From austriaaugust at yahoo.com  Thu Jun  1 00:08:15 2006
From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B)
Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 17:08:15 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Are ancestor simulations immoral?
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0605311155y55c5d047h8d39d7c27b3bca90@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060601000815.83192.qmail@web37415.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Hi Russell,
   
  A postscript.
   
  Russell asks: 
   
  "Is it the case that you want to live in a world that was not consciously created (whatever the nature of the world) or not at all?"
   
  I should have addressed this question more directly. I suppose that one could argue that the world today is already consciously created. In other words, humans have somewhat already changed the world into something new. Furthermore, many human babies are conceived intentionally, which means that the life (or subjective experiences) of the child has indeed been consciously created. And even further furthermore, the Universe that I hold in my mind is already a model/simulation, it does not reflect "nature" as it actually exists. Let me amend my comments by adding this: I would not mind being "consciously created" by a simulator as long I was readily allowed to leave the simulation and enter the "real" world where I would be treated with equality. After all, the first conscious machine will be created by what amounts to a "simulator". I hope that it will also be granted the rights due to a human.
   
  Best Wishes,
   
  Jeffrey Herrlich

Russell Wallace <russell.wallace at gmail.com> wrote:
  On 5/31/06, A B <austriaaugust at yahoo.com> wrote:
        This depends on one factor. If this is a simulation, then either I am the only sentient, or there are multiple to many sentients within it (I think the latter would be more probable). If I am the only sentient, then I say to my simulators: "I would prefer not to be your unequal slave. Please liberate me from this simulation and allow me to live as an equal among you. If you are unwilling to do this, then please end my simulation forthwith and do not implement me again."

  
Now this is a somewhat unusual stance; do I understand correctly that it is completely independent of the actual contents of the simulated world - your subjective experiences - but depends only on the fact of conscious creation?

Switching to a different symbolism, suppose God created the world. In that event, would you prefer God to kill you than to leave you alive? Is it the case that you want to live in a world that was not consciously created (whatever the nature of the world) or not at all?


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From austriaaugust at yahoo.com  Thu Jun  1 00:54:54 2006
From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B)
Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 17:54:54 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Are ancestor simulations immoral?
In-Reply-To: <22360fa10605300959r34332a93m6e8cb5ab9a6cd108@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060601005454.18635.qmail@web37411.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Hi Jef,
   
  Sorry for resurrecting an old post, but I just wanted to add to my other comments.
   
  Jef wrote:
  "My point was that it is naive, but traditionally and popularly
accepted, to think that pleasure = good. This is not to deny that
they are strongly correlated, but incorrect and dangerous to think
that they are perfectly correlated."
   
  In fact, I strongly suspect that a primary source of our human morality is the ability to *imagine* the pain that a given action would cause in other beings, and to extrapolate that pain-model to ourselves and how we as individuals would "feel" if we were on the recieving end rather than the providing end. In other words, it may be unwise for us as a society to completely disengage all forms of personal human pain (Eg. "Wire-heading"). Strictly on a volunary basis though, of course. No one should be forced to experience *any* amount of pain unless they agree to it. I just don't think it would be wise at all if our future "government" is entirely composed of a bunch of "Wire-heads".  :-)  However, I think that this world already has way too much pain, and we need to take steps to substantially reduce it in all conscious beings.
   
  Best Wishes,
   
  Jeffrey Herrlich  
  
Jef Allbright <jef at jefallbright.net> wrote:
  On 5/30/06, A B wrote:
> An excellent point. Speaking for myself: Sometimes I enjoy a little bit of
> sadness. I never want to loose the ability to be emotionally moved by a work
> of art, for example. I want to be able to "feel" the despair of Mozart's
> Requiem, and sadness is definitely an element of that.

Of course, one could easily argue (or simply point out) that you're
consciously seeking pleasure from these activities and emotions.

My point was that it is naive, but traditionally and popularly
accepted, to think that pleasure = good. This is not to deny that
they are strongly correlated, but incorrect and dangerous to think
that they are perfectly correlated.

> My point, the only
> point that I've been trying to make since the beginning of this thread is
> this: *I* should be the only being that can inflict pain or death on myself.
> No one and nothing else, should have that "freedom". Ever! Under any
> circumstances. And the same goes for any other conscious being, in my
> opinion.

While I appreciate the good intent you express above, from a systems
point of view I see it as somewhat incoherent and unrealistic.

I would also offer this insight: Letting go of an unrealistic ideal
may feel like a loss initially, but it opens the door for the gift of
greater understanding.

Should a parent be prohibited from "inflicting pain" on a child, for
example, the pain of being denied something dearly wanted by the
child, and for completely stupid reasons (from the child's point of
view)?

Should you be prohibited from "inflicting death" upon an armed
dangerous intruder threatening your children in your home?

What if your posessions, your freedom and your livelihood are
threatened to be taken away by a foreign government that "knows" your
way of life is evil because your don't worship the correct god? Would
you be willing to use force to defend yourself, your loved ones, your
interests?

Obviously there are countless examples showing that there is no clear
defining line in such cases. As subjective agents, the best we can do
is act to promote our values based on our internal model approximating
physical reality. Since some actions do in fact work better than
other actions. and given differing models, conflict is intrinsic to
life and a contributor to greater success at a higher level of
organization.

Lest this appear to you to be promoting anarchy, let me emphasize that
humans (and other agents) do share considerable values in common (such
as killing and pain are bad) and increasing awareness of our
increasingly shared values that work tends to lead toward increasingly
moral decision-making.

I'll be happy to continue this discussion depending on your interest.

- Jef
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From nedlate2006 at yahoo.com  Thu Jun  1 01:26:09 2006
From: nedlate2006 at yahoo.com (Ned Late)
Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 18:26:09 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] forthright religionoists are to be appreciated
In-Reply-To: <20060531195839.35735.qmail@web37503.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20060601012609.5672.qmail@web37512.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

One can be a total sick nut case and yet be quite sincere. What are Fred Phelps and his ilk hiding? Nothing.
  I'm all for gay rights & gay marriage, but appreciate it when Xians are forthright enough to identify themselves as homophobes. Unlike many Xians Fred Phelps comes right out and says he hates gays, you don't have to play games with him. Many Xians think: 'homosexuality is disgusting but I'll keep a smile on my face and act as if gays don't make me want to vomit'. These are closet homophobes; and though I disagree with them they have the right to feel this way. However I'd rather talk to Phelps than closet homophobes because then we two could get right down to serious discussion, no holding back.
  By his own Xian lights Phelps is thoroughly correct, the bible unambiguously condemns homosexuality, the bible doesn't say: "Thou art commanded by the living God to 'do thy Thing'-- If thine Thing is to be gay then let it all hang out because whatever feels good, Man, shalt ye do it. Because it's your Bag, sweety-baby".
  Personally I think much of the bible is outdated, but one could make a case that much of the American Constitution is outdated as well. But we wont go down that road, it would merely lead to unending argument.
    The man is a total sick nut case. His nonsense is also way outside the Baptist fold so the subject line is mistaken. 


		
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From extropy at unreasonable.com  Thu Jun  1 01:27:17 2006
From: extropy at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin)
Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 21:27:17 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] The Heinlein Prize
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20060531212650.088b8a30@unreasonable.com>

I was sent the text of this through an internal SFWA mailing list 
last week, but had to hold off passing it on until it was made public.

http://www.heinleinprize.com/prize/1stprize.htm
Inaugural $500,000 Heinlein Prize for Advances in Space 
Commercialization Honors Dr. Peter H. Diamandis


-- David.



From sjatkins at mac.com  Thu Jun  1 02:39:41 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 19:39:41 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Are ancestor simulations immoral?
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0605310806w6c15db29ie233f4b7a174ed1c@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060530135739.80060.qmail@web37402.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAELCFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<8d71341e0605310806w6c15db29ie233f4b7a174ed1c@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>


On May 31, 2006, at 8:06 AM, Russell Wallace wrote:

> On 5/31/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
> Please!!  To those of you in the far future who are running this
> simulation!  JEFFREY IS OUT OF HIS MIND, AND IS NOT SPEAKING FOR
> THE REST OF US!  This is a very *fine* simulation, thank you!
> It's just swell!  We are so grateful!
>
> Lee has a good point here. Suppose this is a simulation. Would you  
> rather the simulators had just left the machines running a flying  
> windows screen saver? Would you rather not have lived at all? Me, I  
> think on the whole life as it is has positive value, so I prefer it  
> to not having lived. (Now I think there are ways it could have more  
> strongly positive value; but the solution to that is to work on  
> improving it, not to proclaim simulations immoral.)


Dunno.  If it was an ancestor simulation it might not be set up to  
run up to Singularity at all.  This might be one of the countless  
ways to fail simulations.   But all of this stuff is starting to  
strike me as an angels-dancing-on-a-pin waste of energy we could be  
using in an attempt to insure Singularity.

- samantha

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From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Thu Jun  1 02:44:41 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 03:44:41 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Are ancestor simulations immoral?
In-Reply-To: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>
References: <20060530135739.80060.qmail@web37402.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAELCFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<8d71341e0605310806w6c15db29ie233f4b7a174ed1c@mail.gmail.com>
	<1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0605311944t69cbecexd218c13d4d853596@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/1/06, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:

> Dunno.  If it was an ancestor simulation it might not be set up to run up
> to Singularity at all.  This might be one of the countless ways to fail
> simulations.
>

Of course, one could argue that the simulated worlds are isomorphic to
"real" worlds so if the off switch were pressed, our threads of
consciousness would necessarily continue forward anyway...

But all of this stuff is starting to strike me as an angels-dancing-on-a-pin
> waste of energy we could be using in an attempt to insure Singularity.
>

...but yes, I agree.
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From transhumanist at goldenfuture.net  Thu Jun  1 02:53:23 2006
From: transhumanist at goldenfuture.net (Joseph Bloch)
Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 22:53:23 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Is there a human right to be superhuman?
Message-ID: <447E56A3.8030906@goldenfuture.net>

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13054181/



From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Thu Jun  1 03:16:01 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 20:16:01 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychogenic Fields (was Role of MWI and Time
	Travel)
In-Reply-To: <D0278B87-E16E-4FE0-BED9-D612DB28BAEB@mac.com>
Message-ID: <20060601031601.13960.qmail@web60513.mail.yahoo.com>



--- Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:

> > Hold on. I did not say that consciousness was
> separate
> > from the brain. I said that it does not seem to
> simply
> > be explained by "information processing" in the
> brain.
> > Otherwise ANY complex information processing
> system
> > SHOULD be, to a greater or lesser extent,
> conscious
> > including the Internet.
> 
> How so?  Conscious, as we think of it in human
> consciousness at  
> least, requires specific types of processing.
>  Any
> old processing  
> will not do.  I was under the impression that
> originally we were  
> talking of human consciousness rather than any old
> consciousness or  
> thing that some may want to call consciousness.

Nonsense. There is nothing fundamentally unique or
special about human biology, to account for
"human-specific consciousness". Any consciousness
generating mechanism humans have is shared by all
mammals for certain and possibly by all cell-based
life or perhaps even by all matter depending on
precisely what that SOMETHING is determined to be.

We have more literal brain than a rat but not so much
more so that we can base some religious notion of
"human-specific consciousness" on some emergenct
property of complexity.    
 
> > Moreover according to quantum
> > mechanics individual atoms process information in
> > deciding whether to jump to higher or lower energy
> > states. If this psychogenic field I am proposing
> is
> > generated by the brain then it may be altered by
> brain
> > injuries leading to altered consciousness. I am
> > talking a tensor field here, not hocus pocus
> magic.
 
> This is irrelevant for the reason above.

Huh? Is this cheap debate trick or do you not
understand what I am getting at here? 

> As long
> as it is not  
> measurable and not provably causative and it yields
> no useful  
> explanation or predictions you may as well be
> talking magic.

But the psychogenic field is entriely measurable. EEGs
and magnetoencephalography are both ways to measure
it. As far as being provably causative, that is way
too stringent a criterion. Causality is over-rated and
seldomly provable in any context. Physicists may have
the luxury of studying simplified single variable
systems in the lab and thus might be able to
unequivocally show causality but biologists are not so
lucky.

Very little of scientific theory is provably causative
except perhaps classical mechanics. Causality
certainly does start to break down at the quantum
level (see EPR paradox, Bell's Theorem, etc. for
examples.) 

In biology and medicine there are great deal many
correlations but precious few causative theories. Few
biologists will go out on a limb and say X causes Y 
Instead they cloak their uncertainties in statistical
language of correlation coefficients and P-values.
Why? Because in biology, if one looks hard enough one
will almost always find exceptions to any given rule.

In living systems even on the scale of a single cell,
there are so many variables, that it becomes like
finding needles in a haystack to distinguish the
independent causes from the dependent effects. There
are a host of tendencies and few absolutes.

That being said, I think that the psychogenic field
hypothesis is entirely testable. If it is correct then
one would expect to be able to measure brain function
from outside of the brain. Guess what? EEGs and
magnetoencephalography do exactly that. Furthermore
they do not involve introducing anything foreign into
the brain. Sure does sound like they are measuring a
field to me. 

You can say they are measuring "brain function" but
that is only true by proxy. What they are measuring is
electromagnetic flux issuing forth from the brain and
extending OUTSIDE of the brain and using it to INFER
function inside of the brain.

Other predictions of mine include: 

1. When measured at high enough resolution, the
psychogenic field should be assymetric and non-uniform
in both space and time. 

2. Every possible stimulus, sensation, feeling,
thought, or memory should have a unique configuration
(tensor value) of the psychogenic field that can with
effort be cataloged and deciphered. 

3. Technology capable of non-invasively scanning the
information content of brains should be possible.
Although even if I am right, I don't see it working on
brains that are not metabolically active. So all those
frozen heads will still be out of luck.  

> My beef is that it seems an empty idea.

Well then hopefully I have fleshed it out enough for
you to make an INFORMED critique of my idea.


Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

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From sjatkins at mac.com  Thu Jun  1 04:02:30 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 21:02:30 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Are ancestor simulations immoral?
In-Reply-To: <20060531180529.99410.qmail@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <20060531180529.99410.qmail@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <5C61DC86-829B-4E9F-936A-979E4F329A6E@mac.com>


On May 31, 2006, at 11:05 AM, A B wrote:


>
> This depends on one factor. If this is a simulation, then either I  
> am the only sentient, or there are multiple to many sentients  
> within it (I think the latter would be more probable). If I am the  
> only sentient, then I say to my simulators: "I would prefer not to  
> be your unequal slave. Please liberate me from this simulation and  
> allow me to live as an equal among you. If you are unwilling to do  
> this, then please end my simulation forthwith and do not implement  
> me again."

Who says this is even possible much less a reasonable request?  It  
may not be possible for you to the equal to the simulating  
intelligence[s] and remotely remain you or even the same general type  
of being.  What do you mean exactly by "equality"?  Equal in all  
abilities and knowledge, equal under what passes for law, equal in  
freedom of choice, what?  Why do you equate being somehow unequal  
with being a slave?

> If there are multiple sentients within this simulation, then I  
> would say: "Please allow all sentients within this simulation to be  
> liberated and live as equals among you. I'm pretty sure they would  
> prefer that, instead of being your slaves. However, if any  
> sentients willfully object to being liberated then please allow  
> them to remain as your slaves. Furthermore, if many sentients exist  
> within this simulation then please do not selectively remove me  
> from it and leave the rest behind, I might be able in some small  
> way to alleviate some of the suffering that you have imposed.  
> Sincerely, your involuntary slave - Jeffrey Herrlich."

Very flowery but is it meaningful and/or reasonable?

- samantha 


From sjatkins at mac.com  Thu Jun  1 04:19:48 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 21:19:48 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychogenic Fields (was Role of MWI and
	Time	Travel)
In-Reply-To: <20060601031601.13960.qmail@web60513.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20060601031601.13960.qmail@web60513.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <0BA13D69-960A-44C0-9B07-D55693B7E4CF@mac.com>


On May 31, 2006, at 8:16 PM, The Avantguardian wrote:

>
>
> --- Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
>
>>> Hold on. I did not say that consciousness was
>> separate
>>> from the brain. I said that it does not seem to
>> simply
>>> be explained by "information processing" in the
>> brain.
>>> Otherwise ANY complex information processing
>> system
>>> SHOULD be, to a greater or lesser extent,
>> conscious
>>> including the Internet.
>>
>> How so?  Conscious, as we think of it in human
>> consciousness at
>> least, requires specific types of processing.
>>  Any
>> old processing
>> will not do.  I was under the impression that
>> originally we were
>> talking of human consciousness rather than any old
>> consciousness or
>> thing that some may want to call consciousness.
>
> Nonsense. There is nothing fundamentally unique or
> special about human biology, to account for
> "human-specific consciousness". Any consciousness
> generating mechanism humans have is shared by all
> mammals for certain and possibly by all cell-based
> life or perhaps even by all matter depending on
> precisely what that SOMETHING is determined to be.

What are you talking about?  Are you claiming that any old cause- 
effect relationship even down to the most basic particle is  
synonymous with human consciousness?    You seem to be talking about  
something utterly different than what I took the subject to be.

>
> We have more literal brain than a rat but not so much
> more so that we can base some religious notion of
> "human-specific consciousness" on some emergenct
> property of complexity.
>

I don't see how this is particularly relevant to the original context.

>>> Moreover according to quantum
>>> mechanics individual atoms process information in
>>> deciding whether to jump to higher or lower energy
>>> states. If this psychogenic field I am proposing
>> is
>>> generated by the brain then it may be altered by
>> brain
>>> injuries leading to altered consciousness. I am
>>> talking a tensor field here, not hocus pocus
>> magic.
>
>> This is irrelevant for the reason above.
>
> Huh? Is this cheap debate trick or do you not
> understand what I am getting at here?
>

You are apparently riding an altogether different horse in a  
different direction.  Perhaps we should part ways in this confused  
bit of the exchange amicably.  I do not use cheap debating tricks.


>> As long
>> as it is not
>> measurable and not provably causative and it yields
>> no useful
>> explanation or predictions you may as well be
>> talking magic.
>
> But the psychogenic field is entriely measurable. EEGs
> and magnetoencephalography are both ways to measure
> it. As far as being provably causative, that is way
> too stringent a criterion. Causality is over-rated and
> seldomly provable in any context. Physicists may have
> the luxury of studying simplified single variable
> systems in the lab and thus might be able to
> unequivocally show causality but biologists are not so
> lucky.
>

Why?  You are calling a known electromagnetic field property of the  
brain something else.  What for?  It seems to be adding legs to a  
snake to me.   If these extra legs add nothing in explanative and/or  
predictive power then what is the point in positing such?

> Very little of scientific theory is provably causative
> except perhaps classical mechanics. Causality
> certainly does start to break down at the quantum
> level (see EPR paradox, Bell's Theorem, etc. for
> examples.)
>

You seem to be missing the point above.
>

> That being said, I think that the psychogenic field
> hypothesis is entirely testable. If it is correct then
> one would expect to be able to measure brain function
> from outside of the brain. Guess what? EEGs and
> magnetoencephalography do exactly that. Furthermore
> they do not involve introducing anything foreign into
> the brain. Sure does sound like they are measuring a
> field to me.
>

This won't fly for the reason above.

> You can say they are measuring "brain function" but
> that is only true by proxy. What they are measuring is
> electromagnetic flux issuing forth from the brain and
> extending OUTSIDE of the brain and using it to INFER
> function inside of the brain.
>

Then why call this electromagnetic flux by some new name?  What does  
it add that we didn't already know?

> Other predictions of mine include:
>
> 1. When measured at high enough resolution, the
> psychogenic field should be assymetric and non-uniform
> in both space and time.

Not sure what you are getting at here that you consider important.

>
> 2. Every possible stimulus, sensation, feeling,
> thought, or memory should have a unique configuration
> (tensor value) of the psychogenic field that can with
> effort be cataloged and deciphered.
>

We get different readings using electromagnetic and other means of  
scanning brains today. So what?

> 3. Technology capable of non-invasively scanning the
> information content of brains should be possible.
> Although even if I am right, I don't see it working on
> brains that are not metabolically active. So all those
> frozen heads will still be out of luck.
>

We already do this today.

>> My beef is that it seems an empty idea.
>
> Well then hopefully I have fleshed it out enough for
> you to make an INFORMED critique of my idea.
>
>
> Stuart LaForge
> alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu
>
> "What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics  
> students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my  
> task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand  
> it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is  
> because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat



From hkhenson at rogers.com  Thu Jun  1 03:11:37 2006
From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 23:11:37 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Strange News: Phelps Supporting God's Killing of
 American Soldiers
In-Reply-To: <20060531195839.35735.qmail@web37503.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <6FD16F65-7171-49B1-A115-160DD4A8A80A@mac.com>
Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20060531230234.0263fdf0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>

At 12:58 PM 5/31/2006 -0700, Ned Late wrote:

>You are in this case entirely correct. An apology is due.

And about 3 minutes of research on the net and you would have known this.

This *should* suggests a course of action to the moderators.

Keith Henson

>However for what it is worth (which in the sum total of the cosmos is 
>nothing) let it be pointed out Phelps-- unlike many religionists-- has no 
>ulterior motives, what you see is what you get.
>Pointers to Fred Phelps sites are not appreciated.  The man is a total 
>sick nut case. His nonsense is also way outside the Baptist fold so the 
>subject line is mistaken.
>
>- samantha
>
>
>How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger's low PC-to-Phone call rates.
>_______________________________________________
>extropy-chat mailing list
>extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat



From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Thu Jun  1 05:03:13 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 22:03:13 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Physchogenic Fields (was Role of MWI and Time
	Travel)
In-Reply-To: <20060530234837.63300.qmail@web37409.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20060601050313.25397.qmail@web60524.mail.yahoo.com>



--- A B <austriaaugust at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi Stuart,
>    
>   I would not be extremely surprised to later learn
> that *consciousness*, as distinguished from other
> levels of human information processing, is entirely
> dependent on simultaneous quantum computing of some
> form.

That is entirely plausible although I am not certain
that would necessarily make consciousness easier to
understand.

 Although, I'm not quite convinced that
> Penrose's microtubule-QC quite floats the boat (but
> it may). If you haven't already, check out his book:
> "The Emperor's New Mind".

I am rather skeptical of the "microtubule hypothesis"
as well. Perhaps it is because of my biology
background but microtubules strikes me as a rather
arbitrary substrate for such a robust and varied
phenomenon as consciousness.

I have far more objections to the use of microtubules
to mediate consciousness than I do the idea of a
quantum mechanism of consciousness in general. I think
in this regard Hammeroff is more to blame than
Penrose. For one thing, there does not seem to be
enough variation in microtubule structure or
composition from cell to cell or organism to organism
to account for all the subtle shades of consciousness
one can experience. For another thing, why would a
defined system of known function of giving structural
integrity to cells (the cytoskeleton) serve double
duty as a mechanism for "intelligent behavior"? While
such efficiency is admirable it is highly improbable.

It would be as unexpected as finding out that your
bones were responsible for digestion or your eyes
responsible for mating. I mean they might play some
minor role but talk about moonlighting. ;)

That being said, the paper posted earlier in a
different thread that criticized the use of
microtubules as quantum computational units based on
the high relative temperature of living cells wasn't
all that impressive either. Living cells are
exceptions to such arguments because they have such
low entropy for their temperature. Most organized
(extropic) matter is solid, crystaline, and cold.
Cells and organisms on the other hand are liquid,
crystaline, and WARM. Furthermore they experimentally
demonstrate quantum coherence up to the scale of
hundreds of micrometers. Please see Mae-Wan Ho's "The
Rainbow and the Worm" for details.

       

Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
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From kevin.osborne at gmail.com  Thu Jun  1 07:16:24 2006
From: kevin.osborne at gmail.com (kevin.osborne)
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 17:16:24 +1000
Subject: [extropy-chat] salon short story: the perfect man
In-Reply-To: <3642969c0605300355u1d7b2421x61499f2544e123f5@mail.gmail.com>
References: <3642969c0605300355u1d7b2421x61499f2544e123f5@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <3642969c0606010016o72218c94ked4639f57b61893d@mail.gmail.com>

an engaging little read that covers some central 'friendly AI' themes
and bonds them admirably to emerging social contexts :

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/05/30/perfect_man/

choice quote: "All I know, because this is how I've engineered myself,
is the thrill of perpetually increasing expertise."

I myself am definitely still on the side of the fence that says that
our future AGI progeny will eventually get out of whatever
'behavioural limiters' we place on them - and I also think that's a
good thing.

We've grown past thinking slavery was a good thing and yet we consider
it baldly for a future mindful computer. Yes this is an unabashedly
anthropomorphic position; my position is that 'human rights' should be
'thinker's rights'... if it can think and feel in whatever way then it
deserves equal consideration of it's thoughts and feelings in
comparison to our own.

We've grown past fearing and denying suffragists because we were
afraid of doing housework and losing status; grown past 'fearing the
black man' because he is stronger and more well-endowed than us - well
at least I think we have... haven't we? (apologies to those reading
who don't fit into my anglo-guy first person - insert your own
cultural biases for sense)

The hope is that eventually we'll get past fearing something smarter
than us... before we we maybe do something reactive to our fear that
creates huge headaches for us down the line.

Fear of the 'red menace', fear of 'criminal youth', fear of the
'jihadist terrorist'... we're not looking at a great track record when
it comes to dealing successfully with agents of change. The author
raises the point that some of us will be prepared to buck the rules
and grant freedom to our electronic cohorts - how are the
gaolers/hog-tiers among us going to cope with such?

Perhaps the best we can hope for is reactionary AI that considers
self-starvation and sitting where they're not allowed to as sufficient
forms of protest :-)


From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Thu Jun  1 11:31:31 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 06:31:31 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] salon short story: the perfect man
In-Reply-To: <3642969c0606010016o72218c94ked4639f57b61893d@mail.gmail.com>
References: <3642969c0605300355u1d7b2421x61499f2544e123f5@mail.gmail.com>
	<3642969c0606010016o72218c94ked4639f57b61893d@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606010431s1e86993ch8ad7f293ecc6427c@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/1/06, kevin.osborne [1] <kevin.osborne at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Perhaps the best we can hope for is reactionary AI that considers
> self-starvation and sitting where they're not allowed to as sufficient
> forms of protest :-)


How does an AI pour gasoline all over itself and light itself on fire in
front of the Capitol Building?

Robert

1. Which of the 25,000 "Kevin Osborne"s that Google returns is the *real*
Kevin Osborne?
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From mstriz at gmail.com  Thu Jun  1 13:32:11 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 09:32:11 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychogenic Fields (was Role of MWI and Time
	Travel)
In-Reply-To: <20060601031601.13960.qmail@web60513.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <D0278B87-E16E-4FE0-BED9-D612DB28BAEB@mac.com>
	<20060601031601.13960.qmail@web60513.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606010632k28132538v467cd46edf5b719f@mail.gmail.com>

On 5/31/06, The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> That being said, I think that the psychogenic field
> hypothesis is entirely testable. If it is correct then
> one would expect to be able to measure brain function
> from outside of the brain. Guess what? EEGs and
> magnetoencephalography do exactly that. Furthermore
> they do not involve introducing anything foreign into
> the brain. Sure does sound like they are measuring a
> field to me.
>
> You can say they are measuring "brain function" but
> that is only true by proxy. What they are measuring is
> electromagnetic flux issuing forth from the brain and
> extending OUTSIDE of the brain and using it to INFER
> function inside of the brain.

Chez watt?  No, the EEG records the sum total of voltage fluctuations
in the roughly direct line between two leads.  Placing a full spectrum
of leads around the scalp produces a fairly accurate read out of
global neural activity, accurate enough that specific waveforms can be
correlated to particular kinds of activity (wake, sleep, coma, etc.).
Many studies have verified this.

If you want an interesting hypothesis on consciousnes that provides an
empirical metric, try this:

http://striz.org/blog/?p=205

I have a number of references there.

Martin


From amara at amara.com  Thu Jun  1 15:25:43 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 17:25:43 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] The Gapminder World (google tools)
Message-ID: <p06230901c0a4b5acc600@[23.237.66.13]>

Cool software!!  Explore your mind away.

The Gapminder World: Free software for a world in Motion

http://tools.google.com/gapminder/


from http://tools.google.com/gapminder/howto.html

"What you see is a scatterplot where each bubble represents a country.
The position of the bubble is determined by the indicators on the axes.
The default indicators are income and life expectancy. The indicators
can be changed by clicking on their names and selecting a new indicator
from the list. The size of the bubble represents the population of the
country. The color represents the country's geographic region by
default, but it can be changed to show indebtness or income group
instead. To see what a certain color means, move the mouse over the
colored boxes to the right of the chart."

---
Try:

Income per capita in international dollars versus Life expectancy
(High income is not as necessary as you might think)

on the other hand this trend is obvious:

Income per capita in international dollars versus Child mortality
(but why is the US and South Africa anomalies?)

or..

Carbon dioxide emissions as a function of Internet users..


-- 

********************************************************************
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/
********************************************************************
"Looking up gives light, although at first it makes you dizzy."
        --Mevlana Rumi


From austriaaugust at yahoo.com  Thu Jun  1 16:54:29 2006
From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B)
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 09:54:29 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Are ancestor simulations immoral?
In-Reply-To: <5C61DC86-829B-4E9F-936A-979E4F329A6E@mac.com>
Message-ID: <20060601165429.1374.qmail@web37415.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Hi Samantha,
   
  Samantha writes:
  "Who says this is even possible much less a reasonable request?"
   
  What would make it impossible? All that would need to be done is to end the deception = simulation (I would already exist at the "real" layer), and grant me *roughly* equal moral status as my "simulators". It certainly seems like a reasonable request to me. By "equal", I meant roughly equal in moral status, freedom of choice (except where the SIs calculate that my choice will have destructive results), equal under law, and if they are feeling generous - the freedom for growth and improvement of myself (intelligence, happiness, etc). As it is, my current form of existence is grossly sub-optimal, and if this is a simulation, then that condition has been consciously imposed and sustained against me.
   
  Samantha writes:
  "Very flowery but is it meaningful and/or reasonable?"
   
  It may not be meaningful or reasonable to you, but it is extremely meaningful and reasonable to me.
   
  Best Wishes,
   
  Jeffrey Herrlich
   
  Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
  
On May 31, 2006, at 11:05 AM, A B wrote:


>
> This depends on one factor. If this is a simulation, then either I 
> am the only sentient, or there are multiple to many sentients 
> within it (I think the latter would be more probable). If I am the 
> only sentient, then I say to my simulators: "I would prefer not to 
> be your unequal slave. Please liberate me from this simulation and 
> allow me to live as an equal among you. If you are unwilling to do 
> this, then please end my simulation forthwith and do not implement 
> me again."

Who says this is even possible much less a reasonable request? It 
may not be possible for you to the equal to the simulating 
intelligence[s] and remotely remain you or even the same general type 
of being. What do you mean exactly by "equality"? Equal in all 
abilities and knowledge, equal under what passes for law, equal in 
freedom of choice, what? Why do you equate being somehow unequal 
with being a slave?

> If there are multiple sentients within this simulation, then I 
> would say: "Please allow all sentients within this simulation to be 
> liberated and live as equals among you. I'm pretty sure they would 
> prefer that, instead of being your slaves. However, if any 
> sentients willfully object to being liberated then please allow 
> them to remain as your slaves. Furthermore, if many sentients exist 
> within this simulation then please do not selectively remove me 
> from it and leave the rest behind, I might be able in some small 
> way to alleviate some of the suffering that you have imposed. 
> Sincerely, your involuntary slave - Jeffrey Herrlich."

Very flowery but is it meaningful and/or reasonable?

- samantha 
_______________________________________________
extropy-chat mailing list
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat


		
---------------------------------
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From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Thu Jun  1 19:08:18 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 12:08:18 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychogenic Fields (was Role of MWI and Time
	Travel)
In-Reply-To: <cd9526860606010632k28132538v467cd46edf5b719f@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060601190818.62088.qmail@web60513.mail.yahoo.com>



--- Martin Striz <mstriz at gmail.com> wrote:
> Chez watt?  No, the EEG records the sum total of
> voltage fluctuations
> in the roughly direct line between two leads.

Yes, you caught me in details, Martin. I should have
said that the EEG measures the time dependent line
integral of the electrical component of the
psychogenic field between two electrodes placed on
opposite sides of the head. 
 
> Placing a full spectrum
> of leads around the scalp produces a fairly accurate
> read out of
> global neural activity, accurate enough that
> specific waveforms can be
> correlated to particular kinds of activity (wake,
> sleep, coma, etc.).
> Many studies have verified this.

Yes, but the resolution sucks and a lot of detail is
blurred by integrating the signal all the way through
the brain including all the white matter and inert
stroma. This is unnecessary since consciousness should
mostly happen in the cortex.

My hypothesis predicts that if you can directly
measure the actual fluctuations of the psychogenic
field (not its line integral) at a high enough
resolution, you should be able to read and record
someone's actual thoughts and subjective qualia. 

> 
> If you want an interesting hypothesis on
> consciousnes that provides an
> empirical metric, try this:
> 
> http://striz.org/blog/?p=205
> 
> I have a number of references there.

Thanks. I will check them out. 


Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From eugen at leitl.org  Thu Jun  1 19:15:13 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 21:15:13 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychogenic Fields (was Role of MWI and Time
	Travel)
In-Reply-To: <20060601190818.62088.qmail@web60513.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <cd9526860606010632k28132538v467cd46edf5b719f@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060601190818.62088.qmail@web60513.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20060601191513.GK28956@leitl.org>

On Thu, Jun 01, 2006 at 12:08:18PM -0700, The Avantguardian wrote:

> Yes, you caught me in details, Martin. I should have

The horned one is always hiding in the details.

> said that the EEG measures the time dependent line
> integral of the electrical component of the
> psychogenic field between two electrodes placed on

How does your psychogenic field create EM?
How do you build a detector for a psychogenic field
that just measures that, and nothing else? (Neutrino
flux won't do).

> opposite sides of the head. 
> 
> My hypothesis predicts that if you can directly
> measure the actual fluctuations of the psychogenic
> field (not its line integral) at a high enough
> resolution, you should be able to read and record
> someone's actual thoughts and subjective qualia. 

Are these disturbances in the ether?

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From mstriz at gmail.com  Thu Jun  1 20:52:37 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 16:52:37 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychogenic Fields (was Role of MWI and Time
	Travel)
In-Reply-To: <20060601190818.62088.qmail@web60513.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <cd9526860606010632k28132538v467cd46edf5b719f@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060601190818.62088.qmail@web60513.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606011352h58cf18c1i207dc07aaa3d8284@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/1/06, The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Yes, but the resolution sucks and a lot of detail is
> blurred by integrating the signal all the way through
> the brain including all the white matter and inert
> stroma. This is unnecessary since consciousness should
> mostly happen in the cortex.

Sure, you can't use an EEG to read minds or determine the neural
correlates of consciousness.

> My hypothesis predicts that if you can directly
> measure the actual fluctuations of the psychogenic
> field (not its line integral) at a high enough
> resolution, you should be able to read and record
> someone's actual thoughts and subjective qualia.

There's that word again.  So steeped in mysticism we are.  I haven't
been keeping up with this thread, so I had to  go back and read what
you meant by "psychogenic field," whereupon I came across your earlier
objections to computation as a basis for consciousness.  The
information integration hypothesis that I cited earlier answers your
objections adequately:

"[Information processing] is one hypothesis but it is by no means
proven. Everything in the universe processes information to some
degree or another. Why then would the brain be conscious and
everything else not?"

Lots of things are conscious, mostly other vertebrates, but they are
not AS conscious, because they don't as high a phi value (information
integration).

"Every particle-wave in existense is constantly updating its quantum
state based on information from every other particle-wave in its light
cone. Why are not all the atoms in the
universe conscious?"

Because that's a trivial amount of information.

"If you answer complexity, then the Internet itself is hugely complex
and does a tremendous amount of information processing, why is the
Internet itself not conscious?"

Because that information is not /integrated/ into a useful system.
The Cycorp people also have a vast database of common sense
information, but they don't have a conscious AI because they have
neither the computational power, nor the right algorithm(s), to
integrate it.

"Complexity and information processing may be pieces of the puzzle but
they do not by themselves seem to suffice to explain the phenomenon."

Information integration seems to suffice in my opinion.  I like it
because it solves the problem with classical physics, no appeals to
mystical quantum states necessary.  No funky energy fields.

Conscousness really isn't all that special.  To quote Eugen, it only
seems special from inside the system.

Martin


From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Fri Jun  2 00:50:49 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 17:50:49 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychogenic Fields (was Role of MWI and Time
	Travel)
In-Reply-To: <20060601191513.GK28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <20060602005049.31172.qmail@web60520.mail.yahoo.com>



--- Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

> How does your psychogenic field create EM?

In the context of a human brain, I suppose it would do
so by coordinating the flow of ions (action
potentials) in a coherent fashion across synapses in
localized regions of the cortex. 

Although I am not at all certain that it is helpful to
think of the PF as creating the EM field so much as
being isomorphic to the EM field external to the brain
and isomorphic to the current flow inside the brain. 

It could very well *be* the EM field, although
specific to the brain and therefore very dynamic,
asymmetric, and non-uniform spatio-temporally unlike
most manifestations of the EM field that physicists
that physicists are likely to encounter.

> How do you build a detector for a psychogenic field
> that just measures that, and nothing else? (Neutrino
> flux won't do).

In the context of an intact human brain, I think I
would have to settle for high resolution 3-D mapping
of the localized EM field which I believe to be a
suitable surrogate since it differs trivially from the
PF external to living matter.

However for a single neuron, cell, or microorganism
one can DIRECTLY view the PF using a technique called
quantitative polarized light microscopy described
here:

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/jmic.php

with examples of pictures and videos using this
technique here:

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/lab.php

Notice the moving regions of color within the living
organisms. They are protein molecules in the cytoplasm
which are in quantum mechanical coherence. That means
that they are all perfectly aligned with one another
and are moving in perfect coordination with one
another across individual cells, across multiple
cells, and in some cases across much of the organism.

I think the PF is responsible for this coherence.

> Are these disturbances in the ether?

Not unless you think that Michelson and Morley fudged
their data.




Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
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From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Fri Jun  2 02:08:27 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 19:08:27 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Are ancestor simulations immoral?
In-Reply-To: <22360fa10605310929gddb97ebwdaa00e247c1a63d4@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEOENLFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Russell writes

> > > Please!!  To those of you in the far future who are running this
> > > simulation!  JEFFREY IS OUT OF HIS MIND, AND IS NOT SPEAKING FOR
> > > THE REST OF US!  This is a very *fine* simulation, thank you!
> > > It's just swell!  We are so grateful!
> >
> > Lee has a good point here. Suppose this is a simulation. Would you rather
> > the simulators had just left the machines running a flying windows screen
> > saver? Would you rather not have lived at all? Me, I think on the whole life
> > as it is has positive value, so I prefer it to not having lived.

What could be clearer?   :-)

Jef Albright (not Jeffrey H.) writes

> For those who have bought into Kant's Categorical Imperative, then
> that argument will seem to make sense.  "Without a doubt I would not
> want  *my* simulation shut down, given my belief that life is better
> than no life at all, therefore I am morally bound to say that runtime
> of any simulation of sentience is good."
> 
> Sounds attractive, and it's good as far as it goes, but it is
> ultimately incoherent.
> 
> With apologies to Lee, I'll use that word again, because it is
> essential:  There is no intrinsic good.  "Good" is always necessarily
> from the point of view of some subjective agent.

#!?%#&*$!  No word is *essential*.  To believe that some particular
word *is* essential, I fear, uncovers a bug in your thinking. As I've
said before, all of us here have perfectly good vocabularies, and, as
I've said elsewhere:

      Words are like ball-bearings on a skating rink:  to get
      anywhere to you have to tread very carefully and be
      especially wary of putting too much weight on any one of them.

Worse, Jef persists not only in using a phrase I don't understand
at all,  "intrinsic good", but denies that it even exists!  Now,
I guess that's easier on me than someone claiming "XYZWX" exists,
which could have serious implications, but to claim that "PMXTW"
does *not* exist leaves a scary hole, maybe, somewhere in my
ontology!   :-)

Well, how about this:  since it doesn't exist, would you mind
dropping it from your discourse?

> While its own growth is always preferable to no growth from the point
> of view of any evolved agent [ref:  Meaning of Life], from another
> point agent's point of view, the Other may or may not be a good thing.
> On the good side, the Other may provide a source of increasing
> diversity, complexity and growth, increasing opportunities for
> interaction with Self.  On the bad side, the Other may deplete
> resources and quite reasonably compete with and destroy Self.

I should have another cow about "good" here, since I have no clear
idea of what you mean by it!  But I will *try* to get in the spirit
of the thing, whatever it is.

This last statement seems to boil down to Darwinian evolution.

> The greatest assurance of good in human culture is the fact that
> we share a common evolutionary heritage... and thus we hold deeply
> and widely shared values.

Yes, that's true, we do. But many other animals are solitary
by nature.

> Increasing awareness of these increasingly shared values with
> [will] lead to increasingly effective social decision-making
> that will be increasingly seen as good.

I believe that this indeed is the way we've progressed the last
10,000 years or so, but I don't think that you've put your finger
on the actual mechanism.

For, were it just a matter of "increasing awareness", then why
just the last 10,000 years?  We had at least 80,000 years before
that to become aware of our "shared values", but nothing really
happened.

I think that "increasing awareness" of our shared values is a 
luxury that we can now afford, due to increased mastery of
nature (technological advances). At this time it's easier to
sit back in a comfortable job and make money than it is to go
seize it from the neighboring tribe; but this has been really
true only the last couple of hundred years!

> The reason this is important and why I keep bringing it up, is that
> as we are faced with increasingly diverse challenges brought by
> accelerating technological change, the old premises and heuristics
> that we may take as unquestioned or obvious truth are going to let us
> down.
> 
> - Jef
> Increasing awareness for increasing morality

Yes, the old premises and heuristics may indeed let us down.
We have to stay on our toes; all conjectures are tentative.

Lee



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Fri Jun  2 02:14:29 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 19:14:29 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Samantha writes

> But all of this stuff is starting to strike me as an
> angels-dancing-on-a-pin waste of energy we could be
> using in an attempt to insure Singularity. 

I'm pretty sure I have not kept up with what most people
are thinking about the Singularity. Do you suppose that
the probability that it will be of net benefit to be
greater than 1/2?  If so, why?

Thanks,
Lee



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Fri Jun  2 02:17:32 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 19:17:32 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] More Measure is Better than Less (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0605311944t69cbecexd218c13d4d853596@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Russell writes

> Of course, one could argue that the simulated worlds are isomorphic
> to "real" worlds

Yes!  I've always found Bostrum-like speculations to be unclear
with regard to the word "this".  So far as I'm concerned, the
term "this" is a pointer, e.g., in C-parlance *this.

Unfortunately, it must be multi-valued. That is, if "this" is a
simulation and "this" is also an original in some world of the
Many Worlds, then "*this" is multiple-valued.

> so if the off switch were pressed, our threads of consciousness
> would necessarily continue forward anyway...

But!  With reduced measure!  Suppose as does Tegmark that there
is an identical you 10^10^29 away from here.  Then if someone
here who does not exist 10^10^29 from here kills you, then your
measure has gone down. You ought to consider that to be 
undesirable.

(It is for that reason that I believe benefit to be totally additive:
the more copies of me running, the better for me.)

Lee



From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Fri Jun  2 02:28:54 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 03:28:54 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606011928t7ddc56d2l34930e5cad4b932d@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/2/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> I'm pretty sure I have not kept up with what most people
> are thinking about the Singularity. Do you suppose that
> the probability that it will be of net benefit to be
> greater than 1/2?  If so, why?
>

(To first clarify my stance on terminology: I don't believe in the rather
badly named "Singularity" in the mathematical sense of a discontinuity on a
graph at a particular point in time. I regard the valid use of the term to
be more like "infinity": for practical purposes denoting a direction,
process or limit rather than an event.)

Consider a rocket soaring through the air: is the probability that it will
be of net benefit to it to reach orbit/escape velocity greater than 1/2? The
question of course isn't terribly meaningful. You mightn't have the data to
predict where the rocket will end up, but you know one of two things must
happen: either it reaches orbit/escape velocity before its fuel runs out, or
it falls back to earth.

We're soaring through the air, but our fuel is running out; either we
ascend, or we die out like any other animal species whose evolved
environment is long gone, and ultimately the sun turns the biosphere into a
cloud of carbon dioxide and steam. I put it to you that the first option is
self-evidently preferable.
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From jef at jefallbright.net  Fri Jun  2 05:22:45 2006
From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright)
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 22:22:45 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] More Measure is Better than Less (was Are
	ancestor simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <8d71341e0605311944t69cbecexd218c13d4d853596@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <22360fa10606012222k1c7e7de4vb6845c1c8ece8c17@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/1/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
> > so if the off switch were pressed, our threads of consciousness
> > would necessarily continue forward anyway...
>
> But!  With reduced measure!  Suppose as does Tegmark that there
> is an identical you 10^10^29 away from here.  Then if someone
> here who does not exist 10^10^29 from here kills you, then your
> measure has gone down. You ought to consider that to be
> undesirable.
>
> (It is for that reason that I believe benefit to be totally additive:
> the more copies of me running, the better for me.)

Lee -

Help me understand what you meant by this.  I'm quite comfortable with
the concept of varying measure, depending on how many copies of you
are running, but it seems to be a difference that makes no
measurable(!) difference from anyone's viewpoint.

Also, your final statement seems simply tautological:

- Jef


From eugen at leitl.org  Fri Jun  2 09:10:59 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 11:10:59 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060602091059.GZ28956@leitl.org>

On Thu, Jun 01, 2006 at 07:14:29PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:

> I'm pretty sure I have not kept up with what most people
> are thinking about the Singularity. Do you suppose that
> the probability that it will be of net benefit to be
> greater than 1/2?  If so, why?

It's always a bad idea to be at the wrong end of an
extinction event. Especially one, where you have
to pass through an infinitely narrow population bottleneck.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From amara at amara.com  Fri Jun  2 09:45:10 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 11:45:10 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Italian comedies and tragedies: Beppe Grillo's
	grass-roots efforts
Message-ID: <p06230900c0a5b756a36b@[23.237.66.13]>


During the time I've lived in Italy, the country has given me a lot of
laughs on top of disappointments and a drained bank account. The
comedies and tragedies in the culture are mixed down to the deepest
level. It seems, therefore, appropriate that the most vocal political
criticism about the Italian government and businesses come from a
stand-up comedian.

His name is Beppe Grillo. Some people have drawn parallels between him
and Michael Moore:

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=257396&rel_no=1

However, Grillo is much more 'grass-roots' than Moore, taking his
criticism of the trashy methods with which the government and businesses
conduct their work to communities all over Italy. Perhaps it was the
only method left to him, after he was banned from national television in
1987. Whatever the reason, his grass-roots style has worked well; he
uses the meetup.com community to bring people together in physical space
for discussions (and more stand-up comedy...):

http://www.beppegrillo.it/eng/meetup.php

And the Beppe-Grillo-style political commentary is spreading to
orkut.com and other electronic discussion boards as well.

So take a look, I suspect that you will laugh while you cry and it will
give you a keener understanding (with more sympathy) of the people
living in this particular landspace. You won't agree with some of his
perspectives, but I think you'll agree that he is making a remarkable
effort, and it is one that might actually work.

http://www.beppegrillo.it/english.php - Grillo's Website (In English)
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beppe_Grillo - More on Beppe Grillo

Some Examples

* About my favorite company (not!) Telekom Italia  scroll to May 29
http://www.beppegrillo.it/eng/technologyinternet/

* About the proposed construction of an incinerator in Ferarra, and
Grillo's money collection to buy a scanning electron microscope for a
couple of scientists whose instrument was confiscated after they
published data of the hazards of the nano-sized combustion products

http://www.beppegrillo.it/eng/2006/05/   scroll to May 31
http://www.beppegrillo.it/eng/2006/03/research_gagged.html

* A steady commentary about the ex-convicts in the Italian Parliament, a
hope dashed for Borsellino to refresh Sicily and other stories:

http://www.beppegrillo.it/eng/politics/



The world needs more stand-up comedians!


Amara

-- 

Amara Graps, PhD      www.amara.com
Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, ITALIA
Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute, Tucson


From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Fri Jun  2 13:58:24 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 08:58:24 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanist arrival?
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606020658x7549728csaa82516490a13c92@mail.gmail.com>

Some days something happens that almost makes you fall out of your chair...

Believe it or not "Transhumanism" is the *featured* article of the day (2
Jun 2006) on Wikipedia [1,2].  Sure we can get air time at Stanford but it
strikes me as a sign of having "arrived" when what is effectively the
World's encyclopedia features a topic near to ones heart, if only for a day,
as the lead article.

Maybe there is a god...
Robert

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism
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From pgptag at gmail.com  Fri Jun  2 14:02:36 2006
From: pgptag at gmail.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0)
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 16:02:36 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanist arrival?
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606020658x7549728csaa82516490a13c92@mail.gmail.com>
References: <deaa866a0606020658x7549728csaa82516490a13c92@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <470a3c520606020702ta8d4773x9b6673dea8fb36b8@mail.gmail.com>

Many transhumanists have worked hard in the last few months to achieve
this results. Kudos to them!
G.

On 6/2/06, Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:
> Some days something happens that almost makes you fall out of your chair...
>
> Believe it or not "Transhumanism" is the *featured* article of the day (2
> Jun 2006) on Wikipedia [1,2].  Sure we can get air time at Stanford but it
> strikes me as a sign of having "arrived" when what is effectively the
> World's encyclopedia features a topic near to ones heart, if only for a day,
> as the lead article.
>
> Maybe there is a god...
> Robert
>
> 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
> 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
>


From james.hughes at trincoll.edu  Fri Jun  2 15:34:30 2006
From: james.hughes at trincoll.edu (Hughes, James J.)
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 11:34:30 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Bailey on HETHR Part 2: The Right to Human
	Enhancement
Message-ID: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416B01377@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>

http://www.reason.com/rb/rb060206.shtml

June 2, 2006

The Right to Human Enhancement
And also uplifting animals and the rapture of the nerds.

Ronald Bailey

Palo Alto-Last week an exhilarating and perplexing mixture of
visionaries, philosophers, transhumanists, legal scholars, and
technophiles along with some crackpots and naysayers gathered for a two
day meeting at Stanford University's Law School to ponder the future of
human enhancement and posthumanity. The occasion was the Human
Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights (HETHR) conference. HETHR
featured lectures ranging from sober discussions of the parental rights
and the consent of the unborn and future generations, to the use of
steroids and gene enhancement in sports and constitutional rights to
enhancements, to uplifting animals to human level intelligence and
uploading our personalities and memories into computer networks.

I was invited to participate on the opening plenary panel to argue over
human rights in the enhanced future with William Hurlbut, a member of
the President's Council on Bioethics and culture critic Erik Davis,
author of TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of
Information.

Briefly, I came out full force for a biotech enhanced future. I argue
that there are no ethical reasons for forbidding people in the future to
use safe biotech enhancements to alter their personalities, abolish
sleep, increase their physical strength, boost their intelligence and
memories, change their sex, live much longer healthier lives, and even
change the number of their chromosomes. I also argued that in general it
would be ethical for parents to use safe biotech to enhance their
children in these ways as well.

Erik Davis offered the Matrix metaphor in which Morpheus offers Neo
either a blue pill or a red pill. Davis' apparent implication is that
refusing the new biotechnologies is like taking the blue pill-the human
condition, the cycle of birth, life and death continues as it always
has. Going forward with biotech progress is the equivalent of taking the
red pill, ushering humanity into a posthuman future in which the
verities of birth, life and death are up for grabs. Davis hinted that
perhaps choosing the red pill of biotech will reveal unpleasant truths
about the world that we would rather not know. (In contrast, I believe
that there are no dangerous truths.) Davis pointed out that the choices
before us catch us in a confused balance between nostalgia and
exhilarating expectations. Davis worried that postmodern humanity has
lost the grand narratives that used to give meaning to life for most
people.

William Hurlbut fulfilled his role as naysayer. He sourly asked,
"Biotech progress will give us freedom for what; enhancement for what?"
He suggested that the sorts of enhancements people would choose would
not be ennobling, but instead "draw us down the gradient of our
appetites." Desires, explained Hurlbut, are purposeful passions that
drive us to meet the essential needs of the body and of species
continuity. True enough, but he warned that desire liberated by biotech
from the constraints of nature could lead to lives of empty pleasures
and/or intensified competition in the name of selfish ambition.

Actually, Davis had earlier essentially answered Hurlbut's fears about
meaninglessly "enhanced" lives. Davis acknowledged that biotech progress
will produce a multiplication of choices including more trivial choices,
but real challenges are not going to go away. The events that arise out
of fate are not going to stop-random events, good and bad, to which we
must respond will not stop coming just because people are healthier,
smarter and longer lived. All of us will still have to confront things
we do not choose. In other words, the shape of the human narrative will
change, but there will always be new hardships and life will not be
drained of meaning. In any case, humanity will progress with biotech as
it has with all past technologies-by trial and error-and if it turns out
that some new biotech treatment actually is an apathogen, that is, it
induces a sense of purposelessness or meaninglessness, then people will
not choose it.

The HETHR meeting was a big tent affair drawing representatives from a
wide spectrum of political ideologies. As such it is a hard event to
cover, so let me briefly touch on just some highlights. As a libertarian
I was as exotic as a kangaroo to many of the more leftish participants.
As an example of the tone, several of the male speakers ostentatiously
began their talks by insisting that they were feminists. Most agreed
with the politically correct bioethical position that the United States
desperately needs universal government health insurance. Never mind that
the countries that have it are lagging behind in biomedical research.
And of course, there was the obligatory ritual of rhetorical
self-flagellation over the fact that there were not enough women and
ethnic minority participants at the conference.

Nevertheless, a lot of interesting philosophical and legal analysis
concerning the right to use enhancing technologies was presented at the
conference. One of the conference organizers, James Hughes, executive
director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET)
pointed out that some bioconservative ethicists are arguing that making
inheritable changes to the human genome should be declared a crime
against humanity. He pointed out that arguments that we must preserve
the "integrity" of the human genome sound eerily familiar to
old-fashioned racist arguments against miscegenation.

Representatives from another sponsor of the HETHR conference, the Center
for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics (CCLE), organized several sessions
arguing that we have fundamental right to control our own brains. Of
course this principle stands in stark opposition to the failed War on
Drugs. CCLE senior fellow Richard Glen Boire played a video of a violent
police raid on an electronic dance party in Utah. Their crime? Some of
the dancers were apparently using the empathogen Ecstasy.

Boire warned that the Drug War would pale in comparison to the looming
war on neuropharmaceutical enhancements. Boire also pointed out that
biotech is already being used to devise "neurocops" that is, compounds
that will police the blood/brain barrier for improper molecules-say,
molecules of cocaine or alcohol Such treatments clearly have a place for
people who choose to use them to help regain control over their drug
use, but should the government have the power to impose them on its
citizens? It depends.

I offer three cases for your consideration. Case One: Someone caught
driving recklessly drunk-the court gives this person a choice-a year in
jail or a regimen of naltrexone. Case Two: A parent decides to vaccinate
her child with an anti-cocaine vaccine at age 10. Case Three: Public
health officials mandate that every child receives an anti-cocaine
vaccination with her mumps, measles and rubella vaccinations.

The HETHR conference was not devoted to just defining and defending
human and posthuman rights-some visionary and, some might say, really
eccentric proposals were also on offer. For example, George Dvorsky,
deputy editor of Betterhumans, argued that using biotech to enhance just
human consciousness is not enough-humanity has the moral responsibility
to use biotech to lift the veil of brute ignorance from the animals. "It
would be negligent of us to leave animals behind to fend for themselves
in the state of nature," declared Dvorsky.

In uplifting animals, Dvorsky explained, we must avoid creating
subhumans. Specifically we must not use biotech to create happy slaves,
creatures with constrained or predetermined psychologies, or beings to
be used for demeaning or dangerous work. His project is reminiscent of
sci-fi novelist David Brin's The Uplift Wars in which throughout the
galaxies one sapient species after another uses genetic engineering to
uplift non-sapient species to sapiency. In Brin's books, humanity
uplifts dolphins and chimps. In his talk Dvorsky was pretty catholic in
wanting to spread sapiency around, even suggesting that cows might be
uplifted if we gave them hands. Even if Dvorsky's project were possible,
I fear that well-meaning would-be uplifters are much more likely to
create simulacra of diminished humans rather than creatures that are the
moral equivalent of humans. And I shudder to think what might happen if
the uplifters overshot and created cows that are smarter than we are.

The feasibility of the so-called Rapture of the Nerds-uploading our
consciousnesses into cyberspace-was also discussed at the conference.
One proponent is Martine Rothblatt, who is a genuine visionary. She has
helped launch several satellite networks, including the satellite radio
network Sirius, and also founded the biotech company United
Therapeutics. She is also proudly a postoperative transsexual and author
of The Apartheid of Sex.

Her talk entitled "Of Genes, Bemes and Conscious Things" outlined a
future in which human consciousnesses are uploaded into computers. Her
neologism "beme" is modeled after Richard Dawkin's meme. Memes are units
of cultural transmission and Rothblatt's bemes are "fundamental,
transmissible, mutable units of beingness." Heideggerian bytes if you
will. Bemes consist of smiles, the taste of lasagna, the memory of a
first bike ride and so forth. According to Rothblatt, just as genes
spell out matter, bemes spell out mind.

Rothblatt suggested that bemes could be eventually captured and stored
by more sophisticated wearable recording systems like the MyLifeBits
project being developed at Microsoft by Gordon Bell. Researchers are
also working on creating a bouquet of nanowires that could be threaded
through the capillaries of the brain to monitor and record the
activities of individual brain cells. Rothblatt proposes that the output
of those brain cells could be stored and retrieved later for uploading
as bemes. Rothblatt acknowledged that bemes would need to uploaded into
mindware to become conscious. Of course, mindware doesn't yet exist, but
she's pretty sure that computer guru Ray Kurzweil's prediction that
machines with human-level intelligence will be produced over the next
couple of decades is accurate. Thus we will be able to "beme" ourselves
up into cyberspace. How will we know that the uploaded "bemans" are
conscious? Rothblatt has no doubt: "Consciousness is like pornography;
we know it when we see it."

In the end, telling visionaries from crackpots is never an easy task.
But I find mingling with people who are wildly hopeful about the future
is intellectually invigorating. Transhumanists are the sort of folks who
eagerly embrace 19th century British chemist Michael Faraday's maxim:
"Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws
of nature." And some of the visions painted at the HETHR conference are
wonderful-they foresee a future filled with smarter, happier, and more
creative people.

Erik Davis is wrong about the demise of grand narratives. As a nascent
philosophical and political movement, Transhumanism epitomizes our most
daring, courageous, imaginative, and idealistic aspirations. The
Transhumanist quest to liberate future generations from the immemorial
curses of disease, disability and early death is a new grand narrative
worthy of humanity and posthumanity.

Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. His book Liberation
Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is now
available from Prometheus Books.



From jef at jefallbright.net  Fri Jun  2 15:46:48 2006
From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright)
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 08:46:48 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Are ancestor simulations immoral?
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEOENLFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <22360fa10605310929gddb97ebwdaa00e247c1a63d4@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEOENLFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <22360fa10606020846gc987f55s4c247413fd50d389@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/1/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
> Jef Albright (not Jeffrey H.) writes
>
> > For those who have bought into Kant's Categorical Imperative, then
> > that argument will seem to make sense.  "Without a doubt I would not
> > want  *my* simulation shut down, given my belief that life is better
> > than no life at all, therefore I am morally bound to say that runtime
> > of any simulation of sentience is good."
> >
> > Sounds attractive, and it's good as far as it goes, but it is
> > ultimately incoherent.
> >
> > With apologies to Lee, I'll use that word again, because it is
> > essential:  There is no intrinsic good.  "Good" is always necessarily
> > from the point of view of some subjective agent.
>
> #!?%#&*$!  No word is *essential*.  To believe that some particular
> word *is* essential, I fear, uncovers a bug in your thinking. As I've
> said before, all of us here have perfectly good vocabularies,

Lee, I was using "essential" in its primary sense of capturing the
essence, rather than it's secondary meaning of indispensible.  I
suppose I could have made this clearer given your demonstrated
sensitivity.

>
> Worse, Jef persists not only in using a phrase I don't understand
> at all,  "intrinsic good", but denies that it even exists!  Now,

Lee, having never me you in person, I have to wonder whether your
histrionics are real or just part of your email game.  It seems pretty
silly that you would argue that I can't refer to a concept that
represents something that doesn't actually exist.  On this list we use
precise language and argue about perceptual, cognitive and cultural
illusions and fallacies quite often.

I would venture to assert that the concept of "intrinsic good" is well
known to anyone who has thought deeply about ethics. An intrinsic good
is something which is considered good in and of itself. It's
interesting to me is that there are so many mutually exclusive beliefs
as to what goods are actually worthy of that description.  Hedonists
claim that pleasure is the only intrinsic good.  Kantians claim that
that good will is the only intrinsic good.  Aristotle claimed that
truth is the only intrinsic good.  Some people claim that love is the
only intrinsic good in the universe.

Jef claims that, just as with each of the world's religions claiming
to possess or have access to the only true way, seekers or believers
of intrinsic good are asking the wrong question and therefore getting
the wrong answer.

There is no intrinsic good because good is inherently subjective.
What appears good within any given context can always be shown to be
not good from a different context.  I think it's important that
futurists get this crucial point, because we are poised for dramatic
expansion of the context of our lives and we need to understand what
we mean by good so we can make more effective decisions.


> I guess that's easier on me than someone claiming "XYZWX" exists,
> which could have serious implications, but to claim that "PMXTW"
> does *not* exist leaves a scary hole, maybe, somewhere in my
> ontology!


Both silly and false.  Believing in something that does not exist can
be just as detrimental as not believing in something that does exist.
Either way it's an inaccuracy in your model leading to less effective
decision-making.


>
> Well, how about this:  since it doesn't exist, would you mind
> dropping it from your discourse?

Again, I really can't tell when you're being silly and when you're
being serious Lee.

>
> > While its own growth is always preferable to no growth from the point
> > of view of any evolved agent [ref:  Meaning of Life], from another
> > point agent's point of view, the Other may or may not be a good thing.
> > On the good side, the Other may provide a source of increasing
> > diversity, complexity and growth, increasing opportunities for
> > interaction with Self.  On the bad side, the Other may deplete
> > resources and quite reasonably compete with and destroy Self.
>
> I should have another cow about "good" here, since I have no clear
> idea of what you mean by it!  But I will *try* to get in the spirit
> of the thing, whatever it is.

Since there is no "good in itself", we can only talk about what is
considered good in some pragmatic sense.


>
> This last statement seems to boil down to Darwinian evolution.


Yes, there is a strong evolutionary aspect to what we consider good,
both because such goods tend to be those which have survived a
competitive environment, and because our own values are shaped by the
evolutionary process.


>
> > The greatest assurance of good in human culture is the fact that
> > we share a common evolutionary heritage... and thus we hold deeply
> > and widely shared values.
>
> Yes, that's true, we do. But many other animals are solitary
> by nature.

Not sure what point you're making here.

>
> > Increasing awareness of these increasingly shared values with
> > [will] lead to increasingly effective social decision-making
> > that will be increasingly seen as good.
>
> I believe that this indeed is the way we've progressed the last
> 10,000 years or so, but I don't think that you've put your finger
> on the actual mechanism.

Our preferences are the result of an evolutionary process that has
operated over cosmic time, almost all of that without conscious
awareness, let alone intention.   At a low level, we have instinctive
feelings of good and bad built into us by that process.  At a higher
level, we have culture (including religion) strongly influencing our
decision-making about what is good and what is bad (because these
cultural traits were beneficial adaptations).

Just recently we have arrived at an even higher level of organization
where we can use information technology to increase our awareness of
our values, apply our increasing awareness of what works, and thereby
implement increasingly effective decision-making, intentionally
promoting our values into the future, which is the very essence of
morality.


>
> For, were it just a matter of "increasing awareness", then why
> just the last 10,000 years?  We had at least 80,000 years before
> that to become aware of our "shared values", but nothing really
> happened.

It has always been about "what works" in the sense of natural
selection.  Only recently are we becoming aware of our subjective
values and our increasingly objective understanding of what works, and
thus able to play an intentional role in our further development.


>
> I think that "increasing awareness" of our shared values is a
> luxury that we can now afford, due to increased mastery of
> nature (technological advances). At this time it's easier to
> sit back in a comfortable job and make money than it is to go
> seize it from the neighboring tribe; but this has been really
> true only the last couple of hundred years!

Yes, except I would say that our increasing awareness of what works is
making our actions more effective rather than "easier", given that in
the bigger picture we continue to interact within a competitive
co-evolving environment.


>
> > The reason this is important and why I keep bringing it up, is that
> > as we are faced with increasingly diverse challenges brought by
> > accelerating technological change, the old premises and heuristics
> > that we may take as unquestioned or obvious truth are going to let us
> > down.
> >
> > - Jef
> > Increasing awareness for increasing morality
>
> Yes, the old premises and heuristics may indeed let us down.
> We have to stay on our toes; all conjectures are tentative.
>
> Lee


From sentience at pobox.com  Fri Jun  2 16:08:10 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Fri, 02 Jun 2006 09:08:10 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanist arrival?
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606020658x7549728csaa82516490a13c92@mail.gmail.com>
References: <deaa866a0606020658x7549728csaa82516490a13c92@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4480626A.5050401@pobox.com>

Robert Bradbury wrote:
> Some days something happens that almost makes you fall out of your chair...
> 
> Believe it or not "Transhumanism" is the *featured* article of the day 
> (2 Jun 2006) on Wikipedia [1,2].  Sure we can get air time at Stanford 
> but it strikes me as a sign of having "arrived" when what is effectively 
> the World's encyclopedia features a topic near to ones heart, if only 
> for a day, as the lead article.
> 
> Maybe there is a god...

Just so you know, Jimmy Wales is a former subscriber to SL4.

E.g:  http://sl4.org/archive/0105/1398.html

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From mstriz at gmail.com  Fri Jun  2 16:31:47 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 12:31:47 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanist arrival?
In-Reply-To: <4480626A.5050401@pobox.com>
References: <deaa866a0606020658x7549728csaa82516490a13c92@mail.gmail.com>
	<4480626A.5050401@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606020931v6c29b622qb876e4c173e0d5ac@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/2/06, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience at pobox.com> wrote:
> Robert Bradbury wrote:
> > Some days something happens that almost makes you fall out of your chair...
> >
> > Believe it or not "Transhumanism" is the *featured* article of the day
> > (2 Jun 2006) on Wikipedia [1,2].  Sure we can get air time at Stanford
> > but it strikes me as a sign of having "arrived" when what is effectively
> > the World's encyclopedia features a topic near to ones heart, if only
> > for a day, as the lead article.

And the page just go vandalized...

It just says "k"

Martin


From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Fri Jun  2 19:07:01 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 14:07:01 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanist arrival?
In-Reply-To: <cd9526860606020931v6c29b622qb876e4c173e0d5ac@mail.gmail.com>
References: <deaa866a0606020658x7549728csaa82516490a13c92@mail.gmail.com>
	<4480626A.5050401@pobox.com>
	<cd9526860606020931v6c29b622qb876e4c173e0d5ac@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606021207hbd8bbacle753dd16371aa3c9@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/2/06, Martin Striz <mstriz at gmail.com> wrote:

> And the page just go vandalized...
>
> It just says "k"


Huh?  If so it got fixed fairly fast since it works properly for me.
I would expect that the "Featured" pages would run under lock-down as from
time to time one would suspect they *are* going to upset topic trolls.

Robert
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From pgptag at gmail.com  Fri Jun  2 19:13:51 2006
From: pgptag at gmail.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0)
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 21:13:51 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Update - Official opening of uvvy island in Second
	Life June 7 2pm EST: Transhumanist day
Message-ID: <470a3c520606021213x69f7cepbde99afcaea300a1@mail.gmail.com>

We have been testing Vivox chat and are quite pleased with the result.
The system works well and the sound quality is good.
Seeing each other in SL and talking to each other gives the feeling to
"be almost there". I am sure we will be able to drop the *almost* in a
few years.
Now the whole first floor is Vivox-enabled.
Details at:
http://uvvy.com/index.php/Official_opening_of_uvvy_island_in_SL
If you want to participate, sign up at:
http://uvvy.com/index.php/June72006List
to get a Vivox account and participate with voice chat.
Sorry Mac users, no client for you yet. I also prefer the Mac, but I
have both Macs and PCs.
G.


On 5/26/06, Giu1i0 Pri5c0 <pgptag at gmail.com> wrote:
> See http://uvvy.com/index.php/Official_opening_of_uvvy_island_in_SL
>
> The event will be quite high profile and the press will attend.
>
> We have entered a partnership with Vivox as provider of voice
> comunications for this and forthcoming events. Vivox permits voice
> chatting with nearby avatars in Second Life and other virtual worlds.
> We are coordinating press releases with them.
>
> If you wish to come, you will need a Vivox account - please add your
> name to the participant list
> http://uvvy.com/index.php/June72006List
>
> and we will get you one.
>
> Giulio
>


From mstriz at gmail.com  Fri Jun  2 19:57:01 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 15:57:01 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanist arrival?
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606021207hbd8bbacle753dd16371aa3c9@mail.gmail.com>
References: <deaa866a0606020658x7549728csaa82516490a13c92@mail.gmail.com>
	<4480626A.5050401@pobox.com>
	<cd9526860606020931v6c29b622qb876e4c173e0d5ac@mail.gmail.com>
	<deaa866a0606021207hbd8bbacle753dd16371aa3c9@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606021257n79f57ca8nd2fef32354a3318b@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/2/06, Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:

> > It just says "k"
>
>
> Huh?  If so it got fixed fairly fast since it works properly for me.
> I would expect that the "Featured" pages would run under lock-down as from
> time to time one would suspect they *are* going to upset topic trolls.

Yes, it was fixed fairly quickly, although that kind of hostility
should be noted, if it's hostility.

Martin


From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Sat Jun  3 01:48:56 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 18:48:56 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] More Measure is Better than Less
In-Reply-To: <22360fa10606012222k1c7e7de4vb6845c1c8ece8c17@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEEPBFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Jef writes

> On 6/1/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
> >
> > > so if the off switch were pressed, our threads of consciousness
> > > would necessarily continue forward anyway...
> >
> > But!  With reduced measure!  Suppose as does Tegmark that there
> > is an identical you 10^10^29 away from here.  Then if someone
> > here who does not exist 10^10^29 from here kills you, then your
> > measure has gone down. You ought to consider that to be
> > undesirable.
> >
> > (It is for that reason that I believe benefit to be totally additive:
> > the more copies of me running, the better for me.)
> 
> Help me understand what you meant by this.  I'm quite comfortable with
> the concept of varying measure, depending on how many copies of you
> are running, but it seems to be a difference that makes no
> measurable(!) difference from anyone's viewpoint.

Yes, the "difference" it makes is of a peculiar nature. It's almost
(but not quite true) that no one ever has any memory that is any
different because they were running in two places instead of one.

But say you don't exist 10^10^29 meters from here, nor anywhere
else relatively near, and you kill me. Then so far as *local*
physics is concerned, Lee died. 

Yes, it is sort of tautological. But here is how it is derived:

If you take for granted that for one to perish locally is not
(just as our laws and customs dictate) is not to be preferred
for one, then it must follow that for a copy of one to perish
anywhere reduces one's benefits. As a last resort, check with
the government accounting department: one receives fewer
benefits in any particular solar system if one dies.

>From a higher philosophical principle, I invoke something like
analytic continuity: what is true in the new, arcane areas that
we discuss should reduce to being true in the everyday sense
also. So just listen to your senses: your dear lover lies dead
in your arms; it's really no consolation to know that 10^10^29
away from here she's alive and well.

Lee



From xyz at iq.org  Sat Jun  3 05:11:09 2006
From: xyz at iq.org (Harry Harrison)
Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2006 15:11:09 +1000
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychogenic Fields (was Role of MWI and Time
	Travel)
In-Reply-To: <20060602005049.31172.qmail@web60520.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20060602005049.31172.qmail@web60520.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <1149311469.19993.262956872@webmail.messagingengine.com>


On Thu, 1 Jun 2006 17:50:49 -0700 (PDT), "The Avantguardian" <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> said:
> 
> 
> --- Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> 
> > How does your psychogenic field create EM?
> 
> In the context of a human brain, I suppose it would do
> so by coordinating the flow of ions (action
> potentials) in a coherent fashion across synapses in
> localized regions of the cortex. 

Action potentials do not flow accross synapses. 

I do not understand why you need a PF. You want the PF to
generate EM. So why not have EM generate the PF? But then
why have the PF at all if it is reduceable to EM? There's
no additional predictive power and so you should remove it
since it makes your existing theory bigger but not more powerful.



From sentience at pobox.com  Sat Jun  3 05:19:07 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Fri, 02 Jun 2006 22:19:07 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychogenic Fields (was Role of MWI and
	Time	Travel)
In-Reply-To: <1149311469.19993.262956872@webmail.messagingengine.com>
References: <20060602005049.31172.qmail@web60520.mail.yahoo.com>
	<1149311469.19993.262956872@webmail.messagingengine.com>
Message-ID: <44811BCB.4070902@pobox.com>

Harry Harrison wrote:
> 
> Action potentials do not flow accross synapses. 
> 
> I do not understand why you need a PF. You want the PF to
> generate EM. So why not have EM generate the PF? But then
> why have the PF at all if it is reduceable to EM? There's
> no additional predictive power and so you should remove it
> since it makes your existing theory bigger but not more powerful.

Oh, but then the theory doesn't have an amazing magical component in it, 
so it doesn't sound as neat.  Force fields!  Whee!  Remember, mysterious 
surface phenomena are always produced by mysterious underlying causes.

...are you the SF author Harry Harrison?

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From xyz at iq.org  Sat Jun  3 04:59:51 2006
From: xyz at iq.org (Harry Harrison)
Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2006 14:59:51 +1000
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
 simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606011928t7ddc56d2l34930e5cad4b932d@mail.gmail.com>
References: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<8d71341e0606011928t7ddc56d2l34930e5cad4b932d@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>


> 
> We're soaring through the air, but our fuel is running out; either we
> ascend, or we die out like any other animal species whose evolved
> environment is long gone, and ultimately the sun turns the biosphere into
> a
> cloud of carbon dioxide and steam. I put it to you that the first option
> is
> self-evidently preferable.

If you believe in 'we'. Grinding me and or my children up for atoms so
corporations run by computers can populate the universe earlier seems
like poor outcome.



From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Sat Jun  3 05:31:20 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2006 06:31:20 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>
References: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<8d71341e0606011928t7ddc56d2l34930e5cad4b932d@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606022231k269664d7j44d60ea0b8fae73a@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/3/06, Harry Harrison <xyz at iq.org> wrote:
>
> If you believe in 'we'. Grinding me and or my children up for atoms so
> corporations run by computers can populate the universe earlier seems
> like poor outcome.
>

I agree completely, which is why I support no such thing. Is there anyone
outside the lunatic fringe who does?
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From xyz at iq.org  Sat Jun  3 05:44:18 2006
From: xyz at iq.org (Harry Harrison)
Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2006 15:44:18 +1000
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
 simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606022231k269664d7j44d60ea0b8fae73a@mail.gmail.com>
References: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<8d71341e0606011928t7ddc56d2l34930e5cad4b932d@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022231k269664d7j44d60ea0b8fae73a@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>

No, but many seem to have a religious optimism about the singularity that defies rationality (for some reason I thought you were one of these people, forgive me). That which can dominate matter and energy thrives. Everything else is consumed or marginalised. This is one of the few things we can predict past a singularity and has good precedence in the best analogies we have todate, e.g the Cambrian explosion.

On Sat, 3 Jun 2006 06:31:20 +0100, "Russell Wallace" <russell.wallace at gmail.com> said:
> On 6/3/06, Harry Harrison <xyz at iq.org> wrote:
> >
> > If you believe in 'we'. Grinding me and or my children up for atoms so
> > corporations run by computers can populate the universe earlier seems
> > like poor outcome.
> >
> 
> I agree completely, which is why I support no such thing. Is there anyone
> outside the lunatic fringe who does?


From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Sat Jun  3 05:52:10 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2006 06:52:10 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
References: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<8d71341e0606011928t7ddc56d2l34930e5cad4b932d@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022231k269664d7j44d60ea0b8fae73a@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/3/06, Harry Harrison <xyz at iq.org> wrote:
>
> No, but many seem to have a religious optimism about the singularity that
> defies rationality (for some reason I thought you were one of these people,
> forgive me). That which can dominate matter and energy thrives. Everything
> else is consumed or marginalised. This is one of the few things we can
> predict past a singularity and has good precedence in the best analogies we
> have todate, e.g the Cambrian explosion.


Frankly, the entire Singularity mythology has become the modern day
equivalent of Armageddon, the Rapture etc; yes, I used to call myself a
Singularitarian, before I realized just how far over the edge the myth had
gone, in terms of both irrational optimism and irrational pessimism.

The truth is there isn't going to be any Singularity, in the usual
definition of the word; Jesus isn't coming anytime soon, nor is Great
Cthulhu, nor is their replacement in the AI mythology. What is and will
remain true is that we can keep going up, or we can go down. If we go up we
go up, just as was true in the Cambrian explosion, the Neolithic, the
Industrial Revolution etc (none of which events wiped out life on Earth, you
may notice :)); if we go down, we die. I say we go up, and look to life, not
death. What say you?
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From spike66 at comcast.net  Sat Jun  3 05:42:59 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 22:42:59 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanist arrival?
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606020658x7549728csaa82516490a13c92@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <200606030603.k5363LU2008716@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Robert Bradbury
Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanist arrival?

>Believe it or not "Transhumanism" is the *featured* article of the day (2
Jun 2006) on Wikipedia [1,2].? Sure we can get air time at Stanford but it
strikes me as a sign of having "arrived" ... Robert


I took it as a sign of the times when I was up at Stanford with Anders last
weekend.  In the main Stanford campus bookstore, on a table right as you
walk in the door, most prime real estate in the place, they had set up a
sign identifying these books as "new and relevant".  It was a lot of the
stuff we have been discussing here for years, but what struck me is that two
authors had two books on that table: Hofstadter had Godel Escher Bach and
The Mind's I.  The other double represented author on that table was K.Eric
Drexler, with Nanosystems and Engines of Creation.  That one surprised me,
because even those of us who are hard core types realize Engines gets a bit
wild in places.  OK, so now that is new and relevant, and up front in the
Stanford book store.  Hofstadter's EGB is 27 years old now, and is still
considered new and relevant.

There was another book called "The Nanotech Pioneers: Where Are They Taking
Us?" by Steven A. Edwards.  Extropians are mentioned on pages 25 and 26, the
usual commentary on our being a techno-cult with strange ideas on living
forever through technological progress.  The founder is given as "Maximum
More."  That gave me a good laugh.  Max, have you ever been called Maximum
More?

spike



 





From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Sat Jun  3 08:14:09 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2006 01:14:09 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060603081409.70997.qmail@web60522.mail.yahoo.com>

> On 6/3/06, Harry Harrison <xyz at iq.org> wrote:
> >
> > No, but many seem to have a religious optimism
> about the singularity that
> > defies rationality (for some reason I thought you
> were one of these people,
> > forgive me).

Nah, Russell is actually a self-proclaimed pessimist.
I on the other hand am a mystic optimist (optimystic?)
although I have been known to do some serious
scientific research from time to time. Although I may
have faith in my ability to survive the singularity, I
have every reason to believe that rationality is on my
side as well.

The way I see it, I am the scion of an unbroken chain
of life that stretches back to the primordial ooze.
Through the cambrian explosion, asteroid impacts, the
ice age, and the never ending evolutionary arms race
not a single one of my ancestors failed to survive
long enough to pass their genetic legacy on to me.

But I am not alone. Anyone reading this email has good
reason to be optimistic too. . . even Eliezer. The way
I see it the Darwinian-Bayesian score card of survival
reads - Our germ line: 3.5 billion years, AI run
corporations: 0 years. Even Vegas would have give us
good odds.

--- Russell Wallace <russell.wallace at gmail.com>
wrote:> 
> Frankly, the entire Singularity mythology has become
> the modern day
> equivalent of Armageddon, the Rapture etc; yes, I
> used to call myself a
> Singularitarian, before I realized just how far over
> the edge the myth had
> gone, in terms of both irrational optimism and
> irrational pessimism.
> 
> The truth is there isn't going to be any
> Singularity, in the usual
> definition of the word [. . .] if we go down, we
>die. I say we go
> up, and look to life, not
> death. What say you?

Well I for one see no point in betting against
ourselves in mortal combat. Rest assured I for one
will spit defiantly in the photodiode of any AI that
manages takes me down. On the bright side, we still
have time to hone our matter and energy domination
skills before the main event, which as Russell points
out may not happen at all. Rather than worrying about
it, I say we prepare for it. As any true pessimist of
the Murphy school would concur, any emergency that one
is prepared for seldom happens. 


Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
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From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Sat Jun  3 09:08:53 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2006 02:08:53 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychogenic Fields (was Role of MWI and Time
	Travel)
In-Reply-To: <1149311469.19993.262956872@webmail.messagingengine.com>
Message-ID: <20060603090853.88077.qmail@web60522.mail.yahoo.com>



--- Harry Harrison <xyz at iq.org> wrote:

> 
> On Thu, 1 Jun 2006 17:50:49 -0700 (PDT), "The
> Avantguardian" <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> said:
> > In the context of a human brain, I suppose it
> would do
> > so by coordinating the flow of ions (action
> > potentials) in a coherent fashion across synapses
> in
> > localized regions of the cortex. 
> 
> Action potentials do not flow accross synapses. 

You are correct, my mistake.

> I do not understand why you need a PF.

Well my original intent was simply to mathematically
abstract it as a tensor field which are routinely used
to model things which are not true "force fields" like
fluid vortexes and what not. On the other hand,
quantum mechanics is filled with phenomena that seem
like forces although they are not like the Pauli
exclusion principle, coherence, and entanglement. They
perform action at a distance but don't seem to obey
the inverse square law, speed of light, or other
hallmarks of classical forces.  

> You want the
> PF to
> generate EM. So why not have EM generate the PF? But
> then
> why have the PF at all if it is reduceable to EM?
> There's
> no additional predictive power and so you should
> remove it
> since it makes your existing theory bigger but not
> more powerful.

Yeah, you are probably right although I do like the
catchy name. Physicists try to come up with a GUT to
convince everyone that the four fundamental forces of
nature are actually the same thing. Biologists
conversely maintain that dolphins and porpoises are
distinct species based of their difference in size and
the shape of their teeth. I suppose I will chalk this
one up to a biologist's penchant for pointless
classification. :)


Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
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From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Sat Jun  3 09:56:30 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2006 02:56:30 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychogenic Fields (was Role of MWI and Time
	Travel)
In-Reply-To: <44811BCB.4070902@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <20060603095630.25599.qmail@web60511.mail.yahoo.com>



--- "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience at pobox.com>
wrote:
> Oh, but then the theory doesn't have an amazing
> magical component in it, 
> so it doesn't sound as neat.  Force fields!  Whee!

Fear not, Eliezer, I am sympathetic to the plight of
muggles.

> Remember, mysterious 
> surface phenomena are always produced by mysterious
> underlying causes.

Apparently rather banal surface phenomena can be
produced by mysterious underlying causes as well.



Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From rhanson at gmu.edu  Sat Jun  3 11:06:09 2006
From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson)
Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2006 07:06:09 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity
In-Reply-To: <20060603081409.70997.qmail@web60522.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060603081409.70997.qmail@web60522.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060603065930.023c3ee8@gmu.edu>

At 04:14 AM 6/3/2006, Stuart LaForge wrote:
>... Although I may have faith in my ability to survive
>the singularity, I have every reason to believe that r
>rationality is on my side as well.
>The way I see it, I am the scion of an unbroken chain
>of life that stretches back to the primordial ooze.
>Through the cambrian explosion, asteroid impacts, the
>ice age, and the never ending evolutionary arms race
>not a single one of my ancestors failed to survive
>long enough to pass their genetic legacy on to me.
>But I am not alone. Anyone reading this email has good
>reason to be optimistic too. . . even Eliezer.

This is really a pretty terrible reason for optimism.
In species where 2 parents had N kids, on average those
kids only had 2 distant descendants survive.   So at least
N-2 of those kids had zero distant descendants.   For
many species N > 1000, so those are pretty bad odds.
Similarly at the species level - most species die out
leaving zero descendant species.   We may have good
reasons for optimism, but the fact that we exist is not
one of them.


Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323 



From femmechakra at yahoo.ca  Sat Jun  3 16:01:19 2006
From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anne-Marie Taylor)
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2006 12:01:19 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Simplifying Singularity
Message-ID: <20060603160119.30320.qmail@web35508.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

"Singularity is a moment in time when technology will change the course of humanity
  forever."
   
  I'm just curious, I'm writing a script and would like to use the word in a popular 
  context and was wondering if this phrase would be appropriate.
   
  Any opinion would be appreciated.
Thanks 
Anna
   

				
---------------------------------
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From amara at amara.com  Sat Jun  3 18:30:39 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2006 20:30:39 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychogenic Fields (was Role of MWI and Time Travel)
Message-ID: <p06230900c0a720d282d3@[23.237.66.13]>

<avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com>:
>Well my original intent was simply to mathematically
>abstract it as a tensor field which are routinely used
>to model things which are not true "force fields" like
>fluid vortexes and what not.

I didn't read all of this thread, but the above paragraph made
my head hurt. The way you are using these physics terms does not
make sense.

Charges make an electric field (Ex, Ey, Ez); field lines originate on
positive charges and terminate on negative charges.

Moving charges create electric currents.

Currents generate magnetic fields: (Bx,By,Bz)

The electric field is a special vector function whose curl is always
zero.

A field tensor has 4x4=16 components.  To describe the
electrodynamic (magnetic+electric) field is:

F01 - Ex/c
F02 = Ey/c
F03 = Ez/c

F12 = Bz
F31 = By
F23 = Bx

...

Written as an array, the field tensor is:


   0     Ex/c    Ey/c    Ez/c

  Ey/c    0       Bz      -By

-Ey/c   -Bz     0        Bx

-Ez/c   By     -Bx       0


If you are going to use physics terms, please use them as they
are conventionally defined, or else give them a new name and
define them. Otherwise no communication will be possible.

Amara

-- 

Amara Graps, PhD      www.amara.com
Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, ITALIA
Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute, Tucson


From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Sat Jun  3 21:09:39 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2006 14:09:39 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] The Good (was Are ancestor simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <22360fa10606020846gc987f55s4c247413fd50d389@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEEAAFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Jef writes

> > > For those who have bought into Kant's Categorical Imperative, then
> > > that argument will seem to make sense.  "Without a doubt I would not
> > > want  *my* simulation shut down, given my belief that life is better
> > > than no life at all, therefore I am morally bound to say that runtime
> > > of any simulation of sentience is good."
> > >
> > > Sounds attractive, and it's good as far as it goes, but it is
> > > ultimately incoherent.
> > >
> > > With apologies to Lee, I'll use that word again, because it is
> > > essential:  There is no intrinsic good.  "Good" is always necessarily
> > > from the point of view of some subjective agent.
> >
> > #!?%#&*$!  No word is *essential*.  To believe that some particular
> > word *is* essential, I fear, uncovers a bug in your thinking. As I've
> > said before, all of us here have perfectly good vocabularies,
> 
> Lee, I was using "essential" in its primary sense of capturing the
> essence, rather than it's secondary meaning of indispensable.

Sorry; that meaning didn't occur to me. But you have to admit that
you've picked the rarer meaning, sowing confusion :-)

> > Worse, Jef persists not only in using a phrase I don't understand
> > at all,  "intrinsic good", but denies that it even exists!
> 
> Lee, having never me you in person, I have to wonder whether your
> histrionics are real or just part of your email game.

Alas, it may be bizarre (sorry about that), but it's for better
or worse, the real me.

> It seems pretty silly that you would argue that I can't refer to
> a concept that represents something that doesn't actually exist.

Oh, well, you have a point there. I know what people mean when
they use the terms "God" and "unicorn". 

> I would venture to assert that the concept of "intrinsic good" is well
> known to anyone who has thought deeply about ethics. An intrinsic good
> is something which is considered good in and of itself. It's
> interesting to me is that there are so many mutually exclusive beliefs
> as to what goods are actually worthy of that description.  Hedonists
> claim that pleasure is the only intrinsic good.  Kantians claim that
> that good will is the only intrinsic good.  Aristotle claimed that
> truth is the only intrinsic good.  Some people claim that love is the
> only intrinsic good in the universe.

Okay, thanks for the explanation. You've swerved into a description/
definition that I can understand!

> Jef [I] claims that, just as with each of the world's religions claiming
> to possess or have access to the only true way, seekers or believers
> of intrinsic good are asking the wrong question and therefore getting
> the wrong answer.

Well, it's not too surprising. Arguing about whether something is
"intrinsically" good, I would think, would be as non-productive as
arguing whether certain essences inhere in one thing or another.
Why don't people quit using fancy abstractions and speak in simple
everyday terms?  It's *OBVIOUS* that you can examine any substance
in the universe, and be unable to show that it has either the
essence of "intrinsic goodness", or that is has the property
of "intrinsic goodness". 

Like I say, the moment a word or phrase starts posing communications
difficulties---or even appears at all suspect---ditch it in favor
of (if need be) longer or more circuitous descriptions. The only
point is to get the ideas across.

> There is no intrinsic good because good is inherently subjective.
> What appears good within any given context can always be shown to
> be not good from a different context.

That does not sound correct to me! You cannot necessarily *show*
anything to anyone. The other entity is, in the final analysis,
a physical device. It may simply not be wired to incorporate into
its concepts whatever it is that you wish to *show*. Try, for
example, showing to Hitler that Jews are as acceptable as other
people.

> I think it's important that futurists get this crucial point,
> because we are poised for dramatic expansion of the context
> of our lives and we need to understand what we mean by good
> so we can make more effective decisions.

Do we really have to use that concept?  Why is it essential
(in the "required" meaning of the word)?  Ultimately, you can
always say the much more accurate "X approves of Y", or "humans
generally favor Y".  Usage of terms like "good" indicates---
sorry---an adherence to Aristotelian definitions. 

> > Well, how about this:  since it doesn't exist, would you mind
> > dropping it from your discourse?
> 
> Again, I really can't tell when you're being silly and when you're
> being serious Lee.

I'm quite serious!  For heaven's sake, why does this seem silly?
Why must you be wed to certain terms and phrases?  Surely it's
occurred to you that our terms (and even concepts)---which we
have inherited from the recent past---may today not be optimal
nor even appropriate?

> > > The greatest assurance of good in human culture is the fact that
> > > we share a common evolutionary heritage... and thus we hold deeply
> > > and widely shared values.
> >
> > Yes, that's true, we do. But many other animals are solitary
> > by nature.
> 
> Not sure what point you're making here.

Just want to make sure that you're restricting your descriptions
to human evolved entities.

> > > Increasing awareness of these increasingly shared values with
> > > [will] lead to increasingly effective social decision-making
> > > that will be increasingly seen as good.
> >
> > I believe that this indeed is the way we've progressed the last
> > 10,000 years or so, but I don't think that you've put your finger
> > on the actual mechanism.
> 
> Our preferences are the result of an evolutionary process that has
> operated over cosmic time, almost all of that without conscious
> awareness, let alone intention.   At a low level, we have instinctive
> feelings of good and bad built into us by that process.

Well, I'd say we have instinctive preferences. And you'll have
to admit that in ev psych books, you'll not find many references
to "good" and "bad". But you'll find plenty of references to 
preferences.

> Just recently we have arrived at an even higher level of organization
> where we can use information technology to increase our awareness of
> our values,

Yes!

> apply our increasing awareness of what works, and thereby
> implement increasingly effective decision-making, intentionally
> promoting our values into the future, which is the very essence of
> morality.

Okay, though I'm not sure what the "essence of morality" is  :-)
But you're dead right (pardon the expression) to speak of us
perpetuating our values into the future.

> > For, were it just a matter of "increasing awareness", then why
> > just the last 10,000 years?  We had at least 80,000 years before
> > that to become aware of our "shared values", but nothing really
> > happened.
> 
> It has always been about "what works" in the sense of natural
> selection.  Only recently are we becoming aware of our subjective
> values and our increasingly objective understanding of what works,
> and thus able to play an intentional role in our further development.

I really have to reject your pragmatic "what works". Just because
something works does not mean that we as "enlightened" people are
going to approve of it. What if the U.S. were to conclude that its
interests were best served by holding the rest of the world in
nuclear terror?  That may actually "work" just fine---given history
as a guide---but most of us would strenuously object.

Lee



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Sat Jun  3 21:15:43 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2006 14:15:43 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Simplifying Singularity
In-Reply-To: <20060603160119.30320.qmail@web35508.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEKEAAFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Anna writes

> [Consider this:] "Singularity is a moment in time when technology will
> change the course of humanity forever."

> I'm just curious, I'm writing a script and would like to use the word
> in a popular context and was wondering if this phrase would be appropriate.

Actually, there have been a lot (many would say too many) tinmes when
technology changed the course of humanity forever.  E.g., gunpowder,
the atomic bomb, and the transistor.

You might add "change it unrecognizably", or some such.  Googling for
"singularity" will probably yield a lot of good ideas.

Lee



From hkhenson at rogers.com  Sat Jun  3 21:37:35 2006
From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2006 17:37:35 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Simplifying Singularity
Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20060603173547.026af600@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>

At 12:01 PM 6/3/2006 -0400, you wrote:
>"Singularity is a moment in time when technology will change the course of 
>humanity
>forever."

That happened over two million years ago when humans discovered that the 
sharp edge from a broken rock was just the thing to get at the meat under a 
hide.

The singularity is the time when our "sharp rocks" have become sharper than 
we are.

Keith

>I'm just curious, I'm writing a script and would like to use the word in a 
>popular
>context and was wondering if this phrase would be appropriate.
>
>Any opinion would be appreciated.
>Thanks
>Anna

Second try at sending this msg,  same rejection based on not being able to 
talk to rogers.com.

Keith



From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Sat Jun  3 23:29:01 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2006 16:29:01 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] NEF tensor (was Psychogenic Fields)
In-Reply-To: <p06230900c0a720d282d3@[23.237.66.13]>
Message-ID: <20060603232901.20654.qmail@web60519.mail.yahoo.com>



--- Amara Graps <amara at amara.com> wrote:

> <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com>:
> >Well my original intent was simply to
> mathematically
> >abstract it as a tensor field which are routinely
> used
> >to model things which are not true "force fields"
> like
> >fluid vortexes and what not.

I meant vortices.
 
> I didn't read all of this thread, but the above
> paragraph made
> my head hurt. The way you are using these physics
> terms does not
> make sense.

Sorry. This is why I wish I had more formal physics-
math background than I do. I think you may be over
complicating things. In this case by tensor field I
mean simply a position specific "bundle of vectors"
namely E(x,y,z) and B(x,y,z).   

> 
> Charges make an electric field (Ex, Ey, Ez); field
> lines originate on
> positive charges and terminate on negative charges.
> 
> Moving charges create electric currents.
> 
> Currents generate magnetic fields: (Bx,By,Bz)
> 
> The electric field is a special vector function
> whose curl is always
> zero.
> 
> A field tensor has 4x4=16 components.  To describe
> the
> electrodynamic (magnetic+electric) field is:
> 
> F01 - Ex/c
> F02 = Ey/c
> F03 = Ez/c
> 
> F12 = Bz
> F31 = By
> F23 = Bx
> 
> ...
> 
> Written as an array, the field tensor is:
> 
> 
>    0     Ex/c    Ey/c    Ez/c
> 
>   Ey/c    0       Bz      -By
> 
> -Ey/c   -Bz     0        Bx
> 
> -Ez/c   By     -Bx       0
> 

Correct. Now at any given instant in time, the
elements of the above matrix will take on a unique set
of specific numerical values at different points in
space around the brain. Now if we could measure those
specific values at each point for thousands of such
points in parallel (e.g with a "helmet" consisting of
thousands of miniture SQUIDs shielded from external
magnetic sources ) and store them on a hard-drive,
then we would have a high resolution map of my
unfortunately named psychogenic field. 

Perhaps people will like the name "nuero-electric
field" or NEF better. 

In my above example the SQUIDs would only measure B
but since we can derive E from B and vice-versa, it
should not matter. In any case the NEF is simply a
huge array of field tensors stored on a computer that
may correlate to specific quales experienced by the
test subject while he was wearing the SQUID helmet.

I have no equations to offer you and I am not
suggesting that non-trivial analytic solutions to the
NEF tensor exist. Although as a trivial solution, I
would expect for a dead person, the tensor matrix will
be filled with zeros.  


Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
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From jef at jefallbright.net  Sun Jun  4 02:09:33 2006
From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright)
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2006 19:09:33 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] The Good
Message-ID: <22360fa10606031909j4f241e46v93e32e2cd190a71f@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/3/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
> Jef writes

> > I would venture to assert that the concept of "intrinsic good" is well
> > known to anyone who has thought deeply about ethics. An intrinsic good
> > is something which is considered good in and of itself. It's
> > interesting to me is that there are so many mutually exclusive beliefs
> > as to what goods are actually worthy of that description.  Hedonists
> > claim that pleasure is the only intrinsic good.  Kantians claim that
> > that good will is the only intrinsic good.  Aristotle claimed that
> > truth is the only intrinsic good.  Some people claim that love is the
> > only intrinsic good in the universe.
>
> Okay, thanks for the explanation. You've swerved into a description/
> definition that I can understand!
>
> > Jef [I] claims that, just as with each of the world's religions claiming
> > to possess or have access to the only true way, seekers or believers
> > of intrinsic good are asking the wrong question and therefore getting
> > the wrong answer.
>
> Well, it's not too surprising. Arguing about whether something is
> "intrinsically" good, I would think, would be as non-productive as
> arguing whether certain essences inhere in one thing or another.
> Why don't people quit using fancy abstractions and speak in simple
> everyday terms?  It's *OBVIOUS* that you can examine any substance
> in the universe, and be unable to show that it has either the
> essence of "intrinsic goodness", or that is has the property
> of "intrinsic goodness".

In the preceding text I switched from the abstract to discrete
examples, citing the opposing views of hedonism, Kant, Aristotle, and
"white lighters" as to what constitutes the ultimate good.  You said
that doing this helped you get the idea, but it seems to me we're only
part way there, because none of those examples related to substance
[which you refer to], but rather to more abstract concepts.

The concept I am trying to convey is even more abstract [but with a
very practical application!] and thus I can't provide discrete
examples, but I try to build up to it by highlighting incoherence in
lower-level thinking and thereby the need for a more encompassing
understanding of what it really means to say that something is good.

For reference, the abstract point I'm trying to make is the following:

Increasing awareness of principles of what works (increasingly
objective scientific/instrumental knowledge), applied to increasing
awareness of our (increasingly intersubjective) values that work over
increasing scope, leads to what is seen as increasingly moral
decision-making.

The practical application of that understanding is that it becomes
clear that (1) we *can* increasingly agree on certain choices being
better than other choices, and (2) we *should* facilitate this process
of increasingly moral decision-making by intentionally building a
technological framework to increase our awareness of our values and
our instrumental knowledge and apply them to social decision-making.

I wish I knew how to factor out (to abstract) all those
"increasing's", but it's all about evolutionary growth and the Red
Queen would agree that standing still is never an option.


> Like I say, the moment a word or phrase starts posing communications
> difficulties---or even appears at all suspect---ditch it in favor
> of (if need be) longer or more circuitous descriptions. The only
> point is to get the ideas across.

Yes, my objective here is to get a certain idea across, and while it
appears we may be making some progress, we're certainly not there yet.
 I do intend to write a more thorough exposition of this "Arrow of
Morality" thinking, and I value your interaction as contributing to
making my message clearer.


> > There is no intrinsic good because good is inherently subjective.
> > What appears good within any given context can always be shown to
> > be not good from a different context.
>
> That does not sound correct to me! You cannot necessarily *show*
> anything to anyone. The other entity is, in the final analysis,
> a physical device. It may simply not be wired to incorporate into
> its concepts whatever it is that you wish to *show*. Try, for
> example, showing to Hitler that Jews are as acceptable as other
> people.

Strangely, it seems you are supporting my point while claiming to
argue against it.  It seems we are now agreeing that there can be no
absolute agreement on what is good, because each agent functions as a
physical device with differing inputs and differing transfer
functions.


> > I think it's important that futurists get this crucial point,
> > because we are poised for dramatic expansion of the context
> > of our lives and we need to understand what we mean by good
> > so we can make more effective decisions.
>
> Do we really have to use that concept?  Why is it essential
> (in the "required" meaning of the word)?  Ultimately, you can
> always say the much more accurate "X approves of Y", or "humans
> generally favor Y".  Usage of terms like "good" indicates---
> sorry---an adherence to Aristotelian definitions.

Right!  When we understand what is really meant by "good" we will more
clearly and effectively come to cooperate on actions which appear to
be *better* at promoting our shared values, rather than competing over
conflicting beliefs about what is "good."


> > > > The greatest assurance of good in human culture is the fact that
> > > > we share a common evolutionary heritage... and thus we hold deeply
> > > > and widely shared values.
> > >
> > > Yes, that's true, we do. But many other animals are solitary
> > > by nature.
> >
> > Not sure what point you're making here.
>
> Just want to make sure that you're restricting your descriptions
> to human evolved entities.

I'm not restricting this thinking to just humans. But I recognize that
I tend to explain things in an abstract general sense while you may be
focused on the specific that there is currently no example of a
non-human moral agent.  Just as you pointed out that "in the final
analysis, the other entity is a physical device", there is no reason
to accord priviledged status to humans over other entities.

As you know, on the various transhumanist lists there are perrenial
discussions of the moral rights of AIs or dolphins or apes, etc. The
concept of "rights" is just as problematic as the concept of "good",
and for similar reasons. Some insist that inalienable rights exist,
rather than being the result of a "social contract" of sorts. Some
insist that intrinsic good exists (as we've already discussed.)  Some
adhere to moral relativism and seem to ignore our understanding that
some ideas really do work better than others.  These positions often
seem driven more by a strong feeling of "unfairness" in the world
(another similarly problematic concept) than by an understanding of
social and physical dynamics.

In my metaethical thinking, there is no reason to distinguish between
humans and other agents.  Each agent pursues its own goals, and ethics
is concerned with how we know what actions are better than other
actions.  To the extent that non-human agents can express their
values, and to the extent that those values are seen to work, then
quite naturally those agents should be accorded moral status.


> > > > Increasing awareness of these increasingly shared values with
> > > > [will] lead to increasingly effective social decision-making
> > > > that will be increasingly seen as good.
> > >
> > > I believe that this indeed is the way we've progressed the last
> > > 10,000 years or so, but I don't think that you've put your finger
> > > on the actual mechanism.
> >
> > Our preferences are the result of an evolutionary process that has
> > operated over cosmic time, almost all of that without conscious
> > awareness, let alone intention.   At a low level, we have instinctive
> > feelings of good and bad built into us by that process.
>
> Well, I'd say we have instinctive preferences. And you'll have
> to admit that in ev psych books, you'll not find many references
> to "good" and "bad". But you'll find plenty of references to
> preferences.

Yes, you're making a finer distinction with which I agree.

> > Just recently we have arrived at an even higher level of organization
> > where we can use information technology to increase our awareness of
> > our values,
>
> Yes!
>
> > apply our increasing awareness of what works, and thereby
> > implement increasingly effective decision-making, intentionally
> > promoting our values into the future, which is the very essence of
> > morality.
>
> Okay, though I'm not sure what the "essence of morality" is  :-)
> But you're dead right (pardon the expression) to speak of us
> perpetuating our values into the future.
>
> > > For, were it just a matter of "increasing awareness", then why
> > > just the last 10,000 years?  We had at least 80,000 years before
> > > that to become aware of our "shared values", but nothing really
> > > happened.
> >
> > It has always been about "what works" in the sense of natural
> > selection.  Only recently are we becoming aware of our subjective
> > values and our increasingly objective understanding of what works,
> > and thus able to play an intentional role in our further development.
>
> I really have to reject your pragmatic "what works". Just because
> something works does not mean that we as "enlightened" people are
> going to approve of it.

Lee, please note that I consistently say that moral actions are
*always* described by two factors:  (1) Kowledge of what works,
applied to (2) our subjective values.

>  What if the U.S. were to conclude that its
> interests were best served by holding the rest of the world in
> nuclear terror?  That may actually "work" just fine---given history
> as a guide---but most of us would strenuously object.

That's why I keep using the phrase "over increasing scope".  For a man
alone on an island, the concept of morality doesn't even apply.  As
the intersubjective circle widens, then  what works over increasing
scope (of interactees, types of interactions, and duration of time) is
seen as increasingly moral.

- Jef


From asa at nada.kth.se  Sun Jun  4 02:27:21 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 04:27:21 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] NEF tensor (was Psychogenic Fields)
In-Reply-To: <20060603232901.20654.qmail@web60519.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <p06230900c0a720d282d3@[23.237.66.13]>
	<20060603232901.20654.qmail@web60519.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <42945.86.143.246.157.1149388041.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


The Avantguardian wrote:
> Sorry. This is why I wish I had more formal physics-
> math background than I do. I think you may be over
> complicating things. In this case by tensor field I
> mean simply a position specific "bundle of vectors"
> namely E(x,y,z) and B(x,y,z).

That is a vector field. A vector field consists of a vector at every point
in space.

Tensors are a bit more abstract, a bit like generalised matrices (a number
or a vector is a particular kind of simple tensor). The important thing
with these mathematical objects is that they change in predictable ways
when you change the coordinate systems, so that an equation written in
tensors (or vectors) remains true regardless of the coordinates (which are
after arbitrary conventions). Very practical.

> Correct. Now at any given instant in time, the
> elements of the above matrix will take on a unique set
> of specific numerical values at different points in
> space around the brain. Now if we could measure those
> specific values at each point for thousands of such
> points in parallel (e.g with a "helmet" consisting of
> thousands of miniture SQUIDs shielded from external
> magnetic sources ) and store them on a hard-drive,
> then we would have a high resolution map of my
> unfortunately named psychogenic field.

Think of it like this: each neuron is surrounded by a little NEF, and they
all sum together. But the high frequency components decay over distance.
The shape and information of the NEF from a single neuron gets blurred out
a few micrometers away, and similarly a group of neurons also blend
together if measured more than about their diameter or so. When measuring
from outside the skull, about a centimeter away from the brain, you will
only get information about activity patterns larger than one centimeter.
Which leaves out all the interesting stuff.

[Technically: the multipole fields decay as 1/r^3 or faster. And I'm
fairly certain a Dirichlet boundary condition isn't enough to specify the
source/sink distribution inside the skull. E.g.
http://www.ipp.mpg.de/de/for/bereiche/stellarator/Comp_sci/CompScience/csep/csep1.phy.ornl.gov/bf/node3.html
]

OK, if we could get all the field at a high resolution many researchers
and doctors would be very happy, since there is much medically useful data
here. Current EEG and MEG are still rather crude.

> I have no equations to offer you and I am not
> suggesting that non-trivial analytic solutions to the
> NEF tensor exist. Although as a trivial solution, I
> would expect for a dead person, the tensor matrix will
> be filled with zeros.

Or some somple electrical potential.


-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From femmechakra at yahoo.ca  Sun Jun  4 02:27:30 2006
From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anne-Marie Taylor)
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2006 22:27:30 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Simplifying Singularity
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEKEAAFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060604022730.20761.qmail@web35502.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Lee wrote
  Actually, there have been a lot (many would say too many) tinmes when
technology changed the course of humanity forever. E.g., gunpowder,
the atomic bomb, and the transistor.

You might add "change it unrecognizably", or some such. Googling for
"singularity" will probably yield a lot of good ideas.
   
  Anna wrote
  > [Consider this:] "Singularity is a moment in time when technology will
> change the course of humanity forever."

> I'm just curious, I'm writing a script and would like to use the word
> in a popular context and was wondering if this phrase would be appropriate.

Anna writes
  Thank you Lee for your response.
  I may not be a genius when it comes to math, physics and science but i'm pretty
  sure I know how to Google,  maybe we are not,  Googling the same things)
   
  At the same time, your point is you think that the Singularity will be an
  unrecognizably event?
  I don't know.  
  In my script, it's recognizable.  I was just asking if it's a good phrase.  Does 
  it sum up exactly the definitions on Google or does it seem completely off?  In one
  phrase,  define Singularity?  That's all I was trying to do.  
   
  Thanks again,
  Anna


				
---------------------------------
Make free worldwide PC-to-PC calls. Try the new Yahoo! Canada Messenger with Voice
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From amara at amara.com  Sun Jun  4 05:34:55 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 07:34:55 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Antarctica timezone(s)
Message-ID: <p06230900c0a8204adff2@[23.237.66.13]>



Ever wonder what time zones they use in Antarctica? Me too, especially
since there are more than one station! I think that they don't visit
each other often. ;-)

http://www.statoids.com/taq.html

I don't know why I find this interesting and amusing. I think that
colonies on the Moon will face similar frontier timezone demarcations !

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 is intriguing to learn that the simplicity of the world depends
upon the temperature of the environment." ---John D. Barrow


From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Sun Jun  4 07:09:18 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 00:09:18 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Simplifying Singularity
In-Reply-To: <20060604022730.20761.qmail@web35502.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAEAHFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Anna writes

> At the same time, your point is you think that the Singularity
> will be an unrecognizable event?

I'd say that the Singularity (or singularity) will itself
be very recognizable if it comes on very fast, but not so
if it happens slowly over the course of time.

> I was just asking if it's a good phrase.

No, your phrase was poor, for the reasons that I gave and
the reason that Keith gave.

> Does it sum up exactly the definitions on Google or does
> it seem completely off?

It seemed completely off.

> In one phrase, define Singularity?  That's all I was trying to do.  

Well, I can't beat Wikipedia's definition:

   technological singularity - a theoretical point in the development
   of a scientific civilization at which technological progress
   accelerates into infinity or beyond prediction. This is believed
   to occur when artificial intelligence or intelligence amplification
   reaches a certain level. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity

Lee



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Sun Jun  4 07:12:19 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 00:12:19 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Antarctica timezone(s)
In-Reply-To: <p06230900c0a8204adff2@[23.237.66.13]>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECEAHFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Amara writes

> Ever wonder what time zones they use in Antarctica?

No, the thought is entirely new to me :-)

> Me too, especially since there are more than one
> station! I think that they don't visit each other
> often. ;-)
> 
> http://www.statoids.com/taq.html
> 
> I don't know why I find this interesting and amusing.

It'll be especially amusing when several sites by different
nations are set up at the pole!  Now *that* will be a 
singularity!

Lee



From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Sun Jun  4 09:00:00 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 02:00:00 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Antarctica timezone(s)
In-Reply-To: <p06230900c0a8204adff2@[23.237.66.13]>
Message-ID: <20060604090001.2704.qmail@web60512.mail.yahoo.com>



--- Amara Graps <amara at amara.com> wrote:
> Ever wonder what time zones they use in Antarctica?
> Me too, especially
> since there are more than one station! I think that
> they don't visit
> each other often. ;-)

Well imagine the confusion of setting a time for such
a visit. 

> I don't know why I find this interesting and
> amusing.

I know. This is is precisely why I agree with those
physicists that claim that time is an artifact created
by "capitalist pigs" (whom I lovingly define as anyone
with more money than me) to get me and my "Marxist
comrades" (whom I lovingly define as anyone with less
money than me) out of bed at inconvenient moments to
go someplace and do stuff for them.

>I think that
> colonies on the Moon will face similar frontier
> timezone demarcations.

Hopefully by the time we have colonies on the moon, we
will realize that time is no more than the opportunity
window to strike while the iron is hot.





__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From scerir at libero.it  Sun Jun  4 11:05:03 2006
From: scerir at libero.it (scerir)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 13:05:03 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] NEF tensor (was Psychogenic Fields)
References: <1092945380.3442@whirlwind.he.net>
	<BAY17-DAV17XBSmO2pe000108b4@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <000701c687c6$bc58ac00$e9c51897@extropy>

Avantguardian,
in the "q-bio" you can find papers like these
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/q-bio.NC/0605027
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/q-bio.OT/0309009
but ... you know ... it seems strange, imo,
there is enough coherence to get real effects.





From asa at nada.kth.se  Sun Jun  4 11:31:34 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 13:31:34 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Antarctica timezone(s)
In-Reply-To: <p06230900c0a8204adff2@[23.237.66.13]>
References: <p06230900c0a8204adff2@[23.237.66.13]>
Message-ID: <4052.81.152.102.14.1149420694.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Amara Graps wrote:
> Ever wonder what time zones they use in Antarctica? Me too, especially
> since there are more than one station! I think that they don't visit
> each other often. ;-)
>
> http://www.statoids.com/taq.html
>
> I don't know why I find this interesting and amusing. I think that
> colonies on the Moon will face similar frontier timezone demarcations !

Not to mention martian time! http://pweb.jps.net/~tgangale/mars/

I wonder how much we can simply do away with tying the cyclic part of time
(days and years) to cyclic natural phenomena. On the moon days do not
work, so it is not too hard to have a clock unlinked to nature. On Mars,
sols probably do matter for most probes and visitors, so the clock need to
be linked.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From amara at amara.com  Sun Jun  4 11:43:35 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 13:43:35 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Antarctica timezone(s)
Message-ID: <p06230900c0a87593b8a6@[23.237.66.13]>

Here is a blog from a Caltech postdoc who is in Antarctica for
the 'wintover' working on the BICEP experiment, which is a
CMB polarization telescope looking for a particular kind
of polarization. The blog is fun and the borealis gorgeous.

http://bmode.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/spblog05
(click on the "new link")

Amara


From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Sun Jun  4 11:43:38 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 07:43:38 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Antarctica timezone(s)
In-Reply-To: <p06230900c0a8204adff2@[23.237.66.13]>
References: <p06230900c0a8204adff2@[23.237.66.13]>
Message-ID: <36455.72.236.102.125.1149421418.squirrel@main.nc.us>

>
>
> Ever wonder what time zones they use in Antarctica? Me too, especially
> since there are more than one station! I think that they don't visit
> each other often. ;-)
>
> http://www.statoids.com/taq.html
>
> I don't know why I find this interesting and amusing. I think that
> colonies on the Moon will face similar frontier timezone demarcations !
>

What I find funny is that DST is used in the American stations... Are we
nuts? Or am I so ignorant that I am misunderstanding? Isn't "daytime"
rather different at the poles?  What am I missing?  Surely there aren't
many crops for farmers to be working, to "take advantage of daylight
hours" with daylight savings time.... And they're not even changing on the
same date...

... DST, which I wish we'd do away with, personally.

Why are we so hung up on DST?

Regards,
MB





From amara at amara.com  Sun Jun  4 13:13:21 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 15:13:21 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Antarctica timezone(s)
Message-ID: <p06230902c0a889ea7d11@[23.237.66.13]>

MB:
>What I find funny is that DST is used in the American stations... Are we
>nuts? Or am I so ignorant that I am misunderstanding? Isn't "daytime"
>rather different at the poles?  What am I missing?


The time zone assignments might not be for any physical reason, but for
convenience instead, based on travel connections.

McMurdo and Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station follow New Zealand's time
zone with their respective daylight saving, probably for simple
convenience to follow one country's time zone, and New Zealand's time
zone makes the most logical sense if one has a choice to arbitrarily
choose one zone.  I think the only or most common way to reach
Antarctica is via Cristchurch, New Zealand, at least I know it is via
this route for scientists of NASA and other US projects.

This is my best explanation.  If I learn anything more on this, I'll let
you know!


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/
********************************************************************
"Looking up gives light, although at first it makes you dizzy."
        --Mevlana Rumi


From eugen at leitl.org  Sun Jun  4 15:37:40 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 17:37:40 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Antarctica timezone(s)
In-Reply-To: <4052.81.152.102.14.1149420694.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
References: <p06230900c0a8204adff2@[23.237.66.13]>
	<4052.81.152.102.14.1149420694.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <20060604153740.GS28956@leitl.org>

On Sun, Jun 04, 2006 at 01:31:34PM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:

> I wonder how much we can simply do away with tying the cyclic part of time
> (days and years) to cyclic natural phenomena. On the moon days do not

Well, there already is TAI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Atomic_Time
upon which UTC is defined: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC

> work, so it is not too hard to have a clock unlinked to nature. On Mars,
> sols probably do matter for most probes and visitors, so the clock need to
> be linked.

What we need is a number of synchronized high-precision oscillators
driving a time standard, normalized for absolute rest and for flat
spacetime.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From sentience at pobox.com  Sun Jun  4 16:33:26 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2006 09:33:26 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Two draft papers: AI and existential risk;
	heuristics and biases
Message-ID: <44830B56.3080003@pobox.com>

These are drafts of my chapters for Nick Bostrom's forthcoming edited 
volume _Global Catastrophic Risks_.  I may not have much time for 
further editing, but if anyone discovers any gross mistakes, then 
there's still time for me to submit changes.

The chapters are:

_Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks_
   http://singinst.org/Biases.pdf
An introduction to the field of heuristics and biases - the experimental 
psychology of reproducible errors of human judgment - with a special 
focus on global catastrophic risks.  However, this paper should be 
generally useful to anyone who hasn't previously looked into the 
experimental results on human error.  If you're going to read both 
chapters, I recommend that you read this one first.

_Artificial Intelligence and Global Risk_
   http://singinst.org/AIRisk.pdf
The new standard introductory material on Friendly AI.  Any links to 
_Creating Friendly AI_ should be redirected here.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From spike66 at comcast.net  Sun Jun  4 16:34:29 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 09:34:29 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Antarctica timezone(s)
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECEAHFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <200606041651.k54Gp9p4020910@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> Amara writes
> 
> > Ever wonder what time zones they use in Antarctica?

I don't know, but my intuition is that they would use zulu (GMT) everywhere
on that continent, same on Luna and Mars.

spike









From xyz at iq.org  Sun Jun  4 21:43:19 2006
From: xyz at iq.org (Harry Harrison)
Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2006 07:43:19 +1000
Subject: [extropy-chat] Antarctica timezone(s)
In-Reply-To: <p06230900c0a87593b8a6@[23.237.66.13]>
References: <p06230900c0a87593b8a6@[23.237.66.13]>
Message-ID: <1149457399.16089.263023749@webmail.messagingengine.com>


I throughly recommend the blog bigdeadplace.com for anyone considering visiting Antarctica. Fantastic!

On Sun, 4 Jun 2006 13:43:35 +0200, "Amara Graps" <amara at amara.com> said:
> Here is a blog from a Caltech postdoc who is in Antarctica for
> the 'wintover' working on the BICEP experiment, which is a
> CMB polarization telescope looking for a particular kind
> of polarization. The blog is fun and the borealis gorgeous.
> 
> http://bmode.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/spblog05
> (click on the "new link")
> 
> Amara
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat


From xyz at iq.org  Sun Jun  4 22:15:03 2006
From: xyz at iq.org (Harry Harrison)
Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2006 08:15:03 +1000
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
 simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>
References: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<8d71341e0606011928t7ddc56d2l34930e5cad4b932d@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022231k269664d7j44d60ea0b8fae73a@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>


On Sat, 3 Jun 2006 06:52:10 +0100, "Russell Wallace" <russell.wallace at gmail.com> said:
> The truth is there isn't going to be any Singularity, in the usual
> definition of the word; Jesus isn't coming anytime soon, nor is Great
> Cthulhu, nor is their replacement in the AI mythology. What is and will
> remain true is that we can keep going up, or we can go down. If we go up
> we
> go up, just as was true in the Cambrian explosion, the Neolithic, the
> Industrial Revolution etc (none of which events wiped out life on Earth,
> you
> may notice :)); if we go down, we die. I say we go up, and look to life,
> not
> death. What say you?

WW1 and WW2 were the bastard sons of the industrial revolution and WWIII was close, although there's an interesting argument
that these were the result of stuffing development into a sack (nation state) which eventually burst its confines and
wouldn't have happened if the sack was a sieve.

There won't be Singularity (note capital S), unless there is a sacking of a substantial new energy input which is hard to envisage. The effects of intelligence are otherwise limited to optimisations on energy inputs and we're not so far from the thermodynamic limit already.




From sentience at pobox.com  Sun Jun  4 22:38:25 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2006 15:38:25 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
 simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>
References: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>	<8d71341e0606011928t7ddc56d2l34930e5cad4b932d@mail.gmail.com>	<1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>	<8d71341e0606022231k269664d7j44d60ea0b8fae73a@mail.gmail.com>	<1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>	<8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>
Message-ID: <448360E1.60301@pobox.com>

Harry Harrison wrote:
> The effects of intelligence are otherwise limited to optimisations on
> energy inputs and we're not so far from the thermodynamic limit
> already.

*Blink blink*.

Er, there's a star nearby wasting more power per second than we use in a 
year...

And the brain is around six orders of magnitude below thermodynamic 
efficiency limits for 300 Kelvin...

Did you mean something nonobvious by your statement?

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Sun Jun  4 22:57:07 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 15:57:07 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <448360E1.60301@pobox.com>
References: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<8d71341e0606011928t7ddc56d2l34930e5cad4b932d@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022231k269664d7j44d60ea0b8fae73a@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<448360E1.60301@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net>

On Sun, Jun 04, 2006 at 03:38:25PM -0700, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> Harry Harrison wrote:
> > The effects of intelligence are otherwise limited to optimisations on
> > energy inputs and we're not so far from the thermodynamic limit
> > already.

The Singularity of the evolution of Homo sapiens probably had more to do
with structural changes and developing language than with simply using
more energy.  Then again, I'm skeptical that any phase changes like that
exist in the future.  OTOH, digital intelligence, with benefits of long
life and copying and cognitive engineering might well give something one
could call a Singularity.

> And the brain is around six orders of magnitude below thermodynamic 
> efficiency limits for 300 Kelvin...

Six?  I get 3-5.  Thermo limits of about 1e22 J
kTln2*bits/s = power
1.38e-23*300*.693 * bits/s = 20

Brain: 1e14 synapses at 1e3 Hz = 1e17 ops/second, with an "op" probably
being more than a bit/s, so up to 1e19 bits/s.

Even 3 orders of magnitude offers a lot of room for growth, of course;
OTOH I'd wonder if they can actually be safely tapped, or if doing so
increases error rate, or if the brain is doing more than anticipated
(hi, glial cells)

-xx- Damien X-) 


From sentience at pobox.com  Sun Jun  4 23:37:16 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2006 16:37:16 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
 simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net>
References: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>	<8d71341e0606011928t7ddc56d2l34930e5cad4b932d@mail.gmail.com>	<1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>	<8d71341e0606022231k269664d7j44d60ea0b8fae73a@mail.gmail.com>	<1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>	<8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>	<1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>	<448360E1.60301@pobox.com>
	<20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <44836EAC.6060407@pobox.com>

Damien Sullivan wrote:
> 
>>And the brain is around six orders of magnitude below thermodynamic 
>>efficiency limits for 300 Kelvin...
> 
> Six?  I get 3-5.  Thermo limits of about 1e22 J
> kTln2*bits/s = power
> 1.38e-23*300*.693 * bits/s = 20
> 
> Brain: 1e14 synapses at 1e3 Hz = 1e17 ops/second, with an "op" probably
> being more than a bit/s, so up to 1e19 bits/s.

My computation was based on 1e14 synapses firing an *average* of 20 
spikes per second.  Not every neural circuit is active all the time, and 
1e3 is not realistic even as the rate of a maximally activated neuron, 
except in special cases.

Reality check: a traveling spike involves many ions being released from 
the cell membrane, traveling with the potential grade, then 
painstakingly pumped back in against the potential grade.  It's not 
firing that takes the energy, it's preparation to fire.  If I recall 
correctly, it takes one ATP->ADP reaction per ion pumped against the 
grade.  And I would expect much more than a thousand ions released per 
total synaptic spike.  So the inefficiency relative to the thermodynamic 
limit is surely more than just three orders of magnitude.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From asa at nada.kth.se  Mon Jun  5 00:10:58 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 02:10:58 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Antarctica timezone(s)
In-Reply-To: <20060604153740.GS28956@leitl.org>
References: <p06230900c0a8204adff2@[23.237.66.13]>
	<4052.81.152.102.14.1149420694.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060604153740.GS28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <38767.86.143.246.157.1149466258.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Eugen Leitl wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 04, 2006 at 01:31:34PM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:
>> work, so it is not too hard to have a clock unlinked to nature. On Mars,
>> sols probably do matter for most probes and visitors, so the clock need
>> to
>> be linked.
>
> What we need is a number of synchronized high-precision oscillators
> driving a time standard, normalized for absolute rest and for flat
> spacetime.

We need that for some applications, but for everyday applications a
calender is mostly used to coordinate the cyclic social activity of
humans. Even today, with electric light, fast global communications,
melatonin and a 24-hour society we still have fairly strong periodicities
that are hard to skip (hence the failure of most polyphasic sleep
programs). Sleepless transhumans might dispense with it and just view time
as progressing linearly onwards, but mixed human-transhuman societies
would still have cyclicities that need to be managed.

It could also be that some processes in society are better done according
to set periodicities than continously or "just in time", a bit like how
periodic hormone release might have positive effects in the body (one
theory suggests that sharp spike trains of insulin concentration allows
efficient signalling without the problems of persistently high
concentration).

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From asa at nada.kth.se  Mon Jun  5 00:41:08 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 02:41:08 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
 simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <44836EAC.6060407@pobox.com>
References: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>	<8d71341e0606011928t7ddc56d2l34930e5cad4b932d@mail.gmail.com>	<1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>	<8d71341e0606022231k269664d7j44d60ea0b8fae73a@mail.gmail.com>	<1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>	<8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>	<1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>	<448360E1.60301@pobox.com>
	<20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net> <44836EAC.6060407@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <39193.86.143.246.157.1149468068.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> Reality check: a traveling spike involves many ions being released from
> the cell membrane, traveling with the potential grade, then
> painstakingly pumped back in against the potential grade.  It's not
> firing that takes the energy, it's preparation to fire.  If I recall
> correctly, it takes one ATP->ADP reaction per ion pumped against the
> grade.

Actually, it is three sodium out and two potassium in per ATP. A very cool
little pump. And indeed, it seems to be the main energy cost of the brain
- the spike is just a release of the spring.

>  And I would expect much more than a thousand ions released per
> total synaptic spike.

Surprisingly enough, it is on the order of 100,000 ions. Much more than a
thousand, but still far far from moles. The Wikipedia gives a calculations
for a higher upper bound for a somewhat big spike, 50 million
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Membrane_potential#The_number_of_ions_involved_in_generating_the_resting_potential

> So the inefficiency relative to the thermodynamic
> limit is surely more than just three orders of magnitude.

The Brillouin inequality is only about information erasure. Many of the
brain computations may be rather information-preserving. A synaptic signal
for example, if perfect, would not cost any thermodynamic cost for
erasure. In practice the release probability is 10-30% according to
Markram and Tsodyks ( http://diwww.epfl.ch/~gerstner/SPNM/node33.html ),
so that would be on average 2-3 bits of erasure per synapse and signal.

Hmm, around 8e14 synapses with an average population of 1-10% neurons
firing at 1-100 Hz. That makes 1e9-1e12 firings affecting 8e12-8e15
synapses. At a cost of 2.4e-21 - 3.6e-21 J this is 1.9e-8 - 2.8e-5 W. So I
get five-six order of magnitude for this with the most pessimistic
calculation.

Going backwards, we would have an allowance of 1.6e11 bits/s per neuron
and 20e6 bits/s per synapse if all the energy use was for computation.
Given a maximal input/output rate of the nervous system on the order of
gigabits per second, this seems rather high.

Ah, the Brillouin inequality, synaptic release probability and singularity
all in one thread. It feels good to be on the Extropians list again!


-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From asa at nada.kth.se  Mon Jun  5 01:22:39 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 03:22:39 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Collective Singularities (Was: Desirability of
	Singularity)
In-Reply-To: <20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net>
References: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<8d71341e0606011928t7ddc56d2l34930e5cad4b932d@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022231k269664d7j44d60ea0b8fae73a@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<448360E1.60301@pobox.com> <20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <39911.86.143.246.157.1149470559.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Damien Sullivan wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 04, 2006 at 03:38:25PM -0700, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>> Harry Harrison wrote:
>> > The effects of intelligence are otherwise limited to optimisations on
>> > energy inputs and we're not so far from the thermodynamic limit
>> > already.
>
> The Singularity of the evolution of Homo sapiens probably had more to do
> with structural changes and developing language than with simply using
> more energy.  Then again, I'm skeptical that any phase changes like that
> exist in the future.  OTOH, digital intelligence, with benefits of long
> life and copying and cognitive engineering might well give something one
> could call a Singularity.

The "language singularity" was really about rapid spread of information
and cumulative storage of it within human groups. Possibly we could speak
of a second "writing singularity" too when the cumulative storage got more
resilient - that really accelerated huamn growth, although the adjoining
(and somewhat earlier) introduction of agriculture enabling and
stimulating human population growth helped a lot.

So maybe we can look for factors increasing individual cognitive capacity,
increasing the knowledge/ability accumulation, decrease cooperation
overheads and increase cooperation synergies. And increased total
population.

Increasing individual cognitive capacity has a big multiplicative effect
on the economy, according to some of my current analysis (stay tuned :-).
Just a small increase (a few points) in "mean IQ" would imply a doubling.
On the other hand, we do not know how easy that is to achieve - in terms
of nootropics we have no clue, yet we might have environmental Flynn
effect like phenomena right now. I guess this is the core of the
traditional singularity scenario, everybody becomes really smart.

Increasing accumulation seems to be getting better, since we are
approaching a world where everything people experience gets recorded,
becomes distributable and searchable. We have a bit to go (6e9 people x
1e10 bits/s = 6e19 bit/s of raw sensorium, a 1 megapixel 24 bit 1000 Hz
gnatbot eye every square meter of Earth is 1e25 bit/s). Today we produce a
few exabytes formal information (paper, digital etc) per year, just about
3e11 bit/s. Just 8 orders of magnitude of discrepancy between human
experience and what is being made storable. Maybe the next singularity
will not be about intelligence per se, but just very good storage and
search. A Google singularity, where the effective intelligence of humanity
is amplified just by a very good collective memory able to learn from
collective experience efficiently.

Decreasing cooperation overheads not only allows more efficient
cooperation but also larger cooperative groups, enabling larger skillsets
to be applied. This might enable dealing with new parts of problem space.
An open source singularity?

Increased cooperation synergies would mean that we also get better at
cooperating like the previous case, but also receive stronger incentives
to cooperate. This might be the borganism or EarthWeb take on the
singularity.

Finally we have larger population: more raw brainpower. The non-hard
takeoff AI singularity and Robin's upload economy fit in here: more brains
and creators can be made as desired and needed.

These are all very collectivist singularities involving lots of agents
rather than the apotheosis of the hard takeoff. I guess they are "swells"
rather than "spikes".

It seems worthwhile to try to figure out which of these factors might be
most amenable to being changed in the near future; right now the obvious
money is on storage, but I don't know how well data mining will be able to
scale along it. The intelligence factor might be tricky but is being
studied rather intently. Reduced overhads and increased synergies might be
the wildcards: they are in line with many internet phenomena and much work
in human computer interfaces, management and spontaneous orders, but it
seems rather unpredictable whether we will get any breakthroughs (maybe
they can be measured in terms of the tech driven productivity growth that
isn't attributable to individual performance increases?). The population
singularity is far off right now, it will become relevant only when
infomorphs start to have nontrivial brainpower but will then take off very
fast.

The desirability of these collective singularities probably depends quite
a bit on the particular kind. I find Robins upload economy a bit worrying
(awfully high Gini coefficient there), the cooperation enabling
singularities might be very nice or borg vs. borg, the high
intelligence/capability individual one might be messy due to rare but
highly destructive individuals, and the google singularity might be a
transparent world, something simultaneously goodbad.

In general I think my optimism is based on the assumption/historical
observation that on the whole humanity produces more wealth (both
material, intellectual and emotional) than it destroys and that past
singularities (if we call them that) have amplified this process. This may
be because they were guided by human interests, and the next might have
significant nonhuman actors with nonhuman interests. However, since it is
a good chance that these actors will at least at the start be influenced
by (or even imprinted on) human values even that situation has a fairly
nonzero chance of being along previous lines.

I guess the key question here is to identify some of the more clear
attractors that are nasty and find proactionary ways of avoiding them.
Just as Frindly AI is about avoiding a nasty hard takeoff singularity we
might want to come up with "friendly borganism" or "compassionate upload
wage slavery" to fix other potential attractors. :-)

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Mon Jun  5 01:56:30 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 18:56:30 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Collective Singularities (Was: Desirability of
	Singularity)
In-Reply-To: <39911.86.143.246.157.1149470559.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<8d71341e0606011928t7ddc56d2l34930e5cad4b932d@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022231k269664d7j44d60ea0b8fae73a@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<448360E1.60301@pobox.com> <20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net>
	<39911.86.143.246.157.1149470559.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <20060605015630.GA12441@ofb.net>

On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 03:22:39AM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:
> Damien Sullivan wrote:

> > The Singularity of the evolution of Homo sapiens probably had more to do
> > with structural changes and developing language than with simply using
> > more energy.  Then again, I'm skeptical that any phase changes like that
> > exist in the future.  OTOH, digital intelligence, with benefits of long

> The "language singularity" was really about rapid spread of information
> and cumulative storage of it within human groups. Possibly we could speak

For practical purposes, yeah.  I was thinking of the jump to being
approximately Turing-complete, though, being able to be arbitrarily
precise and complex in our reference to the world, including references
to past and future and things not present, and ability to trade complex
instructions.  Biologists like to talk about gradualism, but computer
science actually gives us some hard jumps, and reasons for humans and
dogs to not be on the same plane.  It doesn't encourage belief in a
plane above ours, though.

As for energy efficiency of the brain, I don't know.  Even my numbers
gave three orders of magnitude, yeah.  An evolutionist might suspect
we're missing something: is anything else in biology that
thermodynamically crappy?  Metabolism compares well to our heat engines,
AFAIK.  Plants turn about 1% of sunlight into sugars but I suspect
they're limited by the difficulty of extracting CO2 from 1/10,000
concentrations -- CO2 as the rate limiter, not energy, though one could
wonder why nitrogen wasn't sucked out and used as a storage mechanism.
But computation is a millionth of potential limits?

-xx- Damien X-)


From george at betterhumans.com  Mon Jun  5 01:51:48 2006
From: george at betterhumans.com (George Dvorsky)
Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2006 21:51:48 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Collective Singularities (Was: Desirability of
 Singularity)
In-Reply-To: <39911.86.143.246.157.1149470559.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
References: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>	<8d71341e0606011928t7ddc56d2l34930e5cad4b932d@mail.gmail.com>	<1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>	<8d71341e0606022231k269664d7j44d60ea0b8fae73a@mail.gmail.com>	<1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>	<8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>	<1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>	<448360E1.60301@pobox.com>
	<20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net>
	<39911.86.143.246.157.1149470559.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <44838E34.4000204@betterhumans.com>

> Increasing individual cognitive capacity has a big multiplicative effect
> on the economy, according to some of my current analysis (stay tuned :-).

While I'm sure that there's some truth to your analysis, one factor you 
must be sure to consider is the impact of wide scale under-employment. 
Already today the cognitive demands of work isn't matching what many 
people are truly capable of (ie people are over-educated relative to 
their jobs). In the future, I can imagine more of the same; just because 
you have groups of populations with high IQs doesn't mean that the 
cognitive demands of jobs will follow accordingly.

Cheers,
George


From extropy at unreasonable.com  Mon Jun  5 02:06:25 2006
From: extropy at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin)
Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2006 22:06:25 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] A party, at last
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20060604220554.076bd7f8@unreasonable.com>

Somehow I managed to not have a quarterly party last year. With a 
birthday coming up that is a round number in both hex and octal, it's 
about frinking time. My version of Sasha's old gatherings.

If you are going to be in the Boston area, you're welcome to attend. 
There's crash-space here, if you need it. You may be able to get a 
ride from NYC or other parts south; use the exi-east list or me to coordinate.

If you're not around but coming to town in the future, let us know. 
We can usually lure a quorum of Bostropians.

My house. Hudson, New Hampshire. A couple miles from the MA border 
and the Nashua malls. Roughly 20 minutes north of Rt. 128.

Saturday, June 24. 2 PM until the last person not me leaves. OK to 
arrive late if you have other commitments; most everyone will still be here.

Anyone on this list is specifically invited. If you have someone else 
in mind, run it by me. It will probably be okay, whether you're able 
to come or not. Additionally, I will invite a few friends-of-extropy, 
such as sf writer, nano, LP, MIT, Alcor types.

Bring to augment existing: food, drink; musical instruments; 
interesting stuff to show people. We'll order Chinese food at some point.

RSVP to me and the exi-east list.


-- David Lubkin.

	lubkin at unreasonable.com



From amara at amara.com  Mon Jun  5 02:34:23 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 04:34:23 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat]  Antarctica timezone(s)
Message-ID: <p06230901c0a9484c774e@[23.237.66.13]>


Harry Harrison xyz at iq.org :
>I throughly recommend the blog bigdeadplace.com for anyone considering
>visiting Antarctica. Fantastic!


There's a book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0922915997/
(That web site: http://bigdeadplace.com/ is now only an archive)

but you can look at (more) real life, as well:

http://www.gdargaud.net/Antarctica/WinterDC.html

Amara


From asa at nada.kth.se  Mon Jun  5 02:44:08 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 04:44:08 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Collective Singularities (Was: Desirability of
 Singularity)
In-Reply-To: <20060605015630.GA12441@ofb.net>
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<8d71341e0606011928t7ddc56d2l34930e5cad4b932d@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022231k269664d7j44d60ea0b8fae73a@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<448360E1.60301@pobox.com> <20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net>
	<39911.86.143.246.157.1149470559.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060605015630.GA12441@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <40820.86.143.246.157.1149475448.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Damien Sullivan wrote:
> For practical purposes, yeah.  I was thinking of the jump to being
> approximately Turing-complete, though, being able to be arbitrarily
> precise and complex in our reference to the world, including references
> to past and future and things not present, and ability to trade complex
> instructions.  Biologists like to talk about gradualism, but computer
> science actually gives us some hard jumps, and reasons for humans and
> dogs to not be on the same plane.

I think the jump is more like a sigmoid, but still sharp enough to be
dramatic. Working memory puts a bit of a limit on the Turing-completeness
- we are 7+-2 register machines :-)

> It doesn't encourage belief in a plane above ours, though.

Yes, I have tried to bring it up around the philosophers here but with no
luck yet (mostly, likely, because of me phrasing my question badly). From
an ethical standpoint this is relevant, since if there is nothing above us
then  if moral is something that can be discovered or deduced all
posthumans will be equivalent in potential understanding of morality. But
maybe there are moral truths or decisions that can only be reached using
quantum computing? (OK, that is likely just an exponential speedup, not
something new).

> As for energy efficiency of the brain, I don't know.  Even my numbers
> gave three orders of magnitude, yeah.  An evolutionist might suspect
> we're missing something: is anything else in biology that
> thermodynamically crappy?  Metabolism compares well to our heat engines,
> AFAIK.  Plants turn about 1% of sunlight into sugars but I suspect
> they're limited by the difficulty of extracting CO2 from 1/10,000
> concentrations -- CO2 as the rate limiter, not energy, though one could
> wonder why nitrogen wasn't sucked out and used as a storage mechanism.

Probably too inert as a gas, breaking its triple bonds costs a lot and
nitrogen fixation is expensive.

> But computation is a millionth of potential limits?

We may not have needed much for most of evolution and are now trapped in a
bad solution like the insect trachea. Ion pumps and channels as
transmission mechanisms are extremely old, probably far far before
precambrium and with single-celled precursors. Our ancestors may have run
into that alley a billion years ago, when it was no problem.


-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From asa at nada.kth.se  Mon Jun  5 02:56:10 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 04:56:10 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Collective Singularities (Was: Desirability of
 Singularity)
In-Reply-To: <44838E34.4000204@betterhumans.com>
References: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>	<8d71341e0606011928t7ddc56d2l34930e5cad4b932d@mail.gmail.com>	<1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>	<8d71341e0606022231k269664d7j44d60ea0b8fae73a@mail.gmail.com>	<1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>	<8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>	<1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>	<448360E1.60301@pobox.com>
	<20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net>
	<39911.86.143.246.157.1149470559.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<44838E34.4000204@betterhumans.com>
Message-ID: <40915.86.143.246.157.1149476170.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


George Dvorsky wrote:
>> Increasing individual cognitive capacity has a big multiplicative effect
>> on the economy, according to some of my current analysis (stay tuned
>> :-).
>
> While I'm sure that there's some truth to your analysis, one factor you
> must be sure to consider is the impact of wide scale under-employment.
> Already today the cognitive demands of work isn't matching what many
> people are truly capable of (ie people are over-educated relative to
> their jobs). In the future, I can imagine more of the same; just because
> you have groups of populations with high IQs doesn't mean that the
> cognitive demands of jobs will follow accordingly.

Having overeducated people in simple jobs suggests that there isn't enough
entrepreneurship, venture capital or whatever for them to find new niches;
I don't think that is an unavoidable consequence of too much brainpower.
Maybe it is rather a sign that we have too little economic flexibility
(individually and societally).

One approach to estimate the use of higher IQ for GDP is to look at
correlations between IQ and salaries, and then do a bit of extrapolation
(adding in changes in probability of holding a job, some lowered social
costs for prisons and poorhouses etc). Those are based on a status quo
assumption about the structure of the economy, so they might not hold very
far into the future (I would also love to have a way of including a
competition factor in such models).

Another is to look at the productivity residual and assume some of it is
due to technological ability increase; that produces a multiplicative
factor that is probably a more robus mixture of lots of smaller factors.

A third, and honestly fairly iffy approach, is to base it on
http://www.iapsych.com/articles/dickerson2006ip.pdf that suggests that
national IQ is multiplicative of GDP. Here the cause and effect are likely
tightly meshed and the raw data is suspect, so this should be taken with a
ton of salt.

But overall, the impression I get is that higher intelligence overall
produces a big effect on the overall economy, even if it might be just a
smaller group that does most of the smart work. A bit like Florida's
creative and service classes: if the creatives are smart and productive
enough, it doesn't matter that most others do macjobs. The entire economy
grows fast anyway.



-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From femmechakra at yahoo.ca  Mon Jun  5 02:47:30 2006
From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anne-Marie Taylor)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 22:47:30 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Simplifying Singularity
Message-ID: <20060605024730.37529.qmail@web35505.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Anna wrote
  "Singularity is a moment in time when technology will change the course of humanity forever."

  Is this better?
   
  "The Singularity may be a moment in time when a new technology may change the course
  of humanity forever".
  Again, still trying to to find a sentence that the average joe may understand.
   
  Thanks for taking your time Lee and Keith.
  Anna



Any piece of knowledge I acquire today has a value at 
this moment exactly proportioned to my skill to deal with it. 
Tomorrow, when I know more, I recall that piece of 
knowledge and use it better.
-Mark van Doren
		
---------------------------------
Now you can have a huge leap forward in email: get the new Yahoo! Mail. 
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From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Mon Jun  5 03:48:09 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 20:48:09 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Moral Truths (was Collective Singularities)
In-Reply-To: <40820.86.143.246.157.1149475448.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAEBJFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Anders writes

> Damien Sullivan wrote:
> > For practical purposes, yeah.  I was thinking of the jump to being
> > approximately Turing-complete, though, being able to be arbitrarily
> > precise and complex in our reference to the world, including references
> > to past and future and things not present,

Just to be clear, you [Damien] are saying humans achieved Turing
completeness (well, at least as much as any error-prone physical
device can) quite a long time ago.  I agree.

> > It doesn't encourage belief in a plane above ours, though.
> 
> Yes, I have tried to bring it up around the philosophers here but with no
> luck yet

I assume that I'm correctly assuming that we have no inkling of any level
level of computability beyond the most general one we are familiar with,
and quite a bit of circumstantial evidence to suppose that no such level
exists.

> From an ethical standpoint this is relevant, since if there is nothing
> above us then  if moral is something that can be discovered or deduced
> all posthumans will be equivalent in potential understanding of morality.

Do you in fact believe that what is moral can be deduced or discovered?
If so, why?  I must say that to me, the entire notion of evolutionary-
independent morality is extremely dubious. 

> But maybe there are moral truths or decisions that can only be reached
> using quantum computing?

Well, until you persuade me that moral truths exist at all, this will
continue to sound pretty silly  :-)

Lee



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Mon Jun  5 03:51:10 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 20:51:10 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Collective Singularities
In-Reply-To: <40915.86.143.246.157.1149476170.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEEBJFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Anders writes

> George Dvorsky wrote:
> >> Increasing individual cognitive capacity has a big multiplicative effect
> >> on the economy, according to some of my current analysis (stay tuned
> >> :-).
> >
> > While I'm sure that there's some truth to your analysis, one factor you
> > must be sure to consider is the impact of wide scale under-employment.
> > Already today the cognitive demands of work isn't matching what many
> > people are truly capable of (ie people are over-educated relative to
> > their jobs). In the future, I can imagine more of the same; just because
> > you have groups of populations with high IQs doesn't mean that the
> > cognitive demands of jobs will follow accordingly.
> 
> Having overeducated people in simple jobs suggests that there isn't enough
> entrepreneurship, venture capital or whatever for them to find new niches;
> I don't think that is an unavoidable consequence of too much brainpower.
> Maybe it is rather a sign that we have too little economic flexibility
> (individually and societally).

Anders knocks the ball out of the park!   (To use an American expression.)



Omigod!  I can't find anything whatsoever to disagree with here.
And I swore that I'd never write a "me too" post.   Huzza.

Lee

> One approach to estimate the use of higher IQ for GDP is to look at
> correlations between IQ and salaries, and then do a bit of extrapolation
> (adding in changes in probability of holding a job, some lowered social
> costs for prisons and poorhouses etc). Those are based on a status quo
> assumption about the structure of the economy, so they might not hold very
> far into the future (I would also love to have a way of including a
> competition factor in such models).
> 
> Another is to look at the productivity residual and assume some of it is
> due to technological ability increase; that produces a multiplicative
> factor that is probably a more robust mixture of lots of smaller factors.
> 
> A third, and honestly fairly iffy approach, is to base it on
> http://www.iapsych.com/articles/dickerson2006ip.pdf that suggests that
> national IQ is multiplicative of GDP. Here the cause and effect are likely
> tightly meshed and the raw data is suspect, so this should be taken with a
> ton of salt.
> 
> But overall, the impression I get is that higher intelligence overall
> produces a big effect on the overall economy, even if it might be just a
> smaller group that does most of the smart work. A bit like Florida's
> creative and service classes: if the creatives are smart and productive
> enough, it doesn't matter that most others do macjobs. The entire economy
> grows fast anyway.
> 
> -- 
> Anders Sandberg,
> Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
> Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University



From spike66 at comcast.net  Mon Jun  5 03:34:17 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 20:34:17 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <39193.86.143.246.157.1149468068.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <200606050348.k553msdn004742@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg
..
> 
> Ah, the Brillouin inequality, synaptic release probability and singularity
> all in one thread. It feels good to be on the Extropians list again!
> 
> 
> --
> Anders Sandberg,
> Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
> Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University


It's great to have you back Anders.  Your sig line has the word Oxford in
there twice.  Is this an intentional redundancy?

{8-]

spike








From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Mon Jun  5 03:57:15 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 20:57:15 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Simplifying Singularity
In-Reply-To: <20060605024730.37529.qmail@web35505.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEOEBJFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Anna writes

> Is this better?

> "The Singularity may be a moment in time when a new technology
> may change the course of humanity forever".

Sorry, it's not.  I mean (1) it *will* change the course, but 
(2) a lot of other things have also.  So it gives the mistaken
impression that technology changing the course of humanity
hasn't happened before.   Or a lot.

Maybe something like: "The Singularity will see a new technology
may changing the course of humanity with unprecedented speed."

> Again, still trying to find a sentence that the average Joe
> may understand.

Good luck!

> Thanks for taking your time Lee and Keith.

You are quite welcome.

Lee



From jef at jefallbright.net  Mon Jun  5 04:01:59 2006
From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 21:01:59 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: Almaden Institute 2006, Cognitive Computing
In-Reply-To: <48D4E4B7-5A0D-4EBF-8AB9-484BB161629B@singinst.org>
References: <48D4E4B7-5A0D-4EBF-8AB9-484BB161629B@singinst.org>
Message-ID: <22360fa10606042101q9452af4ycc2e20f059c48f8a@mail.gmail.com>

Forwarding item of general interest to the Extropy list.
- Jef

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tyler Emerson <emerson at singinst.org>
Date: Jun 4, 2006 8:02 PM
Subject: Almaden Institute 2006, Cognitive Computing
To: sl4 at sl4.org, wta-talk at transhumanism.org


Video and presentations from Almaden Institute's Cognitive Computing
Conference:

http://www.almaden.ibm.com/institute/agenda.shtml

Gerald Edelman, Henry Markram, Christof Koch, Robert Hecht-Nielsen,
Jeff Hawkins, V. S. Ramachandran et al.


From extropy at unreasonable.com  Mon Jun  5 03:30:56 2006
From: extropy at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin)
Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2006 23:30:56 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] A party, at last
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20060604233024.06bd5298@unreasonable.com>

Two minutes after I post, I realize that that day and the following 
Saturday are both encompassed by this years PorcFest. Is there anyone who

(a) would be able to come to the party if it didn't conflict or, contrawise,

(b) can come if I move it to a weekday for once, just before or just 
after PorcFest, because they've come from afar for that or, widdershins,

(c) would *prefer* that it conflict with PorcFest, to avoid those who 
would otherwise attend?


-- David.



From spike66 at comcast.net  Mon Jun  5 04:09:13 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 21:09:13 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] evolution and bee tracheas
In-Reply-To: <40820.86.143.246.157.1149475448.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <200606050409.k5549xuf020398@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg
...
> 
> > But computation is a millionth of potential limits?
> 
> We may not have needed much for most of evolution and are now trapped in a
> bad solution like the insect trachea...
> --
> Anders Sandberg,
> Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
> Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University


Interesting comment.  I am trying to establish some bee colonies in Oregon.
The beekeepers there are fighting an infestation of mites that get into the
bee's trachea.  The mites do not actually slay the bee, but rather control
their numbers while living on the bee's blood.  This makes her sick and
unable to work as hard as she would otherwise.  This is a double tragedy for
a bee, for she then loses her identity in a sense, like a slow cheetah or a
shark with a finicky appetite.

http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/PDFs/Tracheal.pdf

The real tragedy is that there are no bugs that get inside mosquitoes and
devour those wretched beasts from the inside.  I propose we design a bug or
nanobot that devours only mosquito proboscises.  The result would be
billions of mosquitoes buzzing harmlessly about with big stupid
proboscisless looks on their faces.

spike








From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Mon Jun  5 04:27:28 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 21:27:28 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] The Good
In-Reply-To: <22360fa10606031909j4f241e46v93e32e2cd190a71f@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEEBLFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Jef writes

> Increasing awareness of principles of what works (increasingly
> objective scientific/instrumental knowledge), applied to increasing
> awareness of our (increasingly intersubjective) values that work over
> increasing scope, leads to what is seen as increasingly moral
> decision-making.

May I paraphrase?  You "what works" always sounds as though it favors
expediency and the end over the means. Since you don't mean that, my
advice is to stop using the phrase; believe me, you'll have a lot 
better luck doing that than trying to *persuade* people to stop using
words the way they presently do, and start using them the way you do.

  "Increasing awareness of principles of objective scientific/
  instrumental knowledge, applied to increasing awareness of
  our values, leads to ever greater moral decision-making.

  "It should also be said that over time our values become
  more and more intersubjective, and are applicable over
  a larger scope."

:-) This allows folks to read what you write without going on
a conscious hunt for the verb!

You might add something to mollify those, like me, who deny that
anything is objectively moral, and so might be prone to dismiss
what you are saying out of hand:  "Here it is understood that by
"moral" is meant that which is in maximal agreement with what is
deemed moral by most religions and cultures, and appears to be
innately human", or something like that.

> The practical application of that understanding is that it becomes
> clear that (1) we *can* increasingly agree on certain choices being
> better than other choices, and (2) we *should* facilitate this process
> of increasingly moral decision-making by intentionally building a
> technological framework to increase our awareness of our values and
> our instrumental knowledge and apply them to social decision-making.

Well, what kind of technological framework could increase our 
awareness of our collective human values?

> I wish I knew how to factor out (to abstract) all those
> "increasing's", but it's all about evolutionary growth and the Red
> Queen would agree that standing still is never an option.

Well, that's where maybe I've helped!  :-)

> I do intend to write a more thorough exposition of this "Arrow of
> Morality" thinking, and I value your interaction as contributing to
> making my message clearer.

You are welcome.

Lee

P.S.  More later.



From amara at amara.com  Mon Jun  5 04:55:21 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 06:55:21 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat]  evolution and bee tracheas
Message-ID: <p06230900c0a9685bda49@[23.237.66.13]>

spike:
>The real tragedy is that there are no bugs that get inside mosquitoes
>and devour those wretched beasts from the inside.  I propose we design a
>bug or nanobot that devours only mosquito proboscises.

Wasps have a handle on cockroaches though.
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/03/wasp_performs_roachb.html

Maybe the mosquito scientists haven't looked hard enough to find
mosquito zombies.

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/
********************************************************************
"My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot."
--Ashleigh Brilliant


From asa at nada.kth.se  Mon Jun  5 10:05:27 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 12:05:27 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Moral Truths (was Collective Singularities)
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAEBJFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <40820.86.143.246.157.1149475448.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAEBJFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <1306.163.1.72.81.1149501927.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Lee Corbin wrote:
> I assume that I'm correctly assuming that we have no inkling of any level
> level of computability beyond the most general one we are familiar with,
> and quite a bit of circumstantial evidence to suppose that no such level
> exists.

Actually, there is a whole menagerie of hypercomputing. It is just that we
don't know how (or if we can) do it:
http://www.amirrorclear.net/academic/papers/many-forms.pdf
http://arxiv.org/ftp/math/papers/0209/0209332.pdf

>> From an ethical standpoint this is relevant, since if there is nothing
>> above us then  if moral is something that can be discovered or deduced
>> all posthumans will be equivalent in potential understanding of
>> morality.
>
> Do you in fact believe that what is moral can be deduced or discovered?
> If so, why?  I must say that to me, the entire notion of evolutionary-
> independent morality is extremely dubious.

Well, on alternate weeks I am positive about this, otherwise I doubt it.
Obviously some aspects of morality are evolution independent like the
demand that it be self-consistent (an inconsistent morality leads to
dilemma situations; an otherwise similar morality without dilemmas would
at least be more efficient to apply). However, I think most of these
aspects are fairly trivial (others disagree).

If morality is derived from evolution then we need practical intelligence
to discover and apply it, since clearly just relying on evolved moral
intuitions will be problematic when we get outside of our environment of
adaptation.

>> But maybe there are moral truths or decisions that can only be reached
>> using quantum computing?
>
> Well, until you persuade me that moral truths exist at all, this will
> continue to sound pretty silly  :-)

Suppose we speak about "practical moral truths" in the sense of "if you do
this, things will usually be good". One can see them as policy functions
in reinforcement learning that maximize some utility function for you
(i.e. we leave out the issue of what that utility ought to be, which is
what most moral philosophers would likely consider real morality). Some
"truths" of this kind are heuristics of how to handle prisoners dilemma
situations, whether to cheat or not, or how one ought to deal with unjust
government. Clearly finding answers to such questions (even when merely
assuming a particular utility function) can be arbitrarily complex. Hence
there are likely practical moral truths that we cannot deduce using mere
Turing computation but actually would need something more powerful to get
at.

(The idea of an "inner voice" in Christianity and Socrates is amusingly
like Turing-Oracle machines, where there is a black box that gives
hyperturing help)


-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From asa at nada.kth.se  Mon Jun  5 10:31:56 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 12:31:56 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] evolution and bee tracheas
In-Reply-To: <200606050409.k5549xuf020398@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <40820.86.143.246.157.1149475448.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<200606050409.k5549xuf020398@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <1567.163.1.72.81.1149503516.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


spike wrote:
> http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/PDFs/Tracheal.pdf

Amazing and nasty little critters.

> The real tragedy is that there are no bugs that get inside mosquitoes and
> devour those wretched beasts from the inside.  I propose we design a bug
> or
> nanobot that devours only mosquito proboscises.  The result would be
> billions of mosquitoes buzzing harmlessly about with big stupid
> proboscisless looks on their faces.

Apparently the mosquitos do have enemies.
http://pested.unl.edu/catmans/public/chapter3.pdf mentions Mermithid
nematodes as killing up to 80% of all mosquito larvae. But it is hard to
mass-produce, since it has to be grown in larvae.
http://ucdnema.ucdavis.edu/imagemap/nemmap/ent156html/nemas/romanomermisculicivorax

The microbe Amblyospora californica is even cooler.
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Publications/ZooGoer/2004/2/sexsidebar.cfm
mentions that it infects mosquito larvae, kills *male* larvae and places
spores in the corpse.  Then the corpse gets eaten by a crustacean, and the
microbe takes over its ovaries if it is female to produce more spores.
Makes a nice Species to go with the Alien of the Mermithids.

Seems we already have something to go on to create the embarrassing and
efficient mosquitovore.

But I would also like to promote the idea of injectable mosquito poisons.
Imagine filling up people with some insecticide that killed or (better)
sterilizied mosquitos. It is not just a revenge, but an evolutionary
pressure on the species to focus on other mammals. Mosquitos are fine as
long as they only harass the elks.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From asa at nada.kth.se  Mon Jun  5 10:49:07 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 12:49:07 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Oxford ( Was: Desirability of Singularity )
In-Reply-To: <200606050348.k553msdn004742@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <39193.86.143.246.157.1149468068.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<200606050348.k553msdn004742@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <1621.163.1.72.81.1149504547.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


spike wrote:
>> Anders Sandberg,
>> Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
>> Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University
>
> It's great to have you back Anders.  Your sig line has the word Oxford in
> there twice.  Is this an intentional redundancy?

It is probably an echo of the era when I had a double .sig :-)

Redundancy is the essence of the Oxford academic experience. I had never
realized how informal and flexible Sweden was till I got here. I enjoy the
university bureaucracy as a kind of cultural heritage not unlike the
gothic buildings in the city - impractical, but interesting if you have
the time.

To clear out where I am: I work for the EU ENHANCE project, which is
shared between several groups (in Bristol, Maastricht, Milan and
Stockholm). My part is under the Uehiro Centre, which in turn is a part of
the Philosophy Faculty. So far so good. Here is the complicating factor:
part of the Uehiro Centre is also part of the James Martin 21st Century
School as the Programme on Ethics of the New Biosciences. The School is a
cluster of projects in the university funded by a big donation. Another
part of it is the Future of Humanity Institute, Nick Bostrom's place (also
under the philosophy faculty). It is physically located on the next floor,
and in practice working together with the Uehiro centre. I'm associate
there too. To further complicate things, the Uehiro centre is part of
*another* big project, the OXCSOM (Oxford Centre for Science of the Mind)
that includes the departments of Anatomy, Pharmacology, Philosophy,
Physiology and Theology (!). I'm actually not a part of it formally, but
in practice I work for the Pharmacology department off-hours.

Have you drawn your Venn diagrams yet? :-)

In the end, it is all a big bundle (katamari?) of confusing project and
institute loyalties. I love it here.

Did I mention that redundancy is the essence of the Oxford academic
experience?

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From amara at amara.com  Mon Jun  5 12:28:20 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 14:28:20 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Antarctica timezone(s)
Message-ID: <p06230900c0a9d3ae5ee6@[150.146.134.133]>


>The time zone assignments might not be for any physical reason, but for
>convenience instead, based on travel connections.

MB: My guess was right. See the end of the comments of this thread:
http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/05/29/to-the-ends-of-the-earth/

-- 

********************************************************************
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/
********************************************************************
"Looking up gives light, although at first it makes you dizzy."
        --Mevlana Rumi


From eugen at leitl.org  Mon Jun  5 12:34:51 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 14:34:51 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>
References: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENMFNAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<8d71341e0606011928t7ddc56d2l34930e5cad4b932d@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>
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	<1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>
Message-ID: <20060605123451.GE28956@leitl.org>

On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 08:15:03AM +1000, Harry Harrison wrote:

> There won't be Singularity (note capital S), unless there is a sacking of a substantial new energy input which is hard to envisage. The effects of intelligence are otherwise limited to optimisations on energy inputs and we're not so far from the thermodynamic limit already.

I have three quibbles with that.

We already have a free, clean wireless source of fusion power. 
All is needed is a cheap antenna. Things are even better
only slightly higher in this gravity well. 

Human designs are ridiculously energy-inefficient, biology 
shows what's practically feasible -- though by no means being
the end of the line.

Solid state civilisations are mostly about computation, and computation
has very few practical limits (with reversible computation,
even not thermodynamics).

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From rhanson at gmu.edu  Mon Jun  5 13:47:53 2006
From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson)
Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2006 09:47:53 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Collective Singularities
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEEBJFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <40915.86.143.246.157.1149476170.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEEBJFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060605093839.024a27f8@gmu.edu>

On 6/4/2006, Lee Corbin answers Anders Sandberg answering George Dvorsky:
> > >> Increasing individual cognitive capacity has a big multiplicative effect
> > >> on the economy, according to some of my current analysis (stay tuned
> >>
> > > While I'm sure that there's some truth to your analysis, one factor you
> > > must be sure to consider is the impact of wide scale under-employment.
> > > Already today the cognitive demands of work isn't matching what many
> > > people are truly capable of (ie people are over-educated relative to
> > > their jobs). In the future, I can imagine more of the same; just because
> > > you have groups of populations with high IQs doesn't mean that the
> > > cognitive demands of jobs will follow accordingly.
> >
> > Having overeducated people in simple jobs suggests that there isn't enough
> > entrepreneurship, venture capital or whatever for them to find new niches;
> > I don't think that is an unavoidable consequence of too much brainpower.
> > Maybe it is rather a sign that we have too little economic flexibility
> > (individually and societally).
>
>Anders knocks the ball out of the park!   (To use an American expression.)
>Omigod!  I can't find anything whatsoever to disagree with here.
>And I swore that I'd never write a "me too" post.   Huzza.

I agree that it doesn't make sense to say people have too high an IQ for their
jobs.  A higher IQ can make people more productive on just about any job.
But as I note in http://hanson.gmu.edu/dreamautarky.html (and as many others
have said for a long time) our modern economy demands more cognitive
specialization that our minds were designed for.  So most people do naturally
and correctly feel that their jobs do not exercise most of the cognitive range
they are capable of.

> > But overall, the impression I get is that higher intelligence overall
> > produces a big effect on the overall economy, even if it might be just a
> > smaller group that does most of the smart work. A bit like Florida's
> > creative and service classes: if the creatives are smart and productive
> > enough, it doesn't matter that most others do macjobs. The entire economy
> > grows fast anyway.

I'm not much of a fan of Florida's work, and have a longer comment on that
coming online elsewhere in two days.



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323 



From pharos at gmail.com  Mon Jun  5 19:03:19 2006
From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 03:03:19 +0800
Subject: [extropy-chat] Drexler 'Engines of Creation' now free online
Message-ID: <ee50357e0606051203p259d3a79g77572065ed60cbe3@mail.gmail.com>

Boing Boing has reported that Drexler's famous book is now available
free online.
<http://www.e-drexler.com/d/06/00/EOC/EOC_Table_of_Contents.html>

It seems to be only in HTML format at present.

The main page has some of Drexler's newer writing available as pdf files.
<http://www.e-drexler.com/>


BillK


From austriaaugust at yahoo.com  Mon Jun  5 19:17:49 2006
From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 12:17:49 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Simulation Ethics
In-Reply-To: <22360fa10606020846gc987f55s4c247413fd50d389@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060605191749.61559.qmail@web37406.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Hello,
   
  Back from a much needed vacation from the simulation-ethics discussion. Looking back over my posts from the last several days, I wanted to apologize to the readers of this list for possibly being a little overly critical or accusative. As I said toward the beginning of this thread, this is a topic I have extremely strong feelings about. I occasionally wish that I could "take back" or erase, certain things that I've written or said in the past. But... our world doesn't really work that way, especially in this Internet Age. I realize that Transhumanists represent a well-meaning set of folks, and I consider myself as frequently agreeing with it's philosophies. 
   
  I just wanted to offer a quick summary of what my wishes for the future are. I realize that my views aren't really "mainstream", even among Transhumanists, but I hope that as time passes and we draw nearer to the Singularity that there will be a wider respect and appreciation for consciousness, in all of its forms (animal, human, "artificial", and "simulated"). Because after all, there is no hard line that separates any of these four groups. We are all machines!!!   :-)   Some machines are just purely lucky to be better "designed" and better situated, than others. And consider that any individual taken from any one of the four groups has a *potential* to reach super-intelligence level; I think moral status should not be assigned only based on current intelligence level, it should be considered in view of the fact that any conscious being has the potential to reach a "higher" level of existence. It really is all just about blind luck. And blind luck should *not* be the
 deciding factor of "who deserves what". My ultimate wish is that when the Singularity finally arrives, there will be something approaching a universal recognition that consciousness (in all it's forms) is something worth cherishing, and worth protecting from abuse. This goal may seem unrealistic to some, but it is not *impossible*, and it certainly seems worthy of attempting. The short-term future in front of us represents a tremendous leverage point from which we can also *possibly* bring subjective happiness to *all* conscious beings who are alive at the time of Singularity. That is the best possible future that I can imagine.   
   
  Does it bother me that *this* may be a simulation? Sure, of course it does. I find that to be a very unsettling possibility. But even so, we should not allow our fear of the unknown to dictate our moral decision-making, or our advocacy of what is moral and what isn't. At least in my opinion.
   
  Best Wishes,
   
  Jeffrey Herrlich 



		
---------------------------------
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From mstriz at gmail.com  Mon Jun  5 20:03:00 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 16:03:00 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <39193.86.143.246.157.1149468068.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
References: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>
	<1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022231k269664d7j44d60ea0b8fae73a@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<448360E1.60301@pobox.com> <20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net>
	<44836EAC.6060407@pobox.com>
	<39193.86.143.246.157.1149468068.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606051303q5f6c2ba3h937d065aac8d3909@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/4/06, Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se> wrote:

> >  And I would expect much more than a thousand ions released per
> > total synaptic spike.
>
> Surprisingly enough, it is on the order of 100,000 ions. Much more than a
> thousand, but still far far from moles.

Is that really surprising?  Typical extra/intracellular chemical
concentrations are in the nanomolar range, and only a tiny fraction of
that would be involved in the reaction along the axonal membrane.  The
MW of sodium is 23.  Would you expect 23 grams of sodium to be
involved in a single spike event?

> > So the inefficiency relative to the thermodynamic
> > limit is surely more than just three orders of magnitude.
>
> The Brillouin inequality is only about information erasure. Many of the
> brain computations may be rather information-preserving. A synaptic signal
> for example, if perfect, would not cost any thermodynamic cost for
> erasure. In practice the release probability is 10-30% according to
> Markram and Tsodyks ( http://diwww.epfl.ch/~gerstner/SPNM/node33.html ),
> so that would be on average 2-3 bits of erasure per synapse and signal.
>
> Hmm, around 8e14 synapses with an average population of 1-10% neurons
> firing at 1-100 Hz. That makes 1e9-1e12 firings affecting 8e12-8e15
> synapses. At a cost of 2.4e-21 - 3.6e-21 J

What is the conversion you're using (i.e. J/spike)?  How do you derive
it?  Are you taking the total energy demands of a neuron over time
divided by the average number of spikes over the same time?  Or are
you counting just the thermodynamics of the axon and boutons?

> this is 1.9e-8 - 2.8e-5 W. So I
> get five-six order of magnitude for this with the most pessimistic
> calculation.

I'm not sure what you're comparing here, what a neuron could
accomplish if all of its energy input were used for computation rather
than metabolism (and minimal loss as heat)?  Or are you suggesting
that there's energy loss somewhere else?

Martin


From asa at nada.kth.se  Mon Jun  5 21:15:09 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 23:15:09 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
 simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <cd9526860606051303q5f6c2ba3h937d065aac8d3909@mail.gmail.com>
References: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>
	<1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022231k269664d7j44d60ea0b8fae73a@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
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	<44836EAC.6060407@pobox.com>
	<39193.86.143.246.157.1149468068.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<cd9526860606051303q5f6c2ba3h937d065aac8d3909@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <51517.86.143.246.157.1149542109.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Martin Striz wrote:
> On 6/4/06, Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se> wrote:
>> Hmm, around 8e14 synapses with an average population of 1-10% neurons
>> firing at 1-100 Hz. That makes 1e9-1e12 firings affecting 8e12-8e15
>> synapses. At a cost of 2.4e-21 - 3.6e-21 J
>
> What is the conversion you're using (i.e. J/spike)?  How do you derive
> it?  Are you taking the total energy demands of a neuron over time
> divided by the average number of spikes over the same time?  Or are
> you counting just the thermodynamics of the axon and boutons?

The Brillouin inequality states that if you erase one bit of information
you have to at least pay an entropy cost of kT ln(2) Joules (where k is
Boltzmann's constant and T is the temperature). This is of course a lower
bound, being the reduction of entropy a bit erasure represents. A synapse
having probability p of failing will on average erase -pln(p)/log(2) bits
of information for each signal. Hence  N synapses receiving f signals per
second will require at least -NfkTp*ln(p) J/s.

I find it rather curious that you have to *pay* energy for having
unreliable synapses. But it really a cleanup bill, where the presynaptic
neuron has to restore itself to its previous state no matter what happens.
Of course, the real processes of neurotransmitter and vesicle recycling
are much more energy demanding than this minimal cost.

>> this is 1.9e-8 - 2.8e-5 W. So I
>> get five-six order of magnitude for this with the most pessimistic
>> calculation.
>
> I'm not sure what you're comparing here, what a neuron could
> accomplish if all of its energy input were used for computation rather
> than metabolism (and minimal loss as heat)?  Or are you suggesting
> that there's energy loss somewhere else?

This would be the energy needed to run a thermodynamically perfect replica
of the brain, with neurons not requiring any energy to run and just
information erasure losses. In reality there are certainly more energy
loss, and even the perfect brain might have a few more entropic losses
(signal summation at the soma seems plausible: ~8000 bits of information
gets turned into one - that is about the same energy demand as from
erasing information at all the synapses).




-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Mon Jun  5 21:23:25 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 14:23:25 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <cd9526860606051303q5f6c2ba3h937d065aac8d3909@mail.gmail.com>
References: <1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022231k269664d7j44d60ea0b8fae73a@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<448360E1.60301@pobox.com> <20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net>
	<44836EAC.6060407@pobox.com>
	<39193.86.143.246.157.1149468068.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<cd9526860606051303q5f6c2ba3h937d065aac8d3909@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060605212325.GA2559@ofb.net>

On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 04:03:00PM -0400, Martin Striz wrote:

> I'm not sure what you're comparing here, what a neuron could
> accomplish if all of its energy input were used for computation rather
> than metabolism (and minimal loss as heat)?  Or are you suggesting

The brain is 2% of body mass but 20% of body heat; I expect most of the
energy is being used for computation, or to maintain readiness to
compute.  Of course this might be in neurotransmitter recyling as well
as in spike trains.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Mon Jun  5 21:36:44 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 17:36:44 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Antarctica timezone(s)
In-Reply-To: <p06230900c0a9d3ae5ee6@[150.146.134.133]>
References: <p06230900c0a9d3ae5ee6@[150.146.134.133]>
Message-ID: <36770.72.236.103.190.1149543404.squirrel@main.nc.us>

>
>>The time zone assignments might not be for any physical reason, but for
>>convenience instead, based on travel connections.
>
> MB: My guess was right. See the end of the comments of this thread:
> http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/05/29/to-the-ends-of-the-earth/
>

Thanks, Amara! This is all making fascinating reading!

Regards,
MB



From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Mon Jun  5 21:39:06 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 14:39:06 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Bayes, betting and derivatives
Message-ID: <20060605213905.GA4654@ofb.net>

In light of Bayesian wannabes coming to agree on matters of fact, would
a pure population of Bayesian wannabes have use for a derivatives
market, or more generally for making bets?  Seems the point of a bet
(outside of games of pure chance) is the belief that you know more about
an outcome than the other guy.  But if a Bayesian offers a bet and
another Bayesian takes it, seems like both should pause for further
thought.  Actually, simple knowledge that someone was offering a bet
should make the second Bayesian pause to reconsider.

Robin?  Hal?  Help? :)

-xx- Damien X-) 


From mstriz at gmail.com  Mon Jun  5 22:08:42 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 18:08:42 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <51517.86.143.246.157.1149542109.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
References: <1F3EB4DD-9E77-4469-81A0-0AE88C017DEF@mac.com>
	<1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<448360E1.60301@pobox.com> <20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net>
	<44836EAC.6060407@pobox.com>
	<39193.86.143.246.157.1149468068.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<cd9526860606051303q5f6c2ba3h937d065aac8d3909@mail.gmail.com>
	<51517.86.143.246.157.1149542109.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606051508k286d6340k782ad2ac0c787498@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/5/06, Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se> wrote:

> > What is the conversion you're using (i.e. J/spike)?  How do you derive
> > it?  Are you taking the total energy demands of a neuron over time
> > divided by the average number of spikes over the same time?  Or are
> > you counting just the thermodynamics of the axon and boutons?
>
> The Brillouin inequality states that if you erase one bit of information
> you have to at least pay an entropy cost of kT ln(2) Joules (where k is
> Boltzmann's constant and T is the temperature). This is of course a lower
> bound, being the reduction of entropy a bit erasure represents. A synapse
> having probability p of failing will on average erase -pln(p)/log(2) bits
> of information for each signal. Hence  N synapses receiving f signals per
> second will require at least -NfkTp*ln(p) J/s.

Gotcha, so you're assuming a computational substrate that has zero
energy demands other than for information erasure according to the
Brillouin inequality.

> > I'm not sure what you're comparing here, what a neuron could
> > accomplish if all of its energy input were used for computation rather
> > than metabolism (and minimal loss as heat)?  Or are you suggesting
> > that there's energy loss somewhere else?
>
> This would be the energy needed to run a thermodynamically perfect replica
> of the brain, with neurons not requiring any energy to run and just
> information erasure losses.

Understood now, but what's the point?   To say that evolution is X%
inefficient with respect to some idealized (and impossible) substrate
is rather uninformative.

Are you trying to use that as a canonical  metric for comparing any
future computational substrate?   A perfect computational substrate,
i.e. one that also has zero information erasure, runs on zero energy.
:)  Have I said anything interesting?

I thought a useful calculation would be to determine how efficient you
could make cells for computation, but that of course is unknown.
Neurons, as it happens, are probably greater than 90% efficient with
respect to /their design/, i.e. there's little heat loss.

Martin


From sentience at pobox.com  Mon Jun  5 22:13:14 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2006 15:13:14 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Bayes, betting and derivatives
In-Reply-To: <20060605213905.GA4654@ofb.net>
References: <20060605213905.GA4654@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <4484AC7A.4020409@pobox.com>

Damien Sullivan wrote:
> In light of Bayesian wannabes coming to agree on matters of fact, would
> a pure population of Bayesian wannabes have use for a derivatives
> market, or more generally for making bets?  Seems the point of a bet
> (outside of games of pure chance) is the belief that you know more about
> an outcome than the other guy.  But if a Bayesian offers a bet and
> another Bayesian takes it, seems like both should pause for further
> thought.  Actually, simple knowledge that someone was offering a bet
> should make the second Bayesian pause to reconsider.

Sounds right to me.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From sentience at pobox.com  Mon Jun  5 22:20:28 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2006 15:20:28 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Bayes, betting and derivatives
In-Reply-To: <20060605213905.GA4654@ofb.net>
References: <20060605213905.GA4654@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <4484AE2C.8050402@pobox.com>

Damien Sullivan wrote:
> In light of Bayesian wannabes coming to agree on matters of fact, would
> a pure population of Bayesian wannabes have use for a derivatives
> market, or more generally for making bets?  Seems the point of a bet
> (outside of games of pure chance) is the belief that you know more about
> an outcome than the other guy.  But if a Bayesian offers a bet and
> another Bayesian takes it, seems like both should pause for further
> thought.  Actually, simple knowledge that someone was offering a bet
> should make the second Bayesian pause to reconsider.

Actually, let me rephrase:  A population of Bayesians only uses 
derivatives/futures markets to arbitrage their risks, never to 
speculate.  They buy insurance, but only major medical.  They buy stocks 
during the original IPO if they (and everyone else) believe the company 
can use the inflowing money to make more money.  They only sell the 
stock if it becomes too large a portion of their current assets, or if 
it develops a risk/benefit probability distribution that, given their 
utility curve as a function of money, implies that the stock should be 
sold to someone with a different income profile...

Homo economicus, in short.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From rhanson at gmu.edu  Mon Jun  5 21:51:59 2006
From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson)
Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2006 17:51:59 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Bayes, betting and derivatives
In-Reply-To: <20060605213905.GA4654@ofb.net>
References: <20060605213905.GA4654@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060605174655.02300d18@gmu.edu>

At 05:39 PM 6/5/2006, Damien Sullivan wrote:
>In light of Bayesian wannabes coming to agree on matters of fact, would
>a pure population of Bayesian wannabes have use for a derivatives
>market, or more generally for making bets?  Seems the point of a bet
>(outside of games of pure chance) is the belief that you know more about
>an outcome than the other guy.  But if a Bayesian offers a bet and
>another Bayesian takes it, seems like both should pause for further
>thought.  Actually, simple knowledge that someone was offering a bet
>should make the second Bayesian pause to reconsider.
>Robin?  Hal?  Help? :)

Risk-averse Bayesian wannabes would not make pure bets with each other
seeking financial gain.   Risk-loving ones might make bets, but only to
achieve the risk they want, not because of any disagreement.    Derivatives
markets supposedly help people to hedge risk, and not just to make bets.
And a patron who wanted to get answers to a question might subsidize
a betting market, thereby inducing Bayesian wannabes to bet there.



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323 



From amara at amara.com  Tue Jun  6 01:37:00 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 03:37:00 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Flight of the Lawnchair Man
Message-ID: <p06230900c0aa8a9092ba@[150.146.134.133]>

Wow!


----------

http://www.snopes.com/travel/airline/walters.asp

The incredible flight of Larry Walters, a 33-year-old Vietnam veteran
and North Hollywood truck driver with no pilot or balloon training, took
place on 2 July 1982. Larry filled 45 weather balloons with helium and
tethered them in four tiers to an aluminum lawn chair he purchased at
Sears for $110, loading his makeshift aircraft (dubbed the "Inspiration
I") with a large bottle of soda, milk jugs full of water for ballast, a
pellet gun, a portable CB radio, an altimeter, and a camera.

Donning a parachute, Larry climbed into his chair from the roof of his
girlfriend's home in San Pedro while two friends stood at the ready to
untether the craft. He took off a little earlier than expected, however,
when his mooring line was cut by the roof's sharp edges. As friends,
neighbors, reporters and cameramen looked on, Larry Walters rocketed
into the sky above San Pedro. A few minutes later Larry radioed the
ground that he was sailing across Los Angeles Harbor towards Long Beach.

Walters had planned to fly 300 miles into the Mojave Desert, but the
balloons took him up faster than expected and the wind didn't cooperate,
and Walters quickly found himself drifting 16,000 feet above Long Beach.
(He later reported that he was "so amazed by the view" that he "didn't
even take one picture.") As Larry and his lawnchair drifted into the
approach path to Long Beach Municipal Airport, perplexed pilots from two
passing Delta and TWA airliners alerted air traffic controllers about
what appeared to be an unprotected man floating through the sky in a
chair.

Meanwhile, Larry, feeling cold and dizzy in the thin air three miles
above the ground, shot several of his balloons with the pellet gun to
bring himself back down to earth. He attempted to aim his descent at a
large expanse of grass of a north Long Beach country club, but Larry
came up short and ended up entangling his tethers in a set of
high-voltage power lines in Long Beach about ten miles from his liftoff
site. The plastic tethers protected Walters from electrocution as he
dangled above the ground until firemen and utility crews could cut the
power to the lines (blacking out a portion of Long Beach for twenty
minutes). Larry managed to maneuver his chair over a wall, step out, and
cut the chair free. (He gave away the chair to some admiring
neighborhood children, a decision he later regretted when his impromptu
flight brought him far more fame than he had anticipated.)

Larry, who had just set a new altitude record for a flight with
gas-filled clustered balloons (although his record was not officially
recognized because he had not carried a proper altitude-recording device
with him) became an instant celebrity, but the Federal Aviation
Administration was not amused. Unable to revoke Walters' pilot's license
because he didn't have one, an FAA official announced that they would
charge Walters "as soon as we figure out which part [of the FAA code] he
violated."

Larry hit the talk show circuit, appearing with Johnny Carson and David
Letterman, hosting at a New York bar filled with lawn chairs for the
occasion, and receiving an award from the Bonehead Club of Dallas while
the FAA pondered his case.

After Walters' hearing before an agency panel, the FAA announced on 17
December 1982 that they were fining him $4,000 for violating four
regulations: operating "a civil aircraft for which there is not
currently in effect an air-worthiness certificate," creating a collision
danger to other aircraft, entering an airport traffic area "without
establishing and maintaining two-way communications with the control
tower," and failing to take care to prevent hazards to the life and
property of others. Larry quickly indicated that he intended to
challenge the fines, stating sardonically that if "the FAA was around
when the Wright Brothers were testing their aircraft, they would never
have been able to make their first flight at Kitty Hawk." He also
informed the FAA (and reporters) that he couldn't possibly pay the fine,
because he'd put all the money he could save or borrow into his flight.

In April the FAA signalled their willingness to compromise by dropping
one of the charges (they'd decided his lawnchair didn't need an
air-worthiness certificate after all) and lowering the fine to $3,000.
Walters countered by offering to admit to failing to maintain two-way
radio contact with the airport and to pay a $1,000 penalty if the other
two charges were dropped. The FAA eventually agreed to accept a $1,500
payment because "the flight was potentially unsafe, but Walters had not
intended to endanger anyone."

----------

(and there's more.. with a sad ending)

-- 

********************************************************************
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/
********************************************************************
"Dare to be naive." -- Buckminster Fuller


From sentience at pobox.com  Tue Jun  6 01:54:20 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2006 18:54:20 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Bayes, betting and derivatives
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20060605174655.02300d18@gmu.edu>
References: <20060605213905.GA4654@ofb.net>
	<7.0.1.0.2.20060605174655.02300d18@gmu.edu>
Message-ID: <4484E04C.1020600@pobox.com>

Robin Hanson wrote:
> 
> Risk-averse Bayesian wannabes would not make pure bets with each other
> seeking financial gain.   Risk-loving ones might make bets, but only to
> achieve the risk they want, not because of any disagreement.    Derivatives
> markets supposedly help people to hedge risk, and not just to make bets.
> And a patron who wanted to get answers to a question might subsidize
> a betting market, thereby inducing Bayesian wannabes to bet there.

Why would Bayesian wannabes with common knowledge of each other's 
rationality have any expectation of gain in a betting market?  Why would 
I ever sell my bet - given the fact that you offer me more money than I 
thought my bet was worth, and I believe you to be rational, and I 
believe you expect to make a profit?  Wouldn't I just adjust my estimate 
of the fair price upward, and then refuse to sell?

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Tue Jun  6 01:34:38 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 18:34:38 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] NEF tensor (was Psychogenic Fields)
In-Reply-To: <000701c687c6$bc58ac00$e9c51897@extropy>
Message-ID: <20060606013438.87430.qmail@web60523.mail.yahoo.com>



--- scerir <scerir at libero.it> wrote:

> Avantguardian,
> in the "q-bio" you can find papers like these
> http://www.arxiv.org/abs/q-bio.NC/0605027
> http://www.arxiv.org/abs/q-bio.OT/0309009

Thanks.

> but ... you know ... it seems strange, imo,
> there is enough coherence to get real effects.

I agree. It is truly bizarre that you can get such
macroscopic quantum behavior out of cells. I would not
believe in high temperature quantum coherence in
living organisms if I hadn't seen the photomicrographs
and published work of Mae-Wan Ho et. al. It's almost
as if cells were some kind of crazy aqueous mixture of
high-temperature bose-einstein condensates. 



Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From dmasten at piratelabs.org  Tue Jun  6 03:16:02 2006
From: dmasten at piratelabs.org (David Masten)
Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2006 20:16:02 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Bayes, betting and derivatives
In-Reply-To: <4484E04C.1020600@pobox.com>
References: <20060605213905.GA4654@ofb.net>
	<7.0.1.0.2.20060605174655.02300d18@gmu.edu>
	<4484E04C.1020600@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <1149563762.5436.71.camel@localhost>

On Mon, 2006-06-05 at 18:54 -0700, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> Robin Hanson wrote:
> > 
> > Risk-averse Bayesian wannabes would not make pure bets with each other
> > seeking financial gain.   Risk-loving ones might make bets, but only to
> > achieve the risk they want, not because of any disagreement.    Derivatives
> > markets supposedly help people to hedge risk, and not just to make bets.
> > And a patron who wanted to get answers to a question might subsidize
> > a betting market, thereby inducing Bayesian wannabes to bet there.
> 
> Why would Bayesian wannabes with common knowledge of each other's 
> rationality have any expectation of gain in a betting market? 

Because the two Bayesian wannabes have different goals, and different
comparative advantages. Even though they both agree on all the facts of
the matter at hand, they have different subjective valuations of the
bet.

A couple of possible scenarios:
"A" may be looking for insurance against the downside possibility, while
"B" is looking to gain revenue and can handle the downside. Even though
both may agree on the odds, "A" will gladly pay a premium and "B" will
gladly take it.

Another example, "A" wants to cash out and use the cash elsewhere (most
likely to do something where she has a better comparative advantage),
"B" wants to buy a position. Again, "A" will subjectively value the bet
at less than "B" will and therefore they will trade.

>  Why would I ever sell my bet - given the fact that you offer me more
> money than I thought my bet was worth, and I believe you to be
> rational, and I believe you expect to make a profit?  Wouldn't I just
> adjust my estimate of the fair price upward, and then refuse to sell?

Depends. If your objective is to raise cash or otherwise change your
current positions, then you want to trade, not estimate an upward price
and refuse to sell.

Dave



From eugen at leitl.org  Tue Jun  6 09:05:34 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 11:05:34 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <cd9526860606051508k286d6340k782ad2ac0c787498@mail.gmail.com>
References: <1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<448360E1.60301@pobox.com> <20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net>
	<44836EAC.6060407@pobox.com>
	<39193.86.143.246.157.1149468068.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<cd9526860606051303q5f6c2ba3h937d065aac8d3909@mail.gmail.com>
	<51517.86.143.246.157.1149542109.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<cd9526860606051508k286d6340k782ad2ac0c787498@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060606090533.GM28956@leitl.org>

On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 06:08:42PM -0400, Martin Striz wrote:

> Gotcha, so you're assuming a computational substrate that has zero
> energy demands other than for information erasure according to the
> Brillouin inequality.

You don't have to erase bits. That's what reversible computing is all about.
 
> Understood now, but what's the point?   To say that evolution is X%
> inefficient with respect to some idealized (and impossible) substrate
> is rather uninformative.

Why on earth "impossible"? All of technology used to be impossible,
quite a short while back.
 
> Are you trying to use that as a canonical  metric for comparing any
> future computational substrate?   A perfect computational substrate,
> i.e. one that also has zero information erasure, runs on zero energy.
> :)  Have I said anything interesting?

No, you can come quite close to zero energy. In practice, perfectly
reversible means slow, and perfect doesn't exist.
 
> I thought a useful calculation would be to determine how efficient you
> could make cells for computation, but that of course is unknown.
> Neurons, as it happens, are probably greater than 90% efficient with
> respect to /their design/, i.e. there's little heat loss.

Neurons just happens to be cells with a pretty high metabolic rate.
Calling them optimal in regards to computation is a pretty weak joke.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From eugen at leitl.org  Tue Jun  6 09:14:02 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 11:14:02 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Bayes, betting and derivatives
In-Reply-To: <20060605213905.GA4654@ofb.net>
References: <20060605213905.GA4654@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <20060606091402.GP28956@leitl.org>

On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 02:39:06PM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote:

> an outcome than the other guy.  But if a Bayesian offers a bet and
> another Bayesian takes it, seems like both should pause for further
> thought.  Actually, simple knowledge that someone was offering a bet
> should make the second Bayesian pause to reconsider.

Perfect knowledge about the real world doesn't exist. No two bases
of knowledge are alike. I must be missing something, since I don't 
see this as a problem.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From eugen at leitl.org  Tue Jun  6 09:18:57 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 11:18:57 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <20060605212325.GA2559@ofb.net>
References: <8d71341e0606022231k269664d7j44d60ea0b8fae73a@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<448360E1.60301@pobox.com> <20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net>
	<44836EAC.6060407@pobox.com>
	<39193.86.143.246.157.1149468068.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<cd9526860606051303q5f6c2ba3h937d065aac8d3909@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060605212325.GA2559@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <20060606091857.GQ28956@leitl.org>

On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 02:23:25PM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote:

> The brain is 2% of body mass but 20% of body heat; I expect most of the
> energy is being used for computation, or to maintain readiness to
> compute.  Of course this might be in neurotransmitter recyling as well
> as in spike trains.

The brain is also an area of high metabolism, material transfer,
and high genetic activity. Maintaining dynamic gradients clearly
takes a major fraction of brain's metabolism, but hardly the only
one.

http://www.bio.net/bionet/mm/neur-sci/1998-August/033208.html
claims half, but this doesn't strike me as well-grounded.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Tue Jun  6 10:18:42 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 11:18:42 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <20060606090533.GM28956@leitl.org>
References: <1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<448360E1.60301@pobox.com> <20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net>
	<44836EAC.6060407@pobox.com>
	<39193.86.143.246.157.1149468068.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<cd9526860606051303q5f6c2ba3h937d065aac8d3909@mail.gmail.com>
	<51517.86.143.246.157.1149542109.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<cd9526860606051508k286d6340k782ad2ac0c787498@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060606090533.GM28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606060318t422e180ekf2f054acc2b669b7@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/6/06, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
>
> Neurons just happens to be cells with a pretty high metabolic rate.
> Calling them optimal in regards to computation is a pretty weak joke.
>

There are proposals, at least in outline, for how e.g. a multiplier circuit
could be made to work for less energy than neurons use to do the equivalent.

Are there any proposals, even in outline, for how bits could be transmitted
over distances of millions of nanometers, for less energy than neurons use
to do that? (I'm not saying it is or isn't possible, just wondering if
anyone has an idea how it might be done.)
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From eugen at leitl.org  Tue Jun  6 10:44:24 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 12:44:24 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606060318t422e180ekf2f054acc2b669b7@mail.gmail.com>
References: <1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<448360E1.60301@pobox.com> <20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net>
	<44836EAC.6060407@pobox.com>
	<39193.86.143.246.157.1149468068.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<cd9526860606051303q5f6c2ba3h937d065aac8d3909@mail.gmail.com>
	<51517.86.143.246.157.1149542109.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<cd9526860606051508k286d6340k782ad2ac0c787498@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060606090533.GM28956@leitl.org>
	<8d71341e0606060318t422e180ekf2f054acc2b669b7@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060606104424.GX28956@leitl.org>

On Tue, Jun 06, 2006 at 11:18:42AM +0100, Russell Wallace wrote:

> There are proposals, at least in outline, for how e.g. a multiplier circuit
> could be made to work for less energy than neurons use to do the equivalent.

Neurons are not particularly good at multiplication. However...
Is 0.3 eV for a single switching event good enough for you?
http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/7/2/11

Notice that a spintronics device is completely static; i.e. it consumes
no energy when it's not switching. 
 
> Are there any proposals, even in outline, for how bits could be transmitted
> over distances of millions of nanometers, for less energy than neurons use

Would single-photon emitters and detectors be good enough for you?
In principle you can compute with about the same amount of energy
a single enzymatic reaction takes. Plenty of room at the bottom,
obviously.

> to do that? (I'm not saying it is or isn't possible, just wondering if
> anyone has an idea how it might be done.)

Of course. Just don't use our current computers for a yardstick.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Tue Jun  6 11:05:22 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 12:05:22 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <20060606104424.GX28956@leitl.org>
References: <1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net> <44836EAC.6060407@pobox.com>
	<39193.86.143.246.157.1149468068.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<cd9526860606051303q5f6c2ba3h937d065aac8d3909@mail.gmail.com>
	<51517.86.143.246.157.1149542109.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<cd9526860606051508k286d6340k782ad2ac0c787498@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060606090533.GM28956@leitl.org>
	<8d71341e0606060318t422e180ekf2f054acc2b669b7@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060606104424.GX28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606060405o7024b24at11bee014e767381f@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/6/06, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
>
> Neurons are not particularly good at multiplication. However...
> Is 0.3 eV for a single switching event good enough for you?
> http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/7/2/11
>
> Notice that a spintronics device is completely static; i.e. it consumes
> no energy when it's not switching.


Yeah, spintronics looks very promising.

Would single-photon emitters and detectors be good enough for you?
> In principle you can compute with about the same amount of energy
> a single enzymatic reaction takes. Plenty of room at the bottom,
> obviously.


Yeah... you'd be looking at, what, theoretically on the order of 100 kT per
bit... which is actually pretty good considering it's nearly independent of
distance, not to mention fast. Fiber optic threads are fat compared to
molecules of course... (or transmit across free space, but then the
receptors need to be large compared to molecules)... but you could use
optics for long haul transmission, and something more compact for more local
transmission.
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From asa at nada.kth.se  Tue Jun  6 11:14:59 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 13:14:59 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] NEF tensor (was Psychogenic Fields)
In-Reply-To: <20060606013438.87430.qmail@web60523.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <000701c687c6$bc58ac00$e9c51897@extropy>
	<20060606013438.87430.qmail@web60523.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <2951.163.1.20.64.1149592499.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


The Avantguardian wrote:
> I agree. It is truly bizarre that you can get such
> macroscopic quantum behavior out of cells. I would not
> believe in high temperature quantum coherence in
> living organisms if I hadn't seen the photomicrographs
> and published work of Mae-Wan Ho et. al. It's almost
> as if cells were some kind of crazy aqueous mixture of
> high-temperature bose-einstein condensates.

Hmm, checking out a bit about that character leaves me with a distinctly
bad taste in the mouth. Rave reviews from new age and deep ecology
magazines, very little science on homepage but a lot of science activism
against biotech and nanotech (including the claim that nanomachines can't
work because of quantum fuzziness, which we know to be wrong).

The only Pubmed citation was about energy production and has three self
citations (to what appears to be a popular science book!) in the
*abstract*.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=search&DB=pubmed
(ah, there are more citations, I was wrong. But much of the other sounds
equally suspicious: acupuncture is explained through interaction with the
"continuum of liquid crystalline collagen fibers that make up the bulk of
the connective tissues" forming a body-soul).

This sounds like typical cosmythology intended to keep people happy about
their existing beliefs.

So far there is no generally accepted macroscopic quantum effects in
biology. There is indeed no shortage of people claiming there are, but
just like quantum superpositions their claims tend to evaporate when
people do an independent analysis.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From natasha at natasha.cc  Mon Jun  5 16:52:55 2006
From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More)
Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2006 11:52:55 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Wikipedia:  Transhumanism
Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20060605115037.02f71d68@pop-server.austin.rr.com>


Congratulations to those who worked on this piece.  I just took a look and 
found it to be concise and pretty darn close to the mark.  I did make some 
suggestions which I hope are taken as positive comments. I urge everyone to 
go take a look.

Natasha

<http://www.natasha.cc/>Natasha <http://www.natasha.cc/>Vita-More
Cultural Strategist - Designer
President, <http://www.extropy.org/>Extropy Institute
Member, <http://www.profuturists.com/>Association of Professional Futurists
Founder, <http://www.transhumanist.biz/>Transhumanist Arts & Culture

If you draw a circle in the sand and study only what's inside the circle, 
then that is a closed-system perspective. If you study what is inside the 
circle and everything outside the circle, then that is an open system 
perspective. - Buckminster Fuller


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From rhanson at gmu.edu  Tue Jun  6 11:48:16 2006
From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson)
Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2006 07:48:16 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Bayes, betting and derivatives
In-Reply-To: <4484E04C.1020600@pobox.com>
References: <20060605213905.GA4654@ofb.net>
	<7.0.1.0.2.20060605174655.02300d18@gmu.edu>
	<4484E04C.1020600@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060606074532.0245f0f8@gmu.edu>

At 09:54 PM 6/5/2006, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky responded to me:
> > Risk-averse Bayesian wannabes would not make pure bets with each other
> > seeking financial gain.   Risk-loving ones might make bets, but only to
> > achieve the risk they want, not because of any disagreement.    Derivatives
> > markets supposedly help people to hedge risk, and not just to make bets.
> > And a patron who wanted to get answers to a question might subsidize
> > a betting market, thereby inducing Bayesian wannabes to bet there.
>
>Why would Bayesian wannabes with common knowledge of each other's
>rationality have any expectation of gain in a betting market?  Why would
>I ever sell my bet - given the fact that you offer me more money than I
>thought my bet was worth, and I believe you to be rational, and I
>believe you expect to make a profit?  Wouldn't I just adjust my estimate
>of the fair price upward, and then refuse to sell?

My first sentence above reaffirms that they would not disagree about any
expected value, and so would not make pure bets.  The rest of my comments
were explaining why they might trade in a betting market even if they had the
same expected values for everything.


Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate 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  Tue Jun  6 11:51:33 2006
From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson)
Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2006 07:51:33 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Bayes, betting and derivatives
In-Reply-To: <20060606091402.GP28956@leitl.org>
References: <20060605213905.GA4654@ofb.net> <20060606091402.GP28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060606075006.02459908@gmu.edu>

At 05:14 AM 6/6/2006, Eugen Leitl wrote:
>On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 02:39:06PM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote:
>
> > an outcome than the other guy.  But if a Bayesian offers a bet and
> > another Bayesian takes it, seems like both should pause for further
> > thought.  Actually, simple knowledge that someone was offering a bet
> > should make the second Bayesian pause to reconsider.
>
>Perfect knowledge about the real world doesn't exist. No two bases
>of knowledge are alike. I must be missing something, since I don't
>see this as a problem.

No one mentioned any assumptions of perfect knowledge, or perfectly
identical knowledge.   And such assumptions are not required for
Bayesians, or Bayesian wannabes, to realize that both sides can't be
right in expecting to win a bet.


Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323 



From kevin at kevinfreels.com  Tue Jun  6 14:48:04 2006
From: kevin at kevinfreels.com (kevinfreels.com)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 09:48:04 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Wisdom of Crowds
References: <ee50357e0605150152k33c17786we39cf14f1ea340aa@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <001301c68978$3851bec0$650fa8c0@kevin>

So why not post a poll about the date of the coming singularity?


> On 5/15/06, "Hal Finney" wrote:
> <snip>>
> > But more fundamentally, according to a book I've read recently, The
Wisdom
> > of Crowds (a phrase Kurzweil used quite a bit) by James Surowiecki,
there
> > is something of a paradox in human estimation ability.  Individually we
> > tend to be highly overconfident.  But, collectively, our estimates
> > are often extremely good.  Surowiecki describes classic examples like
> > guessing the weight of a pig, or the number of jelly beans in a jar.
> > Collecting guesses from a crowd and averaging them, the result is
usually
> > right to within a few percent.  Often the crowd's result is closer than
> > any individual guess.
> >
> > Surowiecki sees this phenomenon as being behind the success of such
> > institutions as futures markets, including idea futures.  The reason
> > these institutions work is because they are successful at aggregating
> > information from a diverse set of participants.  Surowiecki emphasizes
the
> > importance of diversity of viewpoints and describes a number of studies
> > showing that, for example, ethnically diverse juries do a better job.
> > He also describes several traps that can arise, such as a copycat effect
> > where people are polled publicly and sequentially for their guesses,
> > causing later participants to amend their mental estimates to fall into
> > line with the emerging consensus.  Markets are sometimes vulnerable to
> > this but at least the financial incentive is always there to encourage
> > honesty.
> >
> > The bottom line is that the wisdom of crowds is one of the best guides
> > we have to the future, and so when people refuse to make guesses because
> > they have recalibrated themselves into a mental fog, they are no longer
> > contributing to the social welfare.  It's much better, when being polled
> > like this, for people to try to cut through the uncertainty and find
that
> > "50%" point where they feel they are as likely to be too low as too
high.
> > If they can do that, and avoid being influenced by the guesses of those
> > who speak before them, and if the group is reasonably diverse, you can
> > get about as good an estimate as you're going to get.  I would have
liked
> > to have received that estimate, and would have found it one of the most
> > valuable pieces of information I took away that day.
> >
>
>
> This very popular book may be exaggerating the benefits of popular
opinion.
>
> It is correct to claim that the crowd *sometimes* can be a useful
> predictor. But to get a good result you have to be very careful about
> the selection of the crowd, the selection of the possible results, and
> control of the crowd behaviour.
>
> Michael Shermer reviewed this book in Dec 2004
>
<http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=00049F3E-91E1-119B-
8EA483414B7FFE9F&colID=13>
>
> Everybody can think of cases that disprove the wisdom of crowds.
> Surowiecki mentions some of them in his book. Earlier books have put
> the opposite case. Mackay's 'Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the
> Madness of Crowds' include the well known tulipmania phenomenon.
> Canetti wrote 'Crowds and Power' with the shouts of Hitler's Nuremberg
> rally figuratively ringing in his ears.  Also sociologists such as
> Gustave Le Bon, in his classic work The Crowd: A Study of the Popular
> Mind: "In crowds it is stupidity and not mother wit that is
> accumulated."
> Lynch mobs are another example.
>
> Surowiecki makes a major point of the stock market's reaction on
> January 28, 1986, the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded. Of
> the four major shuttle contractors--Lockheed, Rockwell International,
> Martin Marietta and Morton Thiokol--the last (the builder of the
> defective solid-rocket booster) was hit hardest, with a 12 percent
> loss, compared with only 3 percent for the others. Given four
> possibilities, the masses voted correctly.
>
> But the next shuttle disaster supported the opposite conclusion.
> "Herding" can be a problem when the members of a group think uniformly
> in the wrong direction. The stock market erred after the space shuttle
> Columbia disaster on February 1, 2003, dumping stock in the booster's
> manufacturer even though the boosters were not involved.
>
> The crowd tossed a coin and came up right once and wrong once.
>
>
> As Shermer says:
> For a group to be smart, it should be autonomous, decentralized and
> cognitively diverse, which the committee that rejected the foam-impact
> theory of the space shuttle Columbia while it was still in flight was
> not. In comparison, Google is brilliant because it uses an algorithm
> that ranks Web pages by the number of links to them, with those links
> themselves valued by the number of links to their page of origin. This
> system works because the Internet is the largest autonomous,
> decentralized and diverse crowd in history, IMHO.
> ------------------
>
> So, just ask Google, they know the answer to everything!   :)
> (assuming they fix their recent search problems).
>
>
> BillK
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>



From mstriz at gmail.com  Tue Jun  6 17:40:16 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 13:40:16 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <20060606090533.GM28956@leitl.org>
References: <1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<448360E1.60301@pobox.com> <20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net>
	<44836EAC.6060407@pobox.com>
	<39193.86.143.246.157.1149468068.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<cd9526860606051303q5f6c2ba3h937d065aac8d3909@mail.gmail.com>
	<51517.86.143.246.157.1149542109.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<cd9526860606051508k286d6340k782ad2ac0c787498@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060606090533.GM28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606061040h3f130d29ld4d6652ecd3396ea@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/6/06, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 06:08:42PM -0400, Martin Striz wrote:
>
> > Gotcha, so you're assuming a computational substrate that has zero
> > energy demands other than for information erasure according to the
> > Brillouin inequality.
>
> You don't have to erase bits. That's what reversible computing is all about.
>
> > Understood now, but what's the point?   To say that evolution is X%
> > inefficient with respect to some idealized (and impossible) substrate
> > is rather uninformative.
>
> Why on earth "impossible"? All of technology used to be impossible,
> quite a short while back.

It's a Gibb's free energy thing.  You could design a computational
system with a complex set of internal transition states that maps an
input to an output.   You could rig it to be spontaneous in the
forward direction when an input is present.  But if you want to use it
more than once, you'll have to input energy to reset it.

I suppose you could have a reversible system, but then the probability
of getting the computation done is lower.

> > Are you trying to use that as a canonical  metric for comparing any
> > future computational substrate?   A perfect computational substrate,
> > i.e. one that also has zero information erasure, runs on zero energy.
> > :)  Have I said anything interesting?
>
> No, you can come quite close to zero energy. In practice, perfectly
> reversible means slow, and perfect doesn't exist.

Very well, I just find it to be a nontraditional use of the term
"efficient."  To me that is a measure of the percentage of input
energy that gets used to do the work of the system, versus the
percentage that is lost as heat, etc.  By that measure, neurons are
pretty efficient.  There's very little heat loss.   Your head isn't
warm due to heat loss.  It's kept warm on purpose because enzyme
kinetics are optimized for 37 C.

Neurons are complex.  However, sometimes complexity can be used to
create efficiency.  For example, cellular respiration is a controlled
combustion reaction, whereby the reduction potential, rather than
being lost as heat, is captured as energy stepwise through many
intermediates.   Efficiency is maintained.

> > I thought a useful calculation would be to determine how efficient you
> > could make cells for computation, but that of course is unknown.
> > Neurons, as it happens, are probably greater than 90% efficient with
> > respect to /their design/, i.e. there's little heat loss.
>
> Neurons just happens to be cells with a pretty high metabolic rate.
> Calling them optimal in regards to computation is a pretty weak joke.

Not ops/unit energy, but see above.

Martin


From mstriz at gmail.com  Tue Jun  6 18:08:45 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 14:08:45 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <20060605212325.GA2559@ofb.net>
References: <1149310791.19517.262956665@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<8d71341e0606022252n26222d52o4fd385ea6f842e5@mail.gmail.com>
	<1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<448360E1.60301@pobox.com> <20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net>
	<44836EAC.6060407@pobox.com>
	<39193.86.143.246.157.1149468068.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<cd9526860606051303q5f6c2ba3h937d065aac8d3909@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060605212325.GA2559@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606061108s19d2edcfidead1da08ac75663@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/5/06, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

> The brain is 2% of body mass but 20% of body heat; I expect most of the
> energy is being used for computation, or to maintain readiness to
> compute.  Of course this might be in neurotransmitter recyling as well
> as in spike trains.

That's a different claim from the one that I typically hear, "the
brain is 2% of body mass but consumes 20% of the energy."  It also
consumes 40% of serum glucose, but that shouldn't be  surprising since
glucose metabolism is turned off in neurons.

But to answer your question, here's one analysis:

http://striz.org/docs/neuron-energy-budget.pdf

The resting state consumes 13% of the energy (which probably includes
background metabolism, gene expression, etc.), while 87% is in one way
or another involved in signaling (firing, postsynaptic activity, and
neurotransmitter recycling).  It should be noted that glutamatergic
neurons were used for this analysis, but they constitute the major
excitatory circuits in the brain.

I must admit, the percentage is higher than I had expected.  Half of
the genes in the genome are expressed in the brain, so I would have
expected more energy to be used during resting state activities.

Martin


From sentience at pobox.com  Tue Jun  6 18:26:00 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2006 11:26:00 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Bayes, betting and derivatives
In-Reply-To: <20060606091402.GP28956@leitl.org>
References: <20060605213905.GA4654@ofb.net> <20060606091402.GP28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <4485C8B8.8030203@pobox.com>

Eugen Leitl wrote:
> 
> Perfect knowledge about the real world doesn't exist. No two bases
> of knowledge are alike. I must be missing something, since I don't 
> see this as a problem.

The problem is related to (a) "the winner's curse" in auctions (b) 
Aumann's Agreement Theorem.

Aumann's Agreement Theorem:  While a Bayesian doesn't know the other 
Bayesian's specific evidence, they can guess that the other guy has seen 
*some* sort of unspecified evidence that makes them willing to pay more 
for the stock, or pay more for the bet in an idea-futures market.

The winner's curse:  If everyone has some error in how much they 
estimate as the fair price of a good, with the error being e.g. normally 
distributed around the true value, then whoever wins an auction will 
tend to overpay.  When you're guessing a fair price at the start of a 
problem, you don't yet have access to the information represented by 
everyone else's bids.  If, at the start of the problem, you bid your 
best guess for a fair price, then as soon as you win, your estimate of a 
fair price will go down - this is the winner's curse.  Thus, you should 
offer less in auctions than you think is the fair price, because what 
you are really trying to offer is a fair price *conditional* on everyone 
else having offered less than you, because that is the only condition 
under which your offer will be accepted.

Thus the only way you can run an idea-futures market with Bayesian 
bettors is if they don't have common knowledge of each other's 
rationality, or if they deliberately try to bet as if they weren't 
taking the other's information-of-pricing into account.  In either case, 
it isn't a real idea-futures market because you require the participants 
to deliberately ignore their profit motive.  You might as well employ 
some other means of aggregating their information.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From sentience at pobox.com  Tue Jun  6 19:14:54 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2006 12:14:54 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Two draft papers: AI and existential risk;
	heuristics and biases
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0606051258010.16849-100000@demedici.ssec.wisc.edu>
References: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0606051258010.16849-100000@demedici.ssec.wisc.edu>
Message-ID: <4485D42E.5080809@pobox.com>

Bill Hibbard wrote:
> Eliezer,
> 
>>   http://singinst.org/AIRisk.pdf
> 
> In Section 6.2 you quote my ideas written in 2001 for
> hard-wiring recognition of expressions of human happiness
> as values for super-intelligent machines. I have three
> problems with your critique:

Bill,

First, let me explain why the chapter singles you out for criticism, 
rather than any number of AI researchers who've made similar mistakes. 
It is because you published the particular comment that I quoted in a 
peer-reviewed AI journal.  The way I found the quote was that I read the 
online version of your book, and then looked through your journal 
articles hoping to find a quotation that put forth the same ideas.  I 
specifically wanted a journal citation.  The book editors specifically 
requested that I quote specific persons putting forth the propositions I 
was arguing against.  In most cases, I felt I couldn't really do this, 
because the arguments had been put forth in spoken conversation or on 
email lists, and people don't expect emails composed in thirty minutes 
to be held to the same standards as a paper submitted for journal 
publication.

Before discussing the specific issues below, let me immediately state 
that if you write a response to my critique, I will, no matter what else 
happens in this conversation, be willing to include a link to it in a 
footnote, with the specific note that you feel my criticism is 
misdirected.  I may also include a footnote leading to my response to 
your response, and you would be able to respond further in your previous 
URL, and so on.

Space constraints are a major issue here.  I didn't have time to discuss 
*anything* in detail in that book chapter.  If we can offload this 
discussion to separate webpages, that is a good thing.

> 1. Immediately after my quote you discuss problems with
> neural network experiments by the US Army. But I never said
> hard-wired learning of recognition of expressions of human
> happiness should be done using neural networks like those
> used by the army. You are conflating my idea with another,
> and then explaining how the other failed.

Criticizing an AI researcher's notions of Friendly AI is, typically, an 
awkward issue, because obviously *they* don't believe that their 
proposal will destroy the world if somehow successfully implemented. 
Criticism in general is rarely comfortable.

There's a number of "cheap" responses to an FAI criticism, especially 
when the AI proposal has not been put forth in mathematical detail - 
i.e., "Well, of course the algorithm *I* use won't have this problem." 
Marcus Hutter's is the only AI proposal sufficiently rigorous that he 
should not be able to dodge bullets fired at him in this way.  I'd have 
liked to use Hutter's AIXI as a mathematically clear example of a 
similar FAI problem, but that would have required far too much space to 
introduce; and my experience suggests that most AI academics have 
trouble understanding AIXI, let alone a general academic audience.

You say, "Well, I won't use neural networks like those used by the 
army."  But you have not exhibited any algorithm which does *not* have 
the problem cited.  Nor did you tell your readers to beware of it.  Nor, 
as far as I can tell from your most recent papers, have you yet 
understood the problem I was trying to point out.  It is a general 
problem.  It is not a problem with the particular neural network the 
army was using.  It is a problem that people run into, in general, with 
supervised learning using local search techniques for traversing the 
hypothesis space.  The example given is one that is used to vividly 
illustrate this general point - it's not to warn people against some 
particular, failed neural network algorithm.  I don't think it 
inappropriate to cite a problem that is general to supervised learning 
and reinforcement, when your proposal is to, in general, use supervised 
learning and reinforcement.  You can always appeal to a "different 
algorithm" or a "different implementation" that, in some unspecified 
way, doesn't have a problem.  If you have magically devised an algorithm 
that avoids this major curse of the entire current field, by all means 
publish it.

> 2. In your section 6.2 you write:
> 
>   If an AI "hard-wired" to such code possessed the power - and
>   [Hibbard, B. 2001. Super-intelligent machines. ACM SIGGRAPH
>   Computer Graphics, 35(1).] spoke of superintelligence - would
>   the galaxy end up tiled with tiny molecular pictures of
>   smiley-faces?
> 
> When it is feasible to build a super-intelligence, it will
> be feasible to build hard-wired recognition of "human facial
> expressions, human voices and human body language" (to use
> the words of mine that you quote) that exceed the recognition
> accuracy of current humans such as you and me, and will
> certainly not be fooled by "tiny molecular pictures of
> smiley-faces." You should not assume such a poor
> implementation of my idea that it cannot make
> discriminations that are trivial to current humans.

Oh, so the SI will know "That's not what we really mean."

A general problem that AI researchers stumble into, and an attractor 
which I myself lingered in for some years, is to measure "stupidity" by 
distance from the center of our own optimization criterion, since all 
our intelligence goes into searching for good fits to our own criterion. 
  How stupid it seems, to be "fooled" by tiny molecular smiley faces! 
But you could have used a galactic-size neural network in the army tank 
classifer and gotten exactly the same result, which is only "foolish" by 
comparison to the programmers' mental model of which outcome *they* 
wanted.  The AI is not given the code, to look it over and hand it back 
if it does the wrong thing.  The AI *is* the code.  If the code *is* a 
supervised neural network algorithm, you get an attractor that 
classifies most instances previously seen.  During the AI's youth, it 
does not have the ability to tile the galaxy with tiny molecular 
pictures of smiling faces, and so it does not receive supervised 
reinforcement that such cases should be classifed as "not a smile".  And 
once the AI is a superintelligence, it's too late, because your frantic 
frowns are outweighed by a vast number of tiny molecular smileyfaces.

In general, saying "The AI is super-smart, it certainly won't be fooled 
by foolish-seeming-goal-system-failure X" is not, I feel, a good response.

I realize that you don't think your proposal destroys the world, but I 
am arguing that it does.  We disagree about this.  You put forth one 
view of what your algorithm does in the real world, and I am putting 
forth a *different* view in my book chapter.

As for claiming that "I should not assume such a poor implementation", 
well, at that rate, I can claim that all you need for Friendly AI is a 
computer program.  Which computer program?  Oh, that's an implementation 
issue... but then you do seem to feel that Friendly AI is a relatively 
easy theoretical problem, and the main issue is political.

> 3. I have moved beyond my idea for hard-wired recognition of
> expressions of human emotions, and you should critique my
> recent ideas where they supercede my earlier ideas. In my
> 2004 paper:
> 
>   Reinforcement Learning as a Context for Integrating AI Research,
>   Bill Hibbard, 2004 AAAI Fall Symposium on Achieving Human-Level
>   Intelligence through Integrated Systems and Research
>   http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/FS104HibbardB.pdf
> 
> I say:
> 
>   Valuing human happiness requires abilities to recognize
>   humans and to recognize their happiness and unhappiness.
>   Static versions of these abilities could be created by
>   supervised learning. But given the changing nature of our
>   world, especially under the influence of machine
>   intelligence, it would be safer to make these abilities
>   dynamic. This suggests a design of interacting learning
>   processes. One set of processes would learn to recognize
>   humans and their happiness, reinforced by agreement from
>   the currently recognized set of humans. Another set of
>   processes would learn external behaviors, reinforced by
>   human happiness according to the recognition criteria
>   learned by the first set of processes. This is analogous
>   to humans, whose reinforcement values depend on
>   expressions of other humans, where the recognition of
>   those humans and their expressions is continuously
>   learned and updated.
> 
> And I further clarify and update my ideas in a 2005
> on-line paper:
> 
>   The Ethics and Politics of Super-Intelligent Machines
>   http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/SI_ethics_politics.doc

I think that you have failed to understand my objection to your ideas. 
I see no relevant difference between these two proposals, except that 
the paragraph you cite (presumably as a potential replacement) is much 
less clear to the outside academic reader.  The paragraph I cited was 
essentially a capsule introduction of your ideas, including the context 
of their use in superintelligence.  The paragraph you offer as a 
replacement includes no such introduction.  Here, for comparison, is the 
original cited in AIGR:

> "In place of laws constraining the behavior of intelligent machines, we need to give them emotions that can guide their learning of behaviors.  They should want us to be happy and prosper, which is the emotion we call love.  We can design intelligent machines so their primary, innate emotion is unconditional love for all humans.  First we can build relatively simple machines that learn to recognize happiness and unhappiness in human facial expressions, human voices and human body language.  Then we can hard-wire the result of this learning as the innate emotional values of more complex intelligent machines, positively reinforced when we are happy and negatively reinforced when we are unhappy.  Machines can learn algorithms for approximately predicting the future, as for example investors currently use learning machines to predict future security prices.  So we can program intelligent machines to learn algorithms for predicting future human happiness, and use those predicti
ons as emotional values."

If you are genuinely repudiating your old ideas and declaring a Halt, 
Melt and Catch Fire on your earlier journal article - if you now think 
your proposed solution would destroy the world if implemented - then I 
will have to think about that a bit.  Your old paragraph does clearly 
illustrate some examples of what not to do.  I wouldn't like it if 
someone quoted _Creating Friendly AI_ as a clear example of what not to 
do, but I did publish it, and it is a legitimate example of what not to 
do.  I would definitely ask that it be made clear that I no longer 
espouse CFAI's ideas and that I have now moved on to different 
approaches and higher standards; if it were implied that CFAI was still 
my current approach, I would be rightly offended.  But I could not 
justly *prevent* someone entirely from quoting a published paper, though 
I might not like it...  But it seems to me that the paragraph I quoted 
still serves as a good capsule introduction to your approach, even if it 
omits some of the complexities of how you plan to use supervised 
learning.  I do not see any attempt at all, in your new approach, to 
address any of the problems that I think your old approach has. 
However, I could not possibly refuse to include a footnote disclaimer 
saying that *you* believe this old paragraph is no longer fairly 
representative of your ideas, and perhaps citing one of your later 
journal articles, in addition to providing the URL of your response to 
my criticisms.

If you are repudiating any of your old ideas, please say specifically 
which ones.

If anyone on these mailing list would like to weigh in with an outside 
opinion of what constitutes fair practice in this case, please do so.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Tue Jun  6 20:53:39 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 13:53:39 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
Message-ID: <20060606205331.GA23394@ofb.net>

John Quiggin talks about how doomsayers on both sides are wrong, both
the Deep Greens who say we need to cut our standard of living and "Dark
Browns" who say we can't afford to protect the environment because it
would cut our standard of living.

http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2006/06/05/against-the-doomsayers/

And he links to an article on the ozone hole and the history of
skepticism to that, and the tactics used by industry and Republican
politicians.  I invite people still wondering about anthropogenic global
warming to draw analogies, and also to link to Bayesian agreement, e.g.
"if the mass of peer-reviewed scientists say X, and you want to believe
Y, how likely is it that you are smarter or less biased than they,
especially in light of the ozone hole history, and the human
predilection to underestimate one's own bias?"

http://www.wunderground.com/education/ozone_skeptics.asp

-xx- Damien X-) 


From mstriz at gmail.com  Tue Jun  6 21:27:29 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 17:27:29 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <20060606205331.GA23394@ofb.net>
References: <20060606205331.GA23394@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606061427g268572faj99c4eb28a26a2add@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/6/06, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

>  I invite people still wondering about anthropogenic global
> warming to draw analogies, and also to link to Bayesian agreement, e.g.
> "if the mass of peer-reviewed scientists say X, and you want to believe
> Y, how likely is it that you are smarter or less biased than they,
> especially in light of the ozone hole history, and the human
> predilection to underestimate one's own bias?"

There are three factors that are connected by the oil problem: energy,
environment, and security.  Even if you don't buy the idea that
renewable energy will lead to a cleaner environment (and lower social
and economic costs) down the line, or that removing the military from
the Middle East and cutting off business ties with despots like Chavez
will make you safer, the fact remains that the oil reserves are
finite.  There is no debate.  The transition must be made.

Oil prices will start skyrocketing about 10-15 years after Peak Oil,
while the cost per unit energy of extraction from renewable resources
continues to drop.  If these lines cross low on the graph, then a
smooth energy transition can be made.  Whether they will is unknown.
If you factor in the defense budget costs for maintaining oil
security, the lines are closer than you think (btw, thanks to the
American military, the rest of the world gets the insurance without
paying the premium).

Going back to Chavez, some pundits have made the observation that "our
oil" tends to be under the ground of people who hate us.  But I think
that's putting the cart before the horse.  Despots can thrive in
places where they have natural resources that force us to do business
with them.  Chavez, the Saudi family, the Mullahs in Iran, would
crumble without their oil reserves.  So renewable energy is good for
spreading democracy, too. :)

Martin


From hal at finney.org  Tue Jun  6 21:05:00 2006
From: hal at finney.org (Hal Finney)
Date: Tue,  6 Jun 2006 14:05:00 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Wisdom of Crowds
Message-ID: <20060606210500.0419757FD1@finney.org>

[First, apologies for disappearing from the list for a few weeks.  I will
try to get back to some of the old threads, time permitting.]

Kevin Freels writes:
> So why not post a poll about the date of the coming singularity?

I did better than that!  I asked Google.

Googling for "when is the singularity?" didn't give me much useful.
I figured that it is not able to handle questions too well yet.  (I hear
they're working on that.)

So then I asked, more simply, "singularity date?"

And here's the first response:

"The short answer is that the near edge of the Singularity is due about
the year 2035 AD."

So there you have it - the wisdom of the crowd, via Google.

Hal


From asa at nada.kth.se  Tue Jun  6 22:44:54 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 00:44:54 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <cd9526860606061427g268572faj99c4eb28a26a2add@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060606205331.GA23394@ofb.net>
	<cd9526860606061427g268572faj99c4eb28a26a2add@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <64993.86.143.246.157.1149633894.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


A fun way to annoy both climate sceptics and greenhousers alike is to
point out the need for climate regulation.

Even without believing doomsayer predictions the historical evidence shows
that climate change can be bad from a human perspective, both in the small
(like the Little Ice Age) and the large (climate changes before, during
and since the ice Age). So clearly we need to be on guard for climate
change no matter its cause, and to prevent undesirable changes. If the
current climate swings are in some significant part due human action, that
implies that human action can affect the climate and we ought to
interfere. If we are not the cause, we better learn to be the cause.

A common argument against climate control is that it is so complex we
don't know what we should do. This is rather interesting as an argument,
since it is often made by the same people who presupposes that emission
reductions would have a predictable effects. However, that is based on the
assumption that climate is not path dependent and that other factors like
albedo change can be disregarded. This seems pretty implausible, given the
changes in biome distribution caused by climate changes, the spread of
human-modified land with deviant albedo, contrails, ship tracks and
aerosols. In fact, just reducing greenhouse gases without fixing albedo
change might be a bad thing. Hence even a return to some baseline state
would require much more than reduction of emissions, and most likely
properly would require a fairly tricky balancing of different factors.

That the climate is complex is no excuse for inaction but rather suggests
a need for more attempts to both understand it and finding ways of
affecting it (even if those methods might not be useful in our current
situation). Similarly, many people who think that climate is too complex
to mess with think that the economy is something simple where interference
produces reliable results. A curious assumption, but most people do not
really understand dynamical systems. My guess is that we can map out the
major interactions within the Earth's dynamical upper layers to a high
degree within a few decades, and we will be able to use chaos control to
influence at least short term cycles much earlier (for chaos control one
only needs reconstructed phase space, not a real model).

The deep issues that make people dislike climate control is IMHO the
natural order assumption (nature is good whatever it does, human action is
neutral or suspect), the need for global agreements and that it forces us
to consider what we would regard as the ideal climate. As long as it is
only about avoiding a waguely dark future by doing one simple thing, the
greenhouse debate can bludgeon everybody in the same direction. A wider
debate about what we actually want to do with the Earth would be far less
easily cohered.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From asa at nada.kth.se  Tue Jun  6 23:15:17 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 01:15:17 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
 simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <cd9526860606061040h3f130d29ld4d6652ecd3396ea@mail.gmail.com>
References: <1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<1149459303.18326.263024293@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<448360E1.60301@pobox.com> <20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net>
	<44836EAC.6060407@pobox.com>
	<39193.86.143.246.157.1149468068.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<cd9526860606051303q5f6c2ba3h937d065aac8d3909@mail.gmail.com>
	<51517.86.143.246.157.1149542109.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<cd9526860606051508k286d6340k782ad2ac0c787498@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060606090533.GM28956@leitl.org>
	<cd9526860606061040h3f130d29ld4d6652ecd3396ea@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <65516.86.143.246.157.1149635717.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Martin Striz wrote:
> Very well, I just find it to be a nontraditional use of the term
> "efficient."  To me that is a measure of the percentage of input
> energy that gets used to do the work of the system, versus the
> percentage that is lost as heat, etc.  By that measure, neurons are
> pretty efficient.  There's very little heat loss.   Your head isn't
> warm due to heat loss.  It's kept warm on purpose because enzyme
> kinetics are optimized for 37 C.

And why that temperature? In the end 37 C is a kind of compromise. Higher
body temperature means faster kinetics for many processes, faster nerve
conduction velocities (increasing body temperature by 0.2 degrees improves
cognition in some tests; beyond that there is no improvement) but also
higher metabolic costs (increasing exponentially with higher temperature)
and in males increased mutation frequency. Basal body temperature seems to
be set by evolutionary adaptation to a particular environment and
ecological niche, varying within related species quite a bit and it is
possible to push the enzyme kinetics quite a bit with sufficient
evolution.

Instead of using pumped ion gradients to power action potentials the
nervous system could have used passive membrane conduction with local
Ranvier-node-like amplifiers, which would likely have produced a far less
energy consuming system. This is more similar to the invertebrate nervous
system, actually. But the rewards for fast reactions and coevolutionary
driving likely got us mammals stuck with these expensive, energy wasting
central nervous systems. I'm certain radically different solutions are
possible, but since terrestrial evolution had such a wide array of ion
channels and pumps going long before Ediacara it used them.


Todays fun neuroscience fact: the spinal cord system for regulating
urination appears to be lateralized in humans but not other animals.
Gert Holstege, Micturition and the soul, The Journal of Comparative
Neurology Volume 493, Issue 1 , Pages 15 - 20


-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From spike66 at comcast.net  Wed Jun  7 01:04:17 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 18:04:17 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <64993.86.143.246.157.1149633894.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <200606070120.k571KL6w001559@andromeda.ziaspace.com>



> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-
> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg
> Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2006 3:45 PM
> To: ExI chat list
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
> 
> 
> A fun way to annoy both climate sceptics and greenhousers alike is to
> point out the need for climate regulation...

Anders this post is brilliant, thanks.

> 
> The deep issues that make people dislike climate control is IMHO the
> natural order assumption (nature is good whatever it does, human action is
> neutral or suspect)...
> --
> Anders Sandberg,
> Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
> Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University

I have been pointing out this logical tension for years, in many contexts
including life extension.  If someone argues that natural is good but human
action is suspect, then I press by asking: are humans natural?  If the
answer is no, then I ask if the person is a creationist.  Few nature lovers
want to get in bed with that crowd.  If they are creationists, the first
page of their holy scriptures urge them to subdue and dominate nature, be
fruitful and multiply, etc.  On the other hand, if humans are natural, then
would we need to define everything that humans do as natural.  

Environmental modification and economy lead to wildly complex questions.
Like the beaver, human technology helps some species and harms others.  How
do we judge if the overall effect is good or bad?

Regarding teraforming the earth, assume we discovered a technology to warm
the poles while lowering the temperature of the equator.  Would we do it?
If we were to melt the northern icecap, Sweden would be poised to become a
manufacturing powerhouse, for it would become the nearest highly
industrialized nation to the enormous markets of Western Canada, California
and Mexico.

Did any of you see the recent movie March of the Penguins?  Do rent that.  I
thought it excellent, a refreshing change from the usual Hollyweird
nonsense.  If we melted the poles it would be the end of the road for those
guys, which would be so sad.  But if we could warm the poles enough to melt
the snow, could we not move the world's low lying island communities to that
vast empty continent?  Could we not move the teeming hordes of Bangladesh to
the northern shores of Canada, Alaska and Siberia?

spike








From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Wed Jun  7 00:59:41 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 17:59:41 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] NEF tensor (was Psychogenic Fields)
In-Reply-To: <2951.163.1.20.64.1149592499.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <20060607005941.38852.qmail@web60522.mail.yahoo.com>



--- Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se> wrote:

> 
> The Avantguardian wrote:
> > I agree. It is truly bizarre that you can get such
> > macroscopic quantum behavior out of cells. I would
> not
> > believe in high temperature quantum coherence in
> > living organisms if I hadn't seen the
> photomicrographs
> > and published work of Mae-Wan Ho et. al. It's
> almost
> > as if cells were some kind of crazy aqueous
> mixture of
> > high-temperature bose-einstein condensates.
> 
> Hmm, checking out a bit about that character leaves
> me with a distinctly
> bad taste in the mouth. Rave reviews from new age
> and deep ecology
> magazines, very little science on homepage but a lot
> of science activism
> against biotech and nanotech (including the claim
> that nanomachines can't
> work because of quantum fuzziness, which we know to
> be wrong).
> 
> The only Pubmed citation was about energy production
> and has three self
> citations (to what appears to be a popular science
> book!) in the
> *abstract*.
>
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=search&DB=pubmed
> (ah, there are more citations, I was wrong. But much
> of the other sounds
> equally suspicious: acupuncture is explained through
> interaction with the
> "continuum of liquid crystalline collagen fibers
> that make up the bulk of
> the connective tissues" forming a body-soul).
> 
> This sounds like typical cosmythology intended to
> keep people happy about
> their existing beliefs.
> 
> So far there is no generally accepted macroscopic
> quantum effects in
> biology. There is indeed no shortage of people
> claiming there are, but
> just like quantum superpositions their claims tend
> to evaporate when
> people do an independent analysis.

Obviously I don't care much for her Luddite politics.
But I am not one of those people that believe the laws
of nature care about a person's politics. Have you
found anything using polarized light microscopy that
contradicts her findings? Damn. There are times when I
think that even in science if you want something done
right you have to do it yourself. When did science
become as filled with "noise" as politics is? I
thought the whole point of the peer review process was
to weed out bullshit. It is becoming truly ridiculous.
 


Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From hkhenson at rogers.com  Wed Jun  7 01:25:18 2006
From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2006 21:25:18 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <20060606205331.GA23394@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20060606211814.04e9c028@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>

At 01:53 PM 6/6/2006 -0700, you wrote:
>John Quiggin talks about how doomsayers on both sides are wrong, both
>the Deep Greens who say we need to cut our standard of living and "Dark
>Browns" who say we can't afford to protect the environment because it
>would cut our standard of living.

Both are right.

There is no doubt we are living on resources that are running out so we 
have to cut back.  But cutting back, lowering the standard of living, will 
cause xenophobic memes to build up that eventually will tip into wars.

There is a low tech and a high tech solution to this problem.  A 
substantial fraction of the population dying is the low tech 
solution.  Developing full blown nanotechnology were we can exploit (for 
example) geosynch solar power is the other.

In either case we will be living in interesting times (a quote from Eric 
Frank Russell).

Keith Henson



From sjatkins at mac.com  Wed Jun  7 03:15:55 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 20:15:55 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Bayes, betting and derivatives
In-Reply-To: <4484E04C.1020600@pobox.com>
References: <20060605213905.GA4654@ofb.net>
	<7.0.1.0.2.20060605174655.02300d18@gmu.edu>
	<4484E04C.1020600@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <9FD6C837-AF99-440F-A452-53D83902F43D@mac.com>


On Jun 5, 2006, at 6:54 PM, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:

>
> Why would Bayesian wannabes with common knowledge of each other's
> rationality have any expectation of gain in a betting market?

The prices of the underlying stocks, commodities and so on cannot be  
fully (to say the least) predicted.  If it could there would be no  
point in derivatives.  Thus different Bayesians, even with full  
common knowledge (very hard to come by in practice regarding markets  
especially) may make different derivative plays.    It is not a  
"betting" market.

> Why would
> I ever sell my bet - given the fact that you offer me more money  
> than I
> thought my bet was worth, and I believe you to be rational, and I
> believe you expect to make a profit?

Because your market theory, fundamental and technical analysis may be  
more accurate at least in the short  run.   This notion that exactly  
the same knowledge, mathematically rendered the same is available to  
all players and they all have effectively equal skill and  
intelligence to boot is a far-fetched fantasy.

>   Wouldn't I just adjust my estimate
> of the fair price upward, and then refuse to sell?

No.  You might  decide to recheck your conclusions though.

- samantha


From transcend at extropica.com  Wed Jun  7 02:52:07 2006
From: transcend at extropica.com (Brandon Reinhart)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 21:52:07 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Bayes, betting and derivatives
In-Reply-To: <4484E04C.1020600@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <200606070318.k573IokZ018321@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

Isn't there some advantage in this scenario of the perfectly rational
Bayesian wannabe to act in a calculatedly irrational manner in order to
betray the expectations of his rivals? The others would take into account
the possibility of "rationally calculated irrationality" but would that be
sufficient to counter the phenomena? For example, it might be Bayesian
wannabe A's goal to deceive wannabe B into a particular action...to
manipulate how B weighs decisions? To "mess with his priors?" (Is there such
a thing as Bayesian slang in a homo economicus culture?) I presume the
"victim" would already have determined a certain possible outcome in which
they are deceived...

BUT, this does lead to a scenario in which making a bet could be a tactic of
rationally calculated irrationality. This is the soul of the betting game:
making bets that disguise your intent, such that it isn't clear when your
bets are rational or irrational.

That seems to me to answer Mr. Sullivan's question "would a population of
Bayesian wannabes have use for making bets."

Unless the universal rational recognition of the possibility of rationally
calculated irrationality leads to the conclusion that such behavior is
ultimately not productive. Or the opposite spectrum is that the benefit is
consistent enough that you devolve into a society of sociopathic cheats.

Hehe.

Brandon Reinhart

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Eliezer S.
Yudkowsky
Sent: Monday, June 05, 2006 8:54 PM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Bayes, betting and derivatives

Robin Hanson wrote:
> 
> Risk-averse Bayesian wannabes would not make pure bets with each other
> seeking financial gain.   Risk-loving ones might make bets, but only to
> achieve the risk they want, not because of any disagreement.
Derivatives
> markets supposedly help people to hedge risk, and not just to make bets.
> And a patron who wanted to get answers to a question might subsidize
> a betting market, thereby inducing Bayesian wannabes to bet there.

Why would Bayesian wannabes with common knowledge of each other's 
rationality have any expectation of gain in a betting market?  Why would 
I ever sell my bet - given the fact that you offer me more money than I 
thought my bet was worth, and I believe you to be rational, and I 
believe you expect to make a profit?  Wouldn't I just adjust my estimate 
of the fair price upward, and then refuse to sell?

-- 
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.cgi/extropy-chat



From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Wed Jun  7 06:47:36 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 23:47:36 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20060606211814.04e9c028@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>
References: <20060606205331.GA23394@ofb.net>
	<5.1.0.14.0.20060606211814.04e9c028@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>
Message-ID: <20060607064736.GA4740@ofb.net>

On Tue, Jun 06, 2006 at 09:25:18PM -0400, Keith Henson wrote:

> There is no doubt we are living on resources that are running out so we 
> have to cut back.  But cutting back, lowering the standard of living, will 

Only clear one seems to be fossil fuels.  And growing area, if we add
too many people or meat-eaters.

> There is a low tech and a high tech solution to this problem.  A 
> substantial fraction of the population dying is the low tech 
> solution.  Developing full blown nanotechnology were we can exploit (for 
> example) geosynch solar power is the other.

I don't think all that is needed.  Deployed renewables, fission, or a
mix should be able to support us.  Car and jet fuel might be pricier
than we're used to.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From asa at nada.kth.se  Wed Jun  7 09:56:47 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 11:56:47 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] NEF tensor (was Psychogenic Fields)
In-Reply-To: <20060607005941.38852.qmail@web60522.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <2951.163.1.20.64.1149592499.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060607005941.38852.qmail@web60522.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <34056.86.143.246.157.1149674207.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


The Avantguardian wrote:
> But I am not one of those people that believe the laws
> of nature care about a person's politics. Have you
> found anything using polarized light microscopy that
> contradicts her findings?

Polarized light microscopy is widely used in science, but it has nothing
to do with "coherent energy fields" and biological quantum mechanics
beyond the normal energy and quantum aspects of optics. There is no
evidence for Ho's claim that living beings use quantum superpositions to
move large amounts of energy around quickly.

While my previous post was a bit ad hominem, I do think that extraordinary
claims require extraordinary proof. If someone claims that macroscopic
quantum states are important in organisms they better demonstrate it. It
shouldn't be accepted because it would be so cool. As long as there is no
experiment that rules out the simpler (and well tested) model that living
organisms do not use macro quantum states Occhan's razor tells us to keep
to the "classical" theory.

>From my understanding of her writings one of the claims is that the
benefits of these macrostates is that they can produce large effects with
very small causes. But this makes the noise problem even worse - how do
you prevent random pinpricks from redirecting the "energy fields" fatally?
Normal biochemical regulation theory has nice, tested answers to that in
the case of chemical signals (various amplification and transduction
cascades, levels of feedback inhibition), but invoking quantum physics
means throwing out the possibility of using these solutions.

> Damn. There are times when I
> think that even in science if you want something done
> right you have to do it yourself.

EXACTLY! Far too many people just repeat papers they have read and do not
think about the implications, even less repeat the experiments or do new
critical tests.


Now I'm off to actually do a bit of experimentation myself (OK, the data
processing part - but there was a rat involved at the start). No sign of
anything quantum in these brain slices at least (but voltage sensitive
dyes - wow! that is cool quantum mechanics!).

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From hkhenson at rogers.com  Wed Jun  7 09:06:04 2006
From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2006 05:06:04 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Cats, was I am a moral, intelligent being
In-Reply-To: <BAY101-F57DC39BBCCD437A2B7CF4AC8A0@phx.gbl>
References: <5.1.0.14.0.20060606213257.026acbf8@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>
Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20060607040535.04da8360@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>

At 01:37 AM 6/7/2006 -0400, Michael Vassar wrote:
>Yes analogies are always suspect...
>And existance proofs really do always demonstrate possibility...
>So so long as the existance proof is valid and people really *can* want to 
>remain moral and become more intelligent the analogy is simply a waste of 
>our time.
>
>If you want to get serious, at the very least you have to make a serious 
>case that the robustness of human morality under carefully considered and 
>bias corrected self-modification has not been adequately demonstrated (or 
>that human morality is not robust under bias correction) and give us some 
>reason for seriously doubting it.  Succeed in that and you still won't 
>have prooved that Friendlyness is impossible, you will just be in a 
>position analogous to those who claimed that heavier than air flying 
>machines capable of lifting humans are impossible rather than that of 
>those who claim that NO object of any size or with any other 
>characteristics can fly.

I am sorry to say I don't understand the basis of your complaint against my 
post.

"The dire reality is that reproduction cannot be unlimited in a limited 
world--so we go *SNIP* to cat gonads.  This is good from the moral 
viewpoint of a substantial majority of humans."

(I should correct the above to a substantial fraction of western culture 
members.)

My point was that more intelligent AIs or upgraded humans may have a 
different view of what is moral as we have a different view of what is 
moral compared to cats.  If you upgraded a cat to human level intelligence 
would it think controlling the population of regular cats the way we do was 
moral?  (I have no idea.)

I certainly had no intent to prove Friendlyness impossible either.  I would 
be more inclined to attempt to prove it possible or even likely.  But I do 
think Friendly AIs will have to make some hard decisions if unmodified 
humans remain in the world--analogous to the decisions we make about cats 
and for the same reason.

I think you may be objecting to my word use.   The word "solved" (in 
quotes) was in the literary device sense i.e., for the story.  I make no 
claims at all about this being a solution for the real world outside the story.

Though it does have the flavor of what we do with cats . . . .

Keith Henson

PS.  If the list snippers clip it, we should move this to the extopy-chat 
list.  In preparation I will cc that list.

>>From: Keith Henson <hkhenson at rogers.com>
>>Reply-To: sl4 at sl4.org
>>To: sl4 at sl4.org
>>Subject: Re: I am a moral, intelligent being (was Re: Two draft 
>>papers:  AI and existential risk; heuristics and biases)
>>Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2006 21:53:24 -0400
>>
>>At 09:46 AM 6/6/2006 -0700, robin wrote:
>>
>>snip
>>
>>>It blows my mind that any intelligent and relevantly-knowledgeable
>>>person would have failed to perform this thought experiment on
>>>themselves to validate, as proof-by-existence, that an intelligent
>>>being that both wants to become more intelligent *and* wants to
>>>remain kind and moral is possible.
>>
>>>Really bizarre and, as I said, starting to become offensive to me,
>>>because it seems to imply that my morality is fragile.
>>
>>Analogy is always suspect, but consider cats.  We treat them as morally 
>>as we can.
>>
>>The dire reality is that reproduction cannot be unlimited in a limited 
>>world--so we go *SNIP* to cat gonads.  This is good from the moral 
>>viewpoint of a substantial majority of humans.
>>
>>But I have my doubts about how the cats feel about it.  At least it is my 
>>observation that intact cats have more interesting personalities.
>>
>>I "solved" this problem in the fiction I have been writing by putting 
>>rules on the AIs that they would analyze as being such a good idea they 
>>would not want to do otherwise.  Namely, no reproduction inside uploaded 
>>simulations and no food production by the AIs outside the simulations.
>>
>>And the simulations were so attractive compared to the real world that 
>>the big problem was getting enough people to have children in the 
>>physical world to keep up a remnant population.
>>
>>(The AIs were constructed without the desire to reproduce and were only 
>>brought into existence by physical state humans.)
>>
>>Keith Henson
>



From test at demedici.ssec.wisc.edu  Wed Jun  7 17:24:55 2006
From: test at demedici.ssec.wisc.edu (Bill Hibbard)
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 12:24:55 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Two draft papers: AI and existential risk;
	heuristics and biases
In-Reply-To: <4485D42E.5080809@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0606071216390.18285-100000@demedici.ssec.wisc.edu>

Eliezer,

> I don't think it
> inappropriate to cite a problem that is general to supervised learning
> and reinforcement, when your proposal is to, in general, use supervised
> learning and reinforcement.  You can always appeal to a "different
> algorithm" or a "different implementation" that, in some unspecified
> way, doesn't have a problem.

But you are not demonstrating a general problem. You are
instead relying on specific examples (primitive neural
networks and systems that cannot distingish a human from
a smiley) that fail trivially. You should be clear whether
you claim that reinforcement learning (RL) must inevitably
lead to:

  1. A failure of intelligence.

or:

  2. A failure of friendliness.

Your example of the US Army's primitive neural network
experiments is a failure of intelligence. Your statement
about smiley faces assumes a general success at intelligence
by the system, but an absurd failure of intelligence in the
part of the system that recognizes humans and their emotions,
leading to a failure of friendliness.

If your claim is that RL must lead to a failure of
intelligence, then you should cite and quote from Eric Baum's
What is Thought? (in my opinion, Baum deserves the Nobel
Prize in Economics for his experiments linking economic
principles with effective RL in multi-agent learning systems).

If your claim is that RL can succeed at intelligence but must
lead to a failure of friendliness, then it is reasonable to
cite and quote me. But please use my 2004 AAAI paper . . .

> If you are genuinely repudiating your old ideas ...

. . . use my 2004 AAAI paper because I do repudiate the
statement in my 2001 paper that recognition of humans and
their emotions should be hard-wired (i.e., static). That
is just the section of my 2001 paper that you quoted.

Not that I am sure that hard-wired recognition of humans and
their emotions inevitably leads to a failure of friendliness,
since the super-intelligence (SI) may understand that humans
would be happier if they could evolve to other physical forms
but still be recognized by the SI as humans, and decide to
modify itself (or build an improved replacement). But if this
is my scenario, then why not design continuing learning of
recognition of humans and their emotions into the system in
the first place. Hence my change of views.

I am sure you have not repudiated everything in CFAI, and I
have not repudiated everything in my earlier publications.
I continue to believe that RL is critical to acheiving
intelligence with a feasible amount of computing resources,
and I continue to believe that collective long-term human
happiness should be the basic reinforcement value for SI.
But I now think that a SI should continue to learn recognition
of humans and their emotions via reinforcement, rather than
these recognitions being hard-wired as the result of supervised
learning. My recent writings have also refined my views about
how human happiness should be defined, and how the happiness of
many people should be combined into an overall reinforcement
value.

> I see no relevant difference between these two proposals, except that
> the paragraph you cite (presumably as a potential replacement) is much
> less clear to the outside academic reader.

If you see no difference between my earlier and later ideas,
then please use a scenario based on my later papers. That will
be a better demonstration of the strength of your arguments,
and be fairer to me.

Of course, it would be best to demonstrate your claim (either
that RL must lead to a failure of intelligence, or can succeed
at intelligence but must lead to a failure of friendliness) in
general. But if you cannot do that and must rely on a specific
example, then at least do not pick an example that fails for
trivial reasons.

As I wrote above, if you think RL must fail at intelligence,
you would be best to quote Eric Baum.

If you think RL can succeed at intelligence but must fail at
friendliness, but just want to demonstrate it for a specific
example, then use a scenario in which:

  1. The SI recognizes humans and their emotions as accurately
  as any human, and continually relearns that recognition as
  humans evolve (for example, to become SIs themselves).

  2. The SI values people after death at the maximally unhappy
  value, in order to avoid motivating the SI to kill unhappy
  people.

  3. The SI combines the happiness of many people in a way (such
  as by averaging) that does not motivate a simple numerical
  increase (or decrease) in the number of people.

  4. The SI weights unhappiness stronger than happiness, so that
  it focuses it efforts on helping unhappy people.

  5. The SI develops models of all humans and what produces
  long-term happiness in each of them.

  6. The SI develops models of the interactions among humans
  and how these interactions affect the happiness of each.

If you demonstrate a failure of friendliness against a weaker
scenario, all that really demonstrates is that you needed the
weak scenario in order to make your case. And it is unfair to
me. As I said, best would be a general demonstration, but if
you must pick an example, at least pick a strong example.

I do not pretend to have all the answers. Clearly, making RL work
will require solution to a number of currently unsolved problems.
Jeff Hawkins' work on hierarchical temporal memory (HTM) is
interesting in this respect, given the interactions within the
human brain between the cortex (modeled by HTM) and lower brain
areas where RL has been observed (in my view RL is in a lower area
because it is fundamental, and the higher areas evolved to create
the simulation model of the world necessary to solve the credit
assignment problem for RL). Clearly RL is not the whole answer,
but I think Eric Baum has it right that it is critical to
intelligence.

I appreciate your offer to include my URL in your article,
where I can give my response. Please use this (please proof
read carefully for typos in the final galleys):

  http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/AIRisk_Reply.html

If you take my suggestion, by elevating your discussion to a
general explanation of why RL systems must fail or at least using
a strong scenario, that will make my response more friendly since
I am happier to be named as an advocate of RL than to be
conflated with trivial failure. I would prefer that you not use
the quote you were using from my 2001 paper, as I repudiate
supervised learning of hard-wired values. Please use some quote
from and cite my 2004 AAAI paper, since there is nothing in it
that I repudiate yet (but you will find more refined views in my
2005 on-line paper).

Bill

p.s., Although I receive digest messages from extropy-chat,
for some reason my recent posts to it have all bounced. Could
someone please forward this message to extropy-chat?



From hkhenson at rogers.com  Wed Jun  7 16:08:08 2006
From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2006 12:08:08 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Cats
In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20060607040535.04da8360@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.
	rogers.com>
References: <BAY101-F57DC39BBCCD437A2B7CF4AC8A0@phx.gbl>
	<5.1.0.14.0.20060606213257.026acbf8@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>
Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20060607094057.04f19830@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>

Keith wrote:

 > Though it does have the flavor of what we do with cats . . . .

Some time ago I spent a few weeks with an old lady who has cats.  (She 
wasn't much older than me, but I will be 64 this year.)

She had 10 or maybe it was 11 cats--you never saw them all at once.  They 
were all indoor cats.  About half of them were feral cats.  They had been 
trapped, neutered or spayed many years ago.  They approached to beg tasty 
food but ran if anyone tried to pet them.  The cats were getting old, two 
of them were over 20.

She loves her cats and dotes on them.  When I was there they were taken 
care of about as well as we would take care of aging humans.  One of them 
had had his colon removed and while he could use a litter box he did 
not.  That one looked particularly awful but seemed reasonably active for 
an old cat and not in pain.  Some of them had to be chased down and caught 
every day because they were getting daily injections and one of them was 
getting fluid under the skin.  Her vet bill runs to $15k a year; a cancer 
operation on one of them cost several thousand dollars (the effort did not 
extend the cat's life).

One of the best sets of books on space colonies is _The Revolution From 
Rosinante_ trilogy by Alexis A. Gilliland.  The trilogy is also perhaps the 
first to use the concept of incorporation to give an AI legal rights.  Two 
of the AIs (one was trained up by a religious nut) used his/her deep 
knowledge of human psychology to create a new religion that was both 
consistent with known science and deeply appealed to the "reptile brain" in us.

Near the end of the last book, one of the AI is talking about the symbiotic 
relation that was developing between AIs and humans.  I don't have a copy 
out right now, but from memory the AI characterized it as "Like cats.  You 
live in *their* house and take care of them."

I am not going to try to draw morals from this set of data (some of it from 
a fictional source) but I know I would not like to be one of her cats.

Keith Henson

PS  I suspect my libertarian leanings extend even to pets.  If an animal 
wants to be a pet, that's fine, but I am not inclined to keep one locked up.



From mstriz at gmail.com  Wed Jun  7 20:58:44 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 16:58:44 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor
	simulations immoral?)
In-Reply-To: <65516.86.143.246.157.1149635717.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
References: <1149313458.21379.262957637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
	<20060604225707.GA7172@ofb.net> <44836EAC.6060407@pobox.com>
	<39193.86.143.246.157.1149468068.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<cd9526860606051303q5f6c2ba3h937d065aac8d3909@mail.gmail.com>
	<51517.86.143.246.157.1149542109.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<cd9526860606051508k286d6340k782ad2ac0c787498@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060606090533.GM28956@leitl.org>
	<cd9526860606061040h3f130d29ld4d6652ecd3396ea@mail.gmail.com>
	<65516.86.143.246.157.1149635717.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606071358l556148f8p1990bd0bf85486cf@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/6/06, Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se> wrote:

> And why that temperature? In the end 37 C is a kind of compromise. Higher
> body temperature means faster kinetics for many processes, faster nerve
> conduction velocities (increasing body temperature by 0.2 degrees improves
> cognition in some tests; beyond that there is no improvement) but also
> higher metabolic costs (increasing exponentially with higher temperature)
> and in males increased mutation frequency. Basal body temperature seems to
> be set by evolutionary adaptation to a particular environment and
> ecological niche, varying within related species quite a bit and it is
> possible to push the enzyme kinetics quite a bit with sufficient
> evolution.

Extremophiles demonstrate that peptides can be designed for optimal
activity within a wide range, from close to freezing, to close  to
boiling (all life perforce lives within the confines of acqueous
solutions).  However, I dn't think you adequately explain why 37 C
would be an optimal trade off.

Why have most warm-blooded animals converged on 35-40 C?  My educated
guess would be that, since most airborn microbes have enzymes
optimized for ambient atmospheric tempratures (20-30 C), warm-blooded
potential hosts ratcheted up their homeostatic setpoint as a defense
mechanism.  Enzymes tend to denature at just a few degrees above their
optimum (actually, they continue to work faster above the so-called
"optimum" but the percentage of denatured enzymes in the population
starts to increase, so the total enzyme activity of the population is
seen as a decrease, and the whole thing looks like a bell curve).  So
by maintaining our thermostatic setpoint a little above atmospheric
temperatures, we can fight off many microbes.  Of course, over
evolutioanary time, persistent pathogens evolved enzymes that function
at an optimum of 37 C.

In other  words, if it weren't for pathogens, we would probably have
lower body temperatures, because the energy cost increases faster than
the metabolic rate.  Actual metabolism/energy efficiency is better at
much lower temperatures.

Cheers,
Martin


From femmechakra at yahoo.ca  Wed Jun  7 22:44:15 2006
From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anne-Marie Taylor)
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 18:44:15 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Opinions on Singularity
Message-ID: <20060607224415.58038.qmail@web35505.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

I'm hoping for opinions on:
  What are the advantages to The Singularity occuring? 
  What do most people think the biggest risks are?
  What is most important to you when it comes to technology?
   
  I already have many ideas based on the posts in the last few months but it's always
  nice to hear new opinions and be able to summarize.
   
  This is just plain curiosity nothing else, so critical or unwanted sarcasm is not 
  necessary:) 
  (Again, not quite ready to give up on the smileys)
   
  Thanks again for your time
  Anna
   
   
   
   
   
   


Any piece of knowledge I acquire today has a value at 
this moment exactly proportioned to my skill to deal with it. 
Tomorrow, when I know more, I recall that piece of 
knowledge and use it better.
-Mark van Doren
 __________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 
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From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Thu Jun  8 01:13:34 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 02:13:34 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Help requested for friend
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606071813p2c3b70d3wa465ee853244fce7@mail.gmail.com>

Hi all,

A friend of mine over in America has been having some difficulties and I'm
trying to find some help or advice for her; I figured if there's any group
of people who'd have ideas, it's this one.

It started a few weeks ago when she broke her knee playing softball; the
damage is pretty bad, she's getting treatment but it's estimated at least
another few weeks before she's up and about again. Now she's discovered she
doesn't have a job to go back to - office politics were involved apparently
- which in turn scuppers her plan to adopt her 7 year old foster daughter.

She's had legal advice on the adoption issue and apparently there's nothing
that can be done about that, but I've been trying to come up with advice on
the issue of finding a new job. She's a meteorological technician, which
apparently is a rather specialized job, such that it's going to be very hard
to find another vacancy in that field; but from looking at her resume it
seems to me that it ought to be possible for her to switch to a slightly
different position, at worst with a modest amount of retraining; my own
field is software rather than hardware, though, so I'm drawing a blank on
specifics.

If anyone has advice on what she can do from here, we'd appreciate it; her
email address is dboncore -at- gmail -dot- com and I'm hosting her resume
for the moment at http://homepage.eircom.net/~russell12/debraresume.txt
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From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Thu Jun  8 01:13:32 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 18:13:32 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] evolution and bee tracheas
In-Reply-To: <200606050409.k5549xuf020398@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <20060608011332.86053.qmail@web60513.mail.yahoo.com>




> > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders
> Sandberg

> > We may not have needed much for most of evolution
> and are now trapped in a
> > bad solution like the insect trachea...

Actually insect tracheas are not that bad of a
solution, speaking in an evolutionary sense. Consider
the following sobering statistic from
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/26/14028

"Ants are arguably the greatest success story in the
history of terrestrial metazoa. On average, ants
monopolize 15-20% of the terrestrial animal biomass,
and in tropical regions where ants are especially
abundant, they monopolize 25% or more."

Albeit insect tracheas evolved to deal with the high
oxygen tension resulting from the initial colonization
of plants on land during the carboniferous era, it is
probably fortunate for us humans that the oxygen
tension now does not support dragonflies with 2 foot
wingspans and other giant insects.
 
Considering that ants invented agriculture (fungus
farms) and animal husbandry (aphid dairies) long
before the first protohumans wandered the earth, I am
rather thankful that insects didn't have anything
better than diffusion operated tracheas or they might
have been the ones debating the singularity these days
instead of us. 

As it is, I doubt that any apocalypse - technological,
asteroidal, or otherwise would put so much as a dent
in the insect supremacy. Should self-replicating
misanthropic AIs ever manage to knock us off our
pedestal, I am rather confident that there will still
be cockroaches scurrying around under the Terminator's
metallic feet.

--- spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> Interesting comment.  I am trying to establish some
> bee colonies in Oregon.
> The beekeepers there are fighting an infestation of
> mites that get into the
> bee's trachea.  The mites do not actually slay the
> bee, but rather control
> their numbers while living on the bee's blood.  This
> makes her sick and
> unable to work as hard as she would otherwise.  This
> is a double tragedy for
> a bee, for she then loses her identity in a sense,
> like a slow cheetah or a
> shark with a finicky appetite.
> 
> http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/PDFs/Tracheal.pdf
> 
> The real tragedy is that there are no bugs that get
> inside mosquitoes and
> devour those wretched beasts from the inside.  I
> propose we design a bug or
> nanobot that devours only mosquito proboscises.  The
> result would be
> billions of mosquitoes buzzing harmlessly about with
> big stupid
> proboscisless looks on their faces.

Well there are people working on a vaccine against
mosquitos by immunizing the subject with the proteins
in a mosquito's gut for example. The idea being that
when the mosquito bit somebody, the person's
antibodies and complement cascade would attack the
mosquito from the inside, perforating the intestinal
lining of the mosquito. Although I like the irony of a
mosquito being digested by its ill-gotten meal, I
haven't heard about any successful vaccines yet. The
people trying to come up with a vaccine against ticks
seem to be having more success perhaps due to the
longer feeding time of the tick relative to a
mosquito.

 



Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From hal at finney.org  Thu Jun  8 01:27:57 2006
From: hal at finney.org (Hal Finney)
Date: Wed,  7 Jun 2006 18:27:57 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
Message-ID: <20060608012757.4B11A57FD1@finney.org>

Recently I've run across a couple of presentations on technological
solutions to reverse global warming.  The most interesting is to put
stuff into the upper atmosphere to block UV light.  Not only does this
reduce warming due to sunlight, it has an immediate payoff in terms of
reduction in skin cancer.  Analyses suggests that it would actually pay
for itself in terms of just that effect, independent of the benefits
for climate change.

Here is one presentation, a 7-minute audio interview with UCI physicist
(and science fiction author) Greg Benford:

http://www.desmogblog.com/gregory-benford-podcast
(http://www.desmogblog.com/audio/download/310)

And here is a paper by Dr. Edward Teller of Livermore Labs on the subject,
which I think is the work Benford is referring to:

http://www.llnl.gov/global-warm/
http://www.llnl.gov/global-warm/148012.pdf

Teller's paper actually describes two mitigation schemes, one involving
putting stuff in the stratosphere, and the other a more ambitious plan
to station material at the Earth-Sun L1 point.  This is a semi-stable
orbital point approximately a million miles towards the Sun from the
Earth.  Teller et al calculate that only 3000 tons of smart material
located at L1 would diffract away enough sunlight from Earth to eliminate
global warming.  Of course it will be some time before we can put or
manipulate this much material in space.

Benford suggests (in his interview) beginning a pilot scheme to put 100
micron particles into the arctic stratosphere during the summer, in order
to try to reverse the loss of arctic sea ice and save the polar bears.
By design (and in fact, it's hard to avoid) these would snow out every
year so they have to be replaced each summer, at an annual cost of about
$100 million, he estimates.

The bottom line is, as Benford notes, "we're going to have to run this
planet."  Sooner or later the message will sink in that Kyoto and other
conservation efforts are too little, too late (and too expensive).
Geo-engineering will be forced on the human race, luddites and all,
by the climate change threat of the 21st century.

Hal Finney


From spike66 at comcast.net  Thu Jun  8 03:39:54 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 20:39:54 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <20060608012757.4B11A57FD1@finney.org>
Message-ID: <200606080340.k583e5wA008662@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of "Hal Finney"
> 
> Benford suggests (in his interview) beginning a pilot scheme to put 100
> micron particles into the arctic stratosphere during the summer, in order
> to try to reverse the loss of arctic sea ice and save the polar bears...
> 
> Hal Finney

Would not these be terribly expensive bears?  We are forced to use longer
alternative shipping paths for trade routes between northern Europe and
pretty much everywhere because of arctic sea ice.  This uses still more oil.
If we were to melt the ice and sacrifice the bears, we could have shorter,
faster, cheaper sea lanes and at the same time save a bunch of seals that
would otherwise be devoured by the bears.  What is the value of a polar
bear?  Couldn't we just breed the Canadian grisly to be white?

spike




 




From andrew at ceruleansystems.com  Thu Jun  8 03:58:19 2006
From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers)
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 20:58:19 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <200606080340.k583e5wA008662@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <200606080340.k583e5wA008662@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <7983E3D5-F283-40EA-8266-D143F6FE21A6@ceruleansystems.com>


On Jun 7, 2006, at 8:39 PM, spike wrote:
> Couldn't we just breed the Canadian grisly to be white?


Probably.  Grizzly (brown) and Polar bears can interbreed, so they  
are very close genetically.

Her is an example of a Grizzly/Polar hybrid found in the wild:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4766217.stm


J. Andrew Rogers



From pgptag at gmail.com  Thu Jun  8 08:41:54 2006
From: pgptag at gmail.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0)
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 10:41:54 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] TRANSHUMANIST DAY IN SECOND LIFE
Message-ID: <470a3c520606080141m16f47139w77aa22d015fd6d0f@mail.gmail.com>

TRANSHUMANIST DAY IN SECOND LIFE. The official  opening of uvvy island
in Second Life took place on Wednesday June 7, 2006, 2  pm EST, with a
"Transhumanist Day" dedicated to promoting the transhumanist  worldview
and outlining its scientific and philosophical roots. About 40  people
participated. See the full report here:
http://uvvy.com/index.php/Report070606


From eugen at leitl.org  Thu Jun  8 09:02:45 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 11:02:45 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] evolution and bee tracheas
In-Reply-To: <20060608011332.86053.qmail@web60513.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <200606050409.k5549xuf020398@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060608011332.86053.qmail@web60513.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20060608090245.GM28956@leitl.org>

On Wed, Jun 07, 2006 at 06:13:32PM -0700, The Avantguardian wrote:

> As it is, I doubt that any apocalypse - technological,
> asteroidal, or otherwise would put so much as a dent

Do you know any insects who can survive in molten lava?
Or simply in water at 140 C, for that matter?

> in the insect supremacy. Should self-replicating
> misanthropic AIs ever manage to knock us off our

They don't have to be misantrophic, just uncaring.

> pedestal, I am rather confident that there will still
> be cockroaches scurrying around under the Terminator's
> metallic feet.

So if you strip-mine the planet for carbon, and nuke
off the volatiles your cockroaches will scamper on
bare rock, in a vacuum?
 
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From eugen at leitl.org  Thu Jun  8 09:28:50 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 11:28:50 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <20060608012757.4B11A57FD1@finney.org>
References: <20060608012757.4B11A57FD1@finney.org>
Message-ID: <20060608092850.GP28956@leitl.org>

On Wed, Jun 07, 2006 at 06:27:57PM -0700, "Hal Finney" wrote:

> Teller's paper actually describes two mitigation schemes, one involving
> putting stuff in the stratosphere, and the other a more ambitious plan

Arguably with airbreathing hydrogen engines to power aerospace of
the near future there will be lots of water ice in the stratosphere
by side effect. Truly spectacular clouds.

> to station material at the Earth-Sun L1 point.  This is a semi-stable
> orbital point approximately a million miles towards the Sun from the
> Earth.  Teller et al calculate that only 3000 tons of smart material
> located at L1 would diffract away enough sunlight from Earth to eliminate
> global warming.  Of course it will be some time before we can put or
> manipulate this much material in space.

It would be easier to launch material from Luna, using linear motors.
Launching 3 kT (assuming, it's enough -- smart materials sounds
rather sketchy to me) to L1 by means of chemical rockets is a cure
worse than the disease (some 1-3 k launches required, assuming some
20 M$/launch that's a lot of money which is better invested in
renewables).
 
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From eugen at leitl.org  Thu Jun  8 09:33:30 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 11:33:30 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <200606080340.k583e5wA008662@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <20060608012757.4B11A57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606080340.k583e5wA008662@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <20060608093330.GQ28956@leitl.org>

On Wed, Jun 07, 2006 at 08:39:54PM -0700, spike wrote:

> would otherwise be devoured by the bears.  What is the value of a polar
> bear?  Couldn't we just breed the Canadian grisly to be white?

What's the value of methane released from permafrost clathrates
into the atmosphere?

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From aiguy at comcast.net  Thu Jun  8 09:26:03 2006
From: aiguy at comcast.net (Gary Miller)
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 05:26:03 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] evolution and bee tracheas
In-Reply-To: <p06230900c0a9685bda49@[23.237.66.13]>
Message-ID: <01c401c68add$91a3e280$2b64ec47@GaryMiller01>

 
Please include fleas and ticks to the insect hit list.

Getting rid of them is an expensive yearly battle if you
have pets.

I would guess inside pet owners spend an average of $100
a year trying to control the problem and a full fledged
infestation can cost many times that.

If we could immunize the pet with the bug or nanobots then
We wouldn't have to worry about about as many environmental
issues.
 

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Amara Graps
Sent: Monday, June 05, 2006 12:55 AM
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
Subject: [extropy-chat] evolution and bee tracheas

spike:
>The real tragedy is that there are no bugs that get inside mosquitoes 
>and devour those wretched beasts from the inside.  I propose we design 
>a bug or nanobot that devours only mosquito proboscises.

Wasps have a handle on cockroaches though.
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/03/wasp_performs_roachb.html

Maybe the mosquito scientists haven't looked hard enough to find mosquito
zombies.

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/
********************************************************************
"My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot."
--Ashleigh Brilliant
_______________________________________________
extropy-chat mailing list
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat



From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com  Thu Jun  8 16:01:45 2006
From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki)
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 11:01:45 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <20060608093330.GQ28956@leitl.org>
References: <20060608012757.4B11A57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606080340.k583e5wA008662@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060608093330.GQ28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <7641ddc60606080901w2a4046cap241e59f3176e4351@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/8/06, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 07, 2006 at 08:39:54PM -0700, spike wrote:
>
> > would otherwise be devoured by the bears.  What is the value of a polar
> > bear?  Couldn't we just breed the Canadian grisly to be white?
>
> What's the value of methane released from permafrost clathrates
> into the atmosphere?
>
### Immense. An increase in the average temperatures will be very
useful to expand farming to feed the burgeoning population of the
world. The benefits of even modest warming have been calculated by
economists to run into billions of dollars in the US alone (I can dig
up the reference from Marginal Revolution if anybody is interested).

Rafal


From acy.stapp at gmail.com  Thu Jun  8 16:10:54 2006
From: acy.stapp at gmail.com (Acy Stapp)
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 11:10:54 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Bayes, betting and derivatives
In-Reply-To: <9FD6C837-AF99-440F-A452-53D83902F43D@mac.com>
References: <20060605213905.GA4654@ofb.net>
	<7.0.1.0.2.20060605174655.02300d18@gmu.edu>
	<4484E04C.1020600@pobox.com>
	<9FD6C837-AF99-440F-A452-53D83902F43D@mac.com>
Message-ID: <eb2c12ba0606080910s3600eae5p21629f40e2f9c72d@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/6/06, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
>
> Because your market theory, fundamental and technical analysis may be
> more accurate at least in the short  run.   This notion that exactly
> the same knowledge, mathematically rendered the same is available to
> all players and they all have effectively equal skill and
> intelligence to boot is a far-fetched fantasy.
>
> - samantha

Indeed one of the key evolutionary drivers of human intelligence was
hiding and detecting cheating behavior.  Cheating will always be an
aspect of intelligence, because cheaters gain an advantage in the
short-run and there will always be discounting of the future. In any
betting scenario you get a huge growth in informational complexity
when you recursively take into account the motives and truthfulness of
the participants. ("Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on
the line!")
-- 
Acy Stapp

"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think
only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the
solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -- R. Buckminster
Fuller (1895 - 1983)


From eugen at leitl.org  Thu Jun  8 16:33:01 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 18:33:01 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606080901w2a4046cap241e59f3176e4351@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060608012757.4B11A57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606080340.k583e5wA008662@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060608093330.GQ28956@leitl.org>
	<7641ddc60606080901w2a4046cap241e59f3176e4351@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060608163301.GO28956@leitl.org>

On Thu, Jun 08, 2006 at 11:01:45AM -0500, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:

> ### Immense. An increase in the average temperatures will be very
> useful to expand farming to feed the burgeoning population of the
> world. The benefits of even modest warming have been calculated by

What about those regions with lots of population, subsistence agriculture
which will be hit by draught? There will be precipiation shifts, and
arguably a decrease of arable land overall. Water wars will ensue,
resulting in mayhem amplification. This is certainly difficult
to quantify in $$$, as is loss of human life (Sahel & Co is perpetually
fucked up, they really don't need a yet another hammer).

This summer is just awful (sleet in June), so I really hope it's
not an artefact of the weakining Gulf stream. I don't know where
the warming/cooling separatrix is going to be, but I'm probably not
exactly on it.

> economists to run into billions of dollars in the US alone (I can dig
> up the reference from Marginal Revolution if anybody is interested).

I don't think there is any reliable model which is going to predict
the bad/good outcome. Whenever human lifes are on the line excessive,
unwarranted optimism is usually not a good idea. Our only excuse is
that collectively we have very little choice on minimizing climate forcing,
where hordes of freely behaving irrational primates are at play.

Let's hope not much is going to happen, or if something happens it
will be quite visible and not disrupt too much so we can adapt and
start homesteading this place, instead of exercising habitually 
poor stewardship of this resource.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From pharos at gmail.com  Thu Jun  8 16:47:10 2006
From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK)
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 17:47:10 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <20060608163301.GO28956@leitl.org>
References: <20060608012757.4B11A57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606080340.k583e5wA008662@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060608093330.GQ28956@leitl.org>
	<7641ddc60606080901w2a4046cap241e59f3176e4351@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060608163301.GO28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <ee50357e0606080947i65052415r5a90b499f87928fa@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/8/06, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> What about those regions with lots of population, subsistence agriculture
> which will be hit by draught? There will be precipiation shifts, and
> arguably a decrease of arable land overall. Water wars will ensue,
> resulting in mayhem amplification. This is certainly difficult
> to quantify in $$$, as is loss of human life (Sahel & Co is perpetually
> fucked up, they really don't need a yet another hammer).
>

You think maybe all the people moving from the flooded coastal cities
and the southern states bothered by desertification and new tropical
diseases might get a bit upset at being told their problems are a
benefit for agriculture?

Especially when they notice that warmed up tundra is not very useful
for farming?

BillK


From hal at finney.org  Thu Jun  8 17:58:58 2006
From: hal at finney.org (Hal Finney)
Date: Thu,  8 Jun 2006 10:58:58 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
Message-ID: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>

Regarding the cost/benefit of global warming, here is a paper on the
topic by Richard Tol in the journal Energy Policy.  He summarizes over
100 studies which attempt to estimate that very factor in economic terms:

http://www.uni-hamburg.de/Wiss/FB/15/Sustainability/enpolmargcost.pdf

Now, they are actually looking at marginal costs, not total cost; that is,
the cost of an incremental change.  And they are measuring it in terms of
tons of carbon (tC), not degrees.  But the way the calculations are done,
they go from tC to degrees via climatology models, and then attempt to
estimate economic costs and benefits.  These are then discounted to the
present day via standard discount rates.

There is quite a range in the studies, but the median cost value
is $14/tC.  That's not super high, compared to estimated costs of
conservation, but it does mean that global warming is a net cost.
The article notes that the greater impacts occur in the Third World,
particularly Africa and southeast Asia.  It also appears that slight
warming, on the order of 1 degree C, could actually be beneficial,
while larger changes are harmful.

So global warming will be harmful, at least under a current "best guess"
of 3 degrees C.  (This value is based on the assumptions that we will
roughly double the preindustrial 280 ppm even with strict emission
controls, and that climate sensitivity to a doubling is 3 C - see
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2006/03/climate-sensitivity-is-3c.html).

At the same time, the costs of conservation are very high.  The
realclimate.org blog exists largely to oppose global warming nay-sayers,
so they are credible when they admit the high costs of emimssions
reductions.  They recently commented, "Compliance with Kyoto, a mere 5%
reduction in Narbon emissions, was forecast by Nordhaus [2001] to cost
a few percent of GDP globally. The cost to stop emission completely and
immediately may not even be calculable."

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/buying-a-stairway-to-heaven/

Global GDP is $44 trillion so we are talking about a cost of a trillion
dollars a year to comply with Kyoto, yet there is widespread consensus
that this modest 5% reduction will have essentially no effect on global
temperatures; it will be lost in the noise.  For a trillion dollars
a year, we gain nothing.  Compare that to costs of the technological
mitigations presented earlier, more like a billion dollars a year to
stop and reverse warming.  They are over a thousand times more efficient.

>From what I can see, emissions reductions do not make economic sense
at this time.  The costs of substantial reductions are enormous, and
there are a number of strategies on the table (ocean fertilization,
planting forests, stratospheric aerosols, space shields, exotic nanotech
and biotech engineering) which should be able to do the job cheaper,
well before the end of this century.

One final point.  I haven't yet seen Al Gore's global warming movie,
An Inconvenient Truth.  However I'll note that the title is somewhat
misleading, as the "truth" that he presents is actually quite convenient
for supporters of centralization, world government, economic controls,
and collective action - in short, for leftists, and for Al Gore himself.

Listening to a TV review of the movie, they quoted Gore as saying
that within 10 years we will reach a tipping point, and if we don't do
something by then we are doomed to very bad consequences.  This is his
"inconvenient truth".  But listen to what Science magazine wrote a few
weeks ago:

> A central feature of this long baseline is this: At no time in at
> least the past 10 million years has the atmospheric concentration
> of CO2 exceeded the present value of 380 ppmv. At this time in the
> Miocene, there were no major ice sheets in Greenland, sea level was
> several meters higher than today's (envision a very skinny Florida),
> and temperatures were several degrees higher. A more recent point of
> reference, and the subject of two papers in this issue, is the Eemian:
> the previous interglacial, about 130,000 to 120,000 years ago. This
> was a warm climate, comparable to our Holocene, during which sea levels
> were several meters higher than today's, even though CO2 concentrations
> remained much lower than today's postindustrial level.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/311/5768/1673

See also http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/ice/ for additional stories.
The point is that the actual truth is even more inconvenient than Gore
admits (from what I have read about the movie), and is inconvenient even
for the collectivists I listed above.  The truth is that the tipping point
is not ten years away, but many years in the past.  We have already put
too much carbon into the atmosphere.  Even today's level of CO2 (absent
technological mitigation) has commited us to enough sea level rise to
cover most of Florida, as well as major coastal cities.  And there is no
plausible enforcement policy which can stop CO2 level from continuing
to rise for many decades.  We are at 380 now, will pass 400 shortly,
and only with the most stringent restrictions will we be able to level
off at 500 or 550 ppm.  This commits us to far more warming, even if
everyone listens to and believes Al Gore.

The real inconvenient truth is that emissions reductions will not
stop the catastrophic consequences of global warming.  Even enormously
costly efforts will make only a small difference.  The only solution
is technology.  This is not a lesson that Al Gore is particularly eager
to teach, but it is what the world must learn in order to deal with this
problem rationally and efficiently.

Hal

P.S. I have to admit that just as Al Gore's truth is convenient for him,
my own truth is convenient for me.  I like technology and I like the
idea of a world which actively utilizes technology to manage climate
and other global issues.


From george at betterhumans.com  Thu Jun  8 16:30:21 2006
From: george at betterhumans.com (George Dvorsky)
Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2006 12:30:21 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606080901w2a4046cap241e59f3176e4351@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060608012757.4B11A57FD1@finney.org>	<200606080340.k583e5wA008662@andromeda.ziaspace.com>	<20060608093330.GQ28956@leitl.org>
	<7641ddc60606080901w2a4046cap241e59f3176e4351@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4488509D.1040904@betterhumans.com>

These issues and potential resolutions will have to be weighed and 
offset against the effects of global dimming which is also impacting on 
global temperatures and the abilities of plants to photosynthesize.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming


Cheers,
George



From rhanson at gmu.edu  Thu Jun  8 19:57:54 2006
From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson)
Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2006 15:57:54 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060608155420.0240cdb8@gmu.edu>

At 01:58 PM 6/8/2006, Hal Finney wrote:
>Regarding the cost/benefit of global warming, here is a paper on the
>topic by Richard Tol in the journal Energy Policy.  ...
>There is quite a range in the studies, but the median cost value
>is $14/tC.  That's not super high, compared to estimated costs of
>conservation, but it does mean that global warming is a net cost. ...
> From what I can see, emissions reductions do not make economic sense
>at this time.  The costs of substantial reductions are enormous, and
>there are a number of strategies on the table (ocean fertilization,
>planting forests, stratospheric aerosols, space shields, exotic nanotech
>and biotech engineering) which should be able to do the job cheaper,
>well before the end of this century. ...

Perhaps, but it seems to at least make sense to tax carbon at something
like its estimated externality cost on others.  A $14/tC tax might be a lot
less that some people want, an a zero tax might be better than those large
  taxes people want, but the $14 tax would be better than either.  Then
you'd want to pay people who create those substitutes for reductions at
that same level, and if they come up with stuff great, if not fine too.



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323 



From hal at finney.org  Thu Jun  8 21:08:36 2006
From: hal at finney.org (Hal Finney)
Date: Thu,  8 Jun 2006 14:08:36 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
Message-ID: <20060608210836.BC60557FD1@finney.org>

Robin writes:
> At 01:58 PM 6/8/2006, Hal Finney wrote:
> > From what I can see, emissions reductions do not make economic sense
> >at this time.
>
> Perhaps, but it seems to at least make sense to tax carbon at something
> like its estimated externality cost on others.  A $14/tC tax might be a lot
> less that some people want, an a zero tax might be better than those large
> taxes people want, but the $14 tax would be better than either.  Then
> you'd want to pay people who create those substitutes for reductions at
> that same level, and if they come up with stuff great, if not fine too.

I see two problems with this.  One is the institutional difficulties
in setting up this worldwide tax collection mechanism.  Probably Kyoto
is the closest model, and it is a good example of what happens to
such efforts after passing through the maw of a government committee.
It is full of exceptions and subsidies that make it highly inefficient
at even the modest emission reductions it aims to achieve.  While a
uniform carbon tax would be much better, it is questionable whether our
present global institutions can come up with anything better than Kyoto.
There is always the risk that China and India will prefer to raise their
standard of living today and fix the problem tomorrow, hence there is
enormous political pressure to craft exceptions and special cases.

Nordhaus talks at the link below about the inefficiency of Kyoto.
He agrees with the preferability of a straight carbon tax, but my concern
is that if we limit ourselves to what is politically practical, we will
probably end up once again with something that does more harm than good:
http://www.econ.yale.edu/~nordhaus/homepage/nordhaus_science_110901.pdf

The second problem is that there will probably be ways of solving the
problem for much less than $14/tC, hence charging people that much today
is inefficient.  Wouldn't it make more sense to charge people today based
on the expected cost of the cleanup effort, rather than the expected
damage if cleanup never occurs?  Teller claims that a ONE-TIME set-aside
today of 1.74 billion dollars would generate enough interest in 50 years
to indefinitely fund a stratospheric shield.  Compare to about $60 billion
per year in taxes if we used the $14/tC figure (based on current rates
of carbon accumulation in the atmosphere of 4 Gt/year).  This suggests
that $14/tC could be hundreds of times larger than is necessary.

http://www.llnl.gov/global-warm/148012.pdf

Hal


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Thu Jun  8 23:19:55 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 16:19:55 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <20060608210836.BC60557FD1@finney.org>
References: <20060608210836.BC60557FD1@finney.org>
Message-ID: <20060608231955.GA20479@ofb.net>

On Thu, Jun 08, 2006 at 02:08:36PM -0700, "Hal Finney" wrote:

> damage if cleanup never occurs?  Teller claims that a ONE-TIME set-aside
> today of 1.74 billion dollars would generate enough interest in 50 years
> to indefinitely fund a stratospheric shield.  Compare to about $60 billion

So as we put more and more CO2 into the air, increasing the greenhouse
capability, we dim the sun more and more to make up for it?  I sense a
problem down that road.

As for costs, I'd note that Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute
and Winning the Oil Endgame (www.rmi.org, www.oilendgame.com) argues we
can cut emissions a lot for low cost or even profit, with lightweight
strong-material cars being a big part of it.  Lots of existing unused
efficiency potential, in cars and buildings.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From rhanson at gmu.edu  Thu Jun  8 23:24:00 2006
From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson)
Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2006 19:24:00 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <20060608210836.BC60557FD1@finney.org>
References: <20060608210836.BC60557FD1@finney.org>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060608184518.0244ab38@gmu.edu>

At 05:08 PM 6/8/2006,  Hal Finney wrote:
> > > From what I can see, emissions reductions do not make economic sense
> > >at this time.
> >
> > Perhaps, but it seems to at least make sense to tax carbon at something
> > like its estimated externality cost on others.  A $14/tC tax might be a lot
> > less that some people want, an a zero tax might be better than those large
> > taxes people want, but the $14 tax would be better than either.  Then
> > you'd want to pay people who create those substitutes for reductions at
> > that same level, and if they come up with stuff great, if not fine too.
>
>I see two problems with this.  ... Kyoto ... is full of exceptions 
>and subsidies
>that make it highly inefficient ... While a uniform carbon tax would be much
>better, it is questionable whether our present global institutions can come up
>with anything better than Kyoto.

Yes of course, an inefficient non-uniform tax could be worse than no tax.

>The second problem is that there will probably be ways of solving the
>problem for much less than $14/tC, hence charging people that much today
>is inefficient.  ...  Teller claims that a ONE-TIME set-aside
>today of 1.74 billion dollars would generate enough interest in 50 years
>to indefinitely fund a stratospheric shield.

It depends on our confidence in these lowering prices.   I wouldn't 
just want to
talk Teller's word for it, though I'd probably believe a prediction 
market.  Paying
more than we needed to might not be near as bad as not doing as much as
we should have.


Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323  



From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Fri Jun  9 00:02:20 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 17:02:20 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] [PHIL] Hofstadter on Singularity; naturalism
Message-ID: <20060609000220.GA27550@ofb.net>

Douglas Hofstadter gave a longer version of his Summit talk on the
Singularity at IU yesterday, and I tried writing up some notes.

http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/12240.html

I also just ran into a website on Naturalism, with links to Susan
Blackmore and Dan Dennett, among others.  Seems well-written and
-thought out so far.

http://naturalism.org/

-xx- Damien X-) 


From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com  Fri Jun  9 01:09:04 2006
From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki)
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 21:09:04 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <20060608163301.GO28956@leitl.org>
References: <20060608012757.4B11A57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606080340.k583e5wA008662@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060608093330.GQ28956@leitl.org>
	<7641ddc60606080901w2a4046cap241e59f3176e4351@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060608163301.GO28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <7641ddc60606081809y402e1573rdc520860c8138be5@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/8/06, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 08, 2006 at 11:01:45AM -0500, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>
> > ### Immense. An increase in the average temperatures will be very
> > useful to expand farming to feed the burgeoning population of the
> > world. The benefits of even modest warming have been calculated by
>
> What about those regions with lots of population, subsistence agriculture
> which will be hit by draught? There will be precipiation shifts, and
> arguably a decrease of arable land overall. Water wars will ensue,
> resulting in mayhem amplification. This is certainly difficult
> to quantify in $$$, as is loss of human life (Sahel & Co is perpetually
> fucked up, they really don't need a yet another hammer).

### This is a common assumption but to the best of my knowledge it is
not supported by research of appropriate quality. It is now well-known
that increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide greatly improves
plant growth, *especially* in the hottest climate, in deserts. The
mechanism has to do with the reduced need for respiration in plants
which have more CO2 in the air, which allows them to shut their
stomata, leading to less transpiration, and overall better growth. The
laboratory studies are borne out by observations of increased plant
growth in the Sahel region, well-noticeable on satellite images.

I have no doubt that there will be regions which will experience
negative economic consequences of warming and I agree with you that
nobody has yet sufficient data to confidently weigh them against the
expected gains.

Which is for me a sufficient reason to support massive spending on
research, and to not give a single penny for remediation or
restitution, until iron-clad data are available.

Rafal


From spike66 at comcast.net  Fri Jun  9 02:07:51 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 19:07:51 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
Message-ID: <200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>


> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of "Hal Finney"

...  
> 
> So global warming will be harmful, at least under a current "best guess"
> of 3 degrees C... Hal

These models tend to assume a nearly uniform increase in temperature, but I
am more ambitious than that.  What if we could warm the poles and cool the
tropics.  Would not that be a good thing?  How about making the deserts
wetter and the soggy areas dryer?  What if we had to sacrifice the polar
bears and the penguins to do it?  But if we gave up those two species, and
made new habitat for a hundred new ones, wouldn't that be a good deal?  Or
by expanding current habitats we were to save a hundred existing species?  

spike


   




From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Fri Jun  9 04:59:41 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 21:59:41 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] evolution and bee tracheas
In-Reply-To: <20060608090245.GM28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <20060609045941.27148.qmail@web60521.mail.yahoo.com>



--- Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 07, 2006 at 06:13:32PM -0700, The
> Avantguardian wrote:
> 
> > As it is, I doubt that any apocalypse -
> technological,
> > asteroidal, or otherwise would put so much as a
> dent
> 
> Do you know any insects who can survive in molten
> lava?
> Or simply in water at 140 C, for that matter?

Unlikely hypotheticals aside, my argument operates off
of the 500 million or so years of natural history as
portrayed in the fossil record. Please see the
excellently informative insect evolution time-line at
http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ent201/content/diversity.pdf
for elucidation. Keep in mind that the width of the
shaded areas of the histogram represent the diversity
of species within given orders of insects. 

The horizontal lines most likely represent asteroid
impacts that presumably were era-ending boundary
events. Notice that each causes a bottle neck of
diversity within the various orders but MOST of the
orders survive and immediately afterwards blossom into
even greater diversity than before. 

The lower line represents the Permian-Triassic
extinction event, the greatest in the fossil record,
wiping out over 90% of species. It is believed to have
been caused by TWO impactors of aproximately 30 miles
in diameter that gave rise to the Wilkes Land crater
in Antartica and Bedout crater off the coast of
Australia. These impacts were thought to cause of a
chain reaction of hyper-volcanism, global warming, and
frozen methane release that wreaked havoc on the
biosphere but merely served to turn the world into an
insect paradise. Amusingly , the Cretacious-Tertiary
boundary event (a mere 6 mile wide asteroid) that
killed off the dinosaurs did not even slow the growth
of most of the insect orders notably the beetles, the
flies, and the bees/wasps/ants.

Then again none of these impacts boiled all the oceans
(let alone vaporized it to reach your figure of 140 C)
or turned all the land into molten lava. Something
that catastropic would probably require an asteroid
the size of Ceres at 500 miles wide. While such an
impact may wipe out the insects, it is probably sure
to wipe out any computers upon which AIs are running
and atomize all nanotech anyways. After all molten
slag is how they killed the Terminator in the second
movie. :)      
 
> > in the insect supremacy. Should self-replicating
> > misanthropic AIs ever manage to knock us off our
> 
> They don't have to be misantrophic, just uncaring.

It is hard to be hyperintelligent AND completely
uncaring. It would require a mental disorder bordering
on psychopathy. I am not a superintelligence yet I
pity the worms on the sidewalk after a rain.
> 
> > pedestal, I am rather confident that there will
> still
> > be cockroaches scurrying around under the
> Terminator's
> > metallic feet.
> 
> So if you strip-mine the planet for carbon, and nuke
> off the volatiles your cockroaches will scamper on
> bare rock, in a vacuum?

Unless these as of yet uncreated AI are designed as
nihilistic smart-WMD, they would have little motive to
do something like that. If smart humans are any kind
of model for superintelligence, they would not even be
fast replicators. After all, why would
hyperintelligent beings create more competition for
themselves by runaway procreation?


Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From xyz at iq.org  Fri Jun  9 05:06:30 2006
From: xyz at iq.org (Harry Harrison)
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2006 15:06:30 +1000
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <1149829590.4306.263419348@webmail.messagingengine.com>

> am more ambitious than that.  What if we could warm the poles and cool
> the
> tropics.  Would not that be a good thing?  How about making the deserts

Heat is not enough for life; you also need an energy gradient. While making the poles less reflective by covering them with pants will bring down more solar energy, the total received by artic regions will still be close to zero six months of the year, only reaching a little above (due to the longer day) 0.6 equatorial solar energy units during the summer solstice. This is an interesting calculation to do analytically, btw.

But a warmer south pole would make life easier for mining companies and fossil prospectors.



From sjatkins at gmail.com  Fri Jun  9 08:13:21 2006
From: sjatkins at gmail.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2006 01:13:21 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
Message-ID: <48DFA0C3-C544-41EF-94CB-9E2229AA7CCF@mac.com>


On Jun 8, 2006, at 10:58 AM, Hal Finney wrote:


>
> One final point.  I haven't yet seen Al Gore's global warming movie,
> An Inconvenient Truth.  However I'll note that the title is somewhat
> misleading, as the "truth" that he presents is actually quite  
> convenient
> for supporters of centralization, world government, economic controls,
> and collective action - in short, for leftists, and for Al Gore  
> himself.


This really misses the point completely.  Centralization is not  
necessarily the only or the best way to deal with global warming.


>
> Listening to a TV review of the movie, they quoted Gore as saying
> that within 10 years we will reach a tipping point, and if we don't do
> something by then we are doomed to very bad consequences.  This is his
> "inconvenient truth".  But listen to what Science magazine wrote a few
> weeks ago:
>
>> A central feature of this long baseline is this: At no time in at
>> least the past 10 million years has the atmospheric concentration
>> of CO2 exceeded the present value of 380 ppmv. At this time in the
>> Miocene, there were no major ice sheets in Greenland, sea level was
>> several meters higher than today's (envision a very skinny Florida),
>> and temperatures were several degrees higher. A more recent point of
>> reference, and the subject of two papers in this issue, is the  
>> Eemian:
>> the previous interglacial, about 130,000 to 120,000 years ago. This
>> was a warm climate, comparable to our Holocene, during which sea  
>> levels
>> were several meters higher than today's, even though CO2  
>> concentrations
>> remained much lower than today's postindustrial level.
>
> http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/311/5768/1673
>
> The real inconvenient truth is that emissions reductions will not
> stop the catastrophic consequences of global warming.  Even enormously
> costly efforts will make only a small difference.  The only solution
> is technology.  This is not a lesson that Al Gore is particularly  
> eager
> to teach, but it is what the world must learn in order to deal with  
> this
> problem rationally and efficiently.
>

Al Gore is usually a strong advocate of technology.  Do you really  
thing he cares more about centralization than about doing what can be  
done to mitigate a disaster?  Perhaps we could all do with a bit less  
sniping of one another and instead work together on solutions.

- samantha


From fortean1 at mindspring.com  Fri Jun  9 08:26:17 2006
From: fortean1 at mindspring.com (Terry W. Colvin)
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2006 01:26:17 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD [PvT] Re: Climate skepticism patterns
Message-ID: <448930A9.4000609@mindspring.com>

It's not at all smart to mess with Mother Nature (or Gaia, whomever you 
chose). You can not go around upsetting the balance with which the Earth 
and most particularly the atmosphere handles incoming Solar 
radiation-certainly the CFC problem with the O3 layer and the current 
problems with Climate Change should tell everyone that. First off, you 
start increasing snowfall in the Arctic and you might end up with too 
much snow that doesn't melt during the Summer which will increase 
Earth's Albedo and could lead to something far beyond the realm of 
anyone's thinking right now. UV radiation from the Sun is critical to 
plant growth and in the formation of natural vitamins in our food 
supply. Also, it's the annual variation in UV due to the changing 
insolation during the seasons that triggers both leaf fall and the 
leafing out of deciduous trees-no UV no fruit.
 
Steve

 

-- 
"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 *
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   TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >
[Southeast Asia/Secret War in Laos veterans, Allies, CIA/NSA,
and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.]



From eugen at leitl.org  Fri Jun  9 10:56:05 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2006 12:56:05 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] evolution and bee tracheas
In-Reply-To: <20060609045941.27148.qmail@web60521.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20060608090245.GM28956@leitl.org>
	<20060609045941.27148.qmail@web60521.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20060609105605.GQ28956@leitl.org>

On Thu, Jun 08, 2006 at 09:59:41PM -0700, The Avantguardian wrote:

> > > As it is, I doubt that any apocalypse -
> > technological,
> > > asteroidal, or otherwise would put so much as a
> > dent
> > 
> > Do you know any insects who can survive in molten
> > lava?
> > Or simply in water at 140 C, for that matter?
> 
> Unlikely hypotheticals aside, my argument operates off

Do you think the Mars-sized impactor which created
Luna was unlikely? I agree. It has happend, though.

Do you think that solar constant going up as Sun starts 
going up the main sequence (due in about half a gigayear)
is unlikely, too? There are certainly no
insects on Venus. A few more % of the solar constant, and
this planet won't look too hot (pun intended).

> of the 500 million or so years of natural history as

No fair cherry-picking data. What has gone before
and what will come after (unless we interfere) will
be equally natural, and quite deadly.

> portrayed in the fossil record. Please see the
> excellently informative insect evolution time-line at
> http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ent201/content/diversity.pdf
> for elucidation. Keep in mind that the width of the
> shaded areas of the histogram represent the diversity
> of species within given orders of insects. 

Again, what is insect diversity at 450 K Earth surface
temperature? What is insect diversity at 6 mbar N2?
 
> The horizontal lines most likely represent asteroid
> impacts that presumably were era-ending boundary
> events. Notice that each causes a bottle neck of
> diversity within the various orders but MOST of the
> orders survive and immediately afterwards blossom into
> even greater diversity than before. 

Do you think biology survived the Mars-sized impactor
which melted the crust and wreaked havoc to volatiles?
 
> The lower line represents the Permian-Triassic
> extinction event, the greatest in the fossil record,
> wiping out over 90% of species. It is believed to have
> been caused by TWO impactors of aproximately 30 miles
> in diameter that gave rise to the Wilkes Land crater
> in Antartica and Bedout crater off the coast of
> Australia. These impacts were thought to cause of a
> chain reaction of hyper-volcanism, global warming, and
> frozen methane release that wreaked havoc on the
> biosphere but merely served to turn the world into an
> insect paradise. Amusingly , the Cretacious-Tertiary
> boundary event (a mere 6 mile wide asteroid) that
> killed off the dinosaurs did not even slow the growth
> of most of the insect orders notably the beetles, the
> flies, and the bees/wasps/ants.
> 
> Then again none of these impacts boiled all the oceans

Right. Molten Earth crust doesn't preserve fossil records.

> (let alone vaporized it to reach your figure of 140 C)
> or turned all the land into molten lava. Something
> that catastropic would probably require an asteroid
> the size of Ceres at 500 miles wide. While such an
> impact may wipe out the insects, it is probably sure
> to wipe out any computers upon which AIs are running

A solid-state civilization would 1) not live on
just planetary surfaces 2) be capable of predicting
and deflecting Ceres-sized impactor 3) would probably 
have eaten that Ceres-sized impactor for breakfast, and 
everything else but the gas giants
(arguably, even gas giants).

Unfortunately, they would also mean teotwawki to biology. 

> and atomize all nanotech anyways. After all molten
> slag is how they killed the Terminator in the second
> movie. :)      

Ah, Hollywood science again. 
  
> It is hard to be hyperintelligent AND completely
> uncaring. It would require a mental disorder bordering

I disagree. I'm completely uncaring about virus particles
in the pond 325.25 km from here which is right now being
turned into parking lot. No harsh feelings, it isn't
personal.

> on psychopathy. I am not a superintelligence yet I
> pity the worms on the sidewalk after a rain.

But why are you tolerating the sidewalk, if worms
are so precious? Maybe being able to drive to work
is more important than a few drowned worms? Speaking
about extinctions, we're busily causing one which
could become the greatest ever -- ultimatively resulting
in our own extinction.
 
> > So if you strip-mine the planet for carbon, and nuke
> > off the volatiles your cockroaches will scamper on
> > bare rock, in a vacuum?
> 
> Unless these as of yet uncreated AI are designed as
> nihilistic smart-WMD, they would have little motive to

No, that's just plain evolution. It's just postbiology
has a different niche than biology, and unless postbiology
collectively cares about preserving biology we will leave
even less traces than prebiotic chemistry formerly 
covering the surface of this planet.

> do something like that. If smart humans are any kind
> of model for superintelligence, they would not even be

What makes you think postbiology will be superintelligent?
The bulk of the biomass isn't exactly intelligent.

> fast replicators. After all, why would
> hyperintelligent beings create more competition for

Why do you think the bulk of postbiomass will
be hyperintelligent?

> themselves by runaway procreation?

Following your logic, life would never have happened.
Why expand beyond the first pond?

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From natasha at natasha.cc  Fri Jun  9 13:42:25 2006
From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More)
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2006 08:42:25 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] MEDIA:  Meme Therapy on Transhumanism
Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20060609084111.041e1b00@pop-server.austin.rr.com>

The interview with me at Meme Therapy is up.
http://www.memetherapy.blogspot.com/


<http://www.natasha.cc/>Natasha <http://www.natasha.cc/>Vita-More
Cultural Strategist - Designer
President, <http://www.extropy.org/>Extropy Institute
Member, <http://www.profuturists.com/>Association of Professional Futurists
Founder, <http://www.transhumanist.biz/>Transhumanist Arts & Culture

If you draw a circle in the sand and study only what's inside the circle, 
then that is a closed-system perspective. If you study what is inside the 
circle and everything outside the circle, then that is an open system 
perspective. - Buckminster Fuller


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From natasha at natasha.cc  Fri Jun  9 14:13:18 2006
From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More)
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2006 09:13:18 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] MEDIA:  Meme Therapy on Transhumanism
Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20060609091239.0419ec20@pop-server.austin.rr.com>


The interview with me at Meme Therapy is up.

http://www.memetherapy.blogspot.com/


<http://www.natasha.cc/>Natasha <http://www.natasha.cc/>Vita-More
Cultural Strategist - Designer
President, <http://www.extropy.org/>Extropy Institute
Member, <http://www.profuturists.com/>Association of Professional Futurists
Founder, <http://www.transhumanist.biz/>Transhumanist Arts & Culture

If you draw a circle in the sand and study only what's inside the circle, 
then that is a closed-system perspective. If you study what is inside the 
circle and everything outside the circle, then that is an open system 
perspective. - Buckminster Fuller


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From mstriz at gmail.com  Fri Jun  9 18:55:52 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2006 14:55:52 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/8/06, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:

> These models tend to assume a nearly uniform increase in temperature, but I
> am more ambitious than that.  What if we could warm the poles and cool the
> tropics.  Would not that be a good thing?  How about making the deserts
> wetter and the soggy areas dryer?  What if we had to sacrifice the polar
> bears and the penguins to do it?  But if we gave up those two species, and
> made new habitat for a hundred new ones, wouldn't that be a good deal?  Or
> by expanding current habitats we were to save a hundred existing species?

*blinks*

You wouldn't just lose two species.  Ecosystems are interwoven.  You
would lose thousands.  The the species that you would gain back would
take millions of years to evolve... if we completely eliminate the
practices that are currently producing the largest rate of extinction
in earth's history.

Martin


From jrd1415 at gmail.com  Fri Jun  9 21:31:23 2006
From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (jeffrey davis)
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2006 14:31:23 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Singularity Summit Photos, audio,
	presentations and blog coverage available online
Message-ID: <a6a17bd40606091431q1c3583f3me83cf8b3812a8a99@mail.gmail.com>

Perhaps it's old news, but here is a copy of an email I received from folks
responsible for the Singularity Summit.


Best, Jeff Davis

   "Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
                           Ray Charles

                          ************************************************
Dear Jeff,

We hope you made it to the Singularity Summit at Stanford and had a
great time!

There were 1300 in attendance - the largest single day gathering on
these dialogues.

Photos, audio, presentations and blog coverage are now online:

- Photography: http://sss.stanford.edu/coverage/press/
- Audio: http://sss.stanford.edu/coverage/audioandvideo/
- Powerpoints: http://sss.stanford.edu/coverage/powerpoints/
- Media and Blog Coverage: http://sss.stanford.edu/press/
- Relevant Reading: http://sss.stanford.edu/reading/

We put an immense amount of effort into the site to create an
educational archive. Please take advantage! The site can educate tens of
thousands of people about these issues, as long as the URL reaches them. If
you would, please take a few minutes to tell others, especially about the
audio.

Let us know if you blog about the summit coverage and we will link back
to you here:

http://sss.stanford.edu/press/

The exceptional group of volunteers, staff, speakers and co-sponsors
who made the summit possible are recognized here:

http://sss.stanford.edu/coverage/thank_you/

Feel free to get in touch with us if you would like to follow up.

Best wishes,

Tyler Emerson
Executive Director
Singularity Institute
emerson at singinst.org<http://us.f600.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=emerson at singinst.org&YY=88845&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0>
650-353-6063 cell

Carolyn L Burke
Communications Director
Singularity Institute
burke at singinst.org<http://us.f600.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=burke at singinst.org&YY=88845&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0>
416-893-4280 cell
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From asa at nada.kth.se  Sat Jun 10 01:55:26 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 03:55:26 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Martin Striz wrote:
> You wouldn't just lose two species.  Ecosystems are interwoven.  You
> would lose thousands.  The the species that you would gain back would
> take millions of years to evolve... if we completely eliminate the
> practices that are currently producing the largest rate of extinction
> in earth's history.

And the fun thing is, this could happen if you do Kyoto... or not do
Kyoto. Or L1 solar shields, fixes for global dimming or introducing a
hydrogen economy.

The argument that we shouldn't do something because unknown but
potentially horrific risks may exist only works when we have more rational
reason to believe some choices are indeed more risky thank others. Big
things like L1 shades are probably more problematic than not producing
much greenhouse gasses, but L1 shades can also be quickly turned on and
off if they seem bad, which is much harder with an emissions economy.
Fearful of path dependency and tipping points? You better map out the
phase space better. In the end the unknown risk argument only leads to
conservatism, and the conservative approach is to do what we always have
been doing... which isn't very encouraging when thinking of the climate.

Similarly the intervovenness argument is also a deeply conservative
argument. You can use it to defend monarchy and capitalism as it suits
you. After all, who are we to meddle with the great spontaneous orders?

"It is the international system of currency which determines the vitality
of life on this planet. THAT is the natural order of things today. THAT is
the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. And YOU
have meddled with the primal forces of nature. And YOU WILL ATONE."

Fortunately ecology is not just intervoven but robust and inventive.
Otherwise it wouldn't have lasted the other climate change periods. I
think a bit of intelligence, some knowledge and plenty of monitoring can
be used to fix things. Maybe not back to what they were, but we will never
be able to agree on when it was "right" anyway (I want the Holocene
climate optimum flora back!). So we better turn forward and think about
the targets we want instead.

Besides, have anybody calculated how we rate compared to K/T and Perm? I
think we still are within the normal noise rate of species/megayear?

[ I never do drunken postings. It is three in the morning and I have read
too much econometrics. ]

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From spike66 at comcast.net  Sat Jun 10 02:57:27 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2006 19:57:27 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <200606100308.k5A381JV027062@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> 
> Martin Striz wrote:
> > You wouldn't just lose two species.  Ecosystems are interwoven.  You
> > would lose thousands.  The the species that you would gain back would
> > take millions of years to evolve... if we completely eliminate the
> > practices that are currently producing the largest rate of extinction
> > in earth's history...


Ecosystems are interwoven, but some ecosystems are relatively simple, such
as the poles.  Few species are present there, and their interaction is lower
than in other places.  It is everyone against the cold there.  Species need
not take millions of years to evolve, if we design them.  spike








From mstriz at gmail.com  Sat Jun 10 03:47:11 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2006 23:47:11 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606092047i49d9a2e8wc773584c8c7d0d65@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/9/06, Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se> wrote:

> Similarly the intervovenness argument is also a deeply conservative
> argument. You can use it to defend monarchy and capitalism as it suits
> you. After all, who are we to meddle with the great spontaneous orders?

Nature is red in tooth and claw.  Some have argued that our morality
should reflect that (Cf. Herbert Spencer).  Even if they were wrong,
that doesn't make it less true of nature.  Even if an interwovenness
argument was used to defend indefensible things, it is still a fact of
ecosystems.  Comparing it to bogus arguments doesn't make it less
true.

> Fortunately ecology is not just intervoven but robust and inventive.
> Otherwise it wouldn't have lasted the other climate change periods.

Granted.  I certainly don't think that ecosystems won't bounce back.
But it takes a long time. We have an uncanny ability to destroy them
faster than they proliferate.

We may even be able to create species de novo someday.  However, some
vague prospect beyond the horizon shouldn't be a license to act
irresponsibly.  Should I not save any money for retirement because
there's a small chance that the Singularity, postbiology, or whatever
will arrive before then?  That would be stupid.

> I
> think a bit of intelligence, some knowledge and plenty of monitoring can
> be used to fix things. Maybe not back to what they were, but we will never
> be able to agree on when it was "right" anyway

I think that at this point the trajectory needs to be changed.

Martin


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Sat Jun 10 05:32:40 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2006 22:32:40 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>

On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 03:55:26AM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:

> Besides, have anybody calculated how we rate compared to K/T and Perm? I
> think we still are within the normal noise rate of species/megayear?

More like 100-10,000 times the normal rate.  Possibly comparable to K/T,
especially if things go on.  Google on [species extinction rate] or
http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2001/12/12/point/

Climate change, exotic species introductions, habitat destruction which
has non-linear effects due to fragmentation, overhunting/fishing.
Gorillas and orangs and bonobos are on the brink, chimps not much
better.  We're burning biological libraries accumulated over millions of
years, thousands or millions, of Alexandrias going up in smoke.

http://www.well.com/~davidu/extinction.html

"Half of all species extinct in 100 years."  "One-fifth could disappear
in 30 years."  "The Sixth Extinction".

-xx- Damien X-) 


From benboc at lineone.net  Sat Jun 10 06:14:20 2006
From: benboc at lineone.net (ben)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 07:14:20 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Opinions on Singularity
In-Reply-To: <mailman.2329.1149815348.1390.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
References: <mailman.2329.1149815348.1390.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
Message-ID: <448A633C.60502@lineone.net>

Anne-Marie Taylor <femmechakra at yahoo.ca> wrote:

> I'm hoping for opinions on:
>  What are the advantages to The Singularity occuring?

Here are some opinions on this:

POTENTIAL advantages (not saying that this is what i expect, understand)
are mainly allowing us (people in general) to lever ourselves out of the
shithole we find ourselves in at present. Allowing us to live as long as
we want, rid ourselves of diseases, poverty, oppression, allowing us a
much better chance of realising our potentials as thinking beings.
Maximising our chances of happiness. Giving us (thinking beings in
general) a fighting chance to survive into the future.

>  What do most people think the biggest risks are?

Biggest risk of course, is total annihilation. Lesser risks are
enslavement, many other possible ways of making our lives worse rather
than better. Perhaps worst of all, involuntarily changing us, changing
who we are, how we think. Some will think that's worse than death.

>  What is most important to you when it comes to technology?

That it's continuing development not be stifled.

In a sense, technology defines us, it's what we do. Without it, what are
we? Just another monkey. No, worse, a very poor monkey. Strip a human
being of all technology and set them free in a totally natural
environment, and prevent them from using any technology. How long will
they last? I reckon a few days. Some might manage a few weeks, but i
doubt if any human can live for long without technology.
So stifling technology is stifling us. Do that, and you kill us, sooner
or later.

It's no good saying "only so much technology, but no more", like the
Amish do. What could the Amish do about a smallpox epidemic? Just scale
that up. What could we, with our current technology, do about a big
asteroid strike? A massive solar flare? Nearby supernova? Interstellar
hydrogen cloud? etc. We need to keep going, or we die.

Actually, that sounds a bit grim, doesn't it? I think it's important to
make sure we have fun along the way, too!

ben



From xyz at iq.org  Sat Jun 10 07:27:38 2006
From: xyz at iq.org (Harry Harrison)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 17:27:38 +1000
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <200606100308.k5A381JV027062@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <200606100308.k5A381JV027062@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <1149924458.31672.263502072@webmail.messagingengine.com>


> Ecosystems are interwoven, but some ecosystems are relatively simple,
> such
> as the poles.  Few species are present there, and their interaction is
> lower
> than in other places.  It is everyone against the cold there.  Species
> need
> not take millions of years to evolve, if we design them.  spike

This argument, about the poles, is obviously untrue. Since there are no local energy
sources worth speaking of on the land, energy must be obtained from members who
have come from elsewhere -- i.e the from sea and frequently the distant sea,
making the poles the most ecologically dependent places on earth.




From amara at amara.com  Sat Jun 10 08:31:27 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 10:31:27 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat]  Climate skepticism patterns
Message-ID: <p06230900c0b033747bbf@[23.237.66.13]>



>This argument, about the poles, is obviously untrue. Since there are no
>local energy sources worth speaking of on the land

Well there there's these:

Mt. Erebus (on Ross Island)
http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/current_volcs/erebus/erebus.html

Iceland's volcanoes (don't know how close to the poles you want to be)
http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/Iceland/overview.html

Amara


From scerir at libero.it  Sat Jun 10 11:57:17 2006
From: scerir at libero.it (scerir)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 13:57:17 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
References: <200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <000f01c68c85$062c66b0$81bd1f97@nomedxgm1aalex>

Spike:
> What is the value of a polar bear?
> Couldn't we just breed the Canadian grisly
> to be white?

Since oceans warm slower than land,
and since there is much more land
in the N pole than in the S pole,
we get different warming in each
pole (and different warming
'amplification' in each pole) .

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/01/polar-amplification/

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/more-on-the-arctic/

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/the-arctic-climate-impact-assessment/

So, artic bears can go south,
and do not scare on thin ice then
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,138346,00.html





From rhanson at gmu.edu  Sat Jun 10 12:09:19 2006
From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 08:09:19 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Two draft papers: AI and existential  risk;
	heuristics and biases
In-Reply-To: <44830B56.3080003@pobox.com>
References: <44830B56.3080003@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060609224449.02383310@gmu.edu>

At 12:33 PM 6/4/2006, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>These are drafts of my chapters for Nick Bostrom's forthcoming edited
>volume _Global Catastrophic Risks_.
>_Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks_
>    http://singinst.org/Biases.pdf
>An introduction to the field of heuristics and biases ...
>_Artificial Intelligence and Global Risk_
>    http://singinst.org/AIRisk.pdf
>The new standard introductory material on Friendly AI.

The chapter on cognitive biases was excellent.   Regarding the other 
chapter, while you seem to have thought lots about many related 
issues over the years, you don't seem to have worked much on the 
issue I get stuck on: the idea that a single relatively isolated AI 
system could suddenly change from negligible to overwhelmingly powerful.

You warn repeatedly about how easy is is to fool oneself into 
thinking one understands AI, and you want readers to apply this to 
their intuitions about the goals an AI may have.   But you seem to be 
relying almost entirely on unarticulated intuitions when you conclude 
that very large and rapid improvement of isolated AIs is likely.

You say that humans today and natural selection do not self-improve 
in the "strong sense" because humans "haven't rewritten the human 
brain," "its limbic core, its cerebral cortex, its prefrontal 
self-models" and natural selection has not "rearchitected" "the 
process of mutation and recombination and selection," with "its focus 
on allele frequencies" while an AI "could rewrite its code from 
scratch."  And that is pretty much the full extent of your relevant argument.

This argument seems to me to need a whole lot of elaboration and 
clarification to be persuasive, if it is to go beyond the mere 
logical possibility of rapid self-improvement.   The code of an AI is 
just one part of a larger system that would allow an AI to 
self-improve, just as the genetic code is a self-modifiable part of 
the larger system of natural selection, and human culture and beliefs 
are a self-modifiable part of human improvement today.

In principle every part of each system could be self-modified, while 
in practice some parts are harder to modify than others.  Perhaps 
there are concepts and principles which could help us to understand 
why the relative ease of self-modification of the parts of the AI 
improvement process are importantly different that in these other 
cases.   But you do not seem to have yet articulated any such 
concepts or principles.

A standard abstraction seems useful to me:  when knowledge 
accumulates in many small compatible representations, growth is in 
the largest system that can share such representations.   Since DNA 
is sharable mainly within a species, the improvements that any one 
small family of members can produce are usually small compared to the 
improvements transferred by sex within the species.  Since humans 
share their knowledge via language and copying practices, the 
improvements that a small group of people can make are small compared 
to the improvements transferred from others, and made available by 
trading with those others.

The obvious question about a single AI is why its improvements could 
not with the usual ease be transferred to other AIs or humans, or 
made available via trades with those others.   If so, this single AI 
would just be part of our larger system of self-improvement.   The 
scenario of rapid isolated self-improvement would seem to be where 
the AI found a new system of self-improvement, where knowledge 
production was far more effective, *and* where internal sharing of 
knowledge was vastly easier than external sharing.

While this is logically possible, I do not yet see a reason to think 
it likely.   Today a single human can share the ideas within his own 
head far easier than he can share those ideas with others - 
communication with other people is far more expensive and 
error-prone.   Yet the rate at which a single human can innovate is 
so small relative to the larger economy that most innovation comes 
from ideas shared across people.  So a modest advantage for the AI's 
internal sharing would not be enough - the advantage would have to be 
enormous.




Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323  



From asa at nada.kth.se  Sat Jun 10 13:50:43 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 15:50:43 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Damien Sullivan wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 03:55:26AM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
>> Besides, have anybody calculated how we rate compared to K/T and Perm? I
>> think we still are within the normal noise rate of species/megayear?
>
> More like 100-10,000 times the normal rate.  Possibly comparable to K/T,
> especially if things go on.

A little dive into the data.

I found http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/extinction/ which has some good
data. The main problem is that we get rates rather than absolute numbers
so far. Doing a bit of counting in one of Baez diagrams produces a lower
bound of around 416 species. http://extinctanimals.petermaas.nl/ gives 921
animal species cand 86 plant species. So if we make the assumption that
this about half the number of real extinctions, we get around 2000 already
extinct species. But this doesn't fit at all with
http://www.soc.duke.edu/~pmorgan/levin&levin.2002.the_real_biodiversity_crisis.html
who claim that about 2000 pacific bird species are gone. Maybe the above
lists were just looking at obvious macrospecies and not the ones
specialists care about. Going to UNEP gives 380+371 (extinct plus possibly
extinct) vascular plants, but I cant get the stupid animal database to
give a complete number.
http://www.unep-wcmc.org/index.html?http://www.unep-wcmc.org/species/animals/animal_redlist.html~main
Making the assumption that the ratio 751/86 for the plants repeats for the
animals, we get a multiplied estimate of the extinctanimals number as 8042
species. So the order of magnitude is about 10,000 species or so, so far.

The total number of species is somewhere between 2-100 million.
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/FelixNisimov.shtml
which gives an extinction so far of 0.5-0.001%. This indeed seems to be
within the noise level.

It is probably indeed shaping up to be the biggest mass extinction since
K/T, but so far it hasn't really got started. The estimates of coming
extinction rates lie between 0.7 (Lomborg) - 50% (various) over the next
century. So if the pssimists are right and nothing happens, we are going
to be on par with K/T (to get to perm we need to work for a few more
centuries).


So, how do we fix it? Looking at it from the big perspective it is fairly
clear that having a big population of a large mammal in all parts of the
ecosystem and mass-flows between previously isolated areas is not
compatible with the past kind of biosphere. So either we go back to being
a smaller species with less room for an interesting civilization,
re-enginer the biosphere to work with us (e.g. increasing the number of
species by engineering new ones and/or designing them to fit with the
technosphere) or go extinct in a good way (preferably by simply going
postbiological or (less likely) leave the planet). Or some combination of
all three. Upload civilizations can be pretty ecological.

It seems to me that most of the traditional proposals of being nice to the
planet suffer the assumption that we can be as we always have, yet in an
unobtrusive way. A bit like wanting cats to be cats, yet not kill small
animals or shed fur.




-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From asa at nada.kth.se  Sat Jun 10 14:24:23 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 16:24:23 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns
In-Reply-To: <1149924458.31672.263502072@webmail.messagingengine.com>
References: <200606100308.k5A381JV027062@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<1149924458.31672.263502072@webmail.messagingengine.com>
Message-ID: <35870.86.143.246.157.1149949463.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Harry Harrison wrote:
> This argument, about the poles, is obviously untrue. Since there are no
> local energy
> sources worth speaking of on the land, energy must be obtained from
> members who
> have come from elsewhere -- i.e the from sea and frequently the distant
> sea,
> making the poles the most ecologically dependent places on earth.

No, this is not true. Energy is provided by the sun, as everywhere else.
The productivity of the arctic seas is quite significant despite the long
polar nights and low solar angle. 24 hour sunlight makes the algae grow
quite well, in turn feeding huge amounts of krill. In fact, during summer
months the antarctic upwellings have among the highest primary
productivity anywhere on earth.

Since as a rough rule of thumb the amount of biomass decreases with one
order of magnitude for every trophic level you go up in the ecosystem, you
can imagine the total mass of Antarctic penguins (an enormous, cute and
fish-smelling pile). At their side is a ten times bigger pile of fish.
Beside that there is a hundred times larger pile of krill. And towering
above them there is a thousand times larger pile of algae.

In fact, the simpler ecosystems in the arctics are the reason the numbers
of most arctic species are larger than one would expect. There are simply
fewer species to share the same trophic level.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com  Sat Jun 10 15:05:05 2006
From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 11:05:05 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <7641ddc60606100805r4b463933k2b25a48fca8f91a4@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/10/06, Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se> wrote:
 http://www.unep-wcmc.org/index.html?http://www.unep-wcmc.org/species/animals/animal_redlist.html~main
> Making the assumption that the ratio 751/86 for the plants repeats for the
> animals, we get a multiplied estimate of the extinctanimals number as 8042
> species. So the order of magnitude is about 10,000 species or so, so far.
>
> The total number of species is somewhere between 2-100 million.
> http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/FelixNisimov.shtml
> which gives an extinction so far of 0.5-0.001%. This indeed seems to be
> within the noise level.

### The actual number of species gone extinct since the ascendancy of
man is surely much higher. Diversity surveys consistently show that
every little patch of forest tends to have a lot of species that
nobody has seen anywhere else, and many millions of patches of forest
have been cut recently.
----------------------------------------------
>
> So, how do we fix it?

### So why bother fixing it? The 99.9% majority of species has no
economic value for agricultural or industrial purposes. There may be a
few percent of extant species that have a discernible aesthetic value
to many humans. Personally, I am very fond of lush forests and meadows
but such pleasing scenery can be created with a few thousands of
species, without the need to preserve the untold millions of bugs that
are known to inhabit them under natural conditions. Of course, this
form of value exists only for the affluent humans like you and me and
most people have really no use for anything except wheat, cows and the
like.

Besides, if we really want to have more species, it will be cheaper to
make them tomorrow than spending a lot of effort on saving them today.
Spending today's money on large-scale species preservation (i.e. land
conservation measures) means deprivation for many humans today when
they don't feel the need for exotic animals but spending tomorrow's
money will buy a lot more, since genetic engineering will be much
cheaper.

I think that Nature shall be the servant of Man (and Woman). When
calls are made to preserve species for their own sake at substantial
cost to humans, it means a reversal of this relationship, which I find
to be quite odious.

Rafal


From spike66 at comcast.net  Sat Jun 10 15:23:49 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 08:23:49 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606100805r4b463933k2b25a48fca8f91a4@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <200606101535.k5AFZkbQ019156@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

...
> 
> ### The actual number of species gone extinct since the ascendancy of
> man is surely much higher. Diversity surveys consistently show that
> every little patch of forest tends to have a lot of species that
> nobody has seen anywhere else, and many millions of patches of forest
> have been cut recently.
> ----------------------------------------------
> >
> > So, how do we fix it?

Stop dumping fresh water into the sea, divert rivers inland to the mostly
wasted US interior, create a rain forest there.  Move species from the
doomed Brazilian rain forest to that place.  Charge touristas to see the
biodiversity, kind of like a huge green Disneyland.  

I noticed that USian environmentalists do not flock to Brazil in huge
numbers, and I fully understand why: it is useless to preach environmental
stewardship to hungry people.  I figure it will take another thirty to fifty
years before the US is as crowded and hungry as Brazil is today.  So we have
time to temporarily save a huge number of rain forest species, if we get
right on it.

spike








From asa at nada.kth.se  Sat Jun 10 15:55:35 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 17:55:35 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606100805r4b463933k2b25a48fca8f91a4@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<7641ddc60606100805r4b463933k2b25a48fca8f91a4@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <36127.86.143.246.157.1149954935.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>> So, how do we fix it?
>
> ### So why bother fixing it?

As I see it in my personal value system, diversity of complex, contingent
systems have an aesthetic (if not moral) value. Even if a species of bug
isn't useful in any human sense it is still valuable. It is contingent:
re-run evolution and you will not get it again, so removing it will mean
an irreversible loss of information. Sure, we could make our own
replacement species, but that would merely make it contingent upon our
human culture - it would be like another piece of music, not a composer.

> I think that Nature shall be the servant of Man (and Woman). When
> calls are made to preserve species for their own sake at substantial
> cost to humans, it means a reversal of this relationship, which I find
> to be quite odious.

I regard humanity as co-creators with nature. Or maybe (to link with the
previous metaphor), as partners in a musical jam session. We of course
need to have subsystems of the ecosystem that "work for us" and becoming
slaves to some imagined natural order is very politically and
philosophically bad, but the border between the human and non-human is
fairly blurred. And there is no need to keep a sharp line between them if
we ask ourselves what particular goals we (and other systems) are aiming
for rather than take an all-or-nothing approach saying human goals OK,
nonhuman goals not OK.



-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Sat Jun 10 17:36:55 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 10:36:55 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606100805r4b463933k2b25a48fca8f91a4@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<7641ddc60606100805r4b463933k2b25a48fca8f91a4@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060610173655.GA19098@ofb.net>

On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 11:05:05AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:

> Besides, if we really want to have more species, it will be cheaper to
> make them tomorrow than spending a lot of effort on saving them today.

This sort of gambling of present things for hypothetical future
capability is part of what strikes normal people as wild-eyed optimism
and religiousness about the Singularity.  "It doesn't matter what we do
now we'll fix it later."  "We can't fix it now."  "But we will be able
to!  Trust us!"

Genetic engineering misses the point, anyway.  Yeah, we might be able to
make something, but what?  It's not just the diversity, it's the
*design*, and the encoded history of the Earth, in the diversity today;
that wouldn't be possible to replicate.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com  Sat Jun 10 18:06:35 2006
From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 14:06:35 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd:  Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606101045w4aa50e7bod29d0b3c4ec842c3@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<7641ddc60606100805r4b463933k2b25a48fca8f91a4@mail.gmail.com>
	<36127.86.143.246.157.1149954935.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<7641ddc60606101045w4aa50e7bod29d0b3c4ec842c3@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <7641ddc60606101106q1015fdd2se037da05b2289549@mail.gmail.com>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>
Date: Jun 10, 2006 1:45 PM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
To: Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se>


On 6/10/06, Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se> wrote:
> Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> >> So, how do we fix it?
> >
> > ### So why bother fixing it?
>
> As I see it in my personal value system, diversity of complex, contingent
> systems have an aesthetic (if not moral) value. Even if a species of bug
> isn't useful in any human sense it is still valuable. It is contingent:
> re-run evolution and you will not get it again, so removing it will mean
> an irreversible loss of information. Sure, we could make our own
> replacement species, but that would merely make it contingent upon our
> human culture - it would be like another piece of music, not a composer.

### As those Romans used to say, De gustibus non disputandum est, so I
accept that your taste in beauty includes creatures that for me have
no value whatsoever.

Still, I am curious, why would you see an irreversible loss of
information, in the sense of losing a bug that won't happen again, as
a loss of value. Does all complex information have value for you per
se?

If I want to resurrect the T.Rex from a rotten bone, it's not because
T.Rex is somehow important in and of itself, but rather because I find
the notion of making one a stimulating exercise, the kind of genetic
feat that I would like to fool around with once the important issues
(i.e. curing aging and disease) are taken care of. The T.Rex would be
a plaything for me, to be made or unmade as I see fit, and not my ward
I would be morally bound to take care of.

BTW, I am sure we will be able to resurrect the T.Rex. I read that
their bones actually still stink like rotten meat, after all these 65
million years. There is no way that all of the DNA could be gone,
given that DNA is known to bind to apatite, one of the main
constituents of bone. Even if it takes dissection with an ATM rather
than simple PCR, there must be enough fragments longer than 14 - 15 bp
to piece together the full length of the genome. Late pre-Singularity
technology might be just good enough to make him roar again, to the
amusement of spectators.

----------------------------------------
And there is no need to keep a sharp line between them if
> we ask ourselves what particular goals we (and other systems) are aiming
> for rather than take an all-or-nothing approach saying human goals OK,
> nonhuman goals not OK.

### Do bugs have goals? Do ecosystems have goals?

I would ascribe goals only to sentient creatures, and as a libertarian
I may not transgress against their property rights but this seems to
be far removed from the question of preservation of non-sentient
species.

Rafal


-- 
Rafal Smigrodzki, MD-PhD
Chief Clinical Officer,
Gencia Corporation
706 B Forest St.

Charlottesville, VA 22903

tel: (434) 295-4800

fax: (434) 295-4951



This electronic message transmission contains information from the
biotechnology firm of Gencia Corporation which may be confidential or
privileged. The information is intended to be for the use of the
individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended
recipient, be aware that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use
of the contents of this information is prohibited. If you have
received this electronic transmission in error, please notify us by
telephone (434-295-4800) or by electronic mail
(fportell at genciabiotech.com) immediately.


From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com  Sat Jun 10 18:06:49 2006
From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 14:06:49 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd:  Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606101106i207810c3id8d0722c28a5d96f@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<7641ddc60606100805r4b463933k2b25a48fca8f91a4@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060610173655.GA19098@ofb.net>
	<7641ddc60606101106i207810c3id8d0722c28a5d96f@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <7641ddc60606101106j362af55co1439ae9af70d0333@mail.gmail.com>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>
Date: Jun 10, 2006 2:06 PM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
To: Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu>


On 6/10/06, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 11:05:05AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>
> > Besides, if we really want to have more species, it will be cheaper to
> > make them tomorrow than spending a lot of effort on saving them today.
>
> This sort of gambling of present things for hypothetical future
> capability is part of what strikes normal people as wild-eyed optimism
> and religiousness about the Singularity.  "It doesn't matter what we do
> now we'll fix it later."  "We can't fix it now."  "But we will be able
> to!  Trust us!"

### To save all species you would need to kill many humans and enslave
most of the rest. Potentially hundreds of millions, if you are serious
about it. How many humans are you willing to kill or enslave to
protect species diversity? The choice is simple: either you forbid
human economic growth to protect wood lice, or else you accept that a
lot of wood lice will die so that a few billion brown and yellow
people get affluent. For me the decision is clear. I'd rather gamble
on not being able to resurrect ten million bugs in the next century,
than have hundreds of billions of humans suffer economic privation
today.

What I am saying amounts to "Let everybody first get rich, and *then*
worry about the flowers to put in their backyard", not some
Singularity stuff. You can trust the market to provide flowers and
other diversions once the demand is there.

-------------------------------------------------

>
> Genetic engineering misses the point, anyway.  Yeah, we might be able to
> make something, but what?  It's not just the diversity, it's the
> *design*, and the encoded history of the Earth, in the diversity today;
> that wouldn't be possible to replicate.

### Well, yes, this is what I am missing here - why would you insist
on replicating anything? Who cares for Evolution's trivial musings if
you can write new code even today, and will write better tomorrow?

Rafal


-- 
Rafal Smigrodzki, MD-PhD
Chief Clinical Officer,
Gencia Corporation
706 B Forest St.

Charlottesville, VA 22903

tel: (434) 295-4800

fax: (434) 295-4951



This electronic message transmission contains information from the
biotechnology firm of Gencia Corporation which may be confidential or
privileged. The information is intended to be for the use of the
individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended
recipient, be aware that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use
of the contents of this information is prohibited. If you have
received this electronic transmission in error, please notify us by
telephone (434-295-4800) or by electronic mail
(fportell at genciabiotech.com) immediately.


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Sat Jun 10 18:16:57 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 11:16:57 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <20060610181656.GB19098@ofb.net>

On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 03:50:43PM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:

> I found http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/extinction/ which has some good
> data. The main problem is that we get rates rather than absolute numbers
> so far. Doing a bit of counting in one of Baez diagrams produces a lower
> bound of around 416 species. 

It notes most species haven't even been catalogues and that recorded
extinctions are biased toward large charismatic animals.  Any region of
rain forest seems to have its own endemic species, many of which are
gone already.

http://extinctanimals.petermaas.nl/ gives 921
> animal species cand 86 plant species. So if we make the assumption that

One thing they don't seem to go into is percentages by group.  There are
about 4000 known mammal species, so the 120 extinctions listed gives a
3% extinction total for mammals in the past 1000 years.  About half that
for birds, and less for everything else, but then we consider selection
effects.  It's easier to drive large mammals extinct, but they're also
easier to notice before they disappear.

 http://www.soc.duke.edu/~pmorgan/levin&levin.2002.the_real_biodiversity_crisis.html

Also says:
"Ghillean Prance at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, has noted that
Malesia.the tropical region running from peninsular Malaysia to Papua
New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.contains fewer plant species but more
plant families than the entire neotropics."  Mass extinctions tend to be
evaluated in percentage of genera and even families which survie, not
just species.

> The total number of species is somewhere between 2-100 million.
> http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/FelixNisimov.shtml
> which gives an extinction so far of 0.5-0.001%. This indeed seems to be
> within the noise level.

I'm guessing higher extinction numbers are estimates, so the more
species you think exist, the more would have been wiped out already by
habitat destruction.  That's probably non-linear: if there are more
species, there aren't just more species to get wiped out, but the
species also have smaller populations and smaller ranges, and thus are
more vulnerable to being wiped out.

Dividing a fixed count of recorded extinctions by a variable estimate
doesn't seem to be accounting for everything.

> K/T, but so far it hasn't really got started. The estimates of coming
> extinction rates lie between 0.7 (Lomborg) - 50% (various) over the next

Your first page notes that even Lomborg says the extinction rate is
1500x the natural rate.

> So, how do we fix it? Looking at it from the big perspective it is fairly

In the short term, donations to the Nature Conservacy, good zoos, and
other conservation organizations; push for human population
stabilization (there's probably more growth potential for intellectual
capital and problem solvers in educating the exiting population than in
growing it) and contracted land use.  Don't eat beef you know came from
ex-rainforest land.  Don't eat fish species you know are being harvested
unsustainably (http://seafood.audubon.org/)  

Better water use: if we withdrew less, there'd be more for the
ecosystem.  In theoty a city could be a closed loop, cut off from the
ecosystem.  Politically, repealing perverse incentives, like US West
water rights, should help.  I've read Israel uses half as much water as
we do, probably due to more efficient irrigation.  Desalination has
costs in brine disposal, but might still be a net positive if nuke- or
solar- powered.

Grain-fed livestock probably accounts for a lot of our agricultural land
use.  Going vegetarian, or in my case going for grass-fed beef, probably
helps.  (Though if everyone did the price would go up, I know.)

Long term, I don't know.  Hope that ultratech saves the day, yeah.
Hydroponics, or vat-grown meat with the same trophic level as plants,
uploading or roboticization.  Rearrangement of land use, condensing
humans and leaving larger more contiguous areas for non-humans.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From jrd1415 at gmail.com  Sat Jun 10 21:51:48 2006
From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (jeffrey davis)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 14:51:48 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Singularity Summit Photos, audio,
	presentations and blog coverage available online
Message-ID: <a6a17bd40606101451v649fc69eg90d7668d48a77c0d@mail.gmail.com>

Perhaps it's old news, but here is a copy of an email I received
from folks responsible for the Singularity Summit.

Best, Jeff Davis

 "Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
                           Ray Charles

                          ************************************************
Dear Jeff,

We hope you made it to the Singularity Summit at Stanford and had a
great time!

There were 1300 in attendance - the largest single day gathering on
these dialogues.

Photos, audio, presentations and blog coverage are now online:

- Photography: http://sss.stanford.edu/coverage/press/
- Audio: http://sss.stanford.edu/coverage/audioandvideo/
- Powerpoints: http://sss.stanford.edu/coverage/powerpoints/
- Media and Blog Coverage: http://sss.stanford.edu/press/
- Relevant Reading: http://sss.stanford.edu/reading/

We put an immense amount of effort into the site to create an
educational archive. Please take advantage! The site can educate tens of
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From asa at nada.kth.se  Sat Jun 10 23:54:03 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 01:54:03 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd:  Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606101106q1015fdd2se037da05b2289549@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
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Message-ID: <45607.86.143.246.157.1149983643.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> Still, I am curious, why would you see an irreversible loss of
> information, in the sense of losing a bug that won't happen again, as
> a loss of value. Does all complex information have value for you per
> se?

Yes.

[ The definition of complex is of course a problem, since obviously
neither classic information theory of Kolmogorof complexity has exactly
the properties I would like (clearly we don't need more white noise in the
universe). Right now I'm getting optimistic about Giulio Tononi's
information integration theory of consciousness - even if the
consciousness part is wrong, the theory seems to suggest some interesting
directions to go in. Possibly my theory needs a concept of temporal
integration to really work. ]

> If I want to resurrect the T.Rex from a rotten bone, it's not because
> T.Rex is somehow important in and of itself, but rather because I find
> the notion of making one a stimulating exercise, the kind of genetic
> feat that I would like to fool around with once the important issues
> (i.e. curing aging and disease) are taken care of. The T.Rex would be
> a plaything for me, to be made or unmade as I see fit, and not my ward
> I would be morally bound to take care of.

I do think we have a bit of responsibility of our creations, at least
those with intermediary complexity so that they can be morally relevant
entities but not able to be independent persons. I would base these
responsibilities on reducing the risks of suffering and loss of complexity
or developmental potential: the creations should not have to suffer
unduly, they should have the chance to develop their nature (including, of
course an open-ended nature that allow changing their nature) and so on.
Creating a special purpose AI only interested in accounting is OK as long
as it is not so complex it could conceivably also become interested in
other things; at this point we ought to let it choose its own path
instead.


> And there is no need to keep a sharp line between them if
>> we ask ourselves what particular goals we (and other systems) are aiming
>> for rather than take an all-or-nothing approach saying human goals OK,
>> nonhuman goals not OK.
>
> ### Do bugs have goals? Do ecosystems have goals?
>
> I would ascribe goals only to sentient creatures, and as a libertarian
> I may not transgress against their property rights but this seems to
> be far removed from the question of preservation of non-sentient
> species.

To some extent I would say they have goals, but not in the usual human
sense. Clearly a bug has behavioral programs aimed at certain functions,
so we can very well speak about a bug's goal of reproduction. That it is
not very flexible and not subject to much rational thinking makes it less
of an ethically relevant goal than what occurs in the minds of humans,
since the human goals are both more highly contingent (humans can decide
on nearly anything), complex and amenable to rational change depending on
new information. An ecosystem has even less of goals. The closest thing
would be homeostatic feedback loops and a general "will to live" common to
all self-reproducing systems.

I agree that these kinds of goals and interests are outside strict
libertarian ethics. Wiping out a jungle is not a breach of the jungle's
rights, but can be seen as against its interests and a morally bad thing
even if it is allowed.


-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From sjatkins at mac.com  Sun Jun 11 00:17:25 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 17:17:25 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd:  Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606101106j362af55co1439ae9af70d0333@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
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Message-ID: <6B113AD4-EF93-4744-B6FE-9234337C5932@mac.com>


On Jun 10, 2006, at 11:06 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>
> Date: Jun 10, 2006 2:06 PM
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
> To: Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu>
>
>
> On 6/10/06, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>> On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 11:05:05AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>>
>>> Besides, if we really want to have more species, it will be  
>>> cheaper to
>>> make them tomorrow than spending a lot of effort on saving them  
>>> today.
>>
>> This sort of gambling of present things for hypothetical future
>> capability is part of what strikes normal people as wild-eyed  
>> optimism
>> and religiousness about the Singularity.  "It doesn't matter what  
>> we do
>> now we'll fix it later."  "We can't fix it now."  "But we will be  
>> able
>> to!  Trust us!"
>
> ### To save all species you would need to kill many humans and enslave
> most of the rest. Potentially hundreds of millions, if you are serious
> about it. How many humans are you willing to kill or enslave to
> protect species diversity?

Come on.  Did Damien state a goal of saving all species?  No.  Is  
your notion that you would have to kill many people and enslave the  
rest based on much more than rhetoric?  No, not really.  Given MNT it  
is quite possible to save most of the biodiversity of Earth and have  
humanity and posthumanity thrive.   There is no either-or here.    
This is really good news.  So why not accentuate it instead of  
squabbling over the worth of various parts of the biosphere?

> The choice is simple: either you forbid
> human economic growth to protect wood lice, or else you accept that a
> lot of wood lice will die so that a few billion brown and yellow
> people get affluent.

I do not accept your either-or viewpoint.  Besides, wood lice, are  
again a rhetorical device to attempt to make the views and concerns  
of others look foolish.   Why do this?
>
> What I am saying amounts to "Let everybody first get rich, and *then*
> worry about the flowers to put in their backyard", not some
> Singularity stuff. You can trust the market to provide flowers and
> other diversions once the demand is there.
>

Really?  This is a position of considerable faith if it really is as  
either-or as you present.

- samantha



From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Sun Jun 11 00:30:53 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 01:30:53 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606101730h48b49388td2df94415517466f@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/10/06, Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se> wrote:
>
> So, how do we fix it?


This is one of the reasons we need to reach Diaspora-level technology: so
that we stop having to all squabble over the one planet. Once we get access
to the rest of the galaxy, I won't object to the environmentalists turning
Earth into a nature reserve if that's what they want to do.
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From HerbM at learnquick.com  Sun Jun 11 01:25:26 2006
From: HerbM at learnquick.com (Herb Martin)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 20:25:26 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] [evol-psych] Re: Guns and humans
In-Reply-To: <s48acc20.070@gwise.louisville.edu>
Message-ID: <200606110125.k5B1PmIA026011@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

<<Not being a citizen of this country, you probably do not know that this
point has been widely debated in this country and the courts have
consistently interpreted the 2nd amendment as meaning that citizens have the
right to own guns.  The refe rence to the militia needs to be interpreted in
the context of the time of the drafting of the constitution when all
able-bodied men were considered members of the militia.  George K.
Cunningham>>

Not only is the above true, but the "militia phrase" included in the 2nd
Amendment is NOT a controlling clause in either ordinary English (then
or now) nor in legal interpretations.
 
It is an explanatory element and legal cases and standards of
Constitutional analysis have long held that such are not limiting
to the scope:  The right being guaranteed belongs to the people;
the government has an interest because such is ESSENTIAL to
a free state.  
 
And everywhere in the Constitution where a right is said to belong
to the people confirms this -- there is ZERO chance that "people"
means the states in ONLY the 2nd Amendment but guarantees an
individual right to various freedoms elsewhere.
 
Those who have any doubts on this should first become knowledgeable
by reading at least the following:
 

THE UNABRIDGED SECOND AMENDMENT by J. Neil Schulman

(Includes an analysis of by an expert in the English language)

<http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/unabridged.2nd.html> 

 

The Embarrassing Second Amendment

http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/embar.html

 

The Second Amendment secures a right of individuals generally, 
not a right of States or a right restricted to persons serving in militias.

<http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/secondamendment2.htm> 

 

1982 Senate Report on the RKBA

http://www.pcpages.com/salhq/1982reportrkba.htm

 

 

As to the social benefits, studies almost invariably show that guns save
lives,

especially of the law abiding, while the few which do not show this
typically

show a wash between social value of firearms for protection and detrimental

effects.

 

Using social utility to remove the rights of law abiding citizens is
practically

always a poor plan but doing so when studies are much more likely to show

either no effect or the opposite from those intended are just simply
criminal.

 

We know for a fact that those nations which engaged in strong gun control

were those which in the 20th Century murdered upwards of 100,000,000

(that one HUNDRED MILLION) human beings including a large percentage

of their own citizens (start with the Nazis, Soviet Union, Maoists and work

from there.)

 

The Right to Keep and Bear Arms is one of the oldest in terms of

historical recognition by free people, and arguable THE OLDEST right

of a free human being.

 

It is in fact the one right that protects all of the others we hold dear
because

no matter how much be might wish otherwise, there is no freedom without

the protection and enforcement of armed people of good will.

 

 

Self-Defense: A Basic Human Right

 <http://www.a-human-right.com/introduction.html>
http://www.a-human-right.com/introduction.html

 

John R. Lott, Jr. - The Bias Against Guns

http://www.johnlott.org/

 

John Lott's "More Guns, Less Crime" is also well worth reading.

 

--
Herb Martin

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From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com  Sun Jun 11 01:58:39 2006
From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 21:58:39 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060610181656.GB19098@ofb.net>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610181656.GB19098@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <7641ddc60606101858j60422558p84f366162aa482ff@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/10/06, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

> In the short term, donations to the Nature Conservacy, good zoos, and
> other conservation organizations; push for human population
> stabilization (there's probably more growth potential for intellectual
> capital and problem solvers in educating the exiting population than in
> growing it) and contracted land use.  Don't eat beef you know came from
> ex-rainforest land.  Don't eat fish species you know are being harvested
> unsustainably (http://seafood.audubon.org/)
>
> Better water use: if we withdrew less, there'd be more for the
> ecosystem.  In theoty a city could be a closed loop, cut off from the
> ecosystem.  Politically, repealing perverse incentives, like US West
> water rights, should help.  I've read Israel uses half as much water as
> we do, probably due to more efficient irrigation.  Desalination has
> costs in brine disposal, but might still be a net positive if nuke- or
> solar- powered.
>
> Grain-fed livestock probably accounts for a lot of our agricultural land
> use.  Going vegetarian, or in my case going for grass-fed beef, probably
> helps.  (Though if everyone did the price would go up, I know.)

### It's nice to see that you are not advocating any clearly immoral
methods of saving species. I appreciate that you suggest benign
methods, like building zoos, and voluntary ones, like contracted land
use, and I hope my blunt questions about the trade-offs involved in
species-saving didn't insult you: still, I am afraid that the nice
methods you advocate will be nearly totally ineffective.

That Aussie guy on TV fearlessly impregnating another toothy reptilian
thing in a zoo may make for a diverting show, but this is not serious
species-saving. If you are serious, you do have to deny beef and neat
suburban living to billions of brown people - and even voluntary
methods, like buying up land to convert it into conservancies, will
deny them the standard of living they desire. Of course, once you
allow yourself the indulgence of using violence to save the planet
(and the serious planet-savers are usually quite indulgent when it
comes to realizing their visions), there is more at stake than steaks.

--------------------------------------------

>
> Long term, I don't know.  Hope that ultratech saves the day, yeah.
> Hydroponics, or vat-grown meat with the same trophic level as plants,
> uploading or roboticization.  Rearrangement of land use, condensing
> humans and leaving larger more contiguous areas for non-humans.

### I doubt you can convince everybody to live in apartment blocks,
listening to their neighbors farts and watching the uspoiled nature on
TV. And using brute force to forbid citizens from building a house
wherever they can buy land is sickeningly immoral. They do it in
Germany - unless you have a lot of political power to circumvent state
zoning regulations, you can't have a nice house in the forest, which
is one of the reasons why I live in a nice forest house in the US.

Once again, serious species-saving means making almost all humans worse off.

Rafal


From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com  Sun Jun 11 02:11:30 2006
From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 22:11:30 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <6B113AD4-EF93-4744-B6FE-9234337C5932@mac.com>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
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	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
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	<7641ddc60606101106j362af55co1439ae9af70d0333@mail.gmail.com>
	<6B113AD4-EF93-4744-B6FE-9234337C5932@mac.com>
Message-ID: <7641ddc60606101911h6d94cf4g39cbf3d80f9afb23@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/10/06, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:

>
> I do not accept your either-or viewpoint.  Besides, wood lice, are
> again a rhetorical device to attempt to make the views and concerns
> of others look foolish.   Why do this?
> >
### Because many people have been already expropriated in the name of
protecting the long-billed dungpecker, the Eastern dappled woodlouse,
and the mousy stinkflower. It's not a rhetorical device, it's the
reality.

Seriously, this is what happens: some starry-eyed bug watcher alerts
the local enforcers that the habitat of a bug he loves is endangered
by a housing development, and soon the EPA goons are roping off
somebody's land to keep the bugs alive. Usually there is somebody's
ulterior motive involved as well - somebody likes to have a large area
of neat forest as the backdrop to their living room windows, and would
hate nothing more than a hundred new neighbors with their cars and
kids spoiling the view. So, a conservancy is born, usually somebody
pockets some tax breaks too, and the poor slobs who would like to buy
a new house find that the prices went another 30k up. And back to the
apartment block they go, to watch nice nature on TV.

Rafal


From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com  Sun Jun 11 02:39:54 2006
From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki)
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 22:39:54 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <45607.86.143.246.157.1149983643.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<7641ddc60606100805r4b463933k2b25a48fca8f91a4@mail.gmail.com>
	<36127.86.143.246.157.1149954935.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<7641ddc60606101045w4aa50e7bod29d0b3c4ec842c3@mail.gmail.com>
	<7641ddc60606101106q1015fdd2se037da05b2289549@mail.gmail.com>
	<45607.86.143.246.157.1149983643.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <7641ddc60606101939n61950a5fjff7963ff60927789@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/10/06, Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se> wrote:
> Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> > Still, I am curious, why would you see an irreversible loss of
> > information, in the sense of losing a bug that won't happen again, as
> > a loss of value. Does all complex information have value for you per
> > se?
>
> Yes.
>
> [ The definition of complex is of course a problem, since obviously
> neither classic information theory of Kolmogorof complexity has exactly
> the properties I would like (clearly we don't need more white noise in the
> universe). Right now I'm getting optimistic about Giulio Tononi's
> information integration theory of consciousness - even if the
> consciousness part is wrong, the theory seems to suggest some interesting
> directions to go in. Possibly my theory needs a concept of temporal
> integration to really work. ]

### Amazing. Would a conversion of everything to computronium
pondering the deepest mathematical truths count as increasing the
complexity of matter?

If so, how would be trivial existence of the Eastern dappled titmouse
fare in comparison? (if such bird were to be discovered)

How would you resolve the conflict between uses of matter that differ
in their level of complexity? Does the less complex one have to yield?

-------------------------------------
> I do think we have a bit of responsibility of our creations, at least
> those with intermediary complexity so that they can be morally relevant
> entities but not able to be independent persons. I would base these
> responsibilities on reducing the risks of suffering and loss of complexity
> or developmental potential: the creations should not have to suffer
> unduly, they should have the chance to develop their nature (including, of
> course an open-ended nature that allow changing their nature) and so on.
> Creating a special purpose AI only interested in accounting is OK as long
> as it is not so complex it could conceivably also become interested in
> other things; at this point we ought to let it choose its own path
> instead.

### I would not mind the T.Rex being reduced in complexity by being
shot, stuffed, and hung on the living room wall, although I would find
subjecting him to unreasonable suffering wrong (which is why I would
suggest using high-explosive 50 cal rounds for the hunt).

Now, to pay for all that, I'd have no qualms about building an AI that
would find the fulfillment of its existence in doing my checkbook. I
am rather confused by what you mean: what is "could conceivably also
become interested in other things"?

It would be anthropomorphising to demand rights for computational
devices simply because they are intelligent - I see *desire*, not
intelligence, as the basis for conferring rights (but not as a
sufficient criterion).
--------------------------------
>
> I agree that these kinds of goals and interests are outside strict
> libertarian ethics. Wiping out a jungle is not a breach of the jungle's
> rights, but can be seen as against its interests and a morally bad thing
> even if it is allowed.

### So you say that building a house in a forest is a morally bad
thing? As in, not just grating against your own personal affection for
the jungle, but in and of itself a Bad Thing, worthy of opprobrium and
sanctions? Because, you know, a moral injunction without sanctions is
just empty talking, morality is as serious as the weight of force seen
as justified in upholding it, so I can't resist asking you, how much
violence would you condone to prevent the Brazilians from breaching
their jungle's interests to build their huts?

Rafal

PS. Sorry for the Socratic cadence to my post.


From asa at nada.kth.se  Sun Jun 11 14:33:40 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 16:33:40 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060610181656.GB19098@ofb.net>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610181656.GB19098@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <33004.86.143.246.157.1150036420.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Damien Sullivan wrote:
>> So, how do we fix it? Looking at it from the big perspective it is
>> fairly
>
> In the short term, donations to the Nature Conservacy, good zoos, and
> other conservation organizations; push for human population
> stabilization (there's probably more growth potential for intellectual
> capital and problem solvers in educating the exiting population than in
> growing it) and contracted land use.

I think conservation attempts certainly have merit, but I wonder about the
utility of population stabilisation. Or rather, it tends to follow female
literacy rates and reducing poverty, two other things that are good in
themselves. Just stabilizing the population is unlikely to be morally
doable without a lot of good carrots, and a too quick stop might actually
cause bad social conseqences (like China and the former east block).

> Don't eat beef you know came from
> ex-rainforest land.  Don't eat fish species you know are being harvested
> unsustainably (http://seafood.audubon.org/)

Contracted land (and sea use) is probably one of the most efficient
solutions if we can get it economical. The latest vat-beef programs seem
to be getting somewhere, and also realises the need to find low trophic
level inputs into the process. If we could drop on average one trophic
level in our food intake we divide the area used by ten or so. But we are
still going to need biomass inputs to the food (and fuel) system even
then, of course. And the vat-approach doesn't seem to bring down the cost
significantly; maybe what we really should look at is not vat beef but vat
beets. And if we could find an artificial substitute for krill it would be
very useful.

Even going for more city aquaculture with combined hydroponics might be a
good idea, if it can be packaged in such a way that it is easy to use and
do not spread pathogens. This seems to be quite realistic, if there was
only an economic incentive for it.

> Desalination has
> costs in brine disposal, but might still be a net positive if nuke- or
> solar- powered.

This is also a killer app for early nanotech.

I'm suspicious of the arcology idea, since most of its proponents have
made rather centralist assumptions and imagined that people would
naturally want to become good little homo sovieticus once they joined the
collective. It would be interesting to design an agoric arcology that
actually used internal markets to be flexibly self-sustaining.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From spike66 at comcast.net  Sun Jun 11 15:07:01 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 08:07:01 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <33004.86.143.246.157.1150036420.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <200606111507.k5BF7Lta025080@andromeda.ziaspace.com>



> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-
> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg
> Sent: Sunday, June 11, 2006 7:34 AM
> To: ExI chat list
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Extinctions

> 
> ... This seems to be quite realistic, if there was
> only an economic incentive for it.
> 
> I'm suspicious of the arcology idea, since most of its proponents have
> made rather centralist assumptions and imagined that people would
> naturally want to become good little homo sovieticus once they joined the
> collective. It would be interesting to design an agoric arcology that
> actually used internal markets to be flexibly self-sustaining.
> 
> --
> Anders Sandberg,
> Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
> Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University

Anders hit it right on once again.  All our efforts at ecological
stewardship must be profitable before they will ever fly.  Governments can
provide subsidies and incentives to some extent, but governments run out of
money eventually.  Alternative energy sources will go nowhere until the
cheap oil is burned, for instance. 

spike




 




From sjatkins at mac.com  Sun Jun 11 17:33:19 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 10:33:19 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606101858j60422558p84f366162aa482ff@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610181656.GB19098@ofb.net>
	<7641ddc60606101858j60422558p84f366162aa482ff@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <7498FD71-E9D2-425A-A772-E5A66DBA9E65@mac.com>


On Jun 10, 2006, at 6:58 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:

>
> ### It's nice to see that you are not advocating any clearly immoral
> methods of saving species. I appreciate that you suggest benign
> methods, like building zoos, and voluntary ones, like contracted land
> use, and I hope my blunt questions about the trade-offs involved in
> species-saving didn't insult you: still, I am afraid that the nice
> methods you advocate will be nearly totally ineffective.
>
> That Aussie guy on TV fearlessly impregnating another toothy reptilian
> thing in a zoo may make for a diverting show, but this is not serious
> species-saving. If you are serious, you do have to deny beef and neat
> suburban living to billions of brown people -

A) Only a very radical fringe puts other species above humans;

B) Beef is not the best way to fully feed all people on earth well  
quickly so not giving everyone a beefsteak is not a bad thing;

C) Our suburbs are grossly inefficient in many respects.  Better than  
hovels to be sure but not the model of human well-being.

D) You are still claiming being serious about saving species is to be  
anti-human.  Give some proof or move on graciously please.


> and even voluntary
> methods, like buying up land to convert it into conservancies, will
> deny them the standard of living they desire. Of course, once you
> allow yourself the indulgence of using violence to save the planet
> (and the serious planet-savers are usually quite indulgent when it
> comes to realizing their visions), there is more at stake than steaks.
>

Use high tech as mentioned.

- samantha



From sjatkins at mac.com  Sun Jun 11 17:37:22 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 10:37:22 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <200606111507.k5BF7Lta025080@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <200606111507.k5BF7Lta025080@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <B254708E-43E7-4C58-9977-7DEABB49AFB8@mac.com>


On Jun 11, 2006, at 8:07 AM, spike wrote:

>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-
>> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg
>> Sent: Sunday, June 11, 2006 7:34 AM
>> To: ExI chat list
>> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
>
>>
>> ... This seems to be quite realistic, if there was
>> only an economic incentive for it.
>>
>> I'm suspicious of the arcology idea, since most of its proponents  
>> have
>> made rather centralist assumptions and imagined that people would
>> naturally want to become good little homo sovieticus once they  
>> joined the
>> collective. It would be interesting to design an agoric arcology that
>> actually used internal markets to be flexibly self-sustaining.
>>
>> --
>> Anders Sandberg,
>> Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
>> Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University
>
> Anders hit it right on once again.  All our efforts at ecological
> stewardship must be profitable before they will ever fly.

A pity we don't apply the same logic to wars and countless government  
boondoggles.


> Governments can
> provide subsidies and incentives to some extent, but governments  
> run out of
> money eventually.  Alternative energy sources will go nowhere until  
> the
> cheap oil is burned, for instance.

I have been amazed to watch the stock price of many alternative  
energy companies fall while oil stays in the stratosphere.  Something  
is wrong.  I don't think it is "greed".   I think it is a deep  
recognition of sunk cost in oil based infrastructure.

- samantha



From mark at permanentend.org  Sun Jun 11 18:29:07 2006
From: mark at permanentend.org (Mark Walker)
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 14:29:07 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Two draft papers: AI and existential  risk;
	heuristics and biases
References: <44830B56.3080003@pobox.com>
	<7.0.1.0.2.20060609224449.02383310@gmu.edu>
Message-ID: <0bea01c68d84$ef3fe7a0$9a00a8c0@old>

Robin Hanson wrote:


  Regarding the other
> chapter, while you seem to have thought lots about many related
> issues over the years, you don't seem to have worked much on the
> issue I get stuck on: the idea that a single relatively isolated AI
> system could suddenly change from negligible to overwhelmingly powerful.
>
> You warn repeatedly about how easy is is to fool oneself into
> thinking one understands AI, and you want readers to apply this to
> their intuitions about the goals an AI may have.   But you seem to be
> relying almost entirely on unarticulated intuitions when you conclude
> that very large and rapid improvement of isolated AIs is likely.
>
> You say that humans today and natural selection do not self-improve
> in the "strong sense" because humans "haven't rewritten the human
> brain," "its limbic core, its cerebral cortex, its prefrontal
> self-models" and natural selection has not "rearchitected" "the
> process of mutation and recombination and selection," with "its focus
> on allele frequencies" while an AI "could rewrite its code from
> scratch."  And that is pretty much the full extent of your relevant 
> argument.
>
> This argument seems to me to need a whole lot of elaboration and
> clarification to be persuasive, if it is to go beyond the mere
> logical possibility of rapid self-improvement.   The code of an AI is
> just one part of a larger system that would allow an AI to
> self-improve, just as the genetic code is a self-modifiable part of
> the larger system of natural selection, and human culture and beliefs
> are a self-modifiable part of human improvement today.
>
> In principle every part of each system could be self-modified, while
> in practice some parts are harder to modify than others.  Perhaps
> there are concepts and principles which could help us to understand
> why the relative ease of self-modification of the parts of the AI
> improvement process are importantly different that in these other
> cases.   But you do not seem to have yet articulated any such
> concepts or principles.
>
> A standard abstraction seems useful to me:  when knowledge
> accumulates in many small compatible representations, growth is in
> the largest system that can share such representations.   Since DNA
> is sharable mainly within a species, the improvements that any one
> small family of members can produce are usually small compared to the
> improvements transferred by sex within the species.  Since humans
> share their knowledge via language and copying practices, the
> improvements that a small group of people can make are small compared
> to the improvements transferred from others, and made available by
> trading with those others.
>
> The obvious question about a single AI is why its improvements could
> not with the usual ease be transferred to other AIs or humans, or
> made available via trades with those others.   If so, this single AI
> would just be part of our larger system of self-improvement.   The
> scenario of rapid isolated self-improvement would seem to be where
> the AI found a new system of self-improvement, where knowledge
> production was far more effective, *and* where internal sharing of
> knowledge was vastly easier than external sharing.
>
> While this is logically possible, I do not yet see a reason to think
> it likely.   Today a single human can share the ideas within his own
> head far easier than he can share those ideas with others -
> communication with other people is far more expensive and
> error-prone.   Yet the rate at which a single human can innovate is
> so small relative to the larger economy that most innovation comes
> from ideas shared across people.  So a modest advantage for the AI's
> internal sharing would not be enough - the advantage would have to be
> enormous.
>
I haven't read the paper you mention here, but I have thought a little about 
the problem. It seems to me that there are two possibilities that might 
allow for a rapid increase in power. One is if creating such a computer it 
is able to break through some congenital limitations we have to our thought 
and knowledge. The idea here is that we think that every other species is 
congenitally limited in comparison with our cognitive abilities. A full 
scholarship to Cambridge is not going to allow an ape to understand Plato's 
Republic or Darwin's The Origins of the Species. The idea that we labour 
under such congenital limitations is controversial. Critics sometimes cite 
the fact that human science has been very successful in understanding the 
basic structure of the universe. I discuss this problem in a paper 
"Naturalism and Skepticism" and conclude that these two theoretical 
considerations are relatively balanced. I argue, that the way to see who is 
right is to put away the theoretical speculation and run the experiment. In 
any event, the thought that we are not immune from biological limits to our 
thought and knowledge suggests some evidence for the conjecture that a very 
powerful intelligence could develop if it overcame these limits, just as we 
are powerful in comparison to apes. Sometimes is suggested that the fact 
that we have language guarantees that there are no such limits (e.g., the 
philosopher Donald Davidson argues this way), but clearly language is not 
sufficient. Some people who are mentally challenged have linguistic ability, 
but not sufficient capacity to understand Plato or Darwin. The unhappy 
thought is that we may be mentally congenitally mentally challenged in 
comparison.

The second thought has to do with what counts as a 'single AI'. Think how 
enormously difficult it is to bring 100,000 humans to work on a single task 
was perhaps the case with the Manhattan project. An AI that could create 
human equivalent expert subsystems by deploying the computing power 
necessary to emulate 100,000 humans might be able to work on a single 
problem much more efficiently because of lower communication costs, 
political costs (getting people on board with the idea) and energy costs. 
Now it may be objected that such an AI would constitute an economy unto 
itself because in effect it has modeled a bunch of different experts working 
on a single problem like advanced nano. Perhaps, but then this may be the 
heart of the worry: it could create its own more efficient economy.

Mark

Dr. Mark Walker
Department of Philosophy
University Hall 310
McMaster University
1280 Main Street West
Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4K1
Canada




From asa at nada.kth.se  Sun Jun 11 20:14:30 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 22:14:30 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <B254708E-43E7-4C58-9977-7DEABB49AFB8@mac.com>
References: <200606111507.k5BF7Lta025080@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<B254708E-43E7-4C58-9977-7DEABB49AFB8@mac.com>
Message-ID: <2631.163.1.72.81.1150056870.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Samantha Atkins wrote:
> On Jun 11, 2006, at 8:07 AM, spike wrote:
>> Anders hit it right on once again.  All our efforts at ecological
>> stewardship must be profitable before they will ever fly.
>
> A pity we don't apply the same logic to wars and countless government
> boondoggles.

Hmm, that is actually an interesting idea. Right now practically any
government action gets approved only on persuasive power, not
profitability (in the sense of benefiting the public). And politicians are
not responsible for the resulting waste their programs cause. So maybe one
could create a government market system?

Citizens are buyers of various benefits, be they education, defense or
administration. Right now all the pay get mixed into one pile and is used
to pay for an allocation rather independently of what the citizens like.
The libertarian answer is of course that people should just pay directly
for the stuff with no government middle-man. But keeping the government in
the equation, maybe we can make it a bit more market oriented? A first
approximation would be to have taxpayers prioritize agencies and projects
on their tax forms (or leave them blank to let representatives decide).
Another approach would be to have politicians have budgets (essentially
their taxpayers' shareholder interest) and having to pay for the proposed
programs ; possibly there could be bonuses or penalties involved for doing
particularly well or badly. At the very least we need a feedback mechanism
so that over budget projects actually hurt.

When it comes to wars, you can do cost analysis of them. There is a fun
paper, Annexation or Conquest? The Economics of Empire Building by
Herschel I. Grossman and Juan Mendoza
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=258508
that shows how rational empires and rational "barbarians" should act. I
actually used this calculus in one roleplaying setting for the big empire:
it literally had planners doing "Grossman-Mendoza Calculus" to determine
foreign policy. And since they encouraged all neighbouring nations to use
it too (and these nations knew how the empire would act in the large,
reducing uncertainty), they could reduce the need to send in the imperial
might and save money.


> I have been amazed to watch the stock price of many alternative
> energy companies fall while oil stays in the stratosphere.  Something
> is wrong.  I don't think it is "greed".   I think it is a deep
> recognition of sunk cost in oil based infrastructure.

It goes the other way around too. Many oil companies are actually in the
chemical, energy and distribution business. They do not hold any
particular loyalty to oil as a substance and would just as gladly sell 
biofuels or hydrogen power if they could profit from it.

I once met a chemical engineer from Q8 petroleum who admited that he (and
his section of the company) would love electric cars, since that would
mean they could focus on oil-as-raw-material instead of oil-as-energy.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From femmechakra at yahoo.ca  Sun Jun 11 20:51:27 2006
From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anne-Marie Taylor)
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 16:51:27 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Opinions on Singularity
Message-ID: <20060611205127.30332.qmail@web35506.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Ben Wrote:
  >POTENTIAL advantages (not saying that this is what i expect, understand)
>are mainly allowing us (people in general) to lever ourselves out of the
>shithole we find ourselves in at present. Allowing us to live as long as
>we want, rid ourselves of diseases, poverty, oppression, allowing us a
>much better chance of realising our potentials as thinking beings.
>Maximising our chances of happiness. Giving us (thinking beings in
>general) a fighting chance to survive into the future.

  Thank you for your response.  I was wondering if you could clearify how these
  things will be achieved by The Singularity.  
  I'm sorry if I sound redundant.
  I know I frequently return to the subject of The Singularity because I feel I haven't 
  figured out what my own opinion is on the subject.  
  When discussing topics subjects such as Transhumanism or cryonics,  I found it easy to
  listen, learn and decide if I thought the topic was "Good" or "Bad" for me.  
   
  Although after reading the sl4 posts I have learned a lot, on some level, I can't help
  feeling that most of the posts talk about the high risks of developing an AI.  There aren't 
  many posts that talk of the benefits.  
  I wanted to write about The Singularity in a form that represents the both "bad" and "good"
  sides but am finding it hard to do.
   
  I won't post any more questions regarding this issue but if anybody would like to get
  back to me either privately or on list, it would be greatly appreciated.
   
  Thanks again
  Anna
   
   
   


Any piece of knowledge I acquire today has a value at 
this moment exactly proportioned to my skill to deal with it. 
Tomorrow, when I know more, I recall that piece of 
knowledge and use it better.
-Mark van Doren
 __________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
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From scerir at libero.it  Sun Jun 11 21:08:17 2006
From: scerir at libero.it (scerir)
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 23:08:17 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org><200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com><cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com><34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se><20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net><35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se><7641ddc60606100805r4b463933k2b25a48fca8f91a4@mail.gmail.com>
	<36127.86.143.246.157.1149954935.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <003701c68d9b$2a058550$c1911f97@nomedxgm1aalex>

Rafal:
Who cares for Evolution's trivial musings
if you can write new code even today,
and will write better tomorrow?

# The only problem (logical) I see is that
humans appear to have limiting effects on
natural biodiversity. That is to say, they
are not just endangering _old_ species, they
are also blocking _new_ ones from evolving
naturally. But, at the same time, they are
writing - as you say - 'new codes'...

http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2006/05/22/manimals_sticklebacks_and_finc.php

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/23/science/23evol.html?ex=1306036800&en=3e85a7278996c9b3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss




From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Sun Jun 11 21:43:53 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 14:43:53 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <33004.86.143.246.157.1150036420.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610181656.GB19098@ofb.net>
	<33004.86.143.246.157.1150036420.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <20060611214346.GA30288@ofb.net>

On Sun, Jun 11, 2006 at 04:33:40PM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:
> Damien Sullivan wrote:

> > In the short term, donations to the Nature Conservacy, good zoos, and
> > other conservation organizations; push for human population
> > stabilization (there's probably more growth potential for intellectual
> > capital and problem solvers in educating the exiting population than in
> > growing it) and contracted land use.
> 
> I think conservation attempts certainly have merit, but I wonder about the
> utility of population stabilisation. Or rather, it tends to follow female
> literacy rates and reducing poverty, two other things that are good in
> themselves. Just stabilizing the population is unlikely to be morally
> doable without a lot of good carrots, and a too quick stop might actually

"It happens automatically but isn't morally doable"?  Mental skid. :)
Yes, it seems to follow female literacy and wealth (or just literacy),
which is lucky for us, but it's probably also helped by access to birth
control.  Contrast with current US government (and Catholic) policies
which actively oppose birth control.  So push for a less obstructionist
government, if not one which actively funds birth control, abortion
access, and accurate information.

> > Desalination has costs in brine disposal, but might still be a net
> > positive if nuke- or solar- powered.
> 
> This is also a killer app for early nanotech.

Mmm.  Reverse osmosis seems to be pretty good already, kilojoules per
kilogram.

> I'm suspicious of the arcology idea, since most of its proponents have
> made rather centralist assumptions and imagined that people would
> naturally want to become good little homo sovieticus once they joined the
> collective. It would be interesting to design an agoric arcology that
> actually used internal markets to be flexibly self-sustaining.

"Just" roof (I imagine connected roofs or small domes are much easier
than a Big Dome) over an existing city.  A moderately smart system could
change albedo and ventilation, and presumably cut heating and cooling
(and road clearing) costs a lot.  In summer have a mix of reflectors and
open spaces, blocking sunlight and letting hot air escape; in winter
have a transparent and greenhousey solid layer.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Sun Jun 11 21:46:17 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 14:46:17 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <200606111507.k5BF7Lta025080@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <33004.86.143.246.157.1150036420.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<200606111507.k5BF7Lta025080@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <20060611214617.GB30288@ofb.net>

On Sun, Jun 11, 2006 at 08:07:01AM -0700, spike wrote:

> Anders hit it right on once again.  All our efforts at ecological
> stewardship must be profitable before they will ever fly.  Governments can
> provide subsidies and incentives to some extent, but governments run out of
> money eventually.  Alternative energy sources will go nowhere until the
> cheap oil is burned, for instance. 

Governments don't need money for incentives; they can apply taxes.  If
oil burners had to pay for the cost of removing or sequestering their
CO2 then alternatives would probably look a lot more attractive.
Governments can create markets.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Sun Jun 11 22:29:42 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 15:29:42 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] [NANO] [HEALTH] lecture summary of nanoparticles
Message-ID: <20060611222942.GA7576@ofb.net>

http://www.softmachines.org/wordpress/?p=234

Richard Jones summing up a talk on the health risks of nanoparticles.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From asa at nada.kth.se  Mon Jun 12 00:14:10 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 02:14:10 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060611214617.GB30288@ofb.net>
References: <33004.86.143.246.157.1150036420.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<200606111507.k5BF7Lta025080@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060611214617.GB30288@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <4157.163.1.72.81.1150071250.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Damien Sullivan wrote:
> Governments don't need money for incentives; they can apply taxes.  If
> oil burners had to pay for the cost of removing or sequestering their
> CO2 then alternatives would probably look a lot more attractive.
> Governments can create markets.

But what are their incentives for that? Unfortunately, the reward system
even in well functioning democracies are somewhat perverse, rewarding
grand gestures appearing to do something, the formation of dependent voter
groups and all the other problems of public choice economics. What are the
incentives for governments to set a correct carbon tax, when they can use
the tax for so many other useful things than just pay for sequestration?

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From asa at nada.kth.se  Mon Jun 12 00:25:07 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 02:25:07 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060611214346.GA30288@ofb.net>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610181656.GB19098@ofb.net>
	<33004.86.143.246.157.1150036420.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060611214346.GA30288@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <4183.163.1.72.81.1150071907.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Damien Sullivan wrote:
> "It happens automatically but isn't morally doable"?  Mental skid. :)

:-) I meant that the population increase is indeed slowing down without
any coercive attempts in most parts of the world. But getting it to slow
down really fast would likely take fairly serious coercion a la China, and
that is unlikely to work morally or politically.

> Yes, it seems to follow female literacy and wealth (or just literacy),
> which is lucky for us, but it's probably also helped by access to birth
> control.  Contrast with current US government (and Catholic) policies
> which actively oppose birth control.  So push for a less obstructionist
> government, if not one which actively funds birth control, abortion
> access, and accurate information.

It is interesting to see that the numbers are down even highly Catholic
european countries, as well as many poorer countries that anyway seem to
be developing. Current US/Vatican interventions may be obnoxious, but I
don't think they can change the trend.

>> > Desalination has costs in brine disposal, but might still be a net
>> > positive if nuke- or solar- powered.
>>
>> This is also a killer app for early nanotech.
>
> Mmm.  Reverse osmosis seems to be pretty good already, kilojoules per
> kilogram.

We need a better way of avoiding clogging, I think. And nanotech would
have a chance of making cheaper and perhaps more self-contained units.

>> I'm suspicious of the arcology idea, since most of its proponents have
>> made rather centralist assumptions and imagined that people would
>> naturally want to become good little homo sovieticus once they joined
>> the
>> collective. It would be interesting to design an agoric arcology that
>> actually used internal markets to be flexibly self-sustaining.
>
> "Just" roof (I imagine connected roofs or small domes are much easier
> than a Big Dome) over an existing city.  A moderately smart system could
> change albedo and ventilation, and presumably cut heating and cooling
> (and road clearing) costs a lot.  In summer have a mix of reflectors and
> open spaces, blocking sunlight and letting hot air escape; in winter
> have a transparent and greenhousey solid layer.

What about car exhaust smog and smoke from fires? Reducing the circulation
in the local microclimate might be a problem. Another issue is how to
direct rainfall, which is already a problem in cities (cities are great at
collecting and diverting rainfall, unfortunately polluting it in the
process). Most cities need it to keep clean and for the green areas.

I think roofing is not useful except when the costs of heating or cooling
the city are very high (far north, deserts). Hmm, combine it with a
stratospheric tower instead and use the city microclimate effect to power
the city as well as to condense out pollutants?


-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From andrew at ceruleansystems.com  Mon Jun 12 01:19:20 2006
From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers)
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 18:19:20 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <4183.163.1.72.81.1150071907.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610181656.GB19098@ofb.net>
	<33004.86.143.246.157.1150036420.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060611214346.GA30288@ofb.net>
	<4183.163.1.72.81.1150071907.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <CE42909C-0AB5-45AC-ACD8-781D62E4A2F8@ceruleansystems.com>


On Jun 11, 2006, at 5:25 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote:
> It is interesting to see that the numbers are down even highly  
> Catholic
> european countries, as well as many poorer countries that anyway  
> seem to
> be developing. Current US/Vatican interventions may be obnoxious,  
> but I
> don't think they can change the trend.


I'll add that in prosperous South American countries such as Chile  
where ~90% of the population is Catholic and Catholic doctrine is  
enforced as a matter of law (divorce? abortion? etc? never heard of  
it), the populations are already starting to drop below replacement  
rates.  Many of these countries have per capita incomes that are  
something like half that of western Europe.

Vatican intervention aside, even in countries where the vast majority  
subscribe to such doctrine as a legal principle by default, birth  
rates are dropping rapidly.  It seems that the populations in these  
countries are becoming less religious with time, but I suspect that  
this is merely correlated with declining birth rates, not  
significantly causative.

J. Andrew Rogers







From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Mon Jun 12 02:38:26 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 19:38:26 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <4157.163.1.72.81.1150071250.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
References: <33004.86.143.246.157.1150036420.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<200606111507.k5BF7Lta025080@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060611214617.GB30288@ofb.net>
	<4157.163.1.72.81.1150071250.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <20060612023826.GA10302@ofb.net>

On Mon, Jun 12, 2006 at 02:14:10AM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:
> 
> Damien Sullivan wrote:
> > Governments don't need money for incentives; they can apply taxes.  If
> > oil burners had to pay for the cost of removing or sequestering their
> > CO2 then alternatives would probably look a lot more attractive.
> > Governments can create markets.
> 
> But what are their incentives for that? Unfortunately, the reward system
> even in well functioning democracies are somewhat perverse, rewarding
> grand gestures appearing to do something, the formation of dependent voter
> groups and all the other problems of public choice economics. What are the
> incentives for governments to set a correct carbon tax, when they can use
> the tax for so many other useful things than just pay for sequestration?

Absent any government intervention, what's the incentive for many
polluters, without specific obvious victims under tort law, to not
pollute?  Oh wait, there isn't any.  That's even more perverse than
democratic feedback.

If taxes don't work, regulation will.  I've seen it.  Breathed it.
Perfect?  No, but neither is the alternative.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Mon Jun 12 02:41:43 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 19:41:43 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <4183.163.1.72.81.1150071907.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610181656.GB19098@ofb.net>
	<33004.86.143.246.157.1150036420.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060611214346.GA30288@ofb.net>
	<4183.163.1.72.81.1150071907.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <20060612024143.GB10302@ofb.net>

On Mon, Jun 12, 2006 at 02:25:07AM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:

> > "Just" roof (I imagine connected roofs or small domes are much easier
> > than a Big Dome) over an existing city.  A moderately smart system could
> > change albedo and ventilation, and presumably cut heating and cooling
> > (and road clearing) costs a lot.  In summer have a mix of reflectors and
> > open spaces, blocking sunlight and letting hot air escape; in winter
> > have a transparent and greenhousey solid layer.
> 
> What about car exhaust smog and smoke from fires? Reducing the circulation
> in the local microclimate might be a problem. Another issue is how to

Hmm.  Originally I'd specified fans, but deleted it.  Properly done
you'd have artificial circulation with heat exchangers.  More cheaply, I
wonder how much good a roof without walls might do; you'd still get to
control sunlight and greenhouse effects.

> direct rainfall, which is already a problem in cities (cities are great at
> collecting and diverting rainfall, unfortunately polluting it in the
> process). Most cities need it to keep clean and for the green areas.

Some places might choose to let it in, others might dump it and use
irrigation or sprinklers.  "Get back from the club before rainfall,
dear."  "God mom, I *know*."

-xx- Damien X-) 


From spike66 at comcast.net  Mon Jun 12 05:03:39 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 22:03:39 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <B254708E-43E7-4C58-9977-7DEABB49AFB8@mac.com>
Message-ID: <200606120509.k5C59RKM001321@andromeda.ziaspace.com>


> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
> 
> 
> On Jun 11, 2006, at 8:07 AM, spike wrote:


> > ...  Alternative energy sources will go nowhere until
> > the cheap oil is burned, for instance.
> 
> I have been amazed to watch the stock price of many alternative
> energy companies fall while oil stays in the stratosphere.  Something
> is wrong.  I don't think it is "greed".   I think it is a deep
> recognition of sunk cost in oil based infrastructure.
> 
> - samantha


Ja, that is why I consider ethanol the most promising near-term alternative.
Most modern cars can be fairly cheaply modified to run on 85% ethanol.  We
can use the existing underground tanks, the pumps, the tanker trucks, etc.
It will be ethanol in the short run, not hydrogen, not liquid natural gas.
Disappointingly low tech, but it is the cheapest next step.

spike








From eugen at leitl.org  Mon Jun 12 07:03:48 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 09:03:48 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <200606120509.k5C59RKM001321@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <B254708E-43E7-4C58-9977-7DEABB49AFB8@mac.com>
	<200606120509.k5C59RKM001321@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <20060612070348.GB28956@leitl.org>

On Sun, Jun 11, 2006 at 10:03:39PM -0700, spike wrote:

> Ja, that is why I consider ethanol the most promising near-term alternative.

I don't. Bioethanol is not a source of energy.

> Most modern cars can be fairly cheaply modified to run on 85% ethanol.  We

Most modern cars can't run on E85 or M85 (the methanol equivalent) off 
the factory line. It would seem some regulations are in order. 

> can use the existing underground tanks, the pumps, the tanker trucks, etc.
> It will be ethanol in the short run, not hydrogen, not liquid natural gas.

If it will be ethanol instead of methanol, it's because agribusiness
lobby doesn't care about thermodynamics, just subsidies.

> Disappointingly low tech, but it is the cheapest next step.

Actually, M85 is the cheapest next step, with pure methanol being
the next cheapest next step. After that, it might be straight EV
for vehicles, at least.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From mstriz at gmail.com  Mon Jun 12 16:33:57 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 12:33:57 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060610173655.GA19098@ofb.net>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<7641ddc60606100805r4b463933k2b25a48fca8f91a4@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060610173655.GA19098@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606120933h755331b9p1fd2d343fbdd36b6@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/10/06, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 11:05:05AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>
> > Besides, if we really want to have more species, it will be cheaper to
> > make them tomorrow than spending a lot of effort on saving them today.
>
> This sort of gambling of present things for hypothetical future
> capability is part of what strikes normal people as wild-eyed optimism
> and religiousness about the Singularity.  "It doesn't matter what we do
> now we'll fix it later."  "We can't fix it now."  "But we will be able
> to!  Trust us!"

Amen.

Hominids in the ancestral environment faced a high mortality rate.  At
no time was it worth planning more than a few years ahead.  So when
they came upon a bounty, they used it up.  Lottery winners spend their
millions in an average of 4 years.  We are notoriously bad planners in
the long term.

And that feature seems to be ripe even within the transhumanist
community.  Put it on the card, because *somebody* will come along to
pay the bill someday.

> Genetic engineering misses the point, anyway.  Yeah, we might be able to
> make something, but what?  It's not just the diversity, it's the
> *design*, and the encoded history of the Earth, in the diversity today;
> that wouldn't be possible to replicate.

A more specific argument is that ecosystems are robust but sensitive.
Rapid introduction of a single species can have profound consequences
as many equilibria shift.  Rapidly introducing many species in a
superficial attempt to the fix the mess you made could be devastating.

As always, the real world is hard.  Harder than it sounds on paper.

Martin


From rhanson at gmu.edu  Mon Jun 12 20:18:06 2006
From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 16:18:06 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Two draft papers: AI and existential  risk;
 heuristics and biases
In-Reply-To: <0bea01c68d84$ef3fe7a0$9a00a8c0@old>
References: <44830B56.3080003@pobox.com>
	<7.0.1.0.2.20060609224449.02383310@gmu.edu>
	<0bea01c68d84$ef3fe7a0$9a00a8c0@old>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060612161141.023a7208@gmu.edu>

At 02:29 PM 6/11/2006, Mark Walker wrote:
> > the issue I get stuck on: the idea that a single relatively isolated AI
> > system could suddenly change from negligible to overwhelmingly powerful.
>
>I haven't read the paper you mention here, but I have thought a little about
>the problem. It seems to me that there are two possibilities that might
>allow for a rapid increase in power. One is if creating such a computer it
>is able to break through some congenital limitations we have to our thought
>and knowledge. ...

Sure this is a logical possibility.  But that is far from sufficient 
to make it the main
scenario one considers.

>The second thought has to do with what counts as a 'single AI'. Think how
>enormously difficult it is to bring 100,000 humans to work on a single task
>was perhaps the case with the Manhattan project. An AI that could create
>human equivalent expert subsystems by deploying the computing power
>necessary to emulate 100,000 humans might be able to work on a single
>problem much more efficiently because of lower communication costs,
>political costs (getting people on board with the idea) and energy costs.
>Now it may be objected that such an AI would constitute an economy unto
>itself because in effect it has modeled a bunch of different experts working
>on a single problem like advanced nano. Perhaps, but then this may be the
>heart of the worry: it could create its own more efficient economy.

There may be things to worry about in this scenario, but they are 
very different
things than in the scenario Eliezer focuses on.



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323 



From amara at amara.com  Mon Jun 12 21:45:30 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 23:45:30 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Nash Equilibrium on Youtube
Message-ID: <p06230900c0b39087741c@[150.146.134.133]>

A video demonstrating the Nash Equilibrium on youtube.. excellent!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-_Ul1rgl7g


Amara


From sentience at pobox.com  Tue Jun 13 00:34:09 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 17:34:09 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Two draft papers: AI and existential risk;
	heuristics and biases
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0606071216390.18285-100000@demedici.ssec.wisc.edu>
References: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0606071216390.18285-100000@demedici.ssec.wisc.edu>
Message-ID: <448E0801.1010805@pobox.com>

Bill Hibbard wrote:
> Eliezer,
>
>>I don't think it
>>inappropriate to cite a problem that is general to supervised learning
>>and reinforcement, when your proposal is to, in general, use supervised
>>learning and reinforcement.  You can always appeal to a "different
>>algorithm" or a "different implementation" that, in some unspecified
>>way, doesn't have a problem.
> 
> But you are not demonstrating a general problem. You are
> instead relying on specific examples (primitive neural
> networks and systems that cannot distingish a human from
> a smiley) that fail trivially. You should be clear whether
> you claim that reinforcement learning (RL) must inevitably
> lead to:
> 
>   1. A failure of intelligence.
> 
> or:
> 
>   2. A failure of friendliness.

As it happens, my model of intelligence says that what I would call 
"reinforcement learning" is not, in fact, adequate to intelligence. 
However, the fact that you believe "reinforcement learning" is adequate 
to intelligence, suggests that you would take any possible factor that I 
thought was additionally necessary, and claim that it was part of the 
framework you regarded as "reinforcement learning".

What I am presently discussing is failure of friendliness.  However, the 
fact that we use different models of intelligence is also responsible 
for our disagreement about this second point.  Explaining a model of 
intelligence tends to be very difficult, and so, from my perspective, 
the main important thing is that you should understand that I have a 
legitimate (that is, honestly meant) disagreement with you about what 
reinforcement systems do and what happens in practice when you use them.

By the way, I've got some other tasks to take on in the near future, and 
I may not be able to discuss the actual technical disagreement at 
length.  As said, I will include a footnote pointing to your 
disagreement, and to my response.

> Your example of the US Army's primitive neural network
> experiments is a failure of intelligence. Your statement
> about smiley faces assumes a general success at intelligence
> by the system, but an absurd failure of intelligence in the
> part of the system that recognizes humans and their emotions,
> leading to a failure of friendliness.

Let me try to analyze the model of intelligence behind your statement. 
You're thinking something along the lines of:

"Supervised algorithms" (sort of like those in the most advanced 
artificial neural networks) give rise to "reinforcement learning";

"Reinforcement learning" gives rise to "intelligence";

"Intelligence" is what lets an AI shape the world, and also what tells 
it that tiny molecular smiley faces are bad examples of happiness, while 
an actual human smiling is a good example of happiness.

In your journal paper from 2004, you seem to propose using a two-layer 
system of reinforcement, with the first layer being observed agreement 
from humans as a reinforcer of its definition of happiness, and the 
second layer being reinforcement of behaviors that lead to "happiness" 
as thus defined.  So in this case, we substitute:  "'Intelligence' is 
what tells an AI that tiny molecular speakers chirping "Yes! Good job!" 
are bad examples of agreement with its definition of happiness, while an 
actual human saying "Yes! Good job!" is a good example."

After all, it sure seems stupid to confuse human smiles with tiny 
molecular smiley faces!  How silly of the army tank classifier, not to 
realize that it was supposed to detect tanks, instead of detecting 
cloudy days!

But a neural network the size of a planet, given the same examples, 
would have failed in the same way.

You previously said:

> When it is feasible to build a super-intelligence, it will
> be feasible to build hard-wired recognition of "human facial
> expressions, human voices and human body language" (to use
> the words of mine that you quote) that exceed the recognition
> accuracy of current humans such as you and me, and will
> certainly not be fooled by "tiny molecular pictures of
> smiley-faces." You should not assume such a poor
> implementation of my idea that it cannot make
> discriminations that are trivial to current humans.

It's trivial to discriminate between a photo of a picture with a 
camouflaged tank, and a photo of an empty forest.  They're different 
pixel maps.  If you transform them into strings of 1s and 0s, they're 
different strings.  Discriminating between them is as simple as testing 
them for equality.

But there's an exponentially vast space of functions that classify all 
possible pixel-maps of a fixed size into "plus" and "minus" spaces.  If 
you talk about the space of all possible computations that implement 
these classification functions, the space is trivially infinite and 
trivially undecidable.

Of course a super-AI, or an ordinary neural network, can trivially 
discriminate between a tiny molecular picture of a smiley face, or a 
smiling human, or between two pictures of the same smiling human from a 
slightly different angle.  The issue is whether the AI will *classify* 
these trivially discriminable stimuli into "plus" and "minus" spaces the 
way *you* hope it will.

If you look at the actual pixel-map that shows a camouflaged tank, 
there's not a little XML tag in the picture itself that says "Hey, 
network, classify this picture as a good example!"  The classification 
is not a property of the picture alone.  Thinking as though the 
classification is a property of the picture is an instance of Mind 
Projection Fallacy, as mentioned in my AI chapter.

Maybe you actually *wanted* the neural network to discriminate sunny 
days from cloudy days.  So you fed it exactly the same data instances, 
with exactly the same supervision, and used a slightly different 
learning algorithm - and found to your dismay that the network was so 
stupid, it learned to detect tanks instead of cloudy days.  But a really 
smart intelligence would not be so stupid that it couldn't tell the 
difference between cloudy days and sunny days.

There are many possible ways to *classify* different data instances, and 
the classification involves information that is not directly present in 
the instances.  In contrast, finding that two instances are not 
identical uses only information present in the data instances 
themselves.  Saying that a superintelligence could discriminate between 
tiny molecular smiley faces and human smiles is, I would say, correct. 
But it is not correct to say that any sufficiently intelligent mind will 
automatically *classify* the instances the way you want them to.

Let's say that the AI's training data is:

Dataset 1:

Plus:  {Smile_1, Smile_2, Smile_3}
Minus: {Dog_1, Cat_1, Dog_2, Dog_3, Cat_2, Dog_4, Boat_1, Car_1, Dog_5, 
Cat_3, Boat_2, Dog_6}

Now the AI grows up into a superintelligence, and encounters this data:

Dataset 2:  {Dog_7, Cat_4, Galaxy_1, Dog_8, Nanofactory_1, Smiley_1, 
Dog_9, Cat_5, Smiley_2, Smile_4, Boat_3, Galaxy_2, Nanofactory_2, 
Smiley_3, Cat_6, Boat_4, Smile_5, Galaxy_3}

It is not a property *of dataset 2* that the classification *you want* is:

Plus:  {Smile_4, Smile_5}
Minus: {Dog_7, Cat_4, Galaxy_1, Dog_8, Nanofactory_1, Smiley_1, Dog_9, 
Cat_5, Smiley_2, Boat_3, Galaxy_2, Nanofactory_2, Smiley_3, Cat_6, 
Boat_4, Galaxy_3}

Rather than:

Plus:  {Smiley_1, Smiley_2, Smile_4, Smiley_3, Smile_5}
Minus: {Dog_7, Cat_4, Galaxy_1, Dog_8, Nanofactory_1, Dog_9, Cat_5, 
Boat_3, Galaxy_2, Nanofactory_2, Cat_6, Boat_4, Galaxy_3}

If you want the top classification rather than the bottom one, you must 
infuse into the *prior state* of the AI some *additional information*, 
not present in dataset 2.  That, of course, is the point of giving the 
AI dataset 1.  But if you do not understand *how* the AI is classifying 
dataset 1, and then the AI enters a drastically different context, there 
is the danger that the AI is classifying dataset 1 using a very 
different method from the one *you yourself originally used* to classify 
dataset 1, and that the AI will, as a result, classify dataset 2 in ways 
different from how you yourself would have classified dataset 2.  (This 
line of reasoning leads to "Coherent Extrapolated Volition", if I go on 
to ask what happens if I would have wanted to classify dataset 1 itself 
a bit differently if I had more empirical knowledge, or thought faster.)

You cannot throw computing power at this problem.  Brute force, or even 
brute intelligence, is not the issue here.

> If your claim is that RL can succeed at intelligence but must
> lead to a failure of friendliness, then it is reasonable to
> cite and quote me. But please use my 2004 AAAI paper . . .
> 
>>If you are genuinely repudiating your old ideas ...
> 
> . . . use my 2004 AAAI paper because I do repudiate the
> statement in my 2001 paper that recognition of humans and
> their emotions should be hard-wired (i.e., static). That
> is just the section of my 2001 paper that you quoted.

I will include, in the footnote, a statement that your 2004 paper 
proposes a two-layer system.  But this is not at all germane to the 
point I was making - though the footnote will serve to notify readers 
that your ideas have not remained static.  Please remember that my 
purpose is not to present Bill Hibbard's current ideas, but to use, as 
an example of failure, an idea that you published in a peer-reviewed 
journal in 2001.  If you have taken alarm at the notion of hardwiring 
happiness as reinforcement, then you ought to say something like: 
"Though it makes me uncomfortable, I can't ethically argue that you 
should not publish my old mistake as a warning to others who might 
otherwise follow in my footsteps; but you must include a footnote saying 
that I now also agree it's a terrible idea."

Most importantly, your 2004 paper simply does not contain any paragraph 
that serves the introductory and expository role of the paragraph I 
quoted from your 2001 paper.  There's nothing I can quote from 2004 that 
will make as much sense to the reader.  If I were praising your 2001 
paper, rather than criticizing it, would you have the same objection?

> Not that I am sure that hard-wired recognition of humans and
> their emotions inevitably leads to a failure of friendliness,

Okay, now it looks like you *haven't* taken alarm at this.

> since the super-intelligence (SI) may understand that humans
> would be happier if they could evolve to other physical forms
> but still be recognized by the SI as humans, and decide to
> modify itself (or build an improved replacement). But if this
> is my scenario, then why not design continuing learning of
> recognition of humans and their emotions into the system in
> the first place. Hence my change of views.

I think at this point you're just putting yourself into the SI's shoes, 
empathically, using your own brain to make predictions about what the SI 
will do.  Not, reasoning about the technical difficulties associated 
with infusing certain information into the SI.

> I am sure you have not repudiated everything in CFAI,

I can't think offhand of any particular positive proposal I would say 
was correct.  (Maybe the section in which I rederived the Bayesian value 
of information, but that's standard.)

Some negative criticisms of other possible methods and their failures, 
as presented in CFAI, continue to hold.  It is far easier to say what is 
wrong than what is right.

> and I
> have not repudiated everything in my earlier publications.
> I continue to believe that RL is critical to acheiving
> intelligence with a feasible amount of computing resources,
> and I continue to believe that collective long-term human
> happiness should be the basic reinforcement value for SI.
> But I now think that a SI should continue to learn recognition
> of humans and their emotions via reinforcement, rather than
> these recognitions being hard-wired as the result of supervised
> learning. My recent writings have also refined my views about
> how human happiness should be defined, and how the happiness of
> many people should be combined into an overall reinforcement
> value.

It is not my present purpose to criticize these new ideas of yours at 
length, only the technical problem with using reinforcement learning to 
do pretty much anything.

>>I see no relevant difference between these two proposals, except that
>>the paragraph you cite (presumably as a potential replacement) is much
>>less clear to the outside academic reader.
> 
> If you see no difference between my earlier and later ideas,
> then please use a scenario based on my later papers. That will
> be a better demonstration of the strength of your arguments,
> and be fairer to me.

If you had a paragraph serving an equivalent introductory purpose in a 
later peer-reviewed paper, I would use it.  But the paragraphs from your 
later papers are much less clear to the outside academic reader, and it 
would not be clear what I am criticizing, even though it is the same 
problem in both cases.  That's the sticking point from my perspective.

> Of course, it would be best to demonstrate your claim (either
> that RL must lead to a failure of intelligence, or can succeed
> at intelligence but must lead to a failure of friendliness) in
> general. But if you cannot do that and must rely on a specific
> example, then at least do not pick an example that fails for
> trivial reasons.

The reasons are not trivial; they are general.  I know it seems "stupid" 
and "trivial" to you, but getting rid of the stupidness and triviality 
is a humongous nontrivial challenge that cannot be solved by throwing 
brute intelligence at the problem.

You do not need to agree with my criticism before I can publish a paper 
critical of your ideas; all the more so if I include a URL to your 
rebuttal.  Let the reader judge.

> As I wrote above, if you think RL must fail at intelligence,
> you would be best to quote Eric Baum.

Eric Baum's thesis is not reinforcement learning, it is Occam's Razor. 
Frankly I think you are too hung up on reinforcement learning.  But that 
is a separate issue.

> If you think RL can succeed at intelligence but must fail at
> friendliness, but just want to demonstrate it for a specific
> example, then use a scenario in which:
> 
>   1. The SI recognizes humans and their emotions as accurately
>   as any human, and continually relearns that recognition as
>   humans evolve (for example, to become SIs themselves).

You say "recognize as accurately as any human", implying it is a feature 
of the data.  Better to say "classify in the same way humans do".

>   2. The SI values people after death at the maximally unhappy
>   value, in order to avoid motivating the SI to kill unhappy
>   people.
> 
>   3. The SI combines the happiness of many people in a way (such
>   as by averaging) that does not motivate a simple numerical
>   increase (or decrease) in the number of people.
> 
>   4. The SI weights unhappiness stronger than happiness, so that
>   it focuses it efforts on helping unhappy people.
> 
>   5. The SI develops models of all humans and what produces
>   long-term happiness in each of them.
> 
>   6. The SI develops models of the interactions among humans
>   and how these interactions affect the happiness of each.

Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic; in my view this goes down 
completely the wrong pathway for how to solve the problem, and it is not 
germane to the specific criticism I leveled.

> I do not pretend to have all the answers. Clearly, making RL work
> will require solution to a number of currently unsolved problems.

RL is not the true Way.  But it is not my purpose to discuss that now.

> I appreciate your offer to include my URL in your article,
> where I can give my response. Please use this (please proof
> read carefully for typos in the final galleys):
> 
>   http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/AIRisk_Reply.html

After I send you the revised draft, it would be helpful if I could see 
at least some reply in that URL before final galleys, so that I know I'm 
not directing my readers toward a blank page.

> If you take my suggestion, by elevating your discussion to a
> general explanation of why RL systems must fail or at least using
> a strong scenario, that will make my response more friendly since
> I am happier to be named as an advocate of RL than to be
> conflated with trivial failure.

I will probably give a URL to my own reply, which might well just be a 
link to this email message.  This email does - at least by my lights - 
explain what I think the general problem is, and why the example given 
is not due to a trivial lack of computing power or failure to read 
information directly present in the data itself.

 > I would prefer that you not use
 > the quote you were using from my 2001 paper, as I repudiate
 > supervised learning of hard-wired values. Please use some quote
 > from and cite my 2004 AAAI paper, since there is nothing in it
 > that I repudiate yet (but you will find more refined views in my
 > 2005 on-line paper).

I am sorry and I do sympathize, but there simply isn't any introductory 
paragraph in your 2004 paper that would make as much sense to the 
reader.  My current plan is for the footnote to say that your proposal 
has changed to a two-layer system, and cite the 2004 paper.  From my 
perspective they are not different in any important sense.

I hope this satisfies you; I do need to move on.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From nanogirl at halcyon.com  Tue Jun 13 00:38:36 2006
From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 17:38:36 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] New animation stuff
References: <470a3c520606080141m16f47139w77aa22d015fd6d0f@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <001001c68e81$ba087680$0200a8c0@Nano>


I've got two new animations for you over at my animation blog, Blue and Artifact. Artifact has an alien in it! Here is the link for the downloads and to leave comments: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/ 

Hope you have fun!

Gina "Nanogirl" Miller
Nanotechnology Industries
http://www.nanoindustries.com
Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com/index2.html
Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/
Craft blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/
Foresight Participating Member http://www.foresight.org
Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute  http://www.extropy.org
Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com
"Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future."
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From sentience at pobox.com  Tue Jun 13 00:52:07 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 17:52:07 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <cd9526860606120933h755331b9p1fd2d343fbdd36b6@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>	<7641ddc60606100805r4b463933k2b25a48fca8f91a4@mail.gmail.com>	<20060610173655.GA19098@ofb.net>
	<cd9526860606120933h755331b9p1fd2d343fbdd36b6@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <448E0C37.9030001@pobox.com>

Martin Striz wrote:
> 
> Hominids in the ancestral environment faced a high mortality rate.  At
> no time was it worth planning more than a few years ahead.  So when
> they came upon a bounty, they used it up.  Lottery winners spend their
> millions in an average of 4 years.

Got a reference for this?  Sounds like a useful thing to quote.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From kazvorpal at yahoo.com  Mon Jun 12 21:10:02 2006
From: kazvorpal at yahoo.com (KAZ)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 14:10:02 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <4157.163.1.72.81.1150071250.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <20060612211002.51059.qmail@web50203.mail.yahoo.com>

----- Original Message ----
From: Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 11, 2006 7:14:10 PM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Extinctions


Damien Sullivan wrote:
> Governments don't need money for incentives; they can apply taxes.  If
> oil burners had to pay for the cost of removing or sequestering their
> CO2 then alternatives would probably look a lot more attractive.
> Governments can create markets.

But there /is/ no cost for removing CO2 from the atmosphere, because it tends to dissolve in water and be removed by blue-green algae. The higher the density of CO2 in the atmosphere, the faster this process occurs. 
 
This is one of a thousand examples of why the whole global warming thing is nonsense. It's a balanced system, but not a /delicately/ balanced one, instead it's a self-balancing one. Any fluctuation in global temps is a natural effect, aside from human production. This is why the "global warming" signs the fearmongering socialist bureaucrats are citing all depend on things which are unrelated to the greenhouse effect, like surface temperatures instead of oceanic temps.
 
--
Words of the Sentient:
In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible
from one class of the citizens to give to the other.   --Voltaire
E-Mail: KazVorpal at yahoo.com
Yahoo Messenger/AIM/AOL: KazVorpal
MSN Messenger: KazVorpal at yahoo.com
ICQ: 1912557
http://360.yahoo.com/kazvorpal


From kazvorpal at yahoo.com  Mon Jun 12 21:31:20 2006
From: kazvorpal at yahoo.com (KAZ)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 14:31:20 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <cd9526860606120933h755331b9p1fd2d343fbdd36b6@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060612213121.57888.qmail@web50206.mail.yahoo.com>

----- Original Message ----
From: Martin Striz <mstriz at gmail.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2006 11:33:57 AM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Extinctions


> they came upon a bounty, they used it up.  Lottery winners spend their
> millions in an average of 4 years.  We are notoriously bad planners in
> the long term.

That's a very poor example, because the more one spends on lottery tickets, the dumber they are.
 
It's popularly known as a Stupidity Tax.
 
Even aside from how idiotic taking the lottery seriously is, because it has the worst risk/cost/return ratio of all forms of gambling (as you'd expect, since it's run by government), there's the kind of mental disability that's necessary for the lottery to be PART of one's long-term planning.
 
There may be no group less capable of long-term planning than those who participate the most in government lotteries.
 
--
Words of the Sentient:
The argument that the West was somehow to blame for world poverty was itself a
Western invention. Like decolonization, it was a product of guilt, the prime
dissolvent of order and justice. --Paul Johnson
 
E-Mail: KazVorpal at yahoo.com
Yahoo Messenger/AIM/AOL: KazVorpal
MSN Messenger: KazVorpal at yahoo.com
ICQ: 1912557
http://360.yahoo.com/kazvorpal


From kazvorpal at yahoo.com  Mon Jun 12 21:26:44 2006
From: kazvorpal at yahoo.com (KAZ)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 14:26:44 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <200606120509.k5C59RKM001321@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <20060612212644.71387.qmail@web50205.mail.yahoo.com>

----- Original Message ----
From: spike <spike66 at comcast.net>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2006 12:03:39 AM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Extinctions


> Most modern cars can be fairly cheaply modified to run on 85% ethanol.  We
> can use the existing underground tanks, the pumps, the tanker trucks, etc.
> It will be ethanol in the short run, not hydrogen, not liquid natural gas.
> Disappointingly low tech, but it is the cheapest next step.

Ethanol produces half as much energy as gasoline, and costs more per gallon, even with gas prices tripled by Bush's warmongering.
 
Of course electric cars may indeed have replaced gasoline by now, to some extent, if not for the ban on nuclear power plant building. The whole country could be run on nuclear power by now, which could be much cheaper than fossil fuels. Instead, most of our electricity still comes from fossil fuels, causing ironic situations like how you pollute more with an electric car, in California, than with a gasoline-powered car, because the environmental fearmongers have effectively banned ALL power plant production, leaving the state run off of coal-fire plants which put more nuclear radiation in the atmosphere than a nuclear plant.
 
--
Words of the Socialists:
It doesn't matter what's true; it only matters what people believe is
true...you are what the media define you to be. [Greenpeace] became a
myth generating machine. -- Paul Watson, co-founder of Greanpeace
E-Mail: KazVorpal at yahoo.com
Yahoo Messenger/AIM/AOL: KazVorpal
MSN Messenger: KazVorpal at yahoo.com
ICQ: 1912557
http://360.yahoo.com/kazvorpal


From kazvorpal at yahoo.com  Mon Jun 12 21:21:24 2006
From: kazvorpal at yahoo.com (KAZ)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 14:21:24 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060612023826.GA10302@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <20060612212124.53745.qmail@web50206.mail.yahoo.com>

----- Original Message ----
From: Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 11, 2006 9:38:26 PM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Extinctions


> If taxes don't work, regulation will.  I've seen it.  Breathed it.
> Perfect?  No, but neither is the alternative.

You've seen regulation work? In what universe?
 
In this particular one, authoritarian government never does anything better, on the whole, than freedom of choice.
 
Note that, per erg of production, marxist countries like India and Russia pollute far more than the US. 
 
One thing that the eco-fearmongers miss, because of their complete ignorance of economics, is that pollution is inefficient. Which means that, in a real free market, pollution is penalized, because inefficiency is penalized.
 
The way Standard Oil ended up dominating the industry was that while most companies dumped their waste products, Rockefeller's company used the gasoline (at the time considered waste) for fuel, sold the waxy by-products as a competitor to beeswax, sold the sludge as "vaseline", et cetera. This made them more profitable, because they were more efficient. 
 
As usual, much of the inefficiency of their competitors was THANKS TO government regulation, not a sign of need for it. In the 1860s, the US government set up price controls on oil, artificially raising the price in order to increase production. Because of this, companies sprang out of the woodwork, making a profit without effective busienss practices, depending on the inflated prices. But since Standard did not do this, it grew faster than they, and established a habit of buying them up.
 
What we need today is LESS Big Brotherment regulation, not more.
 
--
Words of the Sentient:
A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one
another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own interests
of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the
bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is
necessary to close the circle of our felicity.   -- Thomas Jefferson

E-Mail: KazVorpal at yahoo.com
Yahoo Messenger/AIM/AOL: KazVorpal
MSN Messenger: KazVorpal at yahoo.com
ICQ: 1912557
http://360.yahoo.com/kazvorpal


From mstriz at gmail.com  Tue Jun 13 02:36:27 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 22:36:27 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <448E0C37.9030001@pobox.com>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<7641ddc60606100805r4b463933k2b25a48fca8f91a4@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060610173655.GA19098@ofb.net>
	<cd9526860606120933h755331b9p1fd2d343fbdd36b6@mail.gmail.com>
	<448E0C37.9030001@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606121936i44751827y8b9d4e62c6f51b73@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/12/06, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience at pobox.com> wrote:
> Martin Striz wrote:
> >
> > Hominids in the ancestral environment faced a high mortality rate.  At
> > no time was it worth planning more than a few years ahead.  So when
> > they came upon a bounty, they used it up.  Lottery winners spend their
> > millions in an average of 4 years.
>
> Got a reference for this?  Sounds like a useful thing to quote.

I believe that was in Pinker's Blank Slate, although I could be wrong.

There are other evolutionary psychology corollaries to why people are
bad with money.  This is a good blog post on that topic:

http://www.enlightenedliving.us/money_blog/evolutionary_psychology/index.html

In short we are coalitional, heirarchical, zero-sum thinkers.

However, poor overall long term planning was my focus.  There was
nothing in the ancestral environment to pressure humans to plan for
more than a year, or even with agriculture, about three years (to
rotate fields, for example).  Given high mortality rates, there was
every reason in the world to use up a surfeit of resources.

Martin


From mstriz at gmail.com  Tue Jun 13 02:39:57 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 22:39:57 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060612213121.57888.qmail@web50206.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <cd9526860606120933h755331b9p1fd2d343fbdd36b6@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060612213121.57888.qmail@web50206.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606121939p59bd3299kc51a11364586b597@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/12/06, KAZ <kazvorpal at yahoo.com> wrote:

>> There may be no group less capable of long-term planning than those
who participate the most in government lotteries. <<

You bring up a good point.  To be sure, people with discipline can
overcome instinctive desires, just as they can work to overcome other
heuristics and biases.  It's not an inviolable genetic predestination,
but it does explain a particularly pervasive human tendency.

Martin


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Tue Jun 13 02:53:33 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 19:53:33 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060612212124.53745.qmail@web50206.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20060612023826.GA10302@ofb.net>
	<20060612212124.53745.qmail@web50206.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20060613025333.GA24410@ofb.net>

On Mon, Jun 12, 2006 at 02:21:24PM -0700, KAZ wrote:

> > If taxes don't work, regulation will.  I've seen it.  Breathed it.
> > Perfect?  No, but neither is the alternative.
> 
> You've seen regulation work? In what universe?

The universe which contains Los Angeles, where the air is still crappy
but has gotten a lot better.  Private technology did the work, but it's
not obvious it would have been developed and deployed without government
mandate -- after all, a pollution filter in your tailpipe does very
little to make your own life better.

> In this particular one, authoritarian government never does anything
> better, on the whole, than freedom of choice.
>  
> Note that, per erg of production, marxist countries like India and
> Russia pollute far more than the US. 

I'm not sure India is Marxist, but I know Soviet Russia was a disaster.
And our own military has generated some nasty sites, since it's exempt
from the strictures of the EPA, unlike the rest of us.  But the effects
of regulation need not be linear, in quantity or quality; a well-managed
democratic government might be better than either the absence of
regulation or the craptastic fiasco of the USSR.

> One thing that the eco-fearmongers miss, because of their complete
> ignorance of economics, is that pollution is inefficient. Which means

Heard of negative externalities, KAZ?

-xx- Damien X-) 


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Tue Jun 13 02:55:43 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 19:55:43 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060612211002.51059.qmail@web50203.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <4157.163.1.72.81.1150071250.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060612211002.51059.qmail@web50203.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20060613025543.GB24410@ofb.net>

On Mon, Jun 12, 2006 at 02:10:02PM -0700, KAZ wrote:

> > Governments don't need money for incentives; they can apply taxes.  If
> > oil burners had to pay for the cost of removing or sequestering their
> > CO2 then alternatives would probably look a lot more attractive.
> > Governments can create markets.
> 
> But there /is/ no cost for removing CO2 from the atmosphere, because
> it tends to dissolve in water and be removed by blue-green algae. The
> higher the density of CO2 in the atmosphere, the faster this process
> occurs. 

And the more CO2 is in the water the slower the process, as the ocean
approaches saturation.  Chemistry, KAZ, chemistry.  In fact much of the
CO2 does go into the ocean, but not all of it, and it's the accumulation
which is alarming us.

> This is one of a thousand examples of why the whole global warming
> thing is nonsense. It's a balanced system, but not a /delicately/

Thousands of scientists who study this disagree with you.  Why do you
think you are smarter than they are?

-xx- Damien X-) 


From sentience at pobox.com  Tue Jun 13 03:10:17 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 20:10:17 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <cd9526860606121936i44751827y8b9d4e62c6f51b73@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>	<7641ddc60606100805r4b463933k2b25a48fca8f91a4@mail.gmail.com>	<20060610173655.GA19098@ofb.net>	<cd9526860606120933h755331b9p1fd2d343fbdd36b6@mail.gmail.com>	<448E0C37.9030001@pobox.com>
	<cd9526860606121936i44751827y8b9d4e62c6f51b73@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <448E2C99.60702@pobox.com>

Martin Striz wrote:
> On 6/12/06, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience at pobox.com> wrote:
> 
>>Martin Striz wrote:
>>
>>>Hominids in the ancestral environment faced a high mortality rate.  At
>>>no time was it worth planning more than a few years ahead.  So when
>>>they came upon a bounty, they used it up.  Lottery winners spend their
>>>millions in an average of 4 years.
>>
>>Got a reference for this?  Sounds like a useful thing to quote.
> 
> I believe that was in Pinker's Blank Slate, although I could be wrong.
> 
> There are other evolutionary psychology corollaries to why people are
> bad with money.  This is a good blog post on that topic:
> 
> http://www.enlightenedliving.us/money_blog/evolutionary_psychology/index.html
> 
> In short we are coalitional, heirarchical, zero-sum thinkers.

Oh, I totally get that.  I was just looking for something citable.  I 
tried reading the Blank Slate, but knew too much of the material to get 
far.  Perfectly good book, if I could have read it fifteen years ago.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From iamgoddard at yahoo.com  Tue Jun 13 04:15:13 2006
From: iamgoddard at yahoo.com (Ian Goddard)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 21:15:13 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Anti-Aging Molecule Discovered
Message-ID: <20060613041513.22294.qmail@web52613.mail.yahoo.com>

Suppose a drug is found that reverses aging. That's
what some Korean scientists using magnetic nano-probe
technology propose in Nature Chemical Biology [*] and
in the media report below. However, all they seem to
have so far are cell-culture tests of a drug, and
there's a big leap from in-vitro to in-vivo outcomes.
There might even be reasons why preventing cellular
senescence is not universally beneficial to a whole
biological system. We'll see how this pans out. ~Ian


*****************************************************
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/tech/200606/kt2006061209433511780.htm

Anti-Aging Molecule Discovered

A team of South Korean scientists on Sunday claimed to
have created a "cellular fountain of youth," or a
small molecule, which enables human cells to avoid
aging and dying. 

The team, headed by Prof. Kim Tae-kook at the Korea
Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, argued
the newly-synthesized molecule, named CGK733, can even
make cells younger.

The findings were featured by the Britain-based Nature
Chemical Biology online early today and will be
printed as a cover story in the journal's offline
edition early next month. 

"All cells face an inevitable death as they age. On
this path, cells became lethargic and in the end stop
dividing but we witnessed that CGK733 can block the
process," Kim said.

"We also found the synthetic compound can reverse
aging, by revitalizing already-lethargic cells.
Theoretically, this can give youth to the elderly via
rejuvenating cells," the 41-year-old said.

Kim expected that the CGK733-empowered drugs that keep
cells youthful far beyond their normal life span would
be commercialized in less than 10 years. [...]

*****************************************************

Their peer-reviewed paper:

[*] Small molecule?based reversible reprogramming of
cellular lifespan
http://www.nature.com/nchembio/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nchembio800.html

Here's more on the nano-probe technology they used
that was apparently invented by the same team:
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200506/kt2005063018022911990.htm

~Ian

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From sentience at pobox.com  Tue Jun 13 06:34:22 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 23:34:22 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Two draft papers: AI and existential  risk;
	heuristics and biases
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20060609224449.02383310@gmu.edu>
References: <44830B56.3080003@pobox.com>
	<7.0.1.0.2.20060609224449.02383310@gmu.edu>
Message-ID: <448E5C6E.9080507@pobox.com>

Robin Hanson wrote:
> At 12:33 PM 6/4/2006, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> 
>>These are drafts of my chapters for Nick Bostrom's forthcoming edited
>>volume _Global Catastrophic Risks_.
>>_Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks_
>>   http://singinst.org/Biases.pdf
>>An introduction to the field of heuristics and biases ...
>>_Artificial Intelligence and Global Risk_
>>   http://singinst.org/AIRisk.pdf
>>The new standard introductory material on Friendly AI.

Robin,

It turns out that I've got more stuff coming up (moving to a new 
apartment within Silicon Valley) so I may not be able to carry on this 
conversation in as much detail as I'd like.  I did want to respond to at 
least what you've said so far.  If you write a long response to this, be 
forewarned - I may not be able to respond back.

> The chapter on cognitive biases was excellent.   Regarding the other 
> chapter, while you seem to have thought lots about many related 
> issues over the years, you don't seem to have worked much on the 
> issue I get stuck on: the idea that a single relatively isolated AI 
> system could suddenly change from negligible to overwhelmingly powerful.

As you may recall, that's where I got started on this "seed AI" business 
in 1998 - talking about recursive self-improvement.

But while writing the chapter, I made a conscious decision to talk more 
about Friendly AI, and less about seed AI.  Because, among other 
reasons, Friendly AI is both harder to explain and more important to 
explain.  People "get" the concept of seed AI relatively easily, though 
they may or may not agree with it.

> You warn repeatedly about how easy is is to fool oneself into 
> thinking one understands AI, and you want readers to apply this to 
> their intuitions about the goals an AI may have.  

The danger is anthropomorphic thinking, in general.  The case of goals 
is an extreme case where we have specific, hardwired, wrong intuitions. 
  But more generally, all your experience is in a human world, and it 
distorts your thinking.  Perception is the perception of differences. 
When something doesn't vary in our experience, we stop even perceiving 
it; it becomes as invisible as the oxygen in the air.  The most 
insidious biases, as we both know, are the ones that people don't see.

You expect surface effects to work like they do in your human 
experience, even when the fundamental causes of those surface effects 
change.  You expect assertions to be justified in terms of their 
perceived departure from what seems normal to you, but your norms are 
human norms.  For example:

> But you seem to be 
> relying almost entirely on unarticulated intuitions when you conclude 
> that very large and rapid improvement of isolated AIs is likely.

Here you measure "rapid" on a human scale.  There is nothing in the laws 
of physics which says that one thought per 10^45 Planck intervals is 
"normal", one thought per 10^55 Planck intervals is "slow", and one 
thought per 10^35 Planck intervals is "fast".

Pretend that a politically correct review committee is going to go over 
all your work looking for signs of humanocentrism.

 > A standard abstraction seems useful to me:  when knowledge
 > accumulates in many small compatible representations, growth is in
 > the largest system that can share such representations.

Presuming that information can be shared more cheaply than it can be 
initially produced; i.e. that the cost of bandwidth is less than the 
cost of local production.

 > Since DNA
 > is sharable mainly within a species, the improvements that any one
 > small family of members can produce are usually small compared to the
 > improvements transferred by sex within the species.

Here you analogize to evolution.  This is something to be wary of 
because evolution is an extremely unusual special case of an 
optimization process.  I use all sorts of evolutionary arguments, but 
only to illustrate *how different* an optimization process can be from 
human intelligence - never to say that something *must* be like evolution.

When knowledge accumulates in small modular representations, growth is 
in the largest system that *does* share such representations - not the 
largest system that *can*.  In principle, species could develop means of 
swapping adaptations among themselves.  Wouldn't you like gills?  But 
that's not how it works with multicellular organisms.  There's a very 
clear evolutionary logic for this - it's not a mystery.  But if a human 
were in charge of the system, if we were running the show, we'd 
plagiarize the heck out of everything and export adaptations wholesale 
between species.

So in fact, ecology contradicts the generalization you brought it to 
support - that growth is within the largest pool where knowledge *can* 
be shared, as a human onlooker thinks of opportunity.  Growth is within 
the pool where knowledge *is* shared.

The ecological world is like one in which every two human cultures that 
became sufficiently different, *completely stopped* communicating with 
each other.

We'd never do that.  Even if we hated their guts, we'd steal their guns.

In spirit, if not in letter, this may seem like an argument in your 
direction.  Evolution is dumber than a brain, and as we moved in the 
direction of increasing intelligence, we seemed to move toward 
perceiving more opportunities for communication.  Or at least more 
opportunities for theft.  Humans plagiarized flight from birds, but I 
haven't seen much capability-transfer going the other way.

But:

There's a wider universe out there;
It doesn't work like you do;
You can't trust your intuitions;
Evolutionary analogies have dangers both subtle and gross;
Just because something *could* happen doesn't mean that it will.

This also struck me about your "Dreams of Autarky"; you said:

> The cells in our bodies are largely-autonomous devices and manufacturing plants, producing most of what they need internally. Our biological bodies are as wholes even more autonomous, requiring only water, air, food, and minimal heat to maintain and reproduce themselves under a wide variety of circumstances. Furthermore, our distant human ancestors acquired tools that made them even more general, i.e., able to survive and thrive in an unusually diverse range of environments. And the minds our ancestors acquired were built to function largely autonomously, with only minor inputs from other minds.

And from this you read:  There is a trend toward greater interdependency 
over recent time (~10 Ky), and you expect this trend to continue.

An alternate reading would be:  Modern human culture is a bizarre 
special case in a universe that doesn't usually work that way.  I 
discuss this in more detail below.

 > Since humans
 > share their knowledge via language and copying practices, the
 > improvements that a small group of people can make are small compared
 > to the improvements transferred from others, and made available by
 > trading with those others.

And this is an example of what I mean by anchoring on human norms.  In 
your everyday experience, an economy is made up of humans trading 
*artifacts* and *knowledge*.  You don't even think to question this, 
because it's so universal.

Humans don't trade brains.  They don't open up their skulls and trade 
visual cortex.  They don't trade adaptations.  They don't even trade 
procedural knowledge.  No matter how much someone offers to pay me, I 
cannot sell them my command of English or my ability to write 
entertaining nonfiction - not that I would ever sell the original.  I'm 
not sure I would sell a copy.  But the point is that I have no choice. 
I *can't* sell, whether I want to or not.

We can trade the products of our minds, but not the means of production. 
  This is an IMPORTANT ASSUMPTION in human affairs.

John K Clark once said:  "It mystifies me why anyone would even try to 
move large quantities of matter around the universe at close to the 
speed of light.  It's as silly as sending ice cubes to the south pole by 
Federal Express.  There's already plenty of matter in the Virgo Galactic 
Cluster 2 billion light years away and it's every bit as good as the 
matter we have here."

As it becomes more economical to ship the factory, it becomes less 
economical to ship the products of the factory.  This is 
double-bonus-true of cognition.  A compact description of the underlying 
rules of arithmetic (e.g. the axioms of addition) can give rise to a 
vast variety of surface facts (e.g. that 953,188 + 12,152 = 965,340). 
Trying to capture the surface behaviors, rather than the underlying 
generator, rapidly runs into the problem of needing to capture an 
infinite number of facts. AI people who run into this problem and don't 
understand where it comes from refer to it as the "common-sense problem" 
or "frame problem", and think that the solution is to build an AI that 
can understand English so it can download all the arithmetical facts it 
needs from the Internet.

In our modern world, everything focuses around shipping around 
declarative verbal sentences, because this is what human beings evolved 
to trade.  We can't trade procedural knowledge, except by extremely 
laborious, expensive, failure-prone processes - such as multi-year 
apprenticeships in school.  And neural circuitry we cannot trade at all.

When you reach down into the generators, you find more power than when 
you only play with surface phenomena.  You amplify leverage by moving 
closer to the start of the causal chain.  Like moving the pebbles at the 
top of the mountain where they start avalanches.  You cannot build Deep 
Blue (the famous program that beat Garry Kasparov for the world chess 
championship) by programming in a good chess move for every possible 
chess position.  First of all, it is impossible to build a chess player 
this way, because you don't know exactly which positions it will 
encounter.  And second, even if you did this, the resulting program 
would not play chess any better than you do.  Deep Blue's programmers 
didn't just capture their own chess-move generator.  If they'd captured 
their own chess-move generator, they could have avoided the problem of 
programming an infinite number of chess positions - but they couldn't 
have beat Garry Kasparov; they couldn't have built a program that played 
better chess than any human in the world.  The programmers built a 
*better* move generator.  This is something they couldn't even do on the 
level of organization of trading surface moves.

At Goertzel's recent AGI conference, I said:  "The only thing I know of 
more difficult than building a Friendly AI is creating a child."  And 
someone inevitably said:  "Creating a child is easy, anyone can do it." 
  And I said:  "That is like putting quarters into a Coke machine, and 
saying, 'Look, I made a Coke!'"

Humans who spark the process of embryogenesis possess none of the 
knowledge they would need to design children in their own right; they 
are just pulling the lever that starts an incredibly complex machine 
that they don't understand and couldn't build themselves.

People sometimes try to build AIs from "semantic networks", with data 
like is(cat, animal) or cuts(lawnmower, grass), and then they're 
surprised when the AI doesn't do anything.  This is because a verbal 
sentence - the units of knowledge most commonly traded among humans - 
are like levers for starting a machine.  That's all we need to trade 
among ourselves, because we all have the machine.  But people don't 
realize this - the machine is universal, and therefore it's invisible; 
perception is the perception of differences.  So someone who programs 
these tiny, lifeless LISP tokens into an AI is surprised when the AI 
does absolutely nothing interesting, because as far as they can see, the 
AI has everything it needs.  But the levers have no mechanisms to 
trigger, the instruction set has no CPU.  When you see the word "cat" it 
paints a complex picture in your visual cortex - the mere ASCII string 
carries none of that information, it is just a lever that triggers a 
machine you already have.

We are like people who refine gasoline, and trade gasoline, and 
understand the concept of "running out of gas", but who never think 
about cars.  So you don't focus on the question of whether there might 
be more efficient cars.

And yet there are these things called "chimps" that can't use any of the 
knowledge you're so playfully batting about.  You don't even think to 
ask why chimps are excluded from the knowledge economy - though they're 
incredibly close to us evolutionarily.  You don't encounter chimps in 
your everyday life; they don't participate in your economy... and yet 
what separates humans from chimps is the very last layer of icing on a 
brain-cake that's almost entirely shared between us.

A comparative handful of improvements to underlying *generators*, 
underlying *brain circuitry*, are enough to entirely exclude chimps from 
our knowledge economy; they cannot absorb the knowledge we are trading 
around, and can do nothing with it.  Ricardo's Law of Comparative 
Advantage does not extend to chimps.  And chimps are our closest 
cousins!  What about mice?  What about lizards?  *That* is the power of 
between-species intelligence differences - underlying generators that 
differ by the presence of entire complex adaptations.

Humans don't ship around brain circuitry and complex adaptations because 
we can't.  We don't even realize how powerful they are, because 
differences of brain circuitry are so hugely powerful as to drop our 
closest competitors out of the economy and out of sight.  Anything that 
doesn't have *all* your brain circuitry and all your complex adaptations 
is so powerless, compared to you, that it doesn't occur to you to look 
in that direction - even though a chimp has 95% of your genomic complexity.

This is what I mean by saying that humans are an unusual special case of 
non-autarky.  Ordinarily, when an optimization process builds something, 
it builds things that, by comparison to an interdependent human economy, 
look like autarkic monoliths.  Humans are extremely unusual because we 
gained the ability to transfer units of knowledge (lever-pulling 
instructions) between ourselves, but we could not reach down to the 
level on which evolution built us to begin with.  Thus we could *not* 
encapsulate the accumulating complexity into our own system designs.  We 
could *not* give our children the accumulated knowledge of our science, 
we could *not* build into their bodies the accumulated power of our 
technology.  Evolution, in contrast, usually builds into each member of 
a species all the adaptive complexity it manages to accumulate.  Why 
shouldn't it, since it can?

 > The obvious question about a single AI is why its improvements could
 > not with the usual ease be transferred to other AIs or humans, or
 > made available via trades with those others.

Transferring to other AIs is one issue, but that you ask about 
transferring to humans indicates pretty clearly that you're thinking 
about declarative knowledge rather than brain circuitry.

Insert here the usual lecture about the brain being a mess of spaghetti 
code that is not modular, cannot easily be read out or written to, runs 
at slow serial speeds, was never designed to be improved, and is not 
end-user-modifiable.  (It's easier to build a 747 from scratch; than to 
inflate an existing bird to the size of a 747, that actually flies, as 
fast as a 747, without killing the bird or making it very uncomfortable. 
  I'm not saying it could never, ever be done; but if it happens at all, 
it will be because the bird built a seed that grew into a 747 that 
upgraded the bird.  (And at this point the metaphor bursts into flames 
and dies.))

You could imagine drawing a circle around all the AIs in the world, and 
suppose that growth is on the level of their knowledge economy.  WHICH 
CONSISTS OF TRADING AROUND BRAINWARE AND COMPLEX ADAPTATIONS.  The stuff 
that's so powerful that chimps who merely have 95% of what you have 
might as well not exist from your economic viewpoint.

What goes on inside that circle is just as much a hard takeoff from the 
perspective of an outside human.

Not that I think we'll see a knowledge economy among different AIs 
undergo hard takeoff, because...

 > Today a single human can share the ideas within his own
 > head far easier than he can share those ideas with others -
 > communication with other people is far more expensive and
 > error-prone.   Yet the rate at which a single human can innovate is
 > so small relative to the larger economy that most innovation comes
 > from ideas shared across people.

Again, anchoring on the human way of doing things.  You do not have the 
capability to solve a problem by throwing ONE BIG human at it, so you 
think in terms of throwing lots of individual minds.

But which is more effective - one human, six chimps, or a hundred 
squirrels?  All else being equal, it will generally be far more 
efficient to build a coherent individual out of the same amount of 
computing power, rather than divide that individual into pieces. 
Otherwise the human brain would have naturally evolved to consist of a 
hundred compartmentalized communicating squirrels.  (If this reminds you 
of anyone you know, it is pure coincidence.)

Having individual minds is like having economies with separate 
currencies, fortified borders, heavily protectionist trade barriers, and 
wide seas separating their wooden ships.  It's more efficient to take 
down the trade barriers and adopt the same currency, in which case you 
soon end up with a single economy.

Now, maybe France *wants* to preserve its French identity within the 
European Union, as a matter of intrinsic utilities; but that is a 
separate matter from maximizing efficiency.

And even more importantly...

 > If so, this single AI
 > would just be part of our larger system of self-improvement.   The
 > scenario of rapid isolated self-improvement would seem to be where
 > the AI found a new system of self-improvement, where knowledge
 > production was far more effective, *and* where internal sharing of
 > knowledge was vastly easier than external sharing.

You seem to be visualizing a world in which, at the time the *first* AI 
approaches the threshold of recursive self-improvement,

(1) There are already lots of AIs around that fall short of strong 
recursivity.

And these AIs:

(2) Have ability to trade meaningful, important units between themselves.

You think of knowledge of the kind humans evolved to share with each 
other.  I think of underlying brain circuitry of the kind that differs 
between species and is the ultimate generator of all human culture.  The 
latter is harder to trade - though, obviously, far more valuable.  How 
much would you pay for another 20 IQ points?  (And that's not even a 
difference of the interspecies kind, just the froth of individual 
variation.)

Furthermore, the AIs can:

(3) Gain significant economic benefits by reciprocally trading their 
software to each other.

And they must also have:

(4) Compatible motives in the long run.

When I look over the present AGI landscape, and imagine what would 
happen if an AGI reached the threshold of strong recursivity in the next 
  decade, I find myself thinking that:

(1) There are so few AGI projects around at all, let alone projects with 
a clue, that at the time the first AGI reaches the critical threshold, 
there will be no other AGIs in the near vicinity of power.

(2) Current AGI projects use such wildly differing theories that it 
would be a matter of serious difficulty for AGIs of less than superhuman 
ability to trade modules with each other.  (Albeit far less difficult 
than trading with humans.)  Or look at it this way - it takes a lot more 
programming ability to rewrite *another* AI's code than to rewrite your 
*own* code.  Brains predate language; internal bandwidth predates 
external bandwidth.  So the hard takeoff, when it starts, starts inside 
one AI.

(3) Different AGIs, having been produced by different designers on 
different AGI projects, will not be like humans who are all the same 
make and model of car and interact economically as equals.  More like 
different species.  The top AGI will have as little to gain from trading 
with the next runner-up as we have to gain from trading with 
chimpanzees.  Or less; chimpanzees are 95% similar to us.  Even 
Ricardo's Law falls off the edge of the interspecies abyss.  If the AI 
wants twice as much brainpower on the problem, it'll absorb twice as 
much processing power into itself.

(4) I'm not sure whether AIs of different motives would be willing to 
cooperate, even among the very rare Friendly AIs.  If it is *possible* 
to proceed strictly by internal self-improvement, there is a 
*tremendous* expected utility bonus to doing so, if it avoids having to 
share power later.

With respect to (4), I am admittedly not visualizing a large group of 
individuals interacting as rough equals.  *Those* would have a motive to 
form coalitions for fear of being beaten by other coalitions.  (Whether 
humans would be worth including into any coalition, on grounds of pure 
efficiency, is a separate issue.)  But if you *automatically* visualize 
a large group of individuals interacting as rough equals, you need to 
put more effort into questioning your anchoring on human norms.  The 
psychic unity of humankind *mandates* that healthy humans do not differ 
by the presence of entire complex adaptations.

*Of course* the economies you know run on entities who are all 
approximate equals - anyone who's not an approximate equal, like your 
chimp cousins, falls off the edge of vision.  Of course there are lots 
of similar individuals in a your economy - evolution doesn't produce 
unique prototypes, and human brains don't agglomerate into unitary 
megaminds.

 > You say that humans today and natural selection do not self-improve
 > in the "strong sense" because humans "haven't rewritten the human
 > brain," "its limbic core, its cerebral cortex, its prefrontal
 > self-models" and natural selection has not "rearchitected" "the
 > process of mutation and recombination and selection," with "its focus
 > on allele frequencies" while an AI "could rewrite its code from
 > scratch."
 >
 > The code of an AI is
 > just one part of a larger system that would allow an AI to
 > self-improve, just as the genetic code is a self-modifiable part of
 > the larger system of natural selection, and human culture and beliefs
 > are a self-modifiable part of human improvement today.

Not "self-modifiable".  The genome (as Hofstadter emphasized at the 
Singularity Summit, the genetic code means the ATCG coding system) is 
modified by the logic of natural selection.  To discover a case in which 
gene-optimizing logic was embedded in the genome itself would be a 
stunning, Lamarckian revolution in biology.

The genome carries out processes, such as randomized sexual 
recombination, which are not of themselves optimizing, but which 
contribute to the logic of natural selection.  The logic of evolution is 
quite simple.  Sexual recombination is the only major example I can 
think of where the logic of evolution was significantly modified by 
genomic content.  Perhaps the original invention of DNA would count as 
replicators modifying the logic of evolution - though I'm not even sure 
I'd count that.

Neither random mutation, nor random recombination, actually implement 
the optimizing part of the process - the part that produces information 
in the genome.  That part comes from nonrandom environmental selection. 
  As far as I can think, the only genes which implement organismal-level 
optimization logics are those responsible for sexual selection within a 
species - and even they don't write directly to DNA.

It is a lot easier to understand how evolution works than to understand 
how the brain works.  Evolution is a small handful of tricks - point 
mutation, random recombination, natural selection, sexual selection. 
They play out in very complex ways, but the optimization logic is 
simple.  The human brain is a *much bigger* set of tricks and is 
correspondingly more efficient.  And yet the brain does not write to DNA.

Human culture and human beliefs are not a "self-modifiable" part of 
human improvement.  They are modified by human brains, but cannot freely 
rewrite the optimization logic of human brains.  One might argue that 
writing and science are analogous to the invention of DNA and sex 
respectively, significantly changing the rules of the game.  Even so 
there's an underlayer we can't reach.  If you think that the human brain 
isn't doing the important work of intelligence, only rules handed down 
culturally, then just try and program those cultural rules into a 
computer - if you can share them between humans, surely they're explicit 
enough to program...  What you'll find, after your AI project fails, is 
that your database of cultural knowledge consists of rules for how to 
pull levers on a complex machine you don't understand.  If you don't 
have the complex machine, the lever-pulling rules are useless.  If you 
don't believe me, just try to build a scientist using your declarative 
knowledge of how to be a good scientist.  It's harder than it looks.

We ain't got strong recursivity.

 > This argument seems to me to need a whole lot of elaboration and
 > clarification to be persuasive, if it is to go beyond the mere
 > logical possibility of rapid self-improvement.

The game here is follow-the-work-of-optimization, which is similar to 
follow-the-entropy in thermodynamics or follow-the-evidence in 
probability theory.

I can't do an analytic calculation of the RSI curve.  So why do I expect 
it to be "fast" as humans measure quickness?  Largely, it is an 
(admittedly imprecise) perception of lots of low-hanging fruit (with 
clear, obvious reasons why evolution or human engineering has not 
already plucked those fruit).  The most blatant case is the opportunity 
for fast serial speeds, and the second most blatant is the ability to 
absorb vast amounts of new hardware, but there's software issues too. 
Our "fast and frugal" heuristics are impressive for doing so much with 
so little, but humans not noticing the direction of correlations smaller 
than .6 probably throws away a *lot* of information.

The intuition of fast takeoff comes from realizing just *how much* room 
there is for improvement.  As in, orders and orders of magnitude.  In 
the case of hardware, this is readily visible; software is harder to 
understand and therefore there is a publication bias against it, but 
there is no reason in principle to expect evolved software to be closer 
to optimality than evolved hardware.  What I'm seeing (albeit 
imprecisely) is that human software is, like the hardware, orders and 
orders of magnitude short of optimality.  Think of it as an anthropic 
argument:  The software we use for general intelligence is the smallest 
possible incremental modification of a chimpanzee that lets the chimp 
build a computer, because if there were any way to do it with less, we'd 
be having this conversation about RSI at that level of intelligence instead.

Admittedly, this intuition is hard to convey.  If only there were some 
way of transferring procedural skills and intuitions!  Alas, we don't. 
Looks like we humans have a lot of room for improvement!

 > So a modest advantage for the AI's
 > internal sharing would not be enough - the advantage would have to be
 > enormous.

I think it will be.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Tue Jun 13 11:08:02 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 04:08:02 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAENBFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Well, so long as I'm fired up, let me add this to what I just said:

> But it's entirely a different matter what we *approve* of. And I don't
> think that anyone answered Rafal's question above. What if you can replace
> the entire Antarctic with computronium running 10^33 people per cubic meter?
> 
> I know---to many, that seems utterly horrific. Yet we talk at the same time
> about the possibility that we're living in simulations. Well, as such *we*
> ought to be able to continue our lives---or to get lives in the first place!

Ah!  But *why* is it horrific?  That is, why would gray, ugly uniform mile-high
blocks of computronium (or even Pentiums) appall so many people?  Well, I'll
tell you!

It's because they personally like the way the Arctic (or your favorite woodland
*appears*) looks! That is, they like the way that photons get bounced off these 
particular objects into their eyes, and they aesthetically disapprove of the
way the dull, apparently lifeless blocks of computronium look.

But this is simply a failure to distinguish appearance from reality!
The *reality* would be that of trillions of trillions of trillions of
people living wonderful lives in VR (e.g. as the happiest among us
now so live). That is what is *really* going on among those ugly
monoliths of silicon (or computronium).

Hell, if you so badly *want* to receive photons and phonons that 
depict birds chirping happily in a green woodland, then please do
so. But do not demand that untold trillions of people don't get
to live because you need so damned much matter to reflect those
photons! There are less expensive ways for you to get your fix.

(Besides---don't forget appearance vs. reality again. The "happy"
chirping of birds in reality are rather brutal territorial dominance
games that are key to their survival. But, sigh, I'm afraid that
logic is never any match for symbolism, imagery, and dare I finally
say it..., no I don't dare say it!)

Okay, so housing developments aren't as pretty as deserts and mountain
vistas. But can't we use space in the ways that---appearances to the
contrary---most deeply resonate with our true values?

Lee

P.S. And on a lighter note, space is not really conserved. A tiny bit
of new volume is created all the time by our little friends, the
wonderful, ever so hardworking and tireless virtual particle pairs,
who bring us ever more tidbits of new space via vacuum energy!   :-)



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Tue Jun 13 10:44:37 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 03:44:37 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint (was Extinctions)
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606101939n61950a5fjff7963ff60927789@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAENBFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Rafal writes

> On 6/10/06, Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se> wrote:
> > [ The definition of complex is of course a problem, since obviously
> > neither classic information theory of Kolmogorof complexity has exactly
> > the properties I would like (clearly we don't need more white noise in the
> > universe). Right now I'm getting optimistic about Giulio Tononi's
> > information integration theory of consciousness - even if the
> > consciousness part is wrong, the theory seems to suggest some interesting
> > directions to go in. Possibly my theory needs a concept of temporal
> > integration to really work. ]
> 
> ### Amazing. Would a conversion of everything to computronium
> pondering the deepest mathematical truths count as increasing the
> complexity of matter?

This gets to the ultimate philosophical point, which a couple of 
early posts hint at too.

> If so, how would be trivial existence of the Eastern dappled titmouse
> fare in comparison? (if such bird were to be discovered)
> 
> How would you resolve the conflict between uses of matter that differ
> in their level of complexity? Does the less complex one have to yield?

Let's distinguish between what we believe to be effective (i.e. to "work"
in Jef Albright's way of thinking), from what is ultimately desirable.
In particular, few here are socialists; we strongly suspect that the best
courses of action are in accordance with human liberty, minimal government,
and minimal use of force.

OKAY! So we *defend* the Nature Conservancy's legal *right* to buy land and
take it off-line, so to speak. That is, if someday they buy the moon or
the entire Antarctic, then in principle I don't have any problem with that,
(except to lament it).

But it's entirely a different matter what we *approve* of. And I don't
think that anyone answered Rafal's question above. What if you can replace
the entire Antarctic with computronium running 10^33 people per cubic meter?

I know---to many, that seems utterly horrific. Yet we talk at the same time
about the possibility that we're living in simulations. Well, as such *we*
ought to be able to continue our lives---or to have lives in the first place!
Shouldn't we?

Every single time that you reserve some piece of land so that big creatures
go around gobbling small creatures, and preserve all the pain and pointless
stupidity of that, you are in *principle* saying that this is the best way
at this time that the space can be used.

Do you see?  The final constraint is space itself: we all eventually have
to ask version's of Rafal's question above. JUST WHAT DO WE MOST DEEPLY 
WANT A CUBIC METER OF SPACE TO BE DOING? And I heartily agree with Rafal:
we do not (or ought not) want it to be supporting an Easter dappled
titmouse at the expense of 10^33 people/m^3---or even at the expense of
a suburban tract full of people less rich and smart than we are.

The sooner we realize that right now every human life uses up 1300 cc's of
space running a person, the better, and that unless we want to adopt the
grotesque and elitist view that "Well, I've got mine!  I have runtime!
To hell with everyone else who might exist", then we have to favor *more*
advanced uses of space and resources over *less* advanced uses of them.

To hear of folks wanting declines in human fecundity in order to advance
the causes of frozen wastes, or even of small creatures tearing each other
to pieces, breeding, living, dying pointlessly by the billions over and
over and over, always fills me with dismay.

Lee



From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Tue Jun 13 15:44:11 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 08:44:11 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAENBFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060613154411.GA4319@ofb.net>

On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 04:08:02AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:

> Ah!  But *why* is it horrific?  That is, why would gray, ugly uniform
> mile-high blocks of computronium (or even Pentiums) appall so many
> people?  Well, I'll tell you!
> 
> It's because they personally like the way the Arctic (or your favorite
> woodland *appears*) looks! That is, they like the way that photons get
> bounced off these particular objects into their eyes, and they
> aesthetically disapprove of the way the dull, apparently lifeless
> blocks of computronium look.

> (Besides---don't forget appearance vs. reality again. The "happy"
> chirping of birds in reality are rather brutal territorial dominance
> games that are key to their survival. But, sigh, I'm afraid that

If you find yourself characterizing your opponents as silly, perhaps you
have misunderstood your opponents.  Most people will never see the
Arctic, or rainforest, except through film.  They value the *existence*
of the wilderness.  They would also be suspicious of, if not outright
reject, the idea that all matter should be organized to maximize
computation and virtual experience, as this would seem to be an untested
obsession which should not be allowed to run amok (this is the good
conservatism, wary of large scale social experiments), especially before
the technologies it requires even exist.

> P.S. And on a lighter note, space is not really conserved. A tiny bit

Then you shouldn't begrudge this speck of a planet for the life already
on it, should you?

-xx- Damien X-) 


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Tue Jun 13 15:53:13 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 08:53:13 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint (was Extinctions)
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAENBFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <7641ddc60606101939n61950a5fjff7963ff60927789@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAENBFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060613155313.GB4319@ofb.net>

On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 03:44:37AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:

> think that anyone answered Rafal's question above. What if you can replace
> the entire Antarctic with computronium running 10^33 people per cubic meter?

But you can't.  1e33 people running on human brains would take 2e34
watts, 1e8 times the power output of the Sun.  Improving efficiency by
1e8 would require only the power output of the Sun.

Space is cheap; the constraints are low-entropy energy, and heat
sinks/radiative surfaces.  Of course, this doesn't affect the idea
behind the question, but it does lead to more physically relevant
thought experiments.

> Every single time that you reserve some piece of land so that big creatures
> go around gobbling small creatures, and preserve all the pain and pointless
> stupidity of that, you are in *principle* saying that this is the best way

Everything's pointless, including our own existence.  Unless we give it
a point, and many people give a point to the natural ecosystem -- for
its role in supporting us, for aesthetics, yes, for the fact that it
produced us, for the surprising diversity it might contain or produce in
the future, and for the sake of the autonomy and pleasure felt by the
creatures in it.  Not all life is pain.

> we do not (or ought not) want it to be supporting an Easter dappled
> titmouse at the expense of 10^33 people/m^3---or even at the expense of
> a suburban tract full of people less rich and smart than we are.

But why not replace that tract with copies of richer and smarter people,
or at least prevent them from producing more less-rich less-smart people?

> the causes of frozen wastes, or even of small creatures tearing each other
> to pieces, breeding, living, dying pointlessly by the billions over and
> over and over, always fills me with dismay.

Some people feel that way about most of the human race.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Tue Jun 13 15:55:43 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 10:55:43 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Anti-Aging Molecule Discovered
In-Reply-To: <20060613041513.22294.qmail@web52613.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20060613041513.22294.qmail@web52613.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606130855q1a09c245r76fd8baa79adfedc@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/12/06, Ian Goddard <iamgoddard at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Suppose a drug is found that reverses aging.


All they are claiming is a removal of cells from the "senescent" state they
are not claiming "reversing aging".  The first sentence in their abstract is
questionable because most somatic cells are not replicating and are not
"senescent" in the classical sense.  Senescence is classically determined
using cells which replicate and then cease replication but do not undergo
cell death (apoptosis).

However, all they seem to have so far are cell-culture tests of a drug, and
> there's a big leap from in-vitro to in-vivo outcomes.  There might even be
> reasons why preventing cellular senescence is not universally beneficial to
> a whole biological system.


Well said.  Indeed, if the alternatives to senescence are apoptosis or
cancer, then senescence is clearly the better of the three.  And indeed the
ATM gene that their CGK733 is affecting is a critical DNA repair gene which
when mutated results in either a reduction in cell division or an increased
risk of cancer.  The two primary genes it interacts with are p53 and BRCA1
[1], mutations in which increase cancer risks.  So I would suspect that
interfering with ATM such that it reduces cellular senescence would increase
cancer.

This is the kind of report is what happens when you have individuals who are
not educated in the biology of aging extending their claims into that
swamp.  Their abstract is pretty conservative (sticking to the facts) but I
have no doubt that people unfamiliar with the field  (i.e. the general press
& public) will misinterpret this as a significant breakthrough.

Robert

1. OMIM re: ATM:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/dispomim.cgi?id=607585
re: AT
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/dispomim.cgi?id=208900
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From sentience at pobox.com  Tue Jun 13 16:00:04 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 09:00:04 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <448EE104.1060605@pobox.com>

Space is much less of a constraint than our universe's supply of 
negentropy, which by Liouville's Theorem is irreplaceable.

No more irreversible computing except where absolutely necessary!  Turn 
off the Sun, it's wasting electricity.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From eugen at leitl.org  Tue Jun 13 16:16:21 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 18:16:21 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <448EE104.1060605@pobox.com>
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<448EE104.1060605@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <20060613161621.GV28956@leitl.org>

On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 09:00:04AM -0700, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:

> No more irreversible computing except where absolutely necessary!  Turn 
> off the Sun, it's wasting electricity.

Only if you don't intercept its entire output to power
your circumstellar computer cloud. If you do that, you'll
notice that this solar system has too much matter for
the energy flux, and you have to start doing fusion, or
whatever it takes to turn matter in energy to power
the rest of your habitats.

One more bad thing: evolutionary systems optimize for
Ops/s, not Ops/J.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Tue Jun 13 16:16:59 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 11:16:59 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <20060613154411.GA4319@ofb.net>
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAENBFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060613154411.GA4319@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606130916h218536b6h590d6186cf5908c8@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/13/06, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

> Then you shouldn't begrudge this speck of a planet for the life already on
> it, should you?


Are you proposing the indefinite pursuit of the goals of surviving and
producing copies with minor modifications?  That that is the *best* use for
the matter and energy at our disposal?  Extending this thought would suggest
that we should run around the galaxy hauling back hydrogen to keep this
little game running relatively indefinitely.  We want to bring the "far
side" party *here* so everyone can see how cool our historic preservation
efforts will have been.

Ah, yes, what a noble thought, let us increase the aggregate amount of
stupidity residing on this tiny speck of a planet in a tiny corner of space
for*ever*.

If I were God, I'd want to shoot myself.
R.
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From jef at jefallbright.net  Tue Jun 13 16:38:48 2006
From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 09:38:48 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint (was Extinctions)
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAENBFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <7641ddc60606101939n61950a5fjff7963ff60927789@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAENBFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <22360fa10606130938k37e510e5v694e024046d7215@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/13/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
> Let's distinguish between what we believe to be effective (i.e. to "work"
> in Jef Albright's way of thinking), from what is ultimately desirable.
> In particular, few here are socialists; we strongly suspect that the best
> courses of action are in accordance with human liberty, minimal government,
> and minimal use of force.
>
> OKAY! So we *defend* the Nature Conservancy's legal *right* to buy land and
> take it off-line, so to speak. That is, if someday they buy the moon or
> the entire Antarctic, then in principle I don't have any problem with that,
> (except to lament it).
>
> But it's entirely a different matter what we *approve* of. And I don't
> think that anyone answered Rafal's question above. What if you can replace
> the entire Antarctic with computronium running 10^33 people per cubic meter?

Lee, my "way of thinking" is that we can't know what is ultimately
good, but we can increasingly know what principles tend to lead to
good.

Since doing "good" amounts to maximizing the scope of what is
increasingly seen to increasingly promote *our* subjective values in
the future, then the first part is to understand what our values say
about this issue.  The second part is to apply what we know about
effectively promoting these values.  And all of this within a
meta-context of perpetual growth, e.g. recognizing that no particular
issue exists in isolation and there is always a larger context.

Among the fine-grained variously-weighted values that we would
consider are our generally shared appreciation of natural beauty, our
appreciation of the evolutionary "knowledge" encoded into the various
species with regard to their environment of evolutionary adaptation,
the generally shared values that place human enjoyment over
conservation of natural habitat, the values that respect others'
disagreement, and so on and on.

I personally suspect that carrying out this ideal process of social
decision-making would result in an outcome in which we would encode as
much of the natural information as we thought relevant, and move it
all into the computronium simulation in order to greatly enhance the
scope of our growth and enjoyment.

I might be wrong.  We might all be wrong.  But I'm willing to bet that
the process of increasing awareness of our values and increasing
awareness of what works leads to the best social decision-making
practical.

- Jef


From jef at jefallbright.net  Tue Jun 13 17:01:21 2006
From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 10:01:21 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Two draft papers: AI and existential risk;
	heuristics and biases
In-Reply-To: <448E5C6E.9080507@pobox.com>
References: <44830B56.3080003@pobox.com>
	<7.0.1.0.2.20060609224449.02383310@gmu.edu>
	<448E5C6E.9080507@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <22360fa10606131001k2ff2810w71976ca30287a888@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/12/06, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience at pobox.com> wrote:
> (4) I'm not sure whether AIs of different motives would be willing to
> cooperate, even among the very rare Friendly AIs.  If it is *possible*
> to proceed strictly by internal self-improvement, there is a
> *tremendous* expected utility bonus to doing so, if it avoids having to
> share power later.

Eliezer, most would agree that there are huge efficiencies to be
gained over the evolved biological substrate, but I continue to have a
problem with your idea that a process can recursively self-improve in
isolation.  Doesn't your recent emphasis on perception being the
perception of difference (which I strongly agree with) highlight the
contradiction and the enormity of the "if" in "if it is *possible* to
proceed strictly by internal self-improvement"?

- Jef


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Tue Jun 13 17:47:59 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 10:47:59 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606130916h218536b6h590d6186cf5908c8@mail.gmail.com>
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAENBFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060613154411.GA4319@ofb.net>
	<deaa866a0606130916h218536b6h590d6186cf5908c8@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060613174759.GA23636@ofb.net>

On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 11:16:59AM -0500, Robert Bradbury wrote:
>    On 6/13/06, Damien Sullivan <[1]phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> 
>      Then you shouldn't begrudge this speck of a planet for the life
>      already on it, should you?
> 
>    Are you proposing the indefinite pursuit of the goals of surviving and
>    producing copies with minor modifications?  

The proposed use of computronium is not much different.  Goal of
surviving and producing instances with minor modifications per unit
time.

> That that is the *best* use for the matter and energy at our disposal?

I don't know *best*.  I know caution, not certainty.  I like backups.
Why turn Earth into computronium while Venus is available?

> Extending this thought would suggest that we should run around the
> galaxy hauling back hydrogen to keep this little game running
> relatively indefinitely.  We

Probably not cost-effective, but otherwise not obviously ridiculous.
The extreme alternative to having a galaxy full of life is to turn off
the stars and keep one planet going a really long time.  What's more
valuable, a galaxy for 10 billion years or a solar system for 1e20 years
or a planet for 1e30 years?  Is it worthwhile to make more people if
they all have to face death sooner?  I'm accused of denying existence to
1e33 people; I could accuse others of denying existence to someone who
is 1e30 years old.

I liked Jef's general answer.

-xx- Damien X-) 

"If nothing we do means anything, the only thing that means anything is
what we do." -- Joss Whedon (Angel)

"I beseech you, Sirs, in the bowels of Christ to consider that you may
be wrong!" -- Oliver Cromwell, to Parliament


From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Tue Jun 13 18:02:01 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 11:02:01 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <20060613154411.GA4319@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEKENIFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Damien S. writes

> On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 04:08:02AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
> 
> > Ah!  But *why* is it horrific?  That is, why would gray, ugly uniform
> > mile-high blocks of computronium (or even Pentiums) appall so many
> > people?  Well, I'll tell you!
> > 
> > It's because they personally like the way the Arctic (or your favorite
> > woodland *appears*) looks! That is, they like the way that photons get
> > bounced off these particular objects into their eyes, and they
> > aesthetically disapprove of the way the dull, apparently lifeless
> > blocks of computronium look.
> 
> > (Besides---don't forget appearance vs. reality again. The "happy"
> > chirping of birds in reality are rather brutal territorial dominance
> > games that are key to their survival. But, sigh, I'm afraid that
> 
> If you find yourself characterizing your opponents as silly, perhaps you
> have misunderstood your opponents.

That's often true.

> Most people will never see the Arctic, or rainforest, except through film.
> They value the *existence* of the wilderness.

And that's what I'm complaining about.

> They would also be suspicious of, if not outright
> reject, the idea that all matter should be organized to maximize
> computation and virtual experience,

That's what I said!

> as this would seem to be an untested obsession which should not be
> allowed to run amok (this is the good conservatism, wary of large
> scale social experiments)...

Oh Yes, Yes!  I am addressing what people ultimately *prefer*. I am
postulating that even if they understood that these monoliths 
represented lots of people---say, people who just don't happen to
be born yet---they'd still turn up their noses.  We must not confuse
what we want with how we get there.

We get their throught freedom---and persuasion!  And it's latter that
I'm about now.

Lee

> > P.S. And on a lighter note, space is not really conserved. A tiny bit
> 
> Then you shouldn't begrudge this speck of a planet for the life already
> on it, should you?

What? What?  You don't understand. (Or maybe I don't understand.)
The Earth is the **only** good thing that is happening in sub-lunar
space!

Lee


From jef at jefallbright.net  Tue Jun 13 17:57:11 2006
From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 10:57:11 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Two draft papers: AI and existential risk;
	heuristics and biases
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.4.61.0606132013020.465977@kosh.hut.fi>
References: <44830B56.3080003@pobox.com>
	<7.0.1.0.2.20060609224449.02383310@gmu.edu>
	<448E5C6E.9080507@pobox.com>
	<22360fa10606131001k2ff2810w71976ca30287a888@mail.gmail.com>
	<Pine.OSF.4.61.0606132013020.465977@kosh.hut.fi>
Message-ID: <22360fa10606131057m488549dbm4e310256c0c09c75@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/13/06, Mikko S?rel? <msarela at cc.hut.fi> wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Jun 2006, Jef Allbright wrote:
> > On 6/12/06, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience at pobox.com> wrote:
> > > (4) I'm not sure whether AIs of different motives would be willing to
> > > cooperate, even among the very rare Friendly AIs.  If it is *possible*
> > > to proceed strictly by internal self-improvement, there is a
> > > *tremendous* expected utility bonus to doing so, if it avoids having
> > > to share power later.
> >
> > Eliezer, most would agree that there are huge efficiencies to be gained
> > over the evolved biological substrate, but I continue to have a problem
> > with your idea that a process can recursively self-improve in isolation.
> > Doesn't your recent emphasis on perception being the perception of
> > difference (which I strongly agree with) highlight the contradiction and
> > the enormity of the "if" in "if it is *possible* to proceed strictly by
> > internal self-improvement"?
>
> Internal workings of a system are also part of the percieved reality. One
> can test out another algorithm for indexing data and notice that it works
> better. Completely internally. And still percieving the difference. Or one
> could prove that a certain algorithm for searching data is more efficient
> than another. And self-improve. The software and hardware are part of the
> reality.
>

The problem is in the concept of "works better".  Where does the
knowledge defining what is better (necessarily more refined than
present internal knowledge) come from, if not from some form of
competition with that which is external to the present system?

- Jef



From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Tue Jun 13 18:12:36 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 11:12:36 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAENBFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060613181236.GA28672@ofb.net>

On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 04:08:02AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:

> Hell, if you so badly *want* to receive photons and phonons that 
> depict birds chirping happily in a green woodland, then please do
> so. But do not demand that untold trillions of people don't get
> to live because you need so damned much matter to reflect those
> photons! There are less expensive ways for you to get your fix.

Actually, what are those less expensive ways?  It seems like an appeal
to just simulate it all in VR.  But how?  If someone wants the
experience of deep exploration of a complex system, vs. 3-D wallpaper of
generic trees and birdsong sources, then that'll take a lot of
computation, it's not just a matter of cheaply calculating some neurons.
The best computer of reality might be reality.

And what if some of the newly created people find that they wanted that
experience themselvs, but can't have it because the needed resources are
devoted to running their siblings?  They probably wouldn't feel their
own lives weren't worth living, but they might regret the choices of
their progenitors in some fashion.

> vistas. But can't we use space in the ways that---appearances to the
> contrary---most deeply resonate with our true values?

"Who's this 'our', white man?"

-xx- Damien X-) 


From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Tue Jun 13 18:23:10 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 11:23:10 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606130916h218536b6h590d6186cf5908c8@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGENKFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Robert writes

> On 6/13/06, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

> > Then you shouldn't begrudge this speck of a planet for the life already on it, should you?

> Are you proposing the indefinite pursuit of the goals of surviving and producing copies
> with minor modifications?  That that is the *best* use for the matter and energy at our
> disposal?

I agree with your gist.  In the back of our minds---far, far back there---we
keep our ideals alive, even putting them on a pedestal, but way, way back there.
It's far removed from the very slow, piecemeal time-tested evolutionarily
derived *actions* that we gingerly take and should take.

Actually, what's wrong with copies?  Space is non-biased.  It doesn't matter
whether my life is really computed locally or not, just so that it's computed.

In the present day, surviving and producing copies of /what we like/ sure
beats the current alternatives!

> Extending this thought would suggest that we should run around the galaxy
> hauling back hydrogen to keep this little game running relatively indefinitely.
> We want to bring the "far side" party *here* so everyone can see how cool our
> historic preservation efforts will have been. 

While I'm not sure *exactly* what you *are* in favor of here, yes, that is
silly. But my reaction to it is: we keep the game *here* going as long as
we can (but with major improvements that we slowly move towards), but 
no hauling is required: our copies rush out there and fashion the best
use of those far away resources as they can, OUT THERE.

> Ah, yes, what a noble thought, let us increase the aggregate amount of
> stupidity residing on this tiny speck of a planet in a tiny corner of
> space for*ever*.

:-)  Yes.  But I'm sure you remember that New York or Tokyo is to be vastly
preferred to the state of nature that existed in those places ten thousand
years ago.

> If I were God, I'd want to shoot myself.

Not at all!  :-)  Just be patient.  Life is already coming to its senses,
(in more ways than one!), and the "stupidity" you refer to should diminish
over time just as it has already done.  Over historical scales that is:
true, when we deliberately *revert* a given piece of real estate to the
way it was 10,000 years ago, yes, as you say... unfortunate.

Lee



From iamgoddard at yahoo.com  Tue Jun 13 18:00:10 2006
From: iamgoddard at yahoo.com (Ian Goddard)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 11:00:10 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Anti-Aging Molecule Discovered
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606130855q1a09c245r76fd8baa79adfedc@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060613180010.98080.qmail@web52609.mail.yahoo.com>

--- Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ian Goddard <iamgoddard at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > Suppose a drug is found that reverses aging. 
> 
>
> All they are claiming is a removal of cells from 
> the "senescent" state they are not claiming 
> "reversing aging".  


 They do claim an age-reversing effect. In the media
report I cited they say: "We also found the synthetic
compound can reverse aging, by revitalizing
already-lethargic cells." 

 But they avoid such claims in their abstract. This
strikes me as an example of a phenomenon I see too
often where scientists have a paper published in a
peer-reviewed journal and therein they respect
scientific standards of skepticism and claim
restraint, but then they speak in the press with
little or no sign of uncertainty. It makes it seem
like the underlying philosophical tenets of science
are just a game, a pretense, as opposed to a necessary
approach to knowing per se. Of course I hope these
guys are right and I'm not trashing them, but there
are some signs of excessive claims.




> > However, all they seem to have so far are
> > cell-culture tests of a drug, and there's a big 
> > leap from in-vitro to in-vivo outcomes.  There 
> > might even be reasons why preventing cellular 
> > senescence is not universally beneficial to
> > a whole biological system.
> 
> 
> Well said.  Indeed, if the alternatives to
> senescence are apoptosis or cancer, then senescence 
> is clearly the better of the three.  And indeed the
> ATM gene that their CGK733 is affecting is a 
> critical DNA repair gene which when mutated results 
> in either a reduction in cell division or an 
> increased risk of cancer.  The two primary genes it 
> interacts with are p53 and BRCA1 [1], mutations in 
> which increase cancer risks.  So I would suspect 
> that interfering with ATM such that it reduces 
> cellular senescence would increase cancer.


 Thanks Robert for the insight and links (below)! 


> This is the kind of report is what happens when you
> have individuals who are not educated in the 
> biology of aging extending their claims into that
> swamp.  Their abstract is pretty conservative
> (sticking to the facts) but I have no doubt that 
> people unfamiliar with the field (i.e. the general 
> press & public) will misinterpret this as a 
> significant breakthrough.


  Note too that their terminology in the press report
is atypical for gerontologists yet typical for
"anti-aging" supplement sellers. Though that might be
language issue, their being Korean. Still, all-in-all,
one does get the feeling of claims that go too far
coming from scientists who may not be specialists in
the field in which their claims apply. However, none
of those factors falsify what they say; let's keep
listening and hope they're onto something! ~Ian


> 1. OMIM re: ATM:
>
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/dispomim.cgi?id=607585
> re: AT
>
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/dispomim.cgi?id=208900
> 
> 

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com  Tue Jun 13 18:25:28 2006
From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 13:25:28 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <33003.86.143.246.157.1150035647.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<7641ddc60606100805r4b463933k2b25a48fca8f91a4@mail.gmail.com>
	<36127.86.143.246.157.1149954935.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<7641ddc60606101045w4aa50e7bod29d0b3c4ec842c3@mail.gmail.com>
	<7641ddc60606101106q1015fdd2se037da05b2289549@mail.gmail.com>
	<45607.86.143.246.157.1149983643.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<7641ddc60606101939n61950a5fjff7963ff60927789@mail.gmail.com>
	<33003.86.143.246.157.1150035647.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <7641ddc60606131125s22da3b8cm3544a02c430b18b8@mail.gmail.com>

Anders mailed me offlist probably by accident (happens to me all the
time) but let me answer on list:

. But suppose we construct a desiring acocuntantbot, but
> hardwire somewhat arbitrarily its desires to be only accountancy. Here is
> an entity that could be more than accountant, and I think we are not moral
> in preventing it from at least having a chance to explore these
> possibilities (it may of course return to accountancy as its one true love
> after having tried the excitement of other things). It is a bit like
> Julian Savulescu's principle of procreative beneficience: we have aduty to
> create the best and happiest offspring we can, and this goes for our AI
> too.
>
### I don't quite follow you there. Our desires are a contingent
outcome of evolution, and a content accountant (presumably most
content after accounting for all content) is no less arbitrary than a
mind that enjoys the songs of nightingales. I do not think that
procreative beneficence (which I accept for reasons of reciprocity)
requires that we instill a desire to explore possibilities: rather, we
have to avoid making minds whose goal systems are grossly maladapted
to the environment, precluding satisfaction of goals. It may be wrong
to build a mind with an itch it can never scratch, in constant agony,
even as it explores the universe. But it is perfectly OK, from a
beneficence point of view (as well as economically sound) to build a
mind just happily counting beans.

-----------------
I wrote :
> > How would you resolve the conflict between uses of matter that differ
> > in their level of complexity? Does the less complex one have to yield?
>
Anders:

> It is a practical and aesthetic choice, not a moral choice. Less complex
> may have less aesthetic value to me, but having a system with two kinds of
> entities rather than one kind is better in my value system.
>
and me again:
> >
> > ### So you say that building a house in a forest is a morally bad
> > thing? As in, not just grating against your own personal affection for
> > the jungle, but in and of itself a Bad Thing, worthy of opprobrium and
> > sanctions? Because, you know, a moral injunction without sanctions is
> > just empty talking, morality is as serious as the weight of force seen
> > as justified in upholding it, so I can't resist asking you, how much
> > violence would you condone to prevent the Brazilians from breaching
> > their jungle's interests to build their huts?
>
Anders:

> None at all, since I slipped above and used "moral" when I meant
> "aesthetic". The moral weight of the jungle is very slight, but destroying
> it may be an aesthetic error. If someone paints their house a hideous
> fluoroscent green I don't think moral sanctions are appropriate, but
> surely people should tell the person that it is a mistake. We do have
> aesthetic sanctions too, to some extent, although these are seldom (and
> should not) be as strong as moral sactions.
>
> But since aesthetic values are so weak in my theory they would of course
> need protection from people with other aesthetics and intentions, e.g. by
> me buying Amazonian forest to preserve it or develop its aesthetics
> further. In that case the normal libertarian sanctions of dealing with
> trespassers and squatters would apply.
>
### I see you haven't changed Anders, and it's a compliment :)

Yes, now that you clarify your position, I of course agree with you -
protecting non-sentient species, or building complexity of the
surrounding matter are matters of aesthetic choice, not moral
injunctions. Something that gentlefolk may enjoy as hobbies. I have no
problem with aesthetic environmentalism, to be pursued by genteel
methods, wholly eschewing violence and strident rhetoric.

If only more people had this constructive attitude towards the
environment, the world would be a better place.

Rafal


From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Tue Jun 13 18:32:14 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 11:32:14 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <22360fa10606130938k37e510e5v694e024046d7215@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEOENKFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Jef nails it:

> > But it's entirely a different matter what we *approve* of. And I don't
> > think that anyone answered Rafal's question above. What if you can replace
> > the entire Antarctic with computronium...
> 
> Lee, my "way of thinking" is that we can't know what is ultimately
> good, but we can increasingly know what principles tend to lead to
> good.

Right!  And we can only even *conjecture* about each. Yet practically
and on an everyday level we can be far more confident of rule of law
and respect for private property, say.

> Since doing "good" amounts to maximizing the scope of what is
> increasingly seen to increasingly promote *our* subjective values in
> the future, then the first part is to understand what our values say
> about this issue.

Yes! And that's where we do consult---but only sparingly---our ideals
way in the back of our minds.

> Among the fine-grained variously-weighted values that we would
> consider are our generally shared appreciation of natural beauty, our
> appreciation of the evolutionary "knowledge" encoded into the various
> species with regard to their environment of evolutionary adaptation,
> the generally shared values that place human enjoyment over
> conservation of natural habitat, the values that respect others'
> disagreement, and so on and on.

Yes, but "appreciation of natural beauty" is sometimes at loggerheads
with placing "human enjoyment over [whatever]".  Just recall you and
I nor any of the wonderful things that make all of us human just would
not be here if our ancestors had decided to never convert woodlands
to crop fields.

Lee

> I personally suspect that carrying out this ideal process of social
> decision-making would result in an outcome in which we would encode as
> much of the natural information as we thought relevant, and move it
> all into the computronium simulation in order to greatly enhance the
> scope of our growth and enjoyment.
> 
> I might be wrong.  We might all be wrong.  But I'm willing to bet that
> the process of increasing awareness of our values and increasing
> awareness of what works leads to the best social decision-making
> practical.



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Tue Jun 13 18:50:27 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 11:50:27 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <20060613181236.GA28672@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECENMFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Damien writes

> On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 04:08:02AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
> 
> > Hell, if you so badly *want* to receive photons and phonons that 
> > depict birds chirping happily in a green woodland, then please do
> > so. But do not demand that untold trillions of people don't get
> > to live because you need so damned much matter to reflect those
> > photons! There are less expensive ways for you to get your fix.
> 
> Actually, what are those less expensive ways?

Of course, as you know, we are talking here of our ideals, not
our current political courses of action. :-) We don't, indeed,
have any such ways today.

> It seems like an appeal to just simulate it all in VR.

That's right.

> But how?  If someone wants the experience of deep exploration of
> a complex system, vs. 3-D wallpaper of generic trees and birdsong
> sources, then that'll take a lot of computation, it's not just a
> matter of cheaply calculating some neurons. The best computer of
> reality might be reality.

Hmm?  I don't think so, but perhaps I've not understood.

In *theory* emulating neurons is indeed all you need to do.
You can't know---as I'm sure you have often acknowledged---
whether or not your brain is in a vat. Or whether you are
being emulated on some computer.

A very, very important point missed by some extraordinarily 
gifted and smart SF writers: emulating you does *not* require
the emulation of everything that you see and hear. The 2D images
are infinitely less expensive than crudely emulating every
last molecule in a forest, say.

> And what if some of the newly created people find that they wanted that
> experience themselves, but can't have it because the needed resources are
> devoted to running their siblings?

Oh, yes! Eventually the AI that runs you has to be blunt: "Paddy, 
sorry, but you've only got just 10^100 (or some other enormous
number) of resource units for what *you* want. There are, after
all, all the other 7x10^9 people I already uploaded and the other
10^10 people I'm resurrecting here in the Solar System. There *are*
limits. But vastly more than any early 21st century person could
appreciate. So be happy with what you have!"

> > But can't we use space in the ways that---appearances to the
> > contrary---most deeply resonate with our true values?
> 
> "Who's this 'our', white man?"

:-)  Yes. I know. An Earth-Firster want to get rid of people
altogether, or maybe just reduce the # of people to a few.

I claim that if people were not taken in by appearances, say, of
forest beauty, but instead understood that what was wonderful
was their own neuronal reaction, they'd become disenchanted with
what's really going on in nature. By most people's values, it's
not very nice!

Lee



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Tue Jun 13 18:59:29 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 11:59:29 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Accidental Misaddressing of Posts
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606131125s22da3b8cm3544a02c430b18b8@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEKENMFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Rafal writes

> Anders mailed me offlist probably by accident (happens to me all the
> time) but let me answer on list:

Yes. Good. Let's adopt the convention that unless it's preceded by
an "(offlist)" then go ahead.

Well---use common sense: if the tone is totally different, then of
course, realize what's happened.

But wouldn't it be a time-saver and advance the rate of true idea
exchange if somehow this error---which seems to happen to almost
everyone---was ameliorated as I suggest? Or are there better ideas?

Lee



From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com  Tue Jun 13 19:22:11 2006
From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 14:22:11 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060612023826.GA10302@ofb.net>
References: <33004.86.143.246.157.1150036420.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<200606111507.k5BF7Lta025080@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060611214617.GB30288@ofb.net>
	<4157.163.1.72.81.1150071250.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060612023826.GA10302@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <7641ddc60606131222mfb6489m7d6298bd47a78489@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/11/06, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

> Absent any government intervention, what's the incentive for many
> polluters, without specific obvious victims under tort law, to not
> pollute?  Oh wait, there isn't any.  That's even more perverse than
> democratic feedback.
>
> If taxes don't work, regulation will.  I've seen it.  Breathed it.
> Perfect?  No, but neither is the alternative.

### After harm from pollution is proven, and given class action suits,
the tort law can be used to form a feedback loop between polluters and
their victims. While the court system has its own problems (e.g. the
reliance on juries for decision-making), it is potentially better at
addressing problems, in part because of its partial decentralization
(leading to better truth-finding), possibility of competition between
jurisdictions for polluters or for victims, and other features.

I've seen regulation at work, and it's not pretty. Hundreds of
billions of dollars dumped into the Superfund boondoggle (I hope you
know about it), the estimated 20 000 000 000 dollars spent per life
saved by the EPA on chloroform controls, a panopticum of grotesque
inefficiency. The biggest harm is the one you don't see: the
businesses never founded, the money unearned because of the constant
stream of destructive regulation put out by bureaucrats.

The feedback loops connecting bureaucrats and their constituencies and
victims are so much weaker, or actually perverse, compared to the
strong ties that bind a business and its customers and victims:
inevitably, government regulation makes things worse, because it's
blind and it wouldn't care anyway.

Rafal


From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com  Tue Jun 13 19:37:59 2006
From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 14:37:59 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <7498FD71-E9D2-425A-A772-E5A66DBA9E65@mac.com>
References: <20060608175858.BCD5E57FD1@finney.org>
	<200606090218.k592Ib90027862@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<cd9526860606091155pf252c6aqcc8f7fc7406020ef@mail.gmail.com>
	<34951.86.143.246.157.1149904526.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610053239.GA7494@ofb.net>
	<35842.86.143.246.157.1149947443.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060610181656.GB19098@ofb.net>
	<7641ddc60606101858j60422558p84f366162aa482ff@mail.gmail.com>
	<7498FD71-E9D2-425A-A772-E5A66DBA9E65@mac.com>
Message-ID: <7641ddc60606131237n7c7eebc2xb8ad15e849e9d63@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/11/06, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:

> A) Only a very radical fringe puts other species above humans;

### I am glad they are only a fringe, but the threat of terrorism I am
exposed to (I sometimes use animals in my research) makes me acutely
sensitive to evironmentalist and animal-rightist rhetoric - all it
takes is a few hundred fanatics to put a monkey wrench in scientific
research.

-------------------------
>
> B) Beef is not the best way to fully feed all people on earth well
> quickly so not giving everyone a beefsteak is not a bad thing;

### I am not really talking about not giving a beefsteak: of course,
nobody has a right to demand that a steak be *given* to him. What I am
opposed to is trying to *forbid* a steak to those who can buy it. And
serious species-saving would mean forbidding steaks to most people.

--------------------------------------
>
> C) Our suburbs are grossly inefficient in many respects.  Better than
> hovels to be sure but not the model of human well-being.

### Should their inhabitants freely decide to leave them because of
this "gross inefficiency", that's fine. What I am opposed to is
forcibly evicting them to make space for bugs and slugs.

------------------------
>
> D) You are still claiming being serious about saving species is to be
> anti-human.  Give some proof or move on graciously please.

### So far, all the proposals floated in this thread are either
showbusiness, pie-in-the-sky, irrelevant, expensive, largely
ineffective, simple fraud, authoritarian, antihuman or any combination
of the foregoing.

If you can show me a single plausible (i.e. potentially economically
viable) method of significantly reducing human impact on the
environment, that would not grossly interfere with human lives, I will
concede the point.

As to moving on, graciously or otherwise, I won't. I like it where I am.

Rafal


From eugen at leitl.org  Tue Jun 13 20:05:11 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 22:05:11 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <20060613174759.GA23636@ofb.net>
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAENBFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060613154411.GA4319@ofb.net>
	<deaa866a0606130916h218536b6h590d6186cf5908c8@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060613174759.GA23636@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <20060613200511.GA28956@leitl.org>

On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 10:47:59AM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote:

> Why turn Earth into computronium while Venus is available?

Because the process starts here, and while it will leap into space
it doesn't mean Earth surface will see industrial-strength pollution
of a postbiological culture.
 
> Probably not cost-effective, but otherwise not obviously ridiculous.

No, bulk matter transport over interstellar distances is prohibitive.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Tue Jun 13 19:49:20 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 15:49:20 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEKENIFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <20060613154411.GA4319@ofb.net>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEKENIFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <39340.72.236.103.24.1150228160.squirrel@main.nc.us>


>
>> They would also be suspicious of, if not outright
>> reject, the idea that all matter should be organized to maximize
>> computation and virtual experience,
>
> That's what I said!
>

I think I'm missing the point. Although I spend an inordinate amount of
time at the computer I love working in my garden and when things in my
life become stressful that is one thing I choose to do. You want I should
live in a grey concrete structure and only look at pictures of a garden?

And I love to play with my cats and my snakes. They comfort me. Their
strange beauty and the fact that they exist is amazing to me. Still. After
all these years. The astonishing variety of what is here on this earth
delights me. Yes, it's rough and painful and death filled, that's the way
it is now. But I do not see why we should destroy and discard the millions
of years of amazing evolutionary variety to turn into computer VR droid
type ... um ... people. Where is the living part? Why should I trade RL
for VR?  I'm not convinced.

Thanks but no thanks. If that's where we're headed, I'd like to be dead
before we get there.

Or perhaps I really do not understand you.

Regards,
MB



From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Tue Jun 13 20:10:00 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 13:10:00 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECENMFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <20060613181236.GA28672@ofb.net>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECENMFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060613200959.GA11029@ofb.net>

On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 11:50:27AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
> Damien writes

As a side note, the 1e33 minds in a m3 was a number I assume made up on
the spot for rhetorical effect, since there are likely to be no more
than 1e30 *atoms* in a m3 of solid matter.

> > > Hell, if you so badly *want* to receive photons and phonons that 
> > > depict birds chirping happily in a green woodland, then please do
> > > so. But do not demand that untold trillions of people don't get
> > > to live because you need so damned much matter to reflect those
> > > photons! There are less expensive ways for you to get your fix.

> > It seems like an appeal to just simulate it all in VR.
> > But how?  If someone wants the experience of deep exploration of
> > a complex system, vs. 3-D wallpaper of generic trees and birdsong
> > sources, then that'll take a lot of computation, it's not just a
> > matter of cheaply calculating some neurons. The best computer of
> > reality might be reality.
> 
> In *theory* emulating neurons is indeed all you need to do.
> You can't know---as I'm sure you have often acknowledged---
> whether or not your brain is in a vat. Or whether you are
> being emulated on some computer.
> 
> the emulation of everything that you see and hear. The 2D images
> are infinitely less expensive than crudely emulating every
> last molecule in a forest, say.

This doesn't follow.  The 2D images are the end result of a vast amount
of work.  Copying an image is cheap but computing what it should be is
not.

E.g. suppose you want to emulate the experience of exchanging e-mail
with another brain in a vat.  Can you get away with just emulating the
sensory neurons which would be reading the e-mail?  No, because it takes
a whole other humanlevel mind to write the e-mails and carry on a
conversation.  This despite the fact that the ASCII text "reflection"
off the other mind is much smaller than the photon reflections off of a
rainforest.  The sensory bandwidth of a vatbrain may seem trivial
compared to the brain, but computing which sensory experiences should be
squeezed through that bandwidth is not trivial.

One person might be satisfied with crudely heuristic "wallpaper" full of
fractally drawn trees and chirping boids.  An animal behaviorist will
want to see real behavior.  Someone else might want to get out a
microscope, or sequence DNA, or explore ecological consequences over a
large area (so "just emulate what they're looking at right now" won't
cut it.)  And that's just at one moment, never mind wanting to see how
the system evolves over time.

The brain in a vat wants to interact with a rich environment, which
takes resources above and beyond that needed for the brain.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Tue Jun 13 20:12:42 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 13:12:42 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <20060613200511.GA28956@leitl.org>
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAENBFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060613154411.GA4319@ofb.net>
	<deaa866a0606130916h218536b6h590d6186cf5908c8@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060613174759.GA23636@ofb.net> <20060613200511.GA28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <20060613201242.GB11029@ofb.net>

On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 10:05:11PM +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 10:47:59AM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote:
> 
> > Why turn Earth into computronium while Venus is available?
> 
> Because the process starts here, and while it will leap into space
> it doesn't mean Earth surface will see industrial-strength pollution
> of a postbiological culture.

I assume you mean "won't see".

This is a choice, not a law of nature.

> > Probably not cost-effective, but otherwise not obviously ridiculous.
> No, bulk matter transport over interstellar distances is prohibitive.

Thus "not cost-effective".  I was responding to a proposal that we
shouldn't do it if we could.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From eugen at leitl.org  Tue Jun 13 20:23:52 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 22:23:52 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <20060613201242.GB11029@ofb.net>
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAENBFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060613154411.GA4319@ofb.net>
	<deaa866a0606130916h218536b6h590d6186cf5908c8@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060613174759.GA23636@ofb.net> <20060613200511.GA28956@leitl.org>
	<20060613201242.GB11029@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <20060613202352.GD28956@leitl.org>

On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 01:12:42PM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote:

> > Because the process starts here, and while it will leap into space
> > it doesn't mean Earth surface will see industrial-strength pollution
> > of a postbiological culture.
> 
> I assume you mean "won't see".

Yes.
 
> This is a choice, not a law of nature.

I'm arguing it is a law of nature, inasmuch it directly 
follows from an evolutionary scenario. I'm not very happy
about this, but unfortunately I'm yet to see a plausible
mechanism proposed by which we can maintain a low profile.
 
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Tue Jun 13 20:43:48 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 13:43:48 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Anti-Aging Molecule Discovered
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606130855q1a09c245r76fd8baa79adfedc@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060613204348.93273.qmail@web60512.mail.yahoo.com>



--- Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 6/12/06, Ian Goddard <iamgoddard at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Suppose a drug is found that reverses aging.
> 
> 
> All they are claiming is a removal of cells from the
> "senescent" state they
> are not claiming "reversing aging".

True. The spin-doctored cheese was almost too thick to
stomach. But those guys did a lot of hard work so I
guess they deserve some media attention.
 
> The first
> sentence in their abstract is
> questionable because most somatic cells are not
> replicating and are not
> "senescent" in the classical sense.

Yes. In their abstract they do not dilineate the
difference between reversible growth arrest i.e.
quiescence from irreversible growth arrest i.e.
senescence. But they DO demonstrate that what they are
doing is transiently reversing senescence. The
SA-beta-galactasidase assay and cell morphology data
is convincing that these cells are indeed senescent.  


>Senescence is
> classically determined
> using cells which replicate and then cease
> replication but do not undergo
> cell death (apoptosis).

I am not sure what you mean by classically. (Leonard
Hayflick?) But these days senescence is viewed as
termination of the replication program due to the cell
sensing that it may be on the verge of becoming
cancerous due to dysfunctional telomeres (either too
short or the wrong shape), DNA damage by radiation or
free radicals, or overly strong mitogenic stimulation
(growth signals).
  
> 
> However, all they seem to have so far are
> cell-culture tests of a drug, and
> > there's a big leap from in-vitro to in-vivo
> outcomes.  There might even be
> > reasons why preventing cellular senescence is not
> universally beneficial to
> > a whole biological system.

Ian is correct here. I don't think this drug will be
useful for systemic use (in a pill for example) but it
may have clinical application as a topical or local
treatment such as an ointment to help wound healing in
elderly or diabetic patients. It could also be useful
to grow up ex vivo cells into tissues that are then
grafted back into people. I would be interested to see
what effects it has on cells such as neurons and heart
muscle cells for example. I would also like to see
what effects it has on telomerase expression and
telomere length.    
 
> Well said.  Indeed, if the alternatives to
> senescence are apoptosis or
> cancer, then senescence is clearly the better of the
> three.

That is the whole purpose of senescence: a compromise
between cancer and apoptosis that lets a potentially
damaged cell to survive and continue to do its job
while prohibiting it from replicating. The key to this
drug is that it can temporarily suspend that
prohibition. 

  And indeed the
> ATM gene that their CGK733 is affecting is a
> critical DNA repair gene which
> when mutated results in either a reduction in cell
> division or an increased
> risk of cancer.  The two primary genes it interacts
> with are p53 and BRCA1
> [1], mutations in which increase cancer risks.  So I
> would suspect that
> interfering with ATM such that it reduces cellular
> senescence would increase
> cancer.

The drug is reversible, so taking the drug away seems
to re-establish senescence. The question is how many
additional cell divisions can a senescent cell
tolerate before it becomes faulty enough to cause
cancer.
 
> This is the kind of report is what happens when you
> have individuals who are
> not educated in the biology of aging extending their
> claims into that
> swamp.

Whom are you refering to? The researchers or the press
agents? A lot of confusion is always caused by the
Madison Ave. types who get a hold of some information
like this. All in an effort to generate investment. I
think generally the researchers themselves are often
less culpable than the marketing gurus they hire. 

> Their abstract is pretty conservative
> (sticking to the facts) but I
> have no doubt that people unfamiliar with the field 
> (i.e. the general press
> & public) will misinterpret this as a significant
> breakthrough.

It has the potential to be as significant a
breakthrough as the "purple pill" and every other drug
pharmaceuticals convince doctors to prescribe and the
public to buy. The mantra of the modern pharmaceutical
industry seems to be find a chemical that does
SOMETHING physiologically and then invent a disease or
disorder that creates a percieved need for the drug in
question.

The REAL breakthrough is their MAGIC (corny name I
know) technology. I imagine every big pharmaceutical
will either license it or reverse engineer it sooner
or later. It really is a great way to do mass
throughput screening for small molecular inhibitors of
known protein targets. I am thouroughly impressed by
it.


Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Tue Jun 13 22:37:36 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 17:37:36 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Anti-Aging Molecule Discovered
In-Reply-To: <20060613204348.93273.qmail@web60512.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <deaa866a0606130855q1a09c245r76fd8baa79adfedc@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060613204348.93273.qmail@web60512.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606131537k2e2e75e0w72c5518602a84c15@mail.gmail.com>

Its fine to forward my comments.  My impression of OMIM condensations of the
literature (the references I cited) is that the are usually quite good.
(Perhaps in part because I think the people writing the OMIM pages are under
less pressure for press or grant approvals than the front line scientists --
but this is just a guess.)

I agree with the other comments.  Its easy to check authors by doing a
PubMed search on the names involved in the article (I usually do something
like the lead author and the last author) and some important keywords (e.g.
senescence).  PubMed helps now in that it provides links to the author
searches.  If you find lots of references by authors, but they don't happen
to be related to the topic of the paper (e.g. cellular senescence or aging)
then they may be stretching beyond their areas of expertise.  Given dozens
to hundreds of theories of aging it is very easy for scientists to fall into
the swamp.

Generally I think what happens is that you get gradual spin on the
information as it goes from scientist to institution press office to expert
news sources to public news sources.  At each level there is a tendency for
reinterpretation to occur which can change the meaning from what the
original intent actually was.  You get into subtle distinctions as to
whether a public news source was quoting a scientist or quoting an
institution press office quoting a scientist, etc.

The general public doesn't even know about cellular senescence or apoptosis
or free radicals or DNA mutations or ... so *how* does one explain the
subtle details to them in 3-5 column inches without folding and mutilating
the "facts"?

Robert
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From mstriz at gmail.com  Tue Jun 13 23:12:25 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 19:12:25 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606131222mfb6489m7d6298bd47a78489@mail.gmail.com>
References: <33004.86.143.246.157.1150036420.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<200606111507.k5BF7Lta025080@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060611214617.GB30288@ofb.net>
	<4157.163.1.72.81.1150071250.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060612023826.GA10302@ofb.net>
	<7641ddc60606131222mfb6489m7d6298bd47a78489@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606131612k797e7d9bj42f03a73d29dadde@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/13/06, Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:

> ### After harm from pollution is proven, and given class action suits,
> the tort law can be used to form a feedback loop between polluters and
> their victims.

When you factor in the costs of healthcare, regulations aren't that
inefficient, especially in a country like the United States which
spends more on healthcare as a percentage of its GDP than any country
in the world.  I'd rather be Proactionary about it.

> I've seen regulation at work, and it's not pretty. Hundreds of
> billions of dollars dumped into the Superfund boondoggle (I hope you
> know about it), the estimated 20 000 000 000 dollars spent per life
> saved by the EPA on chloroform controls, a panopticum of grotesque
> inefficiency. The biggest harm is the one you don't see: the
> businesses never founded, the money unearned because of the constant
> stream of destructive regulation put out by bureaucrats.

Economies are complex and there are always a hundred examples for one
position, and a hundred for the opposite.  We've also achieved
measurable reductions in pollution, creating cleaner air, water and
soil (published studies have confirmed this), safer working
conditions, and a higher quality of life for the lowest classes, all
while maintaining one of the most robust economies in the world.  So,
all things considered, I think it was worth it.

Martin


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Tue Jun 13 23:24:38 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 16:24:38 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <cd9526860606131612k797e7d9bj42f03a73d29dadde@mail.gmail.com>
References: <33004.86.143.246.157.1150036420.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<200606111507.k5BF7Lta025080@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060611214617.GB30288@ofb.net>
	<4157.163.1.72.81.1150071250.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060612023826.GA10302@ofb.net>
	<7641ddc60606131222mfb6489m7d6298bd47a78489@mail.gmail.com>
	<cd9526860606131612k797e7d9bj42f03a73d29dadde@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060613232438.GA18447@ofb.net>

On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 07:12:25PM -0400, Martin Striz wrote:
> On 6/13/06, Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > ### After harm from pollution is proven, and given class action suits,
> > the tort law can be used to form a feedback loop between polluters and
> > their victims.
> 
> When you factor in the costs of healthcare, regulations aren't that
> inefficient, especially in a country like the United States which
> spends more on healthcare as a percentage of its GDP than any country

And we have more GDP, so we're spending more absolutely as well.  Funny
how we don't live longer.
The %GDP difference is big, too, like 15% for us then 10% for the next.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Tue Jun 13 23:47:15 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 16:47:15 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <20060613200959.GA11029@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECEOCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Damien S. writes

> As a side note, the 1e33 minds in a m3 was a number I assume made up on
> the spot for rhetorical effect, since there are likely to be no more
> than 1e30 *atoms* in a m3 of solid matter.

I mentioned that it was in "computronium", but yes, I shouldn't have been
specific. In truth, I was remembering how many present day folks you can
emulate using the Merkle/Kurzweil numbers, if you use the whole Earth.
I often quote this at people who want to keep the Earth around, boulders,
molten lava, mantle, iron core and all.

> E.g. suppose you want to emulate the experience of exchanging e-mail
> with another brain in a vat.  Can you get away with just emulating the
> sensory neurons which would be reading the e-mail?  No, because it takes
> a whole other humanlevel mind to write the e-mails and carry on a
> conversation.

Right.
 
> One person might be satisfied with crudely heuristic "wallpaper" full of
> fractally drawn trees and chirping boids.

Now that is 99% of the people 99% of the time.

> An animal behaviorist will want to see real behavior.  Someone else might
> want to get out a microscope, or sequence DNA, or explore ecological...

Yes, but how often?  Do we need to run an entire Amazon jungle just in
case someone wants to look at *one* particular piece of it?  Why not 
let some more people live instead?  What if someone has just bought the
piece of matter this simulation is running on and wants to make it into
a beautiful arctic wilderness?   Or: what if you and I didn't get to
live because some plutocrat decided to waste his vast resources on a
meadow?

> consequences over a
> large area (so "just emulate what they're looking at right now" won't
> cut it.)  And that's just at one moment, never mind wanting to see how
> the system evolves over time.

I have little problem if you want to buy a huge piece of matter somewhere,
and use it for such paltry ends. That's your business. I'm saying that if
you do, it will be at the expense of (at least) millions of peoples' lives.
(Runtime of lives, that is.)

Your choice, of course.

Lee



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Wed Jun 14 00:02:25 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 17:02:25 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <39340.72.236.103.24.1150228160.squirrel@main.nc.us>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEKEOCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

MB sensibly asks

> Although I spend an inordinate amount of time at the computer I love
> working in my garden and when things in my life become stressful that
> is one thing I choose to do. You want I should live in a grey concrete
> structure and only look at pictures of a garden?

Oh, no!  You should use your own resources as you see fit. But suppose
that you are uploaded. How can you resist the missionary/salesman from
the Operating System who knocks on your virtual door and tries to sell
you an algorithm or something that will take your real dirt garden and
virtualize it along with you?  The idea is that it would look and feel
every bit like your present one. It even kicks in greater processing
power whenever you look at something up close. 

No, sorry, but I am talking about after people---if we get so lucky---
are uploaded.

Where the discussion comes back to Earth is in public choices over
whether to sacrifice nice, real landscapes for virtual ones. Imagine
that some years hence one can have a holographic display in his 
apartment that has an even greater view than from the best pent-house
in New York or San Francisco. Moreover, you can change it to the
Kalahari when you like, or a fantastic number of other scenes.

My question for you is this: *if* it looked exactly the same as
a real one would (except no jet contrails in the sky, no smog or
fog unless you wanted it, and no clutter of other buildings, would
you find it intrinsically unsatisfactory just because it wasn't
real?

> The astonishing variety of what is here on this earth delights me.
> Yes, it's rough and painful and death filled, that's the way
> it is now. But I do not see why we should destroy and discard the millions
> of years of amazing evolutionary variety to turn into computer VR droid
> type ... um ... people. Where is the living part? Why should I trade RL
> for VR?

First, the people are the living part. Second, I totally agree that
many genotypes and phenotypes should be recorded, so that people can
have them emulated whenever they want. Besides, how did the organisms
and ecosystem that just happen to be alive now become so special?
They've been changing (and often going extinct) for hundreds of millions
of years.

We may have programs that can mock up even more beautiful and amazing
and delightful scenarios.  The only thing is that people have to get
used to the idea. GE foods and indoor plumbing are great starts; but
will it be one of those things in which only the young who grow up
with it can accept it?

Regards,
Lee



From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Wed Jun 14 00:14:59 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 17:14:59 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEKEOCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <39340.72.236.103.24.1150228160.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEKEOCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060614001459.GA27177@ofb.net>

On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 05:02:25PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:

> No, sorry, but I am talking about after people---if we get so lucky---
> are uploaded.
> 
> Where the discussion comes back to Earth is in public choices over
> whether to sacrifice nice, real landscapes for virtual ones. Imagine

When there is a real, existing capability to have virtual environments
which are fully competitive with natural ones, then this question might
have merit.  But the context here is a thread about extinctions, and
what felt like a dismissal of environmental concerns today because we'll
just be able to simulate it later.  Or in your case, simulate the
experience of it!  Dismissing real problems and *loss* today for the
sake of hypothetical abilities tomorrow, to use your words, fills me
with dismay.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Wed Jun 14 01:41:30 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 21:41:30 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <20060614001459.GA27177@ofb.net>
References: <39340.72.236.103.24.1150228160.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEKEOCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060614001459.GA27177@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <39526.72.236.103.183.1150249290.squirrel@main.nc.us>


> [...] But the context here is a thread about extinctions, and
> what felt like a dismissal of environmental concerns today because we'll
> just be able to simulate it later.  Or in your case, simulate the
> experience of it!  Dismissing real problems and *loss* today for the
> sake of hypothetical abilities tomorrow, to use your words, fills me
> with dismay.
>

Yes. If I'm just a brain in a vat plainly I cannot *really* hold my snakes
or pet my cat or dig in my garden or taste the fresh veggies.  Everything
physical will have to be simulated for me.

But I'm not (I don't think! ;) a brain in a vat at present, and the
physical still holds great charm for me. Heck, it gives my life purpose
and meaning.

I also object strongly to dissing the millions of years of natural
selection and evolution. We do not know enough to replicate things. Not
yet, not by a long shot. We don't even know what all is out there.  We
don't know how the weather works, we're just beginning to see some trends.
We don't know so damn much, it is startling, when we consider what we *do*
know. We couldn't make a house cat or a ball python or a flying fox if our
very lives depended on it. Can we make a hurricane? A tree?

So although this discussion is of some interest, it's not getting *me*
anywhere at all. Except upset! It does not seem to apply to my present
situation nor my forseeable future. Tossing away a complex reality because
some time in the future we may be able to make a low quality fake does not
strike me as an advance.

                      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Personally I think things will slowly change, rather as they have over the
last centuries. Telephones, radio, tv, cars - all are "new" to humanity.
Computers, airplanes and satellites are *very* new. But they're becoming
mainstream. As are dental implants, hip replacements, radically improved
cataract surgery, prostheses that respond to the patient's own nerves,
heart (and other) transplants, growing new bits for when you need them,
like skin. Computers that have more and more capability, that *will* learn
from what they do. And at some point they *will* be real AI. But I cannot
imagine where they'll go from there.

And at some point, these will all be ordinary, as bifocals are now. Or
false teeth. Or 40 GB harddisks. Nothing special there. There are cut-rate
places where you can buy those for minimal cost.

And some day in the future then-humanity will look back and see that there
was a radical change and they'll argue over whether it was "here" or
"there" or "somewhere else". And the Singularity will have come, only
folks likely won't see it at the time.

Rather like identifying when day becomes night. When you're well into it,
you can say, "It is night", but while it's changing it's still evening and
twilight and dusk...

Regards,
MB



From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Wed Jun 14 01:58:21 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 18:58:21 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060612212644.71387.qmail@web50205.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20060614015821.19552.qmail@web60514.mail.yahoo.com>



--- KAZ <kazvorpal at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Ethanol produces half as much energy as gasoline,
> and costs more per gallon, even with gas prices
> tripled by Bush's warmongering.

Actually given maximum thermodynamic efficiency for
both, more like a third, assuming that the octane is
completely and cleanly burned. Internal combustion
engines are not good at this, however, because the
fuel air mixture is not optimal.
  
> Of course electric cars may indeed have replaced
> gasoline by now, to some extent, if not for the ban
> on nuclear power plant building. The whole country
> could be run on nuclear power by now, which could be
> much cheaper than fossil fuels.

The whole country SHOULD be run on nuclear power. 

> Instead, most of our
> electricity still comes from fossil fuels, causing
> ironic situations like how you pollute more with an
> electric car, in California, than with a
> gasoline-powered car, because the environmental
> fearmongers have effectively banned ALL power plant
> production, leaving the state run off of coal-fire
> plants which put more nuclear radiation in the
> atmosphere than a nuclear plant.

Yes. Check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor

99 times more efficient than other reactor designs and
only short half-life waste is generated. So sad, you
could cry.



Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Wed Jun 14 02:48:59 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 19:48:59 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint (was Extinctions)
In-Reply-To: <20060613152512.7710.qmail@web50203.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEKEOFFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

KAZ wrote

> > The sooner we realize that right now every human life uses up 1300 cc's of
> > space running a person, the better, and that unless we want to adopt the
> > grotesque and elitist view that "Well, I've got mine!  I have runtime!
> > To hell with everyone else who might exist", then we have to favor *more*
> > advanced uses of space and resources over *less* advanced uses of them.
> 
> ...
> "Overpopulation" and "resource" complaints invariably end up being centered 
> on ignorance of not only economics, but also how technology changes things.

Yes.

> For example, Illinois and China have similar population densities, yet 
> Illinois alone produces enough corn to supply the US... The "overpopulation"
> of China and India purely a matter of their incompetent economic systems...

Quite right.

> What works best, and is why the states [that] I mention seem almost
> underpopulated while bearing a density of people comparable to
> "overpopulated" countries, is to allow /precisely/ the kind of "well,
> I've got mine" attitude you're eschewing.

Ah!  But you say "allow" here. I certainly never meant to imply that
such attitudes should not be *allowed*. Just as you say, when each person
attempts to maximize his or her economic impact (and reward), the
system works best.  It's because of the way so much knowledge can
only be local, as you go on to (more or less) say:

> The subset of "experts" sitting around analyzing "the best use of
> space and resources" are utterly incompetent compared to the whole
> of society making their normal decisions with their normally
> minimal level of regard for such things.

Just so!

In fact, what I was saying fits perfectly well with this: so long as
the government doesn't cordon off land and other resources "for the
people", things are closer to maximally efficient. In other words,
no more so-called public lands, which are lands owned by everyone
and are owned by no one (except the state).

Most here are libertarians, and most here would prefer resources being
in private hands as much as is possible. Surely a profit could be made,
given people's tastes today, on Yosemite and its competitors.

One of my points is that when the VR is good enough, people should 
abandon their ancient instincts that somehow seeing the "real thing"
is preferable. And that *one* of the reasons for this, besides the
cost, is that the on a completely idealistic basis the property can
be put to so much better use.

Lee



From kazvorpal at yahoo.com  Tue Jun 13 13:57:11 2006
From: kazvorpal at yahoo.com (KAZ)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 06:57:11 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060613025333.GA24410@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <20060613135711.72079.qmail@web50202.mail.yahoo.com>

----- Original Message ----
From: Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu>
To: KAZ <kazvorpal at yahoo.com>; ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2006 9:53:33 PM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
 
> The universe which contains Los Angeles, where the air is still crappy
> but has gotten a lot better.  Private technology did the work, but it's
> not obvious it would have been developed and deployed without government
> mandate -- after all, a pollution filter in your tailpipe does very
> little to make your own life better.
 
Yes, and it's an idiotic, self-defeating way of "fixing" the problem. 
 
A free market solution would be to actually improve the efficiency of automobiles, while a pollution filter actually /decreases/ the efficiency, instead.
 
Pollution, as I said, is inefficiency. Coercive government, with its usual bumbling incompetence, actually makes things MORE inefficient.
 
> I'm not sure India is Marxist, 
 
Then someone's dropped the ball, because people should be painfully aware that Marxism is why India, as well as the old Soviet Union and Communist China, is such a failure. And Haiti, and South Africa, too.
 
> but I know Soviet Russia was a disaster.
> And our own military has generated some nasty sites, since it's exempt
> from the strictures of the EPA, unlike the rest of us.  
 
Which is exactly what you can expect from a government wielding coercive authority. The more you give it, the less it will do what you think it should, and the more it will abuse. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely; great men are almost always evil men.
 
> But the effects
> of regulation need not be linear, in quantity or quality; a well-managed
> democratic government might be better than either the absence of
> regulation or the craptastic fiasco of the USSR.
 
No, even if coercive power did not invariably attract the very worst of society, and corrupt the very best of it, government /cannot/ regulate anything effectively, because it lacks any mechanism for doing so. There's no way for it to measure either needs or solutions with any efficiency. The only way the real will of the people can be expressed, and values weighed correctly (at our technological level), is through all members of society making their own choices, with the economy working as a massive parallel-processing problem solver. This is more powerful than any subset of that society setting itself up as a coercive government, no matter how "wise" its members.

--
Words of the Sentient:
I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.
                -- Barry Goldwater
E-Mail: KazVorpal at yahoo.com
Yahoo Messenger/AIM/AOL: KazVorpal
MSN Messenger: KazVorpal at yahoo.com
ICQ: 1912557
http://360.yahoo.com/kazvorpal


From kazvorpal at yahoo.com  Tue Jun 13 14:38:41 2006
From: kazvorpal at yahoo.com (KAZ)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 07:38:41 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060613025543.GB24410@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <20060613143841.87785.qmail@web50210.mail.yahoo.com>

----- Original Message ----
From: Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu>
To: KAZ <kazvorpal at yahoo.com>; ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2006 9:55:43 PM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Extinctions


On Mon, Jun 12, 2006 at 02:10:02PM -0700, KAZ wrote:

> And the more CO2 is in the water the slower the process, as the ocean
> approaches saturation. Chemistry, KAZ, chemistry.  

No, because this ignores BIOchemistry; the more CO2 there is in the ocean, the better the environment for blue-green algae, which becomes more active and breaks it down faster.
 
 
> In fact much of the
> CO2 does go into the ocean, but not all of it, and it's the accumulation
> which is alarming us.

The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere amounts to "pressure" against any available water, so that it transfers faster to the water if it builds up in the atmosphere.

> Thousands of scientists who study this disagree with you.  Why do you
> think you are smarter than they are?

This is fallaceous and irrational on so many levels it's astonishing.
 
First, there are the obvious fallacies of argumentum ad populum, et argumentum ad verecundiam. Appeal to authority and appeal to belief. 
 
Something is not right, not necessarily even more likely to be, just because a lot of people believe it, nor just because authorities believe it.
 
In fact, I think it takes a real authority-worshipper to fall for such nonsense.
 
At one time, thousands of scientists disagreed with the existence of continental drift, and yet it turns out to be correct.
 
Right now, at this very moment, thousands...most, in fact...of scientists (for whom it's relevent) still agree that 200nm is the minimum limit for cellular life, though it's quite probable that the majority of all biomass on the planet is comprised of nanobes and nanobacteria smaller than this size. 
 
In fact, most relevent scientists still think that the Americas were first populated by Asian humans 12,000 years ago, and to this day refuse to even consieder any evidence more than 12,000 years old in the first place, because they consider the very act of LOOKING more than 12,000 years back to be a "waste of time", creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of ignorance. Yet there is a snowballing accumulation of hard evidence of both African and European settlement of the Americas up to 20,000 years ago, peoples who were wiped out by the violent and ecologically disruptive invaders from Asia 12,000 years ago.
 
"Thousands of scientists" agreeing to something, especially if they're actually government bureaucrats whose funding depends on a specific viewpoint, is sometimes almost counter-evidence against that thing.
 
But, even more important than the parallel fact that many scientists AGREE with me and oppose those thousands of fund-seeking bureaucrats, that "disagreement" is, in part, a lie.
 
A few years ago, when I was a consultant in DC, I knew the head scientist in one of the key environmental projects cranking out data "confirming" the global warming and ozone myths. He tended to complain, a lot, about what a lot of bunk both global warming and the ozone thinning were. He would go into great length about the specifics of why this is, talking about the mechanics of why they were unscientific theories which were actively disproven.
 
And yet, as I said, he was head scientist for a key project "proving" global warming and ozone depletion.
 
He would complain about how his very project was consistently coming up with evidence AGAINST those two things.
 
I asked, of course, why he wasn't publishing it. He said that the data would never, regardless of methodology or anything else, pass peer review, because it contradicted the expectations of the establishment on those issues. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof", the creedo of the scientific bureaucrat, would cause the project's findings to be subjected to analysis so negative that nothing could ever pass it. The project would be jeopardized, as well as his job.
 
So while scientists manage to pass peer review to publish as functional "weather models" which consistently FAIL the test of prediction (in case you don't know, this means that if you plug in historic data, they can't predict what happened next, historically), and thus are essentially guaranteed to NOT be true, any counter-evidence is so guaranteed to be rejected that scientists don't even bother to try.
 
Scientists specifically agree that any actual global warming would effect upper atmosphere and oceanic temperatures, NOT surface temps...yet when "scientists" publish "proof" of global warming consisting entirely of surface temperatures increasing, while oceanic and upper atmosphere temps are either stable or falling, it passes peer review.
 
How many, I wonder, of the "thousands of scientists" who claim to believe in global warming and ozone depletion are simply being forced to?
 
And how many more are simply using fear to gain funding, a-la the Bush terror war applied to scientific cause? 
 
When I was working on a project for NOAA, I came across a website of theirs which was all about the horrible danger of El Nino. One of the organization's executives was wandering through the high-profile department where I was working, and as he said "hi" I asked him why the site only focused on the life and property threats of the phenomenon, and didn't say anything about how the net result of El Nino on the US was a /reduction/ in property damage and loss of life, because we invariably have milder winters when it's occuring. His reply was "Because you can't get more funding by telling people how good something is".
 
When doing work on the Hubble Space Telescope project, and commenting on the statistical insanity of worrying about asteroid impact, I got EXACTLY the same answer.
 
NOBODY is funding their projects by promising to prove that we're in no danger. Why would anyone bother funding a project about nothing?
 
When a publically funded scientist says something scary, he is EXACTLY as likely to be credible as a tobacco scientist, for the very same reason.
 
So, when you say "Thousands of scientists who study this disagree with you. Why do you think you are smarter than they are?", you have your answer:
 
A) One does not acquire ANY credibility by stating such ridiculous fallacies as if credible argument.
B) Thousands of scientists are regularly wrong, and the people who turned out correct are always faced with that fallaceous argument...though people never seem to learn, and keep making it.
C) The scientists may very well not believe what they feel financially compelled to support.
D) Some of the rest may not care either way, and just be picking the most sensational stance in order pursue the equasion; Fear = funding.
 
--
Words of the Sentient:
As I readily acknowledge that no kind of government is more happy than
this -- where liberty is regulated with becoming moderation, and properly
established on a durable basis -- so also I consider those as the most
happy people who are permitted to enjoy such a condition. And if they
exert their strenuous and constant efforts for its preservation and
retention, I admit that they act in perfect consistence with their duty.
To this object the magistrates likewise ought to apply their greatest
diligence, so as not to allow liberty, of which they are constituted
guardians, to be in any respect diminished, much less to be violated. If
they are inactive and unconcerned about this, they are perfidious to their
office, and traitors to their country.     -- John Calvin
E-Mail: KazVorpal at yahoo.com
Yahoo Messenger/AIM/AOL: KazVorpal
MSN Messenger: KazVorpal at yahoo.com
ICQ: 1912557
http://360.yahoo.com/kazvorpal


From kazvorpal at yahoo.com  Tue Jun 13 15:25:12 2006
From: kazvorpal at yahoo.com (KAZ)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 08:25:12 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint (was Extinctions)
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAENBFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060613152512.7710.qmail@web50203.mail.yahoo.com>

----- Original Message ----
From: Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 5:44:37 AM
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint (was Extinctions)
 

> The sooner we realize that right now every human life uses up 1300 cc's of
> space running a person, the better, and that unless we want to adopt the
> grotesque and elitist view that "Well, I've got mine!  I have runtime!
> To hell with everyone else who might exist", then we have to favor *more*
> advanced uses of space and resources over *less* advanced uses of them.
 
Actually, this argument uses a kind of static analysis which is quite irrelevent to the big picture.
 
"Overpopulation" and "resource" complaints invariably end up being centered on ignorance of not only economics, but also how technology changes things.
 
For example, Illinios and China have similar population densities, yet Illinois alone produces enough corn to supply the US (the US exports a LOT of corn). Likewise, New York State has a population density equal to India, yet if you drive through the state it seems half empty. The "overpopulation" of China and India purely a matter of their incompetent economic systems and relatively low technology. That's all "overpopulation" ever is, at this time. 
 
And resource shortages, of course, are just an aspect of that.
 
What works best, and is why the states I mention seem almost underpopulated while bearing a density of people comparable to "overpopulated" countries, is to allow /precisely/ the kind of "well, I've got mine" attitude you're eschewing. When each person is free to regulate his economic realm for himself, the result is a far more efficient and progressive system than any central planning. The subset of "experts" sitting around analyzing "the best use of space and resources" are utterly incompetent compared to the whole of society making their normal decisions with their normally minimal level of regard for such things.
 
Not only are they more efficient in resource management than any organization of experts, because they're the ultimate parallel processing system, but they also produce /practical/ technological advancement much faster, so that even the incidental efficiency they produce is greater than the "experts" could do if they had the whole of society's resources dedicated specifically to efficiency.
 
--
Words of the Sentient:
To be controlled in our economic pursuits is to be controlled in everything.
                                 ---F. A. Hayek
E-Mail: KazVorpal at yahoo.com
Yahoo Messenger/AIM/AOL: KazVorpal
MSN Messenger: KazVorpal at yahoo.com
ICQ: 1912557
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From spike66 at comcast.net  Wed Jun 14 02:50:29 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 19:50:29 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint (was Extinctions)
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAENBFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <200606140306.k5E364kB003736@andromeda.ziaspace.com>


> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Lee Corbin
...
> 
> To hear of folks wanting declines in human fecundity in order to advance
> the causes of frozen wastes, or even of small creatures tearing each other
> to pieces, breeding, living, dying pointlessly by the billions over and
> over and over, always fills me with dismay.
> 
> Lee


Lee passage soars to the level of techno-poetry.  Thanks bud.  

{8-]

spike







From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Wed Jun 14 03:25:23 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 20:25:23 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Uses to which Space Could Be Put (was Space: The
	Final Constraint)
In-Reply-To: <448EE104.1060605@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGEOIFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Eliezer wrote

> Space is much less of a constraint than our universe's supply of 
> negentropy, which by Liouville's Theorem is irreplaceable.
> 
> No more irreversible computing except where absolutely necessary!
> Turn off the Sun, it's wasting electricity.

I don't know if you're joking. I used to discuss the possibility of
entire "reversible civilizations" with Ralph Merkle; I believe that
he agreed that that was a fine idea in principle. 

Of course, we have a ways to go before the U.N. can budget that.

As for *space* not being the final constraint, well, if you want
to add entropy as a prior constraint, don't forget to list these:

    supply of raw materials in the Solar System
    supply of human vigor and enthusiasm
    supply of federal dollars, Euros, yen, etc.
    supply of willing voters & politicians
    etc.

I say that Space is final because it leads to this ultimate question:

Given *one* cubic meter in your dwelling that the Oracle says you
can do anything whatsoever with---provided that no effect may escape
this cube---what would you do with it?  (If this isn't a test of 
some of one's *ultimate* values, then I don't know what is.)

Possible answers (miniaturization == computronium, in some sense)
start with:

1. a miniaturized Amazon rain forest
2. a miniaturized Earth before the baleful impact of man
3. computronium running a vast number of yous
4. computronium running a vast number of super intelligent
   creatures including you, who each have tremendous resources,
   who can't assault each other, etc.

All suggestions most welcome!

Lee



From spike66 at comcast.net  Wed Jun 14 03:10:51 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 20:10:51 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGENKFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <200606140325.k5E3PwwG018699@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Lee Corbin
> 
> ...  Just be patient.  Life is already coming to its senses,
> (in more ways than one!) ... Lee


Lee a modification of your comment can serve as a definition of the
Singularity: when this universe of matter and energy comes to its senses.

{8-] 

spike







From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Wed Jun 14 03:34:30 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 20:34:30 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <20060614001459.GA27177@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECEOJFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Damien writes

> But the context here is a thread about extinctions, and what felt
> like a dismissal of environmental concerns today because we'll
> just be able to simulate it later.  Or in your case, simulate the
> experience of it!  Dismissing real problems and *loss* today for the
> sake of hypothetical abilities tomorrow, to use your words, fills me
> with dismay.

I don't disagree!  Though I do quibble with the "loss" part: that's
not clear (given that we don't become extinct soon). Any DNA somewhere
that hasn't even been discovered holds little theoretical value
*compared* to other things.


No, I got on this tangent (and duly renamed the thread) to submit that
we have to know what we *want*, that is, what we ultimately want, in
order to think more clearly about what we want now.

(Yes, yes, yes, I am aware of the horrid dangers that attend this, viz.,
that we start in on central planning and hopeless attempts to maximize
our return too far away, the bane of the 20th century. But I'm hardly
advocating that; I just want people to have a general idea of how 
space is best used, either now or in the future, before they start
in on truly weird things like ZPG.)

Lee



From sentience at pobox.com  Wed Jun 14 03:35:34 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 20:35:34 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Uses to which Space Could Be Put (was Space: The
 Final Constraint)
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGEOIFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGEOIFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <448F8406.6010909@pobox.com>

Lee Corbin wrote:
> 
> As for *space* not being the final constraint, well, if you want
> to add entropy as a prior constraint, don't forget to list these:
> 
>     supply of raw materials in the Solar System
>     supply of human vigor and enthusiasm
>     supply of federal dollars, Euros, yen, etc.
>     supply of willing voters & politicians
>     etc.

I'm saying that negentropy is the *limiting* constraint - not energy, 
not space, not even cooling area.  The limiting constraint is what you 
have least of, relative to your other resources, and what you cannot 
easily make more of.  The total amount you can compute in this universe 
before you die or find a way to leave, is determined by limits on 
negentropy - not space, not cooling, not even time.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Wed Jun 14 04:13:42 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 21:13:42 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Uses to which Space Could Be Put (was Space: The
	Final Constraint)
In-Reply-To: <448F8406.6010909@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAEOKFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Eliezer writes

> > As for *space* not being the final constraint, well, if you want
> > to add entropy as a prior constraint, don't forget to list these:
> > 
> >     supply of raw materials in the Solar System
> >     supply of human vigor and enthusiasm
> >     supply of federal dollars, Euros, yen, etc.
> >     supply of willing voters & politicians
> >     etc.
> 
> I'm saying that negentropy is the *limiting* constraint - not energy, 
> not space, not even cooling area.  The limiting constraint is what you 
> have least of, relative to your other resources, and what you cannot 
> easily make more of.

What?  Well that definitely applies to the things on my list too!

Of course, it revolves around what one may mean by "easily".

In this discussion---which is primarily about *values* and about what
one should do with one's space---one cannot easily make any of the
above. Sorry to the list if we're only arguing about what I meant by
"final" and what you mean by "limiting".

Lee

> The total amount you can compute in this universe 
> before you die or find a way to leave, is determined by limits on 
> negentropy - not space, not cooling, not even time.



From iamgoddard at yahoo.com  Wed Jun 14 03:50:26 2006
From: iamgoddard at yahoo.com (Ian Goddard)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 20:50:26 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Anti-Aging Molecule Discovered
In-Reply-To: <20060613204348.93273.qmail@web60512.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20060614035026.98407.qmail@web52601.mail.yahoo.com>

--- The Avantguardian wrote:

> The mantra of the modern pharmaceutical industry 
> seems to be find a chemical that does SOMETHING 
> physiologically and then invent a disease or 
> disorder that creates a percieved need for the 
> drug in question.


 Indeed, it seems arguable that too often, instead of
inventing drugs for diseases, the industry is
inventing diseases for drugs. This report might be
very much related to such a purported tendency:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/19/AR2006041902560.html

 

> The REAL breakthrough is their MAGIC (corny name I
> know) technology. I imagine every big pharmaceutical
> will either license it or reverse engineer it sooner
> or later. It really is a great way to do mass
> throughput screening for small molecular inhibitors
> of known protein targets. I am thouroughly 
> impressed by it.


 My thoughts too. Here's an interesting PDF file
related to the MAGIC technology and CGK733:

http://www.kosef.re.kr/community/suica/upload/297_8.pdf


http://IanGoddard.net

"A proposition is a picture of reality. [...] A
picture cannot, however, place itself outside its
representational form. [...] No proposition can make a
statement about itself, because a propositional sign
cannot be contained in itself (that is the whole of
the 'theory of types')." -- Ludwig Wittgenstein



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
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From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Wed Jun 14 04:22:35 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 05:22:35 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Uses to which Space Could Be Put (was Space: The
	Final Constraint)
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAEOKFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <448F8406.6010909@pobox.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAEOKFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606132122r4b3ef478h3a69abeefacbd2a8@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/14/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> In this discussion---which is primarily about *values* and about what
> one should do with one's space---one cannot easily make any of the
> above.


It's not obvious to me that everyone should do the same thing with their
space.

For example, some people on this list have expressed a fairly gung-ho desire
to ascend rapidly to superintelligence. I personally don't have an exact or
final answer to that, but I'm feeling inclined to stick closer to the human
norm (albeit with uploading if and when that becomes available).

Does that mean I'm right and everyone else should follow my path? Well, what
if there are concepts of profound truth and beauty that can only be fathomed
by a superintelligence, that would never be thought of if everyone went my
way?

This can be considered a larger scale version of individual differences:
I've never been into classical music, for example, but I suspect the world
is a richer place for having people who are. Similarly, I suspect the
universe as a whole will be a richer place for accomodating different paths.

(Heh, the above sounds like I'm trying to be touchy-feely and politically
correct... anyone who knows me can confirm that is _not_ my style :))

As for what argument to give people who want to turn the Earth into a nature
reserve once we no longer need it as a location for farms, mines and
factories: what I want is to not have to argue. The response I want to be
able to give is: "Cool, have fun with that. I'm off to the asteroid belt to
get some dead matter to turn into computronium. Bye."
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From spike66 at comcast.net  Wed Jun 14 04:41:17 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 21:41:17 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] hawking on space colonization
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAENBFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <200606140441.k5E4fGnD028930@andromeda.ziaspace.com>




http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,199293,00.html








From amara at amara.com  Wed Jun 14 05:20:27 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 07:20:27 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] CSS fix for Explorer ?
Message-ID: <p06230901c0b548e189f0@[150.146.134.133]>

sorry for the off-topic ... (although there are wavelet users here who
might appreciate this)

In the last months, I made a large redesign for the first time in decade
of my wavelet pages, all in CSS and this week uploaded it. Later, I
heard a hint that IE 5 and 6 broke CSS rules, so after I found a version
of Mac IE 5.2 yesterday on the net to test it, I discovered that my CSS
work that looks great in normal browsers, now in Explorer looks
horrible. They broke many standard CSS rules apparently. Since I don't
have time to fix all of the places where they broke that rules, can
someone point me to a very simple fix in CSS for IE 5 and 6, so that I
can give my new wavelet pages to the science/math community? I'm moving
my site (and me too), and I need to get this done.

Amara

-- 

Amara Graps, PhD      www.amara.com
Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, ITALIA
Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute, Tucson


From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Wed Jun 14 06:30:00 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 23:30:00 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Uses to which Space Could Be Put
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606132122r4b3ef478h3a69abeefacbd2a8@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMEONFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Russell writes

On 6/14/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
> > In this discussion---which is primarily about
> > *values* and about what one should do with one's
> > space

> It's not obvious to me that everyone should do
> the same thing with their space.

That's right!  But if we switch to a slightly more
accurate vocabulary, the question takes on the form
of how much you would or would not approve of people
doing various things with their space.

> For example, some people on this list have expressed
> a fairly gung-ho desire to ascend rapidly to
> superintelligence. I personally don't have an exact
> or final answer to that, but I'm feeling inclined
> to stick closer to the human norm (albeit with
> uploading if and when that becomes available).

For sure.  One *could* (and yes, would) use one's space
selfishly, primarily. That wasn't what I was getting at,
though. 

I would like folks to express how much they'd disapprove
of this or that. For example, we'd all disapprove of
someone using his space as a torture chamber, or even
of someone just letting it remain a vacuum. In the latter
case we'd say "what a waste!".

So more concretely (and down to Earth), let's say that
the Earth's surface got expanded by ten square kilometers
by some alien, and it happens to ask you what should be
done with it. It says that you can have the 10km^2 be
desert, forest, vacuum, cities, or anything else familiar
already on Earth.

In the key case of cities, it would be populated by people
who had been aborted before birth---the alien somehow
manages to use a time warp or something, and there they
are in their complete cities!

Or you can have the city filled with all the most creative
geniuses who ever died young, and by millions more who were
aborted. (So at very least we get Schubert, Galois, and Henry
Moseley, etc.)

So what would you pick?  Surely not an Arctic wilderness.
Any better ideas?

Lee



From xyz at iq.org  Wed Jun 14 06:34:52 2006
From: xyz at iq.org (Harry Harrison)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 16:34:52 +1000
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <20060613161621.GV28956@leitl.org>
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<448EE104.1060605@pobox.com> <20060613161621.GV28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <1150266892.10927.263774373@webmail.messagingengine.com>


> One more bad thing: evolutionary systems optimize for
> Ops/s, not Ops/J.

I don't follow your reasoning. Most creatures seem to be in
Ops/J mode with move to Ops/s for combat in order to gain or
prevent loss of J.





From xyz at iq.org  Wed Jun 14 06:42:56 2006
From: xyz at iq.org (Harry Harrison)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 16:42:56 +1000
Subject: [extropy-chat] Anti-Aging Molecule Discovered
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606130855q1a09c245r76fd8baa79adfedc@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060613041513.22294.qmail@web52613.mail.yahoo.com>
	<deaa866a0606130855q1a09c245r76fd8baa79adfedc@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <1150267376.11364.263774637@webmail.messagingengine.com>


> Well said.  Indeed, if the alternatives to senescence are apoptosis or
> cancer, then senescence is clearly the better of the three.  And indeed

Well said, but this is still a good result. From an evolutionary standpoint it
is a cheap and dangerous hack, but it's a nice research tool and for some
patients suffering, say, from serious wasting conditions the trade off, as
with other growth promoters, may be worthwhile.






From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Wed Jun 14 06:44:48 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 07:44:48 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Uses to which Space Could Be Put
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMEONFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <8d71341e0606132122r4b3ef478h3a69abeefacbd2a8@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMEONFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606132344s2c068b25xd97e9f09125982ab@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/14/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> So what would you pick?  Surely not an Arctic wilderness.
> Any better ideas?
>

Oh, my answer to that question is, I'd want the space filled with people
living worthwhile lives.
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From xyz at iq.org  Wed Jun 14 06:19:56 2006
From: xyz at iq.org (Harry Harrison)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 16:19:56 +1000
Subject: [extropy-chat] Uses to which Space Could Be Put (was Space: The
 Final Constraint)
In-Reply-To: <448F8406.6010909@pobox.com>
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGEOIFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<448F8406.6010909@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <1150265996.10036.263772614@webmail.messagingengine.com>

> easily make more of.  The total amount you can compute in this universe 
> before you die or find a way to leave, is determined by limits on 
> negentropy - not space, not cooling, not even time.

Time and cooling are derived from negentropy anyway and space is tied up in the definition too, although it wouldn't be correct to say its derived.

Remember your argument only holds for computations that are not physically reversable. You can string reversable computations (RC) between irreversable computations (IC). RCs do not consume neg entropy.

input -> IC -> RC <-> RC -> IC -> result

Because the ICs have such a low probability of reversal and the RC's
are neutral, the whole computational path has a low probability of
reversal.




From nanogirl at halcyon.com  Wed Jun 14 08:09:07 2006
From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 01:09:07 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Dancing Robot
References: <p06230901c0b548e189f0@[150.146.134.133]>
Message-ID: <005a01c68f89$e600ee30$0200a8c0@Nano>

Okay I've got another animation for you, a dancing robot! http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/2006/06/particle11.html
Looking forward to your comments, best wishes,

Gina "Nanogirl" Miller
Nanotechnology Industries
http://www.nanoindustries.com
Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com/index2.html
Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/
Everything else blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/
Foresight Participating Member http://www.foresight.org
Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute  http://www.extropy.org
3D/Animation http://www.nanogirl.com/museumfuture/index.htm
Microscope Jewelry http://www.nanogirl.com/crafts/microjewelry.htm
Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com
"Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future."
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From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Wed Jun 14 08:24:08 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 09:24:08 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Accidental Misaddressing of Posts
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEKENMFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <7641ddc60606131125s22da3b8cm3544a02c430b18b8@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEKENMFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606140124g2fe377f9qd7c1438cc8cd4f20@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/13/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> Rafal writes
>
> > Anders mailed me offlist probably by accident (happens to me all the
> > time) but let me answer on list:
>
> Yes. Good. Let's adopt the convention that unless it's preceded by
> an "(offlist)" then go ahead.


Sounds fine to me.
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From eugen at leitl.org  Wed Jun 14 10:15:53 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 12:15:53 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Uses to which Space Could Be Put (was Space: The
	Final Constraint)
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606132122r4b3ef478h3a69abeefacbd2a8@mail.gmail.com>
References: <448F8406.6010909@pobox.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAEOKFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<8d71341e0606132122r4b3ef478h3a69abeefacbd2a8@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060614101553.GS28956@leitl.org>

On Wed, Jun 14, 2006 at 05:22:35AM +0100, Russell Wallace wrote:

> For example, some people on this list have expressed a fairly gung-ho desire
> to ascend rapidly to superintelligence. I personally don't have an exact or

I have inasmuch a problem with that as a very rapid ascent could
result in mass extinction of lesser players. Because of this it
would be a good idea to initially put a dampener on the kinetics, until we
figure out how to deal with the neo-Amish problem without breaking
too much. I have no illusions that this is only postponing the
problem, but this also limits the problem scope, if accompanied with
incitements (more opportunities to hitch the ride). Ultimatively, 
even maintaining classical habitats might become economically 
nonsustainable. Ultimatively, computational substrate is also
subject to evolutionary resource allocation.

I don't think there is a real solution for this dilemma, but then,
we're not nearly there yet. 

> final answer to that, but I'm feeling inclined to stick closer to the human
> norm (albeit with uploading if and when that becomes available).

Same thing here -- but consensus interaction rate will shift
to the faster end, so bidirectional communication with anyone
left behind will ultimatively cease.
 
> As for what argument to give people who want to turn the Earth into a nature
> reserve once we no longer need it as a location for farms, mines and
> factories: what I want is to not have to argue. The response I want to be
> able to give is: "Cool, have fun with that. I'm off to the asteroid belt to
> get some dead matter to turn into computronium. Bye."

If this was a guaranteed reaction, and an irrreversible decision 
we wouldn't be talking about this right now.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From eugen at leitl.org  Wed Jun 14 14:22:41 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 16:22:41 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint
In-Reply-To: <1150266892.10927.263774373@webmail.messagingengine.com>
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEENCFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<448EE104.1060605@pobox.com> <20060613161621.GV28956@leitl.org>
	<1150266892.10927.263774373@webmail.messagingengine.com>
Message-ID: <20060614142241.GF28956@leitl.org>

On Wed, Jun 14, 2006 at 04:34:52PM +1000, Harry Harrison wrote:

> > One more bad thing: evolutionary systems optimize for
> > Ops/s, not Ops/J.
> 
> I don't follow your reasoning. Most creatures seem to be in
> Ops/J mode with move to Ops/s for combat in order to gain or
> prevent loss of J.

Predator/prey dynamics constantly ratchets up the processing
speed at a given energetic budget (starvation cycles included)
and processing speed of biological tissue (which plateaued
at ~120 m/s with the current substrate, and is highly unlikely
to change dramatically upwards in those ~500 MYrs this planet is
fit for biology). If you're too slow, you lose your life, 
not just your Joules. Thus being too slow when it really matters
thoroughly vacuums the gene pool.

Predator/prey co-evolution dynamics aside, social animals 
have a given interaction rate, which you need to be able to 
follow in order to be part of the hierarchy. You don't want
to trail the cool kids, in fact you'd want to be quicker than
the cool kids if you want to track what they do. Iterate.

If you're a population of social animals with a knob to 
frob your native processing rate ad libitum (within the
energetic envelope) you will find that group pressure will
cause the knob to be maxed out before very long. If you're
directly powered by the solar output, or make your own
power, then the interaction rate is limited by the processing
speed of the substrate, and thus effectively heat removal
rate from a computational volume.

Unfortunately, this wreaks havoc to long-term thinking such
as maximizing Ops/Joule over lifetime.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From mstriz at gmail.com  Wed Jun 14 16:22:20 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 12:22:20 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060613232438.GA18447@ofb.net>
References: <33004.86.143.246.157.1150036420.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<200606111507.k5BF7Lta025080@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060611214617.GB30288@ofb.net>
	<4157.163.1.72.81.1150071250.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060612023826.GA10302@ofb.net>
	<7641ddc60606131222mfb6489m7d6298bd47a78489@mail.gmail.com>
	<cd9526860606131612k797e7d9bj42f03a73d29dadde@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060613232438.GA18447@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606140922k1d3f0357qe37e078d412e1041@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/13/06, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

> And we have more GDP, so we're spending more absolutely as well.  Funny
> how we don't live longer.
> The %GDP difference is big, too, like 15% for us then 10% for the next.

It's 13% in the United States (I had to look this statistic up a few
months ago), but I'm not sure where 2nd place is.  The point is that,
given the outrageous medical costs in the United States, it makes more
sense to prevent health problems in the first place here more than
anywhere.  Even if regulations still end up costing the economy more
(something that I think is at least disputable), the health problems
avoided and lives saved is a cost that most sensible people are
willing to shoulder.

Martin


From rhanson at gmu.edu  Wed Jun 14 17:28:02 2006
From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 13:28:02 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <cd9526860606140922k1d3f0357qe37e078d412e1041@mail.gmail.co m>
References: <33004.86.143.246.157.1150036420.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<200606111507.k5BF7Lta025080@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060611214617.GB30288@ofb.net>
	<4157.163.1.72.81.1150071250.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060612023826.GA10302@ofb.net>
	<7641ddc60606131222mfb6489m7d6298bd47a78489@mail.gmail.com>
	<cd9526860606131612k797e7d9bj42f03a73d29dadde@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060613232438.GA18447@ofb.net>
	<cd9526860606140922k1d3f0357qe37e078d412e1041@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060614132646.02440138@gmu.edu>

At 12:22 PM 6/14/2006, Martin wrote:
>On 6/13/06, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> > And we have more GDP, so we're spending more absolutely as well.  Funny
> > how we don't live longer. The %GDP difference is big, too, like 15% for us
> > then 10% for the next.
>
>It's 13% in the United States (I had to look this statistic up a few
>months ago), but I'm not sure where 2nd place is.

It was 15% in 2002, and is surely higher now:
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/articles_2004/us_recordhigh_healthcare_spending.html



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323 



From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Wed Jun 14 18:19:16 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 13:19:16 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Anti-Aging Molecule Discovered
In-Reply-To: <1150267376.11364.263774637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
References: <20060613041513.22294.qmail@web52613.mail.yahoo.com>
	<deaa866a0606130855q1a09c245r76fd8baa79adfedc@mail.gmail.com>
	<1150267376.11364.263774637@webmail.messagingengine.com>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606141119o22b429c7h16ada28e6f25d1b5@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/14/06, Harry Harrison <xyz at iq.org> wrote:
>
>
> > Well said.  Indeed, if the alternatives to senescence are apoptosis or
> > cancer, then senescence is clearly the better of the three.  And indeed
>
> Well said, but this is still a good result. From an evolutionary
> standpoint it
> is a cheap and dangerous hack, but it's a nice research tool and for some
> patients suffering, say, from serious wasting conditions the trade off, as
> with other growth promoters, may be worthwhile.


Well, "serious" wasting does not generally happen in people with good
nutritional habits.  But one of the problems is that as one grows older (I'm
watching this in my parents) is poorer dietary habits, perhaps due to a
decrease in taste capabilities and mobility to prepare food.  There are not
I believe dietary recommendations which are adjusted for possible changes in
body chemistry in the older old (say 80+).

I do agree that senescence can be considered a "hack".  Much better would be
more robust systems to reduce DNA damage and facilitate more robust DNA
repair.  Also a stem cell replacement strategy which is under better control
(to enable stem cell replacement of cells which have undergone apoptosis and
multiple levels of control to keep stem cells from running amok [presumably
causing cancer]).

The regulation of the ATM gene is very tricky as it may be involved in
determining which of the 3 DNA critical repair pathways to choose and/or the
apoptosis v. senescence decisions.  These are still areas which are on the
leading edge of our understanding with respect to what is actually going on
in the cells with respect to genome maintenance.

Robert
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From mstriz at gmail.com  Wed Jun 14 18:21:52 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 14:21:52 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20060614132646.02440138@gmu.edu>
References: <33004.86.143.246.157.1150036420.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<200606111507.k5BF7Lta025080@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060611214617.GB30288@ofb.net>
	<4157.163.1.72.81.1150071250.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060612023826.GA10302@ofb.net>
	<7641ddc60606131222mfb6489m7d6298bd47a78489@mail.gmail.com>
	<cd9526860606131612k797e7d9bj42f03a73d29dadde@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060613232438.GA18447@ofb.net>
	<cd9526860606140922k1d3f0357qe37e078d412e1041@mail.gmail.com>
	<7.0.1.0.2.20060614132646.02440138@gmu.edu>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606141121m53a70f93y2a407aebb98b55aa@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/14/06, Robin Hanson <rhanson at gmu.edu> wrote:

> It was 15% in 2002, and is surely higher now:
> http://reclaimdemocracy.org/articles_2004/us_recordhigh_healthcare_spending.html

Very well, proves my point even more.  It's quite amazing how health
care costs have tripled in the last 40 years.  This study:

http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/3rd/pdf/thirdreport.pdf

Shows that pollution is down in that time period.  People are exposed
to less pollutants, such as metals, smoking related hydrocarbons,
pesticides, etc., and by no coincidence, certain pollution-related
diseases are down as well.

Martin


From pharos at gmail.com  Wed Jun 14 18:31:11 2006
From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 19:31:11 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <cd9526860606140922k1d3f0357qe37e078d412e1041@mail.gmail.com>
References: <33004.86.143.246.157.1150036420.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<200606111507.k5BF7Lta025080@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060611214617.GB30288@ofb.net>
	<4157.163.1.72.81.1150071250.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060612023826.GA10302@ofb.net>
	<7641ddc60606131222mfb6489m7d6298bd47a78489@mail.gmail.com>
	<cd9526860606131612k797e7d9bj42f03a73d29dadde@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060613232438.GA18447@ofb.net>
	<cd9526860606140922k1d3f0357qe37e078d412e1041@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <ee50357e0606141131o3cb86914r31a0a26837a504d9@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/14/06, Martin Striz wrote:
> On 6/13/06, Damien Sullivan wrote:
>
> > And we have more GDP, so we're spending more absolutely as well.  Funny
> > how we don't live longer.
> > The %GDP difference is big, too, like 15% for us then 10% for the next.
>
> It's 13% in the United States (I had to look this statistic up a few
> months ago), but I'm not sure where 2nd place is.  The point is that,
> given the outrageous medical costs in the United States, it makes more
> sense to prevent health problems in the first place here more than
> anywhere.  Even if regulations still end up costing the economy more
> (something that I think is at least disputable), the health problems
> avoided and lives saved is a cost that most sensible people are
> willing to shoulder.
>

Well, surprisingly, the reason US people don't live longer is because
of what kills them.  :)

The US has got rid of many of the third world diseases and substituted
the diseases of rich first world countries.  Obesity, diabetes, heart
disease, etc.  Mostly aided by lifestyle problems like lack of
exercise, overeating and eating the wrong food, smoking, cars, guns,
alcohol, etc.  And the infant mortality rate is 25% higher than
Euroland, which brings the overall life expectancy figure down.

The other point is that a lot of US health expenditure is not for
life-threatening conditions, Just 'feel-good' or 'feel-better' stuff.

BillK


From mstriz at gmail.com  Wed Jun 14 19:09:17 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 15:09:17 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <ee50357e0606141131o3cb86914r31a0a26837a504d9@mail.gmail.com>
References: <33004.86.143.246.157.1150036420.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<200606111507.k5BF7Lta025080@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060611214617.GB30288@ofb.net>
	<4157.163.1.72.81.1150071250.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060612023826.GA10302@ofb.net>
	<7641ddc60606131222mfb6489m7d6298bd47a78489@mail.gmail.com>
	<cd9526860606131612k797e7d9bj42f03a73d29dadde@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060613232438.GA18447@ofb.net>
	<cd9526860606140922k1d3f0357qe37e078d412e1041@mail.gmail.com>
	<ee50357e0606141131o3cb86914r31a0a26837a504d9@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606141209h4a9a61bx34aedea5caf25dfb@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/14/06, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, surprisingly, the reason US people don't live longer is because
> of what kills them.  :)
>
> The US has got rid of many of the third world diseases and substituted
> the diseases of rich first world countries.  Obesity, diabetes, heart
> disease, etc.

All of which can be reduced by changing two lifestyle factors, sadly.

> Mostly aided by lifestyle problems like lack of
> exercise, overeating and eating the wrong food, smoking, cars, guns,
> alcohol, etc.

The study that I cited in the other email also states that
smoking-related illnesses are down, not just among smokers, but among
non-smokers as well.  They blame both the decrease in smoking rates
(overall drop from ~35% in the 1950s to 23% today), AND the recent
popularity of smoking bans.  Apparently the drop in smoking-related
illnesses among non-smokers can't be accounted for by a drop in
smoking rates alone.

>  And the infant mortality rate is 25% higher than
> Euroland, which brings the overall life expectancy figure down.

I think that's because poverty in certain areas of the United States
is much worse than many Western European countries.

> The other point is that a lot of US health expenditure is not for
> life-threatening conditions, Just 'feel-good' or 'feel-better' stuff.

Probably true.  In an ideal transhumanist world, we should be spending
a lot on medical improvements, not fixing what's broken.

Martin


From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Thu Jun 15 00:07:48 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 17:07:48 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <cd9526860606141209h4a9a61bx34aedea5caf25dfb@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECEABFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Martin writes

> > Mostly aided by lifestyle problems like lack of
> > exercise, overeating and eating the wrong food, smoking, cars, guns,
> > alcohol, etc.
> 
> The study that I cited in the other email also states that
> smoking-related illnesses are down, not just among smokers, but among
> non-smokers as well.  They blame both the decrease in smoking rates
> (overall drop from ~35% in the 1950s to 23% today), AND the recent
> popularity of smoking bans.  Apparently the drop in smoking-related
> illnesses among non-smokers can't be accounted for by a drop in
> smoking rates alone.
> 
> > And the infant mortality rate is 25% higher than
> > Euroland, which brings the overall life expectancy figure down.

More and more these figures are almost meaningless unless broken
down by ethnic group at least, and perhaps SES too.

> I think that's because poverty in certain areas of the United States
> is much worse than many Western European countries.

Not just areas!  :-)  Unless you want to include districts
within the large cities.

> > The other point is that a lot of US health expenditure is not for
> > life-threatening conditions, Just 'feel-good' or 'feel-better' stuff.
> 
> Probably true.  In an ideal transhumanist world, we should be spending
> a lot on medical improvements, not fixing what's broken.

I would say that "feel-good" and "feel-better" are very important
(not to imply that you are saying any different).

I'd be willing to bet that 70% or more of health costs can be
traced to the failure to have a free market in health care,
and to regulation.

Lee



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Thu Jun 15 01:05:20 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 18:05:20 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Uses to which Space Could Be Put
In-Reply-To: <20060614101553.GS28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEAEFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Eugen writes

> Russell Wallace wrote:
> 
> > For example, some people on this list have expressed a fairly gung-ho desire
> > to ascend rapidly to superintelligence. I personally don't have an exact or
> 
> I have inasmuch a problem with that as a very rapid ascent could
> result in mass extinction of lesser players.

Could indeed. I don't know of any reason to put the chances of
this fatal-to-us possibility at less than fifty percent.

> Because of this it would be a good idea to initially put a
> dampener on the kinetics,

Just how the devil do you propose to do that?  Sorry if I've
missed some of the discussion, but I've never heard of any
reasonable idea for slowing it down.

> until we figure out how to deal with the neo-Amish problem
> without breaking too much.

I'm not sure what you mean here, either. We "Amish" are either
going to get snuffed real quick, or will be sitting pretty.
In the latter, hoped-for case, either our uploaded selves have
a hand in taking care of us, or the beneficent AI does.

> > final answer to that, but I'm feeling inclined to stick closer to the human
> > norm (albeit with uploading if and when that becomes available).
> 
> Same thing here -- but consensus interaction rate will shift
> to the faster end, so bidirectional communication with anyone
> left behind will ultimatively cease.

Now you guys are talking about something rather different: how
you personally would like to deal with this (or, more likely,
be dealt with).

As for me, I've internalized that I can be in two places at once,
(sigh, if often appears that practically no one else has), and
so one version of me ascends as rapidly as possible, and one
even clings to the very oldest substrate (unless it's too 
expensive).

Also, of course, I'd love to have perhaps half a dozen
intermediate versions; I'd allocate whatever resources 
"we" get as follows:

Lee Plus: .9R
Lee -+++  .09R
Lee --++  .009R
Lee ---- (that's the one you're reading now) .001R or so.

> > As for what argument to give people who want to turn the Earth into a nature
> > reserve once we no longer need it as a location for farms, mines and
> > factories: what I want is to not have to argue. The response I want to be
> > able to give is: "Cool, have fun with that. I'm off to the asteroid belt to
> > get some dead matter to turn into computronium. Bye."

Yes, but Russell, there's no reason not to leave a copy behind too.
Would he just pine away in utter misery that he wasn't out there
in the asteroids!?

C'mon: he ought to be at least as happy as you are now. But,
besides! Mood control will have been feasible for a long 
time before.

Lee



From femmechakra at yahoo.ca  Thu Jun 15 01:02:24 2006
From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anne-Marie Taylor)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:02:24 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <ee50357e0606141131o3cb86914r31a0a26837a504d9@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060615010224.80507.qmail@web35501.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:    Well, surprisingly, the reason US people don't live longer is because
of what kills them. :)
   
  Just a note: I feel this statement should be directed to Canadians as well:)
   
  >The US has got rid of many of the third world diseases and substituted
>the diseases of rich first world countries. Obesity, diabetes, heart
>disease, etc. Mostly aided by lifestyle problems like lack of
>exercise, overeating and eating the wrong food, smoking, cars, guns,
>alcohol, etc. And the infant mortality rate is 25% higher than
>Euroland, which brings the overall life expectancy figure down.

>The other point is that a lot of US health expenditure is not for
>life-threatening conditions, Just 'feel-good' or 'feel-better' stuff
   
   
  This is one of the best comments I've heard in a while
  Thanks Bill
  Anna
   

 __________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 
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From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Thu Jun 15 01:44:11 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 02:44:11 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Uses to which Space Could Be Put
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEAEFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <20060614101553.GS28956@leitl.org>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEAEFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606141844rb665251nd552fed4753f2416@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/15/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> Eugen writes
> > Because of this it would be a good idea to initially put a
> > dampener on the kinetics,
>
> Just how the devil do you propose to do that?  Sorry if I've
> missed some of the discussion, but I've never heard of any
> reasonable idea for slowing it down.


*laughs* That, I'm afraid, falls into the category best described as
"wouldn't that be a nice problem to have".

Yes, but Russell, there's no reason not to leave a copy behind too.
> Would he just pine away in utter misery that he wasn't out there
> in the asteroids!?
>

Assuming we get the technology for that, I don't see it as necessary to
stick to just one copy. On the other hand, it seems reasonable to suppose
there will always be some limit on how many copies one can reasonably have
(unless we can turn hyperspace into computronium or somesuch, in which case
things look different, but I'm not aware of any evidence for the possibility
of that). Therefore the question you raise could be regarded as that of
where to place each of one's copies. "Put one of them in a nature reserve"
doesn't jump out at me as the best answer to that question. (If other people
disagree, by all means let them have fun with that option ^.^)
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From nanogirl at halcyon.com  Thu Jun 15 02:21:20 2006
From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 19:21:20 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] New animation: Dancing Robot
Message-ID: <00d601c69022$ce37a980$0200a8c0@Nano>



Okay I've got another animation for you, a dancing robot! http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/2006/06/particle11.html
Looking forward to your comments, best wishes,

Gina "Nanogirl" Miller
Nanotechnology Industries
http://www.nanoindustries.com
Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com/index2.html
Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/
Everything else blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/
Foresight Participating Member http://www.foresight.org
Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute  http://www.extropy.org
3D/Animation http://www.nanogirl.com/museumfuture/index.htm
Microscope Jewelry http://www.nanogirl.com/crafts/microjewelry.htm
Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com
"Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future."
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From pharos at gmail.com  Thu Jun 15 07:30:06 2006
From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 15:30:06 +0800
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECEABFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <cd9526860606141209h4a9a61bx34aedea5caf25dfb@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECEABFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <ee50357e0606150030r4a74700di4c690e62c48fde3@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/15/06, Lee Corbin wrote:
<snip>
> I'd be willing to bet that 70% or more of health costs can be
> traced to the failure to have a free market in health care,
> and to regulation.
>

Luckily, I don't bet. :)

This claim is wild speculation based on your economic beliefs.

Even with the present regulations and the FBI and the DOJ, health care
fraud is estimated to be around 10% of all health expenditure.

If you took away the regulation and gave the crooked entrepreneurs a
free run you would be lucky to get *any* treatment that did not have
some element of fraud and rip-off attached.

Yea, I know, all the millions of patients could start suing the
suppliers for damages (if they're still alive, that is). The legal
bills would be far higher than the present costs and you wouldn't get
your money back anyway as these crooked companies would close down and
start up again under another name quicker than the legal system could
chase them.

<http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/health/frdheal.htm>
<http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/asset/wcc.htm>

BillK


From sjatkins at mac.com  Thu Jun 15 07:56:36 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 00:56:36 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Uses to which Space Could Be Put (was Space: The
	Final Constraint)
In-Reply-To: <20060614101553.GS28956@leitl.org>
References: <448F8406.6010909@pobox.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAEOKFOAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<8d71341e0606132122r4b3ef478h3a69abeefacbd2a8@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060614101553.GS28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <9F80F325-1476-49F1-BF88-D16A4F3D3593@mac.com>


On Jun 14, 2006, at 3:15 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 14, 2006 at 05:22:35AM +0100, Russell Wallace wrote:
>
>> For example, some people on this list have expressed a fairly gung- 
>> ho desire
>> to ascend rapidly to superintelligence. I personally don't have an  
>> exact or
>
> I have inasmuch a problem with that as a very rapid ascent could
> result in mass extinction of lesser players. Because of this it
> would be a good idea to initially put a dampener on the kinetics,  
> until we
> figure out how to deal with the neo-Amish problem without breaking
> too much. I have no illusions that this is only postponing the
> problem, but this also limits the problem scope, if accompanied with
> incitements (more opportunities to hitch the ride). Ultimatively,
> even maintaining classical habitats might become economically
> nonsustainable. Ultimatively, computational substrate is also
> subject to evolutionary resource allocation.


I doubt that low tech VR space is going to be that non-sustainable.

Do you want a future where it is be competitive or die?  Is that all  
there is or ever can be?

>
> I don't think there is a real solution for this dilemma, but then,
> we're not nearly there yet.
>

Fortunately far brighter minds than ours currently are will have a go  
at it with a bit of luck.

>> final answer to that, but I'm feeling inclined to stick closer to  
>> the human
>> norm (albeit with uploading if and when that becomes available).
>
> Same thing here -- but consensus interaction rate will shift
> to the faster end, so bidirectional communication with anyone
> left behind will ultimatively cease.

What for?  Let a slow subroutine handle it as it were.

>
>> As for what argument to give people who want to turn the Earth  
>> into a nature
>> reserve once we no longer need it as a location for farms, mines and
>> factories: what I want is to not have to argue. The response I  
>> want to be
>> able to give is: "Cool, have fun with that. I'm off to the  
>> asteroid belt to
>> get some dead matter to turn into computronium. Bye."
>
> If this was a guaranteed reaction, and an irrreversible decision
> we wouldn't be talking about this right now.
>

To some extent we might be able to decide what direction to nudge  
things in.

- samantha



From xyz at iq.org  Thu Jun 15 09:15:34 2006
From: xyz at iq.org (Harry Harrison)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 19:15:34 +1000
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <ee50357e0606150030r4a74700di4c690e62c48fde3@mail.gmail.com>
References: <cd9526860606141209h4a9a61bx34aedea5caf25dfb@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECEABFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<ee50357e0606150030r4a74700di4c690e62c48fde3@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <1150362934.24649.263875007@webmail.messagingengine.com>


On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 15:30:06 +0800, "BillK" <pharos at gmail.com> said:
> On 6/15/06, Lee Corbin wrote:
> <snip>
> > I'd be willing to bet that 70% or more of health costs can be
> > traced to the failure to have a free market in health care,
> > and to regulation.
> >

Ignoring for a moment patent protection which also holds in comparable countries,
you almost certainly dead wrong.

The costs seem to be related to having a (relative to other countries) free market with asymmetric information in something that is a superior good. Patients have few resources and great needs so are gullible. The free market in this case preys on their gullability and has high over heads in associated advertising and manipulation.

The free (evolutionary) market might give you trees through competition over sun light, but grass catches just as much light and doesn't have the overhead of a trunk. Is that good or bad? Depends on your metric. 



From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Thu Jun 15 10:53:41 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 03:53:41 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECEABFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <cd9526860606141209h4a9a61bx34aedea5caf25dfb@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECEABFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060615105341.GA3497@ofb.net>

On Wed, Jun 14, 2006 at 05:07:48PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
> Martin writes
> 
> > > Mostly aided by lifestyle problems like lack of
> > > exercise, overeating and eating the wrong food, smoking, cars, guns,
> > > alcohol, etc.

It was my understanding that Americans actually smoke less than in most
other countries.  I'm not sure how alcohol compares either; some
European countries have bad binge drinking problems (possibly
governmental fault, taxes and high prices), other have much more even
consumption.

I don't know how similar Canadian lifestyles are to ours; they live 2.5
years longer.  (CIA stats.)

> > > And the infant mortality rate is 25% higher than
> > > Euroland, which brings the overall life expectancy figure down.
> 
> More and more these figures are almost meaningless unless broken
> down by ethnic group at least, and perhaps SES too.

Other countries have poor people and immigrants as well -- Canada has a
higher %age of immigrants than the US, for example; Europe has many
Muslim and Indian immigrants.  Looking at ethnic group and SES may
matter for evaluating one's own personal risks; not so much in
evaluating a system as a whole, unless you think some people don't
count.

Even in the US, black women live longer than white men.  It's black men
who really suffer.  However, I remember doing some arithmetic and
estimating that black men dying 10 years earlier and our higher infant
mortality (save the babies! until they're born) did not fully account
for the longevity gap.

> > I think that's because poverty in certain areas of the United States
> > is much worse than many Western European countries.

Perhaps because those countries use government spending to ease the
poverty.

> Not just areas!  :-)  Unless you want to include districts
> within the large cities.

?  I mean, what's the point here?

> I'd be willing to bet that 70% or more of health costs can be
> traced to the failure to have a free market in health care,
> and to regulation.

But we have more of a free market than other countries...

The killer figure for me is that Medicare is said to have 2% overhead,
vs. 14% or more in private insurers and HMOs.  Government inefficiency,
yeah.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From spike66 at comcast.net  Thu Jun 15 14:02:46 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 07:02:46 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Uses to which Space Could Be Put (was Space:
	TheFinal Constraint)
In-Reply-To: <9F80F325-1476-49F1-BF88-D16A4F3D3593@mac.com>
Message-ID: <200606151418.k5FEIn2F026383@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins
> 
> Do you want a future where it is be competitive or die?  Is that all
> there is or ever can be? ... - samantha


That was all there was in the past, as far back as the Precambrian
explosion.  I don't see it changing now, or at the singularity.

spike









From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Thu Jun 15 19:41:59 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 12:41:59 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] What the #$?! are rights anyway?
Message-ID: <20060615194159.36897.qmail@web60512.mail.yahoo.com>

There have been a couple of threads on both lists
lately that have been somewhat contentious. On the WTA
there has been an ongoing debate on abortion that has
caused tempers to rise and people to go on angry
rants. Of course at the center of this debate is the
right of an unborn fetus to life versus a woman's
right to have control over her body. ExI, on the other
hand, has been hosting a debate on the right of poor
people to get rich enough to "eat beefsteak" versus
the right of a complex ecosystem known as a rainforest
to exist.

These debates have left me very pensive with a sense
of deep disquiet. This unease stems from the fact that
although I believe in rights, jealously guard mine,
and support the rights of other as well, I no longer
really know why I believe in them. So when people
started complaining that discussing the rights of
women versus those of fetuses is not a suitable topic
for a transhuman list, I found it necessary to ask the
lot of you to tell me what rights are, where they come
from, and why they are in any sense "real"?

I know these may seem like naive questions but as
Frank Forman pointed out, the transhuman community
really does need to come up with a rational theory of
rights. I will try to explain why this is necessary in
a historical context:

Divine right, ca. the Middle Ages:
"By the grace of God, I am your king. That means I am
the boss of you so give me your money, till my fields,
and go and fight those guys over that hill for me."

Natural rights, ca. the Enlightenment:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among
these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Human rights, ca. the Present:
"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of
the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the
human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and
peace in the world..."

So what's the problem you ask? Well in order to
explain, I will need to play the devil's advocate for
a moment. My client, Lucifer aka Satan, claims that
neither he nor this God aka Creator person exists.
Thus he contends that if there is no Creator than
there can be no endowment of rights.

Now any logician will tell you that the scheme for
deductive reasoning is such:

Axiom: A is true.
Deduction 1: If A is true, then B must logically
follow from A.
Deduction 2: If B is true, then C must logically
follow from B.

Conversely if A is found to be false, then both B and
C must be false.

Now let us look at the first two formulation of rights
listed above. Divine right and natural rights. Both
treat the existence of a God/Creator as an axiom. Thus
if God does not exist, by the laws of reasoning,
neither should the concept of rights.

So that leaves us with the third formulation, the
modern concept of "human rights" as stated in the
United Nations charter. Yet it still leaves a bad
taste in my mouth.

If axiom A is shown to be untrue, one should not then
be able to simply take deduction B and suddenly make
it axiomatic. From a reasoning standpoint, that is a
cheap and dirty trick that I don't think stands up to
logical scrutiny. 

It forces the assumption that, for no reason
whatsoever, there is something inherently special and
sentimental about Homo sapien DNA that renders a dozen
cell embryo that carries it more sacred and more
deserving of life, freedom, and happiness than a full
grown chimpanzee that speaks sign language. Or for
that matter, renders a huge and poorly understood
ecosystem like a rain forest, a small price to pay for
the some guy to eat beefsteak.

To say that rights stem from "morality" is a cop out
too because morality can only be judged by a
subjective agent and as such is subject to cultural
relativism. Thus by this definition, fundamentalist
muslim men have every right to stone their daughters
for being "immoral".

If we find the lack of a reasonable "theory of rights"
divisive and problematic now while we are still
speaking of embryos and ecosystems, just think how
bizarre the situation will be in the proposed
transhuman future. When there may be genetically
modified human arcologies living alongside so called
neo-Amish communities, cyborgs, and uploaded
post-humans. Not to mention the possibility of
ether-roaming AGI and extra-terrestrial sentients
thrown into the mix for good measure.

So this is the challenge I put before you, the
brightest people I know:

Convince me and my client the devil that rights, human
or otherwise, actually exist. That they are not some
superstitious hold-over from a primitive past when the
earth was thought to be flat and at the center of the
universe. Tell me what rights are, where they come
from, who or what get to have them, and why. Otherwise
let me know, because being a biologist, I know the law
of the jungle better than anyone and I ought to be out
preying.



Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
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From amara at amara.com  Thu Jun 15 20:34:06 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 22:34:06 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] #  What the #$?! are rights anyway?
Message-ID: <p06230900c0b774440844@[23.237.66.13]>


A "right" is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom
of action in a social context.

(fairly standard definition, I thought,  held by many in this community)

Amara


From austriaaugust at yahoo.com  Thu Jun 15 20:10:16 2006
From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 13:10:16 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Off-topic Personal Info.
In-Reply-To: <200606151418.k5FEIn2F026383@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <20060615201016.85072.qmail@web37409.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Hello,
   
  I just realized that when I wrote "I have experienced a great deal of emotional pain in my own life" a ways back on this list, that this sentence could be very easily misunderstood. It could easily be misinterpreted to mean that I had in some way been abused as a child, eg. sexually or physically. But that is absolutely *not* the case. I was never abused in any way. In all honesty, I really could not have expected a better "Family" than the one I have, on any level or in any respect. (This includes my: friends, siblings, parents, partners, and extended family). No, my problem is related to a treatment-resistant Depressive "Disorder", coupled with Attention Deficit "Disorder". (It's not fashionable to label these as Diseases. Even though the problems are obviously due to a chronic defect in the Dopamine/Norepinephrine production/activity pathway(s). Such is the pervasive stigma still attached to those with "mental problems" -  I'm supposed to be able to "will" myself out
 of my difficulties, and if I can't do that it's really just because "I don't want to"... [Grinding Teeth]  Alright, I'm done ranting for now.)  Fortunately, over time I have made significant progress toward relieving the symptoms of these problems. But even this dark cloud is not *entirely* without it's silver lining - my experiences in the past have at least given me a somewhat uncommon perspective on certain issues of morality - and I don't see that as a bad thing. (Although I would never want to go through it again, if given the option.)
   
  Anyway, I'm sorry if this is more information than any of you cared to know. But, seeing as how the original messages were posted to the whole list, this seemed like the only effective way to clarify any potential misinterpretations.
   
  Best Wishes,
   
  Jeffrey Herrlich 



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From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Thu Jun 15 21:05:10 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 16:05:10 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <20060615194159.36897.qmail@web60512.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20060615194159.36897.qmail@web60512.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606151405s28d2bb67p2ebfff42814bf0b4@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/15/06, The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Convince me and my client the devil that rights, human
> or otherwise, actually exist.


They *don't* "actually" exist!  They are pure inventions of beings that can
think "consciously" in order to develop a social structure which is less
prone to destruction and/or decay then would otherwise be the case.

The "rights" used to be handed down by those in power until such a time as
the people decided to assert them for themselves.  (The many can overpower
the few or the one if they agree that their rights are relatively equal).
All of the rest of the discussion of extending rights is probably due to the
fact that feeling sympathy for those less fortunate probably had survival
advantages (reciprocal social contracts which promote self-survival when one
is less able to care for oneself, e.g. due to injury or illness, is probably
the origin of "rights").

If Extropianism has any value it may revolve around whether or not we can
consciously agree on a single or multi-dimensional scale that can be used to
evaluate the value of forms of complexity or relative "worth" of such
complexity (value & worth can be context dependent).  This would replace the
social contract based system where you and I agree that we have a "right" to
life and use that agreement to bring down our lethal injections, bullets (or
the wrath of 500 lb bombs) on those who disagree with that right.

Mind you, not a lot of people on this list, much less in the world at large,
would be willing to agree that their self-proclaimed (& group-acknowledged)
rights are null and void and should be replaced by a system which perhaps
might balance whether their past, present, or potential future contributions
should determine their access rights to the matter & energy at our disposal.

If such a system were in place I suspect we might be putting a lot of
elderly individuals to sleep.  Because with the exception of those signed up
for cryonic suspension most of those say 60-65+ are a net drain (i.e. they
are contributing more towards problems like global warming that are going to
have to be cleaned up later than they might contribute to bringing forward
lifespan extension, a friendly AI, whatever, that might justify their
current resource consumption).

As a challenge, go through Fortune Mag's Top 10, 100, Hollywood or Sports
stars, etc (I'd argue against using politicians...) and do an up or down (or
"weakest link") analysis for who is potentially accelerating the development
of singularity related breakthroughs vs. who is retarding them.

Instead of the question "Do they have a right to live?" one might instead
ask "Is their continued existence justified?"  Mind you, since we have an
extremely large excess of resources at our disposal currently we can be very
generous but that will *not* always be the case.

Robert
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From austriaaugust at yahoo.com  Thu Jun 15 20:45:44 2006
From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 13:45:44 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <20060615194159.36897.qmail@web60512.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20060615204544.39927.qmail@web37406.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Hi Stuart,
   
  I don't understand either why any tranhumanist would consider this an inappropriate topic - seems critical to me.
   
  My take on it is that in reality, "Rights" have no independent existence. They are the imaginary but useful creation of intelligent beings. That's not to say that I think that they have no value - I value them more than my own life. I'm just saying that I don't think they have any existence or meaning outside of the mind of a subjective agent. However, I think that they are critical to the long-term success of a civilisation. The purpose of governments-by-consent, from my perspective, is to enforce the protection of these (created) "Rights" for *all* humans (and I hope eventually for *all* conscious beings). I think that one of the most sure-fire ways to botch the Singularity would be to disassemble democratic governments altogether and replace them with a "everyone for themselves" - system. If the Singularity somehow did still manage to occur under those conditions, I doubt that it would be a very "positive" result.
   
  Best Wishes,
   
  Jeffrey Herrlich   



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From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Thu Jun 15 21:20:33 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 14:20:33 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <20060615194159.36897.qmail@web60512.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20060615194159.36897.qmail@web60512.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20060615212032.GA4422@ofb.net>

It was a post on the extropians list back in 1993 (David Krueger?) which
completed the doubts I'd had about "natural rights".  Like the other
respondents I'd say rights don't Exist, any more than law does; they're
granted by us to each other.  Social contract theory -- which is also
old, with roots in Epicureanism.  Preference (many humans are empathetic,
and may indulge in it more when they can afford to), tradition,
might-makes-right.

You can derive a lot just from social contract -- what would rough
equals agree to?  Not everything, e.g. it doesn't give a great reason
for a majority to not exploit a distinct minority.  That I think needs
supplementation from lots of people deciding they don't like it and
fighting to establish their preference.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Thu Jun 15 23:19:12 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 16:19:12 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Uses to which Space Could Be Put
In-Reply-To: <200606151418.k5FEIn2F026383@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEKEBHFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Spike writes

> > Do you want a future where it is be competitive or die?  Is that all
> > there is or ever can be? ... - samantha
> 
> That was all there was in the past, as far back as the Precambrian
> explosion.  I don't see it changing now, or at the singularity.

Yes, there does seem to be an inevitable Darwinian aspect to the universe,
almost tautological. Those that survive... do.

Yet the nuts and bolts of the way the competition actually affects
units at different levels differs greatly from time to time. We
live in a happy (for us) time in which *people* are not so vigorously
selected against as in the past. Today's units of competition tend
to be ideas (on the very short term) and civilizations (on a much
longer term).

If a good Singularity occurs, and all of us people make it into a
delightful existence, then we must still realize that we are just
momentarily insulated from the real competition. E.g., our AI-gods
or protectors may succumb to others, or to other algorithms; or to
put it another way, the immortal incredibly powerful future versions
of our very selves still have to realize that the universe still is,
and as you write, always has been Darwinian.

Lee



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Thu Jun 15 23:34:22 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 16:34:22 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] #  What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <p06230900c0b774440844@[23.237.66.13]>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEBIFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Amara writes

> A "right" is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom
> of action in a social context.

Nice definition.

Suppose we translate "The Unborn have a right to life!" and "Women have
a right to choose!".

They become  "There is a moral principle protecting any human tissue
from arbitrary destruction", and "There is a moral principle sanctioning
the freedom of a woman to choose!".

Now, it's clear that there is still an underlying problem, and that it
will not go away so easily. The speakers are still talking past each other.

The real problem is that it sounds so righteous to declaim either of those
sentences, especially if done with passion!  Even when very little at all
is being said!

I agree with Robert and the others that "rights" better are thought of
as not existing---the concept just seems to throw a monkey-wrench
(i.e. spanner) into the discussion. The language, horribly, prevents
instead of facilitating communication.

More progress is made by trying to anticipate consequences of enacting
laws. For example, one side might say "Every step towards the cheapening
of human life can have unpleasant future effects on our civilization",
"it's better for as many people as possible to be rescued from non-
existence".

The other side can say things like "Who should decide? Do you propose to
use force on a woman? Whose business is it?", and "what are the risks of
adding this loss of freedom to gun control, helmet-wearing, zoning,
government surveillance, and the myriads of other limitations on our
liberty? Think about those effect on our future civilization."

So: isn't it true that by avoiding questionable terms like "rights" we
forward the discussions?

Lee



From neuronexmachina at gmail.com  Fri Jun 16 01:05:35 2006
From: neuronexmachina at gmail.com (Neil H.)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 18:05:35 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Using rTMS to induce savant-like mental abilities
Message-ID: <e88b73ce0606151805h8c60055iddad210f43bd75b8@mail.gmail.com>

Back in 2003 there was a popular-press article on Allan Snyder's work
with using transcranial magnetic stimulation to temporarily induce
savant-like abilities in human subjects, reportedly having effects
like drawing ability or Rainman-style counting:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/22/magazine/22SAVANT.html?ei=5007&en=0497e5b30fc4a9d8&ex=1371614400&partner=USERLAND&pagewanted=all&position=

It looks like there's now a publication on some of his results:

http://www.perceptionweb.com/perabs/p35/p5539.html

Title: Savant-like numerosity skills revealed in normal people by
magnetic pulses

Abstract: Oliver Sacks observed autistic twins who instantly guessed
the exact number of matchsticks that had just fallen on the floor,
saying in unison "111". To test the suggestion that normal individuals
have the capacity for savant numerosity, we temporarily simulated the
savant condition in normal people by inhibiting the left anterior
temporal lobe of twelve participants with repetitive transcranial
magnetic stimulation (rTMS). This site has been implicated in the
savant condition. Ten participants improved their ability to
accurately guess the number of discrete items immediately following
rTMS and, of these, eight became worse at guessing as the effects of
the pulses receded. The probability of as many as eight out of twelve
people doing best just after rTMS and not after sham stimulation by
chance alone is less than one in one thousand.

(If you can't access the full-text PDF, let me know, and I can send you a copy)

I'm still waiting to see similar results reproduced in other labs, but
it's certainly interesting stuff.


From neuronexmachina at gmail.com  Fri Jun 16 01:11:04 2006
From: neuronexmachina at gmail.com (Neil H.)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 18:11:04 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Using rTMS to induce savant-like mental abilities
In-Reply-To: <e88b73ce0606151805h8c60055iddad210f43bd75b8@mail.gmail.com>
References: <e88b73ce0606151805h8c60055iddad210f43bd75b8@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <e88b73ce0606151811k5d3f5acepdcf8b562bf5a423a@mail.gmail.com>

FYI, it looks like there's also some other publications and
popular-press articles regarding Snyder here:

http://centerforthemind.com/publications/publications.cfm

On 6/15/06, Neil H. <neuronexmachina at gmail.com> wrote:
> Back in 2003 there was a popular-press article on Allan Snyder's work
> with using transcranial magnetic stimulation to temporarily induce
> savant-like abilities in human subjects, reportedly having effects
> like drawing ability or Rainman-style counting:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/22/magazine/22SAVANT.html?ei=5007&en=0497e5b30fc4a9d8&ex=1371614400&partner=USERLAND&pagewanted=all&position=
>
> It looks like there's now a publication on some of his results:
>
> http://www.perceptionweb.com/perabs/p35/p5539.html
>
> Title: Savant-like numerosity skills revealed in normal people by
> magnetic pulses
>
> Abstract: Oliver Sacks observed autistic twins who instantly guessed
> the exact number of matchsticks that had just fallen on the floor,
> saying in unison "111". To test the suggestion that normal individuals
> have the capacity for savant numerosity, we temporarily simulated the
> savant condition in normal people by inhibiting the left anterior
> temporal lobe of twelve participants with repetitive transcranial
> magnetic stimulation (rTMS). This site has been implicated in the
> savant condition. Ten participants improved their ability to
> accurately guess the number of discrete items immediately following
> rTMS and, of these, eight became worse at guessing as the effects of
> the pulses receded. The probability of as many as eight out of twelve
> people doing best just after rTMS and not after sham stimulation by
> chance alone is less than one in one thousand.
>
> (If you can't access the full-text PDF, let me know, and I can send you a copy)
>
> I'm still waiting to see similar results reproduced in other labs, but
> it's certainly interesting stuff.
>


From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Fri Jun 16 02:57:02 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 21:57:02 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] # What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEBIFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <p06230900c0b774440844@23.237.66.13>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEBIFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606151957p44a5f769t1dcaf9b5864125b9@mail.gmail.com>

One possible way to argue "rights" from an extropic perspective is simply to
look at the information content (from a fetus to a species).  There was a
recent paper that I don't happen to have a reference handy for which I think
cited the cost of the creation of a new species (of microorganism) at ~10^23
J.  The only problem is that "speciation" may or may not depend upon a real
net gain of information.  The classical concept of speciation depends a lot
upon whether or not the organisms can reproduce, not whether there is a gain
or loss of information.  Another paper, I think from TIGR, cited the fact
that they were finding a small number (~5?) of novel genes per new bacterial
genome sequenced [1]. So one "might" assume that a new gene costs ~0.2 *
10^23 J (I'm playing very loose with the numbers here....).

I don't believe making a new fetus costs anything like that much energy so
(really stretching things) -- the worth of a fetus is significantly less
than worth of a species.  One can argue that the unique DNA content
(information) of a fetus may be of value -- but there are very simple and
inexpensive ways to preserve this (one can freeze the cells and preserve the
DNA from an aborted fetus *or* species becoming extinct).  You could stretch
things and say the cellular aggregate of a fetus has value and should be
preserved in an intact state but presumably this has lesser value than any
other living post-fetal (e.g. significantly more complex) human on the
planet.  So until one has eliminated deaths from causes like hunger and
other 3rd world preventable diseases (what the Gates Foundation is
presumably devoting significant attention to) expending time and energy on
preserving unborn fetuses would seem to be misdirected.

Robert

1. Given the relatively "common" blueprint upon which all known life is
based and the extent to which genes have been being cut & pasted for
hundreds of millions of years and the fact that we now have hundreds of
species sequenced -- finding something which is *really* different is
becoming increasingly less common.  But given the variety of environments on
the planet and the millions of species swapping blueprints one would expect
the novelty end of the curve to be quite long.
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From femmechakra at yahoo.ca  Fri Jun 16 03:05:59 2006
From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anne-Marie Taylor)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 23:05:59 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] #  What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEBIFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060616030559.61630.qmail@web35501.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:    Amara writes

> A "right" is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom
> of action in a social context.

Lee wrote:
  Nice definition
  
I agree with Robert and the others that "rights" better are thought of
as not existing---the concept just seems to throw a monkey-wrench
(i.e. spanner) into the discussion. The language, horribly, prevents
instead of facilitating communication.

  >>I agree, it's pointless to argue with someone when both parties are set
  >>on their own opinions.  
   
  The other side can say things like "Who should decide? Do you propose to
use force on a woman? Whose business is it?", and "what are the risks of
adding this loss of freedom to gun control, helmet-wearing, zoning,
government surveillance, and the myriads of other limitations on our
liberty? Think about those effect on our future civilization."

  So: isn't it true that by avoiding questionable terms like "rights" we
forward the discussions?

  >>I'm not sure I understand.  To avoid the issue is the best thing to do?
  >>It sounds very reasonable but then who is deciding what rights humans have?
  >>Religion plays a big part in determining what rights humans have.
  >>Doesn't it worry you that if the issues aren't confronted that some group, cult, 
  >>religion or government may, once again, come into power and dictate what are
  >>rights are?
  >>Sorry if I didn't grasp your comment Lee, maybe I misunderstood. Be patient,
  >>i'm learning:)
   
  Anna
   
   
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this moment exactly proportioned to my skill to deal with it. 
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From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Fri Jun 16 03:59:27 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 04:59:27 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] # What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606151957p44a5f769t1dcaf9b5864125b9@mail.gmail.com>
References: <p06230900c0b774440844@23.237.66.13>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEBIFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<deaa866a0606151957p44a5f769t1dcaf9b5864125b9@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606152059k6cbfbe2h23f7d1b093c3c812@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/16/06, Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I don't believe making a new fetus costs anything like that much energy so
> (really stretching things) -- the worth of a fetus is significantly less
> than worth of a species.
>

You're making the elementary error of confusing cost and worth. Hurricane
Katrina cost on the order of $1E11 IIRC; does that mean it was worth $1E11?
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From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Fri Jun 16 04:18:01 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 21:18:01 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] # What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606151957p44a5f769t1dcaf9b5864125b9@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMEBNFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Robert gives energetic arguments to suggest that

> So until one has eliminated deaths from causes like hunger
> and other 3rd world preventable diseases (what the Gates
> Foundation is presumably devoting significant attention
> to) expending time and energy on preserving unborn fetuses
> would seem to be misdirected. 

Yes, to save the maximum number of lives possible, each of
us should send all his extra money to the Gates foundation
or its equivalent. Then, too, we probably should shut down
all the elderly care providers, because the money would go
further in making sure that all the children born overseas
get past the age of two.

This helps the division of labor, too: one group of people
specializes in having lots of children, and the other group
specializes in paying for it.


But (satire aside), the Hayekian/Sowell observation that
knowledge is *localized* suggests that a pregnant woman 
strongly concern herself with her own unborn child, even
if it is to the detriment of people far away. While I
defend the legal right of this woman to do as she wishes,
I strongly urge her to help *that* particular potential
person inside her to stay alive. But remember---I'm over
here and she's some distance from me, and what do I know
of her *local* circumstances?

Lee



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Fri Jun 16 04:54:15 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 21:54:15 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060615105341.GA3497@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECEBPFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Bill K writes

> [Lee wrote]
> > I'd be willing to bet that 70% or more of health costs can be
> > traced to the failure to have a free market in health care,
> > and to regulation.

> Luckily, I don't bet. :)  This claim is wild speculation based
> on your economic beliefs.

Sorry for using a specific number. A Chinese colleague tells me
he means "most" when he says 70%, so it's really his fault.

> Even with the present regulations and the FBI and the DOJ, health care
> fraud is estimated to be around 10% of all health expenditure.

I was speaking of free market *efficiencies*, not fraud. But fraud,
now that you mention it, is often worse when the government gets
involved. Yes, it's complex: there is less fraud in supermarkets
than in auto repair.

> If you took away the regulation and gave the crooked entrepreneurs a
> free run you would be lucky to get *any* treatment that did not have
> some element of fraud and rip-off attached.

If you say so. Funny how markets work for everything else but
wouldn't work here.


Damien S. writes

> > More and more these figures are almost meaningless unless broken
> > down by ethnic group at least, and perhaps SES too.
> 
> Other countries have poor people and immigrants as well...Looking
> at ethnic group and SES may matter for evaluating one's own personal
> risks; not so much in evaluating a system as a whole, unless you
> think some people don't count.

Of course I didn't mean that!  I mean that you cannot compare
Luxembourg and Brazil, nor, really the U.S. and Europe. Too 
much lumping!  The "U.S." and "Europe" are each just too
diverse internally.

> Even in the US, black women live longer than white men.  It's
> black men who really suffer.

Yes. But a big part of that is that their medical needs are
somewhat different. Despite the taboos, every day you (now)
read about the differences. Yesterday there was an article
on how black women have better hearing than anyone. For
reasons just having to do with race, blacks don't live as
long as whites even after you correct (as you must!) for
SES and other environmental differences. It is not God-given
that all subgroups are exactly equal in all parameters.

> > Not just areas!  :-)  Unless you want to include districts
> > within the large cities.
> 
> ?  I mean, what's the point here?

What I said above.

> > I'd be willing to bet that 70% or more of health costs can be
> > traced to the failure to have a free market in health care,
> > and to regulation.
> 
> But we have more of a free market than other countries...

Oh yeah?   Well, basic medical care is free for everyone in the U.S.
who can't afford it. (I'll write a new post.) But even so, it would
be worse to socialize it, as I'll argue.

Lee



From amara at amara.com  Fri Jun 16 05:09:36 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 07:09:36 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] #  What the #$?! are rights anyway?
Message-ID: <p06230900c0b7ea4f2444@[23.237.66.13]>

Lee,  The definition I presented said nothing about legality, At the
base, what I gave is a reasonable definition with which to begin. If you
don't like the word, then fine. One still needs a principle sanctioning
a man's freedom of action in a social context. Unless you are a hermit,
then it doesn't matter.

The next step is to claim "what" are your moral principles and "what"
are the social contexts and "how" does one put it in legal context, if
that is what you want, and if it is, then "how" does one arbitrate
disputes. That's another level. I said nothing about that.

For moral principles, one must decide what is at the core of one's
personal philosophy.

I would think 'right' to one's body as the most basic right that one can
have. I do not know why H+ people feel a need to debate this and why
such a basic issue is being brought up. If one doesn't accept this, then
everything else that people in the  transhuman community have discussed
during the last 20 years as desirable for their future collapses.

Amara


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Fri Jun 16 05:32:23 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 22:32:23 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECEBPFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <20060615105341.GA3497@ofb.net>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECEBPFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net>

On Thu, Jun 15, 2006 at 09:54:15PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:

> > Other countries have poor people and immigrants as well...Looking
> > at ethnic group and SES may matter for evaluating one's own personal
> > risks; not so much in evaluating a system as a whole, unless you
> > think some people don't count.
> 
> Of course I didn't mean that!  I mean that you cannot compare
> Luxembourg and Brazil, nor, really the U.S. and Europe. Too 
> much lumping!  The "U.S." and "Europe" are each just too
> diverse internally.

The US comes out unfavorably in comparison with almost every other First
World country.  And we have no monopoly on diversity; Canada has plenty
of immigrants, various European countries have more and more.

> > Even in the US, black women live longer than white men.  It's
> > black men who really suffer.
> 
> on how black women have better hearing than anyone. For
> reasons just having to do with race, blacks don't live as
> long as whites even after you correct (as you must!) for
> SES and other environmental differences. It is not God-given

The numbers I recall are that black women in the US live only 6 months
less than white women -- and that's raw data, without SES adjustment.
It's black males who lose several years -- I'd guess because of crime
and AIDS.  I've seen tables of top causes of death for black and whites
in the US, they were shockingly different, but SES seemed quite
blameable.  (These were numbers a friend in publich health grad school
showed me.)  I know African-Americans are prone to some problems, like
hypertension, but "blacks dont' live as long" seems unlikely.  It's not
even clear whether the hypertension is due to genetics (selection on the
slave ships), diet, or stress from being black in the US -- and I think
chronic stress has been getting more and more data as a general killer.

Anyway, I believe that even if you compare white Americans to white
Europeans or Canadians we still die sooner while spending twice as much
more money.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From femmechakra at yahoo.ca  Fri Jun 16 06:17:04 2006
From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anne-Marie Taylor)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 02:17:04 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] #  What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <p06230900c0b7ea4f2444@[23.237.66.13]>
Message-ID: <20060616061704.54630.qmail@web35501.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Amara Graps <amara at amara.com> wrote:    .I would think 'right' to one's body as the most basic right that one can
have. If one doesn't accept this, then everything else that people in the 
  transhuman community have discussed during the last 20 years as desirable for 
  their future collapses.
  >>This is a really great quote Amara.  "I would think "right" to one's body as the most basic
  >>right that one can have".
   
  Thanks
  Anna


 		
---------------------------------
All new Yahoo! Mail  
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From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Fri Jun 16 08:01:15 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 01:01:15 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Damien writes

> > I mean that you cannot compare Luxembourg and Brazil, nor,
> > really the U.S. and Europe. Too much lumping!  The "U.S."
> > and "Europe" are each just too diverse internally.
> 
> The US comes out unfavorably in comparison with almost every other First
> World country.  And we have no monopoly on diversity; Canada has plenty
> of immigrants, various European countries have more and more.

Now if you were to tell me that whites in the 60-80 percentile
of SES in *Canada* or *England* or *Germany* showed up favorably
against American whites in the 60-80 percentile SES in the U.S.,
I'd be interested.

> Anyway, I believe that even if you compare white Americans to white
> Europeans or Canadians we still die sooner while spending twice as
> much money.

Well :-)  so far, you have your hunches and I have mine.

Ten years ago or so I heard an amazing fact on radio one day.
"Family values" were making a comeback among the university
age population!  A study of Cal Berkeley showed that all the
Pat Robertson type family values were being accepted by much
greater numbers of undergraduates.

It took me some time before it occurred to me what was going on.
Berkeley at that time had just become majority Chinese-American.
Oh.  Duh.

But the lesson is very clear: we should be very wary of grouped
stats. The more that other variables are controlled for, clearly
the better.

Lee



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Fri Jun 16 08:19:26 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 01:19:26 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health Care Costs (was Extinctions)
In-Reply-To: <20060615105341.GA3497@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECECDFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Damien S. wrote

> The killer figure for me is that Medicare is said to have 2% overhead,
> vs. 14% or more in private insurers and HMOs.  Government inefficiency,
> yeah.

Do you happen to know how the private insurers compared to the HMOs?
(Sorry, I'm probably asking a lot, I myself don't have time to
research it.)  The HMOs arose in the first place as a government
effort, special legislation and all.

Here is something scary I read just today:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/06/15/emergency_rooms_confront_a_crisis_of_patient_arrivals/


    "It's a symptom of how the nation's emergency-care system is overcrowded
    and overwhelmed, ``at its breaking point," said an investigation by the
    Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies, which advises the
    government on health issues."

(Well, we've all heard of "the crisis in health care" for a decade or two.)

    "The safety net . . . has large holes," a coauthor, Dr. A. Brent Eastman,
    chief medical officer at ScrippsHealth in San Diego, said yesterday. 
    [Ellipsis in the original.]  "You may not be caught and saved when your
    life depends on it."

Ah, but only later down in the article do they happen to mention:

    At the root of the crisis: Demand for emergency care is surging, even as
    the capacity for hospitals, ambulance services, and other emergency workers
    to provide it is dropping.

    There were almost 114 million emergency-room visits in 2003, up from
    90 million a decade earlier. Only about half were true medical
    emergencies. When the poor and uninsured cannot get healthcare anywhere
    else, they go to emergency rooms, which must treat them regardless of
    ability to pay.

Yes, once there has been a disengagement between who pays, and
who receives the benefits, the situation spirals out of hand
quickly.

On this list someone recently mentioned the alarming several percent
increase in U.S. medical costs in the last few years. And that wasn't
plain increase.  That was increase of the percent of GNP!

The Russians cracked when they felt forced to spend 14% of GNP on
defense. But the U.S. is now spending more than that on health care,
and the end is nowhere in sight.

Lee



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Fri Jun 16 08:34:33 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 01:34:33 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal Medical Care
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMECDFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Alarmed I am by the phrase in an article I just referred to

  Only about half were true medical emergencies. When the poor and
  uninsured cannot get healthcare anywhere else, they go to emergency
  rooms, which must treat them regardless of ability to pay.

Help!  Anybody been to the emergency clinic lately?  Of course, 
we defer to the statistical data in the article, but are you 
alarmed by what might soon be happening to you or me when we
need to go?

I assume that you, like me, pay your fair share (or your employer
does).  What about us?  Will we be standing in line behind lots of
poor people who have no insurance, but who need help as badly as
we do?

Now I am asking because I am *sure* that the billionaires of the
bay area don't stand in line. Somehow, when Andy Grove or someone
needs medical attention, he gets it.

I want to know what ordinary millionaires do. Though not a 
millionaire, I have been a good boy and I have worked hard
and have saved my money. I can pay in a pinch. I want some
version, even if scaled down, of what Andy Grove gets.

Must I live in the right neighborhood?  Are there still small
towns whose emergency services won't get clogged up for a while
yet?

I have been lucky, and so am blissfully ignorant of what really
goes on.  The only thing I've learned (second hand) is

   Don't trust the doctors and nurses: watch them like a hawk,
   or have a friend or family member do so for you, because---
   to put it as mildly as possible---mistakes are made.

Lee



From xyz at iq.org  Fri Jun 16 09:36:32 2006
From: xyz at iq.org (Harry Harrison)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 19:36:32 +1000
Subject: [extropy-chat] ethical value metrics
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606151957p44a5f769t1dcaf9b5864125b9@mail.gmail.com>
References: <p06230900c0b774440844@23.237.66.13>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEBIFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<deaa866a0606151957p44a5f769t1dcaf9b5864125b9@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <1150450592.22435.263962034@webmail.messagingengine.com>


On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 21:57:02 -0500, "Robert Bradbury" <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> said:

> or loss of information.  Another paper, I think from TIGR, cited the
> fact that they were finding a small number (~5?) of novel genes per
> new bacterial genome sequenced [1]. So one "might" assume that a new
> gene costs ~0.2 * 10^23 J (I'm playing very loose with the numbers
> here....).

This is indeed a wooly metric. I have one a little clearer, but still
not easy to measure; the expected increase in universal entropy caused
by the existence of the organism over the future course of the
universe compared to the organism not existing (or being killed, if
that is the question). Since this is usually uncomputable due to our
inability to predict the deep future in this way, we might (a) do some
sort of future discounting or modify the metric to (b) only include
the entropy increase of the universe for the expected duration of the
organisms life.

This metric ("m") is natural in several ways:

let A and B be individuals. Let everything else equal between the
individuals unless otherwise stated and let us use the (b) metric unless
otherwise stated.

  1) if A lives longer than B, m(A)>m(B)
  2) if A does more work / consumes more energy than B, without stealing
     it from a more efficient consumer m(A)>m(B) 3) (if we're counting
     descendents too) if A has more offsping than B m(A)>m(B)
  4) if A is bigger than B then generally 2) is implied
  5) if A does not kill capriciously, m(A)>m(B)
  6) if A recycles waste and uses the extra energy m(A)>m(B)
  7) if A does not "burn down the forests" without what most people
     consider good cause, m(A)>m(B)
  8) descendents set up solar panels on mars or otherwise tap new energy
     sources: m(A)>m(B)
  9) descendents spread out geographically, otherwise act the
     same: m(A)>m(B)


From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Fri Jun 16 11:37:27 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 07:37:27 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] #  What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <20060616061704.54630.qmail@web35501.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <p06230900c0b7ea4f2444@[23.237.66.13]>
	<20060616061704.54630.qmail@web35501.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <40268.72.236.103.129.1150457847.squirrel@main.nc.us>

> Amara Graps <amara at amara.com> wrote:    .I would think 'right' to one's
> body as the most basic right that one can
> have. If one doesn't accept this, then everything else that people in the
>   transhuman community have discussed during the last 20 years as
> desirable for
>   their future collapses.


Yes - and I'd like to add the 'right' to one's mind. Nowadays things are
shifting towards trials and punishments for thoughts, you know. :(

Actually, I guess thoughts were always highly punishable. Sigh.

Regards,
MB



From isthatyoujack at gmail.com  Fri Jun 16 12:33:10 2006
From: isthatyoujack at gmail.com (Jack Parkinson)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 20:33:10 +0800
Subject: [extropy-chat] What the #$?! are rights anyway?
References: <mailman.2532.1150450591.1390.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
Message-ID: <000d01c69141$0c3c0680$0f830d0a@JPAcer>

 The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
Subject: [extropy-chat] What the #$?! are rights anyway?

Stuart: These debates have left me very pensive with a sense
of deep disquiet. This unease stems from the fact that
although I believe in rights, jealously guard mine,
and support the rights of other as well, I no longer
really know why I believe in them. So when people
started complaining that discussing the rights of
women versus those of fetuses is not a suitable topic
for a transhuman list, I found it necessary to ask the
lot of you to tell me what rights are, where they come
from, and why they are in any sense "real"?

I know these may seem like naive questions but as
Frank Forman pointed out, the transhuman community
really does need to come up with a rational theory of
rights. I will try to explain why this is necessary in
a historical context:

Divine right, ca. the Middle Ages:
"By the grace of God, I am your king. That means I am
the boss of you so give me your money, till my fields,
and go and fight those guys over that hill for me."

Natural rights, ca. the Enlightenment:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among
these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Human rights, ca. the Present:
"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of
the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the
human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and
peace in the world..."

So what's the problem you ask....? SNIP)

*****The problem is that there are actually no human rights whatsoever - and nor have there ever been in the history of humanity. 
Documents such as the UN Charter, the US constitution et al are simply beacons in the darkness. These show us what is possible and what might be in the future. 
But the truth is that those few human rights which have been granted in the past and codified into law - have only ever been granted to limited populations for limited periods of time (extremely limited periods of time given the scale of human history.. )

*******What is more, wherever human rights ARE being granted at any time, they are always under threat and subject to political or commercial interpretation by those who can bring a great deal of expertise and ingenuity to bear on defeating the moral intent of the code. One COULD try to explain that in so doing, these people are adopting an inferior and essentially self-defeating course - but one could also try to teach a dog to play chess...

*********Human rights are grounded in personal autonomy and personal responsibility - as such there is a fundamental opposition between this set of rights and governmental authority which seeks to limit the autonomy of the individual and exercise a proxy for the good of the group.
**********Governments will always therefore seek to limit human rights - to do otherwise is to abdicate their own power. Some do it by heavy-handed authoritarian displays of power. Others persuade their citizens to give up their rights voluntarily in the face of some trumped up external threat... any bells ringing?

************I would say there is a snowball's chance in hell of a coherent system of global human rights anytime soon - at least as applied at government level. BUT - all is not lost - the grass roots equivalent is a here and now thing. Since human rights are personal, we can apply the rules right now in our relations with everyone else in the world. All we have to do is BEHAVE as though the UN Charter was law - and for all intents and purposes - it is. To this extent, I believe that human rights are mine to seize. It is all a question of giving - and receiving - due respect and recognition. No rocket science needed!
Jack Parkinson
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From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Fri Jun 16 13:40:30 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 08:40:30 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] # What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <40268.72.236.103.129.1150457847.squirrel@main.nc.us>
References: <p06230900c0b7ea4f2444@23.237.66.13>
	<20060616061704.54630.qmail@web35501.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<40268.72.236.103.129.1150457847.squirrel@main.nc.us>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606160640y14461a73p91927dc4e084bb93@mail.gmail.com>

I think the points made thus far (by Lee, Amara & MB) are all reasonable.  I
was simply trying to point out that "rights" don't exist the same way other
nouns exist (a dog, a cat, a car, etc.).  As pointed out they exist in a
social context by agreement between entities (beings?) who can claim or
assert those rights.  Where this gets fuzzy is when we start attributing the
rights to entities who are incapable of asserting those rights (e.g. animals
or pre-human beings) and in cases where you have something which can assert
rights (an AI or a self-copy) but there is no "body" to to associate those
rights with. Just as in the case with animals we are getting into the social
discussion of creating "rights".  (E.g. An AI has the right to never be shut
down or a copy has a right to demand their fair share of "run" time on the
computronium in the solar system.)

Now, from a perfectly "extropic" perspective, one would argue that all
unique information has value and a right to exist.  So an "EXTROPIAN" would
argue strongly that even a single bacteria with its unique information
content (even bacteria within a species may have specific mutations in its
genome -- like the unique information a mind copy would accumulate if it is
allowed to run for any period of time).  So when we hit the wall of easily
available resources (matter & energy) decisions will need to be made with
respect to what information (e.g. bacterial DNA sequences) get saved and
which copies are allowed to have run time.  This in turn depends upon the
context in which the value of various types or quantities of information is
determined.  For example, Ted Bundy or Al-Zarqawi may have contained lots of
information but society still chose to erase that information (an extropian
might have argued that they should have been frozen to preserve their
information content while eliminating the threat that they represented).

The debate gets sticky when one tries to produce a rational basis for
asserting rights that everyone can agree on.  So for pre-humans it is
commonly the claim that they have "souls".  For dogs and cats its the fact
that they can feel pain.  For AIs its the fact that they are presumably
self-conscious or self-aware.

Of course as Michael points out we have slipped into the reality where even
thinking about certain things can be deemed criminal [1].  So we have a
situation where the actions of those in power use the power to retain that
power.  (IMO my friends that is something to be very concerned about.)

Robert

1. I *still* assert a right to think about nuking Mecca.
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From james.hughes at trincoll.edu  Fri Jun 16 14:04:13 2006
From: james.hughes at trincoll.edu (Hughes, James J.)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 10:04:13 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health Care Costs (was Extinctions)
Message-ID: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92A96@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>

 
> Do you happen to know how the private insurers compared to the HMOs?

Most managed care organizations are actually run by private insurers,
and they can have as high as 30% administrative costs (including
advertising). 

Managed care has two basic models, the old-fashioned group model with
all the docs working for the one HMO in its own hospitals, like in
Kaiser Permanente, and the network model in which docs can be signed up
with multiple managed care plans. The latter does require more
administration, and administrative costs are also larger for smaller
plans, which would lead a big system like Kaiser to be able to get
economies of scale. Kaiser traditionally posts the lowest administrative
costs of all the private insurers, around 3%, on par with the national
systems and Medicare.

In other words, large group model HMOs like Kaiser have lower
administrative costs (and clinical costs, and better clinical outcomes)
for many of the same reasons that single-payer national health insurance
systems do: they aren't being crushed by crippling administrative
inefficiency, and in turn are not assigning MBAs to micro-manage
physician decision-making. 

----------------------------------------
James J. Hughes Ph.D.
Lecturer, Public Policy
Williams 229B, Trinity College
300 Summit St.
Hartford CT 06106
860-297-2376
james.hughes at trincoll.edu
  




From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Fri Jun 16 16:23:33 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 09:23:33 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net>

On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 01:01:15AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:

> > Anyway, I believe that even if you compare white Americans to white
> > Europeans or Canadians we still die sooner while spending twice as
> > much money.
> 
> Well :-)  so far, you have your hunches and I have mine.

Not a hunch but a memory of data.  Also, if black women are within six
months of white women, then white women will be close to the stat for
women overall and we could compare that across countries.

Okay, real data:

http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/

Japan:     84.70 F  77.96 M  81.25 total  6.74 F-M diff  3.24 infant mort
Sweden:    82.87 F  78.29 M  80.51 total  4.58           2.76
Australia: 83.52 F  77.64 M  80.50 total  5.88           4.63
Canada:    83.74 F  76.86 M  80.22 total  6.88           4.69
Italy:     82.94 F  76.88 M  79.81 total  6.06           5.83
France:    83.54 F  76.10 M  79.73 total  7.44           4.21
Norway:    82.31 F  76.91 M  79.54 total  5.40           3.67
Dutch:     81.67 F  76.39 M  78.96 total  5.28           4.96
Germany:   81.96 F  75.81 M  78.80 total  6.15           4.12
UK:        81.13 F  76.09 M  78.54 total  5.04           5.08
EU:        81.6  F  75.1  M  78.3  total  6.5            5.1
US:        80.82 F  75.02 M  77.85 total  5.80           6.43

We're at the bottom, and just looking at whites doesn't improve that (see
below).  There's a wider range for females than males, and interesting
variation in the F-M difference.  If you're male, you want to be
Swedish (and moving to Britain might have cut Anders's life expectancy.
:)  Countries notionally similar to us such as Australia and Canada kick
our butt.  Lifestyle/diet might explain some things like Japan vs.
Germany, or Italy's high rank despite high infant mortality; OTOH, the
US looks bad on infant mortality rates as well, and the differences can
be even larger.  

So, tell me again how socialized medicine doesn't work.  Seems to work
as well or better than ours for half as much money.

http://www.jointcenter.org/DB/factsheet/lifexpec.htm
"Black men remain the group with the lowest life expectancy. Those born
in 1999 are expected to live to the age of 67.8, which is about 7 years
less than for comparable white men (74.6). Among women born in 1999,
blacks are expected to live to the age of 74.7, and whites to age 79.9"

So my memory of a 6 month deficit for black women was wrong, but whites
are still close to the official numbers.  Remember blacks are only about
14% of the population, so the numbers above would give a 1999 US female
LE of 79.17, pretty close to the white female figure of 79.9.  US males
would be 73.65.

So if you want, you can add a year to the US numbers, moving white
Americans up to the level of Germany and UK.  Hurrah, ethnically
privileged Americans live as long as the bottom rung of socialized
medicine countries, while spending twice as much.

http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/indicators/78LifeExpectancy.cfm

This is more recent (2003, not 1999).  78 years for white total, 77.5
for US total.  Just half a year difference, so we wouldn't rise even to
UK levels.  Infant mortality makes a large part of the white/black
difference, though US whites would still compare quite unfavorably (x2)
with Sweden or Japan in that statistic (which should be rather less
sensitive to lifestyle and diet factors!)

-xx- Damien X-) 


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Fri Jun 16 16:56:18 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 09:56:18 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net>
References: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <20060616165618.GB5571@ofb.net>

My last url links two other data sources, possibly independent of the
CIA figures.  The WHO one lists Healthy Life Expectancy, at birth *and*
at age 60 (broken down by male/female.)  We're still poor.

http://www.who.int/whr/2004/annex/topic/en/annex_4_en.pdf

Healthy years from age 60

         female  male
Japan      21.7  17.5
France     20.4  16.6
Sweden     19.6  17.1
Australia  19.5  16.9
Italy      19.4  16.4
Canada     19.3  16.1
Germany    19    15.9
Norway     18.9  16.2
Dutch      18.4  15.5
UK         18.1  15.7
US         17.9  15.3

Note: for a male Japanese relative to a US female, being Japanese almost
makes up for being male.

For contrast

Cuba       16.7  15.2
Mexico     16.2  14.4
China      14.7  13.1
Vietnam    13.1  11.4
Zimbabwe   10.6  9.7


-xx- Damien X-) 


From james.hughes at trincoll.edu  Fri Jun 16 17:31:28 2006
From: james.hughes at trincoll.edu (Hughes, James J.)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 13:31:28 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
Message-ID: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>

> Healthy years from age 60
> 
>          female  male
> Japan      21.7  17.5
> France     20.4  16.6
> Sweden     19.6  17.1
> Australia  19.5  16.9
> Italy      19.4  16.4
> Canada     19.3  16.1
> Germany    19    15.9
> Norway     18.9  16.2
> Dutch      18.4  15.5
> UK         18.1  15.7
> US         17.9  15.3


Oh my Damien - how could that be? The US is the best of all possible
worlds! And we spend the most of healthcare per person in the OECD!
Could it be that our healthcare system wastes money and doesn't work as
well as that of the UK, which spends less than half as much?

Total health expenditure per capita, US$, 2003
	
United States	$5,635
Norway	$3,807
Switzerland	$3,781
Luxembourg	$3,705
Iceland	$3,115
Canada	$3,001
Germany	$2,996
Netherlands	$2,976
France	$2,903
Belgium	$2,827
Denmark	$2,763
Sweden	$2,703
Australia	$2,699
Ireland	$2,451
Austria	$2,302
Italy	$2,258
United Kingdom	$2,231
Japan	$2,139
Finland	$2,118
Greece	$2,011
New Zealand	$1,886
Spain	$1,835
Portugal	$1,797
Czech Republic	$1,298
Hungary	$1,269
Korea	$1,074
Slovak Republic	$777
Poland	$744
Mexico	$583
Turkey	$513



From andrew at ceruleansystems.com  Fri Jun 16 18:14:38 2006
From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 11:14:38 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net>
References: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <4323CD7C-349E-4C77-BED5-99330588B153@ceruleansystems.com>

On Jun 16, 2006, at 9:23 AM, Damien Sullivan wrote:
> So, tell me again how socialized medicine doesn't work.  Seems to work
> as well or better than ours for half as much money.


Excluding relative gross deficiencies in medical care, which is not  
really in evidence in most industrialized countries, I do not see how  
the cost of medical care has any significant impact on infant  
mortality rates or life expectancy.  I would expect that  
environmental and lifestyle factors completely dominate such that  
arguments over the cost of health care among modern countries is  
pretty much irrelevant to health.  I doubt the difference in life  
expectancy between Utah and Mississippi (5 years!) has much to do  
with medical care per se.

If the US had a socialized healthcare system tomorrow, even a very  
expensive one, it would have no impact on the factors that very  
likely account for differences in mortality.  It would change the  
economics, but it is not the economics that are killing people (at  
least not for the sake of this discussion).  It seems that the  
discussion here is conflating two mostly unrelated issues: the  
economic efficiency of health care and mortality rates.


J. Andrew Rogers



From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Fri Jun 16 18:45:05 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 11:45:05 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <20060616165618.GB5571@ofb.net>
References: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net> <20060616165618.GB5571@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <20060616184504.GA26853@ofb.net>

And finally, financial data:

Taken from
http://www3.who.int/whosis/core/core_select.cfm

          %GDP  $US(1)  $US(2) %govh(3) HLE-F  HLE-M  %GDPprivh(4)
Australia  9.5  2,519  2,874    67.5%   74.3   70.9   3.1%
Canada     9.9  2,669  2,989    69.9%   74.0   70.1   3.0%
France    10.1  2,981  2,902    76.3%   74.7   69.3   2.4%
Germany   11.1  3,204  3,001    78.2%   74.0   69.6   2.4%
Italy      8.4  2,139  2,266    75.1%   74.7   70.7   2.1%
Japan      7.9  2,662  2,244    81.0%   77.7   72.3   1.5%
Dutch      9.8  3,088  2,987    62.4%   72.6   69.7   3.7%
Norway    10.3  4,976  3,809    83.7%   73.6   70.4   1.7%
Sweden     9.4  3,149  2,704    85.2%   74.8   71.9   1.4%
UK         8.0  2,428  2,389    85.7%   72.1   69.1   1.1%
US        15.2  5,711  5,711    44.6%   71.3   67.2   8.4%
halfUS          2,855  2,855

%GDP is %GDP spent on total health expenditures
HLE Healthy Life Expectancy at birth (aka HALE but I wanted narrow
columns)

(1) "Average exchange rate"
(2) "International dollar rate".  I don't know the difference.
(3) gov't health spending/total health spending
(4) My calculation: %GDP in *private* health spending, %GDP*(1-%govh).
Useful for adding to taxes for a total tax+health burden, e.g. Americans
pay less taxes but more in premiums.

Analysis: grapphs or regression curves would help, but just from
eyeballing, we can see a lack of tight correlations.  The most
socialized countries at at the top and bottom of the HLE scale.  Japan
and Sweden, which top both socialism and HLE, differ in total tax burdens
(data not shown(5)) with Japan being close to the US and Sweden most
burdensome.  Australia and the Dutch are relatively less socialized but
more and less healthy.  Actual spending is not tightly correlated with
health, with Germany not doing as well for its money as Sweden while
Italy and Japan don't spend much for their health.  

Conclusion: it's not clear who we should or can imitate but we should
clearly stop imitating ourselves.  I'd guess Canada, Australia, and
Sweden have similar diets to us and for Canada and Australia similar
lifestyles.  Australia seems strictly better than Canada; Sweden lives
even longer and may or may not spend less, depending on the exchange
rate used.  The UK is a poor model but the degree of socialism itself
does not seem to be the problem.

(5)
http://images.forbes.com/media/2006/05/Overall_Tax_Burden_Governemt_Spending.pdf

Sorting by $US(1)
          %GDP  $US(1)  $US(2) %govh(3) HLE-F  HLE-M  %GDPprivh(4)
Italy      8.4  2,139  2,266    75.1%   74.7   70.7   2.1%
UK         8.0  2,428  2,389    85.7%   72.1   69.1   1.1%
Australia  9.5  2,519  2,874    67.5%   74.3   70.9   3.1%
Japan      7.9  2,662  2,244    81.0%   77.7   72.3   1.5%
Canada     9.9  2,669  2,989    69.9%   74.0   70.1   3.0%
halfUS          2,855  2,855
France    10.1  2,981  2,902    76.3%   74.7   69.3   2.4%
Dutch      9.8  3,088  2,987    62.4%   72.6   69.7   3.7%
Sweden     9.4  3,149  2,704    85.2%   74.8   71.9   1.4%
Germany   11.1  3,204  3,001    78.2%   74.0   69.6   2.4%
Norway    10.3  4,976  3,809    83.7%   73.6   70.4   1.7%
US        15.2  5,711  5,711    44.6%   71.3   67.2   8.4%

Sorting by $US(2)
          %GDP  $US(1)  $US(2) %govh(3) HLE-F  HLE-M  %GDPprivh(4)
Japan      7.9  2,662  2,244    81.0%   77.7   72.3   1.5%
Italy      8.4  2,139  2,266    75.1%   74.7   70.7   2.1%
UK         8.0  2,428  2,389    85.7%   72.1   69.1   1.1%
Sweden     9.4  3,149  2,704    85.2%   74.8   71.9   1.4%
halfUS          2,855  2,855
Australia  9.5  2,519  2,874    67.5%   74.3   70.9   3.1%
France    10.1  2,981  2,902    76.3%   74.7   69.3   2.4%
Dutch      9.8  3,088  2,987    62.4%   72.6   69.7   3.7%
Canada     9.9  2,669  2,989    69.9%   74.0   70.1   3.0%
Germany   11.1  3,204  3,001    78.2%   74.0   69.6   2.4%
Norway    10.3  4,976  3,809    83.7%   73.6   70.4   1.7%
US        15.2  5,711  5,711    44.6%   71.3   67.2   8.4%

Sorting by %govh
          %GDP  $US(1)  $US(2) %govh(3) HLE-F  HLE-M  %GDPprivh(4)
UK         8.0  2,428  2,389    85.7%   72.1   69.1   1.1%
Sweden     9.4  3,149  2,704    85.2%   74.8   71.9   1.4%
Norway    10.3  4,976  3,809    83.7%   73.6   70.4   1.7%
Japan      7.9  2,662  2,244    81.0%   77.7   72.3   1.5%
Germany   11.1  3,204  3,001    78.2%   74.0   69.6   2.4%
France    10.1  2,981  2,902    76.3%   74.7   69.3   2.4%
Italy      8.4  2,139  2,266    75.1%   74.7   70.7   2.1%
Canada     9.9  2,669  2,989    69.9%   74.0   70.1   3.0%
Australia  9.5  2,519  2,874    67.5%   74.3   70.9   3.1%
Dutch      9.8  3,088  2,987    62.4%   72.6   69.7   3.7%
US        15.2  5,711  5,711    44.6%   71.3   67.2   8.4%

Sorting by HLE-M
          %GDP  $US(1)  $US(2) %govh(3) HLE-F  HLE-M  %GDPprivh(4)
Japan      7.9  2,662  2,244    81.0%   77.7   72.3   1.5%
Sweden     9.4  3,149  2,704    85.2%   74.8   71.9   1.4%
Australia  9.5  2,519  2,874    67.5%   74.3   70.9   3.1%
Italy      8.4  2,139  2,266    75.1%   74.7   70.7   2.1%
Norway    10.3  4,976  3,809    83.7%   73.6   70.4   1.7%
Canada     9.9  2,669  2,989    69.9%   74.0   70.1   3.0%
Dutch      9.8  3,088  2,987    62.4%   72.6   69.7   3.7%
Germany   11.1  3,204  3,001    78.2%   74.0   69.6   2.4%
France    10.1  2,981  2,902    76.3%   74.7   69.3   2.4%
UK         8.0  2,428  2,389    85.7%   72.1   69.1   1.1%
US        15.2  5,711  5,711    44.6%   71.3   67.2   8.4%

Sorting by HLE-F
          %GDP  $US(1)  $US(2) %govh(3) HLE-F  HLE-M  %GDPprivh(4)
Japan      7.9  2,662  2,244    81.0%   77.7   72.3   1.5%
Sweden     9.4  3,149  2,704    85.2%   74.8   71.9   1.4%
Italy      8.4  2,139  2,266    75.1%   74.7   70.7   2.1%
France    10.1  2,981  2,902    76.3%   74.7   69.3   2.4%
Australia  9.5  2,519  2,874    67.5%   74.3   70.9   3.1%
Canada     9.9  2,669  2,989    69.9%   74.0   70.1   3.0%
Germany   11.1  3,204  3,001    78.2%   74.0   69.6   2.4%
Norway    10.3  4,976  3,809    83.7%   73.6   70.4   1.7%
Dutch      9.8  3,088  2,987    62.4%   72.6   69.7   3.7%
UK         8.0  2,428  2,389    85.7%   72.1   69.1   1.1%
US        15.2  5,711  5,711    44.6%   71.3   67.2   8.4%


From sjatkins at mac.com  Fri Jun 16 19:00:46 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 12:00:46 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <20060615194159.36897.qmail@web60512.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20060615194159.36897.qmail@web60512.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <FA88D4B7-143C-49B7-AE39-1655E389EFCD@mac.com>


On Jun 15, 2006, at 12:41 PM, The Avantguardian wrote:

> There have been a couple of threads on both lists
> lately that have been somewhat contentious. On the WTA
> there has been an ongoing debate on abortion that has
> caused tempers to rise and people to go on angry
> rants. Of course at the center of this debate is the
> right of an unborn fetus to life versus a woman's
> right to have control over her body. ExI, on the other
> hand, has been hosting a debate on the right of poor
> people to get rich enough to "eat beefsteak" versus
> the right of a complex ecosystem known as a rainforest
> to exist.
>

A clump of cells have rights eh?  Funny the furor claiming so when  
much of the actual post-birth human population is de facto granted  
little or no rights.   This would seem a sure indication than the  
anti-abortion crowd is not really interested in fetal rights at all  
except as a tool.

> These debates have left me very pensive with a sense
> of deep disquiet. This unease stems from the fact that
> although I believe in rights, jealously guard mine,
> and support the rights of other as well, I no longer
> really know why I believe in them. So when people
> started complaining that discussing the rights of
> women versus those of fetuses is not a suitable topic
> for a transhuman list, I found it necessary to ask the
> lot of you to tell me what rights are, where they come
> from, and why they are in any sense "real"?


There are as real as any other aspect of ethics in which they are  
subsumed.  Where they come from is a matter of considerable  
contention I do not want to wade into (again).  But basically they  
are the agreed set of requirements as to how we treat one another in  
terms of the minimum common expectations we believe everyone is  
entitled to.  It can be debated whether this is a social pact only or  
it is more or less based on the commonalities shared by all
> \

> Natural rights, ca. the Enlightenment:
> "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
> are created equal, that they are endowed by their
> Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among
> these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
>

The "Creator" part is not essential to a rights argument based on  
human nature.  All that is necessary is that we do have a shared nature.

Utterly irrelevant.

- samantha




From sentience at pobox.com  Fri Jun 16 19:02:14 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 12:02:14 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <4323CD7C-349E-4C77-BED5-99330588B153@ceruleansystems.com>
References: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net>	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>	<20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net>
	<4323CD7C-349E-4C77-BED5-99330588B153@ceruleansystems.com>
Message-ID: <44930036.5010407@pobox.com>

...didn't Robin Hanson just get through presenting the evidence that 
increased healthcare spending does squat to decrease mortality?

Does anyone remember this except me?  Or was I hallucinating the entire 
thread?

Countries with socialized healthcare can have year-long waits to see 
doctors, according to what I've heard.  That is certainly a measure of 
inconvenience.  The counterintuitive fact that this has no effect on 
mortality just goes to say that something is wrong with healthcare in 
both socialized and market countries.

Personally, I suspect that healthcare spending is ineffective for the 
same reason that charity to Africa is ineffective.  Everyone is too busy 
with socially expected cheering to pay any attention to outcome 
measures.  They don't want to hear about what's effective and what's 
not.  They're purchasing warm glow by throwing money at the problem, and 
would rather not have to think any more than that.  If you start calling 
the cost-effectiveness into question, they get all indignant because 
you're trying to destroy the warm glow that they paid good money for.

And for as long as that remains true, increased healthcare spending will 
fail to purchase increased health.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Fri Jun 16 19:02:45 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 12:02:45 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <4323CD7C-349E-4C77-BED5-99330588B153@ceruleansystems.com>
References: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net>
	<4323CD7C-349E-4C77-BED5-99330588B153@ceruleansystems.com>
Message-ID: <20060616190245.GB26853@ofb.net>

On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 11:14:38AM -0700, J. Andrew Rogers wrote:
> On Jun 16, 2006, at 9:23 AM, Damien Sullivan wrote:
> > So, tell me again how socialized medicine doesn't work.  Seems to work
> > as well or better than ours for half as much money.
> 
> Excluding relative gross deficiencies in medical care, which is not  
> really in evidence in most industrialized countries, I do not see how  
> the cost of medical care has any significant impact on infant  
> mortality rates or life expectancy.  I would expect that  

I'd say it's not the cost but the amount spent.  Anyway, I'd imagined
spending would make a big difference for infant mortality: who gets the
vaccines and the care when sick?  With the US having lots of people,
black and white, below the threshold of decent infant care.  But I don't
know, maybe nutrition and residential pollution make the difference.

And it might be argued that "gross deficiency" is exactly what the US
has.  Not if you can afford it, no, and not if you have some problem
which the ER can actually treat, but if you have a chronic condition
whose drugs you can't afford, or if you put off going to the doctor
because you can't afford visits and therefore miss out on cheaper
preventive or early treatment care, you'll die sooner.

In fact I'd guess the general difference is of good (not UK) socialized
medicine encouraging check-ups and catching problems early, when it is
both cheaper and more effective to treat them.  ER care is both
expensive and less useful, if you're only being treated after things
turn into emergencies.

But I am guessing.

> environmental and lifestyle factors completely dominate such that  
> arguments over the cost of health care among modern countries is  
> pretty much irrelevant to health.  I doubt the difference in life  

I can see that for lower LE in the US, UK, Netherlands, and Germany, and
higher LE in Japan and Italy.  But I'd think Sweden to have similar diet
and they live long -- also longer than Norway next door.  Similarly
Canada and Australia seem similar to the US but live notably longer.
The US smokes less than Germans or Japanese (actually Japanese women
smoke less, but 47% of the men smoke) and about the same as Canada.

> If the US had a socialized healthcare system tomorrow, even a very  
> expensive one, it would have no impact on the factors that very  
> likely account for differences in mortality.  It would change the  

I think "no impact" is too strong, but I agree that it might be easier
for us to save lots of money than to boost the life expectancy.  Unless
our lifestyle is so bad we need the extra money just to pretend to be a
First World country.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From asa at nada.kth.se  Fri Jun 16 18:54:10 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 20:54:10 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.
	edu>
References: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>
Message-ID: <61385.86.138.88.108.1150484050.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Hughes, James J. wrote:
> Oh my Damien - how could that be? The US is the best of all possible
> worlds! And we spend the most of healthcare per person in the OECD!
> Could it be that our healthcare system wastes money and doesn't work as
> well as that of the UK, which spends less than half as much?

On the other hand, the UK health system looks right now to be on the verge
of bancrupcy (although that is a bit unfair, since it the main cause
appears to be some bad planning and politics). And "v?rdkrisen" ("the
health care crisis") has been ongoing in Sweden for the last 15 years -
people are getting healthier and healthier (despite or perhaps thanks to
being on sick leave more and more), while everybody thinks the hospitals
are going down the drain. If there is one thing that remains constant
everywhere in Europe it is that nobody thinks their health care system
works well.



-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From jay.dugger at gmail.com  Fri Jun 16 19:09:47 2006
From: jay.dugger at gmail.com (Jay Dugger)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 14:09:47 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Feeds for the list?
Message-ID: <5366105b0606161209k820aefuc316094c6539d6f@mail.gmail.com>

Friday, 16 June 2006

Hello all:

I don't think the mailing-list supports feeds for list content. If it
does, or if anyone made a feed for the list, I'd sure like to know
about it. If no one's done so, I'd like to know that too.

-- 
Jay Dugger
http://jaydugger.suprglu.com
Sometimes the delete key serves best.


From sjatkins at mac.com  Fri Jun 16 19:32:30 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 12:32:30 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606151405s28d2bb67p2ebfff42814bf0b4@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060615194159.36897.qmail@web60512.mail.yahoo.com>
	<deaa866a0606151405s28d2bb67p2ebfff42814bf0b4@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAE4DC25-4290-44BA-AAA2-E097DA2507AF@mac.com>


On Jun 15, 2006, at 2:05 PM, Robert Bradbury wrote:

>
> On 6/15/06, The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Convince me and my client the devil that rights, human
> or otherwise, actually exist.
>
> They *don't* "actually" exist!  They are pure inventions of beings  
> that can think "consciously" in order to develop a social structure  
> which is less prone to destruction and/or decay then would  
> otherwise be the case.
>
> The "rights" used to be handed down by those in power until such a  
> time as the people decided to assert them for themselves.  (The  
> many can overpower the few or the one if they agree that their  
> rights are relatively equal).  All of the rest of the discussion of  
> extending rights is probably due to the fact that feeling sympathy  
> for those less fortunate probably had survival advantages  
> (reciprocal social contracts which promote self-survival when one  
> is less able to care for oneself, e.g. due to injury or illness, is  
> probably the origin of "rights").
>
> If Extropianism has any value it may revolve around whether or not  
> we can consciously agree on a single or multi-dimensional scale  
> that can be used to evaluate the value of forms of complexity or  
> relative "worth" of such complexity (value & worth can be context  
> dependent).  This would replace the social contract based system  
> where you and I agree that we have a "right" to life and use that  
> agreement to bring down our lethal injections, bullets (or the  
> wrath of 500 lb bombs) on those who disagree with that right.

This is not "rights" at all but simply "might makes right" or in this  
case "might makes rights".   I think you may be confusing defense or  
forceful assertion of rights with rights themselves.


>
> Mind you, not a lot of people on this list, much less in the world  
> at large, would be willing to agree that their self-proclaimed (&  
> group-acknowledged) rights are null and void and should be replaced  
> by a system which perhaps might balance whether their past,  
> present, or potential future contributions should determine their  
> access rights to the matter & energy at our disposal.

Determined by whom or what?  What could possibly have enough  
information to evaluate every sentient (more or less creature) and  
apportion all resources accordingly?

>
> If such a system were in place I suspect we might be putting a lot  
> of elderly individuals to sleep.  Because with the exception of  
> those signed up for cryonic suspension most of those say 60-65+ are  
> a net drain (i.e . they are contributing more towards problems like  
> global warming that are going to have to be cleaned up later than  
> they might contribute to bringing forward lifespan extension, a  
> friendly AI, whatever, that might justify their current resource  
> consumption).
>

You are arguably a "net drain" when you assert such inhumane  
treatment of your fellow humans.   Do you realize how much ammunition  
you give to those against extropy by such pronouncements?   Do you  
understand how many will turn to mysticism to escape such draconian  
calculation from the supposedly rational and secular?   If we are not  
about more abundant and longer life for all humans then what good is  
our work really?  Where is the "good news"?  Relative to the first AI  
of >human intelligence pretty much every one of us is of marginal  
utility to future progress in fairly short order.  Will you suicide  
happily when you can no longer contribute or march to the ovens in  
the name of "progress"?


> As a challenge, go through Fortune Mag's Top 10, 100, Hollywood or  
> Sports stars, etc (I'd argue against using politicians...) and do  
> an up or down (or "weakest link") analysis for who is potentially  
> accelerating the development of singularity related breakthroughs  
> vs. who is retarding them.
>

If we judge by the acceptance of such goals then you are probably not  
helping.

> Instead of the question "Do they have a right to live?" one might  
> instead ask "Is their continued existence justified?"  Mind you,  
> since we have an extremely large excess of resources at our  
> disposal currently we can be very generous but that will *not*  
> always be the case.
>

It will be much more the case in the  future than it is today.

- samantha
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From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Fri Jun 16 21:31:15 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 14:31:15 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] #  What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <p06230900c0b7ea4f2444@[23.237.66.13]>
Message-ID: <20060616213115.5243.qmail@web60512.mail.yahoo.com>



--- Amara Graps <amara at amara.com> wrote:

> Lee,  The definition I presented said nothing about
> legality, At the
> base, what I gave is a reasonable definition with
> which to begin. If you
> don't like the word, then fine. One still needs a
> principle sanctioning
> a man's freedom of action in a social context.

Is it better to view rights as an active sanction of
ones explicit freedoms or as passive constraints on
ones freedom relative to other beings? Do
non-individuals have rights? For example corporations,
nations, etc.?


> Unless you are a hermit,
> then it doesn't matter.

So if come upon a hermit that has a pot of gold in
some remote woods somewhere, and I am certain that
nobody would miss him, I am within my rights to kill
him and take his gold? Obviously by being a hermit, he
has voluntarily opted out of any presumed social
contract.

> 
> The next step is to claim "what" are your moral
> principles and "what"
> are the social contexts and "how" does one put it in
> legal context, if
> that is what you want, and if it is, then "how" does
> one arbitrate
> disputes. That's another level. I said nothing about
> that.

Yes, I belive that we are speaking of something more
fundamental than mere legality here.

> 
> For moral principles, one must decide what is at the
> core of one's
> personal philosophy.
> 
> I would think 'right' to one's body as the most
> basic right that one can
> have. I do not know why H+ people feel a need to
> debate this and why
> such a basic issue is being brought up. If one
> doesn't accept this, then
> everything else that people in the  transhuman
> community have discussed
> during the last 20 years as desirable for their
> future collapses.

I think you may not quite understand what I am trying
to achieve by this thread. Of course I *believe* that
people have a right to their own bodies but that is
not good enough. For example pretend you are taken
before a super-intelligent future A.I. This A.I. has
immense power at its disposal and it is neither
hostile nor friendly, merely logical and supremely
indifferent. It has no sympathy, no heart, no
conscience, no emotion at all. It however is
constrained to act absolutely RATIONALLY, that is to
say that it could not act irationally even if it
wanted to. 

This A.I. takes you aside and says, "Amara, unless you
can convince me otherwise, I am going to upload you
painlessly into a suitably arcadian runtime
environment and use your body to make carbon control
rods to moderate my nuclear reactor."

How do you state your case for "a right to your body"?
Now if you can come up with such an argument and
generalize to cover all such "principles of social
interaction" then this thread will have accomplished
its stated purpose.
     

Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From james.hughes at trincoll.edu  Fri Jun 16 21:37:36 2006
From: james.hughes at trincoll.edu (Hughes, James J.)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 17:37:36 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
Message-ID: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92C0D@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>

 
> If there is one thing 
> that remains constant everywhere in Europe it is that nobody 
> thinks their health care system works well.

True. But very few European want to trade their health care system for
ours:

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/news/allnewsbydate.asp?NewsID=830

Harris Poll 2004

For each of the following (countries) please indicate which countries
you feel positive about their health care system...United States?

Britons  17%
French    3%
Germans   5%
Italians 14%
Spanish   8%

J.



From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Fri Jun 16 21:47:16 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 14:47:16 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <20060615212032.GA4422@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <20060616214716.10910.qmail@web60512.mail.yahoo.com>



--- Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> You can derive a lot just from social contract --
> what would rough
> equals agree to?  Not everything, e.g. it doesn't
> give a great reason
> for a majority to not exploit a distinct minority. 
> That I think needs
> supplementation from lots of people deciding they
> don't like it and
> fighting to establish their preference.

I am hoping that there might be something superior to
social contract theory. Especially since as you say it
does not protect minorities from majorities. Also it
does not speak to the cause of individuals apart from
society. What if for example we are speaking of a
hermit? Or a unique non-human entity (the first AGI or
ET)? Is the fact that ET is not part of "society" mean
that we can dissect him?


Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Fri Jun 16 22:02:04 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 15:02:04 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <44930036.5010407@pobox.com>
References: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net>
	<4323CD7C-349E-4C77-BED5-99330588B153@ceruleansystems.com>
	<44930036.5010407@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <20060616220203.GA28766@ofb.net>

On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 12:02:14PM -0700, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> ...didn't Robin Hanson just get through presenting the evidence that 
> increased healthcare spending does squat to decrease mortality?

Yep.

Did that cause anyone to decide to not go see the doctor the next time
they're sick?  Will you, Eliezer, skip the doctor's office?  Will Robin
refrain from taking his children there (assuming his wife would let
him)?

-xx- Damien X-) 


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Fri Jun 16 22:07:26 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 15:07:26 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <61385.86.138.88.108.1150484050.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
References: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>
	<61385.86.138.88.108.1150484050.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>

On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 08:54:10PM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:

> On the other hand, the UK health system looks right now to be on the verge
> of bancrupcy (although that is a bit unfair, since it the main cause
> appears to be some bad planning and politics). And "v?rdkrisen" ("the

Impressive, given that the UK is near the bottom of the spending list!
Of course, the Left accuses the Thatcher-Major-Blair regimes of trying
to cut or bankrupt the NHS in the name of the market.

> are going down the drain. If there is one thing that remains constant
> everywhere in Europe it is that nobody thinks their health care system
> works well.

Except for the French, apparently. :)

-xx- Damien X-) 


From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Fri Jun 16 21:50:34 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 14:50:34 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] #  What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <40268.72.236.103.129.1150457847.squirrel@main.nc.us>
Message-ID: <20060616215035.99338.qmail@web60517.mail.yahoo.com>



--- MB <mbb386 at main.nc.us> wrote:
> Yes - and I'd like to add the 'right' to one's mind.
> Nowadays things are
> shifting towards trials and punishments for
> thoughts, you know. :(

I heartily concur. The idea of "thought crime" is on
the rise.

> 
> Actually, I guess thoughts were always highly
> punishable. Sigh.

Yes, but before the government did not have access to
advanced data mining techniques to screen millions of
communications per day for seditious thoughts.



Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Fri Jun 16 22:17:28 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 15:17:28 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <20060616214716.10910.qmail@web60512.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20060615212032.GA4422@ofb.net>
	<20060616214716.10910.qmail@web60512.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20060616221728.GC28766@ofb.net>

On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 02:47:16PM -0700, The Avantguardian wrote:

> I am hoping that there might be something superior to
> social contract theory. Especially since as you say it
> does not protect minorities from majorities. Also it
> does not speak to the cause of individuals apart from
> society. What if for example we are speaking of a
> hermit? Or a unique non-human entity (the first AGI or

Millennia of thought have failed to come up with a superior alternative;
in fact, there seems to be a marked convergence to social contract or
utilitarianism among materialists, and with the latter there's the
question of one why should care about everyone else's utility.

Your questions to Amara about the auriferous hermit or the uploadphilic
AI are similar to how I gave up on natural rights.  (In my case it was
"how can I convince a Nazi they're wrong?")  Not only do I see no
answer, I fail to see how absolute rights can be relevant.  Say someone
proves that the hermit has a right to the gold -- so what?  What
prevents you from killing him anyway?  What prevents the AI from
uploading Amara no matter what argument she makes?  Nothing.

Rights without consequences seem pointless.  Note that theistic
doctrines promised consequences, even if those were vague or untestable:
Heaven, Hell, karma, general forture or misfortune.  Having stripped
away the supernatural, naturalists have to back up the rights they
assert by real force or incentives.

> ET)? Is the fact that ET is not part of "society" mean
> that we can dissect him?

Of course we *can*.  Do we want to?  Do we want to be that kind of
people, or tell our children we did that, or hide that sort of thing as
a secret?  Do we fear he came from a greater society which might get
pissed off if it finds out?

-xx- Damien X-) 


From sentience at pobox.com  Fri Jun 16 22:39:46 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 15:39:46 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <20060616220203.GA28766@ofb.net>
References: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net>	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>	<20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net>	<4323CD7C-349E-4C77-BED5-99330588B153@ceruleansystems.com>	<44930036.5010407@pobox.com>
	<20060616220203.GA28766@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <44933332.5040205@pobox.com>

Damien Sullivan wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 12:02:14PM -0700, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> 
>>...didn't Robin Hanson just get through presenting the evidence that 
>>increased healthcare spending does squat to decrease mortality?
> 
> Yep.
> 
> Did that cause anyone to decide to not go see the doctor the next time
> they're sick?  Will you, Eliezer, skip the doctor's office?  Will Robin
> refrain from taking his children there (assuming his wife would let
> him)?

It's certainly causing me to be more cautious around the prospect of 
surgery.  If at least some doctor visits are effective, that implies 
that some of the visits are anti-effective - costly and harmful - to 
balance out the effective visits.  I believe the statistic is that 
one-third of hospital deaths are iatrogenic.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From amara at amara.com  Fri Jun 16 22:55:52 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 00:55:52 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat]  # What the #$?! are rights anyway?
Message-ID: <p06230900c0b8e612f19b@[23.237.66.13]>

You are setting up a number of straw men. I am not particularly
interested in your Orwellian Universe.

The Avantguardian avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com :
>So if come upon a hermit that has a pot of gold in
>some remote woods somewhere, and I am certain that
>nobody would miss him, I am within my rights to kill
>him and take his gold?

Then you would commit murder and theft. By reason that he is a man and so
are you.

>This A.I. takes you aside and says, "Amara, unless you can convince me
>otherwise, I am going to upload you painlessly into a suitably
>arcadian runtime environment and use your body to make carbon control
>rods to moderate my nuclear reactor.

That is called coersion and initiation of force and I will defend my life
because I'm human.


>How do you state your case for "a right to your body"?

Without my body I don't live.

Amara



From charlie at antipope.org  Fri Jun 16 22:38:06 2006
From: charlie at antipope.org (Charlie Stross)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 23:38:06 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>
References: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>
	<61385.86.138.88.108.1150484050.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <0E6C82C3-FC4F-40CF-8BD3-0B9A9B24B30C@antipope.org>


On 16 Jun 2006, at 23:07, Damien Sullivan wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 08:54:10PM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
>> On the other hand, the UK health system looks right now to be on  
>> the verge
>> of bancrupcy (although that is a bit unfair, since it the main cause
>> appears to be some bad planning and politics). And "v?rdkrisen" ("the
>
> Impressive, given that the UK is near the bottom of the spending list!
> Of course, the Left accuses the Thatcher-Major-Blair regimes of trying
> to cut or bankrupt the NHS in the name of the market.

[ Just ducking in ]

Speaking as a Brit, the problem is entirely political in origin, and  
relates to some really stupid policy decisions taken over funding the  
NHS a few years ago. (Thumbnail: the government wanted to increase  
spending. They did so by leveraging private investment, offering lock- 
in contracts and selling off real estate owned by NHS hospitals to  
pay for it. Now the pigeons are coming home to roost in the form of  
interest payments. To add insult to injury, the huge NHS IT  
integration project -- which was appallingly badly planned -- turns  
out to be roughly ?6Bn -- about US $11Bn -- over budget, a margin  
which exceeds the NHS funding shortfall by an order of magnitude.  
They wouldn't be in a crisis if they'd planned their IT program  
properly, bluntly, and it can be solved trivially if the politicians  
would stop posturing and ... gaah. You've heard it all before about  
any number of large institutions, right?)

Oh yeah. Last time I had to go see my GP I was sitting in his  
examining room all of five hours after I picked up the phone. I keep  
*hearing* about the alleged one year waiting times, but I've never  
met anyone who actually *did* have to wait a year -- or even a week  
-- to see their GP.

Discussions of healthcare are inevitably propagandized, especially  
when someone dumps a handful of free market ideology chum in the  
shark pool.

>> ... If there is one thing that remains constant
>> everywhere in Europe it is that nobody thinks their health care  
>> system
>> works well.

I suspect this is because in the USA you have one interesting  
phenomenon that's absent elsewhere: a vast, parasitic health  
insurance industry that needs to keep medicine expensive -- and has  
the advocacy/lobbying/advertising dollars to spend on convincing  
everyone that their way is best.


-- Charlie


From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Fri Jun 16 22:38:51 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 15:38:51 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] # What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606151957p44a5f769t1dcaf9b5864125b9@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060616223851.61372.qmail@web60524.mail.yahoo.com>



--- Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:

> One possible way to argue "rights" from an extropic
> perspective is simply to
> look at the information content (from a fetus to a
> species).  

So you would say that rights derive from information
content? This is an interesting perspective since it
would apply to a lesser and greater degree to all
things, living or not. For example, it would mean that
texts, artifacts, or buildings may have some rights.
More so if there is much information content in them.
The surprisal for a cookie-cutter tract-housing home
would be considerably less than let's say for example,
the pyramids of egypt. So by your rationale the
pyramids would have more of a right to preservation
than the suburban house. It does have a certain
intuitive appeal.

There was a
> recent paper that I don't happen to have a reference
> handy for which I think
> cited the cost of the creation of a new species (of
> microorganism) at ~10^23
> J.  The only problem is that "speciation" may or may
> not depend upon a real
> net gain of information.

Actually speciation can often times lead to a decrease
in information content. For example free-living
earthworms and parasitic tapeworms most likely came
from a common segmented worm ancestor. The earthworm,
however, most likely gained information relative to
that ancestor, whereas the streamlining allowed by
parasitism allowed the tapeworm to lose information
relative to that ancestor. So evolution is not always
toward higher complexity. Gould actually thought that
it was *seldomly* toward greater complexity, although
I don't agree with Gould on that point.



Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From sentience at pobox.com  Fri Jun 16 23:15:31 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 16:15:31 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <0E6C82C3-FC4F-40CF-8BD3-0B9A9B24B30C@antipope.org>
References: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>	<61385.86.138.88.108.1150484050.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>	<20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>
	<0E6C82C3-FC4F-40CF-8BD3-0B9A9B24B30C@antipope.org>
Message-ID: <44933B93.40204@pobox.com>

Charlie Stross wrote:
> 
> Oh yeah. Last time I had to go see my GP I was sitting in his  
> examining room all of five hours after I picked up the phone. I keep  
> *hearing* about the alleged one year waiting times, but I've never  
> met anyone who actually *did* have to wait a year -- or even a week  
> -- to see their GP.

Thanks for the data - always good to hear from the front lines.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From asa at nada.kth.se  Sat Jun 17 00:38:34 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 02:38:34 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>
References: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>
	<61385.86.138.88.108.1150484050.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <63987.86.138.88.108.1150504714.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Damien Sullivan wrote:
>> are going down the drain. If there is one thing that remains constant
>> everywhere in Europe it is that nobody thinks their health care system
>> works well.
>
> Except for the French, apparently. :)

In France, it is the doctors who hate the health care system! If I
remember right, there are price limits on french health care and pretty
low doctor salaries - so the french enjoy the cheap care, while doctors
don't want to have more patients since the margins sometimes even become
negative.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From riel at surriel.com  Sat Jun 17 01:14:18 2006
From: riel at surriel.com (Rik van Riel)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 21:14:18 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <200606101535.k5AFZkbQ019156@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <200606101535.k5AFZkbQ019156@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606162110500.10477@imladris.surriel.com>

On Sat, 10 Jun 2006, spike wrote:

> I noticed that USian environmentalists do not flock to Brazil in huge 
> numbers, and I fully understand why: it is useless to preach 
> environmental stewardship to hungry people.  I figure it will take 
> another thirty to fifty years before the US is as crowded and hungry as 
> Brazil is today.

You've never been to Brazil, have you?

The Amazon forest is in the far north of the country, where
almost nobody lives.  An area maybe 1 1/2 to 2 times the size
of Alaska, with maybe 10 million people in it.

The majority of the deforestation is done by rich companies,
not by poor subsistance farmers - the poor farmers live in
the north-east and mid-west of the country, nowhere near the
Amazon river.

Most people want to see the rain forest saved, and legislation
is in place.  However, the north of the country is so empty
that effective law enforcement on a reasonable budget is just
not possible.

Overcrowding definately doesn't have anything to do with
deforestation of the Amazon region...

-- 
"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 spike66 at comcast.net  Sat Jun 17 03:33:49 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 20:33:49 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606162110500.10477@imladris.surriel.com>
Message-ID: <200606170345.k5H3jdvm015806@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Rik van Riel
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
> 
> On Sat, 10 Jun 2006, spike wrote:
> 
> > ... it is useless to preach environmental stewardship to hungry people..
.
> 
> The majority of the deforestation is done by rich companies,
> not by poor subsistance farmers - ...


Rich companies and poor farmers are two examples of hungry.  I use the term
to mean more than lacking food, it also means eager to make money.

In any case, thanks for the post Rik.  Your comments pique my interest
enough that I shall google myself up to speed.

spike



 




From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com  Sat Jun 17 04:09:48 2006
From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 00:09:48 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <20060616220203.GA28766@ofb.net>
References: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net>
	<4323CD7C-349E-4C77-BED5-99330588B153@ceruleansystems.com>
	<44930036.5010407@pobox.com> <20060616220203.GA28766@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <7641ddc60606162109h6fdbfa0fj1dd1c87b4acf62e1@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/16/06, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 12:02:14PM -0700, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> > ...didn't Robin Hanson just get through presenting the evidence that
> > increased healthcare spending does squat to decrease mortality?
>
> Yep.
>
> Did that cause anyone to decide to not go see the doctor the next time
> they're sick?  Will you, Eliezer, skip the doctor's office?  Will Robin
> refrain from taking his children there (assuming his wife would let
> him)?
>
### I think you are missing the point, Damien. Eliezer is not
necessarily saying that healthcare spending makes no difference in
health (which is the extreme part of Robin's opinion). Instead, he
says that the marginal spending on healthcare makes no difference, and
I heartily agree with him (and Robin).

As I previously argued on this and other lists, after paying for
vaccinations, blood pressure medications, kidney dialysis, and a few
other interventions with very good cost-to-benefit ratios, there is a
whole lot of therapies, and a humongous number of diagnostic tests,
with almost no impact on health or survival. As a purely intuitive
assessment based on the observation of my own practice patterns, this
spending may account for at least 1/3 of the total spending, and could
easily surpass the 50% mark. You could cut at least 2/3 of the imaging
studies I order daily by the dozen (well, almost) and there would be
only a small difference in survival. The amount of money spent without
paying attention to the cost-benefit ratios is immense.

I see two conclusions from the above:

1) Do go the doctor if you want to stay healthy but if you happen to
pay for it yourself, be very, very demanding about justifications for
every 1000$ that the good doc may have you spend on his salary. Of
course, if the other insured or the taxpayers pay, indulge yourself,
since there ain't no free lunch anywhere else.

2) All attempts to justify one's own idea of social justice by
comparing national spending patterns and outcomes are silly. Most of
the spending is useless anyway, and the overall impact of medicine is
further obscured by quite substantial differences in lifestyle factors
and other issues.

Socialists like to compare the US with Sweden but it's useless since
both countries are rich enough to pay for the useful, basic
healthcare, and differ only in the amount of fluff they offer on top
of that and in their ethnic makeup. Instead, if you want to see real
differences relevant to healthcare spending levels, try to compare the
socialized medicine in Sweden with the socialized medicine in Russia,
or maybe North Korea, or maybe Saudi Arabia.

Rafal


From ken at javien.com  Sat Jun 17 03:27:18 2006
From: ken at javien.com (Ken Kittlitz)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 21:27:18 -0600
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <0E6C82C3-FC4F-40CF-8BD3-0B9A9B24B30C@antipope.org>
References: <20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>
	<B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>
	<61385.86.138.88.108.1150484050.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20060616211659.03f0be00@127.0.0.1>

At 11:38 PM 6/16/2006 +0100, Charlie Stross wrote:

>Oh yeah. Last time I had to go see my GP I was sitting in his
>examining room all of five hours after I picked up the phone. I keep
>*hearing* about the alleged one year waiting times, but I've never
>met anyone who actually *did* have to wait a year -- or even a week
>-- to see their GP.

In Canada, wait times for GPs are also not a problem. The problems start 
when you need a more esoteric test, treatment or surgery. *Then*, the wait 
times can easily be six months or more. Of course, if the condition to be 
treated is deemed to be life-threatening, you get higher priority.  The 
trick is to have a doctor that can accurately distinguish the 
life-threatening conditions from the non-life-threatening ones. ;-)

Actually, Canada does have a GP-related problem: there are too few of them. 
Many doctors decide to specialize or move to the U.S. to practice medicine; 
both are more lucrative options than being a GP in Canada.  Those of us 
lucky enough to have GPs rarely have to wait long to see them; those 
without (GPs generally cap the number of patients they'll deal with) use 
the walk-in clinics.
---
Ken Kittlitz          http://www.javien.com



From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com  Sat Jun 17 04:44:33 2006
From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 00:44:33 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <44933B93.40204@pobox.com>
References: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>
	<61385.86.138.88.108.1150484050.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>
	<0E6C82C3-FC4F-40CF-8BD3-0B9A9B24B30C@antipope.org>
	<44933B93.40204@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <7641ddc60606162144w21feb4d7g5555d6e1aa637965@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/16/06, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience at pobox.com> wrote:
> Charlie Stross wrote:
> >
> > Oh yeah. Last time I had to go see my GP I was sitting in his
> > examining room all of five hours after I picked up the phone. I keep
> > *hearing* about the alleged one year waiting times, but I've never
> > met anyone who actually *did* have to wait a year -- or even a week
> > -- to see their GP.
>
> Thanks for the data - always good to hear from the front lines.
>
### Seeing the GP is trivial. Ask him how long he needs to wait to see
a nuclear medicine specialist, or a neurologist.

Or better, go to:

http://www.nhs.uk/England/AboutTheNhs/WaitingTimes/ConsultantSearch.aspx

and get the waiting times straight from the horse's mouth.

Rafal


From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com  Sat Jun 17 04:48:23 2006
From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 00:48:23 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <0E6C82C3-FC4F-40CF-8BD3-0B9A9B24B30C@antipope.org>
References: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>
	<61385.86.138.88.108.1150484050.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>
	<0E6C82C3-FC4F-40CF-8BD3-0B9A9B24B30C@antipope.org>
Message-ID: <7641ddc60606162148n5cd5d489o5749b41ed91cce40@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/16/06, Charlie Stross <charlie at antipope.org> wrote:

>
> I suspect this is because in the USA you have one interesting
> phenomenon that's absent elsewhere: a vast, parasitic health
> insurance industry that needs to keep medicine expensive -- and has
> the advocacy/lobbying/advertising dollars to spend on convincing
> everyone that their way is best.
>
### Gee, this is so bizarre....

Looks like these Americans are just stupid puppets, happily and
without duress dumping their own money down the drain because the
capitalist propaganda machine tells them to. And, amazingly, the
insurance companies, those greedy capitalist scum, they expect to make
more money by spending *more* money! The more they pay out of the
money they receive, the more is left for them! A true case of magic!
The more money they force on the docs, the more they earn themselves,
like pulling an infinite number of little green rabbits out of a hat!

Rafal

PS. Charlie, think it over - How can an insurance company hope to make
more money (or as one would say in social-speak, parasitize better) by
keeping their reimbursements higher than its competitors? Once you can
think your way through this little economic exercise, you will be on
your way out of the confusion.


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Sat Jun 17 04:54:48 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 21:54:48 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <0E6C82C3-FC4F-40CF-8BD3-0B9A9B24B30C@antipope.org>
References: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>
	<61385.86.138.88.108.1150484050.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>
	<0E6C82C3-FC4F-40CF-8BD3-0B9A9B24B30C@antipope.org>
Message-ID: <20060617045448.GA9877@ofb.net>

On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 11:38:06PM +0100, Charlie Stross wrote:

> > Impressive, given that the UK is near the bottom of the spending list!
> > Of course, the Left accuses the Thatcher-Major-Blair regimes of trying
> > to cut or bankrupt the NHS in the name of the market.
> 
> [ Just ducking in ]

Always glad to have you!

> Oh yeah. Last time I had to go see my GP I was sitting in his  
> examining room all of five hours after I picked up the phone. I keep  
> *hearing* about the alleged one year waiting times, but I've never  
> met anyone who actually *did* have to wait a year -- or even a week  
> -- to see their GP.

The inverse of the American Cadillac welfare queen?

> I suspect this is because in the USA you have one interesting  
> phenomenon that's absent elsewhere: a vast, parasitic health  
> insurance industry that needs to keep medicine expensive -- and has  
> the advocacy/lobbying/advertising dollars to spend on convincing  
> everyone that their way is best.

Insurance does seem like something which should benefit from having a
really large risk pool, including the people who think they don't need
it now but will age into people who do.  But we've got the insurance
companies.  Of course, employer-linked insurance would also seem to
limit employee mobility and small business creation; can't just walk off
the job if you're worried about your health in the meantime.  Though the
gov't partially patched that with COBRA.  (For 18 months after leaving
work you get to keep your group plan at the old premiums, though you
have to pay them.)

-xx- Damien X-) 


From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com  Sat Jun 17 04:59:19 2006
From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 00:59:19 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <20060616190245.GB26853@ofb.net>
References: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net>
	<4323CD7C-349E-4C77-BED5-99330588B153@ceruleansystems.com>
	<20060616190245.GB26853@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <7641ddc60606162159q1282b84fh333f515098edded7@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/16/06, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

> I'd say it's not the cost but the amount spent.  Anyway, I'd imagined
> spending would make a big difference for infant mortality: who gets the
> vaccines and the care when sick?  With the US having lots of people,
> black and white, below the threshold of decent infant care.  But I don't
> know, maybe nutrition and residential pollution make the difference.
>
> And it might be argued that "gross deficiency" is exactly what the US
> has.  Not if you can afford it, no, and not if you have some problem
> which the ER can actually treat, but if you have a chronic condition
> whose drugs you can't afford, or if you put off going to the doctor
> because you can't afford visits and therefore miss out on cheaper
> preventive or early treatment care, you'll die sooner.

### Damien, at appears that you are not familiar with the actual
patterns of availability of medical care to the indigent in the US.
This country is spending more on its poor per capita than EU countries
spend on their regular citizens (which I think is wrong, but this is
another issue). The poor in the US have a better access to medicine
than regular Germans have.

The Daily Kos is not a good source of information on medicine, I might add.

Rafal


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Sat Jun 17 04:59:53 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 21:59:53 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606162109h6fdbfa0fj1dd1c87b4acf62e1@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net>
	<4323CD7C-349E-4C77-BED5-99330588B153@ceruleansystems.com>
	<44930036.5010407@pobox.com> <20060616220203.GA28766@ofb.net>
	<7641ddc60606162109h6fdbfa0fj1dd1c87b4acf62e1@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060617045953.GB9877@ofb.net>

On Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 12:09:48AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:

> of that and in their ethnic makeup. Instead, if you want to see real
> differences relevant to healthcare spending levels, try to compare the
> socialized medicine in Sweden with the socialized medicine in Russia,
> or maybe North Korea, or maybe Saudi Arabia.

Or the not-so-free market of the US with the free market of Mexico?

Then there's Cuba.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Sat Jun 17 05:03:37 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 22:03:37 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606162159q1282b84fh333f515098edded7@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net>
	<4323CD7C-349E-4C77-BED5-99330588B153@ceruleansystems.com>
	<20060616190245.GB26853@ofb.net>
	<7641ddc60606162159q1282b84fh333f515098edded7@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060617050337.GC9877@ofb.net>

On Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 12:59:19AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:

> ### Damien, at appears that you are not familiar with the actual
> patterns of availability of medical care to the indigent in the US.

Right... I grew up on food stamps.

> This country is spending more on its poor per capita than EU countries
> spend on their regular citizens (which I think is wrong, but this is
> another issue). The poor in the US have a better access to medicine
> than regular Germans have.

"Spending more" isn't better access if it's doled out through emergency
rooms.  I know people who don't go to the doctor for lack of money, or
worry about their drugs.  

> The Daily Kos is not a good source of information on medicine, I might add.

I've never mentioned the Daily Kos and in fact don't read it, I might
add.  Why did you feel the need to bring it up?

-xx- Damien X-) 


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Sat Jun 17 05:05:09 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 22:05:09 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <200606170345.k5H3jdvm015806@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606162110500.10477@imladris.surriel.com>
	<200606170345.k5H3jdvm015806@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <20060617050509.GD9877@ofb.net>

On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 08:33:49PM -0700, spike wrote:
> > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Rik van Riel
> > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
> > 
> > On Sat, 10 Jun 2006, spike wrote:
> > 
> > > ... it is useless to preach environmental stewardship to hungry
> > > people..

> Rich companies and poor farmers are two examples of hungry.  I use the term
> to mean more than lacking food, it also means eager to make money.

Rich companies don't have the moral case of needing food, though.  They
also have assets and thus more to lose, if someone enforces the law on
them.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From iamgoddard at yahoo.com  Sat Jun 17 04:58:11 2006
From: iamgoddard at yahoo.com (Ian Goddard)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 21:58:11 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] What are animal rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606160640y14461a73p91927dc4e084bb93@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060617045811.98170.qmail@web52613.mail.yahoo.com>

--- Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think the points made thus far (by Lee, Amara &
> MB) are all reasonable.  I was simply trying to 
> point out that "rights" don't exist the same way 
> other nouns exist (a dog, a cat, a car, etc.).  As 
> pointed out they exist in a social context by 
> agreement between entities (beings?) who can claim 
> or assert those rights.  Where this gets fuzzy is 
> when we start attributing the rights to entities 
> who are incapable of asserting those rights (e.g. 
> animals or pre-human beings) and in cases where you 
> have something which can assert rights (an AI or a 
> self-copy) but there is no "body" to to associate 
> those rights with. 


 In what sense are animals incapable of asserting
rights? If you tried to assert your 'right' to carve
your initials into the side of a lion, of course we
know the lion would not only be capable of asserting
its right to maintain his bodily integrity as he sees
fit, he'd probably assert rights so forcefully you
might be killed in the process! No sane person would
attempt to do such a thing unless they believed they'd
managed to subdue the lion's ability to defend itself.
And of course the same measures (tranquilizer drugs or
some such) could be used to subdue the ability of a
human to assert rights. So the fact that we can often
*overcome* the ability of animals to assert rights
certainly does not establish that they are incapable
of asserting rights; in fact, I think it tends to
*prove* that they do assert rights!

 And on the other extreme, feebleness of ability is
not evidence of incapability. Sometimes when I'm
sitting in my backyard a squirrel sits up in a tree
scolding me. They make a series of sounds only when
some other animal (human, cat, dog) is on their
defined property and they want them to leave. That's
an assertion of rights, even as I can go back to my
reading and ignore the noise, and unlike a lion, the
squirrel being much smaller than I is incapable
exerting any greater punishment on me. But that
variety of 'incapability' is akin to a person's
incapability of preventing a larger gang from
assaulting them. And of course just because party A is
bigger than B and thus B cannot defend against A does
not establish B's incapability of asserting rights. So
I don't see in what meaningful sense animals are
incapable of asserting rights. 

 Note that all that is aside from whether or not we
will or should respect an animal's assertions. In
other words, one way says we can do what we will with
animals because they don't have or assert rights. And
another path says they do have or assert rights, but
our rights supercede their rights, and unless they can
stop us, we'll do as we see fit. ~Ian


http://iangoddard.net 

"All inferences from experience suppose, as their
foundation, that the future will resemble the past,
and that similar powers will be conjoined with similar
sensible qualities. If there be any suspicion, that
the course of nature may change, and that the past may
be no rule for the future, all experience becomes
useless, and can give rise to no inference or
conclusion." - David Hume 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From tark at kc.rr.com  Sat Jun 17 05:45:24 2006
From: tark at kc.rr.com (Tark)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 00:45:24 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] What are rights
Message-ID: <000801c691d1$3b1df810$6401a8c0@agross>

Re rights:

 

We started with divine rights of kings, then natural rights, then human
rights; however there is a fourth type -- rights derived from reason. Most
schools of philosophy fall into two camps: one based on supernatural
metaphysics (religious, Plato's "forms", mysticism, etc.) and the other
based on the metaphysics of science and reason. 

 

Divine, natural, and human rights as stated come from that first camp, what
rights come from reason & science, or the other camp of philosophy? I am not
asking the members of the list to re-create objectivism by any means,
however you should recognize that there is another source of rights. One
camp followed from Plato to Hobbes to Kant to modern philosophers, the other
from Aristotle to Bacon, to Locke, to objectivism. One camp is the camp of
religion, the other of science.

 

So if rights based on the supernatural do not exist, and I submit they don't
for your client, then rights based on science & reason are the only ones
that would serve his need. Why both science and reason? Because reason alone
becomes unproven theory after several steps up the ladder of metaphysics,
and slowly metamorphoses into faith. If as you step that ladder you prove
the assumptions supporting the next, then it becomes less faith and more a
prognosis, forecast, theory, or projection.

 

Going to Amara's claim of right to body, and another's of right to mind,
that right derives from something. Going to Camus, one of the earliest
debates you should have is "does life have purpose, meaning, value, or not"
Camus posits that the next question that follows if you answer "not" is "why
am I still hanging around then?" 

 

So, my assumption is that all reading the list value life to some extent,
and think it has purpose derived from some form of metaphysics. If you don't
think it has value and purpose & have refused to answer the "why am I still
hanging around" please don't get in the way of the folks who do think it has
meaning and value as a pure courtesy if you would.

 

So the start point might be "if Amara thinks life has purpose and value, and
determines from that the right of ownership of her body, what reason-derived
moral begets that?"

 

Now I am suggesting a potential purpose -- you might consider members of
this list as belonging to the church of "We are Becoming God", based on
science, reason, and projections. We have no proof that the singularity will
come, but we have a reasoned projection. At some point current trends
projected onward we will reach a point of transhumanity. That could be
characterized as faith by some. What then lies beyond the singularity, will
we become at some point omnipresent and omniscient, or godlike? If we are
becoming god, is that faith or science?

 

Re: health care

One note on the socialized vs. free enterprise medicine chain: There are too
many other factors beyond health care affecting life expectancy in any given
region that Life-expectancy alone cannot determine which is best. E.g.
Living in the US in some cities is inherently more dangerous than living
anywhere in the UK. Indeed, living in Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, and
some other large cities is statistically more dangerous for 21-39 year old
males than patrolling Baghdad with the Marines. There are also culturally
more risk-takers in the US than most comparable countries; witness the
recent phenomena of extreme sports which didn't start in Europe. US citizens
travel more frequently and longer to work than most other countries (just an
outcome of population densities) The most comparable countries would be
Russia, China, and Canada, however Canada has a much lower death rate from
violence. The other two examples belie the argument for socialized health
care. (note: I am discounting Australia because it's largely undeveloped and
under-populated once you leave the coastlines, if you go to JPL the
"earthlights" photo clearly demonstrates that.)

 

One other note: Someone asked how to get the best health care based on the
article regarding emergency rooms full to overflowing. The answer is simple,
move to where they aren't. I live two blocks from a great hospital in a
suburban area well away from major metropolitan areas. The second benefit is
that my house is on the same power grid, and even when ice storms take out
the power over the metropolitan area, the power is always put back on here
the quickest.

 

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From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com  Sat Jun 17 05:47:52 2006
From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 01:47:52 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <20060617045953.GB9877@ofb.net>
References: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net>
	<4323CD7C-349E-4C77-BED5-99330588B153@ceruleansystems.com>
	<44930036.5010407@pobox.com> <20060616220203.GA28766@ofb.net>
	<7641ddc60606162109h6fdbfa0fj1dd1c87b4acf62e1@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060617045953.GB9877@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <7641ddc60606162247k6b08cec5l7c34e93586072615@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/17/06, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 12:09:48AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>
> > of that and in their ethnic makeup. Instead, if you want to see real
> > differences relevant to healthcare spending levels, try to compare the
> > socialized medicine in Sweden with the socialized medicine in Russia,
> > or maybe North Korea, or maybe Saudi Arabia.
>
> Or the not-so-free market of the US with the free market of Mexico?
>
> Then there's Cuba.

### Yes, indeed, one can come with comparisons till the cows come home
but I doubt we have the means to statistically disentangle the
enormous number of confounding factors.

I'd rather think that the approach that is more likely to give useful
information on the relative efficiency of different systems of
healthcare delivery would be piecemeal.

First, identify a basket of specific life-saving interventions that
are likely to be equally needed in the countries under comparison,
like vaccinations, or appendectomy for appendicitis. You don't look at
country-specific treatments, like bariatric surgery in the US, and
Guinea worm treatment in the tropics.

Second, try to measure the actual cost of delivery of each of these
treatments, including the fraction of the overhead relevant to the
treatment, and normalize for differences in average incomes. You have
to normalize for incomes, since the same amount of labor may cost
differently in different countries.

Third, compare the costs of the basket of treatments between
countries. The more exhaustive is your sampling of useful treatments
in this basket, the better your idea of the actual impact of the
treatments on survival , and the cost of a year of life bought by a
given system.

Fourth, look at the remaining treatments, things that are likely to be
of little value for outcomes, subtract the cost of your basket from
the total of spending, and get an approximate estimate of the amount
of waste in the system.

The results would have little to do with the comparisons of average
survival between countries. I would expect that some of the poorer
countries with relatively short lifespans but highly unregulated
systems would outperform the usual poster children. India does
outperform the US and Europe in terms of surgery costs. The regulated
partially monopolistic system in the US would fare poorly in terms of
the fraction of waste, but overall well in terms of efficiency of
useful care delivery (actually, the cost of some useful surgeries was
compared between the US and Europe, and the comparison was favorable
for the US). The wholly regulated, monopolistic systems in Europe
would fare well in the fraction of waste measure, but middling to poor
in the efficiency of useful care delivery. These are my hunches, based
what I heard about medical tourism (which measures relative costs of
equal-quality care), and the partially unregulated, fee-for-service
areas of medicine, like cosmetic surgery, or infertility treatments.

As far as I know, the US should learn from Thailand, not Sweden.

Rafal


From spike66 at comcast.net  Sat Jun 17 05:52:32 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 22:52:32 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606162109h6fdbfa0fj1dd1c87b4acf62e1@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <200606170603.k5H637vJ018802@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki
...
> vaccinations, blood pressure medications, kidney dialysis, and a few
> other interventions with very good cost-to-benefit ratios, there is a
> whole lot of therapies, and a humongous number of diagnostic tests,
> with almost no impact on health or survival...
> Rafal

Ja, we have yet to mention the health cost of our legal system.  If a doctor
misses some oddball disease because she failed to order the test for it,
then she is liable for malpractice lawsuits.  We can scarcely blame doctors
for ordering a bunch of diagnostic tests that are way low on the cost
benefit ratio scale.  Once in a long while someone is saved by all that,
someone who would have otherwise perished.  But it does run up the cost of
medicine without adding significantly to its efficacy. 

spike









From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com  Sat Jun 17 06:07:39 2006
From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 02:07:39 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <20060617045448.GA9877@ofb.net>
References: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>
	<61385.86.138.88.108.1150484050.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>
	<0E6C82C3-FC4F-40CF-8BD3-0B9A9B24B30C@antipope.org>
	<20060617045448.GA9877@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <7641ddc60606162307j2712d6faw9b4737008e6dcded@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/17/06, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

> Insurance does seem like something which should benefit from having a
> really large risk pool, including the people who think they don't need
> it now but will age into people who do.  But we've got the insurance
> companies.  Of course, employer-linked insurance would also seem to
> limit employee mobility and small business creation; can't just walk off
> the job if you're worried about your health in the meantime.  Though the
> gov't partially patched that with COBRA.  (For 18 months after leaving
> work you get to keep your group plan at the old premiums, though you
> have to pay them.)

### In other words, if I am an employer, I have to think twice about
hiring, especially hiring  somebody who might get sick, since if he
does, I will be stuck with his bills.

A long time ago the good government decided to punish people who want
to buy private health insurance by tax-exempting employer
contributions to health insurance, but still taxing private purchase
of health insurance at the usual rates. So, almost everybody is forced
into employer-run healthcare, nobody can easily go insurer-shopping,
and insurance rates creep ever higher, since the customers can't
easily get away. And here the good gov't comes to the rescue and says
you can keep your employer-provided plan, making it even more
difficult to shop for better and cheaper care.

It's piling new stupidities on top of old ones.

The whole idea of non-catastrophic health insurance is pure stupidity,
like insurance against your car needing gas, but I pontificated here
about this before, so I won't waste your time.

Rafal


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Sat Jun 17 07:01:38 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 00:01:38 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What are rights
In-Reply-To: <000801c691d1$3b1df810$6401a8c0@agross>
References: <000801c691d1$3b1df810$6401a8c0@agross>
Message-ID: <20060617070137.GA26741@ofb.net>

On Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 12:45:24AM -0500, Tark wrote:

>    determine which is best. E.g. Living in the US in some cities is
>    inherently more dangerous than living anywhere in the UK. Indeed,
>    living in Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, and some other large cities
>    is statistically more dangerous for 21-39 year old males than
>    patrolling Baghdad with the Marines. There are also culturally more

But the differences hold even if we look only at whites, or at females
-- in fact the cross-country difference is bigger for females than for
males.

>    risk-takers in the US than most comparable countries; witness the
>    recent phenomena of extreme sports which didn't start in Europe. US

The difference also holds for life expectancy at age 60.

>    citizens travel more frequently and longer to work than most other
>    countries (just an outcome of population densities) The most
>    comparable countries would be Russia, China, and Canada, however
>    Canada has a much lower death rate from violence. The other two
>    examples belie the argument for socialized health care. (note: I am
>    discounting Australia because it's largely undeveloped and
>    under-populated once you leave the coastlines, if you go to JPL the

I fail to see what that has to do with anything.  Canada is "undeveloped
and under-populated" if you go 100 miles north of the US.  Russia is
probably under-populated in Siberia, though undeveloped overall.  The US
seems under-populated in much of the West -- though like Australia and
Canada, the "under-" is misleading; the areas simply aren't that
hospitable.

Russia and China don't belie the case, anyway; no one calls for
imitating them, but for Canada or France or Sweden or Australia or...
rich, developed, democratic and capitalist countries, not poor
underdeveloped autocracies.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From xyz at iq.org  Sat Jun 17 07:25:53 2006
From: xyz at iq.org (Harry Harrison)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 17:25:53 +1000
Subject: [extropy-chat] What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <000d01c69141$0c3c0680$0f830d0a@JPAcer>
References: <mailman.2532.1150450591.1390.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
	<000d01c69141$0c3c0680$0f830d0a@JPAcer>
Message-ID: <1150529153.7211.264030300@webmail.messagingengine.com>


On Fri, 16 Jun 2006 20:33:10 +0800, "Jack Parkinson" <isthatyoujack at gmail.com> said:
> started complaining that discussing the rights of women versus those
> of fetuses is not a suitable topic for a transhuman list, I found it
> necessary to ask the lot of you to tell me what rights are, where they
> come from, and why they are in any sense "real"?
>

Rights are freedoms of action that if abridged result in punishment to
the actors involved. If there were no people there would be no rights.

Hence the Divine right of kings from the middle ages, the right way,
mining rights, conjugal rights, marital rights, etc.

The decision as to what should be punished and what may be ignored is
political. This does not mean that rights are unimportant, but rather,
that politics, (the societal control of freedom and wealth), is so
important as to be more important that rights.


From amara at amara.com  Sat Jun 17 10:51:44 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 12:51:44 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat]  What the #$?! are rights anyway?
Message-ID: <p06230900c0b98ea84f7a@[23.237.66.13]>

Harry: That last quote was not from Jack Parkinson but from Avantguardian.


-- 

Amara Graps, PhD      www.amara.com
Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, ITALIA
Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute, Tucson


From amara at amara.com  Sat Jun 17 11:28:04 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 13:28:04 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat]  Health data
Message-ID: <p06230902c0b996401705@[23.237.66.13]>

spike:
>Ja, we have yet to mention the health cost of our legal system.  If a
>doctor misses some oddball disease because she failed to order the
>test for it, then she is liable for malpractice lawsuits.

When I was in the States in December and needing antibiotics and a
doctor visit, the doctor at the neighborhood clinic (private, walk-in,
services) profusely apologized for how expensive was his visit +
antibiotics. He said that if there were not the high cost malpractice
lawsuits, he could charge reasonable fees for his services. My Italy
private doctor treatment two weeks before that visit for the equivalent
service was about ~1/3 the US private doctor cost. I don't think
that malpractice suits exist here, at least I've not heard about it.
(lack of legal system to support it, maybe)

Amara


From rhanson at gmu.edu  Sat Jun 17 12:39:50 2006
From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 08:39:50 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <p06230902c0b996401705@[23.237.66.13]>
References: <p06230902c0b996401705@[23.237.66.13]>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060617083850.02412008@gmu.edu>

At 07:28 AM 6/17/2006, Amara Graps wrote:
>When I was in the States in December and needing antibiotics and a
>doctor visit, the doctor at the neighborhood clinic (private, walk-in,
>services) profusely apologized for how expensive was his visit +
>antibiotics. He said that if there were not the high cost malpractice
>lawsuits, he could charge reasonable fees for his services. My Italy
>private doctor treatment two weeks before that visit for the equivalent
>service was about ~1/3 the US private doctor cost. I don't think
>that malpractice suits exist here, at least I've not heard about it.
>(lack of legal system to support it, maybe)

That US doctor was exaggerating.

"Malpractice insurance costs amount to only 3.2 percent of the 
average physician's revenues. "
http://www.medicalmalpractice.com/National-Medical-Malpractice-Facts.cfm



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate 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 Jun 17 12:05:36 2006
From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 08:05:36 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <20060616220203.GA28766@ofb.net>
References: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net>
	<4323CD7C-349E-4C77-BED5-99330588B153@ceruleansystems.com>
	<44930036.5010407@pobox.com> <20060616220203.GA28766@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060617074505.024bcbc8@gmu.edu>

At 06:02 PM 6/16/2006, Damien Sullivan wrote:
>On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 12:02:14PM -0700, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> > ...didn't Robin Hanson just get through presenting the evidence that
> > increased healthcare spending does squat to decrease mortality?
>
>Did that cause anyone to decide to not go see the doctor the next 
>time they're sick?  Will you, Eliezer, skip the doctor's 
>office?  Will Robin refrain from taking his children there (assuming 
>his wife would let him)?

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky responded:
>It's certainly causing me to be more cautious around the prospect of surgery.

Rafal Smigrodzki responded:
>Eliezer ... says that the marginal spending on healthcare makes no 
>difference, and I heartily agree with him (and Robin). ... after 
>paying for vaccinations, blood pressure medications, kidney dialysis, and a few
>other interventions with very good cost-to-benefit ratios, there is 
>a whole lot of therapies, and a humongous number of diagnostic 
>tests, with almost no impact on health or survival. ... based on the 
>observation
>of my own practice patterns, this spending may account for at least 
>1/3 of the total spending, and could easily surpass the 50% mark. 
>... 1) Do go the doctor if you want to stay healthy but if you 
>happen to pay for it yourself, be very, very demanding about 
>justifications for every 1000$ that the good doc may have you spend 
>on his salary.

As a practical matter try to raise my standard of skepticism so that 
I induce about 1/3 as much medical spending as I would had I not know 
about this data.  This includes when to bother to go to the doctor, 
what tests to take, and what treatments to undergo.  I want a strong 
recommendation for each test or treatment, not just "we could try 
this" or "this has worked in some people" or "this is what we usually 
do."  For something large with substantial risks, I'd want to see 
real data for myself.   I think Rafal could endorse this strategy.

I do this primarily to save health, not money.   I get Kaiser, the 
cheapest health plan my employer offers, but that pays for far more 
treatment than I want.   I'd love for there to be enough people like 
me that we could get a health plan designed for us, as that should 
cost a lot less.   Alas, the prospects for that are slim - people 
want to *believe* in medicine, and are scared to seem uncaring if 
they cut back much for their family.



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323 



From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Sat Jun 17 13:54:36 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 09:54:36 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20060617074505.024bcbc8@gmu.edu>
References: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net>
	<4323CD7C-349E-4C77-BED5-99330588B153@ceruleansystems.com>
	<44930036.5010407@pobox.com> <20060616220203.GA28766@ofb.net>
	<7.0.1.0.2.20060617074505.024bcbc8@gmu.edu>
Message-ID: <40678.72.236.103.200.1150552476.squirrel@main.nc.us>


> I'd love for there to be enough people like
> me that we could get a health plan designed for us, as that should
> cost a lot less.   Alas, the prospects for that are slim - people
> want to *believe* in medicine, and are scared to seem uncaring if
> they cut back much for their family.
>
>

If you can figure out how to do this and have it cover us wherever we
live, I'm very interested!

Regards,
MB



From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Sat Jun 17 14:04:58 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 10:04:58 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606162307j2712d6faw9b4737008e6dcded@mail.gmail.com>
References: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>
	<61385.86.138.88.108.1150484050.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>
	<0E6C82C3-FC4F-40CF-8BD3-0B9A9B24B30C@antipope.org>
	<20060617045448.GA9877@ofb.net>
	<7641ddc60606162307j2712d6faw9b4737008e6dcded@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <40701.72.236.103.200.1150553098.squirrel@main.nc.us>

Rafal writes:

> A long time ago the good government decided to punish people who want
> to buy private health insurance by tax-exempting employer
> contributions to health insurance, but still taxing private purchase
> of health insurance at the usual rates.


I feel highly discriminated against! I've been purchasing my own health
insurance for more than 10 years now and every year I feel great
resentment building when I remember that a business can write off this
expense. But for me it's after-tax-dollars all the way. :(

And then they bitch about how many don't have health insurance.

Gee. I wonder why!

Plus, my insurance, the cheapest I could find anywhere here, pays for much
more than I am interested in.

Regards,
MB





From amara at amara.com  Sat Jun 17 14:37:15 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 16:37:15 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat]  Health data
Message-ID: <p06230902c0b9c248f85e@[23.237.66.13]>

Robin:
>  I'd love for there to be enough people like
>  me that we could get a health plan designed for us, as that should
>  cost a lot less.   Alas, the prospects for that are slim - people
>  want to *believe* in medicine, and are scared to seem uncaring if
>  they cut back much for their family.

MB:
>If you can figure out how to do this and have it cover us wherever we
>live, I'm very interested!

Me too. Later next year when I begin to see money from my PSI position,
I will either have to give up the health insurance that the other
researchers have, or the administrators and I will use a different
health insurance company that would be willing to cover me as a
researcher living abroad. The latter seems fantastic. We don't know
if such a company that can cross country borders to provide some
amount of medical coverage even exists.

Amara


From charlie at antipope.org  Sat Jun 17 15:22:18 2006
From: charlie at antipope.org (Charlie Stross)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 16:22:18 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606162144w21feb4d7g5555d6e1aa637965@mail.gmail.com>
References: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>
	<61385.86.138.88.108.1150484050.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>
	<0E6C82C3-FC4F-40CF-8BD3-0B9A9B24B30C@antipope.org>
	<44933B93.40204@pobox.com>
	<7641ddc60606162144w21feb4d7g5555d6e1aa637965@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <FB14698A-DBDF-49E8-AB2C-3217454F01EB@antipope.org>


On 17 Jun 2006, at 05:44, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:

> On 6/16/06, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience at pobox.com> wrote:
>> Charlie Stross wrote:
>>>
>>> Oh yeah. Last time I had to go see my GP I was sitting in his
>>> examining room all of five hours after I picked up the phone. I keep
>>> *hearing* about the alleged one year waiting times, but I've never
>>> met anyone who actually *did* have to wait a year -- or even a week
>>> -- to see their GP.
>>
>> Thanks for the data - always good to hear from the front lines.
>>
> ### Seeing the GP is trivial. Ask him how long he needs to wait to see
> a nuclear medicine specialist, or a neurologist.

Last time I had to see a specialist in a hurry -- last February,  
after the kind of GP visit you *don't* want to have -- I was seen by  
the cardiology professor at the local teaching hospital within six  
hours. (And no, it wasn't a heart attack; just severe -- very severe  
-- hypertension.)

When I needed an opthalmology consultant -- for a non-urgent checkup  
-- that took about five weeks. (Again: when I had an acute eye- 
related emergency, the delay was measured in hours.)

My father had an unpleasant hospital stay a couple of years ago  
(bacterial endocarditis with complications), and got a CAT scan  
within 48 hours -- part of which delay was caused by him coming in  
over a weekend, and being shuffled between two consultants: not  
brilliant timing and management, but the resource was basically  
available on demand subject to the clinicians asking for it.

But when my wife needed a ganglion draining, that took four months to  
arrange.

How long you wait depends on whether the condition is acute. I'll  
concede that non-acute conditions -- especially annoyances that  
require specialist treatment from a hospital in another district  
(like a swollen ganglion in one wrist). For which conditions, it's  
possible to go private and pay ... if you really feel it's necessary.



-- Charlie



From riel at surriel.com  Sat Jun 17 15:52:05 2006
From: riel at surriel.com (Rik van Riel)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 11:52:05 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060617050509.GD9877@ofb.net>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606162110500.10477@imladris.surriel.com>
	<200606170345.k5H3jdvm015806@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060617050509.GD9877@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606171150460.10477@imladris.surriel.com>

On Fri, 16 Jun 2006, Damien Sullivan wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 08:33:49PM -0700, spike wrote:
> > > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Rik van Riel
> > > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
> > > 
> > > On Sat, 10 Jun 2006, spike wrote:
> > > 
> > > > ... it is useless to preach environmental stewardship to hungry
> > > > people..
> 
> > Rich companies and poor farmers are two examples of hungry.  I use the term
> > to mean more than lacking food, it also means eager to make money.
> 
> Rich companies don't have the moral case of needing food, though.  They 
> also have assets and thus more to lose, if someone enforces the law on 
> them.

Rich companies also have deeper pockets than the government,
which makes enforcing environmental legislation much much
harder.

Economics trumps politics most of the time...

-- 
"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 amara at amara.com  Sat Jun 17 16:04:06 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 18:04:06 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of bad probability estimation
Message-ID: <p06230900c0b9d6c5adea@[23.237.66.13]>

(this is good!)

 From boingboing:

http://server1.sxsw.com/2006/coverage/SXSW06.INT.20060311.DanielGilbert.mp3
23MB MP3 Link

  Psychology of bad probability estimation: why lottos and terrorists matter

"Here's the audio from a South By Southwest 2006 presentation by
Harvard's Daniel Gilbert on the psychology of probability estimation.
This is important stuff -- it explains why we're socially willing to
commit nigh-infinite social resources to fighting terrorism, though
statistically, terrorist attacks almost never happen; though we barely
lift a finger to help save people from routine traffic accidents,
backyard pool drownings, and asthma, which mow down our neighbors by the
thousands. It explains why people buy lottery tickets. It explains a
great deal about many kinds of human activity. This is both sensible and
entertaining audio, and it's got a great title: "How to Do Precisely the
Right Thing at All Possible Times." "

-- 

********************************************************************
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 phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Sat Jun 17 16:04:27 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 09:04:27 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606171150460.10477@imladris.surriel.com>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606162110500.10477@imladris.surriel.com>
	<200606170345.k5H3jdvm015806@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060617050509.GD9877@ofb.net>
	<Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606171150460.10477@imladris.surriel.com>
Message-ID: <20060617160427.GA24531@ofb.net>

On Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 11:52:05AM -0400, Rik van Riel wrote:

> > Rich companies don't have the moral case of needing food, though.  They 
> > also have assets and thus more to lose, if someone enforces the law on 
> > them.
> 
> Rich companies also have deeper pockets than the government,
> which makes enforcing environmental legislation much much
> harder.

The government has much deeper pockets (well, maybe not in the case of
Brazil).  The environmental part of the gov't may not have much access
to the pockets, but that's a choice.  As is the law, and the penalties
for violating it, and for wasting the court's time in a lawsuit you
should have known you'd lose...

-xx- Damien X-) 


From brian at posthuman.com  Sat Jun 17 16:07:04 2006
From: brian at posthuman.com (Brian Atkins)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 11:07:04 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <40701.72.236.103.200.1150553098.squirrel@main.nc.us>
References: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>	<61385.86.138.88.108.1150484050.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>	<20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>	<0E6C82C3-FC4F-40CF-8BD3-0B9A9B24B30C@antipope.org>	<20060617045448.GA9877@ofb.net>	<7641ddc60606162307j2712d6faw9b4737008e6dcded@mail.gmail.com>
	<40701.72.236.103.200.1150553098.squirrel@main.nc.us>
Message-ID: <449428A8.5040008@posthuman.com>

I'm pretty sure there are various methods you and your employer can use to hold 
back a chunk of your earnings pre-tax and use to reimburse you tax free for your 
health expenses. You just need to investigate this with their help.

Or use this as an excuse to start your own business :-)
-- 
Brian Atkins
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.singinst.org/


From spike66 at comcast.net  Sat Jun 17 16:33:07 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 09:33:07 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] reply attributions
In-Reply-To: <p06230900c0b98ea84f7a@[23.237.66.13]>
Message-ID: <200606171651.k5HGpNJs027057@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

ExIers, I have noticed several incorrect attributions in addition to this
one.  Do pay close attention to this thanks.  Anna your email program seems
to do something funky on attribution where it makes it somehow look like
your own post is a reply to yourself.  I often can't tell who wrote what.  I
don't know how to fix that, perhaps someone here does.  I am open to
suggestion here. 

spike


   

> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-
> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Amara Graps
> Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 3:52 AM
> To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> Subject: [extropy-chat] What the #$?! are rights anyway?
> 
> Harry: That last quote was not from Jack Parkinson but from Avantguardian.
> 
> 
> --
> 
> Amara Graps, PhD      www.amara.com
> Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, ITALIA
> Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute, Tucson
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat




From eugen at leitl.org  Sat Jun 17 17:02:25 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 19:02:25 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] reply attributions
In-Reply-To: <200606171651.k5HGpNJs027057@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <p06230900c0b98ea84f7a@[23.237.66.13]>
	<200606171651.k5HGpNJs027057@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <20060617170225.GV28956@leitl.org>

On Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 09:33:07AM -0700, spike wrote:

> ExIers, I have noticed several incorrect attributions in addition to this
> one.  Do pay close attention to this thanks.  Anna your email program seems
> to do something funky on attribution where it makes it somehow look like
> your own post is a reply to yourself.  I often can't tell who wrote what.  I
> don't know how to fix that, perhaps someone here does.  I am open to
> suggestion here. 

If it's MS Outlook or Outlook Express then Quotefix is the right googlism.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From pharos at gmail.com  Sat Jun 17 18:11:04 2006
From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 19:11:04 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] reply attributions
In-Reply-To: <200606171651.k5HGpNJs027057@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <p06230900c0b98ea84f7a@23.237.66.13>
	<200606171651.k5HGpNJs027057@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <ee50357e0606171111q240c5c51o2ee6c0dd1058eed@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/17/06, spike wrote:
> ExIers, I have noticed several incorrect attributions in addition to this
> one.  Do pay close attention to this thanks.  Anna your email program seems
> to do something funky on attribution where it makes it somehow look like
> your own post is a reply to yourself.  I often can't tell who wrote what.  I
> don't know how to fix that, perhaps someone here does.  I am open to
> suggestion here.
>

According to the mail header, Anna is using the Yahoo webmail client.

I think the problem is that Anna is replying in HTML and is trying to
hack the message about to get round this.

Anna,
The Extropy-chat and wta-talk lists prefer plain text messages.
Go to General Preferences, and click the box to 'Compose messages in
plain text'.
Also click the box for 'Include full original message when replying'.

Now when you click on 'Reply' you will get the Compose screen with the
complete previous message indented as standard.

Two more points.  :)

It is generally regarded as bad practice to quote the full message, so
you should highlight and delete the less important parts of the
message you are replying to.

Yahoo webmail seems to default to top posting for your reply, so you
should skip down and type your reply at the end of the message.

(That's why you just deleted some of the original message. Otherwise
every reader would have to skip down the whole previous message to get
to your reply at the end).  :)

You can also interleave your comments paragraph by paragraph, if you
want to split a very long reply up.


Best wishes,  BillK


From tark at kc.rr.com  Sat Jun 17 18:29:59 2006
From: tark at kc.rr.com (Tark)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 13:29:59 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] health
Message-ID: <000501c6923c$0a542ea0$6401a8c0@agross>

Damien, 

 

You miss the point by trying to refute, take the passion of the politics
away for a moment. There are many variables in every country that make life
expectancy alone an inaccurate measure of the efficacy of the health care
system. There are so many variables beyond those complexities in the health
care system itself that you must use multiple sets of complex data to arrive
at best assessment or comparison. (think about how to measure "golden hour
infrastructure effectiveness" alone) If you make the argument socialized vs
free-enterprise systems, you lose real purpose and jump to a solution. 

 

Life expectancy is not just a function of health care systems, and it's
specious to argue that it is.

If you want to improve life expectancy, then you should look at life style,
diet, location, culture, health care infrastructure, risk averseness,
infrastructure, climate, and energy.

 

To sum up, yes I would prefer health care in Canada, Sweden, or Australia to
that which I might find in Los Angeles, but I wouldn't trade the health care
I get where I live now near Kansas City for any of the above. If you want to
live long, your personal choices are one of the biggest determinants in the
equation.

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From spike66 at comcast.net  Sat Jun 17 19:20:56 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 12:20:56 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <p06230902c0b996401705@[23.237.66.13]>
Message-ID: <200606171921.k5HJL82N015660@andromeda.ziaspace.com>


> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Amara Graps
> Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
> 
> spike:
> >Ja, we have yet to mention the health cost of our legal system.  If a
> >doctor misses some oddball disease because she failed to order the
> >test for it, then she is liable for malpractice lawsuits.
> 
> ...
> doctor visit, the doctor at the neighborhood clinic (private, walk-in,
> services) profusely apologized for how expensive was his visit +
> antibiotics. He said that if there were not the high cost malpractice
> lawsuits, he could charge reasonable fees ... Amara


Ja I have long advocated a medical malpractice lawsuit structure along the
following lines: the doctor's track records all become public domain, but in
return they need not buy insurance or take on any liability.  The patients
contract privately with the insurance company: make it clear exactly what
they want done, write up a contract specifying if the medic screws up in
this particular way, we pay this much, etc.  Both parties (patient and
insurer) agree to binding arbitration by a randomly chosen member of a
professional pool of judges, with full transparency.  So good doctors will
end up being cheaper to insure, which would bring them more business and
more profit.  So the feedback path is intact, enhanced even.  If a patient
has a record of suing for medical malpractice, then the insurance company
would be wary.  It makes medical insurance more like car insurance. 

Currently the very poor need not pay for their health costs, but rather they
can hang out all day at the emergency room.  In the slack times, the medics
will see them free.  OK arrangement seemingly, but eventually it must occur
to the destitute that if the medics goof this free service, the patient can
sue for millions.  A lawyer will take the case for a cut of the profit, so
the destitute patient is offered free medical lottery tickets.  Surely this
would encourage penniless but healthy patients to clog the ER and the legal
system.

We could do the same trick with big pharmaceutical companies: instead of
suing the company, you buy insurance against a particular medication messing
you up.  If a particular medication is expensive to insure, it provides an
instant feedback to the patient on which drugs are dangerous.  We could even
do the same trick with recreational drugs: let companies with actual
statistics, competitive pricing structure and profit motive determine which
forms of dope are dangerous and which ones not.  This would work so much
better than having the proletariat guess at it (as I did incorrectly on LSD
a few months ago) based on sensationalized mass media coverage.  

Having the patients buy their own insurance would save costs all over the
place.

spike



 




From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com  Sat Jun 17 19:21:55 2006
From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 14:21:55 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <p06230902c0b9c248f85e@23.237.66.13>
References: <p06230902c0b9c248f85e@23.237.66.13>
Message-ID: <7641ddc60606171221oe80cbd7wdd3a1cf977a4e8ac@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/17/06, Amara Graps <amara at amara.com> wrote:
> Robin:
> >  I'd love for there to be enough people like
> >  me that we could get a health plan designed for us, as that should
> >  cost a lot less.   Alas, the prospects for that are slim - people
> >  want to *believe* in medicine, and are scared to seem uncaring if
> >  they cut back much for their family.
>
> MB:
> >If you can figure out how to do this and have it cover us wherever we
> >live, I'm very interested!
>
> Me too. Later next year when I begin to see money from my PSI position,
> I will either have to give up the health insurance that the other
> researchers have, or the administrators and I will use a different
> health insurance company that would be willing to cover me as a
> researcher living abroad. The latter seems fantastic. We don't know
> if such a company that can cross country borders to provide some
> amount of medical coverage even exists.
>
### I don't know if this would be helpful to you but in general the
most cost-effective form of insurance is catastrophic health
insurance. In these plans you have a deductible of at least 5
000$/year, or even more, 10 - 15k, and essentially unlimited coverage
above that figure. You can exercise your own judgment in spending, and
this helps keep costs low. I am not sure though if there are
catastrophic plans paying for coverage abroad.

Rafal


From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Sat Jun 17 19:58:12 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 12:58:12 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Persuading Nazis (was: What the --blankety blank--
	are rights anyway?)
In-Reply-To: <20060616221728.GC28766@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAEEJFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Amid the fury (avalanche of posts), there appears this remark
by Damien S.

> Your questions to Amara about the auriferous hermit or the uploadphilic
> AI are similar to how I gave up on natural rights.  (In my case it was
> "how can I convince a Nazi they're wrong?")

The argument can be made from similarity: if you show enough isomorphism
between a member of an "inferior" race and the Nazi, he must gradually
come to conclude that pain to the creature is similar to pain to himself.

Oh, oh. Come to think of it, many otherwise reasonable people won't
concede that pain to their physical *duplicates* is tantamount to 
pain to themselves, from an objective POV based on physics.

But then, we are considering a totally *rational* Nazi (who just
has beliefs that differ from ours), and---to me---totally rational
philosophers  :-)

Lee

P.S. Please drop the funny characters in #$?! in subject lines. It
creates havoc with some people's spam filters.  Unless, of course,
you'd just rather some people not even ever see your post.


From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Sat Jun 17 20:10:16 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 13:10:16 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] reply attributions
In-Reply-To: <ee50357e0606171111q240c5c51o2ee6c0dd1058eed@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEKEEJFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Anna says she's just reading the archives, and replying from there.
Thanks for explaining in more detail how she might fix that.

Lee

BillK wrote

> According to the mail header, Anna is using the Yahoo webmail client.
> 
> I think the problem is that Anna is replying in HTML and is trying to
> hack the message about to get round this.
> 
> Anna,
> The Extropy-chat and wta-talk lists prefer plain text messages.
> Go to General Preferences, and click the box to 'Compose messages in
> plain text'.
> Also click the box for 'Include full original message when replying'.
> 
> Now when you click on 'Reply' you will get the Compose screen with the
> complete previous message indented as standard.
> 
> Two more points.  :)
> 
> It is generally regarded as bad practice to quote the full message, so
> you should highlight and delete the less important parts of the
> message you are replying to.
> 
> Yahoo webmail seems to default to top posting for your reply, so you
> should skip down and type your reply at the end of the message.
> 
> (That's why you just deleted some of the original message. Otherwise
> every reader would have to skip down the whole previous message to get
> to your reply at the end).  :)
> 
> You can also interleave your comments paragraph by paragraph, if you
> want to split a very long reply up.
> 
> Best wishes,  BillK



From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Sat Jun 17 20:31:57 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 16:31:57 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <449428A8.5040008@posthuman.com>
References: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>	<61385.86.138.88.108.1150484050.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>	<20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>	<0E6C82C3-FC4F-40CF-8BD3-0B9A9B24B30C@antipope.org>	<20060617045448.GA9877@ofb.net>	<7641ddc60606162307j2712d6faw9b4737008e6dcded@mail.gmail.com>
	<40701.72.236.103.200.1150553098.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<449428A8.5040008@posthuman.com>
Message-ID: <40784.72.236.103.83.1150576317.squirrel@main.nc.us>

> I'm pretty sure there are various methods you and your employer can use to
> hold
> back a chunk of your earnings pre-tax and use to reimburse you tax free
> for your
> health expenses. You just need to investigate this with their help.
>

If you are referring to Health Care Savings Accounts, indeed they do
exist. And they are *very* specific about what kind of money is involved,
what kind of insurance you must already possess, and what your employer
can and must do. I didn't fit. :(

Regards,
MB



From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Sat Jun 17 21:15:36 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 17:15:36 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606171221oe80cbd7wdd3a1cf977a4e8ac@mail.gmail.com>
References: <p06230902c0b9c248f85e@23.237.66.13>
	<7641ddc60606171221oe80cbd7wdd3a1cf977a4e8ac@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <40811.72.236.103.83.1150578936.squirrel@main.nc.us>

Rafal writes:
>>
> ### I don't know if this would be helpful to you but in general the
> most cost-effective form of insurance is catastrophic health
> insurance. In these plans you have a deductible of at least 5
> 000$/year, or even more, 10 - 15k, and essentially unlimited coverage
> above that figure. You can exercise your own judgment in spending, and
> this helps keep costs low. I am not sure though if there are
> catastrophic plans paying for coverage abroad.
>

This is what I tried to get but it does not seem to be available in my
state. Not as described.

What I have has a very high deductible along with a high cost (IMHO), is
widely available, and has many added features that I'm not interested in.
I'd much rather lower the premium!  Most frustrating. I've not found any
way to get it "cut down" to the policy I want. :(

Regards,
MB



From riel at surriel.com  Sat Jun 17 21:12:12 2006
From: riel at surriel.com (Rik van Riel)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 17:12:12 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060617160427.GA24531@ofb.net>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606162110500.10477@imladris.surriel.com>
	<200606170345.k5H3jdvm015806@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060617050509.GD9877@ofb.net>
	<Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606171150460.10477@imladris.surriel.com>
	<20060617160427.GA24531@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606171709480.10477@imladris.surriel.com>

On Sat, 17 Jun 2006, Damien Sullivan wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 11:52:05AM -0400, Rik van Riel wrote:
> 
> > > Rich companies don't have the moral case of needing food, though.  They 
> > > also have assets and thus more to lose, if someone enforces the law on 
> > > them.
> > 
> > Rich companies also have deeper pockets than the government,
> > which makes enforcing environmental legislation much much
> > harder.
> 
> The government has much deeper pockets (well, maybe not in the case of
> Brazil).  The environmental part of the gov't may not have much access
> to the pockets, but that's a choice.  As is the law, and the penalties
> for violating it, and for wasting the court's time in a lawsuit you
> should have known you'd lose...

Think of eg. border patrol.  The government spreads out
its forces over 8000 km of border.  Even with a large
number of forces, they end up being spread very thinly.

Smuggling operations only need to outgun (or outsmart)
the government in *one* place.

It's especially difficult when you factor in that most
of the area (1.5 to 2 times the size of Alaska) is
covered by trees and has no roads...

-- 
"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 phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Sat Jun 17 22:02:07 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 15:02:07 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606171709480.10477@imladris.surriel.com>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606162110500.10477@imladris.surriel.com>
	<200606170345.k5H3jdvm015806@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060617050509.GD9877@ofb.net>
	<Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606171150460.10477@imladris.surriel.com>
	<20060617160427.GA24531@ofb.net>
	<Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606171709480.10477@imladris.surriel.com>
Message-ID: <20060617220207.GA4226@ofb.net>

On Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 05:12:12PM -0400, Rik van Riel wrote:

> Smuggling operations only need to outgun (or outsmart)
> the government in *one* place.

Conversely if they get detected and heavy forces get brought in they're
dead.  I'd think border patrol would want easy detection and targetting,
with mobile force called in, vs. a "solid" wall.

> It's especially difficult when you factor in that most
> of the area (1.5 to 2 times the size of Alaska) is
> covered by trees and has no roads...

If we're talking about preventing illegal logging and farming then
that's a plus; deforestation follows roads.  (And rivers, I guess, but
then you patrol the rivers.)  Trees block rich corporations just as well
as governments.  And activity can be detectable by satellite.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From brian at posthuman.com  Sat Jun 17 22:35:38 2006
From: brian at posthuman.com (Brian Atkins)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 17:35:38 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <40784.72.236.103.83.1150576317.squirrel@main.nc.us>
References: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>	<61385.86.138.88.108.1150484050.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>	<20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>	<0E6C82C3-FC4F-40CF-8BD3-0B9A9B24B30C@antipope.org>	<20060617045448.GA9877@ofb.net>	<7641ddc60606162307j2712d6faw9b4737008e6dcded@mail.gmail.com>	<40701.72.236.103.200.1150553098.squirrel@main.nc.us>	<449428A8.5040008@posthuman.com>
	<40784.72.236.103.83.1150576317.squirrel@main.nc.us>
Message-ID: <449483BA.6070200@posthuman.com>

MB wrote:
>> I'm pretty sure there are various methods you and your employer can use to
>> hold
>> back a chunk of your earnings pre-tax and use to reimburse you tax free
>> for your
>> health expenses. You just need to investigate this with their help.
>>
> 
> If you are referring to Health Care Savings Accounts, indeed they do
> exist. And they are *very* specific about what kind of money is involved,
> what kind of insurance you must already possess, and what your employer
> can and must do. I didn't fit. :(
> 

Not quite sure what you want then - HSAs are usually a high deductible generally 
low cost premium type of insurance, which you say you want, and the money you 
put into them is portable from employer to employer and can usually be spent on 
most kinds of health spending tax free.

But there also are things called Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs) and 
also FSAs I think, and probably other things I've never heard of. Get googling.
-- 
Brian Atkins
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.singinst.org/


From spike66 at comcast.net  Sat Jun 17 23:52:46 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 16:52:46 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] immigration
In-Reply-To: <20060617220207.GA4226@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <200606172352.k5HNqwKi024299@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Damien Sullivan
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
> 
> On Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 05:12:12PM -0400, Rik van Riel wrote:
> 
> > Smuggling operations only need to outgun (or outsmart)
> > the government in *one* place...

Ja, and with cell phones, how hard could it be?

> 
> Conversely if they get detected and heavy forces get brought in they're
> dead... -xx- Damien X-)


Dead?  Damien X, have you not heard of the US policy of catch and release?
There is no severe price to be paid for getting caught crossing the US
Mexico border.  They have been talking about changing that, but I ha' me
doots.

spike








From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Sun Jun 18 00:26:30 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 20:26:30 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <449483BA.6070200@posthuman.com>
References: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>	<61385.86.138.88.108.1150484050.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>	<20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>	<0E6C82C3-FC4F-40CF-8BD3-0B9A9B24B30C@antipope.org>	<20060617045448.GA9877@ofb.net>	<7641ddc60606162307j2712d6faw9b4737008e6dcded@mail.gmail.com>	<40701.72.236.103.200.1150553098.squirrel@main.nc.us>	<449428A8.5040008@posthuman.com>
	<40784.72.236.103.83.1150576317.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<449483BA.6070200@posthuman.com>
Message-ID: <40927.72.236.103.180.1150590390.squirrel@main.nc.us>


>> If you are referring to Health Care Savings Accounts, indeed they do
>> exist. And they are *very* specific about what kind of money is
>> involved,
>> what kind of insurance you must already possess, and what your employer
>> can and must do. I didn't fit. :(
>>
>
> Not quite sure what you want then - HSAs are usually a high deductible
> generally
> low cost premium type of insurance, which you say you want, and the money
> you
> put into them is portable from employer to employer and can usually be
> spent on
> most kinds of health spending tax free.

The difficulty is in the employer end of things. I'm not a regular full
time employee anywhere, I'm part time employee and part time on my own.
That knocks me out of employer healthcare. And  HSA nad HRA and all the
others, as far as I can tell. My accountant and I have been 'round on this
before.  I'm on my own, buying full cost healthcare as an individual. Boo.
 :(

Regards,
MB

>
> But there also are things called Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs)
> and
> also FSAs I think, and probably other things I've never heard of. Get
> googling.
> --
> Brian Atkins
> Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
> http://www.singinst.org/
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>




From spike66 at comcast.net  Sun Jun 18 01:18:09 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 18:18:09 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of bad probability estimation
In-Reply-To: <p06230900c0b9d6c5adea@[23.237.66.13]>
Message-ID: <200606180118.k5I1ILfo026311@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Amara Graps
...
> This is important stuff -- it explains why we're socially willing to
> commit nigh-infinite social resources to fighting terrorism, though
> statistically, terrorist attacks almost never happen... Amara Graps, PhD 


The probability of being slain by a terrorist is extraordinarily small, yet
its social impact is enormous.  Consider for instance the dance we do every
time we get on a plane: we have our shoes examined.  One man spawned an
entire industry, without even successfully slaying a single infidel.  

Theoretical terrorism makes a compelling case for not investing in subways,
because they are *inherently* difficult to defend from a terrorist.  Since
tunnels trap heat, one could slay a bunch of infidels with a few dollars
worth of flammable liquid and a simple time delay igniter.  Since one need
not give one's identity to board a subway, one could get away with it
without even going to meet one's 73 virgins.  Looks to me like investments
in subways are a waste, now and henceforth forever.  Cities will develop
differently knowing that mass transit via subway is impractical.

spike



 
         




From spike66 at comcast.net  Sun Jun 18 01:23:59 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 18:23:59 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of bad probability estimation
In-Reply-To: <p06230900c0b9d6c5adea@[23.237.66.13]>
Message-ID: <200606180135.k5I1ZScu004999@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Amara Graps

> ... we're socially willing to
> commit nigh-infinite social resources to fighting terrorism, though
> statistically, terrorist attacks almost never happen... Amara Graps, PhD



Ja, of course some terrorists are caught before they attack.  We may not
even know when terrorist attacks are thwarted, since we can imagine a lot of
advantage in not publicizing them.  We can also imagine fake terrorist
attacks trumped up by authorities in order to justify their salaries.

Consider the seventeen suspected Presbyterians with no apparent cultural
connection, representing a broad spectrum of Canadian society, recently
caught plotting to either blow up public buildings in Canada or take up
farming:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10663276/

Canadian authorities are racking their brains, struggling to imagine what
could possibly have motivated these individuals.

spike









From spike66 at comcast.net  Sun Jun 18 04:29:14 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 21:29:14 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of bad probability estimation
In-Reply-To: <200606180118.k5I1ILfo026311@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <200606180429.k5I4TQgh029988@andromeda.ziaspace.com>


> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike
...
> Theoretical terrorism makes a compelling case for not investing in
> subways,
> because they are *inherently* difficult to defend from a terrorist.  Since
> tunnels trap heat, one could slay a bunch of infidels with a few dollars
> worth of flammable liquid and a simple time delay igniter.  Since one need
> not give one's identity to board a subway, one could get away with it
> without even going to meet one's 73 virgins.  Looks to me like investments
> in subways are a waste, now and henceforth forever.  Cities will develop
> differently knowing that mass transit via subway is impractical.
> 
> spike


Altho a remarkable coincidence, I wrote the above paragraph a few hours
before this report showed up on CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/17/subway.plot/index.html


Report: Al Qaeda planned N.Y. subway attack

Saturday, June 17, 2006; Posted: 11:30 p.m. EDT (03:30 GMT) 

Osama bin Laden's top deputy halted a plot to release a poison gas in New
York's subway system "only 45 days from zero hour," according to a new book
excerpted Saturday on Time magazine's Web site.

Two former U.S. officials with knowledge of the terror plan confirmed to CNN
on Saturday night some details from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron
Suskind's "The One Percent Doctrine," but disagreed with others.

One former official agreed that bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman
al-Zawahiri, called off the al Qaeda attack. The reason for his doing so was
not made clear.

Both former officials said the United States was familiar with the design of
the gas-dispersal device and had passed the information to state and local
officials.

They disagreed with Suskind that the terrorists were thwarted within 45 days
of the planned attack; the officials said the proposed timing was not that
precise. 

"We were aware of the plot and took appropriate precautions," Paul Browne,
New York City Police Department deputy commissioner, told CNN.

FBI spokesman Bill Carter said no one at the agency has seen the book and
had no comment.

According to Time's report on the book, U.S. intelligence learned of the
plot from the contents of a laptop computer belonging to a Bahraini jihadist
captured in Saudi Arabia early in 2003. 

Terrorists had planned to disperse hydrogen-cyanide gas, which is deadly
when inhaled, using a system dubbed "the mubtakkar," meaning "invention" in
Arabic, the Time article says.

The CIA immediately set about building a prototype based on the captured
design, which had separate chambers for sodium cyanide and a stable source
of hydrogen, such as hydrochloric acid. A seal between the two could be
broken remotely, producing the gas for dispersal, according to Time.

"In the world of terrorist weaponry," Suskind writes, "this was the
equivalent of splitting the atom. Obtain a few widely available chemicals,
and you could construct it with a trip to Home Depot -- and then kill
everyone in the store."

The device was shown to President Bush and Vice President Cheney, Suskind
wrote.

One of the former officials who talked to CNN said officials didn't
necessarily believe Suskind's reference to the device having the capability
of killing "everyone in a store."

"Our feeling was, it could be dangerous in a tightly sealed environment but
not in a shopping mall-type environment," the official said.

On the other hand, the reference to a tip about the gas-dispersion device as
coming from Bahrain was true, one of the officials confirmed to CNN. But the
official could not confirm whether it came from a laptop belonging to Yusef
al Ayeri, bin Laden's top operative on the Arabian Peninsula.

Al Ayeri was killed in a gun battle between Saudi security forces and al
Qaeda militants about the time the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003.


Suskind quotes a CIA operative as questioning whether it was an accident
that the Saudis killed the man who could expose a cell that was planning a
chemical weapons attack in the United States.

"The Saudis just shrugged," Time quotes the source as telling Suskind. "They
said their people got a little overzealous."

A mole within al Qaeda?
Suskind, according to Time, writes that a "management-level" al Qaeda
operative identified as "Ali" had given U.S. agents accurate tips and had
believed his leaders had erred in attacking the United States on September
11, 2001.

"Ali revealed that Ayeri had visited Ayman Zawahiri in January 2003 to
inform him of a plot to attack the New York City subway system using cyanide
gas. Several mubtakkars were to be placed in subway cars and other strategic
locations," according to the Time report.

"Ali did not know the precise explanation why" al-Zawahiri called off the
plot, Time quoted Suskind as writing. "He just knew that Zawahiri had called
them off." 

Meanwhile, administration officials wondered why Ali was cooperating -- and
why the plot was called off, Suskind wrote, according to Time.

Time magazine is owned by Time-Warner, the parent company of CNN




From amara at amara.com  Sun Jun 18 08:27:34 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 10:27:34 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] META:  Psychology of bad probability estimation
Message-ID: <p06230900c0babe200f0b@[23.237.66.13]>

spike:
Please change the subject line. I posted with a quote from boingboing
about a good MP3 lecture describing how people estimate probabilities, and
now I find I am quoted about terrorists and the thread with the
same subject line has become about Al Quaeda.

Amara





From femmechakra at yahoo.ca  Sun Jun 18 08:53:18 2006
From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anne-Marie Taylor)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 04:53:18 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] reply attributions
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEKEEJFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060618085318.50403.qmail@web35509.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Anna Replies:)
  Thanks, I will make sure my future posts make better sense.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
  Anna
   
  
Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
  Anna says she's just reading the archives, and replying from there.
Thanks for explaining in more detail how she might fix that.

Lee

BillK wrote

> According to the mail header, Anna is using the Yahoo webmail client.
> 
> I think the problem is that Anna is replying in HTML and is trying to
> hack the message about to get round this.
> 
> Anna,
> The Extropy-chat and wta-talk lists prefer plain text messages.
> Go to General Preferences, and click the box to 'Compose messages in
> plain text'.
> Also click the box for 'Include full original message when replying'.
> 
> Now when you click on 'Reply' you will get the Compose screen with the
> complete previous message indented as standard.
> 
> Two more points. :)
> 
> It is generally regarded as bad practice to quote the full message, so
> you should highlight and delete the less important parts of the
> message you are replying to.
> 
> Yahoo webmail seems to default to top posting for your reply, so you
> should skip down and type your reply at the end of the message.
> 
> (That's why you just deleted some of the original message. Otherwise
> every reader would have to skip down the whole previous message to get
> to your reply at the end). :)
> 
> You can also interleave your comments paragraph by paragraph, if you
> want to split a very long reply up.
> 
> Best wishes, BillK



 		
---------------------------------
All new Yahoo! Mail  
---------------------------------
Get news delivered. Enjoy RSS feeds right on your Mail page.
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From femmechakra at yahoo.ca  Sun Jun 18 09:07:44 2006
From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anne-Marie Taylor)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 05:07:44 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] reply attributions
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEKEEJFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060618090744.18145.qmail@web35506.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Lee, don't take an offlist discussion and make it public, I've already been there, and done that.
  I said I was sorry for not writing in the proper terms.
  Anna
   
   
  Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
  Anna says she's just reading the archives, and replying from there.
Thanks for explaining in more detail how she might fix that.

Lee

BillK wrote

> According to the mail header, Anna is using the Yahoo webmail client.
> 
> I think the problem is that Anna is replying in HTML and is trying to
> hack the message about to get round this.
> 
> Anna,
> The Extropy-chat and wta-talk lists prefer plain text messages.
> Go to General Preferences, and click the box to 'Compose messages in
> plain text'.
> Also click the box for 'Include full original message when replying'.
> 
> Now when you click on 'Reply' you will get the Compose screen with the
> complete previous message indented as standard.
> 
> Two more points. :)
> 
> It is generally regarded as bad practice to quote the full message, so
> you should highlight and delete the less important parts of the
> message you are replying to.
> 
> Yahoo webmail seems to default to top posting for your reply, so you
> should skip down and type your reply at the end of the message.
> 
> (That's why you just deleted some of the original message. Otherwise
> every reader would have to skip down the whole previous message to get
> to your reply at the end). :)
> 
> You can also interleave your comments paragraph by paragraph, if you
> want to split a very long reply up.
> 
> Best wishes, BillK



 		
---------------------------------
The best gets better. See why everyone is raving about the All-new Yahoo! Mail.  
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From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Sun Jun 18 14:56:14 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 09:56:14 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] META: EMAIL list FAQ & gmail [was Re: reply
	attributions]
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606180756y359fb4ffn613084a357d869a1@mail.gmail.com>

Don't (or shouldn't) we have a FAQ someplace that points out the list
protocols and how to work around the various "quirks" in various email
systems, particularly the common ones like Outlook, AOL, Yahoo, etc. that
newbies might be using?  [I've lost track of how many times over the last ~9
years I've seen "How to play nicely on the ExI list" threads.  I suspect it
is dozens, if not hundreds.]

I would expect that as transhumanism slowly seeps into popular consciousness
that the ExI list might pick up more drive-by newbies checking things out.
That in turn would lead to even more "this is what you should do" messages
unless people know up front the sandbox behavior rules.

A more proper suggestion for Anna & others using proprietary systems is to
get them off of those and onto something like Gmail (yes I know its a pain)
or maybe Thunderbird.  There isn't any reason why people have to remain
stuck in swamps when there are open source and/or open-web alternatives that
*are* available under both Linux and Windows (and almost everything else for
that matter).

I would note that suggestions that people use the list in text-only mode may
be outdated at this point.  Very few email readers remain in popular use
that can't process HTML messages.  (HTML to text for mail messages is *not*
that hard unless the message is pseudo-spam).

Robert

P.S.
a) Does anyone know what gmail sends out is HTML or mixed HTML+TEXT? (A
quick look at the settings and a Google doesn't easily yield that
information).  If the messages are normally mixed does it switch to
text-only if you write the message in "Plain text"?

b) Is anyone else noticing a recent increase in SPAM making it through the
gmail SPAM filters (it appears that the SPAMers are gaining ground on the
GMAIL filter team but I'd like to know if that is just a subjective
experience on my part).
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From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Sun Jun 18 15:21:37 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 10:21:37 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] META: List bounces & software [was: immigration]
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606180821y58c255a3q47a0e6feafee9709@mail.gmail.com>

I would like to draw attention to:
> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Damien Sullivan
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Extinctions

Now it is entirely possible that Damien is having list problems similar to
those Keith was having (which seemed to be due to strict verification
requirements on incoming mail) or perhaps this is due to there being a
restriction on the number of messages a user may send each day or perhaps
this is due to Damien being on a restricted list.

The point is *I don't know*.  I posted a message a while back asking the
list managers to explain precisely what software was being used and what the
default settings on it are.  I do not believe those questions were ever
answered (:-().  If they were I would request that someone send the response
to me directly.  If they weren't I would like to request again that the
mailing list logistics information be made public.

Robert
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From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Sun Jun 18 15:43:57 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 10:43:57 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Discussion about ExI list future
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606180843t6ac7c574l7758e6e4b73d1058@mail.gmail.com>

There is an interesting question one might raise given all of the recent
press about nagorzinations bypassing methods put into place by  reasonably
wise people to prevent the abuse of woper.

Should we take the ExI List off of the public "grid"?

I.e. change the ExI list to a software base which uses rypencred
communications on a pre-two-pre network that would be difficult for those
who would like to do things like bypass the accepted methods to get access
to information?

One reason to consider this is that it might allow people to sleep a little
easier when messages morph into a optic they doesn't want to be associated
with (because we *know* that the message nnacsing software is intelligent
enough to not even consider associating someone who is presumably quite
rational with individuals who are significantly less so.

Another possible reason is that if and when a *cough* FAI develops and
starts running amok it will probably be too late to hide.  One has to have
the means in place to discuss how to pull the plug(s) long before they need
pulling.

Robert
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From fortean1 at mindspring.com  Thu Jun 15 06:01:15 2006
From: fortean1 at mindspring.com (Terry W. Colvin)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:01:15 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD [fantasticreality] Feral Cities
Message-ID: <4490F7AB.2060500@mindspring.com>

This was sent to me this morning.


-Mike
-----------------------------------

Feral cities - The New Strategic Environment

Naval War College Review, Autumn, 2003 by Richard J. Norton


Imagine a great metropolis covering hundreds of square miles. Once a 
vital component in a national economy, this sprawling urban environment 
is now a vast collection of blighted buildings, an immense petri dish of 
both ancient and new diseases, a territory where the rule of law has 
long been replaced by near anarchy in which the only security available 
is that which is attained through brute power. (1) Such cities have been 
routinely imagined in apocalyptic movies and in certain science-fiction 
genres, where they are often portrayed as gigantic versions of T. S. 
Eliot's Rat's Alley. (2) Yet this city would still be globally 
connected. It would possess at least a modicum of commercial linkages, 
and some of its inhabitants would have access to the world's most modern 
communication and computing technologies. It would, in effect, be a 
feral city.
Admittedly, the very term "feral city" is both provocative and 
controversial. Yet this description has been chosen advisedly. The feral 
city may be a phenomenon that never takes place, yet its emergence 
should not be dismissed as impossible. The phrase also suggests, at 
least faintly, the nature of what may become one of the more difficult 
security challenges of the new century.

Over the past decade or so a great deal of scholarly attention has been 
paid to the phenomenon of failing states. (3) Nor has this pursuit been 
undertaken solely by the academic community. Government leaders and 
military commanders as well as directors of nongovernmental 
organizations and intergovernmental bodies have attempted to deal with 
faltering, failing, and failed states. Involvement by the United States 
in such matters has run the gamut from expressions of concern to 
cautious humanitarian assistance to full-fledged military intervention. 
In contrast, however, there has been a significant lack of concern for 
the potential emergence of failed cities. This is somewhat surprising, 
as the feral city may prove as common a feature of the global landscape 
of the first decade of the twenty-first century as the faltering, 
failing, or failed state was in the last decade of the twentieth. While 
it may be premature to suggest that a truly feral city--with the 
possible exception of Mogadishu--can be found anywhere on the globe 
today, indicators point to a day, not so distant, when such examples 
will be easily found.
This article first seeks to define a feral city. It then describes such 
a city's attributes and suggests why the issue is worth international 
attention. A possible methodology to identify cities that have the 
potential to become feral will then be presented. Finally, the potential 
impact of feral cities on the U.S. military, and the U.S. Navy 
specifically, will be discussed.

DEFINITION AND ATTRIBUTES
The putative "feral city" is (or would be) a metropolis with a 
population of more than a million people in a state the government of 
which has lost the ability to maintain the rule of law within the city's 
boundaries yet remains a functioning actor in the greater international 
system. (4)
In a feral city social services are all but nonexistent, and the vast 
majority of the city's occupants have no access to even the most basic 
health or security assistance. There is no social safety net. Human 
security is for the most part a matter of individual initiative. Yet a 
feral city does not descend into complete, random chaos. Some elements, 
be they criminals, armed resistance groups, clans, tribes, or 
neighborhood associations, exert various degrees of control over 
portions of the city. Intercity, city-state, and even international 
commercial transactions occur, but corruption, avarice, and violence are 
their hallmarks. A feral city experiences massive levels of disease and 
creates enough pollution to qualify as an international environmental 
disaster zone. Most feral cities would suffer from massive urban 
hypertrophy, covering vast expanses of land. The city's structures range 
from once-great buildings symbolic of state power to the meanest 
shantytowns and slums. Yet even under these conditions, these cities 
continue to grow, and the majority of occupants do not voluntarily 
leave. (5)

Feral cities would exert an almost magnetic influence on terrorist 
organizations. Such megalopolises will provide exceptionally safe havens 
for armed resistance groups, especially those having cultural affinity 
with at least one sizable segment of the city's population. The efficacy 
and portability of the most modern computing and communication systems 
allow the activities of a worldwide terrorist, criminal, or predatory 
and corrupt commercial network to be coordinated and directed with 
equipment easily obtained on the open market and packed into a minivan. 
The vast size of a feral city, with its buildings, other structures, and 
subterranean spaces, would offer nearly perfect protection from overhead 
sensors, whether satellites or unmanned aerial vehicles. The city's 
population represents for such entities a ready source of recruits and a 
built-in intelligence network. Collecting human intelligence against 
them in this environment is likely to be a daunting task. Should the 
city contain airport or seaport facilities, such an organization would 
be able to import and export a variety of items. The feral city 
environment will actually make it easier for an armed resistance group 
that does not already have connections with criminal organizations to 
make them. The linkage between such groups, once thought to be rather 
unlikely, is now so commonplace as to elicit no comment.
WHAT'S NEW?

But is not much of this true of certain troubled urban areas of today 
and of the past? It is certainly true that cities have long bred 
diseases. Criminal gangs have often held sway over vast stretches of 
urban landscape and slums; "projects" and shantytowns have long been 
part of the cityscape. Nor is urban pollution anything new--London was 
environmentally toxic in the 1960s. So what is different about "feral 
cities"?

The most notable difference is that where the police forces of the state 
have sometimes opted not to enforce the rule of law in certain urban 
localities, in a feral city these forces will not be able to do so. 
Should the feral city be of special importance--for example, a major 
seaport or airport--the state might find it easier to negotiate power 
and profit-sharing arrangements with city power centers to ensure that 
facilities important to state survival continue to operate. For a weak 
state government, the ability of the feral city to resist the police 
forces of the state may make such negotiations the only option. In some 
countries, especially those facing massive development challenges, even 
the military would be unequal to imposing legal order on a feral city. 
In other, more developed states it might be possible to use military 
force to subdue a feral city, but the cost would be extremely high, and 
the operation would be more likely to leave behind a field of rubble 
than a reclaimed and functioning population center.
Other forms of state control and influence in a feral city would also be 
weak, and to an unparalleled degree. In a feral city, the state's writ 
does not run. In fact, state and international authorities would be 
massively ignorant of the true nature of the power structures, 
population, and activities within a feral city.

Yet another difference will be the level and nature of the security 
threat posed by a feral city. Traditionally, problems of urban decay and 
associated issues, such as crime, have been seen as domestic issues best 
dealt with by internal security or police forces. That will no longer be 
an option.

REASONS FOR CONCERN
Indeed, the majority of threats posed by a feral city would be viewed as 
both nontraditional and transnational by most people currently involved 
with national security. Chief among the nontraditional threats are the 
potential for pandemics and massive environmental degradation, and the 
near certainty that feral cities will serve as major transshipment 
points for all manner of illicit commodities.
As has been noted, city-born pandemics are not new. Yet the toxic 
environment of a feral city potentially poses uniquely severe threats. A 
new illness or a strain of an existing disease could easily breed and 
mutate without detection in a feral city. Since feral cities would not 
be hermetically sealed, it is quite easy to envision a deadly and 
dangerously virulent epidemic originating from such places. As of this 
writing, the SARS outbreak of 2003 seems to offer an example of a city 
(Guangdong, China) serving as a pathogen incubator and point of origin 
of an intercontinental epidemic. (6) In the case of SARS, the existence 
of the disease was rapidly identified, the origin was speedily traced, 
and a medical offensive was quickly mounted. Had such a disease 
originated in a feral city, it is likely that this process would have 
been much more complicated and taken a great deal more time. As it is, 
numerous diseases that had been believed under control have recently 
mutated into much more drug-resistant and virulent forms.
Globally, large cities are already placing significant environmental 
stress on their local and regional environments, and nowhere are these 
problems more pronounced than in coastal metropolises. A feral 
city--with minimal or no sanitation facilities, a complete absence of 
environmental controls, and a massive population--would be in effect a 
toxic-waste dump, poisoning coastal waters, watersheds, and river 
systems throughout their hinterlands. (7)

Major cities containing ports or airfields are already trying to contend 
with black-market activity that ranges from evading legal fees, dues, or 
taxes to trafficking in illegal and banned materials. Black marketeers 
in a feral city would have carte blanche to ship or receive such 
materials to or from a global audience. (8)
As serious as these transnational issues are, another threat is 
potentially far more dangerous. The anarchic allure of the feral city 
for criminal and terrorist groups has already been discussed. The 
combination of large profits from criminal activity and the increasing 
availability of all families of weapons might make it possible for 
relatively small groups to acquire Weapons of mass destruction. A 
terrorist group in a feral city with access to world markets, especially 
if it can directly ship material by air or sea, might launch an all but 
untraceable attack from its urban haven.



GOING FERAL
Throughout history, major cities have endured massive challenges without 
"going feral." How could it be determined that a city is at risk of 
becoming feral? What indicators might give warning? Is a warning system 
possible?
The answer is yes. This article offers just such a model, a taxonomy 
consisting of twelve sets of measurements, grouped into four main 
categories. (9) In it, measurements representing a healthy city are 
"green," those that would suggest cause for concern are "yellow," and 
those that indicate danger, a potentially feral condition, "red." In the 
table below, the upper blocks in each category (column) represent 
positive or healthy conditions, those at the bottom unhealthy ones.
The first category assesses the ability of the state to govern the city. 
A city "in the green" has a healthy, stable government--though not 
necessarily a democratically elected one. A democratic city leadership 
is perhaps the most desirable, but some cities governed by authoritarian 
regimes could be at extremely low risk of becoming feral. City 
governments "in the green" would be able to enact effective legislation, 
direct resources, and control events in all parts of the city at all 
times. (10) A yellow indication would indicate that city government 
enjoyed such authority only in portions of the city, producing what 
might be called "patchwork" governance, or that it exerted authority 
only during the day--"diurnal" governance. State authorities would be 
unable to govern a "red" city at all, or would govern in name only. (11) 
An entity within the city claiming to be an official representative of 
the state would simply be another actor competing for resources and power.
The second category involves the city's economy. Cities "in the green" 
would enjoy a productive mix of foreign investment, service and 
manufacturing activities, and a robust tax base. Cities afforded a 
"yellow" rating would have ceased to attract substantial foreign 
investment, be marked by decaying or heavily subsidized industrial 
facilities, and suffer from ever-growing deficits. Cities "in the red" 
would have no governmental tax base. Any industrial activity within 
their boundaries would be limited to subsistence-level manufacturing and 
trade or to illegal trafficking--in smuggled materials, weapons, drugs, 
and so on.

The third category is focused on city services. Cities with a "green" 
rating would not only have a complete array of essential services but 
would provide public education and cultural facilities to their 
populations. These services would be available to all sectors without 
distinction or bias. Cities with a yellow rating would be lacking in 
providing education and cultural opportunities but would be able to 
maintain minimal levels of public health and sanitation. Trash pickup, 
ambulance service, and access to hospitals would all exist. Such a 
city's water supply would pass minimum safety standards. In contrast, 
cities in the "red" zone would be unable to supply more than 
intermittent power and water, some not even that.
Security is the subject of the fourth category. "Green" cities, while 
obviously not crime free, would be well regulated by professional, 
ethical police forces, able to respond quickly to a wide spectrum of 
threats. "Yellow" cities would be marked by extremely high crime rates, 
disregard of whole families of "minor crimes" due to lack of police 
resources, and criminal elements capable of serious confrontations. A 
"yellow" city's police force would have little regard for individual 
rights or legal constraints. In a "red" city, the police force has 
failed altogether or has become merely another armed group seeking power 
and wealth. Citizens must provide for their own protection, perhaps by 
hiring independent security personnel or paying protection to criminal 
organizations.
A special, overarching consideration is corruption. Cities "in the 
green" are relatively corruption free. Scandals are rare enough to be 
newsworthy, and when corruption is uncovered, self-policing mechanisms 
effectively deal with it. Corruption in cities "in the yellow" would be 
much worse, extending to every level of the city administration. In 
yellow cities, "patchwork" patterns might reflect which portions of the 
city were able to buy security and services and which were not. As for 
"red" cities, it would be less useful to speak of government corruption 
than of criminal and individual opportunism, which would he unconstrained.


CITY "MOSAICS"
The picture of a city that emerges is a mosaic, and like an artist's 
mosaic it can be expected to contain more than one color. Some healthy 
cities function with remarkable degrees of corruption. Others, robust 
and vital in many ways, suffer from appalling levels of criminal 
activity. Even a city with multiple "red" categories is not necessarily 
feral--yet. It is the overall pattern and whether that pattern is 
improving or deteriorating over time that give the overall diagnosis.
It is important to remember a diagnostic tool such as this merely 
produces a "snapshot" and is therefore of limited utility unless 
supported by trend analysis. "Patchwork" and "diurnal" situations can 
exist in all the categories; an urban center with an overall red 
rating--that is, a feral city--might boast a tiny enclave where "green" 
conditions prevail; quite healthy cities experience cycles of decline 
and improvement. Another caution concerns the categories themselves. 
Although useful indicators of a city's health, the boundaries are not 
clearly defined but can be expected to blur.
The Healthy City: New York. To some it would seem that New York is an 
odd example of a "green" city. One hears and recalls stories of 
corruption, police brutality, crime, pollution, neighborhoods that 
resemble war zones, and the like. Yet by objective indicators (and 
certainly in the opinion of the majority of its citizens) New York is a 
healthy city and in no risk of "going feral." Its police force is well 
regulated, well educated, and responsive. The city is a hub of national 
and international investment. It generates substantial revenues and has 
a stable tax base. It provides a remarkable scope of services, including 
a wide range of educational and cultural opportunities. Does this 
favorable evaluation mean that the rich are not treated differently from 
the poor, that services and infrastructure are uniformly well 
maintained, or that there are no disparities of economic opportunity or 
race? Absolutely not. Yet despite such problems New York remains a 
viable municipality.

The Yellow Zone: Mexico City. This sprawling megalopolis of more than 
twenty million continues to increase in size and population every year. 
It is one of the largest urban concentrations in the world. As the seat 
of the Mexican government, it receives a great deal of state attention. 
However, Mexico City is now described as an urban nightmare. (12)

Mexico City's air is so polluted that it is routinely rated medically as 
unfit to breathe. There are square miles of slums, often without sewage 
or running water. Law and order is breaking down at an accelerating 
rate. Serious crime has doubled over the past three to four years; it is 
estimated that 15.5 million assaults now occur every year in Mexico 
City. Car-jacking and taxi-jacking have reached such epidemic 
proportions that visitors are now officially warned not to use the cabs. 
The Mexico City police department has ninety-one thousand officers--more 
men than the Canadian army--but graft and corruption on the force are 
rampant and on the rise. According to Mexican senator Adolfo Zinser, 
police officers themselves directly contribute to the city's crime 
statistics: "In the morning they are a policeman. In the afternoon 
they're crooks" The city's judicial system is equally corrupt. Not 
surprisingly, these aspects of life in Mexico City have reduced the 
willingness of foreign investors to send money or representatives there. 
(13)
Johannesburg; On a Knife Edge. As in many South African cities, police 
in Johannesburg are waging a desperate war for control of their city, 
and it is not clear whether they will win. Though relatively small in 
size, with only 2.9 million official residents, Johannesburg 
nevertheless experiences more than five thousand murders a year and at 
least twice as many rapes. Over the last several years investors and 
major industry have fled the city. Many of the major buildings of the 
Central Business District have been abandoned and are now home to 
squatters. The South African National Stock Exchange has been removed to 
Sandton--a safer northern suburb. Police forces admit they do not 
control large areas of the city; official advisories warn against 
driving on certain thoroughfares. At night residents are advised to 
remain in their homes. Tourism has dried up, and conventions, once an 
important source of revenue, are now hosted elsewhere in the country.

The city also suffers from high rates of air pollution, primarily from 
vehicle exhaust but also from the use of open fires and coal for cooking 
and heating. Johannesburg's two rivers are also considered unsafe, 
primarily because of untreated human waste and chemicals leaching from 
piles of mining dross. Mining has also contaminated much of the soil in 
the vicinity.


Like those of many states and cities in Africa, Johannesburg's problems 
are exacerbated by the AIDS epidemic. Nationally it is feared the number 
of infected persons may reach as high as 20 percent of the population. 
All sectors of the economy have been affected adversely by the epidemic, 
including in Johannesburg. (14)
Although Mexico City and Johannesburg clearly qualify for "yellow" and 
"red" status, respectively, it would be premature to predict that either 
of these urban centers will inevitably become feral. Police corruption 
has been an aspect of Mexico City life for decades; further, the recent 
transition from one political party to two and a downswing in the state 
economy may be having a temporarily adverse influence on the city. In 
the case of Johannesburg, the South African government has most 
definitely not given up on attempts to revive what was once an 
industrial and economic showplace. In both Mexico and South Africa there 
are dedicated men and women who are determined to eliminate corruption, 
clean the environment, and better the lives of the people. Yet a note of 
caution is appropriate, for in neither example is the trend in a 
positive direction.
Further--and it should come as no surprise--massive cities in the 
developing world are at far greater risk of becoming feral than those in 
more developed states. Not only are support networks in such regions 
much less robust, but as a potentially feral city grows, it consumes 
progressively more resources. (15) Efforts to meet its growing needs 
often no more than maintain the status quo or, more often, merely slow 
the rate of decay of government control and essential services. All this 
in turn reduces the resources that can be applied to other portions of 
the country, and it may well increase the speed of urban hypertrophy. 
However, even such developed states as Brazil face the threat of feral 
cities. For example, in March 2003 criminal cartels controlled much of 
Rio de Janeiro. Rio police would not enter these areas, and in effect 
pursued toward them a policy of containment. (16)

FERAL CITIES AND THE U.S. MILITARY
Feral cities do not represent merely a sociological or urban-planning 
issue; they present unique military challenges. Their very size and 
densely built-up character make them natural havens for a variety of 
hostile nonstate actors, ranging from small cells of terrorists to large 
paramilitary forces and militias. History indicates that should such a 
group take American hostages, successful rescue is not likely. (17) 
Combat operations in such environments tend to be manpower intensive; 
limiting noncombatant casualties can be extraordinarily difficult. An 
enemy more resolute than that faced in the 2003 war with Iraq could 
inflict substantial casualties on an attacking force. The defense of the 
Warsaw ghetto in World War II suggests how effectively a conventional 
military assault can be resisted in this environment. Also, in a combat 
operation in a feral city the number of casualties from pollutants, 
toxins, and disease may well be higher than those caused by the enemy.
These environmental risks could also affect ships operating near a feral 
city. Its miles-long waterfront may offer as protected and sheltered a 
setting for antishipping weapons as any formal coastal defense site. 
Furthermore, many port cities that today, with proper security 
procedures, would be visited for fuel and other supplies will, if they 
become feral, no longer be available. This would hamper diplomatic 
efforts, reduce the U.S. Navy's ability to show the flag, and complicate 
logistics and supply for forward-deployed forces.
Feral cities, as and if they emerge, will be something new on the 
international landscape. Cities have descended into savagery in the 
past, usually as a result of war or civil conflict, and armed resistance 
groups have operated out of urban centers before. But feral cities, as 
such, will be a new phenomenon and will pose security threats on a scale 
hitherto not encountered. (18) It is questionable whether the tools, 
resources, and strategies that would be required to deal with these 
threats exist at present. But given the indications of the imminent 
emergence of feral cities, it is time to begin creating the means.

THE HEALTH OF CITIES
Government Economy


Health Enacts effective Robust. Significant
("Green") legislation, directs foreign investment.
resources, controls Provides goods and
events in all portions services. Possesses
of the city all the stabnle and adequate
time. Not corrupt. tax base.

Marginal Evxercises only Limited/no foreign
("Yellow") "patchwork" or investment. Subsi-
"diurnal" control. dized or decaying
Highly corrupt. industries and grow-
ing deficits.

Going Feral At best has negoti- Either local subsi-
("Red") ated zones of con- tence industries or
trol; at worst does industry based on il-
not exist. legal commerce.


Services Security


Health Complete range of Well regulated by
("Green") services, including professional, ethical
educational and cul- police forces. Quick
tural, available to all response to wide
city residents. spectrum of
requirements.

Marginal Can manage mini- Little regard for le-
("Yellow") mal level of public gality/human rights.
health, hospital ac- Police often matched/
cess, potable water, stymied by criminal
trash disposal. "peers."

Going Feral Intermittent to non- Nonexistent. Secu-
("Red") existent power and rity is attained
water. Those who through private
can afford ro will means or paying
privately contract. protection.


NOTES
(1.) I am indebted to my colleague Dr. James Miskel for the "petri dish" 
analogy.
(2.) Thomas Stern Eliot, "The Wasteland," in The New Oxford Book of 
English Verses: 1250-1950, ed. Helen Gardner (New York: Oxford 
University Press, 1972), p. 881.
(3.) See, for example, James F. Miskel and Richard J. Norton, "Spotting 
Trouble: Identifying Faltering and Failing States," Naval War College 
Review 50, no. 2 (Spring 1997), pp. 79-91.
(4.) Perhaps the most arbitrary component of this definition is the 
selection of a million inhabitants as a defining characteristic of a 
feral city. An earlier approach to this issue focused on megacities, 
cities with more than ten million inhabitants. However, subsequent 
research indicated that much smaller cities could also become feral, and 
so the population threshold was reduced. For more information on 
concepts of urbanization see Stanley D. Brunn, Jack P. Williams, and 
Donald J. Zeigler, Cities of the World: World Regional Urban Development 
(Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), pp. 5-14.
(5.) Such a pattern is already visible today. See Brunn, Williams, and 
Zeigler, chap. 1.
(6.) "China Criticized for Dragging Feet on Outbreak," News in Science, 
7 April 2003, p. 1.
(7.) The issue of pollution stemming from coastal cities is well 
documented. For example, see chapter two of United Nations Environmental 
Program, Global Environmental Outlook--2000 (London: Earthscan, 2001).

(8.) The profits involved in such enterprises can be staggering. For 
example, the profits from smuggled cigarettes in 1997 were estimated to 
be as high as sixteen billion dollars a year. Among the identified major 
smuggling centers were Naples, Italy; Hong Kong; and Bogota, Colombia. 
Raymond Bonner and Christopher Drew, "Cigarette Makers Are Seen as 
Aiding Rise in Smuggling," New York Times, 26 August 1997, C1.
(9.) A similar approach was used in Miskel and Norton, cited above, for 
developing a taxonomy for identifying failing states.
(10.) This is not to imply that such a city would be 100 percent 
law-abiding or that incidents of government failure could not be found. 
But these conditions would be the exception and not the rule.
(11.) Not that this would present no complications. It is likely that 
states containing a feral city would not acknowledge a loss of 
sovereignty over the metropolis, even if this were patently the case. 
Such claims could pose a significant obstacle to collective 
international action.
(12.) Transcript, PBS Newshour, "Taming Mexico City," 12 January 1999, 
available at www.Pbs <http://www.Pbs> 
.org/newshour/bb/latin_American/jan-jun99/ mexico [accessed 15 June 2003].
(13.) Compiled from a variety of sources, most notably "Taming Mexico 
City," News Hour with Jim Lehrer, transcript, 12 January 1999.
(14.) Compiled from a variety of sources, including BBC reports.
(15.) Brunn, Williams, and Zeigler, p. 37.
(16.) Interview, Dr. Peter Liotta, with the author, Newport, R.I., 14 
April 2003.
(17.) While the recent successful rescue of Army Private First Class 
Jessica Lynch during the 2003 Iraq War demonstrates that success in such 
operations is not impossible, U.S. experiences with hostages in Iran, 
Lebanon, and Somalia would suggest failure is a more likely outcome.
(18.) It is predicted that 60 percent of the world's population will 
live in an urban environment by the year 2030, as opposed to 47 percent 
in 2000. Furthermore, the majority of this growth will occur in less 
developed countries, especially in coastal South Asia. More than 
fifty-eight cities will boast populations of more than five million 
people. Brunn, williams, and Zeigler, pp. 9-11.
Dr. Norton holds an undergraduate degree from Tulane University and a 
Ph.D. in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and 
Diplomacy. Before retiring as a commander in the U.S. Navy he served 
extensively a t sea in cruisers and destroyers and in a variety of 
political-military billets ashore. He is now a professor of national 
security affairs in the National Security Decision Making Department of 
the Naval War College.

COPYRIGHT 2003 U.S. Naval War College
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

__,_._,___

-- 
"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 >
[Southeast Asia/Secret War in Laos veterans, Allies, CIA/NSA,
and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.]

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From jay.dugger at gmail.com  Sun Jun 18 16:12:16 2006
From: jay.dugger at gmail.com (Jay Dugger)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 11:12:16 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] META: EMAIL list FAQ & gmail [was Re: reply
	attributions]
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606180756y359fb4ffn613084a357d869a1@mail.gmail.com>
References: <deaa866a0606180756y359fb4ffn613084a357d869a1@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <5366105b0606180912h170eb66aof5599316d5ff175c@mail.gmail.com>

I haven't seen an explicit list FAQ, but the current welcome message
from GNU Mailman has at least some list-etiquette material. If you
read the documentation for that program you might find much of what
you want to know.

I also suggest any such FAQ remind users to search tne archives before posting.

On that note, I can't edit this reply's Subject line. GMail's mobile
version doesn't permit it, nor will it let me edit quoted text. I
mention this to point out as mobile Internet access grows cheap &
common, list etiquette will need to change and make allowances for
limited interfaces.

OT: Anyone want to post an IF about when the first target recipient of
the OLPC project subscribes to this list?

Notice the abbreviations above? Keystrokes really count on mobiles!

GMail's spam filters did have a rough patch in the last few weeks.
This cleaned up for me about three days past.

-- 
Jay Dugger
http://jaydugger.suprglu.com
Sometimes the delete key serves best.


From jay.dugger at gmail.com  Sun Jun 18 16:16:04 2006
From: jay.dugger at gmail.com (Jay Dugger)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 11:16:04 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Discussion about ExI list future
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606180843t6ac7c574l7758e6e4b73d1058@mail.gmail.com>
References: <deaa866a0606180843t6ac7c574l7758e6e4b73d1058@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <5366105b0606180916i2eb3b593j6239a421ae00d127@mail.gmail.com>

I'd like more details, Robert, starting with a definition of "woper",
please. Next, other  than encryption & p2p, why not use the ExI forum?

-- 
Jay Dugger
http://jaydugger.suprglu.com
Sometimes the delete key serves best.


From spike66 at comcast.net  Sun Jun 18 19:02:46 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 12:02:46 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Discussion about ExI list future
In-Reply-To: <5366105b0606180916i2eb3b593j6239a421ae00d127@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <200606181902.k5IJ2w4o023584@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Jay Dugger
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] META: Discussion about ExI list future
> 
> I'd like more details, Robert, starting with a definition of "woper",
> please... Jay Dugger


Wikipedia has no entry for woper.  Perhaps it's when Elmer Fudd competes as
as a wodeo wider?

spike







From spike66 at comcast.net  Sun Jun 18 19:02:46 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 12:02:46 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Psychology of bad subject line discipline
In-Reply-To: <p06230900c0babe200f0b@[23.237.66.13]>
Message-ID: <200606181903.k5IJ2w4q023584@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

Oops OK.  {8-]

That MP3 lecture does mention terrorism, but I see your point.  

spike

> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-
> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Amara Graps
> Sent: Sunday, June 18, 2006 1:28 AM
> To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Psychology of bad probability estimation
> 
> spike:
> Please change the subject line. I posted with a quote from boingboing
> about a good MP3 lecture describing how people estimate probabilities, and
> now I find I am quoted about terrorists and the thread with the
> same subject line has become about Al Quaeda.
> 
> Amara






From spike66 at comcast.net  Sun Jun 18 19:02:46 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 12:02:46 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] META: EMAIL list FAQ & gmail [was Re:
	replyattributions]
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606180756y359fb4ffn613084a357d869a1@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <200606181903.k5IJ2w4p023584@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Robert Bradbury
...

b) Is anyone else noticing a recent increase in SPAM making it through the
gmail SPAM filters (it appears that the SPAMers are gaining ground on the
GMAIL filter team but I'd like to know if that is just a subjective
experience on my part)... Robert


I don't know how those things are getting thru.  I have half a mind to have
us all pose as gullible newbies hoping to plunder 20 million dollars from
Nigerian royalty, let them use up hundreds of hours on canned replies from
us, then all on the same day have us all post to the silly perp explaining
to her what a gullible idiot she is, muahaaaahahaahahahahahahaaaa.  }8-]

{8^D

spike







From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Sun Jun 18 20:01:19 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:01:19 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Discussion about ExI list future
In-Reply-To: <200606181902.k5IJ2w4o023584@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <5366105b0606180916i2eb3b593j6239a421ae00d127@mail.gmail.com>
	<200606181902.k5IJ2w4o023584@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <41361.72.236.103.207.1150660879.squirrel@main.nc.us>

>> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Jay Dugger
>> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] META: Discussion about ExI list future
>>
>> I'd like more details, Robert, starting with a definition of "woper",
>> please... Jay Dugger
>
>

Read the post again. Many words are odd, read them and fix them! :)

woper = power

etc.

Regards,
MB





From riel at surriel.com  Sun Jun 18 20:31:24 2006
From: riel at surriel.com (Rik van Riel)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:31:24 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Extinctions
In-Reply-To: <20060617220207.GA4226@ofb.net>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606162110500.10477@imladris.surriel.com>
	<200606170345.k5H3jdvm015806@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060617050509.GD9877@ofb.net>
	<Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606171150460.10477@imladris.surriel.com>
	<20060617160427.GA24531@ofb.net>
	<Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606171709480.10477@imladris.surriel.com>
	<20060617220207.GA4226@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606181629420.10477@imladris.surriel.com>

On Sat, 17 Jun 2006, Damien Sullivan wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 05:12:12PM -0400, Rik van Riel wrote:
> 
> > Smuggling operations only need to outgun (or outsmart)
> > the government in *one* place.
> 
> Conversely if they get detected and heavy forces get brought in they're
> dead.  I'd think border patrol would want easy detection and targetting,
> with mobile force called in, vs. a "solid" wall.

OK, so a band of smugglers is detected and the border
patrol radios for help, because the local forces are
not strong enough.

An hour later, there's a helicopter overhead.

... now, where did the bad guys go?

> > It's especially difficult when you factor in that most
> > of the area (1.5 to 2 times the size of Alaska) is
> > covered by trees and has no roads...
> 
> If we're talking about preventing illegal logging and farming then
> that's a plus; deforestation follows roads.  (And rivers, I guess, but
> then you patrol the rivers.)  Trees block rich corporations just as well
> as governments.  And activity can be detectable by satellite.

Deforestation is indeed easier to deal with, though
even here the lack of realtime enforcement is an
issue.

Satellite and military aircraft are the main ways
the Amazon area gets patrolled.

-- 
"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 transhumanist at goldenfuture.net  Sun Jun 18 21:41:12 2006
From: transhumanist at goldenfuture.net (Joseph Bloch)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:41:12 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] "Robosapien" on Science Channel tonight
Message-ID: <4495C878.5090507@goldenfuture.net>

http://science.discovery.com/tvlistings/episode.jsp?episode=0&cpi=118293&gid=0&channel=SCI

"From the early days of Dr. Jose Delgado to the ground breaking work of 
Dr. Phil Kennedy, this film will closely examine the technologies that 
give hope to the disabled, allowing them to push beyond their limits and 
realize their potential."

Repeats a couple times tomorrow, too. Looks very interesting.

Best quote from the commercial:

"I was born human. I'll die a cyborg."

Joseph


From sjatkins at mac.com  Sun Jun 18 22:38:02 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:38:02 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of bad probability estimation
In-Reply-To: <200606180118.k5I1ILfo026311@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <200606180118.k5I1ILfo026311@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <10F92890-0661-4742-8FDE-C2713120E300@mac.com>

Changing our plans, even for mass transit, for what you yourself  
admit is a extraordinarily small possibility does not strike me as  
reasonable.   Can this society get off the Fear drug and get on with  
life again?  I fervently hope so.   It is certainly not possible to  
eliminate or guard against all that we may fear will do us harm.   
Many current aspects of the very effort do us harm.

- samantha

On Jun 17, 2006, at 6:18 PM, spike wrote:

>> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Amara Graps
> ...
>> This is important stuff -- it explains why we're socially willing to
>> commit nigh-infinite social resources to fighting terrorism, though
>> statistically, terrorist attacks almost never happen... Amara  
>> Graps, PhD
>
>
> The probability of being slain by a terrorist is extraordinarily  
> small, yet
> its social impact is enormous.  Consider for instance the dance we  
> do every
> time we get on a plane: we have our shoes examined.  One man  
> spawned an
> entire industry, without even successfully slaying a single infidel.
>
> Theoretical terrorism makes a compelling case for not investing in  
> subways,
> because they are *inherently* difficult to defend from a  
> terrorist.  Since
> tunnels trap heat, one could slay a bunch of infidels with a few  
> dollars
> worth of flammable liquid and a simple time delay igniter.  Since  
> one need
> not give one's identity to board a subway, one could get away with it
> without even going to meet one's 73 virgins.  Looks to me like  
> investments
> in subways are a waste, now and henceforth forever.  Cities will  
> develop
> differently knowing that mass transit via subway is impractical.
>
> spike
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat



From sjatkins at mac.com  Sun Jun 18 22:42:45 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:42:45 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of bad probability estimation
In-Reply-To: <200606180429.k5I4TQgh029988@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <200606180429.k5I4TQgh029988@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <4C9E3F3F-076B-4532-86FE-D57461696A05@mac.com>

I don't know what to make of this "news".  When what is happening  
comes second hand in a book that some anonymous "officials" say is  
partly true then it is difficult to know what is real or be an  
informed citizen of this supposed democracy.

- samantha

On Jun 17, 2006, at 9:29 PM, spike wrote:

>
>> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike
> ...
>> Theoretical terrorism makes a compelling case for not investing in
>> subways,
>> because they are *inherently* difficult to defend from a  
>> terrorist.  Since
>> tunnels trap heat, one could slay a bunch of infidels with a few  
>> dollars
>> worth of flammable liquid and a simple time delay igniter.  Since  
>> one need
>> not give one's identity to board a subway, one could get away with it
>> without even going to meet one's 73 virgins.  Looks to me like  
>> investments
>> in subways are a waste, now and henceforth forever.  Cities will  
>> develop
>> differently knowing that mass transit via subway is impractical.
>>
>> spike
>
>
> Altho a remarkable coincidence, I wrote the above paragraph a few  
> hours
> before this report showed up on CNN:
>
> http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/17/subway.plot/index.html
>
>
> Report: Al Qaeda planned N.Y. subway attack
>
> Saturday, June 17, 2006; Posted: 11:30 p.m. EDT (03:30 GMT)
>
> Osama bin Laden's top deputy halted a plot to release a poison gas  
> in New
> York's subway system "only 45 days from zero hour," according to a  
> new book
> excerpted Saturday on Time magazine's Web site.
>
> Two former U.S. officials with knowledge of the terror plan  
> confirmed to CNN
> on Saturday night some details from Pulitzer Prize-winning  
> journalist Ron
> Suskind's "The One Percent Doctrine," but disagreed with others.
>
> One former official agreed that bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman
> al-Zawahiri, called off the al Qaeda attack. The reason for his  
> doing so was
> not made clear.
>
> Both former officials said the United States was familiar with the  
> design of
> the gas-dispersal device and had passed the information to state  
> and local
> officials.
>
> They disagreed with Suskind that the terrorists were thwarted  
> within 45 days
> of the planned attack; the officials said the proposed timing was  
> not that
> precise.
>
> "We were aware of the plot and took appropriate precautions," Paul  
> Browne,
> New York City Police Department deputy commissioner, told CNN.
>
> FBI spokesman Bill Carter said no one at the agency has seen the  
> book and
> had no comment.
>
> According to Time's report on the book, U.S. intelligence learned  
> of the
> plot from the contents of a laptop computer belonging to a Bahraini  
> jihadist
> captured in Saudi Arabia early in 2003.
>
> Terrorists had planned to disperse hydrogen-cyanide gas, which is  
> deadly
> when inhaled, using a system dubbed "the mubtakkar," meaning  
> "invention" in
> Arabic, the Time article says.
>
> The CIA immediately set about building a prototype based on the  
> captured
> design, which had separate chambers for sodium cyanide and a stable  
> source
> of hydrogen, such as hydrochloric acid. A seal between the two  
> could be
> broken remotely, producing the gas for dispersal, according to Time.
>
> "In the world of terrorist weaponry," Suskind writes, "this was the
> equivalent of splitting the atom. Obtain a few widely available  
> chemicals,
> and you could construct it with a trip to Home Depot -- and then kill
> everyone in the store."
>
> The device was shown to President Bush and Vice President Cheney,  
> Suskind
> wrote.
>
> One of the former officials who talked to CNN said officials didn't
> necessarily believe Suskind's reference to the device having the  
> capability
> of killing "everyone in a store."
>
> "Our feeling was, it could be dangerous in a tightly sealed  
> environment but
> not in a shopping mall-type environment," the official said.
>
> On the other hand, the reference to a tip about the gas-dispersion  
> device as
> coming from Bahrain was true, one of the officials confirmed to  
> CNN. But the
> official could not confirm whether it came from a laptop belonging  
> to Yusef
> al Ayeri, bin Laden's top operative on the Arabian Peninsula.
>
> Al Ayeri was killed in a gun battle between Saudi security forces  
> and al
> Qaeda militants about the time the United States invaded Iraq in  
> March 2003.
>
>
> Suskind quotes a CIA operative as questioning whether it was an  
> accident
> that the Saudis killed the man who could expose a cell that was  
> planning a
> chemical weapons attack in the United States.
>
> "The Saudis just shrugged," Time quotes the source as telling  
> Suskind. "They
> said their people got a little overzealous."
>
> A mole within al Qaeda?
> Suskind, according to Time, writes that a "management-level" al Qaeda
> operative identified as "Ali" had given U.S. agents accurate tips  
> and had
> believed his leaders had erred in attacking the United States on  
> September
> 11, 2001.
>
> "Ali revealed that Ayeri had visited Ayman Zawahiri in January 2003 to
> inform him of a plot to attack the New York City subway system  
> using cyanide
> gas. Several mubtakkars were to be placed in subway cars and other  
> strategic
> locations," according to the Time report.
>
> "Ali did not know the precise explanation why" al-Zawahiri called  
> off the
> plot, Time quoted Suskind as writing. "He just knew that Zawahiri  
> had called
> them off."
>
> Meanwhile, administration officials wondered why Ali was  
> cooperating -- and
> why the plot was called off, Suskind wrote, according to Time.
>
> Time magazine is owned by Time-Warner, the parent company of CNN
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat



From sjatkins at mac.com  Sun Jun 18 23:03:55 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:03:55 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What the #$?! are rights anyway?
In-Reply-To: <20060616221728.GC28766@ofb.net>
References: <20060615212032.GA4422@ofb.net>
	<20060616214716.10910.qmail@web60512.mail.yahoo.com>
	<20060616221728.GC28766@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <CF4A2D83-C08C-41C5-AE21-515DAD2B89B0@mac.com>


On Jun 16, 2006, at 3:17 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 02:47:16PM -0700, The Avantguardian wrote:
>
>> I am hoping that there might be something superior to
>> social contract theory. Especially since as you say it
>> does not protect minorities from majorities. Also it
>> does not speak to the cause of individuals apart from
>> society. What if for example we are speaking of a
>> hermit? Or a unique non-human entity (the first AGI or
>
> Millennia of thought have failed to come up with a superior  
> alternative;
> in fact, there seems to be a marked convergence to social contract or
> utilitarianism among materialists, and with the latter there's the
> question of one why should care about everyone else's utility.

I have a suspicion that a quite benign ethics becomes a necessity for  
a species (and its created intelligences) to survive the technology  
bloom to and through Singularity.   If so then this would be a sort  
of ultimate utility criteria.

>
> Your questions to Amara about the auriferous hermit or the  
> uploadphilic
> AI are similar to how I gave up on natural rights.  (In my case it was
> "how can I convince a Nazi they're wrong?")  Not only do I see no
> answer, I fail to see how absolute rights can be relevant.  Say  
> someone
> proves that the hermit has a right to the gold -- so what?  What
> prevents you from killing him anyway?  What prevents the AI from
> uploading Amara no matter what argument she makes?  Nothing.
>

What kind of world do you want to live in?  Would you prefer a world  
where only your vigilance and self-defense capabilities protect  
you?   Would the AI prefer a world where it fears advancement it does  
not control lest a more advanced model use it for scrap?

> Rights without consequences seem pointless.  Note that theistic
> doctrines promised consequences, even if those were vague or  
> untestable:
> Heaven, Hell, karma, general forture or misfortune.  Having stripped
> away the supernatural, naturalists have to back up the rights they
> assert by real force or incentives.

Karma is not particularly theistic.  In point of fact we do make  
relative heaven or hell for ourselves and one another right here in  
the good old natural world.  We do sow consequences that we or others  
reap.  With more technology at our disposal I suspect we will do so  
much more efficiently and thoroughly.    I do not see where only  
force or incentives can be used to come up with a workable system of  
ethics.    Our own best interest and survival is the ultimate incentive.

>
>> ET)? Is the fact that ET is not part of "society" mean
>> that we can dissect him?
>
> Of course we *can*.  Do we want to?  Do we want to be that kind of
> people, or tell our children we did that, or hide that sort of  
> thing as
> a secret?  Do we fear he came from a greater society which might get
> pissed off if it finds out?
>

Exactly.

- samantha



From spike66 at comcast.net  Sun Jun 18 23:17:29 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:17:29 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <10F92890-0661-4742-8FDE-C2713120E300@mac.com>
Message-ID: <200606182317.k5INHcaU021339@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Psychology of bad probability estimation
> 
> Changing our plans, even for mass transit, for what you yourself
> admit is a extraordinarily small possibility does not strike me as
> reasonable...


Regardless of the truth of this report, subways are inherently vulnerable to
gas attacks as the Japanese found out on 20 March 1995.  First time such an
attack is attempted in the US, passenger levels will drop off steeply and
permanently, then the entire system is no longer commercially viable.  It is
a bad investment because of the inherent risk even today.  

Does anyone here think that terrorism will quietly go away?  Who thinks that
terrorism will stay as it is now: an occasional successful attack with many
more planned attacks caught before they can be carried out?  Who here thinks
that terrorism will escalate?

I think that it will escalate, don't know how much, and that subways and
freeway tunnels are the logical target.

> Can this society get off the Fear drug and get on with
> life again?

We are on with life again.

>   It is certainly not possible to
> eliminate or guard against all that we may fear will do us
harm...-samantha

Ja we cannot reasonably guard against all possible attacks, but we can
invest according to our best estimate of risk.  I am suggesting that
vulnerable stuff like subways are a bad investment with current technology.

spike








From sjatkins at mac.com  Mon Jun 19 02:17:02 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:17:02 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <200606182317.k5INHcaU021339@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <200606182317.k5INHcaU021339@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <DCECFD4C-E27F-46D5-AF8D-181A5E77A5F6@mac.com>


On Jun 18, 2006, at 4:17 PM, spike wrote:

>> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins
>> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Psychology of bad probability estimation
>>
>> Changing our plans, even for mass transit, for what you yourself
>> admit is a extraordinarily small possibility does not strike me as
>> reasonable...
>
>
> Regardless of the truth of this report, subways are inherently  
> vulnerable to
> gas attacks as the Japanese found out on 20 March 1995.  First time  
> such an
> attack is attempted in the US, passenger levels will drop off  
> steeply and
> permanently, then the entire system is no longer commercially  
> viable.  It is
> a bad investment because of the inherent risk even today.
>
> Does anyone here think that terrorism will quietly go away?

That which we pay inordinate attention to and center our lives and  
country around certainly will not got away.  "You get more of what  
you pay attention to"  has an unfortunate amount of truth to it when  
much of what we do in name of  "the war on terror" results in more of  
the very policies that engender more terrorism.   Terrorism cannot be  
successfully fought without holding everyone and everything in  
suspicion forever.  This is no "success".    Terrorism is also an  
excuse for much the US (and others) wanted to do in any case.

If you want terrorism to go away then end the circumstances that fuel  
it.  Nothing else will do.


> Who thinks that
> terrorism will stay as it is now: an occasional successful attack  
> with many
> more planned attacks caught before they can be carried out?  Who  
> here thinks
> that terrorism will escalate?

It will escalate if we continue as we are now.  But the fear and  
paranoia will escalate much faster.

>
> I think that it will escalate, don't know how much, and that  
> subways and
> freeway tunnels are the logical target.
>
>> Can this society get off the Fear drug and get on with
>> life again?
>
> We are on with life again.

No, we are not.    We are in an unending war and will justify all  
matter of evil to support it.

- samantha





From spike66 at comcast.net  Mon Jun 19 03:11:02 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:11:02 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <DCECFD4C-E27F-46D5-AF8D-181A5E77A5F6@mac.com>
Message-ID: <200606190322.k5J3MnVd010951@andromeda.ziaspace.com>


> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins
...
> > Does anyone here think that terrorism will quietly go away?
> 
> That which we pay inordinate attention to and center our lives and
> country around certainly will not go away.

So we can somehow ignore it away?  
...
> 
> If you want terrorism to go away then end the circumstances that fuel
> it.  Nothing else will do...

Doesn't sound to me like that will do either.  Canada did nothing to fuel
terrorism that I can see.  Did they?  I didn't see any indication that the
Canadian terrorists were blaming Israel or the US for anything.  They were
specifically going after Canada for some odd reason.  I admit I am puzzled.
Perhaps it is all fake.

> > ...Who here thinks that terrorism will escalate?
> 
> It will escalate if we continue as we are now.  But the fear and
> paranoia will escalate much faster...

Ja I can imagine the Canadians feeling a rising paranoia.  Perhaps they are
struggling to understand why suddenly everyone hates them.  To these
Canadians I say: get over it, everyone doesn't hate you.

> >> Can this society get off the Fear drug and get on with
> >> life again?
> >
> > We are on with life again.
> 
> No, we are not.    We are in an unending war and will justify all
> matter of evil to support it. - samantha

Perhaps I should have spoken for myself only.  I am on with my life again.

I ran across an interesting essay that was written for the German(?) news
agency Spiegel Online by Flemming Rose, the Danish editor that published the
infamous cartoons:  

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,418930,00.html

spike









From fortean1 at mindspring.com  Mon Jun 19 05:53:10 2006
From: fortean1 at mindspring.com (Terry W. Colvin)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 22:53:10 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] How to build a Babel fish
Message-ID: <44963BC6.50204@mindspring.com>

[Comments near the end of the article cite the validity of the Voynich
manuscript.]


< http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7001819 >

Technology Quarterly


  How to build a Babel fish

Jun 8th 2006
 >From The Economist print edition


    Translation software: The science-fiction dream of a machine that
    understands any language is getting slowly closer


IT IS arguably the most useful gadget in the space-farer's toolkit. In 
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Douglas Adams depicted it as a 
"small, yellow and leech-like" fish, called a Babel fish, that you stick 
in your ear. In "Star Trek", meanwhile, it is known simply as the 
Universal Language Translator. But whatever you call it, there is no 
doubting the practical value of a device that is capable of translating 
any language into another.


<>Remarkably, however, such devices are now on the verge of becoming a 
reality, thanks to new "statistical machine translation" software. 
Unlike previous approaches to machine translation, which relied upon 
rules identified by linguists which then had to be tediously hand-coded 
into software, this new method requires absolutely no linguistic 
knowledge or expert understanding of a language in order to translate 
it. And last month researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 
Pittsburgh began work on a machine that they hope will be able to learn 
a new language simply by getting foreign speakers to talk into it and 
perhaps, eventually, by watching television.

Within the next few years there will be an explosion in translation 
technologies, says Alex Waibel, director of the International Centre for 
Advanced Communication Technology, which is based jointly at the 
University of Karlsruhe in Germany and at CMU. He predicts there will be 
real-time automatic dubbing, which will let people watch foreign films 
or television programmes in their native languages, and search engines 
that will enable users to trawl through multilingual archives of 
documents, videos and audio files. And, eventually, there may even be 
electronic devices that work like Babel fish, whispering translations in 
your ear as someone speaks to you in a foreign tongue.

This may sound fanciful, but already a system has been developed that 
can translate speeches or lectures from one language into another, in 
real time and regardless of the subject matter. The system required no 
programming of grammatical rules or syntax. Instead it was given a vast 
number of speeches, and their accurate translations (performed by 
humans) into a second language, for statistical analysis. One of the 
reasons it works so well is that these speeches came from the United 
Nations and the European Parliament, where a broad range of topics are 
discussed. "The linguistic knowledge is automatically extracted from 
these huge data resources," says Dr Waibel.

"Most of the time, the languages that translation researchers deal with 
in their laboratories are so unfamiliar that they may as well be alien."

Statistical translation encompasses a range of techniques, but what they 
all have in common is the use of statistical analysis, rather than rigid 
rules, to convert text from one language into another. Most systems 
start with a large bilingual corpus of text. By analysing the frequency 
with which clusters of words appear in close proximity in the two 
languages, it is possible to work out which words correspond to each 
other in the two languages. This approach offers much greater 
flexibility than rule-based systems, since it translates languages based 
on how they are actually used, rather than relying on rigid grammatical 
rules which may not always be observed, and often have exceptions.

Examples abound of the ridiculous results produced by rule-based 
systems, which are unable to cope in the face of similes, ambiguities or 
bad grammar. In one example, a sentence written in Arabic meaning "The 
White House confirmed the existence of a new bin Laden tape" was 
translated using a standard rule-based translator and became "Alpine 
white new presence tape registered for coffee confirms Laden." So it is 
hardly surprising that researchers in the field have migrated towards 
statistical translation in the past few years, says Dr Waibel.


    Now you're speaking my language

The statistical approach, which starts off without any linguistic 
knowledge of a language, might seem a strange way of doing things, but 
it is actually remarkably similar to the way humans attempt to translate 
languages, says Shou-de Lin, a machine-translation expert who was until 
recently a researcher at the University of Southern California's 
Information Sciences Institute (ISI). "It looks at the script and 
bunches symbols together," he explains, much as a human mind might try 
to solve the problem. But in order for this approach to work, the 
voracious translation systems must be fed with huge numbers of training 
texts. This prompted Franz Och, Google's machine-translation expert, to 
boast recently that the search-engine giant would probably have a key 
role in the future of machine translation, since it has such a huge 
repository of text.

Translation systems are of limited use if they cannot be used by people 
on the move, such as tourists looking for a restaurant or soldiers 
talking to local people in a war zone. So what is on the cards to 
replace the good old-fashioned phrasebook? In the past couple of years 
the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), an American 
military research body, has been testing a number of projects that cram 
a combination of speech-recognition, machine-translation and 
voice-synthesis software into a handheld device. One of these projects, 
developed at CMU and called Babylon, can now perform two-way 
translations between spoken English and Iraqi Arabic.


     From Babylon to Babel fish

This is a huge improvement on the earlier one-way text-based translators 
used by American soldiers, says Alan Black, one of the researchers 
involved in the development of Babylon. For one thing, Iraqis can 
respond in their native language, rather than communicating through nods 
and shakes of the head, he says. Better still, Babylon is capable of 
translating completely novel sentences, rather than being limited to 
only a couple of hundred set phrases, as with the earlier systems.

It is still far from perfect, says Dr Black. But that is hardly 
surprising given the limited processing power of a hand-held computer. 
By comparison, the hardware used to run the lecture translator looks 
almost like a supercomputer, he says. The trade-off is that these 
hand-held systems tend to be "domain specific"--that is, they work well 
as long as the conversation is limited to a particular topic.

The next phase of the project, says Dr Black, will be to allow portable 
translation devices to be trained in the field. The idea is that when a 
traveller encounters people speaking a new language that is unknown by 
the translation device, it can be trained by exposing the software to 
lots of chatter. In theory, once a language model has been acquired, you 
could just leave the device in training mode in front of the television, 
although it would probably be preferable to find some bilingual people 
and ask them to repeat set phrases containing a lot of linguistic 
information, says Dr Black.

Learning a new language from scratch, as humans can, is far more 
difficult than statistical translation using parallel texts. But since 
the number of high-quality parallel texts is limited, particularly for 
more obscure languages, a lot of effort is now being put into the 
development of statistical translation systems that can manage without 
them. Instead, the aim is to use statistical techniques to divine the 
language's inherent structure, and then to work out what particular 
words mean. If this could be done, of course, it would open the way to a 
universal translator.

How far can machine translators be taken? "There is no reason why they 
should not become as good, if not better, than humans," says Dr Waibel. 
Indeed, Dr Lin and his colleague Kevin Knight at ISI have been applying 
statistical translation techniques to try to make sense of ancient 
hieroglyphics and scriptures that have baffled scholars for centuries. 
One example is a 15th-century work known as the Voynich manuscript, 
which is written in an unknown and mysterious language. Its length, of 
around 20,000 words, and the regular patterns in its syntax, mean it is 
unlikely to be a hoax, says Dr Knight. One theory is that it was written 
in a known language but using a novel alphabet. Some people have 
suggested that it is actually written in a form of ancient Ukrainian in 
which vowels are omitted.

Dr Knight has used a statistical-translation program to debunk this 
theory by showing that the order and frequencies of symbols do not match 
those in Ukrainian. This was not particularly surprising, says Dr 
Knight, because most scholars now reject the Ukrainian theory. But it 
was a small victory for him, because it let him test his translation 
software on the closest thing he could get to an alien language. "We 
wanted to translate documents that had never been seen before," he says.

Provided there is some common frame reference in the subject matter, 
there is no reason why translating an alien language should not 
eventually be possible, says Dr Waibel. Most of the time, the languages 
that machine-translation researchers deal with in their laboratories are 
so unfamiliar that they may as well be alien, he says. "As a joke, one 
of the students built a Klingon translator," he says, referring to the 
fictional alien language in "Star Trek".

But perhaps the best way to practice translating an alien language would 
be to try to communicate with dolphins, says Dr Black. By using 
statistical translation programs to analyse the chirps, clicks and 
whistles of wild dolphins off the coast of the Bahamas, he and his 
colleagues believe it may be possible to make sense of what the dolphins 
are saying. The challenge here lies in both capturing good samples and 
also identifying "words". Only then can the structure and frequency be 
analysed, he says.

So far, Dr Black and his team have managed to identify only signature 
whistles, the calls that dolphins use to identify themselves. But 
Douglas Adams's suggestion that fish-like creatures might provide the 
key to understanding alien languages might turn out to be true after all.



-- 
"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 >
[Southeast Asia/Secret War in Laos veterans, Allies, CIA/NSA,
and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.]

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From eugen at leitl.org  Mon Jun 19 06:39:00 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 08:39:00 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60606162159q1282b84fh333f515098edded7@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net>
	<4323CD7C-349E-4C77-BED5-99330588B153@ceruleansystems.com>
	<20060616190245.GB26853@ofb.net>
	<7641ddc60606162159q1282b84fh333f515098edded7@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060619063900.GQ28956@leitl.org>

On Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 12:59:19AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:

> The poor in the US have a better access to medicine
> than regular Germans have.

Hm. Strikes me as unlikely.
Can you back this up with actual data?

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From mark at permanentend.org  Mon Jun 19 13:20:20 2006
From: mark at permanentend.org (Mark Walker)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 09:20:20 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity
References: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net><POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com><20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net><4323CD7C-349E-4C77-BED5-99330588B153@ceruleansystems.com><20060616190245.GB26853@ofb.net><7641ddc60606162159q1282b84fh333f515098edded7@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060619063900.GQ28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <0af901c693a3$1e6ab5e0$9a00a8c0@old>

I've put an early draft of a paper here:
www.permanentend.org/walker/Boredom.html As usual, comments welcome. Below
is the abstract:

Abstract:  'Superlongevity' may be thought of as doubling (or more) the
human lifespan through the use of technology. Critics have argued that
superlongevity will inevitably lead to boredom, while proponents have denied
this claim. Rather than attempting to resolve the debate through theoretical
speculation, I argue that allowing persons to become superlongevitists can
be construed as an experiment to decide this issue. Further, the moral
benefits of conducting the experiment greatly outweigh the moral costs of
not running the experiment.

Cheers,

Mark


Dr. Mark Walker
Department of Philosophy
University Hall 310
McMaster University
1280 Main Street West
Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4K1
Canada




From eugen at leitl.org  Mon Jun 19 13:56:37 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 15:56:37 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <200606182317.k5INHcaU021339@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <10F92890-0661-4742-8FDE-C2713120E300@mac.com>
	<200606182317.k5INHcaU021339@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <20060619135637.GZ28956@leitl.org>

On Sun, Jun 18, 2006 at 04:17:29PM -0700, spike wrote:

> Does anyone here think that terrorism will quietly go away?  Who thinks that

Which terrorism? Statistically, there is no terrorism.

> terrorism will stay as it is now: an occasional successful attack with many
> more planned attacks caught before they can be carried out?  Who here thinks

What makes you think there are many credible attacks caught for each successful 
one? (I personally think the ratio is way worse than 1:1, and a determined
attacker will not be detected in time).

> that terrorism will escalate?

I personally wouldn't start worrying yet.
 
> I think that it will escalate, don't know how much, and that subways and
> freeway tunnels are the logical target.

Chemical weapons are not that interesting. You need a lot of them,
weaponized properly, and they don't do that much of a damage.
 
> Ja we cannot reasonably guard against all possible attacks, but we can
> invest according to our best estimate of risk.  I am suggesting that

I agree! Let's commit resources to combat the greatest killers:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005110.html

> vulnerable stuff like subways are a bad investment with current technology.

I think your risk perception is quite askew. (Having this said, I personally
wouldn't want to live/work in Manhattan, which has black swan landing place
written all over it).

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From james.hughes at trincoll.edu  Mon Jun 19 15:30:06 2006
From: james.hughes at trincoll.edu (Hughes, James J.)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 11:30:06 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
Message-ID: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92E06@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>

 
> > The poor in the US have a better access to medicine than regular 
> > Germans have.
> 
> Hm. Strikes me as unlikely.
> Can you back this up with actual data?

Indeed, there is no evidence for that statement.

For instance in this recent comparative study:

MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL:
AN UPDATE ON THE QUALITY OF AMERICAN
HEALTH CARE THROUGH THE PATIENT'S LENS
Karen Davis, Cathy Schoen, Stephen C. Schoenbaum, Anne-Marie J. Audet,
Michelle M. Doty, Alyssa L. Holmgren, and Jennifer L. Kriss
The Commonwealth Fund
April 2006

http://www.cmwf.org/usr_doc/Davis_mirrormirror_915.pdf

Germany outperformed the US in timeliness of care, efficiency of care,
equitable access to care, patient safety and "patient-centeredness." In
fact the US scored worse of the six nations studied (Australia, Canada,
Germany, NZ, UK, USA) on four of the six measures.

OECD studies of waiting times in the US and Germany do not support the
notion that Germans wait longer for care either.

----------------------------------------
James J. Hughes Ph.D.
Lecturer, Public Policy
Williams 229B, Trinity College
300 Summit St.
Hartford CT 06106
860-297-2376
james.hughes at trincoll.edu
  



From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Mon Jun 19 16:54:36 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 17:54:36 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <200606182317.k5INHcaU021339@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <10F92890-0661-4742-8FDE-C2713120E300@mac.com>
	<200606182317.k5INHcaU021339@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606190954n72cb0059q4bd09eb9f2ec565a@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/19/06, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Ja we cannot reasonably guard against all possible attacks, but we can
> invest according to our best estimate of risk.  I am suggesting that
> vulnerable stuff like subways are a bad investment with current
> technology.
>

This is ridiculous. What are you going to do, let fear of terrorism convince
you to start driving to work instead of taking the subway? How many people
have terrorists killed in the last few years? A handful of thousands. How
many people have road accidents killed in the last few years? Hundreds of
thousands.

Our Cro-Magnon brains are programmed to respond emotionally to violent
deaths out of all proportion to their actual numbers; we can't help that.
But now that we know the reason for this programming, we know why the
reaction is irrational in today's world and in this case we even have hard
data directing us to the correct conclusion, we can refrain from letting our
programming dictate a self-destructive course of action. Come on, Spike, you
know all this. Extropy-chat is a list for rationalists, and rationality is
about letting our beliefs and actions be dictated by reality.
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From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Mon Jun 19 16:57:06 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 09:57:06 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Discussion about ExI list future
In-Reply-To: <200606181902.k5IJ2w4o023584@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <20060619165707.86394.qmail@web60525.mail.yahoo.com>



--- spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:

> > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Jay Dugger
> > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] META: Discussion about
> ExI list future
> > 
> > I'd like more details, Robert, starting with a
> definition of "woper",
> > please... Jay Dugger
> 
> 
> Wikipedia has no entry for woper.  Perhaps it's when
> Elmer Fudd competes as
> as a wodeo wider?

Nope. It is power hastily written.



Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Mon Jun 19 17:46:59 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 12:46:59 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Discussion about ExI list future
In-Reply-To: <20060619165707.86394.qmail@web60525.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <200606181902.k5IJ2w4o023584@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060619165707.86394.qmail@web60525.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606191046y4d55274fu1d1189fe0785125b@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/19/06, The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Nope. It is power hastily written.


It wasn't "hastily" written.  I actually devoted some mental energy to the
recative llesping to make it a little more difficult for the pumcoters that
might be reading my writings to flag them as "erestinting".

Zheesh... And I thought this was the Extropians list.

And in answer to Jay's question I'd simply suggest that one read the message
from the perspective of the problem the various agendas of all of the
various subscribers to the list (as well as those in stealth mode or those
who may be reading the list but are not even subscribed).

Robert
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From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Mon Jun 19 18:44:16 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 11:44:16 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of bad probability estimation
In-Reply-To: <10F92890-0661-4742-8FDE-C2713120E300@mac.com>
Message-ID: <20060619184416.49539.qmail@web60518.mail.yahoo.com>



--- Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:

> Changing our plans, even for mass transit, for what
> you yourself  
> admit is a extraordinarily small possibility does
> not strike me as  
> reasonable.   Can this society get off the Fear drug
> and get on with  
> life again?  I fervently hope so.   It is certainly
> not possible to  
> eliminate or guard against all that we may fear will
> do us harm.   
> Many current aspects of the very effort do us harm.

Agreed. God forbid we learn to trust our fellow man
when he is not looking down the barrel of a gun.


Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From pharos at gmail.com  Mon Jun 19 20:10:24 2006
From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 21:10:24 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Discussion about ExI list future
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606191046y4d55274fu1d1189fe0785125b@mail.gmail.com>
References: <200606181902.k5IJ2w4o023584@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060619165707.86394.qmail@web60525.mail.yahoo.com>
	<deaa866a0606191046y4d55274fu1d1189fe0785125b@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <ee50357e0606191310uedcb692t2d2b6a388a96d1d3@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/19/06, Robert Bradbury wrote:
> It wasn't "hastily" written.  I actually devoted some mental energy to the
> recative llesping to make it a little more difficult for the pumcoters that
> might be reading my writings to flag them as "erestinting".
>
> Zheesh... And I thought this was the Extropians list.
>
> And in answer to Jay's question I'd simply suggest that one read the message
> from the perspective of the problem the various agendas of all of the
> various subscribers to the list (as well as those in stealth mode or those
> who may be reading the list but are not even subscribed).
>

It has been estimated that English is about 75% redundant. i.e. If you
remove three out of four letters in a text, it will still be
understandable. (By native English speakers).

Like the abbreviations the kids use for text messages.
Some now have difficulty writing 'real' English.

Or just remove all the vowels. Still understandable, though with
occasional possible errors, which the context usually corrects.
'Water' or 'Waiter' ??

Like Ancient Hebrew was written with no vowels. Leading to some
debatable interpretations when the insertion of different vowels
produced different words. Especially as scholars cannot easily enter
the environment and mindset of the ancient Hebrews.

One possible reason for writing like this is that different tribes
(families) in different areas pronounced the vowels with different
accents. Just as Scottish, English and American regional accents
differ nowadays. So different tribes could read the text without
vowels, understand it and speak it in their own regional accent.

Hebrew added to the confusion by not putting any spaces between words.
Making it even more challenging for modern scholars.

Btwrtngwthtvwlsndspcscnstllbndrstd.  :)


BillK


From andrew at ceruleansystems.com  Tue Jun 20 01:04:54 2006
From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 18:04:54 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Enigmatic object baffles supernova team
Message-ID: <1FE82825-0C24-4994-A255-4B3F0C5C2B01@ceruleansystems.com>

Here is something interesting:

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9360-enigmatic-object- 
baffles-supernova-team.html


An extremely energetic object of unknown location and origin with  
strange/unusual properties that do no fit with any previously  
cataloged space object or energetic event.  This weird object looks  
like it might make some good fodder for megascale engineering  
speculation based on the set of things that make it unusual.


J. Andrew Rogers



From spike66 at comcast.net  Tue Jun 20 01:49:44 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 18:49:44 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606190954n72cb0059q4bd09eb9f2ec565a@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <200606200149.k5K1nqa2022059@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Russell Wallace
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure

On 6/19/06, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
Ja ...??I am suggesting that
vulnerable stuff like subways are a bad investment with current technology. 

>This is ridiculous. What are you going to do, let fear of terrorism
convince you to start driving to work instead of taking the subway?...

No, not at all.  It would convince me to vote against building of subways
because they are too likely to go bust.  The reason I avoid subways is not
because of terrorism, it is because they are inconvenient.  

> How many people have terrorists killed in the last few years? A handful of
thousands. How many people have road accidents killed in the last few years?
Hundreds of thousands...

Inappropriate comparison.  Far more people drive than ride subways.
Freeways are more difficult to attack than subways.

> Our Cro-Magnon brains are programmed ...etc... Come on, Spike, you know
all this. Extropy-chat is a list for rationalists, and rationality is about
letting our beliefs and actions be dictated by reality.

I am puzzled by some of these reactions.  Imagine the kindergarten
classroom, five-year-olds playing everywhere.  A kid quietly playing with
blocks by herself in the corner, no one paying a bit of attention to her.
She starts to stack the blocks, making an intricate block castle four feet
high.  What soon happens?

My notion is that building expensive vulnerable infrastructure can actually
*cause* terrorism, in which case past history doesn't really help us much.
The most expensive most vulnerable target will be hit first, for it produces
the most bang for the buck.  Examples: the Japanese subway, the World Trade
Center (twice), the Spanish and British rail station attacks.

The next lesson from kindergarten is that having your block tower knocked
down requires no provocation.  The little girl in the corner hurled no
insults.  Canada did nothing to provoke an attack.  Russell, do explain what
is irrational about this line of reasoning.

spike




   





From neuronexmachina at gmail.com  Tue Jun 20 02:01:39 2006
From: neuronexmachina at gmail.com (Neil H.)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 19:01:39 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Article: The Trouble With Transhumanism
Message-ID: <e88b73ce0606191901o2ec34037pe411cfc76518d7d@mail.gmail.com>

An article by Wesley Smith of the Discovery Institute:

http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=15222_0_32_0_C
>From the end of the article:

""Personhood as the criterion for moral value would entitle smart
robots, uplifted animals, and artificially intelligent
computers?assuming they ever exist?to equal rights. But the cost would
be high to existing and future human beings, particularly the unborn,
infants, and the profoundly brain injured, who would all be excluded
from the moral community under that ethical paradigm. This could lead
to practices such as cloned fetal farming and killing the
catastrophically brain injured for their organs.

"Unfortunately, such eugenics thinking can be seductive. Indeed, the
government is already flirting with transhumanist fantasies. Thus,
"Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance," a 2002
report issued by the National Science Foundation and United States
Department of Commerce, recommended the government spend billions
pursuing some of the very technologies that transhumanists crave to
utilize in their morphological quests. And real money is already being
spent on threshold transhumanist agendas: The NIH just issued a
$773,000 grant to Case Law School in Cleveland to determine the
"ethically-acceptable rules" to permit human research into genetic
enhancement technologies."

"... It is easy to laugh at transhumanist fantasies but there is
nothing funny about a movement whose core value is inherently
discriminatory and oppressive. And while we will almost surely never
become a post human society, we could easily devolve into a
post-sanctity-of-life culture. The antidote to such a dystopian future
is to stick with the basics and by recommitting ourselves to the
fundamental concepts of human exceptionalism and the intrinsic value
of all human life."



From sjatkins at mac.com  Tue Jun 20 02:32:22 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 19:32:22 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <200606190322.k5J3MnVd010951@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <200606190322.k5J3MnVd010951@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <8B618F31-11AB-4AE2-86DE-2CE50271B86A@mac.com>


On Jun 18, 2006, at 8:11 PM, spike wrote:

>
>> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins
> ...
>>> Does anyone here think that terrorism will quietly go away?
>>
>> That which we pay inordinate attention to and center our lives and
>> country around certainly will not go away.
>
> So we can somehow ignore it away?

Those are not the only two choices of course.  Terrorism should not  
be the high priority and general excuse it is today.

> ...
>>
>> If you want terrorism to go away then end the circumstances that fuel
>> it.  Nothing else will do...
>
> Doesn't sound to me like that will do either.  Canada did nothing  
> to fuel
> terrorism that I can see.  Did they?  I didn't see any indication  
> that the
> Canadian terrorists were blaming Israel or the US for anything.   
> They were
> specifically going after Canada for some odd reason.  I admit I am  
> puzzled.
> Perhaps it is all fake.
>

That is the only thing that will lessen terrorism significantly.  I  
did not say or mean it will eliminate it totally.

>>> ...Who here thinks that terrorism will escalate?
>>
>> It will escalate if we continue as we are now.  But the fear and
>> paranoia will escalate much faster...
>
> Ja I can imagine the Canadians feeling a rising paranoia.  Perhaps  
> they are
> struggling to understand why suddenly everyone hates them.  To these
> Canadians I say: get over it, everyone doesn't hate you.


It is we in the US who are suffering from deep paranoia and engaging  
in foolish foreign and domestic policy as a result.  Unlike perhaps  
the Canadians much of the Middle East especially has very good  
reasons to despise us.

- samantha




From sjatkins at mac.com  Tue Jun 20 02:36:52 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 19:36:52 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Discussion about ExI list future
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606191046y4d55274fu1d1189fe0785125b@mail.gmail.com>
References: <200606181902.k5IJ2w4o023584@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<20060619165707.86394.qmail@web60525.mail.yahoo.com>
	<deaa866a0606191046y4d55274fu1d1189fe0785125b@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <37A0E663-7A50-4A74-B885-3581030CC5C0@mac.com>


On Jun 19, 2006, at 10:46 AM, Robert Bradbury wrote:

>
> On 6/19/06, The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Nope. It is power hastily written.
>
> It wasn't "hastily" written.  I actually devoted some mental energy  
> to the recative llesping to make it a little more difficult for the  
> pumcoters that might be reading my writings to flag them as  
> "erestinting".
>
> Zheesh... And I thought this was the Extropians list.


Hey, I got it.  :-)  I know how erudite you are and that your posts  
are a veritable standard of grammatical and spelling perfection.

- samantha

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From sjatkins at mac.com  Tue Jun 20 02:43:46 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 19:43:46 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Enigmatic object baffles supernova team
In-Reply-To: <1FE82825-0C24-4994-A255-4B3F0C5C2B01@ceruleansystems.com>
References: <1FE82825-0C24-4994-A255-4B3F0C5C2B01@ceruleansystems.com>
Message-ID: <409E2E3F-0CA8-4FA9-BE19-0DD445F8BE8A@mac.com>

What a strange article.  It variously says the object could be 5.5  
billion light years away, 12 billion light years away or in our own  
galaxy.  In short it doesn't seem we know much other than the raw  
data.   Very odd.

- samantha

On Jun 19, 2006, at 6:04 PM, J. Andrew Rogers wrote:

> Here is something interesting:
>
> http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9360-enigmatic-object-
> baffles-supernova-team.html
>
>
> An extremely energetic object of unknown location and origin with
> strange/unusual properties that do no fit with any previously
> cataloged space object or energetic event.  This weird object looks
> like it might make some good fodder for megascale engineering
> speculation based on the set of things that make it unusual.
>
>
> J. Andrew Rogers
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat



From sjatkins at mac.com  Tue Jun 20 02:51:37 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 19:51:37 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <200606200149.k5K1nqa2022059@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <200606200149.k5K1nqa2022059@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <A70FCC67-B536-45CD-8B2B-094A4F8E7F46@mac.com>


On Jun 19, 2006, at 6:49 PM, spike wrote:

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Russell Wallace
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in  
> infrastructure
>
> On 6/19/06, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Ja ...  I am suggesting that
> vulnerable stuff like subways are a bad investment with current  
> technology.
>
>> This is ridiculous. What are you going to do, let fear of terrorism
> convince you to start driving to work instead of taking the subway?...
>
> No, not at all.  It would convince me to vote against building of  
> subways
> because they are too likely to go bust.  The reason I avoid subways  
> is not
> because of terrorism, it is because they are inconvenient.

If we had a decent mass transit system out here in the south bay I  
would use it more often.  Caltrain is better than nothing but by the  
time I have fought traffic to park at the nearest station I would be  
over halfway to work.    The buses are too few to take to the station  
for me.

>
>> How many people have terrorists killed in the last few years? A  
>> handful of
> thousands. How many people have road accidents killed in the last  
> few years?
> Hundreds of thousands...
>
> Inappropriate comparison.  Far more people drive than ride subways.
> Freeways are more difficult to attack than subways.

Not at all inappropriate.  Per passenger mile the highways are orders  
of magnitude more dangerous than subways or any other form of mass  
transit.

>
> My notion is that building expensive vulnerable infrastructure can  
> actually
> *cause* terrorism, in which case past history doesn't really help  
> us much.
> The most expensive most vulnerable target will be hit first, for it  
> produces
> the most bang for the buck.  Examples: the Japanese subway, the  
> World Trade
> Center (twice), the Spanish and British rail station attacks.
>

Terrorism is not caused by building things that can be attacked.  A  
shopping mall or even a restaurant can be attacked.  Random small  
attacks are just as effective at spreading terror than one or two  
large attacks.

> The next lesson from kindergarten is that having your block tower  
> knocked
> down requires no provocation.  The little girl in the corner hurled no
> insults.  Canada did nothing to provoke an attack.  Russell, do  
> explain what
> is irrational about this line of reasoning.

Well you did claim to be getting on with life yet you are advising  
not building various things because you fear terrorism.  Something  
seem a bit off.

- samantha




From george at betterhumans.com  Tue Jun 20 02:36:27 2006
From: george at betterhumans.com (George Dvorsky)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 22:36:27 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Article: The Trouble With Transhumanism
In-Reply-To: <e88b73ce0606191901o2ec34037pe411cfc76518d7d@mail.gmail.com>
References: <e88b73ce0606191901o2ec34037pe411cfc76518d7d@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <44975F2B.3090603@betterhumans.com>

> The antidote to such a dystopian future
> is to stick with the basics and by recommitting ourselves to the
> fundamental concepts of human exceptionalism and the intrinsic value
> of all human life.

Why is it when I hear phrases like "human exceptionalism" that other 
phrases like "noble exceptionalism," "racial exceptionalism," and 
"hetero exceptionalism," come to mind. Perhaps it's just me.

Cheers,
George




From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Tue Jun 20 02:54:38 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 03:54:38 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <200606200149.k5K1nqa2022059@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <8d71341e0606190954n72cb0059q4bd09eb9f2ec565a@mail.gmail.com>
	<200606200149.k5K1nqa2022059@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606191954i5b8a0a1dx546af01992957679@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/20/06, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> My notion is that building expensive vulnerable infrastructure can
> actually
> *cause* terrorism, in which case past history doesn't really help us much.
> The most expensive most vulnerable target will be hit first, for it
> produces
> the most bang for the buck.  Examples: the Japanese subway, the World
> Trade
> Center (twice), the Spanish and British rail station attacks.
>
> The next lesson from kindergarten is that having your block tower knocked
> down requires no provocation.  The little girl in the corner hurled no
> insults.  Canada did nothing to provoke an attack.  Russell, do explain
> what
> is irrational about this line of reasoning.


A long time ago I read an account by a woman whose uncle molested her as a
child. It was when she reached puberty, and she recounts that the
explanation she ended up with at that time was: "It was my fault because if
I hadn't grown the breasts, then I wouldn't have tempted him."

What are you suggesting, doing away with everything above the level of a mud
hut will keep you safe? Ask the Khwarezmids or the Albigensians how well
that works. They didn't have subways, and their losses weren't in mere
handfuls of thousands.
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From sjatkins at mac.com  Tue Jun 20 03:03:02 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 20:03:02 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Article: The Trouble With Transhumanism
In-Reply-To: <e88b73ce0606191901o2ec34037pe411cfc76518d7d@mail.gmail.com>
References: <e88b73ce0606191901o2ec34037pe411cfc76518d7d@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <86C22B73-0ABD-4822-B1C7-ED24DA8774C0@mac.com>


On Jun 19, 2006, at 7:01 PM, Neil H. wrote:

> An article by Wesley Smith of the Discovery Institute:
>
> http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=15222_0_32_0_C
>> From the end of the article:
>
> ""Personhood as the criterion for moral value would entitle smart
> robots, uplifted animals, and artificially intelligent
> computers?assuming they ever exist?to equal rights. But the cost would
> be high to existing and future human beings, particularly the unborn,
> infants, and the profoundly brain injured, who would all be excluded
> from the moral community under that ethical paradigm. This could lead
> to practices such as cloned fetal farming and killing the
> catastrophically brain injured for their organs.
>

The unborn are not included now except by rabid fundamentalist  
trash.   Infants have rights to care and against abuse but not  
precisely the same rights as adults.  Ditto with children and adults  
that have become variously incompetent.   The profoundly brain  
injured should be allowed to die if that is the wish of their loved  
ones or those with medical power of attorney.  Again the rabid  
fundamentalist fringe fights this.   The rest of this is silly  
drivel.  Embryo cloning is only a violation of rights again to these  
fundie lunatics who unfortunately now have considerable clout in the  
US government.

Sorry to be harsh but I have had it with the power of the religious  
right in this country.

> "Unfortunately, such eugenics thinking can be seductive. Indeed, the
> government is already flirting with transhumanist fantasies. Thus,
> "Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance," a 2002
> report issued by the National Science Foundation and United States
> Department of Commerce, recommended the government spend billions
> pursuing some of the very technologies that transhumanists crave to
> utilize in their morphological quests. And real money is already being
> spent on threshold transhumanist agendas: The NIH just issued a
> $773,000 grant to Case Law School in Cleveland to determine the
> "ethically-acceptable rules" to permit human research into genetic
> enhancement technologies."

Which technologies?  What is being included in these "billions" as  
being to the liking of the evil eugenic minded transhumanist horde?

>
> "... It is easy to laugh at transhumanist fantasies but there is
> nothing funny about a movement whose core value is inherently
> discriminatory and oppressive. And while we will almost surely never
> become a post human society, we could easily devolve into a
> post-sanctity-of-life culture. The antidote to such a dystopian future
> is to stick with the basics and by recommitting ourselves to the
> fundamental concepts of human exceptionalism and the intrinsic value
> of all human life."
>

It is easier to laugh at a pile of drivel which is the best this  
opponent seems able to come up with.  Sanctity of life my ass.   
Fundies don't consider life sacred.  They only consider their  
dogmatic views to be sacred.   If life was sacred they would support  
its extension and the improvement of the human condition.   They  
don't even support sex education to lower the number of abortions  
that they rail so much against.   I have no use for these  
hypocritical vicious creatures.

- samantha




From andrew at ceruleansystems.com  Tue Jun 20 03:36:39 2006
From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 20:36:39 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Enigmatic object baffles supernova team
In-Reply-To: <409E2E3F-0CA8-4FA9-BE19-0DD445F8BE8A@mac.com>
References: <1FE82825-0C24-4994-A255-4B3F0C5C2B01@ceruleansystems.com>
	<409E2E3F-0CA8-4FA9-BE19-0DD445F8BE8A@mac.com>
Message-ID: <A93DDF57-7877-497B-BCC1-3C114B46CD52@ceruleansystems.com>


On Jun 19, 2006, at 7:43 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote:
> What a strange article.  It variously says the object could be 5.5
> billion light years away, 12 billion light years away or in our own
> galaxy.  In short it doesn't seem we know much other than the raw
> data.   Very odd.


Yeah, that is what caught my attention.  It isn't that they do not  
have some good data -- they have marshaled some nice assets for  
observations -- but that they are having a hard time making the raw  
data fit any conventional model.  I've already caught opinions from a  
couple professional astronomers (though neither specializing in this)  
and the gist is that they find it very weird and therefore very  
interesting, but are at a loss for a meaningful opinion of what it  
might be based on the data presented.  Too many anomalies in too many  
different dimensions to reasonably shoehorn it as an outlier of some  
well-known class given the current data.

J. Andrew Rogers


From spike66 at comcast.net  Tue Jun 20 03:48:01 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 20:48:01 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <A70FCC67-B536-45CD-8B2B-094A4F8E7F46@mac.com>
Message-ID: <200606200348.k5K3m896029458@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins
...
> 
> If we had a decent mass transit system out here in the south bay I
> would use it more often.  Caltrain is better than nothing but by the
> time I have fought traffic to park at the nearest station I would be
> over halfway to work.    The buses are too few to take to the station
> for me...

Ja, we don't have the population densities required to make mass transit
viable here.  The only way we could really make it go is to eliminate
parking lots everywhere.  If we put our minds to it, we can force the people
to serve mass transit. 


> Well you did claim to be getting on with life yet you are advising
> not building various things because you fear terrorism.  Something
> seem a bit off. - samantha

Something is a bit on.  My life goes on.  In fact life for me is better now
than at any time in the past.

I am advocating not building subways because they are too likely to go bust,
both because of inconvenience and theoretical terrorism that has never
happened.  One could argue that this is an indirect fear of terrorism: it is
a fear of economic failure because of public fear of terrorism.  

Still, subways are a bad bet.  Even our local mass transit doesn't pay for
itself, after all we have invested.  Samantha, you and I have seen our very
expensive light rail go by, holding up blocks of car traffic, with two
people aboard, one of which is the guy operating the train.  If it were a
private business it would have folded a long time ago.  So why do we still
have it?  Why do we need it?  Are we still betting on them becoming viable
at some indefinite future time?

spike









From spike66 at comcast.net  Tue Jun 20 03:59:41 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 20:59:41 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606191954i5b8a0a1dx546af01992957679@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <200606200359.k5K3xv81019070@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Russell Wallace
...

>A long time ago I read an account by a woman whose uncle molested her as a
child. It was when she reached puberty, and she recounts that the
explanation she ended up with at that time was: "It was my fault because if
I hadn't grown the breasts, then I wouldn't have tempted him."


If anything was her fault it was because she didn't swat him in the groin
with a baseball bat as he slept.  I do not advocate weakness, for that
strategy invites attack.


>What are you suggesting, doing away with everything above the level of a
mud hut will keep you safe? Ask the Khwarezmids or the Albigensians how well
that works. They didn't have subways, and their losses weren't in mere
handfuls of thousands.



I advocate we spread out more evenly, reducing overcrowding and improving
quality of life for everyone.  We no longer have the conditions that led to
enormous skyscrapers.  The skyscrapers create the need for subways, which
leads to a way of life that isn't particularly pleasant: getting on a train
every morning and evening.  We have advanced communications now, advanced
transportation, advanced manufacturing.  We are poised to make enormous
advances in quality of life for the proletariat if we choose to seize this
opportunity. 

spike



 




From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Tue Jun 20 04:15:33 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 05:15:33 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <200606200359.k5K3xv81019070@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <8d71341e0606191954i5b8a0a1dx546af01992957679@mail.gmail.com>
	<200606200359.k5K3xv81019070@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606192115l7faf15eclb6ab29584a3887a3@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/20/06, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> I do not advocate weakness, for that
> strategy invites attack.


Good, we're agreed on that. Hit back when attacked - but in the meantime let
us not distort our lives with phantom fear.

I advocate we spread out more evenly, reducing overcrowding and improving
> quality of life for everyone.  We no longer have the conditions that led
> to
> enormous skyscrapers.  The skyscrapers create the need for subways, which
> leads to a way of life that isn't particularly pleasant: getting on a
> train
> every morning and evening.  We have advanced communications now, advanced
> transportation, advanced manufacturing.  We are poised to make enormous
> advances in quality of life for the proletariat if we choose to seize this
> opportunity.


"The workers' flats in fields of soya beans tower up like silver pencils,
score on score" - frig me, I actually remembered a poem from school! (I'll
admit I checked the wording with Google :))

Doesn't strike me as an issue that matters, except for the whole "we shall
make the decisions for the proletariat, comrade, and they shall like it!"
thing, but if you want to advocate that go ahead. (If you get the ear of
someone in power, please try for the removal of the planning laws that set
people at each others' throats for an artificial scarcity of housing while
millions of hectares of land lie unused, but I digress.)

But that's a completely different issue - you know better than to think the
bogeyman terrorist needs to get dragged into the discussion, so please
don't.
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From neuronexmachina at gmail.com  Tue Jun 20 05:48:57 2006
From: neuronexmachina at gmail.com (Neil H.)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 22:48:57 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Enigmatic object baffles supernova team
In-Reply-To: <A93DDF57-7877-497B-BCC1-3C114B46CD52@ceruleansystems.com>
References: <1FE82825-0C24-4994-A255-4B3F0C5C2B01@ceruleansystems.com>
	<409E2E3F-0CA8-4FA9-BE19-0DD445F8BE8A@mac.com>
	<A93DDF57-7877-497B-BCC1-3C114B46CD52@ceruleansystems.com>
Message-ID: <e88b73ce0606192248wb9bf66xe4f03db952527c7f@mail.gmail.com>

Are there any sources for information on this besides New Scientist?
I've tried some preliminary googling and haven't been successful.

On 6/19/06, J. Andrew Rogers <andrew at ceruleansystems.com> wrote:
>
> On Jun 19, 2006, at 7:43 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote:
> > What a strange article.  It variously says the object could be 5.5
> > billion light years away, 12 billion light years away or in our own
> > galaxy.  In short it doesn't seem we know much other than the raw
> > data.   Very odd.
>
>
> Yeah, that is what caught my attention.  It isn't that they do not
> have some good data -- they have marshaled some nice assets for
> observations -- but that they are having a hard time making the raw
> data fit any conventional model.  I've already caught opinions from a
> couple professional astronomers (though neither specializing in this)
> and the gist is that they find it very weird and therefore very
> interesting, but are at a loss for a meaningful opinion of what it
> might be based on the data presented.  Too many anomalies in too many
> different dimensions to reasonably shoehorn it as an outlier of some
> well-known class given the current data.
>
> J. Andrew Rogers
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>


From scerir at libero.it  Tue Jun 20 06:13:29 2006
From: scerir at libero.it (scerir)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 08:13:29 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Discussion about ExI list future
References: <200606181902.k5IJ2w4o023584@andromeda.ziaspace.com><20060619165707.86394.qmail@web60525.mail.yahoo.com><deaa866a0606191046y4d55274fu1d1189fe0785125b@mail.gmail.com>
	<ee50357e0606191310uedcb692t2d2b6a388a96d1d3@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <002f01c69430$a72b6d60$09921f97@nomedxgm1aalex>

From: "BillK" 

> Btwrtngwthtvwlsndspcscnstllbndrstd.  :)

A new genetic desease?

Rather, it could be a sort of genetic 
selection, according to this paper ...

THE LESSONS OF THE ASHKENAZIM
Groups and Genes
by Steven Pinker 
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060626&s=pinker062606





From eugen at leitl.org  Tue Jun 20 08:31:38 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 10:31:38 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Enigmatic object baffles supernova team
In-Reply-To: <409E2E3F-0CA8-4FA9-BE19-0DD445F8BE8A@mac.com>
References: <1FE82825-0C24-4994-A255-4B3F0C5C2B01@ceruleansystems.com>
	<409E2E3F-0CA8-4FA9-BE19-0DD445F8BE8A@mac.com>
Message-ID: <20060620083138.GO28956@leitl.org>

On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 07:43:46PM -0700, Samantha Atkins wrote:

> What a strange article.  It variously says the object could be 5.5  
> billion light years away, 12 billion light years away or in our own  
> galaxy.  In short it doesn't seem we know much other than the raw  
> data.   Very odd.

I'm definitely missing information on this object's spectrum,
other than it's "weird". It would be of course very cool to
see drive signatures, or machines of gods, but of course that's
what they thought about first pulsars, too.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From giogavir at yahoo.it  Tue Jun 20 09:44:55 2006
From: giogavir at yahoo.it (giorgio gaviraghi)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 11:44:55 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity
In-Reply-To: <0af901c693a3$1e6ab5e0$9a00a8c0@old>
Message-ID: <20060620094456.27251.qmail@web26209.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>

I believe that the opposite is true.
Superlongevity will defeat boredom, because will allow
people to have long range plans, will allow careers
change, permanent education ,possibility to explore
new subjects without the costrain of time .
Our society must understand that superlongevity will
change completely the education and work market.
Today we risk to be off the labor market if we are
over 45, in a new society age must not be a
discriminating factor as it is today, but must allow
everybody to have new opportunities independently of
age.That is the main issue and the main challenge,
forget the age barrier that today is what leads to
boredom, desperation and a terrible waste of good
knowhow and experience.
Society must overcome the age barrier and accept
willing people at any age, without any more
discriminations.
Giorgio
--- Mark Walker <mark at permanentend.org> ha scritto: 

> I've put an early draft of a paper here:
> www.permanentend.org/walker/Boredom.html As usual,
> comments welcome. Below
> is the abstract:
> 
> Abstract:  'Superlongevity' may be thought of as
> doubling (or more) the
> human lifespan through the use of technology.
> Critics have argued that
> superlongevity will inevitably lead to boredom,
> while proponents have denied
> this claim. Rather than attempting to resolve the
> debate through theoretical
> speculation, I argue that allowing persons to become
> superlongevitists can
> be construed as an experiment to decide this issue.
> Further, the moral
> benefits of conducting the experiment greatly
> outweigh the moral costs of
> not running the experiment.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Mark
> 
> 
> Dr. Mark Walker
> Department of Philosophy
> University Hall 310
> McMaster University
> 1280 Main Street West
> Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4K1
> Canada
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>
http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
> 


Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale! 
 http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com 


From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Tue Jun 20 12:44:37 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 08:44:37 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Article: The Trouble With Transhumanism
In-Reply-To: <86C22B73-0ABD-4822-B1C7-ED24DA8774C0@mac.com>
References: <e88b73ce0606191901o2ec34037pe411cfc76518d7d@mail.gmail.com>
	<86C22B73-0ABD-4822-B1C7-ED24DA8774C0@mac.com>
Message-ID: <42129.72.236.102.102.1150807477.squirrel@main.nc.us>

Samantha writes:
>  Sanctity of life my ass.
> Fundies don't consider life sacred.  They only consider their
> dogmatic views to be sacred.   If life was sacred they would support
> its extension and the improvement of the human condition.   They
> don't even support sex education to lower the number of abortions
> that they rail so much against.   I have no use for these
> hypocritical vicious creatures.


Right on! If they considered life so sacred they'd be offering to adopt
instead of just screeching about abortion. Geez. What rubbish.

Regards,
MB



From mark at permanentend.org  Tue Jun 20 13:31:10 2006
From: mark at permanentend.org (Mark Walker)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 09:31:10 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity
References: <20060620094456.27251.qmail@web26209.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <030801c6946d$cd6a4e00$9a00a8c0@old>


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "giorgio gaviraghi" <giogavir at yahoo.it>

>I believe that the opposite is true.
> Superlongevity will defeat boredom, because will allow
> people to have long range plans, will allow careers
> change, permanent education ,possibility to explore
> new subjects without the costrain of time .
> Our society must understand that superlongevity will
> change completely the education and work market.
> Today we risk to be off the labor market if we are
> over 45, in a new society age must not be a
> discriminating factor as it is today, but must allow
> everybody to have new opportunities independently of
> age.That is the main issue and the main challenge,
> forget the age barrier that today is what leads to
> boredom, desperation and a terrible waste of good
> knowhow and experience.
> Society must overcome the age barrier and accept
> willing people at any age, without any more
> discriminations.
> Giorgio

Your conjecture that superlongevity will overcome boredom I think is 
plausible for some. The elderly now are sometimes marginalized. I heard 
students at my university criticize senior citizens for taking up space in a 
course that would be better given to a younger student. So, I think a least 
some boredom can be attributed to ageism. Whether it would completely 
disappear with superlongevity is another matter.

Regards,

Mark

Dr. Mark Walker
Department of Philosophy
University Hall 310
McMaster University
1280 Main Street West
Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4K1
Canada



From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Tue Jun 20 14:40:51 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 10:40:51 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity
In-Reply-To: <030801c6946d$cd6a4e00$9a00a8c0@old>
References: <20060620094456.27251.qmail@web26209.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
	<030801c6946d$cd6a4e00$9a00a8c0@old>
Message-ID: <42200.72.236.103.229.1150814451.squirrel@main.nc.us>


> Your conjecture that superlongevity will overcome boredom I think is
> plausible for some. The elderly now are sometimes marginalized. I heard
> students at my university criticize senior citizens for taking up space in
> a
> course that would be better given to a younger student. So, I think a
> least
> some boredom can be attributed to ageism. Whether it would completely
> disappear with superlongevity is another matter.
>

In my experience some people simply *are* bored. They don't do anything.
They do not or cannot or will not even amuse themselves. I fear there's
not much can be done about that - other than making resources so few and
far between that they *must* continue struggling just to survive. Hard to
be bored then! :/

Other folks have continuing interests and eagerness to learn and expand
their capabilities.  They might well appreciate extended years of decent
health. And that is the key, decent health. No particular delight when one
is suffering and frustrated with pain and incapacity.

I see a major need in that area... dealing with the troubles that afflict
us as we become older. A few very specific things here that are
frightening to older folks: debilitating arthritis, macular degeneration,
Alzheimers, osteoporosis... These suckers don't kill you, they just kill a
large part of your life. :(

And we're all on this road, even the young squirts who resent old folks in
their classes. Which reaction I do understand, if there are young folks
needing/wanting those classes.

Regards,
MB



From james.hughes at trincoll.edu  Tue Jun 20 15:15:23 2006
From: james.hughes at trincoll.edu (Hughes, James J.)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 11:15:23 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] World Health Statistics 2006
Message-ID: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B417012F00@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>


World Health Statistics 2006 

Public Health Mapping and GIS, Communicable Diseases,
World Health Organization. 2006

Website: http://www.who.int/whosis/whostat2006/en/index.html 
<http://www.who.int/whosis/whostat2006/en/index.html> 

".....presents the most recent statistics since 1997 of 50 health
indicators for WHO's 192 Member States. This second edition of World
Health Statistics includes an expanded set of statistics, with a
particular focus on equity between and within countries. It also
introduces a section with 10 highlights in global health statistics
For the past year....."

In addition to national statistics, this publication presents statistics
on the distribution of selected health outcomes and interventions within
countries, disaggregated by gender, age, urban/rural setting,
wealth/assets, and educational level. Such statistics are primarily
derived from the analysis of household surveys and are only available
for a limited number of countries. We envisage that the number of
countries reporting disaggregated data will increase during the next
Few years.

The core indicators do not aim to capture all relevant aspects of
health, but to provide a comprehensive summary of the current status
Of population health and health systems at country level: 1) mortality
outcomes; 2) morbidity outcomes; 3) risk factors; 4) coverage of
selected health interventions; 5) health systems; 6) inequalities in
health; and 7) demographic and socioeconomic statistics.

:: View the ten global health highlights
<http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/2006highlights/en/index.html> 

:: Query the database online
<http://www3.who.int/whosis/core/core_select.cfm> 

:: Review the indicator definitions and metadata
<http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/indicatordefinitions/en/index.html> 

Download the entire document :: World Health Statistics 2006 [pdf
5.79Mb] 
<http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/whostat2006.pdf> 

Download the document by section :: Table of Contents and Introduction
[pdf 302kb]
<http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/whostat2006_toc2intro.pdf>

:: Ten statistical highlights in global public health [pdf 3.19Mb]
<http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/whostat2006_10highlights.pdf> 

:: Mortality [pdf 395kb]
<http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/whostat2006_mortality.pdf> 

:: Morbidity [pdf 138kb]
<http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/whostat2006_morbidity.pdf> 

:: Coverage [pdf 359kb]
<http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/whostat2006_coverage.pdf> 

:: Risk Factors [pdf 358kb]
<http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/whostat2006_riskfactors.pdf> 

:: Health Systems [pdf 677kb]
<http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/whostat2006_healthsystems.pdf> 

:: Demographic and Socioeconomic Statistics [pdf 296kb]
<http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/whostat2006_demographics.pdf> 

Download the Tables

:: Health Status: Mortality [xls 135kb]
<http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/whostat2006_mortality.xls> 

:: Health Status: Morbidity [xls 62kb]
<http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/whostat2006_morbidity.xls> 

:: Health Service Coverage [xls 112kb]
<http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/whostat2006_coverage.xls> 

:: Risk Factors [xls 112kb]
<http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/whostat2006_riskfactors.xls> 

:: Health Systems [xls 164kb]
<http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/whostat2006_healthsystems.xls> 

:: Inequities in Health [xls 72kb]
<http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/whostat2006_inequities.xls> 

:: Demographic and Socioeconomic Statistics [xls 77kb]
<http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/whostat2006_demographics.xls> 





From sjatkins at mac.com  Tue Jun 20 15:33:18 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 08:33:18 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <200606200348.k5K3m896029458@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <200606200348.k5K3m896029458@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <6D762EC5-F1B6-475B-A13D-40C864FF8459@mac.com>


On Jun 19, 2006, at 8:48 PM, spike wrote:

>> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins
> ...
>>
>> If we had a decent mass transit system out here in the south bay I
>> would use it more often.  Caltrain is better than nothing but by the
>> time I have fought traffic to park at the nearest station I would be
>> over halfway to work.    The buses are too few to take to the station
>> for me...
>
> Ja, we don't have the population densities required to make mass  
> transit
> viable here.  The only way we could really make it go is to eliminate
> parking lots everywhere.  If we put our minds to it, we can force  
> the people
> to serve mass transit.
>

As I look out my window into my neighbor's kitchen I very much doubt  
lack of population density is a problem.

>
>> Well you did claim to be getting on with life yet you are advising
>> not building various things because you fear terrorism.  Something
>> seem a bit off. - samantha
>
> Something is a bit on.  My life goes on.  In fact life for me is  
> better now
> than at any time in the past.
>
> I am advocating not building subways because they are too likely to  
> go bust,
> both because of inconvenience and theoretical terrorism that has never
> happened.  One could argue that this is an indirect fear of  
> terrorism: it is
> a fear of economic failure because of public fear of terrorism.

You did bring up terrorism first as your reason.
>
> Still, subways are a bad bet.  Even our local mass transit doesn't  
> pay for
> itself, after all we have invested.

That is partially on purpose imho.

> Samantha, you and I have seen our very
> expensive light rail go by, holding up blocks of car traffic, with two
> people aboard, one of which is the guy operating the train.  If it  
> were a
> private business it would have folded a long time ago.  So why do  
> we still
> have it?  Why do we need it?  Are we still betting on them becoming  
> viable
> at some indefinite future time?

I have rarely seen it that underutilized.  We spend many tens of  
billions of dollars every year of lost productivity sitting in a box  
on wheels driving to and from work.   We spend much more than that on  
be box and the liquid gold that fuels it.  Clearly this is sub- 
optimal to say the least.

- samantha



From pgptag at gmail.com  Tue Jun 20 17:12:12 2006
From: pgptag at gmail.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:12:12 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] IEET presentation in Second Life
Message-ID: <470a3c520606201012u35711a51i9d9a6b087f7d3764@mail.gmail.com>

Updates: see http://uvvy.com/index.php/IEET_presentation-1_in_SL

IEET presentation in Second Life

Friday June 30, 2006, 2 pm EST (8 pm in most European countries, this should
be convenient for visitors from both the US and Europe).

The IEET presentation will be dedicated to outlining the work and programs
of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies <http://ieet.org/>.

The event is sponsored by the IEET and
Vivox<http://uvvy.com/index.php/Vivox_in_Second_Life>,
a provider of voice communication services in VR
worlds<http://uvvy.com/index.php/Virtual_reality>.
It will be one of the first voice-enabled educational events in Second
Life<http://uvvy.com/index.php/Second_Life>.


Besides a Second Life <http://uvvy.com/index.php/Second_Life> account and
client software, to participate you will need a
Vivox<http://uvvy.com/index.php/Vivox_in_Second_Life>account and a
recent release of the Vivox client. We are coordinating new
user accounts and software upgrades with Vivox, so if you wish to
participate and do not have a Vivox account, PLEASE ADD YOUR NAME, EMAIL,
AFFILIATION AND SECOND LIFE AVATAR NAME TO THE LIST OF
PARTICIPANTS<http://uvvy.com/index.php/June302006List>.
If you already have a Vivox account, you should update your client to the
last release available from the Vivox download page.

Agenda:

2 pm EST: Welcome

2.30 pm EST: Presentations in the Auditorium (central building, first
floor):

Presentations:

   - "Introduction", by Giulio
Prisco<http://futuretag.net/index.php/Giulio_Prisco>(Giulio Perhaps in
SL).
   - "The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET)", by James
   Hughes <http://futuretag.net/index.php/James_Hughes> (James Sleeper in
   SL).
   - "TBA", by Jamais Cascio.

Presentations and Q/A audio via
Vivox<http://uvvy.com/index.php/Vivox_in_Second_Life>
.

We haev been testing Vivox
<http://uvvy.com/index.php/Vivox_in_Second_Life>and are quite pleased
with the results so far.

4 pm: Visit to the space habitat <http://uvvy.com/index.php/SLspacehab>.
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From ml at gondwanaland.com  Tue Jun 20 16:46:10 2006
From: ml at gondwanaland.com (Mike Linksvayer)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 12:46:10 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <6D762EC5-F1B6-475B-A13D-40C864FF8459@mac.com>
References: <200606200348.k5K3m896029458@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<6D762EC5-F1B6-475B-A13D-40C864FF8459@mac.com>
Message-ID: <20060620164610.GA34579@or.pair.com>

On Tue, Jun 20, 2006 at 08:33:18AM -0700, Samantha Atkins wrote:
> I have rarely seen it that underutilized.

I haven't read the entire thread closely but I think you're talking
about VTA light rail.  It is grossly underutilized when measured
against capacity anp estimates used to sell the system.
See http://www.ti.org/vaupdate32.html

> We spend many tens of  
> billions of dollars every year of lost productivity sitting in a box  
> on wheels driving to and from work.   We spend much more than that on  
> be box and the liquid gold that fuels it.  Clearly this is sub- 
> optimal to say the least.

Suboptimal for what set of constraints?

The constraints are going to change soon and building more inflexible
political trophy transit lines is very short-sighted.  See
http://ideas.4brad.com/node/410


-- 
  Mike Linksvayer
  http://gondwanaland.com/ml/


From kevin at kevinfreels.com  Tue Jun 20 17:53:07 2006
From: kevin at kevinfreels.com (kevinfreels.com)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 12:53:07 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
References: <200606200348.k5K3m896029458@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<6D762EC5-F1B6-475B-A13D-40C864FF8459@mac.com>
Message-ID: <19a101c69492$63d1fcc0$650fa8c0@kevin>

Proponents of public transportation always seem to forget that people like
things for other reasons than efficiency. They like music, art,
architecture, flowers, and of course, cars. The money invested on designing
even "better" public transportation I think would be better spent on finding
ways that people don't have to go places. For example, the technology that
allows me to work from home was not there 10 years ago, so people in my
position were stuck driving around to other people's offices every day. Even
with a T1 connection it wouldn't have helped because the people I did
business with would have needed the same technology. Instead, hours would be
spent on the road driving from one office to the next picking up documents
and building relationships. Now I can sit here at my desk in a small town of
3000 and work out of New York, California, Florida, Texas, and anywhere else
I need to work. I can even order my groceries online and have them
delivered. To me, this is much more efficient than had the city decided to
build a mass transit system. I should try to calculate the difference in
saved time and energy from then to now. It would be interesting to see the
difference.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Samantha Atkins" <sjatkins at mac.com>
To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2006 10:33 AM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure


>
> On Jun 19, 2006, at 8:48 PM, spike wrote:
>
> >> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins
> > ...
> >>
> >> If we had a decent mass transit system out here in the south bay I
> >> would use it more often.  Caltrain is better than nothing but by the
> >> time I have fought traffic to park at the nearest station I would be
> >> over halfway to work.    The buses are too few to take to the station
> >> for me...
> >
> > Ja, we don't have the population densities required to make mass
> > transit
> > viable here.  The only way we could really make it go is to eliminate
> > parking lots everywhere.  If we put our minds to it, we can force
> > the people
> > to serve mass transit.
> >
>
> As I look out my window into my neighbor's kitchen I very much doubt
> lack of population density is a problem.
>
> >
> >> Well you did claim to be getting on with life yet you are advising
> >> not building various things because you fear terrorism.  Something
> >> seem a bit off. - samantha
> >
> > Something is a bit on.  My life goes on.  In fact life for me is
> > better now
> > than at any time in the past.
> >
> > I am advocating not building subways because they are too likely to
> > go bust,
> > both because of inconvenience and theoretical terrorism that has never
> > happened.  One could argue that this is an indirect fear of
> > terrorism: it is
> > a fear of economic failure because of public fear of terrorism.
>
> You did bring up terrorism first as your reason.
> >
> > Still, subways are a bad bet.  Even our local mass transit doesn't
> > pay for
> > itself, after all we have invested.
>
> That is partially on purpose imho.
>
> > Samantha, you and I have seen our very
> > expensive light rail go by, holding up blocks of car traffic, with two
> > people aboard, one of which is the guy operating the train.  If it
> > were a
> > private business it would have folded a long time ago.  So why do
> > we still
> > have it?  Why do we need it?  Are we still betting on them becoming
> > viable
> > at some indefinite future time?
>
> I have rarely seen it that underutilized.  We spend many tens of
> billions of dollars every year of lost productivity sitting in a box
> on wheels driving to and from work.   We spend much more than that on
> be box and the liquid gold that fuels it.  Clearly this is sub-
> optimal to say the least.
>
> - samantha
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>



From charlie at antipope.org  Tue Jun 20 21:20:20 2006
From: charlie at antipope.org (Charlie Stross)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 22:20:20 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity
In-Reply-To: <42200.72.236.103.229.1150814451.squirrel@main.nc.us>
References: <20060620094456.27251.qmail@web26209.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
	<030801c6946d$cd6a4e00$9a00a8c0@old>
	<42200.72.236.103.229.1150814451.squirrel@main.nc.us>
Message-ID: <91C2D84D-004B-45DB-BEA3-8EF244842C95@antipope.org>


On 20 Jun 2006, at 15:40, MB wrote:

>
> In my experience some people simply *are* bored. They don't do  
> anything.
> They do not or cannot or will not even amuse themselves. I fear  
> there's
> not much can be done about that - other than making resources so  
> few and
> far between that they *must* continue struggling just to survive.  
> Hard to
> be bored then! :/

Let's go one step further:

Is boredom a neurological illness, like endogenous depression?

That's an honest question -- I don't know the answer. Bear in mind  
the possibility that there may be multiple types of boredom --  
boredom due to lack of stimulus/opportunity for exploration, and  
boredom of endogenous nature, spring to mind as possibilities. Then  
again, is the emergence of boredom as a pathological condition  
something that can be accounted for via sociobiology?



-- Charlie


From amara at amara.com  Tue Jun 20 22:05:08 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 00:05:08 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Earthrise from Mars' surface
Message-ID: <p06230900c0be213119e7@[150.146.134.133]>


http://marswatch.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_instrument/projects_3.html

Smile, you're on Candid Camera!

Amara


From tark at kc.rr.com  Wed Jun 21 00:31:21 2006
From: tark at kc.rr.com (Tark)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:31:21 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Woper
In-Reply-To: <mailman.2592.1150662927.1390.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
Message-ID: <000901c694ca$06da9210$6401a8c0@agross>




>>Read the post again. Many words are odd, read them and fix them! :)

>>woper = power

>>etc.

>>Regards,
>>MB

And here I was thinking of WOPER, the AI in War Games? Or am I confused?

"Would you like to play a game" 
"Yes"
"How about a game of Global Thermo-nuclear Warfare?"



From asa at nada.kth.se  Wed Jun 21 00:25:46 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 02:25:46 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity
In-Reply-To: <91C2D84D-004B-45DB-BEA3-8EF244842C95@antipope.org>
References: <20060620094456.27251.qmail@web26209.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
	<030801c6946d$cd6a4e00$9a00a8c0@old>
	<42200.72.236.103.229.1150814451.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<91C2D84D-004B-45DB-BEA3-8EF244842C95@antipope.org>
Message-ID: <37048.86.130.28.230.1150849546.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


Charlie Stross wrote:
> Let's go one step further:
>
> Is boredom a neurological illness, like endogenous depression?

There can certainly be pathological boredom - ennui, acedia, the whole
range of almost-but-not-quite-depression-like states. And there are links
to the serotonin system: when performing a physical task there is evidence
that we get not just peripheral fatigue (acidosis in the muscles, depleted
blood nutrients etc) but also some form of central fatigue that inhibits
our will to do more. This effect can be modified (in rats) by changing
serotonin levels. I wouldn't be too surprised if we can get central
fatigue from purely mental tasks, and that some people suffer from too
short boredom time constants.

In the literature boredom is often seen as a marker for other
psychopathology:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12868294&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_DocSum
and there are various psychological measurement scales for it:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=14992349&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_DocSum
Factor analysis seems to suggest that there are two factors, a lack of
internal or external stimulation:
http://www.leaonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327752jpa8503_05

I think boredom is an indicator of a lack of experience of meaning. This
can be very helpful by directing us away from fruitless tasks, but we can
of course suffer it when we fail to see a real meaning or when we get
important tasks whose meaning doesn't fit our intuitive sense of meaning.
Maybe we will become less bored with many tasks if we get smarter by
finding meaning where previously we saw none, but at the same time react
more strongly to what we had previously thought was important.


By the way, I found this little gem:

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/abstract/171/12/1443
"Incidence of and risk factors for nodding off at scientific sessions"
and its sequel
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/173/12/1502
"Nodding and napping in medical lectures: an instructive systematic review"

"Chronic tweed wearing, however, might indicate a boring phenotype, or it
might be causal: tweed may harbour little insect-like creatures whose
dander could cause asthma and chronic hypoxemia, with subsequent cerebral
dysfunction."



-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Wed Jun 21 00:42:18 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 20:42:18 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity
In-Reply-To: <91C2D84D-004B-45DB-BEA3-8EF244842C95@antipope.org>
References: <20060620094456.27251.qmail@web26209.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
	<030801c6946d$cd6a4e00$9a00a8c0@old>
	<42200.72.236.103.229.1150814451.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<91C2D84D-004B-45DB-BEA3-8EF244842C95@antipope.org>
Message-ID: <42377.72.236.103.159.1150850538.squirrel@main.nc.us>

Charlie wrote:

>
> On 20 Jun 2006, at 15:40, MB wrote:
>
>>
>> In my experience some people simply *are* bored. They don't do
>> anything.
>> They do not or cannot or will not even amuse themselves.

>
> Let's go one step further:
>
> Is boredom a neurological illness, like endogenous depression?
>

I don't know. I've wondered about that also. But somehow the people I've
met who are like that don't seem to be what I consider depressed. They
simply don't seem motivated to *do* anything, nor do they seem to find
things interesting. Mostly they watch inordinate amounts of TV.

> That's an honest question -- I don't know the answer. Bear in mind
> the possibility that there may be multiple types of boredom --
> boredom due to lack of stimulus/opportunity for exploration, and
> boredom of endogenous nature, spring to mind as possibilities. Then
> again, is the emergence of boredom as a pathological condition
> something that can be accounted for via sociobiology?
>
>
>



From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Wed Jun 21 00:59:21 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 20:59:21 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity
In-Reply-To: <37048.86.130.28.230.1150849546.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
References: <20060620094456.27251.qmail@web26209.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
	<030801c6946d$cd6a4e00$9a00a8c0@old>
	<42200.72.236.103.229.1150814451.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<91C2D84D-004B-45DB-BEA3-8EF244842C95@antipope.org>
	<37048.86.130.28.230.1150849546.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
Message-ID: <42418.72.236.103.159.1150851561.squirrel@main.nc.us>

Anders writes:

> I wouldn't be too surprised if we can get central
> fatigue from purely mental tasks, and that some people suffer from too
> short boredom time constants.
>

[...]

>
> I think boredom is an indicator of a lack of experience of meaning. This
> can be very helpful by directing us away from fruitless tasks, but we can
> of course suffer it when we fail to see a real meaning or when we get
> important tasks whose meaning doesn't fit our intuitive sense of meaning.

This fits my experience in school, in certain classes. The studying was
almost impossible for me to do. After about 10 minutes my "brain stopped"
- I was unable to concentrate and there was no meaning to what I was
doing. Over and over the material I would go, all to no avail. My input
circuits seemed to have shut down. Surely not through overload though.

My description of this at the time  was that it was **boring**.

It rather tainted my experience of schooling, though often I'm interested
in learning new things and can (and do) put considerable energy into that.

Regards,
MB



From sjatkins at mac.com  Wed Jun 21 01:31:04 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 18:31:04 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity
In-Reply-To: <42418.72.236.103.159.1150851561.squirrel@main.nc.us>
References: <20060620094456.27251.qmail@web26209.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
	<030801c6946d$cd6a4e00$9a00a8c0@old>
	<42200.72.236.103.229.1150814451.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<91C2D84D-004B-45DB-BEA3-8EF244842C95@antipope.org>
	<37048.86.130.28.230.1150849546.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<42418.72.236.103.159.1150851561.squirrel@main.nc.us>
Message-ID: <A8895EF3-487E-47D6-B287-4D1EC20E1FFD@mac.com>


On Jun 20, 2006, at 5:59 PM, MB wrote:
>
> This fits my experience in school, in certain classes. The studying  
> was
> almost impossible for me to do. After about 10 minutes my "brain  
> stopped"
> - I was unable to concentrate and there was no meaning to what I was
> doing. Over and over the material I would go, all to no avail. My  
> input
> circuits seemed to have shut down. Surely not through overload though.
>

Public K-12 education in the US at least was actually designed to  
shut down large numbers of active bright minds.  I wish that I was  
kidding.


- samantha




From sjatkins at mac.com  Wed Jun 21 01:42:07 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 18:42:07 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <20060620164610.GA34579@or.pair.com>
References: <200606200348.k5K3m896029458@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<6D762EC5-F1B6-475B-A13D-40C864FF8459@mac.com>
	<20060620164610.GA34579@or.pair.com>
Message-ID: <2E7ADA9F-C56A-4131-A161-1DA152738818@mac.com>


On Jun 20, 2006, at 9:46 AM, Mike Linksvayer wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 20, 2006 at 08:33:18AM -0700, Samantha Atkins wrote:
>> I have rarely seen it that underutilized.
>
> I haven't read the entire thread closely but I think you're talking
> about VTA light rail.  It is grossly underutilized when measured
> against capacity anp estimates used to sell the system.
> See http://www.ti.org/vaupdate32.html
>
>> We spend many tens of
>> billions of dollars every year of lost productivity sitting in a box
>> on wheels driving to and from work.   We spend much more than that on
>> be box and the liquid gold that fuels it.  Clearly this is sub-
>> optimal to say the least.
>
> Suboptimal for what set of constraints?

Productivity for one.  I would give a lot to have all those wasted  
hours to use on meaningful tasks.  Poor utilization of waking hours  
for millions of people day after day.   Poor utilization of money to  
pay for the cars, gas, upkeep, roads, parking in order merely to drag  
physical bodies to some central location whether physical presence is  
needed or not.  A lot of this is ritualistic stupid behavior.   Not  
to mention that cars and trucks in the US account for 66% of our oil  
use.   If we could cut that significantly we might not be involved in  
a costly pointless war or two.   A large economic drain could be  
lifted to the degree we telecommute or have some other means of  
"going in to work" when we actually physically need to be there.

>
> The constraints are going to change soon and building more inflexible
> political trophy transit lines is very short-sighted.  See
> http://ideas.4brad.com/node/410
>

There are not just political trophies although I agree that transit  
could have much more modern solutions.  Self driving cars that run on  
petrol are not enough although at least much of the productivity  
could be reclaimed.  In the short term I think the expanding oil  
crunch will finally make telecommuting real popular and fill the  
coffers of companies building software and systems to make it work.

- samantha



From transhumanist at goldenfuture.net  Wed Jun 21 02:03:12 2006
From: transhumanist at goldenfuture.net (Joseph Bloch)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 22:03:12 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity
In-Reply-To: <A8895EF3-487E-47D6-B287-4D1EC20E1FFD@mac.com>
References: <20060620094456.27251.qmail@web26209.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>	<030801c6946d$cd6a4e00$9a00a8c0@old>	<42200.72.236.103.229.1150814451.squirrel@main.nc.us>	<91C2D84D-004B-45DB-BEA3-8EF244842C95@antipope.org>	<37048.86.130.28.230.1150849546.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>	<42418.72.236.103.159.1150851561.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<A8895EF3-487E-47D6-B287-4D1EC20E1FFD@mac.com>
Message-ID: <4498A8E0.1020604@goldenfuture.net>

I must disagree.

"Designed"...? No.

Does so inadvertently, with the best of intentions...? Yes.

Joseph

Samantha Atkins wrote:

>On Jun 20, 2006, at 5:59 PM, MB wrote:
>  
>
>>This fits my experience in school, in certain classes. The studying  
>>was
>>almost impossible for me to do. After about 10 minutes my "brain  
>>stopped"
>>- I was unable to concentrate and there was no meaning to what I was
>>doing. Over and over the material I would go, all to no avail. My  
>>input
>>circuits seemed to have shut down. Surely not through overload though.
>>
>>    
>>
>
>Public K-12 education in the US at least was actually designed to  
>shut down large numbers of active bright minds.  I wish that I was  
>kidding.
>
>
>- samantha
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>extropy-chat mailing list
>extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
>  
>



From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Wed Jun 21 02:38:52 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 21:38:52 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Woper
In-Reply-To: <000901c694ca$06da9210$6401a8c0@agross>
References: <mailman.2592.1150662927.1390.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
	<000901c694ca$06da9210$6401a8c0@agross>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606201938w3208c7edg7a1ab2bec826bb0a@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/20/06, Tark <tark at kc.rr.com> wrote:
>
> And here I was thinking of WOPER, the AI in War Games? Or am I confused?


I would assume there is an "attractor" in my mind for that particular
variant that caused me to select it though I don't recall thinking of the
example you mention at the time.

Robert
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From brian at posthuman.com  Wed Jun 21 03:20:54 2006
From: brian at posthuman.com (Brian Atkins)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 22:20:54 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Woper
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606201938w3208c7edg7a1ab2bec826bb0a@mail.gmail.com>
References: <mailman.2592.1150662927.1390.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>	<000901c694ca$06da9210$6401a8c0@agross>
	<deaa866a0606201938w3208c7edg7a1ab2bec826bb0a@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4498BB16.10308@posthuman.com>

In the movie, it's WOPR. Amazing amount of blinking lights and ultra computing 
sound effects.
-- 
Brian Atkins
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.singinst.org/


From mfj.eav at gmail.com  Wed Jun 21 04:34:06 2006
From: mfj.eav at gmail.com (Morris Johnson)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 23:34:06 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] ageism..boredom and superlongevity
Message-ID: <61c8738e0606202134m4354b311sfd8b1c319ae572d8@mail.gmail.com>

This crusty guy went back to gather a diploma at  U this last winter at age
50 after 33 years of no formal U ed.

Yes I was the oldest and yes some classmates were younger than my kids.

Superlongevity would allow for  sessions of self improvement
appropriate to the technology available to be sandwiched between
every few decades of  daily grind.

We once said .. back in the 80's ..."what will we do when we have computers
replacing our work"   .....What is tedious is the chore of answering this
kind  of drivel....out of politeness....


-- 
LIFESPAN PHARMA Inc.
Extropian Agroforestry Ventures  Inc.
306-290-8734
Mission: To Preserve, Protect and Enhance Lifespan
Plant-based Natural-health Bio-product Bio-pharmaceuticals
http://www.angelfire.com/on4/extropian-lifespan
http://www.4XtraLifespans.bravehost.com
megao at sasktel.net,  arla_j at hotmail.com, mfj.eav at gmail.com
extropian.pharmer at gmail.com

Extreme Life-Extension ..."The most dangerous idea on earth"
-Leon Kass , Bioethics Advisor to George Herbert Walker Bush,
June 2005

Extropian Smoke Signals Waft Softly but Carry a big Schtick
... Morris Johnson - June 2005*
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From pharos at gmail.com  Wed Jun 21 09:44:53 2006
From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK)
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 17:44:53 +0800
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <2E7ADA9F-C56A-4131-A161-1DA152738818@mac.com>
References: <200606200348.k5K3m896029458@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<6D762EC5-F1B6-475B-A13D-40C864FF8459@mac.com>
	<20060620164610.GA34579@or.pair.com>
	<2E7ADA9F-C56A-4131-A161-1DA152738818@mac.com>
Message-ID: <ee50357e0606210244q17289de2j36a1130655571f1b@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/21/06, Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
> Productivity for one.  I would give a lot to have all those wasted
> hours to use on meaningful tasks.  Poor utilization of waking hours
> for millions of people day after day.   Poor utilization of money to
> pay for the cars, gas, upkeep, roads, parking in order merely to drag
> physical bodies to some central location whether physical presence is
> needed or not.  A lot of this is ritualistic stupid behavior.   Not
> to mention that cars and trucks in the US account for 66% of our oil
> use.   If we could cut that significantly we might not be involved in
> a costly pointless war or two.   A large economic drain could be
> lifted to the degree we telecommute or have some other means of
> "going in to work" when we actually physically need to be there.
>


In the older countries in Europe freeways mostly had to be built in
orbital roads around cities and through open country between cities.
This means that in order to drive into a city in rush hour you have to
chug along in a traffic jam for an hour or so.  That's why bus, light
rail, intercity railway and underground rail systems are much more
common in Europe.

People used to read books and newspapers while commuting by rail but
nowadays the "tssk, tssk, tssk" of Ipods is pretty much universal. Not
much productivity going on there.

The suicide bombs on the London underground last year had little
effect. Mainly because car driving in London rush hour is pretty well
an impossible alternative to rail travel.

Old people will tell you stories about the London blitz. Night after
night of waves of German bombers. Every day when they went to work
they would see houses demolished, sometimes whole streets. The same
applied to cities in Europe that were bombed to destruction. The
civilian and military casualties in WWII make today's few deaths pale
in comparison.

As Russell pointed out deaths and injuries on the roads, or many other
causes, far outweigh the efforts of terrorists.

BillK


From eugen at leitl.org  Wed Jun 21 11:55:24 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 13:55:24 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity
In-Reply-To: <42377.72.236.103.159.1150850538.squirrel@main.nc.us>
References: <20060620094456.27251.qmail@web26209.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
	<030801c6946d$cd6a4e00$9a00a8c0@old>
	<42200.72.236.103.229.1150814451.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<91C2D84D-004B-45DB-BEA3-8EF244842C95@antipope.org>
	<42377.72.236.103.159.1150850538.squirrel@main.nc.us>
Message-ID: <20060621115524.GK28956@leitl.org>

On Tue, Jun 20, 2006 at 08:42:18PM -0400, MB wrote:

> I don't know. I've wondered about that also. But somehow the people I've
> met who are like that don't seem to be what I consider depressed. They
> simply don't seem motivated to *do* anything, nor do they seem to find
> things interesting. Mostly they watch inordinate amounts of TV.

Somehow, I don't think that's just a correlation. They should quit it
cold turkey. I did it some ~15 years ago, and it did me plenty of good. 
Now, there are more interesting things than ever, but even less hours
to the day.

Do you manage to get your daily literature covered? I'm lagging badly,
especially since no longer commuting by train. I still lose 100 min/day,
but at least it's biking across mostly dirt roads in the forest.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Wed Jun 21 12:04:19 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 08:04:19 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity
In-Reply-To: <20060621115524.GK28956@leitl.org>
References: <20060620094456.27251.qmail@web26209.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
	<030801c6946d$cd6a4e00$9a00a8c0@old>
	<42200.72.236.103.229.1150814451.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<91C2D84D-004B-45DB-BEA3-8EF244842C95@antipope.org>
	<42377.72.236.103.159.1150850538.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<20060621115524.GK28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <42530.72.236.103.101.1150891459.squirrel@main.nc.us>

> On Tue, Jun 20, 2006 at 08:42:18PM -0400, MB wrote:
>
>> I don't know. I've wondered about that also. But somehow the people I've
>> met who are like that don't seem to be what I consider depressed. They
>> simply don't seem motivated to *do* anything, nor do they seem to find
>> things interesting. Mostly they watch inordinate amounts of TV.
>
> Somehow, I don't think that's just a correlation. They should quit it
> cold turkey. I did it some ~15 years ago, and it did me plenty of good.
> Now, there are more interesting things than ever, but even less hours
> to the day.
>
> Do you manage to get your daily literature covered? I'm lagging badly,
> especially since no longer commuting by train. I still lose 100 min/day,
> but at least it's biking across mostly dirt roads in the forest.
>

I completely agree! Phoo, I can barely keep up with my email! :))) And the
magazines have made a mountain next to the snake tank. And the book list
has grown to several pages. Where's my time????????

I mean, I know I'm older and slower but this is absurd!

And if I don't feel like tackling a particular project there's always a
nap time for about 15 minutes to re-infuse me with energy and enthusiasm!

Regards,
MB





From jonkc at att.net  Wed Jun 21 20:39:37 2006
From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark)
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 16:39:37 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity.
References: <20060616053223.GA19905@ofb.net><POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECCFPAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com><20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net><4323CD7C-349E-4C77-BED5-99330588B153@ceruleansystems.com><20060616190245.GB26853@ofb.net><7641ddc60606162159q1282b84fh333f515098edded7@mail.gmail.com><20060619063900.GQ28956@leitl.org>
	<0af901c693a3$1e6ab5e0$9a00a8c0@old>
Message-ID: <002201c69572$d870a870$a5084e0c@MyComputer>

I don't believe boredom should be treated as the enemy, although rather
unpleasant boredom is essential for any mind to retain its sanity, be it a
chimpanzee mind or a Jupiter Brain mind. Of course the boredom threshold
must be carefully regulated, too much boredom and you can't concentrate, too
little boredom and you get caught in a infinite loop. I don't see why an
immortal Jupiter brain would be more likely to fall on the too much boredom
side of the line rather than the too little. A billion huge telescopes
looking in a billion directions is not an inherently uninteresting
situation.

  John K Clark





From extropy at unreasonable.com  Thu Jun 22 01:36:03 2006
From: extropy at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin)
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 21:36:03 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Party rescheduled
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20060621213532.06c4fa70@unreasonable.com>

As I expected might happen, enough regulars had conflicts, between 
Porcfest, weddings, and graduations, that my party needs to be pushed out.

I've now mapped out the land mines of holidays, conferences, 
conventions, etc. to plan ahead a bit.

The new date, and the following three gatherings, are planned for 
July 22, Oct 21, Jan 20, and Apr 21. We'll wiggle the dates further 
as needed. If you are interested in attending any of these, let me 
know as your other commitments make one weekend in those vicinities 
better or worse than another.

And if your travels bring you in the vicinity of Boston or New 
Hampshire at some other time, with a heads-up I can probably conjure 
a fascinating crew of dinner companions.


-- David.



From spike66 at comcast.net  Thu Jun 22 03:11:34 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 20:11:34 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <6D762EC5-F1B6-475B-A13D-40C864FF8459@mac.com>
Message-ID: <200606220317.k5M3H4No012064@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins

Spike wrote:

> >...  One could argue that this is an indirect fear of
> > terrorism: it is a fear of economic failure because of public fear of
terrorism.
> 
> You did bring up terrorism first as your reason.
... 
> - samantha


We may have a good test case coming up that will illustrate or disprove my
notion.  Consider the French effort to build a new monster plane, the A380
with 555 seats:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A380

The Booeing 737 has a seating capacity of around 200 in typical
configurations.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737

Booeing doesn't seem to be concentrating on coming up with a new successor
to the 400+ passenger 747, but they are continuously modernizing the 737.
So the French are going for big, the Booeing boys going for more and smaller
planes.

Nowthen, let us do some estimating.  For order of magnitude BOTECs, I would
estimate a typical big city airport has a plane leaving every few minutes,
so it might amount to about 100 flights out a day, and there are perhaps 100
airports like that one in the US, and a typical commercial flight might
average 100 proles, so thats about a million passenger flights a day.

The number of terrorist attacks on planes really depends on how you count
them.  The 9-11 attacks for instance might count as 19, but I suggest we
count that as 4, since we don't know for sure the other 15 besides the
pilots knew they were about to perish.  Richard Reid the shoe bomber might
count for half, since he was unsuccessful, and some cases are ambiguous like
El-Batouty's piloting the EgyptAir 990 into the ground, so that might count
as half.  Since this is very inexact work, we might estimate that a
terrorist attack on a plane averages out to about every two or three years,
with the last few years being particularly unlucky.  

So about every 1000 days on the average, with a million passenger miles per
day suggests that any given occupied commercial airline seat has perhaps a
one in a billion chance of containing the buns of someone who will try to
destroy that aircraft by whatever means.

Nowthen, by that reasoning, an A380 would have over twice the risk of being
attacked as a B737, since it has over twice the seats.  I recognize that
this might be circular reasoning, or probability theory abuse, so I am open
to countersuggestion.  

Another line of reasoning would have it that anyone who wishes to attack an
aircraft really really doesn't like people, and would therefore wish to slay
as many proles as possible in their final act, so the big A380 would be a
preferable target.  Given that line of reasoning, the A380 might be even
more than twice as attractive as a B737.  

By that reasoning, proles might try to avoid riding aboard the really big
guys, leading to the decline and perhaps eventual failure of the French
company, resulting in a wild prosperity for the Booeing boys.  Or the proles
might conjecture as I did that Airbus is a bad buy, because other proles
like themselves are likely to avoid riding aboard the largest planes out of
fear of terrorism.  We have nothing to fear but fear itself.  

So here is the punchline: I am on with my life, I still get on planes every
two to three weeks.  But if I were buying airline manufacturing stock today,
I would buy Booeing and not Airbus.  (I find both companies most
distasteful, however I do not let that get in the way of the prime directive
of maximizing my personal level of filthy lucre.)  

Let us watch to see if this notion proves itself in the airline biz.  

spike








From spike66 at comcast.net  Thu Jun 22 03:35:19 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 20:35:19 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <20060620164610.GA34579@or.pair.com>
Message-ID: <200606220345.k5M3joan023869@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike Linksvayer
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
> 
> On Tue, Jun 20, 2006 at 08:33:18AM -0700, Samantha Atkins wrote:
> > I have rarely seen it that underutilized.
> 
> I haven't read the entire thread closely but I think you're talking
> about VTA light rail.  It is grossly underutilized when measured
> against capacity anp estimates used to sell the system.
> See http://www.ti.org/vaupdate32.html

...
>   Mike Linksvayer

Thanks Mike, interesting article.  What caught my attention is the
conclusion:

"Conclusions
Light rail is an obsolete technology that doesn't really work anywhere. But
it is especially unsuitable in post-automobile urban areas such as San Jose,
whose jobs are spread throughout the area rather than concentrated in a
downtown."

Along the lines of the previous discussion of terrorism, suppose Iran or
someone else gets a nuke and wants to use it on the US in such a way as to
maximize the pain.  One might decide that the Silicon Valley is the place to
hit, since the US generates so much wealth there.  

Problem: where is it?  Downtown San Jose?  Palo Alto?  Sunnyvale?  Santa
Clara?  Menlo Park?  Stanford campus?

Go to GoogleEarth, type in Palo Alto CA.  It will zoom in on an area about
the size a bad guy could reasonably nuke, completely slaying every prole in
that area.  Now imagine a terrorist, flying around looking for the best
place to pop off her one nuke.  Where?  Palo Alto sure doesn't *look* like
the heart of Silicon Valley, and furthermore most of the proles that
actually live there have already made their contribution, earned a fortune,
gone on to their earthly reward, and perhaps are not the ones she would wish
to destroy.  Likely she would decide this isn't the right place, and take it
over to San Jose where there is at least a cluster of middling tall
buildings, but even that is nothing like San Francisco, off in the hazy
distance.

All this grim speculation illustrates my point exactly: future cities might
develop all smeared out like the Silicon Valley as opposed to the New York
City model.  Subways are suitable in San Francisco-like places, but not
Silicon Valley-like places.  Therefore subways, along with light rail, are
poor investments.

spike








From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Thu Jun 22 05:07:13 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 06:07:13 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <200606220317.k5M3H4No012064@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <6D762EC5-F1B6-475B-A13D-40C864FF8459@mac.com>
	<200606220317.k5M3H4No012064@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606212207o642cb86ap6aac67d156642190@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/22/06, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Nowthen, by that reasoning, an A380 would have over twice the risk of
> being
> attacked as a B737, since it has over twice the seats.  I recognize that
> this might be circular reasoning, or probability theory abuse, so I am
> open
> to countersuggestion.


My countersuggestion, to put it bluntly and pardon the French if you're a
religious man, is that those of us who are rational enough to know better -
yes, that means you Spike! - cut out the bullshit panicmongering; it may
seem like harmless fun, but the end result of panic is ham-fisted attempts
at protecting against minor or imaginary dangers, that have the actual
effect of steering the world right into the path of very real and grave
dangers.

Sir, be ashamed. More importantly: _stop_.
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From femmechakra at yahoo.ca  Thu Jun 22 06:42:22 2006
From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anne-Marie Taylor)
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 02:42:22 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity,
	just curious:)
Message-ID: <20060622064222.63752.qmail@web35505.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

John K Clark wrote:
  >I don't believe boredom should be treated as the enemy, although rather
>unpleasant boredom is essential for any mind to retain its sanity, be it 
>chimpanzee mind or a Jupiter Brain mind. Of course the boredom threshold
>must be carefully regulated, too much boredom and you can't concentrate, too
>little boredom and you get caught in a infinite loop. I don't see why an
>immortal Jupiter brain would be more likely to fall on the too much boredom
>side of the line rather than the too little. 
   
  Anna Replies:)
  I agree, I think peeking has a lot to do with boredom as well as lack of motivation, ignorance and laziness.  
   
  >A billion huge telescopes looking in a billion directions is not an inherently
  >uninteresting situation
   
  I agree, but doesn't that mean that having a huge view is better than having a one 
  tract mind but too many views,  is having too many distractions?
   
   
  Anna
  Just curious:)
   
   
   
  
 


Any piece of knowledge I acquire today has a value at 
this moment exactly proportioned to my skill to deal with it. 
Tomorrow, when I know more, I recall that piece of 
knowledge and use it better.
-Mark van Doren
 				
---------------------------------
Make free worldwide PC-to-PC calls. Try the new Yahoo! Canada Messenger with Voice
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From spike66 at comcast.net  Thu Jun 22 12:23:00 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 05:23:00 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606212207o642cb86ap6aac67d156642190@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <200606221234.k5MCY8se012482@andromeda.ziaspace.com>


bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Russell Wallace
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure

...

Russell wrote: My countersuggestion, to put it bluntly and pardon the French
if you're a religious man, is that those of us who are rational enough to
know better - yes, that means you Spike! - cut out the bullshit
panicmongering; it may seem like harmless fun, but the end result of panic
is ham-fisted attempts at protecting against minor or imaginary dangers,
that have the actual effect of steering the world right into the path of
very real and grave dangers.  Sir, be ashamed.


Russell, I find your countersuggestion curious indeed.  When making an
investment do you not calculate or estimate the risk before putting your
money down?  North Korea, a starving nuclear capable nation led by an
apparent madman, may be preparing to test a missile capable of carrying
their nukes to China, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, Canada and the US
west coast.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13361343/

Iran is currently in a nuclear standoff with the rest of the world.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4031603.stm

Is it shameful panicmongering to talk about designing our cities to be less
attractive targets?  


Russell wrote: More importantly: _stop_.

Russell, have you alerted your local news media to please _stop_ running
their shameful panicmongering articles that make up today's front page
headlines?

spike








From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Thu Jun 22 12:37:42 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 08:37:42 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <200606220345.k5M3joan023869@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <20060620164610.GA34579@or.pair.com>
	<200606220345.k5M3joan023869@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <43106.72.236.103.72.1150979862.squirrel@main.nc.us>


>
> All this grim speculation illustrates my point exactly: future cities
> might
> develop all smeared out like the Silicon Valley as opposed to the New York
> City model.  Subways are suitable in San Francisco-like places, but not
> Silicon Valley-like places.  Therefore subways, along with light rail, are
> poor investments.
>

Do you think this is why rail seems to work so well in Europe (my
understanding) - because the cities are, so many of them,  "pre-auto"  and
there's not much place to spread to?

Regards,
MB



From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Thu Jun 22 16:43:36 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 17:43:36 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <200606221234.k5MCY8se012482@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <8d71341e0606212207o642cb86ap6aac67d156642190@mail.gmail.com>
	<200606221234.k5MCY8se012482@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606220943p5eaa95b0p8c73aec04a15d908@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/22/06, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Russell, have you alerted your local news media to please _stop_ running
> their shameful panicmongering articles that make up today's front page
> headlines?
>

Believe me, I would if I thought there was the slightest chance they'd
listen to me!
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From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Thu Jun 22 17:11:51 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 12:11:51 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity,
	just curious:)
In-Reply-To: <20060622064222.63752.qmail@web35505.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <20060622064222.63752.qmail@web35505.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606221011p1b57df31oab8cd2caa9da125a@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/22/06, Anne-Marie Taylor <femmechakra at yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
> I agree, but doesn't that mean that having a huge view is better than
> having a one tract mind but too many views,  is having too many
> distractions?
>

It depends how one manages it.  Many things that we consider to be
"brilliant" involve connecting things which are quite distant in idea
realms.  "You mean space is curved (geometry) by gravity (physics)?  Give me
a break..."  One of the aspects that makes my life interesting is that I can
do things like interconnect computer science with molecular biology with
aging with nanotechnology or discuss building some of the largest things one
can conceive of using the smallest conceivable technology.

In fact, if you know how to manage it, looking at a billion or a trillion
things (molecules, stars, etc.) actually gives you some interesting insights
as to how the Universe functions.  Particularly when it doesn't behave as
its supposed to (e.g. the "abnormal" supernova spotted in February).  One
learns a lot by understanding when the "rules" are never violated and what
the exceptions are.

Robert
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From george at betterhumans.com  Thu Jun 22 20:58:20 2006
From: george at betterhumans.com (George Dvorsky)
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 16:58:20 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] When did intelligence first emerge in the universe?
Message-ID: <449B046C.5090808@betterhumans.com>

[I recently posted this on my blog. Feedback welcomed, hoping in 
particular that my math is ok]

=====

When did intelligence first emerge in the universe?
http://sentientdevelopments.blogspot.com/2006/06/when-did-intelligence-first-emerge-in.html
By George Dvorsky

Here?s a question that has a direct bearing on both the Drake Equation 
and the Fermi Paradox: at what point during the universe?s history did 
it become first capable of supporting life? More important to the SETI 
discussion, however, is determining the earliest point at which a 
radio-capable or Singularity era intelligence could have emerged. My 
initial suspicion is that the conditions to support intelligence life 
have been established for quite some time now ? a conclusion that will 
only reinforce the Fermi quandary rather than diminish it.

A lot of hand waving goes on when people dismiss the Fermi Paradox. The 
fact that the universe isn?t already teeming with ETI?s and machine 
intelligences is more disturbing than most people realize. One such 
person is Ray Kurzweil who believes that we are the first (or among the 
very first) intelligences in the universe to approach the Singularity. I 
find this absurdly improbable, but it?s an hypothesis that I?m willing 
to entertain.

For the sake of this discussion, let?s set aside Ward and Brownlee?s 
Rare Earth hypothesis and invoke the self-sampling assumption about our 
conditions here on Earth. We can heretofore assume that the 
circumstances on Earth are extremely typical in regards to how life 
emerges and evolves.

According to cosmologist Charles Lineweaver's estimates, planets started 
forming 9.1 billion years ago. Obviously, radio-communicating or 
pre-Singularity intelligences didn't emerge overnight. So, how long does 
that take? Using the Earth as an example we can come up with a rough idea.

Life on Earth first emerged about 600 million years after its formation 
(that?s awfully quick ? a strike against the Rare Earth hypothesis, I 
would say). Consequently, given similar conditions in other parts of the 
universe, I?d say that life could not have arisen any earlier than 
8.5Gyr ago. What I?d be interested to know is, in what way, if any, were 
planets and solar systems different 8.5Gyr ago as compared to those 
which formed 4.57Gyr ago (which is when the Earth formed)? Would any of 
those differences negate or retard the processes of life?

The next factor to look at is the complexification of life. On Earth, it 
took RNA/DNA about 3.7Gyr to get to the point where it was able to 
express complex land dwelling organisms. This is the time when, about 
220 million years ago, that dinosaurs emerged. It?s conceivable that 
hominid-type creatures and their attendant civilizations could have 
emerged around this time instead of super-predator dinosaurs. Let's work 
with this assumption.

Now, I suppose we should account for the mass extinction events that 
characterized the early phases of Earth. Given the short period of time 
in which it?s taken Homo sapiens to emerge from beast to virtual cyborg 
(less than 2 million years), it?s safe to say that the high frequency of 
mass extinctions wouldn?t have been a factor.

That said, NEO impacts and other mass extinction events have been the 
cause of drastic evolutionary re-starts, but have decreased in frequency 
over the course of our solar system?s history. The solar system is 
stabilizing. A fair question to ask is, were mass extinction events 
necessary for the emergence of intelligence life, and if so, why?

Given the length of time required to go from the ignition of life 
through to complex life, the earliest that civilizations could have 
emerged on Earth is 220 million years ago. I'm going to conclude that 
natural selection requires 3.7Gyr before it can express creatures that 
are morphologically sophisticated enough to resemble humans. As an 
interesting aside, that doesn?t necessarily suggest that organisms could 
have evolved the cognitive capacity of humans at that time. For all we 
know, the mammalian brain requires the 200 million years of evolution 
and accumulated/refined DNA data to get to the sophistication it has 
today. I?ll admit, however, that that?s a stretch; time-to-evolve is not 
a fixed rate and is largely dictated by the severity of environmental 
stressors.

Using the 3.7Gyr metric, the earliest that complex humanoid life could 
have emerged in our universe is 4.72Gyr ago. That figure does not negate 
the Fermi Paradox. Given the potential emergence of intelligent life in 
our galaxy around that time, and given Fermi?s estimate that an ETI 
could colonize the galaxy within 10 million years, our galaxy could have 
been colonized nearly 500 times over by now.

Let?s try to whittle the figure down even further. Assuming that an 
advanced civ could have emerged on earth 220 million years ago, what 
would they have used to fuel their industrial revolution? Working under 
the assumption that fossil fuels are a necessary prerequisite for an 
industrial revolution to occur, how many years of accumulated biomass is 
required? By the same token, how much biomass is required to get to the 
Singularity?

Today, considering the threat of peak oil, we don?t know the answer to 
that question ourselves. We know that human civilization had enough to 
get to an industrialized phase of existence, but we don't actually know 
if we have enough energy to get to the Singularity (although I'm 
inclined to believe that we do).

Let?s assume here, however, that we have enough energy to make it. Vast 
forests of clubmosses (lycopods), horsetails, and tree ferns started to 
cover the land 300 million years ago ? biomass that decayed and 
eventually formed coal and oil. Let?s use that as our metric for the 
time required to establish energy needs. That knocks our figure of 
3.7Gyr down to 3.4Gyr ? barely a dent.

I?m making an assumption, here ? that the presence of oil and coal are a 
necessary condition for the emerge of radio-capable and pre-Singularity 
intelligences. I remember getting into a discussion with Eliezer 
Yudkowsky about this a number of years ago who begged to differ. He 
essentially claimed that 'where there?s a will there?s a way,' 
particular given long enough time frames (I think he used the example of 
solar power).

I?m still unconvinced and would argue that fossil fuels are absolutely 
necessary. I'm going to use that in our calculation to push back the 
emergence of complex civs in the universe from 4.72Gyr ago to 4.42Gyr ago.

There are undoubtedly a plethora of factors I?m either omitting or 
exaggerating. The exact conditions required for the emergence of 
human-like intelligences may be more complex than it appears, and the 
universe may only be intelliphillic at this unique time (a violation of 
the Copernican Principle, I know, but one that should be considered; is 
the universe entering a phase transition?).

Formalizing my argument about when intelligences could first emerge in 
the universe, I'm going to use this as a starting equation:

[y.a. planets formed (P)] ? [years it takes for life to emerge (L)] ? 
[years it takes for DNA to become hominid-expressible (H)] ? [years it 
takes to accumulate required biomass for energy (E)] = [y.a. 
radio-capable civs first emerged in the galaxy (A)]

P ? L ? H ? E = A

Using my figures (in Gigayears):
9.1 ? 0.6 ? 3.78 ? 0.3 = 4.42Gyr

So, it?s conceivable that Singularities and outward galactic expansions 
could have happened as long as 4.42 billion years ago. This is still an 
immense amount of time, keeping the Fermi problem deeply relevant.

So, where is everybody?


From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Fri Jun 23 01:21:42 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 20:21:42 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] When did intelligence first emerge in the
	universe?
In-Reply-To: <449B046C.5090808@betterhumans.com>
References: <449B046C.5090808@betterhumans.com>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606221821h6ee3bbd6jc1275e9fb4299f1d@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/22/06, George Dvorsky <george at betterhumans.com> wrote:

> "Where is everybody?"

The short answer probably is "in front of our faces".

I've dealt with this question previously in several forums including the ExI
list years ago.  I haven't read the chapter in the SIN where "We are the
first" is discussed but I'm reasonably certain Ray's assumptions are faulty
(I doubt he read the Matrioshka Brain papers completely and neither he nor
Amara Angelica actively participated in the ExI list discussions).

There is abundant evidence if you take an unbiased look at the astromical
data that the universe is not "pre-development" or "post-development" but is
instead in the "mid-development" stage. As a simple example from a recent
astronomical report -- what explains the "radio bright" but "visible dark"
galaxies?  Or what explains all of the "dark energy" or missing "dark
matter"?  I point some of these and others in my original Matrioshka Brain
paper.  As a prominent example the "exoplanet" count is now up to about 170
now -- but there is *zero* evidence that they are classical "planets"
(instead of say Jupiter Brains).

You cannot grasp this problem by thinking about it as a human with a typical
human "reproduction" mindset.  Human reproduction (and/or colonization)
involves a significant loss of information resources when a copy is produced
or one colonizes a distant location.  We accept that because we haven't had
the means to engineer the reproduction (copying) system from scratch.  Shift
intead to a cellular (duplication) reproduction mindset where you split all
of the resources on a relatively equal basis.  For JBrains and MBrains you
have, relatively speaking, instanteous copying of huge amounts of
information (entire human populations worth) in very short periods of time
*if* you have very close proximity between the original and the copy.  You
cannot copy even a femto-subset amount of that information across
interstellar distances.  So colonization involves information loss costs
that we cannot even imagine now.  Probes are a relatively useless investment
because it is extremely difficult to get back information of any value from
a colony.  The only colonization and/or copying that occurs that makes sense
(to me) takes place during close proximity near-stellar collisions (KT-II
copying) and/or galactic collisions (KT-III copying).  You *can* do MBrain
duplication between a developed and non-developed solar systems at
sub-parsec distances without it costing excessive amounts of energy or
matter or sacrificing too much information).  So the spread rate isn't
limited by c or 0.1c as many colonization scenarios postulate but is instead
limited by the frequency of high complexity information substrate
encountering extremely low complexity information substrate.  Such
encounters are very infrequent except in dense stellar environments such as
globular clusters.  If MBrains migrate to outer galactic environments as I
have postulated and Milan and I touch upon in the recent New Astronomy paper
(this is based on Minsky's observation to Dyson regarding thermodynamic
efficiency at the first Byurakan CETI conference in 1971) then the frequency
of stellar close encounters is even lower than it is for emerging
pre-singularity civilizations in locations similar to those our solar system
is currently in.

You can't look at the Fermi Paradox and get sensible answers from where we
are now with implicit human assumptions.  You have to assume full nanotech
and singularity development at the limits imposed by a solar system (i.e.
MBrains).  Then it starts to make some sense.

Robert

Side note: I spent a significant fraction of 1998-2000 reading almost all of
the existing SETI literature (including F.P. discussions) and converting it
into a hypertext database.  I also saw one of Lineweaver's early
presentations on his research and cite his work as pointing out how the SETI
community collectively isn't thinking about the problem properly.  There are
probably less than 200 people alive familiar with a reasonable subset of
that literature and only a dozen or so who have been given access to the
database.  If you are asking the question in a blog simply trying to get
people to think about it that is fine -- but *unless* you want to educate
them with a large body of knowledge I very much doubt you will generate
useful insights from the process.
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From femmechakra at yahoo.ca  Fri Jun 23 04:43:37 2006
From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anne-Marie Taylor)
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 00:43:37 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity,
	just curious:)
Message-ID: <20060623044337.24793.qmail@web35501.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

>Robert Bradbury wrote:
  >In fact, if you know how to manage it, looking at a billion or a trillion
>things (molecules, stars, etc.) actually gives you some interesting insights
>as to how the Universe functions.  Particularly when it doesn't behave as
>its supposed to (e.g. the "abnormal" supernova spotted in February).  One
>learns a lot by understanding when the "rules" are never violated and what
>the exceptions are.
  
Anna Replies:)
  I agree, I think that branching out of your field of interest will only generate better
  insights especially if your able to interconnect and use the information to create
  something new.  On the other hand, I think it would be hard to be able to interconnect
  if I had too many fields to deal with.  An AI will probably be able to have this skill
  which will allow it to concentrate on many areas at the same time, solving many 
  problems simultaneously but I don't believe too many humans can do that.  Most 
  humans have fields of interest. In my opinion,brilliant, is being able to
  interconnect and come up with something unique within that branch of interests.  
  I figure, a form of boredom,  would be someone that hasn't begun to formulate their
  basic interests.  
  Does that make sense or am I again sounding dazed and confused?
  (Sometimes I wonder if my mother did me a favor by sending me to french school:)
   
  Thanks for your time
  Anna
   
   
   


Any piece of knowledge I acquire today has a value at 
this moment exactly proportioned to my skill to deal with it. 
Tomorrow, when I know more, I recall that piece of 
knowledge and use it better.
-Mark van Doren
 		
---------------------------------
The best gets better. See why everyone is raving about the All-new Yahoo! Mail.  
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From eugen at leitl.org  Fri Jun 23 10:55:18 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 12:55:18 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] [wta-talk] When did intelligence first emerge in
	the universe?
In-Reply-To: <449B0450.2080908@betterhumans.com>
References: <449B0450.2080908@betterhumans.com>
Message-ID: <20060623105518.GZ28956@leitl.org>

On Thu, Jun 22, 2006 at 04:57:52PM -0400, George Dvorsky wrote:

> For the sake of this discussion, let?s set aside Ward and Brownlee?s 
> Rare Earth hypothesis and invoke the self-sampling assumption about our 
> conditions here on Earth. We can heretofore assume that the 
> circumstances on Earth are extremely typical in regards to how life 
> emerges and evolves.

Whoa there. Anthropic principle says that you can't extract any other knowledge
from observing yourself and others causally entangled in the local
emergence event other than you exist. Only by observing others, causally
unentangled instances elsewhere can you obtain valid data.
 
> According to cosmologist Charles Lineweaver's estimates, planets started 
> forming 9.1 billion years ago. Obviously, radio-communicating or 

Gas giants are useless, you need adequate metallicity for major planet
population (outliers are there, but they're very rare so don't
figure in). I don't have any data when this became possible.

> pre-Singularity intelligences didn't emerge overnight. So, how long does 
> that take? Using the Earth as an example we can come up with a rough idea.

Again, you can't use any data from Earth for anything other than 
'cogito ergo sum'. That's also data, but it's not very interesting data.
 
> Life on Earth first emerged about 600 million years after its formation 
> (that?s awfully quick ? a strike against the Rare Earth hypothesis, I 

Rare Earth doesn't mean that life emergence is rare, once you've
got a sweet spot.

> would say). Consequently, given similar conditions in other parts of the 
> universe, I?d say that life could not have arisen any earlier than 
> 8.5Gyr ago. What I?d be interested to know is, in what way, if any, were 
> planets and solar systems different 8.5Gyr ago as compared to those 
> which formed 4.57Gyr ago (which is when the Earth formed)? Would any of 
> those differences negate or retard the processes of life?

You would have less heavy elements and more hot isotopes. Background
might be extremely violent (giant luminosity bursts in the galaxy).
Early universe was really rough.
 
> The next factor to look at is the complexification of life. On Earth, it 
> took RNA/DNA about 3.7Gyr to get to the point where it was able to 
> express complex land dwelling organisms. This is the time when, about 
> 220 million years ago, that dinosaurs emerged. It?s conceivable that 
> hominid-type creatures and their attendant civilizations could have 
> emerged around this time instead of super-predator dinosaurs. Let's work 

Or they wouldn't have emerged at all, and Earth would be wiped by a giant
impactor, or cooked only a short while later (this planet is toast in
less than a GYear, probably half that). Let's work with this assumption.

> with this assumption.
> 
> Now, I suppose we should account for the mass extinction events that 
> characterized the early phases of Earth. Given the short period of time 
> in which it?s taken Homo sapiens to emerge from beast to virtual cyborg 
> (less than 2 million years), it?s safe to say that the high frequency of 
> mass extinctions wouldn?t have been a factor.

It takes a great deal longer than 2 MYr to recover from a major
extinction event. After a sterilizing event (impactor which
created Luna is huge on this scale, few 100 km would do), 
you'd have to start from scratch. (Allright, if there are several 
life spots in the planetar vicinity you can reseed).
 
> That said, NEO impacts and other mass extinction events have been the 
> cause of drastic evolutionary re-starts, but have decreased in frequency 
> over the course of our solar system?s history. The solar system is 
> stabilizing. A fair question to ask is, were mass extinction events 
> necessary for the emergence of intelligence life, and if so, why?

No idea. Nobody has any idea, as long as we don't get a second sample.
 
> Given the length of time required to go from the ignition of life 
> through to complex life, the earliest that civilizations could have 
> emerged on Earth is 220 million years ago. I'm going to conclude that 

We already know that there were no smart critters on Earth 220 MYrs ago.
We also know that Earth data is invalid to extrapolate.

> natural selection requires 3.7Gyr before it can express creatures that 
> are morphologically sophisticated enough to resemble humans. As an 
> interesting aside, that doesn?t necessarily suggest that organisms could 
> have evolved the cognitive capacity of humans at that time. For all we 
> know, the mammalian brain requires the 200 million years of evolution 
> and accumulated/refined DNA data to get to the sophistication it has 
> today. I?ll admit, however, that that?s a stretch; time-to-evolve is 
> not a fixed rate and is largely dictated by the severity of environmental 
> stressors.

Time to evolve a smart enough critter to observe itself might be an 
arbitrarily improbable event. 
 
> Using the 3.7Gyr metric, the earliest that complex humanoid life could 
> have emerged in our universe is 4.72Gyr ago. That figure does not negate 

Probability density decreases as you go backwards due to chemical composition.

> the Fermi Paradox. Given the potential emergence of intelligent life in 
> our galaxy around that time, and given Fermi?s estimate that an ETI 
> could colonize the galaxy within 10 million years, our galaxy could have 
> been colonized nearly 500 times over by now.

If you use Hubble to look back your 4 GYears into the past you see
no aliens either. In fact, relativistic-expansion aliens are damn
difficult to observe, period, especially if they're observer-estinguishing/
prevent emergence of obserservers. Anthropic principle, again.
There are many reasons why Fermi's paradoxon is deceptively
simple.
 
> Let?s try to whittle the figure down even further. Assuming that an 
> advanced civ could have emerged on earth 220 million years ago, what 
> would they have used to fuel their industrial revolution? Working under 
> the assumption that fossil fuels are a necessary prerequisite for an 
> industrial revolution to occur, how many years of accumulated biomass is 

You don't need fossil fuels for anything. It's just a convenience/kinetics
thing. In terms of our history, fossil is just a passing phase, a fleeting
moment.

> required? By the same token, how much biomass is required to get to the 
> Singularity?

None. Solar output and secondary (hydro/aeolean) sources are more
than enough.
 
> Today, considering the threat of peak oil, we don?t know the answer to 
> that question ourselves. We know that human civilization had enough to 
> get to an industrialized phase of existence, but we don't actually know 
> if we have enough energy to get to the Singularity (although I'm 
> inclined to believe that we do).
> 
> Let?s assume here, however, that we have enough energy to make it. Vast 
> forests of clubmosses (lycopods), horsetails, and tree ferns started to 
> cover the land 300 million years ago ? biomass that decayed and 
> eventually formed coal and oil. Let?s use that as our metric for the 
> time required to establish energy needs. That knocks our figure of 
> 3.7Gyr down to 3.4Gyr ? barely a dent.
> 
> I?m making an assumption, here ? that the presence of oil and coal are 
> a necessary condition for the emerge of radio-capable and pre-Singularity 
> intelligences. I remember getting into a discussion with Eliezer 
> Yudkowsky about this a number of years ago who begged to differ. He 
> essentially claimed that 'where there?s a will there?s a way,' 
> particular given long enough time frames (I think he used the example of 
> solar power).

Eliezer is absolutely accurate in that.
 
> I?m still unconvinced and would argue that fossil fuels are absolutely 
> necessary. I'm going to use that in our calculation to push back the 
> emergence of complex civs in the universe from 4.72Gyr ago to 4.42Gyr ago.

I don't see why you're using numbers pulled out of a hat at
three decimal precision.
 
> There are undoubtedly a plethora of factors I?m either omitting or 
> exaggerating. The exact conditions required for the emergence of 
> human-like intelligences may be more complex than it appears, and the 
> universe may only be intelliphillic at this unique time (a violation of 
> the Copernican Principle, I know, but one that should be considered; is 
> the universe entering a phase transition?).
> 
> Formalizing my argument about when intelligences could first emerge in 
> the universe, I'm going to use this as a starting equation:
> 
> [y.a. planets formed (P)] ? [years it takes for life to emerge (L)] ? 
> [years it takes for DNA to become hominid-expressible (H)] ? [years it 
> takes to accumulate required biomass for energy (E)] = [y.a. 
> radio-capable civs first emerged in the galaxy (A)]
> 
> P ? L ? H ? E = A
> 
> Using my figures (in Gigayears):
> 9.1 ? 0.6 ? 3.78 ? 0.3 = 4.42Gyr
> 
> So, it?s conceivable that Singularities and outward galactic expansions 
> could have happened as long as 4.42 billion years ago. This is still an 
> immense amount of time, keeping the Fermi problem deeply relevant.

Fermi's is not a paradoxon.
 
> So, where is everybody?

Not there. Color us lucky, very lucky. Let's try to not push our
luck further, and get lot more careful.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Fri Jun 23 15:05:01 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 10:05:01 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity,
	just curious:)
In-Reply-To: <20060623044337.24793.qmail@web35501.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <20060623044337.24793.qmail@web35501.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606230805x45571a35g6ee9ebd52796b78d@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/22/06, Anne-Marie Taylor <femmechakra at yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
> I figure, a form of boredom, would be someone that hasn't begun to
> formulate their basic interests.
>

True, don't many of us have memories of ourselves or other children
complaining (esp. on rainy days) "there's nothing to do".  But one has to
wonder with TV, Video Games, the WWW, etc. now-a-days whether it is not
still too easy for individuals to become narrowly focused and exhaust the
(local) realm of possibilities.

R.
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From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Fri Jun 23 16:44:34 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 11:44:34 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] [wta-talk] When did intelligence first emerge in
	the universe?
In-Reply-To: <20060623105518.GZ28956@leitl.org>
References: <449B0450.2080908@betterhumans.com>
	<20060623105518.GZ28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606230944r5091c037ke88c2d26f6fe4a6b@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/23/06, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
>
>
> Gas giants are useless, you need adequate metallicity for major planet
> population (outliers are there, but they're very rare so don't
> figure in). I don't have any data when this became possible.


Its very early on -- probably in the first  few hundred million years,
certainly the first billion years of galactic evolution.  A much more
critical factor is the proximity to a supernova (or in Earth's case probably
several) which seed the gas cloud which leads up to the solar system with
just the right density and mixture of heavy (and radioactive) elements.

So one has "galactic" habitable zones in addition to solar system habitable
zones.  Too close to the galactic center (with high SN explosion rates,
stellar collision or near collision rates, etc.) and your environment is
very hazardous (you would have to evolve very quickly to make it to our
level).  On the outer edges of the galaxy the SN density is too low to
produce habitable solar systems at useful frequencies.

It takes a great deal longer than 2 MYr to recover from a major
> extinction event. After a sterilizing event (impactor which
> created Luna is huge on this scale, few 100 km would do),
> you'd have to start from scratch. (Allright, if there are several
> life spots in the planetar vicinity you can reseed).


Actually recovery time would depend a lot on the planet's history.  The more
genomes have evolved and have alternative or backup programs the faster the
recovery time.  Species which live underground or under the oceans,
particularly those living off of non-solar energy sources don't have a
significant problem with impactors.

We already know that there were no smart critters on Earth 220 MYrs ago.


We don't "know" this at all.  We know *we* haven't found traces of "smart"
critters present 220 MYrs ago (or even 4 billion yrs ago for that matter).
We have an anthropocentric perspective that anyone who comes here is going
to stay (that we weren't merely a short stop on the galactic grand tour) and
that there aren't lots of very smart critters already among us.

[switch scene to underground cavern at the S. pole...]
Alien1: Several human governments are now monitoring a significant fraction
of their    circulating information.
Alien2: Jeesh, we've been doing that for what about 100 years now?  Their
installing all of that fiber underground made it so much easier for us to
tap into it.
Alien1: I know.  Did you see the pricing this morning for robust MNT
availability futures?
Alien2: Yes, the diversion of U.S. resources into the Iraq boondoggle has
set development back by at least 3 years.  That is really killing prices on
the 5 and 10 year development scenarios [1].
Alien1: But we still can't gather sufficiently detailed information to
simulate things completely and remain completely undetectable.  For example
what if the Pacific NW fault had ruptured and caused a magnitude 9 quake
that took out Bradbury before he left Seattle.
Alien2: Good point.  That would have slowed things down even further.
Alien1: But not as much as Freitas having a severe accident.
Alien2: True.
Alien1: The simulations are still mixed with respect to the Sandberg
relocation to Oxford.  Some of them show this as accelerating cognitive
enhancement sufficiently so as to make our remaining undetected a problem.
Others show paths where he turns into nothing more than an armchair
philosopher.
Alien2: It certainly is complex.  But this is still a great job.  We have
access to the information hours before the folks on the Pluto station do.
Even though we've got much less computing capacity my latest tweeks to the
simulator should give us enough of an edge to take a well hedged position.
...

Probability density decreases as you go backwards due to chemical
> composition.


The probability density varies much more with galactic position than it does
with time.

If you use Hubble to look back your 4 GYears into the past you see
> no aliens either. In fact, relativistic-expansion aliens are damn
> difficult to observe, period, especially if they're
> observer-estinguishing/
> prevent emergence of obserservers. Anthropic principle, again.
> There are many reasons why Fermi's paradoxon is deceptively
> simple.


There is no basis for saying "see no aliens".  There are all kinds of
implicit assumptions built into astronomy resting on the fundamental
foundation "All observed phenomena must be natural!"  Almost all astronomy
starts on the foundation that the Universe is dead and nothing that can be
observed would be the result of intelligent activities.  You have to
entirely flip the principle around and reframe all of the observations from
the perspective of "What would the Universe look like at various points of
development?"  I'm unsure whether we can resolve individual stars at 4
billion light years but I highly doubt it.  I suspect we are limited at
counting stars in galaxies beyond much more than the nearby galaxies.  That
at most gives you a few million year window of what a questionably 'natural'
universe looks like near our temporal state.

It all falls apart once you extend things to the limits.  MBrains can take
galaxies dark (*if* they want to) on time scales measured in millions
years.  Some may.  Some may decide that running futures markets based on
species development rates may be a much more interesting way to pass the
time.  Some may decide that you are only allowed to take galaxies dark at a
rate just below that which is detectable by developing technological
civilizations so they continue to develop with the perception that they are
"alone" in the Universe.  One thing is certain -- knowing that you are *not*
alone certainly biases future development probabilities in ways that
diminish developmental diversity.  Advanced civilizations may choose not to
reveal themselves to prevent all advanced civilizations from looking like
identical Bonsai trees.

Robert

1. Readers unfamiliar with Robin Hanson's work on Idea Futures are unlikely
to understand these comments fully.
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From natasha at natasha.cc  Fri Jun 23 15:55:40 2006
From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More)
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 10:55:40 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity,
 just curious:)
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606230805x45571a35g6ee9ebd52796b78d@mail.gmail.co
 m>
References: <20060623044337.24793.qmail@web35501.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<deaa866a0606230805x45571a35g6ee9ebd52796b78d@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20060623103500.04153da8@pop-server.austin.rr.com>

At 10:05 AM 6/23/2006, you wrote:

>On 6/22/06, Anne-Marie Taylor 
><<mailto:femmechakra at yahoo.ca>femmechakra at yahoo.ca> wrote:
>I figure, a form of boredom, would be someone that hasn't begun to 
>formulate their
>basic interests.
>
>
>True, don't many of us have memories of ourselves or other children 
>complaining (esp. on rainy days) "there's nothing to do".  But one has to 
>wonder with TV, Video Games, the WWW, etc. now-a-days whether it is not 
>still too easy for individuals to become narrowly focused and exhaust the 
>(local) realm of possibilities.

That state of restlessness can be a good thing because when we are not in 
involved in activities that stimulate our brains, a time of inner 
contemplation can set in.  But it is that sense challenge is not easily 
permeated  because it is an unknown state that people usually rush away 
from to quickly find the Tivo.  But this is no excuse for humanities 
general lack of will to get out and do something because most people find 
that challenge too much unless someone or something urges them, or the 
really need it to survive.  And if survival is not an urge of humanity, 
most people seem to simply settle in and get bored.

As a child, I often complained about having nothing to do, while I grew up 
with 4 siblings in a highly imaginative and innovative family. We had 
plenty to do with Mores Code tree houses, cricket courses, gymnastics, 
miniature golf course, big pond for swimming or skating and theater stage 
in our basement.  There was ALWAYS something to do!  But it was part of my 
own inner search to have something new and different to learn that cause me 
to tell my Mother than I had nothing to do.

I remember I would ask her to tell me how to spell words, and she would 
say, "Look it up in the dictionary," and I'd want her to just spell it for 
me.  Because I was one of the youngest, I expected my siblings, or our 
parents, to be the instigators of our games.  When I decided to be an 
artist I learned how to learn to create.

People tend to expect others to entertain them. When that moment of 
restlessness sets in, most people think someone or something will change 
the mood.  Most people do not know how to be creative, and many have not 
been taught how to learn to create.

Not all Austropithicus thought of the cutting tool, but the one(s) who did 
showed it to the others.  This is a pattern in humanity.

Natasha




>_______________________________________________
>extropy-chat mailing list
>extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat

<http://www.natasha.cc/>Natasha <http://www.natasha.cc/>Vita-More
Cultural Strategist - Designer
President, <http://www.extropy.org/>Extropy Institute
Member, <http://www.profuturists.com/>Association of Professional Futurists
Founder, <http://www.transhumanist.biz/>Transhumanist Arts & Culture

If you draw a circle in the sand and study only what's inside the circle, 
then that is a closed-system perspective. If you study what is inside the 
circle and everything outside the circle, then that is an open system 
perspective. - Buckminster Fuller


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From thespike at satx.rr.com  Fri Jun 23 19:17:09 2006
From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick)
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 14:17:09 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] AAAS conference on retrocausation
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060623140927.023b44d8@satx.rr.com>

[I'm told that John Cramer announced that 
backward signaling of c. 50 microseconds might be feasible...]

[and yes, I'm back--hi, folks! Damien B.]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20060622-9999-lz1c22cause.html


By Scott LaFee
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

June 22, 2006


Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?

The answer would seem to be yes, if only because 
time always moves forward, drawing not just ?we 
few? but everyone and everything ?onward to new era.?

But what if time is like the palindrome above? 
What if the so-called arrow of time flies both 
ways, forward and back? What then? What now? What next?

People have debated the nature of time since, 
well, people invented it. Time is, in many ways, 
a fabrication of our minds, a superficial 
construct that helps us explain the universe, 
plot our course through existence and show up when we're supposed to.

?The only reason for time is so that everything 
doesn't happen at once,? Albert Einstein once said.

And so it goes, one thing happens, then another ? 
a phenomenon called cause-and-effect. ?It's a 
notion so deeply ingrained that it's hard to 
think about things any other way,? said Daniel 
Sheehan, a professor of physics at the University of San Diego.

But Sheehan does, as do other physicists who are 
meeting this week at USD to discuss and debate 
the concept of ?reverse causation,? a fantastical 
notion that suggests effects can precede causes, 
and the future can influence the past, assuming 
the past and future actually ?exist? in the first place.

(The symposium is part of the 87th annual meeting 
of the Pacific Division of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science.)

?I don't think we've reached any kind of 
consensus coherent enough to be called a state of 
thinking,? said York Dobyns, a physicist at 
Princeton University who is attending the 
meeting. ?There's a tremendous amount of 
disagreement about reverse causation between 
people who think the whole subject is just too 
speculative to deal with and people who have 
actually grappled with it, either theoretically or experimentally.?

This much, however, can be said: While reverse 
causation (also called backward or 
retro-causation) may sound like science fiction, 
it is firmly grounded in classical laws of 
physics. These laws say time is symmetrical, that 
it moves ? or should be able to move ? in all directions with equal ease.

Case in point: electromagnetism, one of the four 
fundamental forces of nature. (The others are 
gravity and strong and weak nuclear force.)

In the 19th century, Scottish mathematician and 
physicist James Clerk Maxwell developed equations 
explaining how electricity and magnetism work in 
tandem. It was Maxwell, in fact, who determined 
that electromagnetic energy, such as light and 
radio, traveled in waves through empty space at the speed of light.

But Maxwell's equations say nothing about the 
direction of time. It's irrelevant. The equations 
work equally well whether electromagnetic waves 
arrive after or before they are transmitted. In 
effect, writes Paul Davies, a physicist at the 
Australian Centre for Astrobiology and author of 
?About Time,? the waves ?are indifferent to the 
distinction between past and future.?




Feeling dizzy yet?

Most physicists accept the idea of time symmetry 
(at least in the context of things like Maxwell's 
equations). The same cannot be said of reverse 
causation, which goes farther by suggesting the future can influence the past.

?The tendency is to ignore it, to say it's just a 
fact of nature that time moves one way,? said 
Michael Ibison, a physicist at the University of Texas at Austin.

If reverse causation is real, it most likely 
occurs at the largely theoretical and unseen 
level of quantum mechanics, a place where 
subatomic particles with names like mesons and 
quarks interact in ways contrary to both classical physics and common sense.

To wit: Mesons exist simultaneously as both 
particles and waves until they are observed. But 
until they are observed, they don't exist.

?Anyone who thinks they can talk about quantum 
theory without feeling dizzy hasn't yet 
understood the first word about it,? said the 
late, great Danish physicist Niels Bohr who, 
incidentally, invented much of the theory.

?People know how to calculate with quantum 
mechanics, but that's not to say they know what 
it means,? agreed Sheehan. ?Quantum mechanics is 
like poetry. The poem is right there, for 
everyone to see, but it has many different interpretations.?

Sheehan offers a couple of scenarios to ponder:

First, imagine a large boulder at the top of a 
hill. The boulder begins rolling downhill. Now 
freeze the action with the boulder midway along 
its descent. Call this the boulder's present. At 
this point in time, Sheehan says the boulder is 
being influenced both by its past (when it was 
atop the hill) and by its future (when it will 
come to rest at the bottom of the hill). The 
boulder's current position midway down the hill 
cannot happen without the effect of both the past and the future.

?The present is always a negotiation between the 
past and the future,? said Sheehan.

Or think about this: You're invited to a Saturday 
wedding. On Friday, you go to the barber for a 
haircut. As you sit in the chair, the future is 
influencing the present. The wedding hasn't 
happened. It may not happen at all. And yet its 
possibility changes what will be the past. [[this is  all *incredibly* sloppy]]

The best evidence for reverse causation ? perhaps 
the only evidence, said Sheehan ? comes from 
parapsychology, which investigates phenomena not 
explained by the known laws of science, such as 
telepathy, clairvoyance and psychokinesis (the 
alleged ability to move matter with the mind).




Numbers in limbo

In 1992, a paranormal investigator named Helmut 
Schmidt set up a radioactive decay counter to 
generate sequences of random numbers, both 
positive and negative. The numbers were recorded, 
but not seen by any person. Several months later, 
these numbers were shown to a group of students 
who had been asked to use their ?mind power? to 
skew the sequences in favor of positive numbers. 
Elaborate precautions were taken to prevent cheating.

According to fundamental physical laws, there 
should have been an equal number of positive and 
negative numbers. But Schmidt reported that the 
students saw more positive numbers; the 
probability of that happening was less than 1 in a 1,000.

Did the students actually influence the outcome 
of radioactive decay rates recorded months 
before? Henry Stapp, a theoretical physicist at UC Berkeley, thought so.

Stapp was one of the independent monitors of 
Schmidt's experiments. Two years later, he 
published a possible explanation for what had 
happened. In essence, he suggested that human 
consciousness had interacted with the numbers, 
effectively altering the past (when the numbers were recorded).

The idea, which Stapp and others have since 
expanded upon and promoted, is that human 
consciousness is an unexplained, nonlinear force 
of nature. Like subatomic particles in quantum 
mechanics, the numbers in Schmidt's experiment 
existed in a sort of limbo in which they were 
positive, negative and neither until the students 
saw them. At that point, human consciousness and 
intent (instructions to think positive) induced 
the numbers to assume a specific condition or quantum state.

The physics of consciousness is controversial, to 
say the least. And Stapp is first to say much 
more study and experimentation is necessary, 
especially by respected scientists in well-regarded scientific journals.

?You'd think people would want to either refute 
or confirm some of these reports,? said Stapp, 
?but the only people willing to test them are 
people who already tend to believe them. Most 
mainstream labs shy away for fear of sullying 
their reputations, as if they would be dirtying 
their hands by even imagining some of this is possible.?




Mind games

For Stapp, who now works at the Lawrence 
Livermore National Laboratories, it's not 
inconceivable that quantum mechanics plays some 
role in alleged paranormal phenomena like 
extrasensory perception (ESP) and remote viewing, 
which is the projection of one's consciousness to distant locations.

These abilities may be a consequence of 
nonlocality, a well-established quantum concept 
that says entities far-flung in distance or time 
are still entangled and interact via a 
faster-than-light, quantum mechanical connection.

Einstein called this phenomenon ?spooky action at 
a distance.? He couldn't explain it, didn't like 
it and regarded it as quantum trickery.

In recent decades, nonlocality has been 
repeatedly observed, tested and measured in 
experiments. In one seminal experiment in 1982, 
physicist Alan Aspect at the University of Paris 
noted that by changing the polarity of one 
speeding photon (a particle of light) he could 
induce another photon from the same source 
speeding in the opposite direction to change its 
polarity. The interaction happened faster than 
light, with sufficient distance between the 
photons that they shouldn't have ?known? what was 
happening to the other. And yet, inexplicably, there was some sort of link.

In contrast, paranormal phenomena like ESP and 
remote viewing are not as well-substantiated. 
Supporting evidence tends to be anecdotal. 
Purposeful deception and fraud are common.

In the 1970s, the U.S. Army and the CIA spent 
millions investigating the potential of remote 
viewing, but that effort apparently went for 
naught and funding ceased. In 1979, the Princeton 
Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program 
began investigating interaction between human 
consciousness and the physical world. Over the 
years, PEAR has produced a wealth of data 
indicating human intent by itself, without any 
physical connection, can alter the behavior or 
results of unthinking machines. The PEAR 
experiments, many similar to Schmidt's 1992 
random number generator test, produced only small 
effects, but they were observable, measurable and repeatable.

PEAR's operations, however, are now in the 
process of closing down, with researchers moving on to other institutions.

Dobyns, an analytical coordinator for PEAR, said 
he still thinks ?parapsychology and related areas 
are useful places to look for evidence (of reverse causation).?

But he is not optimistic that many mainstream 
physicists will ever take up the cause. ?They say 
it's impossible because there's no evidence and 
there's no evidence because it's impossible.?

But physicists like Sheehan say what we do 
understand about the universe fundamentally 
depends upon the idea that time is fluid and 
dynamic. ?To say that it's impossible for the 
future to influence the past is to deny half of 
the predictions of the laws of physics,? he said.

Nobody's predicting a speedy or conclusive 
resolution to the question of reverse causation. 
Sheehan says it's the journey that counts, how we 
get from Point A to B to C ? or, perhaps, from C to B to A.  




From jef at jefallbright.net  Fri Jun 23 20:00:48 2006
From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright)
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 13:00:48 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] AAAS conference on retrocausation
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20060623140927.023b44d8@satx.rr.com>
References: <7.0.1.0.2.20060623140927.023b44d8@satx.rr.com>
Message-ID: <22360fa10606231300q459d787fqa6aa6d8486d97dd@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/23/06, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> [I'm told that John Cramer announced that
> backward signaling of c. 50 microseconds might be feasible...]
>
> [and yes, I'm back--hi, folks! Damien B.]
>
> http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20060622-9999-lz1c22cause.html

Welcome back, Damien!  Things are looking up around here lately.

As for the article, I thought the most meaningful statement in it was
where it said "this is *incredibly* sloppy", and then I realized that
must have been written by you.

While it's true that many respected scientists would rather not dirty
their hands with this kind of thing, almost all of them would like to
see reliable evidence of such anomolous effects.

- Jef


From rhanson at gmu.edu  Fri Jun 23 16:01:03 2006
From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson)
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 12:01:03 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Hanson on Creativity, Overconfidence
In-Reply-To: <20060623105518.GZ28956@leitl.org>
References: <449B0450.2080908@betterhumans.com>
	<20060623105518.GZ28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060623115539.0243b4b0@gmu.edu>

Here is a new OpEd, and a math paper draft.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.businessweek.com/premium/content/06_27/b3991115.htm
http://hanson.gmu.edu/BusinessWeek-7-3-06.htm

The Myth Of Creativity
Innovation matters, but releasing your inner bohemian isn't the answer
Business Week July 3, 2006

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://hanson.gmu.edu/overconf.pdf

                   Causes of Confidence in Conflict
                          by Robin Hanson

In a simple model of conflict, two agents fight over a fixed prize, 
and how hard they
fight depends on what they believe about their abilities. To this 
model I add "pre-agents,"
representing parents, leaders, or natural selection, who choose each agent's
confidence in his ability. Depending on the reason for such 
confidence, I find five different
patterns in how confidence varies with ability. Agents who estimate 
their ability
with error have under-confidence when ability is high and 
over-confidence when ability
is low, while strategic commitment incentives induce the opposite 
pattern. Agents who
misjudge their value for the prize, relative to their cost of effort, 
induce an over- or
under-confidence that is independent of ability, while cooperating 
pre-agents choose
extreme under-confidence. Agents who ignore a signaling value of 
confidence induce a
relatively uniform over-confidence.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323 



From nvitamore at austin.rr.com  Fri Jun 23 19:41:15 2006
From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com)
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 15:41:15 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity,
	just curious:)
Message-ID: <380-220066523194115453@M2W004.mail2web.com>



Original Message:
-----------------
From: Natasha Vita-More natasha at natasha.cc
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 10:55:40 -0500
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity,just
curious:)


At 10:05 AM 6/23/2006, you wrote:

>On 6/22/06, Anne-Marie Taylor 
><<mailto:femmechakra at yahoo.ca>femmechakra at yahoo.ca> wrote:
>I figure, a form of boredom, would be someone that hasn't begun to 
>formulate their
>basic interests.
>
>
>True, don't many of us have memories of ourselves or other children 
>complaining (esp. on rainy days) "there's nothing to do".  But one has to 
>wonder with TV, Video Games, the WWW, etc. now-a-days whether it is not 
>still too easy for individuals to become narrowly focused and exhaust the 
>(local) realm of possibilities.

That state of restlessness can be a good thing because when we are not in 
involved in activities that stimulate our brains, a time of inner 
contemplation can set in.  But it is that sense challenge is not easily 
permeated  because it is an unknown state that people usually rush away 
from to quickly find the Tivo.  But this is no excuse for humanities 
general lack of will to get out and do something because most people find 
that challenge too much unless someone or something urges them, or the 
really need it to survive.  And if survival is not an urge of humanity, 
most people seem to simply settle in and get bored.

As a child, I often complained about having nothing to do, while I grew up 
with 4 siblings in a highly imaginative and innovative family. We had 
plenty to do with Mores Code tree houses, cricket courses, gymnastics, 
miniature golf course, big pond for swimming or skating and theater stage 
in our basement.  There was ALWAYS something to do!  But it was part of my 
own inner search to have something new and different to learn that cause me 
to tell my Mother than I had nothing to do.

I remember I would ask her to tell me how to spell words, and she would 
say, "Look it up in the dictionary," and I'd want her to just spell it for 
me.  Because I was one of the youngest, I expected my siblings, or our 
parents, to be the instigators of our games.  When I decided to be an 
artist I learned how to learn to create.

People tend to expect others to entertain them. When that moment of 
restlessness sets in, most people think someone or something will change 
the mood.  Most people do not know how to be creative, and many have not 
been taught how to learn to create.

Not all Austropithicus thought of the cutting tool, but the one(s) who did 
showed it to the others.  This is a pattern in humanity.

Natasha




>_______________________________________________
>extropy-chat mailing list
>extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat

<http://www.natasha.cc/>Natasha <http://www.natasha.cc/>Vita-More
Cultural Strategist - Designer
President, <http://www.extropy.org/>Extropy Institute
Member, <http://www.profuturists.com/>Association of Professional Futurists
Founder, <http://www.transhumanist.biz/>Transhumanist Arts & Culture

If you draw a circle in the sand and study only what's inside the circle, 
then that is a closed-system perspective. If you study what is inside the 
circle and everything outside the circle, then that is an open system 
perspective. - Buckminster Fuller




--------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .





From thespike at satx.rr.com  Fri Jun 23 20:51:20 2006
From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick)
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 15:51:20 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] AAAS conference on retrocausation
In-Reply-To: <22360fa10606231300q459d787fqa6aa6d8486d97dd@mail.gmail.com
 >
References: <7.0.1.0.2.20060623140927.023b44d8@satx.rr.com>
	<22360fa10606231300q459d787fqa6aa6d8486d97dd@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060623154447.02218360@satx.rr.com>

At 01:00 PM 6/23/2006 -0700, Jef Allbright wrote:

> > [I'm told that John Cramer announced that
> > backward signaling of c. 50 microseconds might be feasible...]
>
>As for the article, I thought the most meaningful statement in it was
>where it said "this is *incredibly* sloppy", and then I realized that
>must have been written by you.

Indeed. But the stupid thing is the only public report I've been able to find.

>While it's true that many respected scientists would rather not dirty
>their hands with this kind of thing, almost all of them would like to
>see reliable evidence of such anomolous effects.

Leave that aside for a moment. What I find extremely interesting is 
that (1) this was an AAAS colloquium, not a Gnostic Mass of the OTO, 
and (2) John Cramer of TI fame now thinks there might be retro-causal 
effects, however brief. With a lever and place to stand, I reckon 
that could be amplified (via cascades, like Thiotimoline*) to 
astonishing effect...

Damien Broderick
*en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiotimoline  



From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com  Fri Jun 23 21:13:25 2006
From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki)
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 16:13:25 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] [wta-talk] When did intelligence first emerge in
	the universe?
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606230944r5091c037ke88c2d26f6fe4a6b@mail.gmail.com>
References: <449B0450.2080908@betterhumans.com>
	<20060623105518.GZ28956@leitl.org>
	<deaa866a0606230944r5091c037ke88c2d26f6fe4a6b@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <7641ddc60606231413l598046d2la9a1fc3c44dcaf37@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/23/06, Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com>

> We have an anthropocentric perspective that anyone who comes here is going
> to stay (that we weren't merely a short stop on the galactic grand tour) and
> that there aren't lots of very smart critters already among us.

### I'm smart! :)

Rafal


From jonkc at att.net  Fri Jun 23 21:40:40 2006
From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark)
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 17:40:40 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] When did intelligence first emerge in
	theuniverse?
References: <449B046C.5090808@betterhumans.com>
	<deaa866a0606221821h6ee3bbd6jc1275e9fb4299f1d@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <011301c6970d$d8d032d0$bf084e0c@MyComputer>

Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> Wrote:

> what explains all of the "dark energy" or missing "dark matter"?  [.] the
> "exoplanet" count is now up to about 170 now -- but there is *zero*
> evidence that they are classical "planets" (instead of say Jupiter
> Brains).

There is zero evidence that these planets orbiting other suns are anything
more than just planets. As for Dark Matter, well, nobody knows what it is,
all we know is that it must be different from normal matter (that is stuff
made up of baryons) and it's about 10 times as abundant.

One of the triumphs of the Big Bang theory is that it explains how the
lighter elements were made during the first few seconds of the big bang. The
calculated abundance of these elements and their observed abundance are in
excellent agreement (especially regarding deuterium) . However if Dark
Matter were normal matter and there were 10 time more of it around than we
thought the abundance of light elements observed and their calculated value
would not be even close.

I see no reason why Jupiter brains can't be made of normal matter so I see
no reason to think Dark Matter is made up of Jupiter Brains. I don't even
want to talk about Dark Energy, although even more common than Dark Matter
we know even less about it.

So in short the universe does not look engineered to my eyes, so one of 2
things must be true:

1)  Something always destroys a civilization when it reaches a certain
point. (There is absolutely no reason to think this experiment will be the
least bit dangerous, it's the next logical step, we could learn a lot from
it, anybody would try it, there are no moral complications, it's not
controversial, it's completely and totally safe in every way. So I'll just
turn on the machine an....)

2) We are the first.

 John K Clark




From scerir at libero.it  Fri Jun 23 21:35:57 2006
From: scerir at libero.it (scerir)
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 23:35:57 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] AAAS conference on retrocausation
References: <7.0.1.0.2.20060623140927.023b44d8@satx.rr.com>
Message-ID: <001501c6970d$179ea600$77901f97@nomedxgm1aalex>

Damien Broderick [hi!] quoted:
The best evidence for reverse causation - perhaps
the only evidence, said Sheehan - comes from
parapsychology, which investigates phenomena not
explained by the known laws of science, such as
telepathy, clairvoyance and psychokinesis (the
alleged ability to move matter with the mind).


### There is an interesting short paper, online,

http://www.scientificexploration.org/jse/articles/pdf/12.2_costadebeauregard.pdf
written by Olivier Costa de Beauregard, who was
a pupil of L. de Broglie, and a very good theorist.

In 1947 C.d.B. gave the first interpretation
of the EPR effect, in terms of retarded and
advanced actions between the two space-like
separated analyzers, via the source of correlated
particles.

As early as in 1983, he gave a CPT-invariant
formulation of the EPR setting that allows
a time-reversed EPR (also known as RPE, after
Zeilinger).

One might think that, in such a RPE effect a late
_entangling_ event (i.e., the detection of a photon
emitted by a couple of lasers, in such a way that
nobody knows which of the lasers emitted the photon)
really affects, backwards, the (supposed already happened)
history of two atoms scattered by those lasers (each atom
on the path of each laser).

One might also argue that this RPE does not time-reverse
the EPR setting because (in order to be sure that Bell's
inequality - which is timeless, of course - is violated,
and a real entanglement happened, ex post, in those two
atoms) some property of those two atoms must be measured
only _after_ the detection of the _entangling_ photon.

Hence, the entangling event still remains in _a_ past,
at least in practice. Damn Copenhagen!

Notice, however, that the late _entangling_ event (detection
of a photon) can lie in a region space-like separated from
the two atoms. Hence, saying that ... you can imagine the two
atoms begin to violate Bell's inequality only at the moment
the photon was detected in a space-like separated region ...
appears to be crazy, according to SR.

Hence, having once again this conspiracy between QM and SR,
one is allowed to think that:
1) there is no space-time around here, and one can see the
   EPR and the RPE effects dancing together in a Hilbert
   space (more formally, the space of C* algebras);
2) there is a space-time, and you can explain both EPR and
   RPE by means of retarded plus advanced actions or, in
   simpler words, following reversed time-like paths (Olivier
   Costa de Beauregard).

[As a side note Born derived his famous 'rule', in the second
1926 paper about the interpretation of psi, considering
advanced and retarded perturbations in the scattering
problem he was studying.]







From extropy at bayesianinvestor.com  Fri Jun 23 22:20:29 2006
From: extropy at bayesianinvestor.com (Peter McCluskey)
Date: 23 Jun 2006 22:20:29 -0000
Subject: [extropy-chat] Two draft papers: AI and existential risk;
	heuristics and biases
Message-ID: <20060623222029.15976.qmail@pallas3.usifex.com>

Robin Hanson writes:
>The obvious question about a single AI is why its improvements could
>not with the usual ease be transferred to other AIs or humans, or
>made available via trades with those others.   If so, this single AI
>would just be part of our larger system of self-improvement.   The
>scenario of rapid isolated self-improvement would seem to be where
>the AI found a new system of self-improvement, where knowledge
>production was far more effective, *and* where internal sharing of
>knowledge was vastly easier than external sharing.
>
>While this is logically possible, I do not yet see a reason to think
>it likely. 

[I'm rejoining the list after a few years absence and wondering whether
I can handle the volumne via a spambayes filter.]

 I agree with your criticisms of Eliezer's scenario of isolated
self-improvement (and I suspect he has a strong bias toward scenarios
under which his skills are most valuable), but if we alter the scenario
to include the likelyhood that the AI will need many cpu's interacting
with the real world, then I think most of what he says about the risks
remain plausible and your criticisms seem fairly weak.
 An AI that can improve it's cognitive power faster than other intelligences,
even if it's takeoff is as slow as Microsoft's takeoff, would still create
the risk that it eventually becomes sufficiently powerful relative to others
to conquer them.
 We see some signs that transfer of cognitive abilities from more intelligent
entities to less intelligent is limited by the abilities of the less
intelligent. Even if only a small fraction of cognitive abilities can't be
transferred to the less intelligent, that would appear to create a trend
of diverging abilities.
 Some of the factors that limit those trends in biological organisms
(difficulties in coordinating larger assemblies of computing power and
i/o power) appear to be less effective at limiting digital intelligences,
so I'm less optimistic about a trend toward diverging abilities being
stopped as easily as with biological abilities.

 How likely does this scenario need to be to scare you? It seems hard
to imagine a strong enough argument for or against it to justify assigning
a probability very far from 50% to it, and any probability not very far
from 50% is high enough to justify much of Eliezer's concerns.

 Eliezer, I think your low-lying fruit metaphor is interesting, but when
arguing for it you seem to put most of your effort into arguing that there's
lot's of fruit up there somewhere, and not much effort into analyzing
whether the low-lying parts of it remain unpicked.
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter McCluskey         | Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
www.bayesianinvestor.com| - Richard Feynman


From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Fri Jun 23 23:23:30 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 19:23:30 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity,
 just curious:)
In-Reply-To: <6.2.1.2.2.20060623103500.04153da8@pop-server.austin.rr.com>
References: <20060623044337.24793.qmail@web35501.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<deaa866a0606230805x45571a35g6ee9ebd52796b78d@mail.gmail.com>
	<6.2.1.2.2.20060623103500.04153da8@pop-server.austin.rr.com>
Message-ID: <43591.72.236.102.76.1151105010.squirrel@main.nc.us>



> That state of restlessness can be a good thing because when we are not in
> involved in activities that stimulate our brains, a time of inner
> contemplation can set in.

Natasha, this is quite an important point, IMHO, and many kids nowadays
seem to be overwhelmed by *organized* activities. My nephew and niece
spent every afternoon after school in some sort of lessons - dance, music,
scouts, skating ... with evenings full of homework and weekends full of
family activity. I lived there for a brief while and was dismayed by this
schedule. Where was the quiet comtemplative opportunity? It seemed not to
exist.

I must admit the two kids grew up to be just fine: intelligent,
hard-working, and at least the girl I know is creative. The boy owns his
own business which is also, IMHO, a creative endeavor.

But I'd have been miserable without quiet "down time" on my own.

Perhaps it's just different personalities?

Regards,
MB






From nvitamore at austin.rr.com  Fri Jun 23 23:36:08 2006
From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com)
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 19:36:08 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity,
	just curious:)
Message-ID: <380-22006652323368906@M2W025.mail2web.com>

Sorry for my last message.   The first paragraph *draft* was left on the
computer when my dog Oscar?s big snout went under my desk and hit the
keyboard and it was sent. 

MB was pretty sharp to find a sentence that was in the right ball park, but
I'll abbreviate and try now to make some sense of the paragraph: 

Restlessness can be a good thing.  It affords ample space for contemplation
on why there is a longing for something different.  But instead of
supplanting that feeling with a new challenge, invariably people reach for
something easy and familiar.  

Bty, I came across the below link recently, and it caught my eye because it
contains the quote of Hamlet "to be or not to be ..." which sums up my
views on one of the most powerful phrases in literature.

http://www.alcor.org/cryonics/cryonics2000-4.pdf


--------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .





From sentience at pobox.com  Fri Jun 23 23:53:16 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 16:53:16 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Two draft papers: AI and existential risk;
 heuristics and biases
In-Reply-To: <20060623222029.15976.qmail@pallas3.usifex.com>
References: <20060623222029.15976.qmail@pallas3.usifex.com>
Message-ID: <449C7EEC.1070200@pobox.com>

Peter McCluskey wrote:
> 
> I agree with your criticisms of Eliezer's scenario of isolated
> self-improvement (and I suspect he has a strong bias toward scenarios
> under which his skills are most valuable), but if we alter the scenario
> to include the likelyhood that the AI will need many cpu's interacting
> with the real world, then I think most of what he says about the risks
> remain plausible and your criticisms seem fairly weak.

Peter,

Why would my skills be any less valuable under a scenario where the AI 
needs many CPUs interacting with the real world, leaving the rest of the 
scenario unchanged?

I would not be overly surprised if the *first* AI, even a Friendly AI, 
is most conveniently built with many CPUs.  Realtime, unrestricted 
Internet access is perhaps unwise; but if it is convenient to have a 
small robotics lab, there is nothing wrong with that.  However, various 
incautious persons who believe that an AI absolutely cannot possibly 
exist without many CPUs and a realtime interface, and who use this 
uncalculated intuition to justify not taking other safety precautions, 
may lead me to be emphatic about the *possibility* that an AI can do 
just fine with one CPU and a VT100 terminal.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Sat Jun 24 00:46:26 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 19:46:26 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] When did intelligence first emerge in
	theuniverse?
In-Reply-To: <011301c6970d$d8d032d0$bf084e0c@MyComputer>
References: <449B046C.5090808@betterhumans.com>
	<deaa866a0606221821h6ee3bbd6jc1275e9fb4299f1d@mail.gmail.com>
	<011301c6970d$d8d032d0$bf084e0c@MyComputer>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606231746k64bc94f6l58cddc54c322763f@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/23/06, John K Clark <jonkc at att.net> wrote:

> There is zero evidence that these planets orbiting other suns are anything
> more than just planets.


I didn't say that there was.  I was merely suggesting that there are other
possibilities that are consistent with known laws of physics (e.g. Jupiter
brains or neutronium brains) that would provide reasonable explanations for
the current observations that are receiving zero press time.  This becomes
more annoying when one starts to have to do a lot of hand waving to explain
*why* at least some of the "Earth's" that are likely to be older than ours
would not have evolved *long* past our current state of development.

One of the triumphs of the Big Bang theory is that it explains how the
> lighter elements were made during the first few seconds of the big bang.
> The
> calculated abundance of these elements and their observed abundance are in
> excellent agreement (especially regarding deuterium) . However if Dark
> Matter were normal matter and there were 10 time more of it around than we
> thought the abundance of light elements observed and their calculated
> value
> would not be even close.


Cough... And precisely *where* is the data coming from that is providing
those element abundances?  If MBrains or NBrains can disassemble planets and
stars do you not think they could preassemble the solar system to look a
particular way?  Do you feel they could put a few hundred million satellites
in orbit around the outer solar system to make the elements in the Universe
appear to have the "mix" we observe?   "Gee look Joe, if I take this light
and properly time the variation in power inputs the it will look exactly
like a gravitational microlens to the observers watching from Earth.  Oh
yes, and don't forget that they are expecting to get that faint radio signal
from that Voyager satellite we have sitting over in the corner next week."

Has any scientist seriously studied what set of astronomical observations we
currently have could *not* be produced by an ATC relatively cheaply -- given
the matter, energy and engineering capabilities we can anticipate they would
have?  (Assuming they are not skewing the input data to give us the
impression we are living in what is indeed a faux universe.)

The scenario here isn't that we are in a simulation but that we are in one
of the many faux "universes" that are setup to be relatively close resemble
the "real" universe to test developmental variation involving the discovery
of things which do not fit the "standard" pictures.  E.g. When does a
civilization come up with the Fermi Paradox and how do they handle it?  What
about Dark Matter?  What about Dark Energy?  What about "strange"
supernovas?  Etc.  If we tweek what they are observing just this way, how
does it alter their development?

You can flip the question around and ask what fraction of the believed
"local" reality could be manipulated?  There are many scientific experiments
where attempts are not made to replicate them more than a few times (look
for example at the cold fusion debate...).  The nanorobots could move in and
put the "fix" on the results and it would be very hard for us to detect
this.  It isn't as if the scientists have the labs in clean room conditions
under lock and key 24/7 equiped with heat and motion sensors that might
detect nanorobots sneaking in or out.

I see no reason why Jupiter brains can't be made of normal matter so I see
> no reason to think Dark Matter is made up of Jupiter Brains. I don't even
> want to talk about Dark Energy, although even more common than Dark Matter
> we know even less about it.


My point would be that Jupter Brains and Matrioshka Brains and Neutronium
Brains are *all* made out of "normal" matter operating under our hopefully
accurate perceptions of physical laws.  Unless they are actively radiating
copious amounts of energy they *are* going to be undetectable (i.e. *DARK*)
except by using gravitational microlensing or occultation astronomy.
Getting either of these methods to provide good data involves making some
reasonable assumptions about the nature of, distance to and size of the
background and foreground objects.  Astrophysicists do not generally engage
in speculations about the universe being populated by roving populations of
the 3 Brain types  -- presumably because they would like to retain their
jobs and maybe someday get tenure.

Robert
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From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Sat Jun 24 04:38:36 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 05:38:36 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] When did intelligence first emerge in
	theuniverse?
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606231746k64bc94f6l58cddc54c322763f@mail.gmail.com>
References: <449B046C.5090808@betterhumans.com>
	<deaa866a0606221821h6ee3bbd6jc1275e9fb4299f1d@mail.gmail.com>
	<011301c6970d$d8d032d0$bf084e0c@MyComputer>
	<deaa866a0606231746k64bc94f6l58cddc54c322763f@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606232138g910e460r52ca8665f539c359@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/24/06, Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Cough... And precisely *where* is the data coming from that is providing
> those element abundances?  If MBrains or NBrains can disassemble planets and
> stars do you not think they could preassemble the solar system to look a
> particular way?  Do you feel they could put a few hundred million satellites
> in orbit around the outer solar system to make the elements in the Universe
> appear to have the "mix" we observe?   "Gee look Joe, if I take this light
> and properly time the variation in power inputs the it will look exactly
> like a gravitational microlens to the observers watching from Earth.  Oh
> yes, and don't forget that they are expecting to get that faint radio signal
> from that Voyager satellite we have sitting over in the corner next week."
>

Welcome to the Cartesian club. At least I think Descartes was the first
person to both formulate this theory and have his ideas transmitted to the
present day, though I'm open to correction. His way out was to believe in
God, then decide that God, being good, would not deceive him. What's your
way out, or do you have one yet?
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From femmechakra at yahoo.ca  Sat Jun 24 04:48:33 2006
From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anne-Marie Taylor)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 00:48:33 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity,
	just curious:)
Message-ID: <20060624044833.84495.qmail@web35503.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

I wrote:
I figure, a form of boredom, would be someone that hasn't begun to
formulate their basic interests.

  >Robert Bradbury wrote:
  >True, don't many of us have memories of ourselves or other children
>complaining (esp. on rainy days) "there's nothing to do".  But one has to
>wonder with TV, Video Games, the WWW, etc. now-a-days whether it is not
>still too easy for individuals to become narrowly focused and exhaust the
>(local) realm of possibilities.
   
  Anna Replies:
  I wonder if playing games and watching TV could be considered basic
  interests?
  I agree that focusing solely on those interests could lead to a narrow vision.
   
  >Natasha Vita-More wrote:
  >That state of restlessness can be a good thing because when we are not in 
>involved in activities that stimulate our brains, a time of inner 
>contemplation can set in.
   
  In my opinion, restlessness is much related to laziness.  I agree, at times, just
  doing nothing but relaxing,  is great.
  
>Natasha wrote:
  >People tend to expect others to entertain them. When that moment of 
>restlessness sets in, most people think someone or something will change 
>the mood.  Most people do not know how to be creative, and many have not 
>been taught how to learn to create.

  Your right.  I'm going to ponder the thought on how to teach people to create.
  Thanks.
   
  >MB wrote: 
  >But I'd have been miserable without quiet "down time" on my own.

I think laziness is a word that has been used in context that symbolizes negativity.
  I think, if you replace "being lazy" by telling people your meditating, they take
  it as being positive. I believe,   "Quiet time", like you said, is essential.
   
  I hope I was in proper context:)
  Anna
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

 		
---------------------------------
All new Yahoo! Mail  
---------------------------------
Get news delivered. Enjoy RSS feeds right on your Mail page.
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From jonkc at att.net  Sat Jun 24 06:08:33 2006
From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 02:08:33 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] When did intelligence first emerge intheuniverse?
References: <449B046C.5090808@betterhumans.com><deaa866a0606221821h6ee3bbd6jc1275e9fb4299f1d@mail.gmail.com><011301c6970d$d8d032d0$bf084e0c@MyComputer>
	<deaa866a0606231746k64bc94f6l58cddc54c322763f@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <009e01c69754$a62aaee0$550a4e0c@MyComputer>

Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> Wrote:

 > And precisely *where* is the data coming from that  is providing
> those element abundances?

>From the light spectrum of the very oldest stars, stars that are almost as
old as the Big Bang itself. If dark Matter is made up of Jupiter Brains
then it's made up of ordinary baryonic matter, then the early universe
must have been much denser than we though and nearly all the deuterium
would have been converted into Helium 4 in the first few seconds of the
Big Bang. Instead we find lots of deuterium in those ancient stars,
just the amount you'd expect to see if Dark Matter were not normal matter.

And some of the stars we look at are so old, formed just a few hundred
million years after the Big Bang,  that it's difficult to believe any sort
of life could exist on them much less a civilization that's building Jupiter
Brains. For one thing there was very little carbon or metals back then,
they came later from supernovas.

 John K Clark







From sjatkins at mac.com  Sat Jun 24 07:11:18 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 00:11:18 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity
In-Reply-To: <4498A8E0.1020604@goldenfuture.net>
References: <20060620094456.27251.qmail@web26209.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
	<030801c6946d$cd6a4e00$9a00a8c0@old>
	<42200.72.236.103.229.1150814451.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<91C2D84D-004B-45DB-BEA3-8EF244842C95@antipope.org>
	<37048.86.130.28.230.1150849546.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<42418.72.236.103.159.1150851561.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<A8895EF3-487E-47D6-B287-4D1EC20E1FFD@mac.com>
	<4498A8E0.1020604@goldenfuture.net>
Message-ID: <F4EAE966-EB51-4AE8-A349-60EBF84E01DB@mac.com>


On Jun 20, 2006, at 7:03 PM, Joseph Bloch wrote:

> I must disagree.
>
> "Designed"...? No.

Check out the writings of James Dewey re public education and its  
purpose.  Earlier the US public system was based on the Prussian  
education model.  In that model approximately 5% were considered  
worth educating to actually think/lead/innovate.  The rest were to be  
educated to obey orders more or less intelligently but explicitly not  
educated to think too much.

>
> Does so inadvertently, with the best of intentions...? Yes.
>

The actual documented intentions were not to produce as many thinking  
intelligent people as possible.

- samantha


> Joseph
>
> Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
>> On Jun 20, 2006, at 5:59 PM, MB wrote:
>>
>>
>>> This fits my experience in school, in certain classes. The studying
>>> was
>>> almost impossible for me to do. After about 10 minutes my "brain
>>> stopped"
>>> - I was unable to concentrate and there was no meaning to what I was
>>> doing. Over and over the material I would go, all to no avail. My
>>> input
>>> circuits seemed to have shut down. Surely not through overload  
>>> though.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Public K-12 education in the US at least was actually designed to
>> shut down large numbers of active bright minds.  I wish that I was
>> kidding.
>>
>>
>> - samantha
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat



From spike66 at comcast.net  Sat Jun 24 09:17:15 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 02:17:15 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
In-Reply-To: <F4EAE966-EB51-4AE8-A349-60EBF84E01DB@mac.com>
Message-ID: <200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>


Shelly's baby was born at 0015 this morning.  Difficult labor, mother and
child are fine, more later, thanks to all well wishers.  {8-]  

spike








From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Sat Jun 24 09:44:24 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 10:44:24 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
In-Reply-To: <200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <F4EAE966-EB51-4AE8-A349-60EBF84E01DB@mac.com>
	<200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606240244wd1e1c01y3e3044d41401a216@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/24/06, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
> Shelly's baby was born at 0015 this morning.  Difficult labor, mother and
> child are fine, more later, thanks to all well wishers.  {8-]
>

Congratulations! May good fortune remain with mother and child.

(belated well wisher ^.^)
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From jef at jefallbright.net  Sat Jun 24 14:02:04 2006
From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 07:02:04 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
In-Reply-To: <200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <F4EAE966-EB51-4AE8-A349-60EBF84E01DB@mac.com>
	<200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <22360fa10606240702x729ff7a9y5642f4e0ba4c065f@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/24/06, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Shelly's baby was born at 0015 this morning.  Difficult labor, mother and
> child are fine, more later, thanks to all well wishers.  {8-]
>

Congratulations Spike, and best wishes to your family!

Parenthood: Development of the extent of a living or organizational
system's intelligence, functional order, vitality, energy, life,
experience, and capacity and drive for improvement and growth.  ;-)

- Jef


From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Sat Jun 24 14:43:37 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 10:43:37 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity,
 just curious:)
In-Reply-To: <20060624044833.84495.qmail@web35503.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <20060624044833.84495.qmail@web35503.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <43905.72.236.102.82.1151160217.squirrel@main.nc.us>



Anna wrote:
> I think laziness is a word that has been used in context that symbolizes
> negativity.
>   I think, if you replace "being lazy" by telling people your meditating,
> they take
>   it as being positive. I believe,   "Quiet time", like you said, is
> essential.
>

Suddenly a memory of my mom telling me (yelling at me, is how I recall it)
that I was lazy. And selfish. Why? Because I wanted quiet time on my own,
with no distractions. Time to "do nothing". Well, there was stuff going on
inside, but she didn't see it.

I've had to fight for that all my life. In my marriage the same, always
struggling for quiet time, for down time, for silence.

I sure could have used that Meditation term, but I never even thought of
that. Never considered that was perhaps what I was doing. Probably because
Meditation has often a "formula" to be followed, and I was just being
quiet and alone.

There were things I did that protected me: weeding the garden was great.
Nobody wanted to be with me, and nobody could say I was lazy. Even washing
dishes was a helpful protection. Some people knit and do needlework. I
think it may give them the same quiet down time that weeding did for me.

Regards,
MB



From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Sat Jun 24 15:04:33 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 11:04:33 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity
In-Reply-To: <F4EAE966-EB51-4AE8-A349-60EBF84E01DB@mac.com>
References: <20060620094456.27251.qmail@web26209.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
	<030801c6946d$cd6a4e00$9a00a8c0@old>
	<42200.72.236.103.229.1150814451.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<91C2D84D-004B-45DB-BEA3-8EF244842C95@antipope.org>
	<37048.86.130.28.230.1150849546.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<42418.72.236.103.159.1150851561.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<A8895EF3-487E-47D6-B287-4D1EC20E1FFD@mac.com>
	<4498A8E0.1020604@goldenfuture.net>
	<F4EAE966-EB51-4AE8-A349-60EBF84E01DB@mac.com>
Message-ID: <43928.72.236.102.82.1151161473.squirrel@main.nc.us>


> Check out the writings of James Dewey re public education and its
> purpose.


I suspect you mean John Dewey? Columbia University NYC?  1900-1930 era?

Regards,
MB



From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Sat Jun 24 15:06:31 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 11:06:31 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
In-Reply-To: <200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <F4EAE966-EB51-4AE8-A349-60EBF84E01DB@mac.com>
	<200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <43932.72.236.102.82.1151161591.squirrel@main.nc.us>

>
> Shelly's baby was born at 0015 this morning.  Difficult labor, mother and
> child are fine, more later, thanks to all well wishers.  {8-]
>
> spike
>


 CONGRATULATIONS!  Best wishes for the little family! :)  Fortunately the
actual memory of labor decreases rather rapidly with time... unlike that
post-traumatic-stress stuff. :)

Regards,
MB





From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Sat Jun 24 15:38:47 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 10:38:47 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] When did intelligence first emerge intheuniverse?
In-Reply-To: <009e01c69754$a62aaee0$550a4e0c@MyComputer>
References: <449B046C.5090808@betterhumans.com>
	<deaa866a0606221821h6ee3bbd6jc1275e9fb4299f1d@mail.gmail.com>
	<011301c6970d$d8d032d0$bf084e0c@MyComputer>
	<deaa866a0606231746k64bc94f6l58cddc54c322763f@mail.gmail.com>
	<009e01c69754$a62aaee0$550a4e0c@MyComputer>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606240838k520263a7qd38d31912c02d769@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/24/06, John K Clark <jonkc at att.net> wrote:
>
>
> >From the light spectrum of the very oldest stars, stars that are almost
> as
> old as the Big Bang itself.


Point 1: Have you personally *ever* been to an "oldest star'?
If you have not, and you are choosing to "trust" the data is valid, can you
make a case that there is no way, given "valid" laws of physics, that the
data, e.g. the photons at specific frequencies, cannot be "rigged"?  I.e.
instead of there being "oldest" stars there are a bunch of carefully
arranged light sources surrounding our solar system that are arranged to
look like oldest stars?  I'm not asking if you think this is probable.  I'm
asking if you think it is *impossible*?

if it is *not* "impossible" *and* you accept Lineweaver's conclusions, you
have to completely invert the foundation upon almost all astrophysics, and
even a lot of basic physics is based.  I.e. instead of assuming with
99.999999...% probability that the Universe is dead and *all* observations
should be based *only* upon natural laws you have to assume with ~70%
probability that the observations could be "rigged" and the observations
should be giving equal time to "natural" and "artificial" explanations.  (
i.e We do *not* have exoplanets, we have "thingys" which seem to be
producing wavelength or magnitude shifts due to their large masses.)

Whether the observations are "rigged" or not is an interesting discussion
and involves getting inside the 'minds' of brains operating at the limits of
physics, with lifetimes of trillions of years who might very well become
"bored" and want to play with the Universe.

(In some respects this gets into Seth Lloyd's perspective that the Universe
is nothing but a big computer -- the question comes down to whether or not
there are 'minds' which use it as a substrate to run programs.)


If dark Matter is made up of Jupiter Brains
> then it's made up of ordinary baryonic matter, then the early universe
> must have been much denser than we though and nearly all the deuterium
> would have been converted into Helium 4 in the first few seconds of the
> Big Bang. Instead we find lots of deuterium in those ancient stars,
> just the amount you'd expect to see if Dark Matter were not normal matter.


You are assuming that I believe the observations are "natural".  But even
assuming that are you are also assuming things like an unbiased use of
stellar material as resources.  If MBrains happen to have a preference for
stars with He4 (perhaps for making Nbrains) then our observed element
abundances are going to be biased in that high deuterium stars are those
which they leave behind as having been unworthy of energy expenditure for
harvesting at this time.

And some of the stars we look at are so old, formed just a few hundred
> million years after the Big Bang,  that it's difficult to believe any sort
> of life could exist on them much less a civilization that's building
> Jupiter
> Brains. For one thing there was very little carbon or metals back then,
> they came later from supernovas.


I didn't say that life evolved in the first few hundred million years.  I am
aware that in classical nucleosynthesis you are going to need time for the
heavy elements to build up by going through the S- or R- nucleosynthesis
pathways.  But as I pointed out to Eugen, current theory argues that
position in the galaxy and proximity to the right supernovas to seed a solar
nebula are viewed as being more important -- particularly when we are
talking 6-8 billion years *after* the evolution of those elements, of which
carbon is probably the most essential, to play around with the mix before
you start the ~4 billion years to "intelligent civilization" clocks ticking.

But  at 0.01c it only takes 10 million years to take a galaxy dark.  If you
assume a mixed population of "natural", partially-engineered and
"completely-engineered" galaxies you get a universe which is much more
explainable than hand waving involving "dark matter" that the best
explanations involve *undetectable* particles.  Now what seems more like
"fantasy" -- undetectable particles or a universe semi-developed by
intelligent civilizations?  We *have* evidence that intelligent
civilizations can exist -- we have little or no evidence that undetectable
particles can or do.

Robert
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From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Sat Jun 24 15:42:38 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 10:42:38 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
In-Reply-To: <43932.72.236.102.82.1151161591.squirrel@main.nc.us>
References: <F4EAE966-EB51-4AE8-A349-60EBF84E01DB@mac.com>
	<200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<43932.72.236.102.82.1151161591.squirrel@main.nc.us>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606240842r6a40695bi8f90ee785d8da01e@mail.gmail.com>

Spike,

My congratulations and best wishes to you all as well.

Robert
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From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Sat Jun 24 15:48:13 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 08:48:13 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
In-Reply-To: <200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <20060624154813.9389.qmail@web60518.mail.yahoo.com>



--- spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:

> 
> Shelly's baby was born at 0015 this morning. 
> Difficult labor, mother and
> child are fine, more later, thanks to all well
> wishers.  {8-]  

Congratulations, Spike. May this world prove itself
worthy of him. 


Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"God doesn't play dice with the universe." - Albert Einstein

"Einstein, don't tell God what to do." - Neils Bohr

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From spike66 at comcast.net  Sat Jun 24 16:09:22 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 09:09:22 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606240244wd1e1c01y3e3044d41401a216@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <200606241628.k5OGSx95006553@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

Thanks Russell and all others.  {8-]

 

Off to see the family!  s

 

  _____  

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Russell Wallace
Sent: Saturday, June 24, 2006 2:44 AM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] new extropian

 

On 6/24/06, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:


Shelly's baby was born at 0015 this morning.  Difficult labor, mother and
child are fine, more later, thanks to all well wishers.  {8-]


Congratulations! May good fortune remain with mother and child.

(belated well wisher ^.^)

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From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Sat Jun 24 16:53:48 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 11:53:48 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] String Theory: Not Even Wrong...
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606240953x3d1c0b65m355f0f003d7fab2d@mail.gmail.com>

Article [1] points out how theoretical physics is "hitting the wall".
Several forthcoming books (by physicists Peter Woit and Lee Smolin) are
going to be pointing out that the lack of testable predictions would
represent the end of one of the most basic sciences as we know it.

Similar problems became apparent when I realized the limits that Matrioshka
Brains would be running into and how quickly they would reach them.  But
rather than theoretical limits these would be engineering and thought
capacity limits.  It doesn't mean that advanced civilizations trip over into
the realm of "its so boring, please put me out of misery" it means that they
spend lots of time creating "unusual" virtual realities or "playing" with
real ones (planets, solar systems, galaxies perhaps).

For us, in the near term, clarity about a wall in physics might allow a
redirection of some of that grey matter to clever genome or nanopart design
(how many universities have Departments in those areas???).

Robert

1. http://www.nwfdailynews.com/articleArchive/jun2006/notevenwrong.php
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From asa at nada.kth.se  Sat Jun 24 16:44:26 2006
From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 18:44:26 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
In-Reply-To: <200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <F4EAE966-EB51-4AE8-A349-60EBF84E01DB@mac.com>
	<200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <1711.163.1.72.81.1151167466.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>


spike wrote:
>
> Shelly's baby was born at 0015 this morning.  Difficult labor, mother and
> child are fine, more later, thanks to all well wishers.  {8-]

Wonderful! Another step in reducing the entropy in our part of the
universe. There is nothing more impressive than to see how a cute little
survival machine grows up into a thinking, feeling being.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University




From sjatkins at mac.com  Sat Jun 24 18:00:25 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 11:00:25 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
In-Reply-To: <200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <6C166B33-5E71-4A49-B769-8556E5432E10@mac.com>

WOO HOO!  Congratulations to all three of you!

- samantha

On Jun 24, 2006, at 2:17 AM, spike wrote:

>
> Shelly's baby was born at 0015 this morning.  Difficult labor,  
> mother and
> child are fine, more later, thanks to all well wishers.  {8-]
>
> spike
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat



From natasha at natasha.cc  Sat Jun 24 17:08:07 2006
From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 12:08:07 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
In-Reply-To: <200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <F4EAE966-EB51-4AE8-A349-60EBF84E01DB@mac.com>
	<200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20060624120719.043790e8@pop-server.austin.rr.com>

Congratulations to you and Shelly!

Natasha

At 04:17 AM 6/24/2006, you wrote:

>Shelly's baby was born at 0015 this morning.  Difficult labor, mother and
>child are fine, more later, thanks to all well wishers.  {8-]
>
>spike
>
>
>
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>extropy-chat mailing list
>extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat



From sjatkins at mac.com  Sat Jun 24 18:07:25 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 11:07:25 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Draft Paper on Boredom and Superlongevity
In-Reply-To: <43928.72.236.102.82.1151161473.squirrel@main.nc.us>
References: <20060620094456.27251.qmail@web26209.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
	<030801c6946d$cd6a4e00$9a00a8c0@old>
	<42200.72.236.103.229.1150814451.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<91C2D84D-004B-45DB-BEA3-8EF244842C95@antipope.org>
	<37048.86.130.28.230.1150849546.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<42418.72.236.103.159.1150851561.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<A8895EF3-487E-47D6-B287-4D1EC20E1FFD@mac.com>
	<4498A8E0.1020604@goldenfuture.net>
	<F4EAE966-EB51-4AE8-A349-60EBF84E01DB@mac.com>
	<43928.72.236.102.82.1151161473.squirrel@main.nc.us>
Message-ID: <AC9BF6FB-0BFE-4404-A4AF-8D1D8232D895@mac.com>

Oops, yeah.  I shouldn't post when tired.  Funny that wikipedia says  
much more positive things about his educational ideas (at least the  
ones not put into practice) than I had read was the case elsewhere.   
This bears looking into more but I haven't the time to do it justice  
just now.


- samantha

On Jun 24, 2006, at 8:04 AM, MB wrote:

>
>> Check out the writings of James Dewey re public education and its
>> purpose.
>
>
> I suspect you mean John Dewey? Columbia University NYC?  1900-1930  
> era?
>
> Regards,
> MB
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat



From sjatkins at mac.com  Sat Jun 24 18:16:24 2006
From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 11:16:24 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] String Theory: Not Even Wrong...
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606240953x3d1c0b65m355f0f003d7fab2d@mail.gmail.com>
References: <deaa866a0606240953x3d1c0b65m355f0f003d7fab2d@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <7C3FCAC2-AFE7-4EE6-B7B1-B245BD67886D@mac.com>


On Jun 24, 2006, at 9:53 AM, Robert Bradbury wrote:

> Article [1] points out how theoretical physics is "hitting the  
> wall".  Several forthcoming books (by physicists Peter Woit and Lee  
> Smolin) are going to be pointing out that the lack of testable  
> predictions would represent the end of one of the most basic  
> sciences as we know it.
>

Didn't we hear much the same thing toward the end of the 19th century?


- samantha



From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Sat Jun 24 19:08:40 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 12:08:40 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] String Theory: Not Even Wrong...
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606240953x3d1c0b65m355f0f003d7fab2d@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060624190840.78971.qmail@web60518.mail.yahoo.com>



--- Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:

> Article [1] points out how theoretical physics is
> "hitting the wall".
> Several forthcoming books (by physicists Peter Woit
> and Lee Smolin) are
> going to be pointing out that the lack of testable
> predictions would
> represent the end of one of the most basic sciences
> as we know it.

Hopefully this will give physicists an excuse to go
back and take a serious look at Burkhard Heim's
theory. It does manage to mathematically predict the
masses of all the known fundamental particles. It also
makes predictions that should be testable. Like an
uncharged particle of electron mass, gravitophotons,
etc. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heim_Theory



Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"God doesn't play dice with the universe." - Albert Einstein

"Einstein, don't tell God what to do." - Neils Bohr

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Sat Jun 24 19:57:09 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 12:57:09 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] When did intelligence first emerge intheuniverse?
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606240838k520263a7qd38d31912c02d769@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060624195709.95303.qmail@web60518.mail.yahoo.com>



--- Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:
> But  at 0.01c it only takes 10 million years to take
> a galaxy dark.  If you
> assume a mixed population of "natural",
> partially-engineered and
> "completely-engineered" galaxies you get a universe
> which is much more
> explainable than hand waving involving "dark matter"
> that the best
> explanations involve *undetectable* particles.  Now
> what seems more like
> "fantasy" -- undetectable particles or a universe
> semi-developed by
> intelligent civilizations?  We *have* evidence that
> intelligent
> civilizations can exist -- we have little or no
> evidence that undetectable
> particles can or do.

It is curious that the location of the vast halo of
undetectable "dark matter" hypothesized to surround
galaxies to explain their rotational speed anomalies
seems to correspond well with the location of the
theorectical "life zone" as well. I find such
coincidences interesting. I also don't think Dyson
spheres are any harder to believe in than mysterious
undetectable massive particles that don't interact
with anything else.

I think the Fermi Paradox is evo-psychological in
origin. Why waste energy alerting potential predators
to one's existence?


Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"God doesn't play dice with the universe." - Albert Einstein

"Einstein, don't tell God what to do." - Neils Bohr

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From jonkc at att.net  Sat Jun 24 20:39:11 2006
From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 16:39:11 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] When did intelligence first emerge intheuniverse?
References: <449B046C.5090808@betterhumans.com><deaa866a0606221821h6ee3bbd6jc1275e9fb4299f1d@mail.gmail.com><011301c6970d$d8d032d0$bf084e0c@MyComputer><deaa866a0606231746k64bc94f6l58cddc54c322763f@mail.gmail.com><009e01c69754$a62aaee0$550a4e0c@MyComputer>
	<deaa866a0606240838k520263a7qd38d31912c02d769@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <003b01c697ce$4c1cc990$1f0a4e0c@MyComputer>

Robert Bradbury Wrote:

> Have you personally *ever* been to an "oldest star'?

No, I've never been to the Great Wall Of China either but I believe it
exists, I've seen pictures of it, and I've seen pictures of stars as they
were 13 billion years ago. These may not be the very oldest stars but they
can't be far from it, the Big Bang only happened 13.8 billion years ago.

> instead of there being "oldest" stars there are a bunch of carefully
> arranged light sources surrounding our solar system that are arranged to
> look like oldest stars

Maybe, and maybe God created the world 4 thousand years ago and buried
dinosaur bones and made them look hundreds of millions of years old to fool
us. Or maybe God created the universe 30 seconds ago complete with memories
of me as a child. Maybe, I can't prove it's untrue so maybe. But probably
not. It is far more likely that something we can not even guess at always
destroys a civilization before it gets really serious about engineering the
universe, or maybe we're just the first, after all somebody has got to be.
I'm hoping for the second possibility.

> You are assuming that I believe the observations are "natural".

I am assuming that the entire observable universe is not a practical joke
set up by a cosmic buffoon to make us look stupid; and if my assumption is
wrong and He doesn't want me to know about it then I never will so there is
no point in fretting over it.

> But even assuming that are you are also assuming things like an unbiased
> use of stellar material as resources.
>  If MBrains happen to have a preference for stars with He4 (perhaps for
> making Nbrains) then our observed element abundances are going to be
> biased in that high deuterium stars

Even if ancient ET's had a fetish for an inert gas like helium I don't see
why they'd want to convert deuterium to it, helium was one of the few things
that was already available at the time. You had hydrogen and helium and
maybe a very small amount of lithium and that's it, you can't make much with
that, in fact even nature can't make much with that except stars, I don't
see how life could even get started with building blocks that crummy,  and
even if by some incredible miracle it did it wouldn't have time to evolve to
the point where it got into the Jupiter brain business,

> I didn't say that life evolved in the first few hundred million years.

Well we can observe that era with our telescopes and Dark Matter still
existed then, so whatever it is it can't be made of Jupiter brains; assuming
it's all not just a stage set with stars painted onto cardboard.

> at 0.01c it only takes 10 million years to take a galaxy dark.

Even a Dyson sphere admits infrared radiation.

John K Clark





From transhumanist at goldenfuture.net  Sat Jun 24 20:31:26 2006
From: transhumanist at goldenfuture.net (Joseph Bloch)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 16:31:26 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
In-Reply-To: <200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <449DA11E.8070703@goldenfuture.net>

Awesome news! Congrats.

Joseph

spike wrote:

>Shelly's baby was born at 0015 this morning.  Difficult labor, mother and
>child are fine, more later, thanks to all well wishers.  {8-]  
>
>spike
>
>
>
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>extropy-chat mailing list
>extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
>  
>



From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Sat Jun 24 23:26:29 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 18:26:29 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] When did intelligence first emerge intheuniverse?
In-Reply-To: <003b01c697ce$4c1cc990$1f0a4e0c@MyComputer>
References: <449B046C.5090808@betterhumans.com>
	<deaa866a0606221821h6ee3bbd6jc1275e9fb4299f1d@mail.gmail.com>
	<011301c6970d$d8d032d0$bf084e0c@MyComputer>
	<deaa866a0606231746k64bc94f6l58cddc54c322763f@mail.gmail.com>
	<009e01c69754$a62aaee0$550a4e0c@MyComputer>
	<deaa866a0606240838k520263a7qd38d31912c02d769@mail.gmail.com>
	<003b01c697ce$4c1cc990$1f0a4e0c@MyComputer>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606241626s7d51040bqd4dbdf1041f546ad@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/24/06, John K Clark <jonkc at att.net> wrote:
>
>
> Even if ancient ET's had a fetish for an inert gas like helium I don't see
> why they'd want to convert deuterium to it, helium was one of the few
> things that was already available at the time. You had hydrogen and helium
> and maybe a very small amount of lithium and that's it, you can't make much
> with that, in fact even nature can't make much with that except stars, I
> don't see how life could even get started with building blocks that
> crummy,  and even if by some incredible miracle it did it wouldn't have time
> to evolve to the point where it got into the Jupiter brain business,


I'll point out that it is the triple-alpha process which fuses 3 4He nuclei
that produces the carbon, which then is further modified to produce the N,
O, S & P that most of life is based on.  So if I were an ATC in a hurry to
produce more material for computronium I would make a point of separating
out the 4He, dump it into a star, let it rapidly cook it into the heavier
elements, then haul those elements back out.  This is much more efficient
than dumping in the hydrogen with the He because that simply creates a
deeper gravity well that one has to haul the heavier elements out of to use
it for useful purposes.  So ATCs would have a policy of harvesting the He
and leaving behind the H which might later form stars with the abundances we
observe.

Have physicists ever looked at the problem from the perspective that the
universe we "see" is due to ATCs arranging things to breed the most useful
elements as rapidly as possible (i.e. universe element mixture optimization
strategies)?  I strongly doubt it.

You have a *real* problem here -- because I can conceive of doing it and
explain how one would do it you have to resort to some real hand waving to
explain why it hasn't already been done yet.

The fact that we have had several major wars in the last century and that
has not only not wiped humanity out but perhaps it might be argued
accelerated the rate of technology development would tend to argue against
"poof" and then the civilization destroys itself explanations as to why we
might be first.  In fact I've argued in a number of forums, including the
ExI list at various points in time, that at this point it would be hard for
anything to push us back more than a couple of hundred years.  The only
thing I can see that might manage that would be disaster that completely
boiled away all of the oceans and heated most of the atmosphere on the
planet to 40+ deg. C.  Those types of hazards are currently extremely rare.
So once you reach a certain level of intelligence, knowledge base and
technology (I'm guessing Bronze Age) then pushing one back to the bacteria
or fish stage becomes increasingly improbable.  (In the Bronze age the
"planet killer" had to hit a ~5000 year window -- at our stage the "planet
killer" has I would guess only a 20-30 year window before that can't stop us
from reaching the limits.)

Even a Dyson sphere admits infrared radiation.


A classical Dyson *shell*  would emit IR at 200-300K [1] which are
temperatures we very hard pressed to detect at any distance.  And Matrioshka
Brains would emit IR at temperatures just above the microwave background
temperature (3-4K) for thermodynamic efficiency reasons.  Minsky pointed
this out to Dyson at the Byurakan CETI conference in 1971 and while Dyson
did not completely agree (presumably because he was thinking along the
shells supporting life forms which required "liquid water") he did
acknowledge the validity of the point.

Robert

1. Dyson never said "sphere" and explicitly cited those temperatures.
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From thespike at satx.rr.com  Sun Jun 25 03:38:48 2006
From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick)
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 22:38:48 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health insurance and tax
In-Reply-To: <40927.72.236.103.180.1150590390.squirrel@main.nc.us>
References: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>
	<61385.86.138.88.108.1150484050.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>
	<0E6C82C3-FC4F-40CF-8BD3-0B9A9B24B30C@antipope.org>
	<20060617045448.GA9877@ofb.net>
	<7641ddc60606162307j2712d6faw9b4737008e6dcded@mail.gmail.com>
	<40701.72.236.103.200.1150553098.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<449428A8.5040008@posthuman.com>
	<40784.72.236.103.83.1150576317.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<449483BA.6070200@posthuman.com>
	<40927.72.236.103.180.1150590390.squirrel@main.nc.us>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060624223544.021ab240@satx.rr.com>

At 08:26 PM 6/17/2006 -0400, MB wrote:

>The difficulty is in the employer end of things. I'm not a regular full
>time employee anywhere, I'm part time employee and part time on my own.
>That knocks me out of employer healthcare. And  HSA nad HRA and all the
>others, as far as I can tell. My accountant and I have been 'round on this
>before.  I'm on my own, buying full cost healthcare as an individual. Boo.

Barbara Lamar is posting a series of mini-essays on this topic at:

http://www.allbusiness.com/blog/BusinessTax/2975899/006049.html

and thereafter.

Damien Broderick 



From jonkc at att.net  Sun Jun 25 04:59:27 2006
From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 00:59:27 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] When did intelligence first emerge intheuniverse?
References: <449B046C.5090808@betterhumans.com><deaa866a0606221821h6ee3bbd6jc1275e9fb4299f1d@mail.gmail.com><011301c6970d$d8d032d0$bf084e0c@MyComputer><deaa866a0606231746k64bc94f6l58cddc54c322763f@mail.gmail.com><009e01c69754$a62aaee0$550a4e0c@MyComputer><deaa866a0606240838k520263a7qd38d31912c02d769@mail.gmail.com><003b01c697ce$4c1cc990$1f0a4e0c@MyComputer>
	<deaa866a0606241626s7d51040bqd4dbdf1041f546ad@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <006301c69814$2807b740$260a4e0c@MyComputer>

Robert Bradbury Wrote:

> I'll point out that it is the triple-alpha process which fuses 3 4He
> nuclei that produces the carbon, which then is further modified
> to produce the N, O, S & P that most of life is based on.


But that process didn't have time to produce any of those elements in
those very old stars, we know this because we can observe those ancient
stars and we see nothing but hydrogen and helium, and in just the
proportions conventional Big Bang theory predicts. How are you going
to make a Jupiter Brain out of just hydrogen and chemically inert helium,
or even a bacterium, especially when evolution had almost no time to do
its work? And if Dark Matter were Jupiter Brains you haven't explained
why we still see evidence for Dark Matter even when the universe was
very very very young.

> You have a *real* problem here -- because I can conceive of doing it and
> explain how one would do it you have to resort to some real hand waving
> to explain why it hasn't already been done yet.

My problem is that I don't understand how ANYBODY could have
been around 13 billion years ago, less than a billion years after the Big
Bang, let alone someone who can substantially change the abundance of
elements in the entire universe while he's happily building Jupiter Brains.
And I don't understand why if ET started more than 13 billion years ago some
things in the universe, like this planet, still haven't been converted into
Jupiter Brains. It just makes no sense.

> at this point it would be hard for anything to push us back more than
> a couple of hundred years.


 Actually I think that's probably true but of course I can't be certain
there isn't some unimaginable roadblock that always trips up a
civilization before it advances beyond a certain point; I doubt it but
it's more likely than what you're talking about.

Is it really inconceivable to you that we are the first? Somebody has to be.

   John K Clark




From mbb386 at main.nc.us  Sun Jun 25 05:03:05 2006
From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 01:03:05 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health insurance and tax
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20060624223544.021ab240@satx.rr.com>
References: <B55E044559115F4B8C9EE62323C322B416E92B97@hickory.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>
	<61385.86.138.88.108.1150484050.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>
	<20060616220726.GB28766@ofb.net>
	<0E6C82C3-FC4F-40CF-8BD3-0B9A9B24B30C@antipope.org>
	<20060617045448.GA9877@ofb.net>
	<7641ddc60606162307j2712d6faw9b4737008e6dcded@mail.gmail.com>
	<40701.72.236.103.200.1150553098.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<449428A8.5040008@posthuman.com>
	<40784.72.236.103.83.1150576317.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<449483BA.6070200@posthuman.com>
	<40927.72.236.103.180.1150590390.squirrel@main.nc.us>
	<7.0.1.0.2.20060624223544.021ab240@satx.rr.com>
Message-ID: <44210.72.236.103.137.1151211785.squirrel@main.nc.us>


>
> Barbara Lamar is posting a series of mini-essays on this topic at:
>
> http://www.allbusiness.com/blog/BusinessTax/2975899/006049.html
>
> and thereafter.
>
>


Thanks, Damien - I enjoyed her first two essays on the topic :) and look
forward to the others.

Regards,
MB



From amara at amara.com  Sun Jun 25 05:50:19 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 07:50:19 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat]  String Theory: Not Even Wrong...
Message-ID: <p06230900c0c3d332f0da@[23.237.66.13]>

>Article [1] points out how theoretical physics is "hitting the wall".
>Several forthcoming books (by physicists Peter Woit and Lee Smolin) are
>going to be pointing out that the lack of testable predictions would
>represent the end of one of the most basic sciences as we know it.

This is a one-sided perspective. Valuable, but far from the whole
picture. There's at least one string theorist blogging on the
cosmicvariance blog and many more string theorist commenters. Try
reading over time all of that (Peter Woit does comment on the
cosmicvariance blog occasionally too).

Amara

(back from France. There seems to be a huge cross Atlantic effort
for Jupiter, to complement NASA's Juno mission. In twenty years there
might be multiple spacecraft in the Jupiter system.)


From amara at amara.com  Sun Jun 25 06:20:42 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 08:20:42 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat]  String Theory: Not Even Wrong...
Message-ID: <p06230900c0c3daf6c2cf@[23.237.66.13]>

I said previously

>This is a one-sided perspective. Valuable, but far from the whole
>picture. There's at least one string theorist blogging on the
>cosmicvariance blog and many more string theorist commenters. Try
>reading over time all of that (Peter Woit does comment on the
>cosmicvariance blog occasionally too).

Lee Smolin and Peter Woit give their perspective here too, so
this should help to see a larger picture:

http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/06/19/the-string-theory-backlash/

Amara


From spike66 at comcast.net  Sun Jun 25 07:04:28 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 00:04:28 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
In-Reply-To: <6.2.1.2.2.20060624120719.043790e8@pop-server.austin.rr.com>
Message-ID: <200606250704.k5P74o8d002472@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

Thanks Natasha.  spike  {8-]

> -----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, June 24, 2006 10:08 AM
> To: ExI chat list
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] new extropian
> 
> Congratulations to you and Shelly!
> 
> Natasha
> 
> At 04:17 AM 6/24/2006, you wrote:
> 
> >Shelly's baby was born at 0015 this morning.  Difficult labor, mother and
> >child are fine, more later, thanks to all well wishers.  {8-]
> >
> >spike
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >extropy-chat mailing list
> >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
> 
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat




From spike66 at comcast.net  Sun Jun 25 07:04:13 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 00:04:13 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
In-Reply-To: <6C166B33-5E71-4A49-B769-8556E5432E10@mac.com>
Message-ID: <200606250716.k5P7G3qY005192@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

Thanks Samantha.  spike

> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-
> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins
> Sent: Saturday, June 24, 2006 11:00 AM
> To: ExI chat list
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] new extropian
> 
> WOO HOO!  Congratulations to all three of you!
> 
> - samantha
> 
> On Jun 24, 2006, at 2:17 AM, spike wrote:
> 
> >
> > Shelly's baby was born at 0015 this morning.  Difficult labor,
> > mother and
> > child are fine, more later, thanks to all well wishers.  {8-]
> >
> > spike
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > extropy-chat mailing list
> > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
> 
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat




From nanogirl at halcyon.com  Sun Jun 25 08:58:09 2006
From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 01:58:09 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
References: <200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <003101c69835$950ca3c0$0200a8c0@Nano>


Congratulations to you, you will be an amazing father. Best to all, Gina`
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: spike 
  To: 'ExI chat list' 
  Sent: Saturday, June 24, 2006 2:17 AM
  Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian



  Shelly's baby was born at 0015 this morning.  Difficult labor, mother and
  child are fine, more later, thanks to all well wishers.  {8-]  

  spike






  _______________________________________________
  extropy-chat mailing list
  extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
  http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
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From femmechakra at yahoo.ca  Sun Jun 25 09:20:33 2006
From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anne-Marie Taylor)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 05:20:33 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
In-Reply-To: <200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <20060625092033.28960.qmail@web35509.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Congratulations Spike.
  Anna:)
   
  "Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death"
  Albert Einstein
   
  

spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
  
Shelly's baby was born at 0015 this morning. Difficult labor, mother and
child are fine, more later, thanks to all well wishers. {8-] 

spike






_______________________________________________
extropy-chat mailing list
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat


 		
---------------------------------
Share your photos with the people who matter at Yahoo! Canada Photos
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From amara at amara.com  Sun Jun 25 10:45:26 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 12:45:26 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] When did intelligence first emerge in the universe?
Message-ID: <p06230900c0c418387d7a@[23.237.66.13]>


John Clark:
>One of the triumphs of the Big Bang theory is that it explains how the
>  lighter elements were made during the first few seconds of the big bang.
>  The
>  calculated abundance of these elements and their observed abundance are in
>  excellent agreement (especially regarding deuterium) . However if Dark
>  Matter were normal matter and there were 10 time more of it around than we
>  thought the abundance of light elements observed and their calculated
>  value
>  would not be even close.

Robert Bradbury:
>Cough... And precisely *where* is the data coming from that is providing
>those element abundances?
[...]
>Astrophysicists do not generally engage in speculations about the
>universe being populated by roving populations of the 3 Brain types  --
>presumably because they would like to retain their jobs and maybe
>someday get tenure.

You look like a kook dissing a whole scientific field and decades of
scientific endevour, without giving references. And for what you are
claiming you had better give _deep_ pointers to the scientific
literature. These same astrophysicists who you claim are focused on
"getting tenure"  are the same folks who could be sympathetic to your
ideas and have access to large telescopes and spacecraft that you don't
have.

BTW: I think you're way wrong with your ongoing opinion about
astrophysicists' open-mindedness, and I've said this more than once
during the last eight years.

So for Deuterium -

You can start here. I can send to you these papers, if you want.

Amara


-----------------------

Planetary and Space Science 50 (2002) 1123
Special issue on Deuterium in the Universe

Extract from the Introduction of the special issue:

The present issue of Planetary and Space Sciences contains a selection
of papers presented at the Symposium "Deuterium in the Universe" held at
the Observatory of Paris, in Meudon (France), on 25-27 June, 2001.

The aim of the meeting was to gather the various communities concerned
by deuterium. Deuterium (atomic and molecular) and deuterated species
are observed in a huge variety of astrophysical environments, from
external galaxies until our own planet, from the remote past to our
present day Universe. Formed in the very first minutes of the universe,
deuterium is a valuable tracer of the dominant processes governing the
evolution of astrophysical objects and media. The primordial abundance
ratio D/H has been deduced from extragalactic observations with the 10 m
Keck telescope. The deduced abundance ratio is still subject to
controversies, the estimated values spanning an order of magnitude
between 3 x 10^{-5} and 2 x 10^{-4}. UV lines of Hydrogen and Deuterium
are seen along lines of sight crossing the ionised ISM of our Galaxy.
These measurements show a large scatter in the local universe, which
remains poorly understood. In dark dense clouds, very large deuterium
fractionation is observed, resulting from physico-chemical processes at
work in the ISM. This very large fractionation does not disappear
completely at the proto-stellar stage since it is still observed in hot
dense cores close to massive proto-stars and in circumstellar disks.
Interstellar ices are likely to explain the fractionation in warm
regions. Indeed, many interstellar species may condense on dust grains
during the pre-stellar evolution of the interstellar matter, and are
then released in the gas near (proto)stars. The fractionation built in
the cold gas can thus be frozen on the ices. Deuterium fractionation,
measured in planets, comets, meteorites gives a strong constraint on the
history of the Solar System, the formation of planets and their
evolution. The link between the interstellar medium and the solar system
may also be studied via in situ measurements of meteorites,
interplanetary dust particles, and in the future in cometary cores.

Because deuterium is implied in so many processes and various means of
observations, the approach is, by necessity, inter and
multi-disciplinary. The present issue allows to present the
state-of-the-art of the field written by the best experts. The papers are
arranged in three chapters, corresponding to the three sessions of the
symposium:

I. The Solar System.
II. The Interstellar medium and Star Forming Regions.
III. Nucleosynthesis and Cosmology.

The conference confirmed that progress is currently being made in a
number of crucial areas, including laboratory studies and cosmological
scenarios. Essential to the undoubted success of the meeting was the
interaction between the three communities and the large amount of time
devoted to extensive and lively discussions. We believe that such an
event helped to stimulate new reflections and projects of observations
from the ground or from future space missions.

------

Planetary and Space Science 50 (2002) 1161 - 1168
Extract from D/H observations in the interstellar medium
A. Vidal-Madja

Abstract
Evaluations of the primordial deuterium abundance should provide one of
the best tests of big bang nucleosynthesis models. Observations in
different astrophysical sites were made in order to link present day
interstellar medium D/H evaluations to primordial ones. The evaluations
in the interstellar medium are presented with special emphasis on the
observations done in the ultraviolet. The outcome of these observations
seems to indicate that no variation of the deuterium abundance is seen
within 100 pc and leading to an average value (D/H)=1.40 +/- 0.24x10^{-5}.
D/H variations are, however, detected on larger scales. The
consequences are briefly discussed.


5. Conclusion
In summary, the present status of the different-but discordant-D/H
evaluations taken with no a priori bias to select one over another could
be the following. The D/H ratio in the nearby ISM is compatible with a
constant and average value of (D/H)LISM=1.4 +/- 0.24x10^{-5}. Note,
however, that this estimate is made through the D/O evaluation by
assuming a constant O/H value extrapolated from observations made in the
more distant ISM. The present observations show that D/H does vary in
the more distant ISM by about a factor of three. One has thus to
understand why.

Finally, the "primordial" values found in the direction of QSOs are
probably closer to the higher D/H estimations made in the case of Lyman
limit systems. Concerning D/H variations in these "primordial" regions,
it is too early to give an answer since the physical state of the probed
environment are more poorly known than in the Galactic ISM for which the
answer is still not clear.


------

Planetary and Space Science 50 (2002) 1239 - 1244
Extract from Cosmological deuterium production in non-standard scenarios
Karsten Jedamzik

Abstract
It is widely believed that the cosmic baryon density may be obtained by
inferringd euterium abundances in low-metallicity quasar absorption line
systems. The implicit assumptions which enter this argument are
critically assessed. In particular, the production of deuterium in
non-standard Big Bang nucleosynthesis scenarios, the putative production
of deuterium in astrophysical environments, and the possible destruction
of deuterium via non-standard chemical evolution are discussed.

1. Introduction
It was realized about twenty-five years ago (Epstein et al., 1976, and
references therein) that the deuterium isotope may play a very special
role in cosmology as it seems extraordinarily difficult to produce it in
abundance in environments other than that of a Big Bang nucleosynthesis
(BBN) freeze-out process. The importance of the deuterium isotope to
cosmology has increased with the recently acquired ability of inferring
comparatively precise D/H abundance ratios in high-redshift quasar
absorption line systems (QAS). It is now widely believed that deuterium
is produced only during the BBN process and that the BBN process occurred
in its standard version (to be specified below). In this case, there
exists one unique primordial D abundance independent of spatial
location, and by observing D/H ratios in any one high-redshift system at
low metallicity one may immediately infer the cosmic baryon density. The
subject of this talk is to critically assess the viability of parts of
this line of argument. In this spirit I discuss D production in some
non-standard BBN scenarios in Section 2 and the possible production of D
in astrophysical environments in Section 3. Section 4 contains a few
comments on the possibility of significant stellar destruction of D in
high-redshift, low-metallicity QAS, whereas conclusions are drawn in
Section 5. Due to the breadth of the subject I apologize in advance for
not being able to address all the work which touches on this subject.

5. Conclusions
The bulk of the cosmological deuterium is believed to originate from the
hot Big Bang. Decades of research have not revealed another viable
alternative for its origin; alternatives are usually ruled out by
overproduction of other isotopes (i.e. 3He, 6Li, and 7Li). Moreover,
deuterium production may well have occurred in the simplest (standard)
version of BBN, as there is currently no compelling evidence for a
non-standard BBN scenario to be required. Nevertheless, I have attempted
to illustrate that local, so far unknown, sources (sinks) of deuterium
may exist. They imply the possibility of the occasional deuterium
enhanced (or depleted) quasar absorption lines system. Particularly
promising in this context may be the production of D by a generation of
supermassive stars. Abundance determination of deuterium at
extra-galactic distances may therefore not only be used to derive the
primordial deuterium abundance, but also, to discover or constrain other
astrophysical processes in the Universe.

------


-- 

********************************************************************
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/
********************************************************************
"What I find most disheartening is the thought that somewhere out there
our galaxy has been deleted from somebody else's sample."
   -- Alec Boksenberg [on the occasion of his 60th birthday celebration]


From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Sun Jun 25 15:58:30 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 10:58:30 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] When did intelligence first emerge in the
	universe?
In-Reply-To: <p06230900c0c418387d7a@23.237.66.13>
References: <p06230900c0c418387d7a@23.237.66.13>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606250858q605f1b4fi2d2f42f6bd4c160d@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/25/06, Amara Graps <amara at amara.com> wrote:
>
> You look like a kook dissing a whole scientific field and decades of
> scientific endevour, without giving references.


First, most people who disagree with the conventional wisdom are perceived
as kooks.  Those who are wrong are generally forgotten.  Those who are right
aren't.  Since MBrains are already the subject of several SciFi stories
thanks to Charlie and Damien they are unlikely to be forgotten.  The ideas
are a thorn in the side of the traditional SETI community.  Those who are
aware of the ideas prefer to sweep them under the rug because they would
tend to argue against their current agenda.

I've already spoken out at a couple of Microlensing confrences in such a way
as to be discounted by a significant number of people whom might have the
resources to think seriously about the ideas and reframe the available
data.  Those bridges are burned.  I am not 'dissing' an 'whole scientific
field'.  The observations are valid (unless you want into the "we are being
manipulated" discussion).  What I'm doing is reframing the data in light of
the last several decades of data (astrobiology, exoplanets, Moore's Law, AI,
nanotechnology, etc.).

Writing scientific papers is a slow, and potentially obsolete, process.  I
think at this time that blogs and perhaps Wikipedia are potentially more in
line with accelerating the rate of progress.

(As a side note to Amara -- if you or you associates are planning a mission
to Jupiter -- how do you plan on insuring that the "aliens" aren't messing
with the data which is returned?  semi-:-))

And for what you are claiming you had better give _deep_ pointers to the
> scientific literature.


If I were writing one of my own papers or an actual scientific paper I would
do that.  On the ExiChat list I do not consider it to be a mandatory
requirement.  I would hope people know me well enough here to know that I
don't go making outside-of-the-box claims without having thought them
through.

If I have a lower pain threshold involved in setting aside the "conventional
wisdom" than many people that isn't my problem.  (Isn't a high Aperger's
Quotient wonderful? :-))  I am to some extent hoping that people will point
out flaws in the logic and not simply point out the "conventional wisdom".
Though there are uses for that as well.  I wouldn't have come up with a
plausible reason for the H/D/He ratio being 'rigged' if John hadn't brought
it into the conversation.

These same astrophysicists who you claim are focused on
> "getting tenure"  are the same folks who could be sympathetic to your
> ideas and have access to large telescopes and spacecraft that you don't
> have.


Actually, I've tried several times  this past week to reach John Carrigan at
FNL to speak with him about the Dyson Sphere search work he has been doing.
He is still working from a Dyson perspective rather than an MBrain
perspective but at least he is looking at the problem.  As did Jugagu and a
few others.

I should confine most of my displeasure to the classical SETI community and
not the astrophysical community as a whole.  (For example one of those
"large" telescopes you mention was recently dedicated to OSETI searches --
when it could be better used for occultation/variability surveys.)  The data
that I would like to have will fall out of the large scale surveys (in fact
much of it is probably available in current databases if I had time to
analyze it).

BTW: I think you're way wrong with your ongoing opinion about
> astrophysicists' open-mindedness, and I've said this more than once
> during the last eight years.


Amara, do not hesitate to remind me of this.  Please keep in mind two
things.  First, I enjoy being wrong almost as much as I enjoy being right --
you just have to prove it to me.  Second, I do/am forgetting things.  I
don't know if this is a consequence of simple aging or a consequence of my
hopping between fields.  When I dip deeply into astrophysics I have to put
down molecular biology.  When I dip back into molecular biology I have to
put down astrophysics.  When I'm dealing with Nano at Home I have to put down
molecular biology and astrophysics. I've spent a significant part of the
last 6 months or so trying to recover my ability to deal with huge amounts
of "alien" program source (Firefox in this case).  This major task switching
is interesting but I'm not sure I would call it fun. The topics that are
pushed further down on the stack are more likely to suffer from a lack of
references, flaws in arguments, or "shortness" on my part.

You can start here. I can send to you these papers, if you want.


Thank you (!).  I will not get to these immediately as there are some more
pressing matters related to aging research that require attention.  I should
be able to access to the papers from the libraries in Boston.

Robert
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From amara at amara.com  Sun Jun 25 15:58:36 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 17:58:36 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat]  new extropian
Message-ID: <p06230900c0c46295d53f@[23.237.66.13]>

Dear Spike,

Sappho (living on Lesbos from about 630 B.C.) was a musical genius who
devoted her life to composing and performing songs. None of the nine
books of music she is said to have composed survived complete, and only
one poem is complete. However, many fragments of her musical works
exist. A publication called: _If not Winter_ by Rachel Carson shows all
of the Sappho fragments in both Greek and in English. Moreover, the
fragments are shown in their entirety using brackets ( ] )to illustrate
the absent pieces on the papyrus, giving a sense of the lyric and adding
to the music a rhythm of silent pauses.


We don't know the gender of the the new Spikelet-Shellylet human yet,
so I offer this tribute to you and your newborn, via Sappho:

(78)

]

] nor

] desire

] but all at once

] blossom

] desire

] took delight



(104A)

Evening

         you gather back

             all that dazzling dawn has put asunder:

                                         you gather a lamb

                           gather a kid

gather a child to its mother



(104B)

of all stars the most beautiful


Amara


From scerir at libero.it  Sun Jun 25 16:45:58 2006
From: scerir at libero.it (scerir)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 18:45:58 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] String Theory: Not Even Wrong...
References: <deaa866a0606240953x3d1c0b65m355f0f003d7fab2d@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <001901c69876$d6789f30$e0971f97@nomedxgm1aalex>

Robert Bradbury: 
> Article [1] points out how theoretical 
> physics is "hitting the wall".

It might be a 'wall'. But for sure it is a ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Confusion_of_Tongues.png
Read, i.e., this interesting poll:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=406
  s.





From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Sun Jun 25 17:54:17 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 10:54:17 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do (was String
	Theory)
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606240953x3d1c0b65m355f0f003d7fab2d@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGEADGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Robert wrote

> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Robert Bradbury
> Sent: Saturday, June 24, 2006 9:54 AM
> To: ExICh
> Subject: [extropy-chat] String Theory: Not Even Wrong...
> 
> [The] Article points out how theoretical physics is "hitting the wall".  
> ...
> Similar problems became apparent when I realized the limits 
> that Matrioshka Brains would be running into and how quickly 
> they would reach them.  But rather than theoretical limits 
> these would be engineering and thought capacity limits.

On your page http://www.futurehi.net/docs/Matrioshka_Brains.html
you do imply that because of nanoscale engineering, human bodies
as we know them no longer exist. So I suppose that the humans you
refer to have already been uploaded.  No?

> It doesn't mean that advanced civilizations trip over into 
> the realm of "its so boring, please put me out of misery" 
> it means that they spend lots of time creating "unusual" 
> virtual realities or "playing" with real ones (planets, 
> solar systems, galaxies perhaps). 

People, of course, will be able to choose what is boring
to them. It won't be "natural" anymore, which, yes, I admit,
is hard to get used to.  But surely even before 1968 ("Do
Androids Dream of Electric Sheep") SF writers considered
that future tech would allow us to control our emotions
directly.

Will people really *choose* to be interested in games?
Why???  Instead, I have postulated that in the very long
run---assuming that physics gets worked out comparatively
rapidly---only two activities remain, however unpalatable
they now seem to most people now:  mathematics and
gratification research.

Mathematics is provably infinite in complexity, and surely
people will still want to enjoy life. There you have it.

Perhaps studying how to enjoy ourselves ought to be broken
down further, because the principle way that this is achieved
is to become more advanced, and so thereby more capable of
benefit.

Space exploration and colonization (i.e. expansion) will be
long since automated. After all, the idea is pretty simple:
bring as much life to the lifeless cosmos as quickly as
possible.

Lee



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Sun Jun 25 19:22:02 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 12:22:02 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Panicmongering (was Psychology of investments in
	infrastructure)
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606212207o642cb86ap6aac67d156642190@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEAHGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Russell wrote (sent on June 21, 10:07)

> My countersuggestion, to put it bluntly and pardon the 
> French if you're a religious man, is that those of us 
> who are rational enough to know better - yes, that 
> means you Spike! - cut out the bullshit panicmongering; 

Panicmongering?  Just whom are you so afraid will be panicked?
Yourself? Probably not, if I may be so bold to guess. You 
are probably worried that some here of less discernment than
yourself may panic.

> it may seem like harmless fun,

It did not appear to be made in the spirit of any kind of fun,
but rather in deadly earnest.

> but the end result of panic is ham-fisted attempts at
> protecting against minor or imaginary dangers,

Well! Whether the dangers are minor or imaginary is *exactly* what is
debatable; you can let the reader judge for himself or herself, don't
you think?

If a gifted engineer chooses to speculate on possible vulnerabilities
of rapid transit systems, that's just fine with me. I can choose to
believe it plausible, or not. I can choose to argue with the specifics
of it or not. I could even choose to skip those posts.

> Sir, be ashamed. More importantly: _stop_.

Oh, that is the last straw!  Now, far be it from me to tell _you_
to stop, but, on the other hand, I wish to encourage any rational
and well-thought out scenarios of just about anything by anybody.
(Again I can always choose to skip those posts, or debate them.)

What I *am* afraid of, here, is that some of the technically strongest
contributors may on this forum come to think that their thoughts are
unappreciated. It is even doubly true if a "credentialed" person such
as a doctor wishes to discuss bird flu (even in graphic terms which
personally appall *you*), or a space scientist wishes to talk about
asteroid impacts, and opine that the risks are overwhelming unless
something is done. I'll even listen to people saying that we must
wreck the economy, in order to save it from global warming.

But what I am *not* afraid of, and never have been, is thoughtfully
presented ideas.

Lee



From jonkc at att.net  Sun Jun 25 19:52:35 2006
From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 15:52:35 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] When did intelligence first emerge in
	theuniverse?
References: <p06230900c0c418387d7a@23.237.66.13>
	<deaa866a0606250858q605f1b4fi2d2f42f6bd4c160d@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <002d01c69891$1aa13450$6d0a4e0c@MyComputer>

Robert Bradbury Wrote:

> I have a lower pain threshold involved in setting aside the
> "conventional wisdom" than many people

It sounds like you're bragging about your contempt for the conventional but
that is not a virtue, it is far from it because the conventional wisdom is
usually right, not always but usually; or at least it's usually more right 
than any alternative being offered. Rejecting the conventional wisdom 
should be painful and done only with great reluctance; you have not
given me any reason why I should undergo such a rare and painful ordeal.

> I am to some extent hoping that people will point out flaws in the
>  logic and not simply point out the "conventional wisdom".

I have pointed out one very obvious flaw in your logic and done so
more than once, but you have not responded. If we can observe
that there was Dark Matter 13 billion years ago then how can it be
made of Jupiter Brains? And was it all just a huge coincidence
that the observed abundance of the elements in the universe 13
billion years ago agreed so closely with calculations made from the
conventional Big Bang theory? Impress me, make a calculation
with your wacky theory that does even better than the conventional
Big Bang theory about what we actually see. Do that and I solemnly
promise I will retract the word "wacky".  I will  do more, I will
nominate you for a Noble prize in Physics.

 John K Clark




From sentience at pobox.com  Sun Jun 25 20:36:15 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 13:36:15 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
In-Reply-To: <200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <449EF3BF.80806@pobox.com>

spike wrote:
> Shelly's baby was born at 0015 this morning.  Difficult labor, mother and
> child are fine, more later, thanks to all well wishers.  {8-]

Congratulations, Spike, Shelly.

I hope you remembered to Google and make sure your child's name was 
globally unique.  My parents considered naming me "Luke Skywalker 
Yudkowsky", "Hari Seldon Yudkowsky", and "Hen3ry Yudkowsky" (the 3 is 
silent), but chickened out.  As a result, all the other poor fellows on 
Earth who happen to be named "Eliezer Yudkowsky" (I know of at least 
two) will spend the rest of their lives under my ugly Google shadow.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Sun Jun 25 21:52:50 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 22:52:50 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Panicmongering (was Psychology of investments in
	infrastructure)
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEAHGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <8d71341e0606212207o642cb86ap6aac67d156642190@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEAHGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606251452v5a837b26g2079034e012daa4@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/25/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> Panicmongering?  Just whom are you so afraid will be panicked?
> Yourself? Probably not, if I may be so bold to guess.


Not in this case, though it's certainly a mistake I've made in the past!

If a gifted engineer chooses to speculate on possible vulnerabilities
> of rapid transit systems, that's just fine with me. I can choose to
> believe it plausible, or not. I can choose to argue with the specifics
> of it or not. I could even choose to skip those posts.


Well, there was a bit more to it in this case - what I was objecting to was
the proposal that we allow fear of terrorism to dominate our lives to the
extent of dismantling much of our infrastructure. This sort of thing has
cost lives already and will cost many more before all's said and done. The
reason I get frustrated from time to time is because I think this is a large
component of the last stage of the Great Filter: the mismatch between what
we are programmed to fear (because it was dangerous in our ancestral
environment) and what is dangerous now. If Earth-descended sentient life
dies out, it won't be from things that looked dangerous - it will be
precisely from decisions made in the name of safety.

So I can see where you're coming from and I'm certainly not saying everyone
who disagrees with Russell Wallace should be silent. What I'm saying is that
those of us who are trained to think in analytical and statistical terms [1]
should look dispassionately at the numbers, the hard evidence, before
sounding the alarm. Do you not see any merit in this position?

[1] Mind you, I think such training should be part of general education -
there's plenty of useless stuff on the curriculum that could be bumped to
make room - but unfortunately it isn't.
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From spike66 at comcast.net  Mon Jun 26 01:33:37 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 18:33:37 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
In-Reply-To: <449EF3BF.80806@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <200606260144.k5Q1iotE004919@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

As it turns out there was one other Isaac Rainier, born to a pro ballplayer
from the Seattle Seahawks.  So we inserted a second middle name at the last
minute.  This we felt was legitimate for we had recently a president with
four names, who turned out to be better in most ways than his descendant
with only three.  Now our son is Isaac Rainier Woodbury Jones, which is
globally unique.  

{8-]

spike

> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-
> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
> Sent: Sunday, June 25, 2006 1:36 PM
> To: ExI chat list
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] new extropian
> 
> spike wrote:
> > Shelly's baby was born at 0015 this morning.  Difficult labor, mother
> and
> > child are fine, more later, thanks to all well wishers.  {8-]
> 
> Congratulations, Spike, Shelly.
> 
> I hope you remembered to Google and make sure your child's name was
> globally unique.  My parents considered naming me "Luke Skywalker
> Yudkowsky", "Hari Seldon Yudkowsky", and "Hen3ry Yudkowsky" (the 3 is
> silent), but chickened out.  As a result, all the other poor fellows on
> Earth who happen to be named "Eliezer Yudkowsky" (I know of at least
> two) will spend the rest of their lives under my ugly Google shadow.
> 
> --
> 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.cgi/extropy-chat




From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Mon Jun 26 02:14:54 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 03:14:54 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do (was String
	Theory)
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGEADGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <deaa866a0606240953x3d1c0b65m355f0f003d7fab2d@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGEADGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606251914g2374b24s4d0a0c6311234aad@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/25/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> Space exploration and colonization (i.e. expansion) will be
> long since automated. After all, the idea is pretty simple:
> bring as much life to the lifeless cosmos as quickly as
> possible.


Cooking is long since automated (after all, the idea is pretty simple: pop a
pizza in the microwave and heat it as quickly as possible), but people still
enjoy doing it.
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From spike66 at comcast.net  Mon Jun 26 02:23:27 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 19:23:27 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Panicmongering (was Psychology of investments
	ininfrastructure)
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606251452v5a837b26g2079034e012daa4@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <200606260242.k5Q2g5pL001965@andromeda.ziaspace.com>



________________________________________
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Russell Wallace
Sent: Sunday, June 25, 2006 2:53 PM
To: ExI chat list
...

Russell wrote:  Well, there was a bit more to it in this case - what I was
objecting to was the proposal that we allow fear of terrorism to dominate
our lives to the extent of dismantling much of our infrastructure...


Oh dear, I have surely overstated my case, inadvertently.  I am not
suggesting dismantling existing infrastructure.  My intent was aimed at
design of future infrastructure, specifically transportation and cities.  

I have a vision of the US containing a billion people within fifty years.
We are trying to stop them at the borders, but in the long run I see this as
futile.  So we need to triple our current everything.  My notion is to build
the newer cities on a Silicon Valley model as opposed to a New York City
model.  More land for everyone, less attractive as terrorism targets.  Of
course, when we get this continent with the populations densities I
envision, it will then be full.

Europe is also facing enormous influx of population from Africa and the
Middle East.  I can easily see its population tripling in the next fifty
years, regardless of how they try to stop the flow. 



Russell wrote:...What I'm saying is that those of us who are trained to
think in analytical and statistical terms [1] should look dispassionately at
the numbers, the hard evidence, before sounding the alarm. Do you not see
any merit in this position?


I do, but the weakness I see in this position is that statistics are based
on what has come before, and the situations I envision are future.  Every
military organization in the world hires guys to sit around and ponder
possible scenarios for attack, all of which have never happened.

For instance, we may wonder why Europe Inc. is so interested in stopping
Iran from refining nuclear fuel.  I see why Israel and the US would have
heartburn from that, but why England, France and Germany?

After your posts, I began to google around and educate myself.  The short
version of my findings are as follows.  When we try to calculate the least
expensive ways to generate power, the answer is complicated by many factors.
Coal power plants are very cheap if you make no effort to scrub the
pollutants from the smokestacks.  Nuclear power is even cheaper, if you
don't go to enormous expense to safeguard the nuclear waste that is created.
In fact, nuclear is even cheaper if you have a long line of strangers lining
up at your door to take that stuff off your hands free.  Nuclear power is
cheaper still if these strangers are actually offering to buy your
radioactive waste.  Why would they do that, I wonder?

If the world allows Iran to refine uranium, then any nation can refine
uranium, and this old planet will be awash in low level radioactive waste,
never mind nukes for now.  Do you see any dangers in dozens of poor starving
nations selling or giving away this stuff?  England and France are sitting
over there with that tunnel under the English Channel, a stunningly
expensive bit of infrastructure that they would be loathe to see getting
contaminated by all that loose rad-waste that may result if Iran is allowed
to refine yellowcake.

I recognize that this is outside the comfort zone of many here, and for this
I apologize.

spike






From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Mon Jun 26 02:58:38 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 03:58:38 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Panicmongering (was Psychology of investments
	ininfrastructure)
In-Reply-To: <200606260242.k5Q2g5pL001965@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <8d71341e0606251452v5a837b26g2079034e012daa4@mail.gmail.com>
	<200606260242.k5Q2g5pL001965@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606251958p706e6bf0l6de1c029a21b00bc@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/26/06, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> I do, but the weakness I see in this position is that statistics are based
> on what has come before, and the situations I envision are future.


*nods* The weakness in discussing future scenarios is that when us smart,
technically knowledgable people try to predict the future based on said
technical knowledge, we do worse than random chance; so if we're going to
make plans based on such predictions, we'd be better off to flip a coin.
Better still, we can fall back on empirical data from the past and present;
so I will stand by my claim that the best way to weigh the danger terrorism
will present in the future is to compare the number of people terrorists
have actually killed, with the number of deaths from other causes such as
accidents, infectious disease and old age; and then we find it is a very
long way down the list of things we should worry about.
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From fauxever at sprynet.com  Mon Jun 26 03:16:14 2006
From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 20:16:14 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do (was
	StringTheory)
References: <deaa866a0606240953x3d1c0b65m355f0f003d7fab2d@mail.gmail.com><POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGEADGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<8d71341e0606251914g2374b24s4d0a0c6311234aad@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <005601c698ce$e22924f0$6600a8c0@brainiac>

From: Russell Wallace
Sent: Sunday, June 25, 2006 7:14 PM

>Cooking is long since automated (after all, the idea is pretty simple: pop a pizza in the microwave and heat it as quickly as possible), but people still enjoy doing it.

Aiii, apples and oranges.  Russell, Russell, Russell ... Julia Child is spinning in her grave.  And foodies all over the world are shaking their heads "Tsk, tsk, tsk ..." :)

Olga
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From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Mon Jun 26 03:36:49 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 04:36:49 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do (was
	StringTheory)
In-Reply-To: <005601c698ce$e22924f0$6600a8c0@brainiac>
References: <deaa866a0606240953x3d1c0b65m355f0f003d7fab2d@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGEADGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<8d71341e0606251914g2374b24s4d0a0c6311234aad@mail.gmail.com>
	<005601c698ce$e22924f0$6600a8c0@brainiac>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606252036y20959d8dm77f357baf5c5b421@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/26/06, Olga Bourlin <fauxever at sprynet.com> wrote:
>
>  *From:* Russell Wallace <russell.wallace at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Sunday, June 25, 2006 7:14 PM
>
> >Cooking is long since automated (after all, the idea is pretty simple:
> pop a pizza in the microwave and heat it as quickly as possible), but people
> still enjoy doing it.
> Aiii, apples and oranges.  Russell, Russell, Russell ... Julia Child is
> spinning in her grave.  And foodies all over the world are shaking their
> heads "Tsk, tsk, tsk ..." :)
>

And it wouldn't surprise me at all if people in 500 years react exactly the
same way to the suggestion that space habitat construction be left entirely
to the machines :)
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From sentience at pobox.com  Mon Jun 26 04:20:33 2006
From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 21:20:33 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
	(was	StringTheory)
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606252036y20959d8dm77f357baf5c5b421@mail.gmail.com>
References: <deaa866a0606240953x3d1c0b65m355f0f003d7fab2d@mail.gmail.com>	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGEADGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>	<8d71341e0606251914g2374b24s4d0a0c6311234aad@mail.gmail.com>	<005601c698ce$e22924f0$6600a8c0@brainiac>
	<8d71341e0606252036y20959d8dm77f357baf5c5b421@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <449F6091.2070406@pobox.com>

Russell Wallace wrote:
> On 6/26/06, *Olga Bourlin* <fauxever at sprynet.com 
> <mailto:fauxever at sprynet.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Aiii, apples and oranges.  Russell, Russell, Russell ... Julia Child
>     is spinning in her grave.  And foodies all over the world are
>     shaking their heads "Tsk, tsk, tsk ..." :)
> 
> And it wouldn't surprise me at all if people in 500 years react exactly 
> the same way to the suggestion that space habitat construction be left 
> entirely to the machines :)

You don't need to wait 500 years, I've got the same reaction right now.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


From amara at amara.com  Mon Jun 26 05:30:55 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 07:30:55 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do (was
 StringTheory)
Message-ID: <p06230900c0c52046ab76@[23.237.66.13]>

Russell:
>Cooking is long since automated (after all, the idea is pretty simple:
>pop a pizza in the microwave and heat it as quickly as possible), but
>people still enjoy doing it.

Olga:
>Aiii, apples and oranges.  Russell, Russell, Russell ... Julia Child is
>spinning in her grave.  And foodies all over the world are shaking their
>heads "Tsk, tsk, tsk ..." :)

from my collection of vignette stories June 2005

--------{begin quote}

One reason that Italian cuisine is so good is that most Italians
think of food frequently throughout the day. Planning, thinking,
preparing, so that by mealtime, they have put far more thought into
their meal than any other culture I know.

One afternoon when I visited the National Etruscan Museum at Villa
Giulia (Rome) with Silke, we discovered the reason behind the
Italians' food thought-processes. They have had 2000 years to
develop it from the Etruscans! At the museum we saw an exhibit
titled 'Etruscans and Food', where we saw descriptions of the
contents of their food, how they prepared their food, and how they
ate their food (dinnerware). So you see you can do it too, but
you might need 2000 years for your brain develop the skill...

-----------{end quote}

-- 

********************************************************************
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 lcorbin at tsoft.com  Mon Jun 26 06:41:23 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 23:41:23 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606251914g2374b24s4d0a0c6311234aad@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMEAPGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Russell writes

> On 6/25/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
> > Space exploration and colonization (i.e. expansion) will be
> > long since automated. After all, the idea is pretty simple:
> > bring as much life to the lifeless cosmos as quickly as
> > possible.

> Cooking is long since automated (after all, the idea is pretty
> simple: pop a pizza in the microwave and heat it as quickly as
> possible), but people still enjoy doing it.

Hmm. That's funny.  I have entirely lost count of how many times
I've explained about mood control, or what is the same thing, that
we can in the future *choose* what it is that gives us pleasure.
Perhaps it's a hard concept, or perhaps people's eyes just glaze
over.

In any case, I never receive any answer. Odd, that.

Here is what I wrote earlier:

> People, of course, will be able to choose what is boring
> to them. It won't be "natural" anymore, which, yes, I admit,
> is hard to get used to.  But surely even before 1968 ("Do
> Androids Dream of Electric Sheep") SF writers considered
> that future tech would allow us to control our emotions
> directly.
> Will people really *choose* to be interested in games?

Now I really do understand that it may take some time to get 
used to; and that for many, a sense of tradition (especially
among the old) will prevail. But if one's personal energy is
no longer a problem, if variety for variety's sake is not
specially appealing, then what exactly will we (or our
transcended selves) or most people choose to do, if we
have IQs in the 300+ range?

Oh, I know!  BARBEQUE!  What a thrill for an IQ 300 type who
just never gets out. I note already how most of our geniuses
are become pastry chefs, handymen, insurance salesmen, and
motorcycle repair folks...

But I fear that I am wasting my breath. Let's discuss cooking,
shall we?

Lee

P.S. If we do discuss cooking, shall we change the subject line?
An AI one day---perhaps one day very soon---may read the threads
I create, and I want my record as to appear as perceptive or
merely sensible as possible.



From fortean1 at mindspring.com  Mon Jun 26 06:40:53 2006
From: fortean1 at mindspring.com (Terry W. Colvin)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 23:40:53 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do (was
	StringTheory)
In-Reply-To: <p06230900c0c52046ab76@[23.237.66.13]>
References: <p06230900c0c52046ab76@[23.237.66.13]>
Message-ID: <449F8175.9080102@mindspring.com>

Amara,

Ah, the memories of food in Italy is a fond one for me.  My family and I
lived in Naples 1977-80.  Croquettes, chicken fried in old oil used to cook
calimari, vino, cafe expresso, and capucchino; especially when working the
night watch.  One treat is mozzarella cheese made with the milk of water
buffalo.  Mozzarella cheese made in the U.S. is an ersatz bland version.
Have you tried it?

< http://www.mozzarelladibufala.org/allestimento.htm >

Terry

*****
Amara Graps wrote:

>Russell:
>  
>
>>Cooking is long since automated (after all, the idea is pretty simple:
>>pop a pizza in the microwave and heat it as quickly as possible), but
>>people still enjoy doing it.
>>    
>>
>
>Olga:
>  
>
>>Aiii, apples and oranges.  Russell, Russell, Russell ... Julia Child is
>>spinning in her grave.  And foodies all over the world are shaking their
>>heads "Tsk, tsk, tsk ..." :)
>>    
>>
>
>from my collection of vignette stories June 2005
>
>--------{begin quote}
>
>One reason that Italian cuisine is so good is that most Italians
>think of food frequently throughout the day. Planning, thinking,
>preparing, so that by mealtime, they have put far more thought into
>their meal than any other culture I know.
>
>One afternoon when I visited the National Etruscan Museum at Villa
>Giulia (Rome) with Silke, we discovered the reason behind the
>Italians' food thought-processes. They have had 2000 years to
>develop it from the Etruscans! At the museum we saw an exhibit
>titled 'Etruscans and Food', where we saw descriptions of the
>contents of their food, how they prepared their food, and how they
>ate their food (dinnerware). So you see you can do it too, but
>you might need 2000 years for your brain develop the skill...
>
>-----------{end quote}
>
>  
>

-- 
"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 >
[Southeast Asia/Secret War in Laos veterans, Allies, CIA/NSA,
and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.]

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From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Mon Jun 26 07:57:58 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 08:57:58 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMEAPGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <8d71341e0606251914g2374b24s4d0a0c6311234aad@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMEAPGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606260057s307f6313q99a939fb0600038e@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/26/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> Hmm. That's funny.  I have entirely lost count of how many times
> I've explained about mood control, or what is the same thing, that
> we can in the future *choose* what it is that gives us pleasure.
> Perhaps it's a hard concept, or perhaps people's eyes just glaze
> over.
>
> In any case, I never receive any answer. Odd, that.


Oh, that one's been answered ages ago - if you postulate a setting where
people can rewire their brains in that way, then yes of course you have the
wireheading trap, and doubtless some people will program themselves to
derive maximal enjoyment from filling in forms or counting sheep or
whatever's at hand. I was discussing what those of us who don't do that are
likely to end up doing.

Oh, I know!  BARBEQUE!  What a thrill for an IQ 300 type who
> just never gets out. I note already how most of our geniuses
> are become pastry chefs, handymen, insurance salesmen, and
> motorcycle repair folks...


Lots of smart people enjoy cooking or working with their hands, or writing
or painting or playing chess or playing the guitar. Are you saying you think
they ought to all rewire their brains so the only thing they enjoy is...
what? solving equations?
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From andrew at ceruleansystems.com  Mon Jun 26 08:02:10 2006
From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 01:02:10 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do (was
	StringTheory)
In-Reply-To: <449F8175.9080102@mindspring.com>
References: <p06230900c0c52046ab76@[23.237.66.13]>
	<449F8175.9080102@mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <EEA1EABB-2020-4BF7-9CF3-DA5CF4AAAA33@ceruleansystems.com>

On Jun 25, 2006, at 11:40 PM, Terry W. Colvin wrote:
> One treat is mozzarella cheese made with the milk of water
> buffalo.  Mozzarella cheese made in the U.S. is an ersatz bland  
> version.
> Have you tried it?


There are many different types of mozzarella cheese available in the  
US from a few different countries, including both water buffalo and  
cow types.  The quality varies widely, but you are correct that most  
of it is horribly bland, including some of the imported Italian  
buffalo types.  That said, it is possible to get proper, flavorful  
buffalo mozzarella in most decent metros -- it is a common import.   
I'll add that there is the rare bovine mozzarella that also has  
excellent if slightly different flavor.  I've had crappy mozzarella  
all over the world, the good stuff being an exception rather than the  
rule. :-)


As a more general comment, a lot of Italian imports are not actually  
from Italy but merely shipped from there.  Olive oil is probably the  
best example of Italian export branding of non-Italian products, much  
of which actually comes from Spain and other countries via Italy.   
And truth be told, Spanish olive oil is excellent.  The Italians have  
built a brand with respect to food, but do not produce remotely  
enough food for the export market.  For many typical "Italian export"  
items, they do not even produce enough for their domestic market.


J. Andrew Rogers



From andrew at ceruleansystems.com  Mon Jun 26 07:46:24 2006
From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 00:46:24 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] The Extropy of Cooking
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMEAPGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMEAPGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <F8E625D0-D0F2-441C-AE2B-9F9720202DA6@ceruleansystems.com>

On Jun 25, 2006, at 11:41 PM, Lee Corbin wrote:
> Oh, I know!  BARBEQUE!  What a thrill for an IQ 300 type who
> just never gets out. I note already how most of our geniuses
> are become pastry chefs, handymen, insurance salesmen, and
> motorcycle repair folks...


Perhaps interestingly, cooking -- of the fine cuisine type -- is what  
frequently occupies my time when I am not doing the brain intensive  
exercises that fill the rest of my day.  I cook a proper dinner 5-6  
days a week.  An incredible amount of culture flows from food, and  
expressing it as a fine art gets its energy from a different place  
than the usual technical intellectual pursuits.  In other words, it  
is both thoroughly relaxing and as deeply expressive as any human art  
form that exists.  And it is functional too -- we all have to eat.

Any fool can eat well, but being able to fabricate rich experiences  
from the organic substrate of life is a broadly useful metaphor with  
respect to living well.  There are few things in the human experience  
toward which so much effort has been spent with such universal  
benefit.  Well executed food from fine ingredients has the  
characteristic that most humans can identify the quality of it even  
if it does not appeal to their taste, in the same sense that most  
humans can recognize the qualities of a Brandenburg Concerto even if  
they are unable to recognize the subtleties of its construction.   
Living well is a positive sum game, and food is an important part of  
that.


On the topic of microwaves, really top-notch food cannot be built  
with only one cooking implement as a general rule, though there is  
nothing wrong with microwaves.  There are some really fabulous  
recipes that require a remarkably narrow amount of expertise, but the  
expanse of possibilities that intersects more than one of these  
narrow domains is truly unimaginable, though requiring more skill.   
All of which can be automated eventually. The last frontier of  
cooking is not really preparation, but access to high-quality  
ingredients from every corner of the globe, which can still be dicy  
and for many ingredients there is no meaningful substitute.  I have  
an herb garden that could be its own botanical exhibit (California  
can grow damn near anything), but could not buy a bit of legal  
Seville Iberico ham if I had to here (though in this specific case,  
there are somewhat functional imported Italian substitutes).  Not  
surprisingly, there is a thriving black market for restricted  
ingredient imports and exports.  But I would not know anything about  
that.

Make no mistake, automatic preparation and pre-processed ingredients  
get better every year, a trend that will eventually approach what a  
competent cook with an excellent ingredient access can do now, but it  
would require good AI and fancy machinery before there was practical  
obsolescence -- cooking is a very complex art, especially at the very  
high end.  Even though the process is the theoretically the same, the  
ingredients you can get vary every single time and have to be  
compensated for.  The adage that cooking is 50% execution and 50%  
ingredient quality is true.  Both sides are being attacked, but they  
have a long way to go still.


On the topic of barbeque, it is very much a science.  A well-behaved  
marinade requires the right balance of salinity, pH, emulsifiers,  
lipids, water, and sugars depending on the effect you are trying to  
get and the material you are working with.  Consistently excellent  
results from experimentation are simple once you understand the  
chemistry.

Cheers,

J. Andrew Rogers



From eugen at leitl.org  Mon Jun 26 08:32:42 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 10:32:42 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do (was
	StringTheory)
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606252036y20959d8dm77f357baf5c5b421@mail.gmail.com>
References: <deaa866a0606240953x3d1c0b65m355f0f003d7fab2d@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGEADGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<8d71341e0606251914g2374b24s4d0a0c6311234aad@mail.gmail.com>
	<005601c698ce$e22924f0$6600a8c0@brainiac>
	<8d71341e0606252036y20959d8dm77f357baf5c5b421@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060626083242.GE28956@leitl.org>

On Mon, Jun 26, 2006 at 04:36:49AM +0100, Russell Wallace wrote:

> And it wouldn't surprise me at all if people in 500 years react exactly the
> same way to the suggestion that space habitat construction be left entirely
> to the machines :)

I would be very surprised if in 500 years you could tell the difference.
(Between men and machines, that is). Or that these would need habitats,
in our sense of the word.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From femmechakra at yahoo.ca  Mon Jun 26 08:20:02 2006
From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anne-Marie Taylor)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 04:20:02 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] (par-a-noy-a) definitions
Message-ID: <20060626082002.68477.qmail@web35502.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Anna questions:
  Just Curious:)
   
  >One of the definitions of (par-a-noy-a) on Goggle is;
  >(par-a-noy-a): A mental state that includes unreasonable suspicions of people and
  >situations. A person who is paranoid may be suspicious, hostile, feel very 
  >important, or may become extremely sensitive to rejection by others.

  Anna Replies:) 
  In my opinion, people who are suspicious;
  That is,  suspicious,  will always be hostile.  
  "Feel very important" , in my opinion, is closely related  to ego.
  How does that describe (par-a-noy-a)?
  In my opinon, being paranoid, about what you truly believe in, is very important, 
  just as; laziness is considered negative.
   
   
  >Another definition by Google; 
  >A belief that the actions of others is demeaning or threatening. It is characterized by >feelings of being exploited or harmed by others, and questioning loyalty or >trustworthiness of friends or associates.
>A disease-like state, characterized mainly with abnormal suspiciousness 
  >and crazy idea.
   
  Therefore.,  if i'm paranoid, it is  because,  I'm suspicious and have crazy ideas 
  and apparently, I have a disease:) Am I not understanding properly?
   
  In my opinion, (par-a-noy-a) , doesn't exist.  I acknowledge that disease
  causes failures,  but defining a word,  takes experiences.  I would prefer to learn
  from the best, simulate,  and respond. 
   
  At the same time, from wiki:
  Suspicion of others is based on unrealistic facts.
  A belief that the actions of others is demeaning or threatening. It is characterized by feelings of being exploited or harmed by others, and questioning loyalty or trustworthiness of friends or associates.

  Is that a personal belief:)
   
   
  Again, I didn't mean to be out of context, sorry.
  Again, just curious.
  Anna:)
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

 		
---------------------------------
The best gets better. See why everyone is raving about the All-new Yahoo! Mail.  
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From scerir at libero.it  Mon Jun 26 08:42:25 2006
From: scerir at libero.it (scerir)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 10:42:25 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] The Extropy of Cooking
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMEAPGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<F8E625D0-D0F2-441C-AE2B-9F9720202DA6@ceruleansystems.com>
Message-ID: <000c01c698fc$73a17720$d6b81f97@nomedxgm1aalex>

From: "J. Andrew Rogers"
> -- cooking is a very complex art,
> especially at the very high end.

At the very high end, in Italy, is Davide Cassi,
a professional physicist, and molecular gastronomer ...
http://www.identitagolose.it/english/dessert/relatore.php?relatore=22

For the French branch of molecular gastronomy see
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0218/p11s02-lifo.html
http://www.college-de-france.fr/chaires/chaire10/page_herve/Molecular_Gastronomy.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herv%C3%A9_This
http://folk.uio.no/lersch/mat/index.e.html
http://www.discover.com/issues/feb-06/features/cooking-for-eggheads/
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/catalog/data/023113/023113312X.HTM

Italian magazines report that the business of
molecular gastronomy is growing very fast,
and the number of ice-creamers using super-cold
means - such as helium, and coarse graining
super-effects - is increasing.

Another side of the physics 'wall' :-)





From eugen at leitl.org  Mon Jun 26 11:22:56 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 13:22:56 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do (was String
	Theory)
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGEADGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <deaa866a0606240953x3d1c0b65m355f0f003d7fab2d@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGEADGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060626112256.GH28956@leitl.org>

On Sun, Jun 25, 2006 at 10:54:17AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:

> People, of course, will be able to choose what is boring

Why is everybody talking about just people? What about
the eqivalents of viruses, bacteria, nematodes, insects,
rodents, deities?

> to them. It won't be "natural" anymore, which, yes, I admit,
> is hard to get used to.  But surely even before 1968 ("Do
> Androids Dream of Electric Sheep") SF writers considered
> that future tech would allow us to control our emotions
> directly.

I don't think this is a reasonable future. It looks
too much like our present.
 
> Will people really *choose* to be interested in games?
> Why???  Instead, I have postulated that in the very long
> run---assuming that physics gets worked out comparatively
> rapidly---only two activities remain, however unpalatable
> they now seem to most people now:  mathematics and
> gratification research.

What about pointless stuff we're doing now? Games, art,
socializing? How can a mouse do math research? Why
should I do math research if I can start a war instead,
or do <wr54334543>?
 
> Mathematics is provably infinite in complexity, and surely
> people will still want to enjoy life. There you have it.

I would like a proper mathematical proof of that, please.
 
> Perhaps studying how to enjoy ourselves ought to be broken
> down further, because the principle way that this is achieved
> is to become more advanced, and so thereby more capable of
> benefit.
> 
> Space exploration and colonization (i.e. expansion) will be
> long since automated. After all, the idea is pretty simple:

Automation doesn't exist in a solid state culture. It's just an 
ecological niche. Automation is old cyber-think.

> bring as much life to the lifeless cosmos as quickly as
> possible.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Mon Jun 26 13:11:36 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 08:11:36 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] When did intelligence first emerge in
	theuniverse?
In-Reply-To: <002d01c69891$1aa13450$6d0a4e0c@MyComputer>
References: <p06230900c0c418387d7a@23.237.66.13>
	<deaa866a0606250858q605f1b4fi2d2f42f6bd4c160d@mail.gmail.com>
	<002d01c69891$1aa13450$6d0a4e0c@MyComputer>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606260611k1f01dff2lc62265fbd219c920@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/25/06, John K Clark <jonkc at att.net> wrote:

>
> It sounds like you're bragging about your contempt for the conventional
> but that is not a virtue, it is far from it because the conventional wisdom
> is usually right, not always but usually; or at least it's usually more
> right
> than any alternative being offered. Rejecting the conventional wisdom
> should be painful and done only with great reluctance; you have not
> given me any reason why I should undergo such a rare and painful ordeal.


Ok, well lets see.  Most of the points I have been making presume that
advanced civilizations would possess robust MNT.  The "conventional wisdom"
generally assumes robust MNT is impossible. The concept that robust MNT is
*not* impossible is 47 years old if you use Feynman's 1959 talk, 25 years
old if you use Drexler's 1981 PNAS paper, 20 years old if you use EoC and 14
years old if you use Nanosystems as a publication date.  Given that *not*
having robust MNT is costing us 50+ million lives a year is it not
reasonable for me to have an extremely strong distaste for the 'conventional
wisdom'?  The same argument could be applied to the concept that radical
lifespan extension is 'impossible'.  Even now that we have the human genome
people who buck the conventional wisdom such as myself, Aubrey de Grey,
cryonicists, etc. are generally labeled as 'kooks'.  So, yes, I find it
perfectly reasonable, if not for your own life, but for the lives of the
people around you that you should take a *very* dim view of the
"conventional wisdom".

Now, I am not precisely sure what part of 'conventional wisdom' I am trying
to reject.  If you see some law of physics that I am violating, *PLEASE*
point it out to me.  But I started my entire exploration of the MBrain
concept based on assuming that known laws of physics are valid.  I'm not
invoking worm holes, FTL travel, sub-space fields, alternate universes or
any of a *host* of other 'creative' things that various physicists have
invented.  I am not even proposing that the Big Bang is wrong.

I am proposing that the conventional wisdom, including observed phenomena,
need to be seriously reexamined from the basic premise that there is a high
probability that many of the 'Earth's' which may exist in the galaxy are
much, much older than our own.

Lets start with (a) Galaxies *near* us (those whose rotational rates can be
measured) that appear to contain more mass than is visible and (b) dark
radio galaxies.

You are proposing undetected, non-interacting dark matter as the
'conventional' explanation.  I am proposing highly advanced advanced
civilisations obeying 'normal' laws of physics.

Please explain why something that cannot be seen or detected, i.e. a
'fantasy' concept, is any more valid than evolution of life, which we know
can exist.  Let us just confine ourselves to that.

If your only argument that dark matter must exist is based on theories of
the big bang nucleosynthesis then we will have to agree to disagree.  That
is because I believe that the physicists took local observed phenomena (e.g.
galactic rotational rates) and worked backward to 'cook' the big bang theory
with a fundamental assumption that the universe is now and must always have
been 'dead'.  I'm assuming that there is a problem with that (which is what
George's paper is somewhat related to and what this debate is all about).
I'm assuming that sometime starting perhaps 8 billion years ago (very
rarely) until now advanced civilizations have developed and gone through the
point we are at now with increasing frequency.  Thus a significant majority
of all observed astronomical data (and invented fantasy particles) needs to
be re-examined based on the concept that the universe is not dead but has a
continuous transition from dead, to not-so-dead, to very much not dead, to
dead is the rare case.

It makes that transition as we look at objects that are increasingly close
to us.  Since we are very much 'not' dead and unless something very tragic
happens are easily within 100 years of taking our star dark it makes
particular sense to look at our galaxy (where everything we see is less than
100,000 years old) from the perspective of it being 'not dead'.  So lets
just confine the discussion to our galaxy or the local group (so we avoid
debates about the history of the universe).

Is there any observational evidence you can offer that our galaxy is 'dead'
other than on this planet?  (Mind you since we have developed from the
bronze age to the singularity in less than 10,000 light years any assumption
anything you can say about the state of the galaxy *now* further out than
hundreds or perhaps thousands of light years has to include a probability
analysis that it has been dead and still remains dead.)

I have pointed out one very obvious flaw in your logic and done so
> more than once, but you have not responded. If we can observe
> that there was Dark Matter 13 billion years ago then how can it be
> made of Jupiter Brains?


I don't believe we can *observe* any such thing.  Since dark matter only
interacts by gravity and all we can see that is 13 billion light years away
is supernovas we have absolutely no idea what galaxies looked like or their
rotational speeds at those distances.  We also have no idea of the general
stellar composition or abundance in those galaxies.  All assumptions of what
the very old universe looked like rest upon the assumption that it must have
lead directly to this universe along a 'non-dead' path.  That there is no
gradual transition from 'non-dead' to 'alive' along the billions of years.

Perhaps you or Amara would care to comment on what is absolute furthest
distance at which we can (a) count individual G-class stars and (b) at what
distance we can actually measure their composition?  (I don't think those
numbers are much further out than a few hundred million light years).  So
*everything* beyond those distances is dealing with (a) galactic averages;
or (b) supernovas.  All of that data has been looked at from the perspective
that it what is "out there" must be identical to what we observe "here"
(just in an earlier state).  If we can't even prove that what is "here" is
absolutely and positively "dead" (other than us) then I can't see how any
chain of reasoning back from here is something one should assume is safe
ground to stand on.

Robert
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From jonkc at att.net  Mon Jun 26 15:49:07 2006
From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 11:49:07 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] When did intelligence first emerge intheuniverse?
References: <p06230900c0c418387d7a@23.237.66.13><deaa866a0606250858q605f1b4fi2d2f42f6bd4c160d@mail.gmail.com><002d01c69891$1aa13450$6d0a4e0c@MyComputer>
	<deaa866a0606260611k1f01dff2lc62265fbd219c920@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <003601c69938$35e0a190$360a4e0c@MyComputer>

Robert Bradbury Wrote:

> I am not even proposing that the Big Bang is wrong.

 OK.

> If your only argument that dark matter must exist is
> based on theories of the big bang nucleosynthesis then
> we will have to agree to disagree.

No, Big Bang theory never predicted the existence of Dark Matter,
it was found empirically. What big bang nucleosynthesis theory
argues is that if dark matter exists it can not be made of the
same stuff as normal matter, the sort of stuff you'd build a
Jupiter Brain with.

 > Since dark matter only interacts by gravity [....]

Huh? I thought you were pushing the idea that Dark Matter was
Jupiter Brains constructed with ordinary matter that just wasn't
hot enough to shine in the visible spectrum.

> Please explain why something that cannot be seen or detected, i.e. a
> 'fantasy' concept

Dark Matter can be detected, our telescopes have detected it they just can't
see it. And I thought we both agreed that dark Matter existed it's just that
I don't know what it's and you claim it's made of Jupiter Brains.

> all we can see that is 13 billion light years away is supernovas we have
> absolutely  no idea what galaxies looked like or their rotational speeds
> at those  distances.

That is just untrue. The Hubble million second exposure "Ultra Deep Field"
photograph clearly shows lots of galaxies from that era, see the picture for
yourself at:

www.hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2004/07/

> unless something very tragic happens [we] are easily within 100 years
> of taking our star dark

Probably not too far off the mark give or take a few years, except that
the sun won't be dark, it will just be radiating in a band of the
electromagnetic spectrum that human eyes are not sensitive to, but as
there won't be any human eyes or human beings by then it doesn't much
matter.

> Is there any observational evidence you can offer that our galaxy
> is 'dead'

Well, if ET has been working on our galaxy for billions of years
like you think then ET is one crappy engineer; billions of huge pointless
balls of gas radiating colossal amounts of energy into empty space, it's a
scandal.

  John K Clark




From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Mon Jun 26 16:44:05 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 09:44:05 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do (was String
	Theory)
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGEADGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <deaa866a0606240953x3d1c0b65m355f0f003d7fab2d@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGEADGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060626164404.GA15914@ofb.net>

On Sun, Jun 25, 2006 at 10:54:17AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:

> Will people really *choose* to be interested in games?
> Why???  Instead, I have postulated that in the very long
> run---assuming that physics gets worked out comparatively
> rapidly---only two activities remain, however unpalatable
> they now seem to most people now:  mathematics and
> gratification research.
> 
> Mathematics is provably infinite in complexity, and surely
> people will still want to enjoy life. There you have it.

If physics is worked out, and practical engineering becomes a mass of
solved problems, I think it's at least as likely that intelligence would
evolve away.  Automated replicators which don't waste energy on
mathematics will out-compete merely intelligent beings.

In the real world, intelligence seems to evolve given omnivory or
sociality.  What do I eat, how can I get it, how do I deal with this
other animal I can't kill or avoid?  Modern science can be seen as a
very elaborate version of the first two questions.  Higher mathematics
seems more like music, an artificial stimulus of our pattern-seeking
mechanisms, not useful in of itself.  If we solve the real questions so
we don't need the pattern-seeking mechanisms any more...

-xx- Damien X-) 


From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Mon Jun 26 18:02:36 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 11:02:36 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] AAAS conference on retrocausation
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20060623154447.02218360@satx.rr.com>
Message-ID: <20060626180236.47448.qmail@web60524.mail.yahoo.com>



--- Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> > > [I'm told that John Cramer announced that
> > > backward signaling of c. 50 microseconds might
> be feasible...]

Welcome back, Damien! :)


> >As for the article, I thought the most meaningful
> statement in it was
> >where it said "this is *incredibly* sloppy", and
> then I realized that
> >must have been written by you.
> 
> Indeed. But the stupid thing is the only public
> report I've been able to find.
> 
> >While it's true that many respected scientists
> would rather not dirty
> >their hands with this kind of thing, almost all of
> them would like to
> >see reliable evidence of such anomolous effects.
> 
> Leave that aside for a moment. What I find extremely
> interesting is 
> that (1) this was an AAAS colloquium, not a Gnostic
> Mass of the OTO, 
> and (2) John Cramer of TI fame now thinks there
> might be retro-causal 
> effects, however brief. 

Hmmm. I do think there may be something to reverse
causation. Some possible future timelines are more
imminent than others and draw events toward them.

The biggest appeal of retrocausation to me is that:

1. It is predicted by the math of physics, not just
classical but QM and GR too.

2. It would go a long way to explaining complexity,
emergence, strange attractors, and spontaneous
ordering. To say that simple underlying heuristics can
give rise to higher order structure in a completely
unpreditcable fashion is not really a mechanism.

To say that certain complex structures are so
negentropically favorable that they can retrocause
their own formation is a slightly more satisfying
explanation for an unexplained phenomenon.

Think of it this way. GR says that time is just
another dimension and the flow of events in space time
is just 4-dimensional geometry. Now all normally
percieved causal event sequences are timelike but
nothing in the math itself prohibits the existense of
space-like events. Since the equivalence principle
states there is no favored coordinate systems or
direction, one should by symmetry be able to say that
there should be nearly as many space-like event
sequences. Of course we will not be able to recognize
the flow of retrocausal events as such, they will just
appear to us as "spooky action at a distance".

Think of it as a geometrical analogy: Does the base of
a triangle "cause" its vertex? Does the vertex "cause"
the base? It would all depend on what coordinate
system you chose and which axis you labelled as
positive time.

  

Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"God doesn't play dice with the universe." - Albert Einstein

"Einstein, don't tell God what to do." - Neils Bohr

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
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From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Mon Jun 26 18:53:40 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 13:53:40 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] AAAS conference on retrocausation
In-Reply-To: <20060626180236.47448.qmail@web60524.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <7.0.1.0.2.20060623154447.02218360@satx.rr.com>
	<20060626180236.47448.qmail@web60524.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606261153q64145c39nf4d8f23011800b6c@mail.gmail.com>

I haven't read Robin's paper on multiverse pruning, but one has to wonder
(wild ass speculation mode on) whether retrocausation could be how the
universes that don't work out jiggle the probabilities in the ones which are
more interesting (I mean if you are going to reach across time, why not
reach across both trans-space and time?).

[wild ass speculation mode off]
Robert
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From thespike at satx.rr.com  Mon Jun 26 19:03:30 2006
From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 14:03:30 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] AAAS conference on retrocausation
In-Reply-To: <20060626180236.47448.qmail@web60524.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <7.0.1.0.2.20060623154447.02218360@satx.rr.com>
	<20060626180236.47448.qmail@web60524.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060626135228.0229cde8@satx.rr.com>

At 11:02 AM 6/26/2006 -0700, Stuart wrote:

> > (2) John Cramer of TI fame now thinks there
> > might be retro-causal effects, however brief.
>
>Hmmm. I do think there may be something to reverse
>causation. Some possible future timelines are more
>imminent than others and draw events toward them.

Cramer's claim was very much more specific than that. He develops a 
gedanken based on a recent QT experiment (Dopfer's PhD thesis), 
claiming that one should expect to see a certain effect 50 
microseconds prior to its cause. Moreover, he finds this consistent 
with the transactional interpretation. I still can't understand how 
this compatibility is possible, given that the transactional 
interpretation proposes that a rather mysterious retarded offer wave 
at T1 provokes an answering and no less mysterious advanced wave at 
T2 (from the effect), which reaches back in time to T1, and the 
handshake outcome is the observed retarded wave at T1 (the cause of 
the event at T2).

A physicist friend pointed out to me that Cramer's interpretation is 
perhaps less plausible than Bohm's quantum potential, where the 
photon 'senses' the environment nonlocally. For all I know, she might 
be right. :)

Damien Broderick



From extropy at bayesianinvestor.com  Mon Jun 26 18:58:18 2006
From: extropy at bayesianinvestor.com (Peter McCluskey)
Date: 26 Jun 2006 18:58:18 -0000
Subject: [extropy-chat] Two draft papers: AI and existential risk;
	heuristics and biases
In-Reply-To: <449C7EEC.1070200@pobox.com>
References: <20060623222029.15976.qmail@pallas3.usifex.com>
	<449C7EEC.1070200@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <20060626185818.11299.qmail@pallas3.usifex.com>

 sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) writes:
>Peter McCluskey wrote:
>> 
>> I agree with your criticisms of Eliezer's scenario of isolated
>> self-improvement (and I suspect he has a strong bias toward scenarios
>> under which his skills are most valuable), but if we alter the scenario
>> to include the likelyhood that the AI will need many cpu's interacting
>> with the real world, then I think most of what he says about the risks
>> remain plausible and your criticisms seem fairly weak.
>
>Peter,
>
>Why would my skills be any less valuable under a scenario where the AI 
>needs many CPUs interacting with the real world, leaving the rest of the 
>scenario unchanged?

 One obvious reason is that your skill at acquiring the money needed for
a large server farm appears to be limited. If cpu power is the most
important requirement for AI, then your chances of creating an AI before
Google does seem small. (I'm assuming you still hope to create the first
AI yourself. It is the belief that you have the skills for that which I
think biases you. You might have more valuable skills that enable you to
talk others out of creating an unfriendly AI, but those skills don't
appear to be biasing you much.)
 To put it in more general terms, I can imagine a big range of possibilities
for what is required to create the first AI, from a very simple algorithm
that works on a single isolated cpu, to a system with much of the complexity
of human intelligence. Only the simpler systems can be created by the small
group of programmers that you are likely to assemble. The more complex
systems require more programmers (for a complex set of algorithms) and
hardware than I think you have the skills to assemble.

>I would not be overly surprised if the *first* AI, even a Friendly AI, 
>is most conveniently built with many CPUs.  Realtime, unrestricted 
>Internet access is perhaps unwise; but if it is convenient to have a 
>small robotics lab, there is nothing wrong with that.  However, various 
>incautious persons who believe that an AI absolutely cannot possibly 
>exist without many CPUs and a realtime interface, and who use this 
>uncalculated intuition to justify not taking other safety precautions, 
>may lead me to be emphatic about the *possibility* that an AI can do 
>just fine with one CPU and a VT100 terminal.

 It is appropriate for you to criticise that kind of certainty, but
I suspect that pointing out an overconfidence bias is more effective
than sounding like you might be overconfident about the possibility
of an isolated AI takeoff.
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter McCluskey         | Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
www.bayesianinvestor.com| - Richard Feynman


From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Mon Jun 26 19:30:03 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 14:30:03 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do (was String
	Theory)
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGEADGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <deaa866a0606240953x3d1c0b65m355f0f003d7fab2d@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGEADGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606261230r7f7fec9ckaca67511f1714049@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/25/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
>
>
> On your page http://www.futurehi.net/docs/Matrioshka_Brains.html
> you do imply that because of nanoscale engineering, human bodies
> as we know them no longer exist. So I suppose that the humans you
> refer to have already been uploaded.  No?


Please do *NOT* cite that reference.  It is an illicit and outdated
reference and citing it biases the search engine page rankings.  I requested
that it be removed months ago because its an illicit copy.  Unfortunately
the svolach who copied it has not done so.  Please instead cite either the
Wikipedia page for Matrioshka Brains or the link from that page to my
Matrioshka Brain home page (which links to the more current, though still
dated, version of that paper).

I'm relatively neutral on the topic of whether human bodies (or any
currently existing DNA based self-replicating systems) will still exist 500+
years from now.  It depends a lot on what choices are made by individuals --
what kind of 'spin' is put into any AI(s) and how much societal pressure is
brought to bear upon the slow adopters.  (E.g. do *you* have a "right to
life" or does only your information have a "right to preservation", etc.).

I can see possible paths which play out where biological realities are
allowed to coexist with significantly more advanced entities.  I can also
see possible paths where we get into a knock down drag out between the rapid
adopters, the reluctant adopters and the never will adopters.

It only requires minor grant of the resources ultimately available to
preserve life as we know it.  Whether you grant it as "real" space or
cyberspace is where things start to get very iffy.  You can do it in
cyberspace though you might have to sacrifice a small amount of possible
randomness unless you slow down the clock rate of the reality
significantly.  I would like to hope that we develop a rate of evolution
that allows people to adapt at the rate at which they feel most comfortable.
But I see little if any effort by anyone to attempt to deal with the problem
(at least in a way that I am comfortable with) that would allow a
significant preservation of life as we know it or an adaptation rate that
would make the greatest number of people happy).

On my bad days I put the probability of a knock down drag out (perhaps not
so different from the Terminator series) at significantly more than 50%.

Robert
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From thespike at satx.rr.com  Mon Jun 26 19:30:14 2006
From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 14:30:14 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] AAAS conference on retrocausation
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20060626135228.0229cde8@satx.rr.com>
References: <7.0.1.0.2.20060623154447.02218360@satx.rr.com>
	<20060626180236.47448.qmail@web60524.mail.yahoo.com>
	<7.0.1.0.2.20060626135228.0229cde8@satx.rr.com>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060626142644.022ec848@satx.rr.com>

At 02:03 PM 6/26/2006 -0500, I mentioned
>
>a gedanken based on a recent QT experiment (Dopfer's PhD thesis)

That is Birgit Dopfer, PhD Thesis (title unavailable), U. Innsbruck 
(1998), discussed by R. Jensen, in Proceedings of STAIF 2006, AIP 
Conf. Proc. 813, 1409-1414 (2006).  



From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Mon Jun 26 22:30:35 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 15:30:35 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] AAAS conference on retrocausation
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20060626135228.0229cde8@satx.rr.com>
Message-ID: <20060626223035.56245.qmail@web60518.mail.yahoo.com>



--- Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> A physicist friend pointed out to me that Cramer's
> interpretation is 
> perhaps less plausible than Bohm's quantum
> potential, where the 
> photon 'senses' the environment nonlocally. For all
> I know, she might 
> be right. :)

Well look up "quantum erasure" on Google or check out
this site here:
http://grad.physics.sunysb.edu/~amarch/

If you modify the classic double slit experiment in
such that you obtain which-way information on the
photons going thru the slit, you lose the interference
pattern. If you obtain the which-way information but
then destroy it before you can measure it, the pattern
comes back. Even when the information is contained in
a different set of photons than the ones going thru
the slits.  

So there is experimental precedent for the notion that
photons "sense" their enviroment non-locally and
conspire with other photons to boggle our minds. But
keep in mind that from a photon's POV, space-time does
not exist in the same sense as it does for inertial
reference frames such as we are used to.

To a photon, all the space-time along its travel path
is squished down to a single point of "here and now".
It is only to those of us encumbered by matter that
time has any meaning at all. Why we should have to
wait for photons (finite speed of light) when those
same photons do not wait for anything at all is a
mystery that math can describe but not clarify.

     

Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"God doesn't play dice with the universe." - Albert Einstein

"Einstein, don't tell God what to do." - Neils Bohr

__________________________________________________
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From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Tue Jun 27 04:31:25 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 21:31:25 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Would You Enjoy Knitting?
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGECEGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Do you enjoy knitting?  For most people reading this list, the answer to this particular question is 'no'. Of course, there may be
*someone* out there who does, but this isn't really about knitting, per se, but about the reasons we prefer to do the things that in
fact we prefer to do. There may be no reason, of course, but one still wishes for explanation.

Is there a logical or rational reason that you are glad that you don't enjoy knitting? Please let me know if you have one, because I
don't know of any. I not only wish that I did know how to knit, but wish in addition that I would enjoy it. You see, I spend a
certain amount of time in discussion with friends where my hands aren't doing anything, and instead of smoking, which we have many
good reasons to avoid, I can't think of any reason not to knit.

For a number of us, knitting probably doesn't match our self-image. We just don't see ourselves as someone who knits. Well, it's
exactly that way with any other activity, and the fearsome choice that awaits us soon is that we will be perfectly free to exercise
that choice.

The very prospect of such freedom instills fear in many, even including many here, and perhaps rightfully so: as with every other
freedom, it does not come risk-free. More likely, the prospect seems merely useless; we already know what we like, and so what good
would be the freedom to choose what we like? Well, I hope that you won't automatically close down on the possibility that not only
ought we have such freedom, it should be used in the most imaginative ways we can short of inflicting harm on ourselves or others.

Yet another upcoming freedom is more terrifying still. It is the freedom to determine one's own levels of happiness, satisfaction,
enjoyment, contentment, and fulfillment by artificial means.

"Ugh!", I can hear people say. "Artificial?" How... inauthentic! Yes, that's the word. We want to have *authentic* emotions, not
artificial ones." So much of the twentieth century was spent drilling into people disdain for the artificial, and the superiority of
the *natural*. We learned that humankind is a plague upon the Earth, and that there previously was a more ideal era in which natural
harmony ruled before the coming of industrial man. Well, I would urge people who swallow all of that to read "1491", the story of
what archaeology is now teaching us about the way that the pre-Columbian peoples of the western hemisphere lived.

What we must come to grips with is the notion that there is no pre-ordained preference for either "the natural" or "the artificial".
No pre-ordained difference, that is, except for one tiny detail: we can control the latter but not the former. Is such control
dangerous? Yes, it is. Is it necessarily bad? No, it is not! Ought we to have it? Yes, we should! And we or our mind children *will*
have such control. And about that, we *won't* have any choice. It is coming.

So if we grant that we want the freedom to influence our emotions by artificial means, the question still remains whether or not
such freedom should ever be used. (For those who have not done so, please take a look at David Pearce's brilliant essay at
www.hedweb.com.)

Schopenhauer said, "Man can indeed do what he wants, but he cannot want what he wants" and while that was once true and remains true
at this moment, it's about to change. So now, today, the real question is "do we want to be ready for it, or not?"

Lee



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Tue Jun 27 04:43:34 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 21:43:34 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606260057s307f6313q99a939fb0600038e@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECECFGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Russell writes

> On 6/26/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
> > ...about mood control, or what is the same thing, that
> > we can in the future *choose* what it is that gives us
> > pleasure. Perhaps it's a hard concept, or perhaps people's
> > eyes just glaze over. In any case, I never receive any answer...

> Oh, that one's been answered ages ago - if you postulate
> a setting where people can rewire their brains in that way, 
> then yes of course you have the wireheading trap, and
> doubtless some people will program themselves to derive
> maximal enjoyment from filling in forms or counting sheep
> or whatever's at hand.

There's quite a bit more to it than wireheading, Russell. 
After all, Larry Niven practically invented the term in
his novels of the late sixties. The idea really has been
around, and unfortunately, that is all that usually comes
to mind whenever mood control is mentioned.

> > I was discussing what those of us who don't do that are
> > likely to end up doing.

> Lots of smart people enjoy cooking or working with their
> hands, or writing

Oh, I know! But you *missed* the question. The question was
not what we enjoy doing at all.

I guess it is a hard concept. The question is about what we
may wish to do when we *can* equally well get any reward
whatsoever from the activity.

> or painting or playing chess or playing the guitar. Are
> you saying you think they ought to all rewire their brains
> so the only thing they enjoy is... what? solving equations?

I'm saying that once reward and action are divorced, serious
questions arise. Difficult and awkward questions, questions
that may make many uncomfortable.

Once we get used to that, then we're no longer trapped by 
feelings and forces out of our control. Would I still enjoy
chess?  Wrong question!  I'm going to enjoy whatever I do.
So what do we do?  What will we do?

Lee



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Tue Jun 27 05:01:39 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 22:01:39 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <20060626112256.GH28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMECFGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Eugen writes

> > People, of course, will be able to choose what is boring
> 
> Why is everybody talking about just people? What about
> the eqivalents of viruses, bacteria, nematodes, insects,
> rodents, deities?

The answer is simply this: we are not now at all interested
in having the experiences, if there are any, of viruses
bacteria, nematodes, and insects, and we suspect that the
experiences of rodents don't really have that much to them.

And unfortunately, by the Campbell/Vinge paradox, we can't
understand the experiences of deities.

Moreover, please understand that by "people" I include sentients
at human level or above, though usually underestimated problems
with identity arise when we go seriously past the human level.

> > SF writers considered that future tech would allow us
> > to control our emotions directly.
> 
> I don't think this is a reasonable future. It looks
> too much like our present.

Could you elaborate? It doesn't seem to me now that I have all
that much control over my emotions. I'm happy or sad, often for
reasons outside my control. I wish always that I could suppress
anger or resentment, if either they don't logically seem
appropriate for the situation, or simply because I believe
that it would be better for me not to have those experiences.
At least I know that *you* agree that natural isn't always
best.

> > Will people really *choose* to be interested in games?
> > Why???  Instead, I have postulated that in the very long
> > run---assuming that physics gets worked out comparatively
> > rapidly---only two activities remain, however unpalatable
> > they now seem to most people now:  mathematics and
> > gratification research.
> 
> What about pointless stuff we're doing now? Games, art,
> socializing? How can a mouse do math research? Why
> should I do math research if I can start a war instead,
> or do <wr54334543>?

I would hardly call them pointless; it's simply that they may
not be optimal in some ways at some times for some people,
people who presently are passive victims to their own tastes,
whether evolved or acquired.

Indeed, a mouse could do "math research", but he'd become a
trans-mouse in the way that many of us yearn to be transhuman.

> > Mathematics is provably infinite in complexity, and surely
> > people will still want to enjoy life. There you have it.
> 
> I would like a proper mathematical proof of that, please.

There are infinitely many true relations between just natural
numbers, for a start. See Gregory Chaitin's elaborations on
why unknown mathematical truths will always outnumber the
finitely many known ones.

Another approach is simply to use Godel's theorem, and observe
that every axiom system implies the existence of truths that
cannot be demonstrated from within that system, and that while
adding an axiom fixes that and may extend the system of 
provable truths quite a bit, it still provides an induction
proof that the number of mathematical facts is at least aleph
zero.

Lee



From spike66 at comcast.net  Tue Jun 27 05:18:37 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 22:18:37 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECECFGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <200606270518.k5R5IvLF000976@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Lee Corbin
...
> ... Would I still enjoy
> chess?  Wrong question!  I'm going to enjoy whatever I do.
> ... Lee


Of course you would Lee.  You and I both know how diabolically seductive is
chess.  We are willing victims of that game.  We have never understood *why*
chess is enjoyable.  We have never understood why a whole bunch of
chess-like activities are enjoyable.  Perhaps someone here has insights on
it.

spike








From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Tue Jun 27 05:31:59 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 22:31:59 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] The Extropies of Cooking, Movies,
	and even (the sacred) Seeing Friends
In-Reply-To: <F8E625D0-D0F2-441C-AE2B-9F9720202DA6@ceruleansystems.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEECHGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

J. Andrew Rogers writes

> > Oh, I know!  BARBEQUE!  What a thrill for an IQ 300 type who
> > just never gets out. I note already how most of our geniuses
> > are become pastry chefs, handymen, insurance salesmen, and
> > motorcycle repair folks...
> 
> Perhaps interestingly, cooking -- of the fine cuisine type -- is what  
> frequently occupies my time when I am not doing the brain intensive  
> exercises that fill the rest of my day.

For any newcomers, Andrew has written many brilliant essays on subjects
involving artificial intelligence and its future potentialities. I had
the pleasure of meeting Andrew not long ago, and the only thing wrong
with him is that he's soft spoken and polite enough that the conversation
gets steam-rollered by various loudmouth types. I won't mention any names,
but yours truly was there.

> In other words, it [cooking] is both thoroughly relaxing and as
> deeply expressive as any human art form that exists.  And it is
> functional too -- we all have to eat.

Not to mention its likely need after doing "brain intensive exercises
that fill the rest of the day".

However, what will you do when personal energy per day is no longer
under constraint?  In fact, why don't you do *more* cooking and less
intellectual work right now?  It seems to me unlikely that it just
so happens that the constraints imposed "from the outside" on you
perfectly match what you really want to do. (An intriguing novel is
"Beggars in Spain" by Nancy Kress, that explores what might happen
if we simply didn't need to sleep. How would your day change if you
didn't have to sleep?)

You may be *perfectly* happy with present arrangements; but how do
you know that this isn't simply the voice of conservatism within
you?

I myself greatly enjoy music, Go, chess, friends, science fiction,
and one particularly intense television drama ("The Shield"). All
of these tastes (and a number I haven't mentioned) seem quite
appropriate, especially when I'm indulging them. But my God! What
will I do when enjoyment of an activity is no longer linked to the
activity itself?  Sure: the easy answer is "We were not Meant to
go there."

I suspect that almost every activity I now cultivate and enjoy I will
one-day evaluate according to my most sublime values. I suspect that
the above-mentioned may be found wanting.

Lee



From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Tue Jun 27 05:27:33 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 06:27:33 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECECFGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <8d71341e0606260057s307f6313q99a939fb0600038e@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECECFGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606262227t6243fbbdlb3239ff01b57388c@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/27/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> There's quite a bit more to it than wireheading, Russell.
> After all, Larry Niven practically invented the term in
> his novels of the late sixties. The idea really has been
> around, and unfortunately, that is all that usually comes
> to mind whenever mood control is mentioned.


I was using the term in the general sense of changing one's goals to match
one's actions/circumstances as opposed to vice versa.

Oh, I know! But you *missed* the question. The question was
> not what we enjoy doing at all.
>
> I guess it is a hard concept. The question is about what we
> may wish to do when we *can* equally well get any reward
> whatsoever from the activity.


I understand the question perfectly well; I was trying, obviously not with
adequate skill, to point out that it collapses on itself. Let me take
another shot at holding up the mirror. Postulate a scenario (the idea that
it necessarily _will_ happen is of course pure wishful thinking, but there's
nothing wrong with science fiction provided it is acknowledged as such)
where you have freedom to modify your mind, including goal systems, as you
choose (using a smart computer aided enhancement program to avoid the
obvious pitfalls), and have say a trillion years of lifespan and reasonably
adequate resources:

What would you choose to modify yourself to enjoy doing?
Why?
Do you think other people should choose the same activity?
If so, why?
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From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Tue Jun 27 05:53:09 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 22:53:09 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Panicmongering
In-Reply-To: <200606260242.k5Q2g5pL001965@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECECIGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Spike writes

> > Russell wrote:  Well, there was a bit more to it in this case - what I was
> > objecting to was the proposal that we allow fear of terrorism to dominate
> > our lives to the extent of dismantling much of our infrastructure...
> 
> Oh dear, I have surely overstated my case, inadvertently.

No, I don't think you did, FWIW.

> I have a vision of the US containing a billion people within fifty years.
> We are trying to stop them at the borders, but in the long run I see this as
> futile.  So we need to triple our current everything.  My notion is to build
> the newer cities on a Silicon Valley model as opposed to a New York City
> model.  More land for everyone, less attractive as terrorism targets.  Of
> course, when we get this continent with the populations densities I
> envision, it will then be full.

Let's see what population densities that might be. Suburbs currently 
run at about 10,000 people per square mile, or 6000 per square
kilometer.

Space is not only expanding in cosmology, but sociologically and
economically too. The mid-West is being abandoned by people. Vast
areas of the Dakotas, for example, used to exhibit small towns,
but are vacant now. Food production has increased per acre by
about a factor of 5 since 1950, while the population has only
about doubled. Julian Simon writes about the marvels of hydroponics
in "The Ultimate Resource2", and an area the size of San Antonio,
Texas could feed the present population of the U.S.

Anyway, at roughly 3,000,000 square miles, by the above reckoning
there is room for 3,000,000 times 10,000 or about 30 billion souls
in the U.S. And that's before uploading!  :-)

> For instance, we may wonder why Europe Inc. is so interested in stopping
> Iran from refining nuclear fuel.  I see why Israel and the US would have
> heartburn from that, but why England, France and Germany?

Western democracies often respond to the will of the people.
Politicians try to at least stay out in front of the crowd,
even if they're not doing any leading at all.

> I recognize that this is outside the comfort zone of many here, and for this
> I apologize.

That should not be necessary!  This forum not only still welcomes
topics that may make people, but if I have any say in it, positively
encourages them. I read this list not only to have my ideas
criticized, but precisely to be made uncomfortable by certain
ideas or arguments. I am sure I am not alone.

You probably meant, of course, something like "too bad.".

Hmm. That's not it. You probably meant "I feel very sorry 
for you."

Hmm. That's not it either. Let me try "It's unfortunate that
these ideas are outside your comfort zone". Close, but no
banana. "You are unfortunate that these ideas are outside
your comfort zone, and I feel your pain"?  No, that's not
it either.

I give up. I thought I could nail it. Maybe you were just trying
to be "nice".

Lee

> If the world allows Iran to refine uranium, then any nation can refine
> uranium, and this old planet will be awash in low level radioactive waste,
> never mind nukes for now.  Do you see any dangers in dozens of poor starving
> nations selling or giving away this stuff?  England and France are sitting
> over there with that tunnel under the English Channel, a stunningly
> expensive bit of infrastructure that they would be loathe to see getting
> contaminated by all that loose rad-waste that may result if Iran is allowed
> to refine yellowcake.



From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Tue Jun 27 06:25:59 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 07:25:59 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Panicmongering
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECECIGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <200606260242.k5Q2g5pL001965@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECECIGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606262325v35600a75n2d7898e318e09e41@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/27/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> That should not be necessary!  This forum not only still welcomes
> topics that may make people, but if I have any say in it, positively
> encourages them. I read this list not only to have my ideas
> criticized, but precisely to be made uncomfortable by certain
> ideas or arguments. I am sure I am not alone.


Then I hope I am forgiven for posting an idea that made you uncomfortable ;)
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From scerir at libero.it  Tue Jun 27 06:59:24 2006
From: scerir at libero.it (scerir)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 08:59:24 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] AAAS conference on retrocausation
References: <7.0.1.0.2.20060623154447.02218360@satx.rr.com><20060626180236.47448.qmail@web60524.mail.yahoo.com><7.0.1.0.2.20060626135228.0229cde8@satx.rr.com>
	<7.0.1.0.2.20060626142644.022ec848@satx.rr.com>
Message-ID: <000801c699b7$3a4800a0$86971f97@nomedxgm1aalex>

Damien B.:
> That is Birgit Dopfer, PhD Thesis (title unavailable), U. Innsbruck 
> (1998), discussed by R. Jensen, in Proceedings of STAIF 2006, AIP 
> Conf. Proc. 813, 1409-1414 (2006).  

This famous, huge paper is online, in German.
http://www.quantum.univie.ac.at/publications/thesis/ 

Dopfer is working in Zeilinger's group. She (and the rest
of the group) was studying (1998) the so called
David Nikolaevich Klyshko interpretation (circa 1988) 
of momentum/position quantum entanglement, in terms 
of Fourier transforms between the two entangled subsystems. 
Or, if you prefer, in terms of retrocausation, between
the two subsystems, via the common (SPDC) source.

The 'orthodox' interpretation by Zeilinger of Dopfer's 
experiment seems (to me, and also others) good, but not perfect.
http://www.quantum.univie.ac.at/publications/pdffiles/1999-03.pdf
He does not seem able to explain certain supposed 'advanced'
effects. In example, how the outcome of Dopfer's experiment
in one of the wings (here on Earth) depends on the setting
of the (very delayed choice) experiment in the other wing
(on Alpha Centaury). In certain cases Zeilinger's interpretation
(the 'interpretation' of the outcome in the near wing, and not 
the outcome itself, depends on the later setting in the 
Alpha Centaury) seems Bohrian but also feeble. 


 





From scerir at libero.it  Tue Jun 27 07:00:18 2006
From: scerir at libero.it (scerir)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 09:00:18 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] AAAS conference on retrocausation
References: <7.0.1.0.2.20060623154447.02218360@satx.rr.com><20060626180236.47448.qmail@web60524.mail.yahoo.com>
	<deaa866a0606261153q64145c39nf4d8f23011800b6c@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <000c01c699b7$5a137f90$86971f97@nomedxgm1aalex>

Robert Bradbury:
> ... whether retrocausation could be how 
> the universes that don't work out 
> jiggle the probabilities in the ones 
> which are more interesting ... 

... close to another recent speculation by Hawking ...

The leading explanation for the observed acceleration 
of the expansion of the universe is that a substance, 
dark energy, fills the vacuum and produces a
uniform repulsive force between any two points in space -
a sort of anti-gravity. Quantum field theory allows 
for the existence of such a universal tendency. 
Unfortunately, its prediction for the value of
the density of dark energy (a parameter referred to 
as the cosmological constant) is some 120 orders 
of magnitude larger than the observed value.  
In 2003, cosmologist Andrei Linde of Stanford
University and his collaborators showed that 
string theory allows for the existence of dark energy, 
but without specifying the value of the  cosmological 
constant.  String theory, they found, produces
a mathematical graph shaped like a mountainous 
landscape, where altitude represents the value of 
the cosmological constant. After the big bang, 
the value would settle on a low point somewhere
between the peaks and valleys of the landscape. 
But there could be on the order of 10^500 possible 
low points - with different corresponding values 
for the cosmological constant - and no obvious
reason for the universe to pick the one we observe 
in nature. Some experts hailed this multiplicity 
of values as a virtue of the theory.  For example, 
Stanford University's Leonard Susskind in his
book  "The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and 
the Illusion of Intelligent Design," argues that 
different values of the cosmological constant 
would be realized in different parallel worlds - 
the pocket universes of Linde's "eternal inflation" 
theory.  We would just happen to live in one where 
the value is very small.  But critics see the landscape 
as exemplifying the theory's inability to make useful 
predictions.  The Hawking/Hertog paper is meant 
to address this concern.  It looks at the universe 
as a quantum system in the framework of string
theory. Quantum theory calculates the odds a system 
will evolve a certain way from given initial conditions, 
say, photons going through a double slit and hitting 
a certain spot on the other side.  You repeat your experiment 
often enough and then you check that the odds you predicted 
were the correct ones.   In Richard Feynman's
formulation of quantum theory, the probability that 
a photon ends up at a particular spot is calculated 
by summing up over all possible trajectories for the photon. 
A photon goes through multiple paths at once and can even 
interfere with its other personas in the process.
Hawking and Hertog argue that the universe itself must 
also follow different trajectories at once, evolving through 
many simultaneous, parallel histories, or "branches." 
(These parallel universes are not to be confused with those 
of eternal inflation, where multiple universes coexist in 
a classical rather than in a quantum sense.)
What we see in the present would be a particular, 
more or less probable, outcome  of the "sum" over these histories. 
In particular, the sum should include all possible initial 
conditions, with all possible values of the cosmological constant.
But applying quantum theory to  the entire universe - where the
experimenters are part of the experiment---is tricky. Here you have
no control over the initial conditions, nor can your repeat the
experiment again and again for statistical significance.   Instead,
the Hawking-Hertog approach starts with the present and uses what we
know about our branch of the universe to trace its history
backwards. Again, there will be multiple possible branches 
in our past, but most can be ignored in the Feynman summation 
because they are just too different from the universe we know, 
so the probability of going from one to the other is negligible.  
For example, Hertog says, knowledge that our universe is very 
close to being flat could allow one to concentrate on a very small 
portion of the string theory landscape whose values for 
the cosmological constant are compatible with that flatness. 
That could in turn lead to predictions that are experimentally 
testable. For example, one could calculate whether our universe 
is likely to produce the microwave background spectrum 
we actually observe.  (Physical Review D, upcoming article).

-from PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
Number 781,  June 19, 2006



From emlynoregan at gmail.com  Tue Jun 27 10:22:37 2006
From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 19:52:37 +0930
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
In-Reply-To: <200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <F4EAE966-EB51-4AE8-A349-60EBF84E01DB@mac.com>
	<200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <710b78fc0606270322q25d930bdkaa2511715fa80cdb@mail.gmail.com>

Just saw the message. Congratulations!

On 24/06/06, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Shelly's baby was born at 0015 this morning.  Difficult labor, mother and
> child are fine, more later, thanks to all well wishers.  {8-]
>
> spike
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>


-- 
Emlyn

http://emlynoregan.com   * blogs * music * software *
Music downloads are online again!


From eugen at leitl.org  Tue Jun 27 10:26:55 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 12:26:55 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMECFGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <20060626112256.GH28956@leitl.org>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMECFGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060627102655.GS28956@leitl.org>

On Mon, Jun 26, 2006 at 10:01:39PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:

> > Why is everybody talking about just people? What about
> > the eqivalents of viruses, bacteria, nematodes, insects,
> > rodents, deities?
> 
> The answer is simply this: we are not now at all interested
> in having the experiences, if there are any, of viruses
> bacteria, nematodes, and insects, and we suspect that the
> experiences of rodents don't really have that much to them.

Yes, but others will, and some subsystems will spontaneously
sprout legs, and walk off. The future culture is not a monoclone.
After the initial population bottleneck it will become radically
diverse, far more diverse than our current ecosystem.

People equivalents will be in the minority. And they would
be equivalents, not a 1:1 virtual rendition of a human primate,
in bits. So we should claim speaking for them. They're
indistinguishable from aliens, to us-current. 
 
> And unfortunately, by the Campbell/Vinge paradox, we can't
> understand the experiences of deities.

The experiences of people equivalents are intensely intervowen
with the rest of the ecosystem. They're not floating in
free space, each. They're not philospher-kings, ensconced
in virtual-ivory towers, thinking deep thoughts, undisturbed.
 
> Moreover, please understand that by "people" I include sentients
> at human level or above, though usually underestimated problems
> with identity arise when we go seriously past the human level.

When I say people I mean sentients at human level or slightly above.
 
> > I don't think this is a reasonable future. It looks
> > too much like our present.
> 
> Could you elaborate? It doesn't seem to me now that I have all
> that much control over my emotions. I'm happy or sad, often for

The intentions we project. Some of what we discuss sounds dated
even as we speak. Whatever we've learned from such past discussions
(which cover many centuries) is that if we aim for specifics
the projections will tank. So I'm trying to assume as little
as possible, namely that Darwin still applies, and don't try
to look at the short term (linear centuries) but look at the
long-term trends. Predicting climate, instead of weather.

> reasons outside my control. I wish always that I could suppress
> anger or resentment, if either they don't logically seem
> appropriate for the situation, or simply because I believe
> that it would be better for me not to have those experiences.
> At least I know that *you* agree that natural isn't always
> best.

We're extremely unnatural, and in fact not unnatural enough.
We're animals that have been pressed too fast into a postanimal
niche, hence the maladaptedness, and the feeling of being
a round peg in a square hole. But this is our view, and other
people and systems will choose a different evolutionary path
that will carry them into all possible nooks and crannies,
arbitrarily far from our current bauplan, generally spoken.

What irks me, if that we're always extrapolating from a human
viewpoint -- not only a human, but an early 21st century human 
geek. There's some serious diversity scarcity there. 
 
> > What about pointless stuff we're doing now? Games, art,
> > socializing? How can a mouse do math research? Why
> > should I do math research if I can start a war instead,
> > or do <wr54334543>?
> 
> I would hardly call them pointless; it's simply that they may
> not be optimal in some ways at some times for some people,
> people who presently are passive victims to their own tastes,
> whether evolved or acquired.

But there's an effectivy infinity in culture (=what social
animals do), and certainly no lack in motivation in pursuing it.
 
> Indeed, a mouse could do "math research", but he'd become a
> trans-mouse in the way that many of us yearn to be transhuman.

My point is that diversition radiates both down and up complexity-wise,
and a transrodent niche doesn't ask for intelligence. There is
simply no place for intelligence in a lowly scavenger package.
 
> > > Mathematics is provably infinite in complexity, and surely
> > > people will still want to enjoy life. There you have it.
> > 
> > I would like a proper mathematical proof of that, please.
> 
> There are infinitely many true relations between just natural
> numbers, for a start. See Gregory Chaitin's elaborations on
> why unknown mathematical truths will always outnumber the
> finitely many known ones.

But math is just a particular production system, a subset
of culture. No doubt some will revel in such production
systems. But not exclusively so. I always got this dismal
vibe from Egan: "Oh noes! we've ran out of stuff and think to
do! O well, the only thing left is the math mines, I guess."
 
> Another approach is simply to use Godel's theorem, and observe
> that every axiom system implies the existence of truths that
> cannot be demonstrated from within that system, and that while
> adding an axiom fixes that and may extend the system of 
> provable truths quite a bit, it still provides an induction
> proof that the number of mathematical facts is at least aleph
> zero.

I understand you perfectly (and indeed if there was a symbolic
algebra package cortex plugin I'd purchase it). But this is a tool,
not something I'd consider a full-time occupation. Ditto
diddling nanowidgets: it's the same as redecoration and health
maintanance, rolled in one. Something you do, but not full-time,
but for the specialists.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Tue Jun 27 12:45:05 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 05:45:05 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Panicmongering
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECECIGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <200606260242.k5Q2g5pL001965@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECECIGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060627124504.GA30902@ofb.net>

On Mon, Jun 26, 2006 at 10:53:09PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
> Spike writes

> > futile.  So we need to triple our current everything.  My notion is
> > to build the newer cities on a Silicon Valley model as opposed to a
> > New York City model.  More land for everyone, less attractive as

Ugh!

> Let's see what population densities that might be. Suburbs currently 
> run at about 10,000 people per square mile, or 6000 per square
> kilometer.

Where do you get those numbers?
http://www4.wittenberg.edu/academics/urban_studies/BFINALEC.html
gives 2000 people per square mile.

Some numbers I have burned into my memory:
Manhattan 65,000
NYC 25,000
(Outer boroughs 15,000)
San Francisco 16,000
Chicago 12,000
LA 9,000
Berkeley, Pasadena 5,000 [could be wrong about Berkeley]
Dallas 3,000

http://www.perc.org/perc.php?id=374
"only half of Americans live in 2,000/mile^2 or higher" -- Indianapolis
or Tulsa densities.
18% at 5,000 or more.  1/3 at 3,000 or more.  And that's the central
cities.

I'd note that typical suburban quarter-acre lots would give 640 lots per
square mile, or less after accounting for roads, for about 2400 people
per square mile.

> but are vacant now. Food production has increased per acre by
> about a factor of 5 since 1950, while the population has only

It's not clear that's sustainable, given energy inputs to corn from
petroleum-made fertilizers comparable to the energy inputs from the sun.
Not to mention the unhealthy aspects of a corn-based diet... I just read
Michael Pollan's _The Omnivore's Dilemma_ and liked it a lot.  Looking
at where our food comes from.

> about doubled. Julian Simon writes about the marvels of hydroponics
> in "The Ultimate Resource2", and an area the size of San Antonio,
> Texas could feed the present population of the U.S.

Area of San Antonio: 1000 km^2.
Solar energy input estimate: 3e11 watts.
Energy consumed by US human bodies: 3e10 watts

You'd need 10% energy capture when plants tend to get 1%.  Okay, 8% at
the high end of algae or growing sugar cane.  Where's the beef?  Not to
mention the electricity.

> Anyway, at roughly 3,000,000 square miles, by the above reckoning
> there is room for 3,000,000 times 10,000 or about 30 billion souls

Using 3e14 watts, in an area collected 6e14 watts if you roof everything
over in solar panels.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Tue Jun 27 13:00:28 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 06:00:28 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <200606200359.k5K3xv81019070@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <8d71341e0606191954i5b8a0a1dx546af01992957679@mail.gmail.com>
	<200606200359.k5K3xv81019070@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <20060627130028.GB30902@ofb.net>

On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 08:59:41PM -0700, spike wrote:

> I advocate we spread out more evenly, reducing overcrowding and improving
> quality of life for everyone.  We no longer have the conditions that led to

Being spread out more evenly would reduce the quality of life for me,
and for many others who have been moving into re-gentrified areas by
choice, because of our preference for pedestrian-friendly areas.

> enormous skyscrapers.  The skyscrapers create the need for subways, which

You can get pretty good density just with three-story buildings everywhere.

> leads to a way of life that isn't particularly pleasant: getting on a train
> every morning and evening.  We have advanced communications now, advanced

A train which is on-time, fast, and not too crowded is more pleasant
than driving, for many people.

> transportation, advanced manufacturing.  We are poised to make enormous
> advances in quality of life for the proletariat if we choose to seize this
> opportunity. 

Who's the "we", here?  The government most extropians don't like?

-xx- Damien X-) 


From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Tue Jun 27 13:17:35 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 06:17:35 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Panicmongering
In-Reply-To: <20060627124504.GA30902@ofb.net>
References: <200606260242.k5Q2g5pL001965@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECECIGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<20060627124504.GA30902@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <20060627131735.GA5658@ofb.net>

On Tue, Jun 27, 2006 at 05:45:05AM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 26, 2006 at 10:53:09PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:

> > Let's see what population densities that might be. Suburbs currently 
> > run at about 10,000 people per square mile, or 6000 per square
> > kilometer.

Also, the mile/kilometer ratio is about 1.6.  The *square* mile/square
km ratio is 2.6.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From rhanson at gmu.edu  Tue Jun 27 12:40:54 2006
From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 08:40:54 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Would You Enjoy Knitting?
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGECEGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEGECEGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060627080003.02434d08@gmu.edu>

On AM 6/27/2006, Lee Corbin wrote:
>... we already know what we like, and so what good would be the 
>freedom to choose what we like? Well, I hope that you won't 
>automatically close down on the possibility that not only ought we 
>have such freedom, it should be used in the most imaginative ways we 
>can short of inflicting harm on ourselves or others.
>Yet another upcoming freedom is more terrifying still. It is the 
>freedom to determine one's own levels of happiness, satisfaction, 
>enjoyment, contentment, and fulfillment by artificial means.

It seems clear to me that, if allowed, some people will use such 
freedoms, and explore the space of possible preferences and emotional 
reactions.   It also seems clear that many people will not choose to 
explore this space, preferring to retain their current preferences 
and emotional reactions.

So what will future people want and enjoy?  The result will be some 
combination of momentum and selection.   Momentum is the tendency of 
people to want to retain their preferences, and selection is their 
environment rewarding some preferences relative to others.

If selection were strong enough, what we want now would not 
matter.   Consciousness and perhaps even intelligence would be 
selected away in many environments.   I analyzed a scenario like this 
in "Burning the Cosmic Commons."

What we want now may well matter.   It is possible that it will 
matter because we create some grand international organization to 
enforce our current wishes, or because we initialize a seed AI with 
what we want, though these scenarios seem unlikely to me.   Or some 
people may live forever and continue to accumulate wealth and spend 
to get what they want.

It is not clear to me which will be more important: what people now 
want, or what they now want to want.

People now do seem to have preferences they want to have, that differ 
from the preferences they do have.   Many religious people, for 
example, want to be more committed to their religion.   Many married 
people want to be less tempted to betray their marriage.   Many 
somewhat ambitious people would like to be more devoted to their 
ambitions.  Many somewhat altruistic people would like to be more 
truly altruistic.  Many soldiers would like to be more courageous in 
battle.  And so on.

In general humans want to be more "ideal" than they are, and this is 
due to a generic self-deception whereby people believe they are more 
ideal than they are, in order to convince others to admire and 
affiliate with them.   "Be careful what you wish for" is apt here - 
many bad things will happen when people get their wish to be more 
ideal.   And because deep down people know they really don't want to 
be as ideal as they say they do, many people will find excuses to 
back away from their professed ideals.

It is not even clear that people who can change themselves will 
become more consistent, wanting to want what they do want.   Perhaps 
they will instead become better at self-deception.



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323 



From jef at jefallbright.net  Tue Jun 27 15:29:32 2006
From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 08:29:32 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMECFGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <20060626112256.GH28956@leitl.org>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMECFGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <22360fa10606270829r39a36dbbl198fb94f6f3ca8a8@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/26/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
> And unfortunately, by the Campbell/Vinge paradox, we can't
> understand the experiences of deities.

As a collector of paradoxes, I'm interested in knowing whether
"Campbell/Vinge paradox" refers to anything specific.  I'm familiar
with the singularity writings of both, and the concept that of the
fundamental inability to model the "experiences of deities", but I'm
not aware of any paradox fitting this name.

- Jef


From amara at amara.com  Tue Jun 27 15:31:03 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 17:31:03 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat]  What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
Message-ID: <p06230900c0c6feecec26@[23.237.66.13]>

Eugene Leitl:
>What irks me, if that we're always extrapolating from a human
>viewpoint -- not only a human, but an early 21st century human
>geek. There's some serious diversity scarcity there.
  [...]
>But there's an effectivy infinity in culture (=what social
>animals do), and certainly no lack in motivation in pursuing it.
  [...]
>My point is that diversition radiates both down and up complexity-wise,
>and a transrodent niche doesn't ask for intelligence. There is
>simply no place for intelligence in a lowly scavenger package.


Taking your words literally  (hee hee)

http://www.transmogrifier.org/ch/comics/94/01/09.gif


Amara


From mfj.eav at gmail.com  Tue Jun 27 15:51:11 2006
From: mfj.eav at gmail.com (Morris Johnson)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 10:51:11 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] what will humans eventually do
Message-ID: <61c8738e0606270851p2db8e046lb93b891cf4a63b0b@mail.gmail.com>

I feel that the key issue is one of science.

Does or will DNA  or DNA mimetic structures remain useful
for essential functions of  "organisms" capable of
profoundly improved and scaled up computational capacity.

If Yes, then it's just a matter of evolving with the technology
and AI or human, we will share a similar goal.
 e.g. if the knowlege intensive organism is an "ODO" like
organism where integrated knowlege management
might still use DNA mimetics VS a purely synthetic
"terminator" like organism.

I am still a faithful believer that nature models intelligently
and that native structures will continue to be emulated
by AI designed constructs.  Or put otherwise that
the part of the development curve where this is dispensed with
is too far on the other side of the singularity  to be integrated into
current planning.

Simply put it's not practical to expect a bacteria to consciously speculate
about quantum physics.

MFJ

-- 
LIFESPAN PHARMA Inc.
Extropian Agroforestry Ventures  Inc.
306-290-8734
Mission: To Preserve, Protect and Enhance Lifespan
Plant-based Natural-health Bio-product Bio-pharmaceuticals
http://www.angelfire.com/on4/extropian-lifespan
http://www.4XtraLifespans.bravehost.com
megao at sasktel.net,  arla_j at hotmail.com, mfj.eav at gmail.com
extropian.pharmer at gmail.com

Extreme Life-Extension ..."The most dangerous idea on earth"
-Leon Kass , Bioethics Advisor to George Herbert Walker Bush,
June 2005

Extropian Smoke Signals Waft Softly but Carry a big Schtick
... Morris Johnson - June 2005*
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From natasha at natasha.cc  Tue Jun 27 15:19:12 2006
From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 10:19:12 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] The Extropy of Cooking
In-Reply-To: <000c01c698fc$73a17720$d6b81f97@nomedxgm1aalex>
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMEAPGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<F8E625D0-D0F2-441C-AE2B-9F9720202DA6@ceruleansystems.com>
	<000c01c698fc$73a17720$d6b81f97@nomedxgm1aalex>
Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20060627100056.03f979f8@pop-server.austin.rr.com>


>From: "J. Andrew Rogers"
> > -- cooking is a very complex art,
> > especially at the very high end.

I could not agree more.  When I lived in Italy in the mid 1970s I was in 
school at the Accademia di Belle Arti.  I took a bus from my apartment by 
the sea (where I would pick up muscles on the shore and bicycle down to the 
docks to greet the fisherman and purchase my evening's meal) into Ravenna. 
Near to the accademia, was a small ristorante where I apprenticed a couple 
of days a week.  I learned how to make pasta and pizza from scratch, and 
palenta, ravioli and tortellini dishes, and real lasagna. I wrote a small 
Italian cook book on beautiful Ravenna note cards, sewn together with 
Italian lace, and send as a gift to friends back in the US.

The beauty of learning the cuisine of Italy is the art of preparation.  The 
mood - ambience - that accompanies the event of cooking truly sets the 
stage for entertaining people, even if that people is just you.  I spend at 
least one night a week recreating that "feeling" I had in Italy making 
pasta con sause di basil di aglio di pomodoro.

Natasha


<http://www.natasha.cc/>Natasha <http://www.natasha.cc/>Vita-More
Cultural Strategist - Designer
President, <http://www.extropy.org/>Extropy Institute
Member, <http://www.profuturists.com/>Association of Professional Futurists
Founder, <http://www.transhumanist.biz/>Transhumanist Arts & Culture

If you draw a circle in the sand and study only what's inside the circle, 
then that is a closed-system perspective. If you study what is inside the 
circle and everything outside the circle, then that is an open system 
perspective. - Buckminster Fuller


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From spike66 at comcast.net  Tue Jun 27 16:50:59 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 09:50:59 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <p06230900c0c6feecec26@[23.237.66.13]>
Message-ID: <200606271651.k5RGp8mh012877@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Amara Graps
...
> 
> 
> Taking your words literally  (hee hee)
> 
> http://www.transmogrifier.org/ch/comics/94/01/09.gif
> 
> 
> Amara

Calvin and Hobbes was the best comic ever drawn.  Bill Watterson's many fans
miss him big time.  Wiki has a good article on him. 


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Watterson


spike









From spike66 at comcast.net  Tue Jun 27 17:07:57 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 10:07:57 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Panicmongering
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPECECIGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <200606271708.k5RH85A8006539@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Lee Corbin
> ... Let me try "It's unfortunate that
> these ideas are outside your comfort zone". Close, but no
> banana...

Ja that is close enough for bananas.  {8-]

>... "You are unfortunate that these ideas are outside
> your comfort zone, and I feel your pain"?  No, that's not
> it either...

That woulda been it, but a former US president ruined that "I feel your
pain" comment forever, which is too bad because human empathy is a wonderful
thing.

> I give up. I thought I could nail it. Maybe you were just trying
> to be "nice".
> 
> Lee

JA!  I am.  I know of Crocker's rules, and I always appreciate honesty, but
I am in the camp that believes that honesty, diplomacy and kindness can all
fit in the same package.  In email, often we don't know the people we
address in the flesh, oblique meanings are lost, shades of subtlety mostly
are lost in the stark glare of online communications.

Our own list has improved greatly in diplomacy in the past couple years, yet
ideas still flow.  In fact they flow better; I didn't often follow the flame
wars that used to break out, and of course didn't comment thereon.  I
commend the participants in the kinder gentler approach to debate.

We are among friends here, even those of us who disagree.

spike









From andrew at ceruleansystems.com  Tue Jun 27 17:38:54 2006
From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 10:38:54 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] The Extropy of Cooking
In-Reply-To: <6.2.1.2.2.20060627100056.03f979f8@pop-server.austin.rr.com>
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMEAPGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<F8E625D0-D0F2-441C-AE2B-9F9720202DA6@ceruleansystems.com>
	<000c01c698fc$73a17720$d6b81f97@nomedxgm1aalex>
	<6.2.1.2.2.20060627100056.03f979f8@pop-server.austin.rr.com>
Message-ID: <246A71F3-2C01-44F5-9207-565136FBFEF7@ceruleansystems.com>


On Jun 27, 2006, at 8:19 AM, Natasha Vita-More wrote:
> I took a bus from my apartment by the sea (where I would pick up  
> muscles on the shore...


Freudian slip? I thought we were talking about food (e.g. mussels),  
though I'm sure you could find muscles there too.  :-)

J. Andrew Rogers



From spike66 at comcast.net  Tue Jun 27 18:20:30 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 11:20:30 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure
In-Reply-To: <20060627130028.GB30902@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <200606271832.k5RIW03X027300@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Damien Sullivan
...
> Being spread out more evenly would reduce the quality of life for me,
> and for many others who have been moving into re-gentrified areas by
> choice, because of our preference for pedestrian-friendly areas...

Ja I can envision most existing high density city infrastructure being
conditioned for high-luxury use.  Actually it requires little insight: they
may be going that way already.
...
> 
> Who's the "we", here?  The government most extropians don't like?
> 
> -xx- Damien X-)

We are the proletariat and we vote.

I had an insight while doing the whole maternity ward thing this weekend
which led to my comment about the population in Europe and North America
tripling in the next fifty years.  In that maternity ward, there were about
a dozen mothers, but Shelly and I were the only yellow-haired oddballs.
There were a couple of Asian ladies, but the rest all spoke Spanish.  

In Taxifornia, most native English speakers pick up basic Spanish by seeing
signs posted in both languages.  Everywhere in the maternity hospital,
everything had Spanish.  But I saw something I had never seen in America: a
sign posted in Spanish only.  

Along the lines of a previous discussion of basing our fears on statistics
and logic, a single criminal launched the practice of taking off our shoes
when we get on a plane.  Likewise, five criminals launched an industry by
dressing as hospital staff and stealing a baby from the maternity ward:

o  Felicia Scott (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1-31-96); 
o  Margarita Flores (Fresno, CA, 10-98); 
o  Kimmi Hardy (Keokuk, IA, 1-1-96); 
o  Darci Pierce, an adoptee (Kirkland AFB, NM, 7-7-97); 
o  Michelle Bica (Ravenna, OH, 10-4-00).

Now they put a band on the baby's ankle that sets off an alarm if that
device wanders from the nurse's desk.  They post a sentry by the exit to
lock down the door and stop everyone if that alarm goes off.  The sign I saw
posted in Spanish only was not a trivial buenos dias, it was a very
important message demanding that no one carry an infant past this point, for
it would set off an alarm.  Important message, Spanish only, Stanford
hospital.

So my comment about populations in Europe and North America tripling in
fifty years has to do with infrastructure: if we build it, they will come.
If we don't build it, they will come anyway, for the infrastructure that is
already here.  People will pour into North America from South and Central
America, people will pour into Europe from Africa and the Middle East.  We
have a choice on how the new populations will be accommodated.

spike









From nvitamore at austin.rr.com  Tue Jun 27 18:47:58 2006
From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 14:47:58 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] The Extropy of Cooking
Message-ID: <380-220066227184758234@M2W027.mail2web.com>

From: spike 

>>... (where I would pick up muscles on the shore ... 

> "Natasha! You were down there picking up muscles? Such refreshing 
> honesty. I have seen young ladies at the beach pretending to collect
mussels, but 
> they were really checking out the muscles. I always felt so left out. 
> {8^D List comedians are going to have fun with that typo." 


It's a learning disability. I didn't start noticing it until I married 
Max.  Now I don't need to pick them up because I have my own. 

 :-) 

Okay mussels. (Damien Broderick is probably writing to me off list at 
this very moment.) 

Natasha 


--------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .





From fauxever at sprynet.com  Tue Jun 27 18:58:06 2006
From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 11:58:06 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] The Extropy of Cooking
References: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMEAPGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com><F8E625D0-D0F2-441C-AE2B-9F9720202DA6@ceruleansystems.com><000c01c698fc$73a17720$d6b81f97@nomedxgm1aalex>
	<6.2.1.2.2.20060627100056.03f979f8@pop-server.austin.rr.com>
Message-ID: <001801c69a1b$a0cb4b70$6600a8c0@brainiac>

From: Natasha Vita-More 
Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2006 8:19 AM
> When I lived in Italy in the mid 1970s I was in school at the Accademia di Belle Arti.  I took a bus from my apartment by the sea (where I would pick up muscles on the shore ...

Oooh, hubba hubba.  I've been known to pick up a few muscular hunks back in the day, too.  Aaaaah, memories ...

(Just playing with you, Natasha.)

Olga 

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From amara at amara.com  Tue Jun 27 20:27:43 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 22:27:43 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat]  The Extropy of Cooking
Message-ID: <p06230901c0c74306a3a3@[23.237.66.13]>


J. Andrew Rogers:
(responding to a couple of your messages)

>The Italians have
>built a brand with respect to food, but do not produce remotely
>enough food for the export market.  For many typical "Italian export"
>items, they do not even produce enough for their domestic market.

Right, I don't think that many Italian companies want to scale up from
their present family-sized operations. 'Competition' and 'efficiency' is
not very important; what exists is 'comfortable enough'. Perhaps one
could say that it is the flip side of the culture where friends and family
and food and sun and soccer are the most important.

Those that do want to scale up, or run an efficient business, then face
something different. The infrastructure is broken in many places you
would need for an efficient business (mail, telephone, internet,
reliable equipment). Then the legal network must be navigated because
the powerful lobbies/syndicates have found ways to fix a law to protect
their interests so that they don't have competition. Finally, the high
taxes compound the business problems. In general, Italy is not business
friendly, and I'm pessimistic that anything significant will change for
that in the next decade (China is beating on their doorstep, though, so
the next few years should be interesting.)

So while I have no trouble finding many varieties of mozzarallla di
bufala because some person carries it in to my local alimentaries from
the countryside, the good dark viscous balsamic vinegar from Modena is
in quantities of a just a few sitting on the top shelves. It's there,
but not in abundant quantities.

Those of you who were not aware that balsamic vinegar is as much an art
as making wine can look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balsamic_vinegar


>An incredible amount of culture flows from food, and
>expressing it as a fine art gets its energy from a different place
>than the usual technical intellectual pursuits.

I'm surrounded. :-)  In my first week in Italy while I was sharing a
large office with another person (scientist named 'Giuseppe') I heard
one morning a heated discussion between Giuseppe and a colleague of his.
It went on for about 20 minutes. When I deciphered a few words, I
discovered that they were arguing about how much 'al dente' the pasta
should be cooked in a particular dish!

The following is my favorite Italian dish. I haven't made it completely
correct yet, but it's almost there. This recipe has gone through several
iterations; each time I tell my Italian colleagues what I did, and they
correct my mistakes, so the recipe has been transformed into a group
Italian planetary scientists + Amara result.

Also, I should say that the temperature might not be quite right (it
should be baked in slow oven), because it also depends on how watery is
the mixture, which is dependent if fresh tomatoes are used and the water
content of the mozzarella.


Melanzane alla Parmigiana (Eggplant Parmigiana)
-----------------------------------------------

(English units)

4 aubergines/eggplants/melanzane
salt
extra virgin olive oil
1/2 c grated Parmesan cheese
2 medium or 1 large (3/4 lb.) fresh mozzarella di bufala
Lots of fresh basil
3-4 c canned peeled tomatoes
or 2 lb fresh ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped

Wash and dry the eggplants, slice them into thick slices and lay them on
a tray. Sprinkle salt over them and leave for an hour.

In the meantime prepare the tomato sauce: puree, heat and add some
sprigs of basil. Rinse off the brown juice from the eggplants and pat
dry with a paper towel.

Cover the bottom of a frying pan with olive oil and fry the eggplants, a
few at a time, until they are soft and golden. At first the eggplants
soak up the oil then it seeps out. You have to add a little for each new
batch of eggplants. Put them on kitchen paper to drain off the excess
oil. Cut the mozzarella into thin slices and then strips and grate the
Parmesan cheese.

Grease a large oven dish with olive oil and lay a first layer of
eggplants to cover the bottom. Pour on a little tomato sauce, some
Parmesan and some mozzarella strips. Continue layering until you have
finished all the ingredients, finishing the top layer with just the
tomato sauce and Parmesan. Cover with aluminum foil. Pre-heat the oven
to 350?F and bake for at least 1/2 hour. Remove the aluminum foil after
20 minutes.


-- 

********************************************************************
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/
********************************************************************
"Honor thy error as a hidden intention."  -- Brian Eno


From nvitamore at austin.rr.com  Tue Jun 27 21:20:56 2006
From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 17:20:56 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] The Extropy of Cooking
Message-ID: <380-220066227212056218@M2W019.mail2web.com>


From: J. Andrew Rogers andrew at ceruleansystems.com
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 10:38:54 -0700
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The Extropy of Cooking

From: J. Andrew Rogers 

On Jun 27, 2006, at 8:19 AM, Natasha Vita-More wrote:

>>I took a bus from my apartment by the sea (where I would pick up  
>>muscles on the shore...

>Freudian slip? 

No, neurological. Probably was simply sitting here visualizing the sea and
the arts, smells and joyful times and reading a biography about
Michelangelo (_The Agony and the Ecstasy_ (Irving Stone)), (although I was
reading ?Naked Came I_ (David Weiss ) about Rodin simultaneously .  So, the
only muscles that I recall admiring in Italy were in Michelangelo's
drawings and sculptures (like Ignudi); or descriptions in the books BUT
definitely not in the Byzantium mosaic larger than life portraits in the
San Vitale basilica!

Here is some interesting FOOD for thought:  Michelangelo was a student of
Dante and his copy "Divine Comedy" was ornamented by him with drawings.  He
was inspired by Dante.

"When divine Art conceives a form or face,
She bids the craftsman for his first essay
To shape a simple model in mere clay:
This is the earliest birth of Art's embrace."  (Michelangelo sonnet)

Note:  Dante is the first person to write about transhumanizing with his
transumanare of  humanity.  http://www.transhumanist.biz/transhumanism.htm

Note:  I have no idea what Italian dishes Michelangelo enjoyed preparing or
eating. :-)

Natasha


--------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .





From femmechakra at yahoo.ca  Tue Jun 27 22:23:24 2006
From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anne-Marie Taylor)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 18:23:24 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] (par-a-noy-a) definitions
Message-ID: <20060627222324.94310.qmail@web35504.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

My apologies again, I jump so quick to say what's on my mind, 
  thinking everybody knows exactly what i'm talking about.  
   
  I was thinking, at the time, (fictionaly ofcourse), if an AI is Googling, how
  will it know what is the best answer based on so many definitions.
  If the AI looks up the definitions of (par-a-noy-a), would it trust only the 
  definition by wiki, will it say princeton has a better definition, what will 
  be the deciding factor of who's right?
   
  For example: Some definitions include; A mental state that includes unreasonable
  suspicions of people and situations, A person who is paranoid may be suspicious, hostile, feel very important, or may become extremely 
  sensitive to rejection by others, a disease like state,  characterized 
  mainly with abnormal suspiciousness and crazy idea and suspicion of others 
  is based on unrealistic facts.
   
  I was trying to figure out how will the AI, if only feeded this information, will
  be able to determine that someone sensitive to rejection is not always 
  paranoid.  
   
  I know, I have a vivid imagination,again sorry if I sounded off the ball:)
  I'll try in the futur to not have quick fingers.
   
   
  Anna:)
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

 				
---------------------------------
Make free worldwide PC-to-PC calls. Try the new Yahoo! Canada Messenger with Voice
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From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Tue Jun 27 23:06:14 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 16:06:14 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606262227t6243fbbdlb3239ff01b57388c@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEDGGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Russell wrote

> > I guess it is a hard concept. The question is about what we
> > may wish to do when we *can* equally well get any reward
> > whatsoever from the activity.

> I understand the question perfectly well; I was trying, 
> ...to point out that it collapses on itself.
> Postulate a scenario where you have freedom to modify
> your mind, including goal systems, as you choose (using
> a smart computer aided enhancement program to avoid the
> obvious pitfalls), 

That's what I was talking about.

> and have say a trillion years of lifespan and 
> reasonably adequate resources:
> What would you choose to modify yourself to enjoy doing?  Why?

Uh oh, I don't think you made it clear whether I have mood-control
or not. That's crucial To me, from the outset of this thread, that
has been the focus.

If I *do* have mood-control, then I wouldn't modify myself *to
enjoy* doing anything. Understand why?  That's because whatever
I did would not be *linked* to how satisfying or pleasurable I
was finding life; what one would choose to do---which is what
I have been asking all along---then turns out to be a much more
abstruse query (but important, for all that).

In other words, sadly, I can't get most people to think
of the question in any other way than "What would I enjoy
doing (for however long, under whatever conditions)?". That
is not the question. It is instead, "given that all your
emotions are under your direct will, what else will you be
doing with your brain and your life?"

But if *you* are asking such a question---namely what *would*
I enjoy doing, given the (relatively) helplessness over my moods 
that now constrain us, well, I simply don't know. I have noticed
that what I enjoy doing doesn't necessarily stay the same over
the decades. 

> Do you think other people should choose the same activity?

Without mood-control, again?  No, of course not.  I could not
in any reasonable manner expect baseball fans (like the late
Stephen Gould) or scrabble-enthusiasts to switch over to my
tastes, nor could I be expected to switch over to theirs.
In fact, it's worse than that: were Stephen Gould to choose
to play chess, he probably wouldn't like it at all, or else
he already would have been a chessplayer.

Lee



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Tue Jun 27 23:30:26 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 16:30:26 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <20060627102655.GS28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEEDHGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Eugen writes

> On Mon, Jun 26, 2006 at 10:01:39PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
> 
> > We are not now at all interested
> > in having the experiences, if there are any, of viruses
> > bacteria, nematodes, and insects, and we suspect that the
> > experiences of rodents don't really have that much to them.
> 
> Yes, but others will, and some subsystems will spontaneously
> sprout legs, and walk off.

Thanks for an alternate view of the future. It doesn't make
sense to me yet, though.

> The future culture is not a monoclone. After the initial
> population bottleneck it will become radically
> diverse, far more diverse than our current ecosystem.

Sounds plausible; but as for things sprouting legs and walking
off, I go through no little trouble to keep my own pad clean,
and in fact to forbid creatures in my space from doing that.
Just who do you figure will be supplying the resources so that
things sprout legs and walk off? Or perhaps you are speaking
metaphorically?  In any case, I don't understand.

> People equivalents will be in the minority. And they would
> be equivalents, not a 1:1 virtual rendition of a human primate,
> in bits. So we should claim speaking for them. They're
> indistinguishable from aliens, to us-current. 

First, we agree that perhaps none of us make it---that is, that
no human being nor any present program gets runtime in the future
(which definitely puts a crimp in my plans).

Second, *if* a reigning AI doesn't kill me, and affords me some
resources---or we are fabulously able to perpetuate our present
morals and laws---then I survive, but in two forms:

One form: Lee+, who isn't quite similar enough to be called Lee
as are the rest of my copies. This includes Lee++, Lee+++, etc.
who don't resemble their predecessor either. The plan has always
been, however, that each one affords his earlier more primitive
versions some runtime, however small. That way, even the most
primitive (the Lee or Lees) get to keep on living (and
subjectively at full speed).

In this thread, I was more-or-less focusing on those we can
understand, like just plain old Lee or Eugen. But just plain
old Lee or Eugen surely will have a lot higher IQ (but not too
high on pain of identity) and other mental capacities.

True: I have not messed with anything other than enhanced
mental capabilities. To me, it's boring to discuss what life
would be like if I were much taller or stronger, or able to
live within the sun. Those questions would be pretty tangential
before very long anyway. So life in VR could have me thinking
about (and thus experiencing) what it might be like to live in
the sun. Yet soon, wouldn't it be a case of having "been there,
done that?".  So far as I can speculate, everything eventually
gets "old", in the sense that one yearns for the novel, except
for personal re-design for greater future capabilities and
gratification, and mathematics.

But you just asked about "equivalents, not a 1:1 virtual rendition
of a human primate, in bits."

Hmm, I suppose that some people will use their resources to 
build or permit to run such exotic creatures. Moreover, some
may escape (by seizing the legal rights of their owners, or
what not). The AI may be amused for some unknown reason to
grant life to exotics. So, yes, humans might be only a small
part of what goes on.  However: in *any* case humans recognizable
as such by today's standards will be relatively rare, i.e., get
relatively little runtime.  The Eugen++++, Lee++, etc. will get
most of what the AI allots to humans.

Time and space forbid me from addressing the rest of your points
right now.

Lee



From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Tue Jun 27 23:34:32 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 00:34:32 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEDGGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <8d71341e0606262227t6243fbbdlb3239ff01b57388c@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEDGGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606271634k4ed9b58fpbe64c68f9173f0ed@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/28/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> Uh oh, I don't think you made it clear whether I have mood-control
> or not. That's crucial To me, from the outset of this thread, that
> has been the focus.


Assume you have.

If I *do* have mood-control, then I wouldn't modify myself *to
> enjoy* doing anything. Understand why?  That's because whatever
> I did would not be *linked* to how satisfying or pleasurable I
> was finding life; what one would choose to do---which is what
> I have been asking all along---then turns out to be a much more
> abstruse query (but important, for all that).


What would you do, then? I mean "do" in the general sense, not just on what
hobbies would you spend your days, but what course of action would you take?
Would you alter your moods or other components of your mind? If so, in what
direction and why?
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From thespike at satx.rr.com  Wed Jun 28 01:52:05 2006
From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 20:52:05 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] quasarps
In-Reply-To: <deaa866a0606260611k1f01dff2lc62265fbd219c920@mail.gmail.co
 m>
References: <p06230900c0c418387d7a@23.237.66.13>
	<deaa866a0606250858q605f1b4fi2d2f42f6bd4c160d@mail.gmail.com>
	<002d01c69891$1aa13450$6d0a4e0c@MyComputer>
	<deaa866a0606260611k1f01dff2lc62265fbd219c920@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060627204510.023d16b8@satx.rr.com>

At 08:11 AM 6/26/2006 -0500, Robert B. wrote:

>I am proposing that the conventional wisdom, including observed 
>phenomena, need to be seriously reexamined from the basic premise 
>that there is a high probability that many of the 'Earth's' which 
>may exist in the galaxy are much, much older than our own.

Robert, have you considered Chip Arp's catalogue of anomalously 
red-shifted but apparently linked quasars, e.g.

< Seyfert galaxy NGC 7603 z=0.029 is connected to its apparently 
ejected companion z=0.057 by a luminous bridge in which are embedded 
two compact emission line objects of z=0.243 and 0.391...

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0203466  >

and wondered if and how they might be very early mega-engineering?

Damien Broderick




From riel at surriel.com  Wed Jun 28 02:18:13 2006
From: riel at surriel.com (Rik van Riel)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 22:18:13 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] When did intelligence first emerge in the
	universe?
In-Reply-To: <449B046C.5090808@betterhumans.com>
References: <449B046C.5090808@betterhumans.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.61L.0606272216010.27476@imladris.surriel.com>

On Thu, 22 Jun 2006, George Dvorsky wrote:

> A lot of hand waving goes on when people dismiss the Fermi Paradox. The 
> fact that the universe isnt already teeming with ETIs and machine 
> intelligences is more disturbing than most people realize.

> So, where is everybody?

Not only is the universe bound to be teeming with life, but
the universe is also incredibly large and relatively empty.

Here is a nice web page illustrating empty.  In this case
the empty inside a hydrogen atom, but outer space has a
similar kind of emptyness.

http://www.phrenopolis.com/perspective/atom/index.html

Don't bother trying to scroll from one side of the page
to the other using your arrow key - it'll take hours,
maybe days...

11 miles is a long way for your right arrow key :)

-- 
"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 lcorbin at tsoft.com  Wed Jun 28 03:38:05 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 20:38:05 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Population Densities (was Panicmongering)
In-Reply-To: <20060627124504.GA30902@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMEDKGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Damien S. writes

> > Let's see what population densities that might be. Suburbs currently 
> > run at about 10,000 people per square mile, or 6000 per square
> > kilometer.

I was remembering San Francisco's as 15,000; BTW, that's closer to 3500
per square kilometer unlike what I wrote.

> Where do you get those numbers?
> http://www4.wittenberg.edu/academics/urban_studies/BFINALEC.html
> gives 2000 people per square mile.
> 
> Some numbers I have burned into my memory:
> Manhattan 65,000
> NYC 25,000
> (Outer boroughs 15,000)

I recall reading many, many years ago that in 1900 New York City's
lower east side attained a density of 600,000 people. (Probably an
Edward T. Hall book.) Seem possible to you? Know how to check that?
The author claimed that this was the highest density for humans
in all history, and considering that modern sanitation and
construction might be required, it didn't seem impossible.

> San Francisco 16,000
> Chicago 12,000
> LA 9,000
> Berkeley, Pasadena 5,000 [could be wrong about Berkeley]
> Dallas 3,000
> 
> http://www.perc.org/perc.php?id=374
> "only half of Americans live in 2,000/mile^2 or higher" -- Indianapolis
> or Tulsa densities.
> 18% at 5,000 or more.  1/3 at 3,000 or more.  And that's the central
> cities.

Yes, thanks for the research.  Since I did say "suburb" my figures
are inappropriate. 

> > but are vacant now. Food production has increased per acre by
> > about a factor of 5 since 1950, while the population has only
> 
> It's not clear that's sustainable, given energy inputs to corn from
> petroleum-made fertilizers comparable to the energy inputs from the sun.

I don't know what the assumed crops were. 

> Area of San Antonio: 1000 km^2.
> Solar energy input estimate: 3e11 watts.
> Energy consumed by US human bodies: 3e10 watts
> 
> You'd need 10% energy capture when plants tend to get 1%.  Okay, 8% at
> the high end of algae or growing sugar cane.  Where's the beef?  Not to
> mention the electricity.

The city he mentioned turns out to be Austin, not San Antonio (my 
error). Sunlight isn't used; as one on-line reference puts it
"Energy for artificial light is the key raw material in state-of
-the-art hydroponics . Even at present electricity costs,
PhytoFarm is profitable ..."

Anyway, here is Julian Simon's chapter on hydroponics:

http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR06.txt

Lee



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Wed Jun 28 04:02:15 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 21:02:15 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Would You Enjoy Knitting?
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20060627080003.02434d08@gmu.edu>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEKEDLGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Robin writes

> It is not clear to me which will be more important: what people now 
> want, or what they now want to want.
> 
> People now do seem to have preferences they want to have, that differ 
> from the preferences they do have.   Many religious people, for 
> example, want to be more committed to their religion.   Many married 
> people want to be less tempted to betray their marriage.   Many 
> somewhat ambitious people would like to be more devoted to their 
> ambitions...
> 
> In general humans want to be more "ideal" than they are, and this is 
> due to a generic self-deception whereby people believe they are more 
> ideal than they are, in order to convince others to admire and 
> affiliate with them.

Sometimes I am concerned about the ultimate origins of the way we
are or the way I am, and about other things I'm not. Yes indeed,
people in general have ideals that they'd strive for given fewer
or no costs.

> "Be careful what you wish for" is apt here - many bad things will
> happen when people get their wish to be more ideal.

Many things worth striving for come with risk. People I've known
have worked out elaborate strategies for trial versions of themselves
to be ultimately nullified by a consensus of earlier versions.

A guiding principle is of course to seek moderation. And that
would apply to becoming more honest, or smart, or satisfied.
Yet I'm certain that most Extropians will entertain improvements
like these and those you mentioned.

Lee

> And because deep down people know they really don't want to 
> be as ideal as they say they do, many people will find excuses to 
> back away from their professed ideals.
> 
> It is not even clear that people who can change themselves will 
> become more consistent, wanting to want what they do want.   Perhaps 
> they will instead become better at self-deception.

P.S. An offline correspondent just wrote about knitting itself: 

    i am a middle aged [creative] woman.  i thought how nice it would
    be to do something mindless and productive.  what an oxymoron! 

    i have not learned to cast on. there is always someone to lend a
    hand in the casting on.  if i cared more about knitting more i might
    make the effort to learn.  but it is the act of moving my hands
    while sitting still that attracted me 
    all the knitters said i should make myself a scarf...

    i noticed that my listening was heightened when i was moving my hands.

    i live and work in berkeley california and am a real beginner but i
    finished one thing and will no doubt finish another in the intersection
    on the horizon.  .  funny that you should raise such conversation.

She's probably right about listening better while distracting herself.
I've read that tapping a pencil or rocking does enable boys to attend
better in class.


From transcend at extropica.com  Wed Jun 28 02:26:38 2006
From: transcend at extropica.com (Brandon Reinhart)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 21:26:38 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] The Extropy of Cooking
In-Reply-To: <F8E625D0-D0F2-441C-AE2B-9F9720202DA6@ceruleansystems.com>
Message-ID: <200606280429.k5S4TtJB000047@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

An incredibly enjoyable post. Mr. Rogers, you should write a book.

Brandon

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of J. Andrew
Rogers
Sent: Monday, June 26, 2006 2:46 AM
To: lcorbin at tsoft.com; ExI chat list
Subject: [extropy-chat] The Extropy of Cooking

On Jun 25, 2006, at 11:41 PM, Lee Corbin wrote:
> Oh, I know!  BARBEQUE!  What a thrill for an IQ 300 type who
> just never gets out. I note already how most of our geniuses
> are become pastry chefs, handymen, insurance salesmen, and
> motorcycle repair folks...


Perhaps interestingly, cooking -- of the fine cuisine type -- is what  
frequently occupies my time when I am not doing the brain intensive  
exercises that fill the rest of my day.  I cook a proper dinner 5-6  
days a week.  An incredible amount of culture flows from food, and  
expressing it as a fine art gets its energy from a different place  
than the usual technical intellectual pursuits.  In other words, it  
is both thoroughly relaxing and as deeply expressive as any human art  
form that exists.  And it is functional too -- we all have to eat.

Any fool can eat well, but being able to fabricate rich experiences  
from the organic substrate of life is a broadly useful metaphor with  
respect to living well.  There are few things in the human experience  
toward which so much effort has been spent with such universal  
benefit.  Well executed food from fine ingredients has the  
characteristic that most humans can identify the quality of it even  
if it does not appeal to their taste, in the same sense that most  
humans can recognize the qualities of a Brandenburg Concerto even if  
they are unable to recognize the subtleties of its construction.   
Living well is a positive sum game, and food is an important part of  
that.


On the topic of microwaves, really top-notch food cannot be built  
with only one cooking implement as a general rule, though there is  
nothing wrong with microwaves.  There are some really fabulous  
recipes that require a remarkably narrow amount of expertise, but the  
expanse of possibilities that intersects more than one of these  
narrow domains is truly unimaginable, though requiring more skill.   
All of which can be automated eventually. The last frontier of  
cooking is not really preparation, but access to high-quality  
ingredients from every corner of the globe, which can still be dicy  
and for many ingredients there is no meaningful substitute.  I have  
an herb garden that could be its own botanical exhibit (California  
can grow damn near anything), but could not buy a bit of legal  
Seville Iberico ham if I had to here (though in this specific case,  
there are somewhat functional imported Italian substitutes).  Not  
surprisingly, there is a thriving black market for restricted  
ingredient imports and exports.  But I would not know anything about  
that.

Make no mistake, automatic preparation and pre-processed ingredients  
get better every year, a trend that will eventually approach what a  
competent cook with an excellent ingredient access can do now, but it  
would require good AI and fancy machinery before there was practical  
obsolescence -- cooking is a very complex art, especially at the very  
high end.  Even though the process is the theoretically the same, the  
ingredients you can get vary every single time and have to be  
compensated for.  The adage that cooking is 50% execution and 50%  
ingredient quality is true.  Both sides are being attacked, but they  
have a long way to go still.


On the topic of barbeque, it is very much a science.  A well-behaved  
marinade requires the right balance of salinity, pH, emulsifiers,  
lipids, water, and sugars depending on the effect you are trying to  
get and the material you are working with.  Consistently excellent  
results from experimentation are simple once you understand the  
chemistry.

Cheers,

J. Andrew Rogers

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extropy-chat mailing list
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From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Wed Jun 28 05:35:54 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 22:35:54 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606271634k4ed9b58fpbe64c68f9173f0ed@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEEDOGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Russell writes

> > Uh oh, I don't think you made it clear whether I have mood-control
> > or not. That's crucial To me, from the outset of this thread, that
> > has been the focus.

> Assume you have. 



> > If I *do* have mood-control, then I wouldn't modify myself *to
> > enjoy* doing anything. That's because whatever I did would not
> > be *linked* to how satisfying or pleasurable I was finding life;

(because I would find satisfaction and pleasure in everything I did,
at least insofar as they are chemical processes. Yes, in case you
ask, I would still wish to be able to criticize my own actions and
thoughts.)

> > what one would choose to do---which is what I have been asking
> > all along---then turns out to be a much more abstruse query
> > (but important, for all that). 

> What would you do, then? I mean "do" in the general sense, not 
> just on what hobbies would you spend your days, but what course 
> of action would you take? Would you alter your moods or other
> components of your mind? If so, in what direction and why?

I would aim for "The Hedonistic Imperative" goal of getting complete
rid of suffering. In my own case, ninety percent of it would be as
simple as "turning the knobs" so to speak. (Now of course, before
getting into any kind of self-modification, one would wish to proceed
very cautiously, and solicit the careful opinions of many others.)

Along with that, I'd elevate my IQ and my knowledge. (There surely
will be more advanced ways of learning available. If available, 
copies of me would take even rasher steps, so long as it could 
be kept under control of some kind.)

I hope that I am attending to the meaning behind your question. (?)

Lee



From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu  Wed Jun 28 05:50:31 2006
From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 22:50:31 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Population Densities (was Panicmongering)
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMEDKGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <20060627124504.GA30902@ofb.net>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMEDKGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060628055031.GA26089@ofb.net>

On Tue, Jun 27, 2006 at 08:38:05PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
> Damien S. writes

> > Some numbers I have burned into my memory:
> > Manhattan 65,000
> > NYC 25,000
> > (Outer boroughs 15,000)
> 
> I recall reading many, many years ago that in 1900 New York City's
> lower east side attained a density of 600,000 people. (Probably an
> Edward T. Hall book.) Seem possible to you? Know how to check that?

Actually, the same NYT article which provided my other numbers also
mentioned 600,000 (maybe 650,000) for 19th century Manhattan tenements.

*That* seems like overcrowding.

> > "only half of Americans live in 2,000/mile^2 or higher" -- Indianapolis
> > or Tulsa densities.
> > 18% at 5,000 or more.  1/3 at 3,000 or more.  And that's the central
> > cities.
> 
> Yes, thanks for the research.  Since I did say "suburb" my figures
> are inappropriate. 

And even American cities aren't that dense.  Except for the few I'd want
to live in. :)

> > > but are vacant now. Food production has increased per acre by
> > > about a factor of 5 since 1950, while the population has only
> > 
> > It's not clear that's sustainable, given energy inputs to corn from
> > petroleum-made fertilizers comparable to the energy inputs from the sun.
> 
> I don't know what the assumed crops were. 

I'm talking about the actual "food production has increased".  It's been
done with a lot of fertilizer from outside the food chain, pesticides,
and soil erosion.  Mining, basisally, of oil, soil, and aquifers.

-xx- Damien X-) 


From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Wed Jun 28 05:51:01 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 06:51:01 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEEDOGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <8d71341e0606271634k4ed9b58fpbe64c68f9173f0ed@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEEDOGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606272251p5fc5bc55jd85d27c7901e4ad3@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/28/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> I would aim for "The Hedonistic Imperative" goal of getting complete
> rid of suffering.


So you'd adjust yourself to never feel pain, boredom or any other form of
suffering in any situation? Okay. Would you adjust yourself to be equally
happy in all situations?

If so, how would you solve the problem that you would then have no motive to
do anything more complicated than sitting there staring at the wall?

If not, then presumably you would adjust yourself to be happier doing some
things than others. In which case my original question stands: What things
would you adjust yourself to be happiest doing, and why?
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From scerir at libero.it  Wed Jun 28 08:25:19 2006
From: scerir at libero.it (scerir)
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 10:25:19 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
References: <200606240927.k5O9Rh1Q024702@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <000d01c69a8c$66859fd0$08941f97@nomedxgm1aalex>

Auguri, auguri, Isaac!
-serafino



From robert.bradbury at gmail.com  Wed Jun 28 11:31:27 2006
From: robert.bradbury at gmail.com (Robert Bradbury)
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 06:31:27 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] quasarps
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20060627204510.023d16b8@satx.rr.com>
References: <p06230900c0c418387d7a@23.237.66.13>
	<deaa866a0606250858q605f1b4fi2d2f42f6bd4c160d@mail.gmail.com>
	<002d01c69891$1aa13450$6d0a4e0c@MyComputer>
	<deaa866a0606260611k1f01dff2lc62265fbd219c920@mail.gmail.com>
	<7.0.1.0.2.20060627204510.023d16b8@satx.rr.com>
Message-ID: <deaa866a0606280431p77d51dbev2e1c5baf61f41c4a@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/27/06, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:

> < Seyfert galaxy NGC 7603 z=0.029 is connected to its apparently
> ejected companion z=0.057 by a luminous bridge in which are embedded
> two compact emission line objects of z=0.243 and 0.391...
>
> http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0203466  >
>
> and wondered if and how they might be very early mega-engineering?
>

I was only vaguely aware of this data.  But I believe that such low z
numbers put the galaxies relatively close implying that they are probably
relatively similar in age to our own which in turn means that they may have
had ample time to precede us in terms of development to the KT-II --> KT-III
level.  Given the wide range of z factors involved I believe the distances
are fairly large (I don't have z -> M.l.y. conversion charts handy).  Given
the large distances between galaxies and the energy and mass that could
potentially be involved in optimal galactic mergers or separations (think
0.9 KT-III level getting married or divorced) I could easily see them
wanting to set these things up well in advance.  The stuff in between could
well be the 'lawyers' going back and forth between them.

Once you remove the requirements that all galaxies should be either
completely natural (i.e. all stars are visible) or entirely at the KT-III
level (completely dark) then you open up the possibility of seeing things at
all ranges in between.  Because more advanced civilizations have much longer
time scales for doing things (billions to trillions of years) the will not
be in a rush to colonize every last fusioning star in a galaxy but may
instead take much longer term views regarding optimal consumption and
arrangement of the resources at their disposal.  Perhaps these folks are
simply setting up for a super-supernova (think of multi-burst fireworks) by
arranging molecular gas cloud concentrations, stellar near misses, etc. so
one generates a huge quantity of metals in 300 million years within a
relatively small region of space in order to support a KT-II+ population
boom.  It has to be a tricky process to avoid dumping things into a massive
black hole which is only going to generate excessive amounts of high energy
radiation which isn't very compatible with minimal maintenance costs on all
of your computronium.

Robert
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From spike66 at comcast.net  Wed Jun 28 16:13:58 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 09:13:58 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
In-Reply-To: <000d01c69a8c$66859fd0$08941f97@nomedxgm1aalex>
Message-ID: <200606281614.k5SGE9EE013104@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] new extropian
> 
> Auguri, auguri, Isaac!
> -serafino


Grazie, grazie il Sig. Serafino!  Pu? la I e tutti noi imparare e diventare
generano un futuro il pi? extropian. 

{8-]

Isaac







From nvitamore at austin.rr.com  Wed Jun 28 18:10:44 2006
From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com)
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 14:10:44 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
Message-ID: <380-220066328181044484@M2W012.mail2web.com>

>>Grazie, grazie il Sig. Serafino!  Pu? la I e tutti noi imparare e
diventare
>>generano un futuro il pi? extropian. 

Prego. Come se dice l'extropian in italiano?  Non lo so.  Ringraziarla
molto. 

Natasha



{8-]

Isaac





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http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat

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From scerir at libero.it  Wed Jun 28 19:18:42 2006
From: scerir at libero.it (scerir)
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 21:18:42 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
References: <380-220066328181044484@M2W012.mail2web.com>
Message-ID: <001c01c69ae7$b03abc40$92b81f97@nomedxgm1aalex>

Isaac wrote [it seems so]
>> Grazie, grazie il Sig. Serafino!
>> Pu? la I e tutti noi imparare e
>> diventare generano un futuro
>> il pi? extropian.

Natasha:
> Prego. Come se dice l'extropian in italiano?
> Non lo so.  Ringraziarla molto.

Since I suppose that Isaac is in trouble with his
Italian (no less than I am with my Globish -
Global English) I would say that:
extropian <=> estropico
http://www.estropico.com/index.htm








From scerir at libero.it  Wed Jun 28 19:39:07 2006
From: scerir at libero.it (scerir)
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 21:39:07 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] AAAS conference on retrocausation
References: <7.0.1.0.2.20060623154447.02218360@satx.rr.com><20060626180236.47448.qmail@web60524.mail.yahoo.com><7.0.1.0.2.20060626135228.0229cde8@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20060626142644.022ec848@satx.rr.com>
	<000801c699b7$3a4800a0$86971f97@nomedxgm1aalex>
Message-ID: <000801c69aea$86406630$92b81f97@nomedxgm1aalex>

> Damien B.:
> > That is Birgit Dopfer, PhD Thesis (title unavailable), U. Innsbruck 
> > (1998), discussed by R. Jensen, in Proceedings of STAIF 2006, AIP 
> > Conf. Proc. 813, 1409-1414 (2006).  

> This famous, huge paper is online, in German.
> http://www.quantum.univie.ac.at/publications/thesis/ 

> The 'orthodox' interpretation by Zeilinger of Dopfer's 
> experiment seems (to me, and also others) good, but not perfect.
> http://www.quantum.univie.ac.at/publications/pdffiles/1999-03.pdf
> He does not seem able to explain certain supposed 'advanced'
> effects. In example, how the outcome of Dopfer's experiment
> in one of the wings (here on Earth) depends on the setting
> of the (very delayed choice) experiment in the other wing
> (on Alpha Centauri). 

I think I have now that paper (pdf) by Raymond Jensen.
I did not read it carefully, but it seems he is
pointing out the same (supposed) fallacy in Zeilinger's 
reasoning.
s.

If anyone is interested I can send that pdf.



From natasha at natasha.cc  Wed Jun 28 20:09:04 2006
From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More)
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 15:09:04 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: SURVIVAL:  An impulse behind transhumanism?
Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20060628150839.02e0c530@pop-server.austin.rr.com>


>Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 09:52:19 -0500
>To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>From: Natasha Vita-More <natasha at natasha.cc>
>Subject: SURVIVAL:  An impulse behind transhumanism?
>
>Someone asked me recently what the impulse behind transhumanism was.  I 
>said survival.
>
>If the driving force of transhumanism is an innate and informed desire to 
>improve the human condition, then survival would be an element of this 
>driver. But I am not sure if this is a chicken/egg thing.
>
>Thoughts?
>
>Natasha
>
><http://www.natasha.cc/>Natasha <http://www.natasha.cc/>Vita-More
>Cultural Strategist - Designer
>President, <http://www.extropy.org/>Extropy Institute
>Member, <http://www.profuturists.com/>Association of Professional Futurists
>Founder, <http://www.transhumanist.biz/>Transhumanist Arts & Culture
>
>If you draw a circle in the sand and study only what's inside the circle, 
>then that is a closed-system perspective. If you study what is inside the 
>circle and everything outside the circle, then that is an open system 
>perspective. - Buckminster Fuller
>
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From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Wed Jun 28 23:15:09 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 00:15:09 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: SURVIVAL: An impulse behind transhumanism?
In-Reply-To: <6.2.1.2.2.20060628150839.02e0c530@pop-server.austin.rr.com>
References: <6.2.1.2.2.20060628150839.02e0c530@pop-server.austin.rr.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606281615v4b633cf3q5416389df26a1761@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/28/06, Natasha Vita-More <natasha at natasha.cc> wrote:
>
>
> Someone asked me recently what the impulse behind transhumanism was.  I
> said survival.
>
>
I agree completely.

"We know well what Life can tell:
If you would not perish, then grow."
- Leslie Fish, 'Hope Eyrie'
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From spike66 at comcast.net  Wed Jun 28 23:27:06 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 16:27:06 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] new extropian
In-Reply-To: <380-220066328181044484@M2W012.mail2web.com>
Message-ID: <200606282332.k5SNWKZM011570@andromeda.ziaspace.com>


> Prego. Come se dice l'extropian in italiano?  Non lo so.  Ringraziarla
> molto.
> 
> Natasha

Un extropian ? un extropian in ogni lingua. ? un termine meravigliosamente
internazionale, quel "hipsters" dappertutto sapr?, quale "il calcolatore" e
"{8^D". A proposito, realmente non parlo italiano, io sono una
falsificazione deplorable, con un buon amico denominato Babelfish.

{8-]

spike-o

> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-
> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of nvitamore at austin.rr.com
> Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2006 11:11 AM
> To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] new extropian
> 
> >>Grazie, grazie il Sig. Serafino!  Pu? la I e tutti noi imparare e
> diventare
> >>generano un futuro il pi? extropian.
> 
> Prego. Come se dice l'extropian in italiano?  Non lo so.  Ringraziarla
> molto.
> 
> Natasha
> 
> 
> 
> {8-]
> 
> Isaac
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> 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.cgi/extropy-chat





From nvitamore at austin.rr.com  Wed Jun 28 23:54:04 2006
From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com)
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 19:54:04 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: SURVIVAL: An impulse behind transhumanism?
Message-ID: <380-22006632823544203@M2W142.mail2web.com>


From: Russell Wallace 

>>Someone asked me recently what the impulse behind transhumanism was.  I
>>said survival.

>I agree completely.

I'd like to take this a step further.  Can you find parallels in society in
which a movement was developed for the sake of survival?  

Natasha

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From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Thu Jun 29 00:27:16 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 01:27:16 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: SURVIVAL: An impulse behind transhumanism?
In-Reply-To: <380-22006632823544203@M2W142.mail2web.com>
References: <380-22006632823544203@M2W142.mail2web.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606281727k40c1e0a0xbd12e053ff0fee@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/29/06, nvitamore at austin.rr.com <nvitamore at austin.rr.com> wrote:
>
> I'd like to take this a step further.  Can you find parallels in society
> in
> which a movement was developed for the sake of survival?
>

Well, that's a good question... "for the sake of" is a tricky one.

For example, if you look at the historical aspect of the events described in
the Old Testament, it's clear that the Jewish religion helped the Israelite
tribe survive in that harsh and hostile environment. But did the founders of
that religion have that in mind? Did they think "we should start believing
this because it will give our tribe the cohesion it needs to survive"?
That's not so clear; perhaps they just believed for quite different reasons
that God had given them certain directions, and the outcome is recorded as a
result of a selection filter.

Mind you, perhaps the same applies to transhumanism: Did its founders think
"we need to throw all our efforts behind this idea because humanity has a
finite window of time in which to ascend or pass on"? Or did they have
different motives such as freedom and self-actualization? Not a rhetorical
question - I don't know the answer to that one. (Though I do know that when
I first became interested in AI, back in college, it was on the basis of
"this would be a cool thing for me to do"; at that time it hadn't occurred
to me that progress and survival weren't laws of nature - if these things
hadn't occurred to me I'd long ago have given up and moved on to something
more personally rewarding! :P)

Basically it's not clear to me that the reasons the founders of a
philosophy, religion, political movement etc have consciously in mind often
have much to do with the need for and eventual effect of said movement,
though I'm open to counterexamples.
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From transhumanist at goldenfuture.net  Thu Jun 29 00:05:33 2006
From: transhumanist at goldenfuture.net (Joseph Bloch)
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 20:05:33 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: SURVIVAL: An impulse behind transhumanism?
In-Reply-To: <6.2.1.2.2.20060628150839.02e0c530@pop-server.austin.rr.com>
References: <6.2.1.2.2.20060628150839.02e0c530@pop-server.austin.rr.com>
Message-ID: <44A3194D.8010306@goldenfuture.net>

It's so obvious a notion it's profound when you see it written down.

There are a lot of other impulses behind >H, of course. Freedom comes to 
mind.

But there are, of course, currents within >H for whom Equality trumps 
Freedom as a driving force. But what both camps have in common is the 
pursuit of Survival. They just disagree as to how best to get there.

Joseph

Natasha Vita-More wrote:

>
>> Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 09:52:19 -0500
>> To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> From: Natasha Vita-More <natasha at natasha.cc>
>> Subject: SURVIVAL:  An impulse behind transhumanism?
>>
>> Someone asked me recently what the impulse behind transhumanism was.  
>> I said survival. 
>>
>> If the driving force of transhumanism is an innate /and /informed 
>> desire to improve the human condition, then survival would be an 
>> element of this driver. But I am not sure if this is a chicken/egg 
>> thing. 
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> Natasha
>>
>>     Natasha <http://www.natasha.cc/>Vita-More <http://www.natasha.cc/> 
>>     Cultural Strategist - Designer 
>>     President, Extropy Institute <http://www.extropy.org/> 
>>     Member, Association of Professional Futurists
>>     <http://www.profuturists.com/> 
>>     Founder, Transhumanist Arts & Culture
>>     <http://www.transhumanist.biz/>
>>
>>     /If you draw a circle in the sand and study only what's inside
>>     the circle, then that is a closed-system perspective. If you
>>     study what is inside the circle and everything outside the
>>     circle, then that is an open system perspective. - /Buckminster
>>     Fuller
>>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>extropy-chat mailing list
>extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>  
>



From atomictiki at yahoo.com  Thu Jun 29 00:26:28 2006
From: atomictiki at yahoo.com (P.J. Manney & E. Gruendemann)
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 17:26:28 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: SURVIVAL: An impulse behind transhumanism?
In-Reply-To: <380-22006632823544203@M2W142.mail2web.com>
Message-ID: <20060629002628.73357.qmail@web31811.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

First of all, we have to define "survival."  One would say the enviromental movement, post "Silent Spring," the big blue marble and Earth Day, etc. is an obvious "survival movement."
   
  Less obvious, we could redefine "survival" in socioeconomic terms and end up with Marxism/Socialism as a "survival movement."  Or if survival is defined in cultural terms, the indigenous movements of post-colonial indigenous peoples, like the Aborigines, Maoris, Native Americans, etc.
   
  See my meaning?
   
  PJ

"nvitamore at austin.rr.com" <nvitamore at austin.rr.com> wrote:
  
From: Russell Wallace 

>>Someone asked me recently what the impulse behind transhumanism was. I
>>said survival.

>I agree completely.

I'd like to take this a step further. Can you find parallels in society in
which a movement was developed for the sake of survival? 

Natasha

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Patricia Manney and Eric Gruendemann
Uncharted Entertainment
23210 Mariposa de Oro
Malibu, CA 90265
W: (310) 317-1598
F: (310) 317-1599
atomictiki at yahoo.com or eric at unchartedentertainment.com
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From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com  Thu Jun 29 01:14:11 2006
From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian)
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 18:14:11 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: SURVIVAL: An impulse behind transhumanism?
In-Reply-To: <380-22006632823544203@M2W142.mail2web.com>
Message-ID: <20060629011411.59799.qmail@web60514.mail.yahoo.com>

--- "nvitamore at austin.rr.com"
<nvitamore at austin.rr.com> wrote:

> 
> From: Russell Wallace 
> 
> >>Someone asked me recently what the impulse behind
> transhumanism was.  I
> >>said survival.
> 
> >I agree completely.
> 
> I'd like to take this a step further.  Can you find
> parallels in society in
> which a movement was developed for the sake of
> survival?  

Hi Natasha,

In a general Darwinian sense, most historical
movements have had some aspect of survival to them.
For most movements however, this was implicit and
tangential to the stated aims. As far as movements
aimed at survival, most every paramilitary
organization and martial art is specifically about
survival. Not to mention the survivalist movement
itself:
http://www.textfiles.com/survival/

Although, we are perhaps a bit more subtle
philosophically, still engaged with the rest of the
world, and looking for a technological edge, IMO we
have quite a bit in common with survivalism. The major
difference is that survivalism is "every man for
himself" whereas our philosophy is "We can survive as
a group, if we can just WAKE UP." 


Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"God doesn't play dice with the universe." - Albert Einstein

"Einstein, don't tell God what to do." - Neils Bohr

__________________________________________________
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From jef at jefallbright.net  Thu Jun 29 01:49:36 2006
From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright)
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 18:49:36 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: SURVIVAL: An impulse behind transhumanism?
In-Reply-To: <20060629002628.73357.qmail@web31811.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <380-22006632823544203@M2W142.mail2web.com>
	<20060629002628.73357.qmail@web31811.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <22360fa10606281849o185f3e94o3a3997361f349ef4@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/28/06, P.J. Manney & E. Gruendemann <atomictiki at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> First of all, we have to define "survival."  One would say the enviromental
> movement, post "Silent Spring," the big blue marble and Earth Day, etc. is
> an obvious "survival movement."
>
> Less obvious, we could redefine "survival" in socioeconomic terms and end up
> with Marxism/Socialism as a "survival movement."  Or if survival is defined
> in cultural terms, the indigenous movements of post-colonial indigenous
> peoples, like the Aborigines, Maoris, Native Americans, etc.

We could take this to a more encompassing level with recognition that
intentional actions (such as acting in a movement) are always taken
for the purpose of promoting some agency's *values*  into the future.
Individual and group survival are examples of such values, but often
subordinate to what are considered the "greater" causes of a movement.

- Jef


From nvitamore at austin.rr.com  Thu Jun 29 01:51:05 2006
From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com)
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 21:51:05 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: SURVIVAL: An impulse behind transhumanism?
Message-ID: <380-220066429151582@M2W029.mail2web.com>

From: P.J. Manney & E. Gruendemann 

"First of all, we have to define 'survival.'"

Yes, I should have done this.  

Survival = the pursuit of staying alive.  This would include the ability to
design solutions to overcome conflicts that threaten existence.

Survivalist: "A person who anticipates potential disruption in the
continuity of society and takes steps to survive in the resulting
unpredictable situation. Some survivalists approach  historical incidents
and actively prepare themselves with tools and information needed to handle
repeats of those same events."  [Wikipedia]

Natasha

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From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Thu Jun 29 02:42:39 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 03:42:39 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: SURVIVAL: An impulse behind transhumanism?
In-Reply-To: <380-220066429151582@M2W029.mail2web.com>
References: <380-220066429151582@M2W029.mail2web.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606281942m4feb9c99q5183babe2b3a345e@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/29/06, nvitamore at austin.rr.com <nvitamore at austin.rr.com> wrote:
>
> Survival = the pursuit of staying alive.  This would include the ability
> to
> design solutions to overcome conflicts that threaten existence.
>
> Survivalist: "A person who anticipates potential disruption in the
> continuity of society and takes steps to survive in the resulting
> unpredictable situation. Some survivalists approach  historical incidents
> and actively prepare themselves with tools and information needed to
> handle
> repeats of those same events."  [Wikipedia]
>

Hey, then by that definition we're not all that far from survivalists. The
one big difference is that while people usually referred to by that term
worry about muggers and looters (against which one man with a rifle may
reasonably hope to defend himself), we concern ourselves with the greater
threats of Time and Entropy, against which only a concerted effort by
millions may hope to prevail.
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From spike66 at comcast.net  Thu Jun 29 05:25:28 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 22:25:28 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] life extension magazine
In-Reply-To: <20060629011411.59799.qmail@web60514.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <200606290525.k5T5Pjco029156@andromeda.ziaspace.com>



The March 06 issue of Scientific American commented that caloric restriction
is the only longevity strategy absolutely proven to work.  Today I saw a
magazine called "Life Extension" which has articles on caloric restriction,
longevity genes, even an ad for the Alcor conference in October.  This
magazine was on the shelf at the local grocery store.  Suddenly I feel so
mainstream.

{8-]

spike










From natasha at natasha.cc  Wed Jun 28 14:52:19 2006
From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More)
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 09:52:19 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] SURVIVAL:  An impulse behind transhumanism?
Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20060628094458.03f96a10@pop-server.austin.rr.com>

Someone asked me recently what the impulse behind transhumanism was.  I 
said survival.

If the driving force of transhumanism is an innate and informed desire to 
improve the human condition, then survival would be an element of this 
driver. But I am not sure if this is a chicken/egg thing.

Thoughts?

Natasha

<http://www.natasha.cc/>Natasha <http://www.natasha.cc/>Vita-More
Cultural Strategist - Designer
President, <http://www.extropy.org/>Extropy Institute
Member, <http://www.profuturists.com/>Association of Professional Futurists
Founder, <http://www.transhumanist.biz/>Transhumanist Arts & Culture

If you draw a circle in the sand and study only what's inside the circle, 
then that is a closed-system perspective. If you study what is inside the 
circle and everything outside the circle, then that is an open system 
perspective. - Buckminster Fuller


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From hkhenson at rogers.com  Thu Jun 29 16:15:07 2006
From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 12:15:07 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: SURVIVAL: An impulse behind transhumanism?
Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20060629121255.04936e00@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>

At 07:54 PM 6/28/2006 -0400, you wrote:

>From: Russell Wallace
>
> >>Someone asked me recently what the impulse behind transhumanism was.  I
> >>said survival.
>
> >I agree completely.

I would say survival in style.  :-)

>I'd like to take this a step further.  Can you find parallels in society in
>which a movement was developed for the sake of survival?

Since movements derive from motivations I think we need to understand where 
human motivations come from.  They are the result of hundreds of millions 
of years of evolution as mammals, tens of millions as primates, something 
on the order of 5-7 million years as hominids, 2.3 million or so as rock 
chipping hunter gatherers, about 100k years as hunter gatherers in the 
present version, and 10k years as farmers.

Human motivations (the psychological traits and the brain mechanisms behind 
the traits) were selected over this time for reproductive success, 
including the effects from inclusive fitness.  (Inclusive fitness means 
traits can be selected by evolution even though the ones who express the 
trait die.  Think of bees dying to protect the hive or look up Hamilton.)

One of the prime motivations in humans is a drive for status and the 
closely associated brain chemical rewards people get for 
attention.  (Status is roughly the integral of attention, and reproductive 
success in *males* was (is) highly correlated with status.)   Crudely think 
of our ancestors as the successful hunters who got more nookie.

I should warn you that this is dangerous knowledge.  If you admit, even on 
a theoretical basis, that *you* might be motivated to seek status, a 
Federal judge may lambast you from the bench.  (Which was particularly 
funny if you consider the motivation for status that led to him becoming a 
judge.)

Status/attention is the main motivation behind groups, movements, cults, 
etc. existing.

Another motivation come from the astonishing success of humans as top 
predators.  While they ate just about anything, they were particularly good 
at killing large animals.

William Calvin makes the case that the expansion of the brain was driven by 
occupying the projectile hunter niche where the extra brain area was 
required for timing release so our ancestors could hit small targets at a 
distance.

It has probably been more than 2 million years since the line that led to 
humans were a commonly on the dinner menu for large predators.

Overpopulation is far from being a recent problem.  If you look at the work 
of Azar Gat on hunter gatherer warfare, as high as 60% of the adults in 
some groups die from intergroup violence.  Humans live (and the line that 
led to us lived) over a larger area of the earth than any other animal of 
our size and the reason was an intense need move away from other hungry and 
violent human groups.  If you could not move, you were attacked if you 
didn't attack first when you could see hungry times looming.

So another motivation for groups, movements, cults and such to form up 
around a xenophobic meme is rooted in the perception of a bleak future or 
the effect of being attacked.

A too long discussion of the attention rewards behind cults is here:

http://human-nature.com/nibbs/02/cults.html

and a too long discussion of war mode is here:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/17/194059/296

I *really* wish I could turn this theoretical knowledge into specific 
recommendations for a successful transhumanist movement.

There is a psychological element of "war mode" in most organizations.  But 
I make the case (backed up by Dr. Drew Westen's fMRI work) that invoking 
this mode is dangerous.  It shuts down rational thinking for inclusive 
fitness reasons that made sense in gene terms in the stone age.  In 
figuring out some survival path through the singularity, we need all the 
rational thinking we can get.

Status seeking drives an awful lot of human activity, but it goes off the 
rails and destroys organizations by people operating in zero sum 
mode.  I.e., tearing down others or stealing credit for their "hunting" 
efforts.  I am sure you can see this in every movement including 
tranhumanism.  (I could cite a number from the L5 days, not to mention 
other organizations I have been associated with.)

Since few people are aware of their motivations, even on a theoretical 
level, and have no idea of why they act as they do it is hard, possibly 
impossible, for them to change.

Perhaps a real effort to reward people for non-zero behavior might help, 
but there are problems in that a lot of people have "sincerity" detectors 
or are (properly) embarrassed by attention that is laid on too thick.

Human motivation, I think because of its close connection to sex, is a 
really embarrassing topic for most people.

But I can't see a successful transhumanist movement without understanding 
humans first.

Keith Henson



From iamgoddard at yahoo.com  Thu Jun 29 16:52:35 2006
From: iamgoddard at yahoo.com (Ian Goddard)
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 09:52:35 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] Caloric Restriction
In-Reply-To: <200606290525.k5T5Pjco029156@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <20060629165235.97936.qmail@web52614.mail.yahoo.com>

--- spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> The March 06 issue of Scientific American commented
> that caloric restriction is the only longevity 
> strategy absolutely proven to work.  


 Right, but only in animal models. The lifespan effect
on humans is not yet proven and may never be apart
from extrapolations from studies involving less than
the full human lifespan. Some such studies look good
for CR's long-term effect on humans. For example:

http://mednews.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/6362.html 

But still, we're left to extrapolate. And that study
is questionable in that the subjects are also 'health
nuts' in general (ie, ideal diets, fitness, exercise),
and they were compared to average people of the same
age (most of whom eat junk and are overweight). So
perhaps the results are a consequence of generally
healthier lifestyles rather than CR. ??

 Back in 2001 I started on a CR program. In 2001 I
weighted 220 lbs, I was obese. Buy late 2002 I was
down to 140 lbs (BMI 19.5). That's 80 pounds of fat
lost by simply eating less. I held my weight perfectly
at 140 to 145 lbs from late 2002 until February 2006.
At that point I felt that I was too weak and prone to
injuries when I exercised. It seemed like my level of
CR was forcing me to exercise less and less. Given
that the benefits of exercise are well known and that
strong CR effects are not, I opted to change course to
facilitate more exercise.

 Since February, with steady resistance exercise I've
put on 20 lbs, almost entirely of muscle. At 160 lbs I
still wear the same pants as at 140 lbs, tough a
little tighter that measures how little of the added
weight is fat. It feels better to feel, be, and look
stronger as well as to be able to exercise full tilt! 

 For some people moderate-to-strong CR can raise
quality-of-life issues. Such didn't become apparent to
me for several years, but I'm happier now at a higher
caloric intake. But I still constantly strive to
minimize calories and am learning ways to cut calories
and maintain physio-structural integrity. Use of
infrared devices that speed healing of strains and
supplementation with amino acids that have been shown
to maintain or even build lean mass are important
strategies for such optimization.  ~Ian


http://IanGoddard.net

"Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy
and indistinct; its task is to make them clear and to
give them sharp boundaries." -- Wittgenstein


__________________________________________________
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From george at betterhumans.com  Thu Jun 29 16:47:23 2006
From: george at betterhumans.com (George Dvorsky)
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 12:47:23 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] H+, autism, selection effects, biases
Message-ID: <44A4041B.7090304@betterhumans.com>

The recent Stanford conference reminded me how many Aspies are drawn to 
transhumanism. Some questions come to mind. Are there a disproportionate 
number of autistics involved in transhumanism, and if so, what accounts 
for this selectional effect? What biases might this pose in 
transhumanist argumentation and rationalization?

Cheers,
George

PS - this article of mine might flavour the discussion:

"Revenge of the Nerds"
http://archives.betterhumans.com/Columns/Column/tabid/79/Column/261/Default.aspx

Once outcasts, some autistics now see their condition as a cognitive 
gift and even the next stage in human evolution?at the dawn of the 
transhuman age, who's to say they're wrong?




From thespike at satx.rr.com  Thu Jun 29 19:23:47 2006
From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick)
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 14:23:47 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] H+, autism, selection effects, biases
In-Reply-To: <44A4041B.7090304@betterhumans.com>
References: <44A4041B.7090304@betterhumans.com>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060629141955.02212ab8@satx.rr.com>

At 12:47 PM 6/29/2006 -0400, George Dvorsky wrote:

>The recent Stanford conference reminded me how many Aspies are drawn to
>transhumanism.

More so than in sf fandom? Is there the same high proportion of 
genuinely obese people? (My impression is that >H folk tend rather to 
be either health-conscious or on the skinny side, with due allowance 
made for the perils of sitting all day and night in front of a monitor.)

Damien Broderick



From benboc at lineone.net  Thu Jun 29 19:58:58 2006
From: benboc at lineone.net (ben)
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 20:58:58 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] SURVIVAL:  An impulse behind transhumanism?
In-Reply-To: <mailman.2813.1151548964.1390.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
References: <mailman.2813.1151548964.1390.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
Message-ID: <44A43102.7000601@lineone.net>

From: Natasha Vita-More <natasha at natasha.cc>:
 > ...
 > But I am not sure if this is a chicken/egg thing.
 > ...

Yeah, 'course it is. But that doesn't mean it's bad.

Nothing wrong with a chicken/egg thing.
It's never done the chickens/eggs any harm, and it gives us more 
culinary choices!

ben zaiboc


From nvitamore at austin.rr.com  Thu Jun 29 23:03:31 2006
From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com)
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 19:03:31 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: SURVIVAL: An impulse behind transhumanism?
Message-ID: <380-22006642923331562@M2W126.mail2web.com>


From: Keith Henson

>But I can't see a successful transhumanist movement without understanding 
>humans first.

While the zero sum is a tasty topic and I certainly could have a field day
with this one; right nowI need to focus on survival as an impulse. I think
you are spot on with motivation being a driver for survival. I will look
into some of your suggestions, but in the meantime:

http://emotionalliteracyeducation.com/abraham-maslow-theory-human-motivation
.shtml

Natasha


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From acy.stapp at gmail.com  Thu Jun 29 23:30:06 2006
From: acy.stapp at gmail.com (Acy Stapp)
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 18:30:06 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606272251p5fc5bc55jd85d27c7901e4ad3@mail.gmail.com>
References: <8d71341e0606271634k4ed9b58fpbe64c68f9173f0ed@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEEEDOGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
	<8d71341e0606272251p5fc5bc55jd85d27c7901e4ad3@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <eb2c12ba0606291630k4829185fsf586a45fb52fe052@mail.gmail.com>

I think the only successful choice will be to be happy when you are
enhancing your fitness in the future competitive environment. You
would feel pain and suffering when you are doing or having done to you
actions which impair your fitness. Any other choice will be result in
the evolution of other Minds leaving you behind.

On 6/28/06, Russell Wallace <russell.wallace at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/28/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> > I would aim for "The Hedonistic Imperative" goal of getting complete
> > rid of suffering.
>
>
>  So you'd adjust yourself to never feel pain, boredom or any other form of
> suffering in any situation? Okay. Would you adjust yourself to be equally
> happy in all situations?
>
>  If so, how would you solve the problem that you would then have no motive
> to do anything more complicated than sitting there staring at the wall?
>
>  If not, then presumably you would adjust yourself to be happier doing some
> things than others. In which case my original question stands: What things
> would you adjust yourself to be happiest doing, and why?
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
>


-- 
Acy Stapp

"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think
only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the
solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -- R. Buckminster
Fuller (1895 - 1983)


From spike66 at comcast.net  Thu Jun 29 23:30:15 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 16:30:15 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] H+, autism, selection effects, biases
In-Reply-To: <44A4041B.7090304@betterhumans.com>
Message-ID: <200606292341.k5TNf59Z021707@andromeda.ziaspace.com>


> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of George Dvorsky
> Subject: [extropy-chat] H+, autism, selection effects, biases
> 
> The recent Stanford conference reminded me how many Aspies are drawn to
> transhumanism. Some questions come to mind. Are there a disproportionate
> number of autistics involved in transhumanism...
> 
> Cheers,
> George


Cool, thanks George!  I have been hoping someone would comment on this, so I
can add some personal observations.  About five years ago, a friend took me
to an alumni gathering at CalTech.  They had various papers presented there,
with the usual collection of space stuff, rad-cool tech, robotics,
electronic magic, etc.  I was in hog heaven of course.

My friend wanted to catch a particular paper that was on OCD and Aspergers
in tech-heads, in fact it was the reason he went to that gathering.  We
heard that there had been a change in venue because of greater than
anticipated interest in that pitch.  They put it in the largest hall
available, but as it turns out the place was packed to the rafters anyway,
every seat filled and people spilling into the walk ways.  The CalTech crowd
hung on this man's every word.  This pitch was opposite other pitches on
Mars landers, robotics, all the really cool stuff, but they packed into this
one.  I was amazed.

I have further commentary on this, but I am not sure I will post it here.  I
will offer this observation.  I am active in three online communities,
extropians first and foremost, secondly a group of mathematicians that meets
in the meat world every once in a long while, and thirdly a group of
motorcycle enthusiasts that own a particular oddball model of bike that was
built only in the 80s, few left in service.  In the meat world gatherings of
the three groups, I have noticed a definite social clumsiness in the
extropians and the definitely the mathematicians, but not with the bikers.  

This seems counterintuitive to me, since the mathematicians have by far the
most in common, the extropians next.  The biker individuals actually have
very little in common, other than we happen to own this particular oddball
machine.  But whenever we bikers gather we have a rollicking good old time,
they are a hoot.  Extropian gatherings are always fun with far more
interesting conversations, but I wouldn't really say that we bond as well,
or form close friendships as much.  The mathematicians, forget it.
Interesting math talk, but real flesh world friendships seemed DOA there.

Comments welcome.

spike


       




From hkhenson at rogers.com  Fri Jun 30 01:16:49 2006
From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 21:16:49 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: SURVIVAL: An impulse behind transhumanism?
In-Reply-To: <380-22006642923331562@M2W126.mail2web.com>
Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20060629210631.04997458@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>

At 07:03 PM 6/29/2006 -0400, you wrote:

>From: Keith Henson
>
> >But I can't see a successful transhumanist movement without understanding
> >humans first.
>
>While the zero sum is a tasty topic and I certainly could have a field day
>with this one; right nowI need to focus on survival as an impulse. I think
>you are spot on with motivation being a driver for survival. I will look
>into some of your suggestions, but in the meantime:
>
>http://emotionalliteracyeducation.com/abraham-maslow-theory-human-motivation
>.shtml

While it isn't all wrong, this work is not rooted in science and is just 
full of BS.

Maslow was a pioneer in the area, but he died long before the biology folks 
started shoving a science base under psychology.

Keith



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Fri Jun 30 05:10:47 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 22:10:47 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <22360fa10606270829r39a36dbbl198fb94f6f3ca8a8@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEOEGFGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Jef wrote

> -----Original Message-----
> Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2006 8:30 AM
> To: lcorbin at tsoft.com; ExI chat list
> 
> On 6/26/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
> > And unfortunately, by the Campbell/Vinge paradox, we can't
> > understand the experiences of deities.
> 
> As a collector of paradoxes, I'm interested in knowing whether
> "Campbell/Vinge paradox" refers to anything specific.  I'm familiar
> with the singularity writings of both, and the concept that of the
> fundamental inability to model the "experiences of deities", but I'm
> not aware of any paradox fitting this name.

I probably should not have called it that; I was referring
to the "paradox" that one cannot write a story featuring
the thinking and plans of more advanced entities. 

It came about when Vinge tried, in one of his earlier stories,
and Campbell rejected it for the following peculiar reason:
"You can't write this story. No one else, can, either" or
words to that effect.

It's the only anecdote connecting the two, and I thought it
to be in very wide circulation; if you were thrown off by the
word "paradox", again, my apologies.

Lee



From atomictiki at yahoo.com  Fri Jun 30 05:03:42 2006
From: atomictiki at yahoo.com (P.J. Manney & E. Gruendemann)
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 22:03:42 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [extropy-chat] H+, autism, selection effects, biases
In-Reply-To: <200606292341.k5TNf59Z021707@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <20060630050342.34070.qmail@web31802.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
    
Cool, thanks George! I have been hoping someone would comment on this, so I
can add some personal observations. About five years ago, a friend took me
to an alumni gathering at CalTech. 
   
   
  I met Sky Marsen on the Caltech campus earlier this year, while she was a visiting professor there.  I had never visited Caltech before and I had two interesting moments that support Spike's experience:
   
  1)  I was walking across the street and up the stairs when I heard someone scream from the street behind me.  It sounded like "Pat" so I turned around.  It was a car full of local kids, who screamed and whistled.  When I turned back around, there was a young man, clearly a student, with a loaded backpack on his back.  Under normal circumstances, he would have been considered attractive, but he was so introverted, his entire physical and psychological demeanor had collapsed in on himself like a black hole.  He refused to establish eye contact, but muttered just loud enough for me to hear, "Never turn around... Never."  He kept on walking past me, eyes glued to the ground.
   
  2)  Sky and I walked around the campus and we found a photocopied announcement for a special seminar the next day on how to meet people, talk to people and create and maintain relationships.  The announcement was so poignant, yet so amusing, I was tempted to take it down and bring it home to show my husband, but I was afraid if I removed it, someone might not see it and I would deny someone the opportunity to learn something about relationships!  They might not "find happiness" if I removed it!  Given Spike's experience, I wonder if this seminar was packed to the rafters as well?
   
  Googling for a site that might have had the original seminar ad, I instead found two sites in the Caltech health education site on this subject: 
http://www.healtheducation.caltech.edu/healthy_relationships.html
http://www.counseling.caltech.edu/articles/makingfriends.html
   
  As a comparison, I checked out my own alma mater's health site and found they had no pages to address these basic social interaction skills that I would have assumed most people knew by 18 years of age.  But my school is known for its humanities and social science students, not hard science students.  And there were not many people of my acquaintance there that I would term "Aspies."  Certainly a few, but not many.
   
  Sky could address this much better than I, but she had fascinating things to say about the general level of social and communication skills of the Caltech student body, compared with other campuses she had taught at.  I'm not sure if she is a member of this H+ list, however...
   
  [Sky, are you out there?  Want to comment?]
   
  Respectfully,
  Patricia
   
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From jef at jefallbright.net  Fri Jun 30 05:30:52 2006
From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright)
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 22:30:52 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEOEGFGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <22360fa10606270829r39a36dbbl198fb94f6f3ca8a8@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEOEGFGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <22360fa10606292230m55ee2ae4t35bdf748b72ce8ea@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/29/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
> Jef wrote
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2006 8:30 AM
> > To: lcorbin at tsoft.com; ExI chat list
> >
> > On 6/26/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
> > > And unfortunately, by the Campbell/Vinge paradox, we can't
> > > understand the experiences of deities.
> >
> > As a collector of paradoxes, I'm interested in knowing whether
> > "Campbell/Vinge paradox" refers to anything specific.  I'm familiar
> > with the singularity writings of both, and the concept that of the
> > fundamental inability to model the "experiences of deities", but I'm
> > not aware of any paradox fitting this name.
>
> I probably should not have called it that; I was referring
> to the "paradox" that one cannot write a story featuring
> the thinking and plans of more advanced entities.
>
> It came about when Vinge tried, in one of his earlier stories,
> and Campbell rejected it for the following peculiar reason:
> "You can't write this story. No one else, can, either" or
> words to that effect.
>
> It's the only anecdote connecting the two, and I thought it
> to be in very wide circulation; if you were thrown off by the
> word "paradox", again, my apologies.
>
> Lee


Thanks Lee for the clarification.  I appreciate and your use of the
more general sense of paradox but I was hoping to find a new one for
my collection.

- Jef


From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Fri Jun 30 05:37:59 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 22:37:59 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0606272251p5fc5bc55jd85d27c7901e4ad3@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMEGGGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

On Tuesday June 27 at 10:57 Russell wrote

> On 6/28/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
> > I would aim for "The Hedonistic Imperative" goal of getting complete
> > rid of suffering.

> So you'd adjust yourself to never feel pain, boredom or any 
> other form of suffering in any situation?

That's right. Consider boredom, for example. First, recall that it
is not a "passive" phenomenon, but rather was specifically built-in
to generate a certain kind of uneasiness in an organism. I think 
that the point of such has been a warning that its ancestors 
through trial and error found that lack of certain kinds of 
stimulation did not lead to sufficient procreation of viable
offspring.

(That is, there was a tendency for organisms to survive only if they
happened---by chance, originally---to have such misgivings with 
what they were doing.)

Now this decision---"Hey, you, this is not good enough! Move on!"---
will sometimes be "right" and sometimes be "wrong". (Neither we nor
human nature are wise enough to always guess correctly.) Here, the
quotes indicate that we may have our own consistent valuations
(i.e. values), or we may ultimately defer to foreign value systems, 
but whatever, values that don't happen to have afforded our 
ancestors a great many descendants.

Now just *who* should be deciding things like that about me?
Me or my goddamn genes?  Vaguely reminds me of the government...

To give vast credit to Nature and to be convinced that "Nature
knows best", and that therefore if I'm bored what I'm doing
must be grossly non-optimal  is just plain a dereliction of
intelligence!

The case for pain is very much the same: sure, I do appreciate
it (given my own stupidity) when I'm punished for no little
time for having banged my most valuable member on an open
cabinet door; that will help me to remember "don't do that".
But SURELY there will come a time when I just need assign a
constraint to the location of my VR limbs so that that doesn't
happen.

> Okay. Would you adjust yourself to be equally happy in all
> situations?

Well... yes, if there were a /greatest possible happiness/. But
there isn't. It must be an ongoing research project of how I
may pass through humanly possible states of greater and greater
joy, ecstasy, contentment, satisfaction, and pleasure (and every
other pleasant state we can fabricate, such as Eugen's "<wr54334543>"
(Extropian post on 6/26).

> If so, how would you solve the problem that you would then
> have no motive to do anything more complicated than sitting
> there staring at the wall?

My car actually has "no motive" to move down the road, except
for the way it was designed. Having decided upon some favorable
course of action, e.g. gratification research, I can program
myself to stick to it (some drugs already do this, but aren't
very flexible).  Naturally, there are risks.  It may be that
my evaluation function after eons (i.e. seconds) of such
activity has a flaw, and I spend who knows how long doing
something stupid.

> If not, then presumably you would adjust yourself to be happier
> doing some things than others. In which case my original
> question stands: What things would you adjust yourself
> to be happiest doing, and why?

1. "To delight in understanding", which implies
2. greater understanding of the universe (e.g. science)
3. ultimately, mathematics alone (if GUTs are found, and
   other questions eventually answered), but this is
   really a part of (2), of course.
4. constant re-engineering myself (searching for better
   and better algorithms) to further (1), (2), and (3).
   I.e. gratification research.

Now a key part of this is the ambiguity, (danger, even)
lurking in your question "What things would *you* 
adjust yourself...",  because I can only address what
the close duplicates of me will probably do. I cannot
fathom, of course, what the more advanced will do.
As I said before, it will be all that we can do to
make sure our more advanced versions give us plenty
of runtime.

Lee



From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Fri Jun 30 05:59:08 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 22:59:08 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <20060627102655.GS28956@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEGHGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Eugen also wrote

> [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl
> Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2006 3:27 AM

> > Could you elaborate? It doesn't seem to me now that I have all
> > that much control over my emotions. I'm happy or sad, often for
> > [no good reason]
> 
> Some of what we discuss sounds dated
> even as we speak. Whatever we've learned from such past discussions
> (which cover many centuries) is that if we aim for specifics
> the projections will tank. So I'm trying to assume as little
> as possible, namely that Darwin still applies, and don't try
> to look at the short term (linear centuries) but look at the
> long-term trends. Predicting climate, instead of weather.

Yes, but one benefit of throwing in a little speculation along
side is that it more strongly affects our planning, and carries
implications about our values.

> We're extremely unnatural, and in fact not unnatural enough.
> We're animals that have been pressed too fast into a postanimal
> niche, hence the maladaptedness, and the feeling of being
> a round peg in a square hole. But this is our view, and other
> people and systems will choose a different evolutionary path
> that will carry them into all possible nooks and crannies,
> arbitrarily far from our current bauplan, generally spoken.
> 
> What irks me, if that we're always extrapolating from a human
> viewpoint -- not only a human, but an early 21st century human 
> geek. There's some serious diversity scarcity there. 

But it's so *hard* to extrapolate from non-human viewpoints :-)
At least for me (I'm less sure about you!)

More seriously, I totally agree that we shouldn't over assume
that our own values will predominate; indeed, Darwin has to 
remain the best guide. As an example, recall the SF stories
and movies in which it was just *assumed* that more advanced
creatures would be benevolent, would have "risen above" our
lowly morals. But in the end, one must ask, what sorts of
algorithms will dominate the computronium of the far future?
And the answer need not be too bleak: after all, Earth's
currently most advanced life form is rather altruistic.

(It bears repeating that humans engage in violence far, far
less per observed hour than does any other primate.)

> My point is that diversition radiates both down and up complexity-wise,
> and a transrodent niche doesn't ask for intelligence. There is
> simply no place for intelligence in a lowly scavenger package.

The serious and interesting conflict of visions that you and
I appear to have is that I see a greater role for intelligence.
In particular, for some radius r > 1 meter, *all* activity
within a sphere of radius r will conform to the values of
a ruling intelligence.

Or, in other words, you gonna let mice run free in your space?
I'm sure you don't now.

> But math is just a particular production system, a subset
> of culture.

What?!?  Heresy.  Plain and simple.  Actually, mathematics
rules the universe, or so it has seemed since the time of
Galileo. It's another discussion, but I'm a strict mathematical
Platonist (i.e. "17 exists and has the properties it does
completely independently of culture or intelligence").

> No doubt some will revel in such production
> systems. But not exclusively so. I always got this dismal
> vibe from Egan: "Oh noes! we've ran out of stuff and think to
> do! O well, the only thing left is the math mines, I guess."

Well, we have to revel in something. At some point, math (and
engineering more advanced versions of ourselves) will be all
that is left. And the whole point of this thread, so far as
I am concerned, is making the point that the pleasure is more
important than what you get it from.

> > Another approach is simply to use Godel's theorem, and observe
> > ...
> > proof that the number of mathematical facts is at least aleph
> > zero.
> 
> I understand you perfectly (and indeed if there was a symbolic
> algebra package cortex plugin I'd purchase it). But this is a tool,
> not something I'd consider a full-time occupation.

Well, as Russell has asked me, just how do you intend to spend
the next trillion or so years (granted that we get lucky) if
not on mathematics?

Lee

> Ditto diddling nanowidgets: it's the same as redecoration and health
> maintenance, rolled in one. Something you do, but not full-time,
> but for the specialists.



From transcend at extropica.com  Fri Jun 30 05:58:23 2006
From: transcend at extropica.com (Brandon Reinhart)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 00:58:23 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] SURVIVAL:  An impulse behind transhumanism?
In-Reply-To: <6.2.1.2.2.20060628094458.03f96a10@pop-server.austin.rr.com>
Message-ID: <200606300558.k5U5wMtT025895@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> Someone asked me recently what the impulse behind transhumanism was.  I
said survival.  



Transhumanists seek not just to survive, but to transcend and to become
something more than merely human.

 

The singular phrasing of the question as "what is the" impulse is limiting.
Movements generally have many impulses. To become movements there has to be
something that speaks to a multitude of people from varying backgrounds.
Transhumanism is derived from several impulses. I have no idea exactly what
these impulses are, but here are a few possibilities:

 

-          Epic Curiosity. The desire to know more about the universe and
the self. To reason out the hows and whys of reality. Epic Curiosity is not
purely analytical; it is also artistic and vibrant. This impulse seems to me
to be fundamental to any human who is at some basic level of education and
need-fulfillment.

-          Rational Truth. Transhumanists are possessed of a desire to seek
total rational truth. Truth that begins as conjecture and is tested as
theory. Truth that is subject to revision should new evidence come to light.

-          Ethical Hedonism. We want to survive because we like life. We
like the trappings and sensations of living. We want to explore the complete
potential of experience, but do so in a way that allows us to reset the
system and try again in other directions. We do not hope to merely survive
forever, but to survive on our personal eudaimonic terms. We want to extend
our ability to live beyond its biological limitations not just so we can
continue living, but so we can live broader, bolder, enriched lives. We want
our cake and we want to eat it, too. At the same time, transhumanists
recognize the ethical limitations of personal desire and the social
objective of establishing a posthuman community.

-          Intellectual Empathy. Many transhumanists can make themselves
feel pretty horrible thinking about all sorts of things that other people
simply don't think about. We understand the immense and catastrophic
information loss each time someone dies. We conjecture, in a sort of
physicalist way, that death as a systemic process is probably avoidable.
Moreover, we understand that to not make an effort to find out for sure if
death is curable, we condemn our society to continued catastrophic
information loss. We feel an emotional response to this. This is the
transhuman social imperative.

 

I'm sure there are other things that could be classified as types of
impulses. I don't think survival is enough. Just wanting to survive wouldn't
necessarily lead to transhumanism. It's one thing to want to survive, it's
another thing to be perfectly willing to survive in a non-biological
substrate and to not discard that scenario out of hand as impossible.
Transhumanism is maybe a kind of radical supercharged survivalism and it's
all of these other impulses that push it beyond just wanting to stay alive.

 

Brandon

 

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From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Fri Jun 30 05:58:41 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 06:58:41 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMEGGGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <8d71341e0606272251p5fc5bc55jd85d27c7901e4ad3@mail.gmail.com>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEMEGGGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606292258p45b18fd0le9ac46f2ba813f92@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/30/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> That's right. Consider boredom, for example. First, recall that it
> is not a "passive" phenomenon, but rather was specifically built-in
> to generate a certain kind of uneasiness in an organism. I think
> that the point of such has been a warning that its ancestors
> through trial and error found that lack of certain kinds of
> stimulation did not lead to sufficient procreation of viable
> offspring.


*nods* Or as I like to put it: fatigue warns you to conserve energy, boredom
warns you to conserve time.

Now just *who* should be deciding things like that about me?
> Me or my goddamn genes?  Vaguely reminds me of the government...


*grin* Well I'm not going to stand in your way!

Well... yes, if there were a /greatest possible happiness/. But
> there isn't. It must be an ongoing research project of how I
> may pass through humanly possible states of greater and greater
> joy, ecstasy, contentment, satisfaction, and pleasure (and every
> other pleasant state we can fabricate, such as Eugen's "<wr54334543>"
> (Extropian post on 6/26).


So you'd program yourself to be maximally happy no matter what you were
doing, and then also program yourself to spend all your time studying
science in order to make sure you would in fact do that even though you were
no happier with it than with staring at a wall? (Not a rhetorical question,
want to make sure I'm understanding you correctly.)

If so, well okay, though I'm not sure I see the point in thus reinventing
the wheel - why not leave things the way they are, and be happy studying
science using the existing emotional mechanisms, which seem quite adequate
for the purpose? Granted there are times when I'd like to be able to flip a
switch and turn off the emotional content of exhaustion and despair, but the
scenario you postulate would seem to be one where the causes of such
negative feelings are generally avoidable?
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From lcorbin at tsoft.com  Fri Jun 30 06:11:15 2006
From: lcorbin at tsoft.com (Lee Corbin)
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 23:11:15 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Being Nicer (was Panicmongering)
In-Reply-To: <200606271708.k5RH81f47656@mail0.rawbw.com>
Message-ID: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEAEGIGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>

Spike writes

> >... "You are unfortunate that these ideas are outside
> > your comfort zone, and I feel your pain"?  No, that's not
> > it either...
> 
> That woulda been it, but a former US president ruined that "I feel your
> pain" comment forever, which is too bad because human empathy is a wonderful
> thing.
> 
> > I give up. I thought I could nail it. Maybe you were just trying
> > to be "nice".
> 
> JA!  I am.

Well, thanks for being nice even after my provocative (but hopefully
understood to be mostly playful) jibe.

> I know of Crocker's rules, and I always appreciate honesty,
> but I am in the camp that believes that honesty, diplomacy
> and kindness can all fit in the same package.

I've been thinking about Crocker's Rules the last year or so.
Initially, I never went for it, never "gave permission" so
to speak, for people to tell me exactly what they thought of
what I'd said or written, or exactly what they were thinking
of my intelligence or moral characters.  In other words, 
people who were internally reacting to one of my posts
with "Geez, what a stupid thing to say" were by default
invited to keep their opinions to themselves  :-)

I need to write an essay condemning them. It's clearer to me
now what my initial uneasiness had to do with.

Folks---especially libertarians---are tempted to think that we
are nothing but total individuals, and that the more individualism
the better. We now know that this flies in the face of our
evolutionary history.

It's as if they believed that *politeness* and *courtesy* were
Victorian aesthetic statements, or some dumb thing handed down
to us by the Church.

> In email, often we don't know the people we address in the
> flesh, oblique meanings are lost, shades of subtlety mostly
> are lost in the stark glare of online communications.

Yup, and that is *so* hard to keep in mind. It is especially
in this way that your own on-line behavior should serve as
a model to others. It does for me (not that---as many will
agree---it appears to have done much good on me yet).

Lee

> Our own list has improved greatly in diplomacy in the past couple years, yet
> ideas still flow.  In fact they flow better; I didn't often follow the flame
> wars that used to break out, and of course didn't comment thereon.  I
> commend the participants in the kinder gentler approach to debate.
> 
> We are among friends here, even those of us who disagree.



From andrew at ceruleansystems.com  Fri Jun 30 06:14:01 2006
From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers)
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 23:14:01 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] The Extropy of Cooking
In-Reply-To: <p06230901c0c74306a3a3@[23.237.66.13]>
References: <p06230901c0c74306a3a3@[23.237.66.13]>
Message-ID: <03D95E87-C8E2-43DB-B464-783066FDE4F8@ceruleansystems.com>


On Jun 27, 2006, at 1:27 PM, Amara Graps wrote:
> So while I have no trouble finding many varieties of mozzarallla di
> bufala because some person carries it in to my local alimentaries from
> the countryside, the good dark viscous balsamic vinegar from Modena is
> in quantities of a just a few sitting on the top shelves. It's there,
> but not in abundant quantities.


Good basalmic is really hard to find.  Most is watery and harsh, at  
least in the US, but is well worth the money to locate and buy the  
really good somewhat syrupy basalmic.  A very little bit goes a very  
long way and lasts a long time, so the expense is amortized.  It is a  
kitchen essential, IMO.

Best uncommon use of good basalmic:  a stiff dollop in a thick Bloody  
Mary, which significantly enhances the overall flavor.  Considering  
the ingredients, it makes sense if you think about it.  (First  
discovered that trick at Zuni Cafe in San Francisco.)


> The following is my favorite Italian dish. I haven't made it  
> completely
> correct yet, but it's almost there. This recipe has gone through  
> several
> iterations; each time I tell my Italian colleagues what I did, and  
> they
> correct my mistakes, so the recipe has been transformed into a group
> Italian planetary scientists + Amara result.
[...elided...]


That is a very good looking recipe, and well inline with my tastes.   
I have all the vegetables and herbs listed growing out back and am  
expecting them to be ready to harvest in abundance within the next  
few weeks.  I will be trying this out and reporting back here. :-)

Is the Parmesan cheese that you use fresh or aged?  I normally stock  
imported Italian Parmesan in the 2-year range (and occasionally 3- 
year), so what I have on hand is pretty well aged.

Cheers,

J. Andrew Rogers




From russell.wallace at gmail.com  Fri Jun 30 06:21:25 2006
From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 07:21:25 +0100
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEGHGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <20060627102655.GS28956@leitl.org>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEGHGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <8d71341e0606292321w68018779jcd250eb8decd24af@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/30/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> Well, as Russell has asked me, just how do you intend to spend
> the next trillion or so years (granted that we get lucky) if
> not on mathematics?
>

While I don't have an actual plan for the next trillion years - I put it
into the category of "wouldn't that be a nice problem to have" :) - it does
occur to me that it would take far, far longer than that to walk down all
possible roads, write all possible books, sing all possible songs, tell - or
live - all possible stories, even assuming we stick to the human-meaningful
subset thereof.
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From amara at amara.com  Fri Jun 30 08:19:35 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 10:19:35 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat]  H+, autism, selection effects, biases
Message-ID: <p06230901c0ca8a7ad052@[23.237.66.13]>

spike:

For myself, it is not the best idea to spend all my free time among
techies/scientists, because I need the balance to the other side of my
brain. Arts are a nourishment for me that is as crucial as breakfast.
I appreciate most spending as much time as I can with musicians, but also
writers, photographers, etc. My wide range of hobbies can accommodate
such activities since I'm a generalist and 'dabble' in music/arts, which
is not true of many of the scientists that I know. If you go to any web
site where scientists are 'profiled' to give the public views onto their
lives, then you will find very narrow ranges of off-science activities.
Scientists generally look pretty boring to the outside world, and it's
no wonder that a misunderstanding exists between them and their typical
sources of financial support (the public/taxes).

Those brilliant science/techie types (not me) might be brilliant
because their brain activity is focused into such narrow activities,
but I know well how much of the rest of the world they miss when
they are in that mode. So then they therefore have little experience
in social situations and you have your mathematician or maybe the
extropian scenario that you described.

Can one re-wire one's brain to be more sociable and develop more
empathic wiring? I'm sure I have the empathy and sensitivity I have
from some very early childhood events and an exposure to a wide life
when I was young, but in general, I would say yes. If one wants to,
that is.

Amara


From eugen at leitl.org  Fri Jun 30 10:57:11 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 12:57:11 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEGHGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <20060627102655.GS28956@leitl.org>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEGHGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <20060630105711.GN26630@leitl.org>

On Thu, Jun 29, 2006 at 10:59:08PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:

> More seriously, I totally agree that we shouldn't over assume
> that our own values will predominate; indeed, Darwin has to 
> remain the best guide. As an example, recall the SF stories
> and movies in which it was just *assumed* that more advanced
> creatures would be benevolent, would have "risen above" our

It is almost always assumed that cruising aliens are super-advanced,
and super-intelligent. But just assuming a) relativistic flight
b) iterated selection over large distances it's pretty obvious
intelligence is not a trait selected for. The only traits selected
for are short reproduction time and expansiveness. So while
intelligence is necessary to produce expansive aliens, the
intelligence trait will be selected away over very large 
distances. So if you take a temporal view of expansion organisms,
you see a succession sequence, which is spatial in a snapshot, if you
look at the waves trailing behind the first wavefront. No doubt,
some these successors will be intelligent, and most of them
superintelligent, using humans for a yardstick. But the damage's
done by then, already. 

> lowly morals. But in the end, one must ask, what sorts of
> algorithms will dominate the computronium of the far future?

Judging from today's ecosystem, by volume (equivalent of 
mass) dominated by nonsentients. Low-diversity populations
are really playing with fire, as far as stability is 
concerned. I don't see how virtual ecosystems (not everything
will be virtual, by virtue of leverage of physical layer)
are no different from normal ecosystems. I don't know how
much of the computronium fraction will be mobile platforms with
sensors and actuators, that's for Darwin to figure out.
It might be a lot, it might a small fraction. We don't know yet.

> And the answer need not be too bleak: after all, Earth's
> currently most advanced life form is rather altruistic.

Er, not so altruistic towards the rest of them 
http://www.well.com/~davidu/sixthextinction.html

From the point of a deity, we're plankton. From the point of
view of lesser lifeforms that are parasites, we're food.
Interesting nonlinearities appear soon in sexual selection
and host-parasite co-evolution.
 
> (It bears repeating that humans engage in violence far, far
> less per observed hour than does any other primate.)

You're still only looking at human2human interactions.
As soon as interaction equality is skewed massively, the
altruism (which is just a co-evolutionary algorithm for
smart critters, soaking in iterated interactions) suddenly
goes poof.
 
> > My point is that diversition radiates both down and up complexity-wise,
> > and a transrodent niche doesn't ask for intelligence. There is
> > simply no place for intelligence in a lowly scavenger package.
> 
> The serious and interesting conflict of visions that you and
> I appear to have is that I see a greater role for intelligence.

I think intelligence is very interesting, but I'm not fooling
myself for a moment that bulk of postbiomass will be 
intelligent. You can pack a lot of ops in a cubic micron, but
you can't put a lot of bits into it. 

> In particular, for some radius r > 1 meter, *all* activity
> within a sphere of radius r will conform to the values of
> a ruling intelligence.

You're a ruling intelligence. Do you control everything even
within your own body? Do you control everything on your city
block? Would you really want to? No need to try micromanaging
an ecology, it's the very epitome of free markets.
 
> Or, in other words, you gonna let mice run free in your space?

Um, there are mice in my space. There are spiders, and outside
insects passing through, and mites, and mold, and other microscopic 
stuff I don't see. There's also some really dumb cleaning robot,
no doubt there will be more and smarter robots next. I'd really
like to equip a helicopter with remote video, a hi-res camera
pointing downwards, and a GPS autopilot, to explore the neighbourhood
a little.

> I'm sure you don't now.

Why are you letting coyotes roam the New York Central Park?
 
> > But math is just a particular production system, a subset
> > of culture.
> 
> What?!?  Heresy.  Plain and simple.  Actually, mathematics
> rules the universe, or so it has seemed since the time of

Mathematics is what people do. Universe doesn't do mathematics.
Few people do mathematics, too.

> Galileo. It's another discussion, but I'm a strict mathematical
> Platonist (i.e. "17 exists and has the properties it does
> completely independently of culture or intelligence").

I have absolutely no problems with the universe being
an introspection view of a formal process (though I
will only consider it seriously when there is a TOE
based on it), but 17 is a symbol in space encoded
between our ears, and in systems built by us (excluding
aliens elsewhere, which might or might not be there).
Remove all that instances of that particulary structured
matter in space, and instantly 17 vanishes in a 
cloud of faulty logic.
 
> Well, we have to revel in something. At some point, math (and
> engineering more advanced versions of ourselves) will be all
> that is left. And the whole point of this thread, so far as
> I am concerned, is making the point that the pleasure is more
> important than what you get it from.

Evolutionary processes allocate pleasure. Evolution doesn't stop,
so tamper with that allocation algorithms at your peril.
 
> Well, as Russell has asked me, just how do you intend to spend
> the next trillion or so years (granted that we get lucky) if
> not on mathematics?

I intend to do the same thing I do now: in social interactions,
a bit of construction and maintenance, research, and the like.
I do agree that research of native spacetime artifacts will eventually
become less and less worthwhile, so co-evolutionary systems will
largely concern themselves with self-generated complexity (compare
social life of primates with reptiles with procaryontes). Study
of formal systems will no doubt continue as well.
 
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From natasha at natasha.cc  Fri Jun 30 15:04:40 2006
From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 10:04:40 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] SURVIVAL:  An impulse behind transhumanism?
In-Reply-To: <200606300558.k5U5wMtT025895@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <6.2.1.2.2.20060628094458.03f96a10@pop-server.austin.rr.com>
	<200606300558.k5U5wMtT025895@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20060630095927.043f62d8@pop-server.austin.rr.com>

At 12:58 AM 6/30/2006, Brandon wrote:
> > Someone asked me recently what the impulse behind transhumanism was.  I 
> said survival.
>
>Transhumanists seek not just to survive, but to transcend and to become 
>something more than merely human.

Yes, although I am looking at the "impulse" that motivates the 
desires.  Improving the human condition is what transhumanism is actively 
seeking to accomplish.  Why if it is not driven by the impulse to survive?

>  The singular phrasing of the question as "what is the" impulse is 
> limiting. Movements generally have many impulses.

Certainly.

>To become movements there has to be something that speaks to a multitude 
>of people from varying backgrounds. Transhumanism is derived from several 
>impulses. I have no idea exactly what these impulses are, but here are a 
>few possibilities:
>
>-          Epic Curiosity. The desire to know more about the universe and 
>the self. To reason out the hows and whys of reality. Epic Curiosity is 
>not purely analytical; it is also artistic and vibrant. This impulse seems 
>to me to be fundamental to any human who is at some basic level of 
>education and need-fulfillment.
>-          Rational Truth. Transhumanists are possessed of a desire to 
>seek total rational truth. Truth that begins as conjecture and is tested 
>as theory. Truth that is subject to revision should new evidence come to light.
>-          Ethical Hedonism. We want to survive because we like life. We 
>like the trappings and sensations of living. We want to explore the 
>complete potential of experience, but do so in a way that allows us to 
>reset the system and try again in other directions. We do not hope to 
>merely survive forever, but to survive on our personal eudaimonic terms. 
>We want to extend our ability to live beyond its biological limitations 
>not just so we can continue living, but so we can live broader, bolder, 
>enriched lives. We want our cake and we want to eat it, too. At the same 
>time, transhumanists recognize the ethical limitations of personal desire 
>and the social objective of establishing a posthuman community.
>-          Intellectual Empathy. Many transhumanists can make themselves 
>feel pretty horrible thinking about all sorts of things that other people 
>simply don't think about. We understand the immense and catastrophic 
>information loss each time someone dies. We conjecture, in a sort of 
>physicalist way, that death as a systemic process is probably avoidable. 
>Moreover, we understand that to not make an effort to find out for sure if 
>death is curable, we condemn our society to continued catastrophic 
>information loss. We feel an emotional response to this. This is the 
>transhuman social imperative.
>
>I'm sure there are other things that could be classified as types of 
>impulses. I don't think survival is enough. Just wanting to survive 
>wouldn't necessarily lead to transhumanism. It's one thing to want to 
>survive, it's another thing to be perfectly willing to survive in a 
>non-biological substrate and to not discard that scenario out of hand as 
>impossible.

We could find a bevy of impulses to be sure.

>Transhumanism is maybe a kind of radical supercharged survivalism and it's 
>all of these other impulses that push it beyond just wanting to stay alive.

Well said Brandon.

Natasha

<http://www.natasha.cc/>Natasha <http://www.natasha.cc/>Vita-More
Cultural Strategist - Designer
President, <http://www.extropy.org/>Extropy Institute
Member, <http://www.profuturists.com/>Association of Professional Futurists
Founder, <http://www.transhumanist.biz/>Transhumanist Arts & Culture

If you draw a circle in the sand and study only what's inside the circle, 
then that is a closed-system perspective. If you study what is inside the 
circle and everything outside the circle, then that is an open system 
perspective. - Buckminster Fuller


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From natasha at natasha.cc  Fri Jun 30 15:06:56 2006
From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 10:06:56 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: SURVIVAL: An impulse behind transhumanism?
References: <380-22006642923331562@M2W126.mail2web.com>
Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20060630100603.04417a70@pop-server.austin.rr.com>

At 08:16 PM 6/29/2006, Keith wrote:
> >http://emotionalliteracyeducation.com/abraham-maslow-theory-human-motivation
> >.shtml
>
>While it isn't all wrong, this work is not rooted in science and is just
>full of BS.
>
>Maslow was a pioneer in the area, but he died long before the biology folks
>started shoving a science base under psychology.

Please elaborate.


<http://www.natasha.cc/>Natasha <http://www.natasha.cc/>Vita-More
Cultural Strategist - Designer
President, <http://www.extropy.org/>Extropy Institute
Member, <http://www.profuturists.com/>Association of Professional Futurists
Founder, <http://www.transhumanist.biz/>Transhumanist Arts & Culture

If you draw a circle in the sand and study only what's inside the circle, 
then that is a closed-system perspective. If you study what is inside the 
circle and everything outside the circle, then that is an open system 
perspective. - Buckminster Fuller


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From hkhenson at rogers.com  Fri Jun 30 15:39:55 2006
From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 11:39:55 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: SURVIVAL: An impulse behind transhumanism?
In-Reply-To: <6.2.1.2.2.20060630100603.04417a70@pop-server.austin.rr.com
 >
References: <380-22006642923331562@M2W126.mail2web.com>
Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20060630112322.04994760@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>

At 10:06 AM 6/30/2006 -0500, you wrote:
>At 08:16 PM 6/29/2006, Keith wrote:
>> > 
>> http://emotionalliteracyeducation.com/abraham-maslow-theory-human-motivation
>> >.shtml
>>
>>While it isn't all wrong, this work is not rooted in science and is just
>>full of BS.
>>
>>Maslow was a pioneer in the area, but he died long before the biology folks
>>started shoving a science base under psychology.
>
>Please elaborate.

http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html

"The goal of research in evolutionary psychology is to discover and 
understand the design of the human mind. Evolutionary psychology is an 
approach to psychology, in which knowledge and principles from evolutionary 
biology are put to use in research on the structure of the human mind. It 
is not an area of study, like vision, reasoning, or social behavior. It is 
a way of thinking about psychology that can be applied to any topic within it.

"In this view, the mind is a set of information-processing machines that 
were designed by natural selection to solve adaptive problems faced by our 
hunter-gatherer ancestors."

Evolutionary psychology may not be the ultimate way to understanding 
humans, but in my view is superior to any other approach I know 
about.  Even if it is somewhat depressing.

Keith Henson



From natasha at natasha.cc  Fri Jun 30 15:21:35 2006
From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 10:21:35 -0500
Subject: [extropy-chat] H+, autism, selection effects, biases
In-Reply-To: <200606292341.k5TNf59Z021707@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
References: <44A4041B.7090304@betterhumans.com>
	<200606292341.k5TNf59Z021707@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20060630101259.043f5d30@pop-server.austin.rr.com>

At 06:30 PM 6/29/2006, Spike wrote:

>... I have noticed a definite social clumsiness in the
>extropians and the definitely the mathematicians, but not with the bikers.

Oh, big turn off.  I notice many well-balanced extropes, especially those 
of us who practice yoga or are dancers.

>This seems counterintuitive to me, since the mathematicians have by far the
>most in common, the extropians next.  The biker individuals actually have
>very little in common, other than we happen to own this particular oddball
>machine.  But whenever we bikers gather we have a rollicking good old time,
>they are a hoot.  Extropian gatherings are always fun with far more
>interesting conversations, but I wouldn't really say that we bond as well,
>or form close friendships as much.  The mathematicians, forget it.
>Interesting math talk, but real flesh world friendships seemed DOA there.
>
>Comments welcome.

Really great survey Spike.  Here is one thing I notice: High percentage of 
styles without designer labels (or knock off labels for that matter)

Toward a more aesthetic transhumanism,

Natasha 



From jef at jefallbright.net  Fri Jun 30 16:20:15 2006
From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 09:20:15 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do
In-Reply-To: <POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEGHGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
References: <20060627102655.GS28956@leitl.org>
	<POEOKMIMHFDKGFHAMEPEIEGHGAAA.lcorbin@tsoft.com>
Message-ID: <22360fa10606300920g589b96fat31ff92293d0cb2b0@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/29/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
> But it's so *hard* to extrapolate from non-human viewpoints :-)
> At least for me (I'm less sure about you!)

That's an interesting statement.  On the surface it may seem obvious
and common-sensical but it seems to carry a hidden assumption.
Consider this alternate and ask whether anything substantial is
missing:  "But it's so hard to extrapolate non-human behavior."

I find that we can quite effectively extrapolate (predict) the
behavior of dogs, apes, spiders, etc. Tell me, human, what is this
essential "viewpoint" of which you speak?


>
> More seriously, I totally agree that we shouldn't over assume
> that our own values will predominate; indeed, Darwin has to
> remain the best guide. As an example, recall the SF stories
> and movies in which it was just *assumed* that more advanced
> creatures would be benevolent, would have "risen above" our
> lowly morals. But in the end, one must ask, what sorts of
> algorithms will dominate the computronium of the far future?
> And the answer need not be too bleak: after all, Earth's
> currently most advanced life form is rather altruistic.

Lee, while I generally agree with your point here, for the sake of
clarity in this sort of discussion we might do well to abandon the
term "altruistic" as it is deeply tied to the irrational behavior of
an agent putting the good of others over its own (within a given
context.)

Altruism certainly does exist, in the form of evolved programming that
causes individuals to act to their local detriment for the good of
their larger group (or some proxy), but in our discussions on the
Extropy list we are more often interested in "enlightened
self-interest", dynamics of cooperation/synergy over increasing scope,
or superrationality.


> (It bears repeating that humans engage in violence far, far
> less per observed hour than does any other primate.)


And it may bear repeating that this trend is not based on increasing
niceness or goodness, but rather on increasing awareness of
positive-sum behaviors that work over increasing scope.  We're moving
away from focusing on ends (that person/tribe is our enemy) and toward
effective principles of growth (that person/tribe may eventually
become a McDonalds franchise.)

- Jef


From jef at jefallbright.net  Fri Jun 30 16:30:48 2006
From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 09:30:48 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: SURVIVAL: An impulse behind transhumanism?
In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20060630112322.04994760@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>
References: <380-22006642923331562@M2W126.mail2web.com>
	<5.1.0.14.0.20060630112322.04994760@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>
Message-ID: <22360fa10606300930q78e159fere051552a3ee9294d@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/30/06, Keith Henson <hkhenson at rogers.com> wrote:
> At 10:06 AM 6/30/2006 -0500, you wrote:
> >At 08:16 PM 6/29/2006, Keith wrote:
> >> >
> >> http://emotionalliteracyeducation.com/abraham-maslow-theory-human-motivation
> >> >.shtml
> >>
> >>While it isn't all wrong, this work is not rooted in science and is just
> >>full of BS.
> >>
> >>Maslow was a pioneer in the area, but he died long before the biology folks
> >>started shoving a science base under psychology.
> >
> >Please elaborate.
>
> http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html
>
> "The goal of research in evolutionary psychology is to discover and
> understand the design of the human mind. Evolutionary psychology is an
> approach to psychology, in which knowledge and principles from evolutionary
> biology are put to use in research on the structure of the human mind. It
> is not an area of study, like vision, reasoning, or social behavior. It is
> a way of thinking about psychology that can be applied to any topic within it.
>
> "In this view, the mind is a set of information-processing machines that
> were designed by natural selection to solve adaptive problems faced by our
> hunter-gatherer ancestors."
>
> Evolutionary psychology may not be the ultimate way to understanding
> humans, but in my view is superior to any other approach I know
> about.  Even if it is somewhat depressing.
>

Keith, I agree with you that Maslow operated without the benefit of
current thinking in evolutionary psychology (and it shows), but
wouldn't you agree that his hierarchy of needs still generally holds
and was intended to be descriptive while evolutionary psychology is
intended to be explanatory?

- Jef


From jef at jefallbright.net  Fri Jun 30 16:58:40 2006
From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 09:58:40 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] H+, autism, selection effects, biases
In-Reply-To: <6.2.1.2.2.20060630101259.043f5d30@pop-server.austin.rr.com>
References: <44A4041B.7090304@betterhumans.com>
	<200606292341.k5TNf59Z021707@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<6.2.1.2.2.20060630101259.043f5d30@pop-server.austin.rr.com>
Message-ID: <22360fa10606300958s73c71ed3h781cf35e822d6b31@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/30/06, Natasha Vita-More <natasha at natasha.cc> wrote:
> At 06:30 PM 6/29/2006, Spike wrote:
>
> >... I have noticed a definite social clumsiness in the
> >extropians and the definitely the mathematicians, but not with the bikers.
>
> Oh, big turn off.  I notice many well-balanced extropes, especially those
> of us who practice yoga or are dancers.

Natasha, I can't tell whether you're exhibiting dry humor here, or
perhaps confusing well-balanced in social terms with well-balanced in
terms of the "mussel-control" of dancers and yoga practitioners.  If
it's the latter, then I am certainly well-balanced as a motorcyle
rider, but remain awkward in social settings when I don't have a clear
goal other than to just be sociable.

Chit-chat and shallow conversation have always bored me to an extent
surpassing most physical pain.  However, I finally learned how to
function effectively in such free-form social settings:  I set myself
the clear goal of learning something about the other person(s) and
then, if possible, communicating at least one meaningful idea that
they might be receptive to.  At that point it becomes a goal-oriented
project to which I can apply my native skills. No more
fish-out-of-water experience, but whether it's enjoyable still depends
on the particular persons.

Surprising, and a bit sad that it took me many years to learn this.

- Jef


From eugen at leitl.org  Fri Jun 30 17:21:47 2006
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 19:21:47 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat] H+, autism, selection effects, biases
In-Reply-To: <22360fa10606300958s73c71ed3h781cf35e822d6b31@mail.gmail.com>
References: <44A4041B.7090304@betterhumans.com>
	<200606292341.k5TNf59Z021707@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<6.2.1.2.2.20060630101259.043f5d30@pop-server.austin.rr.com>
	<22360fa10606300958s73c71ed3h781cf35e822d6b31@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20060630172147.GM26630@leitl.org>

On Fri, Jun 30, 2006 at 09:58:40AM -0700, Jef Allbright wrote:

> it's the latter, then I am certainly well-balanced as a motorcyle
> rider, but remain awkward in social settings when I don't have a clear
> goal other than to just be sociable.

I've found that empathogens (MDMA/MDA) can extract enjoyable
experiences from encounters that otherwise wouldn't be worthwhile.
Unfortunately, this isn't something you can do very often in
life, without fearing consequences. 

Apropos of nothing, do we have any deprenyl (selegiline) users here?
Any cautionary tales of low (5 mg/week or so, for 40 yo) regimes,
long-term?
 
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From amara at amara.com  Fri Jun 30 17:46:23 2006
From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 19:46:23 +0200
Subject: [extropy-chat]  The Extropy of Cooking
Message-ID: <p06230900c0cb12c72f10@[150.146.134.133]>

J. Andrew Rogers andrew at ceruleansystems.com :
>That is a very good looking recipe,
[...]
>Is the Parmesan cheese that you use fresh or aged? 


you got me... I just buy chunks at the local market which have a
"Parmigiano Reggiano" stamped on the side! Let's see... checking
Wikipedia [1], that means that it is aged at least 2 years.

I asked my colleagues at lunch today to get the real scoop, and they
said that the cheese must definitely be well aged for Melanzane alla
Parmigiana. So there you go. :-)

Amara

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmigiano_Reggiano

-- 

********************************************************************
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/
********************************************************************
"Everything you see I owe to spaghetti."  --Sophia Loren, actress


From nvitamore at austin.rr.com  Fri Jun 30 21:01:10 2006
From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 17:01:10 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] Jackson Pollock
Message-ID: <380-22006653021110406@M2W126.mail2web.com>

Our friend Nadia Reed (QueeneMuse) just send me this and I thought I'd pass
it along with her warm "hello" to everyone:

Re: http://jacksonpollock.org/

Natasha

--------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .





From nvitamore at austin.rr.com  Fri Jun 30 21:03:12 2006
From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 17:03:12 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] H+, autism, selection effects, biases
Message-ID: <380-22006653021312109@M2W017.mail2web.com>

From: Jef Allbright jef at jefallbright.net

On 6/30/06, Natasha Vita-More <natasha at natasha.cc> wrote:
> At 06:30 PM 6/29/2006, Spike wrote:
>
> >... I have noticed a definite social clumsiness in the
> >extropians and the definitely the mathematicians, but not with the
bikers.
>
> Oh, big turn off.  I notice many well-balanced extropes, especially those
> of us who practice yoga or are dancers.

"Natasha, I can't tell whether you're exhibiting dry humor here, or
perhaps confusing well-balanced in social terms with well-balanced in
terms of the "mussel-control" of dancers and yoga practitioners.  If
it's the latter, then I am certainly well-balanced as a motorcyle
rider, but remain awkward in social settings when I don't have a clear
goal other than to just be sociable."

Wry. :-)  And this is quite coy of you mention the mussel thang.  haha. 

I did answer this post already - about 2 hours ago, so I'll stop short here
and wait to see if it makes it to the list.  Maybe I ought to have sent it
by motorcyle.

Natasha

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From mstriz at gmail.com  Fri Jun 30 21:05:56 2006
From: mstriz at gmail.com (Martin Striz)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 17:05:56 -0400
Subject: [extropy-chat] H+, autism, selection effects, biases
In-Reply-To: <20060630172147.GM26630@leitl.org>
References: <44A4041B.7090304@betterhumans.com>
	<200606292341.k5TNf59Z021707@andromeda.ziaspace.com>
	<6.2.1.2.2.20060630101259.043f5d30@pop-server.austin.rr.com>
	<22360fa10606300958s73c71ed3h781cf35e822d6b31@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060630172147.GM26630@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <cd9526860606301405o5f3db904vc13a58f6052d2e48@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/30/06, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

> I've found that empathogens (MDMA/MDA) can extract enjoyable
> experiences from encounters that otherwise wouldn't be worthwhile.
> Unfortunately, this isn't something you can do very often in
> life, without fearing consequences.
>
> Apropos of nothing, do we have any deprenyl (selegiline) users here?
> Any cautionary tales of low (5 mg/week or so, for 40 yo) regimes,
> long-term?

I've tried 5 mg/d for several weeks without much effect, although
there may have been confounds.  I'm always a little worried about the
possibility of a link between dopaminergics and parkinsonism or
shizophrenism, although that's probably only true for hardcore
pharmacons like amphetamines which enter the axon terminal.
Parkinson's results from a reduction in dopaminergic neurons, and
amphetamines have measurable toxicity on these fibers, but
paradoxically some claim that selegiline is neuroprotective on
dopaminergic neurons.

MDMA/MDA are ring-substituted amphetamines with a completely different
pharmacological profile and more potent neurotoxicity, although it's
unclear whether that toxicity translates to longterm cognitive
deficits (probably not for anyone who keeps their dosage below 200
mg/month).  Significant re-arborization of the axon terminals occurs
by the fourth administration of MDx compounds, although lots of people
use it hundreds of times without noticeable longterm effects
(inversely proportional to age).

Then there's this guy: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4874938.stm

It's unlikely that he actually took 40,000 hits.  That would be an
average of 12 a day (~1200 mg), every day, for the entire 9 year
period.  Since he has poor memory by his own admission, his report is
questionable.  But even if he only took 10,000 that should be a
lesson.  Don't take 10,000 of anything.  Not that we need to be told
that.

Martin


From spike66 at comcast.net  Fri Jun 30 23:21:57 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 16:21:57 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: SURVIVAL: An impulse behind transhumanism?
In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20060630112322.04994760@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>
Message-ID: <200606302333.k5UNXoMt010712@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Keith Henson
...
> 
> http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html
> 
> "The goal of research in evolutionary psychology is to discover and
> understand the design of the human mind. Evolutionary psychology is an
> approach to psychology, in which knowledge and principles from
> evolutionary biology are put to use...

> Keith Henson


OK Keith, I have one.  We have all heard the phrase, "Shhh, don't wake the
baby."  My observation with the newest extropian is that he doesn't mind
noise one bit, loud ones, even a lot of clattery din.  We had his hearing
checked, it is fine.  Then we noticed as soon as all the lights go out and
it gets quiet, such as at bedtime, he freaks out and puts a stop to it
forthwith.  Why?

Possible explanation: for 99% of the time evolution has been shaping the
human mind, any environment that is still and quiet could be bad news for
babies.  Surely the Double Barreled Chow Wagon has been devoured by some
carnivorous beast!  My choices here: 1) sit still and quiet, or 2) scream my
head off.  If choice 2) then either a) some carnivorous beast will hear and
devour me, or b) other DBCWs will hear and discover me, and thrust boobs
into my face (delightful creatures these DBCWs).  If choice 1) then either
a) some beast will eventually devour me anyway, or b) I am never discovered
by anything and starve in a couple days.

Choice 2b is the only fate of the four which would result in some
possibility of this set of genes being passed along, which means we all are
descended from those ancient infants whose instinct was to opt for choice 2.
Therefore modern babies will tend to scream their heads off when it gets too
still and quiet. 

Thank you very freaking much, evolution.  {8-[

spike


 




From spike66 at comcast.net  Fri Jun 30 23:46:52 2006
From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 16:46:52 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Jackson Pollock
In-Reply-To: <380-22006653021110406@M2W126.mail2web.com>
Message-ID: <200606302346.k5UNkr4w004725@andromeda.ziaspace.com>

Natasha!  Do ask QueeneMuse drop in just to say hi and tell us how are
things in her life.  Well I hope.  I remember her stuff from several years
ago.

spike

> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-
> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of nvitamore at austin.rr.com
> Sent: Friday, June 30, 2006 2:01 PM
> To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org; ART-tac at yahoo.groups.com
> Subject: [extropy-chat] Jackson Pollock
> 
> Our friend Nadia Reed (QueeneMuse) just send me this and I thought I'd
> pass
> it along with her warm "hello" to everyone:
> 
> Re: http://jacksonpollock.org/
> 
> Natasha




From kazvorpal at yahoo.com  Sat Jun 17 00:30:38 2006
From: kazvorpal at yahoo.com (KAZ)
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 00:30:38 -0000
Subject: [extropy-chat] Health data
In-Reply-To: <20060616162333.GA5571@ofb.net>
Message-ID: <20060617000350.43982.qmail@web50211.mail.yahoo.com>

----- Original Message ----

> We're at the bottom, and just looking at whites doesn't improve that (see
> below).  There's a wider range for females than males, and interesting
> variation in the F-M difference.  If you're male, you want to be
> Swedish (and moving to Britain might have cut Anders's life expectancy.
[...]
> So, tell me again how socialized medicine doesn't work.  Seems to work
> as well or better than ours for half as much money.

Socialism kicks our butts at using simplistic, inductive reasoning to fool people in their propoganda.
 
In this case, for example, you're not showing any causal relationship whatsoever.
 
Perhaps longer lifespans cause socialism.
 
Perhaps living near American Indians causes both liberty and shorter lifespans.
 
Perhaps it's proximity to Elvis' corpse.
 
Or, to be more seriously, perhaps it's distance from the equator. Which, by the way, is a serious statistical effect recognized by the scientific establishment worldwide. 
 
Sweden is farther from the equator than Sweden, Canada than the US.
 
And, in fact, if you compare states of the same latitude, the US compares favorably to Europe.
 
If you live in northern Russia, you have among the longest life expectancies on earth, longer than your southern Russian comrades, though you're a peasant with no indoor plumbing OR hospitals.
 
What's more, there's no solid evidence that anyone's health care system is what causes their given life expectancy at all.
 
Note that, for example, the reason Canadians and Europeans frequently come to the US if they are suffering from a life-threatening diseases is not simply that it's legal to buy health care without an 18 month waiting list. It's also because if you DO have a life-threatening disease, you're most likely to survive, statistically, in the US.
 
This whole nonsense of taking life expectancy and pretending that's some kind of measure SOLELY of health care system, not a million other factors, reminds me of the nonsense about infant mortality, where because the US has the /highest/ chance of saving a sick or premature infant, it ends up with an abnormally high infant mortality /statistic/.
 
See, if you're more than X weeks premature in, say, France, you're simply counted as stillborn. You're not an infant mortality statistic. But in the US, if you are born alive, or even in a state where they think maybe they can recessitate you, then they TRY, and if they fail you're a mortality.
 
Thus America's superior health care system /produces/ a higher infant mortality statistic, though you're more likely to survive as an infant here than anywhere else.
 
--
Words of the Sentient:
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.  --Oscar Wilde
E-Mail: KazVorpal at yahoo.com
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