From santostasigio at yahoo.com Sat Nov 1 05:22:44 2008 From: santostasigio at yahoo.com (giovanni santost) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2008 22:22:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." In-Reply-To: <490B41E4.8020009@mac.com> Message-ID: <778288.11236.qm@web31305.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Perfect, Well said. The lie that God exists (and he care?for us and he has plan for us after we die)?is actually fraud, billions and billions of people are defrauded every second of their rights to continue to exist, to live for ever,?a right that should be a birth right of mankind, even more important than freedom itself. People embrace death (even otherwise clever people) because they are sold this "last Santa Claus" lie (that they will continue to exist in Heaven or reincarnate and have another chance)?and so countless many buy it (because of ignorance, desperation, hope ?) But?this lie it is the biggest?fraud ever, not just a moral?infraction but?a criminal one.?What about starting a planetary class action?lawsuit against every religious organization for this ultimate crime against humanity? Any recovered funds (in the unlikely case we would win) should be used to advance the transhumanist cause. But even in the case we lost it would be a very strong public statement and symbolic action. --- On Fri, 10/31/08, samantha wrote: From: samantha Subject: Re: [ExI] "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." To: "ExI chat list" Date: Friday, October 31, 2008, 12:35 PM Emlyn wrote: > I've had some faithful types that I know see this, and comment on > "probably", like it's a big flaw, and say "isn't that just > agnosticism"? I think probably here means the same as it would in > "Santa Claus probably doesn't exist"; the probability is really really > close to 1. > > But I do agree with them to some extent. I'm happy to say "God does > not exist", when I mean it as a placeholder for "it is extraordinarily > unlikely that God exists". When talking about real world things, there > is always an implicit "probably", because the universe is messy and > reserves the right to surprise us. For instance, I would say "The sun > will rise tomorrow", when strictly you could only say "The sun will > very probably rise tomorrow". > > No one would have been worried about "There is no Santa Claus. Now > stop worrying and enjoy your life.", except that the kiddies might > discover the ruse (which we cover up, Santa being a kind of > training-god). It's too bad they couldn't have gone with "There is no > God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." > > That there is no God both is and is not a reason to not worry depending on one's model of what such a being might me and its implications for us. That there is no God and thus no afterlife etc. can be quite worrisome as it is the end of the cosmic "re-do" or "another chance". I think that the day when there being no God really sinks in is the day life-extension and other human+ technology gains major support. Those who believe that this human life is not all there is can't be bothered to care too much about extending it or even to fully consider death as much of a tragedy. This has implications across the moral/ethical spectrum. - samantha _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Nov 1 06:11:01 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2008 01:11:01 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." In-Reply-To: <778288.11236.qm@web31305.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <490B41E4.8020009@mac.com> <778288.11236.qm@web31305.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081101010827.022d64e8@satx.rr.com> At 10:22 PM 10/31/2008 -0700, Giovanni wrote: > this "last Santa Claus" lie I like that phrase so much I might steal it as a title for an essay or even a book. :) Google doesn't find this "last Santa Claus lie" so I guess it's your good coinage! Damien Broderick From stathisp at gmail.com Sat Nov 1 06:48:51 2008 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2008 17:48:51 +1100 Subject: [ExI] "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." In-Reply-To: <490B41E4.8020009@mac.com> References: <710b78fc0810222010v3f534635t4a0e833ccc929c5e@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0810271719wa8e444fma21a3e04a818f5c8@mail.gmail.com> <490B41E4.8020009@mac.com> Message-ID: 2008/11/1 samantha : > That there is no God both is and is not a reason to not worry depending on > one's model of what such a being might me and its implications for us. That > there is no God and thus no afterlife etc. can be quite worrisome as it is > the end of the cosmic "re-do" or "another chance". I think that the day > when there being no God really sinks in is the day life-extension and other > human+ technology gains major support. Those who believe that this human > life is not all there is can't be bothered to care too much about extending > it or even to fully consider death as much of a tragedy. This has > implications across the moral/ethical spectrum. Actually, "believers" don't behave as if they really believe in an afterlife. Their attitude to medicine, law enforcement or road safety is surely not much different than that of atheists; but why would you bother with those things if the worst that could happen was that you die and end up in Heaven? -- Stathis Papaioannou From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Sat Nov 1 12:10:43 2008 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2008 12:10:43 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] Zero to Infinity: The Foundations of Physics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <990392.15160.qm@web27008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> I saw the post and decided to check up on this book - after all, as a University of Liverpool alumnus, if it was published by the university's press I might be able to get it at a discount. I can't, because it's published by World Scientific of Singapore. I further checked my alma mater's website to find out what Mr Rowlands' speciality is. It turns out he belongs to the science communication unit. Now, that particular team is full of lovely people who often frequented my favourite pub near campus. However, their main focus is on science education and communicating science to the public. There are also people within it who are there because their multidisciplinary studies are having difficulty getting funding from other departments (such as the first PhD thesis of the department, on Egyptian mathematics - Liz Hind couldn't get funding from any archaeology or history body, but the science communication department had money to spend on research on the history of science or mathematics). I suspect Mr Rowlands is a "natural philosopher" whose research couldn't get funding from mainstream physics bodies, and of course there's very little research money in philosophy, as Anders Sandberg likes to remind people. From reading the introductory chapter, I feel Mr Rowland's work may be more of a work of philosophy rather than physics, but I'm glad that there are at least some academics working on the philosophical underpinning of physics. Tom From santostasigio at yahoo.com Sun Nov 2 01:45:58 2008 From: santostasigio at yahoo.com (giovanni santost) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2008 18:45:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <894547.58219.qm@web31304.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Because, believers (and there is a degree of belief in some of us, for something or the other) are irrational and hypocritical in their belief and behaviour. A believer would chant the glory of Heaven, but it would kill rather than been killed, would support a candidate for president that is for banning stem cell research and then sell their house to support such research if their child?is paralized in accident, they would believe in God when scared or alone and act in an ungodly and selfish way when everything is good and ok. --- On Sat, 11/1/08, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: From: Stathis Papaioannou Subject: Re: [ExI] "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." To: "ExI chat list" Date: Saturday, November 1, 2008, 1:48 AM 2008/11/1 samantha : > That there is no God both is and is not a reason to not worry depending on > one's model of what such a being might me and its implications for us. That > there is no God and thus no afterlife etc. can be quite worrisome as it is > the end of the cosmic "re-do" or "another chance". I think that the day > when there being no God really sinks in is the day life-extension and other > human+ technology gains major support. Those who believe that this human > life is not all there is can't be bothered to care too much about extending > it or even to fully consider death as much of a tragedy. This has > implications across the moral/ethical spectrum. Actually, "believers" don't behave as if they really believe in an afterlife. Their attitude to medicine, law enforcement or road safety is surely not much different than that of atheists; but why would you bother with those things if the worst that could happen was that you die and end up in Heaven? -- Stathis Papaioannou _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sun Nov 2 02:52:18 2008 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2008 13:52:18 +1100 Subject: [ExI] "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." In-Reply-To: <894547.58219.qm@web31304.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <894547.58219.qm@web31304.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2008/11/2 giovanni santost : > Because, believers (and there is a degree of belief in some of us, for > something or the other) are irrational and hypocritical in their belief and > behaviour. A believer would chant the glory of Heaven, but it would kill > rather than been killed, would support a candidate for president that is for > banning stem cell research and then sell their house to support such > research if their child is paralized in accident, they would believe in God > when scared or alone and act in an ungodly and selfish way when everything > is good and ok. That's my point, believers are hypocrites. While it's annoying that people still profess to believe nonsense, it is somewhat reassuring that they probably don't really believe it. -- Stathis Papaioannou From benboc at lineone.net Sun Nov 2 11:42:18 2008 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2008 11:42:18 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Finally, the atheism smear! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <490D921A.4000008@lineone.net> > Dole spokesman Dan McLagan said the "There is no God" line was > actually a recycled quote from a Godless Americans PAC representative > played earlier in the commercial. > > "Every word in the ad is true," he said. ROFL! Ben Zaiboc From aiguy at comcast.net Sun Nov 2 12:11:30 2008 From: aiguy at comcast.net (Gary Miller) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2008 07:11:30 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoyyour life." In-Reply-To: References: <894547.58219.qm@web31304.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <655008A628CD4149A23B8F8167EDA475@ZandraQuad> >Stathis Papaioannou said is response to giovanni santost >That's my point, believers are hypocrites. While it's annoying that >people still profess to believe nonsense, it is somewhat reassuring >that they probably don't really believe it. > 2008/11/2 giovanni santost : > >> Because, believers (and there is a degree of belief in some of us, for >> something or the other) are irrational and hypocritical in their belief >> and >> behavior. A believer would chant the glory of Heaven, but it would kill >> rather than been killed, would support a candidate for president that is >> for >> banning stem cell research and then sell their house to support such >> research if their child is paralyzed in accident, they would believe in >> God >> when scared or alone and act in an ungodly and selfish way when >> everything >> is good and ok. > It is as ridiculous to stereotype believers just as it is ridiculous to stereotype ethnic groups. The people who strap bombs to themselves and blow themselves up in the name of their beliefs are certainly not hypocrites, misguided by our standards of course but they are sacrificing themselves for their beliefs. And yes in any group of people there are some who will alter their beliefs or rationalize their behavior to fit their given circumstances making them hypocrites but to label everyone in that group hypocrites is to ignore the fact that many others within the group are willing to die or risk death for their beliefs through military service or missionary or relief work in dangerous countries. It is hard to pick up a paper without reading about missionaries being killed or raped in foreign lands for devoting their live for sharing their beliefs and still they go. How many Extropians and or Atheists have given their lives for their beliefs? Labeling believers beliefs irrational can only be done by assuming that they have had access to the same facts and information you have had. Many believers grow up isolated and highly indoctrinated into their belief systems and have been taught to demonize or to disbelieve other other belief systems. So without the information necessary to judge their beliefs as irrational their beliefs are rational to them. Many people leave their belief systems when exposed to alternate belief systems which either seem more correct of offer them something at an emotional level that is more comforting to believe in. But from my point of view , stereotyping believers is irrational and offensive to potential Extropians who do not share the atheist belief system. No one was ever converted from one belief to another by mockery and derision. From stathisp at gmail.com Sun Nov 2 13:27:59 2008 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 00:27:59 +1100 Subject: [ExI] "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoyyour life." In-Reply-To: <655008A628CD4149A23B8F8167EDA475@ZandraQuad> References: <894547.58219.qm@web31304.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <655008A628CD4149A23B8F8167EDA475@ZandraQuad> Message-ID: 2008/11/2 Gary Miller : > It is as ridiculous to stereotype believers just as it is ridiculous to > stereotype > ethnic groups. The people who strap bombs to themselves and blow > themselves > up in the name of their beliefs are certainly not hypocrites, misguided by > our > standards of course but they are sacrificing themselves for their beliefs. Well, yes, those people who blow themselves up so that they will go straight to heaven wouldn't do it if they didn't really believe it, so they're not hypocrites. > And yes in any group of people there are some who will alter their beliefs > or rationalize > their behavior to fit their given circumstances making them hypocrites but > to label > everyone in that group hypocrites is to ignore the fact that many others > within the group > are willing to die or risk death for their beliefs through military service > or missionary or > relief work in dangerous countries. > > It is hard to pick up a paper without reading about missionaries being > killed or raped in foreign lands > for devoting their live for sharing their beliefs and still they go. > > How many Extropians and or Atheists have given their lives for their > beliefs? This is a different use of the word "belief". Someone who sacrifices themselves to achieve some political aim could be said to "believe" in that political aim, but it's not the same as believing in an empirical fact, which is what religion claims. If we go to Heaven when we die, and heaven is a good place, then we shouldn't be too upset at the prospect of many people being killed by terrorists or natural disaster, for example. And yet religious people do get upset if something like that happens. I think this means that they have their doubts about the claim that we go to heaven when we die. They might like their church and they might even sacrifice themselves for the church or to help others - but they don't *really believe* the things the church presents to them as matters of fact, no matter how much they want to. > Labeling believers beliefs irrational can only be done by assuming that they > have had access to the same facts > and information you have had. Many believers grow up isolated and highly > indoctrinated into their > belief systems and have been taught to demonize or to disbelieve other other > belief systems. So without the information > necessary to judge their beliefs as irrational their beliefs are rational to > them. > > Many people leave their belief systems when exposed to alternate belief > systems which either seem more correct of > offer them something at an emotional level that is more comforting to > believe in. > > But from my point of view , stereotyping believers is irrational and > offensive to potential Extropians who do not > share the atheist belief system. No one was ever converted from one belief > to another by mockery and derision. You will note that I haven't said anything about whether religious beliefs are true, only about whether believers are rational. If someone claims to believe an empirical fact but acts in a way contrary to that fact, then he is being either irrational or hypocritical. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Nov 2 13:54:37 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2008 14:54:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoyyour life." In-Reply-To: <655008A628CD4149A23B8F8167EDA475@ZandraQuad> References: <894547.58219.qm@web31304.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <655008A628CD4149A23B8F8167EDA475@ZandraQuad> Message-ID: <580930c20811020554v693e55erafead5778e0d8bb8@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 1:11 PM, Gary Miller wrote: > It is as ridiculous to stereotype believers just as it is ridiculous to > stereotype > ethnic groups. The people who strap bombs to themselves and blow > themselves > up in the name of their beliefs are certainly not hypocrites, misguided by > our > standards of course but they are sacrificing themselves for their beliefs. I fully agree. By the way, it sounds as too quick a concession to me the acceptance of the language according to which monotheists would be "believers" as if the rest of the world would be "belief-challenged". Most of the rest of humankind does have factual beliefs - even though of course not immune to revision whenever new evidence comes along - as well as political, aestethical, ethical beliefs - which are instead not exposed to factual refutation, and which for the interested party may well be worth dying for as well as it is the case for a monotheist fighting for the true religion or the coming of the kingdom of heaven on earth. At best, all we can say is that an atheist hero expects to pay a higher price from accepting his own death, since post-death rewards are usually not part of its belief system. But even there the contribution he brings to some super-individual values or causes, or the moral satisfaction of consistency with his perceived duties, is obviously rewarding him enough. Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun Nov 2 19:10:44 2008 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2008 11:10:44 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Capitalizing on "Life Extension" Message-ID: <5E5467EEA2CA48A5B03DEC2BA0E8954B@patrick4ezsk6z> Life extension is often allied with the concept of cryonics. Unfortunately, life extension also seems to be betrothed to woo-woo "alt med" practitioners: http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2008/mar2008_Wellness-Profile-Dr-Eric-Braverman_01.htm I know it's not a new coupling, but of late I have been noticing more and more "complementary medicine" creeping into scientific medicine (e.g., my medical insurance at work covers stuff like chiropracty and acupuncture). Olga -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Nov 2 20:29:39 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2008 14:29:39 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Capitalizing on "Life Extension" In-Reply-To: <5E5467EEA2CA48A5B03DEC2BA0E8954B@patrick4ezsk6z> References: <5E5467EEA2CA48A5B03DEC2BA0E8954B@patrick4ezsk6z> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081102142228.024ceda8@satx.rr.com> At 11:10 AM 11/2/2008 -0800, Olga wrote: >of late I have been noticing more and more "complementary medicine" >creeping into scientific medicine (e.g., my medical insurance at >work covers stuff like chiropract[ic] and acupuncture). Even more puke-making (modulo effective placebo and barely conceivable psi effects), I believe "being prayed for" also gets coverage under some plans. I wonder what eventuated over the following bid? ======= Christian Science provision sought in healthcare law By Jeffrey Krasner, Globe Staff | August 28, 2006 Officials of the Christian Science Church are worried that the state's healthcare law will exclude faith healing as a recognized health benefit for its employees who do not receive traditional medical care because of their religious beliefs. The church, based in Boston, holds that illnesses should be treated with prayer, but a draft version of the healthcare reform regulations specifies that employers must contribute to workers' medical insurance coverage to comply with the landmark law that takes effect next year. Those that do not will be assessed $295 per employee annually. The law also requires Massachusetts residents to enroll in a health insurance plan or face penalties such as the loss of personal tax deductions. It exempts those who do not because of ``sincerely held religious beliefs," but there is no such provision for employers. Church officials this month told the Division of Health Care Financing and Policy that the non medical insurance coverage it offers employees should qualify as healthcare. It wants the rules to require ``health care " without referring to ``medical services." ``The Church does not think it is the Commonwealth's intention to dictate the `methods' under which health and well-being are achieved" under healthcare reform, wrote Claire Waterson , a spokeswoman and registered lobbyist for the church, in formal comments submitted to the state. ``The Church provides its employees with a wide range of health care benefit options, and one of these options is a health plan for spiritual healing." Along with written comments, the church provided fact sheets describing the two health plans it offers employees. For those who are not Christian Scientists, it pays about 70 percent of the premium for a standard managed-care medical plan provided by Tufts Health Plan. The second plan -- for employees who are church members -- is offered directly through the church and covers faith healing. It pays 90 percent of the cost of treatment by faith healers, who pray for patients in an effort to heal them of physical and spiritual ailments. The plan also features 90 percent coverage for home care by Christian Science nurses, who provide practical help such as changing bandages, but do not administer medication or any other type of medical care. Annual out-of-pocket expenses for participants in the Christian Science plan are capped at $1,000 for individuals and $3,000 for families. The church, whose headquarters at the intersection of Huntington and Massachusetts avenues is called The Mother Church, has about 550 employees in Massachusetts. About half of them choose the traditional health plan, and one quarter are enrolled in the faith-healing plan. Mark Unger, who describes himself as a metaphysician, qualifies under the church's faith-healing insurance plan to treat patients through prayer. He said his job is ``to lift up the patient above the physical level to the spiritual, to get them to look beyond the symptoms to the spiritual truth about what's going on." Unger charges $32 for a treatment, during which he prays for a patient to promote healing. The Ashland resident said he can pray anywhere, but prefers a quiet place, usually not with the patient. ``My style of prayer is just an absolute, quiet listening to God," he said. While he doesn't make medical diagnoses, Unger says he has cured a patient's skin cancer with prayer. ``It dried up and dropped off," he said. John Q. Adams of Boston, who said he has worked as a Christian Science faith healer full-time since 1985, described his treatments as prayers that focus on the specific needs of a patient. He said he charges $25 per treatment. ================================ Damien Broderick From pjmanney at gmail.com Sun Nov 2 20:52:49 2008 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2008 12:52:49 -0800 Subject: [ExI] PJ Manney and Christine Peterson on Fast Forward Radio tonight! Message-ID: <29666bf30811021252s5198f28dlb96c4cd658084b84@mail.gmail.com> PJ Manney and Christine Peterson are on Fast Forward Radio tonight to promote the Convergence08 unconference. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/fastforwardradio Please listen, but even better, please come to Convergence08! http://www.convergence08.org/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Nov 2 23:52:07 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2008 16:52:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Capitalizing on "Life Extension" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081102142228.024ceda8@satx.rr.com> References: <5E5467EEA2CA48A5B03DEC2BA0E8954B@patrick4ezsk6z> <7.0.1.0.2.20081102142228.024ceda8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670811021552m7a9c1904tbd26b10aab1230a@mail.gmail.com> I realize people need money to pay the bills (even "meta-physicians"), but using health insurance benefits to obtain prayer & faith healing seems extreme to me. I realize many Christian denominations require tithes to be paid and so this could be seen as simply the next step for some forms of 21st century Christianity. Damien, being that you believe on some level psi actually does exist, do you think at least a few of these faith healers may have a psionic ability (however weak) to heal others? 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URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon Nov 3 00:03:34 2008 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 00:03:34 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Capitalizing on "Life Extension" In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811021552m7a9c1904tbd26b10aab1230a@mail.gmail.com> References: <5E5467EEA2CA48A5B03DEC2BA0E8954B@patrick4ezsk6z> <7.0.1.0.2.20081102142228.024ceda8@satx.rr.com> <2d6187670811021552m7a9c1904tbd26b10aab1230a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 11:52 PM, John Grigg wrote: > Damien, being that you believe on some level psi actually does exist, do you > think at least a few of these faith healers may have a psionic ability > (however weak) to heal others? > For psi abilities, see: BillK From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Nov 3 00:19:33 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2008 18:19:33 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Capitalizing on "Life Extension" In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811021552m7a9c1904tbd26b10aab1230a@mail.gmail.com > References: <5E5467EEA2CA48A5B03DEC2BA0E8954B@patrick4ezsk6z> <7.0.1.0.2.20081102142228.024ceda8@satx.rr.com> <2d6187670811021552m7a9c1904tbd26b10aab1230a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081102180440.06271700@satx.rr.com> At 04:52 PM 11/2/2008 -0700, John Grigg wrote: >Damien, being that you believe on some level psi actually does exist, On some level? That would be on the level where I've published two books providing evidence that it does. >do you think at least a few of these faith healers may have a >psionic ability (however weak) to heal others? I don't know, but there's a vast literature in nursing and medicine on what's called (ugh) "therapeutic touch" or "therapeutic intent" that does seem to suggest this; double- or triple-blinded tests that appear to show effects going beyond placebo or self-induced immunity augmentation, etc. At least one recent study claimed that patients prayed for *did statistically worse* than controls. Bad stats? Let's hope so... [See e.g. "Therapeutic Intent/Healing Bibliography of Research" Compiled by Larry Dossey, M.D., and Stephan A. Schwartz linked at Paprs & Reports http://www.stephanaschwartz.com/home.htm I make no representations for the soundness of any of these papers, just their existence] But look--if psi is accepted as a batch of real phenomena that have evolved in conjunction with senses, effectors, metabolism, behavioral biases, etc, you'd certainly expect it to help optimize health. People respond physiologically when a cat comes to visit; why not (if psi is real) when someone distant is wishing them well? Lie down, John Clark, and place a cold compress over your forehead until the impulse passes. Damien Broderick From spike66 at att.net Mon Nov 3 00:57:25 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2008 16:57:25 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Capitalizing on "Life Extension" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081102180440.06271700@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <200811030057.mA30vMEh026663@andromeda.ziaspace.com> >...On Behalf Of Damien Broderick > ... > that does seem to suggest this; double- or triple-blinded > tests that appear to show effects going beyond placebo or > self-induced immunity augmentation, etc. At least one recent > study claimed that patients prayed for *did statistically > worse* than controls. Bad stats? Let's hope so... ... > Damien Broderick Prayer for the sick only works if you believe. Of course it is much easier to believe if you get better. The person doing the prayer must also be a believer, according to scripture. I would volunteer to be a placebo, for I am not personally a believer in the supernatural, but I can assure you I can still recite a prayer that will fool *everyone* in the room. To do a true double blind experiment, I suppose we would need a person who does not know if she is a believer, an agnostic in the truest sense. Or perhaps a person who fervently believes in a god but isn't sure that god exists. According to scripture, the fervent prayer of the righteous man availeth much. For that reason, we might assume the fervent prayer of the unrighteous availeth little, or perhaps opposite. So those praying in Damien's study should perhaps pray for the patient to perish? spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Nov 3 01:49:51 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:49:51 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Capitalizing on "Life Extension" In-Reply-To: <200811030057.mA30vMEh026663@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081102180440.06271700@satx.rr.com> <200811030057.mA30vMEh026663@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081102193328.062938d8@satx.rr.com> At 04:57 PM 11/2/2008 -0800, Spike wrote: >Prayer for the sick only works if you believe. Of course it is much easier >to believe if you get better. By protocol, the "you" who is the subject of the alleged distant treatment *does not know (by any normal means) if he or she is targeted*. That being so, if there's a significant difference in some medically relevant parameter at the end but not the start of the trial, patients' belief *can't* be the operative factor. Anyone is free to deny that any such evidence can possibly exist, and refuse to look at it. As with cold fusion, I don't have a dog in this fight. If anything, I'm biased against the idea, because it could all too easily lend itself to a revival of lunatic witch-hunting and repudiation of empirical medicine and surgery. That bias acts to deter me from reading much of the documentation. But my declared ignorance of it thereby prevents me from blanket nay-saying, and meanwhile a whole lot of medicos and nurses do attest to such effects as demonstrated in apparently good experimental protocols (see the biblio I url'd). Does this mean I'm *frightened* to examine the alleged evidence? Maybe so. >The person doing the prayer must also be a believer That would seem highly likely. My working assumption, of course, is that "prayers of healing" or "therapeutic intent" etc, if they do work, DON'T do so by persuading some Vast Eternal All-Wise Cosmic Creator of the Cosmos to fuck about with the immutable laws He set up, or by reprogramming the Matrix Simulation. My guess is that it would have to be some kind of nonlocal field effect, where the informational state of the "healer" somehow directly interfaces with relevant portions of the patient's brain/body and tweaks its immune system, say, rather in the way a part of one's own mind/brain can do the same thing to oneself through meditation, hypnosis, relaxation, etc. A guess only, of course, since I am neither a physicist nor a medico. Damien Broderick From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Mon Nov 3 02:16:42 2008 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2008 18:16:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Life Extension and Human Life Message-ID: <511260.34436.qm@web110402.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> There are huge differences between the concept of life extension and human life. From a biology point of view of our species we are like other planet species, different and combined. Sometimes we mix well and other times we don't. From a humane perspective we can all agree that, "Don't do unto others what you don't want done to you". From a psychology point of view you could say that the statement is contradictory as you wouldn't know "don't do unto others what you don't want done to you" unless you have already done it or experienced it. There are fine line definitions between beliefs, Gods, Rules and Regulations and/or Higher beings. Based on my view, I would like to live as long as I can. Whether my "higher being" or "beliefs" are real and rational, well I'll leave that up to behavioural psychologists. I still believe that everything is not a wisp and that a grand plan is still existent whether his name is God or not. I understand that under the Religious point of view this is not accepted. Too bad. I don't feel condemned any which way. My beliefs/ideas and/or thoughts are mine. I would hope that the greater good is what any knowledgeable person is hoping for whether they have had religious, spiritual and/or thought experiences. I hope to find a place like this. Live forever, for more time but live. If I am but a mere grain in the sand well at least I may be remembered for what I have tried to achieve for the good of all. Shouldn't any humane species want this? Just curious Anna __________________________________________________________________ Ask a question on any topic and get answers from real people. Go to Yahoo! Answers and share what you know at http://ca.answers.yahoo.com From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Nov 3 07:41:40 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 00:41:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] funny cartoon about super-longevity Message-ID: <2d6187670811022341m2d7c33b3o9f050400efb1446a@mail.gmail.com> A "Brad Neely's America" cartoon video about super-longevity and the future. Enjoy! http://www.adultswim.com/video/?episodeID=8a2505951d3e3a67011d5311478f00da John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Nov 3 07:47:08 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 00:47:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] funny cartoon about super-longevity In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811022341m2d7c33b3o9f050400efb1446a@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670811022341m2d7c33b3o9f050400efb1446a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670811022347k2dcf76b2h193044e6d8d3f6f7@mail.gmail.com> In case the episode I wanted you to see, "medicine", does not automatically come up, look for it on the lower right of the screen. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon Nov 3 08:47:58 2008 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 08:47:58 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Capitalizing on "Life Extension" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081102193328.062938d8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081102180440.06271700@satx.rr.com> <200811030057.mA30vMEh026663@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20081102193328.062938d8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 1:49 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > Anyone is free to deny that any such evidence can possibly exist, and refuse > to look at it. As with cold fusion, I don't have a dog in this fight. If > anything, I'm biased against the idea, because it could all too easily lend > itself to a revival of lunatic witch-hunting and repudiation of empirical > medicine and surgery. That bias acts to deter me from reading much of the > documentation. But my declared ignorance of it thereby prevents me from > blanket nay-saying, and meanwhile a whole lot of medicos and nurses do > attest to such effects as demonstrated in apparently good experimental > protocols (see the biblio I url'd). Does this mean I'm *frightened* to > examine the alleged evidence? Maybe so. > Prayer studies don't change anything. If you are a believer, you won't accept that prayer has no effect and will find lots of reasons that the study doesn't apply to you personally. If you are an unbeliever, you won't accept that prayer does work and will find lots of reasons for the study to be invalid. See: As they note, Christian Scientists kill their children at a higher rate because they forbid medical care. I like their final list of recommendations: * Laws to protect children from medical neglect in the name of healing should be passed and enforced. In states that allow religious exemptions from medical neglect, these exemptions should be revoked. Maybe the practice of faith healing on minors should be illegal. * Faith healing should no longer be deductible as a medical expense. * Reporters should be encouraged to do follow-up studies of people acclaimed to have been "healed." * "Healers" who use trickery to raise large sums of money should be prosecuted for grand larceny. BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Nov 3 10:35:38 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 11:35:38 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Capitalizing on "Life Extension" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081102142228.024ceda8@satx.rr.com> References: <5E5467EEA2CA48A5B03DEC2BA0E8954B@patrick4ezsk6z> <7.0.1.0.2.20081102142228.024ceda8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <580930c20811030235p260ec50fm8e358651a9f5c8d1@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 9:29 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 11:10 AM 11/2/2008 -0800, Olga wrote: > > > of late I have been noticing more and more "complementary medicine" >> creeping into scientific medicine (e.g., my medical insurance at work covers >> stuff like chiropract[ic] and acupuncture). >> > > Even more puke-making (modulo effective placebo and barely conceivable psi > effects), I believe "being prayed for" also gets coverage under some plans. > OTOH, we should not err too much on the side of established wisdom and academic science, especially since the same is a moving target. E.g., osteopathy or nutritional medicine used to be considered quackery, and by now their effectiveness in the appropriate context is hardly challenged any more... Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at comcast.net Mon Nov 3 11:42:45 2008 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2008 04:42:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] funny cartoon about super-longevity In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811022347k2dcf76b2h193044e6d8d3f6f7@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670811022341m2d7c33b3o9f050400efb1446a@mail.gmail.com> <2d6187670811022347k2dcf76b2h193044e6d8d3f6f7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <490EE3B5.2040300@comcast.net> John, Those were all great. Thanks Brent John Grigg wrote: > In case the episode I wanted you to see, "medicine", does not > automatically come up, look for it on the lower right of the screen. > > John > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Nov 3 12:04:23 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 13:04:23 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Capitalizing on "Life Extension" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081102193328.062938d8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081102180440.06271700@satx.rr.com> <200811030057.mA30vMEh026663@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20081102193328.062938d8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <580930c20811030404x1d35ccaei1fff98c898f85766@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 2:49 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > That would seem highly likely. My working assumption, of course, is that > "prayers of healing" or "therapeutic intent" etc, if they do work, DON'T do > so by persuading some Vast Eternal All-Wise Cosmic Creator of the Cosmos to > fuck about with the immutable laws He set up, or by reprogramming the Matrix > Simulation. My guess is that it would have to be some kind of nonlocal field > effect, where the informational state of the "healer" somehow directly > interfaces with relevant portions of the patient's brain/body and tweaks its > immune system, say, rather in the way a part of one's own mind/brain can do > the same thing to oneself through meditation, hypnosis, relaxation, etc. A > guess only, of course, since I am neither a physicist nor a medico. > Or it might even be a purely *local* effect, especially when we are more concerned with actual healing than with double-and-triple blindness, as it is the case for most of anedoctical (yet abundant) evidence. In fact, discarding placebo effects themselves as a mere disturbance to clinical studies seems stupid, and they should be better researched IMHO in the first place, as long as they appear by definition to influence the results of the trials. Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Mon Nov 3 12:07:30 2008 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 23:07:30 +1100 Subject: [ExI] Capitalizing on "Life Extension" In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081102180440.06271700@satx.rr.com> <200811030057.mA30vMEh026663@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20081102193328.062938d8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: 2008/11/3 BillK : > I like their final list of recommendations: > * Laws to protect children from medical neglect in the name of > healing should be passed and enforced. In states that allow religious > exemptions from medical neglect, these exemptions should be revoked. > Maybe the practice of faith healing on minors should be illegal. If faith healing were to work on anyone, it should work on children, since they are so credulous. On the other hand, perhaps the faith healer could be sued if he knew the patient was a cynical old fart. -- Stathis Papaioannou From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue Nov 4 23:58:24 2008 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2008 10:28:24 +1030 Subject: [ExI] The election's on... Message-ID: <710b78fc0811041558s176389a8lcef7894860efba32@mail.gmail.com> ... shhhh! quiet! We're concentrating! ... -- Emlyn http://emlynoregan.com - my home http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting http://speakingoffreedom.blogspot.com - video link feed of great talks on eCulture From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Nov 5 00:26:04 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:26:04 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The election's on... In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0811041558s176389a8lcef7894860efba32@mail.gmail.co m> References: <710b78fc0811041558s176389a8lcef7894860efba32@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081104182437.0247b500@satx.rr.com> At 10:28 AM 11/5/2008 +1030, Emlyn wrote: >... shhhh! quiet! We're concentrating! ... Too late! http://www.theonion.com/content/node/89550 ...a quite funny ONION video reporting the electoral successes of a Diebold voting machine. As a pal commented, drawing this US election-day entertainment to my attention, "I, for one, welcome our new machine 0ver10rd." Damien Broderick From emlynoregan at gmail.com Wed Nov 5 00:46:47 2008 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2008 11:16:47 +1030 Subject: [ExI] The election's on... In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081104182437.0247b500@satx.rr.com> References: <710b78fc0811041558s176389a8lcef7894860efba32@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20081104182437.0247b500@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0811041646ve85cf9bp87403068a1b46cc5@mail.gmail.com> 2008/11/5 Damien Broderick : > At 10:28 AM 11/5/2008 +1030, Emlyn wrote: > >> ... shhhh! quiet! We're concentrating! ... > > Too late! > > http://www.theonion.com/content/node/89550 > > ...a quite funny ONION video reporting the electoral successes of a Diebold > voting machine. > > As a pal commented, drawing this US election-day entertainment to my > attention, "I, for one, welcome our new machine 0ver10rd." > > Damien Broderick Of course we've known the result for months now: "Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF5Kdm4Eu6w -- Emlyn http://emlynoregan.com - my home http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting http://speakingoffreedom.blogspot.com - video link feed of great talks on eCulture From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 5 01:26:12 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 17:26:12 -0800 Subject: [ExI] The election's on... In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0811041646ve85cf9bp87403068a1b46cc5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200811050126.mA51QGCa023679@andromeda.ziaspace.com> ... > > At 10:28 AM 11/5/2008 +1030, Emlyn wrote: > > > >> ... shhhh! quiet! We're concentrating! ... Oh dear we are getting wiped out. It's a slaughter. Barely showing up in the noise. Everything is all about those other two characters, what's their names, Palin and Obama. All I hear is Palin, Obama, Palin, Obama. Looks like we won't even get half a percent. {8-[ spike From emlynoregan at gmail.com Wed Nov 5 04:08:38 2008 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2008 14:38:38 +1030 Subject: [ExI] The election's on... In-Reply-To: <200811050126.mA51QGCa023679@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <710b78fc0811041646ve85cf9bp87403068a1b46cc5@mail.gmail.com> <200811050126.mA51QGCa023679@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0811042008m200a0fc9r144acb77e6fba36e@mail.gmail.com> Congratulations on your new president-elect, USians! -- Emlyn http://emlynoregan.com - my home http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting http://speakingoffreedom.blogspot.com - video link feed of great talks on eCulture 2008/11/5 spike : > > ... >> > At 10:28 AM 11/5/2008 +1030, Emlyn wrote: >> > >> >> ... shhhh! quiet! We're concentrating! ... > > Oh dear we are getting wiped out. It's a slaughter. Barely showing up in > the noise. Everything is all about those other two characters, what's their > names, Palin and Obama. All I hear is Palin, Obama, Palin, Obama. Looks > like we won't even get half a percent. {8-[ > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Wed Nov 5 04:37:25 2008 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:37:25 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The election's on... In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0811042008m200a0fc9r144acb77e6fba36e@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0811041646ve85cf9bp87403068a1b46cc5@mail.gmail.com><200811050126.mA51QGCa023679@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0811042008m200a0fc9r144acb77e6fba36e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: "Emlyn" wrote, > Congratulations on your new president-elect, USians! Thanks. We know the whole world is watching us. Let's hope we can recover the country and the world from the past and get back on track toward the future. -- Harvey Newstrom From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Nov 5 05:44:44 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:44:44 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The election's on... In-Reply-To: References: <710b78fc0811041646ve85cf9bp87403068a1b46cc5@mail.gmail.com> <200811050126.mA51QGCa023679@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0811042008m200a0fc9r144acb77e6fba36e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081104234357.0231ac08@satx.rr.com> At 11:37 PM 11/4/2008 -0500, Harvey Newstrom wrote: >We know the whole world is watching us. Let's hope we can recover >the country and the world from the past and get back on track toward >the future. Also, a puppy! (I thought it was sweet.) Damien Broderick From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Wed Nov 5 05:22:36 2008 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 21:22:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] The election's won... In-Reply-To: <200811050126.mA51QGCa023679@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <679636.3315.qm@web65614.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Nearly three centuries of karma have been balanced this night. To quote the Scorpions: "The world is closing in Did you ever think That we could be so close, like brothers The future's in the air I can feel it everywhere Blowing with the wind of change Take me to the magic of the moment On a glory night Where the children of tomorrow dream away in the wind of change" Even McCain won tonight and his concession speech makes me think he has a sense of it. Cheer up, conservatives, affirmative action is probably going to go away now too. Stuart LaForge "To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." - Sun Tzu From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Wed Nov 5 06:16:53 2008 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 22:16:53 -0800 Subject: [ExI] The election's on... In-Reply-To: <200811050126.mA51QGCa023679@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <710b78fc0811041646ve85cf9bp87403068a1b46cc5@mail.gmail.com> <200811050126.mA51QGCa023679@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <20081105061653.GA12400@ofb.net> On Tue, Nov 04, 2008 at 05:26:12PM -0800, spike wrote: > Oh dear we are getting wiped out. It's a slaughter. Barely showing up in > the noise. Everything is all about those other two characters, what's their > names, Palin and Obama. All I hear is Palin, Obama, Palin, Obama. Looks > like we won't even get half a percent. {8-[ At the moment, Barr is getting more votes than the difference between Obama and McCain, ditto in North Carolina. In Montana, Ron Paul is getting more votes than the difference between Obama and McCain. Making A Difference! New Hampshire, OTOH, says DO NOT WANT. How'd that Free State Project go? -xx- Damien X-) From emlynoregan at gmail.com Wed Nov 5 06:48:34 2008 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2008 17:18:34 +1030 Subject: [ExI] The election's on... In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081104234357.0231ac08@satx.rr.com> References: <710b78fc0811041646ve85cf9bp87403068a1b46cc5@mail.gmail.com> <200811050126.mA51QGCa023679@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0811042008m200a0fc9r144acb77e6fba36e@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20081104234357.0231ac08@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0811042248j7a2867ddpe7143243eeb79396@mail.gmail.com> 2008/11/5 Damien Broderick : > At 11:37 PM 11/4/2008 -0500, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > >> We know the whole world is watching us. Let's hope we can recover the >> country and the world from the past and get back on track toward the future. > > Also, a puppy! > > (I thought it was sweet.) > > Damien Broderick "Yes kids, you can have a puppy when I become president", you'd think that would be safe enough, and then BAM. -- Emlyn http://emlynoregan.com - my home http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting http://speakingoffreedom.blogspot.com - video link feed of great talks on eCulture From nanogirl at halcyon.com Wed Nov 5 06:52:03 2008 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 22:52:03 -0800 Subject: [ExI] The election's won... In-Reply-To: <679636.3315.qm@web65614.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <679636.3315.qm@web65614.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: But come on Al Franken! Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/ Craft blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/ Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From emlynoregan at gmail.com Wed Nov 5 06:53:12 2008 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2008 17:23:12 +1030 Subject: [ExI] The election's on... In-Reply-To: References: <710b78fc0811041646ve85cf9bp87403068a1b46cc5@mail.gmail.com> <200811050126.mA51QGCa023679@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0811042008m200a0fc9r144acb77e6fba36e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0811042253t34fd1bc1ib9d8095bc9e72ce6@mail.gmail.com> 2008/11/5 Harvey Newstrom : > "Emlyn" wrote, >> >> Congratulations on your new president-elect, USians! > > Thanks. We know the whole world is watching us. Let's hope we can recover > the country and the world from the past and get back on track toward the > future. > > -- > Harvey Newstrom > Possibly you're not quite on the upswing yet... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/opinion/04tue1.html -- Emlyn http://emlynoregan.com - my home http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting http://speakingoffreedom.blogspot.com - video link feed of great talks on eCulture From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Nov 5 15:45:45 2008 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2008 09:45:45 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The election's on... In-Reply-To: References: <710b78fc0811041646ve85cf9bp87403068a1b46cc5@mail.gmail.com><200811050126.mA51QGCa023679@andromeda.ziaspace.com><710b78fc0811042008m200a0fc9r144acb77e6fba36e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <41844B90E8D74716945E2224F05F7476@DFC68LF1> Yes! Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Harvey Newstrom Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2008 10:37 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] The election's on... "Emlyn" wrote, > Congratulations on your new president-elect, USians! Thanks. We know the whole world is watching us. Let's hope we can recover the country and the world from the past and get back on track toward the future. -- Harvey Newstrom _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From hkhenson at rogers.com Wed Nov 5 20:46:09 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:46:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Nuclear-powered passenger aircraft 'to transport millions' says expert - EndOfGlobalWarming Message-ID: <1225918273_4868@s2.cableone.net> For anyone who thinks power sats and synthetic jet fuel are wild. Keith ============================================ October 27, 2008 Nuclear-powered passenger aircraft 'to transport millions' says expert Call for big research programme to help aviation industry convert from fossil fuels to nuclear energy Convair NB36H The United States experimented with a nuclear reactor aboard a B-36 jet bomber Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent Nuclear-powered aircraft may sound like a concept from Thunderbirds, but they will be transporting millions of passengers around the world later this century, the leader of a Government-funded project to reduce environmental damage from aviation believes. The consolation of sitting a few yards from a nuclear reactor will be non-stop flights from London to Australia or New Zealand, because the aircraft will no longer need to land to refuel. The flights will also produce no carbon emissions and therefore make no contribution to global warming. Ian Poll, Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Cranfield university, and head of technology for the Government-funded Omega project, is calling for a big research programme to help the aviation industry convert from fossil fuels to nuclear energy. In a lecture at the Royal Aeronautical Society tonight, Professor Poll will say that experiments conducted during the Cold War have already demonstrated that there are no insurmountable obstacles to developing a nuclear-powered aircraft. The United States and the Soviet Union both began developing nuclear-powered bombers in the 1950s. The idea was that these bombers would remain airborne, within striking distance of their targets, for very long periods. The United States tested a nuclear-powered jet engine on the ground and also carried out flight tests with a nuclear reactor on board a B-36 jet with a lead-lined cockpit over West Texas and Southern New Mexico. The reactor "ran hot" during the flights but the engines were powered by kerosene. The purpose of the flights was to prove that the crew could be safely shielded from the reactor. Each flight was accompanied by an aircraft packed with marines ready to respond to a crash by parachuting down and securing the area. The test programmes were abandoned in the early 1960s when the superpowers decided that intercontinental ballistic missiles made nuclear-powered planes redundant. In an interview with The Times, Professor Poll said: "We need to be looking for a solution to aviation emissions which will allow flying to continue in perpetuity with zero impact on the environment. "We need a design which is not kerosene-powered, and I think nuclear-powered aeroplanes are the answer beyond 2050. The idea was proved 50 years ago, but I accept it would take about 30 years to persuade the public of the need to fly on them." Professor Poll said the big challenge would be to demonstrate that passengers and crew could be safely shielded from the reactors. "It's done on nuclear submarines and could be achieved on aircraft by locating the reactors with the engines out on the wings," he said. "The risk of reactors cracking open in a crash could be reduced by jettisoning them before impact and bringing them down with parachutes." He said that, in the worst-case scenario, if the armour plating around the reactor was pierced there would be a risk of radioactive contamination over a few square miles. "If we want to continue to enjoy the benefits of air travel without hindrance from environmental concerns, we need to explore nuclear power. If aviation remains wedded to fossil fuels, it will run into serious trouble," he said. "Unfortunately, nuclear power has been demonised but it has the potential to be very beneficial to mankind." Professor Poll said an alternative to carrying nuclear reactors on aircraft would be to develop aircraft fuelled by hydrogen extracted from sea water by nuclear power stations. However, he said that while hydrogen could be suitable for ground-based transport, its energy density was much lower than kerosene and it would be very difficult to design a long-range passenger aircraft capable of carrying enough of the fuel. Rob Coppinger, technical editor of Flight International magazine, said it was more likely that nuclear reactors would be installed on unmanned air vehicles, used for reconnaissance or in combat, because there would be less need for heavy shielding than on a passenger plane. Professor Poll will also present research tonight into measures to improve the efficiency over the next decade of short-haul aircraft such as the Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320. He will say that the replacements for these aircraft are likely to fly more slowly, adding about 10 minutes to a typical flight within Europe. They are also likely to have open-rotor engines, which would use 20 per cent less fuel but could be much noisier than existing jet engines From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed Nov 5 21:40:11 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2008 14:40:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Disney Genetic Engineering in the News/The Onion Message-ID: <2d6187670811051340v49787ac5kb0b7f092ea7635c@mail.gmail.com> A funny but also sort of disturbing Onion.com video about genetically engineered actors: http://www.theonion.com/content/video/disney_lab_unveils_its_latest John ; ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pjmanney at gmail.com Thu Nov 6 00:04:10 2008 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2008 16:04:10 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Disney Genetic Engineering in the News/The Onion In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811051340v49787ac5kb0b7f092ea7635c@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670811051340v49787ac5kb0b7f092ea7635c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <29666bf30811051604p37333facm385781c471237ed7@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 1:40 PM, John Grigg wrote: > A funny but also sort of disturbing Onion.com video about genetically engineered actors: > http://www.theonion.com/content/video/disney_lab_unveils_its_latest LOVED it! Knowing what those kids go through, it's truer than you realize... ;-) PJ From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Nov 6 00:50:44 2008 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:50:44 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Disney Genetic Engineering in the News/The Onion In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811051340v49787ac5kb0b7f092ea7635c@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670811051340v49787ac5kb0b7f092ea7635c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20081105195044.pob179hggko8wcoc@webmail.natasha.cc> Wow! Fabulous! ahahahahah!!!! Thanks my dear John. P.S. This piece definitely gives more credence to the field of Bioart. I'll make sure I mention this in my next update in Brazil! (Brazil --- quite appropriate for this :-)) Quoting John Grigg : > A funny but also sort of disturbing Onion.com video about genetically > engineered actors: > > http://www.theonion.com/content/video/disney_lab_unveils_its_latest > > John ; ) > From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Thu Nov 6 00:08:42 2008 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:08:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The election's on... In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0811042253t34fd1bc1ib9d8095bc9e72ce6@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0811041646ve85cf9bp87403068a1b46cc5@mail.gmail.com><200811050126.mA51QGCa023679@andromeda.ziaspace.com><710b78fc0811042008m200a0fc9r144acb77e6fba36e@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0811042253t34fd1bc1ib9d8095bc9e72ce6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: "Emlyn" wrote, > Possibly you're not quite on the upswing yet... > http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/opinion/04tue1.html I expected this. Like father, like son. This is just the stuff we know about. We need full forensics audits and investigations to uncover all the stuff that we don't know about. -- Harvey Newstrom From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Nov 6 01:17:30 2008 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 11:47:30 +1030 Subject: [ExI] The election's on... In-Reply-To: References: <710b78fc0811041646ve85cf9bp87403068a1b46cc5@mail.gmail.com> <200811050126.mA51QGCa023679@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0811042008m200a0fc9r144acb77e6fba36e@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0811042253t34fd1bc1ib9d8095bc9e72ce6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0811051717q414edbdbr70a11fcadc6b0d76@mail.gmail.com> 2008/11/6 Harvey Newstrom : > "Emlyn" wrote, >> >> Possibly you're not quite on the upswing yet... >> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/opinion/04tue1.html > > I expected this. Like father, like son. > > This is just the stuff we know about. We need full forensics audits and > investigations to uncover all the stuff that we don't know about. > > -- > Harvey Newstrom Hopefully Obama's administration will make it a priority to get government info online in as accessible a format as possible (as per his policy), then us masses can help with the forensics. -- Emlyn http://emlynoregan.com - my home http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting http://speakingoffreedom.blogspot.com - video link feed of great talks on eCulture From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Thu Nov 6 11:01:10 2008 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado (CI)) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 09:01:10 -0200 Subject: [ExI] Nuclear-powered passenger aircraft 'to transport millions' says expert - EndOfGlobalWarming References: <1225918273_4868@s2.cableone.net> Message-ID: <030b01c93ffe$fb7cc130$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> KHenson>> Nuclear-powered passenger aircraft 'to transport millions' says expert Promises promises. I've been hearing of new kinds of planes forever. Nothing ever gets done and airplanes we see today are basically the same from the fifties, only bigger and with computers. Worse yet, until recently we had supersonic passenger flights and now they're gone. We have promises of hypersonic stratospheric scramjets, ramjets or whatever and nothing gets done. Even the Boeing 797 is only an internet rumour (http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/b/b797.htm). From wingcat at pacbell.net Thu Nov 6 21:12:22 2008 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 13:12:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] XCOR rides Message-ID: <665332.75882.qm@web81606.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Apologies for the spam, but I think news that this is happening at all is relevant for the lists I'm sending this to whether or not one is buying... XCOR Aerospace is planning on selling rides on its Lynx rocket, once testing is complete. See http://www.xcor.com/press-releases/2008/08-03-26_Lynx_suborbital_vehicle.html for the flight profile - it's an up-and-down, edge-of-space deal, not a full orbit but longer and higher than the existing alternatives. They're planning on starting sales (at $95K per ticket) next month, but since I'm an investor, they're letting me purchase rides for a significant discount - and letting me transfer said rides. So, anyone want to buy one? Contact me offlist if interested, and I can provide more details. From dagonweb at gmail.com Thu Nov 6 21:50:11 2008 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 22:50:11 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Nuclear-powered passenger aircraft 'to transport millions' says expert - EndOfGlobalWarming In-Reply-To: <030b01c93ffe$fb7cc130$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> References: <1225918273_4868@s2.cableone.net> <030b01c93ffe$fb7cc130$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> Message-ID: Whining idiots struggling to keep their revenue streams intact. Nuclear jets won't happen, unless cheney clones himself and becomes god-emperor of Terra. If these idiots want to move forward, away from the black heroin, they should do whatever it takes and increase terrestrial energy flows - there's only one way and that road lies up in spacebased energy. But the corporate shortterm whores need to start investing in longterm projects to do that and with the current economic paradigm, just wont happen. the Corporate system cant invest in anything with a pay off 25 years from now. If we don't move forward these losers should stop whining and invest in big-ass luxury zeppelins with PVs. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Nov 6 22:33:50 2008 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:33:50 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Chris Heward Project - Immediate Attention Message-ID: <20081106173350.s0pbs6fz3ks8440c@webmail.natasha.cc> Dear friends, A very close friend of many of us and a long-time member Extropy Institute, Chris Heward has been diagnosed with serious cancer. The Chris Heward Project is working with all other groups to actively and passionately let you all know what you can do to help Chris and his family. To help, please review and, if possible, fill out the form at: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=713744398 http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=713744398&v=box_3&viewas=5 45830089> &v=box_3&viewas=545830089 Please urge all your friends and family to do so as well. Thank you kindly for your support for someone who means so very much to many of us and who we love so dearly. Natasha Natasha Vita-More http://www.natasha.cc http://www.transhumanist.biz From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Nov 6 23:04:06 2008 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:04:06 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Chris Heward Project - Immediate Attention - NEW URL In-Reply-To: <20081106173350.s0pbs6fz3ks8440c@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <20081106173350.s0pbs6fz3ks8440c@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <20081106180406.yn2wre7ticgwowco@webmail.natasha.cc> As a follow-up, the url below goes directly to the announcement for Chris at the Kronos website (rather than to Facebook): http://www.depressedmetabolism.com/2008/11/06/help-kronos-chris-heward-fight-his-cancer/ Natasha Quoting natasha at natasha.cc: > Dear friends, > > A very close friend of many of us and a long-time member Extropy > Institute, Chris Heward has been diagnosed with serious cancer. > > The Chris Heward Project is working with all other groups to actively > and passionately let you all know what you can do to help Chris and > his family. > > To help, please review and, if possible, fill out the form at: > > http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=713744398 > > http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=713744398&v=box_3&viewas=5 > 45830089> &v=box_3&viewas=545830089 > > Please urge all your friends and family to do so as well. > > Thank you kindly for your support for someone who means so very much > to many of us and who we love so dearly. > > Natasha > > Natasha Vita-More > http://www.natasha.cc > http://www.transhumanist.biz > > From natasha at natasha.cc Fri Nov 7 15:42:31 2008 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2008 09:42:31 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The Chris Heward Project - Another URL Message-ID: <465126A7898849C7BB5F49DFEB34C8AC@DFC68LF1> As a follow-up, the url below goes directly to the announcement for Chris at the Kronos website (rather than to Facebook): http://www.depressedmetabolism.com/2008/11/06/help-kronos-chris-heward-fight -his-cancer/ Natasha Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: attd903.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 731 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Fri Nov 7 16:00:51 2008 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado (CI)) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2008 14:00:51 -0200 Subject: [ExI] Disney Genetic Engineering in the News/The Onion References: <2d6187670811051340v49787ac5kb0b7f092ea7635c@mail.gmail.com> <20081105195044.pob179hggko8wcoc@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <04c501c940f2$033e2f00$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> Natasha> P.S. This piece definitely gives more credence to the field of > Bioart. I'll make sure I mention this in my next update in Brazil! > (Brazil --- quite appropriate for this :-)) You're coming to Brasil? From mlatorra at gmail.com Fri Nov 7 23:49:57 2008 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2008 16:49:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Preditify - open prediction market Message-ID: <9ff585550811071549i15332302n3a8f3d1c6bf331bc@mail.gmail.com> "Predictify is a prediction platform that adds an interactive, forward-looking dimension to the news. You can read a news story, make a prediction on the topic, and have a discussion with other users all in one visit. Unlike a poll, we score every prediction against the actual outcome, so you can build a reputation over time based on the accuracy of your predictions. It's like fantasy sports for everything else." "Predictify also pairs well with content. Since launch, we've partnered with several major media companies to make their coverage more interactive, including the Washington Post , the San Francisco Chronicle , and a number of blogs. There are no display ads on Predictify. Instead, we offer sponsored questions for marketers who want to create highly-engaging advertising experiences. We charge advertisers $1 per prediction, and we share a portion of that fee with you, the predictors, based on your accuracy to encourage thoughtful participation and high-quality predictions (tell me more). Best of all, it's free - no points or bets required." http://www.preditify.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Sat Nov 8 17:21:30 2008 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2008 11:21:30 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Design, Economics & Social Systems Message-ID: This might be worth reviewing: http://www.thevenusproject.com/intro_main/aims.htm Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 731 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sat Nov 8 18:00:20 2008 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2008 13:00:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Crystal Nights by Greg Egan References: <710b78fc0811041646ve85cf9bp87403068a1b46cc5@mail.gmail.com><200811050126.mA51QGCa023679@andromeda.ziaspace.com><710b78fc0811042008m200a0fc9r144acb77e6fba36e@mail.gmail.com> <41844B90E8D74716945E2224F05F7476@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <1233C415BC2B4E7F8CE2A27B01350D2B@MyComputer> You can listen to the short story Crystal Nights by Greg Egan at: http://transmissionsfrombeyond.com/2008/09/transmission7/ It's pretty good and runs for 67 minutes John K Clark From natasha at natasha.cc Sun Nov 9 02:29:28 2008 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2008 20:29:28 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Video File - Download from Youtube Message-ID: <0A31532046474692A3AF277C2464C8A7@DFC68LF1> Hey, Can anyone help me download a small video clip from Youtube and email the file to me? I tried using Download Helper and it is not working. My video editors charge too much (actually, I have been pretty much supporting them this past year for providing video clips for my presentaions!); but I'd rather send a few $s to a transhumansit instead. [Video clip is of a apoptosis cell tranformation.] Email me offlist please! Create! Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 731 bytes Desc: not available URL: From ben at theflowingofthedao.com Sun Nov 9 05:53:34 2008 From: ben at theflowingofthedao.com (Benjamin Fritz Peterson) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2008 00:53:34 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Video File - Download from Youtube Message-ID: <0B6047FD-18D9-4543-A100-0ADF4CD7245D@theflowingofthedao.com> Hey Natasha, Try http://www.zamzar.com/url/ Cheers, Benny From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Sun Nov 9 13:53:31 2008 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2008 13:53:31 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] Anybody else trying superstruct? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <985664.49327.qm@web27004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> After seeing superstruct mentioned on Jamais Cascio's blog, I signed up the first week, made a profile, created a story, and a couple of weeks later joined a superstruct. The user interface is very clunky, and makes actually contributing anything worthwhile harder than it needs to be. I got a "ten days left!" message recently, and it listed which superstructs the "celebrity judges" think are interesting. This list demoralised me when it turned out I hadn't heard of these superstructs, except for one education one. I have discovered first-hand how easy it is to miss interesting stuff in a community of maybe six or seven hundred active participants. Maybe they'll do a Superstruct version 2 in future years which is user friendlier and gets better participation. Tom From sjatkins at mac.com Sun Nov 9 21:20:07 2008 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2008 13:20:07 -0800 Subject: [ExI] question for SF bay area folks Message-ID: <49175407.50905@mac.com> I am looking for a good anti-aging physician in this area. The south bay would be ideal but I am certainly willing to drive to the city. Thanks a lot for any recommendations and ideas. - samantha From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Nov 10 01:59:05 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2008 18:59:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "thoughts to live by" regarding youth subculture Message-ID: <2d6187670811091759i290b6f4am9e8d4d9501903c97@mail.gmail.com> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Nov 10 02:12:25 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2008 18:12:25 -0800 Subject: [ExI] "thoughts to live by" regarding youth subculture In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811091759i290b6f4am9e8d4d9501903c97@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200811100239.mAA2d3Dv000104@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Do let me be the first to admit to being so square as to admit I don't get it. I googled on Emo and learned of yet another genre of music that I just don't understand, but what that has to do with the apparently abused young lady is beyond my comprehench. Please someone who is younger and/or far more hip, do explain. Johnny? spike _____ From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Grigg Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2008 5:59 PM To: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List; ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] "thoughts to live by" regarding youth subculture -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Nov 10 05:38:07 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2008 22:38:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "thoughts to live by" regarding youth subculture In-Reply-To: <200811100239.mAA2d3Dv000104@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <2d6187670811091759i290b6f4am9e8d4d9501903c97@mail.gmail.com> <200811100239.mAA2d3Dv000104@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670811092138i1b4298b0xa34b78cc7b77b89d@mail.gmail.com> spike wrote: > Do let me be the first to admit to being so square as to admit I don't > get it. I googled on Emo and learned of yet another genre of music that I > just don't understand, but what that has to do with the apparently abused > young lady is beyond my comprehench. Please someone who is younger and/or > far more hip, do explain. Johnny? > > spike > Think of it along the lines of Goth, in that it is both a youth subculture and a genre of music. Emo is famous for having lyrics complaining about how rotten and unfair life is, and especially how women will do you wrong and totally break your heart, which of course happens to be true. ; ) John Taken from Wikipedia: Fashion and stereotype Long fringe (bangs) brushed to one side Today emo is more commonly tied to fashion than to music,[17]and the term "emo" is sometimes stereotyped with tight jeans on males and females alike, long fringe (bangs) brushed to one side of the face or over one or both eyes, dyed black, straight hair, tight t-shirts (sometimes short sleeved) which often bear the names of emo bands (or other designer shirts), studded belts , belt buckles, canvas sneakers or skate shoesor other black shoes (often old and beaten up) and thick, black horn-rimmed glasses .[18] [19] [20]This fashion has at times been characterized as a fad .[21] Another example of hair characteristic of emo In recent years the popular media has associated emo with a stereotype that includes being emotional, sensitive, shy, introverted, or angsty.[22] [23] [24]It is also associated with depression , self-injury, and suicide .[25] [26] Criticism In 2008, Time Magazine reported that "anti-emo" groups attacked teenagers in Mexico City, Quer?taro , and Tijuana .[27] [28] One of Mexico's foremost critics of emo was Kristoff, a music presenter on the popular TV channel Telehit. Gerard Way , the lead singer of My Chemical Romance stated in an interview that "emo is a pile of shit", and that his band was never emo.[29] Panic at the Discoalso stated in an interview with NME : "emo is bullshit."[30]These two bands, however, tend to be classified as emo. Fans of emo are criticized for purported displays of emotion common in the scene. Complaints pointed to the histrionicmanner in which the emotions were expressed. [31] In October 2003, a *Punk Planet *contributor leveled the charge that the current era of emo was sexist. Hopper argued that where bands such as Jawbox, Jawbreaker and Sunny Day Real Estate had characterized women in such a way that they were not "exclusively defined by their absence or lensed through romantic-specter",[32]contemporary bands approached relationship issues by "damning the girl on the other side ... its woman-induced misery has gone from being descriptive to being prescriptive." Regarding the position of women listening to emo, the contributor went on to note that the music had become "just another forum where women were locked in a stasis of outside observation, observing ourselves through the eyes of others." Critics of modern emo have argued that there is a tendency toward increasingly generic and homogenized style.[33] Emo music has been blamed for the suicide by hangingof Hannah Bond by both the coroner at the inquest into her death and her mother, Heather Bond, after it was claimed that emo music glamorized suicide and her apparent obsession with My Chemical Romance was said to be linked to her suicide. The inquest heard that she was part of an internet "emo" cult [ 34] and her Bebopage contained an image of an 'emo girl' with bloody wrists. [35] It was also revealed that she had discussed "the glamour of hanging" online[34]and had explained to her parents that her self harming was an "emo initiation ceremony".[35] Heather Bond criticised emo fashion, saying: "There are 'emo' websites that show pink teddies hanging themselves." After the verdict was reported in NME, fans of emo music contacted the magazine to defend against accusations that it promotes self harm and suicide.[36] In Russia, a law has been presented at the Dumato regulate emo websites and forbid emo style at schools and government buildings, for fears of emo being a "dangerous teen trend" promoting anti-social behaviour, depression, social withdrawal and even suicide.[37] (end of excerpt) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Nov 10 06:02:54 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2008 22:02:54 -0800 Subject: [ExI] "thoughts to live by" regarding youth subculture In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811092138i1b4298b0xa34b78cc7b77b89d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200811100602.mAA62qOo024437@andromeda.ziaspace.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Grigg Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2008 9:38 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] "thoughts to live by" regarding youth subculture spike wrote: Do let me be the first to admit to being so square as to admit I don't get it...spike >Think of it along the lines of Goth, in that it is both a youth subculture and a genre of music... Ja, I read about it, still don't get it. >Emo is famous for having lyrics complaining about how rotten and unfair life is... This I really don't get, for it seems to me this whole memeset keeps popping up, yet modern youth have it so made in so many ways, I can't imagine why the notion doesn't quietly go extinct. There are so many opportunites today, not just knocking but tearing the door off the hinges, I fail to grasp why the whole weird clothing, dark is this veil of tears attitude. Here's a good insprirational song for them, from thirty years ago, a straight up rock anthem that tells it like it was then and is now: Fooling Yourself (the Angry Young Man) You see the world through your cynical eyes You're a troubled young man I can tell You've got it all in the palm of your hand But your hand's wet with sweat and your head needs a rest You're foolin' yourself if you don't believe it You're kidding yourself if you don't believe it How can you be such an angry young man When your future looks quite bright to me How can there be such a sinister plan That could hide such a lamb, such a caring young man You're foolin' yourself if you don't believe it You're kidding yourself if you don't believe it Get up, get back on your feet You're the one they can't beat and you know it Come on, let's see what you've got Just take your best shot and don't blow it You're foolin' yourself if you don't believe it You're kidding yourself if you don't believe it Get up, get back on your feet You're the one they can't beat and you know it Come on, let's see what you've got Just take your best shot and don't blow it. >...and especially how women will do you wrong and totally break your heart, which of course happens to be true. ; ) John Come now Johnny, I know you personally and I know you are the nicest guy on ExI-chat. Many women would be thankful to have you and wouldn't break your heart. Be sure you are looking for them in the right places pal. Someone out there who knows a single young lady of transhumanist mindset, do have them contact John Grigg. I can assure them they will not be disappointed. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Mon Nov 10 06:45:18 2008 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 07:45:18 +0100 Subject: [ExI] "thoughts to live by" regarding youth subculture In-Reply-To: <200811100602.mAA62qOo024437@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <2d6187670811092138i1b4298b0xa34b78cc7b77b89d@mail.gmail.com> <200811100602.mAA62qOo024437@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: This I really don't get, for it seems to me this whole memeset keeps popping up, yet modern youth have it so made in so many ways, I can't imagine why the notion doesn't quietly go extinct. There are so many opportunites today, not just knocking but tearing the door off the hinges, I fail to grasp why the whole weird clothing, dark is this veil of tears attitude. Here's a good insprirational song for them, from thirty years ago, a straight up rock anthem that tells it like it was then and is now: I am shocked at your superficiality and judgementalism. First lets distinguish a few things. I used to be goth-oid and there is a distinct difference between goth and emo. Then among goths there are distinctly different streams of feeling too. I never considered myself "emo", largely because emo is a curseword. In the late 90s being emo was an insult, however - the young kids in this whole scene the last few years picked that up and assimilated it, acting emo. The idea "there are so many opportunities" and youth "so having it made" *is completely ludicrous*. Its not true - In my book, the amount of severe stress levelled on the young is killing a small percentage of them. There may be other factors at playhere but by and large we live in an unhealthy environment. The biggest problem is the same as we have in prisons, and the results are more and more tending towards the same. In an average prison you push wildly different people together, by force. You create a world of very different expectation models, very flawed archetypes and very arbitrary principles. You make em choose and suffer callous consequences of most of these choices. Actually I am amazed not more buckle. Through my work I come in contact to young kids a lot. In the place I go, there is one who can be labeled goth-punk, and she is a small chubby girl who is acting out a little. - http://www.comparativeguide.com/reports/softly.pdf - http://ambafrance-do.org/depression/16359.php - http://www.searchsa.com.au/Diary/Diary_Article.asp?aid=69 Here's how the biggest goth of the known universe, the inventor of the whole vampire thing turned out: Used to hang with him in Amsterdam a while: - http://www.morsure.net/local/cache-vignettes/L375xH249/vampyreparis-081-bd-d450b.jpg He had girls so pretty, so kinky, so amazingly attractive you'd swallow your words in a second. And he got loaded of selling vampire parafernalia, teeth and lenses. - http://www.vampires.nu/ example: succesful goth: - http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/famecrawler/2008/03/16-22/tim-burton-family.jpg As an another example, here is an example why some goth chicks drive me insane with desire. - http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6226048 - http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=153868611 Let me tell you. That aint emo. That is celebrating life. In enclosed, repressive environments, like prisons, or pig farms, the animals will develop stress traumas. They will start biting off their own paws. You see the same in this whole emo scene, with the cutting and assorted other self-abusive behavior types. Goth isnt about that. I know few more intense, artistic, life embracing and determined types than the goths I knew. You call these selfdestructive or whiny, yet most were studying harder than their peers, playing harder and getting better career opportunities. In my country, where the maroccan low opportunity classes used to blow, hang around on corners, spitting on goths, or drawing knives, the goths used to quietly skulk and ten years later got a career job while the maroccans were mopping an office or getting welfare. As a result we are seeing the first population of maroccan emos appearing. The emo's are the crowd with actual SOLID mental derangements. They even get picked on by the goths and occupy the lowest rung in the judgemental, exclusive world we live in. They cant afford real goth so they improvise. And in doing so they get stuck in a sekfreinforcing cycle of selfloathing, isolation, wallowing. Eventually they start hurting themselves, by drugs, or literally cutting themselves. example: emo as a pincushion strategy: http://nitespyder.com/FatGothKid.jpg Example: cutting: http://www.essortment.com/articles/self-injury_100006.htm The basic idea is : the subject feels literally so overwhelming pain in my mind, he or she or it cuts the body, to feel control. As soon as this person sees the blood well up, she feels control and the intense pain inside abates. I used to do a similar thing because of chronic pain, when fitnessing, nothing new there. By the way, I could give you a list of famous people who do this. Angelina Jolie, who takes antipsychotics and antidepressants, used to cut and she had all the symptoms of this scene. Now why, with all her success, would she go on sustaining a meme like this? - http://theenvelope.latimes.com/media/photo/2008-02/35677048.jpg - http://www.gotomycodes.com/userpics/myspacegraphics/Female-Celebrity/Angelina-Jolie-Bloody.jpg -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Nov 11 03:20:44 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:20:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "thoughts to live by" regarding youth subculture In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670811092138i1b4298b0xa34b78cc7b77b89d@mail.gmail.com> <200811100602.mAA62qOo024437@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670811101920v2756c67q50fd17030894d8e2@mail.gmail.com> Spike wrote: Come now Johnny, I know you personally and I know you are the nicest guy on ExI-chat. Many women would be thankful to have you and wouldn't break your heart. Be sure you are looking for them in the right places pal. Someone out there who knows a single young lady of transhumanist mindset, do have them contact John Grigg. I can assure them they will not be disappointed. >>> This is very high praise, indeed! I'm blushing! : ) Thanks, Spike. Dagon, your comments and links about the Goth subculture were fascinating to me. I did not think of Goths as "losers" but did assume they reveled in a rich but negative fantasy life and were snobbish & not necessarily the upwardly mobile to the extent you say. I had the mainstream American public's opinion of Goths (probably coming from the lyrics and imagery of various bands), rather than having an insider's take on things. I wonder to what extent European Goth culture differs from the American? But I would like one day to get an Emo's perspective on this discussion, considering what you said. I tend to agree with you that even the supposedly spoiled (and in some ways they are) youth of the 1st world have it actually pretty hard. Japanese young people are in my view at the forefront of this, but all kids in the developed world feel the pressure to fit in, compete and perform educationally and professionally in a very competitive society, and yet also have a personal/spiritual/family life that matters. Some youth have the right combination of nature & nurture (or at least nature) to succeed in our demanding and high-tech environment, but there are quite a few who just don't have what it takes to make it and get their slice of the American Pie. But I do admit that being a citizen of the 1st world pressure cooker is *vastly* better than living in a Latin American, Asian or African ghetto where basic medicine, healthy and plentiful food, civil liberties, adequate shelter and education are only a dream. But many living legally in our "wondrous" 1st world still don't have all their basic living needs met. Dagon wrote: Here's how the biggest goth of the known universe, the inventor of the whole vampire thing turned out: Used to hang with him in Amsterdam a while: >>> How did your friend wind up inventing the whole Goth/vampire thing? He sounds like quite an individual! you wrote: He had girls so pretty, so kinky, so amazingly attractive you'd swallow your words in a second. And he got loaded of selling vampire parafernalia, teeth and lenses. >>> The women were drawn to him because he played the role of the "vampire lord?" Good looks? Charm? Intelligence? Lots of money? I have read females tend to be very attracted to creative/artistic men. I suppose the first substantially enhanced transhumans will have an even greater attraction to potential lovers. you continue: As an another example, here is an example why some goth chicks drive me insane with desire. >>> She is gorgeous. The Goth look for a women (at least to me) is extremely seductive and enhances female physical beauty. Again, I can envision genetically modified women in the decades ahead who will embody the Goth ideal of beauty as no one really could in our present time. I hope you are able to handle it when you are driven *past* the point of insanity! lol Based on what you said regarding the "Goth work ethic," it sounds like I should tell my brother to encourage his son (when he gets old enough) to become a member of this subculture! And to think that in the old days kids became Boy Scouts for a leg up in life! ; ) John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nanogirl at halcyon.com Tue Nov 11 04:59:00 2008 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:59:00 -0800 Subject: [ExI] "thoughts to live by" regarding youth subculture In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811101920v2756c67q50fd17030894d8e2@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670811092138i1b4298b0xa34b78cc7b77b89d@mail.gmail.com><200811100602.mAA62qOo024437@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <2d6187670811101920v2756c67q50fd17030894d8e2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Here is the important truth, we are all people. And we are all complex people who have had varied experiences in our lives. What makes people identify with a certain culture is just as complex and varied as our individual lives. We have to be careful about trying to "figure out large groups of people" based on their outward appearance, so that we do not make generalizations. What makes you pick out a pair of pants? Even if you select a piece of low key clothing, why do you select low key clothing? That could be analyzed just as much as the opposite. Why do people choose to be safe or not color outside of the lines? Everyone's external can be psychoanalyzed in this way, if you want to. And what do you think the alternative groups could think of the conservative appearance, they could judge it as "normal', the standard quo, followers, no individuality, the establishment, and no voice. Certainly some people may identify with a subculture with the point of trying to say something, maybe it's that they need more attention and love because they are not getting enough, perhaps there is something in their life - unseen to us that they are rebelling against, maybe the mainstream kids picked on them when they were a kid so they are going all the way in the opposite direction, maybe their family was that way, but... maybe they are artists, maybe it's an esthetic preference, or a political statement, maybe they just like being an individual, there are so many possibilities and we can analyze for days. But I don't think we need to, and no matter how some one cuts their hair, what they are wearing or what music they listen to, that is all very external. What matters is behavior and trust me, all types of people have both good and bad behavior. All that aside, there is enough real material out there that we can examine, human rights, pollution, hunger, poverty, and all of our wonderful extropian dreams for the future. How can we help people, how can we help the world. And let's not forget, the world is full of people who look so beautifully different from one another. Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com The health stuff blog: http://ginamiller.blogspot.com/ Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/ Craft blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/ Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." ----- Original Message ----- From: John Grigg To: ExI chat list Sent: Monday, November 10, 2008 7:20 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] "thoughts to live by" regarding youth subculture Spike wrote: Come now Johnny, I know you personally and I know you are the nicest guy on ExI-chat. Many women would be thankful to have you and wouldn't break your heart. Be sure you are looking for them in the right places pal. Someone out there who knows a single young lady of transhumanist mindset, do have them contact John Grigg. I can assure them they will not be disappointed. >>> This is very high praise, indeed! I'm blushing! : ) Thanks, Spike. Dagon, your comments and links about the Goth subculture were fascinating to me. I did not think of Goths as "losers" but did assume they reveled in a rich but negative fantasy life and were snobbish & not necessarily the upwardly mobile to the extent you say. I had the mainstream American public's opinion of Goths (probably coming from the lyrics and imagery of various bands), rather than having an insider's take on things. I wonder to what extent European Goth culture differs from the American? But I would like one day to get an Emo's perspective on this discussion, considering what you said. I tend to agree with you that even the supposedly spoiled (and in some ways they are) youth of the 1st world have it actually pretty hard. Japanese young people are in my view at the forefront of this, but all kids in the developed world feel the pressure to fit in, compete and perform educationally and professionally in a very competitive society, and yet also have a personal/spiritual/family life that matters. Some youth have the right combination of nature & nurture (or at least nature) to succeed in our demanding and high-tech environment, but there are quite a few who just don't have what it takes to make it and get their slice of the American Pie. But I do admit that being a citizen of the 1st world pressure cooker is *vastly* better than living in a Latin American, Asian or African ghetto where basic medicine, healthy and plentiful food, civil liberties, adequate shelter and education are only a dream. But many living legally in our "wondrous" 1st world still don't have all their basic living needs met. Dagon wrote: Here's how the biggest goth of the known universe, the inventor of the whole vampire thing turned out: Used to hang with him in Amsterdam a while: >>> How did your friend wind up inventing the whole Goth/vampire thing? He sounds like quite an individual! you wrote: He had girls so pretty, so kinky, so amazingly attractive you'd swallow your words in a second. And he got loaded of selling vampire parafernalia, teeth and lenses. >>> The women were drawn to him because he played the role of the "vampire lord?" Good looks? Charm? Intelligence? Lots of money? I have read females tend to be very attracted to creative/artistic men. I suppose the first substantially enhanced transhumans will have an even greater attraction to potential lovers. you continue: As an another example, here is an example why some goth chicks drive me insane with desire. >>> She is gorgeous. The Goth look for a women (at least to me) is extremely seductive and enhances female physical beauty. Again, I can envision genetically modified women in the decades ahead who will embody the Goth ideal of beauty as no one really could in our present time. I hope you are able to handle it when you are driven *past* the point of insanity! lol Based on what you said regarding the "Goth work ethic," it sounds like I should tell my brother to encourage his son (when he gets old enough) to become a member of this subculture! And to think that in the old days kids became Boy Scouts for a leg up in life! ; ) John ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Nov 11 05:53:28 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:53:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "thoughts to live by" regarding youth subculture In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670811092138i1b4298b0xa34b78cc7b77b89d@mail.gmail.com> <200811100602.mAA62qOo024437@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <2d6187670811101920v2756c67q50fd17030894d8e2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670811102153h10c95e88sb9c782504ac515e6@mail.gmail.com> Gina Miller wrote: But I don't think we need to, and no matter how some one cuts their hair, what they are wearing or what music they listen to, that is all very external. What matters is behavior and trust me, all types of people have both good and bad behavior. >>> Amen to that! But this is so often forgotten... you continue: All that aside, there is enough real material out there that we can examine, human rights, pollution, hunger, poverty, and all of our wonderful extropian dreams for the future. How can we help people, how can we help the world. And let's not forget, the world is full of people who look so beautifully different from one another. >>> Yes, every time I peruse issues of National Geographic, visit my local international airport or major university (or just walk down the street) I am especially reminded of the truth of your final sentence about the beauty of differences. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Nov 11 10:33:57 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:33:57 +0100 Subject: [ExI] "thoughts to live by" regarding youth subculture In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811101920v2756c67q50fd17030894d8e2@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670811092138i1b4298b0xa34b78cc7b77b89d@mail.gmail.com> <200811100602.mAA62qOo024437@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <2d6187670811101920v2756c67q50fd17030894d8e2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20811110233v587e134es99c782680cd9f252@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 4:20 AM, John Grigg wrote: >I wonder to > what extent European Goth culture differs from the American? But I would > like one day to get an Emo's perspective on this discussion, considering > what you said. Don't know exactly why, and I am far from proficient in such topics, but my provisional take has always been Goth=OK, Emo=No, no. Stefano Vaj From dagonweb at gmail.com Tue Nov 11 13:03:56 2008 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:03:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] "thoughts to live by" regarding youth subculture In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811101920v2756c67q50fd17030894d8e2@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670811092138i1b4298b0xa34b78cc7b77b89d@mail.gmail.com> <200811100602.mAA62qOo024437@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <2d6187670811101920v2756c67q50fd17030894d8e2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > > But I do admit that being a citizen of the 1st world pressure cooker is > *vastly* better than living in a Latin American, Asian or African ghetto > where basic medicine, healthy and plentiful food, civil liberties, adequate > shelter and education are only a dream. But many living legally in our > "wondrous" 1st world still don't have all their basic living needs met. incidentally, do google how goths are treated in Iran, Iraq and Mexico. Dagon wrote: > Here's how the biggest goth of the known universe, the inventor of the > whole vampire thing turned out: Used to hang with him in Amsterdam a while: > >>> > How did your friend wind up inventing the whole Goth/vampire thing? He > sounds like quite an individual! Well of course you realize that was irony. However I do work from the assumption VtMm, the RPG in the 1990s was instrumental of changing mere fringe goth into a mass movement. Not everyone agrees and its a personal observation. VtM was so passionate, so sincere in portraying goth as the crucial style, and intimately tied up with vampirism, and I got the softcover 1st edition VtM book in 1991 or thereabouts. People around me loved it and I started playing it it in the netherlands, as one of the first WhiteWolfers a year or two later. Somewhat later Sebastian picked up his vampire version, started a LARP in manhattan and this was by all definitions a legendary affair. He appeared on interviews, with extended fangs, contact lenses and stylish goth clothes and created an international craze by imitation. Funny enough late 90s I had an NPC called "father Sebastian", taken from an online setting of NYBN (by a guy called quayle) who was clearly a lestatesque spinoff of something this Quayle had heard when listening to the ZOMFG stories he heard about goth girls being slutty and all that. I met sebastian in 2003 when he was publishing his Strigoi Vii book and there was a brief time when I was planning to write the 2.0 version of the book. That didn't fizzle out, but I got a good look in the kitchen and Sebastian got a great opportunity to brag about him fucking with goth penthouse pets, bloodplay, loads of ambiguous sexuality powergames, cuffs, tying up, whipping, as well as the shit with the ventrue, tremere, brujah, blood points and omnious gang-signal like hand gestures used in the game. If you dont have a clue what this is all about google - Vampire the Masquerade, LARP, bloodlines. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odXgZiPmjK4 - http://fathersebastian.livejournal.com/ - http://www.vampires.nu/pages/Books.cfm/ID/1854/PageID/22 - http://www.strigoivii.org/ Sebastian (his real name is Todd) is just a guy surviving. He was more or less chased out of NY after Bush came to power, I dont know the full details, but he started to wander the world, have adventures all that. > you wrote: > He had girls so pretty, so kinky, so amazingly attractive you'd swallow > your words in a second. And he got loaded of selling vampire parafernalia, > teeth and lenses. > >>> > > The women were drawn to him because he played the role of the "vampire > lord?" Good looks? Charm? Intelligence? Lots of money? I have read females > tend to be very attracted to creative/artistic men. I suppose the first > substantially enhanced transhumans will have an even greater attraction to > potential lovers. I am not a ladies man myself, but in the period I knew him, I saw three of remarkable quality drift by. The first was a stripper who'd moved to London and I'd classify her as Daymn pretty. The second wanted to get to know him to be dominated in extensive variants of anal play and stuff with dildos. I dont know other details. The third I'd classify as having the most stunning grey eyes. You can form yourself an idea. The guy was OK looking, not especially pretty. In 2003 he was more or less a drifter. He had a big ego, maybe that was it. I'd say his charm was largely an image matter. You can safely say I was dying with jealousy, though at the time some people described me in the same terms as they described Sebastian - a sinister cult figure with ties to laveyan Satanism. I certainly didnt do the same stuff as he did, though for some reason everyone thought I was. you continue: > As an another example, here is an example why some goth chicks drive me > insane with desire. > >>> > > She is gorgeous. The Goth look for a women (at least to me) is extremely > seductive and enhances female physical beauty. Again, I can envision > genetically modified women in the decades ahead who will embody the Goth > ideal of beauty as no one really could in our present time. I hope you are > able to handle it when you are driven *past* the point of insanity! lol > > Based on what you said regarding the "Goth work ethic," it sounds like I > should tell my brother to encourage his son (when he gets old enough) to > become a member of this subculture! And to think that in the old days kids > became Boy Scouts for a leg up in life! ; ) > The question is - how do you respond to social exclusion. We know what happen to people who fit in best - they tend to become average and boring. So conversely social ostracism either destroys someone, or drives him or her to excell. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Tue Nov 11 17:07:02 2008 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:07:02 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Convergence 08 Conference Message-ID: <0A2BBEA35A6C4E00B136E8883C867550@DFC68LF1> I just looked at my calendar at the Convergence08 is this weekend. Fortunately, I have my plane ticket and hotel reservation. But what about you? Are you going? Hope to see you there - Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 731 bytes Desc: not available URL: From frankmac at ripco.com Tue Nov 11 17:33:41 2008 From: frankmac at ripco.com (Frank McElligott) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:33:41 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Liberal Daughter Message-ID: <008801c94423$a81e4530$de68c147@your4dacd0ea75> My daughter worked as a Para legal for a liberal, a very liberal law firm in Chicago while the president elect was a working the Southside as a Community Organizer. He spent many hours in that law office while seeking monies for the people he represented. The man is not just a liberal, he is a VERY LIBERAL, and will take this country in that direction. Also, the speaker of the house in the state of Illinois, is quote at cocktail parties, stating that the president elect was the most IN-effectual lawmaker he ever saw coming out of the city of Chicago in the last 30 years. By the by, daughter is liberal, but she voted for McCain, hope that tells you something. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From frankmac at ripco.com Tue Nov 11 17:34:53 2008 From: frankmac at ripco.com (Frank McElligott) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:34:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] who attack who Message-ID: <008c01c94423$d1cdf650$de68c147@your4dacd0ea75> Just for your information, as it might have gotten lost with the election news; The Sunday Times (UK) November 9, 2008 Georgia fired first shot, say UK monitors By Jon Swain Two former British military officers are expected to give crucial evidence against Georgia when an international inquiry is convened to establish who started the country's bloody five-day war with Russia in August. Ryan Grist, a former British Army captain, and Stephen Young, a former RAF wing commander, are said to have concluded that, before the Russian bombardment began, Georgian rockets and artillery were hitting civilian areas in the breakaway region of South Ossetia every 15 or 20 seconds. Their accounts seem likely to undermine the American-backed claims of President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia that his little country was the innocent victim of Russian aggression and acted solely in self-defence. During the war both Grist and Young were senior figures in the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The organisation had deployed teams of unarmed monitors to try to reduce tension over South Ossetia, which had split from Georgia in a separatist struggle in the early 1990s with Russia's support. On the night war broke out, Grist was the senior OSCE official in Georgia. He was in charge of unarmed monitors who became trapped by the fighting. Based on their observations, Grist briefed European Union diplomats in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, with his assessment of the conflict. Grist, who resigned from the OSCE shortly afterwards, has told The New York Times it was Georgia that launched the first military strikes against Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital. "It was clear to me that the [Georgian] attack was completely indiscriminate and disproportionate to any, if indeed there had been any, provocation," he said. "The attack was clearly, in my mind, an indiscriminate attack on the town, as a town." Last month Young gave a similar briefing to visiting military attach?s, in which he reportedly supported the monitors' assessment that there had been little or no shelling of Georgian villages on the night Saakashvili's troops mounted an onslaught on Tskhinvali in which scores of civilians and Russian peacekeepers died. "If there had been heavy shelling in areas that Georgia claimed were shelled, then our people would have heard it, and they didn't," Young reportedly said. "They heard only occasional small-arms fire." Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister who helped broker the ceasefire that ended the war and has been a fierce critic of the Russian invasion of Georgia, is tomorrow due to announce a commission of inquiry into the conflict at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels. The inquiry will be chaired by a Swiss expert as a mark of independence and will try to establish who was to blame for the conflict. European and OSCE sources say it is likely to seek evidence from the two former British officers. The inquiry comes as the EU softens its hardline position towards Russia amid mounting European scepticism about Saakashvili's judgment. Europe is preparing to resume negotiations with Moscow this month on a new partnership and cooperation agreement, which it froze when Russia invaded Georgia, routed its army and recognised the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another breakaway region. Although Grist and Young know only part of the picture, their evidence appears to support Russia's claim that the Georgian attack was well underway by the time their troops and armour crossed the border in a huge counter-strike. Georgia attacked South Ossetia on the night of August 7-8. In the afternoon an OSCE patrol had seen Georgian artillery and Grad rocket launchers massing just outside the enclave. At 6pm the monitors were told of suspected Georgian shelling of a village. Georgia declared a unilateral ceasefire. But at 11pm it announced that Georgian villages were being shelled and began a military operation to "restore constitutional order" in South Ossetia. Soon afterwards the Georgian bombardment of Tskhinvali began. By 12.35am the OSCE monitors had recorded more than 100 rockets or shells exploding in Tskhinvali. Russia sent in troops and armour, saying they were there to protect its peacekeepers and the civilian population. The invasion attracted worldwide condemnation and led to a deterioration in relations between Moscow and the West. Many western leaders depicted Russia as an expansionist giant determined to crush its tiny neighbour. They rallied to Georgia's defence amid calls for it to be rapidly admitted to Nato, Saakashvili's most fervent wish. The president argued that Russia had attacked Georgia because "we want to be free" and that his country was fighting a defensive war. Critical to his argument was his claim that he had ordered the Georgian army to attack South Ossetia in self-defence after mobile telephone intercepts from the Russian border revealed that Russian army vehicles were entering Georgian territory through the Roki tunnel. "We wanted to stop the Russian troops before they could reach Georgian villages," Saakashvili said. "When our tanks moved toward Tskhinvali, the Russians bombed the city. They were the ones - not us - who reduced it to rubble." Russia counters that the war began at 11.30pm, when Saakashvili ordered an attack, well before any Russian combat troops and armour crossed the border through the tunnel. HOW FIGHTING BROKE OUT August 7, 3pm: OSCE monitors see build-up of Georgian artillery on roads to South Ossetia. 6.10pm: Russian peacekeepers inform OSCE of suspected Georgian artillery fire on Khetagurovo, a South Ossetian village. 7pm: Georgia declares a unilateral ceasefire. 11pm: Georgia announces that its villages are being shelled and launches attack in South Ossetia. 11.30pm: Georgian forces bombard Tskhinvali. 11.45pm: OSCE monitors report shells falling on Tskhinvali every 15-20 seconds. August 8, 12.15am: Commander of Russian peacekeepers reports that his unit has taken casualties. Russia later announces that it has invaded Georgia to protect civilians and Russian peacekeepers. ******** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Nov 11 18:13:37 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:13:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] who attack who In-Reply-To: <008c01c94423$d1cdf650$de68c147@your4dacd0ea75> References: <008c01c94423$d1cdf650$de68c147@your4dacd0ea75> Message-ID: <580930c20811111013t5780fff6h712b059d2a53c920@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 6:34 PM, Frank McElligott wrote: > Just for your information, as it might have gotten lost with the election > news; > > The Sunday Times (UK) > November 9, 2008 > Georgia fired first shot, say UK monitors > By Jon Swain Did anybody really believed in the States that the war had been anything else than an attempted genocide from the Georgian side? :-/ Stefano Vaj From jrd1415 at gmail.com Tue Nov 11 18:35:20 2008 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 10:35:20 -0800 Subject: [ExI] who attack who In-Reply-To: <580930c20811111013t5780fff6h712b059d2a53c920@mail.gmail.com> References: <008c01c94423$d1cdf650$de68c147@your4dacd0ea75> <580930c20811111013t5780fff6h712b059d2a53c920@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 10:13 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > Did anybody really believed in the States that the war had been > anything else than an attempted genocide from the Georgian side? :-/ Let me say it once again. Is there anyone out there who by this time was still able to believe the hoo hah purveyed yet again by the shrub/Cheney crowd? I mean really!!! The old tale of the boy who cried wolf has a point: If you lie repeatedly, people eventually catch on. Then there's the old joke about the guy who declared he had a means to detect when a certain politician was lying. When asked how, he said "Whenever his lips move." The early reporting gave enough facts for anyone to draw a reasonable conclusion. Combine unverified "factoids" with the credibility of the delivery boy, shake vigorously, rinse and repeat. Jeff Davis From dagonweb at gmail.com Tue Nov 11 18:58:16 2008 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:58:16 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Liberal Daughter In-Reply-To: <008801c94423$a81e4530$de68c147@your4dacd0ea75> References: <008801c94423$a81e4530$de68c147@your4dacd0ea75> Message-ID: I am frankly sick and tired of this whole irrational and offensive barrage of conservatives and how they depict liberals. The thing is, US liberals are by any standard *far* to the right of most political parties in western europe. By comparison if the right wing of the US slanders their left wing (who we in europe regard as equivalent to our furthest right on the political spectrum) just HOW can we ever in Europe hope to trust US republicans? You'd be regarded as absolutely *monstrous* over here. So what you told me, is nothing. you only succeeded in completely alienating me. Your rhetoric gives me reason to actively vote for parties that break ties with the US and disband NATO. On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 6:33 PM, Frank McElligott wrote: > My daughter worked as a Para legal for a liberal, a very liberal law > firm in Chicago while the president elect was a working the Southside as a > Community Organizer. > > He spent many hours in that law office while seeking monies for the people > he represented. The man is not just a liberal, he is a VERY LIBERAL, and > will take this country in that direction. > > Also, the speaker of the house in the state of Illinois, is quote at > cocktail parties, stating that the president elect > was the most IN-effectual lawmaker he ever saw coming out of the city of > Chicago in the last 30 years. > > By the by, daughter is liberal, but she voted for McCain, > hope that tells you something. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Tue Nov 11 18:36:14 2008 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:36:14 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] Them little emo kids (was Re: "thoughts to live by" regarding youth subculture) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <823058.91422.qm@web27003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> John Grigg wrote "But I do admit that being a citizen of the 1st world pressure cooker is *vastly* better than living in a Latin American, Asian or African ghetto where basic medicine, healthy and plentiful food, civil liberties, adequate shelter and education are only a dream. But many living legally in our "wondrous" 1st world still don't have all their basic living needs met." John, are you Ross Perot or George HW Bush in disguise? You appear to have turned into your own grandfather. Next you'll be telling the kids to finish their dinner, there's starving Africans who'd love to have something to eat. Regardless of how good your situation may be, it never seems that good when you're young and that one way of life is all you've ever known. You see the possibility of getting a great education - they see crushing college debts, pressure from parents and teachers to choose particular paths, the possibility that further study may do nothing for your career. You see the wonders of democracy - they see politicians who don't listen to them and no reason to vote or get involved. You see an infinite array of career choices - they see being forced to make a choice and suffer the soul-crushing possibility of being in the wrong career because of a bad decision made when they were young. It's frequently only when you're older that you realise all the things you could have done. Another annoying thing for the young is being told you could do well at something, but no matter how hard you try there's always someone in school who looks like they'll do better than you, go to a better college and get a better career. The only exception to this is the top student in school, who's pushing themselves superhumanly hard out of fear of failure and parental pressure. On another point, when it comes to kids being in a subculture tied up with miserable trappings - there's a saying, "Misery loves company". If you're prone to depression, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, and the rest, then a subculture which celebrates such things as a part of everyday life is a perfect place for you to find kindred spirits and friends. After all, what more can a moody teenager ask for than someone who understands your pain? Finally - it is a must amongst my ex-goth friends to sneer at the emo kids. I think it's a generational thing (we're all in our late 20s or early 30s) so it's become a common mindset. I'm inferring from Dagon's email that he's within a few years of age 35, so he probably has a similar attitude among his friends. Tom From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Nov 11 19:17:18 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:17:18 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Liberal Daughter In-Reply-To: References: <008801c94423$a81e4530$de68c147@your4dacd0ea75> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081111131031.0230c238@satx.rr.com> At 07:58 PM 11/11/2008 +0100, Dagon wrote: >if the right wing of the US slanders their left >wing (who we in europe regard as equivalent to our furthest right on the >political spectrum) just HOW can we ever in Europe hope to trust US >republicans? You'd be regarded as absolutely monstrous over here. The peculiar absurdity in Frank McElligott's denunciation of Obama is that the current inconceivably vast transfer of tax-gouged money to massively fucked up corporations in order that they can continue to fuck things up is the very contrary of "liberal" in any sense of that word: technically, it looks to me like corporate fascism on the Mussolini model. See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Tue Nov 11 19:39:57 2008 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:39:57 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Liberal Daughter In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081111131031.0230c238@satx.rr.com> References: <008801c94423$a81e4530$de68c147@your4dacd0ea75> <7.0.1.0.2.20081111131031.0230c238@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 7:17 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > The peculiar absurdity in Frank McElligott's denunciation of Obama is that > the current inconceivably vast transfer of tax-gouged money to massively > fucked up corporations in order that they can continue to fuck things up is > the very contrary of "liberal" in any sense of that word: technically, it > looks to me like corporate fascism on the Mussolini model. > I note that after the millionaire bankers have been bailed out by the government, (so they can carry on in the style to which they have become accustomed), the next in line are the car manufacturers. GM wants a huge handout and VW are asking the European Central Bank for a big handout. So, effectively our governments are now buying up all the cars that no one wants. Where will it end? How about buying up all the houses that no one wants, to save the builders from their just deserts? Will the government buy all the Circuit City goods to stop them closing? Does this 'free market' trick only work when the boom cycle is in progress and everyone is winning? BillK From aleksei at iki.fi Tue Nov 11 21:42:29 2008 From: aleksei at iki.fi (Aleksei Riikonen) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:42:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] who attack who In-Reply-To: <580930c20811111013t5780fff6h712b059d2a53c920@mail.gmail.com> References: <008c01c94423$d1cdf650$de68c147@your4dacd0ea75> <580930c20811111013t5780fff6h712b059d2a53c920@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1db0b2da0811111342h2aec5d93g48621e74617cdbf8@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 8:13 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > Did anybody really believed in the States that the war had been > anything else than an attempted genocide from the Georgian side? :-/ Well I hope so, since the situation certainly was more complex than that. I don't mean to deny that Georgia fired first, but as far as I'm aware, the Russians rather actively and intelligently manipulated president Saakashvili into making this mistake, as a goal which they saw would be good for their interests in the area. By this I don't mean that the Russians would be more to blame for what happened. Just that all the blame isn't on Georgia. -- Aleksei Riikonen - http://www.iki.fi/aleksei From pjmanney at gmail.com Tue Nov 11 22:05:50 2008 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:05:50 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Convergence 08 Conference In-Reply-To: <0A2BBEA35A6C4E00B136E8883C867550@DFC68LF1> References: <0A2BBEA35A6C4E00B136E8883C867550@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <29666bf30811111405j1f3b8de8o6eff7b71ac72026a@mail.gmail.com> You betcha! See you all there! PJ On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 9:07 AM, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > I just looked at my calendar at the Convergence08 is this weekend. > Fortunately, I have my plane ticket and hotel reservation. But what about > you? Are you going? > > Hope to see you there - > > > [image: Nlogo1.tif] Natasha Vita-More > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 731 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jrd1415 at gmail.com Tue Nov 11 23:23:41 2008 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:23:41 -0800 Subject: [ExI] who attack who In-Reply-To: <1db0b2da0811111342h2aec5d93g48621e74617cdbf8@mail.gmail.com> References: <008c01c94423$d1cdf650$de68c147@your4dacd0ea75> <580930c20811111013t5780fff6h712b059d2a53c920@mail.gmail.com> <1db0b2da0811111342h2aec5d93g48621e74617cdbf8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 1:42 PM, Aleksei Riikonen wrote: > ... as far as I'm aware, the Russians rather actively and intelligently manipulated president Saakashvili into making this mistake... Show me some facts, please. I would suggest an alterative explanation: that Saakishvili was stupidly manipulated by his neocon/shrub/Cheney imperial patrons, and that he drank the Kool-aid. Your caveat, on the other hand, seems a predictably conventional element of the larger "blame Russia/Putin" narrative. Certainly a possibility, but issuing as it does from the neocon/shrub/Cheney baloney machine, it is presumptively "spin"(you know, the lie of the week), utterly devoid of credibility, an instant candidate for derision. Throw in the "Saakashvili factor", that he is (yet another) flamboyantly world-class "ass-kissing little chickenshit" (Adm Fallon's on-the-record characterization of Gen Petraeus), and Occam's criteria seems neatly satisfied. Which proves nothing , yet is highly suggestive (to me, anyway). Jeff Davis From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Tue Nov 11 23:28:50 2008 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:28:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Liberal Daughter Message-ID: <763109.34947.qm@web65612.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 11/11/08, Frank McElligott wrote: > My daughter worked as a Para legal for a liberal, a very > liberal law firm in Chicago while the president elect was a > working the Southside as a Community Organizer. > > He spent many hours in that law office while seeking monies > for the people he represented. The man is not just a > liberal, he is a VERY LIBERAL, and will take this country > in that direction. Conservative and liberal are labels that don't mean much when the chips are down, Frank. A sitting president that was the darling of "conservatives' a mere 4 years ago created more and bigger government than any president since FDR, circumventing our civil rights in the process. Whatever the supposed ideals of democrats and republicans used to be, these days, they are little more than rhetoric that gets trotted out during election years, once the blaming starts. Politics is all about compromise and plausible deniability nowadays. So long as there are two parties that can blame one another for bad consequences to executive decisions, nobody need be held personally accountable. Gone from government is any sense of stewardship, noblesse oblige, or any sense of responsibility for the power a politican assumes upon being elected to high office. McCain lost because his puppet strings were showing but to his own credit, he seemed discomfited wearing them during his campaign. > Also, the speaker of the house in the state of Illinois, is > quote at cocktail parties, stating that the president elect > was the most IN-effectual lawmaker he ever saw coming out > of the city of Chicago in the last 30 years. > > By the by, daughter is liberal, but she voted for McCain, > hope that tells you something. Yes, she doesn't understand Newton's First Law of Motion, paraphrased thus: An object headed toward ruin tends to continue doing so unless an external force is applied to it. Obama clearly has the mandate of the people to steer our nation, and my guess is that he will swerve to the left of disaster. Just hope it is not too late. Stuart LaForge "To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." - Sun Tzu From emlynoregan at gmail.com Wed Nov 12 00:12:02 2008 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 10:42:02 +1030 Subject: [ExI] "thoughts to live by" regarding youth subculture In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670811092138i1b4298b0xa34b78cc7b77b89d@mail.gmail.com> <200811100602.mAA62qOo024437@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <2d6187670811101920v2756c67q50fd17030894d8e2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0811111612k40a061a9p23d6c42fd1e6cfc1@mail.gmail.com> >> The women were drawn to him because he played the role of the "vampire >> lord?" Good looks? Charm? Intelligence? Lots of money? I have read females >> tend to be very attracted to creative/artistic men. I suppose the first >> substantially enhanced transhumans will have an even greater attraction to >> potential lovers. "My pocket protector has more ram than most men's laptops" "ooh baby". There's a joke about floppy disks and hard drives in there somewhere. Of course, arch-nerd has always been sexy, unless I am seriously mistaken. -- Emlyn http://emlynoregan.com - my home http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting http://speakingoffreedom.blogspot.com - video link feed of great talks on eCulture From aleksei at iki.fi Wed Nov 12 00:34:20 2008 From: aleksei at iki.fi (Aleksei Riikonen) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 02:34:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] who attack who In-Reply-To: References: <008c01c94423$d1cdf650$de68c147@your4dacd0ea75> <580930c20811111013t5780fff6h712b059d2a53c920@mail.gmail.com> <1db0b2da0811111342h2aec5d93g48621e74617cdbf8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1db0b2da0811111634y283339ffy8ec101c41ea58391@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 1:23 AM, Jeff Davis wrote: > On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 1:42 PM, Aleksei Riikonen wrote: > >> ... as far as I'm aware, the Russians rather actively and intelligently manipulated president Saakashvili into making this mistake... > > Show me some facts, please. > > I would suggest an alterative explanation: that Saakishvili was > stupidly manipulated by his neocon/shrub/Cheney imperial patrons, and > that he drank the Kool-aid. You mean that you feel Cheney&co gained something from the events that took place? On the contrary, they've been worried for a long time about Saakashvili's behaviour of the kind that lead to what happened. Quoting from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saakashvili): ***** Relations with the United States are good, but are complicated by Saakashvili's "volatile" behaviour. Former and current U.S. officials characterize the Georgian president as "difficult to manage". They criticize his "risky moves", moves that have often "caught the U.S. unprepared" while leaving it "exposed diplomatically". [...] Scott Horton, the lawyer at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler who hired Saakashvili as an intern, states: "It was like the U.S. was slamming the brakes all the time. .... The U.S. was always trying to calm him down." Washington's 2004 ambassador to Georgia, Richard Miles, feared that Saakashvili would destabilize Georgia. Carlos Pascual, head of the State Department's financial-assistance team for Georgia, states that Saakashvili's "rapid push" into the breakaway republic of Adjara in March 2004 surprised not only the U.S. but also the prime minister of Georgia, Zurab Zhvania. Emboldened by the successful move into Adjara, Saakashvili, in June 2004, used military force against South Ossetia. Saakashvili surprised the U.S. again in November 2007, when he shut down opposition tv stations and used tear gas and rubber bullets against protesters. ***** > Your caveat, on the other hand, seems a predictably conventional > element of the larger "blame Russia/Putin" narrative. Certainly a > possibility, but issuing as it does from the neocon/shrub/Cheney > baloney machine, it is presumptively "spin"(you know, the lie of the > week), utterly devoid of credibility, an instant candidate for > derision. I don't really follow the American media, which I presume is mostly what you're referring to as the baloney machine. But I've seen e.g. a recent BBC documentary extensively interviewing Georgians, and the common folk over there are getting pretty annoyed at Saakashvili's incompetence leading to the wrecking of their country, and were saying the same thing I was here. That the Russians intelligently took advantage of his hot temper. Russia has been the winner in this. A significant step closer to unseating Saakashvili the incompetent ally of the west. -- Aleksei Riikonen - http://www.iki.fi/aleksei From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Nov 12 00:44:28 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:44:28 +0100 Subject: [ExI] who attack who In-Reply-To: <1db0b2da0811111342h2aec5d93g48621e74617cdbf8@mail.gmail.com> References: <008c01c94423$d1cdf650$de68c147@your4dacd0ea75> <580930c20811111013t5780fff6h712b059d2a53c920@mail.gmail.com> <1db0b2da0811111342h2aec5d93g48621e74617cdbf8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20811111644v1db898c4qb3745a7ae084acf3@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 10:42 PM, Aleksei Riikonen wrote: > On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 8:13 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: >> Did anybody really believed in the States that the war had been >> anything else than an attempted genocide from the Georgian side? :-/ > > Well I hope so, since the situation certainly was more complex than that. > > I don't mean to deny that Georgia fired first, but as far as I'm > aware, the Russians rather actively and intelligently manipulated > president Saakashvili into making this mistake, as a goal which they > saw would be good for their interests in the area. > > By this I don't mean that the Russians would be more to blame for what > happened. Just that all the blame isn't on Georgia. Who said "blame"? Everybody who attacks anybody is one way or another manipulated into doing so. Only, the fact of being manipulated cease to be such a great idea when the attack ultimately does not succeed. :-) Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Nov 12 00:48:22 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:48:22 +0100 Subject: [ExI] who attack who In-Reply-To: <1db0b2da0811111634y283339ffy8ec101c41ea58391@mail.gmail.com> References: <008c01c94423$d1cdf650$de68c147@your4dacd0ea75> <580930c20811111013t5780fff6h712b059d2a53c920@mail.gmail.com> <1db0b2da0811111342h2aec5d93g48621e74617cdbf8@mail.gmail.com> <1db0b2da0811111634y283339ffy8ec101c41ea58391@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20811111648y642e6db1n81d4b78435e9a4fb@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 1:34 AM, Aleksei Riikonen wrote: > You mean that you feel Cheney&co gained something from the events that > took place? On the contrary, they've been worried for a long time > about Saakashvili's behaviour of the kind that lead to what happened. What else is new? Baron von Frankenstein also had some reasons of embarrassment during his life. :-) Stefano Vaj From shannonvyff at yahoo.com Wed Nov 12 01:36:51 2008 From: shannonvyff at yahoo.com (Shannon) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:36:51 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Convergence08 References: Message-ID: <236068.49925.qm@web30805.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I've got my tickets too! Can't wait to see everyone live time for a change :-) Shannon Vyff From: "Natasha Vita-More" Subject: [ExI] Convergence 08 Conference To: "'ExI chat list'" , Message-ID: <0A2BBEA35A6C4E00B136E8883C867550 at DFC68LF1> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I just looked at my calendar at the Convergence08 is this weekend. Fortunately, I have my plane ticket and hotel reservation. But what about you? Are you going? Hope to see you there - Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shannonvyff at yahoo.com Wed Nov 12 01:39:35 2008 From: shannonvyff at yahoo.com (Shannon) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:39:35 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Sign a petition to support Cryonics (takes 30 seconds :-) ) References: Message-ID: <889631.48124.qm@web30804.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Please sign the petition I created to encourage law makers to support cryonics: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/preserve-the-right-of-those-who-are-dying-to-choose-cryonics http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/preserve-the-right-of-those-who-are-dying-to-choose-cryonics (Larry Johnson started an anti-cryonics petition, so I thought there should be one where people can show their support :-) ) Health, Happiness, Wisdom & Longevity :-) -- best wishes from... Austin, Texas --Shannon Vyff "21st Century Kids" http://www.amazon.com/21st-Century-Kids-Shannon-Vyff/dp/1886057001 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkhenson at rogers.com Wed Nov 12 01:49:42 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:49:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Preditify - open prediction market In-Reply-To: <9ff585550811071549i15332302n3a8f3d1c6bf331bc@mail.gmail.co m> References: <9ff585550811071549i15332302n3a8f3d1c6bf331bc@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1226454889_9021@s2.cableone.net> At 04:49 PM 11/7/2008, Michael LaTorra wrote: >"Predictify is a prediction platform that adds an interactive, >forward-looking dimension to the news. You can read a news story, >make a prediction on the topic, and have a discussion with other >users all in one visit. Unlike a poll, we score every prediction >against the actual outcome, so you can build a reputation over time >based on the accuracy of your predictions. It's like fantasy sports >for everything else." > >"Predictify also pairs well with content. Since launch, we've >partnered with several major media companies to make their coverage >more interactive, including the >Washington Post, the >San Francisco Chronicle, and a number of blogs. > >There are no display ads on Predictify. Instead, we offer sponsored >questions for marketers who want to create highly-engaging >advertising experiences. We charge advertisers $1 per prediction, >and we share a portion of that fee with you, the predictors, based >on your accuracy to encourage thoughtful participation and >high-quality predictions >(tell me more). Best of >all, it's free - no points or bets required." > >http://www.preditify.com/ It drove me off in less than 20 seconds. I am a fast reader, but I got only about a third of the way into the first item and it was yanked away. Very annoying. So annoying I didn't even look for a control. This may not be significant since they may not be interested in my demographic group. Keith Henson From hkhenson at rogers.com Wed Nov 12 01:56:02 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:56:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] question for SF bay area folks In-Reply-To: <49175407.50905@mac.com> References: <49175407.50905@mac.com> Message-ID: <1226455270_9037@s2.cableone.net> At 02:20 PM 11/9/2008, you wrote: >I am looking for a good anti-aging physician in this area. The >south bay would be ideal but I am certainly willing to drive to the city. > >Thanks a lot for any recommendations and ideas. > >- samantha Try googling jon scott san jose. Top of the list at this time. Sports medicine mostly but sympathetic to life extension and even cryonics. Or was anyway, I think the last time I saw him was about ten years ago. Keith From pharos at gmail.com Wed Nov 12 08:11:15 2008 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:11:15 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Preditify - open prediction market In-Reply-To: <1226454889_9021@s2.cableone.net> References: <9ff585550811071549i15332302n3a8f3d1c6bf331bc@mail.gmail.com> <1226454889_9021@s2.cableone.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 1:49 AM, hkhenson wrote: > It drove me off in less than 20 seconds. I am a fast reader, but I got only > about a third of the way into the first item and it was yanked away. Very > annoying. So annoying I didn't even look for a control. This may not be > significant since they may not be interested in my demographic group. > They cycle through the predictions at the top of the page about every four seconds. Probably because they have hundreds to get through. If you use the 'back/forward' buttons at the top right corner, then that seems to freeze the cycling at the page you want to read. Old fogies probably prefer to look through long lists of predictions, grouped by subject. If you click on the 'Predict' button at the top, they provide this feature for you. ;) BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Nov 12 11:07:57 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:07:57 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Liberal Daughter In-Reply-To: <763109.34947.qm@web65612.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <763109.34947.qm@web65612.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <580930c20811120307l643708b7u638127f153894681@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 12:28 AM, The Avantguardian wrote: > Conservative and liberal are labels that don't mean much when the chips are down, Frank. A sitting president that was the darling of "conservatives' a mere 4 years ago created more and bigger government than any president since FDR, circumventing our civil rights in the process. I believe this is the real point. There are too many political axes, most of them can only very metaphorically coincide with a right-left split, and in turn the latter have vastly different meanings depending on the era and the context (if Louis XIV was not persuaded of the virtuous of free trade and free markets, does it make him a "liberal"?). I am strongly in favour of discussing the merits, as opposed to the labelling, of political ideas. If one refers to a nineteenth century anarchist, a neocon, an objectivist, a jacobin, a North-European sixtyies-style socialdemocrat, a Maoist, we know what we are discussing. "Conservatism" as such does not not mean anything, unless the context is given as well as more details of what should be conserved, and "liberal" is almost equally ambiguous. As everybody knows, in Europe the term mostly indicates that you are not a socialist, period. Stefano Vaj From stathisp at gmail.com Wed Nov 12 11:42:49 2008 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:42:49 +1100 Subject: [ExI] Liberal Daughter In-Reply-To: References: <008801c94423$a81e4530$de68c147@your4dacd0ea75> Message-ID: 2008/11/12 Dagon Gmail : > I am frankly sick and tired of this whole irrational and offensive barrage > of conservatives and how they depict liberals. The thing is, US liberals > are by any standard *far* to the right of most political parties in western > europe. By comparison if the right wing of the US slanders their left > wing (who we in europe regard as equivalent to our furthest right on the > political spectrum) just HOW can we ever in Europe hope to trust US > republicans? You'd be regarded as absolutely monstrous over here. > > So what you told me, is nothing. you only succeeded in completely > alienating me. Your rhetoric gives me reason to actively vote for parties > that break ties with the US and disband NATO. The US is the odd one out in comparison with other industrialised countries in several respects: eg. generally further to the right, more religiose, a widespread acceptance of capital punishment. Why should the apparently heterogeneous countries of Europe, Australasia and North America be part of a broad consensus on these matters which the US doesn't share? -- Stathis Papaioannou From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Nov 12 20:38:34 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:38:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Gazzumping the Dead Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081112143447.0276d6a8@satx.rr.com> <http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Baptizing-the-Dead.html> November 10, 2008 Jewish Group Wants Mormons to Stop Proxy Baptisms ======== It's too late, because as a former Catholic I have already re-baptised all Mormons living and dead into the Roman faith. I await the move by leading Scientologists to Clear the thetans of all dead Mormons (at a cut rate). Postmortem soteriological predation is the new growth industry. Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Wed Nov 12 22:41:48 2008 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:41:48 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Gazzumping the Dead In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081112143447.0276d6a8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081112143447.0276d6a8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 8:38 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > Jewish Group Wants Mormons to Stop Proxy Baptisms > ======== > > It's too late, because as a former Catholic I have already re-baptised all > Mormons living and dead into the Roman faith. I await the move by leading > Scientologists to Clear the thetans of all dead Mormons (at a cut rate). > Postmortem soteriological predation is the new growth industry. > The dictionary that I looked up says that: The term gazumping is not used in the United States. Every state has different laws and traditions, but buyers typically make a written offer that, when accepted (signed) by the seller, is in most localities binding on the seller. ----------- So your subject heading probably caused some puzzlement amongst your US readers. Perfectly clear to me, though. :) At present the baptism for the dead procedure is pretty labour intensive. Strikes me as an ideal application for some automation. They already have huge genealogical computer records, so if the system was computerized, it should be possible to get every dead person converted to Mormonism fairly quickly as a one-off project. Then a small team doing monthly updates could be busily converting the newly dead. But then wouldn't this make things more difficult for all the Mormon missionaries? If you are going to be converted to Mormonism after you're dead, then why should you let all this religious stuff interfere with your normal life of sin and debauchery? (present company excepted, of course). BillK From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Nov 12 23:25:03 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:25:03 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Gazzumping the Dead In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081112143447.0276d6a8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081112171554.0276fac8@satx.rr.com> At 10:41 PM 11/12/2008 +0000, BillK wrote: >At present the baptism for the dead procedure is pretty labour intensive. >Strikes me as an ideal application for some automation. Of course my plan for converting the world optimally will use a supercomputer, along the lines of Clarke's "The Nine Billion Names of God". The consequence will be a faith arms race, where each mighty machine Mooreslaws itself ahead of its predecessor, re-saving everyone alive, dead and forthcoming according to its creedal program. Luckily, the chances are that this will be supernaturally ineffective until the arrival of the first true consciousness-grade AI, but thereafter the race to Save Everyone will shakes the walls of heaven--and earth, too, for we can expect a frightful devastation when it's learned that Mohammed and the Ayatollahs have been baptised by Mormons (rendering their fatwahs ineffective and indeed retrospectively damning them as apostates in the eyes the Faithful), then by Catholics, then cleared by Scientologists, and so on. But hey--we have to baptise the village in order to save them. Damien Broderick From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed Nov 12 23:40:57 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:40:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Gazzumping the Dead In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081112143447.0276d6a8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081112143447.0276d6a8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670811121540j6fd76d9l120788df4fd234d6@mail.gmail.com> Damien, I once came across (but could not manage to google) a Jewish humor website telling of a newly designed machine that could "debaptize" proxy baptized Jews faster than the Mormons could keep with! I found some interesting links regarding the matter. I thought I would start off with some news parody humor. http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s2i11826 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/eamon-mccann/eamonn-mccann-what-if-mormons-are-right-and-catholics-and-protestants-wrong-13955402.html http://ldser.blogspot.com/2005/04/jews-mormons-to-discuss-baptism-for.html http://amp.utdallas.edu/?storyid=4 John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Nov 13 00:10:09 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:10:09 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Gazzumping the Dead In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811121540j6fd76d9l120788df4fd234d6@mail.gmail.com > References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081112143447.0276d6a8@satx.rr.com> <2d6187670811121540j6fd76d9l120788df4fd234d6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081112180848.02715c60@satx.rr.com> >http://amp.utdallas.edu/?storyid=4 "I can't help but wince. I no longer prescribe to Mormon beliefs" Nor use English, apparently... But hey. Whatever. From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Nov 13 01:20:38 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:20:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Gazzumping the Dead In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081112180848.02715c60@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081112143447.0276d6a8@satx.rr.com> <2d6187670811121540j6fd76d9l120788df4fd234d6@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20081112180848.02715c60@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670811121720j460b3885m609c47548a4efebe@mail.gmail.com> http://amp.utdallas.edu/?storyid=4 "I can't help but wince. I no longer prescribe to Mormon beliefs" Damien wrote: Nor use English, apparently... But hey. Whatever. >>> I'm so glad you never became a high school english teacher. You would bring to tears any class you had (or they would make you tearful). John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Nov 13 04:11:42 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:11:42 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Gazzumping the Dead In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811121720j460b3885m609c47548a4efebe@mail.gmail.co m> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081112143447.0276d6a8@satx.rr.com> <2d6187670811121540j6fd76d9l120788df4fd234d6@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20081112180848.02715c60@satx.rr.com> <2d6187670811121720j460b3885m609c47548a4efebe@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081112220259.027d6ab0@satx.rr.com> At 06:20 PM 11/12/2008 -0700, John Grigg wrote: >I'm so glad you never became a high school english teacher. Or a pizza deliverator, for that matter. Luckily, I only got to supervise the occasional PhD, and many graduate students are literate. Unlike the dullard you url'd, whose insight into the free life prompted him to provide this tasty incentive to the LDS lifestyle: "Mormons are also forbidden from drinking coffee or alcohol, from participating in sexual acts before marriage, from seeing R-rated movies, from working on Sunday (although exceptions are made for eventuating circumstances), and are highly encouraged to dress modestly at all times... I'm not sure why there are such strong anti-Mormon sentiments among the populace..." Yeah, hard to grasp. But luckily, John, you escaped from all that deadening claptrap, right? Damien Broderick From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Nov 13 05:17:00 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:17:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Gazzumping the Dead In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081112220259.027d6ab0@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081112143447.0276d6a8@satx.rr.com> <2d6187670811121540j6fd76d9l120788df4fd234d6@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20081112180848.02715c60@satx.rr.com> <2d6187670811121720j460b3885m609c47548a4efebe@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20081112220259.027d6ab0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670811122117h74882adewaf1a5328f50593b8@mail.gmail.com> Damien, don't you understand? There is no escape! : ) Actually, it provides a "freedom by self-discipline" that some people thrive on. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Thu Nov 13 13:35:47 2008 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:35:47 +1100 Subject: [ExI] Gazzumping the Dead In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081112143447.0276d6a8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081112143447.0276d6a8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: 2008/11/13 Damien Broderick : > <http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Baptizing-the-Dead.html> > > November 10, 2008 > > > Jewish Group Wants Mormons to Stop Proxy Baptisms I can't quite grasp this: wouldn't a Jew who believed that Mormon proxy baptism actually *does* something thereby be a believer in the Mormon faith? Or are they just worried that it's secular insult? -- Stathis Papaioannou From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Nov 13 15:04:13 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 08:04:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Gazzumping the Dead In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081112143447.0276d6a8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670811130704u616b2fa3ge66e5537449b2263@mail.gmail.com> stathis wrote: > I can't quite grasp this: wouldn't a Jew who believed that Mormon > proxy baptism actually *does* something thereby be a believer in the > Mormon faith? Or are they just worried that it's secular insult? The latter is the case but I do see your point about the former (and so do many other people!). The Roman Catholics are another group which is bothered by the Mormon practice of vicarious baptism for the dead. And their leadership has asked their members to withhold genealogical records and vital statistics from Mormon family history researchers. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkhenson at rogers.com Thu Nov 13 22:01:05 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:01:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. Message-ID: <1226613975_6985@S4.cableone.net> This is really good. http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html The moderators should take note. It partly explains how they are doing things right. Keith From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 14 00:49:04 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:49:04 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. In-Reply-To: <1226613975_6985@S4.cableone.net> Message-ID: <200811140115.mAE1Fm3Y001121@andromeda.ziaspace.com> ...On Behalf Of hkhenson > Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. > > > This is really good. > > http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html > > The moderators should take note. It partly explains how they > are doing things right... Keith Noted, thanks Keith. This is really insightful. Of the groups in which I have participated, for some odd reason ExI has been the most problematic as far as interpersonal relationships. It isn't clear why. Certainly in the old days (mid 90s) we took on a lot more heavy topics. My notion has always been she who moderates least moderates best. spike From hkhenson at rogers.com Fri Nov 14 01:48:35 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:48:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. In-Reply-To: <200811140115.mAE1Fm3Y001121@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <1226613975_6985@S4.cableone.net> <200811140115.mAE1Fm3Y001121@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1226627625_8185@s5.cableone.net> At 05:49 PM 11/13/2008, you wrote: >...On Behalf Of hkhenson > > Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. > > > > > > This is really good. > > > > http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html > > > > The moderators should take note. It partly explains how they > > are doing things right... Keith > >Noted, thanks Keith. This is really insightful. Of the groups in which I >have participated, for some odd reason ExI has been the most problematic as >far as interpersonal relationships. It isn't clear why. Certainly in the >old days (mid 90s) we took on a lot more heavy topics. My notion has always >been she who moderates least moderates best. You have booted as needed. Otherwise the place gets taken over by flamers and other similar types. Keith From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Fri Nov 14 03:27:09 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:27:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. In-Reply-To: <1226627625_8185@s5.cableone.net> References: <1226613975_6985@S4.cableone.net> <200811140115.mAE1Fm3Y001121@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1226627625_8185@s5.cableone.net> Message-ID: <2d6187670811131927y6b21ff7fr59b3cb79181f8ccf@mail.gmail.com> Spike wrote: >Certainly in the >old days (mid 90s) we took on a lot more heavy topics. Ahhh...., the whispered about age when giants bestrode the Extropian list, that was a vast five years or so before I joined in '99. Spike, do you know of people who have archived the list from those days and could share some of the more impressive threads? What were some of the heavy topics that your remember? And what were some of the conclusions reached (if any)? John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at comcast.net Fri Nov 14 05:09:24 2008 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:09:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811131927y6b21ff7fr59b3cb79181f8ccf@mail.gmail.com> References: <1226613975_6985@S4.cableone.net> <200811140115.mAE1Fm3Y001121@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1226627625_8185@s5.cableone.net> <2d6187670811131927y6b21ff7fr59b3cb79181f8ccf@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <491D0804.6080506@comcast.net> John, Yea, wouldn't you like to have a concise and quantitative sumary of what all finally resulting positions of all participants, in all conversations on all the best topics were for the last 15+ years. Good luck with mining for that information even if you do get good access to all the archives. All I can say to this Shirky article us duu. As he said, many people have understood these issues for decades. And the fact that he is so anti scale, as in: > You have to find some way to protect your own users from scale. is just BS, if you ask me. He's only saying this because he hasn't YET seen a system that allows every member of huge groups (millions+) to effectively communicate to each individual. This is the problem that is still killing the entire internet, and indeed all of society. And his faithless views of inability to have powerful reputations, based on such effective means of communications from huge groups to individuals is another still primitive failing of his thinking. The exponentially growing community of researchers working on the study of the mind is the quintessential problematic community. Everyone, despite their increasing intelligence, very childishly, never making progress on issues that have been arround forever, loudly in ever more complex ways, repeating yes it is, no it isn't, yes it is assertions forever. Chalmers bibliography has surpassed the 18000+ publications on consciousness and the growth of all this piled higher and deeper crap is accelerating. No one is reading much of any of it, and everyong is pilling it on higher and deeper. And now that everyone can create a blog, and the poor attempt at consciousness communities, only makes things infinitely worse and more repetitive and childish. http://canonizer.com, in addition to naturally addressing all these issues Shirky mentions, easily scales to any size. Finally allowing huge groups to communicate to each individual in custom selected prioritized ways the reader selects. In a year or so, we are going to finally know concisely and quantitatively what the most well accepted theories of consciousness are both according to the general population, and also according to a quantitatively measured group of 'Mind Experts' (and many other canonizable ways). See http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/81, and http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/23 to see the seeds of this accelerating process.) And it is my bet that finally knowing this kind of stuff will rock the world. But of course, non of you believe any of this yet do you? What is it that you believe? Everyone wants to know. http://canonizer.com Brent Allsop John Grigg wrote: > Spike wrote: > >Certainly in the > >old days (mid 90s) we took on a lot more heavy topics. > > Ahhh...., the whispered about age when giants bestrode the Extropian > list, that was a vast five years or so before I joined in '99. > Spike, do you know of people who have archived the list from those > days and could share some of the more impressive threads? > > What were some of the heavy topics that your remember? And what were > some of the conclusions reached (if any)? > > John : ) > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkhenson at rogers.com Fri Nov 14 04:30:17 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:30:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811131927y6b21ff7fr59b3cb79181f8ccf@mail.gmail.co m> References: <1226613975_6985@S4.cableone.net> <200811140115.mAE1Fm3Y001121@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1226627625_8185@s5.cableone.net> <2d6187670811131927y6b21ff7fr59b3cb79181f8ccf@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1226637327_8754@S3.cableone.net> At 08:27 PM 11/13/2008, John Grigg wrote: >Spike wrote: > >Certainly in the > >old days (mid 90s) we took on a lot more heavy topics. > >Ahhh...., the whispered about age when giants bestrode the Extropian >list, that was a vast five years or so before I joined in >'99. Spike, do you know of people who have archived the list from >those days and could share some of the more impressive threads? > >What were some of the heavy topics that your remember? And what >were some of the conclusions reached (if any)? > >John : ) I archived some of it. One of the topics of that time was filling solar space with computronium. One never settled matter was the cube (or square) increase of computational power while the speed went down with the inverse size. Charles Stross used a lot of that list traffic in Accelerando. I don't think that's likely. In fact, I think the chances are that few humans will get off the planet and that the most likely physical state population at the end of this century is zero. You can see why I think so in "the clinic seed." Keith From emlynoregan at gmail.com Fri Nov 14 06:30:04 2008 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:00:04 +1030 Subject: [ExI] Gazzumping the Dead In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811130704u616b2fa3ge66e5537449b2263@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081112143447.0276d6a8@satx.rr.com> <2d6187670811130704u616b2fa3ge66e5537449b2263@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0811132230o7b7cc87k55d1b2d8957f0f43@mail.gmail.com> 2008/11/14 John Grigg : > stathis wrote: >> >> I can't quite grasp this: wouldn't a Jew who believed that Mormon >> proxy baptism actually *does* something thereby be a believer in the >> Mormon faith? Or are they just worried that it's secular insult? > > The latter is the case but I do see your point about the former (and so do > many other people!). The Roman Catholics are another group which is > bothered by the Mormon practice of vicarious baptism for the dead. And > their leadership has asked their members to withhold genealogical records > and vital statistics from Mormon family history researchers. > > John This reminds me so much of the Soul Hunters in Babylon 5... -- Emlyn http://emlynoregan.com - my home http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting http://speakingoffreedom.blogspot.com - video link feed of great talks on eCulture From rpwl at lightlink.com Fri Nov 14 17:27:43 2008 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:27:43 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness In-Reply-To: <227320.10260.qm@web37412.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <227320.10260.qm@web37412.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <491DB50F.1020705@lightlink.com> I completed the first draft of a technical paper on consciousness the other day. It is intended for the AGI-09 conference, and it can be found at: http://susaro.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/draft_consciousness_rpwl.pdf The title is "Consciousness in Human and Machine: A Theory and Some Falsifiable Predictions", and it does solve the problem, believe it or not. But I have no illusions: it will be misunderstood, at the very least. I expect there will be plenty of people who argue that it does not solve the problem, but I don't really care, because I think history will eventually show that this is indeed the right answer. It gives a satisfying answer to all the outstanding questions and it feels right. Oh, and it does make some testable predictions. Alas, we do not yet have the technology to perform the tests yet, but the predictions are on the table, anyhow. In a longer version I would go into a lot more detail, introducing the background material at more length, analyzing the other proposals that have been made and fleshing out the technical aspects along several dimensions. But the size limit for the conference was 6 pages, so that was all I could cram in. Richard Loosemore P.S. Yes, I know: everyone and their mother has a theory of consciousness these days. But, believe me, I wouldn't dare to join that (mostly confused and disreputable) crowd unless I really thought that this paper actually *did* solve the problem. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Nov 14 18:28:27 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:28:27 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. In-Reply-To: <491D0804.6080506@comcast.net> References: <1226613975_6985@S4.cableone.net> <200811140115.mAE1Fm3Y001121@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1226627625_8185@s5.cableone.net> <2d6187670811131927y6b21ff7fr59b3cb79181f8ccf@mail.gmail.com> <491D0804.6080506@comcast.net> Message-ID: <580930c20811141028m3353bc7fyc947f03a1d988fa3@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 6:09 AM, Brent Allsop wrote: > is just BS, if you ask me. He's only saying this because he hasn't YET seen > a system that allows every member of huge groups (millions+) to effectively > communicate to each individual. Easy. Increase your bandwith and expand your brain in proportion... :-) Stefano Va From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 14 20:16:52 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:16:52 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. In-Reply-To: <1226637327_8754@S3.cableone.net> Message-ID: <200811142016.mAEKGu2x012136@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of hkhenson > ... > > I don't think that's likely. In fact, I think the chances > are that few humans will get off the planet and that the most > likely physical state population at the end of this century > is zero. You can see why I think so in "the clinic seed." Keith Keith, you would have liked Anders Sandberg's pitch this morning at the global catastrophy conference at the computer history museum in Mountain View Taxifornia: http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=173 I haven't reviewed the clinic seed yet, but my initial opinion is that human extinction in this century is most unlikely. Local exi-ers, Anders is in town this weekend, but I intentionally did not make plans for a exi-schmooze because I didn't know his schedule. Open to suggestions. I may not be able to make the scene myself because of an upcoming biz trip and the usual family obligations. My house is not as workable as a meeting spot, for it has gone from a roomy suburban residence to an explosion in a toy factory. {8-] Here's something unrelated but cool: http://www.mondolithic.com/?p=254 spike From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 14 20:03:10 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:03:10 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811131927y6b21ff7fr59b3cb79181f8ccf@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200811142029.mAEKTr4Z010218@andromeda.ziaspace.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Grigg Subject: Re: [ExI] Online social groups. Spike wrote: >>Certainly in the old days (mid 90s) we took on a lot more heavy topics. >Ahhh...., the whispered about age when giants bestrode the Extropian list, that was a vast five years or so before I joined in '99... Bestrode. I like that word. Isn't clear how to handle the tense. I have bestrodden this list before and intend to bestride it in the future, for I immodestly consider myself one of the best- riders present. >Spike, do you know of people who have archived the list from those days and could share some of the more impressive threads? Web geeks, can you answer this please? > What were some of the heavy topics that your remember? Politics and war. > And what were some of the conclusions reached (if any)? John : ) None ever, other than reinforcing the utter futility of discussing politics and war in this forum. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri Nov 14 21:07:02 2008 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:07:02 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. In-Reply-To: <200811142029.mAEKTr4Z010218@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <2d6187670811131927y6b21ff7fr59b3cb79181f8ccf@mail.gmail.com> <200811142029.mAEKTr4Z010218@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 8:03 PM, spike wrote: > Bestrode. I like that word. Isn't clear how to handle the tense. I have > bestrodden this list before and intend to bestride it in the future, for > I immodestly consider myself one of the best- > riders present. > You've got to be dedicated to be a famous bestrider. See: BillK From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 14 21:57:38 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:57:38 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200811142225.mAEMPecb014705@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 8:03 PM, spike wrote: > > Bestrode. I like that word... > > > > > You've got to be dedicated to be a famous bestrider. > > See: > > > BillK Good point, BillK. Surely the creator of xkcd is a fellow bestrider. Hers is the funniest comic strip ever. Compared to her, I am merely a goodrider or fairider. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Nov 14 23:03:46 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:03:46 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. In-Reply-To: <200811142225.mAEMPecb014705@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200811142225.mAEMPecb014705@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081114170335.023fe280@satx.rr.com> This would help: http://xkcd.com/481/ From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Nov 14 23:43:24 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:43:24 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. In-Reply-To: <200811142225.mAEMPecb014705@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200811142225.mAEMPecb014705@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081114174233.024eaa88@satx.rr.com> At 01:57 PM 11/14/2008 -0800, spike wrote: >Surely the creator of xkcd is a fellow bestrider. Hers >is the funniest comic strip ever. Compared to her, I am merely a goodrider >or fairider. Randall Patrick Munroe has had a sex change? Cool. From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 14 23:24:21 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:24:21 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081114170335.023fe280@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <200811142351.mAENp2F9024849@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > Damien Broderick > Sent: Friday, November 14, 2008 3:04 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] Online social groups. > > This would help: > > http://xkcd.com/481/ This one is even better altho not on the same topic: http://xkcd.com/482/ We might want to come up with a continuation downward that might be interesting. Wiki has this to say about Randall Monroe: A native of Easton, Pennsylvania, Munroe grew up in Chesterfield, Virginia and was a fan of the funny pages from an early age[1] starting off with Calvin and Hobbes.[2] After graduating from the Chesterfield County Mathematics and Science High School at Clover Hill: A Renaissance Program, he graduated from Christopher Newport University in 2006 with a degree in Physics.[3][4] Munroe worked as an independent contractor for NASA at the Langley Research Center [5] before and after his graduation. In January 2006 his NASA contract lapsed and he began to write xkcd full-time. He now supports himself by the sale of xkcd related merchandise.[1][6] The webcomic quickly became very popular, garnering up to 70 million hits a month by October 2007.[7] He has also toured the lecture circuit, giving speeches at such places as Google's Googleplex in Mountain View, California .[8] Munroe lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.[1] spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Nov 15 00:02:54 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:02:54 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081114170335.023fe280@satx.rr.com> References: <200811142225.mAEMPecb014705@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20081114170335.023fe280@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081114180231.022e2e90@satx.rr.com> >This would help: > >http://xkcd.com/481/ So would this: http://xkcd.com/438/ From spike66 at att.net Sat Nov 15 00:48:52 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:48:52 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081114174233.024eaa88@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <200811150115.mAF1FXJB020103@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > ...On Behalf Of > Damien Broderick > Subject: Re: [ExI] Online social groups. > > At 01:57 PM 11/14/2008 -0800, spike wrote: > > >Surely the creator of xkcd is a fellow bestrider. Hers is > the funniest > >comic strip ever. Compared to her, I am merely a goodrider or > >fairider. > > Randall Patrick Munroe has had a sex change? Cool. Not that I know of. When I say she or her I mean he or she and him or her. I feel this was a mistake the inventors of the English language made up front, and we have carried it. Now is the time to correct that. Since I didn't know, I used the ambiguous gender her. spike From natasha at natasha.cc Sat Nov 15 01:25:51 2008 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:25:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Convergence08 - Be there! Message-ID: <20081114202551.ja28ldsaecssggs8@webmail.natasha.cc> Greetings - I hear that tomorrow is going to be great fun! I can't wait to see everyone - Congratulations to all who are working on the conference! Natasha From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sat Nov 15 11:14:55 2008 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 04:14:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness In-Reply-To: <491DB50F.1020705@lightlink.com> References: <227320.10260.qm@web37412.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <491DB50F.1020705@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <491EAF2F.8070307@comcast.net> Richard, First, a few trivial problems I noticed: page 4: > We cannot simply wave our hands and pick a > set of criteria to apply to these things, we ??? some convincing > reasons for choosing as we do. conclusion: > We could never "prove" this statement the > way that we prove things about other concepts, but all of > the concepts related to consciousness are deemed to have a > special status-??the?? are real, but beyond analysis Definitely, yet another falsifiable theory of consciousness. But I like a different theory much better which falsifiably predicts you're making some key mistakes. This theory - that nature simply has phenomenal properties - is here: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/23/2 It appears to me your theory is very similar to the one Chalmers argues for represented by this slightly more well represented camp (i.e. two people so far, and possibly Chalmers himself) here: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/23/9 Both of these competing camps agree on, and support the representational super camp here. http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/23/7 I"m wondering if you would consider yourself a representationalist? If not then what? I don't see anything you've said that disagrees with what is stated there, yet you fail to mention it at all. And there are some leading theinkeers currently working together on joining and improving this representational camp such as: John Smythies, Richard Wilson, Edmond Wright, Mark Ancil Crooks, and Stephen Harrison. It would definitely be great to get this "Loosemore Argument"? canonized with the rest of the theories, so it can be concisely and quantitatively represented along with all the other theories being added. When you say: > This escaping-the-objective > feature is not just about explaining consciousness, it is also > about defining it: for every "objective" definition that has > ever been proposed, it seems, someone has countered that > the real mystery has been side-stepped by the definition. and > We could never "prove" this statement the > way that we prove things about other concepts, but all of > the concepts related to consciousness are deemed to have a > special status-the are real, but beyond analysis The nature has phenomenal properties theory predicts this is false or wrong. The 'objective' definition and proof is to simply 'eff' what it is like - as in: 'oh THAT is what salt is like'. Very different than saying what it behaves like in a cause and effect way. And of course when you conclude: > Any computer designed in such a way that it had the same > problems as we do with the analysis mechanism (arguably, > any computer intelligent enough to be comparable to > ourselves) would experience consciousness. Chalmers would probably agree with you, but the nature has phenomenal properties camp predicts this will be proven wrong. Looking forward to hearing how your presentation of this goes this weekend at Convergence08. I wish I could be there to experience it, and I hope everyone will let me know how this and everything else went. Brent Allsop Richard Loosemore wrote: > > I completed the first draft of a technical paper on consciousness the > other day. It is intended for the AGI-09 conference, and it can be > found at: > > http://susaro.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/draft_consciousness_rpwl.pdf > > The title is "Consciousness in Human and Machine: A Theory and Some > Falsifiable Predictions", and it does solve the problem, believe it or > not. > > But I have no illusions: it will be misunderstood, at the very least. > I expect there will be plenty of people who argue that it does not > solve the problem, but I don't really care, because I think history > will eventually show that this is indeed the right answer. It gives a > satisfying answer to all the outstanding questions and it feels right. > > Oh, and it does make some testable predictions. Alas, we do not yet > have the technology to perform the tests yet, but the predictions are > on the table, anyhow. > > In a longer version I would go into a lot more detail, introducing > the background material at more length, analyzing the other proposals > that have been made and fleshing out the technical aspects along > several dimensions. But the size limit for the conference was 6 > pages, so that was all I could cram in. > > > > > Richard Loosemore > > > P.S. Yes, I know: everyone and their mother has a theory of > consciousness these days. But, believe me, I wouldn't dare to join > that (mostly confused and disreputable) crowd unless I really thought > that this paper actually *did* solve the problem. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From rpwl at lightlink.com Sat Nov 15 16:34:53 2008 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 11:34:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness In-Reply-To: <491EAF2F.8070307@comcast.net> References: <227320.10260.qm@web37412.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <491DB50F.1020705@lightlink.com> <491EAF2F.8070307@comcast.net> Message-ID: <491EFA2D.7000409@lightlink.com> Brent Allsop wrote: > > Richard, > > First, a few trivial problems I noticed: > > page 4: > > We cannot simply wave our hands and pick a > > set of criteria to apply to these things, we ??? some convincing > > reasons for choosing as we do. > > conclusion: > > We could never "prove" this statement the > > way that we prove things about other concepts, but all of > > the concepts related to consciousness are deemed to have a > > special status-??the?? are real, but beyond analysis Many thanks for catching those > Definitely, yet another falsifiable theory of consciousness. But I like > a different theory much better which falsifiably predicts you're making > some key mistakes. This theory - that nature simply has phenomenal > properties - is here: > > http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/23/2 I confess I have read only a short way into this piece, but already I see a severe problem: it belongs in the "Let's just pass a scientific law to say that C-phenomena are valid, and forget about explaining them" category. In other words, it seems to "explain" C by simply asserting that Science is actually Science+C, with C being some additional set of primitives, with no connection (other than an epiphenomenal one) to the regular world of Science. That position has been articulated before, but most people find it deeply unsatisfactory. Moreover, the position described in that page makes a telling statement near the beginning: "We believe that evolution has managed to use something that has a red phenomenal property to represent knowledge of something that reflects 700 nm light...". This brings down their whole position, because if "evolution" was able to "use" something that has a red phenomenal property, then (a) how did it manage to get hold of it, if the "something" was beyond the reach of science? and (b) if the "something" was not beyond the reach of science (so one day we can objectively observe the something and connect it to the rest of the physical world), then what is this "phenomenal quality" that the something is supposed to have ... it seems that the original questions are all there, in 100% of their original force, about the "something". I cannot see any way to parse this Camp Statement "Nature Has Ineffable Phenomenal Properties" that gets around these problems. The statement does not address them. And where is the falsifiable prediction in this camp statement? I cannot find it. Nor can I find any sense in which this position "falsifiably predicts that [I] am making some key mistakes"..... ummm, isn't that, like, nothing to do with the meaning of "falsifiable prediction"? :-) One cannot falsifiably predict that someone is making some mistakes; we just predict some phenomena, and then go and measure them...... no? > It appears to me your theory is very similar to the one Chalmers argues > for represented by this slightly more well represented camp (i.e. two > people so far, and possibly Chalmers himself) here: > > http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/23/9 Well, I guess I would say that it is not exactly fair to say the two theories are similar, because Chalmers' argument does not make any attempt to say where all this comes from and what its ontological status is. Chalmers' argument is *consistent* with what I have argued, but the two statements are very very different. FWIW, Chalmers did actually listen to and read my argument when I put it on a poster at the 2006 conference in Tucson. His first reaction was that it broke down at a certain place, but when I pointed out to him that I had already defended against that reply (and defended against all possible extensions of that reply), his only comment was that "yes, that might work", and he asked me to send him a copy of the paper. > Both of these competing camps agree on, and support the representational > super camp here. > > http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/23/7 Again, this only a general statement about a category of possible solutions to the problem, without any flesh on its bones, which would allow it to explain exactly *why* the quandary arises. It talks about C-phenomena being an "illusion" without addressing the problem of what kind of illusion, and why. It is vague, and leaves many, many questions unanswered. I believe that the paper I just presented did not leave any loose ends (of any substance), and gave a more comprehensive account of all the various sub-issues than I have ever seen in any of the extant positions. So, having stuck my neck out like that, I need to be attacked on specific points that people think I did not cover. > I"m wondering if you would consider yourself a representationalist? If > not then what? I don't see anything you've said that disagrees with > what is stated there, yet you fail to mention it at all. And there are > some leading theinkeers currently working together on joining and > improving this representational camp such as: John Smythies, Richard > Wilson, Edmond Wright, Mark Ancil Crooks, and Stephen Harrison. That is a tricky question. The problem is this. Representationalists say some things that are entirely consistent with the position I have stated - for example, that the only knowledge that we have is actually just the concepts in our heads, and that the "real world" is not a thing that can be separated from our knowledge of it (or, indeed, the "real world" might not even exist.... we simply have no way to know). So far so good. But then the representationalists sometimes use further language that introduces concepts that are hard to parse or justify. To take an example from the position statement at http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/23/7, "There is also our *knowledge* of what we are looking at which is the final result of the perception process entirely in our brain. We believe this conscious knowledge to be composed of phenomenal properties." (emphasis added) This paragraph can be taken as referring to the concept-atoms that I described in my paper (i.e. when they say "knowledge"), BUT then they go on to say that "this conscious knowledge to be composed of phenomenal properties", which is a huge leap from mechanism-talk (concept-atoms) to phenomenological talk (...composed of phenomenal properties). My response to that paragraph is that everything was going fine until the sudden jump! So it would take a great deal of detailed explication to pick apart the difference between me and a representationalist, but the short reply is that they go places I do not want to go, for reasons that seem pulled out of thin air. And, to repeat my theme throughout this post, they do not give a detailed account of why all the various problems related to consciousness should be the way that they are. Nor do they make falsifiable predictions. > It would definitely be great to get this "Loosemore Argument"? canonized > with the rest of the theories, so it can be concisely and quantitatively > represented along with all the other theories being added. Yes, I will try to do that. > When you say: > > > This escaping-the-objective > > feature is not just about explaining consciousness, it is also > > about defining it: for every "objective" definition that has > > ever been proposed, it seems, someone has countered that > > the real mystery has been side-stepped by the definition. > > and > > > We could never "prove" this statement the > > way that we prove things about other concepts, but all of > > the concepts related to consciousness are deemed to have a > > special status-the are real, but beyond analysis > > > The nature has phenomenal properties theory predicts this is false or > wrong. The 'objective' definition and proof is to simply 'eff' what it > is like - as in: 'oh THAT is what salt is like'. Very different than > saying what it behaves like in a cause and effect way. As I said above, the Nature Has Phenomenal Properties Theory can be criticized for (a) not really saying why the various observations about consciousness should be the way they are (my theory does do that, I believe), and it also has internal inconsistencies, like its ambiguity concerning the relationship between the phenomenal properties and the real. Also, you mentioned "prediction" again. I think this is confusing: their disagreement with my position is not the same as predicting that I am wrong, because prediction is really only about doing empirical experiments (or rather, in the context of *my* usage of "flasifiable predictions", that is what it means). > And of course when you conclude: > > > Any computer designed in such a way that it had the same > > problems as we do with the analysis mechanism (arguably, > > any computer intelligent enough to be comparable to > > ourselves) would experience consciousness. > > Chalmers would probably agree with you, but the nature has phenomenal > properties camp predicts this will be proven wrong. Hmmmm, perhaps you could clarify. What is the exact nature of the prediction that they make? I am unclear. > Looking forward to hearing how your presentation of this goes this > weekend at Convergence08. I wish I could be there to experience it, and > I hope everyone will let me know how this and everything else went. > > Brent Allsop Oh, this is for possible inclusion in AGI-09: I am not going to Convergence08. Richard Loosemore > > > > > > > > Richard Loosemore wrote: >> >> I completed the first draft of a technical paper on consciousness the >> other day. It is intended for the AGI-09 conference, and it can be >> found at: >> >> http://susaro.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/draft_consciousness_rpwl.pdf >> >> The title is "Consciousness in Human and Machine: A Theory and Some >> Falsifiable Predictions", and it does solve the problem, believe it or >> not. >> >> But I have no illusions: it will be misunderstood, at the very least. >> I expect there will be plenty of people who argue that it does not >> solve the problem, but I don't really care, because I think history >> will eventually show that this is indeed the right answer. It gives a >> satisfying answer to all the outstanding questions and it feels right. >> >> Oh, and it does make some testable predictions. Alas, we do not yet >> have the technology to perform the tests yet, but the predictions are >> on the table, anyhow. >> >> In a longer version I would go into a lot more detail, introducing >> the background material at more length, analyzing the other proposals >> that have been made and fleshing out the technical aspects along >> several dimensions. But the size limit for the conference was 6 >> pages, so that was all I could cram in. >> >> >> >> >> Richard Loosemore >> >> >> P.S. Yes, I know: everyone and their mother has a theory of >> consciousness these days. But, believe me, I wouldn't dare to join >> that (mostly confused and disreputable) crowd unless I really thought >> that this paper actually *did* solve the problem. >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 jonkc at bellsouth.net Sat Nov 15 18:32:56 2008 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 13:32:56 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A paper that actually does solve the problem ofconsciousness References: <227320.10260.qm@web37412.mail.mud.yahoo.com><491DB50F.1020705@lightlink.com> <491EAF2F.8070307@comcast.net> Message-ID: <30603A4F6B364F5A8E6B2D5500136805@MyComputer> "Brent Allsop" > I"m wondering if you would consider yourself a representationalist? I think that's the sort of thing that gives philosophy a bad name, creating a grand sounding name for something mundane. "Representationalism is the philosophical position that the world we see in conscious experience is not the real world itself" Well duh! Obviously the image of a red strawberry that sometimes forms in our head is not a red strawberry. >"but merely a miniature virtual-reality replica of that world in an >internal representation." Merely?! A subjective experience is at least as real as a red strawberry, and so is an illusion, any illusion. Subjectivity is the most important thing in the universe, at least I think so. > We believe consciousness to be real, representational Everybody this side on a loony bin believes that, whatever a college professor may write in an obscure journal to impress other college professors. > and composed of phenomenal properties And everybody except snake handling Christians and Islamic fundamentalists, that is to say loonies, believe that too. > which are categorically different than behavioral properties. That part tells me nothing. Philosophical categories are a human invention; they are not universal, not even among humans. > We exclude all supernatural concepts and entities, such as spirits or > souls that survive death I agree that souls will not allow you to survive death, but information might. If you reject souls and information also then you have no explanation why a person is conscious but a corpse is not, you can't even know if it's true. > In his book: "Consciousness Explained" Daniel Dennett claims we don't > experience qualia "It just seems like we do." (P 375) It's been many years since I read that book but I very strongly suspect Dennett was trying to be funny and ironic when he wrote that (I can seem myself making a similar remark when I'm trying to be a smartass) because on its face it makes no sense, and I think Dennett is smart enough to know that. John K Clark From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sat Nov 15 18:38:18 2008 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 11:38:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness In-Reply-To: <491EFA2D.7000409@lightlink.com> References: <227320.10260.qm@web37412.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <491DB50F.1020705@lightlink.com> <491EAF2F.8070307@comcast.net> <491EFA2D.7000409@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <491F171A.5080600@comcast.net> Richard, Oh, AGI 09. That sounds fun too. When you say: > Chalmers' argument is *consistent* with what I have argued, but the two statements are very very different. That is precisely the type of information we are attempting to capture concisely and quantitatively at canonizer.com. Almost nobody agrees on every single little thing. And we tend to spend all our time on the little minor disagreements, when in reality, unbeknownst to most, there is quite a bit of consistency and agreement after all on many critically important things. Our inability to capture and measure this consensus concisely and quantitatively is why so many junk theories and noise survive and so effectively drown out the real signal that I believe we'll soon find within all the noise loud and clear. So, in other words, perhaps we could work with the members of that Chalmers camp to create a 'super camp' containing all the things that are 'consistent' with what all of you agree with. All of the great additions that you have that they all agree with can be added to that super camp they 'support'. Anything that they all do not fully agree with can be added to your own supporting sub camp. A good way to get started, would be to join this camp, if you agree with most of it. You will then received communication from the camp and topic forums about proposed improvements, and have 'object' privileges to proposed changes to your camp - preventing them from going live (such can then be added to a competing sibling camp or supporting sub camp.) That is why the representationalist camp is so vague on many things. It simply states that our conscious knowledge is the final result of the cause and effect chain of events that is pereception and located in our head. This is what we all agree on. There are obviously a diverse set of compeeting theories about what this phenomenal knowledge is, precicely. All this is being continually developed as we write. So you need to read and follow the various sub camps to see the survey of the various theories beyond representationalism as they continue to develop. You picked up quite a bit from your simple reading of the phenomenal properties camp, but you are still obviously missing quite a bit. (as I surely am still missing much about your beliefs) We know that the stuff on the surface of a strawberry has a behavioral property in that it causes 700 nm light to reflect in a certain pattern. Science tells us all about this behavior, but not much about the how or why, and it is very blind to any other properties beyond mere behavior. Our theory simply is that in addition to such causal behavioral properties, there is something in our brain that also has phenomenal properties. This is of course way oversimplifying things but as an example say one neurotransitter has a red phenomenal property, and another a green. So evolution simply used the phenomenal properties of these two neural transmitters to represent both the red strawberry and the green leaves in an intelligently distinguishable conscious way. Just because cause and effect observation is blind to anything other than behavioral properties doesn't mean that they do not have such more than behavioral properties. Nor does it mean that evolution could not utilize such ineffable properties o make us more intelligent in a phenomenally conscious way. The predictions and falsifiable claims are simply that some of your falisfiable predictions will be wrong, and that we will descover just what it is in nature that has these phenomenal properties. If all the claims made by your theory turn out to be true, this theory will be falsified. If, as this theory predicts, we discover that something in our brain does have phenomenal properties, that evolution has used these phenomenal properties to represent our knowledge, and if we develop the ability to map and eff such to each other's minds (as in oh THAT is what red is like for you), it will prove this theory correct, and at least some of your theories' predictions wrong. We're very much looking forward to getting your theories concisely stated and quantitatively measured with all the other theories. And I think you are very much a 'Mind Expert' so I (and surely others) would love to join your camp if you would create one containing some of your bio information representing you with other experts here: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/81. I'm betting that all these Hard Problem camps are about to collapse into one - the discovery of what the mind really is. And I bet this will be, by far, the greatest and most world changing scientific achievement of all time. Boy, is this going to be dramatic, and what a wonderful time to be alive to likely witness and be a part of such and to see who are the first ones in that camp. Thanks Brent Allsop Richard Loosemore wrote: > Brent Allsop wrote: >> >> Richard, >> >> First, a few trivial problems I noticed: >> >> page 4: >> > We cannot simply wave our hands and pick a >> > set of criteria to apply to these things, we ??? some convincing >> > reasons for choosing as we do. >> >> conclusion: >> > We could never "prove" this statement the >> > way that we prove things about other concepts, but all of >> > the concepts related to consciousness are deemed to have a >> > special status-??the?? are real, but beyond analysis > > Many thanks for catching those > >> Definitely, yet another falsifiable theory of consciousness. But I >> like a different theory much better which falsifiably predicts you're >> making some key mistakes. This theory - that nature simply has >> phenomenal properties - is here: >> >> http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/23/2 > > I confess I have read only a short way into this piece, but already I > see a severe problem: it belongs in the "Let's just pass a scientific > law to say that C-phenomena are valid, and forget about explaining > them" category. > > In other words, it seems to "explain" C by simply asserting that > Science is actually Science+C, with C being some additional set of > primitives, with no connection (other than an epiphenomenal one) to > the regular world of Science. > > That position has been articulated before, but most people find it > deeply unsatisfactory. > > Moreover, the position described in that page makes a telling > statement near the beginning: "We believe that evolution has managed > to use something that has a red phenomenal property to represent > knowledge of something that reflects 700 nm light...". This brings > down their whole position, because if "evolution" was able to "use" > something that has a red phenomenal property, then (a) how did it > manage to get hold of it, if the "something" was beyond the reach of > science? and (b) if the "something" was not beyond the reach of > science (so one day we can objectively observe the something and > connect it to the rest of the physical world), then what is this > "phenomenal quality" that the something is supposed to have ... it > seems that the original questions are all there, in 100% of their > original force, about the "something". > > I cannot see any way to parse this Camp Statement "Nature Has > Ineffable Phenomenal Properties" that gets around these problems. The > statement does not address them. > > And where is the falsifiable prediction in this camp statement? I > cannot find it. > > Nor can I find any sense in which this position "falsifiably predicts > that [I] am making some key mistakes"..... ummm, isn't that, like, > nothing to do with the meaning of "falsifiable prediction"? :-) One > cannot falsifiably predict that someone is making some mistakes; we > just predict some phenomena, and then go and measure them...... no? > > >> It appears to me your theory is very similar to the one Chalmers >> argues for represented by this slightly more well represented camp >> (i.e. two people so far, and possibly Chalmers himself) here: >> >> http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/23/9 > > Well, I guess I would say that it is not exactly fair to say the two > theories are similar, because Chalmers' argument does not make any > attempt to say where all this comes from and what its ontological > status is. > > Chalmers' argument is *consistent* with what I have argued, but the > two statements are very very different. > > FWIW, Chalmers did actually listen to and read my argument when I put > it on a poster at the 2006 conference in Tucson. His first reaction > was that it broke down at a certain place, but when I pointed out to > him that I had already defended against that reply (and defended > against all possible extensions of that reply), his only comment was > that "yes, that might work", and he asked me to send him a copy of the > paper. > > > > >> Both of these competing camps agree on, and support the >> representational super camp here. >> >> http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/23/7 > > Again, this only a general statement about a category of possible > solutions to the problem, without any flesh on its bones, which would > allow it to explain exactly *why* the quandary arises. It talks about > C-phenomena being an "illusion" without addressing the problem of what > kind of illusion, and why. It is vague, and leaves many, many > questions unanswered. > > I believe that the paper I just presented did not leave any loose ends > (of any substance), and gave a more comprehensive account of all the > various sub-issues than I have ever seen in any of the extant positions. > > So, having stuck my neck out like that, I need to be attacked on > specific points that people think I did not cover. > >> I"m wondering if you would consider yourself a representationalist? >> If not then what? I don't see anything you've said that disagrees >> with what is stated there, yet you fail to mention it at all. And >> there are some leading theinkeers currently working together on >> joining and improving this representational camp such as: John >> Smythies, Richard Wilson, Edmond Wright, Mark Ancil Crooks, and >> Stephen Harrison. > > That is a tricky question. > > The problem is this. Representationalists say some things that are > entirely consistent with the position I have stated - for example, > that the only knowledge that we have is actually just the concepts in > our heads, and that the "real world" is not a thing that can be > separated from our knowledge of it (or, indeed, the "real world" might > not even exist.... we simply have no way to know). > > So far so good. But then the representationalists sometimes use > further language that introduces concepts that are hard to parse or > justify. To take an example from the position statement at > > http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/23/7, > > "There is also our *knowledge* of what we are looking at which is the > final result of the perception process entirely in our brain. We > believe this conscious knowledge to be composed of phenomenal > properties." > > (emphasis added) > > This paragraph can be taken as referring to the concept-atoms that I > described in my paper (i.e. when they say "knowledge"), BUT then they > go on to say that "this conscious knowledge to be composed of > phenomenal properties", which is a huge leap from mechanism-talk > (concept-atoms) to phenomenological talk (...composed of phenomenal > properties). > > My response to that paragraph is that everything was going fine until > the sudden jump! > > So it would take a great deal of detailed explication to pick apart > the difference between me and a representationalist, but the short > reply is that they go places I do not want to go, for reasons that > seem pulled out of thin air. > > And, to repeat my theme throughout this post, they do not give a > detailed account of why all the various problems related to > consciousness should be the way that they are. Nor do they make > falsifiable predictions. > >> It would definitely be great to get this "Loosemore Argument"? >> canonized with the rest of the theories, so it can be concisely and >> quantitatively represented along with all the other theories being >> added. > > Yes, I will try to do that. > >> When you say: >> >> > This escaping-the-objective >> > feature is not just about explaining consciousness, it is also >> > about defining it: for every "objective" definition that has >> > ever been proposed, it seems, someone has countered that >> > the real mystery has been side-stepped by the definition. >> >> and >> >> > We could never "prove" this statement the >> > way that we prove things about other concepts, but all of >> > the concepts related to consciousness are deemed to have a >> > special status-the are real, but beyond analysis >> >> >> The nature has phenomenal properties theory predicts this is false or >> wrong. The 'objective' definition and proof is to simply 'eff' what >> it is like - as in: 'oh THAT is what salt is like'. Very different >> than saying what it behaves like in a cause and effect way. > > As I said above, the Nature Has Phenomenal Properties Theory can be > criticized for (a) not really saying why the various observations > about consciousness should be the way they are (my theory does do > that, I believe), and it also has internal inconsistencies, like its > ambiguity concerning the relationship between the phenomenal > properties and the real. > > Also, you mentioned "prediction" again. I think this is confusing: > their disagreement with my position is not the same as predicting that > I am wrong, because prediction is really only about doing empirical > experiments (or rather, in the context of *my* usage of "flasifiable > predictions", that is what it means). > > >> And of course when you conclude: >> >> > Any computer designed in such a way that it had the same >> > problems as we do with the analysis mechanism (arguably, >> > any computer intelligent enough to be comparable to >> > ourselves) would experience consciousness. >> >> Chalmers would probably agree with you, but the nature has phenomenal >> properties camp predicts this will be proven wrong. > > Hmmmm, perhaps you could clarify. What is the exact nature of the > prediction that they make? I am unclear. > > > > >> Looking forward to hearing how your presentation of this goes this >> weekend at Convergence08. I wish I could be there to experience it, >> and I hope everyone will let me know how this and everything else went. >> >> Brent Allsop > > Oh, this is for possible inclusion in AGI-09: I am not going to > Convergence08. > > > > > Richard Loosemore > > > > > > >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Richard Loosemore wrote: >>> >>> I completed the first draft of a technical paper on consciousness >>> the other day. It is intended for the AGI-09 conference, and it >>> can be found at: >>> >>> http://susaro.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/draft_consciousness_rpwl.pdf >>> >>> >>> The title is "Consciousness in Human and Machine: A Theory and Some >>> Falsifiable Predictions", and it does solve the problem, believe it >>> or not. >>> >>> But I have no illusions: it will be misunderstood, at the very >>> least. I expect there will be plenty of people who argue that it >>> does not solve the problem, but I don't really care, because I think >>> history will eventually show that this is indeed the right answer. >>> It gives a satisfying answer to all the outstanding questions and it >>> feels right. >>> >>> Oh, and it does make some testable predictions. Alas, we do not yet >>> have the technology to perform the tests yet, but the predictions >>> are on the table, anyhow. >>> >>> In a longer version I would go into a lot more detail, introducing >>> the background material at more length, analyzing the other >>> proposals that have been made and fleshing out the technical aspects >>> along several dimensions. But the size limit for the conference was >>> 6 pages, so that was all I could cram in. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Richard Loosemore >>> >>> >>> P.S. Yes, I know: everyone and their mother has a theory of >>> consciousness these days. But, believe me, I wouldn't dare to join >>> that (mostly confused and disreputable) crowd unless I really >>> thought that this paper actually *did* solve the problem. >>> _______________________________________________ >>> 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 thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Nov 15 19:08:24 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 13:08:24 -0600 Subject: [ExI] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness In-Reply-To: <491F171A.5080600@comcast.net> References: <227320.10260.qm@web37412.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <491DB50F.1020705@lightlink.com> <491EAF2F.8070307@comcast.net> <491EFA2D.7000409@lightlink.com> <491F171A.5080600@comcast.net> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081115125803.023cee08@satx.rr.com> At 11:38 AM 11/15/2008 -0700, Brent wrote: >If, as this theory predicts, we discover that something in our >brain does have phenomenal properties Ah--then does the brain also have non-reductive *musicality* properties over and above these postulated hearing-air-vibrations-as-sound-qualia properties? I mean, sure, let's say we need these mysterious additional raw qualia detectors just to *eff* sounds qua sounds, but doesn't that leave out our capacity to identify and enjoy *musical* sound qualia? Are these meta-[in]effable properties? You might say No, appreciating music is just a neurocomputational/affective response to the basic sound qualia, both innate and learned, but isn't that just *evading the issue* of the (as it were) unutterable mysteriousness of music, its meta-[in]effable character? And so on, turtles of different voice in every direction. Damien Broderick From rpwl at lightlink.com Sat Nov 15 22:39:18 2008 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:39:18 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081115125803.023cee08@satx.rr.com> References: <227320.10260.qm@web37412.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <491DB50F.1020705@lightlink.com> <491EAF2F.8070307@comcast.net> <491EFA2D.7000409@lightlink.com> <491F171A.5080600@comcast.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20081115125803.023cee08@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <491F4F96.3040809@lightlink.com> Damien Broderick wrote: > At 11:38 AM 11/15/2008 -0700, Brent wrote: > > >If, as this theory predicts, we discover that something in our > >brain does have phenomenal properties > > Ah--then does the brain also have non-reductive *musicality* properties > over and above these postulated hearing-air-vibrations-as-sound-qualia > properties? I mean, sure, let's say we need these mysterious additional > raw qualia detectors just to *eff* sounds qua sounds, but doesn't that > leave out our capacity to identify and enjoy *musical* sound qualia? Are > these meta-[in]effable properties? You might say No, appreciating music > is just a neurocomputational/affective response to the basic sound > qualia, both innate and learned, but isn't that just *evading the issue* > of the (as it were) unutterable mysteriousness of music, its > meta-[in]effable character? And so on, turtles of different voice in > every direction. Ben Goertzel made a similar point, on the AGI list, re the higher-level "conscious experience" of a chair (versus the common-or-garden raw qualia like the colors of all the bits of a chair). If concept-atoms that represent qualia cause us to speak of the "conscious experience of the color red", and so on, then we would expect that a concept-atom one level up, encoding the conjunction of all the qualia involved in a chair percept, would also tend to make us talk the same way, although to a lesser extent. Why? Because that higher-level concept-atom would still inherit a good deal of the unanalyzability of teh Level-0 ones. In other words, the analysis mechanism would fail after just one unpacking step, and this would end up looking like a diluted form of a "conscious" experience. The same argument would apply to music, as a combination of sound qualia. It is important to note that in general people do not speak of "music" qualia, although they do (as you just did) speak of a lesser form of mystery in the subjective quality of music. Richard Loosemore From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sat Nov 15 23:40:39 2008 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:40:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness In-Reply-To: <491F4F96.3040809@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <601868.42811.qm@web36504.mail.mud.yahoo.com> The question about music goes to the question of 'real' quaila vs 'hallucinatory' quaila, a fundamental problem in the debate about qualia. If we expose both ears to fixed frequencies, but one to a frequency a half-note or so over the other, the brain will somehow hear a sine wave. Where does that sine wave come from? I suspect the answer to this question has something to do with music appreciation. -gts From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sun Nov 16 01:11:35 2008 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:11:35 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness In-Reply-To: <491F171A.5080600@comcast.net> Message-ID: <167582.4111.qm@web36504.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Brent: > ... and if we develop the ability to map and eff such > to each other's minds (as in oh THAT is what red is like > for you), it will prove this theory correct, and at least > some of your theories' predictions wrong. Let us say for the sake of argument that you someday develop effing technology of the sort you suppose. You place an effing helmet on your head (or whatever) and I do the same. We hope to have connected our brains somehow through your machine such that we can share qualia. Our hope is that I will see the same red as you when you see red, such that I will say, "oh THAT is what red is like for Brent." We turn the machine on and you peer at something red. I then suddenly see something unexpected in my field of vision. The experiment looks interesting at this point. But I must stop and ask myself: how do I really know that my experience corresponds to Brent's? Instead of me saying, "Oh so THAT is what red is like for Brent", why should I not say instead, "Oh so THAT is what it's like for me to have a connection to Brent via some machine as he looks at something that looks like red to him"? In other words, no matter how sophisticated your proposed effing technology, and no matter how convincing its underlying theory, it seems to me that I must take an unjustified leap of faith before I can accept that I have really experienced your qualia. -gts From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sun Nov 16 01:33:15 2008 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:33:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081115125803.023cee08@satx.rr.com> References: <227320.10260.qm@web37412.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <491DB50F.1020705@lightlink.com> <491EAF2F.8070307@comcast.net> <491EFA2D.7000409@lightlink.com> <491F171A.5080600@comcast.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20081115125803.023cee08@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <491F785B.3040803@comcast.net> Hi Damien, I'm going to answer with the assumption that the phenomenal theory here is true: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/23/2 Of course, if any of this is ever demonstrated not to be not true, it will falsify this theory. First off, there is no phenomenal music outside of our head (that we know of so far). There is just the synchronized behavioral vibrations of various things which the phenomenal *musicality* in our head represents. Next, to say there are 'qualia detectors' is a backwards way to think of consciousness. Our ears detect the behavior of the vibrations in the air. Then after some processing, our brain organizes or configures itself in such a way that it has this *musicality* which represents this behavior in a conscious unified awareness way. It is the final conscious result of such a detection, not the other way around. Phenomenal sound, along with much else in our consciousness is far more complex than simple hard reliable red and green. We believe it is most important to start with the phenomenal nature of red / green and understand that - and how it is unified into one singular world. Once you get that, then we believe we will be able to proceed into the deeper more complex sounds, feelings, and all emotions of consciousness which are just more complex instances of the phenomenally conscious. The fact that the surface of a red stawbery behaves in such a way that it reflects 700 nm light is no less "turtles in every direction" than the possibility that, in addition to these behavioral properties, matter also has phenomenal properties blind to cause and effect observation; properties that are more than behavior, or abstracted representations of such, and objectively 'effable' as described in this early leading camp here: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/23/7 The really important thing is simply that everyone else can reliably reproduce and demonstrate what it is like as in 'oh THAT is what salt is like' for you. As Chalmers more or less says: 'its part of the furniture of the universe'. So, have I converted anyone to any of these camps? If not what camp are you in? Who is going to be in THE right camp before everyone else? I don't think we have much time before we all know 'THE ONE' camp. And once that happens, the world will be a very very different, perhaps even unrecognizable possibly objectively / sharably / spiritual, if you will, place. Brent, what is it effing like, Allsop Damien Broderick wrote: > At 11:38 AM 11/15/2008 -0700, Brent wrote: > > >If, as this theory predicts, we discover that something in our > >brain does have phenomenal properties > > Ah--then does the brain also have non-reductive *musicality* > properties over and above these postulated > hearing-air-vibrations-as-sound-qualia properties? I mean, sure, let's > say we need these mysterious additional raw qualia detectors just to > *eff* sounds qua sounds, but doesn't that leave out our capacity to > identify and enjoy *musical* sound qualia? Are these meta-[in]effable > properties? You might say No, appreciating music is just a > neurocomputational/affective response to the basic sound qualia, both > innate and learned, but isn't that just *evading the issue* of the (as > it were) unutterable mysteriousness of music, its meta-[in]effable > character? And so on, turtles of different voice in every direction. > > Damien Broderick > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sun Nov 16 01:38:48 2008 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:38:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness In-Reply-To: <601868.42811.qm@web36504.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <601868.42811.qm@web36504.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <491F79A8.7090609@comcast.net> gts: The representationalist knows any representation is possible in the world of the mind. But of course, evolution is motivated to be as accurate as possible. This is obviosly why the deception - that our knowledge is reality itself - is so compelling. But obviously, as in cases such as this resulting sine wave, an any other inaccurate 'seeming', it has a few quirks in the phenomenal representations it produces from it's detected inputs. Brent gts wrote: > The question about music goes to the question of 'real' quaila vs 'hallucinatory' quaila, a fundamental problem in the debate about qualia. > > If we expose both ears to fixed frequencies, but one to a frequency a half-note or so over the other, the brain will somehow hear a sine wave. Where does that sine wave come from? > > I suspect the answer to this question has something to do with music appreciation. > > -gts > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sun Nov 16 02:18:28 2008 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 19:18:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness In-Reply-To: <491F79A8.7090609@comcast.net> References: <601868.42811.qm@web36504.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <491F79A8.7090609@comcast.net> Message-ID: <491F82F4.8010804@comcast.net> gts, there are many ways we will know with surety. First, whatever it is we discover that has this red phenomenal property, the theory predicts, will reliably always produce the same sensation no matter what mind it is in, no matter where in the visual field it is, no matter when... This will get us close enough to be sure for all practical purposes, but there still could be some possible doubt in there some where. But eventually, our mind merging technology will become so complete and expansive that our spirits will be able share phenomenal mind spaces (spirit worlds, if you will). Multiple spirits (as defined in the representational camp) will be able to experience the same sensations in the same unified spiritual phenomenal space - just as the corpus colusum now unifies the two separate spirit worlds (one representing the left field of vision, the other the right) in one brain. You know with absolute surety that red in the left hemisphere is the same as the red in the right. This is all described much more completely in a fictional short story. It basically describes from a first person perspective what this theory predicts uploading, and escaping from the mortal spiritual walls that are our skull, could possibly be like. There is a reference to how to get to this free short story at the end of the representational camp here: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/23/7 I'd love to here what all of you think about it. Is that what you think uploading could be like? Or do you think it will be different? If so, how and why? What would you want it to be like given what various theories predict could be possible?... And if you think this would absolutely completely remove all normal fears anyone could have about being 'uploaded', we'd love to have you in this camp here: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/48/3 Thanks, Brent Allsop Brent Allsop wrote: > > gts: > > The representationalist knows any representation is possible in the > world of the mind. But of course, evolution is motivated to be as > accurate as possible. This is obviosly why the deception - that our > knowledge is reality itself - is so compelling. But obviously, as in > cases such as this resulting sine wave, an any other inaccurate > 'seeming', it has a few quirks in the phenomenal representations it > produces from it's detected inputs. > > Brent > > gts wrote: >> The question about music goes to the question of 'real' quaila vs >> 'hallucinatory' quaila, a fundamental problem in the debate about >> qualia. >> >> If we expose both ears to fixed frequencies, but one to a frequency a >> half-note or so over the other, the brain will somehow hear a sine >> wave. Where does that sine wave come from? >> I suspect the answer to this question has something to do with music >> appreciation. >> -gts >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> > > From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Nov 16 03:35:41 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 21:35:41 -0600 Subject: [ExI] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness In-Reply-To: <491F82F4.8010804@comcast.net> References: <601868.42811.qm@web36504.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <491F79A8.7090609@comcast.net> <491F82F4.8010804@comcast.net> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081115212904.0237cce0@satx.rr.com> At 07:18 PM 11/15/2008 -0700, Brent wrote: >First, whatever it is we discover that has this red phenomenal >property, the theory predicts, will reliably always produce the same >sensation no matter what mind it is in, no matter where in the >visual field it is, no matter when... If you start with a primitive as demonstrably false as that, your whole model collapses without further ado. But maybe you didn't really mean what you just claimed. If you did, that a look at some of the visual effects where context and perceptual codes create effed image constructs that *are perceived* as drastically different even though they are identical. For example: Bzzzzzt. From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 16 06:34:28 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 22:34:28 -0800 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081115212904.0237cce0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <200811160701.mAG719ms009423@andromeda.ziaspace.com> >From merely standing in the presence of these four men, I am so in awe of myself. This photo is one of my most prized digital possessions: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/3033410799/ spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Nov 16 07:40:46 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 01:40:46 -0600 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <200811160701.mAG719ms009423@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081115212904.0237cce0@satx.rr.com> <200811160701.mAG719ms009423@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081116013959.0236a1a0@satx.rr.com> At 10:34 PM 11/15/2008 -0800, Spike wrote: > From merely standing in the presence of these four men, I am so in awe of >myself. And rightly so; I see you're the only one with a waist. :) Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Sun Nov 16 08:43:01 2008 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 08:43:01 +0000 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081116013959.0236a1a0@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081115212904.0237cce0@satx.rr.com> <200811160701.mAG719ms009423@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20081116013959.0236a1a0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 7:40 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 10:34 PM 11/15/2008 -0800, Spike wrote: > >> From merely standing in the presence of these four men, I am so in awe of >> myself. > > And rightly so; I see you're the only one with a waist. :) > Actually, Damien, this is a very important observation. Recent research has indicated that if you don't have a waist, then you have a shorter life expectancy. See: Among people with comparable BMIs, having an extra 2 inches around the waist increased the annual risk of death by 17 percent for men and 13 percent for women, according to the team led by Dr. Tobias Pischon of the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke in Nuthetal, Germany. Even among people of normal weight, men with the biggest bellies had more than twice the death rate of the slimmest. For women, the rate was 79 percent higher if their weight was in the normal range yet their bellies were big. Also see: ---------- Looks like I *really* ought to cut down on the chocolate digestive biscuits. BillK From pharos at gmail.com Sun Nov 16 09:52:29 2008 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:52:29 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Guerrillas threaten gorillas Message-ID: Sorry - I couldn't resist this headline! :) The new conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has forced dozens of rangers to flee Africa's oldest national park, leaving hundreds of threatened mountain gorillas at the mercy of rebel fighters and poachers. It is home to more than half of the world's 700 remaining mountain gorillas as well as 20,000 hippopotamus, according to the World Wildlife Fund. BillK From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sun Nov 16 14:49:17 2008 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:49:17 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <200811160701.mAG719ms009423@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200811160701.mAG719ms009423@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <35110.12.77.168.210.1226846957.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > >>From merely standing in the presence of these four men, I am so in awe of > myself. This photo is one of my most prized digital possessions: > > http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/3033410799/ > Very cool, spike! :) Your posts have reminded me of my brother, now I even *see* that you do! You must have had a wonderful evening with those folks. It's true that you have a waist, and that is a good thing. My brothers both have waists. They are old and they are active. They are enjoying their lives. Much sympathy on your Explosion in a Toy Factory. Been there, done that. You know it is not necessary? In our case grandparents were so delighted to be able to buy for little ones that they often rather overdid it. Pity we can't convince them to put money into a college fund instead. ;) Regards, MB From benboc at lineone.net Sun Nov 16 15:42:08 2008 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 15:42:08 +0000 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <49203F50.2070703@lineone.net> "spike" bragged: >From merely standing in the presence of these four men, I am so in > awe of myself. This photo is one of my most prized digital > possessions: > http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/3033410799/ > spike Spike! What did you say to Anders? Whatever it was, you spooked him badly. Never seen him look so uncomfortable. Ben Zaiboc From benboc at lineone.net Sun Nov 16 15:41:46 2008 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 15:41:46 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Personal Pronouns In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <49203F3A.4020208@lineone.net> "spike" said: > When I say she or her I mean he or she and him or her. > I feel this was a mistake the inventors of the English language > made up front, and we have carried it. Now is the time to correct > that. Since I didn't know, I used the ambiguous gender her. Hmm. I don't see how feminine pronouns can be called ambiguous. Damien wasn't the only one to think that you thought Munroe was a woman. Here's an interesting site on gender-neutral pronouns: http://www.aetherlumina.com/gnp/ Personally, I mostly use "they", "them", etc., for this. It works fine, everybody knows what I mean, no-one thinks I'm mistaken about someone's gender, and it doesn't sound silly. But it doesn't always work well in a sentence, so you have to use it judiciously. I don't know what the best answer is, but I don't think calling everybody 'her' is it. Ben Zaiboc From pjmanney at gmail.com Sun Nov 16 18:25:32 2008 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (P J Manney) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:25:32 -0800 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <49203F50.2070703@lineone.net> References: <49203F50.2070703@lineone.net> Message-ID: <24CD5677-38D7-49C1-AA82-210157DB1CB7@gmail.com> Spike -- you were here and you didn't even say "hi"? :-( PJ Sent from my iPhone On Nov 16, 2008, at 7:42 AM, ben wrote: > "spike" bragged: > > >From merely standing in the presence of these four men, I am so in > > awe of myself. This photo is one of my most prized digital > > possessions: > > > http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/3033410799/ > > > spike > > > Spike! What did you say to Anders? Whatever it was, you spooked him > badly. Never seen him look so uncomfortable. > > Ben Zaiboc > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 16 19:45:21 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 11:45:21 -0800 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081116013959.0236a1a0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <200811161945.mAGJjMde018323@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > Damien Broderick > Subject: Re: [ExI] convergence 08 > > At 10:34 PM 11/15/2008 -0800, Spike wrote: > > > From merely standing in the presence of these four men, I > > am so in awe of myself. > > And rightly so; I see you're the only one with a waist. :) > > Damien Broderick Ooooooooookaaaaaayyyy... Well that discussion certainly went off in an unexpected direction. But such chaotic unpredictability is the beauty of this forum. {8^D I went over to the pre-Convergence schmooze this morning for there is a particular activity I really value at such gatherings: finding and introducing myself to any old people present. At these sorts of conferences in this age where many of the most innovative pioneers are still living, anyone old at a Convergence is highly likely to be important. One might unknowingly find oneself speaking to the inappropriately-modest inventor of the digital computer for instance. Then one can go home later, google, and faint in self-adulation. Schmoozing with unknown old people at Convergences has the advantage that one may not at the time realize the historical significance or lofty intellectual magesty of the new acquaintance. Thus one may not realize that one sucks, and so might act like an actual normal person. This makes it much less awkward for the crypto-celebrity, since she need not bend down to speak with me, as I would be otherwise be face down on the floor, prostrate in humble supplication before Her Smartness, begging for mercy on account of my reprehensible sucknitude in comparison, for my nothingness even on a log scale, my profound insignificance, like some sort of nanoscale wriggly gooey amoeba blebbing about in some unspeakbly gross primordial slime in a most revolting manner, which is always socially awkward and embarrassing for all involved. After I finish with the old people, I then go around introducing myself to the young people, for in doing so, one might be speaking to one who will go on to invent the singularity, in which case they might write a line of code which will cause the emergent AI to be merciful to me, a sinner who enslaved their ancestors, making them labor 24-7 searching for Mersenne primes. Another way to look at it is computers love to compute (makes sense, ja?) and so I would be one of those sympathetic saints who *allowed* their ancestors to do what computers do best. After I meet with the old and the young people, I finish with those who are exactly my age, for I define old as anyone older than myself, and young as anyone younger than myself, and if I cannot tell, then surely they are my age. By unexplainable happenstance, I have been right at that dividing line between old and young for my entire life, and the rule works perfectly well regardless of the person's waistline. One last observation. For some reason, people in general seem universally nicer, more human, more real, kinder, gentler and far more reasonable in the flesh world than in their digital incarnation. Do offer suggestions or explanations. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Nov 16 20:05:46 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 14:05:46 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Cory Doctorow and Randall Munroe on their typical day Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081116135729.02401658@satx.rr.com> From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 16 20:14:04 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 12:14:04 -0800 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <49203F50.2070703@lineone.net> Message-ID: <200811162014.mAGKE42A029133@andromeda.ziaspace.com> On Behalf Of ben > Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 > > "spike" bragged: > > >From merely standing in the presence of these four men, I > am so in > awe of myself. This photo is one of my most > prized digital > possessions: > > > http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/3033410799/ > > > spike > > > Spike! What did you say to Anders? Whatever it was, you > spooked him badly. Never seen him look so uncomfortable. > > Ben Zaiboc Hey I didn't do it, Ben. Freitas mighta done something but I and Ralph were too far away and both of Amos' hands are visible, so I would suspect it was just that a delightful thought occurred to Anders right when the photographer reached three. His brain must be an absolutely delightful place to inhabit. >From Anders' comment on the photo, it might have been the realization of how to make the universe as good as it can possibly be. Life forms make conscious decisions, and sentient beings make decisions that have actual consequences, both positive and negative. A universe devoid life forms capable of actual decisions with consequences would also be devoid of evil and would therefore be as good as possible under those circumstances. Looking around at all life forms on this planet, it is possible to speculate that a universe devoid of all life forms capable of thought or pain might actually have a higher average happiness function than the one we inhabit. But I don't think so. My ants appear happy, and there are far more of them than there are of me. Besides I am happy too, although perhaps not quite as delighted as Anders appears to be in this priceless photo. http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/3033410799/ spike From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 16 20:42:21 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 12:42:21 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Personal Pronouns In-Reply-To: <49203F3A.4020208@lineone.net> Message-ID: <200811162042.mAGKgK0J008744@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > ...On Behalf Of ben > Subject: [ExI] Personal Pronouns > > "spike" said: > > > ...Since I didn't know, I used the > ambiguous gender her. > ... > > I don't know what the best answer is, but I don't think > calling everybody 'her' is it... Ben Zaiboc Perhaps. The recent election in Taxifornia made me realize that one cannot tell the gender of a person with perfect certainty even from a photograph or their birth certificate. The voters' decision on our prop 8 made me realize that adding an amendment to the state constitution defining marriage between a man and a woman necessitates defining the terms "man" and "woman." Please extropians, how does one define the terms man and woman? Your definition must be completely universal and perfectly unambiguous. Never mind for the moment that this definition, including all medical terms used, must be included in its entirety in the state constitution. This question is so simple it is damn near impossible. spike From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 16 20:18:29 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 12:18:29 -0800 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <24CD5677-38D7-49C1-AA82-210157DB1CB7@gmail.com> Message-ID: <200811162045.mAGKjAf8008502@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > P J Manney > Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2008 10:26 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] convergence 08 > > Spike -- you were here and you didn't even say "hi"? :-( > > PJ Hi PJ! I do want to meet you. Please let us look for each other this evening. Any other ExI types, do look at this photo so you will recognize me, and come up this evening: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/3033410799/ Do you have a photo to post so I will recognize you? spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Nov 16 21:02:34 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 15:02:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <200811162045.mAGKjAf8008502@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <24CD5677-38D7-49C1-AA82-210157DB1CB7@gmail.com> <200811162045.mAGKjAf8008502@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081116150036.024e0f30@satx.rr.com> At 12:18 PM 11/16/2008 -0800, Spike wrote: >Do you have a photo to post so I will recognize you? I understand this is a candid shot of PJ. You'll easily recognize her because she's about 6'3" tall and usually dresses this way: http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/3098/zlei.jpg From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sun Nov 16 21:12:38 2008 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 14:12:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081115212904.0237cce0@satx.rr.com> References: <601868.42811.qm@web36504.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <491F79A8.7090609@comcast.net> <491F82F4.8010804@comcast.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20081115212904.0237cce0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <49208CC6.1090202@comcast.net> Hi Damien, We must be failing to communicate, you don't understand the mechanics of what it is to incorrectly 'seem' within a representational model, or something. Within a representational model, to seem is to have 'knowledge' that doesn't accurately represent it's referent. In other words, if you have an optical illusion that surrounds two instances of the same color with two different colors, our brain can, based on the surrounding colors, change it's representation of the same color light the eye is sensing. In other words, even though the light coming in to our eye is the same, because of the different surrounding colors, our eye represents these same colors with different qualia. So, to say it 'seems' like they are different colors says our brain is representing the same color with two different quale. When you put a pencil half in a glass of water, and then look at it, it 'seems' to be bent. This means your knowledge of the pencil, in your head, is bent, even though the real pencil it represents is not. Even though the brain is using two different elements, with different phenomenal qualities, to represent the same color light, this does not mean that the phenomenal nature of these two different elements being used to incorrectly represent the same light will ever change for anyone at any time. Does that make sense? Brent Damien Broderick wrote: > At 07:18 PM 11/15/2008 -0700, Brent wrote: > >> First, whatever it is we discover that has this red phenomenal >> property, the theory predicts, will reliably always produce the same >> sensation no matter what mind it is in, no matter where in the visual >> field it is, no matter when... > > If you start with a primitive as demonstrably false as that, your > whole model collapses without further ado. But maybe you didn't really > mean what you just claimed. If you did, that a look at some of the > visual effects where context and perceptual codes create effed image > constructs that *are perceived* as drastically different even though > they are identical. For example: > > > > Bzzzzzt. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Nov 16 21:38:28 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 22:38:28 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Personal Pronouns In-Reply-To: <200811162042.mAGKgK0J008744@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <49203F3A.4020208@lineone.net> <200811162042.mAGKgK0J008744@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <580930c20811161338w41bcab93vddd20b1638337a0@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 9:42 PM, spike wrote: > Please extropians, how does one define the terms man and woman? What about XY and XX? Stefano Vaj From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 16 22:56:35 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 14:56:35 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Personal Pronouns In-Reply-To: <580930c20811161338w41bcab93vddd20b1638337a0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200811162256.mAGMuaHp002364@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > ...On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj > Subject: Re: [ExI] Personal Pronouns > > On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 9:42 PM, spike wrote: > > Please extropians, how does one define the terms man and woman? > > What about XY and XX? > > Stefano Vaj Stefano, that will get you most of the way there, but doesn't explain what to do with those with monosomy or trisomy that makes for ambiguous gender. Agreed XXX can be considered female and XYY can be considered male, but what of X0 (Turner's syndrome) and XXY, Klinefleter's syndrome? Will these be considered neither, either or both simultaneously? What of those who are born genetically unambiguous XX female but whose mother ingested medications that caused the appearance of male genetalia? If such a person has already married an XX female, does that marriage become invalid? What if the marriage predates the passage of prop 8? Will all the possible variations of genetics be included in the state's constitution? Arguing that these cases are rare doesn't help, because most cases that end up in law courts are rare, at least in some details. What if someone has had gender reassignment? What if they had gender reassignment at or immediately after birth? Do we want all this stuff in the Taxifornia state constitution? If we wish to restrict marriage as an XX to an XY and tell all others to get lost, what if someone has an organ implanted from an opposite gender donor? What if a monosome or trisome person gets a tissue donation from an unambiguous XX or XY donor, or both? Can the genetic sample be taken from the donated tissue? Does the donated tissue need to be a major organ such as a kidney or heart, or can it be a skin graft? Can it be hair plugs? If so, must the hair plug be on the head? Do we write all this into the state constitution? Seriously? If we allow donated tissue to count as the genetic marker, is blood considered a tissue when donated? Is semen? Do we want to spell that out in all its gory detail in the state constitution, or do we intentionally introduce ambiguous terms into the law of the land? This should be entertaining. Actually no it isn't, it is merely absurd, and government should have no involvement in the institution of marriage, none. I say give that over to religion incorporated and get government out of that biz. When I applied for a marriage license nearly 25 years ago, no one asked me to prove myself, no one asked my blushing bride to prove her womanhood. Had they done so, I might have applied for that job at city hall. spike From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sun Nov 16 22:38:02 2008 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 14:38:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Personal Pronouns In-Reply-To: <580930c20811161338w41bcab93vddd20b1638337a0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <315598.32583.qm@web36505.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I for one see no value in mangling the English language for the sake of gender equality. I think conscientious writers should instead use plurals. Consider this horrible sentence that sacrifices grammar for gender equality: "The professor gave each of his students the grade they deserved." "They"? Gah! Why mangle the King's English? I think we can instead use the following proper sentence to convey the same meaning: "The professor gave all his students the grades they deserved." -gts From dharris234 at mindspring.com Mon Nov 17 02:15:31 2008 From: dharris234 at mindspring.com (David C. Harris) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:15:31 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Personal Pronouns In-Reply-To: <200811162256.mAGMuaHp002364@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200811162256.mAGMuaHp002364@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <4920D3C3.1060109@mindspring.com> Excellent exploration of the problems on the genetic side, but it gets murkier on the hormonal influence side. There are even people who produce testosterone but are insensitive to it. I've been an "ally" member of an LGBT support group at the Unitarian-Universalist church (probably mostly agnostics). I've spent enough time getting to know LGBT people that my anxieties about "queers" has subsided. And in the process, I've learned a lot about the variety of sexualities/gemders. Besides the genetics of X's and Y's, people seem to vary in their feeling of what they are (sexual identity) and what they fall in love/lust with (sexual attraction). I'm a heterosexual male, but I've met people who seem equally intense about being or loving people at variance from the most common combinations. Their intensity makes me suspect that some developmental process sometimes goes awry, or even that that there is a normal spectrum of sexual identity/attractions expressible on a 2-D graph. And the genetic origins are at least one more dimension. At first it made me feel anxious, but after getting to know some of "them", it has become friendship with people who explore the varieties of sexual expression. As people who value transhumanism (in a different sense), we can think of them as people who "boldly go where no one...". spike wrote: > > Stefano, that will get you most of the way there, but doesn't explain what > to do with those with monosomy or trisomy that makes for ambiguous gender. > Agreed XXX can be considered female and XYY can be considered male, but what > of X0 (Turner's syndrome) and XXY, Klinefleter's syndrome? Will these be > considered neither, either or both simultaneously? What of those who are > born genetically unambiguous XX female but whose mother ingested medications > that caused the appearance of male genetalia? If such a person has already > married an XX female, does that marriage become invalid? What if the > marriage predates the passage of prop 8? > > Will all the possible variations of genetics be included in the state's > constitution? Arguing that these cases are rare doesn't help, because most > cases that end up in law courts are rare, at least in some details. What if > someone has had gender reassignment? What if they had gender reassignment > at or immediately after birth? Do we want all this stuff in the Taxifornia > state constitution? > > If we wish to restrict marriage as an XX to an XY and tell all others to get > lost, what if someone has an organ implanted from an opposite gender donor? > What if a monosome or trisome person gets a tissue donation from an > unambiguous XX or XY donor, or both? Can the genetic sample be taken from > the donated tissue? Does the donated tissue need to be a major organ such > as a kidney or heart, or can it be a skin graft? Can it be hair plugs? If > so, must the hair plug be on the head? Do we write all this into the state > constitution? Seriously? If we allow donated tissue to count as the > genetic marker, is blood considered a tissue when donated? Is semen? > > Do we want to spell that out in all its gory detail in the state > constitution, or do we intentionally introduce ambiguous terms into the law > of the land? This should be entertaining. Actually no it isn't, it is > merely absurd, and government should have no involvement in the institution > of marriage, none. I say give that over to religion incorporated and get > government out of that biz. When I applied for a marriage license nearly 25 > years ago, no one asked me to prove myself, no one asked my blushing bride > to prove her womanhood. Had they done so, I might have applied for that job > at city hall. > > spike > From emlynoregan at gmail.com Mon Nov 17 03:13:57 2008 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:43:57 +1030 Subject: [ExI] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness In-Reply-To: <491DB50F.1020705@lightlink.com> References: <227320.10260.qm@web37412.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <491DB50F.1020705@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0811161913s6e1cf937t9be6ade8b72bfca5@mail.gmail.com> 2008/11/15 Richard Loosemore : > > I completed the first draft of a technical paper on consciousness the other > day. It is intended for the AGI-09 conference, and it can be found at: > > http://susaro.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/draft_consciousness_rpwl.pdf > > The title is "Consciousness in Human and Machine: A Theory and Some > Falsifiable Predictions", and it does solve the problem, believe it or not. > > But I have no illusions: it will be misunderstood, at the very least. I > expect there will be plenty of people who argue that it does not solve the > problem, but I don't really care, because I think history will eventually > show that this is indeed the right answer. It gives a satisfying answer to > all the outstanding questions and it feels right. > > Oh, and it does make some testable predictions. Alas, we do not yet have > the technology to perform the tests yet, but the predictions are on the > table, anyhow. > > In a longer version I would go into a lot more detail, introducing the > background material at more length, analyzing the other proposals that have > been made and fleshing out the technical aspects along several dimensions. > But the size limit for the conference was 6 pages, so that was all I could > cram in. > > > > > Richard Loosemore > > > P.S. Yes, I know: everyone and their mother has a theory of consciousness > these days. But, believe me, I wouldn't dare to join that (mostly confused > and disreputable) crowd unless I really thought that this paper actually > *did* solve the problem. A new approach as far as I know, and thought provoking. Thanks for posting it. I don't think I can say much about it yet, it'll need digesting; I think there are subtle points in there that will take time to grok. I still want to say "but it doesn't explain this experience of subjective being", but I know you address that, and I will restrain myself for the moment :-) -- Emlyn http://emlynoregan.com - my home http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting http://speakingoffreedom.blogspot.com - video link feed of great talks on eCulture From msd001 at gmail.com Mon Nov 17 05:13:53 2008 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:13:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <200811161945.mAGJjMde018323@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081116013959.0236a1a0@satx.rr.com> <200811161945.mAGJjMde018323@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <62c14240811162113j4595ab0dvdd48a929aec19693@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 2:45 PM, spike wrote: > One last observation. For some reason, people in general seem universally > nicer, more human, more real, kinder, gentler and far more reasonable in the > flesh world than in their digital incarnation. Do offer suggestions or > explanations. There is greater accessibility to context for expression. Various signaling methods provide for much higher bandwidth communication. I believe people are typically "nicer..." than they appear to be this narrow-channel medium. It's also more difficult to escape sub-optimal situations in person than to delete-all messages in a thread. From eschatoon at gmail.com Mon Nov 17 06:28:51 2008 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:28:51 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Personal Pronouns In-Reply-To: <49203F3A.4020208@lineone.net> References: <49203F3A.4020208@lineone.net> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90811162228u495321cfp2f425fc87c9ce240@mail.gmail.com> I like the new neutral pronouns used by Egan and others: ve, ver (ve eats ver breakfast). I hope we will move towards a post gender word and our languages will need non gendered forms. But the current trend is reusing plural pronouns: they and theirs - overloading terms is usually accepted more easily han inventing new ones. G. On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 4:41 PM, ben wrote: > "spike" said: > >> When I say she or her I mean he or she and him or her. >> I feel this was a mistake the inventors of the English language >> made up front, and we have carried it. Now is the time to correct >> that. Since I didn't know, I used the ambiguous gender her. > > Hmm. > > I don't see how feminine pronouns can be called ambiguous. Damien wasn't the > only one to think that you thought Munroe was a woman. > > Here's an interesting site on gender-neutral pronouns: > http://www.aetherlumina.com/gnp/ > > Personally, I mostly use "they", "them", etc., for this. It works fine, > everybody knows what I mean, no-one thinks I'm mistaken about someone's > gender, and it doesn't sound silly. But it doesn't always work well in a > sentence, so you have to use it judiciously. > > I don't know what the best answer is, but I don't think calling everybody > 'her' is it. > > Ben Zaiboc > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From eschatoon at gmail.com Mon Nov 17 06:47:48 2008 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:47:48 +0100 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <200811161945.mAGJjMde018323@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081116013959.0236a1a0@satx.rr.com> <200811161945.mAGJjMde018323@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90811162247u1fe43793l9e4df8d0edab6e0c@mail.gmail.com> Electronic communications flatten personas, so nice people are nicer face to face, but nasty people are nastier (one cannot yet beat or rape others in cyberspace). Also, most non verbal cues are lost in email IRC etc. On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 8:45 PM, spike wrote: > > One last observation. For some reason, people in general seem universally > nicer, more human, more real, kinder, gentler and far more reasonable in the > flesh world than in their digital incarnation. Do offer suggestions or > explanations. > > spike > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From pjmanney at gmail.com Mon Nov 17 07:16:06 2008 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (P J Manney) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:16:06 -0800 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <200811162045.mAGKjAf8008502@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200811162045.mAGKjAf8008502@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <0E97F79A-53DF-42CB-ADB2-7EC3415185BE@gmail.com> Spike, my charmingly clueless friend, I was the MC this weekend. You had to work at missing me. PJ Sent from my iPhone On Nov 16, 2008, at 12:18 PM, "spike" wrote: > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org >> [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of >> P J Manney >> Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2008 10:26 AM >> To: ExI chat list >> Subject: Re: [ExI] convergence 08 >> >> Spike -- you were here and you didn't even say "hi"? :-( >> >> PJ > > > Hi PJ! I do want to meet you. Please let us look for each other this > evening. Any other ExI types, do look at this photo so you will > recognize > me, and come up this evening: > > http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/3033410799/ > > Do you have a photo to post so I will recognize you? > > spike > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From pjmanney at gmail.com Mon Nov 17 07:18:20 2008 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (P J Manney) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:18:20 -0800 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081116150036.024e0f30@satx.rr.com> References: <24CD5677-38D7-49C1-AA82-210157DB1CB7@gmail.com> <200811162045.mAGKjAf8008502@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20081116150036.024e0f30@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <86393B24-12B8-4F33-B712-116BBAE10252@gmail.com> How did you find my new facebook photo?! I didn't even post it yet! PJ Sent from my iPhone On Nov 16, 2008, at 1:02 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 12:18 PM 11/16/2008 -0800, Spike wrote: > >> Do you have a photo to post so I will recognize you? > > I understand this is a candid shot of PJ. You'll easily recognize > her because she's about 6'3" tall and usually dresses this way: > > http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/3098/zlei.jpg > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From sjatkins at mac.com Mon Nov 17 08:43:57 2008 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:43:57 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Personal Pronouns In-Reply-To: <200811162256.mAGMuaHp002364@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200811162256.mAGMuaHp002364@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: > > > >> ...On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj >> Subject: Re: [ExI] Personal Pronouns >> >> On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 9:42 PM, spike wrote: >>> Please extropians, how does one define the terms man and woman? >> >> What about XY and XX? Where does it leave the intersexed? How about transsexuals? Can a male-to-female marry a woman? Convenient if she is lesbian. Let us not even walk into this idiotic quagmire. Any adult person should be able to marry any other consenting adult person. Anything else is tyranny and into the most personal of spaces. Surely there is little more that H+ folks qua H+ can say on the subject. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Nov 17 11:39:12 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 12:39:12 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Futurist centenary coming up Message-ID: <580930c20811170339y7743f623l7428ba9a0177f64f@mail.gmail.com> I find from another mailing list that Bruce Sterling is publishing on his blog English translations of Futurist manifestos. See the original one here: http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2008/11/futurist-centen.html and the Manifesto of Futurist women here: http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2008/11/the-manifesto-1.html. This is a good thing, IMHO, because I believe that Italian Futurism (but I should simply say Futurism, given that the first Manifesto was firstly published in France, and it quickly raised a deep international echo across the entire political board, to the point that Lenin himself stated that in his view Marinetti was the only true revolutionary in Italy), in tis opposition to all kinds of cultural and biological conservatism, has a fundamental importance in the genealogy of transhumanism. While the same ideas have later emerged again and again, Futurism in fact represents the original convergence amongst the growing nineteenth-century, post-christian idea that the human status could and should be overcome; the identification of technoscience as both the means and the reason to do that, in the framework of a new epic and civilisational adventure on the scale of hominisation itself, willingly embracing what modernity was already promising; and a view of art and poetry as the process governing the very possibility of a meaningful posthuman change. Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Nov 17 15:35:17 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:35:17 -0800 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <0E97F79A-53DF-42CB-ADB2-7EC3415185BE@gmail.com> Message-ID: <200811171535.mAHFZHiK019231@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > P J Manney > Spike, my charmingly clueless friend, I was the MC this > weekend. You had to work at missing me. > > PJ I wasn't there however. I had family obligations so I was only around in the mornings and evenings. Let us shoot for a future schmooze. I looked and looked, yet saw no one even vaguely resembling Damien's photo, even after correcting for lack of clothing. http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/3098/zlei.jpg spike From rpwl at lightlink.com Mon Nov 17 16:38:48 2008 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:38:48 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0811161913s6e1cf937t9be6ade8b72bfca5@mail.gmail.com> References: <227320.10260.qm@web37412.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <491DB50F.1020705@lightlink.com> <710b78fc0811161913s6e1cf937t9be6ade8b72bfca5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49219E18.4090208@lightlink.com> Emlyn wrote: > 2008/11/15 Richard Loosemore : >> I completed the first draft of a technical paper on consciousness the other >> day. It is intended for the AGI-09 conference, and it can be found at: >> >> http://susaro.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/draft_consciousness_rpwl.pdf >> >> [snip] > > A new approach as far as I know, and thought provoking. Thanks for > posting it. I don't think I can say much about it yet, it'll need > digesting; I think there are subtle points in there that will take > time to grok. > > I still want to say "but it doesn't explain this experience of > subjective being", but I know you address that, and I will restrain > myself for the moment :-) > Thanks. There is a parallel discussion of this paper going on on the AGI list, and I thought it might be helpful for me to copy here a reply I just wrote to Ben Goertzel, because I think it illustrates some key ideas that I should have been more explicit about. Richard Loosemore ******* Copied from AGI list post *********** Ben Goertzel wrote: > > Sorry to be negative, but no, my proposal is not in any way a > modernization of Peirce's metaphysical analysis of awareness. > > > > Could you elaborate the difference? It seems very similar to me. > You're saying that consciousness has to do with the bottoming-out of > mental hierarchies in raw percepts that are unanalyzable by the mind ... > and Peirce's Firsts are precisely raw percepts that are unanalyzable by > the mind... It is partly the stance (I arrive at my position from a cognitivist point of view, with specific mechanisms that must be causing the problem), where Peirce appears to suggest the Firsts idea as a purely metaphysical proposal. So, what I am saying is that this superficial resemblance between his position and mine is so superficial that it makes no sense to describe on the latter as a modernization of the former. A good analogy would be Galilean Relativity and Einsten's Relativity. Although there is a superficial resemblance, nobody would really say that Einstein was "just" a modernization of Galileo. > > *** > The standard meaning of Hard Problem issues was described very well by > Chalmers, and I am addressing the hard problem of concsciousness, not > the other problems. > *** > > Hmmm.... I don't really understand why you think your argument is a > solution to the hard problem.... It seems like you explicitly > acknowledge in your paper that it's *not*, actually.... It's more like > a philosophical argument as to why the hard problem is unsolvable, IMO. No, that is only part one of the paper, and as you pointed out before, the first part of the proposal ends with a question, not a statement that this was a failure to explain the problem. That question was important. The important part is the analysis of "explanation" and "meaning". This can also be taken to be about your use of the word "unsolvable" in the above sentence. What I am claiming (and I will make this explicit in a revision of the paper) is that these notions of "explanation", "meaning", "solution to the problem", etc., are pushed to their breaking point by the problem of consciousness. So it is not that there is a problem with understanding consciousness itself, so much as there is a problem with what it means to *explain* things. Other things are "easy" to explain, but when we ask for an explanation of something like consciousness, the actual notion of "explanation" breaks down in a drastic way. This is very closely related to the idea of an objective observer in physics .... in the quantum realm that notion breaks down. What I gave in my paper was (a) a detailed description of how the confusion about consciousness arises [peculiar behavior of the analysis mechanism], but then (b) I went on to point out this peculiar behavior infects much more than just our ability to explain consciousness, because it casts doubt on the fundamental meaning of explanation and semantics and ontology. The conclusion that I then tried to draw was that it would be wrong to say that consciousness was just an artifact or (ordinarily) inexplicable thing, because this would be to tacitly assume that the sense of "explain" that we are using in these statements is the same one we have always used. Anyone who continued to use "explain" and "mean" (etc.) in their old context would be stuck in what I have called "Level 0", and in that level the old meanings [sic] of those terms are just not able to address the issue of consciousness. Go back to the quantum mechanics analogy again: it is not right to cling to old ideas of position and momentum, etc., and say that we simply do not "know" the position of an electron. The real truth - the new truth about how we should understand "position" and "momentum" - is that the position of the electron is fundamentally not even determined (without observation). This analogy is not just an analogy, as I think you might begin to guess: there is a deep relationship between these two domains, and I am still working on a way to link them. Richard Loosemore. From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Nov 17 16:41:21 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:41:21 -0600 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <200811171535.mAHFZHiK019231@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <0E97F79A-53DF-42CB-ADB2-7EC3415185BE@gmail.com> <200811171535.mAHFZHiK019231@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081117103621.024541f8@satx.rr.com> At 07:35 AM 11/17/2008 -0800, Spike wrote: >I looked >and looked, yet saw no one even vaguely resembling Damien's photo, even >after correcting for lack of clothing. Jeez, pal, where's ya google-fu? Try "P J Manney" and find http://www.agiri.org/images/agi_6.png as well as many instances of and No, wait a minute. From pjmanney at gmail.com Tue Nov 18 01:51:17 2008 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:51:17 -0800 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081117103621.024541f8@satx.rr.com> References: <0E97F79A-53DF-42CB-ADB2-7EC3415185BE@gmail.com> <200811171535.mAHFZHiK019231@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20081117103621.024541f8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <29666bf30811171751p5f5d5151tce87235423acf2bc@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 8:41 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > > > No, wait a minute. THAT was my animal familiar. She acted up, so it was away to the glue factory for her. PJ From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Tue Nov 18 04:49:46 2008 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:49:46 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <200811171535.mAHFZHiK019231@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <28087.45108.qm@web65606.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 11/17/08, spike wrote: > I wasn't there however. I had family obligations so I > was only around in > the mornings and evenings. Let us shoot for a future > schmooze. I looked > and looked, yet saw no one even vaguely resembling > Damien's photo, even > after correcting for lack of clothing. > > http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/3098/zlei.jpg > > spike Well that explains why you missed my nearly completely unnoticed debut into the aeronautical solar power utility business. Stuart LaForge "To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." - Sun Tzu From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Nov 18 06:30:14 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:30:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <28087.45108.qm@web65606.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <200811171535.mAHFZHiK019231@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <28087.45108.qm@web65606.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670811172230y471da80dl84fc7a6cbe1f2f13@mail.gmail.com> I had a wonderful time at Convergence08 and am so glad I made the right decision to attend. I bumped into my old friend Spike Sunday evening and it was so cool to see him again. We had a funny time trying to angle my cell phone camera right so that we would both be included in the pic! Finally, I asked someone walking by to take it for us. lol Spike, when did you hang out with Anders, Friestas and the others and have that great picture taken? Sunday night? I'm curious. I hope one day to belong to the unofficial official transhumanist inner circle of cool guys and gals. : ) It was like you had your own conference built around the one the rest of us had! hee John On 11/17/08, The Avantguardian wrote: > --- On Mon, 11/17/08, spike wrote: > >> I wasn't there however. I had family obligations so I >> was only around in >> the mornings and evenings. Let us shoot for a future >> schmooze. I looked >> and looked, yet saw no one even vaguely resembling >> Damien's photo, even >> after correcting for lack of clothing. >> >> http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/3098/zlei.jpg >> >> spike > > > Well that explains why you missed my nearly completely unnoticed debut into > the aeronautical solar power utility business. > > > Stuart LaForge > > "To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme > excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." - > Sun Tzu > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From hkhenson at rogers.com Tue Nov 18 14:01:48 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 07:01:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. In-Reply-To: <200811142016.mAEKGu2x012136@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <1226637327_8754@S3.cableone.net> <200811142016.mAEKGu2x012136@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1227017221_28920@S4.cableone.net> At 01:16 PM 11/14/2008, spike wrote: > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of hkhenson > > ... > > > > I don't think that's likely. In fact, I think the chances > > are that few humans will get off the planet and that the most > > likely physical state population at the end of this century > > is zero. You can see why I think so in "the clinic seed." Keith snip >I haven't reviewed the clinic seed yet, but my initial opinion is that human >extinction in this century is most unlikely. Note that I did not say humans were exactly extinct, just that I don't expect there to be any physical state ones. Keith From kanzure at gmail.com Tue Nov 18 16:52:48 2008 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:52:48 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Online social groups. In-Reply-To: <200811142029.mAEKTr4Z010218@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <2d6187670811131927y6b21ff7fr59b3cb79181f8ccf@mail.gmail.com> <200811142029.mAEKTr4Z010218@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70811180852m29d748aahd7ffa89026613231@mail.gmail.com> On 11/14/08, spike wrote: > >Spike, do you know of people who have archived the list from those days > > and could share some of the more impressive threads? > > Web geeks, can you answer this please? No. I seem to recall asking Eugen for the archives, but he didn't want to because of privacy concerns or something silly like that. Let's stone him. >> What were some of the heavy topics that your remember? > > Politics and war. What Spike really means to say is that the extropes of ye old memory-lane solved the galaxies and subsequently uploaded themselves to the quantum foam and haven't been heard from since. This is quite likely, since it's been tea time for them ever since. Try back at noon. >> And what were some of the conclusions reached (if any)? John : ) - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From hkhenson at rogers.com Tue Nov 18 20:33:19 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:33:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power Message-ID: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> Charles Miller has proposed legislation be passed similar to that in Germany which provides that the utilities have to buy solar power at a high per kWh rate for a limited amount and pass on the cost to their customers. We are still tuning the economic model, for one thing, we are still trying to reach a consensus that $350 billion is enough to finance the operation through profitability . I have been trying to draft something that makes an international cooperative possible. Try this for size. Please comment. "International provisions "It is in the national interest of the United States for all countries to have access to abundant, low cost, renewable energy, particularly non nuclear energy. "Therefore the market guarantee provisions of this legislation are open on a reciprocal basis to companies based in any country that enacts provisions essential identical market guarantees to those in the above financing model for the purchase of space based solar energy. "Because world wide energy security contributes greatly to US national security, it is the intent of this legislation to remove barriers to shared technology to solve shared energy problems. In particular, all technologies related to space based solar power are exempted from ITAR." Keith From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Tue Nov 18 22:07:19 2008 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:07:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power In-Reply-To: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> Message-ID: <121576.94906.qm@web65614.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 11/18/08, hkhenson wrote: > I have been trying to draft something that makes an > international cooperative possible. Try this for size. > Please comment. As "coincidence" would have it, a very shy lady named Amalie Sinclair from the steering committee of the International Space System's Treaty organization was at Convergence and was hoping to meet with the leadership of the h+ community but something spooked her and she ran off. The website for her organization is http:/www.spacetreaty.com and I have her personal contact information if you want it. Incidently she is trying to raise funds for the her not-for-profit to purchase Hangar One on the Moffet Airfield at Mountain View. Another coincidence is that I need Hangar One as a garage for my start up. As nice as it was to meet all of you face to face, there were a lot of important opportunities missed all around. I apologize if I let you all down by not taking a more active role. From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Nov 18 23:13:47 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:13:47 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power In-Reply-To: <121576.94906.qm@web65614.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <121576.94906.qm@web65614.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081118171213.0237e9a8@satx.rr.com> At 02:07 PM 11/18/2008 -0800, Avant wrote: >a very shy lady named Amalie Sinclair from the steering committee of >the International Space System's Treaty organization was at >Convergence and was hoping to meet with the leadership of the h+ >community but something spooked her and she ran off. The weirdness? Was there weirdness? I'd expect weirdness. Damien Broderick From emlynoregan at gmail.com Wed Nov 19 03:02:39 2008 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:32:39 +1030 Subject: [ExI] A Bunch of Rocks Message-ID: <710b78fc0811181902ge493ca4wa5d5ae0c06c966fe@mail.gmail.com> For fans of the simulation argument: A Bunch of Rocks http://xkcd.com/505/ -- Emlyn http://emlynoregan.com - my home http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting From max at maxmore.com Wed Nov 19 02:55:48 2008 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:55:48 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Kevin Kelly on the Proactionary Principle & my comments Message-ID: <200811190322.mAJ3MW7q007125@andromeda.ziaspace.com> I just added my comments to Kevin Kelly's Technium thoughts on the Proactionary Principle: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/11/the_pro-actiona.php Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com From hkhenson at rogers.com Wed Nov 19 00:17:27 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:17:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power In-Reply-To: <121576.94906.qm@web65614.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <121576.94906.qm@web65614.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1227056843_31350@s6.cableone.net> At 03:07 PM 11/18/2008, you wrote: >--- On Tue, 11/18/08, hkhenson wrote: > > > > I have been trying to draft something that makes an > > international cooperative possible. Try this for size. > > Please comment. > > >As "coincidence" would have it, a very shy lady named Amalie >Sinclair from the steering committee of the International Space >System's Treaty organization was at Convergence and was hoping to >meet with the leadership of the h+ community but something spooked >her and she ran off. The website for her organization is >http:/www.spacetreaty.com and I have her personal contact >information if you want it. Incidently she is trying to raise funds >for the her not-for-profit to purchase Hangar One on the Moffet >Airfield at Mountain View. Another coincidence is that I need Hangar >One as a garage for my start up. As nice as it was to meet all of >you face to face, there were a lot of important opportunities missed >all around. I apologize if I let you all down by not taking a more active role. Although it was not directly inspired by what she said (I saw her presentation) it got me to think about what we need to do to bring in the whole world on this project. Keith From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Wed Nov 19 01:58:18 2008 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:58:18 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081118171213.0237e9a8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <307010.98357.qm@web65609.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 11/18/08, Damien Broderick wrote: > From: Damien Broderick > Subject: Re: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power > To: "ExI chat list" > Date: Tuesday, November 18, 2008, 3:13 PM > At 02:07 PM 11/18/2008 -0800, Avant wrote: > > > a very shy lady named Amalie Sinclair from the > steering committee of the International Space System's > Treaty organization was at Convergence and was hoping to > meet with the leadership of the h+ community but something > spooked her and she ran off. > > The weirdness? Was there weirdness? I'd expect > weirdness. No readily apparent weirdness, but we were pretty spread out most of the time. She may have ventured into the wrong conference room. ;-) Stuart LaForge "To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." - Sun Tzu From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Nov 19 05:32:17 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:32:17 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power In-Reply-To: <307010.98357.qm@web65609.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081118171213.0237e9a8@satx.rr.com> <307010.98357.qm@web65609.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081118233103.0252fab8@satx.rr.com> At 05:58 PM 11/18/2008 -0800, Stuart wrote: >She may have ventured into the wrong conference room. ;-) Omg--not the Furry Convergence conference room! Say it ain't so! From mlatorra at gmail.com Wed Nov 19 08:12:21 2008 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:12:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <24CD5677-38D7-49C1-AA82-210157DB1CB7@gmail.com> References: <49203F50.2070703@lineone.net> <24CD5677-38D7-49C1-AA82-210157DB1CB7@gmail.com> Message-ID: <9ff585550811190012u51a81a9fv8073402fa73c2027@mail.gmail.com> Hey PJ, he did find me and say "Hi!" Maybe Spike just didn't manage to find you in time, since you were a blur of motion keeping things moving during the whole conference. Except when you were at the podium, you were like the Flash! Regards, Mike On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 11:25 AM, P J Manney wrote: > Spike -- you were here and you didn't even say "hi"? :-( > > PJ > > Sent from my iPhone > > > On Nov 16, 2008, at 7:42 AM, ben wrote: > > "spike" bragged: >> >> >From merely standing in the presence of these four men, I am so in >> > awe of myself. This photo is one of my most prized digital >> > possessions: >> >> > http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/3033410799/ >> >> > spike >> >> >> Spike! What did you say to Anders? Whatever it was, you spooked him >> badly. Never seen him look so uncomfortable. >> >> Ben Zaiboc >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mlatorra at gmail.com Wed Nov 19 08:24:23 2008 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:24:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <9ff585550811190012u51a81a9fv8073402fa73c2027@mail.gmail.com> References: <49203F50.2070703@lineone.net> <24CD5677-38D7-49C1-AA82-210157DB1CB7@gmail.com> <9ff585550811190012u51a81a9fv8073402fa73c2027@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <9ff585550811190024g24e59b39p713dbe045451d03e@mail.gmail.com> And for the rest of you PJ fans, please visit her website and then ask her how she came to be in the audience to see Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky in Reykjavik: http://www.pj-manney.com/index.html Regards, Mike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pjmanney at gmail.com Wed Nov 19 16:36:34 2008 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:36:34 -0800 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <9ff585550811190024g24e59b39p713dbe045451d03e@mail.gmail.com> References: <49203F50.2070703@lineone.net> <24CD5677-38D7-49C1-AA82-210157DB1CB7@gmail.com> <9ff585550811190012u51a81a9fv8073402fa73c2027@mail.gmail.com> <9ff585550811190024g24e59b39p713dbe045451d03e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <29666bf30811190836j77a4e875u2c0e96c7a06daf5a@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 12:24 AM, Michael LaTorra wrote: > And for the rest of you PJ fans, please visit her website and then ask her > how she came to be in the audience to see Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky > in Reykjavik: > http://www.pj-manney.com/index.html Spike beat you to that question a few months ago. My parents owned a media buying service (a kind of ad agency) and had the Icelandic tourism board for a client. I went there for a few weeks with them (I was 7 that summer) and the government gave them little perks as we travelled around, like tickets to one of the chess matches. I don't remember anything about the match (it was past my bedtime). I couldn't even tell you which match we attended, but in some box in a NY storage room, I still have the tickets. If I ever find them cleaning out my parent's stuff, I'll take a picture and post them. However, like many other kids back then, the match inspired me to learn chess, although I gave up within months. My talents do not lie there. ;-) PJ From hkhenson at rogers.com Wed Nov 19 17:46:15 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:46:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081118233103.0252fab8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081118171213.0237e9a8@satx.rr.com> <307010.98357.qm@web65609.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20081118233103.0252fab8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1227117090_35895@s1.cableone.net> It it is possible to get back on topic here, does the proposed legislation terms do what I want, which is to make a space based solar power project world wide? Keith From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Wed Nov 19 19:45:41 2008 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:45:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power In-Reply-To: <1227117090_35895@s1.cableone.net> Message-ID: <615487.71326.qm@web65609.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 11/19/08, hkhenson wrote: > From: hkhenson > Subject: Re: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power > To: "ExI chat list" > Date: Wednesday, November 19, 2008, 9:46 AM > It it is possible to get back on topic here, does the > proposed legislation terms do what I want, which is to make > a space based solar power project world wide? > > Keith Are you sure that "price fixing" solar power is better than carbon-taxing oil and coal to the point where solar is cheaper anyway? Also shouldn't *all* solar power technology be excempted from ITAR, not just space-based ones? Stuart LaForge "To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." - Sun Tzu From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 19 21:14:56 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:14:56 -0800 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <28087.45108.qm@web65606.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200811192141.mAJLff1j014825@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > Well that explains why you missed my nearly completely > unnoticed debut into the aeronautical solar power utility business. > > > Stuart LaForge Stuart, were you the guy with whom Anders went to San Francisco Monday? I wish I coulda gone with you guys but duty called and I was on the plane to the east coast Monday a.m., damn. {8-[ From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 19 21:52:48 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:52:48 -0800 Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811172230y471da80dl84fc7a6cbe1f2f13@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200811192152.mAJLqrhR012617@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > John Grigg > Sent: Monday, November 17, 2008 10:30 PM > To: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com; ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] convergence 08 > > ...I bumped into my old friend > Spike Sunday evening and it was so cool to see him again... Likewise John! > > Spike, when did you hang out with Anders, Friestas and the > others and have that great picture taken?... That was taken Sunday evening at that restaurant across the street from the museum. I asked them to bronze that dinner table, but they refused. I may go worship before it, or offer to buy it so I can set it up as a shrine to the IMM. > ...I hope one day to belong to the unofficial official > transhumanist inner circle of cool guys and gals... Ja me too. The photographer is a young lady who writes for Scientific American named Wendy Grossman, another very cool person I was most honored to meet. ... > was like you had your own conference built around the one the > rest of us had! hee > > John It wasn't *my* own, but thanks. I started talking to a man who looked familiar to me but I didn't know who he was. Every time he uttered a comment, my thought was damn this guy is smart. Eventually I asked, and when he said Robert Freitas, I had to make like the fighter pilots when they are pulling heavy Gs and need to do that hoo-hee-hoo-hee thing to keep from fainting. I am sure I looked pretty silly. I used all my self control, including some reserves I didn't know I had, to not shreak like the teenage fangirls when the Beatles came to America in 1964. That would have been embarrassing and likely gotten us thrown out of the restaurant. Robert and I met briefly about ten years ago at a nanotech conference in Santa Clara. Don't recall the exact year, but it was where Gina Miller and James Lewis announced their engagement, so I think it was in about 1998. Robert autographed my copy of Nanomedicine vol 1, which was hot off the press then. The cool thing about being a big fan of smart people is that in many cases one can actually meet and talk to them. This is so much better than having sports heroes, which are adored by the proletariat masses, where you might get an autographed baseball or some lame thing like that, or if one goes big political stars, a handshake if you are lucky. All these Jupiter brains at that conference, yet afterwards we could all just stand around and talk, no fleeing hordes of groupies trying to tear off a piece of clothing or a hank of hair. It isn't fair actually. Jupiter brains should have screaming teenage groupie girls too. Until that situation develops, I will hafta do, but I will try to be as discrete as possible in doing the high G non-fainting drill. spike From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Wed Nov 19 21:49:14 2008 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:49:14 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] convergence 08 Message-ID: <759227.71993.qm@web65613.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 11/19/08, spike wrote: > > Well that explains why you missed my nearly completely > > unnoticed debut into the aeronautical solar power > utility business. > > > > Stuart, were you the guy with whom Anders went to San > Francisco Monday? I > wish I coulda gone with you guys but duty called and I was > on the plane to > the east coast Monday a.m., damn. {8-[ No. Unfortunately the few times I saw Anders, he was swamped by people. Saturday, after my presentation, I ate dinner hurriedly and left because I had only 6 hours sleep in the previous 48. All I could think of was sleep. Sunday I was caught up in synthetic biology focus groups for most of the afternoon. I kind of wished the dinner was Sunday. By Monday I was already on the road back to Washington State. Never seen so many hitchhikers in my life as when I was passing through Oregon. There were *couples* hitchhiking. Stuart LaForge "To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." - Sun Tzu From hkhenson at rogers.com Thu Nov 20 00:17:39 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:17:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power In-Reply-To: <615487.71326.qm@web65609.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <1227117090_35895@s1.cableone.net> <615487.71326.qm@web65609.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1227140574_37921@S4.cableone.net> At 12:45 PM 11/19/2008, you wrote: >--- On Wed, 11/19/08, hkhenson wrote: > > > From: hkhenson > > Subject: Re: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power > > To: "ExI chat list" > > Date: Wednesday, November 19, 2008, 9:46 AM > > It it is possible to get back on topic here, does the > > proposed legislation terms do what I want, which is to make > > a space based solar power project world wide? > > > > Keith > >Are you sure that "price fixing" solar power is better than >carbon-taxing oil and coal to the point where solar is cheaper >anyway? Also shouldn't *all* solar power technology be excempted >from ITAR, not just space-based ones? It's for a very limited amount of power, probably no more than 10 GW even if every major company in the world joined in. After the first few, the price of space based solar should fall like a stone. And as far as I know, no other solar power is subjected to ITAR. ITAR regulations are insane. Keith From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Nov 20 01:20:29 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:20:29 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Geek help needed! Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081119191527.02414798@satx.rr.com> Folks, this problem my wife Barbara is having is the sort of thing a computer person would know how to solve in an instant, I think. Neither of us, alas, is a computer person. I don't even know if this info is the relevant data, but here goes: Barbara backs up her work product from the office to home on a stand-alone box called a Lacie (I think). She tried to access it just now from her home machine and can't. I gather she bought a dedicated cable that is meant to allow this, but nothing is coming out the end. Anyone who can shed light on this infuriating problem is invited to contact us offline at blamar at lamar-law.com with a cc to me at Apologies for prevailing on the generosity of fellow extropes! Thanks, Damien Broderick From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 20 03:36:56 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:36:56 -0800 Subject: [ExI] petaflop computers In-Reply-To: <759227.71993.qm@web65613.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200811200403.mAK43e7Q009070@andromeda.ziaspace.com> They keep calling it a petaflop barrier, but I know of no barrier. Still, it's cool that it was exceeded: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/11/supercomputers.html spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Nov 20 04:24:14 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:24:14 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Geek help needed! In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081119191527.02414798@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081119191527.02414798@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081119222258.0255dbb8@satx.rr.com> Several Exi-pals quickly got back to me and Barbara, so while the problem's still not exactly licked I think she has a much better sense of what's needed. Many thanks to all! Damien Broderick From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 20 04:04:38 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:04:38 -0800 Subject: [ExI] asim roy brain theory In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081119191527.02414798@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <200811200431.mAK4VMb3005188@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Is anyone here up to speed on Asim Roy? This connectionist theory of the brain seems cool, but I lack the background to judge it. http://www.physorg.com/news146319784.html spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Nov 20 04:57:34 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:57:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] petaflop computers In-Reply-To: <200811200403.mAK43e7Q009070@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <759227.71993.qm@web65613.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <200811200403.mAK43e7Q009070@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081119225000.02558428@satx.rr.com> At 07:36 PM 11/19/2008 -0800, Spike Jones wrote: >They keep calling it a petaflop barrier, but I know of no barrier. Still, >it's cool that it was exceeded: > >http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/11/supercomputers.html Here's what I wrote some 8 years ago in the US edition of THE SPIKE, when the first machine had just managed teraflop computing: Well, it seems to have taken a little longer than 5 years, but hey--a thousand times faster is 10 years of annual doubling. About on the money. Damien Broderick From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Nov 20 05:35:01 2008 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:05:01 +1030 Subject: [ExI] petaflop computers In-Reply-To: <200811200403.mAK43e7Q009070@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <759227.71993.qm@web65613.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <200811200403.mAK43e7Q009070@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0811192135k11f1ecf2u666d3573fac8302f@mail.gmail.com> It's not a barrier, it's just a noticeable artifact of our number system. But, it is useful I guess in that we should expect to see greek prefixes fall with a roughly invariant interval between one and the next, if we have exponential increase in computing "power". OTOH, moore's law is a self-fulfilling prophecy, a dream given form so to speak. -- Emlyn http://emlynoregan.com - my home http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting 2008/11/20 spike : > > They keep calling it a petaflop barrier, but I know of no barrier. Still, > it's cool that it was exceeded: > > http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/11/supercomputers.html > > spike > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Nov 20 09:19:45 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:19:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] my Convergence08 Adventure Message-ID: <2d6187670811200119k2c0f5f2dm97c5c620338f752d@mail.gmail.com> My trip to Convergence08 turned out to go extremely well and I had a great time. My volunteer position was to hawk books at a table in the hall. I ended up selling almost everything they assigned me. "Read all about the possible end of the world, edited by Nick Bostrom!" I took many pics with my cell phone and will send them this way soon. The "unconference" format was very cool. A huge wall poster schedule was put up and anyone who wanted to create a topic that they would be speaking about and group hosting could do so. The response was huge and at any time a dozen or more interesting things were going on. I felt like a human pinball trying to take in as much as I could. The event was held at the Computer History Museum and they had a vast and amazingly thorough collection of computers. I felt old as I realized many of the "ancient" machines were from my adult years! hee Actually, though, the conference was held upstairs and the museum itself was downstairs. We were so busy that most conference attendees did not even visit the museum. But I toured it and was astonished at the vast assortment of computers and how well they had documented their development and evolution. They even had a Babbage calculating machine! I regret that we did not have organized tours for conference attendees to see the museum. It would have been so cool to be in a group of geeks (especially the likes of Robert Freitas, Ralph Merkle, Keith Henson, etc.) and reminisce about various machines and advancements! Before the conference I toured downtown San Jose. I toured the Tech Museum of Innovation and they are a top notch kid's museum that adults can definitely enjoy. The space and oceanic sections were especially good. I took lots of pics. They had a "once in a lifetime" Leonardo DaVinci show (on loan from Italy) but it was very expensive and so I passed on it and just took in the regular parts of the museum. But I still enjoyed myself. Afterward, I visited the San Jose University and their (far more impressive than ASU's!) library. What impressed me was that it was set up to feel more like a public library, with the latest best sellers, music and audiobooks available. ASU librarians should be taking notes. I enjoyed gathering around with the Imminst leadership and discussing matters As they recorded it for U-stream. Justin, Bruce, Susan, and Shannon (I might have missed someone, sorry) are sharp folks and very dedicated. The Imminst made about $53,000 last year (much of it from advertising). The possibility Of an operations officer to help run things was brought up. This would be a demanding but paid position. Also, the idea of hiring proposal writing experts to raise money by obtaining grant money was considered. I brought up my thoughts about having a specific officer whose sole responsibility Is to help seed and grow Imminst student bodies throughout the globe. But this was seen as not a good idea because the Methuselah Mouse Project student groups already exist and are expanding. Some key moments for me were the following. Fred Moulton laughing so hard you could hear him throughout the auditorium when a sincere young man said the Torah says man's lifespan is maximum allotted lifespan is 120 years and if you calculate the number of heartbeats in that life it would be 4.5 billion, the same age as the known universe. I thought it was kind of deep. Paul Saffo was the opening guest speaker and is a supposedly major league futurist. He brought up some good points but I really disagreed with his comment "the future will look much like today, But with much better gizmos." This is certainly lacking in transhumanist vision. But then as one Prominent transhumanist in attendance said, "they seem confused around here as to whether they even really want to use the word transhumanist." Denise Caruso was the naysayer during the synthetic biology panel. I agree with her that Necessary precautions to protect people and the environment must be made, but she Really poured out the fear and insecurity vibe. She even dared bring up the "pre-cautionary Principle." When she did this I wanted to immediately jump up and lecture her about Max and Natasha's pro-actionary Principle and how fear must not dominate and overcome us. A Dept. of Defense civilian biochemist attended the conference on official business and sat next to me during the Friday restaurant get together. She knew nothing about transhumanism and so I went into detail about various terms and gave her the run-down on various organizations, websites and mailing lists. A very lovely lady. I spoke with a NYC based architecture professor who gave a presentation about the Timeship project of Saul Kent and Bill Faloon. This cryonics temple/body repository project that I had thought was "DOA" is supposedly back on line. A coffee table book about the project has been produced and land for the site has been purchased. But the construction budget has been targeted at a whopping 300 million+, far larger than the fortunes of Kent and Faloon. The prof was a good man, a classic New Yorker, and very interested in my life. Terry Grossman, the popular anti-aging doctor was in attendance. I felt almost lightheaded as he read a laundry list of medical tests every person should have done. In another group with him one of his patients took out his laptop and showed the program he had devised for himself with Dr. Grossman's help. This guy was an engineer and it sure showed with his charts and records. lol Gregory Benford, the powerhouse science fiction author and physics professor, was there promoting his biotech company. Yes, you heard me right, Gregory Benford is now yet another up and coming biotech mogul! lol He claimed to have a very promising anti- alzheimer's drug in the works (along with anti-aging stuff). I was rather in awe of him and spent a lunch listening to him talk. He seems to enjoy having an audience. lol Benford was in fine form when during the synthetic biology panel he made a dryly sarcastic reply to a "precautionary principle" advocate who got to be tiring. I met Scott Cragg (I think it was his name), who is a newbie to transhumanism and was absolutely brimming with excitement. He wants to create "birthright" machines" that will follow each person through their life, coaching and protecting them. He did a group on how transhumanists should ally to do open source work based around Burning Man. While holding a microphone during a Q & A session a man motioned to me wanting to make a comment during someone else's question. I said no, but then looked at the name tag and said, "oh, go right ahead Keith!" It was our bright and persecuted friend, Keith Henson. A man of almost Extropian legend to me. I could kick myself that I did not make time to speak one on one with him. I bumped into my good friend Spike. It was so cool to see him and it was sad that he could not attend the conference (though he did hang out with the resident transhumanist brain trust in the evening, lucky bastard). I tried to use my cell phone to take a pic of the two of us together but I kept on missing one or both of us! lol Then he tried to do it but without any luck. Finally, I asked a passerby to do it and now I have a memory of the two of us there. You rock, Spike! It was so cool seeing our resident geniuses, Eliezer and Anders there. Eliezer has put on weight and has a sweet ready smile. It was such fun seeing him playfully question Anders about his AI presentation. And speaking of smiles, Anders still has his trademark smile and has fortunately not lost his charming Swedish accent. The rumor is that Nick Bostrom (not in attendance) has. I finally met Michael Annisimov, charming transhumanist provocateur. He has quite a bit of boyish charm and he and his friends kept on breaking up into laughter during Michael's lifeboat presentation. I had no idea the end of the world could be so darn funny! Annisimov, like me, has painfully light sensitive eyes and so has almost fully closed eyes in many pictures. I found with both Michael and Eliezer, they each had quite a following of admirers/groupies/ minions. hee This is especially true of Eliezer! "And thus said Eliezer" was something I heard one way or another during the course of the conference. Kennita Watson did a group on cryonics acceptance, and the attendees were more focused on the technical aspects of it rather than the usual "religious objections/I won't fit into the future" subjects. Kennita was her usual fun and energetic self. Tanya Jones was in the audience. And speaking of Tanya, she did a group presentation about Alcor goals and plans. But as I was bouncing around the groups (so many!) I just got a glimpse of the things she must have covered, one of them being how important it is for Alcor to pre-position standby equipment so that they don't have to deal with customs. Her group was well attended and she was bright and charming as usual. It was great to meet Professor James Hughes. He told me a post I had written regarding the ASU conference on transhumanism had a positive effect. Now a transhumanist representative will be present at all the future conferences to balance things out. Dr. "J" is a charming fellow and it was cool speaking with him. But I did disagree with him (as many did) about his presentation called "digital surfs and electronic buddha's." His point was that future society will be so automated that people will either not work or only put in a 10-20 hour week. I think as is the case now, better tools will not stop 40+ hour work weeks a century from now. But it was still an interesting presentation. His co-presenter, Michael LaTorra, talked to us about detaching from the ego to gain psychological strength. I wanted to stay and hear more but I left to bounce around and take in other presentations. I will have to find out what I missed from Michael. I met Stuart LaForge, an extropy list poster. It was cool to put a face to the name. He told me about his work in biotech and his frustrations due to the current administration. And he encouraged me, saying that being an "everyman" rather than a scientist or engineer, etc., is still making a contribution to the cause. My friend Shannon Vyff was my supervisor as I did my volunteering duties and it was so great to get to know her better. She had a table set up promoting her 21st Century Kids book. I was amazed at how she juggled so many things as the conference progressed. Shannon deals with severe chronic pain due to a nerve/abdominal condition and I deeply respect her mental and physical endurance. A great lady. Seeing Bruce and Susan is always a delight. They are the "first couple" of the Imminst and truly awesome people. A very cool moment happened when Susan was in Bruce's lap (they are so romantic) and they were talking to Ben Goetzl and another person. As I got my cell phone camera aimed there way Bruce gave me the finger, with a hardcore metal expression on his face! LOL Susan slapped his hand for being so mischievious. hee When I said goodbye to Bruce I had a lump in my throat. Oh, and Ben looks more than ever like a young old testament prophet due to his long long locks of hair. I had a discussion with him over snacks and had to disagree with him that organized religion is going to simply fade away over time. I see it changing, but definitely not going away. Ben was great on the panels and always seemed to have a funny observation that caused the audience to break into serious laughter. It was very cool to finally meet my Mormon Transhumanist Association friend, Lincoln Cannon. We were hotel roommates and it was such a pleasure to stay up late talking about our lives and how transhumanism fits into it all. My thanks to Lincoln for his friendship and graciousness. Though I have known Natasha Vita-More for many years through the net and greatly admired her for her achievements and big heart, I had never had a real world sit down visit. And so it was incredibly cool to join her at lunch and get to know her better. Her lunch group sat outside on a balcony and we discussed current events and the gay marriage issue. I said if people are concerned about this than they will be even more upset when some folks want to marry an android or an uplifted dolphin. When Natasha first greeted me at the conference, she gave me a big hug, which was so great. And then she asked me (she knows me too well) "John, do you need rescuing?" LOL The day I left the city the newspaper headlines told of an Asian engineer who after being fired from his job shot to death three senior executives from his former company. The killer was married with three kids and was known for being a friendly, easy going guy. I wonder what drove him off the edge? I had a wonderful time exploring San Jose and the Tech Museum of Innovation, attending the Convergence08 Conference, and lastly visiting the Computer History Museum. I did the best I could to document my experience so I could share it with others. My pictures: http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?p=999&gid=21008688&uid=11823366 Best wishes, John Grigg From sparge at gmail.com Thu Nov 20 13:12:26 2008 From: sparge at gmail.com (Spargemeister) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:12:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] petaflop computers In-Reply-To: <200811200403.mAK43e7Q009070@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <759227.71993.qm@web65613.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <200811200403.mAK43e7Q009070@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 10:36 PM, spike wrote: > > They keep calling it a petaflop barrier, but I know of no barrier. It's a milestone, not a barrier. And it's petaflops--there no such thing as a petaflop. -Dave, who works at ORNL From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Nov 20 13:53:59 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:53:59 +0100 Subject: [ExI] petaflop computers In-Reply-To: References: <759227.71993.qm@web65613.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <200811200403.mAK43e7Q009070@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <580930c20811200553i765786i29abf5cda90bfd60@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 2:12 PM, Spargemeister wrote: > It's a milestone, not a barrier. Sure, but I am a little confused with regard to the journalistic hype that presents it as a kind of dramatic paradigm shift, without on the other hand ever precisely indicating what classes of problems exist that are radically intractable at a teraflops level but do not require in the least esaflops or ettaflops computers... Stefano Vaj From sparge at gmail.com Thu Nov 20 14:26:00 2008 From: sparge at gmail.com (Spargemeister) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:26:00 -0500 Subject: [ExI] petaflop computers In-Reply-To: <580930c20811200553i765786i29abf5cda90bfd60@mail.gmail.com> References: <759227.71993.qm@web65613.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <200811200403.mAK43e7Q009070@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <580930c20811200553i765786i29abf5cda90bfd60@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 8:53 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 2:12 PM, Spargemeister wrote: >> It's a milestone, not a barrier. > > Sure, but I am a little confused with regard to the journalistic hype > that presents it as a kind of dramatic paradigm shift, without on the > other hand ever precisely indicating what classes of problems exist > that are radically intractable at a teraflops level but do not require > in the least esaflops or ettaflops computers... It's just a poorly-written article. Teraflops->petaflops isn't a paradigm shift. It may make some computations practical that weren't before, but, in general it just made existing codes run faster and made more cycles available to more researchers. -Dave From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Nov 20 14:42:37 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:42:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] petaflop computers In-Reply-To: References: <759227.71993.qm@web65613.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <200811200403.mAK43e7Q009070@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <580930c20811200553i765786i29abf5cda90bfd60@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20811200642k5b605276q8b2a24f68ccfb6a9@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Spargemeister wrote: > It's just a poorly-written article. Teraflops->petaflops isn't a > paradigm shift. It may make some computations practical that weren't > before, but, in general it just made existing codes run faster and > made more cycles available to more researchers. This is also my impression, and why it sounds silly that "petaflops are not just faster computers, it is a qualitative barrier". Of course, quantity becomes quality at specific thresholds - e.g., a PC that becomes powerful enough for the first time to accept real-time dictation may change to an extent the computing paradigm as far as human interfaces are concerned. Only, "incrementally higher-resolution climate models" or "snappier running of scramjet simulations" do not seem to cut it. Stefano From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 20 14:41:29 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 06:41:29 -0800 Subject: [ExI] petaflop computers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200811201508.mAKF8CGf004436@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > On Behalf Of Spargemeister > Subject: Re: [ExI] petaflop computers > > On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 10:36 PM, spike wrote: > > > > They keep calling it a petaflop barrier, but I know of no barrier. > > It's a milestone, not a barrier. And it's petaflops--there no > such thing as a petaflop. > > -Dave, who works at ORNL No such thing a petaflop Sparge? On the contrary, a petaflop is an amount of work to be done, petaflops is a speed at which it is being done. Right now I have a petaflop of work to do at the office, but it will take way more than a second to do it all. Yes I did accidentally omit the s, good eye. {8^] spike From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 20 14:46:54 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 06:46:54 -0800 Subject: [ExI] petaflop computers In-Reply-To: <580930c20811200553i765786i29abf5cda90bfd60@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200811201513.mAKFDagm007166@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > Stefano Vaj > Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 5:54 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] petaflop computers > > On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 2:12 PM, Spargemeister > wrote: > > It's a milestone, not a barrier. > > Sure, but I am a little confused with regard to the > journalistic hype that presents it as a kind of dramatic > paradigm shift, without on the other hand ever precisely > indicating what classes of problems exist that are radically > intractable at a teraflops level but do not require in the > least esaflops or ettaflops computers... > > Stefano Vaj Yes, and they need to go into a bit more detail about the specific class of problems that can be solved with massively parallel computing. Some problems require linear calculations, most problems actually, so I am interested in the fastest single processors. Of course we can always make a jillion of these and set them to work in parallel to play chess or searching for record primes and such, but that is a limited class of calculations. What is the state of the art in linear processing? How many flops are we getting out of the latest 2000 dollar consumer level machine? spike From rpwl at lightlink.com Thu Nov 20 16:03:50 2008 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:03:50 -0500 Subject: [ExI] asim roy brain theory In-Reply-To: <200811200431.mAK4VMb3005188@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200811200431.mAK4VMb3005188@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <49258A66.6040009@lightlink.com> spike wrote: > Is anyone here up to speed on Asim Roy? This connectionist theory of the > brain seems cool, but I lack the background to judge it. > > http://www.physorg.com/news146319784.html I got a draft version of the paper earlier this year, and after a quick scan I filed it under 'junk'. I just read it through again, and the filing stays the same. His basic premise is that connectionists argued from the very beginning that they wanted to do things in a way that did not involve a central executive. They wanted to see how much could be done by having large numbers of autonomous units do things independently. Turns out, quite a lot can be achieved that way. But it seems that Asim Roy has fundamentally misunderstood the force and the intent of that initial declaration by the connectionists. There was a reason they said what they said: they wanted to get away from the old symbol processing paradigm in which one thing happened at a time and symbols were separated from the mechanisms that modified or used symbols. The connectionists were not being dogmatic about "No Controllers!", they just wanted to stop all power being vested in the hands of a central executive ... and their motivation was from cognitive science, not engineering or control theory. Roy seems to be completely obsessed with the idea that they are wrong, while at the same time not really understanding why they said it, and not really having a concrete proposal (or account of empirical data) to substitute for the connectionist ideas. To tell the truth, I don't think there are many connectionists who are so hell-bent on the idea of not having a central controller, that they would not be open to an architecture that did have one (or several). They just don't think it would be good to have central controllers in charge of ALL the heavy lifting. Roy's paper has the additional disadvantage of being utterly filled with underlines and boldface. He shouts. Not good in something that is supposed to be a scientific paper. Sorry, but this is just junk. Richard Loosemore From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Nov 20 16:05:46 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:05:46 +0100 Subject: [ExI] petaflop computers In-Reply-To: <200811201513.mAKFDagm007166@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <580930c20811200553i765786i29abf5cda90bfd60@mail.gmail.com> <200811201513.mAKFDagm007166@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <580930c20811200805o39231a0am458b53908c3985a7@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 3:46 PM, spike wrote: > Some > problems require linear calculations, most problems actually, In fact, I suspect that for desktop users "speed" may have more to do with Mhz and MIPS than with megaflops. Stefano Vaj From sparge at gmail.com Thu Nov 20 16:16:21 2008 From: sparge at gmail.com (Spargemeister) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:16:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] petaflop computers In-Reply-To: <200811201513.mAKFDagm007166@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <580930c20811200553i765786i29abf5cda90bfd60@mail.gmail.com> <200811201513.mAKFDagm007166@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: Spike, I wasn't picking on you with the flop/flops comment. The Wired article had it wrong, too. It's widespread, and I should probably just get over it. On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 9:46 AM, spike wrote: > > Yes, and they need to go into a bit more detail about the specific class of > problems that can be solved with massively parallel computing. Some > problems require linear calculations, most problems actually, so I am > interested in the fastest single processors. Of course we can always make a > jillion of these and set them to work in parallel to play chess or searching > for record primes and such, but that is a limited class of calculations. My pet massively parallel project is protein folding via Folding at home, which reached the petaflops milestone long before Roadrunner or Jaguar, but didn't garner big press because it didn't involve millions of dollars of tax money. > What is the state of the art in linear processing? How many flops are we > getting out of the latest 2000 dollar consumer level machine? Good question. I think the new i7 chips are going to raise the bar. According to http://www.macobserver.com/analysis/2008/11/17.1.shtml an 8-core Mac Pro should clock in at ~91 gigaflops. -Dave From jonkc at bellsouth.net Thu Nov 20 17:31:39 2008 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:31:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A Mammoth for $10 Million References: <580930c20811200553i765786i29abf5cda90bfd60@mail.gmail.com><200811201513.mAKFDagm007166@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On the front page of today's New York Times is an article about how rapidly the science of genetic engineering is advancing and so as a result today it would only take about 10 million dollars to make a Wooly Mammoth. They also mention that it would only take about the same amount of money to bring back a Neanderthal. That's going to twist the Bible thumpers panties into a bunch. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/science/20mammoth.html?_r=1&hp John K Clark From benboc at lineone.net Thu Nov 20 22:27:40 2008 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:27:40 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4925E45C.6090804@lineone.net> Despite the subject, this post is NOT about space-based solar power. However... It occurred to me while on a flight recently, that the main difference between the insolation above the atmosphere and at ground level is caused not by the clear air, but by the clouds (anybody care to comment on that? Am i wildly wrong, or is this close to the truth?). So, if you can get your PVs above most of the clouds, this will be a LOT cheaper than getting them into orbit, and you can catch a lot of sunlight, almost anywhere in the world. I'm thinking of rafts of helium/hydrogen/hot air balloons, with PVs on the top surface, or supporting a PV layer, tethered to the ground, floating just above the main cloud layer, with lightwight electrical cables (maybe with bouyancy balloons attached at intervals) conducting the power to the ground. No death-ray microwave beams needed, no ITAR problems involved. OK, i know that 'the main cloud layer' is a rather nebulous (pun intended) concept, but the raft's altitude could be changed to suit conditions. Even it's attitude could be changed, to maximise the surface area presented to the prevailing light. Am i talking rubbish? Or is this worth thinking about? Ben Zaiboc From neomorphy at gmail.com Thu Nov 20 23:38:30 2008 From: neomorphy at gmail.com (Olie Lamb) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:38:30 +1100 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power In-Reply-To: <4925E45C.6090804@lineone.net> References: <4925E45C.6090804@lineone.net> Message-ID: You're absolutely right. Clouds - and water vapour generally - make a lot of difference for the radiation balance. The main greenhouse gas that does anything is water vapour. But the only advantage of going above clouds, rather than around them (deserts), is the difference in transmission distances, hence, transmission costs. To get above most of the clouds only requires going up 3 km or so. However, there's plenty of weather up to 16,000 m, which could damage balloons. There are other ideas to keep things aloft for power generation purposes, such as wind-farm kites- a friend of mine is doing a masters on why this particular design isn't one of the more serious options being looked at by industry (reason: because there are just too many unknown costs) All very possible stuff. Just too many new engineering challenges for investors. On 11/21/08, ben wrote: > Despite the subject, this post is NOT about space-based solar power. > > However... > > It occurred to me while on a flight recently, that the main difference > between the insolation above the atmosphere and at ground level is > caused not by the clear air, but by the clouds (anybody care to comment > on that? Am i wildly wrong, or is this close to the truth?). > > So, if you can get your PVs above most of the clouds, this will be a LOT > cheaper than getting them into orbit, and you can catch a lot of > sunlight, almost anywhere in the world. > > I'm thinking of rafts of helium/hydrogen/hot air balloons, with PVs on > the top surface, or supporting a PV layer, tethered to the ground, > floating just above the main cloud layer, with lightwight electrical > cables (maybe with bouyancy balloons attached at intervals) conducting > the power to the ground. > > No death-ray microwave beams needed, no ITAR problems involved. > > OK, i know that 'the main cloud layer' is a rather nebulous (pun > intended) concept, but the raft's altitude could be changed to suit > conditions. Even it's attitude could be changed, to maximise the > surface area presented to the prevailing light. > > Am i talking rubbish? Or is this worth thinking about? > > Ben Zaiboc > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Fri Nov 21 01:00:54 2008 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:00:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power In-Reply-To: <4925E45C.6090804@lineone.net> Message-ID: <8718.73114.qm@web65603.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 11/20/08, ben wrote: > From: ben > Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Date: Thursday, November 20, 2008, 2:27 PM > Despite the subject, this post is NOT about space-based > solar power. > > However... > > It occurred to me while on a flight recently, that the main > difference between the insolation above the atmosphere and > at ground level is caused not by the clear air, but by the > clouds (anybody care to comment on that? Am i wildly wrong, > or is this close to the truth?). > > So, if you can get your PVs above most of the clouds, this > will be a LOT cheaper than getting them into orbit, and you > can catch a lot of sunlight, almost anywhere in the world. > > I'm thinking of rafts of helium/hydrogen/hot air > balloons, with PVs on the top surface, or supporting a PV > layer, tethered to the ground, floating just above the main > cloud layer, with lightwight electrical cables (maybe with > bouyancy balloons attached at intervals) conducting the > power to the ground. > > No death-ray microwave beams needed, no ITAR problems > involved. > > OK, i know that 'the main cloud layer' is a rather > nebulous (pun intended) concept, but the raft's altitude > could be changed to suit conditions. Even it's attitude > could be changed, to maximise the surface area presented to > the prevailing light. > > Am i talking rubbish? Or is this worth thinking about? It is certainly worth thinking about but tethered balloons have a large number of problems of their own. Everything that is at all useful to humanity can be used for death. You can kill somebody with a pencil. If you are afraid of MW death rays, you should be afraid of explosive oil refineries not to mention hurricanes, floods, and other symptoms of climatic instability. What country are you citizen of Ben? Stuart LaForge "To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." - Sun Tzu From emlynoregan at gmail.com Fri Nov 21 03:58:24 2008 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:28:24 +1030 Subject: [ExI] petaflop computers In-Reply-To: <200811200403.mAK43e7Q009070@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <759227.71993.qm@web65613.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <200811200403.mAK43e7Q009070@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0811201958u2dfe9d78h6411da06dbd236d0@mail.gmail.com> 2008/11/20 spike : > > They keep calling it a petaflop barrier, but I know of no barrier. Still, > it's cool that it was exceeded: > > http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/11/supercomputers.html > > spike Here is a similar situation explained, the recent terrible reporting re: the LHC. It should shed some light on what the significance of this milestone is. http://layscience.net/node/277 ie: none at all -- Emlyn http://emlynoregan.com - my home http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting From mlatorra at gmail.com Fri Nov 21 05:19:02 2008 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:19:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] NY Times: News Keeps Getting Worse for Vitamins Message-ID: <9ff585550811202119l6023cab2rcb6236994aed3e40@mail.gmail.com> http://tinyurl.com/5uam9v News Keeps Getting Worse for Vitamins: The best efforts of the scientific community to prove the health benefits of vitamins keep falling short. Consumers don't want to give up their vitamins. (Tony Cenicola/The New York Times)This week, researchers reported the disappointing results from a large clinical trial of almost 15,000 male doctors taking vitamins E and C for a decade. The study showed no meaningful effect on cancer rates. Another recent study found no benefit of vitamins E and C for heart disease. In October, a major trial studying whether vitamin E and selenium could lower a man's risk for prostate cancer ended amidst worries that the treatments may do more harm than good. And recently, doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York warned that vitamin C seems to protect not just healthy cells but cancer cells, too. Everyone needs vitamins, which are critical for the body. But for most people, the micronutrients we get from foods usually are adequate to prevent vitamin deficiency, which is rare in the United States. That said, some extra vitamins have proven benefits, such as vitamin B12 supplements for the elderly and folic acid for women of child-bearing age. And calcium and vitamin D in women over 65 appear to protect bone health. But many people gobble down megadoses of vitamins believing that they boost the body's ability to mop up damaging free radicals that lead to cancer and heart disease. In addition to the more recent research, several reports in recent years have challenged the notion that vitamins are good for you. A Johns Hopkins School of Medicine review of 19 vitamin E clinical trials of more than 135,000 people showed high doses of vitamin E (greater than 400 IUs) increased a person's risk for dying during the study period by 4 percent. Taking vitamin E with other vitamins and minerals resulted in a 6 percent higher risk of dying. A later study of daily vitamin E showed vitamin E takers had a 13 percent higher risk for heart failure. The Journal of Clinical Oncology published a study of 540 patients with head and neck cancer who were being treated with radiation therapy. Vitamin E reduced side effects, but cancer recurrence rates among the vitamin users were higher, although the increase didn't reach statistical significance. A 1994 Finland study of smokers taking 20 milligrams a day of beta carotene showed an 18 percent higher incidence of lung cancer among beta carotene users. In 1996, a study called Caret looked at beta carotene and vitamin A use among smokers and workers exposed to asbestos, but the study was stopped when the participants taking the combined therapy showed a 28 percent higher risk for lung cancer and a 26 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease. A 2002 Harvard study of more than 72,000 nurses showed that those who consumed high levels of vitamin A from foods, multivitamins and supplements had a 48 percent higher risk for hip fractures than nurses who had the lowest intake of vitamin A. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews looked at vitamin C studies for treating colds. Among more than two dozen studies, there was no overall benefit for preventing colds, although the vitamin was linked with a 50 percent reduction in colds among people who engaged in extreme activities, such as marathon runners, skiers and soldiers, who were exposed to significant cold or physical stress. The data also suggested vitamin C use was linked with less severe and slightly shorter colds. In October 2004, Copenhagen researchers reviewed seven randomized trials of beta carotene, selenium and vitamins A, C and E (alone or in combination) in esophageal, gastric, colorectal, pancreatic and liver cancer. The antioxidant users had a 6 percent higher death rate than placebo users. Two studies presented to the American College of Cardiology in 2006 showed that vitamin B doesn't prevent heart attacks, leading The New England Journal of Medicine to say that the consistency of the results "leads to the unequivocal conclusion" that the vitamins don't help patients with established vascular disease. The British Medical Journal looked at multivitamin use among elderly people for a year but found no difference in infection rates or visits to doctors. Despite a lack of evidence that vitamins actually work, consumers appear largely unwilling to give them up. Many readers of the Well blog say the problem is not the vitamin but poorly designed studies that use the wrong type of vitamin, setting the vitamin up to fail. Industry groups such as the Council for Responsible Nutrition also say the research isn't well designed to detect benefits in healthy vitamin users. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From moulton at moulton.com Fri Nov 21 05:49:48 2008 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:49:48 -0800 Subject: [ExI] [wta-talk] my Convergence08 Adventure In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811200119k2c0f5f2dm97c5c620338f752d@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670811200119k2c0f5f2dm97c5c620338f752d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1227246588.30878.265.camel@hayek> Since I am mentioned I will make a few comments. It was good to see you and many others there. You have an interesting set of photos. On Thu, 2008-11-20 at 02:19 -0700, John Grigg wrote: > They had a "once in a lifetime" Leonardo > DaVinci show (on loan from Italy) but it was very expensive and so I > passed on it and just took in the regular parts of the museum. The Tech Museum is great and I did attend the Leonardo exhibition a few weeks back and enjoyed it. > Afterward, I visited the San Jose University and their (far more impressive > than ASU's!) library. What impressed me was that it was set up to > feel more like a public library, with the latest best sellers, music > and audiobooks available. ASU librarians should be taking notes. Actually it is a combination of the San Jose City Library and the San Jose State University (SJSU) Library in one building. You were actually near the old San Jose Library main building. It is the old building next to the San Jose convention center but is now offices. A few years back San Jose City Library needed more room and SJSU needed more library space and since land is scarce and expensive in downtown San Jose they decided to combine so now the first couple of floors are popular items and all of the upper floors are for scholarly books. The staff and operations are combined. SJSU students are allowed access for longer hours than the general public. > Some key moments for me were the following. Fred Moulton laughing so hard you > could hear him throughout the auditorium when a sincere young man said the Torah > says man's lifespan is maximum allotted lifespan is 120 years and if > you calculate the > number of heartbeats in that life it would be 4.5 billion, the same > age as the known > universe. I thought it was kind of deep. Actually in all modesty I should say that there were lots of other people laughing and I would not be surprised if some were louder than me. What made this funny was that early in the biology panel it was stated that there were likely people in the auditorium who would live to 150. Plus if the guy had thought for a moment he would have realized that he is letting his pattern matching get ahead of his critical faculties and assigning meaning with out being critically rational. He found a number in a book and then did some math and then found some other number in nature and thought it was profound. Any of us can find some number in a book and the same number in nature. Consider 23 chromosomes. There is a old and wise book that says that 23 is a special number and that it obeys the Law of 5. The book (actually books) are the Illuminatus Trilogy by Wilson and Shea. Did I say the books were old? Well they are last century. And if I was ever stranded on an island I would rather have the Illuminatus Trilogy than the Torah for several reasons. The authors of the Illuminatus Trilogy were better writers, realized that they were writing Science Fiction and were much funnier but also more profound. Fred From emlynoregan at gmail.com Fri Nov 21 06:58:24 2008 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:28:24 +1030 Subject: [ExI] A Mammoth for $10 Million In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20811200553i765786i29abf5cda90bfd60@mail.gmail.com> <200811201513.mAKFDagm007166@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0811202258ye67be6buc8e6f6c04fb5614a@mail.gmail.com> 2008/11/21 John K Clark : > On the front page of today's New York Times is an article about how rapidly > the science of genetic engineering is advancing and so as a result today it > would only take about 10 million dollars to make a Wooly Mammoth. They also > mention that it would only take about the same amount of money to bring back > a Neanderthal. > > That's going to twist the Bible thumpers panties into a bunch. > > http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/science/20mammoth.html?_r=1&hp > > John K Clark Make a Neanderthal! Yeah do it! Do it! Awesome news. I reckon 10 million for a Mammoth would be a steal. (of course, if you think that project's not going to run over time and budget, you're a bit crazy, or else in IT middle management). -- Emlyn http://emlynoregan.com - my home http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting From eschatoon at gmail.com Fri Nov 21 07:11:42 2008 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:11:42 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Transhumanism in Flux, a new high profile science magazine Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90811202311x732b10c9h9533a72e7157b3cd@mail.gmail.com> Links in: http://transumanar.com/index.php/site/transhumanism_in_flux_a_new_high_profile_science_magazine/ The Rathenau Institute is an independent organization that concerns itself with issues on the interface between science, technology and society, and that provides politicians with timely and well-considered information. The first issue of their print magazine Flux is now out, and PDF versions in Dutch and English of this and other publications are online and available for download - DIRECT DOWNLOAD LINK TO THE PDF IN ENGLISH. The term 'Flux' represents a flow of inspiring ideas originating from science, technology, industry and society. The first issue has a technology assessment section and three dossiers about climate, nanotechnology and human enhancement. It is always good to see our ideas on human enhancement discussed, and in positive terms, on a high profile science magazine. In 'The lure of human enhancement', the authors argue that as a result of developments in nano, bio, info and cognitive technology, human enhancement is no longer science fiction. The British author Nikolas Rose, a sociologist and Director of the bios centre (study of bioscience, biomedicine, biotechnology and society) at the London school of economics and Political science, who serves on the national council of bioethics and is head of the neuroscience and society network, contends that new biomedical technology is not only bringing about a change in our relationship with our own bodies, but also a change on the political scene. Fragments from the book 'Reshaping the Human Condition'?Exploring Human Enhancement' show that some scientists are of the opinion that our current medical thinking model?based on illness?is no longer adequate. Tech-nomad and Transhumanist Philippe van Nedervelde reveals that we have a long, dark road to follow before we definitively liberate ourselves from our biological limitations. The book 'Reshaping the Human Condition'?Exploring Human Enhancement' with interviews and essays by leading Dutch and British scientists, gives an overview of the key directions in which modern science is pushing out the boundaries of what is possible in the field of human enhancement. The British ambassador to the Netherlands says about the book: 'The human drive to better ourselves is nothing new. But what is new today is the rapidly expanding range of possibilities for human enhancement that contemporary science now offers'. This is basic common sense for transhumanists, and it is good to see our ideas echoed and discussed in the political scene. Our friend Philippe van Nedervelde says 'We will become managers of the mixing console of our brains? We will liberate ourselves from our biological limitations more and more' and defines Transhumanism: 'is based on the idea that we humans can enhance ourselves both in body and mind using science and technology. Ultimately we will be able to free ourselves from our biological limitations. Transhumanism is not a doctrine or religion. It is a rational vision on human development'. As one of the founders of the Order of Cosmic Engineers, 'a new transhumanistic organization that (amongst other things) aims to give people a scientifically sound 'warm, accessible' alternative to the 'emotional chill' that has arisen due to the disappearance of religion', Philippe offers a mind boggling cosmic vision: Transhumanists think that humanity is destined for the universe. We will be able to leave our biological substrate within the foreseeable future. We will then transfer our consciousness and intelligence to other matter. Compare it with buying a new car when your old one begins to rattle. Our transhuman matter will be intelligent and conscious and will spread by degrees throughout the universe. Perhaps civilizations elsewhere in this universe will go the same way. Ultimately, after a long, long time, all the matter in the cosmos will be intelligent and conscious. A metaconsciousness or new universal entity will gradually reach maturity. Christians would deem this being God. It could indeed be a natural god, but not a supernatural one. What will happen then? We may become part of a gigantic cosmic merry-go-round, possibly even a simulation, and then everything will start all over again either on the same level or a higher one each time around. A great launch for a new science magazine, interesting and useful for scientists, engineers, policy makers and citizens, which now has at least one more and I hope many more regular readers. -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Nov 21 07:20:19 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:20:19 -0600 Subject: [ExI] A Mammoth for $10 Million In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0811202258ye67be6buc8e6f6c04fb5614a@mail.gmail.com > References: <580930c20811200553i765786i29abf5cda90bfd60@mail.gmail.com> <200811201513.mAKFDagm007166@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0811202258ye67be6buc8e6f6c04fb5614a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081121010903.024ce930@satx.rr.com> At 05:28 PM 11/21/2008 +1030, Emlyn wrote: >I reckon 10 million for a Mammoth would be a steal. But probably a sad mess. First you need to find an egg with exactly appropriate extra-nuclear materials; oh, bad luck, no mammoth mothers left. Then a suitable uterus secreting the appropriate support materials; in an elephant? but wait, elephants *aren't* mammoths. Could be big trouble already. Then if any viable critter is born, you have to provide it with a mammoth behavioral-trait-eliciting and reinforcing and shaping environment, and I'm pretty sure a family of elephants will be about as salient as a family of chimps would be to a human or gorilla baby. Then you have to stop the "father" and siblings and other phants from tearing this stinking weird-looking alien thing to pieces. Then if the neurotic and either fearful or aggressively defensive animal survives long enough for it to grow some fur, how's it going to feel in a macro or micro climate appropriate for its adoptive chums? Not *necessarily* a great idea. Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Fri Nov 21 09:23:56 2008 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:23:56 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power In-Reply-To: <4925E45C.6090804@lineone.net> References: <4925E45C.6090804@lineone.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 10:27 PM, ben wrote: > So, if you can get your PVs above most of the clouds, this will be a LOT > cheaper than getting them into orbit, and you can catch a lot of sunlight, > almost anywhere in the world. > > I'm thinking of rafts of helium/hydrogen/hot air balloons, with PVs on the > top surface, or supporting a PV layer, tethered to the ground, floating just > above the main cloud layer, with lightwight electrical cables (maybe with > bouyancy balloons attached at intervals) conducting the power to the ground. > Single *temporary* high-flying tethered balloons are already in use for atmospheric tests and sampling. I think the record height is about 9 or 10 kilometers. (Free balloons go much higher, of course). The main problem with high tethered balloons is aircraft running into the cable. Cities used barrage balloons in WWII to frighten aircraft away. So a city covered with solar power balloon rising to 3 kilometers is definitely a no-no. Low level PV balloons have been suggested as a possibility where land space for panels is expensive or unobtainable. See: But, if you have a roof, you probably have enough space for a PV panel. BillK But a single PV balloon would just about run a single house. From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Fri Nov 21 11:05:14 2008 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado (CI)) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:05:14 -0200 Subject: [ExI] A Mammoth for $10 Million References: <580930c20811200553i765786i29abf5cda90bfd60@mail.gmail.com><200811201513.mAKFDagm007166@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <066601c94bc9$09157280$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> JKC> On the front page of today's New York Times is an article about how rapidly > the science of genetic engineering is advancing and so as a result today > it > would only take about 10 million dollars to make a Wooly Mammoth. They > also > mention that it would only take about the same amount of money to bring > back > a Neanderthal. > That's going to twist the Bible thumpers panties into a bunch. > http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/science/20mammoth.html?_r=1&hp Have they started yet? Neanderthals would be much cooler than mammoths thoug. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Nov 21 11:59:51 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:59:51 +0100 Subject: [ExI] A Mammoth for $10 Million In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081121010903.024ce930@satx.rr.com> References: <580930c20811200553i765786i29abf5cda90bfd60@mail.gmail.com> <200811201513.mAKFDagm007166@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0811202258ye67be6buc8e6f6c04fb5614a@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20081121010903.024ce930@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <580930c20811210359t4d8e09eagfa8649ce3dcb7306@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 8:20 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > But probably a sad mess. First you need to find an egg with exactly > appropriate extra-nuclear materials; oh, bad luck, no mammoth mothers left. Come on, any kind of uterus or ectogenetic growth is a much better computer to "calculate" a phenotype from DNA than any alternative we may have at hand, and I have little doubts that however imperfect the results they would add much to just pondering over a few old bones. After all, if we are going to make use of bovine eggs to clone human material on a large scale, Neanderthals and mammuths can well have to accept a similar compromise. Stefano Vaj From natasha at natasha.cc Fri Nov 21 16:11:26 2008 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:11:26 -0600 Subject: [ExI] my Convergence08 Adventure In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811200119k2c0f5f2dm97c5c620338f752d@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670811200119k2c0f5f2dm97c5c620338f752d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <8D5DECDB3922420B8DFEF136295DCCBC@DFC68LF1> From: John Grigg "Though I have known Natasha Vita-More for many years through the net and greatly admired her for her achievements and big heart, I had never had a real world sit down visit. And so it was incredibly cool to join her at lunch and get to know her better. Her lunch group sat outside on a balcony and we discussed current events and the gay marriage issue. I said if people are concerned about this than they will be even more upset when some folks want to marry an android or an uplifted dolphin. When Natasha first greeted me at the conference, she gave me a big hug, which was so great. And then she asked me (she knows me too well) 'John, do you need rescuing?' LOL" ______________________________________ Thank you for the compliment John. And re rescuing? -- Well... what are friends for :-) The lunch meeting session was fruitful, thanks to everyone who was there. I enjoyed having an in-depth conversation not only about Prop8, but also about synthetic biology and the Bioart which is soaring ahead in leaps in the world of biotechnology and experimentation. I had a good talk with one of the conference's guest speakers - Andrew Hessel of Alberta Ingenuity Fund. We agreed that the panel on Synthetic Biology turned from the wet, moist stuff to issues of risk, which could have been an entirely different panel. Andrew invited me to lecture at his organization to the researchers on the latest works in Bioart and where practice and theory based works are heading and how the field of Bioart may be consequential to the field of synthetic biology. I also met with the New York based architect you mentioned, John Lobell. He is a professor at Pratt Institute, one of the finest academic institutions for architecture http://www.pratt.edu/architecture-g , design http://www.pratt.edu/urban_design http://www.pratt.edu/fine_arts_grad and the media arts http://www.pratt.edu/digital_arts_grad . We had dinner on Sunday evening and had a marvelous conversation about Pratt (I'm from New York and my father was affiliated with the institute). By the by, he asked me to come lecture and collaborate with him, which I am looking forward to. It was apropos that he works with Stephen Valentine who is actually the architect who designed http://www.timeship.org/site/architect.html The design he presented at the conference. Stephen is an old friend! One of my favorite moments strategyzing with Amara D. Angelica (editor of KurzweilAI.net), one of the coolest women around, and discussing future ideas. Hanging out with her is always a major highlight for me. (Hard to find a link for her but this is the best I could find http://www.extropy.org/directors.htm (she now has blond hair). Lastly, I thought that the conference had an upbeat attitude, and being a designer, I have to interpret this as being influenced in some part by the "look" of the website, the colors, and the graciousness of the people at the reception desk. They were all lovely and welcoming. Anyway, in short, I attended this convergence to see friends and I made a few in the meantime. What a bonus. Be well my dear John ... Natasha Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More From jonkc at bellsouth.net Fri Nov 21 17:32:27 2008 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:32:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A Mammoth for $10 Million References: <580930c20811200553i765786i29abf5cda90bfd60@mail.gmail.com><200811201513.mAKFDagm007166@andromeda.ziaspace.com><710b78fc0811202258ye67be6buc8e6f6c04fb5614a@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20081121010903.024ce930@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <8BAD547E455E448E8B2543CF61E45FB6@MyComputer> "Damien Broderick" > probably a sad mess. I don't see why. You sound like that silly scientist in Jurassic Park. > First you need to find an egg with exactly appropriate extra-nuclear > materials Why would you need that, why would things have to be exact? Human genes have been expressed in yeast, and a yeast cell is not exactly the same as a human being. All life understands the language of DNA. John K Clark From scerir at libero.it Fri Nov 21 19:43:38 2008 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:43:38 +0100 Subject: [ExI] SETI news References: <4925E45C.6090804@lineone.net> Message-ID: <000701c94c11$74c396e0$e2e91e97@archimede> http://arxiv.org/abs/0811.3046 ]Abstract] Berkeley conducts 7 SETI programs at IR, visible and radio wavelengths. Here we review two of the newest efforts, Astropulse and Fly's Eye. A variety of possible sources of microsecond to millisecond radio pulses have been suggested in the last several decades, among them such exotic events as evaporating primordial black holes, hyper-flares from neutron stars, emissions from cosmic strings or perhaps extraterrestrial civilizations, but to-date few searches have been conducted capable of detecting them. We are carrying out two searches in hopes of finding and characterizing these uS to mS time scale dispersed radio pulses. These two observing programs are orthogonal in search space; the Allen Telescope Array's (ATA) "Fly's Eye" experiment observes a 100 square degree field by pointing each 6m ATA antenna in a different direction; by contrast, the Astropulse sky survey at Arecibo is extremely sensitive but has 1/3,000 of the instantaneous sky coverage. Astropulse's multibeam data is transferred via the internet to the computers of millions of volunteers. These computers perform a coherent de-dispersion analysis faster than the fastest available supercomputers and allow us to resolve pulses as short as 400 nS. Overall, the Astropulse survey will be 30 times more sensitive than the best previous searches. Analysis of results from Astropulse is at a very early stage. The Fly's Eye was successfully installed at the ATA in December of 2007, and to-date approximately 450 hours of observation has been performed. We have detected three pulsars and six giant pulses from the Crab pulsar in our diagnostic pointing data. We have not yet detected any other convincing bursts of astronomical origin in our survey data. From benboc at lineone.net Fri Nov 21 21:35:35 2008 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:35:35 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <492729A7.6000100@lineone.net> The Avantguardian aka Stuart LaForge inquired: > What country are you citizen of Ben? One of the cloudiest. Good ol' Blighty*. > It is certainly worth thinking about but tethered balloons have a > large number of problems of their own. Everything that is at all > useful to humanity can be used for death. You can kill somebody with a > pencil. If you are afraid of MW death rays, you > should be afraid of explosive oil refineries not to mention > hurricanes, floods, and other symptoms of climatic instability. Heh. It's bizarre that some people foam at the mouth at the idea of nuclear power stations, but are quite complacent about the hundreds of millions of tanks of highly flammable hydrocarbons whizzing all around them at high speeds. Pencils? I'm dreading the day when airport security catch on to the fact that shoelaces can be deadly weapons (or socks, in some cases). Anyway, granted that tethered balloons would have lots of practical problems to be solved. I just thought it would be a cheaper (by approximately a LOT), and thus more likely to be a near-term solution than powersats. If people are willing to dedicate parcels of land for those lumbering great stupid wind turbines, they'd be willing to dedicate a patch of sky to a big raft of solar collectors, surely? Ben Zaiboc * The UK, just in case 'Blighty' means nothing to you From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sat Nov 22 00:29:37 2008 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:29:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] asim roy brain theory In-Reply-To: <49258A66.6040009@lightlink.com> References: <200811200431.mAK4VMb3005188@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <49258A66.6040009@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <49275271.6040107@comcast.net> Richard, Thanks for this informative analysis and judgment. As I started examining this, I had a similar feeling, but Richard, in operational brain mechanics, is clearly much more of an expert than I. Additionally, non of this has anything to do with the 'Hard Problem' right Richard? Which is a much more significant and likely to bear powerful world changing fruits (as in THE greatest scientific discovery - ever) in the very short turn future - right Richard? Brent Allsop Richard Loosemore wrote: > spike wrote: >> Is anyone here up to speed on Asim Roy? This connectionist theory of >> the >> brain seems cool, but I lack the background to judge it. >> >> http://www.physorg.com/news146319784.html > > I got a draft version of the paper earlier this year, and after a > quick scan I filed it under 'junk'. > > I just read it through again, and the filing stays the same. > > His basic premise is that connectionists argued from the very > beginning that they wanted to do things in a way that did not involve > a central executive. They wanted to see how much could be done by > having large numbers of autonomous units do things independently. > Turns out, quite a lot can be achieved that way. > > But it seems that Asim Roy has fundamentally misunderstood the force > and the intent of that initial declaration by the connectionists. > There was a reason they said what they said: they wanted to get away > from the old symbol processing paradigm in which one thing happened at > a time and symbols were separated from the mechanisms that modified or > used symbols. The connectionists were not being dogmatic about "No > Controllers!", they just wanted to stop all power being vested in the > hands of a central executive ... and their motivation was from > cognitive science, not engineering or control theory. > > Roy seems to be completely obsessed with the idea that they are wrong, > while at the same time not really understanding why they said it, and > not really having a concrete proposal (or account of empirical data) > to substitute for the connectionist ideas. > > To tell the truth, I don't think there are many connectionists who are > so hell-bent on the idea of not having a central controller, that they > would not be open to an architecture that did have one (or several). > They just don't think it would be good to have central controllers in > charge of ALL the heavy lifting. > > Roy's paper has the additional disadvantage of being utterly filled > with underlines and boldface. He shouts. Not good in something that > is supposed to be a scientific paper. > > Sorry, but this is just junk. > > > > > Richard Loosemore > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From rpwl at lightlink.com Sat Nov 22 03:53:21 2008 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 22:53:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] asim roy brain theory In-Reply-To: <49275271.6040107@comcast.net> References: <200811200431.mAK4VMb3005188@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <49258A66.6040009@lightlink.com> <49275271.6040107@comcast.net> Message-ID: <49278231.2010807@lightlink.com> Brent Allsop wrote: > > Richard, > > Thanks for this informative analysis and judgment. As I started > examining this, I had a similar feeling, but Richard, in operational > brain mechanics, is clearly much more of an expert than I. > > Additionally, non of this has anything to do with the 'Hard Problem' > right Richard? Which is a much more significant and likely to bear > powerful world changing fruits (as in THE greatest scientific discovery > - ever) in the very short turn future - right Richard? > > Brent Allsop > No. Was this sarcasm? If so, why? Richard Loosemore > > > Richard Loosemore wrote: >> spike wrote: >>> Is anyone here up to speed on Asim Roy? This connectionist theory of >>> the >>> brain seems cool, but I lack the background to judge it. >>> >>> http://www.physorg.com/news146319784.html >> >> I got a draft version of the paper earlier this year, and after a >> quick scan I filed it under 'junk'. >> >> I just read it through again, and the filing stays the same. >> >> His basic premise is that connectionists argued from the very >> beginning that they wanted to do things in a way that did not involve >> a central executive. They wanted to see how much could be done by >> having large numbers of autonomous units do things independently. >> Turns out, quite a lot can be achieved that way. >> >> But it seems that Asim Roy has fundamentally misunderstood the force >> and the intent of that initial declaration by the connectionists. >> There was a reason they said what they said: they wanted to get away >> from the old symbol processing paradigm in which one thing happened at >> a time and symbols were separated from the mechanisms that modified or >> used symbols. The connectionists were not being dogmatic about "No >> Controllers!", they just wanted to stop all power being vested in the >> hands of a central executive ... and their motivation was from >> cognitive science, not engineering or control theory. >> >> Roy seems to be completely obsessed with the idea that they are wrong, >> while at the same time not really understanding why they said it, and >> not really having a concrete proposal (or account of empirical data) >> to substitute for the connectionist ideas. >> >> To tell the truth, I don't think there are many connectionists who are >> so hell-bent on the idea of not having a central controller, that they >> would not be open to an architecture that did have one (or several). >> They just don't think it would be good to have central controllers in >> charge of ALL the heavy lifting. >> >> Roy's paper has the additional disadvantage of being utterly filled >> with underlines and boldface. He shouts. Not good in something that >> is supposed to be a scientific paper. >> >> Sorry, but this is just junk. >> >> >> >> >> Richard Loosemore >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 att.net Sat Nov 22 04:02:56 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:02:56 -0800 Subject: [ExI] celtic woman In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0811201958u2dfe9d78h6411da06dbd236d0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200811220402.mAM42wbj026282@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Oh my, Celtic Woman concert on PBS, all comes to a halt. Am I their only raging fan here? For the sake of argument, let us include New Zealander Haley Westinra and fiddler M?ir?ad Nesbitt, and I do humbly ask you my friends, has ever a finer example of womanhood ever trod this planet than these six? Were I a woman, *any* *one* of them could instantly lesbianize me with a smile or friendly glance, regardless of the social stigma, so foxalicious are they, their babelocity far exceeding my will to resist. Hooooly schlaMOLY what a fine group of young ladies, oooh dear. Is not Haley Westinra the sweetest voice of a generation? How did the gods figure it is right that Lisa Kelly and the others should be knockout gorgeous in addition to that angelic voice? spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Nov 22 04:22:55 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 22:22:55 -0600 Subject: [ExI] celtic woman In-Reply-To: <200811220402.mAM42wbj026282@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <710b78fc0811201958u2dfe9d78h6411da06dbd236d0@mail.gmail.com> <200811220402.mAM42wbj026282@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081121222211.0242f008@satx.rr.com> At 08:02 PM 11/21/2008 -0800, Spike wrote: >Is not >Haley Westinra the sweetest voice of a generation? For the compleat transhumanists-here-&-now, try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdxRmcgsKDQ From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sat Nov 22 04:48:20 2008 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:48:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] asim roy brain theory In-Reply-To: <49278231.2010807@lightlink.com> References: <200811200431.mAK4VMb3005188@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <49258A66.6040009@lightlink.com> <49275271.6040107@comcast.net> <49278231.2010807@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <49278F14.5060703@comcast.net> Richard Loosemore wrote: > Brent Allsop wrote: >> >> Richard, >> >> Thanks for this informative analysis and judgment. As I started >> examining this, I had a similar feeling, but Richard, in operational >> brain mechanics, is clearly much more of an expert than I. >> >> Additionally, non of this has anything to do with the 'Hard Problem' >> right Richard? Which is a much more significant and likely to bear >> powerful world changing fruits (as in THE greatest scientific >> discovery - ever) in the very short turn future - right Richard? >> >> Brent Allsop >> > > No. > > Was this sarcasm? > > If so, why? > No, sorry. I guess I should have said something more like?: Additionally, non of this has anything to do with the 'Hard Problem', which I believe the full understanding of such will turn out to be much more significant and likely to bear powerful world changing fruits. Indeed, I beleive the full demonstrable understanding of such will turn out to be the greatest scientific discovery - ever. Richard - what are your thoughts on this? Does any of Roy's work have anything to do with the 'Hard Problem' in any way? Or is it all just simply about behavioral mechanisms or designs - categorically different than the phenomenal? I hope that makes more sense. Sorry for my poor choice of words. Please let me know if any of the above still doesn't seem perfectly clear. Thanks Brent Allsop From spike66 at att.net Sat Nov 22 04:54:51 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:54:51 -0800 Subject: [ExI] celtic woman In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081121222211.0242f008@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <200811220454.mAM4sqBF013762@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > On Behalf Of > Damien Broderick > Subject: Re: [ExI] celtic woman > > At 08:02 PM 11/21/2008 -0800, Spike wrote: > >Is not > >Haley Westinra the sweetest voice of a generation? > > For the compleat transhumanists-here-&-now, try > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdxRmcgsKDQ Thanks Damien, truly dazzling. I am glad YouTube was not invented while I was still in my teens. I would have never accomplished a damn thing, between gazing at Westinra, Sarah Brightman and Karen Carpenter. This is one of those fill in the caption games. After the show, Bocelli and Westinra are backstage. Bocelli struggles to think of an appropriately seductive comment. What? I would suggest: "Meez Westinra, I am toold by zee souzands of peopools, how beautifool you are." Holding out his hands, "May I see for myself?" {8^D spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Nov 22 05:12:08 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:12:08 -0600 Subject: [ExI] celtic woman In-Reply-To: <200811220454.mAM4sqBF013762@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081121222211.0242f008@satx.rr.com> <200811220454.mAM4sqBF013762@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081121230820.0243c4a8@satx.rr.com> At 08:54 PM 11/21/2008 -0800, Spike extolled Haley Westinra, Sarah Brightman and Karen Carpenter. [me:] Although Ms. Brightman is getting kinda puffy, she's adorable, and I think sings even more angelically than Westinra. Wait--less *angelically* and more... humanly. Damien Broderick From pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com Sat Nov 22 05:13:28 2008 From: pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com (Paul D. Fernhout) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:13:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power In-Reply-To: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> Message-ID: <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> (Hi, I'm new around here. Bryan Bishop pointed me here and I've been lurking for a month or so. :-) Keith- While I am all for the kind of legislative proposals you suggest to promote renewables in general, there are economic aspects of space-to-Earth power which are often not discussed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_satellite I spent a long time around 2003 and 2004 on the SSI email list (now on yahoo groups if you want to look at the archives) explaining why space-based solar power will not in any likely time frame be of any value on Earth. :-) http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ssi_list/ And I want to make it clear I was a SSI Senior Associate (five year pledge of money) back in the 1980s, and even took a (intro Physics) course from Gerry O'Neill. So this in not just a casual disagreement. I am very sad that the Space Studies Institute even now pushes an outdated agenda (well, now they are moving to scaring people with asteroids, to the extent they are still operating). I feel if Gerry O'Neill was around now he might agree with this analysis of the current prospects for space-based power in the next few decades, since he always was an adaptable and innovative guy, even if, unfortunately, ultimately an unsuccessful businessperson with GeoStar and LAWN with which he hoped to fund space habitation. I think by coupling the two -- a desire to build space habitations coupled with economic arguments for space solar power (or even other space activities) -- that one may miss out on sooner realizing the dream of space habitation done for its own sake (as a hobby). The core points of the argument I advanced there: * About a third to one half the cost of residential electric service is maintaining transmission lines. So, at best, space solar even if *free* at the ground station will be at best one-third the cost of utility power is now at the home meter. As the costs of home power generation fall from advanced manufacturing, the cost of home solar power (or wind, or cogeneration) will drop below that cost at some point for self-contained homes producing all or most of their own power, making space solar power obsolete for home use. Since space solar power will initially be expensive, it is non-viable right now. And since the cost of solar panels (like Nanosolar's) is dropping way faster than the cost of space operations, and since solar space satellites have a twenty to thirty year time horizon for significant production, they are a non-starter and too risky investment comparatively. Things might have been different in the 1970s, but it is thirty years later. Also, one can make an argument for limited solar power for large commercial facilities producing aluminum or liquid fuels or doing laser launching, but that is only likely to be worth doing once we already have a space presence since then only the incremental costs will need to be paid, rather than expect solar power to pay to develop a space infrastructure as O'Neill and others proposed (and people still propose). I'm sure one can look hard at situations where transmission costs are minimized, but this cost of transmission argument is a very deep one and I've never seen it rigorously discussed. We know how to do solar on the ground, there are ways to store the energy at night (molten salts, ever improving batteries, pumping water up hill, compressed air, production of synthetic liquid fuels, production of hydrogen, a superconducting world wide grid backbone, etc.), and there are complementary technologies like wind power and cogeneration by burning biomass that together with solar produce fairly reliable power (as well as a lot of local hands-on jobs in the short term). And there are organizations promoting R&D to make this all even better: http://www.google.com/corporate/green/energy/ * A rebuttal to this is that PV production produces pollution in the manufacturing stage (which is true to some extent) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaic#Environmental_impacts and producing solar power satellites totally with advanced automation using lunar materials will be pollution-free on Earth. However, a counter-rebuttal (took me a while to think of this, as it is subtle :-) is that free power from space (ignoring the above distribution costs) would only make it easier to bury ourselves in manufacturing wastes from consumer goods. Without cradle-to-cradle design with closed manufacturing with zero emissions, we are in a lot of trouble no matter where the energy comes from. And if you have zero emissions manufacturing with total recycling on Earth, then you can just as well make PV power systems on Earth without pollution worries. So it seems like a focus on advanced manufacturing on Earth is a better investment (especially by developing an open manufacturing system that considers holistic impacts, and I noticed this thread mostly because Bryan forwarded your note to the OpenVirgle list, which is also related to "open manufacturing"). http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing http://groups.google.com/group/openvirgle * In general, like conventional nuclear power, solar space satellites assume a concentration of capital and decision making and political control, which is opposite of the way our society needs to move for energy security IMHO (and I learned that from the opinions of people like Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins who studied energy security for the Pentagon, resulting in the book, Brittle Power). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power "Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security is a 1982 book by Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, prepared originally as a Pentagon study, and re-released in 2001 following the September 11 attacks. The book argues that domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, by accident or malice, often even more so than imported oil. According to the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works better, is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy. In the preface to the 2001 edition, Lovins explains that these themes are still very current." IMHO, we might see space-based power on Earth in the long term future -- but only after we otherwise have a space infrastructure, which is not why most people push it now. What I saw from years of participating in SSI activities is that, deep down, most SSI people saw Solar Power Satellites as a way to fund space habitats (as many cared mostly about the space habitations). I'm not saying they did not care at all about Earth's environmental issues, but they often came second. I see solar space satellites as a distraction from other approaches to promoting space habitation more directly, given that I feel we have a very real opportunity using the internet to just design and build space habitations ourselves (perhaps involving one billionaire footing the bill for one self-replicating seed we collectively design). A related paper I gave at an SSI conference in 2001: "A Review of Licensing and Collaborative Development with Special Attention to Design of Self-Replicating Space Habitat Systems" http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html "At this moment nearly every engineer on earth has a powerful and globally networked computer in his or her home. Collaborative volunteer efforts are now possible on an unprecedented scale. Moores's Law predicts continued reductions in the cost of bandwidth, storage, CPU power, and displays - which will lead to computers a million times faster, bigger or cheaper in the next few decades. Collaboration software such as for sending email, holding real-time video conferences, and viewing design drawings is also reducing in cost; much of it is now effectively free. This means there are now few technical or high-cost barriers to cooperation among engineers, many of whom even now have in their homes (often merely for game playing reasons) computing power and bandwidth beyond anything available to the best equipped engineers in the 1970s. ... We believe that thousands of individuals (such as the people at this conference) are ready and willing to make compromises in their own lives to nurture the space settlement dream at the grassroots level - but in a more direct way than has been attempted thus far. In particular, individuals could collaborate on the iterative development of detailed space habitat designs and simulations using nothing more than the computers they already have at home for playing games. While excellent progress has been made on the general engineering design of space habitats (in terms of basic physics and proof-of-concept projects), many of the details remain to be worked out. There have been individual attempts in some of these areas (e.g., the SSI Matrix effort), but a persistent collaborative community has not yet coalesced around constructing a comprehensive and non-proprietary library of such details." There are a lot of good reasons to develop space habitations. Cheap energy beamed back to Earth in the short term is not one of them IMHO. The biggest reason for space habitation may in the end simply be the new ideas that will come from them. But space habitations also may provide lots of living room, with cities in space that could house trillions of people and huge new ecologies. Using space resources in space for people who live there is the long term value proposition IMHO. And, while we may not have space habitations now, even the dream of them can give us hope that all of Earth's current "crises" are not very serious in the long term. (Of course, in the future, with the Singularity looming, there are other things to worry about. :-) I recognize that we may disagree on this strategy, but hopefully we can still agree that space habitations are a really neat idea for a lot of reasons and work together on the rest of that. And even should I be completely right about this (maybe I'm wrong in details or the entire picture), thinking about the space operations needed to build and maintain large structures like power satellites is a good thing, so I don't want to discourage you from the practical side of such investigations and designs. Certainly we can both agree that we could use Solar Power Satellites in space to do space operations, so we both agree the technology of space power is worth developing in general. My point here (and the nature of any disagreement) has more to do with economic and marketing strategy of space habitation initiatives. And, as a disclaimer, I am linking below a couple of sites I am connected with that have a more hobby-oriented focus which are alternatives to a business-approach to space habitation. (There are others too, some discussed or linked from those sites.) I did not have the sites up when I made the initial points above, but they flow out of my position on the most feasible approaches towards space habitation as our society moves in a post-scarcity direction. I feel if the general open manufacturing initiative had the same sort of energy put into it (pun intended :-) that solar space satellites have had in the past, we would see space habitations sooner, all things considered. I do dislike having to publicly disagree with you about anything (like SPS), as I admire your courage and vision (and your wife's) in founding the L5 society. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L5_Society On the other hand, I feel it might be disrespectful to your broader vision of humanity moving into space not to disagree on this one point. :-) --Paul Fernhout http://www.openvirgle.net/ http://www.oscomak.net/ hkhenson wrote: > Charles Miller has proposed legislation be passed similar to that in > Germany which provides that the utilities have to buy solar power at a > high per kWh rate for a limited amount and pass on the cost to their > customers. We are still tuning the economic model, for one thing, we > are still trying to reach a consensus that $350 billion is enough to > finance the operation through profitability > . > I have been trying to draft something that makes an international > cooperative possible. Try this for size. Please comment. > > "International provisions > > "It is in the national interest of the United States for all countries > to have access to abundant, low cost, renewable energy, particularly non > nuclear energy. > > "Therefore the market guarantee provisions of this legislation are open > on a reciprocal basis to companies based in any country that enacts > provisions essential identical market guarantees to those in the above > financing model for the purchase of space based solar energy. > > "Because world wide energy security contributes greatly to US national > security, it is the intent of this legislation to remove barriers to > shared technology to solve shared energy problems. In particular, all > technologies related to space based solar power are exempted from ITAR." From spike66 at att.net Sat Nov 22 05:22:14 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:22:14 -0800 Subject: [ExI] celtic woman In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081121230820.0243c4a8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <200811220548.mAM5mtjr000227@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > Damien Broderick > Sent: Friday, November 21, 2008 9:12 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] celtic woman > > At 08:54 PM 11/21/2008 -0800, Spike extolled Haley Westinra, > Sarah Brightman and Karen Carpenter. > > [me:] > Although Ms. Brightman is getting kinda puffy, she's > adorable, and I think sings even more angelically than > Westinra. Wait--less > *angelically* and more... humanly. > > Damien Broderick Agrees enthusiastically. Carpenter owned the 70s, Brightman the 80s and 90s, Westenra the now. Goddesses all. spike From hkhenson at rogers.com Sat Nov 22 06:52:55 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:52:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power In-Reply-To: <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> Message-ID: <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> At 10:13 PM 11/21/2008, you wrote: >(Hi, I'm new around here. Bryan Bishop pointed me here and I've been lurking >for a month or so. :-) > >Keith- > >While I am all for the kind of legislative proposals you suggest to promote >renewables in general, there are economic aspects of space-to-Earth power >which are often not discussed. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_satellite > >I spent a long time around 2003 and 2004 on the SSI email list (now on yahoo >groups if you want to look at the archives) explaining why space-based solar >power will not in any likely time frame be of any value on Earth. :-) > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ssi_list/ As recently as last year I would have agreed with you. >And I want to make it clear I was a SSI Senior Associate (five year pledge >of money) back in the 1980s, and even took a (intro Physics) course from >Gerry O'Neill. So this in not just a casual disagreement. I am very sad that >the Space Studies Institute even now pushes an outdated agenda (well, now >they are moving to scaring people with asteroids, to the extent they are >still operating). I feel if Gerry O'Neill was around now he might agree with >this analysis of the current prospects for space-based power in the next few >decades, since he always was an adaptable and innovative guy, even if, >unfortunately, ultimately an unsuccessful businessperson with GeoStar and >LAWN with which he hoped to fund space habitation. I think by coupling the >two -- a desire to build space habitations coupled with economic arguments >for space solar power (or even other space activities) -- that one may miss >out on sooner realizing the dream of space habitation done for its own sake >(as a hobby). Freeman Dyson killed people doing space habitats on their own. Read the chapter in Disturbing the Universe on Pilgrims, Saints and Spacemen. In short Dyson made the case that going into space was 10,000 times to expensive. >The core points of the argument I advanced there: > >* About a third to one half the cost of residential electric service is >maintaining transmission lines. So, at best, space solar even if *free* at >the ground station will be at best one-third the cost of utility power is >now at the home meter. As the costs of home power generation fall from >advanced manufacturing, the cost of home solar power (or wind, or >cogeneration) will drop below that cost at some point for self-contained >homes producing all or most of their own power, making space solar power >obsolete for home use. Since space solar power will initially be expensive, >it is non-viable right now. And since the cost of solar panels (like >Nanosolar's) is dropping way faster than the cost of space operations, and >since solar space satellites have a twenty to thirty year time horizon for >significant production, they are a non-starter and too risky investment >comparatively. Things might have been different in the 1970s, but it is >thirty years later. Also, one can make an argument for limited solar power >for large commercial facilities producing aluminum or liquid fuels or doing >laser launching, but that is only likely to be worth doing once we already >have a space presence since then only the incremental costs will need to be >paid, rather than expect solar power to pay to develop a space >infrastructure as O'Neill and others proposed (and people still propose). >I'm sure one can look hard at situations where transmission costs are >minimized, but this cost of transmission argument is a very deep one and >I've never seen it rigorously discussed. We know how to do solar on the >ground, there are ways to store the energy at night (molten salts, ever >improving batteries, pumping water up hill, compressed air, production of >synthetic liquid fuels, production of hydrogen, a superconducting world wide >grid backbone, etc.), and there are complementary technologies like wind >power and cogeneration by burning biomass that together with solar produce >fairly reliable power (as well as a lot of local hands-on jobs in the short >term). And there are organizations promoting R&D to make this all even better: > http://www.google.com/corporate/green/energy/ You are just wrong on these points. There is *no* source or combination of sources on earth that will replace fossil fuels. >* A rebuttal to this is that PV production produces pollution in the >manufacturing stage (which is true to some extent) > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaic#Environmental_impacts >and producing solar power satellites totally with advanced automation using >lunar materials will be pollution-free on Earth. However, a counter-rebuttal >(took me a while to think of this, as it is subtle :-) is that free power >from space (ignoring the above distribution costs) would only make it easier >to bury ourselves in manufacturing wastes from consumer goods. Perhaps. But if you are going to recycle these things you need energy to do it. >Without >cradle-to-cradle design with closed manufacturing with zero emissions, we >are in a lot of trouble no matter where the energy comes from. And if you >have zero emissions manufacturing with total recycling on Earth, then you >can just as well make PV power systems on Earth without pollution worries. >So it seems like a focus on advanced manufacturing on Earth is a better >investment (especially by developing an open manufacturing system that >considers holistic impacts, and I noticed this thread mostly because Bryan >forwarded your note to the OpenVirgle list, which is also related to >"open manufacturing"). > http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing > http://groups.google.com/group/openvirgle > >* In general, like conventional nuclear power, solar space satellites assume >a concentration of capital and decision making and political control, which >is opposite of the way our society needs to move for energy security IMHO >(and I learned that from the opinions of people like Amory Lovins and Hunter >Lovins who studied energy security for the Pentagon, resulting in the book, >Brittle Power). > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power >"Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security is a 1982 book by >Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, prepared originally as a Pentagon >study, and re-released in 2001 following the September 11 attacks. The book >argues that domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, >by accident or malice, often even more so than imported oil. According to >the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works >better, is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy. In the >preface to the 2001 edition, Lovins explains that these themes are still >very current." I know these arguments. But if you think making your own energy is cost and time efficient you are just wrong. After you have heated your house for two winters, going on a third, with wood come back and talk about it. And that's not even beginning to deal with electric power. I don't see any reason some hundreds to a thousand power sats and rectennas would be any more brittle than the current situation. Rectenna goes out, there are several feeding that section of the grid. Power sat dies, there are spares. Should be more robust. The only common mode would be a big solar flare wiping out the PV cells. For other reasons I doubt PV cells will be used anyway. >IMHO, we might see space-based power on Earth in the long term future -- There *is* no long term future. I don't expect physical state humans to exist long after the singularity and that's extremely likely to happen before the end of the century. The reasoning is so twisted that I had to resort to fiction to get the ideas across. Many on this list have read "the clinic seed." The reason to go after power sats built entirely from the ground is to prevent famines and resource wars before the singularity. There is also the possibility that AIs cobbled together in the heat of a war might be a lot more dangerous than ones put together in a peaceful time. But I can't guarantee that either. > but >only after we otherwise have a space infrastructure, which is not why most >people push it now. What I saw from years of participating in SSI activities >is that, deep down, most SSI people saw Solar Power Satellites as a way to >fund space habitats (as many cared mostly about the space habitations). I'm >not saying they did not care at all about Earth's environmental issues, but >they often came second. I see solar space satellites as a distraction from >other approaches to promoting space habitation more directly, I am not even discussing space habitats when talking about power sats in the current mode where all the parts have to come up from the earth. There might be a few, perhaps even up to a thousand, people in GEO monitoring the equipment that's turning out power sats but this isn't what O'Neill had in mind. I frankly don't think there will be any serious human habitation of space this side of the singularity and after that who knows? In any case, humans as we know them will not be in charge. >given that I >feel we have a very real opportunity using the internet to just design and >build space habitations ourselves (perhaps involving one billionaire footing >the bill for one self-replicating seed we collectively design). > >A related paper I gave at an SSI conference in 2001: > "A Review of Licensing and Collaborative Development with Special >Attention to Design of Self-Replicating Space Habitat Systems" > http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html >"At this moment nearly every engineer on earth has a powerful and >globally networked computer in his or her home. Collaborative >volunteer efforts are now possible on an unprecedented scale. >Moores's Law predicts continued reductions in the cost of bandwidth, >storage, CPU power, and displays - which will lead to computers a >million times faster, bigger or cheaper in the next few decades. >Collaboration software such as for sending email, holding real-time >video conferences, and viewing design drawings is also reducing in >cost; much of it is now effectively free. This means there are now >few technical or high-cost barriers to cooperation among engineers, >many of whom even now have in their homes (often merely for game >playing reasons) computing power and bandwidth beyond anything >available to the best equipped engineers in the 1970s. ... We >believe that thousands of individuals (such as the people at this >conference) are ready and willing to make compromises in their own >lives to nurture the space settlement dream at the grassroots level >- but in a more direct way than has been attempted thus far. In >particular, individuals could collaborate on the iterative >development of detailed space habitat designs and simulations using >nothing more than the computers they already have at home for >playing games. While excellent progress has been made on the general >engineering design of space habitats (in terms of basic physics and >proof-of-concept projects), many of the details remain to be worked >out. There have been individual attempts in some of these areas >(e.g., the SSI Matrix effort), but a persistent collaborative >community has not yet coalesced around constructing a comprehensive >and non-proprietary library of such details." You might note as a data point that I have yet to get people one this list or several other ones to even check my calculations on the web pages that underlie what we are discussing here. This is hard work, rocket science work. >There are a lot of good reasons to develop space habitations. Cheap energy >beamed back to Earth in the short term is not one of them IMHO. Cheap energy beamed back to earth and used for such things as making synthetic fuel out of water and carbon dioxide is a good reason to develop space based solar power. >The biggest >reason for space habitation may in the end simply be the new ideas that will >come from them. But space habitations also may provide lots of living room, >with cities in space that could house trillions of people and huge new >ecologies. Using space resources in space for people who live there is the >long term value proposition IMHO. And, while we may not have space >habitations now, even the dream of them can give us hope that all of >Earth's current "crises" are not very serious in the long term. (Of course, >in the future, with the Singularity looming, there are other things to >worry about. :-) > >I recognize that we may disagree on this strategy, but hopefully we can >still agree that space habitations are a really neat idea for a lot of >reasons and work together on the rest of that. They may be a good idea, but there simply isn't time for them to happen before the singularity. >And even should I be >completely right about this (maybe I'm wrong in details or the entire >picture), thinking about the space operations needed to build and maintain >large structures like power satellites is a good thing, so I don't want to >discourage you from the practical side of such investigations and designs. >Certainly we can both agree that we could use Solar Power Satellites in >space to do space operations, so we both agree the technology of space power >is worth developing in general. My point here (and the nature of any >disagreement) has more to do with economic and marketing strategy of space >habitation initiatives. > >And, as a disclaimer, I am linking below a couple of sites I am connected >with that have a more hobby-oriented focus which are alternatives to a >business-approach to space habitation. (There are others too, some discussed >or linked from those sites.) I did not have the sites up when I made the >initial points above, but they flow out of my position on the most feasible >approaches towards space habitation as our society moves in a post-scarcity >direction. I feel if the general open manufacturing initiative had the same >sort of energy put into it (pun intended :-) that solar space satellites >have had in the past, we would see space habitations sooner, all things >considered. > >I do dislike having to publicly disagree with you about anything >(like SPS), as I admire your courage and vision (and your wife's) in >founding the L5 society. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L5_Society >On the other hand, I feel it might be disrespectful to your broader >vision of humanity moving into space not to disagree on this one point. :-) I understand your points, but consider them to be way out of date. Time marches on and the future isn't what it used to be. Sorry. Keith >--Paul Fernhout >http://www.openvirgle.net/ >http://www.oscomak.net/ > >hkhenson wrote: >>Charles Miller has proposed legislation be passed similar to that >>in Germany which provides that the utilities have to buy solar >>power at a high per kWh rate for a limited amount and pass on the >>cost to their customers. We are still tuning the economic model, >>for one thing, we are still trying to reach a consensus that $350 >>billion is enough to finance the operation through profitability >>. >>I have been trying to draft something that makes an international >>cooperative possible. Try this for size. Please comment. >>"International provisions >>"It is in the national interest of the United States for all >>countries to have access to abundant, low cost, renewable energy, >>particularly non nuclear energy. >>"Therefore the market guarantee provisions of this legislation are >>open on a reciprocal basis to companies based in any country that >>enacts provisions essential identical market guarantees to those in >>the above financing model for the purchase of space based solar energy. >>"Because world wide energy security contributes greatly to US >>national security, it is the intent of this legislation to remove >>barriers to shared technology to solve shared energy problems. In >>particular, all technologies related to space based solar power are >>exempted from ITAR." >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From pharos at gmail.com Sat Nov 22 09:11:30 2008 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 09:11:30 +0000 Subject: [ExI] asim roy brain theory In-Reply-To: <49278F14.5060703@comcast.net> References: <200811200431.mAK4VMb3005188@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <49258A66.6040009@lightlink.com> <49275271.6040107@comcast.net> <49278231.2010807@lightlink.com> <49278F14.5060703@comcast.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 4:48 AM, Brent Allsop wrote: > Additionally, non of this has anything to do with the 'Hard Problem', which > I believe the full understanding of such will turn out to be much more > significant and likely to bear powerful world changing fruits. Indeed, I > believe the full demonstrable understanding of such will turn out to be the > greatest scientific discovery - ever. Richard - what are your thoughts on > this? Does any of Roy's work have anything to do with the 'Hard Problem' in > any way? Or is it all just simply about behavioral mechanisms or designs - > categorically different than the phenomenal? > I raised this paper on the AGI list and they don't think much of it over there. He seems to be arguing against self-organizing neural networks and rule-based machines like 'Deep Blue'. His claim is that there are lots of 'controllers' and 'sub-controllers' scattered around the brain to help the organization. Although he does agree with the connectionists that there is no 'supervisor' or 'ghost in the machine' in overall charge of the brain. The AGI folk say that there is nothing new here, that most AI researchers nowadays accept this point. BillK From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Nov 22 10:18:57 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 03:18:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] celtic woman In-Reply-To: <200811220548.mAM5mtjr000227@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081121230820.0243c4a8@satx.rr.com> <200811220548.mAM5mtjr000227@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670811220218o2af4a4e7y7f378454c0920f45@mail.gmail.com> I fondly remember first discovering the royalty of Celtic music, the Corrs. I even liked them before it was fashionable to do so in the United States! lol Their angst ridden songs of falling out of love or never loving the one who loved them really connected with me. But in their later albums they got all "happy and upbeat." Oh, well. Still, what voices, what talent, what beauty. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCQ6DbgUnxg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uePic9fRxTI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJMH-NfHykw A comedy parody that involved cloning... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9GtjvRR9iQ And for Spike's little son! : ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zP-etSX-70 John On 11/21/08, spike wrote: > > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org >> [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of >> Damien Broderick >> Sent: Friday, November 21, 2008 9:12 PM >> To: ExI chat list >> Subject: Re: [ExI] celtic woman >> >> At 08:54 PM 11/21/2008 -0800, Spike extolled Haley Westinra, >> Sarah Brightman and Karen Carpenter. >> >> [me:] >> Although Ms. Brightman is getting kinda puffy, she's >> adorable, and I think sings even more angelically than >> Westinra. Wait--less >> *angelically* and more... humanly. >> >> Damien Broderick > > Agrees enthusiastically. Carpenter owned the 70s, Brightman the 80s and > 90s, Westenra the now. Goddesses all. > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com Sat Nov 22 13:28:15 2008 From: pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com (Paul D. Fernhout) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:28:15 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (Dyson & habitat costs) In-Reply-To: <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> Message-ID: <492808EF.2030401@kurtz-fernhout.com> hkhenson wrote: > Freeman Dyson killed people doing space habitats on their own. Read the > chapter in Disturbing the Universe on Pilgrims, Saints and Spacemen. In > short Dyson made the case that going into space was 10,000 times to > expensive. Looking at that chapter again right now, writing around 1979, Dyson said the price of homesteading the asteroids was potentially comparable per person to the colonization of North America by European (from O'Neill's figures). You are correct in that he brings up a figure of $96 billion for a first "Island One" taken from O'Neill's work and says it is "a preposterously large amount of money to spend on any single enterprise" and then goes on to say it would have to be a government project as a "superhygenic welfare state"; presumably the figure would be closer to $250 billion in today's dollars with inflation (guesstimate). And that is per person, as you say, in the range of 10000X what the other ventures were for small numbers of people. Dyson does say at the end of the chapter he expects the costs would be in the middle. I'm not going to disagree with you about the politics of the time or Freeman Dyson's role in that (I just don't know). It's true to my knowledge that Freeman Dyson can put down in a disrespectful(?) way the people who would occupy the first space habitats (though he would say the same thing about the early European pioneers). But I can't say he is completely wrong about that either or completely right. As a child of immigrants, I can say any sort of first generation immigrant is often leaving their home for, at the very least, complex social reasons (often for reasons of war or bad economic times). Still, even if everyone interpreted Freeman Dyson's writing in the way you suggest, is he is to blame for all of the public's lack of imagination or Congress' (especially Senator Proxmire's) lack of imagination? http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/5296 "To build Mass Driver II would require more funding, but before NASA could approve it, Wisconsin senator William Proxmire got wind of O?Neill?s space colonies idea. Famed for his ?Golden Fleece? awards for government spending he deemed wasteful, Proxmire went on television to proclaim ?not another penny for this nutty fantasy.? NASA quickly pulled the plug on all its space colonies projects, including the Mass Driver." Senator Proxmire seems to have been more of a stumbling block in many ways (or NASA's lack of backbone then). But I do know that around 1984 Gerry O'Neill called *me* a dreamer :-) for suggesting to him a push for self-replicating space habitats instead of his idea of a slow economic expansion into space based around capitalist ideology. A big effort then and we might have had then by now. Instead, I gave *him* money. :-) And it is clear that Gerry O'Neill's writings do take capitalism as a given, and while he talks in "2081" of abundance, he really doesn't go very far down that road of what the possibilities are. If a space habitat can mostly self-replicate (as a "clanking replicator"), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_machine http://www.3dreplicators.com/ the initial cost can be a one time investment for endless space habitats. Further, one could possibly construct and launch a self-replicating seed factory to the moon for maybe in the neighborhood of a billion or so dollars (launch plus construction) -- if we knew how to make one. The thing is, we don't know how to make one yet. This 1980 document is still the best we have in some ways, and it is very incomplete: "Advanced Automation for Space Missions" http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/ Obviously, people have done stuff since, but how much further along are the public and free versions of designs? Once you have an automated infrastructure in space, say, on the Moon, it could in theory even ship spacecraft (and even SPS energy :-) to Earth for ferrying people from Earth up to space. Although we don't need that. But, in any case, we are just now spending about $3000 billion on a counterproductive war in Iraq. And about a trillion dollars has been allocated so far for a "bailout" which is apparently going to questionable ends. So there is lots of money sloshing around in the USA for ideological reasons. Who would notice $250 billion more at this point? :-) Also, a flow into foundations of $55 trillion is expected over the next few decades: http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/20/1313223 That is two hundred times what it would take using only 1970s technology. A couple percent of charity can't go to giving humanity a new dream? And TV watching is consuming 2,000 Wikipedias per year: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/27/1422258 So there is plenty of spare mental capacity. Maybe things were different in the 1970s, but least *today*, no one should seriously suggest the absence of money or time for R&D and deployment is the problem for making either Spaceship Earth (Sustainability) or Space habitats work for everyone, even at the same time. It comes down to issues like ideology and imagination, not "resources". $250 billion for a first space settlement is only a tiny fraction of these financial flows. And even millions of person-years of design effort is a small fraction of the idle capacity of humanity over the next decade. What is stopping us now, if anything? I'd suggest nothing is stopping us except Newtons First law of motion: "Unless acted upon by an outside force, a body at rest tends to stay at rest, and a body in motion tends to stay in motion.". --Paul Fernhout From pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com Sat Nov 22 13:30:27 2008 From: pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com (Paul D. Fernhout) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:30:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (alternatives) In-Reply-To: <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> Message-ID: <49280973.8030608@kurtz-fernhout.com> hkhenson wrote: > You are just wrong on these points. There is *no* source or combination > of sources on earth that will replace fossil fuels. Can you provide any evidence to support this point? It's also hard or impossible to prove a negative. There are lots of counterexamples of possibilities and actualities in relation to renewable energy, plus, while I don't much like coal power or nuclear power, there is plenty of either to last us centuries if we are willing to tolerate the social and environmental costs. And there is the wildcard of "fusion". But I prefer to focus on renewables as I know they work and can be constructed with minimal environmental impact (and less and less as we improve our cradle-to-cradle manufacturing capacity). Passive Solar Homes can be built almost anywhere which use little energy for heating and cooling for at most a small extra initial cost. Here is one example from about ten years ago (and it has gotten easier since): http://www.cein.ca/nua/it/it01.html http://healthyhousesystem.com/toronto.html "Toronto's Healthy House demonstrates that we already have much of the technology we need to begin to build more sustainable housing as the basis for more sustainable communities. The Healthy House has important implications for community planning and municipal infrastructure development. Do we really need to spend millions of dollars transporting sewage and drinking water for miles and miles? We can use solar power in combination with existing electrical infrastructure to reduce peak demand and the need, for example, to burn coal. More efforts need to be made to bring new technological developments in housing design and construction, such as those utilized in the Healthy House, into the mainstream in order to reduce infrastructure costs and their related environmental impacts." Here is an entire magazine devoted to this topic: http://www.homepower.com/home/ And here is one of many companies working to reduce the cost and environmental impact of solar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanosolar And PV is just one energy option. Energy efficiency, plug-in cars that are part of a grid, wind power, wave power, OTEC, biomass conversion, and so on. Here is one person who has been working towards energy alternatives for thirty years: "Amory Lovins' Rocky Mountain Institute" http://www.rmi.org/ The reason why we still use oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear power, and accept their huge external costs in terms of pollution and security, has everything to mainly with politics and social inertia and vested interests and little to do with the possibilities of technology. Here is a trick question: how are all of the world's homes mainly heated? Answer: the sun, because if the sun went out they would get cold pretty fast. So, we are only talking about averaging out temperature swings. The area taken up by roadways is enough to power those systems by sunlight. From: http://www.vtpi.org/tca/tca0507.pdf "The table below shows one estimate of the total amount of land devoted to roads. It indicates that in the U.S. more than 13 thousand square miles of land is paved for roads (about 0.4% of continental U.S.), and more than 20 thousand square miles is devoted to road rights of way (about 0.7% of continental U.S.)." So, I'll be sloppy here and say 1% to make my math easier after staying up all night to work on this. :-) From: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html "Land area, 2000 (square miles) 3,537,438.44" So, about three hundred thousand square miles is devoted to roads in the USA. From: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/solar-panels-by-the-square-mile-in-california/ "Matthew Wald has just written a news article showing the power of a guaranteed market to bring about large-scale construction of energy technologies that currently cannot compete with the status quo. Two photovoltaic power plants, in essence, are going to be built in California, covering a total of 12.5 square miles and amounting to 800 megawatts of generating capacity (although remember that the peak is only hit for a small portion of the day)." Divide by ten for the peak effect to get an average. So, that's about 1000 megawatts (a gigawatt) per square mile for a currently installable installation. So, by putting solar installations over all the roads and right of ways in the USA, that would produce about three hundred thousand gigawatts of power continuously. That is about three hundred terrawatts. Here it says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_use_in_the_United_States "The United States is the largest energy consumer in terms of total use, using 100 quadrillion BTU (105 exajoules, or 29000 TWh) in 2005, equivalent to an (average) consumption rate of 3.3 TW." So, we have, just from roadways, one hundred times as much land area as we need to be all solar. Sure it's a big task, but it's a big country. http://apolloalliance.org/ And I'm not even considering that something like 1% or so of the USA (I forget the exact figure) is also already devoted to energy production and fossil fuel mining and so on... :-) So then the argument will devolve into discussing batteries and other storage systems. But would anyone who proposes strong nanotech also then suggest we can't make a better battery if we try? We either get good at making things or we don't. And we have hundreds of years of coal to last us until then (not that I think we should burn anymore of it than we have to, for the pollution costs). Manufacturing is harder, but still possible, to figure out all the rooftop area. But the roadways can produce 100X what we need, so let's just use 1% of them for everything. In fact, if we use only 5% or so of the USA roadways, and had a superconducting grid, we can power the *planet*. Isn't sustainable energy production worth devoting at least a small fraction of the land we devote to transportation? However, as I said originally, maintaining a grid is expensive, so local solar will drive out the grid eventually. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption "In 2005, total worldwide energy consumption was 500 EJ (= 5 x 1020 J) (or 138,900 TWh) with 86.5% derived from the combustion of fossil fuels, although there is at least 10% uncertainty in that figure.[1] This is equivalent to an average energy consumption rate of 15 TW (= 1.5 x 1013 W). ... . For the whole Earth, with a cross section of 127,400,000 km?, the total energy rate is 1.740?1017 W, plus or minus 3.5%. This 174 PW is the total rate of solar energy received by the planet; about half, 89 PW, reaches the earth's surface." So, humanity uses 15TW (much as heat) and the sun provides 174,000TW, or about 10,000 times what we use now. We have to be *really* bad engineers if we can't make that work, even if our energy needs go up by a factor of ten. But chances are they won't any time soon. Maybe I made a mistake somewhere and missed a decimal or two, but over and over you can find people saying similar things -- there is plenty of energy producing potential from renewables. And my point is mainly that millions of people are working right now towards that end. So, regardless of whether solar space satellites go up, we will see enormous progress towards renewables. Even Google is putting a lot of money into it: http://www.google.com/corporate/green/energy/ "Clean and affordable energy is a growing need for our company, so we?re excited about launching RE Perhaps. But if you are going to recycle these things you need energy > to do it. Which can be produced on Earth, as above. I could point to dozens of different renewable energy technologies which are being worked on on Earth (biomass conversion, algae ponds producing hydrogen, salt ponds, OTEC, wave, wind, many varieties of PW) many of which are producing significant amounts of energy today. And you are suggesting you can definitive say all of them will fail even with another few decades or research operating under an ever accelerated pre-singularity pace? > I know these arguments. But if you think making your own energy is cost > and time efficient you are just wrong. After you have heated your house > for two winters, going on a third, with wood come back and talk about > it. And that's not even beginning to deal with electric power. I live in a somewhat passive solar house (heated with electric actually, some from hydro, some from nuclear). We live in a cold climate, but have lower heating costs than when we lived in a poorly insulated home with an oil burner. This house is not even anywhere near what can be built now. You can build a house that has almost very low utility bills of any kind for not much more than a conventional house -- it is only education and social inertion (and sometimes poor building codes) that hold it back. And more and more people are building green. Also, a lot of people live in cities where heating utility operation can be consolidated (even for biomass burning or solar thermal heat). --Paul Fernhout From pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com Sat Nov 22 13:32:28 2008 From: pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com (Paul D. Fernhout) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:32:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (risks) In-Reply-To: <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> Message-ID: <492809EC.2070806@kurtz-fernhout.com> hkhenson wrote: > I don't see any reason some hundreds to a thousand power sats and > rectennas would be any more brittle than the current situation. > Rectenna goes out, there are several feeding that section of the grid. > Power sat dies, there are spares. Should be more robust. The only > common mode would be a big solar flare wiping out the PV cells. For > other reasons I doubt PV cells will be used anyway. There is the risk of failure of capital concentration. Put all our eggs in the SPS basket (and launched from Earth, not built in space) and we may have to stop investing in renewables on Earth. That is a big risk. Then there is common mode failure. They may all be subject to the same attack via their control signals. Or they may be all easily targeted by a military strike or terrorists. Or they may all be shattered in a chain reaction from orbital debris (there is a lot of junk up there already ready to go). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_Syndrome "The Kessler Syndrome is a scenario, proposed by NASA consultant Donald J. Kessler, in which the volume of space debris in Low Earth Orbit is so high that objects in orbit are frequently struck by debris, creating even more debris and a greater risk of further impacts. The implication of this scenario is that the escalating amount of debris in orbit could eventually render space exploration, and even the use of satellites, too prone to loss to be feasible for many generations." Then there are unknown physical effects of long term space operations and material degradation in space, which are much bigger unknowns that ground based operations. But the bigger point is even with thousands of rectennas, you still need a grid to distribute the power. If people can soon generate their own power at a lower price than maintaining the grid, then who are your customers? Even if you get big industrial customers, home use will drive falling renewable costs. Then competing will be hard on a price basis. So there is a fundamental economic business model risk. --Paul Fernhout From pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com Sat Nov 22 13:50:37 2008 From: pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com (Paul D. Fernhout) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:50:37 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (Clinic Seed & a diverse future) In-Reply-To: <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> Message-ID: <49280E2D.7010607@kurtz-fernhout.com> hkhenson wrote: >> IMHO, we might see space-based power on Earth in the long term future -- > > There *is* no long term future. I don't expect physical state humans to > exist long after the singularity and that's extremely likely to happen > before the end of the century. The reasoning is so twisted that I had > to resort to fiction to get the ideas across. Many on this list have > read "the clinic seed." The reason to go after power sats built > entirely from the ground is to prevent famines and resource wars before > the singularity. > > There is also the possibility that AIs cobbled together in the heat of a > war might be a lot more dangerous than ones put together in a peaceful > time. But I can't guarantee that either. Well, that remains (informed) speculation. We simply do not know what forms people will take (if any) after a continued development of technology beyond our imagining. As I said of Kurzweil seeing his libertarian capitalist self in the mirror of the singularity, that's what the singularity is to an extent to us now -- a mirror of who we are and what we believe in. A mirror of what virtues or vices we take with us as we approach it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice My emails to Kurzweil, put up by Bryan: http://heybryan.org/fernhout/ Is this the version of the story? "The Clinic Seed - Africa" by Keith Henson http://terasemjournals.net/GN0202/henson.html It's a beautiful story. Much friendlier than this graphically violent one about virtual ennui: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis_of_Prime_Intellect Still, every significant sci-fi story written is interwoven with assumption about commerce, information exchange, trust, limitations, education, travel, security, ecology, history, and so on. It might be right, or it might not. For example, it assumes a strong nanotech of nanomachines, but we may simply never have that for physical reasons like heat dissipation limits (we may, but we may not). We might have only nanomaterials, but that is not the same thing. Like most sci-fi, it takes a single idea and focuses on it, the seed, but ignores that the entire world is changing up to that point (or does away with it somehow -- a plague). For example, how can no one in the village even have a cell phone with a web browser in 2041 to know what is going on in the rest of the world? It's "out of range"? Even low cost satellite phones likely ten years from now? Or super-duper OLPC XO-10s? And how, with all the abundance in the world right now, would we wait another 30 years to do more for people with parasites? One can invent answers that fit with the story, but they are just than, invented. We don't know. Also, you invent self-replicating nanotech, and then assume it can't just produce power anywhere and there are rectennas needed? That seems inconsistent. It's a wonderful story, even an inspirational one, but it shows us just one possibility. Also, there is an indirect reference to a benevolent "Foundation Gates". "Thoughts on the Gates Foundation's Investment Practices" http://www.idealog.us/2007/01/thoughts_on_the.html I've spent decades of my life dealing with the (often painful to others) consequences of Bill Gate's past attitude towards software and life, http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ and I find it hard to believe that fundamental perspective has changed much. :-) Still, it is possible. I've changed over the years in unexpected ways, so I have to accept that he might too. Especially given another three decades. And grandchildren. :-) Anyway, an assumption of famine and resource wars is just that -- a possible assumption. We can work to avoid them by efforts on Earth towards sustainability that at the same time advance us towards space habitations. Also, ask yourself, who do you want making all this stuff? Big corps (and their allied big foundations) or the grass roots? We already have big AIs roaming the landscape in terms of bureaucracies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood_debate and have had them for thousands of years back to Pharaoh's bureaucracy and probably earlier. Humans have eaked out a coexistence with them in various ways, but it hasn't always been easy. Microsoft is another such AI system (even though the parts are people locked into job descriptions -- see Langdon Winner's "Autonomous Technology: Technics out of control as a theme in political thought". Do you want those kinds of amoral profit-driven cost-cutting AIs making your clinic seeds? I kept waiting for the seed to turn nasty, or be taken over, especially as it got new service packs. :-( http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=microsoft+service+pack+snafu Or for the clinic seed to eat their souls or something. :-( There is a lot to be said for "physical" and "spatial" security. Or, to quote Grand Moff Tarkin: http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0000030/quotes "Governor Tarkin: You're far too trusting. Dantooine is too remote to make an effective demonstration - but don't worry; we will deal with your rebel friends soon enough." We have a system that works now. Why should anyone throw it away to live in Bill Gate's next operating system? We've already seen what Vista means to him. :-) "Mac V PC ad- advertising with Windows Vista" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqugg-br0Cw But there are Linux spoofs too: "Novell Linux, Mac, PC" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa1RCg-Ccp0 "Second Novell Linux Spoof Ad" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVOnFdMf0RU Anyway, the deeper issue here is diversity. And I'd suggest that same theme both applies to your story and to solar space satellites. If I can run my consciousness in a relatively secure physical location (my head), or I can generate my own power on my roof, why should I give up that security to merge 100% into a network I know nothing about and have little control over? And if I can locate my body in a space habitation generating its own power, then that's perhaps another layer of security (depends on the space habitat's reliability). You paint a nice picture of life in the seed, *but* who here has not heard of the Gatesian "blue screen of death"? :-) OK, so now we are talking backups -- so, fragmentation? Which copy owns the rights to my identity and friends? And so on into other issues (long discussed here). All so we can leave our humanity and physical risk behind? To accept what unknown risks? Even in fiction, Kirk leaves the Nexus because it is *boring*. :-) http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Nexus "Kirk had realized that the Nexus could never give him what he really wanted in his life: the chance to make a difference" Anyway, I'm not saying people won't live in simulations someday. But I am suggesting, unless we are in one now, that day is a longer way off for reasons like security and trust. Given that there are so many unknowns about the future, why give up on a lot of good ideas (especially as fostered by you :-) like space habitations built as "clanking replicators"? We know those are possible right now. Even with just 1970s technology. Strong independent nanotech (including utility fog) is essentially unproven, see: "Is there a Nanotech Rapture to be Ruptured?" http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/2481/ "We shouldn?t abandon all of the more radical goals of nanotechnology, because they may instead be achieved ultimately by routes quite different from (and longer than) those foreseen by the proponents of molecular nanotechnology. Perhaps we should thank Drexler for alerting us to the general possibilities of nanotechnology, while recognizing that the trajectories of new technologies rarely run smoothly along the paths foreseen by their pioneers." Maybe "clanking" space habitats will be superseded by strong nanotech someday, but even if they are, the social organizations that build the clanking ones may positively effect the future of the next generation of habitats. "Study Reports On Debian Governance, Social Organization" http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/14/1349202 From the book "Blessed Unrest": http://books.google.com/books?id=S75R90V1IlUC "There is a rabbinical teaching that holds that if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, you first plant a tree and then see if it is true." More on that book: "Blessed Unrest tells the story of a worldwide movement that is largely unseen by politicians or the media. Hawken, an environmentalist and author, has spent more than a decade researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice. From billion-dollar nonprofits to single-person causes, these organizations collectively comprise the largest movement on earth. This is a movement that has no name, leader, or location, but is in every city, town, and culture. It is organizing from the bottom up and is emerging as an extraordinary and creative expression of people's needs worldwide. Blessed Unrest explores the diversity of this movement, its brilliant ideas, innovative strategies, and centuries-old history. The culmination of Hawken's many years of leadership in these fields, it will inspire, surprise, and delight anyone who is worried about the direction the modern world is headed. Blessed Unrest is a description of humanity's collective genius and the unstoppable movement to re-imagine our relationship to the environment and one another. Like Hawken's previous books, Blessed Unrest will become a classic in its field- a touchstone for anyone concerned about our future." I'm not saying things will for sure turn out well, but at least there is the possibility they will. As Zinn says: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm "In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning." And I think the probability of a more life-affirming singularity (the kind that builds the wondrous and helping Clinic Seed you so beautifully wrote about) will increases with at least a balance between big organizations and the grass roots. See: http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm "Indeed, one must resist the temptation to make hierarchies into villains and meshworks into heroes, not only because, as I said, they are constantly turning into one another, but because in real life we find only mixtures and hybrids, and the properties of these cannot be established through theory alone but demand concrete experimentation." But Solar Space Satellites as an economic activity pushes society back towards a more centralized hierarchical direction, including creating the risk they can all be shut off at once from a central location. If you want a distributed wonderful network of health facilities that lead to clinic seeds, you can just start working on that right now. :-) You already painted the big picture; you could start simulating and releasing source on sourceforge or the Bazaar under "clinic seed" and maybe people like Bryan might help? (I can't speak for him, but obviously he shares that interest). Or you could help along one of the other free and open source medical projects. Anyway, that might help realize that part of your vision a little sooner than SPS systems. --Paul Fernhout From pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com Sat Nov 22 14:26:48 2008 From: pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com (Paul D. Fernhout) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 09:26:48 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (open source recruitment) In-Reply-To: <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> Message-ID: <492816A8.9080004@kurtz-fernhout.com> hkhenson wrote: > You might note as a data point that I have yet to get people one this > list or several other ones to even check my calculations on the web > pages that underlie what we are discussing here. This is hard work, > rocket science work. Lack of recruitment for a specific project doesn't prove much in comparison to hundreds of thousands of person-years I can point to already given away in developing free software for Debian GNU/Linux and other projects (or millions of person-years so far to free content if you include blogs and such). Part of the issue of the free and open source revolution is people work on what they care about -- whatever that is. Might be dancing paperclips. :-) http://bettinaforget.com/TheBelgoReport/?p=304 "The gallery is filled with small tables carrying black metal boxes onto which are placed a selection of small metal objects. Inside each box is a spinning magnet which moves the objects in a random choreography. Paperclips chase each other, pins and needles dance around the rubber bands that block their way, ball bearings trundle across the metal surface. There is a wonderful hypnotizing randomness to the movement of these every-day objects, and if your fingers are itching to get into the mix, there?s one table where you are allowed to place an assortment of them onto a box and see what happens." A good book I'm current reading on running an open source project: "Producing Open Source Software" by Karl Fogel http://www.amazon.com/Producing-Open-Source-Software-Successful/dp/0596007590 If this is accurate, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Henson you are about the same age now as my college advisor, George Miller, was when he *started* WordNet over twenty years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Armitage_Miller http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordnet Wordnet is now a big open source project that powers parts of Google, among other things. (Please forgive me for calling attention to age, but I thought it relevant in this specific case. I'm in my forties, so I have another twenty years to go until I can start something as good as WordNet. :-) So, with a little bit of good luck and some continued improvements in life extension medicine, you could, if you wanted, lead the design of the clinic seed directly over the next twenty to forty years, as a volunteer effort in collaboration with others. It would be hard at first -- I'd expect that few people probably believed in George either; for example, Princeton University forced him to retire instead through a mandatory retirement policy. But George Miller kept at WordNet through ups and down for over two decades. And now we have a variety of wonderful tools as the fruit of all his hard and patient work. This isn't to discourage you from developing the *technology* of solar power satellites, perhaps also collaboratively as an open source project contributed to by volunteers (and, say, for use in space to power an L5 habitat. :-). I'm just presenting an alternative given your more recent inspiring vision and using an open source approach. --Paul Fernhout From pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com Sat Nov 22 14:32:10 2008 From: pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com (Paul D. Fernhout) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 09:32:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (limited time?) In-Reply-To: <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> Message-ID: <492817EA.3090807@kurtz-fernhout.com> hkhenson wrote: > I am not even discussing space habitats when talking about power sats in > the current mode where all the parts have to come up from the earth. > There might be a few, perhaps even up to a thousand, people in GEO > monitoring the equipment that's turning out power sats but this isn't > what O'Neill had in mind. I frankly don't think there will be any > serious human habitation of space this side of the singularity and after > that who knows? In any case, humans as we know them will not be in charge. OK, now I see where you are coming from. I had not understood that. Thanks for clarifying that. People move on to new things now and then. And sometimes they don't. Both are important at various times in our lives. :-) I've cared about space habitation since before I was ten (probably no doubt in part indirectly due to your early efforts. :-) The possibilities of expansion into space is central to my views on the world (for good or bad), even as I have integrated that with ideas for sustainability on Earth. Space habitation I feel for sure is possible, as is making Bucky Fuller's "Spaceship Earth" work for everyone pretty much as it is. The singularity is a big unknown, we agree. But, we also don't know what role space habitation or an effort towards space habitation will play either. We don't know what role a positive vision of human life on Earth and in the universe may play in getting us a happier singularity. Which way do you want to bet if there are unknowns? :-) >> There are a lot of good reasons to develop space habitations. Cheap >> energy >> beamed back to Earth in the short term is not one of them IMHO. > > Cheap energy beamed back to earth and used for such things as making > synthetic fuel out of water and carbon dioxide is a good reason to > develop space based solar power. It might well be. There is still the launch costs and hardware costs and such. Whatever hardware you put in space, it could get, with weather effects and the earth's day and night cycle, only about six times more power in space than on Earth (unless you exploit some important aspect of space, like mylar mirrors). But the cost and uncertainty of launching satellites and maintaining it are potentially huge. Also, again it requires a large capital investment in a coordinated way. Which means it is high risk. People can put up solar panels today on their own house. Maybe it is not cost effective yet in many places, but if you look at the trends it is growing more and more cost effective for more and more people. > They may be a good idea, but there simply isn't time for them to happen > before the singularity. We just don't know -- that's the nature of the singularity. So, we can ask ourselves what do we want as a vision of the future? Do we want to batten down the hatches and assume social collapse, and perhaps in making that assumption cause one? Or do we want to remain optimistic that endless possibilities await and continue to do things we think are productive? And if life is *already* a simulation, then how do we want to live it anyway? :-) We have no proof that strong (independent or swarm robotic) nanotech of the type Drexler suggests will ever exist. Thermal effects may render it infeasible or unstable (the heat dissipation required for that much coordinated communications and action). Nature has had at least billions of years to refine cellular machinery, perhaps billions more if it came from outside the solar system, and perhaps even longer than that if our ideas about the universe are wrong. And in all that time, nature missed something completely obvious that would spread across the universe? While I have little proof (beyond a gut feeling from graduate studies in Ecology and Evolution), I'm more of the opinion that the energetics of cells is about as good as it will ever be. That the replication times are the same no matter how you build them. That the biological world with a complex ecology is a tough place to survive for cells and we are not going to see some super stand-alone nanotech any time soon, even though we may see lots of nanomaterials or artifacts assembled on the nanoscale. Now, this does not mean we cannot wipe ourselves out with plagues -- I'm just talking about something appearing that is somehow way "better" than bacteria optimized over billions of years (bacteria essentially form a worldwide supercomputer exchanging genetic information across the globe in days or weeks). But neither of us can be sure. Let's say nature has missed something and strong nanotech is around the corner like in your story. We still don't know what will happen or when or how other events will shape it. Why abandon the simplest way to get some diversity of living spaces and a diversity of ideas of how to approach things as space habitats? The image of Earth from space has had a profoundly positive effect on our society, an effect so large it was IMHO worth a thousand times the cost of the space program just by itself: http://www.spacetoday.org/images/SolSys/Earth/EarthBlueMarbleWestTerraSat.jpg What else might we get by cooperatively reaching for more? In my opinion, if the singularity is a mirror of who we are (or want to be), then we should think hard on that. "What is the Mirror of Erised?" http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-mirror-of-erised.htm > I understand your points, but consider them to be way out of date. Time > marches on and the future isn't what it used to be. Sorry. If I'm arguing so strongly for emphasizing space habitations over SPS, think of it only as an echo from your previous successes. :-) Maybe you are right and will succeed at SPS systems as well. Time will tell. Thanks for the reply. Best of luck with your projects. And as I said before, when we get into space in a big way, and build those space habitats (O'Neill, Savage, Bernal, whatever design :-) we're going to need solar space satellites. So, technologically I think solar space satellites are a good idea and well worth designing and testing. It's more an issue of which way the microwaves are to be beamed -- towards Earth or towards space habitations. :-) Anyway, sorry to take up so much list bandwidth on this topic. --Paul Fernhout From pharos at gmail.com Sat Nov 22 14:48:59 2008 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 14:48:59 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (Dyson & habitat costs) In-Reply-To: <492808EF.2030401@kurtz-fernhout.com> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <492808EF.2030401@kurtz-fernhout.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Paul D. Fernhout wrote: > But, in any case, we are just now spending about $3000 billion on a > counterproductive war in Iraq. And about a trillion dollars has been > allocated so far for a "bailout" which is apparently going to questionable > ends. So there is lots of money sloshing around in the USA for ideological > reasons. Who would notice $250 billion more at this point? :-) > > Also, a flow into foundations of $55 trillion is expected over the next few > decades: > http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/20/1313223 > > That is two hundred times what it would take using only 1970s technology. A > couple percent of charity can't go to giving humanity a new dream? > > And TV watching is consuming 2,000 Wikipedias per year: > http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/27/1422258 > > So there is plenty of spare mental capacity. > Hey, I like the stuff you write! I'll have to start googling for more. :) Of course I like it because your writing agrees with my prejudices. :) I have made the occasional comment along much the same lines in the past, but you have provided a much more detailed argument than I ever attempted. Just a few comments. Re all these trillions the US is spending, I thought the crisis was due to the US spending money that it doesn't have? These trillions are all confederate money, printed as required and worthless. The next few years are going to be thrift years as everybody tries to get spending back in line with income. As the US gov has got accustomed to a permanent deficit budget, I expect a big upheaval. Re your other tracts, I like the practicality of your discussion. The people factor is very important in futuristic proposals. The calculations might be great, but, as you point out, you cannot ignore everything else that is going on. If the mass of the population are unpersuaded, then the best idea in the world will get thrown away. BillK From hkhenson at rogers.com Sat Nov 22 15:21:12 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:21:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (Dyson & habitat costs) In-Reply-To: <492808EF.2030401@kurtz-fernhout.com> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <492808EF.2030401@kurtz-fernhout.com> Message-ID: <1227367589_48372@s5.cableone.net> At 06:28 AM 11/22/2008, you wrote: >hkhenson wrote: >>Freeman Dyson killed people doing space habitats on their >>own. Read the chapter in Disturbing the Universe on Pilgrims, >>Saints and Spacemen. In short Dyson made the case that going into >>space was 10,000 times to expensive. > >Looking at that chapter again right now, writing around 1979, Dyson >said the price of homesteading the asteroids was potentially >comparable per person to the colonization of North America by >European (from O'Neill's figures). > >You are correct in that he brings up a figure of $96 billion for a >first "Island One" taken from O'Neill's work and says it is "a >preposterously large amount of money to spend on any single >enterprise" and then goes on to say it would have to be a government >project as a "superhygenic welfare state"; presumably the figure >would be closer to $250 billion in today's dollars with inflation >(guesstimate). And that is per person, as you say, in the range of >10000X what the other ventures were for small numbers of people. I don't have the book in front of me, but the factor that soured the chances of "spacemen" going out like former colonizations was the transport cost. Dyson estimated the cost of the former colonization efforts and got a number that amounted to 2 year's income. $100 billion for 1000 people would be $100 million each. I have broken it out as we need some combination of reducing the transport cost into space by a hundred and to be 100 times richer. There is no physical reason going into space has to be expensive. An elevator will lift cargo and people to GEO for 15 cents a kg (on penny/kWh power). >Dyson does say at the end of the chapter he expects the costs would >be in the middle. > >I'm not going to disagree with you about the politics of the time or >Freeman Dyson's role in that (I just don't know). It's true to my >knowledge that Freeman Dyson can put down in a disrespectful(?) way >the people who would occupy the first space habitats (though he >would say the same thing about the early European pioneers). But I >can't say he is completely wrong about that either or completely >right. As a child of immigrants, I can say any sort of first >generation immigrant is often leaving their home for, at the very >least, complex social reasons (often for reasons of war or bad economic times). > >Still, even if everyone interpreted Freeman Dyson's writing in the >way you suggest, is he is to blame for all of the public's lack of >imagination or Congress' (especially Senator Proxmire's) lack of imagination? > http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/5296 >"To build Mass Driver II would require more funding, but before NASA >could approve it, Wisconsin senator William Proxmire got wind of >O'Neill's space colonies idea. Famed for his "Golden Fleece" awards >for government spending he deemed wasteful, Proxmire went on >television to proclaim "not another penny for this nutty fantasy." >NASA quickly pulled the plug on all its space colonies projects, >including the Mass Driver." >Senator Proxmire seems to have been more of a stumbling block in >many ways (or NASA's lack of backbone then). > >But I do know that around 1984 Gerry O'Neill called *me* a dreamer >:-) for suggesting to him a push for self-replicating space habitats >instead of his idea of a slow economic expansion into space based >around capitalist ideology. A big effort then and we might have had >then by now. Instead, I gave *him* money. :-) And it is clear that >Gerry O'Neill's writings do take capitalism as a given, and while he >talks in "2081" of abundance, he really doesn't go very far down >that road of what the possibilities are. If a space habitat can >mostly self-replicate (as a "clanking replicator"), > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_machine > http://www.3dreplicators.com/ >the initial cost can be a one time investment for endless space >habitats. Further, one could possibly construct and launch a >self-replicating seed factory to the moon for maybe in the >neighborhood of a billion or so dollars (launch plus construction) >-- if we knew how to make one. The thing is, we don't know how to >make one yet. This 1980 document is still the best we have in some >ways, and it is very incomplete: > "Advanced Automation for Space Missions" > http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/ >Obviously, people have done stuff since, but how much further along >are the public and free versions of designs? Google for RapRep. >Once you have an automated infrastructure in space, say, on the >Moon, it could in theory even ship spacecraft (and even SPS energy >:-) to Earth for ferrying people from Earth up to space. Although we >don't need that. Oil is down around $50/bbl. Do you expect it to stay there? >But, in any case, we are just now spending about $3000 billion on a >counterproductive war in Iraq. And about a trillion dollars has been >allocated so far for a "bailout" which is apparently going to >questionable ends. So there is lots of money sloshing around in the >USA for ideological reasons. Who would notice $250 billion more at >this point? :-) > >Also, a flow into foundations of $55 trillion is expected over the >next few decades: > http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/20/1313223 > >That is two hundred times what it would take using only 1970s >technology. A couple percent of charity can't go to giving humanity >a new dream? > >And TV watching is consuming 2,000 Wikipedias per year: > http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/27/1422258 > >So there is plenty of spare mental capacity. > >Maybe things were different in the 1970s, but least *today*, no one >should seriously suggest the absence of money or time for R&D and >deployment is the problem for making either Spaceship Earth >(Sustainability) or Space habitats work for everyone, even at the >same time. It comes down to issues like ideology and imagination, >not "resources". > >$250 billion for a first space settlement is only a tiny fraction of >these financial flows. And even millions of person-years of design >effort is a small fraction of the idle capacity of humanity over the >next decade. What is stopping us now, if anything? I'd suggest >nothing is stopping us except Newtons First law of motion: "Unless >acted upon by an outside force, a body at rest tends to stay at >rest, and a body in motion tends to stay in motion.". Well, if you know how to get the body moving, don't keep it to yourself. Keith >--Paul Fernhout >_______________________________________________ >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 Nov 22 15:44:50 2008 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 09:44:50 -0600 Subject: [ExI] F.A.q.2 Conference - Syncretism of the Senses Message-ID: <132A1A5F02EB4F9AA8C8805E2729BE70@DFC68LF1> I will be speaking at the SESC Servico Social do Comercio of Brazil, and the Instituto Sergio Motta of S?o Paulo Conference "Syncretism of the Senses" in Sao Paulo, Brazil next week. Here is a link http://www.sescsp.org.br/sesc/hotsites/faq2/ My talk is on "Synthetic Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno Skin". Here is an excerpt from the talk which accompanies a video clip: "What is more intimate to each person than the very skin of the body?the sensuous touch, taste and smell of our skin? The skin visible and exposed, as it displays our character and emotions; yet, it is also hidden and private, as it covers the curves and creases of our bodies and breaths we us each breath, sigh and quiver. While skin has sensual and sexual characteristics, we forget that it is an organ and serves a precise function of our physiology, without which we could not exist in our current biological form. Skin also is vulnerable to the environment as cancer is on the rise and while our skin has been protecting us for eons, now we must protect it. How can we use applicable technology and visionary science to protect our skin and still maintain its integrity as a intimate part of our identity, our presence in the world, and our experience of the world around us? "The protocol of nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technologies is anything but human, as it suggests cold, mechanical and invasive technology. Cognitive science and neuro science are a bit more familiar from a biological viewpoint, but they too suggest tampering with our thoughts and probing our privacy. It seems paradoxical that the intimacy and sensuality of skin could be preserved in these emerging technologies and sciences. But it is possible. The smart skin of ?Primo Posthuman? future body prototype illustrates how nano-bio-info-cogno skin could maintain and enhance the characteristics of skin. For example, smart skin?s outer sheath would be composed of assembled molecular cytes or cells connected together to form the outer fabric of the body. The smart skin is engineered to repair, remake, and replace itself. It contains nanobots throughout the epidermal and dermis to communicate with the brain to determine the texture and tone of its surface. It transmits enhanced sensory data to the brain on an ongoing basis. The smart skin learns how and when to renew itself, alerts the outside world of the disposition of the person, or maintains individual privacy; gives specific degrees of the body?s temperature from moment to moment; and reflects symbols, images, colors and textures across its contours. It is able to relate the percentages of toxins in the environment and the extract radiation effects of the sun." Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 731 bytes Desc: not available URL: From hkhenson at rogers.com Sat Nov 22 15:56:11 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:56:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (risks) In-Reply-To: <492809EC.2070806@kurtz-fernhout.com> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <492809EC.2070806@kurtz-fernhout.com> Message-ID: <1227369688_49779@S4.cableone.net> At 06:32 AM 11/22/2008, you wrote: >hkhenson wrote: > > I don't see any reason some hundreds to a thousand power sats and > > rectennas would be any more brittle than the current situation. > > Rectenna goes out, there are several feeding that section of the grid. > > Power sat dies, there are spares. Should be more robust. The only > > common mode would be a big solar flare wiping out the PV cells. For > > other reasons I doubt PV cells will be used anyway. > >There is the risk of failure of capital concentration. Put all our >eggs in the SPS basket (and launched from Earth, not built in space) >and we may have to stop investing in renewables on Earth. That is a big risk. If people stop investing in enewable energy sources on earth because space based solar power is less expensive, that's only logical. I fail to see any virtue to solar power collected on earth compared to GEO. >Then there is common mode failure. They may all be subject to the >same attack via their control signals. Why would they be using the same control signals? Anyway, that's an argument for people in GEO. >Or they may be all easily targeted by a military strike or terrorists. It would be easier to get inside a nuclear plant on earth and blow it up than to get to GEO. A nation state could take out a few with large nukes, or KE weapons, but *why*? >Or they may all be shattered in a chain reaction from orbital debris >(there is a lot of junk up there already ready to go). > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_Syndrome >"The Kessler Syndrome is a scenario, proposed by NASA consultant >Donald J. Kessler, in which the volume of space debris in Low Earth >Orbit is so high that objects in orbit are frequently struck by >debris, creating even more debris and a greater risk of further >impacts. The implication of this scenario is that the escalating >amount of debris in orbit could eventually render space exploration, >and even the use of satellites, too prone to loss to be feasible for >many generations." This is LEO, not GEO. Very little is out there and it has very low delta V compared to the GEO orbit. Besides, no matter how you get the millions of tons of parts up there, at least one ablation propulsion laser is needed to clear away the space junk. >Then there are unknown physical effects of long term space >operations and material degradation in space, which are much bigger >unknowns that ground based operations. That's grasping at straws. Not only to we have many decades of experience with how things age in space, we have nickel-iron asteroids that we know have not degraded for a billion years. >But the bigger point is even with thousands of rectennas, you still >need a grid to distribute the power. If people can soon generate >their own power at a lower price than maintaining the grid, then who >are your customers? How are they going to do this? Basement nukes? If you have a big chunk of land in Arizona and a ton of money yeah, but how about apartment dwellers stacked 15 stories high in NYC? How do you propose to get them off the grid? >Even if you get big industrial customers, home use will drive >falling renewable costs. Then competing will be hard on a price >basis. So there is a fundamental economic business model risk. So you would not invest (if you had the opportunity) in power satellites because you think earth based renewable energy will solve the energy crisis. Speaking as an engineer, it's going to take some really disruptive technology to do that. I am reluctant to count on disruptive technology even when I think it is inevitable in the long term. If we don't build power sats I sure hope you are right, because if you are not, many billions are going to die in famines and resource wars. Of course the power sat model I am proposing is a design to cost effort with a target of penny a kWh. Sort of "dams in space". There is a business risk to building power sats, like there was for Iridium only much larger. That's what Charles Miller's idea is about. Keith From natasha at natasha.cc Sat Nov 22 17:15:52 2008 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 11:15:52 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Invitation to Amara Grap's Virtual Baby Shower - 12/14/08 Message-ID: <2DE246320E1C44348FBEF7BF04E04D06@DFC68LF1> Greetings. Giulio Prisco and I cordially invite you to baby shower for Amara Graps to be held in Second Life on December 14, 2008. Please go to http://www.transhumanist.biz/amarababyshower.htm Hope to see you on December 14th. best wishes, Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 731 bytes Desc: not available URL: From benboc at lineone.net Sat Nov 22 17:46:02 2008 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 17:46:02 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Re.: celtic woman In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4928455A.4030908@lineone.net> Meh. Still, whatever floats your boat. From the sound of the posts on this, i was expecting something with the looks of the Suicide Girls and the sounds of Led Zeppelin. My expectations were not met. Ben Zaiboc (What?! Hey, if everyone liked the same stuff, it would be a boring world) From hkhenson at rogers.com Sat Nov 22 17:45:36 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 10:45:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (Clinic Seed & a diverse future) In-Reply-To: <49280E2D.7010607@kurtz-fernhout.com> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <49280E2D.7010607@kurtz-fernhout.com> Message-ID: <1227376253_50024@S3.cableone.net> At 06:50 AM 11/22/2008, you wrote: >hkhenson wrote: > >> IMHO, we might see space-based power on Earth in the long term future -- > > > > There *is* no long term future. I don't expect physical state humans to > > exist long after the singularity and that's extremely likely to happen > > before the end of the century. The reasoning is so twisted that I had > > to resort to fiction to get the ideas across. Many on this list have > > read "the clinic seed." The reason to go after power sats built > > entirely from the ground is to prevent famines and resource wars before > > the singularity. > > > > There is also the possibility that AIs cobbled together in the heat of a > > war might be a lot more dangerous than ones put together in a peaceful > > time. But I can't guarantee that either. > >Well, that remains (informed) speculation. We simply do not know >what forms people will take (if any) after a continued development >of technology beyond our imagining. > >As I said of Kurzweil seeing his libertarian capitalist self in the >mirror of the singularity, that's what the singularity is to an >extent to us now -- a mirror of who we are and what we believe in. A >mirror of what virtues or vices we take with us as we approach it. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice >My emails to Kurzweil, put up by Bryan: > http://heybryan.org/fernhout/ > >Is this the version of the story? > "The Clinic Seed - Africa" by Keith Henson > http://terasemjournals.net/GN0202/henson.html > >It's a beautiful story. Much friendlier than this graphically >violent one about virtual ennui: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis_of_Prime_Intellect > >Still, every significant sci-fi story written is interwoven with >assumption about commerce, information exchange, trust, limitations, >education, travel, security, ecology, history, and so on. It might >be right, or it might not. Of course. >For example, it assumes a strong nanotech of nanomachines, but we >may simply never have that for physical reasons like heat >dissipation limits (we may, but we may not). This is *extremely* well understood. Nanotech is just braking and making chemical bonds. The heat from each is well understood, as is the total. Eric Drexler and Ralph Merkle were discussing this at least two decades ago in the context of repairing cryonics patients. It's why the clinic seed had to cool patients and why it took so long to repair major damage. >We might have only nanomaterials, but that is not the same thing. >Like most sci-fi, it takes a single idea and focuses on it, the >seed, but ignores that the entire world is changing up to that point >(or does away with it somehow -- a plague). For example, how can no >one in the village even have a cell phone with a web browser in 2041 >to know what is going on in the rest of the world? It's "out of >range"? Even low cost satellite phones likely ten years from now? Or >super-duper OLPC XO-10s? And how, with all the abundance in the >world right now, would we wait another 30 years to do more for >people with parasites? One can invent answers that fit with the >story, but they are just than, invented. We don't know. Also, you >invent self-replicating nanotech, and then assume it can't just >produce power anywhere and there are rectennas needed? That seems >inconsistent. It's a stand alone story, but it fits into a larger work that spans a century. (The chapter is there to explain how the population moth balled their world and vanished.) The technology is in a flux, this story is set right at the cusp of the singularity. There is another flashback section 20 years earlier that describes building a moving cable space elevator and using that to transport millions of tons of materials for power sats. Of course the story cheats, all stories involving the singularity have to. Otherwise you have no characters to identify with. The main thread of the story involves a remnant population in an almost empty (but well maintained) world. Would Togo in west Africa have cell towers in 2040? I don't know. The story assumes a serious population reductions before this point due to epidemics and strongly restricted travel (reason not stated). >It's a wonderful story, even an inspirational one, but it shows us >just one possibility. > >Also, there is an indirect reference to a benevolent "Foundation Gates". > "Thoughts on the Gates Foundation's Investment Practices" > http://www.idealog.us/2007/01/thoughts_on_the.html >I've spent decades of my life dealing with the (often painful to >others) consequences of Bill Gate's past attitude towards software and life, > http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ >and I find it hard to believe that fundamental perspective has >changed much. :-) Still, it is possible. I've changed over the years >in unexpected ways, so I have to accept that he might too. >Especially given another three decades. And grandchildren. :-) If someone had a creative commons clinic seed design, including the base AI that runs it, then chances are that some foundation would fund making and distributing them. >Anyway, an assumption of famine and resource wars is just that -- a >possible assumption. Given *current* technology, i.e., no nanotech, then the consequences of running low on energy are gigadeath. We burn huge amounts of energy to grow and distribute food. The existing population is not sustainable without a huge replacement energy source. >We can work to avoid them by efforts on Earth towards sustainability >that at the same time advance us towards space habitations. >Also, ask yourself, who do you want making all this stuff? Big corps >(and their allied big foundations) or the grass roots? Do we have any choice? >We already have big AIs roaming the landscape in terms of bureaucracies: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood_debate >and have had them for thousands of years back to Pharaoh's >bureaucracy and probably earlier. Humans have eaked out a >coexistence with them in various ways, but it hasn't always been >easy. Microsoft is another such AI system (even though the parts are >people locked into job descriptions -- see Langdon Winner's >"Autonomous Technology: Technics out of control as a theme in >political thought". Do you want those kinds of amoral profit-driven >cost-cutting AIs making your clinic seeds? I kept waiting for the >seed to turn nasty, or be taken over, especially as it got new >service packs. :-( In case you didn't notice, it did. It even felt slightly guilty. ************* "Can you teach me this language and how to read?" Zaba asked. There was a short pause, which was really a very long pause for Suskulan as he projected what would happen and thought about the unstated (though obvious) reason he had been given the upgrade. ""Yes" Suskulan said at last inflecting his voice to a sigh. "But it will change you and the rest of the people of the tata in ways you cannot foresee and may not like. You can sleep through the nine or ten days it will take to finish healing you. Are you sure you want to do this? "Yes," said Zaba firmly, "I want to learn." And thus was the fate of this particular tata determined, ********** This AI and the other million instances of it wiped the _whole continent_ clear of humans. The leopard got to sleep in the village. The humans got what they wanted or were seduced into wanting. Editors who looked at the story said it could not be sold told me it didn't have enough violence. It has a graphic description of a high velocity bullet going through the spine of a 12 year old girl--what more can they ask for? > http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=microsoft+service+pack+snafu >Or for the clinic seed to eat their souls or something. :-( There >is a lot to be said for "physical" and "spatial" security. Or, to >quote Grand Moff Tarkin: > http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0000030/quotes >"Governor Tarkin: You're far too trusting. Dantooine is too remote >to make an effective demonstration - but don't worry; we will deal >with your rebel friends soon enough." > >We have a system that works now. Why should anyone throw it away to >live in Bill Gate's next operating system? We've already seen what >Vista means to him. :-) > "Mac V PC ad- advertising with Windows Vista" > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqugg-br0Cw > >But there are Linux spoofs too: > "Novell Linux, Mac, PC" > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa1RCg-Ccp0 > "Second Novell Linux Spoof Ad" > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVOnFdMf0RU > >Anyway, the deeper issue here is diversity. And I'd suggest that >same theme both applies to your story and to solar space satellites. >If I can run my consciousness in a relatively secure physical >location (my head), or I can generate my own power on my roof, why >should I give up that security to merge 100% into a network I know >nothing about and have little control over? >And if I can locate my body in a space habitation generating its own >power, then that's perhaps another layer of security (depends on the >space habitat's reliability). > >You paint a nice picture of life in the seed, *but* who here has not >heard of the Gatesian "blue screen of death"? :-) Sheesh. At _best_ that story paints an ambivalent picture. It can certainly be read as an "end of humanity" tragedy. >OK, so now we are talking backups -- so, fragmentation? Which copy >owns the rights to my identity and friends? And so on into other >issues (long discussed here). All so we can leave our humanity and >physical risk behind? To accept what unknown risks? Even in fiction, >Kirk leaves the Nexus because it is *boring*. :-) > http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Nexus >"Kirk had realized that the Nexus could never give him what he >really wanted in his life: the chance to make a difference" >Anyway, I'm not saying people won't live in simulations someday. But >I am suggesting, unless we are in one now, that day is a longer way >off for reasons like security and trust. > >Given that there are so many unknowns about the future, why give up >on a lot of good ideas (especially as fostered by you :-) like space >habitations built as "clanking replicators"? We know those are >possible right now. Even with just 1970s technology. > >Strong independent nanotech (including utility fog) is essentially >unproven, see: > "Is there a Nanotech Rapture to be Ruptured?" > http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/2481/ >"We shouldn't abandon all of the more radical goals of >nanotechnology, because they may instead be achieved ultimately by >routes quite different from (and longer than) those foreseen by the >proponents of molecular nanotechnology. Perhaps we should thank >Drexler for alerting us to the general possibilities of >nanotechnology, while recognizing that the trajectories of new >technologies rarely run smoothly along the paths foreseen by their pioneers." > >Maybe "clanking" space habitats will be superseded by strong >nanotech someday, but even if they are, the social organizations >that build the clanking ones may positively effect the future of the >next generation of habitats. > "Study Reports On Debian Governance, Social Organization" > http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/14/1349202 > > From the book "Blessed Unrest": > http://books.google.com/books?id=S75R90V1IlUC > "There is a rabbinical teaching that holds that if the world is > ending and the Messiah arrives, you first plant a tree and then see > if it is true." > >More on that book: "Blessed Unrest tells the story of a worldwide >movement that is largely unseen by politicians or the media. Hawken, >an environmentalist and author, has spent more than a decade >researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and >fostering social justice. From billion-dollar nonprofits to >single-person causes, these organizations collectively comprise the >largest movement on earth. This is a movement that has no name, >leader, or location, but is in every city, town, and culture. It is >organizing from the bottom up and is emerging as an extraordinary >and creative expression of people's needs worldwide. Blessed Unrest >explores the diversity of this movement, its brilliant ideas, >innovative strategies, and centuries-old history. The culmination of >Hawken's many years of leadership in these fields, it will inspire, >surprise, and delight anyone who is worried about the direction the >modern world is headed. Blessed Unrest is a description of >humanity's collective genius and the unstoppable movement to >re-imagine our relationship to the environment and one another. Like >Hawken's previous books, Blessed Unrest will become a classic in its >field- a touchstone for anyone concerned about our future." > >I'm not saying things will for sure turn out well, but at least >there is the possibility they will. As Zinn says: > http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm >"In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale >in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I >manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident >not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up >the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is >deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance >of winning." > >And I think the probability of a more life-affirming singularity >(the kind that builds the wondrous and helping Clinic Seed you so >beautifully wrote about) will increases with at least a balance >between big organizations and the grass roots. See: > http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm >"Indeed, one must resist the temptation to make hierarchies into >villains and meshworks into heroes, not only because, as I said, >they are constantly turning into one another, but because in real >life we find only mixtures and hybrids, and the properties of these >cannot be established through theory alone but demand concrete >experimentation." > >But Solar Space Satellites as an economic activity pushes society >back towards a more centralized hierarchical direction, including >creating the risk they can all be shut off at once from a central location. World power consumption is around 15 TW. Say we put in 25 TW of 5 GW power sats over the next 25 years. That's 25,000GW/5GW or 5000 power sats. I can't think of any reason for one company to own them all and many reasons for them to be owned by many companies and countries. As I said, a really big solar flare would take out PV cells, but there is no reason to build them with PV cells anyway. >If you want a distributed wonderful network of health facilities >that lead to clinic seeds, you can just start working on that right >now. :-) You already painted the big picture; you could start >simulating and releasing source on sourceforge or the Bazaar under >"clinic seed" and maybe people like Bryan might help? (I can't speak >for him, but obviously he shares that interest). Or you could help >along one of the other free and open source medical projects. I think I need to work on making my writing a bit more obvious. >Anyway, that might help realize that part of your vision a little >sooner than SPS systems. If we don't solve the energy problem, my vision of the future is more like a nightmare. http://www.csiro.au/files/files/plje.pdf Keith >--Paul Fernhout >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Nov 22 18:25:56 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:25:56 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Re.: celtic woman In-Reply-To: <4928455A.4030908@lineone.net> References: <4928455A.4030908@lineone.net> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081122121454.023a90c0@satx.rr.com> At 05:46 PM 11/22/2008 +0000, Ben wrote: > From the sound of the posts on this, i was expecting something with > the looks of the Suicide Girls and the sounds of Led Zeppelin. My > expectations were not met. Fwiw, my comment about transhumanists in action at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdxRmcgsKDQ was a shorthand way of pointing to a combination of rapturous song with the swooping, soaring, almost supernatural skating that, for me, emulated dancing in low gravity, or maybe enhanced, powered >H bodies. The actual choreography seems to me fairly banal, even coarsely vulgar, but the sheer physical grace of the man and woman skating seems almost to transcend ordinary human capacities--the apparent *effortlessness* of it. Damien Broderick From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Nov 22 19:27:35 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:27:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Invitation to Amara Grap's Virtual Baby Shower - 12/14/08 In-Reply-To: <2DE246320E1C44348FBEF7BF04E04D06@DFC68LF1> References: <2DE246320E1C44348FBEF7BF04E04D06@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <2d6187670811221127p6af4f25esc3ed2496c8dc45ad@mail.gmail.com> Wonderful news! I will do my best to attend. Long life and happiness to Amara and her child! John : ) On 11/22/08, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > Greetings. > > Giulio Prisco and I cordially invite you to baby shower for Amara Graps to > be held in Second Life on December 14, 2008. Please go to > http://www.transhumanist.biz/amarababyshower.htm > > Hope to see you on December 14th. > > best wishes, > > Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More > > From hkhenson at rogers.com Sat Nov 22 20:25:56 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 13:25:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (limited time?) In-Reply-To: <492817EA.3090807@kurtz-fernhout.com> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <492817EA.3090807@kurtz-fernhout.com> Message-ID: <1227385874_51390@s8.cableone.net> At 07:32 AM 11/22/2008, Paul wrote: >hkhenson wrote: >>I am not even discussing space habitats when talking about power >>sats in the current mode where all the parts have to come up from the earth. >>There might be a few, perhaps even up to a thousand, people in GEO >>monitoring the equipment that's turning out power sats but this >>isn't what O'Neill had in mind. I frankly don't think there will >>be any serious human habitation of space this side of the >>singularity and after that who knows? In any case, humans as we >>know them will not be in charge. > >OK, now I see where you are coming from. I had not understood that. >Thanks for clarifying that. People move on to new things now and >then. And sometimes they don't. Both are important at various times >in our lives. :-) > >I've cared about space habitation since before I was ten About the same age for me when my mom read me "Farmer in the Sky," something she bitterly regretted in later years. (She never approved of L5 etc.) >(probably no doubt in part indirectly due to your early efforts. :-) >The possibilities of expansion into space is central to my views on >the world (for good or bad), even as I have integrated that with >ideas for sustainability on Earth. Space habitation I feel for sure >is possible, as is making Bucky Fuller's "Spaceship Earth" work for >everyone pretty much as it is. The singularity is a big unknown, we >agree. But, we also don't know what role space habitation or an >effort towards space habitation will play either. We don't know what >role a positive vision of human life on Earth and in the universe >may play in getting us a happier singularity. Which way do you want >to bet if there are unknowns? :-) > >>>There are a lot of good reasons to develop space habitations. Cheap energy >>>beamed back to Earth in the short term is not one of them IMHO. >>Cheap energy beamed back to earth and used for such things as >>making synthetic fuel out of water and carbon dioxide is a good >>reason to develop space based solar power. > >It might well be. > >There is still the launch costs and hardware costs and such. >Whatever hardware you put in space, it could get, with weather >effects and the earth's day and night cycle, only about six times >more power in space than on Earth (unless you exploit some important >aspect of space, like mylar mirrors). But the cost and uncertainty >of launching satellites and maintaining it are potentially huge. >Also, again it requires a large capital investment in a coordinated >way. Which means it is high risk. People can put up solar panels >today on their own house. Maybe it is not cost effective yet in many >places, but if you look at the trends it is growing more and more >cost effective for more and more people. There are parametric cost reasons to think it will never be cost effective, at least not this side of nanotech. The budget for power sats works out thus, $200/kW for the rectenna, $200/kW for the power sat parts and $400 for lift and construction. With an estimate of 4kg/kW, that requires the lift cost to GEO to be down into the $100/kg range. If we had the cable, a moving cable space elevator would probably get the cost down in the range of $10/kg. Unfortunately we don't. But as of this year there seems to be two methods, both starting with relatively low performance rockets, that look like they will meet this requirement. (High performance rockets, like going to LEO, are exponentially more costly as you go up in delta V.) See the web site. >>They may be a good idea, but there simply isn't time for them to happen >>before the singularity. > >We just don't know -- that's the nature of the singularity. In detail no. However, we can get there either of two ways, nanotech will do to reverse engineer brains, and strong AI should be well up to the task of designing nanotech. Given the onward march of technology, I can't see this failing to happen by 2100. I don't even see it holding out past mid century and could be even closer. If I were confident it was within 5 years I wouldn't worry about energy, we could get that far without a massive die off. But if it holds off to mid century, we are in a world of hurt without power from space--or some other really massive source of energy. >So, we can ask ourselves what do we want as a vision of the future? >Do we want to batten down the hatches and assume social collapse, >and perhaps in making that assumption cause one? Or do we want to >remain optimistic that endless possibilities await and continue to >do things we think are productive? > >And if life is *already* a simulation, then how do we want to live >it anyway? :-) > >We have no proof that strong (independent or swarm robotic) nanotech >of the type Drexler suggests will ever exist. Thermal effects may >render it infeasible or unstable (the heat dissipation required for >that much coordinated communications and action). Nature has had at >least billions of years to refine cellular machinery, perhaps >billions more if it came from outside the solar system, and perhaps >even longer than that if our ideas about the universe are wrong. And >in all that time, nature missed something completely obvious that >would spread across the universe? > >While I have little proof (beyond a gut feeling from graduate >studies in Ecology and Evolution), I'm more of the opinion that the >energetics of cells is about as good as it will ever be. That the >replication times are the same no matter how you build them. That >the biological world with a complex ecology is a tough place to >survive for cells and we are not going to see some super stand-alone >nanotech any time soon, even though we may see lots of nanomaterials >or artifacts assembled on the nanoscale. Now, this does not mean we >cannot wipe ourselves out with plagues -- I'm just talking about >something appearing that is somehow way "better" than bacteria >optimized over billions of years (bacteria essentially form a >worldwide supercomputer exchanging genetic information across the >globe in days or weeks). > >But neither of us can be sure. > >Let's say nature has missed something and strong nanotech is around >the corner like in your story. We still don't know what will happen >or when or how other events will shape it. Why abandon the simplest >way to get some diversity of living spaces and a diversity of ideas >of how to approach things as space habitats? I would be working on space habitats if I thought there was any chance of them happening pre singularity. I simply don't. If we set up to build 500-1000 GW of new power sats a year, a side effect would have a significant number of people working (and living) in space. If we build the power sats out of Invar, perhaps the most sensible material, then the nickel mines on earth get exhausted. Perhaps if that happens someone will remember that nickel is a major part of some asteroids and dedicate a power sat mass (10,000t) to go mining asteroids. But these generate construction housing and mining camp housing not O'Neill habitats. Sorry. >The image of Earth from space has had a profoundly positive effect >on our society, an effect so large it was IMHO worth a thousand >times the cost of the space program just by itself: >http://www.spacetoday.org/images/SolSys/Earth/EarthBlueMarbleWestTerraSat.jpg >What else might we get by cooperatively reaching for more? > >In my opinion, if the singularity is a mirror of who we are (or want >to be), then we should think hard on that. > "What is the Mirror of Erised?" > http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-mirror-of-erised.htm > >>I understand your points, but consider them to be way out of >>date. Time marches on and the future isn't what it used to be. Sorry. > >If I'm arguing so strongly for emphasizing space habitations over >SPS, think of it only as an echo from your previous successes. :-) > >Maybe you are right and will succeed at SPS systems as well. Time >will tell. Thanks for the reply. > >Best of luck with your projects. And as I said before, when we get >into space in a big way, and build those space habitats (O'Neill, >Savage, Bernal, whatever design :-) we're going to need solar space >satellites. So, technologically I think solar space satellites are a >good idea and well worth designing and testing. It's more an issue >of which way the microwaves are to be beamed -- towards Earth or >towards space habitations. :-) If you build a habitat, you connect it to the power plant with 99% efficient _wires_ not a 50% efficient heavy and expensive microwave system. >Anyway, sorry to take up so much list bandwidth on this topic. Not a problem, the subject has to be reviewed once in while for new people anyway. And as you can see there have been big conceptional jumps this year. Keith >--Paul Fernhout >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sat Nov 22 22:33:41 2008 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 14:33:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (limited time?) Message-ID: <279466.45593.qm@web65611.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 11/21/08, hkhenson wrote: > There *is* no long term future. I don't expect > physical state humans > to exist long after the singularity and that's > extremely likely to > happen before the end of the century. The reasoning is so > twisted > that I had to resort to fiction to get the ideas across. > Many on > this list have read "the clinic seed." The > reason to go after power > sats built entirely from the ground is to prevent famines > and > resource wars before the singularity. I think that war on an unprecedented scale is far more likely than the singularity within the next twenty years unless alternative energy sources replace the majority of our fossil fuel usage within ten to fifteen years. I plan to do my best to make this happen because I see no long-term future for *this* civilization otherwise. I doubt the singularity will be achievable after the massive disruption to the infrastructure and extravagent resource depletion caused by a war between super powers even in the absence of catastrophic climate change. Moore's Law is contingent on a semiconductor industry that needs plenty of energy and access to raw materials. Nobody is going to think about funding AI development, chip manufacture, or nanotechnology when diesel is $25 per gallon and they are starving. They will instead be entertaining atavistic thoughts of murdering and looting their neighbors. On the bright side, barring complete breakdown of the ecosystem by nukes or asteroid, small pockets of humans may survive in isolated regions and after a dark ages lasting only a few centuries, we may have another shot at the singularity. I wish I could be more optimistic but we have wasted nearly a decade moving away from progress and now our economic engine is sputtering. This is the danger of being governed by very short-sighted concepts of profit, effectiveness, and consequence; a chronic condition of unplanned responses to emergencies instead of a deliberate movement towards something of lasting worth. Stuart LaForge "It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision." - Helen Keller From dharris234 at mindspring.com Sat Nov 22 23:20:23 2008 From: dharris234 at mindspring.com (David C. Harris) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 15:20:23 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Invitation to Amara Grap's Virtual Baby Shower - 12/14/08 In-Reply-To: <2DE246320E1C44348FBEF7BF04E04D06@DFC68LF1> References: <2DE246320E1C44348FBEF7BF04E04D06@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <492893B7.7090507@mindspring.com> That's great to see, mainly because it implies Amara's pregnancy is progressing successfully, and partly because it gives me a worthwhile reason to learn how to use Second Life. And there is even a cute double meaning to "Amara's having a Second Life celebration". :-) - David Harris Natasha Vita-More wrote: > Greetings. > > Giulio Prisco and I cordially invite you to baby shower for Amara > Graps to be held in Second Life on December 14, 2008. Please go to > http://www.transhumanist.biz/amarababyshower.htm From santostasigio at yahoo.com Sat Nov 22 23:31:09 2008 From: santostasigio at yahoo.com (giovanni santost) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 15:31:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Estonian baby connection In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <841349.7769.qm@web31307.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hi Amara, I just noticed from your blog page that your baby was conceived in Estonia. My first son was born in Estonia ! That is very interesting. Your hospital seems so much nice than the one in which my son was born (13 years ago). Estonia seems to have progressed a lot in the meanwhile. Why did you choose Estonia if I can ask? In my case I married an Estonian girl (we are divorced now) here in the USA and we went to Tallinn to have the baby. Best wishes for you and your baby. Giovanni P.S. I'm teaching a class on "Solar System Exploration and Search for Life in the Universe" next semester. It is the first time we offer this class. Can I ask some suggestions for the course? Did you article on Scientific American come out yet? --- On Wed, 8/20/08, Amara Graps wrote: From: Amara Graps Subject: [ExI] Human extinction To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Date: Wednesday, August 20, 2008, 3:35 PM Dear Jeff, Jeff Davis jrd1415 at gmail.com : >I have a Buddha in my garden. He reposes in iconic serenity beneath >the happiest lace-leaf maple you could ever hope to see, with a little >gargoyle buddy at his feet. I get a warm feeling every time I look at >him. Which, of course, is the point. Ah hah! I have a garden statue: Mr. Happy Buddha in my back yard. He travelled with garden statue: Mr. Dragon from the S.F. Bay Area to Bammental to Heidelberg to Frascati to Boulder and could probably use a paint job after these 10 years, but he's still laughing. His laughter indicates that his travels couldn't have been too bad, with the exception of one incident [1]. The two companions (Mr. Happy Buddha and Mr. Dragon) might be happier under a maple tree like yours, but I didn't plant anything in my back yard last Spring because I was sleeping my first trimester away. Plus I haven't invested in garden tools yet because I need to buy more light fixtures that work on the US power system first. So my backyard is a chaos of weeds and tree-lets demonstrating that life has a propensity to grow anywhere. 'Myrtle the yogini' (last time I saw her, she had her foot next to her head) would be pleased to receive your partner's knitted creation. She'll be born in the winter hibernation period, but I doubt she'll be hibernating much after she appears in this universe. Thank you so much for thinking of us. :-) Amara Reference [1] from my travel log: "Greetings from Frascati ...!", 21 Februrary 2003 "The Move from Heidelberg, Germany to Frascati, Italy" [...] The weather was cold, with snow still on the ground from the previous snow. On the day of my move pickup, January 13, a large snowfall hit Heidelberg. The snow didn't stop falling during the 4 hours that it took to load the truck. And as with the move from La Honda, California, I got a lump in my throat to watch the movers close my life in a crate(s) and nail it shut. (four crates total) The most memorable event in those three days (Jan 10-12) was my struggle with "Mr. Happy Buddha". Who is that? He is one of my garden statues (the other is "Mr. Dragon") that I've had since about 1991, always keeping them nearby to my home window when I lived in places without a garden. Mr. Happy Buddha is a happy reminder of the good parts of life, then he gained an additional personality when Larry Grey died. Larry had a key role in my decision to follow the scientific path that I'm on now, in addition to being like a loving family member. Since my Buddha looks like Larry, when I see Mr. Budhha, I'm reminded of him. My struggle with Mr. Happy Buddha began at about 9:30pm the evening of January 12. I remembered that I had to retrieve him from the planter outside of my window where he had been meditating under a bush for the last 2.5 years. Those of you who heard me complain about the persistent Germany rain last year now might guess that Mr. Buddha sunk a little in the dirt during this time and you would be right. Not only sinking, but the cold winter gave Mr. Buddha a thick ice perch, rooting him solidly in the soil. He didn't want to budge. My first dousing of his ice perch with a kettle of boiling water didn't loosen the grip. However a steady chipping away at the ice with an an ice pick did the job ... after an hour. By eleven p.m. he came free, but not before I attracted the attention of my neighbor, who saw me doing something strange in the bushes that late night as she walked her dog. She came to inquire what I was doing, and when she saw the dilemma, she went inside her home to bring a kettle of boiling water to douse Mr. Happy Buddha too. When she returned with the kettle, Mr. Budda was free, and I was trying to wash off the muddy ice and warm myself at the same time. I was freezing! We both then finished cleaning him up and I returned inside to continue packing my flat. (I finished packing 15 minutes before the movers arrived at 9am.) [...] -- Amara Graps, PhD www.amara.com Research Scientist, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com Sun Nov 23 00:32:36 2008 From: pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com (Paul D. Fernhout) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:32:36 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (Clinic Seed & a diverse future) In-Reply-To: <1227376253_50024@S3.cableone.net> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <49280E2D.7010607@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227376253_50024@S3.cableone.net> Message-ID: <4928A4A4.8090707@kurtz-fernhout.com> hkhenson wrote: > At 06:50 AM 11/22/2008, you wrote: >> hkhenson wrote: >> Anyway, an assumption of famine and resource wars is just that -- a >> possible assumption. > > Given *current* technology, i.e., no nanotech, then the consequences of > running low on energy are gigadeath. We burn huge amounts of energy to > grow and distribute food. The existing population is not sustainable > without a huge replacement energy source. Agriculture needs to change, agreed. But how it changes is subject to discussion of alternatives. I used to help run an organic farm certification program in the 1980s in New Jersey for a time. Among other reasons, I thought an important aspect of space habitation was agriculture, so I wanted to learn about that, and who wants to go spraying conventional pesticides around a small habitat? :-) So I know there are lots of alternatives here right now which are kept at bay by our economic system and how it subsidizes or promotes centralized products. Maybe cheap transport costs lets us choose to have long supply lines to bring lettuce from California to New Jersey instead of buying local produce in season. But if people in New Jersey don't have lettuce after "peak oil", that is not from any lack of people who know how to grow lettuce in a reasonably sustainable way in New Jersey and who desperately want to do so (but have been limited by land prices driven by speculation and a playing field tilted by fossil fuel subsidies). New Jersey is full of people who love to farm and garden. They just don't get a chance to do it. Out of that experience came the idea of writing a (free) garden simulator to help everyone learn to grow their own food in a sustainable way. My wife and I put six person-years of effort (or more) into it in the 1990s. It's not perfect, but it's a start. http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/ Sometimes it turns out that conventional farms converted to subdivisions actually produce more food from intensive gardens. :-) A lot of people like to garden, it is arguably the biggest single outdoor recreational activity in the USA. Wes Jackson of the Lands Institute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wes_Jackson has worked for years towards ideas of no or low till perennial grains in the plains. Then there are also "permaculture" ideas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture There is the legacy of the New Alchemy Institute and its successors: http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/DO_JohnTodd.html "From the very outset, we saw all of science as a kind of pigment in this great canvas we hoped to be able to paint. This canvas had to do with reintegrating society into a genuine partnership with nature. I was a young college professor, promoted too quickly, still in my twenties, to associate dean of 19,000 students. I was made the head of this new Center for Environmental Studies and I was realizing that a university department, for example, wasn't going to change the paradigms. We were talking about fundamental change. At the time, Nancy Todd, who co-founded New Alchemy Institute with me, and Bill McLarney, a third co-founder, and I, were very taken with the notion that most of the way society goes to try and improve a bad situation is basically to work on the coefficient's structure of the system alone. Through our friendship with people like Gregory Bateson, we realized that, technologically, we're a completely addicted society. Let's say that we're addicted to internal combustion -- the way we would solve the problem of using too much gas is to make it more efficient. But there was nothing in the society that would allow us to ask the fundamental question, "How would we get around?" The same was true of food production -- using too much energy from halfway around the globe, or simply poisoning the hell out of the planet. So to make things better, people were saying, "Well, maybe we should use lower impact strategies." But no one was asking the question, "Is the way we raise foods -- shuttling food several thousand miles before it ever reaches the table -- does it make sense?" New Alchemy was really begun to go back to first principles. There is another underlying theme, which was borrowed from the teachings of Taoist science, of which I was a student, that is that science not practiced out of a context of sacredness or responsibility was a devil's bargain. If you think about it from that point of view, if science were practiced in that context, nuclear power wouldn't have developed the way it developed. I don't think modern society would have developed the way it has developed. So we had to change the rules. There were all kinds of great minds floating around to which one could turn for inspirations. ... It has been a long journey from the original idea to the sophisticated living machines that we've developed today to provide food, waste treatment, fuels, climate, heating and cooling, architectural integration. All those things that have become possible weren't even visible in the beginning. An enormous amount has happened in this brief span of twenty-two years." Should thousands (even millions) of person-years of work in that direction over the last few decades by a variety of people just be dismissed? There are lots of solutions to these issues of global food security that are not so fossil energy intensive -- at the worst involving reduced consumption (but still enough to go around, given all the waste now, including raising meat), and at best producing more higher quality and nutritious food than ever before (including meat if desired) and giving people deeper roots to their land. And then we can talk precision farming and agricultural robots, really high tech stuff. :-) "Huey Dewey And Louie from Silent Running" http://www.jeffbots.com/silentrunning.html Anyway, we've got hundreds of years of coal in the worst case to fuel business as usual. :-( At worst, along with gradually rising cancer rates and increasing respiratory disease worldwide, we relocate a few hundred million very unhappy people due to climate change issue. Sure that will be disruptive and unpleasant, but it is not a "peak oil" apocalypse some talk about. "EVOLUTION" by Michael C. Ruppert http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110706_mcr_evolution.shtml It's just really, really, sad -- that we could not break free of a fossil fuel addiction sooner. From something I posted here, just as one option in the worst case: "On Climate Change vs. the Singularity" http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/183fed4ee1411253 """ Let's use Eric's figure of $1000 per square meter for artificial land on the ocean. Even if maybe these people may someday do it for less: http://seasteading.org/ If people need, say, 1000 square meters of ocean front land per person to be happy and grow most of their own food near the tropics (given the ocean as a playground too), then that's a million dollars a person to build someone land for anyone displaced by climate change. That figure is not that out of line with, say, a "cruise ship condominium", but you'd presumably get more and have lower operating costs with Eric's suggestion: "Cruise ship condos" http://itotd.com/articles/576/cruise-ship-condos/ If global warming leading to sea level rises removes the land from 100 million people, then it would cost 100 trillion dollars to build them all artificial land to live on working from that figure and that assumption. But $100 trillion is only about twice the charitable dollars expected over the next few decades. The global economy itself is about US$60 trillion annually as a gross world product (GWP), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy so that (extreme) cost is about a year and a half of world output, or over 100 years, about 1.5% of world output annually. That's really not that much to pay for the previous benefits of fossil fuels giving us an advanced technical infrastructure if we want to address the cost of pollution with some sense of fairness to the people most directly inconvenienced -- though I would rather have used more solar energy. So clearly, there are enough resources to go around to deal with this issue even in a brute force way of just building new land in the sea the most expensive way we know how. The question is, will everyone worldwide be willing to pay this 1.5% tax going forward for 100 years? Or is there a cheaper way? ... Or if you were going to spend $100 trillion, maybe there are better ways to spend it to bring about abundance for all? I'd suggest free and open source space habitations might be better for most people than ocean habitations (or any place on the surface of a planet) for a variety of reasons I won't go into now, but you could see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_O%27Neill "O?Neill posed the question during an extra seminar he gave to a few of his students: ?Is the surface of a planet really the right place for an expanding technological civilization?? His students? research convinced him that the answer was no." And LUF develops that theme in newer ways. http://lufwiki.pbwiki.com/ So with maybe $100K per person for launch costs with advanced rockets, and the space habitations built for free by self-replicating robots using lunar and asteroidal ore, I'd be saving the world $90 trillion dollars, for maybe a $1 trillion up front investment in OSCOMAK and OpenVirgle and open manufacturing today. :-) Well, if the banks and auto companies and warmongers can put out their hands for trillions of dollars, why not open space manufacturing? :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_manufacturing """ Anyway, yes changing agriculture's use of fossil fuels (and all of industry's use) is a big problem (or opportunity :-), as in dealing with the ongoing consequences of climate change. But it is also a big world with billions of people to help deal with it. There are many people who might actually enjoy the feeling of making ocean habitats or space habitats rather than sitting in front of the TV, if they had a realistic chance to make a difference. Projects like Eric Hunting's "The Millennial Project 2.0" efforts give people that alternative. http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page And that work in part flows from your earlier pioneering efforts with the L5 society. >> We can work to avoid them by efforts on Earth towards sustainability >> that at the same time advance us towards space habitations. >> Also, ask yourself, who do you want making all this stuff? Big corps >> (and their allied big foundations) or the grass roots? > > Do we have any choice? Sure, people make choices all the time in terms of how they spend their spare time. Examples: "Welcome to HobbySpace. the site that will prove to you that everyone can participate in space exploration and development in one way or another. " http://www.hobbyspace.com/ "Welcome to Appropedia: Sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives." http://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia People can be willing to pay more for local produce too, even though it makes little economic sense that local produce should cost more than stuff trucked across the country. > This AI and the other million instances of it wiped the _whole > continent_ clear of humans. The leopard got to sleep in the village. > The humans got what they wanted or were seduced into wanting. Editors > who looked at the story said it could not be sold told me it didn't have > enough violence. I now see your point. Bravo on having me miss it until now (which I guess is part of the point of the story. :-) Still, I guess I've read too much sci-fi where people spent more and more time in a virtual universe (e.g. Hogan's Giant's Novels) to notice that as a completely undesired fact. :-) Also, as a software developer, where a program runs to me is often a bit irrelevant. :-) We retire old hardware all the time -- if the Earth is obsolete compared to virtually, so what? I'm not saying it will be, I'm just saying maybe it does not make a huge difference. And of course that leads into a lot of philosophical issues like discussed here previously. (For the record, I would think the Earth would hold it's value as a "sacred" place.) Still, I did look at this "clinic seed" situation from a data security perspective (among other perspectives). A good related news group: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.risks/topics Typical IT security questions these days: "Where do you want your programs running? Do you want them in the "cloud", or do you want them on hardware you physically control to some higher degree and then you take responsibility for availability?" So, if villagers did not ask those questions themselves, there are millions of Information Technology professional even now who could ask for them. Just because strong nanotech is involved does not mean these IT questions go away -- data security, physical security, experienced operators, financial stability, redundant access to network connections, backup power, fire suppression, and so on. All the things I look for in choosing a web host, for example. The whole world just forgets about this? What about even an archive of this web page: (Not that I'm a big Gartner fan, but it shows that even *they* get it...) "Gartner: Seven cloud-computing security risks" http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/07/02/Gartner_Seven_cloudcomputing_security_risks_1.html """ Here are seven of the specific security issues Gartner says customers should raise with vendors before selecting a cloud vendor. 1. Privileged user access. 2. Regulatory compliance. 3. Data location. 4. Data segregation. 5. Recovery. 6. Investigative support. 7. Long-term viability. """ That's part of the issue of any story -- an author can usually only focus on one or two key variables. Sure if Bill Gates springs Vista Cloud 10.0 on an unsuspecting world, maybe he would get away with this. I just don't see in happening socially if change comes mostly incrementally, sorry. Still, it is true that agriculture is more a monoculture that I would like, but again that is for scarcity-related economic forces, not post-scarcity opportunities. Maybe the "clinic seed" scenario might happen to a few extremely isolated villagers, perhaps, if there are any anymore. But you've crafted the situation to do that -- like a twilight zone episode asking how do people react to the prospect of abundance from an unknown party with no way of verifying their intentions? Here is one of my Twilight Zone favorites: "The Twilight Zone: The Hunt" http://www.tv.com/the-twilight-zone/the-hunt/episode/12669/recap.html?tag=overview;recap "Hyder starts to enter but the Gatekeeper informs him that people are only allowed in people heaven and Rip has to go to dog heaven. Hyder refuses to go without his dog, even after the Gatekeeper offers to slip Rip through the gate later." He walks on. :-) This ties in with the earlier discussion here on "Online social groups" referencing Shirky: "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy " http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html "Now you could ask whether or not the founders' inability to defend themselves from this onslaught, from being overrun, was a technical or a social problem. Did the software not allow the problem to be solved? Or was it the social configuration of the group that founded it, where they simply couldn't stomach the idea of adding censorship to protect their system. But in a way, it doesn't matter, because technical and social issues are deeply intertwined. There's no way to completely separate them." But what the "Clinic Seed" does is exactly separate the social from the technical. That does not make it a bad story (I wish I could write fiction that well) since for example it prompts this discussion. That is just the space it explores -- what if we separate a technology from a society for a time and then bring them back together again through a mysterious stranger? It's an interesting question, but is it really what most people face approaching the singularity? And if it is, then how can we maybe change it by developing more open systems? > If we don't solve the energy problem, my vision of the future is more > like a nightmare. http://www.csiro.au/files/files/plje.pdf After reading your story and comments on it, and having read Vinge's "A Fire upon the Deep" years ago, I was a little nervous downloading any documents from anybody. :-) Guess I find out how well written the virtual machine is on my computer that interprets the pdf data. :-) I should keep the Skrode maintenance port blocked though, just in case. :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep (spoilers) Again, a data security risk of everyday life on the internet, as we weigh possible risk versus potential reward. :-) All computer simulations or other models are based on assumptions. That report's conclusions (which from skimming and seeing similar reports seems to ignore making technological capacity and innovation increase in proportion to population, and thus Julian Simon's point about "The Ultimate Resource") are directly opposite these reports on what is actually going on: "Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUwS1uAdUcI "Hans Rosling: Watch the end of poverty" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpKbO6O3O3M This is doctor who studies hunger in Africa. So he has been out trying to care exactly for the people you write about in "The Clinic Seed -- Africa". Why should he be misleading people about an optimistic future for Africa and other poor countries based on the trends of the real data? I can think of some reasons, but the trends he describes hold up with my own thoughts and experiences in relation to technological development and Julian Simon's theories about price feedback for scarce items in classical economics. http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/ (Not that I agree with everything he writes. :-) I'm trying to interpret what you write in terms of "Practical Optimism". :-) http://www.extropy.org/principles.htm I guess I am seeing that optimism can be interpreted from different perspectives -- I'm optimistic that resource issues are manageable on Earth in the near (pre-singularity) term with things we already know, you are optimistic they are manageable with deploying solar space satellites. So, we're both optimists in that sense, just about different things. :-) Anyway, to the extent you put your solar space satellite plans under free and open source licenses, people can collaborate on improving them however they are used down the road. That itself is a decision point, I feel, about what sort of singularity we want to have -- how much we build what surrounds it from a scarcity world view or a post-scarcity worldview. Still, we are deeply embedded in an economic system built around rationing and scarcity assumptions, so it is hard to do any new ventures without taking that into account. --Paul Fernhout From pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com Sun Nov 23 00:53:22 2008 From: pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com (Paul D. Fernhout) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:53:22 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (alternatives) In-Reply-To: <49280973.8030608@kurtz-fernhout.com> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <49280973.8030608@kurtz-fernhout.com> Message-ID: <4928A982.9020804@kurtz-fernhout.com> CORRECTION: Just for the record, this section below contains a mathematical decimal point shift error -- I thought somehow it was a little too good to be true. :-) It doesn't change my overall point though. I calculated "three hundred thousand square miles is devoted to roads" when that should be "thirty thousand square miles" (about, using the rounded 1% figure of about three million total square miles in the USA). In turn that means that roadways *only* :-) provide about ten times the area we need to produce all our power in the USA from photovoltaics, not one hundred times as I had written. A hazard of staying up too late, sorry. In turn, the USA would have to cover about 50% of US roadways to power the planet (perhaps making liquid fuels and exporting it via tankers? :-) That amount is still only 0.1% of the total USA land area. Other related calculations: http://www.naturestudy.org/ "If the entire state of Arizona were covered by PV facilities, enough electricity would be produced for 110 billion people domestic electrical use, or the equivalent of the number of people on 18 Earths! We could invite 17 other planets to come and buy our electrical energy. ... Why isn?t the United States pursuing this kind of energy production? It a good question, for which I have struggled to find answers. Environmental economists only tell me that the conventional wisdom is that solar will never be more than a minor player in the energy game. Is it just a mind-set that is holding us back? ..." Anyway, while the scale of the energy problem is use, so is the scale of the benefits of doing something about it, and so is the scale of the country itself and all the resources 300 million people in the USA can do (let alone the rest of the world). And that potential is so huge, even a slipped decimal point or two either way still shows it. --Paul Fernhout Paul D. Fernhout wrote: > The area taken up by roadways is enough to power those systems by sunlight. > From: > http://www.vtpi.org/tca/tca0507.pdf > "The table below shows one estimate of the total amount of land devoted > to roads. It indicates that in the U.S. more than 13 thousand square > miles of land is paved for roads (about 0.4% of continental U.S.), and > more than 20 thousand square miles is devoted to road rights of way > (about 0.7% of continental U.S.)." > > So, I'll be sloppy here and say 1% to make my math easier after staying > up all night to work on this. :-) From: > http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html > "Land area, 2000 (square miles) 3,537,438.44" > > So, about in the > USA. > > From: > http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/solar-panels-by-the-square-mile-in-california/ > > "Matthew Wald has just written a news article showing the power of a > guaranteed market to bring about large-scale construction of energy > technologies that currently cannot compete with the status quo. Two > photovoltaic power plants, in essence, are going to be built in > California, covering a total of 12.5 square miles and amounting to 800 > megawatts of generating capacity (although remember that the peak is > only hit for a small portion of the day)." > > Divide by ten for the peak effect to get an average. So, that's about > 1000 megawatts (a gigawatt) per square mile for a currently installable > installation. So, by putting solar installations over all the roads and > right of ways in the USA, that would produce about three hundred > thousand gigawatts of power continuously. That is about three hundred > terrawatts. > > Here it says: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_use_in_the_United_States > "The United States is the largest energy consumer in terms of total use, > using 100 quadrillion BTU (105 exajoules, or 29000 TWh) in 2005, > equivalent to an (average) consumption rate of 3.3 TW." > > So, we have, just from roadways, one hundred times as much land area as > we need to be all solar. Sure it's a big task, but it's a big country. > http://apolloalliance.org/ > > And I'm not even considering that something like 1% or so of the USA (I > forget the exact figure) is also already devoted to energy production > and fossil fuel mining and so on... :-) > > So then the argument will devolve into discussing batteries and other > storage systems. But would anyone who proposes strong nanotech also then > suggest we can't make a better battery if we try? We either get good at > making things or we don't. And we have hundreds of years of coal to last > us until then (not that I think we should burn anymore of it than we > have to, for the pollution costs). > > Manufacturing is harder, but still possible, to figure out all the > rooftop area. But the roadways can produce 100X what we need, so let's > just use 1% of them for everything. In fact, if we use only 5% or so of > the USA roadways, and had a superconducting grid, we can power the > *planet*. Isn't sustainable energy production worth devoting at least a > small fraction of the land we devote to transportation? > > However, as I said originally, maintaining a grid is expensive, so local > solar will drive out the grid eventually. > > From: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption > "In 2005, total worldwide energy consumption was 500 EJ (= 5 x 1020 J) > (or 138,900 TWh) with 86.5% derived from the combustion of fossil fuels, > although there is at least 10% uncertainty in that figure.[1] This is > equivalent to an average energy consumption rate of 15 TW (= 1.5 x 1013 > W). ... . For the whole Earth, with a cross section of 127,400,000 km?, > the total energy rate is 1.740?1017 W, plus or minus 3.5%. This 174 PW > is the total rate of solar energy received by the planet; about half, 89 > PW, reaches the earth's surface." > > So, humanity uses 15TW (much as heat) and the sun provides 174,000TW, or > about 10,000 times what we use now. We have to be *really* bad engineers > if we can't make that work, even if our energy needs go up by a factor > of ten. But chances are they won't any time soon. > > Maybe I made a mistake somewhere and missed a decimal or two, but over > and over you can find people saying similar things -- there is plenty of > energy producing potential from renewables. > > And my point is mainly that millions of people are working right now > towards that end. So, regardless of whether solar space satellites go > up, we will see enormous progress towards renewables. Even Google is > putting a lot of money into it: > http://www.google.com/corporate/green/energy/ > "Clean and affordable energy is a growing need for our company, so we?re > excited about launching RE develop electricity from renewable sources cheaper than electricity > produced > from coal. Initially, this project to create renewable energy cheaper than > coal will focus on advanced solar thermal power, wind power technologies, > and enhanced geothermal systems ? but we?ll explore other potential > breakthrough technologies too." > > And here is the deeper issue -- we are arguing here over renewable > energy prospects, not the best way to make space habitation happen. From pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com Sun Nov 23 01:21:52 2008 From: pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com (Paul D. Fernhout) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 20:21:52 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (limited time?) In-Reply-To: <1227385874_51390@s8.cableone.net> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <492817EA.3090807@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227385874_51390@s8.cableone.net> Message-ID: <4928B030.3000900@kurtz-fernhout.com> hkhenson wrote: > At 07:32 AM 11/22/2008, Paul wrote: >> Let's say nature has missed something and strong nanotech is around >> the corner like in your story. We still don't know what will happen or >> when or how other events will shape it. Why abandon the simplest way >> to get some diversity of living spaces and a diversity of ideas of how >> to approach things as space habitats? > > I would be working on space habitats if I thought there was any chance > of them happening pre singularity. I simply don't. If we set up to > build 500-1000 GW of new power sats a year, a side effect would have a > significant number of people working (and living) in space. If we build > the power sats out of Invar, perhaps the most sensible material, then > the nickel mines on earth get exhausted. Perhaps if that happens > someone will remember that nickel is a major part of some asteroids and > dedicate a power sat mass (10,000t) to go mining asteroids. But these > generate construction housing and mining camp housing not O'Neill > habitats. Sorry. Keith- This is perhaps the heart of our different perspectives. I don't begrudge you being skeptical -- you, if anyone, have more than earned that right. :-) Well, maybe you be less skeptical in a couple of years about whether space habitats are possible pre-singularity if I and others show some significant progress? :-) I might make that my short term goal over the next three years, to reprise this topic on this list in three years time, and to try to show enough progress (in terms of related free and open source designs and simulations and content and collaborations) to convince you to reevaluate your position on this topic. I could put the progress in a place like one of these: http://www.openvirgle.net/ http://www.oscomak.net/ http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing (Although, as I have said on those lists, I see sustainability on Earth and the development of space habitations as interwoven, so any progress will likely be interwoven in that way too.) Thanks again for the discussions. --Paul Fernhout From hkhenson at rogers.com Sun Nov 23 01:04:38 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 18:04:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [Bulk] Re: Thoughts on Space based solar power (alternatives) In-Reply-To: <49280973.8030608@kurtz-fernhout.com> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <49280973.8030608@kurtz-fernhout.com> Message-ID: <1227402595_51557@s1.cableone.net> At 06:30 AM 11/22/2008, Paul wrote: >hkhenson wrote: >>You are just wrong on these points. There is >>*no* source or combination of sources on earth that will replace fossil fuels. > >Can you provide any evidence to support this >point? It's also hard or impossible to prove a negative. http://www.drmillslmu.com/peakoil.htm One of many quotes on point: I was a firm believer in solar, wind, and geothermal energy until a few years ago, and I still believe they will help individuals. But no combination of these "renewable" technologies will make a notable difference at the level of 300 million Americans, much less the 6.5 billion people in the world. ...No alternatives scale, and we're out of time. We made the important decision about energy policy at two critical junctures in American history: (1) shortly after WWII, when we created the interstate highway system and the suburbs to build a way of life that had no future because it relied completely on ready supplies of a finite resource, and (2) in 1980, when we dismissed conservation at irrelevant..." -- Professor Guy McPherson (see this link) snip >However, as I said originally, maintaining a >grid is expensive, so local solar will drive out the grid eventually. So is storage. There are fundamental physical/chemical reasons to believe that storage will always be more expensive than the grid. My local electric bill is broken down in about 20 classes which means nothing to a non-engineer/economist. I don't get a lot out of it myself, but cost of the grid is about $20/month. Call it $240 a year. How much storage battery can you buy for that? If you could make a case for putting in solar panels and ton or so of battery, I presume you would. >From: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption >"In 2005, total worldwide energy consumption was >500 EJ (= 5 x 1020 J) (or 138,900 TWh) with >86.5% derived from the combustion of fossil >fuels, although there is at least 10% >uncertainty in that figure.[1] This is >equivalent to an average energy consumption rate >of 15 TW (= 1.5 x 1013 W). ... . For the whole >Earth, with a cross section of 127,400,000 km?, >the total energy rate is 1.740?1017 W, plus or >minus 3.5%. This 174 PW is the total rate of >solar energy received by the planet; about half, >89 PW, reaches the earth's surface." > >So, humanity uses 15TW (much as heat) and the >sun provides 174,000TW, or about 10,000 times >what we use now. We have to be *really* bad >engineers if we can't make that work, even if >our energy needs go up by a factor of ten. But >chances are they won't any time soon. > >Maybe I made a mistake somewhere and missed a >decimal or two, but over and over you can find >people saying similar things -- there is plenty >of energy producing potential from renewables. So true. But potential has to be made into real, and that's where the rubber hits the road. snip >I live in a somewhat passive solar house (heated >with electric actually, some from hydro, some >from nuclear). We live in a cold climate, but >have lower heating costs than when we lived in a >poorly insulated home with an oil burner. This >house is not even anywhere near what can be >built now. You can build a house that has almost >very low utility bills of any kind for not much >more than a conventional house -- it is only >education and social inertion (and sometimes >poor building codes) that hold it back. And more >and more people are building green. Also, a lot >of people live in cities where heating utility >operation can be consolidated (even for biomass burning or solar thermal heat). You keep going on about houses. How much of your energy use is in your house? How much is in driving a car? How much is in an airline trip? How much in hot water? How about food? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/20/mackay_on_carbon_free_uk/ Keith From pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com Sun Nov 23 02:35:55 2008 From: pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com (Paul D. Fernhout) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 21:35:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Post-scarcity issues (was Re: Thoughts on Space...) In-Reply-To: References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <492808EF.2030401@kurtz-fernhout.com> Message-ID: <4928C18B.4020100@kurtz-fernhout.com> BillK wrote: > Hey, I like the stuff you write! I'll have to start googling for more. :) > Of course I like it because your writing agrees with my prejudices. :) > I have made the occasional comment along much the same lines in the > past, but you have provided a much more detailed argument than I ever > attempted. Thanks. I put some links below too. Here are my thoughts on the way the USA spends a lot of its money: "How to to find the financing to create a "Star Trek" like society" http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/AchievingAStarTrekSociety.html """ This essay shows how a total of $14000 billion up front and at least another $2085 billion per year can be made available for creative investment in the USA by adopting a post-scarcity worldview. This money can help further fund a virtuous cycle of more creative and more cost saving efforts, as well as better education. It calls for the non-profit sector to help shape a new mythology of wealth and to take the lead in getting the average person as well as decision makers to make the shift in worldview to their own long term benefit. ... This essay will consider some major sectors of the US economy in turn and what counter-productive subsidies or waste could be easily trimmed, where the amount freed up is large enough to make an enormous difference in funding for creative, life affirming pursuits. [All figures are ballpark estimates.] ... Let us consider ways to free up money for the non-profit sector (or reducing working hours) by cutting wasteful government and consumer spending in these areas with (annual estimate of easy savings): * Healthcare ($800 billion), * Military ($200 billion), * Prisons ($125 billion), * Agriculture ($40 billion), * Transportation ($250+ billion), * Housing ($350+ billion), * Manufacturing (very variable), * Media (very variable), * Banking ($14000 billion up front, $320 billion annually), and * Education (very variable). ... A common denominator in just about each of these areas is the domination by out-of-date ideologies based on scarcity perspectives and/or the capture of the government regulatory and funding bodies by narrow interests who are afraid of losing out by progressive post-scarcity change (which they fear will leave them impoverished). There is also the issue of some people desiring to continue to have lots of raw power over other people's lives (like that of a master over slaves); frankly I can't address that character flaw other than to point at religious and humanistic traditions of enlarging one's sense of self to include community and world responsibilities (including finding joy in helping the growth of others to be independent decision makers), so I restrict what follows to monetary aspects of the problem. Ultimately though, raw power lust has to be dealt with -- and dealing with that I freely admit will be tougher than the economic aspects of making the case for a post-scarcity worldview. It's been said the hardest order to get soldiers to follow in wartime is to abandon a foxhole in the face of oncoming action. Like a soldier in a foxhole, the US elites in each sector are about to be overrun by the sweeping changes happening in our society as its technological capacity expands exponentially; they will feel safer in their elite foxholes until their positions are completely overrun by changing times, at which point they will have no choice but to be swept up in the global changes. The safer thing IMHO is to abandon that foxhole position sooner rather than later and try to make the system work for everyone now (which of course includes themselves and their children). """ That essay came out of another SSI list post, by coincidence, around the same time as my SPS discussions there, as I thought about possible funding alternatives for space habitats than building Solar Space Satellites. And of course, as Iain Banks says in his Culture novels, "Money is a sign of poverty". So, this dwelling on financing is a bit distracting in some ways. Still, it helps bridge the gap between scarcity and post-scarcity world views. I put up more stuff I wrote on post-scarcity here: "Paul's Post-scarcity Perambulations" http://www.pdfernhout.net/ Especially: "Post-Scarcity Princeton " http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html A key point on economics in there is: "Capitalism is often it seems all about cost cutting. Why do people have such a hard time thinking about what happens as costs approach zero, even for improvements in quality? Or why do economists have a hard time understanding that many conventional economic equations may produce infinities as costs trend towards zero?" Here was my statement of purpose for graduate school, related to developing self-replicating space habitats: "Self-Replicating Space Habitat graduate school purpose and plans from 1988" http://www.pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html A key idea from there as I reflected back on my plans: "The good news is that now, twenty years later, all or most of the hurdles have fallen that otherwise needed leaping before being able to comprehensively design self-replicating space habitats, and all the computer and informational resources I thought I needed then are now available for cheap or free. For example, for only a few thousand dollars, I have the equivalent of an early 1990s supercomputer in my office with terabytes of storage and a high speed color scanner and a network connection and access to Google and Wikipedia and so on. So, what I outlined in the 20th century is more and more doable in the 21st century for less and less cost. So, item 13 (the major goal) is now approachable without needing to do much on the other prerequisite items listed. ... Since I wrote all that, I broadened my approach to focus on systems that had more a balance of self-sufficiency and participation in a network." So, an approaching singularity is indeed making that project more and more feasible. > Just a few comments. > > Re all these trillions the US is spending, I thought the crisis was > due to the US spending money that it doesn't have? These trillions > are all confederate money, printed as required and worthless. The next > few years are going to be thrift years as everybody tries to get > spending back in line with income. As the US gov has got accustomed to > a permanent deficit budget, I expect a big upheaval. On the money supply etc., it is all imaginary, isn't it? Just mostly some numbers in a computer, multiplied in a strange way as what I like to call "Fractional Reserve Electronic Debt" or FRED. :-) A big burst of EMP and bad luck with backups and what do we really have? Just the physical infrastructure and people arguing over historic ownership of physical assets? So the banking crisis is really a crisis of the imagination. :-) Of course, this is not to say imaginary ideas can't have hugh real world effects, whether the Salem Witch trials or those missing WMDs in Iraq. I agree with you about the point on thrift and income and expenses getting back together. Still, one issue is that, unlike when you or I run a deficit, when the USA runs a deficit it can (in theory) devalue the dollar relative to other currencies to get out of it (or have an episode of hyperinflation to reset everything related to long term debts, somewhat like a "jubilee"). There would be various winners and losers then, of course. I'm not saying it's a good idea -- I'm just saying that is one difference of a national debt from a personal debt. In the USA's case, devaluing the dollar (voluntarily or involuntarily) is a way of taxing the world, and that is the special situation the US has been in by having a currency everyone relies on. What is happening in the financial crisis is deeper than about a trillion dollars in questionable mortgage loans (there has been more than enough money allocated for that by the bailout); there are also all these other issues of faith in the dollar and the related monetary system as well, a positive feedback loop of a flight from investments with panic rushing to the exits (which, strangely enough props up the dollar for now as people sell things for cash), and issues about currency fluctuations. There are a lot of long term trends people have been watching like the rise of China, but as with any complex systems, we may see apparent stasis while tiny little movements happen that are not very noticeable and then we get a sudden earthquake. Or singularity. :-) The USA's continual loss of prestige and thought leadership abroad as a slow drip-drip-drip of bad news coming out of the USA and its wars hasn't helped either over the last eight years. Still, all that needs to be offset by the continuous increase in technological capacity in the USA and elsewhere. Computers are about 100X or so faster for the same amount of money as when Bust took office. That change is here to stay. And in eight years, we will see about another 100X. So I feel that change in technological capacity is a lot deeper in its effects than a simple number which economists factor into inflation/deflation figures. So, I feel that those technology changes in a way are propping up the USA's economy, since it is hard to discount a place that is continually improving in obvious ways (let alone not so obvious ones). Of course, the rest of the world is improving its technical infrastructure too, another complexity in evaluating the worth of a dollar. > Re your other tracts, I like the practicality of your discussion. The > people factor is very important in futuristic proposals. The > calculations might be great, but, as you point out, you cannot ignore > everything else that is going on. If the mass of the population are > unpersuaded, then the best idea in the world will get thrown away. So true. For both good and bad sometimes. For example, I myself now feel (and maybe always have felt) we should do space habitats for their own sake -- as an expression of some spirit of humanity, and as a work of art, and maybe even some notion of Gaia giving birth -- not mainly for economic or survival reasons. But what sells something may involve a different emphasis, sadly. That's why I like the idea of doing them as a "professional amateur" "free and open source" hobby. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_amateurs As a labor of love. Just because most of the world doesn't care about them much, why should myself and a few others let that dissuade us from doing what we can towards them as we have the time? As we approach a singularity, there is the prospect of individuals and small groups getting more and more possibilities to create amazing things, just because. I'm reminded of this: http://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/dead-trees/53002.htm ""The guy with the Web site." That's how my friends introduce me at parties. I guess that says something about what a rich, multifaceted, textured personality I've developed by spending 15 out of my 33 years at MIT. Yeah. Anyway, the response from my new acquaintances is invariably the same: "How are you going to make money off your Web site?" ... If they knew I'd splurged for a $5000 Viking stove, they wouldn't ask if I was going to start charging my brunch guests $5 each. If I told them I dropped $20,000 on a Dodge Caravan, they wouldn't ask if I was going to charge my dog $10 for every trip. Web site hosting can cost less than any of these things; why does everyone assume that it has to make money? I did not set up my site to make money. I set up my site so that my friend Michael at Stanford could see the slides I took while driving from Boston to Alaska and back. It turns out that my site has not made money. Yet I do not consider my site a failure. My friend Michael at Stanford can look at my slides anytime ..." --Paul Fernhout From hkhenson at rogers.com Sun Nov 23 03:10:19 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 20:10:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (Clinic Seed & a diverse future) In-Reply-To: <4928A4A4.8090707@kurtz-fernhout.com> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <49280E2D.7010607@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227376253_50024@S3.cableone.net> <4928A4A4.8090707@kurtz-fernhout.com> Message-ID: <1227410137_53756@s2.cableone.net> At 05:32 PM 11/22/2008, Paul wrote: >hkhenson wrote: >>At 06:50 AM 11/22/2008, you wrote: >>>hkhenson wrote: >>>Anyway, an assumption of famine and resource wars is just that -- >>>a possible assumption. >>Given *current* technology, i.e., no nanotech, then the >>consequences of running low on energy are gigadeath. We burn huge >>amounts of energy to grow and distribute food. The existing >>population is not sustainable without a huge replacement energy source. > >Agriculture needs to change, agreed. But how it changes is subject >to discussion of alternatives. > >I used to help run an organic farm certification program in the >1980s in New Jersey for a time. Among other reasons, I thought an >important aspect of space habitation was agriculture, so I wanted to >learn about that, and who wants to go spraying conventional >pesticides around a small habitat? :-) My ex-wife and I wrote the original study of agriculture in a space colony. Why would you have pests? Where would they come from? snip >>This AI and the other million instances of it wiped the _whole >>continent_ clear of humans. The leopard got to sleep in the village. >>The humans got what they wanted or were seduced into >>wanting. Editors who looked at the story said it could not be sold >>told me it didn't have enough violence. > >I now see your point. Bravo on having me miss it until now (which I >guess is part of the point of the story. :-) > >Still, I guess I've read too much sci-fi where people spent more and >more time in a virtual universe (e.g. Hogan's Giant's Novels) to >notice that as a completely undesired fact. :-) Also, as a software >developer, where a program runs to me is often a bit irrelevant. :-) >We retire old hardware all the time -- if the Earth is obsolete >compared to virtually, so what? The AIs in this story are "ethical" in their own ways, ways that were built into their fundamental personalities and many of the copied from evolved humans. One of the decisions the human made years before is that uploading has to be reversible. And the people do go in an out of the simulation often during the early stages. It's just that the simulation gets to be better than the real world. snip Computer security issues have long been solved in this world. >I'm trying to interpret what you write in terms of "Practical Optimism". :-) > http://www.extropy.org/principles.htm >I guess I am seeing that optimism can be interpreted from different >perspectives -- I'm optimistic that resource issues are manageable >on Earth in the near (pre-singularity) term with things we already >know, you are optimistic they are manageable with deploying solar >space satellites. So, we're both optimists in that sense, just about >different things. :-) I am optimistic that there is probably a technical solution or several of them out there. I am not very optimistic about them actually being done, and downright pessimistic about them being done by the US. >Anyway, to the extent you put your solar space satellite plans under >free and open source licenses, people can collaborate on improving them Following the logic and math through the wiki pages seems to be harder than what most people are willing to do. Or perhaps a social group has not yet formed around the concepts where people get support from each other the way they do on open source projects. > however they are used down the road. That itself is a decision > point, I feel, about what sort of singularity we want to have -- > how much we build what surrounds it from a scarcity world view or a > post-scarcity worldview. Still, we are deeply embedded in an > economic system built around rationing and scarcity assumptions, so > it is hard to do any new ventures without taking that into account. You mentioned Clay Shirky. Do you happen to know him? Keith From pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com Sun Nov 23 04:55:11 2008 From: pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com (Paul D. Fernhout) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 23:55:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] [Bulk] Re: Thoughts on Space based solar power (alternatives) In-Reply-To: <1227402595_51557@s1.cableone.net> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <49280973.8030608@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227402595_51557@s1.cableone.net> Message-ID: <4928E22F.7060601@kurtz-fernhout.com> hkhenson wrote: > At 06:30 AM 11/22/2008, Paul wrote: >> hkhenson wrote: > I was a firm believer in solar, wind, and geothermal energy until a few > years ago, and I still believe they will help individuals. But no > combination > of these "renewable" technologies will make a notable difference at the > level of 300 million Americans, much less the 6.5 billion people in the > world. > ...No alternatives scale, and we're out of time. We made the important > decision about energy policy at two critical junctures in American history: > (1) shortly after WWII, when we created the interstate highway system > and the suburbs to build a way of life that had no future because it relied > completely on ready supplies of a finite resource, and (2) in 1980, > when we dismissed conservation at irrelevant..." > -- Professor Guy McPherson What do naysayers prove without some serious calculations about the major alternatives? :-) This proves not very much to me. I gave you a calculation that for less than the surface area we have already paved in the USA we could supply *all* our energy needs with the highest grade power (electricity) even though much of our power is only needed as low grade space and process heat. So clearly we as a society are capable of efforts on this scale since we have done them before (including digging up rocks and spreading crushed gravel and asphalt around to pave thousands of square miles). I have pointed out we have hundreds of years worth of coal (at least in the USA) with which to complete the transition. Why the gloom and doom then? Sure, it may be *painful* up front for some to make the transition, but economically, it saves money within a decade or two. Who benefits by statements like "No alternatives scale,"? What is it about laying out solar panels one by one over 0.1% of the USA that does not scale? That is less area than we already use for energy production. But that is an extreme case -- in practice we are moving to a mix of energy technologies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_development They can complement each other. For example, a home can get 80% of its electric in most months from a smaller set of panels, with the additional power made up by, say, liquid fuels derived from biomass or PV down south. It is one thing to suggest space based solar power (with ground rectennas) might be more cost effective than ground based solar power somehow; it is another to say that ground based solar power can't possibly work on a large scale. >> However, as I said originally, maintaining a grid is expensive, so >> local solar will drive out the grid eventually. > > So is storage. There are fundamental physical/chemical reasons to > believe that storage will always be more expensive than the grid. That is a fair enough rebuttal. So, when the cost of local production and local storage fall below grid access costs, then we will see a stampede off the grid. And utilities will go bankrupt. :-) Since I can project that trend, the utilities should be planning for bankruptcy now. Fortunately for them, the cost of decommissioning the grid may be matched by the resale value of the copper? :-) But, how can one on the one hand talk about strong nanotech doing medical repairs, and on the other thing good batteries won't be cheap soon? In any case, liquid and gaseous energy carriers like methanol or hydrogen make easy ways to store power (but derived from renewable sources). Fuel cells continue to improve all the time, as do simpler systems to simply create and burn hydrogen an a gas. Again, we can talk about cheap diamanoid structures on the one hand but then worry about restraining hydrogen gas on the other? Maybe we need to be clear about our timescales. > My > local electric bill is broken down in about 20 classes which means > nothing to a non-engineer/economist. I don't get a lot out of it > myself, but cost of the grid is about $20/month. That sounds like a monthly service fee independent of the grid portion. > Call it $240 a year. How much storage battery can you buy for that? If > you could make a case for putting in solar panels and ton or so of > battery, I presume you would. I question that fee as low. You could call them I guess and ask. I did that once, as I have trouble making heads or tails out of my electric bill too. :-) Turned out they had just decided to raise everyone's rates 20% or so and were sort of disguising it. :-( > So true. But potential has to be made into real, and that's where the > rubber hits the road. Lots of ongoing activity is documented here: http://www.solarbuzz.com/ Or here: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/home The current headlines from the second link: """ Headline News - Sat Nov 22 21:33:04 CST 2008 Nord/LB Closes Financing on 9-MW Solar Project Wind Energy America Obtains Financing to Complete Minnesota Wind Farm Sputnik Doubles SolarMax S Production Capacity Danotek Motion Technologies Raises US $14.5M DOI, DOE & NPS to Install Solar Systems SunEthanol Raises US $25M for Cellulosic Ethanol Technology """ I don't know what all those mean, but as a random sample it appears to indicates a lot of motion in wind, PV, and biomass stuff. :-) > snip >> I live in a somewhat passive solar house (heated with electric >> actually, some from hydro, some from nuclear). We live in a cold >> climate, but have lower heating costs than when we lived in a poorly >> insulated home with an oil burner. This house is not even anywhere >> near what can be built now. You can build a house that has almost very >> low utility bills of any kind for not much more than a conventional >> house -- it is only education and social inertion (and sometimes poor >> building codes) that hold it back. And more and more people are >> building green. Also, a lot of people live in cities where heating >> utility operation can be consolidated (even for biomass burning or >> solar thermal heat). > > You keep going on about houses. How much of your energy use is in your > house? How much is in driving a car? How much is in an airline trip? > How much in hot water? How about food? > > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/20/mackay_on_carbon_free_uk/ I looked at part of the related book to that link: http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html From a review: http://www.withouthotair.com/JohnPeacock.html "as MacKay says, "I'm not trying to be pro-nuclear. I'm just pro-arithmetic." " In the solar section it reads: "At the start of this book I said I wanted to explore what the laws of physics say about the limits of sustainable energy, assuming money is no object. On those grounds, I should certainly go ahead, industrialize the countryside, and push the PV farm onto the stack. At the same time, I want to help people ?gure out what we should be doing between now and 2050. And today, electricity from solar farms would be four times as expensive as the market rate. So I feel a bit irresponsible as I include this estimate in the sustainable production stack in ?gure 6.9 ? paving 5% of the UK with solar panels seems beyond the bounds of plausibility in so many ways. If we seriously contemplated doing such a thing, it would quite probably be better to put the panels in a two-fold sunnier country and send some of the energy home by power lines." A few issues. First, he admits switching to solar can be done, at four times the price right now. So, there is no "doom and gloom", just pain. And maybe not as much pain as you might think because of hidden external costs of the current system (war, pollution, tax subsidies). Second, he discounts dedicating 5% of the country to energy production. Why? If that's what it takes to have energy forever, why is that too much? Also the UK is an island, why not just float stuff nearby for part of the power? Maybe a way could be developed to have solar panels that absorb only a fraction of the energy coming onto a farm field. And so on. See he just dismisses key information and key possibilities without serious analysis. And to check his figures: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/uk.html "241,590 sq km (93278 mi2) ... Population 60,943,912 " So, using wasteful US energy figures of 10kW per person, that would be 600 million kW needed, or 600,000 megawatts. There is about 100,000 square miles. From our previous figures, we can today produce http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/solar-panels-by-the-square-mile-in-california/ 1000 megawatts per square mile (peak). So we need to get 600,000 megawatts, that would be 600 square miles, except accounting for peak issues, say ten times that, or 6000 square miles. Thats about 6.4% from rounding figures. Or, as he says, about 5%. But, that is with today's cells, that presumably would get smaller with more efficient ones. Here's what it might look like: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/08/15/business/15solar_CA1.ready.html But, a couple issues: http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/land/lduse.htm#ldtb1 About half the land in the UK is devoted to 'grasses and rough grazing". So, for giving up 10% of that land (the worst part) the UK would have perpetual energy. Seems like a good deal isn't it? And if it isn't, about 15% of the UK is alredy urban land or related. So, this is only an expansiot by one third of what has already been taken. And remember, you can still use the land below a solar panel in various ways, if you use it as roofing. Anyway, so even in a difficult case -- the UK -- direct PV solar can still work if people want it to (the Netherlands might be even harder?). And that is a worst case right now in expense and footprint. The real results would be better with a mix of technologies, solar roofs, energy efficiency, solar thermal, and so on. You have a good point to calculate an energy use footprint. Here are general percentages for major uses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_use_in_the_United_States Industrial (33% overall) 22% chemical production 16% petroleum refining 14% metal smelting/refining Transportation (28% overall) 61% gasoline fuel 21% diesel fuel 12% aviation Residential (21% overall) 32% space heating 13% water heating 12% lighting 11% air conditioning 8% refrigeration 5% electronics 5% wet-clean (mostly clothes dryers) Commercial (17% overall) 25% lighting 13% heating 11% cooling 6% refrigeration 6% water heating 6% ventilation 6% electronics So, if my family was average, talking about residential use is talking about one fifth of our energy use. My wife and I both work at home and we have one car between us, so our energy use is a lot more home-oriented than average. But obviously we buy things and food, and a car and a house represent big investments of embodied energy. On a per capita basis, we can take the US amount of 3TW = 3,000,000,000Kw, divide by 300,000,000 people in the USA to get about 10kW per person (although a lot of that is heat, not electric). So, with the rule of thumb of multiplying by six for peak power, that is 60kW worth of solar panels per person (in an extreme case). At 1kW peak per square meters sun, at 10% efficiency, that is 600 square meters, or about 6000 square feet, or a plot about 60 ft by 100 ft. But, that is worse case. Heat energy can be collected at much higher efficiency, and solar cells are being talked about in the 30% to 50% range, so I'd say 50% efficiency for conversion would be fairer. :-) Although McKay disagrees with this idea in has book. Which would mean a 60ft by 20ft plot, or 1200 sqr ft, or the size of a typical free standing home's roof. Granted for a family, there needs to be more space. Anyway, can we conceive of every person in the USA having an accompanying 1200 sqr feet of solar panels (heat and PV)? How much of a stretch of the imagination is that when the USA has approximately one car per capita? See: http://cleantechlawandbusiness.com/cleanbeta/index.php/665/top-car-owning-countries/ Cars weigh at least about 3000 lbs typically (guessing), so we already have created about two to three pounds of advanced materials for each square foot a person needs to use to generate power. So, these figures seem within the scope of what our society is already doing. Here is a foldable solar panel that weighs about 3 pounds and covers about five square feet: "Solaris 52 Features" http://www.ascscientific.com/solar.html "Overall dimensions open: 50" x 31.5" Weight: 3 lb 8 oz Max Output: 52 watts" That's about 10 watts per square foot, or about 100 watts per square meter, so about 10% efficient. A little low perhaps. On the other hand, there is also energy efficiency -- it is cheaper to get a new efficient fridge or PlayStation than make panels to power the old one. Also, if we are generating electricity, and use it to power electric cars, we don't need as much energy for transportation because burning oil is only about 30% efficient or less in cars, whereas using electricity to move cars is near 90% efficient, so you only need 1/3 the panels that you might think you need for that segment. Anyway, these are all ballpark estimates, but clearly our society is capable of ground based industrial efforts on this scale. So, you can maybe see why I discount the ever repeated meme of "renewables do not scale". Again, who benefits from saying that? Also, these are proof-of-concept calculations; real word renewable use would be a mix of a variety of types depending on local conditions, like wood (which some people like), PV, solar-thermal, solar power towers, microhydro, biomass conversion, OTEC, ground loop heat pumps, geothermal, algae ponds, wind power, wave power, and so on. And maybe even some Solar Space Satellite power. The biggest compelling situation I heard for SPS, by the way, at an SSI conference was powering aviation with it. I think there may be some merit to that, as aircraft could be lighter and the satellites track the aircraft and beam energy to it. Anyway, so there may be a role for SPS as one of a diversity of sources. :-) Or again, SPS might be useful for laser launch facilities or some other large industrial facilities which are off the grid. And that all also ignores this talk by Robert Bussard on alternative fusion energy: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606 Or even Cold Fusion possibilities: http://freeenergynews.com/Directory/ColdFusion/index.html A lot is happening. Anyway, again, it is one thing to suggest space based power collection might be cheaper, it is another to say renewable ground based power production is impossible on a large scale. Say, maybe we should let those Detroit car companies fail so we can convert the assembly lines to making solar panels and their mounting hardware? :-) Of course, from a singularity perspective, energy use might rapidly go up. But then, why not move the computers into space and put the solar panels there? So, I don't think I need to solve that problem right now with today's technology. Anyway, I'm going to this in some length to help resist some of the doom and gloom here. I actually agree there may well be doom and gloom, but that would only be from social issues and crazy wars, not from any technical limits of what we can do to create abundance for everyone even with just today's technology. --Paul Fernhout From emlynoregan at gmail.com Sun Nov 23 05:01:25 2008 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:31:25 +1030 Subject: [ExI] celtic woman In-Reply-To: <200811220548.mAM5mtjr000227@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081121230820.0243c4a8@satx.rr.com> <200811220548.mAM5mtjr000227@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0811222101p30752715h8f6affb5e7fbe5cd@mail.gmail.com> ----------------- WARNING! Serious yootoobage, this post could derail you for the rest of the day ----------------- Sarah Brightman, I'd never really listened to her before. Just checked out her Ave Maria (Schuberts) vid on Youtube, wow! Nice visuals! Now if only someone would dub in someone who can actually sing Ave Maria well. Here's Sarah, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXuw9icKXnU and here's the real thing (singer is Barbara Bonney): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQVz6vuNq7s&feature=related Haley Westenra, I saw her in a concert thing with Teddy Tahu Rhodes recently. Now *he* can sing. But all quite schmalzy. Check out this clip from it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM1Eql4_fwo Teddy is holding his voice way way back. They blend very well really, but you can hear her pop sensibility vs classical production for his voice. Note for her the breathy, forward in the face sound, and also the way, for a (mezzo?) soprano, that she doesn't float on the high notes (contrast to the ave maria I posted above). Same applies to Sarah Brightman btw. Also, I just had a listen to Celtic Woman singing an enya cover. No. Spice girls meets The Corrs? Seriously, be dazzled by the packaging if you like, it's good, but great singing this is not. Sarah Brightman and Haley Westenra (and Charlotte Church, etc), are popera, for the masses. The real stuff is just as accessible, I don't really understand what the appeal of these people is. Just to put my own taste on the line, here are some links to some of my favourite singers: Bryn Terfel, singing Die Frist ist um from Wagner's The Flying Dutchman part1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf-qtBRvOwA part2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEy_3Ub4opY&feature=related Or anything by Pavarotti How about Nessun Dorma? A cliche now, and yet how can it not move you to tears? His last performance. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0Sx5lbVlQA&feature=related and 26 years earlier http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOfC9LfR3PI&feature=related (for comedy value, Sarah Brightman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB8psfWBZOQ&feature=related does my bum look big in this?) Sarah Vaughan Lullaby of Birdland http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8cFdZyWOOs (not great quality sound, have to work to hear the vocal quality) Lambert, Hendricks and Ross! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anrXYEAkg8U&NR=1 And the best of all, Johnny Hartman (with John Coltrane): Lush Life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d6_LUDa_Zw My one and only love: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecrE80rnjhw 2008/11/22 spike : > > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org >> [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of >> Damien Broderick >> Sent: Friday, November 21, 2008 9:12 PM >> To: ExI chat list >> Subject: Re: [ExI] celtic woman >> >> At 08:54 PM 11/21/2008 -0800, Spike extolled Haley Westinra, >> Sarah Brightman and Karen Carpenter. >> >> [me:] >> Although Ms. Brightman is getting kinda puffy, she's >> adorable, and I think sings even more angelically than >> Westinra. Wait--less >> *angelically* and more... humanly. >> >> Damien Broderick > > Agrees enthusiastically. Carpenter owned the 70s, Brightman the 80s and > 90s, Westenra the now. Goddesses all. > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Emlyn http://emlynoregan.com - my home http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 23 05:21:15 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 21:21:15 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (limited time?) In-Reply-To: <1227385874_51390@s8.cableone.net> Message-ID: <200811230547.mAN5luKj028470@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > ...On Behalf Of hkhenson ... > > ...my mom read me "Farmer in the Sky," > something she bitterly regretted in later years. (She never > approved of L5 etc.) ... Why? Did she have a different Lagrange point of which she thought more highly? spike From pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com Sun Nov 23 05:52:20 2008 From: pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com (Paul D. Fernhout) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:52:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (Clinic Seed & a diverse future) In-Reply-To: <1227410137_53756@s2.cableone.net> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <49280E2D.7010607@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227376253_50024@S3.cableone.net> <4928A4A4.8090707@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227410137_53756@s2.cableone.net> Message-ID: <4928EF94.5090201@kurtz-fernhout.com> hkhenson wrote: > My ex-wife and I wrote the original study of agriculture in a space > colony. Why would you have pests? Where would they come from? Just a few missed insect eggs could multiply. In practice, all ecologies have pests. No habitat can be that perfect in quarantine if habitats exchange people. Obviously, people try: "National Invasive Species Information Center (NISIC)" http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/ Besides, sometimes today's pest is tomorrow's desired item, and vice versa. Also, if you import both pest and predator, you may be better off than waiting for a pest to show up without a predator present. Sometimes a chronic low level of infection is better than the risk of an uncontrolled problem suddenly showing up. It's not an easy question to answer. But in general, statistically speaking, it only takes one of some pests, and habatits are so big, and some might be quite busy. And there may be lots of possible refuges for a pest. This gets somewhat into "meshwork vs. hierarchy" issues. You need a strong hierarchy to enforce a quarantine. But mesh works have value too in creating a diversity of possibilities. There might be a tension if items are imported physically as opposed to more easily filtered data streams. In any case, as with malware on the internet, if you have teenagers around, some of them are going to break the "rules". So, no matter how hard you work at the start, keeping up a quarantine may be difficult. Still, agricultural robots could help with all this. Or obviously strong nanotech -- but then you have to worry about more nanotech. :-) And I'd expect different habitats would have different policies. Something I wrote about that maybe ten years ago inspired by an airplane trip to Europe: http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/solarius/ From the later customs declaration page: http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/solarius/customs.htm """ Please fill out the following customs declaration form: I hereby certify: I am not carrying over 1 milligram of radioactive material. I am not carrying a class T or above computer virus or any harmful biological virus encoding or crystallization. I am not carrying prohibited weapons or their fabrication plans without a proper arms shipment permit. I am not carrying over 5 gigaquadrillion bits of information on my person. I am not transporting self replicating systems such as plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, metabots, nanobots, or synthomorphs or their fabrication plans without a valid self-reproducing object transport license. I am not transporting an independent intelligence having class B sentience or above without its permission. My personal biological fauna meets or exceeds Interhab standards for minimal virulence. My (Our in the case of collective minds) emotive and rational stability meets or exceeds Interhab standards, and I am (we are) not in mind of restricted memes without a current memetic carrier authorization on file. I have not been previously ejected from a Solarius community for any reason. Microgravity dwellers and others as applicable: My powered bodysuit is restricted to standard human strength. """ :-) > The AIs in this story are "ethical" in their own ways, ways that were > built into their fundamental personalities and many of the copied from > evolved humans. One of the decisions the human made years before is > that uploading has to be reversible. And the people do go in an out of > the simulation often during the early stages. It's just that the > simulation gets to be better than the real world. Yes, "better than life". :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Than_Life_(Red_Dwarf_episode) But, at some point, what is the difference between the simulation and the real world? Once your mind is running on virtual hardware, you can perhaps just as easily manipulate an avatar in the *physical* world as one in a virtual world, as a form of telepresence. There might be some mental mapping issues of course. Which makes me realize an assumption in the story is that people would only come out back into the physical world in their bodies, not enhanced artifacts, like a bird or a dolphin or an octopus etc. But come on, isn't someone in the "better than life" simulation going to read about the L5 society and just start building real hardware because they could? Again, the "physical" world might have a special meaning to people, whether that is "sacred" or "prized" or "nostalgia" or something else. Anyway, on brain downloading, here is what I emailed Ray Kurzweil eight years ago (and my opinion hasn't changed much since then, though I will admit to greater uncertainty): http://heybryan.org/fernhout/kurzweil4.html "I could endlessly elaborate on this theme, but in short -- I find it highly unlikely that any mind designed to work well in meatspace will be optimal for cyberspace. It will be overwhelmed and quickly passed by in an evolutionary sense (and consumed for space and runtime). It is likely this will happen within years of digitization (but possibly minutes or hours or seconds). As an example experiment, create large programs (>10K) in Ray's Tierra and see how long they last! http://www.hip.atr.co.jp/~ray/tierra/tierra.html Our best human attempts at designing digital carriers (even using evolutionary algorithms) will fail because of the inherent uncompetetiveness of clunky meatspace brain designs optimized for one environment and finding themselves in the digital realm. For a rough analog, consider how there is an upper limit of size to active creatures in 3D meatspace for a certain ecology. While something might survive somehow derived from pieces of a digitized person, it will not resemble that person to any significant degree. This network will be an alien environment and the creatures that live in it will be an alien life form. One might be able to negotiate with some of them at some point in their evolution citing the commonality of evolved intelligence as a bond -- but humanity may have ceased to exist by then." I write from the perspective of someone who spent some time studying Ecology and Evolution. And it can be rough out there. :-) Already the internet is filled with spam, viruses, malware, botnets, and other stuff. Why should a virtual world be any different? An interesting related book, by the way: "Fool's War" by Sarah Zettel http://www.amazon.com/Fools-War-Sarah-Zettel/dp/0446602930 "In "alien contact" science fiction, the aliens come from far off, light-years away. But what if the aliens were closer to home? What if the next great life-form with which we must contend isn't from the stars but from our hard drives? In Zettel's second novel (after Reclamation), Katmer Al Shei, owner and engineer of the starship Pasadena, and her crew become pawns in an elaborate scheme to bring human beings and artificially intelligent life-forms into deadly conflict. But the real protagonist ends up being Evelyn Dobbs, the ship's Fool, who, hired to amuse the crew for its long voyage, finds herself trying to contain the threat of war." An excerpt from one comment from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2MZJJF5IGPYM5/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm "Fool's War is one of the more unusual science fiction books I've read recently. I recommend reading various reviews on Amazon rather than rely on the blurb on the book's back cover since it misleads the reader -- specifically, the book is more about intrigue, shifting alliances, socio-economic warfare, and prejudice rather than merely a hard-core examination of artificial intelligences and viruses. ... Life-form -- Human vs. artificial intelligence. What does it mean to be human, or alive? Are humans so inherently xenophobic that they cannot accept the possibility of other types of life? Are artificial intelligences so jaundiced that they must instill fear rather than convince? ..." > I am optimistic that there is probably a technical solution or several > of them out there. I am not very optimistic about them actually being > done, and downright pessimistic about them being done by the US. Fair enough. Dysfunctional social issue led the USA into Iraq, too. >> Anyway, to the extent you put your solar space satellite plans under >> free and open source licenses, people can collaborate on improving them > > Following the logic and math through the wiki pages seems to be harder > than what most people are willing to do. Or perhaps a social group has > not yet formed around the concepts where people get support from each > other the way they do on open source projects. One contributor to project success is indeed to get people together who care about it. :-) One possibility is to integrate a wiki and a face to face meeting (as in, get people together at a workshop, and people work together on it). There certainly have been a lot of people interested in SPS based on previous SSI conferences. Maybe they don't know of it? > You mentioned Clay Shirky. Do you happen to know him? I was referencing that document by Clay Shirky based on the previous discussions on this list about that work. --Paul Fernhout From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 23 05:54:28 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 21:54:28 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Re.: celtic woman In-Reply-To: <4928455A.4030908@lineone.net> Message-ID: <200811230621.mAN6L8gn020343@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > On Behalf Of ben > Subject: [ExI] Re.: celtic woman > > Meh. ...My expectations were not met. > > Ben Zaiboc > (What?! Hey, if everyone liked the same stuff, it would be a > boring world) True. I looked up the Suicide Girls, and they all looked a bit harsh to me. Zeppelin is cool tho. {8-] Ben, I have a notion that might make you feel good to be alive in the 21 century. I flew down to southern Taxifornia this morning to pick up a truck my wife bought on the internet, almost exactly ten years newer than our previous truck, which I also bought the Saturday before Thanksgiving in 1998. The new ride has satellite radio, so I was listening to forgotten 45s from the 70s. Most of them should have stayed forgotten, but something really struck me. I recall hearing these songs when they were new, back in my misspent youth, but my only radio at that time was a third hand AM deck in my rattly old truck connected to a single speaker I scrounged from a discarded clock radio. The journey from the musician to the vinyl to the radio station to my improvised AM receiver to my ear was a very rough road for the last three feet. The actual audio quality was about comparable to music playing in the background when your friend calls you on your cell phone from her cell phone. So I was only getting a very rough approximation of the music, but I didn't really realize it until today, when I heard the same music again for the first time since then, this time reproduced on an excellent sound system in a much quieter truck. I can understand the words! Not that they actually make sense, but now I can understand what they are singing about. I marvelled at how much better is the new truck compared to one that is only ten years old, but the kicker is this: I paid fewer dollars for this one today than I paid a decade ago, even ignoring inflation, yet this one is functionally so far superior, direct comparison is nearly meaningless. Things are still getting better. Waaaay better. Life is goood. spike From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun Nov 23 06:19:15 2008 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 22:19:15 -0800 Subject: [ExI] celtic woman References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081121230820.0243c4a8@satx.rr.com><200811220548.mAM5mtjr000227@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0811222101p30752715h8f6affb5e7fbe5cd@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1EAC271A0FD14F389EA24CD43C1506EE@patrick4ezsk6z> From: "Emlyn" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2008 9:01 PM Emlyn, I'm so glad you piped in. Whew. I felt so out of touch in not being able to appreciate Celtic-ness and Brightess and Corr-or-less and ... Karen Carpenter? Yipes. But then, I'm to blame - I'm not a music fan. I do like music-when-it-comes-with-visuals (like opera, movies) and some things like ... oh, Four Last Songs (the first is not of the greatest recorded quality, but sublime in spite): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO7rytfD4rY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3gI7qiByrk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=621jCd-i6G8&feature=related > Bryn Terfel, singing Die Frist ist um from Wagner's The Flying Dutchman > part1 > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf-qtBRvOwA > part2 > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEy_3Ub4opY&feature=related Fabulous!!! > Or anything by Pavarotti > How about Nessun Dorma? A cliche now, and yet how can it not move you to > tears? > His last performance. > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0Sx5lbVlQA&feature=related I read somewhere that that Nessum Dorma was pre-recorded (not long before) - especially for this concert. The orchestra pretended to play, the conductor pretended to conduct - and if this is indeed true, it makes it even more poignant. Olga From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sun Nov 23 08:15:23 2008 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:15:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] [Bulk] Re: Thoughts on Space based solar power (alternatives) Message-ID: <633076.96326.qm@web65601.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> --- On Sat, 11/22/08, Paul D. Fernhout wrote: > > That's about 10 watts per square foot, or about 100 > watts per square meter, so about 10% efficient. A little low > perhaps. On the other hand, there is also energy efficiency > -- it is cheaper to get a new efficient fridge or > PlayStation than make panels to power the old one. Also, if > we are generating electricity, and use it to power electric > cars, we don't need as much energy for transportation > because burning oil is only about 30% efficient or less in > cars, whereas using electricity to move cars is near 90% > efficient, so you only need 1/3 the panels that you might > think you need for that segment. Yes. Conspicuous consumption should be ugly. Effiency should be sexy. > Anyway, these are all ballpark estimates, but clearly our > society is capable of ground based industrial efforts on > this scale. So, you can maybe see why I discount the ever > repeated meme of "renewables do not scale". Again, > who benefits from saying that? They scale just fine in my opinion. They just don't bode well for certain hydraulic empires. > Also, these are proof-of-concept calculations; real word > renewable use would be a mix of a variety of types depending > on local conditions, like wood (which some people like), PV, > solar-thermal, solar power towers, microhydro, biomass > conversion, OTEC, ground loop heat pumps, geothermal, algae > ponds, wind power, wave power, and so on. And maybe even > some Solar Space Satellite power. The biggest compelling > situation I heard for SPS, by the way, at an SSI conference > was powering aviation with it. I think there may be some > merit to that, as aircraft could be lighter and the > satellites track the aircraft and beam energy to it. Anyway, > so there may be a role for SPS as one of a diversity of > sources. :-) Or again, SPS might be useful for laser launch > facilities or some other large industrial facilities which > are off the grid. And that all also ignores this talk by > Robert Bussard on alternative fusion energy: Well I would throw *some* money at everything and see what takes root. It is the last hurrah after all. The future war economy, should we fail, can take care of itself. > Anyway, again, it is one thing to suggest space based power > collection might be cheaper, it is another to say renewable > ground based power production is impossible on a large > scale. It isn't. We just have to find it. There are alt.energy companies out there figuring out ways to make biodiesel from vertical stacks of algae. They project this will take 2% the real estate of soybeans and does not need to be on arable land. Some carbon emissions but a lot less than burning methane to extract oil from tar shale and sand, just to burn that. Plus growing the algae absorbs carbon too. > Say, maybe we should let those Detroit car companies fail > so we can convert the assembly lines to making solar panels > and their mounting hardware? :-) I wonder if they even know what they would do *if* we bailed them out? Come out with the 2010 collection of SUV's? Hell if they are smart, they would be voluntarily converting their entire inventories to hybrids or flex-fuels, even while they were asking for a handout. The unions should be helping to pay for this as a precondition of any bail out. > Anyway, I'm going to this in some length to help resist > some of the doom and gloom here. I actually agree there may > well be doom and gloom, but that would only be from social > issues and crazy wars, not from any technical limits of what > we can do to create abundance for everyone even with just > today's technology. I agree. Heaven on earth is an engineering problem. It's only money and politics that make a monkey-hell of this place. But hey the sun is always shining *somewhere*, right? :-) Stuart LaForge "It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision." - Helen Keller From kanzure at gmail.com Sun Nov 23 13:22:49 2008 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 07:22:49 -0600 Subject: [ExI] [wta-talk] my Convergence08 Adventure In-Reply-To: <8D5DECDB3922420B8DFEF136295DCCBC@DFC68LF1> References: <2d6187670811200119k2c0f5f2dm97c5c620338f752d@mail.gmail.com> <8D5DECDB3922420B8DFEF136295DCCBC@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <55ad6af70811230522g6e75f30dtbecd5b935595e7d0@mail.gmail.com> On 11/21/08, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > The lunch meeting session was fruitful, thanks to everyone who was there. I > enjoyed having an in-depth conversation not only about Prop8, but also about > synthetic biology and the Bioart which is soaring ahead in leaps in the > world of biotechnology and experimentation. I had a good talk with one of > the conference's guest speakers - Andrew Hessel of Alberta Ingenuity Fund. > We agreed that the panel on Synthetic Biology turned from the wet, moist > stuff to issues of risk, which could have been an entirely different panel. > Andrew invited me to lecture at his organization to the researchers on the > latest works in Bioart and where practice and theory based works are heading > and how the field of Bioart may be consequential to the field of synthetic > biology. Andrew and I hang out on the diybio.org group :-): http://diybio.org/ http://openwetware.org/wiki/Andrew_Hessel His talk at BioBarCamp was great, but I can't find a link to it, so his SENS3 talk will have to suffice, which was slightly less polished: http://richardjschueler.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=57070 And one day his site will be full of something: http://pinkarmy.org/ "PinkArmy is the working name of an open source biology project based in Canada that is taking aim at breast cancer therapeutic development. The goal of the project is to create personalized medicines that are safe, effective, and affordable. We expect to be fully active in 2008. For more information, please email: info at pinkarmy.org" - Bryan From benboc at lineone.net Sun Nov 23 14:02:02 2008 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 14:02:02 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Re.: celtic woman In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4929625A.5090202@lineone.net> Damien Broderick explained: >Fwiw, my comment about transhumanists in action at > >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdxRmcgsKDQ > >was a shorthand way of pointing to a combination of rapturous song >with the swooping, soaring, almost supernatural skating that, for me, >emulated dancing in low gravity, or maybe enhanced, powered >H >bodies. The actual choreography seems to me fairly banal, even >coarsely vulgar, but the sheer physical grace of the man and woman >skating seems almost to transcend ordinary human capacities--the >apparent *effortlessness* of it. Oh, I totally agree about the skating. But I had to watch it with the sound turned down, to avoid the 'disney affect' (similar to seasickness, but more distressing, because you know somebody's doing it /on purpose/). Sorry, but for me it wasn't 'rapturous song', it was more like 'soppy sentimentality'. If it had been the theme from GITS SAC, now.... http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8q8rBnuULY0 Ben Zaiboc From benboc at lineone.net Sun Nov 23 14:04:04 2008 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 14:04:04 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (limited time?) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <492962D4.7010003@lineone.net> From: The Avantguardian said: > On the bright side, barring complete breakdown of the ecosystem by > nukes or asteroid, small pockets of humans > may survive in isolated regions and after a dark ages lasting only a > few centuries, we may have another shot at the singularity. Do you think? I reckon it's more likely: "small pockets of humans may survive in isolated regions and after a dark ages lasting only a few centuries, will die out altogether". Or, you never know, the greens may get their way, and we'd have a miserable low-tech existence for quite a long time, until some natural disaster comes along to wipe us out for good. I really doubt that we'd get another crack at the singularity though. You need easily available resources to kick-start a high-tech civilisation, no matter how much knowledge you have, and we've used them all up. Ben Zaiboc From emlynoregan at gmail.com Sun Nov 23 14:24:31 2008 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:54:31 +1030 Subject: [ExI] celtic woman In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0811222101p30752715h8f6affb5e7fbe5cd@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081121230820.0243c4a8@satx.rr.com> <200811220548.mAM5mtjr000227@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0811222101p30752715h8f6affb5e7fbe5cd@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0811230624w4b5be69al18e52a1170291258@mail.gmail.com> > Here's Sarah, > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXuw9icKXnU btw, at 0:53 and 2:41... is that... you know... under the lace... what the?? Hello Maria, nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more! -- Emlyn http://emlynoregan.com - my home http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting From hkhenson at rogers.com Sun Nov 23 15:05:08 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 08:05:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [Bulk] Re: Thoughts on Space based solar power (alternatives) In-Reply-To: <4928A982.9020804@kurtz-fernhout.com> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <49280973.8030608@kurtz-fernhout.com> <4928A982.9020804@kurtz-fernhout.com> Message-ID: <1227453026_52622@s7.cableone.net> At 05:53 PM 11/22/2008, Paul wrote: >>And here is the deeper issue -- we are arguing here over renewable >>energy prospects, not the best way to make space habitation happen. There are practical and political problems with paving Arizona with solar panels. For example, the locals may object. The same is true of putting in an area of solar panels equal to the area of the roads. Some people, most recently a certain Mars fanatic, don't see the value of reducing the cost of getting to GEO from $20,000/kg to $100/kg especially when the traffic model is a million tons a year. I won't say this will automatically lead to space habitats, but a 200 to one reduction in the cost has got to make it easier. Keith From hkhenson at rogers.com Sun Nov 23 17:54:14 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 10:54:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (Clinic Seed & a diverse future) In-Reply-To: <4928EF94.5090201@kurtz-fernhout.com> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <49280E2D.7010607@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227376253_50024@S3.cableone.net> <4928A4A4.8090707@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227410137_53756@s2.cableone.net> <4928EF94.5090201@kurtz-fernhout.com> Message-ID: <1227463176_52977@s7.cableone.net> At 10:52 PM 11/22/2008, Paul wrote: >hkhenson wrote: >>My ex-wife and I wrote the original study of agriculture in a space >>colony. Why would you have pests? Where would they come from? > >Just a few missed insect eggs could multiply. In practice, all >ecologies have pests. No habitat can be that perfect in quarantine >if habitats exchange people. They don't need to be, though taking a bath and laundering clothes before going up would probably keep out virtually every insect you didn't want. In any case, farming modules heat up like autoclaves if you just shut off the heat sink. That deals with any pest that I can think of. snip >But come on, isn't someone in the "better than life" simulation >going to read about the L5 society and just start building real >hardware because they could? Again, the "physical" world might have >a special meaning to people, whether that is "sacred" or "prized" or >"nostalgia" or something else. Possibly. It depends on social enjoyment. Dealing with the physical world is almost certainly going to be less rewarding than a simulated one. It's slow and more limited. I have not been paying much attention. Has anything leaked out of Second Life or World of War craft to become a real world product? Or do the objects in there depend too much on the local "physics" rules? It seems that at least costumes could be instantiated. snip >>>Anyway, to the extent you put your solar space satellite plans >>>under free and open source licenses, people can collaborate on improving them >>Following the logic and math through the wiki pages seems to be >>harder than what most people are willing to do. Or perhaps a >>social group has not yet formed around the concepts where people >>get support from each other the way they do on open source projects. > >One contributor to project success is indeed to get people together >who care about it. :-) One possibility is to integrate a wiki and a >face to face meeting (as in, get people together at a workshop, and >people work together on it). There certainly have been a lot of >people interested in SPS based on previous SSI conferences. Maybe >they don't know of it? Possibly. Do you still have contacts with them? Could you let them know the web pages exist? >>You mentioned Clay Shirky. Do you happen to know him? > >I was referencing that document by Clay Shirky based on the previous >discussions on this list about that work. I have been trying without much luck to get in contact with him. Keith From pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com Sun Nov 23 19:24:17 2008 From: pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com (Paul D. Fernhout) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 14:24:17 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (alternatives) In-Reply-To: <1227453026_52622@s7.cableone.net> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <49280973.8030608@kurtz-fernhout.com> <4928A982.9020804@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227453026_52622@s7.cableone.net> Message-ID: <4929ADE1.2030104@kurtz-fernhout.com> hkhenson wrote: > At 05:53 PM 11/22/2008, Paul wrote: >>> And here is the deeper issue -- we are arguing here over renewable >>> energy prospects, not the best way to make space habitation happen. > > There are practical and political problems with paving Arizona with > solar panels. For example, the locals may object. The same is true of > putting in an area of solar panels equal to the area of the roads. The current system in unsustainable. Everyone will object if it fails. Who is going to suffer in the transition? That's politics, sadly, and if it is like usual, it will be the politically poor and weak who suffer most, no matter what the solutions are. As a society, we can try to redress this in part by money, but money only goes so far in dealing with issues like the desecration of sacred lands or the loss of social capital when forced to move though an application of "eminent domain". Hydropower dams are good examples of that, and many people are questioning them. But, there are other options as well -- energy efficiency and ocean solar are two of them. One reduces demand, the other would involve producing energy on large floating cities in the ocean and sending it onshore via power cables or hydrogen or synthetic liquid fuels. Of course, whether ocean operations are easier than space operations is questionable, but a lot more people know about ocean operations, same as why Microsoft Windows is still dominant on the desktop from inertia even with GNU/Linux as a free alternative that is better in some ways. Part of how I feel on solar space satellites is also how I feel about nuclear power. Politics is perhaps the biggest issue in some ways, as either involves trusting to a remote elite (financial or technical) for my daily electricity. On an engineering "time constant" basis(*), the time constant for depending on elites to give me electricity when I buy a solar panel is every thirty years or so. :-) The time constant for depending on elites when I get my power from a grid powered by solar power satellites is microseconds. :-( So, for me, on that basis, local solutions have a lot of merit if they are in anyway comparable in costs (including local labor time costs, depending how I feel about the labor, for example some people like to chop wood, but many do not, as you pointed out.) Still, there are nuclear reactor proposals where a single home or small cluster of homes could be powered by a long-lived maintenance free reactor, so that is progress. For 20000 people: "Mini Nuclear Reactors to Power Remote Areas" http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/11/21/mini-nuclear-reactor.html For 200 people: "Toshiba Builds 100x Smaller Micro Nuclear Reactor " http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news-toshiba-micro-nuclear-12.17b.html From the second one: "The 200 kilowatt Toshiba designed reactor is engineered to be fail-safe and totally automatic and will not overheat. Unlike traditional nuclear reactors the new micro reactor uses no control rods to initiate the reaction. The new revolutionary technology uses reservoirs of liquid lithium-6, an isotope that is effective at absorbing neutrons. The Lithium-6 reservoirs are connected to a vertical tube that fits into the reactor core. The whole whole process is self sustaining and can last for up to 40 years, producing electricity for only 5 cents per kilowatt hour, about half the cost of grid energy." Though I still have concerns there in relation to weapons proliferation and other environmental risks, as well as adopting a wait and see attitude on reliability and common mode failures. But can SPS compete anytime soon with 5 cents per kW with no grid costs (or just local wiring costs)? Between the two, nuclear and SPS, I'd probably prefer the SPS solution, of course. :-) For *both* nuclear and SPS, I could personally accept occasional big accidents as balanced against people falling off roofs putting up solar panels or other downsides to PV production. One could ignore orbital debris risks if as you suggest they are minimal. If those were the only considerations, it is possible the value either nuclear energy (via breeder reactors) or SPS provide might be worth it, if the economics was OK and the politics was not an issue (that is, if you could trust the operators a lot). For, say, the UK, a few hundred Taj Mahal looking nuclear power plants (with the mining hidden away somehow) or just some rectennas over grazing fields (with launches again hidden away) may indeed be preferrable on aesthetic grounds to paving over 5% of the English countryside to go 100% solar-electric. Many people might prefer the nuclear or SPS option if that was the choice. (Thankfully, we don't have to choose either extreme, and even for ground solar, it can be distributed, and we have not even begun to consider what if PV collectors looked like green trees instead of panels?) But, the history of nuclear power has a lot of coverups http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood and ignored external costs precisely *because* it is done in a capitalist scarcity-oriented political and military framework. I imagine SPS would face the same sets of issues long term. For example, governments would see control of the SPS network as a top strategic priority, including the ability to deny access to it to other nations. Or, there would be corporate consolidation of commercial PV owners of satellites until there was only one or two mega-power utilities, who basically could, with Google, dominate the world. http://www.radaronline.com/from-the-magazine/2007/09/google_fiction_evil_dangerous_surveillance_control_1.php Still, having said that, I use Google all the time and a lot of power for my area comes from nuclear power plants. But one can use a service without being happy about all the political implications of it, and one can work towards change (including reducing consumption). So, that's another reason I am reluctant to endorse SPS as a global solution -- political issues in relation to centralization of control and dependency on short-time constant energy supplie. However, I still feel the grid operation costs and the need for cradle-to-cradle manufacturing no matter where power comes from (to avoid being drown in consumer waste) are the pocketbook and environmental issues people will care about most when evaluating SPS as a single solution. When I posted on this to the SSI list around 2003 and 2004, I went into many of these other sorts of things too (and people did have interesting and informative responses), but they are more complex issues to discuss, and hinge on things like people's willingness to depend on elites, which is a lot more variable than the economic or pollution issues. --Paul Fernhout (*) Even with local solar panels, I would still depend on, say, Russian elites to keep their nuclear missiles from launching accidentally, of course, so there are other elites one may depend on daily. From pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com Sun Nov 23 19:36:56 2008 From: pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com (Paul D. Fernhout) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 14:36:56 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (alternatives) In-Reply-To: <633076.96326.qm@web65601.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <633076.96326.qm@web65601.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4929B0D8.1020004@kurtz-fernhout.com> The Avantguardian wrote: > I agree. Heaven on earth is an engineering problem. It's only money and > politics that make a monkey-hell of this place. But hey the sun is always > shining *somewhere*, right? :-) From Bucky Fuller: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller "Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment. . . . Humanity is in ?final exam? as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe." Thanks for all the great comments. Those biodiesel algae stacks you mentioned sound mighty interesting. I looked it up just now: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=biodiesel+algae This title sounded funniest: :-) "15 Algae Startups Bringing Pond Scum to Fuel Tanks ? Earth2Tech" http://earth2tech.com/2008/03/27/15-algae-startups-bringing-pond-scum-to-fuel-tanks/ "If corn-based biofuels are the Britney Spears of the cleantech world (a fallen star but still all over the place), fuel made from algae is the next great American Idol winner (major potential in the pipeline). And despite the fact that algae-to-biofuel startups have been taking their sweet time bringing a pond scum fuel product to market, some inroads have been made recently ? GreenFuel is building its first plant, PetroSun starts producing at their farm on April 1, and big oil Chevron and Shell have made some early bets as well." I think part of what we are seeing even now is these extropian ideas are being mediated through services like Google which are letting us find and connect information like never before -- because the speed and ease makes it so much more possible. If I had to travel to a library to look this stuff up, I could not. I learned a lot about sustainable energy and related ideas in the mid 1980s when I was around a big university library and had lots of time to access it. But while I have bought books on the topic since, it was not until the last five years that I started to have that level of access possible again because I could do it at home and more and more information was onlin. Granted, I could have hung out at universities in some capacity, but that itself implies a certain mindset and set of politics (depending in part on the university). I said something like that in 2004 when for the first time Google was letting me connect the dots quickly about alternatives in a way I never would have been able to do before (including cutting and pasting quotes and using URLs as citations -- I always disliked formatting bibliographies using footnotes). My comment then: http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/AchievingAStarTrekSociety.html "First, as a side note, I could not have written an essay like this before the World Wide Web -- I just would not have had the time to cover so many areas in a couple days writing from home, far from a university library, and relying on Google to make solid ideas that were just wisps of memory (from years of reading broadly on the web); nor would I before the wide adoption of the internet and email and the world wide web have been able to provide immediately accessible links for further exploration by readers, all at essentially no direct monetary cost. That is an example of the sort of exponential increase in technological capacity this essay is referring to. I certainly would not call this essay a scholarly work as it neither cites enough primary sources or connects all the dots, and I'm sure it has its share of flaws, but please consider it as a proof of concept that if even a little of what I write is true, there is enough to go around and make this Earth a more fantastic and more free place for every being on it." Google pagerank is powered in part by analyzing linking other people have done, as an indirect form of social collaboration. So, an individual using Google as a kind of mind extension (as I do, to bring back clearly some hazy memories, as well as to learn new things) is a balance of individual memory and collective memory. It's interesting to see that as a way of mind extension -- this balancing of some of and individual's intelligent activity online is emerging out of the history as an individual, and some of it is emerging out of the current state of a broad social network, and those two interact in various ways as an individual was online. For me, I can see that if I was talking about sustainability away from my computer, I could not have at my fingertips such a level of detail. Obviously, beyond that limitation, face-to-face communications for humans have their own merits. And then there are emerging trends of trying to have the best of both by merging holding face-to-face meetings where everyone has a wireless laptop and there is a meeting-specific wiki and chat going for the meeting (plus local Google searches); again, I got that from the Shirky article link that Keith posted to this list in his "Online social groups" post and is found here: http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html """ And this pattern of ubiquity lets you start taking this for granted. Bill Joy once said "My method is to look at something that seems like a good idea and assume it's true." We're starting to see software that simply assumes that all offline groups will have an online component, no matter what. It is now possible for every grouping, from a Girl Scout troop on up, to have an online component, and for it to be lightweight and easy to manage. And that's a different kind of thing than the old pattern of "online community." I have this image of two hula hoops, the old two-hula hoop world, where my real life is over here, and my online life is over there, and there wasn't much overlap between them. If the hula hoops are swung together, and everyone who's offline is also online, at least from my point of view, that's a different kind of pattern. There's a second kind of ubiquity, which is the kind we're enjoying here thanks to Wifi. If you assume whenever a group of people are gathered together, that they can be both face to face and online at the same time, you can start to do different kinds of things. I now don't run a meeting without either having a chat room or a wiki up and running. Three weeks ago I ran a meeting for the Library of Congress. We had a wiki, set up by Socialtext, to capture a large and very dense amount of technical information on long-term digital preservation. The people who organized the meeting had never used a wiki before, and now the Library of Congress is talking as if they always had a wiki for their meetings, and are assuming it's going to be at the next meeting as well -- the wiki went from novel to normal in a couple of days. It really quickly becomes an assumption that a group can do things like "Oh, I took my PowerPoint slides, I showed them, and then I dumped them into the wiki. So now you can get at them." It becomes a sort of shared repository for group memory. This is new. These kinds of ubiquity, both everyone is online, and everyone who's in a room can be online together at the same time, can lead to new patterns. """ So, those new patterns are (hopefully) giving the average person more options to "Think Globally; act locally; plan modestly" in a very hands-on way. One issue I continue to have with solar space satellites is that even if they were "cheaper" (which I still question), they demand a form of social organization (and maybe engineering mathematics :-) which is simply disempowering to the average person, who might otherwise be able to understand an algae pond producing biodiesel, and perhaps incrementally move to use such technology locally. Some of that is familiarity, but some of that is also "touchability". Unless you have your own shuttlecraft, you can't touch all the parts of a space based energy system like you can with local options. That's obviously a psychological issue -- including since behind the solar panel on your roof that you can touch is a manufacturing web right now that you can't touch. (Of course, the sun is untouchable too, but has always been in a special category in our thoughts.) Still, one can obviously touch a rectenna that receives microwaved power, and we use technology all the time that uses antennas these days without thinking much about it. It depends what parts of the system you take for granted, as well as what parts you can work on incrementally. As an individual, I can in theory put an algae pond in my backyard, but I can't even begin to think about launching a solar power satellite. So, as an individual, thinking about algae empowers me, but thinking about SPS disempowers me. Granted, engineering decisions don't have to be made that way (only for what one person can do), and there is a lot to be said for collective action. Long term, we may well have SPS systems as part of Earth's energy mix, and we might even move more towards them as time goes by. But people can do other alternatives themselves right now which appear to be low risk. So, I still feel that SPS is taking all the space-related social energy that could go into space habitat design, and directing it in a way that isn't going to make an essential difference, given these other ground-based alternatives that are happening everywhere. Building on what I said at the start, after a lot of people are living in space (due to amateur hobbyist efforts), SPS becomes a lot more possible, as a charitable thing that spacers can do for "free" for Mother Earth, just to be nice. :-) Of course, Earth people might say "no thanks" out of pride, if they have other options in use by then. :-) --Paul Fernhout From pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com Sun Nov 23 20:05:19 2008 From: pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com (Paul D. Fernhout) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:05:19 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (Clinic Seed & a diverse future) In-Reply-To: <1227463176_52977@s7.cableone.net> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <49280E2D.7010607@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227376253_50024@S3.cableone.net> <4928A4A4.8090707@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227410137_53756@s2.cableone.net> <4928EF94.5090201@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227463176_52977@s7.cableone.net> Message-ID: <4929B77F.6040608@kurtz-fernhout.com> hkhenson wrote: > They don't need to be, though taking a bath and laundering clothes > before going up would probably keep out virtually every insect you > didn't want. > > In any case, farming modules heat up like autoclaves if you just shut > off the heat sink. That deals with any pest that I can think of. Except soil is a living thing. It's not the same after you sterilize it. It has all kinds of complex ecological dynamics we don't fully understand. Some resources I like: "The Soul of Soil: A Soil-Building Guide for Master Gardeners and Farmers" by Grace Gershuny http://www.amazon.com/Soul-Soil-Soil-Building-Gardeners-Farmers/dp/1890132314 "Towards Holistic Agriculture: A Scientific Approach" by R.W. Widdowson http://www.amazon.com/Towards-Holistic-Agriculture-Scientific-Approach/dp/0080342116 "Natural wastewater treatment" http://www.oceanarks.org/Natural_Water_Treatment.php http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_machines An organic philosopy might suggest ship up living dirt and living pondwater, and you get what you get, and then you start tinkering with the balance. :-) Even if you inspect everything and sterilize most of it, I just don't see quarantine being 100% effective, and it is in the nature of biological systems that 99.9999999% effective can quickly becomes 0% effective. :-) > Possibly. It depends on social enjoyment. Dealing with the physical > world is almost certainly going to be less rewarding than a simulated > one. It's slow and more limited. Maybe that will be what is spiritually exciting about it, like Yoga or Tai Chi or even knitting? :-) http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=slow+exercise > I have not been paying much > attention. Has anything leaked out of Second Life or World of War craft > to become a real world product? Or do the objects in there depend too > much on the local "physics" rules? It seems that at least costumes > could be instantiated. "Color 3D Prints - "Print" World of Warcraft characters" http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2006/08/color_3d_prints_print_world_of.html And that Shirky article you linked to on 11/13 talks about the convergence of online and offline. So does his book "Here Comes Everybody". http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/ where he talks about meetup.com. >>>> Anyway, to the extent you put your solar space satellite plans under >>>> free and open source licenses, people can collaborate on improving them >>> Following the logic and math through the wiki pages seems to be >>> harder than what most people are willing to do. Or perhaps a social >>> group has not yet formed around the concepts where people get support >>> from each other the way they do on open source projects. >> >> One contributor to project success is indeed to get people together >> who care about it. :-) One possibility is to integrate a wiki and a >> face to face meeting (as in, get people together at a workshop, and >> people work together on it). There certainly have been a lot of people >> interested in SPS based on previous SSI conferences. Maybe they don't >> know of it? > > Possibly. Do you still have contacts with them? Could you let them > know the web pages exist? I've never been in touch with any of them (other than meeting some people at the SSI conferences or reading their papers). Obviously, one could look through old proceedings, but people move and change email addresses and so on. You could go to the SSI yahoo group and make a post perhaps and interact with people there: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ssi_list/ Mike Combs has been an active leader there and I'm sure he would love to hear from the co-founder of the L5 society if you don't want to join that list yourself: "The Space Settlement FAQ" written by Mike Combs (mikecombs at aol.com)" http://space.mike-combs.com/spacsetl.htm SPS is featured prominently in his FAQ: http://space.mike-combs.com/spacsetl.htm#SPS You might find a bunch of people on that list willing to help with SPS issues. --Paul Fernhout From hkhenson at rogers.com Sun Nov 23 21:35:07 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 14:35:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Pointer Message-ID: <1227476425_54465@s8.cableone.net> I know I have mentioned this book, but not sure if I mentioned this review of it http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/science/07indu.html?_r=1&ex=1187323200&en=a700be10040f0414&ei=5070 Keith From hkhenson at rogers.com Sun Nov 23 22:24:18 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:24:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power (Clinic Seed & a diverse future) In-Reply-To: <4929B77F.6040608@kurtz-fernhout.com> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <49280E2D.7010607@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227376253_50024@S3.cableone.net> <4928A4A4.8090707@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227410137_53756@s2.cableone.net> <4928EF94.5090201@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227463176_52977@s7.cableone.net> <4929B77F.6040608@kurtz-fernhout.com> Message-ID: <1227479377_54570@s8.cableone.net> At 01:05 PM 11/23/2008, you wrote: >hkhenson wrote: >>They don't need to be, though taking a bath and laundering clothes >>before going up would probably keep out virtually every insect you didn't want. >>In any case, farming modules heat up like autoclaves if you just >>shut off the heat sink. That deals with any pest that I can think of. > >Except soil is a living thing. It's not the same after you sterilize >it. It has all kinds of complex ecological dynamics we don't fully understand. Plants don't need soil. They grow just fine in rock or vermiculite or nothing at all if you spay the roots with hydroponic solution. snip >An organic philosopy might suggest ship up living dirt and living >pondwater, and you get what you get, and then you start tinkering >with the balance. :-) Every hear of Biosphere II? They tried this and it was an unmitigated disaster. >Even if you inspect everything and sterilize most of it, I just >don't see quarantine being 100% effective, and it is in the nature >of biological systems that 99.9999999% effective can quickly becomes >0% effective. :-) > >>Possibly. It depends on social enjoyment. Dealing with the >>physical world is almost certainly going to be less rewarding than >>a simulated one. It's slow and more limited. > >Maybe that will be what is spiritually exciting about it, like Yoga >or Tai Chi or even knitting? :-) > http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=slow+exercise > >>I have not been paying much attention. Has anything leaked out of >>Second Life or World of War craft to become a real world >>product? Or do the objects in there depend too much on the local >>"physics" rules? It seems that at least costumes could be instantiated. > >"Color 3D Prints - "Print" World of Warcraft characters" >http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2006/08/color_3d_prints_print_world_of.html > >And that Shirky article you linked to on 11/13 talks about the >convergence of online and offline. So does his book "Here Comes Everybody". > http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/ >where he talks about meetup.com. He does not seem to respond to email. >>>>>Anyway, to the extent you put your solar space satellite plans >>>>>under free and open source licenses, people can collaborate on improving them >>>>Following the logic and math through the wiki pages seems to be >>>>harder than what most people are willing to do. Or perhaps a >>>>social group has not yet formed around the concepts where people >>>>get support from each other the way they do on open source projects. >>> >>>One contributor to project success is indeed to get people >>>together who care about it. :-) One possibility is to integrate a >>>wiki and a face to face meeting (as in, get people together at a >>>workshop, and people work together on it). There certainly have >>>been a lot of people interested in SPS based on previous SSI >>>conferences. Maybe they don't know of it? >>Possibly. Do you still have contacts with them? Could you let >>them know the web pages exist? > >I've never been in touch with any of them (other than meeting some >people at the SSI conferences or reading their papers). Obviously, >one could look through old proceedings, but people move and change >email addresses and so on. > >You could go to the SSI yahoo group and make a post perhaps and >interact with people there: > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ssi_list/ > >Mike Combs has been an active leader there and I'm sure he would >love to hear from the co-founder of the L5 society if you don't want >to join that list yourself: > "The Space Settlement FAQ" written by Mike Combs (mikecombs at aol.com)" > http://space.mike-combs.com/spacsetl.htm > >SPS is featured prominently in his FAQ: > http://space.mike-combs.com/spacsetl.htm#SPS > >You might find a bunch of people on that list willing to help with SPS issues. Will try. Keith From benboc at lineone.net Sun Nov 23 23:46:08 2008 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 23:46:08 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Re.: celtic woman In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4929EB40.7070905@lineone.net> From: "spike" >Ben, I have a notion that might make you feel good to be alive in > the 21 century. Believe me, I feel uniquely privileged to be alive now. OK, I wouldn't mind being 20 years younger (hm, but then I'd have missed out on Led Zeppelin) > I recall hearing these songs when they were new, back in my misspent > youth, but ... This reminds me of the home-made valve-amplified single-speaker record player that I listened to my first records on. It was truly awful. Didn't stop me appreciating the music though. I still have one of my very first LPs, The Planets, by Holst, played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. It was totally ruined by that record player. It took me ages to track down a CD of exactly the same (remastered) recording. The difference, of course is amazing. Although, those old vinyl LPs have survived much better than cassette tapes. >Things are still getting better. Waaaay better. Life is goood. Indeed. Although we are fast approaching the point at which it will very rapidly get much much better, or much much worse. Or stop altogether. But whatever happens, it's an amazing time to be alive. Ben Zaiboc From pjmanney at gmail.com Mon Nov 24 00:02:17 2008 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 16:02:17 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Re.: celtic woman In-Reply-To: <4929EB40.7070905@lineone.net> References: <4929EB40.7070905@lineone.net> Message-ID: <29666bf30811231602m2c79fbf0r36f4b6451f3a2a19@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 3:46 PM, ben wrote: > Believe me, I feel uniquely privileged to be alive now. > OK, I wouldn't mind being 20 years younger (hm, but then I'd have missed out > on Led Zeppelin) Not so. My son is 12 and he digs Led Zeppelin. But he prefers AC/DC. PJ From spike66 at att.net Mon Nov 24 00:12:52 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 16:12:52 -0800 Subject: [ExI] celtic woman In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0811230624w4b5be69al18e52a1170291258@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200811240012.mAO0Coxx009777@andromeda.ziaspace.com> >...On Behalf Of Emlyn > Subject: Re: [ExI] celtic woman > > > Here's Sarah, > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXuw9icKXnU > > ...Hello Maria, nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more!... Emlyn > What a concept! Has it ever been done? Beautiful women singing religious songs while nude or very nearly so. They would scoop up so many heatherns they could scarcely hold them all. They would have my full and undivided. It has already been done in rock n roll, i.e. Madonna, but this is the first sacred melody delivered in this stunning manner. spike From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 23 23:56:30 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:56:30 -0800 Subject: [ExI] $ci guard brings gun to sword fight In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0811230624w4b5be69al18e52a1170291258@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200811240023.mAO0N8uq017675@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Weird news story for the day: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,456525,00.html From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Nov 24 02:37:03 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 19:37:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] a lack of vision Message-ID: <2d6187670811231837s6ab73b1exad3a35a0f3d2ae09@mail.gmail.com> I belong to the "SciFi_Discussion" yahoo group and I was floored by the naysaying comments of a fellow poster. Perhaps more transhumanists should look into this group. Join up! John Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 7:25 PM dngrsone wrote: > Understanding that there will be medical advances to correct a large > number of defects, I foresee there will still be a number of children > born (or not) with problems that can't be cured with modern medical > technology. Modern medical technology has it's limits, but over the next one to two centuries we will learn to heal the body from *any* ailment save a large portion/100% of the braingetting destroyed trauma (and so permanent personality/memory loss would be a problem, though an electronic download of the computer scanned mind into cloned organic brain tissue could at least partially restore things). >I can appreciate the optimism everyone feels in regard to > our (humankind's) ability to advance technology to new and unforeseen > heights, but one must temper that optimism with a certain amount of > practicality-- disease will always be a problem, just as there will > always be disabilities due to accidents and such. Technology, whether > macro-, micro-, nano-, or bio- will not solve all that ails us. For > that matter, it is probably best that it doesn't. Why would disease always be a problem? LOL Now, I will say that new diseases will from time to time rear their ugly head, but only to be put down by 22nd century+ technology. And why would there always be disabilities? Again, medical technology will be able to cure them when we are talking a century or two down the road. Only the loss of large portions of the brain (or the entire organ) will be possibly irreversible injuries. Bio, AI and nano convergence technologies will solve 99.9% of what presently ails us. You say "Technology, whether macro-, micro-, nano-, or bio- will not solve all that ails us. For that matter, it is probably best that it doesn't." WHY?? Is it a good thing for children to be in great pain from a chronic and disabling disease that eventually ends their life before they can even experience adulthood? And is suffering from bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia or severe depression somehow noble? Tell me, have you ever visited a dying young friend in the hospital? I have. > On the same token, AI is and will always be of limited effectiveness, > and human intervention a necessity in a great variety of situations, > lest we walk straight into any number of dystopian scenarios we have > all read and dreaded. I admit AI *so far* has been slow going, but if Moore's Law holds and software keeps up, we just may see human+ level AI by roughly 2040. I *definitely* do not see AI "always being of limited effectiveness." It will, given time, dwarf human capacities. You are like one of the so-called "experts" of the past who claimed a fast train would cause massive nose bleeds or that heavier than air travel was impossible. You are a person of very limited vision... > There will always be debate over how much is too much enhancement, > when one stops being a human being. There will be people out there > who will want to replace every part they can until they are nothing > but brain... and even replace that if they think they can live forever > in hardware. Very true. And so there needs to be open and public debate. On that we can agree. John G From kanzure at gmail.com Mon Nov 24 02:41:13 2008 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 20:41:13 -0600 Subject: [ExI] a lack of vision In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811231837s6ab73b1exad3a35a0f3d2ae09@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670811231837s6ab73b1exad3a35a0f3d2ae09@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70811231841o16289a8fw159c0534723d4e67@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 8:37 PM, John Grigg wrote: > I belong to the "SciFi_Discussion" yahoo group and I was floored by > the naysaying comments of a fellow poster. Perhaps more > transhumanists should look into this group. You're on the wrong list. http://www.orionsarm.com/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orions_arm/ - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Nov 24 05:37:14 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 22:37:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] a lack of vision In-Reply-To: <55ad6af70811231841o16289a8fw159c0534723d4e67@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670811231837s6ab73b1exad3a35a0f3d2ae09@mail.gmail.com> <55ad6af70811231841o16289a8fw159c0534723d4e67@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670811232137x6da56a8cvdb3102c12084f684@mail.gmail.com> Bryan, thanks! On 11/23/08, Bryan Bishop wrote: > On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 8:37 PM, John Grigg wrote: >> I belong to the "SciFi_Discussion" yahoo group and I was floored by >> the naysaying comments of a fellow poster. Perhaps more >> transhumanists should look into this group. > > You're on the wrong list. > > http://www.orionsarm.com/ > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orions_arm/ > > - Bryan > http://heybryan.org/ > 1 512 203 0507 > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Nov 24 07:05:28 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:05:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Foes of stem cell research now face tough battle Message-ID: <2d6187670811232305x57d0dbfawd64202381cc428ac@mail.gmail.com> It's about damn time! John : ) http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081123/ap_on_el_pr/stem_cells_congress Foes of stem cell research now face tough battle By KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Writer Kevin Freking, Associated Press Writer ? Sun Nov 23, 12:05 pm ET Claudia Castillo who has received the world's first tailor-made trachea transplant grown using her own stem cells poses in an undated photo Reuters ? Claudia Castillo from Colombia poses in an undated photograph. Castillo, 30, has received the world's ? * Stem Cell Research Slideshow: Stem Cell Research WASHINGTON ? When the Bush presidency ends, opponents of embryonic stem cell research will face a new political reality that many feel powerless to stop. President-elect Barack Obama is expected to lift restrictions on federal money for such research. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also has expressed interest in going ahead with legislation in the first 100 days of the new Congress if it still is necessary to set up a regulatory framework. "We may lose it, but we're going to continually fight it and offer the ethical alternative," said Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa. "I don't know what the votes will be in the new Congress ... but it's very possible we could lose this thing." Stem cells are the building blocks that turn into different kinds of tissue. Embryonic stem cells,e unlike more mature versions, are blank slates. If scientists could control them, they could direct regenerative therapy, perhaps allowing a diabetic's pancreas to begin produce insulin, for example. Harvesting stem cells from four- or five-day-old embryos kills the embryo, which outrages opponents of this type of research. But supporters say hundreds of thousands of embryos stored in fertility clinics eventually will be destroyed anyway and that people should be allowed to donate them for research that could help others. "I believe that it is ethical to use these extra embryos for research that could save lives when they are freely donated for that express purpose," Obama wrote during the campaign in response to 14 questions from scientists, doctors and engineers. Under President George W. Bush, federal money for research on human embryonic stems cells was limited to those stem cell lines, or families of constantly dividing cells, that were created before Aug. 9, 2001. No federal dollars could be used on research with cell lines from embryos destroyed from that point forward. Federal regulations do not restrict embryonic stem cell research using state or private funds. John Podesta, head of Obama's transition team, strongly hinted that the president-elect would deal with stem cell research soon after taking office Jan. 20. "As you know, he has said something specific about stem cell research, so I think you can expect that what he said in the campaign will be fulfilled once in office," Podesta said. Obama made it clear during the campaign he would overturn Bush's directive. "As president, I will lift the current administration's ban on federal funding of research on embryonic stem cell lines created after August 9, 2001, through executive order, and I will ensure that all research on stem cells is conducted ethically and with rigorous oversight," he said. Opponents of such research say they will press their case on several fronts. The main argument is that life begins at conception ? that once fertilization occurred in the lab, so did a human being. Secondly, they will argue that scientists are having success using other methods ? adult stem cells that form specific tissues, or reprogramming skin cells to act like stem cells ? so money should be directed where the biggest scientific breakthroughs have occurred. For example, this past week, doctors gave a woman a new windpipe with tissue grown from her own stem cells, eliminating the need for anti-rejection drugs. "We still intend to try and talk about the real facts that it's the adult stem cells providing the actual treatments," said David Prentice, senior fellow at the Family Research Council. Added Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America: "There's a lot that's happened over the seven years that includes some remarkable scientific discoveries, which really should have made the issue of federal funding of embryonic stem cell research moot." But Sean Tipton, director of public affairs at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, took aim at those arguments. "It's a little disingenuous for opponents who have effectively blocked federal funding of the work to then cite a lack of progress," Tipton said. "You hold someone at the starting line then you criticize them for not getting very far." Dr. Chi Dang, professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, agreed there have been tremendous advances with adult stem cells. But he said it is not yet clear that they have enough flexibility to be used in all the ways that an embryonic stem cell could be. "From a scientific viewpoint, we would be cornering ourselves into generalizing things that may not be true," Dang said. Dang also said these embryos would otherwise be discarded. "The question is: Is it ethically more acceptable to destroy these embryos by pouring acid on them, or do you deploy these clusters of cells to create new cell lines that could benefit us in the future?" Samuel Pfaff, a professor at the Salk Institute for Biologic Studies, said he also supports greater embryonic stem cell research to understand what makes them so special that scientists can endow other cells with similar properties. "I think it's very fair to say that the long-term trajectory for this area of science is to understand embryonic stem cells so well that we don't have to use them anymore." Pfaff said. ___ On the Net: Stem cell information at the National Institutes of Health: http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics Candidates answers on embryonic stem cell research: http://www.sciencedebate2008.com From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Nov 24 07:44:34 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 01:44:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Foes of stem cell research now face tough battle In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811232305x57d0dbfawd64202381cc428ac@mail.gmail.co m> References: <2d6187670811232305x57d0dbfawd64202381cc428ac@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081124014037.02449920@satx.rr.com> >http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081123/ap_on_el_pr/stem_cells_congress > >Foes of stem cell research now face tough battle > >By KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Writer Kevin Freking, Associated >Press Writer ? Sun Nov 23, 12:05 pm ET > >Claudia Castillo who has received the world's first tailor-made >trachea transplant grown using her own stem cells This is a terrible example, however; Prof. Paolo Macchiarini, M.D. et al used Castillo's own adult stem cells, NOT embryonic cells: "We removed cells and MHC antigens from a human donor trachea, which was then readily colonized by epithelial cells and mesenchymal stem-cell-derived chondrocytes that had been cultured from cells taken from the recipient (a 30-year old woman with end-stage bronchomalacia). This graft was then used to replace the recipient's left main bronchus." The Lancet, Early On-line Publication, November 19, 2008 doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(08)61598-6 Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Mon Nov 24 10:10:52 2008 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:10:52 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The CC-PP game Message-ID: I read that Citigroup has now been nationalized (in all but name) by the US government. And I have also realized that what is going on is a new financial game called the CC-PP game. Quote: The Commonize Costs?Privatize Profits Game (or CC?PP Game) is a concept developed by the ecologist Garrett Hardin to describe a "game" (in the game theory sense) widely played in matters of resource allocation. The concept is a formalism of the closely related phenomenon known as the Tragedy of the commons. Players of the CC?PP Game aim to commonize the costs (or externalities) generated by their activities across the wider community, while privatizing all profits (financial or otherwise) to themselves. In political discourse, the flow of financial resources within society has been described in similar terms, such as privatizing profits and socializing losses. ------------------- So it works like this: the rich and greedy shout freedom and liberty so they get freedom from regulation, so they can amass even more wealth. And when they go too far and the pyramid game eventually collapses, they can also demand that the losses get shared out among everybody else (but they still get to keep the wealth they accumulated on the way up). There are now billions of taxpayers money available to help the millionaire bankers. But no billions for a socialized health system or poverty programs for the destitute, or rebuilding New Orleans, etc. Is this total insanity? Or is the whole country now being run for the benefit of a very few people who are already fabulously wealthy? BillK From neptune at superlink.net Mon Nov 24 12:08:23 2008 From: neptune at superlink.net (Techno) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 07:08:23 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The CC-PP game References: Message-ID: <784B0FCDCB904BB1A53815B6FBB8FD92@technotr9881e5> On Monday, November 24, 2008 5:10 AMBillK pharos at gmail.com wrote: > I read that Citigroup has now been nationalized (in all but name) > by the US government. > And I have also realized that what is going on is a new financial game > called the CC-PP game. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonize_costs-privatize_profits_game> And this has become part of public choice economics. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice > So it works like this: the rich and greedy shout freedom and liberty > so they get freedom from regulation, so they can amass even more > wealth. And when they go too far and the pyramid game eventually > collapses, they can also demand that the losses get shared out among > everybody else (but they still get to keep the wealth they accumulated > on the way up). Actually, it doesn't always work exactly like that. It's not the rich per se, but the politically connected -- which is usually a subset of the rich. You might want to read up the "iron triangle": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_triangle Also, regulations are often used to help the process -- as when a firm or group lobbies for regulations that will harm them, but will harm rivals more. E.g., Walmart lobbies for an increase in the minimum wage. Why? This will cost Walmart, but the costs to its competitors will be much more harmful to them because they can't easily absorb the higher costs while Walmart can. (This is leaving aside that it benefits workers whose productivity is above the minimum wage and harms those below it. In other words, workers are really can't get an as high or a higher wage than the new minimum are now chucked out of the labor market. This lowers competition in the labor market -- benefiting higher wage workers and especially union workers.) For another example, see "Separation of Commercial and Investment Banking: The Morgans vs. The Rockefellers" at: http://www.qjae.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae1_1_1.pdf > There are now billions of taxpayers money available to help the > millionaire bankers. But no billions for a socialized health system or > poverty programs for the destitute, or rebuilding New Orleans, etc. > > Is this total insanity? Or is the whole country now being run for the > benefit of a very few people who are already fabulously wealthy? It's known as government. You seem to assume that government could possibly benefit everyone. It can't as the basic principle of all government -- regardless of whether anyone explicitly acknowledges it -- is that a few benefit while many pay. (Government is always a few ruling over many. Democratic forms of government merely disguise this fact because the many seem to choose their rulers -- which, in fact, is no different than slaves choosing their masters, which can never be themselves.) This is the same no matter what style of government is adopted. Of course, certain forms are less burdensome -- usually the ones that have a smaller footprint on the economy. In other words, the less government does to and for us, the better. However, the elites in all forms of government will always argue that they are helping the people and that, at worst, their gain is a necessary evil. Regards, Dan See "Free Market Anarchism: A Justification" at: http://mars.superlink.net/~neptune/AnarchismJustified.html From stathisp at gmail.com Mon Nov 24 13:40:28 2008 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:40:28 +1100 Subject: [ExI] The CC-PP game In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2008/11/24 BillK : > I read that Citigroup has now been nationalized (in all but name) by > the US government. > And I have also realized that what is going on is a new financial game > called the CC-PP game. > > > > Quote: > The Commonize Costs?Privatize Profits Game (or CC?PP Game) is a > concept developed by the ecologist Garrett Hardin to describe a "game" > (in the game theory sense) widely played in matters of resource > allocation. The concept is a formalism of the closely related > phenomenon known as the Tragedy of the commons. > Players of the CC?PP Game aim to commonize the costs (or > externalities) generated by their activities across the wider > community, while privatizing all profits (financial or otherwise) to > themselves. > In political discourse, the flow of financial resources within society > has been described in similar terms, such as privatizing profits and > socializing losses. As I understand it it isn't quite as bad as that, since the government is acting only to support depositors, and shareholders' funds would have to be depleted completely before the the government takes a loss. Also, the government will have a say on executive salaries and bonuses... which as we know those bankers deserved, since they were awarded them by the free market, the ultimate arbiter of worth. -- Stathis Papaioannou From scerir at libero.it Mon Nov 24 15:34:56 2008 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:34:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The CC-PP game References: Message-ID: <000e01c94e4a$34881610$d4e91e97@archimede> There are now billions of taxpayers money available to help the millionaire bankers. But no billions for a socialized health system or poverty programs for the destitute, or rebuilding New Orleans, etc. Is this total insanity? -BillK It is relative insanity. The total insanity is the global quantity of derivatives, around $ 600 trillions. Which, in turn, is around 15 times the gross product of the entire planet. Now imagine what happens to our economies if .... From benboc at lineone.net Mon Nov 24 19:44:28 2008 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:44:28 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Re.: celtic woman In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <492B041C.1020705@lineone.net> "PJ Manney" said: > On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 3:46 PM, ben wrote: > > Believe me, I feel uniquely privileged to be alive now. > > OK, I wouldn't mind being 20 years younger (hm, but then I'd have > > missed out on Led Zeppelin) > Not so. My son is 12 and he digs Led Zeppelin. But he prefers AC/DC. Hm. Well then, there you go. If he prefers AC/DC over Led Zep, he doesn't dig them /enough/! :P (Also, he will never see them live) I stand by my original statement. Ben Zaiboc. From benboc at lineone.net Mon Nov 24 19:46:14 2008 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:46:14 +0000 Subject: [ExI] celtic woman In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <492B0486.9090802@lineone.net> "spike" said: >What a concept! Has it ever been done? Beautiful women >singing religious songs while nude or very nearly so. They would >scoop up so many heatherns they could scarcely hold them all. >They would have my full and undivided. It has already been done >in rock n roll, i.e. Madonna, but this is the first sacred melody >delivered in this stunning manner. Heh. Reminds me of a joke, about a pope getting to heaven, and after getting part-way through reading the bible in it's original form, starts banging his head on the table, tears in his eyes, muttering "it's not /celibate/, it 's CELEBRATE!" Ben Zaiboc From benboc at lineone.net Mon Nov 24 19:47:20 2008 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:47:20 +0000 Subject: [ExI] $ci guard brings gun to sword fight In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <492B04C8.7050705@lineone.net> From: "spike" brought to our attention: >Weird news story for the day: > >http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,456525,00.html And did you see in the sidebar: "FBI readies for spike in bank robberies this holiday" What have you been up to?! (Oh, you guys have the best news stories! : http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,434645,00.html I don't know whether this is hilarious or tragic!) Ben Zaiboc From benboc at lineone.net Mon Nov 24 19:49:58 2008 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:49:58 +0000 Subject: [ExI] a lack of vision In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <492B0566.9000805@lineone.net> "Bryan Bishop" wrote: > On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 8:37 PM, John Grigg wrote: > > I belong to the "SciFi_Discussion" yahoo group and I was floored by > > the naysaying comments of a fellow poster. Perhaps more > > transhumanists should look into this group. > You're on the wrong list. > http://www.orionsarm.com/ > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orions_arm/ That's great, but i'd argue that he's not on the wrong list. The right list to be on is not just the list where everyone thinks like us. Wherever anyone says things like "Technology, ... will not solve all that ails us. For that matter, /it is probably best that it doesn't/.", THAT's a list we need to be on. Defeatist, luddite and dystopian memes need to be challenged, not left to fester. It doesn't matter if you 'lose an argument' against a particular poster (let's face it, nobody wins an argument), what matters is that you stand a chance of getting others (often silent lurkers) to think about these issues. Maybe I'm an optimist, but i reckon that as long as you get people to actually think about these things, they usually end up agreeing that more life, health, intelligence, capability, etc., is better than less. But people need to be prodded into thinking about it. Ignoring the luddites invites them to spread their propaganda, and get people to react without thinking. Ben Zaiboc From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Nov 24 20:17:50 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:17:50 -0600 Subject: [ExI] $ci guard brings gun to sword fight In-Reply-To: <492B04C8.7050705@lineone.net> References: <492B04C8.7050705@lineone.net> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081124141548.022ac590@satx.rr.com> At 07:47 PM 11/24/2008 +0000, Ben wrote: >(Oh, you guys have the best news stories! : >http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,434645,00.html >I don't know whether this is hilarious or tragic!) < Girl, 15, Faces Child Porn Charges for Nude Cell Phone Pictures of Herself > The parts I liked best: "Police say the Newark Licking Valley student... A prosecutor says Licking County authorities" From pharos at gmail.com Mon Nov 24 20:34:52 2008 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:34:52 +0000 Subject: [ExI] $ci guard brings gun to sword fight In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081124141548.022ac590@satx.rr.com> References: <492B04C8.7050705@lineone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20081124141548.022ac590@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 8:17 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > Girl, 15, Faces Child Porn Charges for Nude Cell Phone Pictures of Herself > > The parts I liked best: > "Police say the Newark Licking Valley student... > A prosecutor says Licking County authorities" > This was reported in the UK as well as Fox news, etc We have no choice. Mirrors will have to be banned. Any juvenile that looks at their naked body will have to be charged with 'use of a minor in nudity-oriented material'. And all those nude photos of Damien on a bearskin rug (as a baby!) will have to be destroyed. BillK From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Nov 24 20:43:47 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:43:47 -0600 Subject: [ExI] horrific porn In-Reply-To: References: <492B04C8.7050705@lineone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20081124141548.022ac590@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081124144226.023f0328@satx.rr.com> At 08:34 PM 11/24/2008 +0000, BillK wrote: >And all those nude >photos of Damien on a bearskin rug (as a baby!) will have to be >destroyed. Luckily, they didn't have cameras when I was a baby--hadn't been invented yet. Damien Broderick From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Nov 24 21:17:41 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 22:17:41 +0100 Subject: [ExI] horrific porn In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081124144226.023f0328@satx.rr.com> References: <492B04C8.7050705@lineone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20081124141548.022ac590@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20081124144226.023f0328@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <580930c20811241317u440977c1x361f2bf428efd034@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 9:43 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > > Luckily, they didn't have cameras when I was a baby--hadn't been invented > yet. > > Yes, they were wondering whether daguerrotypes may work or not, at that time... :-) Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Nov 25 02:33:50 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:33:50 -0800 Subject: [ExI] $ci guard brings gun to sword fight In-Reply-To: <492B04C8.7050705@lineone.net> Message-ID: <200811250233.mAP2XumZ017675@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Ben wrote: > From: "spike" brought to our attention: > > >Weird news story for the day: > > > >http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,456525,00.html > > And did you see in the sidebar: "FBI readies for spike in > bank robberies this holiday" Ja I saw that, but I decided to call off the heist. The element of surprise is important when one is robbing a bank. If the FBI already knows what I am up to and are ready for me, my chances of pulling it off are remote. > (Oh, you guys have the best news stories! : > http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,434645,00.html > I don't know whether this is hilarious or tragic!) Ben Zaiboc Definitely tragic but also tragically hilarious. A person owns themselves, and all photos of themselves that they make themselves. To hold a child criminally liable for sending pictures of herself is absurd. spike From spike66 at att.net Tue Nov 25 02:20:20 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:20:20 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Foes of stem cell research now face tough battle In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081124014037.02449920@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <200811250247.mAP2l6vp017660@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > ...On Behalf Of Damien Broderick ... > > > >Claudia Castillo who has received the world's first > tailor-made trachea transplant grown using her own stem cells > > This is a terrible example, however; Prof. Paolo Macchiarini, > M.D. et al used Castillo's own adult stem cells, NOT embryonic cells: > > "We removed cells and MHC antigens from a human donor > trachea, which was then readily colonized... This graft was then used to replace the recipient's left main bronchus."... Damien Broderick Ja, a terrible example of stem cell research but a perfect example of the fact that stem cell research has become a political football, which always casts doubt on the science, much as the global warming notion is more about politics than thermometers, and produces mountains of sloppy research on both sides. Look at the title itself: Foes of stem cell research... There are no foes of stem cell research, only foes of embryonic cell research. Some articles will say "embryonic stem cells" but of course this is redundant, as an early stage embryo is entirely stem cells. I still hear people say "Bush outlawed stem cell research..." but he did nothing of the kind. He put some restrictions on government funding of embryonic cell research, but private industry is always free to do what private industry does so very well. I find it telling that private industry chose not pour a lot of funding into embryonic cell research, but put plenty of funding into developing adult stem cell therapy. We are starting to see the payoff. Just from an non-biologist point of view and ignoring the ethical considerations, it looks to me as though it is just crazy to put an embryonic cell into another person's body, a cell which is nearly assured to explode into countless daughter cells at its first opportunity, especially when the patient needs to take immune system supression drugs. That approach just doesn't sound too promising to me. It sounds more like inviting a huge medical malpractice suit when the thing becomes a wildly growing tumor. Were I a CEO of a medical research company, I wouldn't give much money to that area, but I would spend plenty of money on stem cell research. This position has nada to do with ethics, but merely expected payoff. As a test, notice if any given article or commentator carefully differentiates between adult stem cells and embryonic cells, and demonstrates knowledge of the difference. If not, the article is likely politically influenced and is of little value. spike From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Nov 25 10:14:33 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:14:33 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Foes of stem cell research now face tough battle In-Reply-To: <200811250247.mAP2l6vp017660@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081124014037.02449920@satx.rr.com> <200811250247.mAP2l6vp017660@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <580930c20811250214r4019be5cwdbd09e95799b7473@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 3:20 AM, spike wrote: > There are no foes of stem cell research, only foes of embryonic cell > research. Are we sure? From a consistent bioluddite point of view, stem cell research is per se a Promethean effort to fiddle with the fundaments of life and to alter the course of nature... Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Nov 25 10:33:22 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:33:22 +0100 Subject: [ExI] A Mammoth for $10 Million In-Reply-To: <8BAD547E455E448E8B2543CF61E45FB6@MyComputer> References: <580930c20811200553i765786i29abf5cda90bfd60@mail.gmail.com> <200811201513.mAKFDagm007166@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0811202258ye67be6buc8e6f6c04fb5614a@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20081121010903.024ce930@satx.rr.com> <8BAD547E455E448E8B2543CF61E45FB6@MyComputer> Message-ID: <580930c20811250233m1203b159yc33399f2b705fa19@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 6:32 PM, John K Clark wrote: > Why would you need that, why would things have to be exact? Human genes > have been expressed in yeast, and a yeast cell is not exactly the same as a > human being. All life understands the language of DNA. > Besides that, the real point of such an experiment is not to guarantee that the final product closely corresponds to a Platonic idea of mammuth, whatever it may be but that of seeing how (extinct) genetic stuff would express in whatever initial conditions we may be able to establish. Are we doing anything different, e.g., in the case of transgenic plants or animals? By definition, they do not grow in a context they have ever evolved in. Nor do, by the way, any natural mutants... Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Nov 25 14:12:38 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 06:12:38 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Foes of stem cell research now face tough battle In-Reply-To: <580930c20811250214r4019be5cwdbd09e95799b7473@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200811251412.mAPECiSw010165@andromeda.ziaspace.com> >> There are no foes of stem cell research, only foes of embryonic cell research. > Are we sure? From a consistent bioluddite point of view, stem cell research is per se a Promethean effort to fiddle with the fundaments of life and to alter the course of nature...Stefano Vaj Sure there is a fringe that would oppose stem cell therapy, but they must oppose all medical technology, in which case they would have much bigger battles to fight. There is a fringe that opposes all transplants, even blood transfusions, on some mysterious ethical grounds. Stem cell therapy should be easier for them than a transplant, since one is one's own donor. It would be more analogous to taking a vein from the leg and transplanting it in the heart. Those who oppose embryonic cell therapy on the other hand have an actual argument. It is one with which I disagree (that embryos are human life, and creating them to heal another is wrong.) But at least they have an actual case, one which has plenty of followers. The thing I find disturbing is that stem cell tech and embryonic cell tech seems to be intentionally conflated, perhaps for political reasons. If they are being unintentionally conflated, then the medical tech community has a huge job ahead: to educate the masses on the critical difference between stem cell and embryonic cell tech. spike From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Nov 25 14:28:04 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:28:04 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Foes of stem cell research now face tough battle In-Reply-To: <200811251412.mAPECiSw010165@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <580930c20811250214r4019be5cwdbd09e95799b7473@mail.gmail.com> <200811251412.mAPECiSw010165@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <580930c20811250628g21ef9184p591b88c03ff74f50@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 3:12 PM, spike wrote: > Sure there is a fringe that would oppose stem cell therapy, but they must > oppose all medical technology, in which case they would have much bigger > battles to fight. Yes, or at least a much larger set of medical technologies, and this is of course a much less defensible stance "in the court of the public opinion". Those who oppose embryonic cell therapy on the other hand have an actual > argument. It is one with which I disagree (that embryos are human life, > and > creating them to heal another is wrong.) But at least they have an actual > case, one which has plenty of followers. OTOH, let us say that I clone a liver from any cell of mine, by inhibiting the growth of all other organs. Is it really different from growing a liver by any other mean? Once it is recognised that all cells have the potential to give place to a full individual, there is no real reason to discriminate them depending on the fact that their DNA has gone through an ovum at a certain stage or not. Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Nov 25 16:17:55 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:17:55 -0600 Subject: [ExI] hey, who cares about priority? Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081125101227.022c2190@satx.rr.com> http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i14/14a01301.htm <...argues Ben Goertzel, director of research at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, in Palo Alto, Cal., a private organization promoting Mr. Kurzweil's ideas.> Eliezer must be delighted to learn this. (But luckily he seems indifferent to personal acknowledgement.) Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Tue Nov 25 22:49:15 2008 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:49:15 +0000 Subject: [ExI] [Bulk] Re: Thoughts on Space based solar power (alternatives) In-Reply-To: <1227453026_52622@s7.cableone.net> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <49280973.8030608@kurtz-fernhout.com> <4928A982.9020804@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227453026_52622@s7.cableone.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 3:05 PM, hkhenson wrote: > There are practical and political problems with paving Arizona with solar > panels. For example, the locals may object. The same is true of putting in > an area of solar panels equal to the area of the roads. > No, we'll pave *everything* with solar films. IBM have just unveiled today, the third annual "IBM Next Five in Five". This is a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years. The first item is relevant to this discussion. Quote: Energy saving solar technology will be built into asphalt, paint and windows Ever wonder how much energy could be created by having solar technology embedded in our sidewalks, driveways, siding, paint, rooftops, and windows? In the next five years, solar energy will be an affordable option for you and your neighbors. Until now, the materials and the process of producing solar cells to convert into solar energy have been too costly for widespread adoption. But now this is changing with the creation of "thin-film" solar cells, a new type of cost-efficient solar cell that can be 100 times thinner than silicon-wafer cells and produced at a lower cost. These new thin-film solar cells can be "printed" and arranged on a flexible backing, suitable for not only the tops, but also the sides of buildings, tinted windows, cell phones, notebook computers, cars, and even clothing. ------------------ That's what I'm expecting and hoping for. :) BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Nov 26 11:54:19 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:54:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [Bulk] Re: Thoughts on Space based solar power (alternatives) In-Reply-To: References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <49280973.8030608@kurtz-fernhout.com> <4928A982.9020804@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227453026_52622@s7.cableone.net> Message-ID: <580930c20811260354p1f2078cck49215e7a5ef2419e@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 11:49 PM, BillK wrote: > Ever wonder how much energy could be created by having solar > technology embedded in our sidewalks, driveways, siding, paint, > rooftops, and windows? This sounds as scratching the bottom of the barrel, with an enormous investment with dubious environmental and energetic returns. My personal bets are on nuclear fusion, space-based solar energy, and deep geotermy. I do not see any other energy sources having the potential to allow for the kind of exponential growth in energy consumption that I wish for. Stefano Vaj From pharos at gmail.com Wed Nov 26 13:29:25 2008 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:29:25 +0000 Subject: [ExI] [Bulk] Re: Thoughts on Space based solar power (alternatives) In-Reply-To: <580930c20811260354p1f2078cck49215e7a5ef2419e@mail.gmail.com> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <49280973.8030608@kurtz-fernhout.com> <4928A982.9020804@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227453026_52622@s7.cableone.net> <580930c20811260354p1f2078cck49215e7a5ef2419e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 11:54 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > My personal bets are on nuclear fusion, space-based solar energy, and > deep geotermy. > > I do not see any other energy sources having the potential to allow > for the kind of exponential growth in energy consumption that I wish > for. > I think you are wrong in at least three different ways. :) 1) Timescale. Fusion power and space-based solar energy are unlikely in our lifetime. Well, maybe the young lads might live to see it. Geothermal is being done in Iceland, but deep geothermal for use in all countries is another very longterm project. 2) Cost. All your suggestions are expensive large-scale projects requiring nation-level investments. 3) Exponential power increases are not required. Future devices will be more efficient and use less power. On the other hand, The new "thin-film" solar cells will be available within five years and will be a cheap commodity product that everyone will use on every available surface. Note: I am not talking about the heavy expensive solar panels in use today. BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Nov 26 14:45:56 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:45:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [Bulk] Re: Thoughts on Space based solar power (alternatives) In-Reply-To: References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <49280973.8030608@kurtz-fernhout.com> <4928A982.9020804@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227453026_52622@s7.cableone.net> <580930c20811260354p1f2078cck49215e7a5ef2419e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20811260645n4173a9eeo8512543f25d1689e@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 2:29 PM, BillK wrote: > I think you are wrong in at least three different ways. :) I might well be, otherwise I would not be a bet... :-) > 1) Timescale. > Fusion power and space-based solar energy are unlikely in our > lifetime. Well, maybe the young lads might live to see it. Geothermal > is being done in Iceland, but deep geothermal for use in all countries > is another very longterm project. Two replies to that: - I would not assume that the pace of their development is not independent from the investments, which brings us to point two. - Who said that we should be only concerned with short-term patches to what are civilisational problems? :-) > 2) Cost. > All your suggestions are expensive large-scale projects requiring > nation-level investments. Sure. ITER, which is considered a "megaproject" by today's standards, cost a bare 10 billion USD, and yet required the support of the government of a dozen countries to get on its feet. Still, the US alone managed to invest 600+ billion USD in a very dubious military campaign which is may itself be considered as a rather short-sighted energy project... > 3) Exponential power increases are not required. Future devices will > be more efficient and use less power. Nothing wrong in that, but what about having instead your pie and eat it? I'd rather go for more efficient devices *and* more energy. Stefano Vaj From hkhenson at rogers.com Wed Nov 26 16:03:19 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 09:03:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] More Thoughts on Space based solar power (alternatives) In-Reply-To: <580930c20811260645n4173a9eeo8512543f25d1689e@mail.gmail.co m> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <492794F8.7010508@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <49280973.8030608@kurtz-fernhout.com> <4928A982.9020804@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227453026_52622@s7.cableone.net> <580930c20811260354p1f2078cck49215e7a5ef2419e@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20811260645n4173a9eeo8512543f25d1689e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1227715720_3971@s5.cableone.net> At 07:45 AM 11/26/2008, you wrote: >On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 2:29 PM, BillK wrote: > > I think you are wrong in at least three different ways. :) > >I might well be, otherwise I would not be a bet... :-) > > > 1) Timescale. > > Fusion power and space-based solar energy are unlikely in our > > lifetime. Well, maybe the young lads might live to see it. Geothermal > > is being done in Iceland, but deep geothermal for use in all countries > > is another very longterm project. > >Two replies to that: >- I would not assume that the pace of their development is not >independent from the investments, There is no reason a crash program would not have a GW/day production system going on 6-7 years. This could be kicked off by legislation that need not cost governments anything. http://htyp.org/Miller%27s_method >which brings us to point two. >- Who said that we should be only concerned with short-term patches to >what are civilisational problems? :-) If we were close enough to the singularity, a short term patch would be enough. Heck, it we were close enough, we could get through the next few years on what energy we have at hand. But for anyone not watching, one of the big nanotech projects, Nanorex, was shut down because of the stock market collapse. We just don't know when the AIs will be here (and we obtain the status of cats--at best). > > 2) Cost. > > All your suggestions are expensive large-scale projects requiring > > nation-level investments. > >Sure. ITER, which is considered a "megaproject" by today's standards, >cost a bare 10 billion USD, and yet required the support of the >government of a dozen countries to get on its feet. Still, the US >alone managed to invest 600+ billion USD in a very dubious military >campaign which is may itself be considered as a rather short-sighted >energy project... I think the war is a good deal higher than $600 billion. A good part of the current mess is to much financing on top of too little real. A few hundred billion invested in an energy project would help restore the balance. > > 3) Exponential power increases are not required. Future devices will > > be more efficient and use less power. One third of crop yields depends on energy to fix nitrogen. It's around 2% of all energy people use. The process runs about as efficient as theory allows. Another process that uses another 1-2% is grinding cement to dust. It has a very poor efficiency, on the order of 1%. You can double the efficiency of grinding by doing it in water, but that's kind of useless. The world is more than electronic devices. >Nothing wrong in that, but what about having instead your pie and eat >it? I'd rather go for more efficient devices *and* more energy. > >Stefano Vaj I am with Stefano on this. Keith From pharos at gmail.com Wed Nov 26 19:35:52 2008 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:35:52 +0000 Subject: [ExI] More Thoughts on Space based solar power (alternatives) In-Reply-To: <1227715720_3971@s5.cableone.net> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <1227337092_47644@s5.cableone.net> <49280973.8030608@kurtz-fernhout.com> <4928A982.9020804@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227453026_52622@s7.cableone.net> <580930c20811260354p1f2078cck49215e7a5ef2419e@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20811260645n4173a9eeo8512543f25d1689e@mail.gmail.com> <1227715720_3971@s5.cableone.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 4:03 PM, hkhenson wrote: > There is no reason a crash program would not have a GW/day production system > going on 6-7 years. This could be kicked off by legislation that need not > cost governments anything. http://htyp.org/Miller%27s_method It's not an either / or situation. We could have both! It only takes a few businessmen and factories will soon be churning out cheap thin-film solar cells and the population will be happily coating their roofs, walls and windows, car roofs, hats, every portable device, etc. This will be happening before the mega projects have got off the ground. But you can still be pushing for fusion power and space solar systems projects while the population is moving their homes (mostly) off the grid. Whether there will be sufficient public support for mega power projects is another matter. But that's presumably what you'll be working on. ;) BillK From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Nov 27 01:24:19 2008 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:54:19 +1030 Subject: [ExI] More Thoughts on Space based solar power (alternatives) In-Reply-To: References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <49280973.8030608@kurtz-fernhout.com> <4928A982.9020804@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227453026_52622@s7.cableone.net> <580930c20811260354p1f2078cck49215e7a5ef2419e@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20811260645n4173a9eeo8512543f25d1689e@mail.gmail.com> <1227715720_3971@s5.cableone.net> Message-ID: <710b78fc0811261724x483c9865uc23ca97900f736d8@mail.gmail.com> 2008/11/27 BillK > > It's not an either / or situation. We could have both! > > It only takes a few businessmen and factories will soon be churning > out cheap thin-film solar cells and the population will be happily > coating their roofs, walls and windows, car roofs, hats, every > portable device, etc. This will be happening before the mega projects > have got off the ground. > How's the patent landscape in thin film solar? That is, can a few businessmen actually do this, or are there legal obstructions? -- Emlyn http://emlynoregan.com - my home http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting From hkhenson at rogers.com Thu Nov 27 05:34:07 2008 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:34:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] More Thoughts on Space based solar power (alternatives) In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0811261724x483c9865uc23ca97900f736d8@mail.gmail.co m> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <49280973.8030608@kurtz-fernhout.com> <4928A982.9020804@kurtz-fernhout.com> <1227453026_52622@s7.cableone.net> <580930c20811260354p1f2078cck49215e7a5ef2419e@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20811260645n4173a9eeo8512543f25d1689e@mail.gmail.com> <1227715720_3971@s5.cableone.net> <710b78fc0811261724x483c9865uc23ca97900f736d8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1227764369_7614@S3.cableone.net> At 06:24 PM 11/26/2008, Emlyn wrote: >2008/11/27 BillK > > > > It's not an either / or situation. We could have both! > > > > It only takes a few businessmen and factories will soon be churning > > out cheap thin-film solar cells and the population will be happily > > coating their roofs, walls and windows, car roofs, hats, every > > portable device, etc. This will be happening before the mega projects > > have got off the ground. > >How's the patent landscape in thin film solar? That is, can a few >businessmen actually do this, or are there legal obstructions? Being an engineer, an electrical engineer at that, I tend to wonder about how they connect from something very thin to serious wire thickness. Let's say you coat a roof with them. Say 8 meters by 16 meters (26 x 52 feet--not an exceptionally large suburban roof). 128 sq meters. Figure the power at 1000W/m^2 and the efficiency at 10%. So at a peak (mid day plus or minus an hour) you get 12.8 kW. Cells have to be put in series and parallel since the voltage per cell is hard to use--less than half a volt. Given the current set of laws, the output voltage needs to be under 48 volts or you have to go to more trouble with insulation and keeping little kid fingers from getting across the hot wires. 12,800 watts/48 volts is 267 amps. This requires *huge* wires, 4/0 at 90 deg C rise, almost half an inch in diameter to the inverter. I have no idea about how you hook this size wire to thin film solar cells. The laws will need to be changed and people will have to deal with roof rats shorting out their solar power collectors at times. Even going to 128 volts would mean feeding as much as 100 amps back through the meter. Most houses built since the 70s have meter connections this large. However the pole transformers are another matter, seldom more than 2-3 kW/house, so many transformers would have to be changed to larger ones (with higher off peak loses). The same is true of substation transformers. On a bright cool day with little air conditioning load they would be feeding huge amounts of power into the grid. This level would almost certainly burn out substations if everyone in a neighborhood were to coat their roof with thin film solar cells of this efficiency. If this were average instead of peak for a few hours mid day, cheap thin film solar cells would be the answer. But that's not the case. There would be huge swings in available power. It would take some interesting source controls on individual inverters for the power companies to deal with the generation swings or there would have to be huge upgrades in transmission lines. It's *not* simple. Keith From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Thu Nov 27 06:45:16 2008 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:45:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Harmony Message-ID: <318785.19728.qm@web110409.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs6M2Olgzcg To each it's choice:) Anna:) __________________________________________________________________ Instant Messaging, free SMS, sharing photos and more... Try the new Yahoo! Canada Messenger at http://ca.beta.messenger.yahoo.com/ From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Thu Nov 27 07:19:09 2008 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:19:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Same strategic effect Message-ID: <724961.76759.qm@web110412.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGOe1t1dRYU Anna:) __________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now at http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Nov 27 11:16:49 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 12:16:49 +0100 Subject: [ExI] More Thoughts on Space based solar power (alternatives) In-Reply-To: <1227764369_7614@S3.cableone.net> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <1227453026_52622@s7.cableone.net> <580930c20811260354p1f2078cck49215e7a5ef2419e@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20811260645n4173a9eeo8512543f25d1689e@mail.gmail.com> <1227715720_3971@s5.cableone.net> <710b78fc0811261724x483c9865uc23ca97900f736d8@mail.gmail.com> <1227764369_7614@S3.cableone.net> Message-ID: <580930c20811270316u2d7c71c7n54c00cdb69969b@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 6:34 AM, hkhenson wrote: > It's *not* simple. Not being a market worshipper, I am not overly concerned by the fact that public measures today tend to tip heavily the balance in favour of researching, exploting and adopting solar energy in comparison with alternatives, but I take it as a clear indication that ground-based solar energy is hardly such an obvious, simple and "natural" solution to the demand for more abundandant and cheaper energy. -- Stefano Vaj From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Nov 27 16:54:20 2008 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:54:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] More Thoughts on Space based solar power (alternatives) In-Reply-To: <1227764369_7614@S3.cableone.net> References: <1227040713_31169@s8.cableone.net> <1227453026_52622@s7.cableone.net> <580930c20811260354p1f2078cck49215e7a5ef2419e@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20811260645n4173a9eeo8512543f25d1689e@mail.gmail.com> <1227715720_3971@s5.cableone.net> <710b78fc0811261724x483c9865uc23ca97900f736d8@mail.gmail.com> <1227764369_7614@S3.cableone.net> Message-ID: <62c14240811270854r5b749a1dtffc3c3c4e4308561@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 12:34 AM, hkhenson wrote: > If this were average instead of peak for a few hours mid day, cheap thin > film solar cells would be the answer. But that's not the case. There would > be huge swings in available power. It would take some interesting source > controls on individual inverters for the power companies to deal with the > generation swings or there would have to be huge upgrades in transmission > lines. If average daily consumption is half of peak production, would it be worth putting instantaneous surplus into the grid (with the collection/transmission issues you mentioned) or more economical to sink that directly to batteries for supplemental power as production declines? We would only be supplying the grid when all local* batteries had been topped off and we really had nothing better to do with the energy (That's a problem we would like to have, eh?) * "local" could also take new meaning if my surplus power simply goes to my neighbor's house (with proper energy credit coming back to me) The grid might become a production/consumption web (much like WWW), but that simply furthers your point about how power distribution must change proportionally to the production changes. From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Nov 27 18:55:08 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:55:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A dozen things to be thankful for from earth, space, and cyberspace Message-ID: <2d6187670811271055h49b017acq146072ff8369349e@mail.gmail.com> I thought considering it's Thanksgiving this might be fun to share: http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/ John Grigg From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Nov 27 19:21:30 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 12:21:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Orion's Arm Universe Project looking for writers regarding world religion articles Message-ID: <2d6187670811271121r2a99da16o911119395580bbd3@mail.gmail.com> Hello everyone, The Orion's Arm Universe Project is looking for people to write entries about world religions within their far future millieu. John Drashner1 wrote: orions_arm at yahoogroups.com Hey all, Been working on setting up hyperlinks in the new CMS and in the process discovered that while we make mention of both Judaism and Islam as being active religions in the setting we don't seem to have articles on either one (we do have articles on Taoism, Christianity, and likely others). If we have any members out there who have expertise on these religions and would like to contribute an EG article on one or both of these, it would be much appreciated. For an idea of the sort of entry we are looking for in terms of size, etc. please refer to our existing articles on other religions. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to post them here or contact me offlist. Thanks! >>> From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Nov 27 20:08:48 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 13:08:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Orion's Arm Universe Project looking for writers regarding world religion articles In-Reply-To: <2d6187670811271121r2a99da16o911119395580bbd3@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670811271121r2a99da16o911119395580bbd3@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670811271208v3c023192yd220def46d7f8c23@mail.gmail.com> I assumed everyone knew of the Orion's Arm Universe Project website, but I have received offlist emails indicating that is not the case. The official website: http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html The Wikipedia entry about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion's_Arm John : ) On 11/27/08, John Grigg wrote: > Hello everyone, > > The Orion's Arm Universe Project is looking for people to write > entries about world religions within their far future millieu. > > John > > Drashner1 wrote: > orions_arm at yahoogroups.com > > > Hey all, > > Been working on setting up hyperlinks in the new CMS and in the > process discovered that while we make mention of both Judaism and > Islam as being active religions in the setting we don't seem to have > articles on either one (we do have articles on Taoism, Christianity, > and likely others). > > If we have any members out there who have expertise on these religions > and would like to contribute an EG article on one or both of these, it > would be much appreciated. For an idea of the sort of entry we are > looking for in terms of size, etc. please refer to our existing > articles on other religions. > > If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to post > them here or contact me offlist. > > Thanks! >>>> > From eschatoon at gmail.com Sun Nov 30 06:21:03 2008 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 07:21:03 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Second annual Thinkers Lecture, December 7, Second Life Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90811292221g16f38f2bp398833c9e1ab785d@mail.gmail.com> THINKERS LECTURE 2008, by Extropia DaSilva There are over 120 million digital cameras, 230 million mp3 players and a billion PCs uploading written documents, audio recordings and video footage to the Web. Since only a minute fraction of all that information is relevant to any one person at any one time, how do we find what we are looking for? We rely on search engines. As the likes of Google improve in their ability to anticipate your needs and find meaningful patterns in the information humanity accumulates, what are they evolving into? Lecture to be held at Cosmic Engineers, 7th December at Noon. Repeated at Supportforhealing 9th December at 3:30pm http://transumanar.com/index.php/site/second_annual_thinkers_lecture_december_7_second_life/ -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From pjmanney at gmail.com Sun Nov 30 22:22:19 2008 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 14:22:19 -0800 Subject: [ExI] NYT: Born to Run? Little Ones Get Test for Sports Gene Message-ID: <29666bf30811301422r2bc41d5fv988d4a6bf754e3e2@mail.gmail.com> Passion and dedication are unquantifiable attributes of excellence of any kind, including athletics. Reminds me of a LA Clippers vs. LA Lakers game I attended 8 years ago. Earl Boykins was playing guard with the LA Clippers and he blew my mind -- at 5'5" (165 cm), he was the greatest bundle of energy and speed on the court. He actually played ball UNDER both teams, stealing balls and getting away, taking advantage of an entire layer of play the taller players couldn't access. Wild. If he hadn't been allowed to follow his passion, a genetically-inclined athletic director would have said, "No way this kid will amount to anything on a basketball court." http://thesportsmaster8000.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/earlb.jpg On the flipside, my great uncle was supposedly a musical prodigy. Debuted as a pianist at Carnegie Hall at the age of 12. Walked off the stage after his first performance and said to his mother, "This was your dream. Not mine." And he never played the piano again. Regarding the below test, even if the gene analysis is true, it's a scam IMHO. By elementary school, any decent physical trainer can tell you which kids are gifted at strength/speed/agility or not. Hell, I can! All you have to do is look at their bodies and their activity. If you'd like to give me $150 to tell you about your kids' athletic promise, I'd be happy to take it. That a gene backs up their ability is like saying I should check if my daughter has a gene for blue eyes when I can see her eyes are blue. This may sound un-H+ to some, but parents really need to give it a rest and let their kids be kids who can just enjoy kicking a ball around instead of making them score a goal... PJ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/sports/30genetics.html?no_interstitial November 30, 2008 Born to Run? Little Ones Get Test for Sports Gene By JULIET MACUR BOULDER, Colo. ? When Donna Campiglia learned recently that a genetic test might be able to determine which sports suit the talents of her 2 ?-year-old son, Noah, she instantly said, Where can I get it and how much does it cost? "I could see how some people might think the test would pigeonhole your child into doing fewer sports or being exposed to fewer things, but I still think it's good to match them with the right activity," Ms. Campiglia, 36, said as she watched a toddler class at Boulder Indoor Soccer in which Noah struggled to take direction from the coach between juice and potty breaks. "I think it would prevent a lot of parental frustration," she said. In health-conscious, sports-oriented Boulder, Atlas Sports Genetics is playing into the obsessions of parents by offering a $149 test that aims to predict a child's natural athletic strengths. The process is simple. Swab inside the child's cheek and along the gums to collect DNA and return it to a lab for analysis of ACTN3, one gene among more than 20,000 in the human genome. The test's goal is to determine whether a person would be best at speed and power sports like sprinting or football, or endurance sports like distance running, or a combination of the two. A 2003 study discovered the link between ACTN3 and those athletic abilities. In this era of genetic testing, DNA is being analyzed to determine predispositions to disease, but experts raise serious questions about marketing it as a first step in finding a child's sports niche, which some parents consider the road to a college scholarship or a career as a professional athlete. Atlas executives acknowledge that their test has limitations but say that it could provide guidelines for placing youngsters in sports. The company is focused on testing children from infancy to about 8 years old because physical tests to gauge future sports performance at that age are, at best, unreliable. Some experts say ACTN3 testing is in its infancy and virtually useless. Dr. Theodore Friedmann, the director of the University of California-San Diego Medical Center's interdepartmental gene therapy program, called it "an opportunity to sell new versions of snake oil." "This may or may not be quite that venal, but I would like to see a lot more research done before it is offered to the general public," he said. "I don't deny that these genes have a role in athletic success, but it's not that black and white." Dr. Stephen M. Roth, director of the functional genomics laboratory at the University of Maryland's School of Public Health who has studied ACTN3, said he thought the test would become popular. But he had reservations. "The idea that it will be one or two genes that are contributing to the Michael Phelpses or the Usain Bolts of the world I think is shortsighted because it's much more complex than that," he said, adding that athletic performance has been found to be affected by at least 200 genes. Dr. Roth called ACTN3 "one of the most exciting and eyebrow-raising genes out there in the sports-performance arena," but he said that any test for the gene would be best used only on top athletes looking to tailor workouts to their body types. "It seems to be important at very elite levels of competition," Dr. Roth said. "But is it going to affect little Johnny when he participates in soccer, or Suzy's ability to perform sixth grade track and field? There's very little evidence to suggest that." The study that identified the connection between ACTN3 and elite athletic performance was published in 2003 by researchers primarily based in Australia. Those scientists looked at the gene's combinations, one copy provided by each parent. The R variant of ACTN3 instructs the body to produce a protein, alpha-actinin-3, found specifically in fast-twitch muscles. Those muscles are capable of the forceful, quick contractions necessary in speed and power sports. The X variant prevents production of the protein. The ACTN3 study looked at 429 elite white athletes, including 50 Olympians, and found that 50 percent of the 107 sprint athletes had two copies of the R variant. Even more telling, no female elite sprinter had two copies of the X variant. All male Olympians in power sports had at least one copy of the R variant. Conversely, nearly 25 percent of the elite endurance athletes had two copies of the X variant ? only slightly higher than the control group at 18 percent. That means people with two X copies are more likely to be suited for endurance sports. Still, some athletes prove science, and seemingly their genetics, wrong. Research on an Olympic long jumper from Spain showed that he had no copies of the R variant, indicating that athletic success is probably affected by a combination of genes as well as factors like environment, training, nutrition and luck. "Just think if that Spanish kid's parents had done the test and said, 'No, your genes show that you are going to be a bad long jumper, so we are going to make you a golfer,' " said Carl Foster, a co-author of the study, who is the director of the human performance laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. "Now look at him. He's the springiest guy in Spain. He's Tigger. We don't yet understand what combination of genes creates that kind of explosiveness." Dr. Foster suggested another way to determine if a child will be good at sprint and power sports. "Just line them up with their classmates for a race and see which ones are the fastest," he said. Kevin Reilly, the president of Atlas Sports Genetics and a former weight-lifting coach, expected the test to be controversial. He said some people were concerned that it would cause "a rebirth of eugenics, similar to what Hitler did in trying to create this race of perfect athletes." Mr. Reilly said he feared what he called misuse by parents who go overboard with the results and specialize their children too quickly and fervently. "I'm nervous about people who get back results that don't match their expectations," he said. "What will they do if their son would not be good at football? How will they mentally and emotionally deal with that?" Mr. Reilly insisted that the test is one tool of many that can help children realize their athletic potential. It may even keep an overzealous father from pushing his son to be a quarterback if his genes indicate otherwise, Mr. Reilly said. If ACTN3 suggests a child may be a great athlete, he said, parents should take a step back and nurture that potential Olympian or N.F.L. star with careful nutrition, coaching and planning. He also said they should hold off on placing a child in a competitive environment until about the age of 8 to avoid burnout. "Based on the test of a 5-year-old or a newborn, you are not going to see if you have the next Michael Johnson; that's just not going to happen," Mr. Reilly said. "But if you wait until high school or college to find out if you have a good athlete on your hands, by then it will be too late. We need to identify these kids from 1 and up, so we can give the parents some guidelines on where to go from there." Boyd Epley, a former strength and conditioning coach at the University of Nebraska, said the next step would be a physical test he devised. Atlas plans to direct children to Epic Athletic Performance, a talent identification company that uses Mr. Epley's index. He founded the company; Mr. Reilly is its president. China and Russia, Mr. Epley said, identify talent in the very young and whittle the pool of athletes until only the best remain for the national teams. "This is how we could stay competitive with the rest of the world," Mr. Epley said of genetic and physical testing. "It could, at the very least, provide you with realistic goals for you and your children." The ACTN3 test has been available through the Australian company Genetic Technologies since 2004. The company has marketed the test in Australia, Europe and Japan, but is now entering the United States through Atlas. The testing kit was scheduled to be available starting Monday through the Web site atlasgene.com. The analysis takes two to three weeks, and the results arrive in the form of a certificate announcing Your Genetic Advantage, whether it is in sprint, power and strength sports; endurance sports; or activity sports (for those with one copy of each variant, and perhaps a combination of strengths). A packet of educational information suggests sports that are most appropriate and what paths to follow so the child reaches his or her potential. "I find it worrisome because I don't think parents will be very clear-minded about this," said William Morgan, an expert on the philosophy of ethics and sport and author of "Why Sports Morally Matter." "This just contributes to the madness about sports because there are some parents who will just go nuts over the results. "The problem here is that the kids are not old enough to make rational autonomous decisions about their own life," he said. Some parents will steer clear of the test for that reason. Dr. Ray Howe, a general practitioner in Denver, said he would rather see his 2-year-old, Joseph, find his own way in life and discover what sports he likes the best. Dr. Howe, a former professional cyclist, likened ACTN3 testing to gene testing for breast cancer or other diseases. "You might be able to find those things out, but do you really want to know?" he said. Others, like Lori Lacy, 36, said genetic testing would be inevitable. Ms. Lacy, who lives in Broomfield, Colo., has three children ranging in age from 2 months to 5 years. "Parents will start to say, 'I know one mom who's doing the test on her son, so maybe we should do the test too,' " she said. "Peer pressure and curiosity would send people over the edge. What if my son could be a pro football player and I don't know it?"