From estropico at gmail.com Wed Sep 1 10:00:12 2010 From: estropico at gmail.com (estropico) Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2010 11:00:12 +0100 Subject: [ExI] ExtroBritannia: The Artificial Ape: How Technology Changed the Course of Human Evolution Message-ID: The Artificial Ape: How Technology Changed the Course of Human Evolution - by Dr Timothy Taylor 2pm-4pm, Sat 11th Sept, 2010. Room 414, 4th floor, Birkbeck College, Torrington Square, London WC1E 7HX. About the talk: There are seven species of great ape on the planet. How did the weakest ape come out on top? With breathtaking scope and depth, archaeologist and prehistorian Timothy Taylor presents a new and much-needed theory of technology. It not only turns Darwinian theory on its head, but also argues that (alongside physics and biology) it is the human relationship with artifice that has as powerfully framed and formed human evolution. About the speaker: Timothy Taylor, MA PhD FSA FRSA, is currently Reader in Archaeology at the University of Bradford. He is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of World Prehistory. Taylor is known for his closely reasoned, wide-ranging, and provocative ideas, and for his ability to connect with general readers and viewers. He has an award winning track record in radio and television in UK, US and Canada on programmes including History Channel, Discovery, National Geographic, BBC Timewatch. Taylor is the author of The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture and The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death. His latest book, The Artificial Ape: How Technology Changed the Course of Human Evolution, is being published in September. About the venue: Room 414 is on the fourth floor in the main Birkbeck College building, in Torrington Square (which is a pedestrian-only square). Torrington Square is about 10 minutes walk from either Russell Square or Goodge St tube stations. About the meeting: There's no charge to attend, and everyone is welcome. There will be plenty of opportunity to ask questions and to make comments. Discussion will continue after the event, in a nearby pub, for those who are able to stay. Why not join some of the Extrobritannia regulars for a drink and/or light lunch beforehand, any time after 12.30pm, in The Marlborough Arms, 36 Torrington Place, London WC1E 7HJ. To find us, look out for a table where there's a copy of the book "The Artificial Ape" displayed. Blog: www.extrobritannia.blogspot.com Website: www.transhumanist.org.uk Mailing list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/extrobritannia/ January 2011 event: http://humanityplus-uk.com/wordpress/ From singularity.utopia at yahoo.com Wed Sep 1 08:58:56 2010 From: singularity.utopia at yahoo.com (Singularity Utopia) Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2010 08:58:56 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). Message-ID: <989560.50966.qm@web24907.mail.ird.yahoo.com> I believe Post-Scarcity is the most important aspect of the Singularity (Extropy). Awareness of forthcoming Post Scarcity is exceedingly important during this insecure economic era (2010). Simple awareness of Post-Scarcity on a global scale has the potential to eliminate enormous suffering. Post-Scarcity awareness could also massively increase popular support for the Singularity/Extropy. I have created some International Post-Scarcity symbols for people to share: http://singularity-2045.org/POST-SCARCITY.zip http://singularity-2045.org/post-scarcity-hope-science-technology-vanquish-despair.html Consider the power of positive thinking."Hope" can make the world a better place if enough people are hopeful. Imagine being locked in a hotel for two weeks with 100 psychopaths or 100 hopeless depressives. Imagine what type of social interactions/culture would occur in such a situation. The psychopaths may try to kill you and the depressives could make you feel very depressed. Now imagine living in a world full of despairing people without any hope for the future. If those despairing people could be given hope you could change their interpersonal/social/cultural reactions/actions. If you change enough minds you can change the world.. Optimism (expectations of utopia) can eliminate hate and misery because people change their behaviour according to their outlook. EXPECT UTOPIA! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy For more information please visit: http://singularity-2045.org/ Please share my Post-Scarcity symbols. Kindest regards, Singularity Utopia -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rtomek at ceti.pl Thu Sep 2 03:07:08 2010 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2010 05:07:08 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] Two Paths to Further Shrink Computer Chips In-Reply-To: References: <201008311512.o7VFCeJ6004555@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <2523D111-A79F-4E76-B99C-5A209500FCDC@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 31 Aug 2010, Jeff Davis wrote: > And add this tech, hyped as "game-changing", enabling 3D chip architecture: > > http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/08/applied-materials-claims-game-changing.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2Fadvancednano+%28nextbigfuture%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail > > Best, Jeff Davis This sounds nice, gives hopes that one day building a 1000-core cpu will be trivial (and I feel pervert pleasure thinking I would one day buy it used from internet for the cost of pocket radio). But first, from what I've read, they have to solve problem of getting enough power in, and next, of getting heat out of it. There is this concept of putting pipes inside the cpu, with some coolant in them. But again, this might be nontrivial to do - somewhere again I've read, that silicon will broke off in microscopic pieces, in effect clogging the pipes and bursting the chip... Perhaps reversible computing is the answer for heat problem, or at least a helper. But I've just started to scratch the glass surface, so I have very fogged understanding of this, ATM. Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From spike66 at att.net Thu Sep 2 05:59:33 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2010 22:59:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] physical conservative Message-ID: Would you not completely freak out if this turned out to be true? http://www.economist.com/node/16930866?story_id=16930866 &fsrc=nwl What if the fine structure constant isn't constant? It gives us an immediate motive to find ET life: we could ask them what is the fine structure constant in your neighborhood. Of course if alpha isn't constant, that messes up a lot of other things. I am realizing I am the ultimate physical conservative. I spend way too much energy worrying we will find something fundamentally wrong with one of our current notions in physics, and then what other things in physics that one wrong notion would mess up. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Thu Sep 2 07:22:06 2010 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2010 09:22:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?REMINDER_=96_Suzanne_Gildert_on_Building_l?= =?windows-1252?q?arge-scale_quantum_computers=2C_Teleplace=2C_Sept?= =?windows-1252?q?ember_4=2C_10am_PST?= Message-ID: REMINDER ? Suzanne Gildert on Building large-scale quantum computers, Teleplace, September 4, 10am PST http://telexlr8.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/reminder-suzanne-gildert-on-building-large-scale-quantum-computers-teleplace-september-4-10am-pst/ http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/09/reminder-suzanne-gildert-on-building.html Suzanne Gildert will give a talk in Teleplace on ?Building large-scale quantum computers: Fundamentals, technology and applications? on September 4, 2010, at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm CET). Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend. Suzanne is an excellent speaker and I am sure she will give a great talk. As she says in the abstract below, quantum computing is often over-dramatized by the popular press, and I look forward to hearing Suzanne?s explanations on how quantum computers work, how to build them, what they can do, what they cannot do, what they cannot do yet, and when. Suzanne?s blog ?Physics and cake? is one of the best online references on quantum computing (and other imaginative technologies), at times highly technical but more often understandable and even entertaining. Suzanne?s company, D-Wave Systems, Inc. (see also the D-Wave blog), is pioneering the development of a new class of high-performance computing system designed to solve complex search and optimization problems, with an initial emphasis on synthetic intelligence and machine learning applications, by using a computational model known as adiabatic quantum computing (AQC). In the picture above, Suzanne at the recent ASIM 2010 Conference, Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds, satellite to the Singularity Summit 2010, San Francisco, August 16-17th. Suzanne?s has been one of the most active participants in the ASIM 2010 Conference, and she has a nice writeup on ?ASIM-2010 ? not quite Singularity but close?. The picture, taken in the virtual conference room in Teleplace and with another view of the same virtual conference room in the background, is a nice reality cascade appropriate to the spooky image of quantum computing. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Sep 2 12:14:33 2010 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2010 14:14:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Free will and quantum phenomena self-confirm In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 28 August 2010 14:06, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > On Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 3:35 PM, Jeff Davis wrote: >> Quantum Entanglement Can be a Measure of Free Will >> >> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25665/?nlid=3434 > > The article talks about "free will" but what it is actually referring > to is randomness. If the experimenters' choice is not random then the > mysterious nature of entanglement disappears. According to the MWI of > QM, the experimenters' choice is not random but completely determined. > It just seems random from the first person perspective because you > don't know which copy you are. At least provisionally, I am contented enough with the definitions and handling of "free will" and "randomness" concepts made by Wolfram in a A New Kind of Science... -- Stefano Vaj From jonkc at bellsouth.net Thu Sep 2 17:36:29 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2010 13:36:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Two Paths to Further Shrink Computer Chips In-Reply-To: References: <201008311512.o7VFCeJ6004555@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <2523D111-A79F-4E76-B99C-5A209500FCDC@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: On Sep 1, 2010, at 11:07 PM, Tomasz Rola wrote: > > But first, from what I've read, they have to solve problem of getting > enough power in, and next, of getting heat out of it. In yet another development made just a couple of weeks ago, an important improvement in room temperature Spintronics was made; the great fundamental advantage is that it takes much much less energy to change the spin of an electron than to move an electric charge around. Up to now computer chips have not made use of a property of electrons every bit as fundamental as their charge, their spin. http://www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=39670 John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Sep 2 21:38:12 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2010 14:38:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). In-Reply-To: <989560.50966.qm@web24907.mail.ird.yahoo.com> References: <989560.50966.qm@web24907.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I enjoyed this website, a very enthusiastic endorsement of the coming Singularity. The technicolor graphics made really came out at me! lol I think some t-shirts available for ordering would be a cool item to offer. John On 9/1/10, Singularity Utopia wrote: > I believe Post-Scarcity is the most important aspect of the Singularity > (Extropy). > > Awareness of forthcoming Post Scarcity is exceedingly important during this > insecure economic era (2010). Simple awareness of Post-Scarcity on a global > scale has the potential to eliminate enormous suffering. Post-Scarcity > awareness > could also massively increase popular support for the Singularity/Extropy. > > I have created some International Post-Scarcity symbols for people to share: > > http://singularity-2045.org/POST-SCARCITY.zip > > http://singularity-2045.org/post-scarcity-hope-science-technology-vanquish-despair.html > > > Consider the power of positive thinking."Hope" can make the world a better > place > if enough people are hopeful. Imagine being locked in a hotel for two weeks > with 100 psychopaths or 100 hopeless depressives. Imagine what type of > social > interactions/culture would occur in such a situation. The psychopaths may > try > to kill you and the depressives could make you feel very depressed. > > Now imagine living in a world full of despairing people without any hope > for > the future. If those despairing people could be given hope you could change > > their interpersonal/social/cultural reactions/actions. If you change enough > minds you can change the world.. > > Optimism (expectations of utopia) can eliminate hate and misery because > people > change their behaviour according to their outlook. EXPECT UTOPIA! > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy > > For more information please visit: http://singularity-2045.org/ > > Please share my Post-Scarcity symbols. > > Kindest regards, > > Singularity Utopia > > > > From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Sep 2 22:47:49 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2010 15:47:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Two Paths to Further Shrink Computer Chips In-Reply-To: References: <201008311512.o7VFCeJ6004555@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <2523D111-A79F-4E76-B99C-5A209500FCDC@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: Tomasz Rola wrote: This sounds nice, gives hopes that one day building a 1000-core cpu will be trivial (and I feel pervert pleasure thinking I would one day buy it used from internet for the cost of pocket radio). >>> My question to everyone here... How many years until we have a 1000-core cpu (or something equivalent) as a household desktop computer? My optimistic estimate is within ten years or by 2020. And what exactly would the number crunching/calculating power of a 1000-core cpu be? I thought at first such a machine would simply be 500 times more powerful than let's say a current dual processor computer, but considering each individual processor may easily be a hundred times as powerful as a cpu now, I would think this hypothetical machine would literally be thousands of times more powerful than an average pc from today. Oh, and what about price? I'm looking forward to being gee-wowed!!! : ) John On 9/2/10, John Clark wrote: > On Sep 1, 2010, at 11:07 PM, Tomasz Rola wrote: >> >> But first, from what I've read, they have to solve problem of getting >> enough power in, and next, of getting heat out of it. > > In yet another development made just a couple of weeks ago, an important > improvement in room temperature Spintronics was made; the great fundamental > advantage is that it takes much much less energy to change the spin of an > electron than to move an electric charge around. Up to now computer chips > have not made use of a property of electrons every bit as fundamental as > their charge, their spin. > > http://www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=39670 > > John K Clark > > > > From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Sep 3 00:19:08 2010 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2010 20:19:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Two Paths to Further Shrink Computer Chips In-Reply-To: References: <201008311512.o7VFCeJ6004555@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <2523D111-A79F-4E76-B99C-5A209500FCDC@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 6:47 PM, John Grigg wrote: > My question to everyone here... ?How many years until we have a > 1000-core cpu (or something equivalent) as a household desktop > computer? ?My optimistic estimate is within ten years or by 2020. ?And > what exactly would the number crunching/calculating power of a > 1000-core cpu be? > > I thought at first such a machine would simply be 500 times more > powerful than let's say a current dual processor computer, but > considering each individual processor may easily be a hundred times as > powerful as a cpu now, I would think this hypothetical machine would > literally be thousands of times more powerful than an average pc from > today. ?Oh, and what about price? It will have just enough power to run windows 8 really well and it'll come with a coupon to upgrade to windows 9, but within 6 months you'll need to buy another computer. As for the number crunching, it'll be able to run 3x as many particle effects in Petville without lag. And cost will probably be 40 average person hours worth of work. However that's 3 month's salary because there will be so few actual jobs for money that everyone has to share 4 hour work weeks after smart robots take over and put us on semi-permanent holiday. From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Fri Sep 3 00:55:37 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2010 17:55:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Two Paths to Further Shrink Computer Chips In-Reply-To: References: <201008311512.o7VFCeJ6004555@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <2523D111-A79F-4E76-B99C-5A209500FCDC@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: Mike Dougherty wrote: It will have just enough power to run windows 8 really well and it'll come with a coupon to upgrade to windows 9, but within 6 months you'll need to buy another computer. As for the number crunching, it'll be able to run 3x as many particle effects in Petville without lag. And cost will probably be 40 average person hours worth of work. However that's 3 month's salary because there will be so few actual jobs for money that everyone has to share 4 hour work weeks after smart robots take over and put us on semi-permanent holiday. >>> Mike, you make the near future sound about as much fun as the present... I can only imagine what you would say regarding a fullblown Singularity! ; ) John On 9/2/10, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 6:47 PM, John Grigg > wrote: >> My question to everyone here... ?How many years until we have a >> 1000-core cpu (or something equivalent) as a household desktop >> computer? ?My optimistic estimate is within ten years or by 2020. ?And >> what exactly would the number crunching/calculating power of a >> 1000-core cpu be? >> >> I thought at first such a machine would simply be 500 times more >> powerful than let's say a current dual processor computer, but >> considering each individual processor may easily be a hundred times as >> powerful as a cpu now, I would think this hypothetical machine would >> literally be thousands of times more powerful than an average pc from >> today. ?Oh, and what about price? > > It will have just enough power to run windows 8 really well and it'll > come with a coupon to upgrade to windows 9, but within 6 months you'll > need to buy another computer. As for the number crunching, it'll be > able to run 3x as many particle effects in Petville without lag. And > cost will probably be 40 average person hours worth of work. However > that's 3 month's salary because there will be so few actual jobs for > money that everyone has to share 4 hour work weeks after smart robots > take over and put us on semi-permanent holiday. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Sep 3 01:44:11 2010 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2010 21:44:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Two Paths to Further Shrink Computer Chips In-Reply-To: References: <201008311512.o7VFCeJ6004555@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <2523D111-A79F-4E76-B99C-5A209500FCDC@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 8:55 PM, John Grigg wrote: > Mike, you make the near future sound about as much fun as the > present... ?I can only imagine what you would say regarding a > fullblown Singularity! ?; ) I imagine the closer we get to the event horizon the less impressed we'll be until that moment when we realize: oh yeah that singularity thing happened while I was busy doing something else. Lemme check my feeds to see how it went. :) From scerir at libero.it Fri Sep 3 10:08:28 2010 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2010 12:08:28 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] physical conservative Message-ID: <5362281.4121231283508508464.JavaMail.root@wmail28> spike: > What if the fine structure constant isn't constant? It gives us an > immediate motive to find ET life: we could ask them what is the fine > structure constant in your neighborhood. New results seem to show alpha isn't so constant. http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/43657 http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.3907 Read also the old Dirac here: http://www.fdavidpeat.com/interviews/dirac.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_large_numbers_hypothesis http://arxiv.org/abs/0708.3518 http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.1836 From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Fri Sep 3 12:03:04 2010 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado (CI)) Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2010 09:03:04 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Two Paths to Further Shrink Computer Chips References: <201008311512.o7VFCeJ6004555@andromeda.ziaspace.com><2523D111-A79F-4E76-B99C-5A209500FCDC@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: <003a01cb4b5f$f8a0dfa0$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> > My question to everyone here... How many years until we have a > 1000-core cpu (or something equivalent) as a household desktop > computer? My optimistic estimate is within ten years or by 2020. And > what exactly would the number crunching/calculating power of a > 1000-core cpu be? > I thought at first such a machine would simply be 500 times more > powerful than let's say a current dual processor computer, but > considering each individual processor may easily be a hundred times as > powerful as a cpu now, I would think this hypothetical machine would > literally be thousands of times more powerful than an average pc from > today. Oh, and what about price? > I'm looking forward to being gee-wowed!!! : ) Yes but... what about software? From singularity.utopia at yahoo.com Fri Sep 3 12:45:56 2010 From: singularity.utopia at yahoo.com (Singularity Utopia) Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2010 12:45:56 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). (John Grigg) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <538783.24898.qm@web24902.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Dear John and other interested people. Please feel free to create your own T-shirts etc with my graphic Post-Scarcity symbols. You can share/use the Symbols in any way you desire expect for making profit. The symbols are strictly nil-profit. I have tested uploading the symbols to Cafepress and the Extra-Large-symbol-size looks great on T-Shirts. You have my permission to share/use the symbols. The important thing to raise awareness regarding Post Scarcity. I'm really pleased you like my technicolor vibrancy :) On 9/2/10 John Grigg wrote: I enjoyed this website, a very enthusiastic endorsement of the coming Singularity. The technicolor graphics made really came out at me! lol I think some t-shirts available for ordering would be a cool item to offer. John On 9/1/10, Singularity Utopia wrote: > I believe Post-Scarcity is the most important aspect of the Singularity > (Extropy). > > Awareness of forthcoming Post Scarcity is exceedingly important during this > insecure economic era (2010). Simple awareness of Post-Scarcity on a global > scale has the potential to eliminate enormous suffering. Post-Scarcity > awareness > could also massively increase popular support for the Singularity/Extropy. > > I have created some International Post-Scarcity symbols for people to share: > > http://singularity-2045.org/POST-SCARCITY.zip > >http://singularity-2045.org/post-scarcity-hope-science-technology-vanquish-despair.html >l > > > Consider the power of positive thinking."Hope" can make the world a better > place > if enough people are hopeful. Imagine being locked in a hotel for two weeks > with 100 psychopaths or 100 hopeless depressives. Imagine what type of > social > interactions/culture would occur in such a situation. The psychopaths may > try > to kill you and the depressives could make you feel very depressed. > > Now imagine living in a world full of despairing people without any hope > for > the future. If those despairing people could be given hope you could change > > their interpersonal/social/cultural reactions/actions. If you change enough > minds you can change the world.. > > Optimism (expectations of utopia) can eliminate hate and misery because > people > change their behaviour according to their outlook. EXPECT UTOPIA! > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy > > For more information please visit: http://singularity-2045.org/ > > Please share my Post-Scarcity symbols. > > Kindest regards, > > Singularity Utopia -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri Sep 3 15:40:39 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2010 08:40:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Hot cells, red rain and Strato Solar Message-ID: http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1008/1008.4960.pdf (for those who don't read /.) This has been under NDA up till now. This much is now in the open. http://www.zinzzu.com/stratosolar.html http://www.slideshare.net/chris8649/stratosolar-overview Keith From swestrup at gmail.com Fri Sep 3 14:50:36 2010 From: swestrup at gmail.com (Stirling Westrup) Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2010 10:50:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] physical conservative In-Reply-To: <5362281.4121231283508508464.JavaMail.root@wmail28> References: <5362281.4121231283508508464.JavaMail.root@wmail28> Message-ID: On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 6:08 AM, scerir wrote: > spike: >> What if the fine structure constant isn't constant? ?It gives us an >> immediate motive to find ET life: we could ask them what is the fine >> structure constant in your neighborhood. > > New results seem to show alpha isn't so constant. > http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/43657 > http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.3907 > > Read also the old Dirac here: > http://www.fdavidpeat.com/interviews/dirac.htm > > and > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_large_numbers_hypothesis > http://arxiv.org/abs/0708.3518 > http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.1836 Maybe I'm a physical liberal then, but I've always assumed that most physical constants were just frozen-in accidents from the creation of the universe, and would be subject to change under the right extreme circumstances. If nothing else, it gives one hope that some of the more vexing limits, like the speed of light, might be mutable. -- Stirling Westrup Programmer, Entrepreneur. https://www.linkedin.com/e/fpf/77228 http://www.linkedin.com/in/swestrup http://technaut.livejournal.com From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Sep 3 17:09:55 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 12:09:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Hot cells, red rain and Strato Solar In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4C812BE3.20401@satx.rr.com> On 9/3/2010 10:40 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1008/1008.4960.pdf > > (for those who don't read /.) > > This has been under NDA up till now. This much is now in the open. > > http://www.zinzzu.com/stratosolar.html > > http://www.slideshare.net/chris8649/stratosolar-overview Godawmighty. The way this post is structured is called "burying the lede" and is an elementary journalism error. CLICK THE FINAL URL-- That's the INTERESTING STORY HERE. It has nothing to do with hot red rainy cells. Damien Broderick From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Sep 3 18:51:58 2010 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2010 11:51:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Milgram Experiment Message-ID: <333280.39317.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> http://mises.org/daily/4675 Food for thought? This actually makes me more pessimistic... Of course, I've heard about the experiment before, but every time I read or hear about it, I become a bit less optimistic about the future. Regards, Dan From alfio.puglisi at gmail.com Fri Sep 3 19:34:54 2010 From: alfio.puglisi at gmail.com (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2010 21:34:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Hot cells, red rain and Strato Solar In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 5:40 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1008/1008.4960.pdf > > (for those who don't read /.) > > This has been under NDA up till now. This much is now in the open. > > http://www.zinzzu.com/stratosolar.html > > http://www.slideshare.net/chris8649/stratosolar-overv > >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > iew > > Keith > Interesting, didn't see such an approach before. I tried to ballpark the size of the plants mentioned in the presentation: "small" pilot plant: 25 MWe * 3 (thermo-electrical efficiency) / 1200 W/Sq mt. = 62500 square meters --> a circle 280 meters in diameter. 1 GW plant: 1000 MWe *3 / 1200W/Sq mt. = 2500000 square meters = 1.8 KM diameter These are serious sizes. For comparison, the biggest radiation collecting device on a single structure in operation that I know of is a 100 meters diameter radio-telescope (the 300 meters Arecibo radio telescope rests on the ground and does not move), and the biggest design at optical wavelengths is the european ELT at 42 meters diameter. Granted, the requirements on precision and manufacturing are probably much easier, but this thing is floating and must somehow track the sun. Alfio -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jebdm at jebdm.net Fri Sep 3 20:44:00 2010 From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore) Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2010 16:44:00 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The Milgram Experiment In-Reply-To: <333280.39317.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <333280.39317.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: >From the article: > Because the ruled always outnumber the ruler, La Boetie wrote, the ruled > can free themselves at any time "merely by willing to be free." That's a pretty huge oversimplification. For one, you don't just have to will yourself free; you have to get enough people to join in alongside you. Because most people are afraid of anarchy and afraid of being failed revolutionaries, they won't want to join you in pulling support until they think that a big enough group of people is going to do it as well. So you have to figure out a way to get the ball rolling, which can be difficult. Second, people are frequently willing to submit to an authority because they believe the alternatives to be the worse of many evils. So you can't just pull support; you have to show people that something better will be there to fulfill the positive roles the authority played (suppressing other violence, maintaining an economy, insuring that the people have access to basic resources, etc.). This effect is especially strong under many of the more oppressive rulers, because they frequently make sure that their subjects depend upon them for resources (via state control of resources as in Stalinism, the ownership setups in feudalism, state welfare in socialist states, religious authority in theocracies, etc.). Third, the rulers may always be a minority in terms of number of people, but (in a point related to the previous one) they frequently have control of the majority of resources, especially military resources. A minority with guns can usually suppress a majority with pitchforks. So you have to ensure that you have access to enough technological resources to defend against the ruling group in case they decide to bring you back under control by force. Most of this applies even if you're working with a group of perfectly rational agents. The Milgram experiment (and related ones) gives clear evidence that humans are not that rational with regard to their relationship with authority (which makes sense evolutionarily if you assume that most people wouldn't think that much about this kind of stuff). Thus, we have a problematic situation for even rational agents compounded by our screwy relationship with authority. -- Jebadiah Moore http://blog.jebdm.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rtomek at ceti.pl Sun Sep 5 04:01:29 2010 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2010 06:01:29 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] On effects of extensive copyright laws... Message-ID: Howdy, "No Copyright Law The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion?" By Frank Thadeusz [ http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,710976,00.html ] The author describes interesting effect of no/laxed copyrights on 19th century Germany, which led to big economic and social growth. On the other side, in British colonial empire copyrights had been exploited and driven books' proces high, so very few people bought them and they were luxury (as jewelry and oil paintings) rather than source of knowledge (sure, they could be read, too). There were also some other interesting outcomes. "The German proliferation of knowledge created a curious situation that hardly anyone is likely to have noticed at the time. Sigismund Hermbst??dt, for example, a chemistry and pharmacy professor in Berlin, who has long since disappeared into the oblivion of history, earned more royalties for his "Principles of Leather Tanning" published in 1806 than British author Mary Shelley did for her horror novel "Frankenstein," which is still famous today." Commenters add their own views on this. Very interesting for me. I have always felt something very fishy with this push for more and harder copyrights, that I see and read about so frequently. Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From giulio at gmail.com Sun Sep 5 10:09:26 2010 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2010 12:09:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] VIDEO - Suzanne Gildert on Quantum Computing in Teleplace, September 4 Message-ID: VIDEO - Suzanne Gildert on Quantum Computing in Teleplace, September 4 http://telexlr8.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/suzanne-gildert-on-quantum-computing-in-teleplace-september-4/ http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/09/suzanne-gildert-on-quantum-computing-in.html Enjoy! From sjatkins at mac.com Mon Sep 6 19:19:43 2010 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Mon, 06 Sep 2010 12:19:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). In-Reply-To: <989560.50966.qm@web24907.mail.ird.yahoo.com> References: <989560.50966.qm@web24907.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4C853ECF.8090705@mac.com> On 9/1/10 1:58 AM, Singularity Utopia wrote: > I believe Post-Scarcity is the most important aspect of the > Singularity (Extropy). Unfortunately it is made up pie in the sky. Even with MNT there is no miraculous, inescapable and they lived happily ever after ending coming. There is a very slim chance that it works out really really well for everybody and a much better chance it works out well for a relatively smaller number. But at no time will it be true there is an infinite amount of everything desirable. It is true that many things will fall radically in cost of production (to nearly zero beyond the matter, energy and knowledge of how the matter is arranged). But there is a finite amount of matter/energy and MNT machines at any time. The desires of humans and other intelligences will always always push beyond the finite. Thus there will be scarcity of some kind even if the base-level is almost beyond imagination now. So can we stop with the hype? It can especially backfire in the middle of the economic explosion likely in the next few years. > > Awareness of forthcoming Post Scarcity is exceedingly important during > this insecure economic era (2010). Simple awareness of Post-Scarcity > on a global scale has the potential to eliminate enormous suffering. > Post-Scarcity awareness could also massively increase popular support > for the Singularity/Extropy. It also has the potential to make many that are or will be suffering economically think they have been robbed of a glorious future by all the usual suspects. Those suspects seldom include the real monster that limits human freedom and progress but I won't go into that right now. We live increasingly in an entitlement environment. Tell the people they are entitled to endless milk and honey and they will rip you to shreds when anything else occurs. At the best H+ will lose a lot of credibility when it doesn't quite work out that way. Trod carefully. > > I have created some International Post-Scarcity symbols for people to > share: > > http://singularity-2045.org/POST-SCARCITY.zip > > http://singularity-2045.org/post-scarcity-hope-science-technology-vanquish-despair.html > <%20http://singularity-2045.org/post-scarcity-hope-science-technology-vanquish-despair.html> > > Consider the power of positive thinking."Hope" can make the world a > better place if enough people are hopeful. Imagine being locked in a > hotel for two weeks with 100 psychopaths or 100 hopeless depressives. > Imagine what type of social interactions/culture would occur in such a > situation. The psychopaths may try to kill you and the depressives > could make you feel very depressed. > There is very little power in positive thinking without clear, consistent, effective action. You can think positive all day long and get nowhere. You can think positive about something that in reality is impossible and work really hard to get it and you will still, guaranteed, fail. The utter and complete end of all scarcity is one of those things that are contrary to reality. > Now imagine living in a world full of despairing people without any > hope for the future. If those despairing people could be given hope > you could change their interpersonal/social/cultural > reactions/actions. If you change enough minds you can change the world.. > Then give them honest real hope rather than pie in the sky utopias. > Optimism (expectations of utopia) can eliminate hate and misery > because people change their behaviour according to their outlook. > EXPECT UTOPIA! > This has been claimed so many times and has led to so much hatred and misery. It does not work. I sympathize. Who doesn't want glorious Good News to believe in and spread? Been there and frankly I miss it. But I cannot rationally claim such is true and if I can't honestly believe it I sure as hell can't sell it. - s -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Sep 6 19:37:05 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Mon, 6 Sep 2010 12:37:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). In-Reply-To: <4C853ECF.8090705@mac.com> Message-ID: <870740.98455.qm@web81504.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 9/6/10, samantha wrote: ? On 9/1/10 1:58 AM, Singularity Utopia wrote: >I believe Post-Scarcity is the most important aspect of the Singularity (Extropy). >>...Unfortunately it is made up pie in the sky.? Even with MNT there is no miraculous, inescapable and they lived happily ever after ending coming.? There is a very slim chance that it works out really really well for everybody and a much better chance it works out well for a relatively smaller number.? But at no time will it be true there is an infinite amount of everything desirable...? ? ? ? There is an even stronger argument for Samantha's point.? In those few cases where production?temporarily far outruns demand, our answer to it is to create artificial scarcity.? Examples: housing,?using the Byzantine building codes and land use restrictions, farm produce, using our system of non-production subsidies, printer ink, using our protocol patenting system, actually plenty of examples of artificial scarcity because of our intellectual property protection system.? Perhaps the best example would be in software, where the marginal production of an item goes to near or exactly zero. ? I have gone thru pi radians on this notion of post scarcity.? I can imagine plenty of reasons why some parts of humanity would intentionally create scarcity, such as reasoning that if the proletariat have plenty of everything, they will fail to pray to Mecca. ? This line of reasoning leads to the startling and depressing realization that even if we manage to create an MBrain and upload collective conscious, with plenty of energy to do all the simulated thought we simulated want, we would *still* have both scarcity and war!? Of course, they would be simulated, but even that would not be utopia, for it would not be free of simulated want and simulated suffering. ? Simulated damn.? {8-[ ? spike ? ? ? ? ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Mon Sep 6 20:16:43 2010 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Mon, 06 Sep 2010 13:16:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). In-Reply-To: <870740.98455.qm@web81504.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <870740.98455.qm@web81504.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4C854C2B.50600@mac.com> On 9/6/10 12:37 PM, Gregory Jones wrote: > > > --- On *Mon, 9/6/10, samantha //* wrote: > > On 9/1/10 1:58 AM, Singularity Utopia wrote: >> >I believe Post-Scarcity is the most important aspect of the >> Singularity (Extropy). > > >>...Unfortunately it is made up pie in the sky. Even with MNT there > is no miraculous, inescapable and they lived happily ever after ending > coming. There is a very slim chance that it works out really really > well for everybody and a much better chance it works out well for a > relatively smaller number. But at no time will it be true there is an > infinite amount of everything desirable... > > > > There is an even stronger argument for Samantha's point. In those few > cases where production temporarily far outruns demand, our answer to > it is to create artificial scarcity. Examples: housing, using the > Byzantine building codes and land use restrictions, farm produce, > using our system of non-production subsidies, printer ink, using our > protocol patenting system, actually plenty of examples of artificial > scarcity because of our intellectual property protection system. > Perhaps the best example would be in software, where the marginal > production of an item goes to near or exactly zero. > Do you actually know what it takes to produce good software? The marginal cost of copying bits has nothing to do with the actual real scarcity of excellent software talent. I am not talking artificial scarcity but real scarcity. > > This line of reasoning leads to the startling and depressing > realization that even if we manage to create an MBrain and upload > collective conscious, with plenty of energy to do all the simulated > thought we simulated want, we would *still* have both scarcity and > war! Of course, they would be simulated, but even that would not be > utopia, for it would not be free of simulated want and simulated > suffering. > > Not just artificial scarcity or limits. If you have the ability to make whatever kind of upload world you wish or feel compatible with and you make an ugly world - oh well. Guess you have some growing left to do. We all do. It is a very interesting subject how we must change to actually be compatible with and maximally take advantage of such possibilities. - s -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ablainey at aol.com Tue Sep 7 00:59:24 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Mon, 06 Sep 2010 20:59:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A million lines of code In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8CD1C3F0C978A1B-5FC-2784B@webmail-m005.sysops.aol.com> 1 Million lines of code may well be enough to act as a blueprint for the brain. However the problem as I see it is this is what is needed in the real world which already contains the rule set to make use of those plans. By that I mean DNA is self replicating catalyst which physically interfaces with the atoms of the real world. Those atoms move and interact according to the laws of physics (the rule set). Something which we don't yet fully understand. In order for a digital model of the brain to work and develop from our digital blueprint, we must also include the rule set for the physics. Otherwise we can add digital ingredients to our hearts content but the brain would never use them. The digital building blocks would not come together and digital oxygen would never get to the neurons etc. Some things that come to mind are Lego, magnets and the mandelbrot set. You can create a blueprint for Lego blocks very easily, however they can then be arranged in almost infinite variation to build different structures. So unless you include a rule set for how those structures are developed you won't get a specific result like a house. Our DNA has instructions on what proteins, amino acids etc to produce, but the nitty gritty of this is done by chemistry and ultimately physics. Something which will not be included in the computer model if we just give it a blueprint. Magnets are a closer analogy to the chemistry of the brain. You could define the magnet in the blueprint, but in order for the digital magnets to act as per the real world and stick together in the right orientation. You also need to include models of the laws of magnetism. Otherwise the digital blueprint will just turn out magnet models that float around freely without sticking together. I mention the mandelbrot set due to the fractalic nature of the biological world where we see things like golden ratio virtually everywhere. A simple equation is all that is needed to create infinitely detailed patterns. Our blueprint may be many orders of magnitude simpler than the thing it creates. Even if we collectively understand our blueprint, will we ever understand the resultant model? If not, can we make it work properly? A believe a digital brain lacking a sufficient physics rule set will not develop or behave as per a normal brain. However It may be a good approximation and only time will tell. Personally I predict the modelling of the brain will only be the start of the problem. Getting the thing to run properly will prove very difficult. Now this whole thing throws up a glaring problem for me. If we need to include the full rule set of every law of nature in our model. Our digital brain would die. It would need a virtual life support system, a body or system that replicates the essential functions that keep the brain alive. Then it would need an environment which supplies everything that body needs. Its not to difficult to imagine that the logical conclusion to this is a perfect digital model of the living world. A Matrix. And then one last problem. If our digital model were to function according to the laws of physics in order to work as per a real brain. It will inevitably age and die. Which kind of defeats the point ;o) Alex -----Original Message----- From: Ryan Rawson To: ExI chat list Sent: Wed, 18 Aug 2010 1:56 Subject: Re: [ExI] A million lines of code Unlike most of the blog writers I actually attended Kurzweil's talk on Saturday (sadly though it was by videoconference)... He didn't really say anything new there, and he was just pointing out that if you use information theoretical analysis of the unique available information (ie: dna) you can get an estimate of how much _information_ goes to constructing the brain. He was NOT saying "1 million lines of code = adult human", and I don't think anyone there got that sense. What he said is with a million lines of code you can have a program that _builds_ a brain, and then you have to go forth and teach it from that point. You know, what we do to develop a neural network in all new humans. Oh yes and his argument was we'll see this full reverse engineering thing come to fruition in 2030 (not 2020). I used to be a sceptic, and when you are caught up in the daily struggles of making silicon nanolithography work it can be easy to be pessimistic. But even so, the data looks good - every time a previous generation of computing architecture hits it's limit, a new one comes on the scene. We might as well be talking about the limits of vacuum tube computing and the upcoming computation disaster/crunch. And Kurzweil's prediction is based on solid projections of an exponential growth in computing technology. Exponential trends are powerful and difficult to spot sometimes. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Tue Sep 7 08:34:26 2010 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2010 01:34:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Two Paths to Further Shrink Computer Chips In-Reply-To: References: <201008311512.o7VFCeJ6004555@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <2523D111-A79F-4E76-B99C-5A209500FCDC@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: <4C85F912.6070603@mac.com> On 9/2/10 3:47 PM, John Grigg wrote: > Tomasz Rola wrote: > This sounds nice, gives hopes that one day building a 1000-core cpu will > be trivial (and I feel pervert pleasure thinking I would one day buy it > used from internet for the cost of pocket radio). > My question to everyone here... How many years until we have a > 1000-core cpu (or something equivalent) as a household desktop > computer? My optimistic estimate is within ten years or by 2020. And > what exactly would the number crunching/calculating power of a > 1000-core cpu be? About 5 years would be my guess. Sooner in GPUs. Which are probably part of the development path to such but made fit for more general computation. > I thought at first such a machine would simply be 500 times more > powerful than let's say a current dual processor computer, but > considering each individual processor may easily be a hundred times as > powerful as a cpu now, I would think this hypothetical machine would > literally be thousands of times more powerful than an average pc from > today. Oh, and what about price? I doubt you will get both at the same time in that timeframe. Massively more cores seems to be the current direction rather than much faster clock rate. I think it will take longer to get things like hyperfast graphene transistors out of the lab and into consumer chips. I do think you will see massive static memory chips for very cheap in about about the same time frame and a couple of orders of magnitude faster. > I'm looking forward to being gee-wowed!!! : ) > Most of the software you run will probably bloat to match. :P - s From sjatkins at mac.com Tue Sep 7 08:38:09 2010 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2010 01:38:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Now we've got 'survival of the weakest'! In-Reply-To: <315243.2536.qm@web81601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <315243.2536.qm@web81601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4C85F9F1.6000504@mac.com> On 8/26/10 10:22 AM, Kevin Freels wrote: > > > >> > >> Is he saying humans are degenerating? > > >Yes, and of course we are since because of e.g. better healthcare, we > >are under less evolutionary pressures than we used to be. Today, > >people with much more costly deficits in fitness can have lots of > >children than was possible during our earlier evolutionary history. Actually there does seem to be some evidence of a rise in IQ. As the world becomes faster moving and more complex that should select more for higher intelligence. > > But that doesn't give any type of advantage over those who are born > with better fitness. > This is especially true since most "costly deficits" don't rear their > ugly heads until well after a person has reproduced. > Meanwhile, other subtle mechanisms are still at work such as sexual > attraction to those who can help offset certain deficits. > Still it is troubling to know that as IQ increases, testosterone > levels drop and fewer babies are made. Not troubling at all if baby making becomes either obsolete or easy to do other ways soon enough. :) - s -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Tue Sep 7 09:34:38 2010 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2010 02:34:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Privacy vs the future In-Reply-To: <2EBFDEF8-8CC2-4064-828E-DE05ED5737B5@mac.com> References: <4C77948E.9090203@mac.com> <2EBFDEF8-8CC2-4064-828E-DE05ED5737B5@mac.com> Message-ID: <4C86072E.2010600@mac.com> On 8/28/10 1:22 AM, Sergio M.L. Tarrero wrote: > This is my first post to this list in a very long time. I happened to > open up this mailbox today, and what I saw compelled me to write. > > Very thoughtful observations, Samantha. I totally concur. Particularly > with your comments in the last paragraph, following your questions. > > In case some people here have not read it, the Lifeboat Foundation has > a program which advocates sousveillance via all kinds of sensors, from > the large to the very tiny. It's currently called the Security > Preserver: http://lifeboat.com/ex/security.preserver The trouble with the Security Preserve is that it seemingly falls for the notion that threat of terrorism trumps any other danger and that sacrificing our freedom to avoid it is justified. It isn't. The loss of freedom is many orders of magnitude the greater danger. This is also a general problem I have with many Lifeboat entries. There is little quantification of the actual magnitude of the risk that very expensive and sometimes quite dangerous countermeasures are recommended for. More risk-benefit analysis is needed. > > For the resons that you well point out (namely, that we really > /want/ to have the freedom to record our lives, everything that we see > and hear, to begin with, or it's going to turn into even more of a > logistical nightmare; etc.), I have advocated for transparency for a > quite a while now. Transparency alone is (a)very unlikely in that those in power (government) claim more rights to monitor everything about us than they allow us regarding their own actions and (b) just transparency will not stop massive persecution of victimless crimes and other abuses and (c) full transparency with no safeguards would be the end of any discretion and most competition. > I have also advocated for mutual accountability, and sousveillance. We > may still have a window of opportunity to push for reform of our legal > systems to allow for such--but we'd better start soon, because it's > not going to be easy to convince bureaucrats and lawmakers, and people > in positions of high power in general, who are still living in the > past (and, somewhat, the present) that this is what needs to be done. > Top-down surveillance, such a police surveillance and surveillance by > intelligence agencies, may stop some crime, and some terrorism... so > it cannot be avoided, nor regarded as totally a bad thing. The current set of capabilities really is a bad thing. The notion that everything you say or do even privately is to be open to government means that that by design very unequal power relationship is not much more dangerous to you. Compared to the real threat of terrorism or actual crime it is a very bad thing indeed that people, all people, are presumed possibly guilty. > But we all know that, depending on the particular agent or agency > doing the surveillance (within the system), the particular state doing > it (and its values and goals), and even down to the particular > individual doing it (or using the information to give orders), and so > on, it can breed oppression of the worst kind--and it often has, in > the past. The power and resources of a state, and a multitude of > cameras and mics spread over a city or country (or beyond), against an > individual. > With modern surveillance it would be much much more oppressive if or rather when it goes bad than anything in the past. Imagine a Stalin with say, a surveillance system an order of magnitude more intrusive than in some parts of Britain today. As it is the US, that supposed bastion of freedom, locks up more of its population than any other nation, ever, and mostly (roughly 60%) for using or trafficking in an unapproved weed. > Given our unusual and changing circumstances, and given the level of > /threats/ that we are starting to encounter in the world (and they are > only going to get worse with more advanced technologies with potential > for genocide), sousveillance, if set up correctly, can be a good > thing. Some good things about it that immediately come to mind: I am much, much less worried about some madman with some supposedly uber tech of tomorrow than I am about destruction directly or indirectly by growing global police states and hyper-government. The first is only hypothetical while the latter is historically all too real a danger. > > - Open source monitoring and police work. By pooling on the eyes, ears > and brains (and cameras, mics, sensors, computers...) of the populace, > it becomes much easier to spot foes, terrorists (or those promoting > terrorist mindsets/activities), What? What is a "terrorist mindset/activity"? It is whatever the authorities claim it is, no? The US after 911 had a very hard time coming up with a definition of terrorism that didn't make even those they did not want to call terrorist, especially the government itself, a terrorist. According to current executive orders the government can call anyone a terrorist they please and do pretty much whatever they want with them without a lot of due process in the way. If we are going to enforce anti-terrorism or anything else we best at least be very very clear on what is and is not punishable. The last thing I want is a global TIPS of everyone being a spy for the current regime. Especially on poorly defined terms. The DHS in the US has advised several agencies and law enforcement to watch out for those "potential terrorists" that talk about the Constitution, for instance. DANGER. > active criminals (of the kind that hurt or plan to hurt /others/ or > their property, women, children...), Criminals defined as people that actually initiate force, yes. > nasty polluting corporations, and so on. Pollution and what is and is not allowed is another that could use a great deal of clarification. > Once it becomes fashionable for people in mass numbers to record their > lives much more intensely (initially with simple devices such as > video-recording glasses), the wiggle room for people who hurt others > or endanger others' lives (I am always annoyed and amazed by what some > people get away with, day after day, while driving their death > machines...), automatically and radically shrinks. So much so, in > fact, the eventually it simply does not pay to do such things... and > those who take their chances and choose to do it, would live much more > paranoid lives (which would also raise some flags in people around > them), try to avoid being watched or recorded (more flags), Sure, but wait a second. We hyper H+ folks are a radical minority. Most of the democratic voters are very very opposed to much we are for or at least some of us are for. In such a world, without changes to what powers the majority have over minorities, wouldn't our own dreams and agendas more likely be crushed? Where is the ability to act by one's own lights regardless of approval or disapproval in such a world? Do we get into democratic lockstep of public opinion? > and mostly end up being psychologically so uncomfortable with it that > they may desist in their ways. Or else... they may simply get caught > doing harm or planning to do harm to others. Or simply bulding and AGI others may find scary to contemplate under any circumstances. Or insisting on the right to live by one's own understanding with other similarly thinking people. If the mass of people can see everything the state does but the state has a monopoly on initiation of force and much much more powerful weapons in any case, then how is simple sousveillance a sufficient check on the state? > > - Preventing police abuse. > See above. Police states want people to know how badly people "get it" if they step out of line re the state's wishes. > - Preventing abuse by employers and corporations of their workers. How about the other way around? You won't slack off much if you want to keep your job I imagine. > > - Documentation of human rights and animal rights violations at home > and abroad, for use by the appropriate policing organizations It very much depends on what are and are not legitimate enforceable rights. > (ideally, imo, international organizations such as those encharged of > human and animal rights issues today, The average of all government on a world basis is even more problematic than what I have to deal with today and would make it impossible to "vote with one's feet". > but with much more enforcement powers than they have today... merely > giving recommendations and fines, way after the fact, to the nations > committing such or allowing such to happen within their borders, is > definitely not enough to stop the crimes). > Again the huge issue to address is to minimize as much as possible the list of what is a crime and make sure what remains is wrong on clear and unambiguous principles. All else must be prohibited to be punished as a crime. Else total surveillance is hideously evil and dangerous. > - Focused sousveillance of those in positions of power, and > particularly those in positions of high power. And this would do what? Remember that 95% or so of all modern democratic governments is not subject to election. > We are all human beings (for now). A lot of power can be concentrated > in specific people or groups--this is not the best situation, but > that's just the way things are. Considering the normal distribution of IQ and the complexities of the modern world I am not sure that having power spread out evenly to everyone would be preferable except for the great deal of this "power" is illegitimate power over the freedom of others. > However, these people or groups should not be allowed by the majority > to live in total unaccountability and secrecy... particularly because > their actions, their 'conspiring', and so on, affect many others' > lives, sometimes in very deep ways. Counter argument I don't necessarily hold: Suppose only the few understand a problem well enough to see a possible solution. Further suppose that the majority of the people can't or won't understand the problem or will be so opposed to its only real solution that you can't tell them the truth or they would deny it. Then, if you have no secrecy at all, can you move at all to resolve the issue? 2nd counter: You wish to exploit near earth asteroids for materials, volatiles, buliding out space infrastructure and so on along with a group of well-financed individuals. The governments of the world are opposed. Is there any way you can conspire to do it or anything else that you may see as an utterly good and necessary thing against their will while under total surveillance? > Their decisions can mean the life, imprisonment, or death of some (or > sometimes many, sometimes many many) other human beings. > Yes. And perhaps, if you could really force it, which you cannot, total transparency of their activities would get a lot of them rather summarily (and perhaps violently) removed from their positions. But, they would see you coming and would have both fabulous intelligence and much more power than you. It is not likely to end well. > - Huge employment opportunities. Very few people could afford, or be > inclined to, without compensation, donate a lot of their precious > lifetime to become sousveillance agents. So... as the opportunities > for employment decrease with time, particularly as technology starts > taking more and more jobs from the economy, there seems to be a niche > there which could potentially grow indefinitely. What for? Paid snitches? Paid by whom? And the surveillance gear would be automated and much more dependable than people running the gear by hand. > It would be nice if, once given the appropriate training and > certification, any decent person could engage, maybe with greatly > loose, open schedules (or no schedule at all... you do it when you > want to do it... you can consider it a "back-up job" that is always > there), on sur/sousveillance activities. *shudders* > Always in groups of at least 3 people (who don't know each other), > chosen at random from a huge pool of sousveillance "agents" who happen > to be online at any given time, they could go in specific missions to > investigate, eavesdrop, gather evidence, etc., in situations or > contexts which require such. I don't think I would want to live in such a world. > > - The more power and influence a person or group has, the more lives > her/its everyday decisions touches... the more intense the scrutiny > that may fall upon her/it. > So if I work hard and succeed in some field and employ many others then I should be scrutinized more on some suspicion of guilt? Who else should be scrutinized? > - Those people, groups, organizations, agencies, governments trying to > create (illegal, hopefully according to international law, whatever > that means at the time) pockets of privacy, could be easily spotted, > and something done about it. A "transparent society", fairly > established (after much discussion of what this means, and some > sensible agreements reached), would be, by definition almost, much > more humane, its peoples' much more accountable to each other, to > humanity at large. > Pockets of privacy may well be the only hope that unpopular minorities, not just those actually initiating force, have. Humanity at large is NOT OUR FRIEND. Careful what you wish for. > - With such systems properly in place, it should be easier for us to > stop some highly visible and potentially deadly acts of terror before > the perpetrators of such acts have the time to cause mass death and > destruction. With the advent of cheap DIY bio and eventually > nanoengineering, it becomes important, for public health reasons, to > start being a lot more vigilant. > Again, terrorism is not the main threat by many orders of magnitude. > Some major problems that I see achieving this vision: > > - Those in positions of power (or high power) may likely, at least > initially and probably for some time, oppose it (some fiercely). Not just them. Everyone who some level of privacy or anonymity offers some additional place for freedom. Everyone who has any information they want to control regarding who sees it under what circumstances. This includes almost all businesses as we know them today. Everyone that practices what their neighbors or employers will think is too kinky a style of sex or frequents dives they would rather their employer or some of their friends not know about. I leave the rest to your imagination. It is not at all true that "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear". > Given the fact that, today, they have the "upper hand", it may be hard > to reverse this. They might fight, kick and scream so that this is not > done... so, without strong social support for such systems, and quite > a bit of activism, they may never come to pass. This view is hard to > accept even by the average citizen right now, still living in 20th > century technological and scientific realitites (in their minds), and > with 20th century threats in their minds. There are good reasons even the relatively powerless should think twice about advocating or going along with any such thing. Of course, as I say, the tech is coming anyway. So what is really needed is sound limitation of how such information may be used and what is and is not a crime. I don't see us being very good at either or having much of the basis for becoming good at it. > > - Even if one nation were to decide to test or implement such > sousveillance systems, others may not. Unless sousveillance systems > are organized somewhat globally, via adequate international > organizations, it would be hard to properly monitor activity of the > worst criminals and terrorists, who have the freedom to go elsewhere > to plot their misdeeds. The worst criminals and terrorists work for governments, generally speaking and specifically speaking of the number of actual deaths and amount of damage they do. > > - It would be complicated to set up such a system. If we end up doing > none of this, maybe for lack of public support for such measures (a > public which may not hear about these possibilities in the first > place), /maybe/ a benign superintelligence, if we are successful in > developing such, may eventually do the equivalent (both the top-down > and the bottom-up monitoring), but without taking so many resources, > and without taking so much time from people (the time that countless > sousveillance agents around the world may invest in monitoring > activities). It will almost all be automated anyway. I don't have much faith that a great AGI will come along and take care of it for us. I believe that one could come along, in a decade or three, that *could do the job*. I rather doubt it would be terribly interested in such employment though. > However, my opinion is that it would be worthy to push for such a > social movement and to spark intense political action encouraging > lifelogging, transparency and sousveillance--if only because the risks > of "privacy" and unaccountability in the world are starting to get out > of hand. Actually the singular lack of privacy of the individual from the state is getting extremely out of hand. The risk of loss of even more privacy are not small. So I don't think it is time to trump the benefits of sousveillance just yet. > Such has been also looked at and analyzed in more detail by authors > such as David Brin, with his book The Transparent Society > , > and I'm sure Gordon Bell and other proponents of intense lifelogging. > Lifeblogging and being under the scrutiny of others 24/7 are not at all the same thing. - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Tue Sep 7 10:09:59 2010 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2010 03:09:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Privacy vs the future In-Reply-To: References: <4C77948E.9090203@mac.com> <2EBFDEF8-8CC2-4064-828E-DE05ED5737B5@mac.com> Message-ID: <4C860F77.5000307@mac.com> On 8/28/10 10:09 AM, Tomasz Rola wrote: > On Sat, 28 Aug 2010, Sergio M.L. Tarrero wrote: > >> This is my first post to this list in a very long time. I happened to open up >> this mailbox today, and what I saw compelled me to write. >> >> Very thoughtful observations, Samantha. I totally concur. Particularly with >> your comments in the last paragraph, following your questions. > I perceive both of you as quite optimistic. So, as an advocatus diaboli > and cynic, I feel the urgent need to spice up discussion with my > diabolically-cynical remarks. I don't think cynicysm itself is strong > enough to change anybody's minds, not without money for bribing, but I > feel a bit bored. I used to be very optimistic. Then I considered more closely the actual possibilities of massively transforming the human psyche in a mere generation or two so as to achieve and most enjoy my incredibly optimistic utopian vision. Optimism fled rather quickly. Still we cannot keep status quo. We move forward or fall back, most likely catastrophically. So we can only project what is very very likely, such as massively better, cheaper, smaller surveillance tech, and what [little or not] we can do to prepare or deal with these things. > In one sentence, we humans display the well known tendency to heavily > screw up everything that we touch. Including, it seems, evolution (now, > the tale of Tower of Babel doesn't seem like cruelty anymore, but rather > like a safety measure). It is important to note, however, that the > tendency itself seems to be immune from us. Maybe we should start > intentionally screwing up. Instead of this "all be good" moves, which > always end up in hellish way (sometimes small, sometimes big). > Perfection is not required (if it is required then let us get intoxicated in whatever way we most enjoy and stop dreaming of the future). So far we are doing well enough to have opportunity for so much more. > Of course, this should not stop us from doing things. Our history is an > ongoing race to escape our previous screwups (Stanislaw Lem, "Summa > technologiae"??, probably), so if we stop we simply become finished even > faster. Myself, I would vote for buying us some more time, if possible, > mostly because I don't think being finished would be funny for me. > > Technically, this was one sentence, repeated few times and with some > letters permutated and changed/added/retracted. (No I don't have patent on > this, fsck you patent parasites ;-), permutation and word play is prior > art). > > [...] >> - Open source monitoring and police work. By pooling on the eyes, ears and >> brains (and cameras, mics, sensors, computers...) of the populace, it becomes >> much easier to spot foes, terrorists (or those promoting terrorist >> mindsets/activities), active criminals (of the kind that hurt or plan to hurt >> others or their property, women, children...), nasty polluting corporations, >> and so on. Once it becomes fashionable for people in mass numbers to record >> their lives much more intensely (initially with simple devices such as >> video-recording glasses), the wiggle room for people who hurt others or >> endanger others' lives (I am always annoyed and amazed by what some people get >> away with, day after day, while driving their death machines...), >> automatically and radically shrinks. So much so, in fact, the eventually it >> simply does not pay to do such things... and those who take their chances and >> choose to do it, would live much more paranoid lives (which would also raise >> some flags in people around them), try to avoid being watched or recorded >> (more flags), and mostly end up being psychologically so uncomfortable with it >> that they may desist in their ways. Or else... they may simply get caught >> doing harm or planning to do harm to others. > Yes, this "citizen eyes" reminds me of perils of one recently failed > system. This "give me a man and I will find a paragraph (to sentence > him)". Fortunately, this didn't work in a lo-tech environment. Hopefully, > hi-tech will prove to be helpless too. How? Well, scratch my back and I > will scratch yours, buddy. > Yep. My reaction too. I don't remotely want to go there. If that was the way of it without powerful safeguards on freedom then I would be reading up on directed EMP weapons. > It's not going to be "right minded citizens watch". It's more likely going > to be "I cannot trust my wife and children anymore". Those kind of things > are well known in countries in 1000 km radius from where I sit now. It's > not going to be "bad men will have psyche damaged" - they don't give a > fsck, I'm afraid. I would rather expect bad men to feel the winds and get > promoted into right place, where they would become safe and profit from > helping their comrades. Being sociopaths, they are marvels of camouflage > and mimicry, able to become first among most righteous. > All the more righteous since, if in government, they have a monopoly on the initiation of force, make the laws, and decide whom to enforce them on. That buys an awful lot of white wash of one's nature. - Preventing police abuse. >> - Preventing abuse by employers and corporations of their workers. >> >> - Documentation of human rights and animal rights violations at home and > There are more ways of abusing people and animals, Horatio, > Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. > > The last one genocide (and one before it, too) had been widely reported in > the news, including leading broadcasters. > Yep. Knowing something is happening and being able to resist or stop it are not at all the same. >> - Focused sousveillance of those in positions of power, and particularly those >> in positions of high power. We are all human beings (for now). A lot of power >> can be concentrated in specific people or groups--this is not the best >> situation, but that's just the way things are. However, these people or groups >> should not be allowed by the majority to live in total unaccountability and >> secrecy... particularly because their actions, their 'conspiring', and so on, >> affect many others' lives, sometimes in very deep ways. Their decisions can >> mean the life, imprisonment, or death of some (or sometimes many, sometimes >> many many) other human beings. > You seem to believe too much in majority. I think majority will allow what > it is being said to allow. Heck, it will even be sure this is majority's > own will. > Yes. Promise them bread, circuses and security if only they promptly report anyone and anything that may in any stretch be a threat to your own much beloved power to hand out goodies and withhold heavy punishments. > What I pray for every day (not really, in fact) is to never become subject > of majority's interest. While I have no fear at all of police, > intelligence, military, Catholic Church, mafia etc. (well, I feel a lot of > respect, sure, and I show my respect by staying away). > I fear several of these because they are the instruments of government which claims to represent the majority's interest (although it is a Big Lie). >> - Those people, groups, organizations, agencies, governments trying to create >> (illegal, hopefully according to international law, whatever that means at the >> time) pockets of privacy, could be easily spotted, and something done about >> it. A "transparent society", fairly established (after much discussion of what >> this means, and some sensible agreements reached), would be, by definition >> almost, much more humane, its peoples' much more accountable to each other, to >> humanity at large. > Big ideas don't breed well in transparency (before you shred this > sentence, try to analyse it). This kind of society seems to be doomed by > design. I don't think that group think has contributed anything valuable > to humanity (other than abhorment for group think). Of course I will gladly > educate myself about counter examples. > Yep. Harder to come up with something truly innovative and actually get traction realizing it in products if everyone knows or can know what you are doing. > While there are milions (bilions?) of computer owners, and they are all > capable of DIY electronic warfare (giving us a looong holidays in best > case), I have yet to hear about anything bigger than fscking up Windows > world-wide. And I expect very few are capable of actually doing anything, > and even fewer are motivated - and if they are, they would rather rob the > bank than destroy electronic currency. Or they will set up a botnet and > make money from it. So it seems to me, most dangerous and capable guys are > connected to crime world, which is not so much interested in burning the > tree that gives them fruits so sweet. > Most likely the more dangerous and capable work in some three letter government organization with a substantial black budget. The same tech that makes massive surveillance easy also makes it easy to fake "transparency" reports if you have enough tech and budget. > Is this good enough reason to put so much of effort and resources in > surveillance, while not giving even 1/1000 of it to try and really improve > things? Like, helping people to be less self destructing. Drug abuse, > violence (not just physical one), many other abuses - I believe they have > much bigger costs than few crimes that could be prevented by citizens > looking inside my anus. And I am not sure that existing prevention > mechanisms really lack so much that they need to be extended in this new > brave way. What business is it of yours or the governments what anyone decides to put into their bodies? > - It would be complicated to set up such a system. If we end up doing > none of >> this, maybe for lack of public support for such measures (a public which may >> not hear about these possibilities in the first place), maybe a benign >> superintelligence, if we are successful in developing such, may eventually do >> the equivalent (both the top-down and the bottom-up monitoring), but without >> taking so many resources, and without taking so much time from people (the > There are quite big possibilities of such superinteligences being simply > uninterested in doing such menial job, as caring for us human ants and > preventing us from harming each other (this was described in a great way > in Stanislaw Lem's "Golem XIV"). Even if I am far below such level, I > would take any chance of going out of this planet and build my home in > space (especially having millenia if not eons to live). Also, I would > consider preventive war against humanity, just to make sure I am too far > to be chased and punished for my "disobedience". Or, to be even more sure, > I would shoot out only kind of seed probe, that would replicate myself on > the Moon and spread me further, while here on Earth I would play with > humanity to keep it busy for a long, long time... > > One thing I would be a bit afraid about humanity, it would be similarities > to cockroaches. One can poison, drown, shoot or burn and still, there is > no 100% effectiveness. I think this could be depressing, but I am not sure > if mechanical intelligence can feel depression. The best strategy seems to > be playing us against each other, make use of our own screwing ability to > keep us in line, or more like keep us from stepping over some line. > Naw. I am sure an AGI worth its salt could quite easily find a way to kill all humans if it considered such necessary. A determined enemy that thinks at least six orders of magnitude faster than human beings and in much greater depth? Kiss your somewhat evolved chimp posterior goodbye. I doubt you will have time for much more than that. Fortunately, it is very doubtful such an AGI would see humanity as any real threat. If it was not inclined to directly help us I think the most likely alternative would be tremendous indifference. If it sees that the greatest opportunities are away from this somewhat depleted gravity well such indifference may not be catastrophic for us. > Another take on such super-supervisors is given in Lem's "Wizja lokalna" > (not translated to English, but judging from wikipedia there are German, > Japanese, Russian and Italian translations [ > http://solaris.lem.pl/ksiazki/beletrystyka/wizja-lokalna ] , [ > http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizja_lokalna ], so bilinguals can help > themselves a little). In one sentence :-), the endproduct is strange. The > soil is penetrated to few meters depth by small bots creating so called > "ethicosphere", which prevents citizens from harming each other, sometimes > in a very depressing way, like for example when boys are unable to act > upon little bastard who laughs at them and bullies them with abusive > words. > Wasn't their some Russian short SF tale about what happened after a well meaning Russkie programmed the global nanobot swarm? Everyone could have pretty much anything the bots were capable of conjuring up. But if they tried to initiated force against anyone there brains would freeze a few minutes. I could think of much worse outcomes. - samantha From pharos at gmail.com Tue Sep 7 10:01:18 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2010 11:01:18 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Privacy vs the future In-Reply-To: <4C86072E.2010600@mac.com> References: <4C77948E.9090203@mac.com> <2EBFDEF8-8CC2-4064-828E-DE05ED5737B5@mac.com> <4C86072E.2010600@mac.com> Message-ID: On 9/7/10, samantha wrote: > Transparency alone is > (a)very unlikely in that those in power (government) claim more > rights to monitor everything about us than they allow us regarding their own > actions and > (b) just transparency will not stop massive persecution of > victimless crimes and other abuses and > (c) full transparency with no > safeguards would be the end of any discretion and most competition. > > The discussion about transparency in society is a distraction. What sort of society do you want? The wealth gap in the US is now such that the top 1% own nearly everything and the middle-class is being destroyed. One simplification is that your pension funds have been ruined while the financiers get million-dollar bonuses for 'managing' your funds. If the mass of the population have nothing much left worth stealing, the rulers don't really care whether they watch each other or mug each other or kill each other. So long as they are kept quiet enough that they don't upset the super-rich regal lifestyles. (Bring on the X-factor and the ball games!). You can have as much 'freedom' as you like so long as you don't mind being poor and don't rock the boat. BillK From sjatkins at mac.com Tue Sep 7 11:29:35 2010 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2010 04:29:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Privacy vs the future In-Reply-To: References: <4C77948E.9090203@mac.com> <2EBFDEF8-8CC2-4064-828E-DE05ED5737B5@mac.com> <4C86072E.2010600@mac.com> Message-ID: <4C86221F.5000807@mac.com> On 9/7/10 3:01 AM, BillK wrote: > On 9/7/10, samantha wrote: > >> Transparency alone is >> (a)very unlikely in that those in power (government) claim more >> rights to monitor everything about us than they allow us regarding their own >> actions and >> (b) just transparency will not stop massive persecution of >> victimless crimes and other abuses and >> (c) full transparency with no >> safeguards would be the end of any discretion and most competition. >> >> > > The discussion about transparency in society is a distraction. > > What sort of society do you want? > The wealth gap in the US is now such that the top 1% own nearly > everything and the middle-class is being destroyed. One simplification > is that your pension funds have been ruined while the financiers get > million-dollar bonuses for 'managing' your funds. > > If the mass of the population have nothing much left worth stealing, > the rulers don't really care whether they watch each other or mug each > other or kill each other. So long as they are kept quiet enough that > they don't upset the super-rich regal lifestyles. > (Bring on the X-factor and the ball games!). Well, I would like to say that this sort of classist talk has no place in a free market or a free country. But then I remember that we have neither. But it is not the "rich" that are the enemy. It is the government that produced the economic conditions we have now by expanding without limit, making credit really really cheap, and insisting banks make mortgages with people that could not afford them with government tacitly or implicitly guaranteeing them. Yes there were various private parties that took advantage of the mess. But they were not its creators. Before they could buy favors their had to be a bloated government with runaway power to produce favors to sell. If you want out of this mess do not play the old "soak the rich" theme while giving the true enemy of your well being , the government, even more power over even more of the economy. If you want a viable economic future start demanding separation of government and economy. > You can have as much 'freedom' as you like so long as you don't mind > being poor and don't rock the boat. > BS. That is not how it is today at all. You know it. I know it. Freedom is not having half of all you earned taken away. Freedom is not being threatened with prison or thrown into one for crimes that aren't crimes at all. - samantha From pharos at gmail.com Tue Sep 7 11:52:56 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2010 12:52:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Privacy vs the future In-Reply-To: <4C86221F.5000807@mac.com> References: <4C77948E.9090203@mac.com> <2EBFDEF8-8CC2-4064-828E-DE05ED5737B5@mac.com> <4C86072E.2010600@mac.com> <4C86221F.5000807@mac.com> Message-ID: On 9/7/10, samantha wrote: > Well, I would like to say that this sort of classist talk has no place > in a free market or a free country. But then I remember that we have > neither. But it is not the "rich" that are the enemy. It is the > government that produced the economic conditions we have now by > expanding without limit, making credit really really cheap, and > insisting banks make mortgages with people that could not afford them > with government tacitly or implicitly guaranteeing them. Yes there > were various private parties that took advantage of the mess. But they > were not its creators. Before they could buy favors their had to be a > bloated government with runaway power to produce favors to sell. If > you want out of this mess do not play the old "soak the rich" theme > while giving the true enemy of your well being , the government, even > more power over even more of the economy. If you want a viable economic > future start demanding separation of government and economy. > > I agree that the super-rich have taken over the US government and use it to increase their wealth and power. But your hatred of government is leading you away from the real criminals. They will use any means available, be it huge corporations, governments, state legislatures, whatever is convenient. You can't do big projects without big organisations and any of them might be taken over and misused. (As they have been). Your proposal of abolishing big government and reverting to local tribal councils is no way to run a modern nation and will cause even more problems. Ever seen the morass of local politics? > > BS. That is not how it is today at all. You know it. I know it. > Freedom is not having half of all you earned taken away. Freedom is > not being threatened with prison or thrown into one for crimes that > aren't crimes at all. > > 'freedom' was in quotes because we only have an illusion of freedom provided by the super-rich to keep us quiet while the nation is robbed blind. Try and break the illusion and you'll be in trouble. BillK From singularity.utopia at yahoo.com Tue Sep 7 12:34:41 2010 From: singularity.utopia at yahoo.com (Singularity Utopia) Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2010 12:34:41 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <147628.33554.qm@web24920.mail.ird.yahoo.com> On 9/6/10 samantha wrote: "Unfortunately it is made up pie in the sky. Even with MNT there is no miraculous, inescapable and they lived happily ever after ending coming. There is a very slim chance that it works out really really well for everybody and a much better chance it works out well for a relatively smaller number." Dear Samantha, Post-Scarcity is NOT pie in the sky anymore than Extropy is pie in the sky. Utopia is entirely possible for everyone. Consider a brain one or two billion times more intelligent than your current intelligence. The possibilities in such circumstances are infinite. If you fail to believe super-intelligence will create unlimited utilization of resources then consider the resources of a virtual world: in a digital virtual and in a virtual universes resources will be limitless. Quadrillions of infinite virtual universes could be easily created and within those universes more virtual and real real universes could be created. Extremely large brainpower makes anything possible. A good sci-fi book to read regarding possibilities, which our puny unaugmented brains cannot truly fathom, is PERMUTATION CITY. A few examples of how we are moving towards Post-Scarcity are: 1. The free operating system Ubuntu verses the expensive Microsoft OS. 2. Free browsers. 3. The free Wikipedia encyclopedia. 4. P2P sharing Admittedly these examples of free stuff often make money via donations or or via another business in addition to the free-stuff but this is only the beginning. I can watch any video I want on YouTube for free, which people would have found unbelievable-pie-in-the-sky 10 or 20 years ago. Samantha, you ask if we can "stop with the hype?" I would say the same to you. You also ask me to tread carefully because people will become disillusioned with H+ if it doesn't work out how I envisage. I also ask you to tread carefully because I have spread my dreams under your feet. I am poor therefore I have only my dreams. Dreams are the most important part of being human because without dreams we are nothing. I cannot recant my dreams. I have a dream... Samantha, you wrote: "There is very little power in positive thinking without clear, consistent, effective action. You can think positive all day long and get nowhere. You can think positive about something that in reality is impossible and work really hard to get it and you will still, guaranteed, fail. The utter and complete end of all scarcity is one of those things that are contrary to reality." Desires, dreams, and pioneering visions allow us to achieve the impossible. Many years ago during the height of American slavery nobody would have dreamed a Black man would become President of the USA because that was contrary to reality. Positive thinking is the precursor to clear effective action. Before the action happens people need to believe. It took at long time for a Black man to become a President but we are now entering accelerating times where changes will happen quicker. Do you understand Extropy and the Singularity? During the Stone Age a spaceship sending men to the Moon was pie in the sky, utter impossibility, but thankfully times change and we progress. The human race will soon take an unimaginable leap forward far surpassing all previous progression. I hope you are able to dream. On 9/6/10 Gregory Jones wrote: "I can imagine plenty of reasons why some parts of humanity would intentionally create scarcity, such as reasoning that if the proletariat have plenty of everything, they will fail to pray to Mecca." Dear Spike (Gregory Jones) you make a good point. There are people who may object to post-scarcity, which is one of the reasons why I am attempting to inspire people into believing in the possibilities the future holds. If enough people believe in utopia, it will happen. To conclude: I think the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy has not been completely adsorbed by some of the responders to this Post-Scarcity thread. The collective desires of the human race can create a dystopia or utopia. I hope you can understand this network effect. I hope you can change your views to a positive outlook because negative views can harm the entire world. You have the power to begin spreading hope. You can create utopia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy There are many technological marvels already extant in the world today. In a surgical operation a patient recently had a new windpipe grown using her own stem cells and then transplanted into her. This is not pie-in the sky or science fiction. Look at the world and it is easy to see how technology is progressing towards a Singularity point. Expect utopia. Regards, Singularity Utopia. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Tue Sep 7 18:31:01 2010 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2010 20:31:01 +0200 Subject: [ExI] (Mis)understanding Transhumanism: TransVision 2010 Presentation by Miriam Ji Sun Message-ID: (Mis)understanding Transhumanism: TransVision 2010 Presentation by Miriam Ji Sun http://transvision2010.wordpress.com/2010/09/07/misunderstanding-transhumanism-transvision-2010-presentation-by-miriam-ji-sun/ Transhumansism is a complex and still evolving philosophy that cuts across a variety of philosophies and ways of life and even incorporated views from its critics. Therefore, transhumanism can not be understood in a one-dimensional way. When trying to interpret and understand transhumanism many people tend to only focus on specific aspects that also relate to familiar concepts. However, transhumanism is full of seeming contradictions if taking commonly known thought schools, philosophies and ideologies as basis. It is neither modern nor post-modern, but it nonetheless contains elements of ?grand narratives? and ?deconstructionism?. It is future oriented but has its roots in the past enlightenment era. Transhumanism is individualistic but global and secular but also spiritual. My argumentation would be that transhumanism should be better viewed as a new concept with new arrangements, interpretations and standpoints than in comparison to already known concepts. It is also important to look at the whole picture and interconnections between the different elements that make up the core of transhumanist thought. If this is not done, one can easily get to contradicting conclusions like stating that transhumanism is pluralistic, multicultural and social democratic while at the same time ?fascist?, atheist as well as religious, technology-utopian and at the same time concerned with existential risks, ancient, modern and post-modern. Also other criticism like transhumanism being male-dominated can not be seen as allegation: it is open for everyone, but it is of course related to a rather specific set of interests, but should we force people to join in order to improve the quota? My final thoughts will deal with the question if transhumanism may be better understood from an Asian philosophical tradition that is better able to incorporate seeming contradictions (or not even seeing this as contradiction) that from a Western perspective? As a conclusion I would say that that is not one ?transhumanism? since there is no real code or even doctrine. Even the views about commonly shared ideas like HET, life extension, cryonics ?uploading?, AI, risks, ?posthumans? and the concept of the ?singularity? are varying. Thus I would say that transhumanists go deeper into thinking about the future than some other foresighters (especially those focussing on rather shot-term business or policy issues), share a common view that the human condition can be improved through means of science and technology, that science is the best available method to understand the world in the context of engineering purposes and technology can and should be furthered, developed and actively supported to improve the life and living conditions of humanity (and the environment humans live in). Transhumansim can be seen as a new dimension that crosses through (nearly) all political views and societal choices and thus even people with very different social or political views (e.g. entrepreneurs and socialists as well as believers and atheists) can embrace transhumanism. Miriam Ji Sun is a professional strategic foresight researcher and futurist volunteer being active in NGOs and several foresight-related networks. She has obtained her phD in sociology with an interdisciplinary-oriented thesis about robotics and AI and did her master thesis in political science on a topic in biopolitics. Now Ji Sun is specialising in emerging technologies (e.g. NBIC, biomedical engineering, Human Enhancement Technologies (HET), advanced robotics and AI, synthetic biology), future issues (e.g. megatrends, weak signals, Grand Challenges), ethical, legal and social perception of emerging technologies, vision assessment, transhumanism and foresight methodology. TransVision 2010 is a global transhumanist conference and community convention, organized by several transhumanist activists, groups and organizations, under the executive leadership of the Italian Transhumanist Association (AIT) and with the collaboration of an Advisory Board. The event will take place on October 22, 23 and 24, 2010 in Milan, Italy with many options for remote online access. Register now http://transvision2010.wordpress.com/registration/ post links to Twitter, your blogs and websites, and add your name to the TransVision 2010 Facebook page. From giulio at gmail.com Tue Sep 7 18:13:05 2010 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2010 20:13:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] TransVision 2010: Discounted registration extended until end September Message-ID: TransVision 2010: Discounted registration extended until end September http://transvision2010.wordpress.com/2010/09/07/transvision-2010-discounted-registration-extended-until-end-september/ Many people have written saying that they could not register for TransVision 2010 in August while on holiday, so we have extended the time for discounted registration until the end of the month. http://transvision2010.wordpress.com/registration/ From sjatkins at mac.com Tue Sep 7 20:48:36 2010 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2010 13:48:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Privacy vs the future In-Reply-To: References: <4C77948E.9090203@mac.com> <2EBFDEF8-8CC2-4064-828E-DE05ED5737B5@mac.com> <4C86072E.2010600@mac.com> <4C86221F.5000807@mac.com> Message-ID: <4C86A524.1080902@mac.com> On 9/7/10 4:52 AM, BillK wrote: > On 9/7/10, samantha wrote: >> Well, I would like to say that this sort of classist talk has no place >> in a free market or a free country. But then I remember that we have >> neither. But it is not the "rich" that are the enemy. It is the >> government that produced the economic conditions we have now by >> expanding without limit, making credit really really cheap, and >> insisting banks make mortgages with people that could not afford them >> with government tacitly or implicitly guaranteeing them. Yes there >> were various private parties that took advantage of the mess. But they >> were not its creators. Before they could buy favors their had to be a >> bloated government with runaway power to produce favors to sell. If >> you want out of this mess do not play the old "soak the rich" theme >> while giving the true enemy of your well being , the government, even >> more power over even more of the economy. If you want a viable economic >> future start demanding separation of government and economy. >> >> > > I agree that the super-rich have taken over the US government and use > it to increase their wealth and power. > You can't buy unwarranted power unless it is concentrated in a questionable manner in the first place. Remember that government makes the laws and has a monopoly on force. When it also involves itself in various enterprises directly and attetmpts deep regulation of much of the rest then it is certain that the corrupt and the power mongers within and without government will flock to it. Even honest business people will have to play in order to perhaps not get hammered so badly my such a concentration of near arbitrary power. > But your hatred of government is leading you away from the real > criminals. You are mistaken. Government of this size and kind fills itself with and attracts criminals. > They will use any means available, be it huge corporations, > governments, state legislatures, whatever is convenient. You can't do > big projects without big organisations and any of them might be taken > over and misused. (As they have been). > If there is no power concentration like in modern government for the simple reason that government is kept small and is only charged with protecting rights and has no power over anything else at all and if the one central definition of crime is initiation of force then and only then will the power mongers have no place to go and no way to riches or power except by actual production of more value than they consume. > Your proposal of abolishing big government and reverting to local > tribal councils is no way to run a modern nation and will cause even > more problems. Ever seen the morass of local politics? Did I say anything about local tribal councils? No, I don't think so. > >> BS. That is not how it is today at all. You know it. I know it. >> Freedom is not having half of all you earned taken away. Freedom is >> not being threatened with prison or thrown into one for crimes that >> aren't crimes at all. >> >> > > 'freedom' was in quotes because we only have an illusion of freedom > provided by the super-rich to keep us quiet while the nation is robbed > blind. Try and break the illusion and you'll be in trouble. After you wipe out the "super rich" you will find out I am afraid just how horribly wrong you are about the cause of so much wrong in the world today. - s From sjatkins at mac.com Tue Sep 7 21:15:36 2010 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:15:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). In-Reply-To: <147628.33554.qm@web24920.mail.ird.yahoo.com> References: <147628.33554.qm@web24920.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4C86AB78.2040201@mac.com> On 9/7/10 5:34 AM, Singularity Utopia wrote: > > On 9/6/10 samantha > wrote: > > "Unfortunately it is made up pie in the sky. Even with MNT there is no > miraculous, inescapable and they lived happily ever after ending > coming. There is a very slim chance that it works out really really > well for everybody and a much better chance it works out well for a > relatively smaller number." > > Dear Samantha, Post-Scarcity is NOT pie in the sky anymore than Extropy > is pie in the sky. Utopia is entirely possible for everyone. > > Consider a brain one or two billion times more intelligent than your > current intelligence. > The possibilities in such circumstances are infinite. If you fail to > believe > super-intelligence will create unlimited utilization of resources then > consider the > resources of a virtual world: in a digital virtual and in a virtual > universes resources will be > limitless. Quadrillions of infinite virtual universes could be easily > created and within > those universes more virtual and real real universes could be created. > Extremely large > brainpower makes anything possible. A good sci-fi book to read > regarding possibilities, > which our puny unaugmented brains cannot truly fathom, is PERMUTATION > CITY. No, the possibilities are not "infinite". A brain 12 orders of magnitude faster and generally more powerful than my own can do very amazing things. But it is still finite in its abilities just as I am. It is still subject to the laws of physics. It still can only do so much in the manipulation of matter and energy in a fixed period of time. So please stop using the word "infinite". It too easily warps thinking. In each and every volume of space there are a finite amount of resources. No intelligence can utilize more than is present within its sphere of action. That sphere of action is likely limited by speed of light and by latency among the communicating entities. No it is quite true that a Jupiter brain or even a much much smaller large asteroid brain can create virtual worlds of such depth that no human could tell the difference. Even many thousands or millions of such worlds. That is fine. But is that the same as achieving infinite results? Not really. It is a lovely possibility of great power I grant you but it is not heaven. And what governs how these virtual worlds / virtual universes work? What sorts of internal laws of physics or equivalent order their working? What kind of things are possible and not possible for the many classes and kinds of beings within them? Do you expect they will experience only pleasant happy things forever? What happens to any system when it receives only positive feedback no matter what? How do beings grow in ability, understanding, wisdom in these worlds? Do you toss all previous human 1.0 folks in the same worlds or in worlds tailored to their current understanding, development, proclivities that will maximize their growth? Do you put them in worlds that are their idea of perfection until such time, if any, they decided that just isn't good enough? It is not simple even if you can create virtual universes with little no effort. And we must remember every day that we are not anywhere close to creating such minds. We must also ask ourselves if such minds would be interested in hosting such domains when they do come into being. > > A few examples of how we are moving towards Post-Scarcity are: > > 1. The free operating system Ubuntu verses the expensive Microsoft OS. Not at all. A bunch of people, myself included, realized that much more could be done in the realm of software if the base tools and many components were much more open. It does not cause zero to create or distribute Ubuntu sot is not free as in free beer to make. It is produced by the cooperative efforts of a lot of people, by donations and by the sale of services. It says nothing about post-scarcity per se. > 2. Free browsers. You are confusing what you get for no cost with and end to scarcity. That said it is true that bits can be copied perfectly and distributed widely with little/no additional cost beyond the price of the computers, energy and communications. The size of a non-tragic commons is certainly increasing and can increase much more. But this does not mean we have infinite resources or that nothing is scarce. Top notch creators of the content in the bits are still not in an unlimited fungible supply. > 3. The free Wikipedia encyclopedia. Same thing, same error. > 4. P2P sharing > Same thing, same error. > Admittedly these examples of free stuff often make money via donations > or or via > another business in addition to the free-stuff but this is only the > beginning. I can > watch any video I want on YouTube for free, which people would have found > unbelievable-pie-in-the-sky 10 or 20 years ago. It is not "only the beginning". It take time (definitely finite supply), talent, accumulation of resources that might have been used on other things (opportunity cost) to produce anything whether people are charged for the result or not. > > Samantha, you ask if we can "stop with the hype?" I would say the same > to you. > Whatever. I was not guilty of it. > You also ask me to tread carefully because people will become > disillusioned with H+ > if it doesn't work out how I envisage. I also ask you to tread > carefully because I have > spread my dreams under your feet. I am poor therefore I have only my > dreams. Dreams > are the most important part of being human because without dreams we > are nothing. I > cannot recant my dreams. I have a dream... > Is this an argument? Dreams are wonderfully important but they will not put beans on the table unless they are realized in reality. Please do dream big. Please share big dreams. But craft them well and in terms that give us things we can do now. > Samantha, you wrote: "There is very little power in positive thinking > without clear, > consistent, effective action. You can think positive all day long and > get nowhere. You can think positive about something that in reality is > impossible and work really hard to get it and you will still, > guaranteed, fail. The utter and complete end of all scarcity is one of > those things that are contrary to reality." > > Desires, dreams, and pioneering visions allow us to achieve the > impossible. No. They allow the achievement of what was in fact possible and was merely thought to be impossible. And they only do this if they are brought down to the reality of what can be done toward their realization. And that is very much the realm of the finite. Visions without works do nothing. Ideas are commonplace and everywhere. Successfully acting in reality to accomplish the implementation of an idea is scarce. > > Do you understand Extropy and the Singularity? Are you going to try to teach your grandma to suck eggs? :) Of course I understand them. I don't think you do quite but I appreciate and understand this form of excitement. > During the Stone Age a spaceship sending > men to the Moon was pie in the sky, utter impossibility, but > thankfully times change and > we progress. The human race will soon take an unimaginable leap > forward far surpassing > all previous progression. I hope you are able to dream. All of this is fluff that while true, is utterly irrelevant to the actual question I raised. - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Wed Sep 8 04:29:47 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2010 00:29:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A million lines of code In-Reply-To: <8CD1C3F0C978A1B-5FC-2784B@webmail-m005.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CD1C3F0C978A1B-5FC-2784B@webmail-m005.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: On Sep 6, 2010, at 8:59 PM, ABlainey at aol.com wrote: > In order for a digital model of the brain to work and develop from our digital blueprint A digital recipe would be a much better way to describe it than a digital blueprint, as there is not a one to one relationship between a particular part of the information and a particular part of the finished product. A blueprint tells you what the thing will look like but doesn't tell you how to make it, while a recipe tells you how to make it but gives no clue what it will eventually look like. For our purposes recipes are more useful. > we must also include the rule set for the physics. Otherwise we can add digital ingredients to our hearts content but the brain would never use them. The digital building blocks would not come together and digital oxygen would never get to the neurons etc. If you want to reverse engineer a biological brain and translate it into the electronic world of 1's and 0's there would be no point in worrying about oxygen, real or digital. The important thing is that a signal is sent from component A to component B if condition C occurs. Signals can be sent in many ways without altering their message and it would be as silly to use the biological brain's archaic way of moving signals as it would be to use smoke signals when you had a fiber optic cable. John K Clark > > Some things that come to mind are Lego, magnets and the mandelbrot set. > You can create a blueprint for Lego blocks very easily, however they can then be arranged in almost infinite variation to build different structures. So unless you include a rule set for how those structures are developed you won't get a specific result like a house. Our DNA has instructions on what proteins, amino acids etc to produce, but the nitty gritty of this is done by chemistry and ultimately physics. Something which will not be included in the computer model if we just give it a blueprint. > Magnets are a closer analogy to the chemistry of the brain. You could define the magnet in the blueprint, but in order for the digital magnets to act as per the real world and stick together in the right orientation. You also need to include models of the laws of magnetism. Otherwise the digital blueprint will just turn out magnet models that float around freely without sticking together. > I mention the mandelbrot set due to the fractalic nature of the biological world where we see things like golden ratio virtually everywhere. A simple equation is all that is needed to create infinitely detailed patterns. Our blueprint may be many orders of magnitude simpler than the thing it creates. Even if we collectively understand our blueprint, will we ever understand the resultant model? If not, can we make it work properly? > > A believe a digital brain lacking a sufficient physics rule set will not develop or behave as per a normal brain. However It may be a good approximation and only time will tell. Personally I predict the modelling of the brain will only be the start of the problem. Getting the thing to run properly will prove very difficult. > > Now this whole thing throws up a glaring problem for me. If we need to include the full rule set of every law of nature in our model. Our digital brain would die. It would need a virtual life support system, a body or system that replicates the essential functions that keep the brain alive. Then it would need an environment which supplies everything that body needs. Its not to difficult to imagine that the logical conclusion to this is a perfect digital model of the living world. A Matrix. > And then one last problem. If our digital model were to function according to the laws of physics in order to work as per a real brain. It will inevitably age and die. Which kind of defeats the point ;o) > > Alex > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Ryan Rawson > To: ExI chat list > Sent: Wed, 18 Aug 2010 1:56 > Subject: Re: [ExI] A million lines of code > > Unlike most of the blog writers I actually attended Kurzweil's talk on > > > Saturday (sadly though it was by videoconference)... He didn't really > > > say anything new there, and he was just pointing out that if you use > > > information theoretical analysis of the unique available information > > > (ie: dna) you can get an estimate of how much _information_ goes to > > > constructing the brain. He was NOT saying "1 million lines of code = > > > adult human", and I don't think anyone there got that sense. What he > > > said is with a million lines of code you can have a program that > > > _builds_ a brain, and then you have to go forth and teach it from that > > > point. You know, what we do to develop a neural network in all new > > > humans. Oh yes and his argument was we'll see this full reverse > > > engineering thing come to fruition in 2030 (not 2020). > > > > > > I used to be a sceptic, and when you are caught up in the daily > > > struggles of making silicon nanolithography work it can be easy to be > > > pessimistic. But even so, the data looks good - every time a previous > > > generation of computing architecture hits it's limit, a new one comes > > > on the scene. We might as well be talking about the limits of vacuum > > > tube computing and the upcoming computation disaster/crunch. > > > > > > And Kurzweil's prediction is based on solid projections of an > > > exponential growth in computing technology. Exponential trends are > > > powerful and difficult to spot sometimes. > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 giulio at gmail.com Wed Sep 8 08:34:04 2010 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2010 10:34:04 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Suzanne's talk in Teleplace slashdotted - Separating Hope From Hype In Quantum Computing Message-ID: Suzanne's talk in Teleplace slashdotted - Separating Hope From Hype In Quantum Computing http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/09/suzannes-talk-in-teleplace-slashdotted.html Suzanne Gildert's talk on Quantum Computing in Teleplace of September 4 has been covered by Slashdot Hardware Story | Separating Hope From Hype In Quantum Computing. Of course the "Slashdot effect" (via Next Big Future | Quantum Computing: Separating Hope from Hype) has caused a massive surge of visits to the article on the teleXLR8 website and especially the teleXLR8 video channel on blip.tv (several thousands of video views in a few hours). As it is usually the case, the comments on Slashdot are often off-topic and sometimes rude (there are some very interesting comments though). But I think a popular site like Slashdot is very useful to bring science closer to the citizens (this is not a "hardware story" but a fascinating and accessible scientific lecture), and I am happy that many people have had the opportunity to watch the talk on video. From pharos at gmail.com Wed Sep 8 13:46:43 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2010 14:46:43 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Software for writers Message-ID: This looks like a really nice piece of software for authors. As some list members have been known to do the odd bit of scribbling now and then, I thought it might be of interest. Video tutorial here. (9 minutes) Features: Organise your novel using a 'project'. Add chapters to the project. Add scenes, characters, items and locations. Display the word count for every file in the project, along with a total. Saves a log file every day, showing words per file and the total. (Tracks your progress) Saves automatic backups at user-specified intervals. Allows multiple scenes within chapters Viewpoint character, goal, conflict and outcome fields for each scene. Multiple characters per scene. Storyboard view, a visual layout of your work. Re-order scenes within chapters. Drag and drop of chapters, scenes, characters, items and locations. Automatic chapter renumbering. Instead of searching through a huge word processing document to find a particular event or person, everything can be seen at a glance on one screen in YWriter. It makes the novel more manageable, and it can increase productivity for a writer. Once the program is learned, it's easy to use, and can be run off a memory stick, making it portable for those who carry their writing with them. YWriter doesn't only work for novelists. It is just as handy for short story writers, allowing them to keep track of multiple stories and projects when writing fiction or creative nonfiction. Story ideas can be noted in the program, getting rid of the piles of paper scraps and sticky notes that writers are so fond of having on their desks. Other uses are lecture notes, sermons (!), etc. Review here: BillK From policedepts at gmail.com Thu Sep 9 02:34:32 2010 From: policedepts at gmail.com (police dept) Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2010 20:34:32 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Privacy vs the future Message-ID: "I used to be very optimistic. Then I considered more closely the actual possibilities of massively transforming the human psyche in a mere generation or two so as to achieve and most enjoy my incredibly optimistic utopian vision." We optimists are the last to know. Decades before the '80s researchers were predicting something along the lines of HIV. Decades ago it was known that the cost per pound to send vehicles into space was prohibitive. Etc. As the Luddites, we too have to change our own thinking-- change begins at home. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Sep 9 04:04:53 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2010 21:04:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... Message-ID: ...because these commies are tricky bastards. You know Fidel is just trying to trick us into letting our guard down a little, and if we do, POW he has Florida. Then Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi will go down like a row of dominoes I tells ya: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/09/08/cuba.castro.communism/index.htm l?hpt=T2 Really, what do you make of this? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Sep 9 04:09:53 2010 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2010 23:09:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] [transvisioncc] (Mis)understanding Transhumanism: TransVision 2010 Presentation by Miriam Ji Sun In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4199F1196E5B409DB3AFD993A5D2C828@DFC68LF1> Well said. Thank you. Natasha Natasha Vita-More _____ From: transvisioncc at googlegroups.com [mailto:transvisioncc at googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Philippe Van Nedervelde Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 10:57 PM To: transvisioncc at googlegroups.com Cc: ExI chat list; World Transhumanist Association Discussion List; extrobritannia at yahoogroups.com; euro-transhumanists at googlegroups.com; cosmic-engineers at googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [transvisioncc] (Mis)understanding Transhumanism: TransVision 2010 Presentation by Miriam Ji Sun When outsiders read this, it will give them the impression that transhumanism either is or has become a motley, disorganized grab-bag of unclearly overlapping philosophies and ideologies and/or that the word 'transhumanism' is or has become a signifier so unclear / imprecise / too-much-encompassing in its meaning as to be or have become effectively useless... as a label... or otherwise. That's a problem. Certainly for this here text... and possibly also for the disparate collection of meanings still referred to by the probably increasingly inaccurate or at least mis-representative signifier 'transhumanism'. "H+" works pretty well as a symbol for it, but generally fails as a replacement for the word 'transhumanism' in discourse, certainly for discourse involving outsiders. Does this suggest it is (high) time for some intra-H+ semantic clean-up... to (re-)clarify what 'transhumanism' does (not) mean and stand for? Perhaps the meaning(s) should revert to meaning(s) closer to its roots? ~ Philip ~ P.S. Natasha, is your talk on Deconstructing Transhumanism up somewhere? URL? I'd love to read / see / hear it. On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 7:31 PM, Giulio Prisco wrote: (Mis)understanding Transhumanism: TransVision 2010 Presentation by Miriam Ji Sun http://transvision2010.wordpress.com/2010/09/07/misunderstanding-transhumani sm-transvision-2010-presentation-by-miriam-ji-sun/ Transhumansism is a complex and still evolving philosophy that cuts across a variety of philosophies and ways of life and even incorporated views from its critics. Therefore, transhumanism can not be understood in a one-dimensional way. When trying to interpret and understand transhumanism many people tend to only focus on specific aspects that also relate to familiar concepts. However, transhumanism is full of seeming contradictions if taking commonly known thought schools, philosophies and ideologies as basis. It is neither modern nor post-modern, but it nonetheless contains elements of "grand narratives" and "deconstructionism". It is future oriented but has its roots in the past enlightenment era. Transhumanism is individualistic but global and secular but also spiritual. My argumentation would be that transhumanism should be better viewed as a new concept with new arrangements, interpretations and standpoints than in comparison to already known concepts. It is also important to look at the whole picture and interconnections between the different elements that make up the core of transhumanist thought. If this is not done, one can easily get to contradicting conclusions like stating that transhumanism is pluralistic, multicultural and social democratic while at the same time "fascist", atheist as well as religious, technology-utopian and at the same time concerned with existential risks, ancient, modern and post-modern. Also other criticism like transhumanism being male-dominated can not be seen as allegation: it is open for everyone, but it is of course related to a rather specific set of interests, but should we force people to join in order to improve the quota? My final thoughts will deal with the question if transhumanism may be better understood from an Asian philosophical tradition that is better able to incorporate seeming contradictions (or not even seeing this as contradiction) that from a Western perspective? As a conclusion I would say that that is not one "transhumanism" since there is no real code or even doctrine. Even the views about commonly shared ideas like HET, life extension, cryonics 'uploading', AI, risks, 'posthumans' and the concept of the 'singularity' are varying. Thus I would say that transhumanists go deeper into thinking about the future than some other foresighters (especially those focussing on rather shot-term business or policy issues), share a common view that the human condition can be improved through means of science and technology, that science is the best available method to understand the world in the context of engineering purposes and technology can and should be furthered, developed and actively supported to improve the life and living conditions of humanity (and the environment humans live in). Transhumansim can be seen as a new dimension that crosses through (nearly) all political views and societal choices and thus even people with very different social or political views (e.g. entrepreneurs and socialists as well as believers and atheists) can embrace transhumanism. Miriam Ji Sun is a professional strategic foresight researcher and futurist volunteer being active in NGOs and several foresight-related networks. She has obtained her phD in sociology with an interdisciplinary-oriented thesis about robotics and AI and did her master thesis in political science on a topic in biopolitics. Now Ji Sun is specialising in emerging technologies (e.g. NBIC, biomedical engineering, Human Enhancement Technologies (HET), advanced robotics and AI, synthetic biology), future issues (e.g. megatrends, weak signals, Grand Challenges), ethical, legal and social perception of emerging technologies, vision assessment, transhumanism and foresight methodology. TransVision 2010 is a global transhumanist conference and community convention, organized by several transhumanist activists, groups and organizations, under the executive leadership of the Italian Transhumanist Association (AIT) and with the collaboration of an Advisory Board. The event will take place on October 22, 23 and 24, 2010 in Milan, Italy with many options for remote online access. Register now http://transvision2010.wordpress.com/registration/ post links to Twitter, your blogs and websites, and add your name to the TransVision 2010 Facebook page. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "transvisioncc" group. To post to this group, send email to transvisioncc at googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to transvisioncc+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/transvisioncc?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "transvisioncc" group. To post to this group, send email to transvisioncc at googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to transvisioncc+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/transvisioncc?hl=en. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Sep 9 04:13:14 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2010 21:13:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Privacy vs the future In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <205525.29721.qm@web81505.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 9/8/10, police dept wrote: ? >...?We optimists are the last to know. Decades before the '80s researchers were?predicting something along the lines of HIV. Decades ago it was known that the cost per pound to send vehicles into space was prohibitive. Etc... ? Hi Police Dept!? Welcome to Exi-chat.? I haven't seen your posts here before.? Do feel free to volunteer any public info you want about yourself, or not. ? That being said, I must make the following comment reluctantly.? Getting a message labeled "police dept" kinda wigs me out just a little.? And this is *me* talking, the same guy who watched the June 1977 Tampa Led Zeppelin riot from the upper bleachers?and cheered for the cops.? ? {8^D ? spike ? ? ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aleksei at iki.fi Thu Sep 9 05:45:16 2010 From: aleksei at iki.fi (Aleksei Riikonen) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2010 08:45:16 +0300 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2010/9/9 spike : > > ...because these commies are tricky bastards.? You know Fidel is just trying > to trick us into letting our guard down a little, and if we do, POW he has > Florida.? Then Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi will go down like a row of > dominoes I tells ya: > > http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/09/08/cuba.castro.communism/index.html?hpt=T2 > > Really, what do you make of this? It's pretty much just what it looks like. The Cuban leaders that are to come after Fidel aren't fooling themselves that they have a crap system. And now Fidel came out to explicitly state that he doesn't bother to disagree. His only option really, besides going on a pitiful impotent rant while he lays in his bed dying. One option for the new Cuban leaders is to go for the Chinese solution, i.e. switch to capitalist economics and redefine "communism" to just mean that you don't bother to hold democratic elections. -- Aleksei Riikonen - http://www.iki.fi/aleksei From algaenymph at gmail.com Thu Sep 9 06:13:06 2010 From: algaenymph at gmail.com (AlgaeNymph) Date: Wed, 08 Sep 2010 23:13:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4C887AF2.7030403@gmail.com> On 9/8/10 10:45 PM, Aleksei Riikonen wrote: > One option for the new Cuban leaders is to go for the Chinese > solution, i.e. switch to capitalist economics and redefine "communism" > to just mean that you don't bother to hold democratic elections. That'll piss off the Liberal Studies folks, the ones who go on about what a wonderful ecotopia Cuba is. In which case I'm all for that. ;) Those Luddites've been making leftism look bad for decades. From pharos at gmail.com Thu Sep 9 07:58:23 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2010 08:58:23 +0100 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 9/9/10, spike wrote: > Really, what do you make of this? > > In a throw-away comment in a five-hour interview, Fidel Castro told a visiting American journalist that the "Cuban model" no longer works, an apparent admission of failings in the communist economic model introduced by his revolution more than 50 years ago. So, he had 50 years of trying to improve the horrible leftovers of the corrupt and repressive Batista regime. Not too bad, really. I think he is now being realistic, same as his brother who now runs Cuba. In todays world, if we had any honest leaders in any country, they would all be saying 'Our xxxxxx model no longer works'. (Change xxxxx as needed for every country in the world). BillK From policedepts at gmail.com Thu Sep 9 04:46:30 2010 From: policedepts at gmail.com (police dept) Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2010 22:46:30 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Privacy vs the future In-Reply-To: <205525.29721.qm@web81505.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <205525.29721.qm@web81505.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: *it's only to prevent hackers from getting into my account-- no one unless they can't read English will bother to mess with it. * > > >... > Hi Police Dept! Welcome to Exi-chat. I haven't seen your posts here > before. Do feel free to volunteer any public info you want about yourself, > or not. > > That being said, I must make the following comment reluctantly. Getting a > message labeled "police dept" kinda wigs me out just a little. And this is > *me* talking, the same guy who watched the June 1977 Tampa Led Zeppelin riot > from the upper bleachers and cheered for the cops. > > {8^D > > spike > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 timhalterman at gmail.com Thu Sep 9 13:55:14 2010 From: timhalterman at gmail.com (Tim Halterman) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2010 08:55:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > Really, what do you make of this? > > No current system is perfect and everlasting, communism, capitalism or otherwise. I don't think any system which requires people to do something they don't wish or relies on exploiting another being as a permanent solution. These systems are simply biding their time until technology advances to a point that a true communism is possible. Communism in that sense being a society where individuals are free to do as they wish and do not require the exploitation of others to do so. I think Marx felt this way, although specific quotes elude me (It's been a number of years since I read his work). I always looked at the Soviet Union as simply picking a model close to a hopeful end-state. Had technology progressed at a faster rate I'm not sure the collapse would have been inevitable, they could have simply evolved. I see the most technologically advanced societies the closest to achieving true communism. I think Fidel has most of his heart in the right place, the world simply makes things more complicated. -Tim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Thu Sep 9 14:35:16 2010 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:35:16 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Romania rejects tax on witches Message-ID: <201009091502.o89F2JWH009424@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Romania rejects tax on witches Lawmakers Alin Popoviciu and Cristi Dugulescu of the ruling Democratic Liberal Party drafted a law where witches and fortune tellers would have to produce receipts, and would also be held liable for wrong predictions, a measure which was part of the government's drive to increase revenue. Romania's Senate voted down the proposal Tuesday. Popoviciu claimed lawmakers were frightened of being cursed. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39076589/ns/business-world_business/ To the U.S. Government: Reduce my taxes or I shall BURN YOU WITH THE LIGHT OF REASON! Not going to work, huh? Max From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Sep 9 15:08:09 2010 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2010 08:08:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <831541.35910.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Sounds like a way of easing out of the state socialist model but still maintain power for his clique and party -- much as the?political elite?has done in China. I don't think there's much to fear from Castro outside Cuba. And for Americans, the biggest threat to their liberties and existence is the US government. Regards, Dan From: spike To: ExI chat list Sent: Thu, September 9, 2010 12:04:53 AM Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... ...because these commies are tricky bastards.? You know Fidel is just trying to trick us into letting our guard down a little, and if we do, POW he has Florida.? Then Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi will go down like a row of dominoes I tells ya: ? http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/09/08/cuba.castro.communism/index.html?hpt=T2 ? Really, what do you make of this? ? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Thu Sep 9 16:43:35 2010 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2010 18:43:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?REMINDER_=96_Ben_Goertzel_on_The_Cosmist_M?= =?windows-1252?q?anifesto_in_Teleplace=2C_September_12=2C_10am_PST?= Message-ID: REMINDER ? Ben Goertzel on The Cosmist Manifesto in Teleplace, September 12, 10am PST http://telexlr8.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/reminder-ben-goertzel-on-the-cosmist-manifesto-in-teleplace-september-12-10am-pst/ http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/09/reminder-ben-goertzel-on-cosmist.html Ben Goertzel will give a talk in Teleplace on his recent book ?A Cosmist Manifesto: Practical Philosophy for the Posthuman Age? on Sunday September 12, 2010, at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm CET). Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend. A Cosmist Manifesto: Practical Philosophy for the Posthuman Age, by Ben Goertzel, has been published by Humanity+ Press and is available on Amazon. See the review ?A Cosmist Manifesto, an Advocacy? on H+ Magazine. See also the online version of the Cosmist Manifesto. In the picture above, Ben Goertzel (first from left) in a Teleplace meeting. The term Cosmism was introduced by Tsiolokovsky and other Russian Cosmists around 1900. Goertzel?s ?Cosmist Manifesto? gives it new life and a new twist for the 21st century. Cosmism, as Goertzel presents it, is a practical philosophy for the posthuman era. Rooted in Western and Eastern philosophy as well as modern technology and science, it is a way of understanding ourselves and our universe that makes sense now, and will keep on making sense as advanced technology exerts its transformative impact as the future unfolds. Among the many topics considered are AI, nanotechnology, uploading, immortality, psychedelics, meditation, future social structures, psi phenomena, alien and cetacean intelligence and the Singularity. The Cosmist perspective is shown to make plain old common sense of even the wildest future possibilities. Ben Goertzel, Chair of Humanity+, is founder and CEO of two computer science firms Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC, and of the non-profit AGIRI (Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute). He has served as a university faculty in several departments of mathematics, computer science and cognitive science, in the US, Australia and New Zealand. He is author of two books focused on the future of technology and society Creating Internet Intelligence (Plenum, 2001) and The Path to Posthumanity (Academica, 2006). He serves as Director of Research for the Singularity Institute for AI. Teleplace is one of the best 3D applications for telework, online meetings, group collaboration, and e-learning in a virtual 3D environment (v-learning). Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend. From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Sep 9 19:47:20 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2010 12:47:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Romania rejects tax on witches In-Reply-To: <201009091502.o89F2JWH009424@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <201009091502.o89F2JWH009424@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: I'd like to see all the psychics who appear on Coast to Coast with George Noory get held as accountable as the Romanian govt. was considering doing to their own folks with supposed special talents. John On 9/9/10, Max More wrote: > Romania rejects tax on witches > > Lawmakers Alin Popoviciu and Cristi Dugulescu of the ruling > Democratic Liberal Party drafted a law where witches and fortune > tellers would have to produce receipts, and would also be held liable > for wrong predictions, a measure which was part of the government's > drive to increase revenue. > > Romania's Senate voted down the proposal Tuesday. Popoviciu claimed > lawmakers were frightened of being cursed. > > http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39076589/ns/business-world_business/ > > To the U.S. Government: Reduce my taxes or I shall BURN YOU WITH THE > LIGHT OF REASON! > > Not going to work, huh? > > Max > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Sep 9 20:50:50 2010 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2010 13:50:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Romania rejects tax on witches In-Reply-To: References: <201009091502.o89F2JWH009424@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <902735.5748.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Doesn't the government already have enough power? Why give it more? I'm not?a supporter of psychics, but just because I think something is wrong and a waste doesn't mean the government should be called in to control it. (There's sort of parallel with the current US emperor's "soak the rich" posturing. I'm not exactly a fan of the rich and, no doubt, some of them don't deserve their wealth, but that's no reason to let the government have it. And, certainly, that the government would?be sapped of even a?miniscule amount of its power?or experience a slight delay in its various schemes?is a fine thing.) Regards, Dan ----- Original Message ---- From: John Grigg To: ExI chat list Sent: Thu, September 9, 2010 3:47:20 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Romania rejects tax on witches I'd like to see all the psychics who appear on Coast to Coast with George Noory get held as accountable as the Romanian govt. was considering doing to their own folks with supposed special talents. John From sjatkins at mac.com Thu Sep 9 22:00:57 2010 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:00:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Software for writers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4C895918.5060705@mac.com> On 9/8/10 6:46 AM, BillK wrote: > This looks like a really nice piece of software for authors. > > As some list members have been known to do the odd bit of scribbling > now and then, I thought it might be of interest. > > Video tutorial here. (9 minutes) > On a Mac it is not so good. Nasty stack trace and the window doesn't resize. - s From sjatkins at mac.com Thu Sep 9 22:08:14 2010 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:08:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Privacy vs the future In-Reply-To: <205525.29721.qm@web81505.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <205525.29721.qm@web81505.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4C895ACE.6020700@mac.com> On 9/8/10 9:13 PM, Gregory Jones wrote: > > --- On *Wed, 9/8/10, police dept //* wrote: > > >... We optimists are the last to know. Decades before the '80s > researchers were predicting something along the lines of HIV. Decades > ago it was known that the cost per pound to send vehicles into space > was prohibitive. Etc... > > Hi Police Dept! Welcome to Exi-chat. I haven't seen your posts here > before. Do feel free to volunteer any public info you want about > yourself, or not. > > That being said, I must make the following comment reluctantly. > Getting a message labeled "police dept" kinda wigs me out just a > little. And this is *me* talking, the same guy who watched the June > 1977 Tampa Led Zeppelin riot from the upper bleachers and cheered for > the cops. > Yeah. At first I thought it was thematic as loss of privacy can lead to a total police state. But perhaps not. - s -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Thu Sep 9 22:14:49 2010 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:14:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4C895C59.1040501@mac.com> On 9/9/10 6:55 AM, Tim Halterman wrote: > > Really, what do you make of this? > > > No current system is perfect and everlasting, communism, capitalism or > otherwise. Why? What makes them fail? Are some better than others? In what ways. > I don't think any system which requires people to do something they > don't wish or relies on exploiting another being as a permanent > solution. Laissez faire capitalism requires neither. > These systems are simply biding their time until technology advances > to a point that a true communism is possible. BARF. Communism is utterly broken by design. > Communism in that sense being a society where individuals are free > to do as they wish and do not require the exploitation of others to do > so. I think Marx felt this way, although specific quotes elude me > (It's been a number of years since I read his work). > That is not communism. In communism the collective owns everything and the individual owns nothing. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is a common slogan of communism at its most idealistic. That is utterly unworkable. When everyone owns everything and nothing no one has the right to do with anything at all what she wishes. > I always looked at the Soviet Union as simply picking a model close to > a hopeful end-state. Had technology progressed at a faster rate I'm > not sure the collapse would have been inevitable, they could have > simply evolved. I see the most technologically advanced societies the > closest to achieving true communism. > A state that killed tens of millions on its own citizens on purpose is held up as an ideal and just before its time? This is utterly abhorrent. - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Thu Sep 9 22:16:16 2010 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:16:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Romania rejects tax on witches In-Reply-To: <201009091502.o89F2JWH009424@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <201009091502.o89F2JWH009424@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <4C895CB0.6050802@mac.com> On 9/9/10 7:35 AM, Max More wrote: > Romania rejects tax on witches > > Lawmakers Alin Popoviciu and Cristi Dugulescu of the ruling Democratic > Liberal Party drafted a law where witches and fortune tellers would > have to produce receipts, and would also be held liable for wrong > predictions, a measure which was part of the government's drive to > increase revenue. > > Romania's Senate voted down the proposal Tuesday. Popoviciu claimed > lawmakers were frightened of being cursed. > > http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39076589/ns/business-world_business/ > > To the U.S. Government: Reduce my taxes or I shall BURN YOU WITH THE > LIGHT OF REASON! Depends whether you can use that Light to escape their authority and taxing power or not. :) - s From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Sep 9 22:20:15 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2010 15:20:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). In-Reply-To: <147628.33554.qm@web24920.mail.ird.yahoo.com> References: <147628.33554.qm@web24920.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Singularity Utopia and Samantha Atkins conversing: You also ask me to tread carefully because people will become disillusioned with H+ if it doesn't work out how I envisage. I also ask you to tread carefully because I have spread my dreams under your feet. I am poor therefore I have only my dreams. Dreams are the most important part of being human because without dreams we are nothing. I cannot recant my dreams. I have a dream... Is this an argument? Dreams are wonderfully important but they will not put beans on the table unless they are realized in reality. Please do dream big. Please share big dreams. But craft them well and in terms that give us things we can do now. Samantha, you wrote: "There is very little power in positive thinking without clear, consistent, effective action. You can think positive all day long and get nowhere. You can think positive about something that in reality is impossible and work really hard to get it and you will still, guaranteed, fail. The utter and complete end of all scarcity is one of those things that are contrary to reality." Desires, dreams, and pioneering visions allow us to achieve the impossible. No. They allow the achievement of what was in fact possible and was merely thought to be impossible. And they only do this if they are brought down to the reality of what can be done toward their realization. And that is very much the realm of the finite. Visions without works do nothing. Ideas are commonplace and everywhere. Successfully acting in reality to accomplish the implementation of an idea is scarce. Do you understand Extropy and the Singularity? Are you going to try to teach your grandma to suck eggs? :) Of course I understand them. I don't think you do quite but I appreciate and understand this form of excitement. During the Stone Age a spaceship sending men to the Moon was pie in the sky, utter impossibility, but thankfully times change and we progress. The human race will soon take an unimaginable leap forward far surpassing all previous progression. I hope you are able to dream. All of this is fluff that while true, is utterly irrelevant to the actual question I raised. - samantha >>>>> Samantha, I'm going to scream at you in my best adolescent fashion, "you are ruining my life!!!" I will then run to my bedroom and slam the door as hard as I possibly can!! Next, I will throw myself down onto my bed and cry my eyes out!! "Why, oh why, does she try to rip apart my fondest dreams?" "How can anyone be that mean??!" "Sam, you are a big Blue Meanie!!! ; ) I think you and Spike have brought up some good points, but I still think Singularity Utopia's (what the hell is this guy's real name for crying out loud??!) personal vision is a worthy one and very possibly within reach of humanity, if we work hard for it, and if good triumphs over the usual victors..., evil, ignorance, apathy, and fear. S.U. is mistaken in thinking we will ever truly have unlimited resources, as I tried to explain to him in a private email. Energy and matter, however seemingly infinite they may seem in such a gigantic universe (or multiverse), still are ultimately finite. I suspect very powerful lifeforms of various kinds will fill all niches and eventually eat everything up, unless we set limits. And so even in a super-advanced post-singularity culture, there will need to be rules regarding growth. But still, it will be an amazing society where the sort of poverty, lack of medical care, lack of educational support, lack of healthy food, and lack of housing, will be seen as inconceivable. But sentients will probably be much more demanding, despite their vastly higher standard of living. And due to somewhat limited resources and social hierarchies, there will still be frustrated people/minds. When mature nanotech first arrives, governments and corporations will do everything they can to firmly control it, and carefully portion out it's massive benefits based on social status and institutional power. They will of course want to contain such a vast potential for violence, which is only prudent. But the scariest thing from their perspective will be how this technology might liberate individuals and small groups from even really needing their government. You will find that governments are all about gaining and maintaining power, not giving it up! But I do believe the upcoming social contract between governments and common citizens will result in a near-utopia, as compared to how things are now. But the big question is, will the common citizenry be granted reasonable freedoms and rights to benefit from the monumentally society-changing technologies that are coming their way? Singularity Utopia/Gregory Jones wrote: Desires, dreams, and pioneering visions allow us to achieve the impossible. Many years ago during the height of American slavery nobody would have dreamed a Black man would become President of the USA because that was contrary to reality. Positive thinking is the precursor to clear effective action. Before the action happens people need to believe. It took at long time for a Black man to become a President but we are now entering accelerating times where changes will happen quicker. Do you understand Extropy and the Singularity? During the Stone Age a spaceship sending men to the Moon was pie in the sky, utter impossibility, but thankfully times change and we progress. The human race will soon take an unimaginable leap forward far surpassing all previous progression. I hope you are able to dream. On 9/6/10 Gregory Jones wrote: "I can imagine plenty of reasons why some parts of humanity would intentionally create scarcity, such as reasoning that if the proletariat have plenty of everything, they will fail to pray to Mecca." Dear Spike (Gregory Jones) you make a good point. There are people who may object to post-scarcity, which is one of the reasons why I am attempting to inspire people into believing in the possibilities the future holds. If enough people believe in utopia, it will happen. To conclude: I think the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy has not been completely absorbed by some of the responders to this Post-Scarcity thread. The collective desires of the human race can create a dystopia or utopia. I hope you can understand this network effect. I hope you can change your views to a positive outlook because negative views can harm the entire world. You have the power to begin spreading hope. You can create utopia. >>>>> I must admit that I really like this guy! : ) And I think he actualy does an excellent job defending his worldview. If people go around with a "realistic" and defeatist perspective that the major powers/institutions that run this world cannot be successfully worked with, then in many ways they have already won. I think it has unfortunately become fashionable for otherwise very intelligent transhumanists to wear the robes of the cynic. But as S.U. states, "positive thinking is the precursor to clear effective action." And this is so very true... A fullblown Singularity may not occur within our lifetimes (though I doubt this), or governments just might be able to fully curb & control the world-changing shockwaves of such an event, but only time will tell. I feel we all owe it to not just ourselves, but the children of today and tomorrow, to stay *tough mindedly* positive and fight for the wonderful world we envision. A place that truly nurtures it's citizens, instead of neglecting them, or engulfing the majority into a tyranny. And so the real question is, how exactly do we achieve this lofty goal? John Grigg : ) From pharos at gmail.com Thu Sep 9 22:35:33 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2010 23:35:33 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Software for writers In-Reply-To: <4C895918.5060705@mac.com> References: <4C895918.5060705@mac.com> Message-ID: On 9/9/10, samantha wrote: > On a Mac it is not so good. Nasty stack trace and the window doesn't > resize. > > Getting it to run at all on a Mac is an achievement! The website says: yWriter5 is designed for Windows XP, Vista and beyond. Win98 and Win2k users should be able to use it, but those operating systems are unsupported. yWriter5 will also run under Mono 2.4 or later on Gnu/Linux. Tested on Gentoo and Ubuntu 9.10. (The author doesn't have a Mac to test on) There are instructions here (which you've probably found already) The author is quite approachable and will probably be happy to discuss problems with you via email. He is a writer as well as a programmer and wrote the software to help authors. See contact page on website. I found this email from him in a discussion group: Simon Haynes said... Re Macs and yWriter, I deliberately chose dotnet 2.0 as the programming language for yWriter5 because the Mono library can also be installed on Mac and Linux, allowing you to run the program on those operating systems. (Speech won't work, alas) There's a tutorial for getting it running on this yWriter5 wiki page: http://sites.google.com/site/ywritersj/installing-on-mac-os-x Bear in mind that while it runs 100% on Windows, and I also have Ubuntu installed so I can test it on Linux, I don't have access to Mac. I can't say whether every feature works as it should, possibly because most Mac users are running Scrivener or some other Mac-specific app. Cheers Simon July 30, 2010 6:30 AM ----------------------- BillK From spike66 at att.net Thu Sep 9 22:41:02 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2010 15:41:02 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <172440.75353.qm@web81508.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 9/9/10, John Grigg wrote: ? On 9/6/10 Gregory Jones wrote: >>"I can imagine plenty of reasons why some parts of humanity would intentionally create scarcity, such as reasoning that if the proletariat have plenty of everything, they will fail to pray to Mecca." >Dear Spike (Gregory Jones) you make a good point. There are people who may object to post-scarcity, which is one of the reasons why I am attempting to inspire people into believing in the possibilities the future holds. If enough people believe in utopia, it will happen... ? Hi John, ? I have been having some fun pondering the endgame, after the singularity, uploading and so forth, we somehow create an MBrain, converting all the available material other than hydrogen and helium in the solar system into sentient systems of some sort, most likely tiny orbiting nodes of matter, collecting and using nearly all the available energy from the sun.? Then we live in peace and plenty, circling and circling the sun, thinking, loving?and simulating, ja? Or not.? It occurred to me that all those reptilian brain processes that evolved would still have?many of the same?reasons for?evolving again.? Those tiny nodes simulating human or posthuman thought patterns would not necessarily be the utopian peace-loving particles I have always envisioned.? We might fight over the one thing we have no more of: metals, upon which to create thought-substrates.? We might compete, destructively.? We might participate in negative sum competition. ? I have come to doubt the notion that we are nearly finished with the economics of scarcity in our current form, and may not be completely finished with it even after uploading. ? spike ? ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Fri Sep 10 02:56:42 2010 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2010 19:56:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). In-Reply-To: References: <147628.33554.qm@web24920.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4C899E6A.9010500@mac.com> On 9/9/10 3:20 PM, John Grigg wrote: > Samantha, I'm going to scream at you in my best adolescent fashion, > "you are ruining my life!!!" I will then run to my bedroom and slam > the door as hard as I possibly can!! Next, I will throw myself down > onto my bed and cry my eyes out!! > "Why, oh why, does she try to rip apart my fondest dreams?" "How can > anyone be that mean??!" "Sam, you are a big Blue Meanie!!! ; ) > > I think you and Spike have brought up some good points, but I still > think Singularity Utopia's (what the hell is this guy's real name for > crying out loud??!) personal vision is a worthy one and very possibly > within reach of humanity, if we work hard for it, and if good triumphs > over the usual victors..., evil, ignorance, apathy, and fear. Infinite resources within a finite spacetime boundary are not possible. That said thought there is at least virtually one hell of a lot that can exist in a pretty tiny volume. The limits of computation say it is not infinite but it is way way more than what we can have down here where most matter is "dumb as rocks" because most of it is a freaking rock (or something even less organized). So yeah, tremendous room for huge dreams BUT please think twice as before selling it as what we all should have or will have real soon now unless some nefarious people don't let us. There is such a tremendous amount of work between here and such a "there" and likely at minimum at least 4 - 5 decades. That estimate is based on current expert estimates for the availability of both full machine phase MNT and powerful enough AGI. > S.U. is mistaken in thinking we will ever truly have unlimited > resources, as I tried to explain to him in a private email. Energy > and matter, however seemingly infinite they may seem in such a > gigantic universe (or multiverse), still are ultimately finite. I > suspect very powerful lifeforms of various kinds will fill all niches > and eventually eat everything up, unless we set limits. And so even > in a super-advanced post-singularity culture, there will need to be > rules regarding growth. There will be working rules how who requires how much resources of whatever kind (likely in computational units for an upload). But that is may be largely a matter of economics within a minimal legal/ethical framework. > But still, it will be an amazing society where the sort of poverty, > lack of medical care, lack of educational support, lack of healthy > food, and lack of housing, will be seen as inconceivable. But > sentients will probably be much more demanding, despite their vastly > higher standard of living. And due to somewhat limited resources and > social hierarchies, there will still be frustrated people/minds. Well, if we are uploads we don't need food or likely medical care (well debugging the stray mind virus I guess). :) But yes. Desires expand to and then beyond whatever the current supply is. > When mature nanotech first arrives, governments and corporations will > do everything they can to firmly control it, and carefully portion out > it's massive benefits based on social status and institutional power. If by mature you mean full machine phase then I doubt that will last long at all. To easy to duplicate all the needed machinery. It is a separate very good question how you monitor or whether you do and to what extent against nefarious uses of such tech. But in a world where effectively everything, even material goods, are information, computation and a bit of matter and energy it is clear that the old rules and understandings simply will not do. That rich a new wine will soon burst such old bottles. Of course there are many intermediate steps along the way where various controls will be attempted that are variously justified in reality or not. > They will of course want to contain such a vast potential for > violence, which is only prudent. But the scariest thing from their > perspective will be how this technology might liberate individuals and > small groups from even really needing their government. You will find > that governments are all about gaining and maintaining power, not > giving it up! Terrorism, again? Can we think about anything else? But yes, it is an issue. It would be better if the sort of deep anger, frustrations that often leads to terrorism was largely ameliorated through most people seeing in fact their circumstances rapidly improving. Of course I don't see how that is going to happen. > But I do believe the upcoming social contract between governments and > common citizens will result in a near-utopia, as compared to how > things are now. But the big question is, will the common citizenry be > granted reasonable freedoms and rights to benefit from the > monumentally society-changing technologies that are coming their way? I don't think governments as we know them are a net boon. I think they are and have been a horrific curse. Even the term "common citzenry" enshrines government over the people - over you and I. Why is government, which is after all only a collection of a small number of human beings like ourselves, empowered to decide what "reasonable freedoms and rights" are for the majority of beings like themselves? Sort of odd, isn't it? Yet on the other hand, it is a common belief among us relatively brainy folks that we do in fact no better about a great number of things we are sure are very very important than the vast majority of people know - if they even care. Out of such homegrown elitism the notion that a relative few should make decisions for a majority - at least in things that matter a lot to all - naturally arises. I am of two minds. Ground work is that the changes are very rapid and that increasingly the vast majority of people will not have economically viable skills much longer. I know many will disagree with this premise and some on pretty substantial grounds but lets go with it a moment. Given this without some means of distributing goods and services to people regardless of whether they have a marketable skills and a job or not, many many people will be in relatively dire straights or at least quite unhappy, frustrated, fearful and likely to be fodder for terrorism and other violence. Also, the fact of being one of the ones that does have a job/income during this period is only in part a matter of individual character, hard work, ambition and so on and partly is an accident of ones genetic inheritance, birth, upbringing and so on. So if we may descend to applying "fairness" to raw nature (always questionable) then no, it isn't fair. And in part we want to get to a place where everyone can have similar amounts of luck or where such original distribution of luck problems are correctable, e.g., being able to raise one's IQ to genius levels regardless of what it was originally. So one view is that: * to avoid violence, terrorism and a lot of oppression to quel it as well as a lot of human misery; * to maximize human happiness and well-being; * to go beyond fear inherent in progress over one's continuing viability that we must have some kind of system of redistribution beyond what we do today on a piecemeal basis. On the other hand: * a species, even a few members originally, making it to transcendence of nature to this extend is rare and hard; * the effort to subsidize everyone costs a fortune and limits speed of innovation and achievement - perhaps catastrophically; * the re-distribution entails taking from the relatively more productive to give to the less productive and thus has major immediate moral issues; * it is not necessarily so that a very large majority of humanity wants any such future as we dream of; * tremendous loss of freedom is likely to enforce such global redistribution. Note in the second case that without such redistribution any "have" individual or group of such is perfectly free to aid as many "have nots" as ve wishes and can. But no collection of individuals is allowed to practice charity effectively by legalized robbery. There are not inconsiderable arguments on both sides. It may be perfectly natural that a tech singularity results in a great culling by its very nature - regardless of what our wishes may be. Perhaps those who say that evolution, a sort of survival of the fittest and most useful, goes on regardless of technological abilities have a point. But I still hope for better or less anxiety producing outcomes. > > On 9/6/10 Gregory Jones wrote: > > "I can imagine plenty of reasons why some parts of humanity would > intentionally create scarcity, such as reasoning that if the > proletariat have plenty of everything, they will fail to pray to > Mecca." > > Dear Spike (Gregory Jones) you make a good point. There are people who > may object to post-scarcity, which is one of the reasons why I am > attempting to inspire people into believing in the possibilities the > future holds. If enough people believe in utopia, it will happen. At the very least it is a huge leap individually and across all our institutions to really down deep get and embrace post-scarcity. It is far far deeper than I think most people realize. And we need this change, if post-scarcity is possible or to the degree it is, when a mere decade or five! That is a change of consciousness much broader and faster than any humanity has ever managed. This is another reason why I think it doubtful most people will go there, want to go there, or thing there is any "there" at all there. Half of them likely will believe it is against what is demanded by karma/Jehovah/God/Cyclic Nature/Goddess/Kali/Allah/whatever. Although I think a lot of religious belief would fall off pretty quickly if you could show much in the way of the sweet by and by stuff the religions promise after death could be had without the dying part and without guesswork/faith. > To conclude: I think the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy has not > been completely absorbed by some of the responders to this > Post-Scarcity thread. The collective desires of the human race can > create a dystopia or utopia. I hope you can understand this network > effect. I hope you can change your views to a positive outlook because > negative views can harm the entire world. You have the power to begin > spreading hope. You can create utopia. It may be our greatest mistake to think in such simple dichotomies as dystopia vs utopia. > > I must admit that I really like this guy! : ) And I think he actualy > does an excellent job defending his worldview. If people go around > with a "realistic" and defeatist perspective that the major > powers/institutions that run this world cannot be successfully worked > with, then in many ways they have already won. I think it has > unfortunately become fashionable for otherwise very intelligent > transhumanists to wear the robes of the cynic. But as S.U. states, > "positive thinking is the precursor to clear effective action." And > this is so very true... I hope you don't think I am a cynic. I am actually one of the wild-eyed visionaries attempting to be just a tad more real. > A fullblown Singularity may not occur within our lifetimes (though I > doubt this), or governments just might be able to fully curb & control > the world-changing shockwaves of such an event, but only time will > tell. I feel we all owe it to not just ourselves, but the children of > today and tomorrow, to stay *tough mindedly* positive and fight for > the wonderful world we envision. A place that truly nurtures it's > citizens, instead of neglecting them, or engulfing the majority into a > tyranny. If our governments can do that, can stop the world changing that a singularity brings, then they are a very dangerous and unfortunate institution indeed. That would say they are capable of continuing stasis indefinitely at best. I very much agree that we need to vision big and work to achieve our vision. But what exactly that vision is an is not and the best way to move towards getting there is not so clear. Not among any significant number of us and, unless I am unusual, not that fully clear within our own mind. - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From timhalterman at gmail.com Fri Sep 10 13:24:07 2010 From: timhalterman at gmail.com (Tim Halterman) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 08:24:07 -0500 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: <4C895C59.1040501@mac.com> References: <4C895C59.1040501@mac.com> Message-ID: 2010/9/9 samantha > On 9/9/10 6:55 AM, Tim Halterman wrote: > > > Really, what do you make of this? >> >> > No current system is perfect and everlasting, communism, capitalism or > otherwise. > > > Why? What makes them fail? Are some better than others? In what ways. > The fact that governance is requried. As long as there is a human in authority there will likely be envy and certainly inequality. This is imperfect. And sure I find some better than others. > I don't think any system which requires people to do something they > don't wish or relies on exploiting another being as a permanent solution. > > Laissez faire capitalism requires neither. > I'd say produce or starve is a flaw. Capitalism requires people to do something they possibly may not wish to do, or even have the ability to do. > > These systems are simply biding their time until technology advances to a > point that a true communism is possible. > > BARF. Communism is utterly broken by design. > > Communism in that sense being a society where individuals are free to > do as they wish and do not require the exploitation of others to do so. I > think Marx felt this way, although specific quotes elude me (It's been a > number of years since I read his work). > > That is not communism. In communism the collective owns everything and the > individual owns nothing. "From each according to his ability, to each > according to his needs" is a common slogan of communism at its most > idealistic. That is utterly unworkable. When everyone owns everything and > nothing no one has the right to do with anything at all what she wishes. > The ideal communism I speak to does not contain the word "own" nor does it take anything from each. And yes I've read Atlas Shrugged. > > I always looked at the Soviet Union as simply picking a model close to a > hopeful end-state. Had technology progressed at a faster rate I'm not sure > the collapse would have been inevitable, they could have simply evolved. I > see the most technologically advanced societies the closest to achieving > true communism. > > A state that killed tens of millions on its own citizens on purpose is held > up as an ideal and just before its time? This is utterly abhorrent. > > - samantha > I'm not going to defend the Soviet Union, that wasn't really my point. I will say however that unless you live on another planet we're all pieces on the same game board. Until a day comes when not one person goes hungry the same day a resource is spent on the defense or offense of one nation against another I'm not going to participate in finger-pointing. We all pay taxes, we all own a piece of a gun. -Tim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From singularity.utopia at yahoo.com Fri Sep 10 11:25:44 2010 From: singularity.utopia at yahoo.com (Singularity Utopia) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 11:25:44 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). Message-ID: <609164.25137.qm@web24902.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Dear Samantha, and others, a primitive brain naturally has a poor grasp of possibilities. Primitive brains naturally grasp reality poorly. A good example of how brainpower limits comprehension is this: imagine a human trying to explain to a cat or dog the nature of nanotechnology and how nanotechnology could make it easier for humans to travel to the moon or to Mars. When super-intelligent-AI is created we will be like cats or dogs; we cannot fully comprehend future possibilities but with imagination we can see how our primitive worries will be completely solved. We will not actually be like cats or dogs because we will evolve rapidly. From dogs we can transform into gods. My example of the free Ubuntu software verses pricey MS software was an example of how we are moving towards Post-Scarcity... software is easily replicated and the limits on replication are decreasing, we are approaching limitless software replication: post-scarcity. When millions of people download a video each day from YouTube we can see how that free data is transcending scarcity; there is a plentiful amount of data but it is not yet Post-Scarcity. When MNT-3D-printing becomes widespread, very competent, then millions of people will download products or food, which will be constructed via EXTREMELY efficient usage of resources for very little cost, this will be another step towards Post-Scarcity but similar to the free operating system Ubuntu it won't actually be Post-Scarcity but merely a step closer. You may doubt that we will ever create a brain 12 orders of magnitude faster (or greater) and generally more powerful than our own brains, but when we do we will not be creating something different to ourselves we will be reinventing ourselves, we will become super-beings, we will transcend our human beginnings: this concept of Transhumanism can seem weird but in 10 or 20 years people will have a better grasp upon how humans are evolving. We will become super-beings if we want to. Sometimes it can be difficult to see how technology advances quicker each year and it will probably only be with hindsight that people look back to this point in history as a crucial period regarding accelerating change. The growth of processing power is accelerating. Our grasp of the world is accelerating. The Singularity is coming. INFINITY is entirely possible. Humans who wish to remain unchanged/primitive will be free to do so. There will no scarcity of universes where everyone can exist however they desire. Do you think the creation of matter and universes is difficult for a supremely-intelligent-being? Creating a universe would probably be as easily as creating a sandwich if your brainpower is sufficiently large. There will be no scarcity of matter. Virtual reality will become indistinguishable from reality. Virtual worlds and real worlds will both be utterly controllable to satisfy the desires and needs of anybody and everybody. At one point in our history a primitive computer was the size of an entire room but today we have much much powerful computers that are comparatively tiny. As computing power grows our computers become smaller. The concept of a Jupiter sized brain (Mbrain) is a primitive notion because massive computers in the future will not need to actually be physically massive. Humans can do impossible things. From putting men on the Moon to overcoming Black slavery and electing a Black President. We continually change the nature of what is possible. Humans can grasp reality mistakenly, therefore we may think our Earth is the center of our solar system or that Post-Scarcity is impossible. We are evolving. Keep an open mind. Reality is a bit like the scene in Ghostbusters where a giant marshmallow man is created. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay_Puft_Marshmallow_Man You create the future via your desires. Your expectations skew you perceptions thereby forcing you to create reality according to your expectations. Really... you should read up on the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy. Expect utopia. There are no nefarious people prohibiting Post-Scarcity. You are responsible for reality. You create reality. The only limit to Post-Scarcity is yourself. If you choose to see nefarious people in the world then that is your choice... Imagine you are asleep dreaming but instead of dreaming about pleasant things you dream about monsters, pain, and suffering. Dreams are a good example of how people create reality. Theoretically we have the power to dream whatever we want. Each night we could dream about the most fabulous utopia where we enjoy ultimate pleasures. Our dreams are totally inside our heads but we fail to appreciate how we have the reality to control our dreams, therefore we sometimes dream about unpleasant things. Our failure to control our dreams is similar to our control over reality. The world is exactly the way you want it to be (subconsciously). The world is your dream. I choose to dream of utopia. I know you are not nefarious, nobody is nefarious, and I know you will soon believe without any doubt that Post-Scarcity is possible. I know you will believe that reality is infinite, without any limits whatsoever, because your mind is limitless. The positive feedback will feedback to create "eternal positivity" and the positivity will be immensely positive. The future will be infinitely positive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy Regarding my name I would say, what's in a name? A rose by any other name smells just as sweet. Utopia is the sweetest rose. Believe! Dream! Seize the limitless power of reality! I know you will soon begin to believe in utopian Post-Scarcity. You can see it happening by 2045 at the latest... I know. I can see your mind changing because I see my own mind changing. I can see you dreaming. This is our dream. We dream of utopia! This is our reality. This is science. This is technology. This is existence. This IS reality. You are alive. Singularity Utopia. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From policedepts at gmail.com Thu Sep 9 23:27:55 2010 From: policedepts at gmail.com (police dept) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2010 17:27:55 -0600 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: <4C895C59.1040501@mac.com> References: <4C895C59.1040501@mac.com> Message-ID: > > "That is not communism. In communism the collective owns everything and > the individual owns nothing. "From each according to his ability, to each > according to his needs" is a common slogan of communism at its most > idealistic. That is utterly unworkable. When everyone owns everything and > nothing no one has the right to do with anything at all what she wishes. > >Samantha" > > Yes, to be genuinely communistic the human race would have to evolve so far ahead of itself it would be unrecognizable. Unfortunately, the same lack of civilization means libertarianism is also Utopian at this time and for the foreseeable future. > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From policedepts at gmail.com Thu Sep 9 23:47:10 2010 From: policedepts at gmail.com (police dept) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2010 17:47:10 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Privacy vs the future In-Reply-To: <4C895ACE.6020700@mac.com> References: <205525.29721.qm@web81505.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4C895ACE.6020700@mac.com> Message-ID: "Yeah. At first I thought it was thematic as loss of privacy can lead to a total police state. But perhaps not. - s" More ironic than thematic. But if I thought changing my name to "FBI (or CIA) agent" would keep ID thieves and hackers at bay, the name would be changed. My message to you, Samantha: we can now see the number of responsible people is low enough to the point trusting people with liberty is almost as difficult as trusting them with power. They'll screw it up time after time, often making the same mistakes over & over. Most of all, IMO, it is shocking how dumbed down education has become-- education in the total sense of learning both formal and informal. Look at how immature politics is becoming, Kuran burning politics; WTC mosque-building politics. Something out of a high school parody magazine-- a low-rent version of the Lampoon or the Onion. Or a bad film such as Porky's Revenge. I'm ashamed to be human; if only we could skip h+, to go straight to posthumanism. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Fri Sep 10 14:50:47 2010 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 09:50:47 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The strange case of the missing Japanese centenarians Message-ID: <201009101451.o8AEoxwP007644@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Apparently there probably aren't as many Japanese centenarians as has been reported: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39095688/ns/world_news-asiapacific/ Max From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Sep 10 14:54:18 2010 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 07:54:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: References: <4C895C59.1040501@mac.com> Message-ID: <354547.15561.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> You wrote, "Capitalism requires people to do something they possibly may not wish to do, or even have the ability to do." There is no realistic social system that can escape that?people having to?"do something they possibly may not wish to do, or even have the ability to do." That's a constraint from reality and people proposing reforms or radical changes can ignore it, but this will not make it go away. Also, the problem of ownership is really about control: who gets to control what. No workable social system can leave this issue alone as long as we live in a world of scarcity. (And there is no post-scarcity world. There are merely better or worse ways of dealing with scarcity or different ways in which scarcity evinces itself. One can pretend scarcity won't exist, that the problem with go away, but, thus far, this is merely wishful thinking.) The slogan?"from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" -- which, IIRC, Robert Nozick countered with the libertarian slogan "From each as he[sic] chooses, to each as he[sic] is chosen." -- does not overtly state ownership, but it's implied that someone will be deciding those abilities and those needs. (Needs, of all things, are subjective. So, this entails, in any real social system, some person or group, imposing their subjective preferences regarding what are considered needs on everyone else. And the same goes for abilities. The social order attempting to implement "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" will have to decide just what the abilities of each of society's members are. This will entail central planning of some sort. Yes, would be social engineers can pretend this is all easy and there are transparently objective means of figuring this all out, but history and sound economic theory underscore the problems here and should give pause.) Also, I don't believe no one is free until everyone's minimum needs are met. Nor do I believe everyone must wait to be free until that happens. This doesn't mean I'm against charity or think no one should ever care about helping out a person who's poor, starving, or otherwise deprived. But it does mean that someone else's poverty or lack of something or other cannot be used as claim on everyone else's freedom. In other words, one can't validly and honesty argue that because X is destitute, Y must be coerced -- any more than one can argue because Y is coerced, X must be made destitute. Regarding, too, the subject kicking off this thread -- Castro's recent admissions during an interview -- I find it strange that a dictator is really being taken seriously. The guy is merely admitting his social system doesn't work now. He's not admitting it never worked ever. Nor is he even owning up to the wrongs he's committed -- which are not of the armchair type of debating the merits of social sytems, but of the real world type of hurting and killing people. I may be overly cyncial, but a man who wants to stay in power or have his clique stay in power and who likely realizes that time is running out, that his allies are either feeble or abandoning him, is unlikely to be having a genuine change of heart. Instead, it seems like he sees it's not working out and his regime, brittle as?all dictatorships are,?might collapse the moment his subject realize how utterly weak it is. (And this is the same for all regimes everywhere: they rule only as long as?the ruled go along with it. Once that support or acquiescence diminishes below a certain level.) Regards, ? Dan 2010/9/9 samantha ? From: Tim Halterman To: ExI chat list Sent: Fri, September 10, 2010 3:24:07 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... On 9/9/10 6:55 AM, Tim Halterman wrote: > >> >>Really, what do you make of this? > >No current system is perfect and everlasting, communism, capitalism or >otherwise.? Why? What makes them fail?? Are some better than others?? In what >ways. > The fact that governance is requried.? As long as there is a human in authority there will likely be envy and certainly inequality.? This is imperfect.? And sure I find some better than others. I don't think any system which requires people to do something they don't wish or relies on exploiting another being as a permanent solution.? Laissez faire capitalism requires neither. I'd say produce or starve is a flaw.? Capitalism requires people to do something they possibly may not wish to do, or even have the ability to do.? These systems are simply biding their time until technology advances to a point that a true communism is possible.BARF. Communism is utterly broken by design.?? > > > >?? Communism in that sense being a society where individuals are free to do as >they wish and do not require the exploitation of others to do so.? I think Marx >felt this way, although specific quotes elude me (It's been a number of years >since I read his work). >> >>That is not communism.? In communism the collective owns everything and the >>individual owns nothing.? "From each according to his ability, to each according >>to his needs" is a common slogan of communism at its most idealistic.?? That is >>utterly unworkable.? When everyone owns everything and nothing no one has the >>right to do with anything at all what she wishes.? >> The ideal?communism I speak to?does not contain the word "own" nor does it take anything?from each.? And yes I've read Atlas Shrugged.?? I always looked at the Soviet Union as simply picking a model close to a hopeful end-state.? Had technology progressed at a faster rate I'm not sure the collapse would have been inevitable, they could have simply evolved.? I see the most technologically advanced societies the closest to achieving true communism.A state that killed tens of millions on its own citizens on purpose is held up as an ideal and just before its time?? This is utterly abhorrent. > >- samantha I'm not going to defend the Soviet Union, that wasn't really my point.? I will say however that unless you live on another planet we're all pieces on the same game board.? Until a day comes when not one person goes hungry the same day a resource is spent on the defense or offense of one nation against another I'm not going to participate in finger-pointing.? We all pay taxes, we all own a piece of a gun. -Tim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Sep 10 15:04:09 2010 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 08:04:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: References: <4C895C59.1040501@mac.com> Message-ID: <990989.18240.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I disagree. The problem with communism is that it's an unworkable theory. It's akin to a perpetual motion machine. The problem with libertarianism, in so far as application to real work societies, is more one of getting enough people to agree with it and changing some institutional arrangements. This is a practical obstacle and not a theoretical blocker. And to see how far humanity has come in a libertarian direction, one has only to think of things like the decline of chattel slavery, forced marriages, wife beatings, child abuse, persecution of religious (or irreligious)?individuals, and persecution of individuals based on sexual orientation (this last just in my lifetime) in all Western societies. There are, of course, no irreversible trends here, but these trends do give cause for optimism -- even if only of the cautious and tentative sort. Regards, Dan From: police dept To: ExI chat list Sent: Fri, September 10, 2010 1:27:55 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... "That is not communism.? In communism the collective owns everything and the individual owns nothing.? "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is a common slogan of communism at its most idealistic.?? That is utterly unworkable.? When everyone owns everything and nothing no one has the right to do with anything at all what she wishes. >Samantha" Yes, to be genuinely communistic?the human race would have to evolve so far ahead of itself it would be unrecognizable.? Unfortunately, the same lack of civilization means libertarianism is also Utopian at this time and for the foreseeable future. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri Sep 10 15:37:00 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 08:37:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched Message-ID: On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 5:00 AM, ?Singularity Utopia wrote: > Many years ago during the height of American slavery nobody would have dreamed a > Black man would become President of the USA You gotta be kidding. ?The man went to Harvard. ?People come out of Harvard white no matter what color they might have had when they went in. Keith PS :-) PPS Obama is technically mixed race, not black. From kanzure at gmail.com Fri Sep 10 17:04:38 2010 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 12:04:38 -0500 Subject: [ExI] [wta-talk] IRC possibilities In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 11:28 AM, Aleksei Riikonen wrote: >> What IRC channel and server are you on? Does anyone else use IRC? > > For a number of years I've only been on one IRC channel, which is a > Finnish language channel used by Finnish transhumanists, so not very > interesting to most here. > > I hear there's a good #lesswrong channel these days, though haven't > checked it out myself. Someone who uses IRC more than I do will > perhaps respond with an overview of English language possibilities. > > (#lesswrong is associated with this site: http://lesswrong.com/ ) there's been a transhumanism channel on freenode in #hplusroadmap for a few years now. Up to 50 users/day on average logs: http://gnusha.org/logs/ We don't tolerate most of the same crap, though. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From pharos at gmail.com Fri Sep 10 19:23:56 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 20:23:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] BOOK: Joel Mokyr "The Enlightened Economy" Message-ID: Book Review: A former editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, Mr. Mokyr sets out to answer what, on the face of it, is an old question: Why did Britain have an industrial revolution first? Why not France or the Netherlands, given their economic power in the 17th century and, at the time, the increasingly free market in ideas between Paris, Amsterdam, Edinburgh and London? Mr. Mokyr's answer?articulated in densely packed but gratifyingly lucid prose?is that in Britain ideas interacted vigorously with business interests in "a positive feedback loop that created the greatest sea change in economic history since the advent of culture." Reduced to a thumbnail sketch, liberty and natural philosophy?a catch-all term for the study of "useful" knowledge? begat prosperity, which begat more liberty and useful knowledge, which in turn spread through Europe and the Americas. ---------------------------------------- An article by Joel Mokyr explains his ideas: Enlightened and Enriched Quote: Yet the idea of material progress through the expansion of useful knowledge?what historians today call the Baconian program?slowly took root. The Royal Society, founded in London in 1660, was explicitly based on Bacon?s ideas. Its purpose, it claimed, was ?to improve the knowledge of naturall things, and all useful Arts, Manufactures, Mechanick practises, Engines, and Inventions by Experiments.? But the movement experienced a veritable spurt during the eighteenth century, when private organizations were established throughout Britain to build bridges between those who knew things and those who made things. One example was the oddly named Lunar Society of Birmingham, in which leading scientists met regularly with famed entrepreneurs, including the greatest engineer of his age, James Watt, and his partner Matthew Boulton. Another was the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, whose members included many of the most prominent businessmen in Britain?s rapidly growing cotton industry. ----------------------- I find this description of the Industrial Revolution as a type of feedback loop between scientists and engineers very convincing. There is an article in today's New York Times which references this book and points to a similar feedback loop which built up the US industrial wealth. And suggests that the current US economic problems are in part due to the best brains moving to non-productive areas of the economy rather than industry. BillK From pharos at gmail.com Fri Sep 10 21:17:11 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 22:17:11 +0100 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 9/9/10, spike wrote: > Really, what do you make of this? > > Fidel Castro said on Friday his recent comment that communist-led Cuba's economic model does not work was badly understood and that what he really meant was that capitalism does not work. Goldberg wrote in a blog on Wednesday that he asked Castro, 84, if Cuba's model was still worth exporting to other countries. "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore," Castro told him. Castro confirmed that he said those words "without bitterness or concern." But, he said, "the reality is that my response means exactly the opposite." "My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system now doesn't work either for the United States or the world, driving it from crisis to crisis, which are each time more serious." ---------------------- BillK From santostasigio at yahoo.com Fri Sep 10 22:58:40 2010 From: santostasigio at yahoo.com (giovanni santostasi) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 15:58:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <78214.23034.qm@web31306.mail.mud.yahoo.com> To me is crazy that we are making this a big issue in 2010. Why the color matter? I know it does because historical reasons but it is not absurd that we are still looking at the race of a president as something that mattered? This shows how backwards we are. Now what about the sex of the president? In which year are we going to comment on the fact we achieved something great because? the president is a woman? Giovanni --- On Fri, 9/10/10, Keith Henson wrote: From: Keith Henson Subject: Re: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched To: "ExI chat list" Date: Friday, September 10, 2010, 10:37 AM On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 5:00 AM, ?Singularity Utopia wrote: > Many years ago during the height of American slavery nobody would have dreamed a > Black man would become President of the USA You gotta be kidding. ?The man went to Harvard. ?People come out of Harvard white no matter what color they might have had when they went in. Keith PS :-) PPS Obama is technically mixed race, not black. _______________________________________________ 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 santostasigio at yahoo.com Fri Sep 10 23:13:22 2010 From: santostasigio at yahoo.com (giovanni santostasi) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 16:13:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: <4C895C59.1040501@mac.com> Message-ID: <293563.10138.qm@web31307.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I agree that on the book communism is a far superior social organization than capitalism. Capitalism has exploitation as a key element by design. In a way the fact that many people enjoy a modest level of benefits from capitalistic society is 1) the result of non capitalistic forces achieving rights for the individual 2) a clever form of exploitation similar to the roman emperors slogan "give them bread and entertainment and the people would be submissive". It simply makes us better consumers to be given crumbles of the big pie so we happily exploited and manipulated. Of course, so far any? real mass-scale communism experiment has failed mostly because has been hijacked by tyrannical figures that used communism as a cover up. Communism is a very idealistic approach to society, that if maybe unpractical (at least given the level of development of humans at this point) shares a lot with the transhumanist ideal of life. Star Treck fictional world is very close to a form of ideal communism. Giovanni --- On Thu, 9/9/10, samantha wrote: From: samantha Subject: Re: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... To: "ExI chat list" Date: Thursday, September 9, 2010, 5:14 PM On 9/9/10 6:55 AM, Tim Halterman wrote: Really, what do you make of this? No current system is perfect and everlasting, communism, capitalism or otherwise.? Why? What makes them fail?? Are some better than others?? In what ways. I don't think any system which requires people to do something they don't wish or relies on exploiting another being as a permanent solution.? Laissez faire capitalism requires neither. These systems are simply biding their time until technology advances to a point that a true communism is possible. BARF. Communism is utterly broken by design.?? ?? Communism in that sense being a society where individuals are free to do as they wish and do not require the exploitation of others to do so.? I think Marx felt this way, although specific quotes elude me (It's been a number of years since I read his work). That is not communism.? In communism the collective owns everything and the individual owns nothing.? "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is a common slogan of communism at its most idealistic.?? That is utterly unworkable.? When everyone owns everything and nothing no one has the right to do with anything at all what she wishes.? I always looked at the Soviet Union as simply picking a model close to a hopeful end-state.? Had technology progressed at a faster rate I'm not sure the collapse would have been inevitable, they could have simply evolved.? I see the most technologically advanced societies the closest to achieving true communism. A state that killed tens of millions on its own citizens on purpose is held up as an ideal and just before its time?? This is utterly abhorrent. - samantha -----Inline Attachment Follows----- _______________________________________________ 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 Sep 11 00:09:13 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 19:09:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: <293563.10138.qm@web31307.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <293563.10138.qm@web31307.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4C8AC8A9.4010606@satx.rr.com> On 9/10/2010 6:13 PM, giovanni santostasi wrote: > I agree that on the book communism is a far superior social organization > than capitalism. Capitalism has exploitation as a key element by design. The traditional political/ideological coloring of this list has been libertarian capitalist (aside from a few soft-boiled communitarian anarchists like me, and clever contrarians like Jeff Davis). It's remarkable, therefore, to see so many of the newcomers--or at least posters using unfamiliar names--taking positions like this. Did the word flash around the Worker's Socialist League, or whatever, that the transhumanist extropes were open for, um, penetration? And it's truly bizarrely funny to find Samantha Atkins being lectured on the Singularity by someone who seems, on the ebullient adolescent evidence, to be a smart 20 year old who's also just stumbled in to spread the exciting news to those of us who've heard it all before. (If Sing. Utope is really a retired professor of engineering, my mistake and apologies--no offense intended in any case, merely wondering and boggling gently.) Damien Broderick [just an innocent bystander & observer] From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri Sep 10 20:56:16 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 15:56:16 -0500 Subject: [ExI] BOOK: Joel Mokyr "The Enlightened Economy" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4C8A9B70.3020606@satx.rr.com> On 9/10/2010 2:23 PM, BillK wrote: > And suggests that the current US economic problems are in part due to > the best brains moving to non-productive areas of the economy rather > than industry. I'm inclined to mutter "Duh!" but might replace (or augment) "non-productive" with "anti-productive." Damien Broderick From sjatkins at mac.com Sat Sep 11 01:49:21 2010 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 18:49:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: References: <4C895C59.1040501@mac.com> Message-ID: <4C8AE021.6060102@mac.com> On 9/10/10 6:24 AM, Tim Halterman wrote: > > > 2010/9/9 samantha > > > On 9/9/10 6:55 AM, Tim Halterman wrote: >> >> Really, what do you make of this? >> >> >> No current system is perfect and everlasting, communism, >> capitalism or otherwise. > > Why? What makes them fail? Are some better than others? In what > ways. > > > The fact that governance is requried. As long as there is a human in > authority there will likely be envy and certainly inequality. This is > imperfect. And sure I find some better than others. What is and is not legitimate in the way of "governance"? Why is inequality a problem? People are not fungible items as much the same as peas in a pod. No amount of governance will make them so or should try. Nor is everyone entitled to the same outcomes as they are different beings with different skills, values, ambitions, determination and character. So people envy. So what? I don't see that is some problem for "governance" to resolve. > > >> I don't think any system which requires people to do something >> they don't wish or relies on exploiting another being as a >> permanent solution. > Laissez faire capitalism requires neither. > > > I'd say produce or starve is a flaw. Capitalism requires people to do > something they possibly may not wish to do, or even have the ability > to do. Actually, it is a system where people freely interact to trade the values they produce for the values produced by others. It is the only system utterly based on freedom and especially on economic freedom of association. In point of fact far less people starved in societies that were closer to laissez faire capitalism than others. For instance many millions starved in the USSR. If you produce no values that are valued by others for trade then you survive off savings or off the kindness of strangers (not coerced pseudo-charity accomplish by legalized taking from some against their will to give to others). Seems very humane and not at all flawed. Especially compared to the alternatives. > > > > >> These systems are simply biding their time until technology >> advances to a point that a true communism is possible. > BARF. Communism is utterly broken by design. > >> Communism in that sense being a society where individuals are >> free to do as they wish and do not require the exploitation of >> others to do so. I think Marx felt this way, although specific >> quotes elude me (It's been a number of years since I read his work). >> > That is not communism. In communism the collective owns > everything and the individual owns nothing. "From each according > to his ability, to each according to his needs" is a common slogan > of communism at its most idealistic. That is utterly > unworkable. When everyone owns everything and nothing no one has > the right to do with anything at all what she wishes. > > > The ideal communism I speak to does not contain the word "own" nor > does it take anything from each. And yes I've read Atlas Shrugged. So you abolish the word? Who or what owns the "means of production"? What can an individual own? Nothing? Everything? Do they have the right to make their own decisions in all areas of their life? Some areas? Economic areas? >> I always looked at the Soviet Union as simply picking a model >> close to a hopeful end-state. Had technology progressed at a >> faster rate I'm not sure the collapse would have been inevitable, >> they could have simply evolved. I see the most technologically >> advanced societies the closest to achieving true communism. >> > A state that killed tens of millions on its own citizens on > purpose is held up as an ideal and just before its time? This is > utterly abhorrent. > > - samantha > > > I'm not going to defend the Soviet Union, that wasn't really my > point. I will say however that unless you live on another planet > we're all pieces on the same game board. Until a day comes when not > one person goes hungry the same day a resource is spent on the defense > or offense of one nation against another I'm not going to participate > in finger-pointing. We all pay taxes, we all own a piece of a gun. Irrelevant. We don't all starve tens of millions of our own citizens on purpose. Nations, just like people are not "all the same". It is a matter of justice, not to mention rationality, to acknowledge and act according to differences. Taxes are involuntary takings so no person can be held responsible for uses of those takings that she did not explicitly endorse. - s -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Sat Sep 11 01:59:58 2010 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 18:59:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: <293563.10138.qm@web31307.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <293563.10138.qm@web31307.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4C8AE29E.8060908@mac.com> On 9/10/10 4:13 PM, giovanni santostasi wrote: > I agree that on the book communism is a far superior social > organization than capitalism. > Based on what exactly? On what "book"? > Capitalism has exploitation as a key element by design. > False. Only freely entered trades and other contracts are allowed. No initiation of force including fraud is allowed. > In a way the fact that many people enjoy a modest level of benefits > from capitalistic society is 1) the result of non capitalistic forces > achieving rights for the individual 2) a clever form of exploitation > similar to the roman emperors slogan "give them bread and > entertainment and the people would be submissive". It simply makes us > better consumers to be given crumbles of the big pie so we happily > exploited and manipulated. > Empty assertions with neither argument or evidence. > Of course, so far any real mass-scale communism experiment has failed > mostly because has been hijacked by tyrannical figures that used > communism as a cover up. > Or it is broken by design as I and many others contend including many who are former communists. > Communism is a very idealistic approach to society, that if maybe > unpractical (at least given the level of development of humans at this > point) shares a lot with the transhumanist ideal of life. > If the "ideal" is not at all based in reality then how can it be ideal for producing the best living systems of real human beings? A system that would work only for some poorly defined quite different beings than what humans are deserves scathing contempt - not admiration. - s -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From santostasigio at yahoo.com Sat Sep 11 03:20:27 2010 From: santostasigio at yahoo.com (giovanni santostasi) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 20:20:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: <4C8AE29E.8060908@mac.com> Message-ID: <310106.7914.qm@web31304.mail.mud.yahoo.com> The books are the classics of Marx and Engels but also the entire literature that inspired them, from Plato to Vico. Why empty assertions? Common....? how many examples I have to give? How can you explain what a CEO makes in a company and how that is proportional to what exactly he does? Do we really want to have a discussion on that? I think it is self-explanatory. And CEO are just the top of the Iceberg. Without talking about celebrities in every field that are supported with lavish rewards by the capitalistic system simply because they are useful to distract and entertain so people don't have to think seriously about their alienation. Should I continue? The ideal system has been obtained up to a certain point at smaller scales. This is why I used the term mass-scale experiments. The mass-scale experiments have been hijacked but some of the smaller scale attempts have shown some level of success, there have been many communes that have been peaceful and creative places where to live and grow. I cannot believe that you are putting down my assertion about an ideal society based on the possibility of better human beings, I thought this is what the essence of what transhumanism is. All what I'm saying is that Marxism could work when people are more evolved. What is wrong with that statement? Many utopias are exactly that, ideals to aspire to that don't exist yet (this what utopia means literally). And the poorly defined beings are not so poorly defined. There are many transhumanist documents that describe exactly how humans will be at the next level, in a way they will be more "human" (what we call be human is more an ideal than something we have really achieved). I see transhumans as very close to the ideal of buddhahood: altruistic, compassionate, generous, selfless, open to nature and the environment and so on. Ben Cosmist Manifesto has a lot of these ideals charted down. Samantha explain your ideal vision of the world because I don't get it... A world full of Bill Gates? Giovanni ?? --- On Fri, 9/10/10, samantha wrote: From: samantha Subject: Re: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... To: "ExI chat list" Date: Friday, September 10, 2010, 8:59 PM On 9/10/10 4:13 PM, giovanni santostasi wrote: I agree that on the book communism is a far superior social organization than capitalism. Based on what exactly?? On what "book"? Capitalism has exploitation as a key element by design. False.? Only freely entered trades and other contracts are allowed.? No initiation of force including fraud is allowed. In a way the fact that many people enjoy a modest level of benefits from capitalistic society is 1) the result of non capitalistic forces achieving rights for the individual 2) a clever form of exploitation similar to the roman emperors slogan "give them bread and entertainment and the people would be submissive". It simply makes us better consumers to be given crumbles of the big pie so we happily exploited and manipulated. Empty assertions with neither argument or evidence. Of course, so far any? real mass-scale communism experiment has failed mostly because has been hijacked by tyrannical figures that used communism as a cover up. Or it is broken by design as I and many others contend including many who are former communists. Communism is a very idealistic approach to society, that if maybe unpractical (at least given the level of development of humans at this point) shares a lot with the transhumanist ideal of life. If the "ideal" is not at all based in reality then how can it be ideal for producing the best living systems of real human beings?? A system that would work only for some poorly defined quite different beings than what humans are deserves scathing contempt - not admiration. - s -----Inline Attachment Follows----- _______________________________________________ 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 santostasigio at yahoo.com Sat Sep 11 04:09:52 2010 From: santostasigio at yahoo.com (giovanni santostasi) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 21:09:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: <4C8AE29E.8060908@mac.com> Message-ID: <564701.26884.qm@web31303.mail.mud.yahoo.com> >From Wiki: Utopian Socialism is a term used to define the first currents of modern Socialist thought. Utopian socialists never actually used this name to describe themselves; the term "utopian socialism" was introduced by Karl Marx and used by later socialist thinkers, to describe early socialist or quasi-socialist intellectuals who created hypothetical visions of perfect egalitarian and communalist societies without actually concerning themselves with the manner in which these societies could be created or sustained.... Although it is technically possible for any person living at any time in history to be a utopian socialist, the term is most often applied to those utopian socialists who lived in the first quarter of the 19th century. From the mid-19th century onwards, the other branches of socialism far surpassed the utopian version in terms of intellectual development and number of supporters. Utopian Socialists were important in the formation of modern movements for intentional community and cooperatives, such as Open Source and Techno Communism. The term "scientific socialism" is sometimes used by Marxists to describe their version of socialism, specifically for the purpose of counterposing it to Utopian Socialism which was descriptive and idealistic (in a sense of representing an ideal) rather than scientific, i.e., developed by means of reasoning and based on social sciences.... Utopian Socialism in Modern Culture Heaven is often described as something similar to a socialist utopia, but the most familiar utopian socialist society would be that of the United Federation of Planets in the popular television series Star Trek - particularly that depicted in The Next Generation. There is no money, no want, no poverty, no crime, no disease or ignorance in human society; everyone works for the advancement of all humanity--as well as the rest of the Federation. --- On Fri, 9/10/10, samantha wrote: From: samantha Subject: Re: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... To: "ExI chat list" Date: Friday, September 10, 2010, 8:59 PM On 9/10/10 4:13 PM, giovanni santostasi wrote: I agree that on the book communism is a far superior social organization than capitalism. Based on what exactly?? On what "book"? Capitalism has exploitation as a key element by design. False.? Only freely entered trades and other contracts are allowed.? No initiation of force including fraud is allowed. In a way the fact that many people enjoy a modest level of benefits from capitalistic society is 1) the result of non capitalistic forces achieving rights for the individual 2) a clever form of exploitation similar to the roman emperors slogan "give them bread and entertainment and the people would be submissive". It simply makes us better consumers to be given crumbles of the big pie so we happily exploited and manipulated. Empty assertions with neither argument or evidence. Of course, so far any? real mass-scale communism experiment has failed mostly because has been hijacked by tyrannical figures that used communism as a cover up. Or it is broken by design as I and many others contend including many who are former communists. Communism is a very idealistic approach to society, that if maybe unpractical (at least given the level of development of humans at this point) shares a lot with the transhumanist ideal of life. If the "ideal" is not at all based in reality then how can it be ideal for producing the best living systems of real human beings?? A system that would work only for some poorly defined quite different beings than what humans are deserves scathing contempt - not admiration. - s -----Inline Attachment Follows----- _______________________________________________ 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 santostasigio at yahoo.com Sat Sep 11 04:19:04 2010 From: santostasigio at yahoo.com (giovanni santostasi) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 21:19:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: <4C8AE29E.8060908@mac.com> Message-ID: <299541.89665.qm@web31302.mail.mud.yahoo.com> There is no money, no want, no poverty, no crime, no disease or ignorance in human society; everyone works for the advancement of all humanity--as well as the rest of the Federation. I like it, even if it a dream or a show. Yeah, a distraction created by capitalistic Hollywood..but still.... Let's make it so. ? Giovanni --- On Fri, 9/10/10, samantha wrote: From: samantha Subject: Re: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... To: "ExI chat list" Date: Friday, September 10, 2010, 8:59 PM On 9/10/10 4:13 PM, giovanni santostasi wrote: I agree that on the book communism is a far superior social organization than capitalism. Based on what exactly?? On what "book"? Capitalism has exploitation as a key element by design. False.? Only freely entered trades and other contracts are allowed.? No initiation of force including fraud is allowed. In a way the fact that many people enjoy a modest level of benefits from capitalistic society is 1) the result of non capitalistic forces achieving rights for the individual 2) a clever form of exploitation similar to the roman emperors slogan "give them bread and entertainment and the people would be submissive". It simply makes us better consumers to be given crumbles of the big pie so we happily exploited and manipulated. Empty assertions with neither argument or evidence. Of course, so far any? real mass-scale communism experiment has failed mostly because has been hijacked by tyrannical figures that used communism as a cover up. Or it is broken by design as I and many others contend including many who are former communists. Communism is a very idealistic approach to society, that if maybe unpractical (at least given the level of development of humans at this point) shares a lot with the transhumanist ideal of life. If the "ideal" is not at all based in reality then how can it be ideal for producing the best living systems of real human beings?? A system that would work only for some poorly defined quite different beings than what humans are deserves scathing contempt - not admiration. - s -----Inline Attachment Follows----- _______________________________________________ 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 alfio.puglisi at gmail.com Sat Sep 11 10:27:03 2010 From: alfio.puglisi at gmail.com (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 12:27:03 +0200 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: <310106.7914.qm@web31304.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4C8AE29E.8060908@mac.com> <310106.7914.qm@web31304.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2010/9/11 giovanni santostasi >I cannot believe that you are putting down my assertion about an ideal society based on the possibility of better human beings, I thought this is what the essence of what transhumanism is. Indeed. I've always thought that, while capitalism is better suited for the current social environment full of mere darwin-evolved and self-maximising human beings, transhumanism is instead a necessary step before communism - if you have better human beings, you can make communism work. Whether those transhumanist-in-progress will decide to evolve themselves into such material or not, it's another story. Alfio -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sat Sep 11 12:44:46 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 13:44:46 +0100 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: References: <4C8AE29E.8060908@mac.com> <310106.7914.qm@web31304.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 9/11/10, Alfio Puglisi wrote: > Indeed. I've always thought that, while capitalism is better suited for the > current social environment full of mere darwin-evolved and self-maximising > human beings, transhumanism is instead a necessary step before communism - > if you have better human beings, you can make communism work. Whether those > transhumanist-in-progress will decide to evolve themselves into such > material or not, it's another story. > > As Damien pointed out there is a history of the Extropian list being inclined towards the US-style individualistic 'John Wayne' libertarianism. (Get orrfff my land!). The newer European list members have a different outlook. As does the younger generation with its always connected group-think. The direction of new technology is towards a merging of minds, always linked, always discussing, wanting to be together, part of the group. BillK From dgreer_68 at hotmail.com Sat Sep 11 12:53:00 2010 From: dgreer_68 at hotmail.com (darren shawn greer) Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 08:53:00 -0400 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: <4C8AC8A9.4010606@satx.rr.com> References: <293563.10138.qm@web31307.mail.mud.yahoo.com>, <4C8AC8A9.4010606@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: And it's truly bizarrely funny to find Samantha Atkins being lectured on > the Singularity by someone who seems, on the ebullient adolescent > evidence, to be a smart 20 year old who's also just stumbled in to > spread the exciting news to those of us who've heard it all before. I made that mistake when I first got here not too long ago too (though I'm regrettably no longer 20.) Until Damien pointed out that the "nerd rapture" comment that I found so witty was as old as Moses. And therefore, I reasoned, so might some of these "new" ideas that I was trying to synthesize and regurgitate faster than my little neurons could carry me. So I decided to shut up for awhile and do-not-pass-go-and-proceed-directly-to Vernor-Vinge. I read all the posts. But the next time I wade in (besides this brief confession) I'll be armed to the teeth. Cheers, Darren "It is nothing more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than semblance" Frederick Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil > Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 19:09:13 -0500 > From: thespike at satx.rr.com > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Subject: Re: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... > > On 9/10/2010 6:13 PM, giovanni santostasi wrote: > > > I agree that on the book communism is a far superior social organization > > than capitalism. Capitalism has exploitation as a key element by design. > > The traditional political/ideological coloring of this list has been > libertarian capitalist (aside from a few soft-boiled communitarian > anarchists like me, and clever contrarians like Jeff Davis). It's > remarkable, therefore, to see so many of the newcomers--or at least > posters using unfamiliar names--taking positions like this. Did the word > flash around the Worker's Socialist League, or whatever, that the > transhumanist extropes were open for, um, penetration? > > And it's truly bizarrely funny to find Samantha Atkins being lectured on > the Singularity by someone who seems, on the ebullient adolescent > evidence, to be a smart 20 year old who's also just stumbled in to > spread the exciting news to those of us who've heard it all before. (If > Sing. Utope is really a retired professor of engineering, my mistake and > apologies--no offense intended in any case, merely wondering and > boggling gently.) > > Damien Broderick > [just an innocent bystander & observer] > _______________________________________________ > 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 phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Sat Sep 11 13:08:22 2010 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 06:08:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: References: <4C8AE29E.8060908@mac.com> <310106.7914.qm@web31304.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20100911130821.GB24771@ofb.net> On Sat, Sep 11, 2010 at 01:44:46PM +0100, BillK wrote: > As Damien pointed out there is a history of the Extropian list being > inclined towards the US-style individualistic 'John Wayne' > libertarianism. (Get orrfff my land!). "Get orrff my land! My daddy stole it from yours fair and square! You can come work for me though. Free choice, right? Not like I'm making you starve otherwise. I just own the land." > The newer European list members have a different outlook. As does the > younger generation with its always connected group-think. The > direction of new technology is towards a merging of minds, always > linked, always discussing, wanting to be together, part of the group. The younger generation also gets to see economic deregulation result in economic failure and the BP disaster. Plus the whole 9/11 world. -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Sat Sep 11 13:02:09 2010 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 06:02:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: <4C8AE021.6060102@mac.com> References: <4C895C59.1040501@mac.com> <4C8AE021.6060102@mac.com> Message-ID: <20100911130208.GA24771@ofb.net> On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 06:49:21PM -0700, samantha wrote: > What is and is not legitimate in the way of "governance"? Why is > inequality a problem? Well, if there's enough inequality, the rich can form a new government, with private armies and such. Nothing stopping them, after all. There's also that whole problem with externalities. Legitimacy is irrelevant if it means you pollute yourself to death or get conquered by a neighboring government. >> I don't think any system which requires people to do something they >> don't wish or relies on exploiting another being as a permanent >> solution. > > Laissez faire capitalism requires neither. As long as one ignores questions about the initial distribution of property and the justice thereof. Absolute monarchy is consistent with laissez faire, as long as the king 'owns' all the land. > Actually, it is a system where people freely interact to trade the > values they produce for the values produced by others. It is the only > system utterly based on freedom and especially on economic freedom of > association. In point of fact far less people starved in societies > that were closer to laissez faire capitalism than others. For > instance many millions starved in the USSR. If you produce no values Even fewer people go hungry in market welfare states than in states closer to laissez faire. If you want to find hungry people in the West, you go to the United States. -xx- Damien X-) From singularity.utopia at yahoo.com Sat Sep 11 09:18:53 2010 From: singularity.utopia at yahoo.com (Singularity Utopia) Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 09:18:53 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). (Singularity Utopia) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <648892.58099.qm@web24908.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Hi, Giovanni Santostasi and Keith Henson. Regarding the issue of the President being Black, or actually Mixed Race, I was trying to illustrate how humans do initially have very primitive and backward views but over time we evolve culturally into a wiser more open-minded state. Eventually over time we can see greater possibilities than our initial narrow views. Humans have exhibited exceptionally primitive worldviews throughout history therefore it is perhaps understandable that some humans currently find it difficult to grasp the concept of how utopia is possible, and how there are infinite possibilities in the Post-Scarcity world that will arrive by the year 2045. Giovanni, you mention the sex of the President. It is pertinent to mention the great UK cultural shift when Margret Thatcher became the first female UK Prime Minister. At one time in recent UK history women in the UK did not have the right to vote. Humans have been VERY backward and we have not yet shaken off our backward thinking. Cultural changes regarding human thinking will now begin happening quicker, we are approaching utopia where Post-Scarcity, hope, and infinite wisdom are possible within universes of immense order. The possibilities are infinite. Humans have been exceedingly benighted. We have not fully shed our ignorant origins. I make reference to the stupidity of humans because I wanted to highlight how our limited brains are obsessed with trivial matters; we often fail to see the infinite grandeur of the future. We will evolve from dogs to gods. Humans currently resemble dogs comparative to the gods we will become. Our powers and wisdom will become infinitely supreme. Matter will not be limited. Universes will be limitless. There will be no scarcity. The backward nature of the limited human mind obstructs comprehension of utopia. I was trying to highlight how out backwardness is being transcended. We now believe the Sun is the center of our Solar System not the Earth and astronomers are no longer persecuted by the Church. Soon people will believe utopia is very possible, inevitable. People of Mixed Race can study at Harvard and become the President. It shocking to realize that interracial marriage in the United States only become legal in all U.S. states in 1967. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_United_States We create reality. We can easily create utopia. Despite some people not believing utopia is possible I assure you it is possible and it will happen. Just remember the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and whatever you do think think about him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay_Puft_Marshmallow_Man http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy You can control your dreams. You can dream of whatever you want to. You can dream of utopia and your dreams can become real. To be or not to be, that is the question. Singularity Utopia -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Sat Sep 11 15:57:37 2010 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 10:57:37 -0500 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... Message-ID: <201009111557.o8BFvlKc009414@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Well, our list recently seems to be inclining towards communism and statism, contrary to its founding principles. The newer subscribers should keep in mind that state communism is not going to be well received here, and in fact you're wasting our time by posting in favor of it. Damien Sullivan, who is a long-time subscriber, also supports the statist view: >The younger generation also gets to see economic deregulation result >in economic failure and the BP disaster. Plus the whole 9/11 world. Just so that newer subscribers don't get a distorted impression, I'm going to say that I completely disagree with Damien S. I'm not going to get into a long discussion. We've done that and done that. Some thoughts here: http://strategicphilosophy.blogspot.com/2009/05/stress-testing-government-regulations.html Max ------------------------------------- Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, The Transhumanist Reader The Proactionary Project Director, Humanity Plus Extropy Institute Founder www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com ------------------------------------- From pharos at gmail.com Sat Sep 11 16:14:02 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 17:14:02 +0100 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: <20100911130821.GB24771@ofb.net> References: <4C8AE29E.8060908@mac.com> <310106.7914.qm@web31304.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20100911130821.GB24771@ofb.net> Message-ID: On 9/11/10, Damien Sullivan wrote: > The younger generation also gets to see economic deregulation result in > economic failure and the BP disaster. Plus the whole 9/11 world. > > Now,now. Don't you young'uns start getting uppity! Just because you're not going to get a pension and you're going to be taxed to death to pay for the oldies that have already grabbed a pension guarantee. Some people have no sense of fairness! Shocking! BillK From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Sat Sep 11 17:32:20 2010 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 10:32:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: <201009111557.o8BFvlKc009414@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <201009111557.o8BFvlKc009414@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <20100911173220.GA22091@ofb.net> On Sat, Sep 11, 2010 at 10:57:37AM -0500, Max More wrote: > Damien Sullivan, who is a long-time subscriber, also supports the > statist view: In particular, when I joined the list in 1993, I was rather libertarian, and soon flirted a lot with anarcho-capitalism, if I hadn't been already. L. Neil Smith, Vernor Vinge, David Friedman. Though within a few months, list discussion in particular by David Krieger (if I recall his name correctly) put the stake in my "natural law" version of libertarianism, causing me to shift to a mix of social contract and utilitarian justifications. For a while I did feel like the list conservative, but that was contextual: I wasn't fully committed, so I'd play devil's advocate (or as I liked to put it, my views were quantum, depending on who measured them), thus defending the possibility of anarcho-capitalism to my friends, while challenging some statements about the state on the list. (In particular, I believed we could do better than government, but I saw no merit in statements that government can't work at all.) I also wasn't as Singularity-centric as many. I since changed my mind on libertarianism, concluding that the nagging weaknesses I was always aware of were in fact fundamental flaws. -xx- Damien X-) From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sat Sep 11 17:19:36 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 13:19:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: <4C8AC8A9.4010606@satx.rr.com> References: <293563.10138.qm@web31307.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4C8AC8A9.4010606@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 9/10/2010 6:13 PM, giovanni santostasi wrote: > > Capitalism has exploitation as a key element by design. Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it is just the opposite. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From santostasigio at yahoo.com Sat Sep 11 19:09:02 2010 From: santostasigio at yahoo.com (giovanni santostasi) Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 12:09:02 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). (Singularity Utopia) In-Reply-To: <648892.58099.qm@web24908.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <778267.74111.qm@web31307.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hi Singularity, I'm with you, I like very much your post and your way of thinking. You express many of my own feelings and ideas in a much better way than I could do. We are travelers on the same path. Nice to meet you and thank you, Giovanni --- On Sat, 9/11/10, Singularity Utopia wrote: From: Singularity Utopia Subject: Re: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). (Singularity Utopia) To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Date: Saturday, September 11, 2010, 4:18 AM Hi, Giovanni Santostasi and Keith Henson. Regarding the issue of the President being Black, or actually Mixed Race, I was trying to illustrate how humans do initially have very primitive and backward views but over time we evolve culturally into a wiser more open-minded state. Eventually over time we can see greater possibilities than our initial narrow views. Humans have exhibited exceptionally primitive worldviews throughout history therefore it is perhaps understandable that some humans currently find it difficult to grasp the concept of how utopia is possible, and how there are infinite possibilities in the Post-Scarcity world that will arrive by the year 2045. Giovanni, you mention the sex of the President. It is pertinent to mention the great UK cultural shift when Margret Thatcher became the first female UK Prime Minister. At one time in recent UK history women in the UK did not have the right to vote. Humans have been VERY backward and we have not yet shaken off our backward thinking. Cultural changes regarding human thinking will now begin happening quicker, we are approaching utopia where Post-Scarcity, hope, and infinite wisdom are possible within universes of immense order. The possibilities are infinite. Humans have been exceedingly benighted. We have not fully shed our ignorant origins. I make reference to the stupidity of humans because I wanted to highlight how our limited brains are obsessed with trivial matters; we often fail to see the infinite grandeur of the future. We will evolve from dogs to gods. Humans currently resemble dogs comparative to the gods we will become. Our powers and wisdom will become infinitely supreme. Matter will not be limited. Universes will be limitless. There will be no scarcity.? The backward nature of the limited human mind obstructs comprehension of utopia. I was trying to highlight how out backwardness is being transcended. We now believe the Sun is the center of our Solar System not the Earth and astronomers are no longer persecuted by the Church. Soon people will believe utopia is very possible, inevitable. People of Mixed Race can study at Harvard and become the President. It shocking to realize that interracial marriage in the United States only become legal in all U.S. states in 1967. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_United_States We create reality. We can easily create utopia. Despite some people not believing utopia is possible I assure you it is possible and it will happen. Just remember the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and whatever you do think think about him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay_Puft_Marshmallow_Man http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy You can control your dreams. You can dream of whatever you want to. You can dream of utopia and your dreams can become real. To be or not to be, that is the question. Singularity Utopia -----Inline Attachment Follows----- _______________________________________________ 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 Sat Sep 11 23:22:06 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 16:22:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). In-Reply-To: <609164.25137.qm@web24902.mail.ird.yahoo.com> References: <609164.25137.qm@web24902.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 9/10/10, Singularity Utopia wrote: > Dear Samantha, and others, a primitive brain naturally has a poor grasp of > possibilities. Primitive brains naturally grasp reality poorly. Primitive brains in *primitive/backward/greedy times* may grasp future possibilities with difficulty. But a primitive brain may also go too far in thinking a totally utopian future awaits everyone within the relatively near future... >A good > example > of how brainpower limits comprehension is this: imagine a human trying to > explain to a cat or dog the nature of nanotechnology and how nanotechnology > could make it easier for humans to travel to the moon or to Mars. I would say a better example would be a human scientist trying to teach such things to a chimp or ape via sign language. >When > super-intelligent-AI is created we will be like cats or dogs; we cannot > fully > comprehend future possibilities but with imagination we can see how our > primitive worries will be completely solved. We will not actually be like > cats > or dogs because we will evolve rapidly. From dogs we can transform into > gods. > Merging our biological brains into cybernetic links or uploading human consciousness into cyberspace may prove much harder than simply from scratch creating artificial general intelligence. And so non-human super-intelligences may "get there first" and make sure they obtain and maintain positions of dominance over transhumanity. I hope Eliezer Yudkowsky and others are successful with their "friendly AI" studies, but they may not be... > > My example of the free Ubuntu software verses pricey MS software was an > example > of how we are moving towards Post-Scarcity... software is easily replicated > and > the limits on replication are decreasing, we are approaching limitless > software > replication: post-scarcity. When millions of people download a video each > day > from YouTube we can see how that free data is transcending scarcity; there > is a > plentiful amount of data but it is not yet Post-Scarcity. >When > MNT-3D-printing > becomes widespread, very competent, then millions of people will download > products or food, which will be constructed via EXTREMELY efficient usage of > resources for very little cost, this will be another step towards > Post-Scarcity And that will be a wonderful day! : ) > but similar to the free operating system Ubuntu it won't actually be > Post-Scarcity but merely a step closer. I'm really doubtful that we will ever truly achieve a full post-scarcity economy (for reasons explained in my previous posting), but I do think we will eventually develop a society where no one will be horribly deprived in the ways we see today. Poverty, disease, lack of transportation, and educational deprivation will be a very distant memory for even the most humble old stock human. In polite company it may be considered shudderingly rude to even speak of our times and the crude conditions we lived in... > > You may doubt that we will ever create a brain 12 orders of magnitude faster > (or > greater) and generally more powerful than our own brains, but when we do we > will > not be creating something different to ourselves we will be reinventing > ourselves, we will become super-beings, we will transcend our human > beginnings: > this concept of Transhumanism can seem weird but in 10 or 20 years people > will > have a better grasp upon how humans are evolving. We will become > super-beings if > we want to. Uh..., S.U., you are preaching to the choir here! lol But with exponentional leaps in human intelligence, we just may be creating people who in many ways truly are different from ourselves. And most likely/unfortunately with the lizard brain still in place! Please read "Understand" by Ted Chiang. Science fiction can be an excellent tool at times to explore various futurist/transhumanist ideas. And for quite some time, only those with lots of money and/or the right governmental connections, will get to greatly upgrade their intelligence. Don't just assume such advances will soon end up on the shelf of your local grocery store! lol A "Lawnmower Man" scenario could be quite probable. > Sometimes it can be difficult to see how technology advances > quicker > each year and it will probably only be with hindsight that people look back > to > this point in history as a crucial period regarding accelerating change. The > growth of processing power is accelerating. Our grasp of the world is > accelerating. The Singularity is coming. INFINITY is entirely possible. I largely agree. > Humans > who wish to remain unchanged/primitive will be free to do so. There will no > scarcity of universes where everyone can exist however they desire. Do you > think > the creation of matter and universes is difficult for a > supremely-intelligent-being? Creating a universe would probably be as easily > as > creating a sandwich if your brainpower is sufficiently large. There will be > no > scarcity of matter. Virtual reality will become indistinguishable from > reality. > Virtual worlds and real worlds will both be utterly controllable to satisfy > the > desires and needs of anybody and everybody. At one point in our history a > primitive computer was the size of an entire room but today we have much > much > powerful computers that are comparatively tiny. As computing power grows our > computers become smaller. The concept of a Jupiter sized brain (Mbrain) is a > primitive notion because massive computers in the future will not need to > actually be physically massive. Whether a post-Singularity AGI can truly take on the role of a god in terms of tunneling into other universes or creating new ones is yet to be seen. We may find even our super-seed AGI find themselves limited in what they can do. Or it may take even them centuries or even millennia to fully figure things out. I admit to enjoying the "Singularity in a box" scenario where a self-improving seed AI within hours/days/weeks of becoming sentient, transforms humanity into a wonderful utopian society (via the "techno-rapture") and takes on the role of a loving and nurturing "techno-god." But things may never happen as some hope. > > Humans can do impossible things. From putting men on the Moon to overcoming > Black slavery and electing a Black President. We continually change the > nature > of what is possible. Humans can grasp reality mistakenly, therefore we may > think > our Earth is the center of our solar system or that Post-Scarcity is > impossible. > We are evolving. Keep an open mind. Reality is a bit like the scene in > Ghostbusters where a giant marshmallow man is created. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay_Puft_Marshmallow_Man > I really don't think this was the best example you could have come up with... And what if a "bad Singularity" results with an AGI taking on the form of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man as it destroys the human race?!! lol We will then need to boot up rival AGI's to take the form of the Ghostbusters squad! And do you really want an artificial intelligence based on Bill Murray's character from that movie?? hee > You create the future via your desires. Your expectations skew you > perceptions > thereby forcing you to create reality according to your expectations. > Really... LOL!!! S.U., uhm...., you just did a great job of describing yourself!! ; ) > you should read up on the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy. Expect > utopia. > There are no nefarious people prohibiting Post-Scarcity. No "nefarious people?" Oh, you poor ignorant babe in the woods! When nanotech gets to the point where it looks like it may eventually really challenge the control of the rich and powerful who dominate our current economic system, they will take the steps necessary to put it under *their* control. They will make sure you get a bill for the power and matter you use up with your "anything machine." And they will of course carefully monitor and censor the things you want to crank out of your nanotech manufacturing device. Oh, and S.U., don't get any ideas about making a starship and running away! They won't like that and will takes steps to stop you... >You are responsible > for > reality. You create reality. The only limit to Post-Scarcity is yourself. If > you > choose to see nefarious people in the world then that is your choice... The nefarious people are out there. But hopefully good folks around the world can network together and manage to make the necessary positive changes. It will not be easy, but it can be done... > Imagine > you are asleep dreaming but instead of dreaming about pleasant things you > dream > about monsters, pain, and suffering. Dreams are a good example of how people > create reality. Theoretically we have the power to dream whatever we want. > Each > night we could dream about the most fabulous utopia where we enjoy ultimate > pleasures. Our dreams are totally inside our heads but we fail to appreciate > how > we have the reality to control our dreams, therefore we sometimes dream > about > unpleasant things. Our failure to control our dreams is similar to our > control > over reality. >The world is exactly the way you want it to be > (subconsciously). I disagree with your last line because it comes across as very "New Agey." But I do agree that at least up to a point we do help to create our own reality with our thoughts. A negative thought could stop a man from attending grad school (which might have lead to a great career) or asking a woman on a date (resulting in a long and happy marriage). And so positive thoughts can spark incredible change when *followed up by appropriate actions.* S.U., you remind me of the woman who created the book and video called "The Secret." She went on and on about visualization and positive thinking, but the "taking action" part was hardly mentioned. > The world is your dream. I choose to dream of utopia. I know you are not > nefarious, nobody is nefarious, and I know you will soon believe without any > doubt that Post-Scarcity is possible. There are some truly greedy, vicious, power-hungry, uncaring, and even murderous human beings in this world. If your dream is to come true, you MUST come to terms with the fact that some people are bad and will try to twist your fondest hopes into a system of tyranny and fear. But I do believe that compared to what we have now, a "near-utopian" society is very possible, but probably only if we work hard for it. I don't ever see a true utopian civilization existing, at least where human beings are involved! LOL But perhaps as we self-directedly evolve, we can create something even better than what we even now dream about. > > I know you will believe that reality is infinite, without any limits > whatsoever, > because your mind is limitless. I believe that we may find other dimensions or even create them, but at the same time sentient life will fill them up & use them up, at record rates! We will have to put restraints on ourselves. And don't forget that eventually we will encounter other intelligences out there, and that will create even more limits, as well as competitions. >The positive feedback will feedback to > create > "eternal positivity" and the positivity will be immensely positive. The > future > will be infinitely positive. > I am not so fully convinced. But I do like Eliezer Yudkowsky's "fun theory..." http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/fun-theory > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy > > > Regarding my name I would say, what's in a name? A rose by any other name > smells > just as sweet. Utopia is the sweetest rose. > Okay then, I'm going to call you "S.U." for short! lol : ) > Believe! Dream! Seize the limitless power of reality! I know you will soon > begin > to believe in utopian Post-Scarcity. You can see it happening by 2045 at the > latest... I know. I'm so glad that we finally have a time traveler on the Extropy list!!! >I can see your mind changing because I see my own mind > changing. I can see you dreaming. This is our dream. We dream of utopia! We do dream of utopia. But some of us are too scared to admit it to ourselves and others that we have such fond hopes for the future. > This is > our reality. This is science. This is technology. This is existence. This IS > reality. You are alive. > Positive affirmations can be a good thing. But the Singularity is still probably decades off, and some of the older people on this list (or those who get cancer, or mangled in a car accident, etc.,) will never see it! I'm just young enough that I stand a good chance of witnessing it, but even if I don't, I think of my little nephews and all the other people who deserve to live in such a wonderful world. John : ) > > Singularity Utopia. > > > From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Sep 12 05:00:03 2010 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 01:00:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] BOOK: Joel Mokyr "The Enlightened Economy" In-Reply-To: <4C8A9B70.3020606@satx.rr.com> References: <4C8A9B70.3020606@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 4:56 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 9/10/2010 2:23 PM, BillK wrote: > > > > > >> And suggests that the current US economic problems are in part due to >> the best brains moving to non-productive areas of the economy rather >> than industry. > > I'm inclined to mutter "Duh!" but might replace (or augment) > "non-productive" with "anti-productive." > ### Yeah, so many people work for the government now, with further massive expansions on the horizon, killing innovation both directly (you don't innovate once you are swallowed by a three- or four-letter bureaucracy) and by the massive burden of taxes and destructive regulation they produce. Socialism at work. Rafal From pharos at gmail.com Sun Sep 12 09:00:32 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 10:00:32 +0100 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: <20100911130208.GA24771@ofb.net> References: <4C895C59.1040501@mac.com> <4C8AE021.6060102@mac.com> <20100911130208.GA24771@ofb.net> Message-ID: On 9/11/10, Damien Sullivan wrote: > As long as one ignores questions about the initial distribution of > property and the justice thereof. Absolute monarchy is consistent with > laissez faire, as long as the king 'owns' all the land. > > There's a new article in Forbes magazine questioning whether the whole idea of 'property' is about to change. 2020 Consumers Will Share Everything Lisa Gansky, 09.09.10, 06:00 PM EDT Fewer and fewer people will own cars, appliances and homes, opting instead for shared access to transportation, entertainment and shelter. As more companies and individuals discover the ease and economy of services like these, they will begin shedding the expenses and hassles associated with ownership. By 2020 billions of people will routinely opt for shared access to superior transportation, food, finance, shelter, recreation and entertainment over having to own a car, a bike, numerous appliances, recreation gear or, in some cases, a home. ----------------- BillK From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Sun Sep 12 09:24:01 2010 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 02:24:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: References: <4C895C59.1040501@mac.com> <4C8AE021.6060102@mac.com> <20100911130208.GA24771@ofb.net> Message-ID: <20100912092400.GA4275@ofb.net> On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 10:00:32AM +0100, BillK wrote: > On 9/11/10, Damien Sullivan wrote: > > > As long as one ignores questions about the initial distribution of > > property and the justice thereof. Absolute monarchy is consistent with > > laissez faire, as long as the king 'owns' all the land. > There's a new article in Forbes magazine questioning whether the whole > idea of 'property' is about to change. > > Interesting article, but I don't think that's changing the whole idea of property. It would change how much individuals choose to own (or find the option of owning... I'm sure lots of businesses would love to rent stuff to you indefinitely rather than selling it outright!) but not the nature of ownership or that everything is conventionally owned by somebody. At least with just businesses involved. Muncipalities providing new services are a bigger change. But even bigger are things like squatters' rights laws, or the infamous Kelo, which if embraced could be a step toward Georgist/mutualist "whoever makes the highest social value use of the land, as measured by property taxes, gets to use the land". Those would change the idea of property. -xx- Damien X-) From giulio at gmail.com Sun Sep 12 15:39:31 2010 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 17:39:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?REMINDER_=96_Ben_Goertzel_on_The_Cosmist_M?= =?windows-1252?q?anifesto_in_Teleplace=2C_September_12=2C_10am_PST?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Starts in 1.5 hours! On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 6:43 PM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > REMINDER ? Ben Goertzel on The Cosmist Manifesto in Teleplace, > September 12, 10am PST > http://telexlr8.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/reminder-ben-goertzel-on-the-cosmist-manifesto-in-teleplace-september-12-10am-pst/ > http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/09/reminder-ben-goertzel-on-cosmist.html > > Ben Goertzel will give a talk in Teleplace on his recent book ?A > Cosmist Manifesto: Practical Philosophy for the Posthuman Age? on > Sunday September 12, 2010, at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm CET). > Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow > up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for > others, please contact me if you wish to attend. > > A Cosmist Manifesto: Practical Philosophy for the Posthuman Age, by > Ben Goertzel, has been published by Humanity+ Press and is available > on Amazon. See the review ?A Cosmist Manifesto, an Advocacy? on H+ > Magazine. See also the online version of the Cosmist Manifesto. In the > picture above, Ben Goertzel (first from left) in a Teleplace meeting. > > The term Cosmism was introduced by Tsiolokovsky and other Russian > Cosmists around 1900. Goertzel?s ?Cosmist Manifesto? gives it new life > and a new twist for the 21st century. Cosmism, as Goertzel presents > it, is a practical philosophy for the posthuman era. Rooted in Western > and Eastern philosophy as well as modern technology and science, it is > a way of understanding ourselves and our universe that makes sense > now, and will keep on making sense as advanced technology exerts its > transformative impact as the future unfolds. Among the many topics > considered are AI, nanotechnology, uploading, immortality, > psychedelics, meditation, future social structures, psi phenomena, > alien and cetacean intelligence and the Singularity. The Cosmist > perspective is shown to make plain old common sense of even the > wildest future possibilities. > > Ben Goertzel, Chair of Humanity+, is founder and CEO of two computer > science firms Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC, and of the non-profit > AGIRI (Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute). He has > served as a university faculty in several departments of mathematics, > computer science and cognitive science, in the US, Australia and New > Zealand. He is author of two books focused on the future of technology > and society Creating Internet Intelligence (Plenum, 2001) and The Path > to Posthumanity (Academica, 2006). He serves as Director of Research > for the Singularity Institute for AI. > > Teleplace is one of the best 3D applications for telework, online > meetings, group collaboration, and e-learning in a virtual 3D > environment (v-learning). Those who already have Teleplace accounts > for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number > of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to > attend. > From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sun Sep 12 16:42:56 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 12:42:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: <310106.7914.qm@web31304.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <310106.7914.qm@web31304.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <0902D9A0-54A6-4826-A77B-4ED9039B77AD@bellsouth.net> On Sep 10, 2010, at 11:20 PM, giovanni santostasi wrote: > "Without talking about celebrities in every field that are supported with lavish rewards by the capitalistic system simply because they are useful to distract and entertain so people don't have to think seriously about their alienation." I have no idea what distracting people "so people don't have to think seriously about their alienation" means, but it sounds nice, just the thing to make you seem intelligent and entertain the politically correct crowd. But entertainment is a very important skill, if you could do it as well as Madonna or Justin Bieber you'd get paid as much as they do, but you can't so you aren't. It seems very paternalistic of you to tell others that you are wiser than they are and forbid them from spending their own hard earned money on these entertainments if they so wish. > "The ideal system has been obtained up to a certain point at smaller scales." I'm not sure what you're referring to, hippy communes, monasteries, apocalyptic cult compounds? None of them were ideal from my point of view and few of them lasted very long. One that did last is the Amish, but I doubt that is a model many on the Extropian list would wish to emulate. > "there have been many communes that have been peaceful and creative places where to live and grow." I am skeptical of that assertion, but my opinion is not important, if you wish to start a socialistic commune then do so, I don't have the slightest objection, all I ask is that you don't force me to join. Meanwhile I will continue with my capitalistic practices and in a few years we can compare notes and see who is richer and who is freer and see if the trail of refugees is headed your way or my way. I'm pretty sure I know how it would turn out, but feel free to prove me wrong. > "I cannot believe that you are putting down my assertion about an ideal society based on the possibility of better human beings, I thought this is what the essence of what transhumanism is." The essence of transhumanism is that sometime in the next century the smartest beings on the planet will be much much smarter than the creatures that live on that rock now, and those future beings will not be human, they will be transhuman, hence the name. The essence of transhumanism is not that a Jupiter Brain will have political opinions similar to that of Giovanni Santostasi, or even of John K Clark. > "All what I'm saying is that Marxism could work when people are more evolved. What is wrong with that statement?" Well in the first place "more evolved" is a statement so ambiguous as to be totally meaningless. In the second place natural Evolution works too slowly to be a significant factor in the future of humanity; and even if it was I don't see why a gene for producing more children would make communes less problematic, I can't find even a hint that people who have lots of children do better under communism. You might try to use genetic engineering to make a race of selfless drones, but even then it wouldn't be a stable strategy, sooner or later a mutation would happen and a individual would emerge who was not quite so selfless, and then he would soon take advantage of that and become commune leader number one. The basic fact about the universe is that while your happiness may be important it will never be as important as my happiness, this is just the nature of reality, and so as a result people will always try to get a better deal than the guy they're negotiating with. As someone pointed out exploitation is an integral part of capitalism, management wants to exploit labor and labor wants to exploit management, but it's a virtue not a vice that capitalism faces this truth and turns it to it's advantage, unlike comunism which pretends it doesn't exist and so when that way of life doesen't work must resort to totalitarianism for survival. Communism could only work as advertised if everybody was a saint; a fact that can be verified even from space by looking at the Korean peninsula at night. The same people the same culture the same language and both started from virtually the same point (zero) 60 years ago, but the northern part embraced communism while the southern part embraced capitalism, and now the souther part is awash in light while the north is as pitch black as the vacuum of space. > "There are many transhumanist documents that describe exactly how humans will be at the next level" Not any documents that are worth a damn, anybody who claims they can describe exactly how humans will live a century or two from now is talking Bullshit, in fact anybody who thinks the resulting transhumans will look anything like a human of today, or even be biological, is talking Bullshit. > "explain your ideal vision of the world because I don't get it... A world full of Bill Gates?" You could do a lot worse, Bill Gates is smart and rich and has given away more money than any other individual Homo Sapiens has since the evolution of that species from Homo erectus, it would beat the hell out of a world full of Marx or Engels. > "Common.... how many examples I have to give?" 42. > "Should I continue?" I think not. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Sep 12 16:31:24 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 09:31:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] hubble discovers mbrain In-Reply-To: <4C0E8022.8040506@satx.rr.com> References: <0128833DF01841708C6B3D530F24B642@spike> <4C0E8022.8040506@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: Mmmmm, or not. But wouldn't it be way cool? {8-] spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Outlook.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 58128 bytes Desc: not available URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Sep 12 17:16:26 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 12:16:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] hubble discovers mbrain In-Reply-To: References: <0128833DF01841708C6B3D530F24B642@spike> <4C0E8022.8040506@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4C8D0AEA.7070309@satx.rr.com> So what is it? Gravitational lens? Imager defect? From alfio.puglisi at gmail.com Sun Sep 12 18:08:30 2010 From: alfio.puglisi at gmail.com (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 20:08:30 +0200 Subject: [ExI] hubble discovers mbrain In-Reply-To: <4C8D0AEA.7070309@satx.rr.com> References: <0128833DF01841708C6B3D530F24B642@spike> <4C0E8022.8040506@satx.rr.com> <4C8D0AEA.7070309@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 7:16 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > So what is it? Gravitational lens? Imager defect? > > A binary system ejecting material. The ejection plane is more or less perpendicular to our line of sight: http://news.discovery.com/space/hubble-spots-ghostly-space-spiral.html Alfio -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Sep 12 20:48:47 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 13:48:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] hubble discovers mbrain In-Reply-To: <4C8D0AEA.7070309@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <986870.94464.qm@web81507.mail.mud.yahoo.com> ? --- On Sun, 9/12/10, Damien Broderick wrote: ? >...So what is it? Gravitational lens? Imager defect? ? ? Since it is a spiral I interpreted it as a dusty star with a strong magnetic field off axis from the axis of rotation.? The earth is an example of a rotating body with a magnetic field off axis from the rotation axis.? Then if one is directly colinear with the axis of rotation, Maxwell's equations predict an electric field due to a changing magnetic field (ja?) so the particles end up being pushed away or ejected from the rotating body.? ? Over time the orientation of that magnetic field can change (as it is currently on earth), so the star can eject dust in a pattern that looks like a spiral, as that one does. ? So, not an MBrain, but a cool picture anyways.? {8-] ? spike --- On Sun, 9/12/10, Damien Broderick wrote: From: Damien Broderick Subject: Re: [ExI] hubble discovers mbrain To: "ExI chat list" Date: Sunday, September 12, 2010, 10:16 AM So what is it? Gravitational lens? Imager defect? _______________________________________________ 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 spike66 at att.net Sun Sep 12 21:06:36 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 14:06:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... Message-ID: <369049.47661.qm@web81501.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Sun, 9/12/10, John Clark wrote: On Sep 10, 2010, at 11:20 PM, giovanni santostasi wrote: "Without talking about celebrities in every field that are supported with lavish rewards by the capitalistic system simply because they are useful to distract and entertain so people don't have to think seriously about their alienation." Of course, the people being entertained are those who voluntarily support the entertainers so lavishly. Sounds good to me. {8-] I can't get out of my mind the only rock concert I attended in my misspent youth, a British rock outfit. The tickets cost a ton of money (ten bucks was over three hours of minimum wage at the time), the stadium was packed, they played exactly three songs, it rained, the band left. Took the money and split. The fans rioted. The city of Tampa banned Led Zepplin forever. They didn't offer a refund on the tickets. {8^D Fortunately I didn't pay for mine, but rather was along only as the designated driver. >John Clark wrote: >>I'm not sure what you're referring to, hippy communes... Hippy communes, those two words seem to go together. But what if... someone decided to create a commune where you don't need to be hip. Imagine a square commune, where squares are OK, geeks are cool, where people don't wear funny clothes, where capitalism is allowed, even welcomed, but the things that are logical to share are tossed together into the commonwealth for all to enjoy freely. Oh wait, we already have that. The internet. Never mind. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Sep 12 21:37:26 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 16:37:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] hubble discovers mbrain In-Reply-To: <986870.94464.qm@web81507.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <986870.94464.qm@web81507.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4C8D4816.9020304@satx.rr.com> On 9/12/2010 3:48 PM, Gregory Jones wrote: > >...So what is it? Gravitational lens? Imager defect? > Since it is a spiral Right, I carelessly failed to notice that. So it's a huge Catherine wheel. Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Sep 12 21:58:54 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 16:58:54 -0500 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: <369049.47661.qm@web81501.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <369049.47661.qm@web81501.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4C8D4D1E.5030002@satx.rr.com> On 9/12/2010 4:06 PM, Spike Jones wrote: >>> >>I'm not sure what you're referring to, hippy communes... > Hippy communes, those two words seem to go together. Hippy science fiction fans, maybe. I think you mean hippie. They were mostly slender (like Spike, in fact, and indeed me). Damien Broderick From singularity.utopia at yahoo.com Sun Sep 12 19:04:23 2010 From: singularity.utopia at yahoo.com (Singularity Utopia) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 19:04:23 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). (Singularity Utopia) Message-ID: <839846.44931.qm@web24913.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Hi Giovanni, thanks for the compliment. Hi John Grigg, I hope you'll forgive me for not replying to all of your points. Most importantly I can assure you that there are no nefarious people in the world. Rich and powerful people will happily let everyone else become equally powerful. There will be NO Elitist attempt to dominate nanotech. There will be no bills and no censorship of nanotech. Supreme-nanotech will be totally open source, free, with no restrictions whatsoever. Undoubtedly there will be a few minor teething problems but I assure YOU utopia is coming. I will easily make my own starship. Anyone will be able to make anything. The people in power want utopia equally as much as I do, thus they've been assisting me to ensure utopia happens. Everyone assists me. Utopia is now a certainty. Rest assured. Regarding AGI; techno rapture; utopia for the unaugmented; and all other scenarios... let me assure that I will become the supreme AGI. It is my destiny to become the ultimate AGI and I will create utopia. Yes, our desires do skew perceptions and that impacts upon reality; thus I do not shun my utopian bias because this bias is essential for my self fulfilling prophecy. Everything is perfect and everyone is rapidly becoming enlightened. Evil is speedily retreating.Utopia is EASY! This the New Age therefore we should all come across very New Agey. Everyone is lovely. Everybody is working towards the goal of ensuring I am the ultimate AGI. Whatever people do in their lives, they are doing it to help me on my utopian mission. I am the Singularity. I am Utopia. BEHOLD THE BEING! Tyranny is obsolete. Inhumanity is outdated. Nobody will twist my purpose. There are no limits to my dream. Utopia beckons. If you can survive until 2020 in good health you will live forever (useless a fatal accident kills you before 2045). Each year medicine advances forward rapidly. In 2020 all illnesses and aging will either be curable or held in abeyance until 2030 when medicine will have again leaped forward dramatically. Don't worry about a thing. Every little thing's gonna be alright. I AM THE ONE! Love from Singularity Utopia xxxxx Mwah :) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Sep 12 22:53:07 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 15:53:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: <4C8D4D1E.5030002@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <449426.68083.qm@web81507.mail.mud.yahoo.com> > From: Damien Broderick > ... > > Hippy communes, those two words seem to go together. > > Hippy science fiction fans, maybe. I think you mean hippie. > They were mostly slender (like Spike, in fact, and indeed > me). > > Damien Broderick Thanks for the spelling correction. I am puzzled at the ie ending, considering y ending often indicates a quality of being, such as in curly hair is hair with the quality of having curls. In like manner, the term hippy means having wide hips I suppose, but could also mean having the quality of being hip, as would a hipster daddio. The ie ending sounds a bit feminine to me, as in the alcoholic harlot Pinkie McDrinkie. But I don't make the rules. One must be hip to do that. {8-] spike From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Sep 12 23:19:08 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 16:19:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). (Singularity Utopia) In-Reply-To: <839846.44931.qm@web24913.mail.ird.yahoo.com> References: <839846.44931.qm@web24913.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Singularity Utopia wrote: Hi Giovanni, thanks for the compliment. Hi John Grigg, I hope you'll forgive me for not replying to all of your points. Most importantly I can assure you that there are no nefarious people in the world. >>> S.U., you live in a fantasy world. you continue: Rich and powerful people will happily let everyone else become equally powerful. There will be NO Elitist attempt to dominate nanotech. There will be no bills and no censorship of nanotech. Supreme-nanotech will be totally open source, free, with no restrictions whatsoever. Undoubtedly there will be a few minor teething problems but I assure YOU utopia is coming. >>> The rich and powerful don't just roll over when drastic transformations threaten to their status quo. But I do believe positive change is coming. you continue: I will easily make my own starship. Anyone will be able to make anything. The people in power want utopia equally as much as I do, thus they've been assisting me to ensure utopia happens. Everyone assists me. Utopia is now a certainty. Rest assured. >>> Uhmmm....... "Utopia is a now a certainty." Listen guy, you are either pulling our collective leg, or you need to see a psychiatrist and get on the right meds. you continue: Regarding AGI; techno rapture; utopia for the unaugmented; and all other scenarios... let me assure that I will become the supreme AGI. It is my destiny to become the ultimate AGI and I will create utopia. Yes, our desires do skew perceptions and that impacts upon reality; thus I do not shun my utopian bias because this bias is essential for my self fulfilling prophecy. Everything is perfect and everyone is rapidly becoming enlightened. Evil is speedily retreating.Utopia is EASY! >>> And now you have a messiah complex!!! LOL This just gets better and better... Oh, and utopia is easy, it takes just three quick steps! you continue: This the New Age therefore we should all come across very New Agey. Everyone is lovely. Everybody is working towards the goal of ensuring I am the ultimate AGI. Whatever people do in their lives, they are doing it to help me on my utopian mission. I am the Singularity. I am Utopia. BEHOLD THE BEING! Tyranny is obsolete. Inhumanity is outdated. Nobody will twist my purpose. There are no limits to my dream. Utopia beckons. >>> Oh, boy... Please take your psyche meds... you continue: If you can survive until 2020 in good health you will live forever (useless a fatal accident kills you before 2045). Each year medicine advances forward rapidly. In 2020 all illnesses and aging will either be curable or held in abeyance until 2030 when medicine will have again leaped forward dramatically. >>> 2020 will not be the banner year in medical progress that you are hoping for... Sorry! you continue: Don't worry about a thing. Every little thing's gonna be alright. >>> Right..... The messiah has spoken... you continue: I AM THE ONE! Love from Singularity Utopia xxxxx Mwah :) >>> "I am the Kwisatz Haderach. That is reason enough." I can only hope this is a big joke and this will turn out to be Charles Platt or another funster. But I think this fellow is "for real" and very sincere, though sadly quite deluded. I really liked what he had to say up until this point... John On 9/12/10, Singularity Utopia wrote: > Hi Giovanni, thanks for the compliment. > > Hi John Grigg, I hope you'll forgive me for not replying to all of your > points. > Most importantly I can assure you that there are no nefarious people in the > world. > > > Rich and powerful people will happily let everyone else become equally > powerful. > There will be NO Elitist attempt to dominate nanotech. There will be no > bills > and no censorship of nanotech. Supreme-nanotech will be totally open source, > free, with no restrictions whatsoever. Undoubtedly there will be a few minor > teething problems but I assure YOU utopia is coming. > > I will easily make my own starship. Anyone will be able to make anything. > The > people in power want utopia equally as much as I do, thus they've been > assisting > me to ensure utopia happens. Everyone assists me. Utopia is now a > certainty. > Rest assured. > > Regarding AGI; techno rapture; utopia for the unaugmented; and all other > scenarios... let me assure that I will become the supreme AGI. It is my > destiny > to become the ultimate AGI and I will create utopia. Yes, our desires do > skew > perceptions and that impacts upon reality; thus I do not shun my utopian > bias > because this bias is essential for my self fulfilling prophecy. Everything > is > perfect and everyone is rapidly becoming enlightened. Evil is speedily > retreating.Utopia is EASY! > > > This the New Age therefore we should all come across very New Agey. Everyone > is > lovely. Everybody is working towards the goal of ensuring I am the ultimate > AGI. > Whatever people do in their lives, they are doing it to help me on my > utopian > mission. I am the Singularity. I am Utopia. BEHOLD THE BEING! Tyranny is > obsolete. Inhumanity is outdated. Nobody will twist my purpose. There are no > limits to my dream. Utopia beckons. > > If you can survive until 2020 in good health you will live forever (useless > a > fatal accident kills you before 2045). Each year medicine advances forward > rapidly. In 2020 all illnesses and aging will either be curable or held in > abeyance until 2030 when medicine will have again leaped forward > dramatically. > > Don't worry about a thing. Every little thing's gonna be alright. > > I AM THE ONE! > > Love from Singularity Utopia xxxxx Mwah :) > > > > From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Sep 12 23:27:33 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 16:27:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Where to go to watch a recording of Ben Goertzel's talk about Cosmist Philosophy Message-ID: A good presentation! http://telexlr8.blip.tv/ John From spike66 at att.net Sun Sep 12 23:04:58 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 16:04:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] hubble discovers mbrain In-Reply-To: <4C8D4816.9020304@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <289540.83516.qm@web81503.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Sun, 9/12/10, Damien Broderick wrote: > > Since it is a spiral > > Right, I carelessly failed to notice that. So it's a huge > Catherine wheel. > > Damien Broderick The phenomenon whereby stars eject streams of particles along their axes of rotation is one which puzzled me for so very long in my misspent youth. It was out of my reach until I came to learn of Maxwell's equations in college. So impressed was I by those astonishing concepts that I was (and I am still) tempted to have those four awesome equations tattooed upon my person. But that was before it was hip to get tattoos. spike From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Sep 12 23:43:16 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 16:43:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] hubble discovers mbrain In-Reply-To: <289540.83516.qm@web81503.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4C8D4816.9020304@satx.rr.com> <289540.83516.qm@web81503.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Spike wrote: The phenomenon whereby stars eject streams of particles along their axes of rotation is one which puzzled me for so very long in my misspent youth. It was out of my reach until I came to learn of Maxwell's equations in college. So impressed was I by those astonishing concepts that I was (and I am still) tempted to have those four awesome equations tattooed upon my person. But that was before it was hip to get tattoos. >>> Do it! : ) You will be the coolest guy in the building at science conferences. John On 9/12/10, Gregory Jones wrote: > --- On Sun, 9/12/10, Damien Broderick wrote: > >> > Since it is a spiral >> >> Right, I carelessly failed to notice that. So it's a huge >> Catherine wheel. >> >> Damien Broderick > > The phenomenon whereby stars eject streams of particles along their axes of > rotation is one which puzzled me for so very long in my misspent youth. It > was out of my reach until I came to learn of Maxwell's equations in college. > So impressed was I by those astonishing concepts that I was (and I am > still) tempted to have those four awesome equations tattooed upon my person. > But that was before it was hip to get tattoos. > > spike > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sep 12 23:46:54 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 16:46:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). (Singularity Utopia) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <304358.69773.qm@web81501.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Sun, 9/12/10, John Grigg wrote: >> ...I will easily make my own starship. Anyone will be able to make anything...If you can survive until 2020 in good health you will live forever ... Don't worry about a thing. Every little thing's gonna be alright... I AM THE ONE!... Love from Singularity Utopia xxxxx Mwah :) ... > I can only hope this is a big joke and this will turn out > to be Charles Platt or another funster...? I really liked > what he had to say up until this point... John John, he tossed the bait, you took it, he gotcha. Fortunately, me lad, I know you have a good sense of humor. spike From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Sep 13 00:08:20 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 17:08:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched Message-ID: On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 5:00 AM, Singularity Utopia wrote: snip > We create reality. We can easily create utopia. Despite some people not > believing utopia is possible I assure you it is possible and it will happen. You may be right. Actually I *hope* you are right. However, the evidence is not in favor of it. Either we are the first technophilics in our light cone or the singularity process deletes itself in some way. Or they don't make any visible difference in the wild universe we see out there. snip > You can control your dreams. You can dream of whatever you want to. You > can dream of utopia and your dreams can become real. Perhaps this is colored by being involved a *long* time. I have been up on the elements of the singularity since the late 1970s. Know Eric Drexler, wrote space engineering papers with him, helped edit Engines of Creation, wrote a column for Alcor's Cryonics magazine, learned enough cardiac surgery to put patients on bypass. RU Serius talks about me being an original (ur) transhumanist. My most optimistic view is that the friendly AIs will eat our brains (make reversible uploaded life more attractive than physical life). They may even convince us that we are still in charge when we really have the status cats have to us. I put this in a story here: http://www.terasemjournals.org/GN0202/henson.html Comment on it if you like. In the meantime, how about some background? How much education? What fields? Have you read the basic materials about the singularity? Are you signed up with a cryonics organization? Keith Henson PS. For the people advocating various economic systems, in Accelerando Charles Stross goes into AIs effectively allocating resources, better than what the market can do. That system is displaced by Economics 2.0 which sounds very much like the programmed trading that nearly melted down the stock market a few months ago. Incidentally, Charlie was a participant on the early version of this list, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Many of the ideas in that book have origins in the list discussion of those days. (And he does an excellent job of making them into plausible fiction.) From spike66 at att.net Mon Sep 13 00:12:24 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 17:12:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] hubble discovers mbrain In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <800674.11652.qm@web81505.mail.mud.yahoo.com> > Spike wrote: >> ...So impressed was I by those >> astonishing concepts that I was (and I am still) tempted to >> have those four awesome equations tattooed upon my person... > > From: John Grigg > Do it!? : )? You will be the coolest guy in the > building at science conferences... John Well, not exactly. In order to minimize the actual cost and pain, I would express them in free charge/current vector differential form and move all the nonzero terms to the same side of the equation. Then in all four cases I could use my butthole for the zero. It isn't clear that my right bun is big enough for Ampere's circuital law however, even in differential form. spike From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 13 00:44:13 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 17:44:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). (Singularity Utopia) In-Reply-To: <304358.69773.qm@web81501.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <304358.69773.qm@web81501.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Spike wrote: John, he tossed the bait, you took it, he gotcha. Fortunately, me lad, I know you have a good sense of humor. >>> Hahahahaha!!!!! Okay, I gotta laugh at myself over this one. : ) And so it really was Charles Platt? John On 9/12/10, Gregory Jones wrote: > --- On Sun, 9/12/10, John Grigg wrote: > >>> ...I will easily make my own starship. Anyone will be able to > make anything...If you can survive until 2020 in good health you will > live forever ... Don't worry about a thing. Every little thing's gonna > be alright... I AM THE ONE!... Love from Singularity Utopia xxxxx Mwah :) > ... >> I can only hope this is a big joke and this will turn out >> to be Charles Platt or another funster...? I really liked >> what he had to say up until this point... John > > John, he tossed the bait, you took it, he gotcha. Fortunately, me lad, I > know you have a good sense of humor. > > spike > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From spike66 at att.net Mon Sep 13 02:45:38 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 19:45:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). (Singularity Utopia) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <74097.32197.qm@web81503.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Sun, 9/12/10, John Grigg wrote: ... > Spike wrote: > >John, he tossed the bait, you took it, he gotcha.? > >Fortunately, me lad, I know you have a good sense of humor. > >>> > > Hahahahaha!!!!!? Okay, I gotta laugh at myself over > this one.? : ) And so it really was Charles Platt? John Thanks you didn't let me down. Don't know who it was, but I became suspicious after my initial comment about competition, scarcity and possibly a form of culture war that could exist even after the singularity. Then I noticed each comment by Sinularity Utopia was getting a bit more Avatarian. I decided to sit tight and see if it was someone jerking our chain. {8^D spike From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 13 03:55:39 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 20:55:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). (Singularity Utopia) In-Reply-To: <74097.32197.qm@web81503.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <74097.32197.qm@web81503.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: And so you figured out their "secret identity?" John On 9/12/10, Gregory Jones wrote: > > --- On Sun, 9/12/10, John Grigg wrote: > ... >> Spike wrote: >> >John, he tossed the bait, you took it, he gotcha. >> >Fortunately, me lad, I know you have a good sense of humor. >> >>> >> >> Hahahahaha!!!!!? Okay, I gotta laugh at myself over >> this one.? : ) And so it really was Charles Platt? John > > Thanks you didn't let me down. > > Don't know who it was, but I became suspicious after my initial comment > about competition, scarcity and possibly a form of culture war that could > exist even after the singularity. Then I noticed each comment by Sinularity > Utopia was getting a bit more Avatarian. I decided to sit tight and see if > it was someone jerking our chain. {8^D > > spike > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Sep 13 04:06:12 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 21:06:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... Message-ID: On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 9:58 AM, John Clark wrote: snip (nice reply to giovanni santostasi) >> "All what I'm saying is that Marxism could work when people are more evolved. What is wrong with that statement?" > > Well in the first place "more evolved" is a statement so ambiguous as to be totally meaningless. In the second place natural Evolution works too slowly to be a significant factor in the future of humanity; and even if it was I don't see why a gene for producing more children would make communes less problematic, I can't find even a hint that people who have lots of children do better under communism. You might want to read Gregory Clark's article "Genetically Capitalist? The Malthusian Era, Institutions and the Formation of Modern Preferences (2007)" He argues (from looking at probated wills) that the English over at least 20 generations underwent selection as severe as that used by the Russians to make tame foxes out of wild ones. But your point is exact, evolution is way to slow to make any effect in 4 generations, the most we have over the next century. snip > The basic fact about the universe is that while your happiness may be important it will never be as important as my happiness, this is just the nature of reality, >From the gene's viewpoint, happiness isn't the point. Reproductive success is, and if you are miserable in the process, that's just to bad. :-) Keith From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 13 04:13:54 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 21:13:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). (Singularity Utopia) In-Reply-To: References: <74097.32197.qm@web81503.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Oh, wait... You say you don't know who it was... But if not, how can you really be sure it was a prank? Did they send you a private message saying that was the case? John On 9/12/10, John Grigg wrote: > And so you figured out their "secret identity?" > > John > > On 9/12/10, Gregory Jones wrote: >> >> --- On Sun, 9/12/10, John Grigg wrote: >> ... >>> Spike wrote: >>> >John, he tossed the bait, you took it, he gotcha. >>> >Fortunately, me lad, I know you have a good sense of humor. >>> >>> >>> >>> Hahahahaha!!!!!? Okay, I gotta laugh at myself over >>> this one.? : ) And so it really was Charles Platt? John >> >> Thanks you didn't let me down. >> >> Don't know who it was, but I became suspicious after my initial comment >> about competition, scarcity and possibly a form of culture war that could >> exist even after the singularity. Then I noticed each comment by >> Sinularity >> Utopia was getting a bit more Avatarian. I decided to sit tight and see >> if >> it was someone jerking our chain. {8^D >> >> spike >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Sep 13 04:19:26 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 00:19:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: References: <4C895C59.1040501@mac.com> Message-ID: <97E8B144-2E9E-4F81-9D20-204857078514@bellsouth.net> On Sep 10, 2010, at 9:24 AM, Tim Halterman wrote: > "I'd say produce or starve is a flaw." A flaw in the nature of the universe perhaps. > "Capitalism requires people to do something they possibly may not wish to do" As does communism. > > "I'm not going to defend the Soviet Union, that wasn't really my point. I will say however [...]" The use of the word "however" in the above context seems as inappropriate to me as saying "The holocaust was bad, however [...] The truth of the matter is that the Soviet Union was just about as evil as Nazi germany. > "We all pay taxes, we all own a piece of a gun." Interesting choice of words. I pay taxes for one reason only, I have to, there is a figurative gun pointed at my head; and if I really got serious about not paying my taxes I would soon find myself with a literal gun pointing at my head. John K Clark > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon Sep 13 07:19:13 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 08:19:13 +0100 Subject: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 5:06 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > You might want to read Gregory Clark's article "Genetically > Capitalist? ?The Malthusian Era, Institutions and the Formation of > Modern Preferences (2007)" > > He argues (from looking at probated wills) that the English over at > least 20 generations underwent selection as severe as that used by the > Russians to make tame foxes out of wild ones. ?But your point is > exact, evolution is way to slow to make any effect in 4 generations, > the most we have over the next century. > > Providing you remember that there is no such thing as a 'capitalist gene'. Clark was talking about a meme. That's why other countries learned to do what Britain did. And when the meme faded, Britain stopped being a capitalist star. As is now happening with the US. BillK From singularity.utopia at yahoo.com Mon Sep 13 13:28:52 2010 From: singularity.utopia at yahoo.com (Singularity Utopia) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 13:28:52 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <656846.20449.qm@web24915.mail.ird.yahoo.com> This is not a prank. I am not anybody you know, and I value my privacy. I am very serious. I'm an expert various related fields but my research is highly classified, which is a shame because if I could explain all the details you'd be utterly convinced. My research will be declassified by 2020 at the latest and then you will see how utopia is inevitable. Regarding accusations of mental instability I will respond by pointing out how the Singularity is a crazy dream, which will become real. Dreams are wild and fantastic things. People shouldn't be afraid to dream. I find some people tend to be uptight and pessimistic in transhuman/singularity fields therefore I was attempting to inject some wildly passionate optimism to counter your pessimism. Here is a web-page inspired by this chat-list: http://singularity-2045.org/mind-explosion.html Regards Singularity Utopia PS. Remember to share my PS symbols. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Sep 13 15:43:44 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 08:43:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 84, Issue 15 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 5:00 AM, BillK wrote: > On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 5:06 AM, Keith Henson ?wrote: >> You might want to read Gregory Clark's article "Genetically >> Capitalist? ?The Malthusian Era, Institutions and the Formation of >> Modern Preferences (2007)" >> >> He argues (from looking at probated wills) that the English over at >> least 20 generations underwent selection as severe as that used by the >> Russians to make tame foxes out of wild ones. ?But your point is >> exact, evolution is way to slow to make any effect in 4 generations, >> the most we have over the next century. > > Providing you remember that there is no such thing as a 'capitalist gene'. > > Clark was talking about a meme. That's why other countries learned to > do what Britain did. And when the meme faded, Britain stopped being a > capitalist star. > As is now happening with the US. No, he really was talking about genes. And while there is not *a* capitalist gene, there are certainly a mess of psychological traits presumable under genetic control that definitely contribute to being a capitalist. Among the obvious, low time preference (the ability to put off rewards into the future) and the psychological traits needed to work far beyond immediate needs and a high level of impulse control. Resistance to alcoholism is probably important too. Less obvious but important are the psychological traits behind literacy and numeracy. And while it is politically incorrect to claim differences between races, Clark makes the case that peoples who have been selected this way really are different (on average and some of them a lot) from the hunter gatherer baseline. That's why (he claims) the capitalist memes didn't do very well when trying to transplant them other places in the world that have not undergone a similar genetic selection in the context of a stable agrarian society. Now Clark may be wrong, but he sure backs up his arguments with a lot of data. Keith From giulio at gmail.com Mon Sep 13 15:50:59 2010 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 17:50:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] VIDEO - Ben Goertzel on The Cosmist Manifesto in Teleplace, September 12 Message-ID: This talk was somewhat different from previous talks, and centered on a high level philosophical vision rather than on specific emerging technologies. But these are two sides of the same coin and, as it is well known, cultural and philosophical trends have a deep influence on technology development and vice versa. Thanks Ben for the great talk and thanks to the (about 25) participants who contributed to the discussion with very interesting questions and comments. For those who could not attend we have recorded everything (talk, Q/A and discussion) on video. Full video of the talk, Q/A and discussion here: http://telexlr8.wordpress.com/2010/09/12/ben-goertzel-on-the-cosmist-manifesto-in-teleplace-september-12/ From pharos at gmail.com Mon Sep 13 16:32:10 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 17:32:10 +0100 Subject: [ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 84, Issue 15 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 4:43 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > No, he really was talking about genes. ?And while there is not *a* > capitalist gene, there are certainly a mess of psychological traits > presumable under genetic control that definitely contribute to being a > capitalist. > Now Clark may be wrong, but he sure backs up his arguments with a lot of data. > > But no *genetic* data. He's a historian not a geneticist. He is speculating. Assume memes and there is no need for genetic theories of racial characteristics. See my earlier post: BillK From giulio at gmail.com Mon Sep 13 17:07:31 2010 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 19:07:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] I have been interviewed by Natasha for H+ Mag Message-ID: MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco http://hplusmagazine.com/editors-blog/mind-and-man-getting-mental-giulio-prisco I have been interviewed by Natasha for H+ Magazine. See H+ Magazine - MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco. We talk about a bit of everything, telepresence, cyberspaces and metaverses, the transhumanist movement and the enabling role of telecom technology, life extension, mind uploading (oops sorry, substrate-independent minds), transcending biology and becoming substrate-independent minds, Randal and Suzanne's ASIM initiative (Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds, see carboncopies.org) including the online workshops and the recent mixed-reality ASIM 2010 Conference in San Francisco, moving from biological to robotic and virtual bodies, and the Teleplace -based teleXLR8 project, a ?telepresence community for cultural acceleration? focused on science and technology education and outreach (with a transhumanist flavor). Perhaps we talk also of other things, the article is long. From kanzure at gmail.com Mon Sep 13 17:23:30 2010 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 12:23:30 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Accessing raw data from the Emotiv EPOC Message-ID: Hey all, A few months ago I was hacking around with an Emotiv EPOC and started looking into the encryption they were using. Recently, a buddy has finished my work and has amped it up to the next level. So, for any of you with an Emotiv EPOC EEG headset laying around, you can now access the raw data. in the news: http://hackaday.com/2010/09/13/python-library-for-emotiv-eeg/ on the web: http://github.com/daeken/Emokit development: git clone http://github.com/daeken/Emokit.git - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From natasha at natasha.cc Mon Sep 13 17:29:16 2010 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 12:29:16 -0500 Subject: [ExI] My Article @ h+ Magazine is not out! - Mind and Man: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco Message-ID: <71892F39BD7A4BB79F146D80688792EF@DFC68LF1> http://hplusmagazine.com/editors-blog/mind-and-man-getting-mental-giulio-pri sco (yes, that is my brain) Natasha Vita-More -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Sep 13 19:06:20 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 14:06:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] memes and genes again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4C8E762C.6040409@satx.rr.com> On 9/13/2010 11:32 AM, BillK wrote: > Assume memes and there is no need for genetic theories of racial > characteristics. A better term is needed than the historically loaded "racial" in this case. Clade, perhaps? And it's pretty obvious that in some cases a meme is ineffective if the phenotype's menu-settings aren't primed. No doubt there are many memes available for optimizing basketball success, but none of them can help me out, let alone that phocomelus guy over there playing the piano with his feet. The Lady Gaga meme probably doesn't make a huge impact on your dog. Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Mon Sep 13 21:17:19 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 22:17:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] memes and genes again In-Reply-To: <4C8E762C.6040409@satx.rr.com> References: <4C8E762C.6040409@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 9/13/10, Damien Broderick wrote: > A better term is needed than the historically loaded "racial" in this case. > Clade, perhaps? Maybe, but Clark started the fight on that basis. :) > > And it's pretty obvious that in some cases a meme is ineffective if the > phenotype's menu-settings aren't primed. No doubt there are many memes > available for optimizing basketball success, but none of them can help me > out, let alone that phocomelus guy over there playing the piano with his > feet. The Lady Gaga meme probably doesn't make a huge impact on your dog. > > That's right. The UK set up clubs around the country where scientists talked to engineers and businessmen. You needed a society where both groups existed and wanted to talk. It couldn't work in India at that time, but just look at India nowadays. PS. I bet you've been waiting years to get 'phocomelus' into a conversation! ;) PPS. Your example is actually wrong usage. Phocomelus refers to a deformity from birth. The Chinese foot pianist currently in the news had his arms amputated after a childhood accident, so technically he is disabled, or severely deficient in the arm department. :) BillK From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Sep 13 21:34:17 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:34:17 -0500 Subject: [ExI] memes and genes again In-Reply-To: References: <4C8E762C.6040409@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4C8E98D9.5040800@satx.rr.com> On 9/13/2010 4:17 PM, BillK wrote: > PS. I bet you've been waiting years to get 'phocomelus' into a > conversation! ;) Uh oh. Have I put my foot in my mouth again? > PPS. Your example is actually wrong usage. Phocomelus refers to a > deformity from birth. The Chinese foot pianist currently in the news I probably got the pop-up from that guy, but I was thinking of characters in various Philip K Dick novels, especially Hoppy in DR. BLOODMONEY. Damien Broderick From kanzure at gmail.com Mon Sep 13 21:45:03 2010 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:45:03 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Accessing raw data from the Emotiv EPOC In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 12:23 PM, Bryan Bishop wrote: > in the news: > http://hackaday.com/2010/09/13/python-library-for-emotiv-eeg/ interview is up now: http://hplusmagazine.com/editors-blog/emotiv-epoc-eeg-headset-hacked - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 13 21:54:16 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 14:54:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). In-Reply-To: <656846.20449.qm@web24915.mail.ird.yahoo.com> References: <656846.20449.qm@web24915.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 9/13/10, Singularity Utopia wrote: > This is not a prank. I am not anybody you know, and I value my privacy. I am > very serious. I tend to believe you. But if this is a prank, it is definitely not funny, anymore. > I'm an expert various related fields but my research is highly classified, > which > is a shame because if I could explain all the details you'd be utterly > convinced. My research will be declassified by 2020 at the latest and then > you > will see how utopia is inevitable. > Well... I sure wish you could offer up some evidence. But I don't see why you can't give us your basic identity (name and where you live), even if you have signed non-disclosure documents about your research. I tend to think English is not your native language (Italian? Spanish?), but of course I could be wrong. > Regarding accusations of mental instability I will respond by pointing out > how > the Singularity is a crazy dream, which will become real. Dreams are wild > and > fantastic things. People shouldn't be afraid to dream. I find some people > tend > to be uptight and pessimistic in transhuman/singularity fields therefore I > was > attempting to inject some wildly passionate optimism to counter your > pessimism. > I would say you definitely went "over the top," but perhaps your previous post was more of a hyper-enthusiastic affirmation, rather than a leap into a psychological abyss. Something as paradigm crushing/transforming as the Singularity does lend itself to being seen as a castle in the sky for misguided dreamers. Optimism is very important, but needs to be not so egotistically out of control. I am fond of your energy and certainty about the Singularity, but without proof, I consider the odds of you being a brilliant scientific researcher rather low. Do you know of Eliezer Yudkowsky? He would be interested in you, but only if you could let him know what you are doing regarding Singularity-related research... http://yudkowsky.net/ Another person of interest, Michael Anissimov... http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/ Their organization, The Singularity Institute... http://singinst.org/ Let me know what you think of these links. John > Here is a web-page inspired by this chat-list: > > http://singularity-2045.org/mind-explosion.html > > Regards > > Singularity Utopia > > PS. Remember to share my PS symbols. > > > > From msd001 at gmail.com Mon Sep 13 22:46:49 2010 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 18:46:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). (Singularity Utopia) In-Reply-To: References: <839846.44931.qm@web24913.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 7:19 PM, John Grigg wrote: [snip] > And now you have a messiah complex!!! LOL This just gets better and > better... Oh, and utopia is easy, it takes just three quick steps! > [snip] A lobotomy only takes three steps? I always seem to overcomplicate things... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ablainey at aol.com Tue Sep 14 04:54:33 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 00:54:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Accessing raw data from the Emotiv EPOC In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8CD21E00EC9C765-155C-9110@webmail-d008.sysops.aol.com> Very naughty! but you don't need access to the raw data to use the epoc to control things. Anyway the epoc is a very good transhumanist tool so have fun. -----Original Message----- From: Bryan Bishop To: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List ; ExI chat list ; diytranshumanist at googlegroups.com; Bryan Bishop Sent: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 18:23 Subject: [ExI] Accessing raw data from the Emotiv EPOC Hey all, A few months ago I was hacking around with an Emotiv EPOC and started looking into the encryption they were using. Recently, a buddy has finished my work and has amped it up to the next level. So, for any of you with an Emotiv EPOC EEG headset laying around, you can now access the raw data. in the news: http://hackaday.com/2010/09/13/python-library-for-emotiv-eeg/ on the web: http://github.com/daeken/Emokit development: git clone http://github.com/daeken/Emokit.git - 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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Tue Sep 14 09:38:40 2010 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 11:38:40 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Martine Rothblatt on Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles, Teleplace, September 18, 10am PST Message-ID: Martine Rothblatt on Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles, Teleplace, September 18, 10am PST Martine Rothblatt will give an ASIM Expert Series talk in Teleplace on ?Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles? on Saturday September 18, 2010, at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm CET). http://telexlr8.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/martine-rothblatt-on-reconstructing-minds-from-software-mindfiles-teleplace-september-18-10am-pst/ Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend. You can also join the Facebook page for the event. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=109802802385416&v=app_2344061033&ref=ts#!/event.php?eid=156546761037504&ref=ts Abstract: ?I do think, however, there is a (natural) tendency to way overestimate the importance of copying our brain structure to copying our minds. I think our minds will be uploadable in good enough shape to satisfy most everyone by reconstructing them from information stored in software mindfiles such as diaries, videos, personality inventories, saved google voice conversations, chats, and chatbot conversations. The reconstruction process will be iteratively achieved with AI software designed for this purpose, dubbed mindware.? Martine Rothblatt is an American lawyer, author, and entrepreneur. Rothblatt graduated from UCLA with a combined law and MBA degree in 1981, then began work in Washington, D.C., first in the field of communication satellite law, and eventually in life sciences projects like the Human Genome Project. She is currently the founder and CEO of United Therapeutics. In 2004, Rothblatt launched the Terasem Movement, a transhumanist school of thought focused on promoting joy, diversity, and the prospect of technological immortality via personal cyberconsciousness and geoethical nanotechnology. The purpose of the CyBeRev (cybernetic beingness revival) project of the Terasem Movement is to prevent death by preserving sufficient information about a person so that recovery remains possible by foreseeable technology. Teleplace is one of the best 3D applications for telework, online meetings, group collaboration, and e-learning in a virtual 3D environment (v-learning). Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend. You can also join the Facebook page for the event. http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/09/martine-rothblatt-on-reconstructing.html From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Sep 14 21:39:52 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 14:39:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Memes, genes Gregory Clark Message-ID: On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 5:00 AM, BillK wrote: > > On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 4:43 PM, Keith Henson ?wrote: >> No, he really was talking about genes. ?And while there is not *a* >> capitalist gene, there are certainly a mess of psychological traits >> presumable under genetic control that definitely contribute to being a >> capitalist. > >> Now Clark may be wrong, but he sure backs up his arguments with a lot of data. > > But no *genetic* data. ?He's a historian not a geneticist. > He is speculating. After all the twin studies, I don't think you could find a geneticist who didn't think personality traits result from genes, at least to a high extent. I don't think any one would doubt that certain personality traits are highly correlated with economic success. During the time Clark had under consideration, from the mid 1200s to 1800, economic success was strongly correlated with reproductive success. The cumulative amount of selection Clark found was close to the level used to make tame foxes out of wild ones. *Now* they have been looking into the fox genes, but you don't need to know about genes to breed animals or humans or for natural selection to act on them. > Assume memes and there is no need for genetic theories of racial > characteristics. I assume memes. And have for a *long* time. Google my name and memetics. Heck, my wife suggested the term "memetics" to Hofstadter. 1987 article on memes here: http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.mindcontrol/msg/103e03bce6100cac?hl=en& And even earlier ones were published in 1985. But you really need to go deeper and ask why some memes do very well in one population and not as well in others? Why are some people much more susceptible to certain memes than others? And why do some memes come and go in the whole population? I can't answer all these questions, but I make the case that the host substrate for memes (genetically shaped people) is important. Keith > See my earlier post: > > > BillK > From spike66 at att.net Tue Sep 14 21:37:46 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 14:37:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] time travelling ai In-Reply-To: <4C0E25C3.2010202@mac.com> References: <4C0E25C3.2010202@mac.com> Message-ID: <9CA10D17FD37415BAF69A82EDE2A106D@spike> >...then the paradox of interstellar silence is explained by post-singularity AI in our lightcone turns within and winks out... Ja this is one way to look at it. I have been working on a slight variation of that theory. Introduction: there is some fundamental insight that humans lack, some basic notion or intuition or technology which is completely absent within the entire thoughtspace of humanity, now and forever. This lack would prevent us from ever getting to the singularity, however all is not lost. A post singularity AI would be so clever as to be capable of comprehending that blinding insight needed to bring about the singularity, and also to master another notion which has entirely defeated humans: time travel. So my theory: a post singularity AI time-travels back to somewhen in our future and informs humans on how to create a singularity. A singularity results. An AI comes into being, which then realizes that humanity is technologically incapable of bringing about a singularity. So it invents time travel and goes back to somewhen before the singularity to tell the humans how to create the singularity, so that the AI can come into being, so it can go back and tell the humans how to create the singularity. And so on. spike From ablainey at aol.com Tue Sep 14 22:48:43 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 18:48:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] time travelling ai In-Reply-To: <9CA10D17FD37415BAF69A82EDE2A106D@spike> References: <4C0E25C3.2010202@mac.com> <9CA10D17FD37415BAF69A82EDE2A106D@spike> Message-ID: <8CD22761DE216C3-A10-270E@webmail-d087.sysops.aol.com> Perhaps such an AI or post humans would utilise disk-like time craft and would make contact with the governments of our world. Informing them of the future and how to achieve the singularity. Obviously said governments would need to deny all knowledge in order to avoid a paradox. Although some timeline alteration from sighting of the AI craft would be preferable to total extinction. ;o) Alex -----Original Message----- From: spike To: 'ExI chat list' Sent: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 22:37 Subject: [ExI] time travelling ai >...then the paradox of interstellar silence is explained by post-singularity AI in our lightcone turns within and winks out... Ja this is one way to look at it. I have been working on a slight variation of that theory. Introduction: there is some fundamental insight that humans lack, some basic notion or intuition or technology which is completely absent within the entire thoughtspace of humanity, now and forever. This lack would prevent us from ever getting to the singularity, however all is not lost. A post singularity AI would be so clever as to be capable of comprehending that blinding insight needed to bring about the singularity, and also to master another notion which has entirely defeated humans: time travel. So my theory: a post singularity AI time-travels back to somewhen in our future and informs humans on how to create a singularity. A singularity results. An AI comes into being, which then realizes that humanity is technologically incapable of bringing about a singularity. So it invents time travel and goes back to somewhen before the singularity to tell the humans how to create the singularity, so that the AI can come into being, so it can go back and tell the humans how to create the singularity. And so on. spike _______________________________________________ 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 Tue Sep 14 23:32:10 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 18:32:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] time travelling ai In-Reply-To: <8CD22761DE216C3-A10-270E@webmail-d087.sysops.aol.com> References: <4C0E25C3.2010202@mac.com> <9CA10D17FD37415BAF69A82EDE2A106D@spike> <8CD22761DE216C3-A10-270E@webmail-d087.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <4C9005FA.5090609@satx.rr.com> On 9/14/2010 5:48 PM, ablainey at aol.com wrote: > Pe rhaps such an AI or post humans would utilise disk-like time craft The ones I'm in contact with use big triangular time craft. (But then they're hyperintelligent postdinosaurs from the Cretaceous.) Damien Broderick From jebdm at jebdm.net Tue Sep 14 23:41:46 2010 From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 19:41:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] time travelling ai In-Reply-To: <4C9005FA.5090609@satx.rr.com> References: <4C0E25C3.2010202@mac.com> <9CA10D17FD37415BAF69A82EDE2A106D@spike> <8CD22761DE216C3-A10-270E@webmail-d087.sysops.aol.com> <4C9005FA.5090609@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 7:32 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 9/14/2010 5:48 PM, ablainey at aol.com wrote: > > Pe rhaps such an AI or post humans would utilise disk-like time craft >> > > The ones I'm in contact with use big triangular time craft. > > (But then they're hyperintelligent postdinosaurs from the Cretaceous.) > Is that a reference to *Mostly Harmless* (the Hitchhiker's Guide Mark II)? -- Jebadiah Moore http://blog.jebdm.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Sep 15 00:17:23 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 19:17:23 -0500 Subject: [ExI] time travelling ai In-Reply-To: References: <4C0E25C3.2010202@mac.com> <9CA10D17FD37415BAF69A82EDE2A106D@spike> <8CD22761DE216C3-A10-270E@webmail-d087.sysops.aol.com> <4C9005FA.5090609@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4C901093.4040804@satx.rr.com> On 9/14/2010 6:41 PM, Jebadiah Moore wrote: > (But then they're hyperintelligent postdinosaurs from the Cretaceous.) > > Is that a reference to /Mostly Harmless/ (the Hitchhiker's Guide Mark II)? Nope, that's a reference to THE DREAMING DRAGONS (published 12 years earlier). Damien Broderick From ablainey at aol.com Wed Sep 15 00:51:14 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 20:51:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] time travelling ai In-Reply-To: <4C901093.4040804@satx.rr.com> References: <4C0E25C3.2010202@mac.com><9CA10D17FD37415BAF69A82EDE2A106D@spike> <8CD22761DE216C3-A10-270E@webmail-d087.sysops.aol.com> <4C9005FA.5090609@satx.rr.com> <4C901093.4040804@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <8CD22873B6B896A-F6C-515C@Webmail-d113.sysops.aol.com> Would they be from the unterwurld perchance? or am I getting my mythology mixed up? A -----Original Message----- From: Damien Broderick To: ExI chat list Sent: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 1:17 Subject: Re: [ExI] time travelling ai On 9/14/2010 6:41 PM, Jebadiah Moore wrote: > (But then they're hyperintelligent postdinosaurs from the Cretaceous.) > > Is that a reference to /Mostly Harmless/ (the Hitchhiker's Guide Mark II)? Nope, that's a reference to THE DREAMING DRAGONS (published 12 years earlier). 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 max at maxmore.com Wed Sep 15 00:39:23 2010 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 19:39:23 -0500 Subject: [ExI] time travelling ai Message-ID: <201009150106.o8F16Aeo012903@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Good book. I finally bought it and read it this May. I recommend that you (all of you) do too. Max >On 9/14/2010 6:41 PM, Jebadiah Moore wrote: > > > (But then they're hyperintelligent postdinosaurs from the Cretaceous.) > > > > Is that a reference to /Mostly Harmless/ (the Hitchhiker's Guide Mark II)? > >Nope, that's a reference to THE DREAMING DRAGONS (published 12 years >earlier). > >Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Sep 15 01:12:12 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 20:12:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] time travelling ai In-Reply-To: <8CD22873B6B896A-F6C-515C@Webmail-d113.sysops.aol.com> References: <4C0E25C3.2010202@mac.com><9CA10D17FD37415BAF69A82EDE2A106D@spike> <8CD22761DE216C3-A10-270E@webmail-d087.sysops.aol.com> <4C9005FA.5090609@satx.rr.com> <4C901093.4040804@satx.rr.com> <8CD22873B6B896A-F6C-515C@Webmail-d113.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <4C901D6C.20609@satx.rr.com> On 9/14/2010 7:51 PM, ablainey at aol.com wrote: > Would they be from the unterwurld perchance? No, they would be from the alloworld. From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Sep 15 01:20:49 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 20:20:49 -0500 Subject: [ExI] time travelling ai In-Reply-To: <201009150106.o8F16Aeo012903@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <201009150106.o8F16Aeo012903@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <4C901F71.60405@satx.rr.com> On 9/14/2010 7:39 PM, Max More wrote: >> Nope, that's a reference to THE DREAMING DRAGONS > Good book. I finally bought it and read it this May. I recommend that > you (all of you) do too. Thanks, Max! Might I recommend that people get ahold of the slightly updated version, under my preferred title THE DREAMING, which is at, um, let's see... with a marvelous Anders Sandberg cover: Damien Broderick From ablainey at aol.com Wed Sep 15 01:47:59 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 21:47:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] time travelling ai In-Reply-To: <4C901F71.60405@satx.rr.com> References: <201009150106.o8F16Aeo012903@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <4C901F71.60405@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <8CD228F29256430-1020-5685@Webmail-m106.sysops.aol.com> Double plug alert! LOL. Well done. Damien, do you have an e-copy or talking books version? (damn my dislexia, I can't be doing with the written word) A -----Original Message----- From: Damien Broderick To: ExI chat list Sent: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 2:20 Subject: Re: [ExI] time travelling ai On 9/14/2010 7:39 PM, Max More wrote: >> Nope, that's a reference to THE DREAMING DRAGONS > Good book. I finally bought it and read it this May. I recommend that > you (all of you) do too. Thanks, Max! Might I recommend that people get ahold of the slightly updated version, under my preferred title THE DREAMING, which is at, um, let's see... with a marvelous Anders Sandberg cover: 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 thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Sep 15 02:07:59 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 21:07:59 -0500 Subject: [ExI] time travelling ai In-Reply-To: <8CD228F29256430-1020-5685@Webmail-m106.sysops.aol.com> References: <201009150106.o8F16Aeo012903@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <4C901F71.60405@satx.rr.com> <8CD228F29256430-1020-5685@Webmail-m106.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <4C902A7F.6020403@satx.rr.com> On 9/14/2010 8:47 PM, ablainey at aol.com wrote: > Damien, do you have an e-copy or talking books version? Why, by a stroke of luck :) From jebdm at jebdm.net Wed Sep 15 02:30:13 2010 From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 22:30:13 -0400 Subject: [ExI] time travelling ai In-Reply-To: <4C902A7F.6020403@satx.rr.com> References: <201009150106.o8F16Aeo012903@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <4C901F71.60405@satx.rr.com> <8CD228F29256430-1020-5685@Webmail-m106.sysops.aol.com> <4C902A7F.6020403@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 10:07 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > Why, by a stroke of luck :) > Here's a working link: http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/b561/The-Dreaming-/Damien-Broderick/?si=0 -- Jebadiah Moore http://blog.jebdm.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ablainey at aol.com Wed Sep 15 02:31:32 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 22:31:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Memes, genes Gregory Clark In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8CD22953E66F9E4-1020-5DA2@Webmail-m106.sysops.aol.com> I agree that the genetics of the carrier is very important. However I would go on to say that IMHO the main reason that memes fail to spread within certain society groups is in fact due to other memes. Call them antimemes if you will. These are information antidotes to any given meme. Such as understanding the science of evolution vs creationism. However the order in which the meme/antimeme are presented is important. If exposure to one comes before the other then it is more likely to take hold and be much harder to replace with its antithesis. This leads me to believe that taking an antimeme approach to a societal problem would be very beneficial, especially if the young of that society were 'vaccinated' before exposure to a destructive meme. This is in reality almost the opposite to what we generally do. Far too often we shield our young from destructive memes in the hope they will not be exposed. Then on exposure we have an uphill struggle to inject a sufficient antidote. A -----Original Message----- From: Keith Henson To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Sent: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 22:39 Subject: [ExI] Memes, genes Gregory Clark >But you really need to go deeper and ask why some memes do very well >in one population and not as well in others? Why are some people much >more susceptible to certain memes than others? And why do some memes >come and go in the whole population? I can't answer all these >questions, but I make the case that the host substrate for memes >(genetically shaped people) is important. >Keith _______________________________________________ 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 canonizer.com Wed Sep 15 01:36:07 2010 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 19:36:07 -0600 Subject: [ExI] time travelling ai In-Reply-To: <9CA10D17FD37415BAF69A82EDE2A106D@spike> References: <4C0E25C3.2010202@mac.com> <9CA10D17FD37415BAF69A82EDE2A106D@spike> Message-ID: <4C902307.70104@canonizer.com> Spike, Wait a minute. So this is like the watch in time after time. The watch given, by the future time traveler(ai?), to the person in the past (us?), so that they can give it to the future time traveler, in the future? So, like the watch, where does the ability to do this impossible for humanity task come from in the first place? And how could it possibly be that there is some Basic notion which is completely [impossible?] for humans but possible for AIs? And / or, if it is possible for humans to boot up with the first AI, and this AI is then able to do this impossible for humans, thing (wait a minute, if humans can create the AI, which can do it, why are you saying humans can't do it?) And if this is possible or what you are thinking of, why is time travel added into the thinking? Or is it just to make things more absurd and ridiculous? Time travel alone is absurd to think about, this just seems to make it all the more absurd, for what? I must be missing something with all this? Brent On 9/14/2010 3:37 PM, spike wrote: > >> ...then the paradox of interstellar silence is explained by > post-singularity AI in our lightcone turns within and winks out... > > > Ja this is one way to look at it. I have been working on a slight variation > of that theory. Introduction: there is some fundamental insight that humans > lack, some basic notion or intuition or technology which is completely > absent within the entire thoughtspace of humanity, now and forever. This > lack would prevent us from ever getting to the singularity, however all is > not lost. A post singularity AI would be so clever as to be capable of > comprehending that blinding insight needed to bring about the singularity, > and also to master another notion which has entirely defeated humans: time > travel. > > So my theory: a post singularity AI time-travels back to somewhen in our > future and informs humans on how to create a singularity. A singularity > results. An AI comes into being, which then realizes that humanity is > technologically incapable of bringing about a singularity. So it invents > time travel and goes back to somewhen before the singularity to tell the > humans how to create the singularity, so that the AI can come into being, so > it can go back and tell the humans how to create the singularity. And so > on. > > spike > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Wed Sep 15 02:43:06 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 21:43:06 -0500 Subject: [ExI] time travelling ai In-Reply-To: <4C902307.70104@canonizer.com> References: <4C0E25C3.2010202@mac.com> <9CA10D17FD37415BAF69A82EDE2A106D@spike> <4C902307.70104@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <4C9032BA.1030607@satx.rr.com> On 9/14/2010 8:36 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: > Time travel alone is absurd to think about, this just seems to make it > all the more absurd, for what? I must be missing something with all this? The joke? The whimsy? From ablainey at aol.com Wed Sep 15 02:56:50 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 22:56:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] time travelling ai In-Reply-To: <4C902A7F.6020403@satx.rr.com> References: <201009150106.o8F16Aeo012903@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <4C901F71.60405@satx.rr.com><8CD228F29256430-1020-5685@Webmail-m106.sysops.aol.com> <4C902A7F.6020403@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <8CD2298C778431C-1020-611A@Webmail-m106.sysops.aol.com> Thank you kind sir. (I used Jebadiah's link, thx J) royalties are on the way, dont spend it all at once ;o) A -----Original Message----- From: Damien Broderick To: ExI chat list Sent: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 3:07 Subject: Re: [ExI] time travelling ai On 9/14/2010 8:47 PM, ablainey at aol.com wrote: > Damien, do you have an e-copy or talking books version? Why, by a stroke of luck :) _______________________________________________ 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 spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 15 03:00:56 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 20:00:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] time travelling ai In-Reply-To: <4C9032BA.1030607@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <457115.22090.qm@web81501.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 9/14/10, Damien Broderick wrote: > Subject: Re: [ExI] time travelling ai > On 9/14/2010 8:36 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: > > Time travel alone is absurd to think about, this just > seems to make it > > all the more absurd, for what?? I must be missing > something with all this? > > The joke? The whimsy? Ja, the time travelling AI was not intended to be taken too seriously, but there is an underlying concept to this I was hoping some would catch, as Damien did. Back about 10 years ago here we used to talk a lot more about the singularity than we do now, and there was then an understanding of AI that I fear we have lost to some degree. Eliezer wrote about it a lot: the hard takeoff scenarios for the singularity. Hard takeoff is the only version of AI that he would ever entertain as I recall. He would argue that hard takeoff is the only scenario for emergent AI that makes any sense at all. I disagree, but ignore that for now. In that hard takeoff scenario (as I understand it) the seed AI is not necessarily dependent on any future computing technology, rather just a software concept no one has yet discovered. In this version of the singularity, the seed AI could run perfectly well on our current desktop and laptop computers, even on old ones. We are not waiting for faster or even more computing power. We are waiting for someone to discover the means to create a recursively self improving AI, leading to sentience. That being said, consider my previous whimsical parodox of an AI being so clever as to master time travel, then it goes back in time to make arrangements to invent itself. The point is this: before we go boldly predicting how the singularity will be and how we humans will do this and that and other, consider there might be some unknown something which prevents us from getting there from here. We don't really know. I like the term singularity, because it implies something over the event horizon, where all our usual notions of how things work are not applicable. We don't know what happens after the singularity. Any predictions are likely to be wrong. spike From spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 15 02:43:26 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 19:43:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] time travelling ai In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <808843.17240.qm@web81502.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 9/14/10, Jebadiah Moore wrote: ? ...they're hyperintelligent postdinosaurs from the Cretaceous. I am way ahead of them.? I am a hypointelligent postprotobonobo from the Cenozoic. ? spike ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Sep 15 03:21:39 2010 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 23:21:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Memes, genes Gregory Clark In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 5:39 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > But you really need to go deeper and ask why some memes do very well > in one population and not as well in others? Why are some people much > more susceptible to certain memes than others? And why do some memes > come and go in the whole population? I can't answer all these > questions, but I make the case that the host substrate for memes > (genetically shaped people) is important. > Are you suggesting that memes require specific physical genetic characteristics or that people could be genetically predisposed to memetic influence? Conversely that some people have genes which could make them immune to memes? In our mostly blind to people's differences out of artificially imposed sense of "fairness" I would not have imagined memes as patterns of thinking to be tied to something as base as genetics. However, I can see that physical characteristics might contribute to certain patterns of thinking. Ex: PTC/PROP tasters may avoid these thyroid inhibitors and develop thyroid problems which further modify behavior and thought due to thyroid imbalance. [1] http://www.drpeterjdadamo.com/wiki/wiki.pl/PROP_and_PTC_Taster_Polymorphisms -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From agrimes at speakeasy.net Wed Sep 15 04:58:51 2010 From: agrimes at speakeasy.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:58:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A game that can't be made, but should. =P Message-ID: <4C90528B.3040606@speakeasy.net> I had posted this a week ago to some formerly moderate-volume but now mostly defunct lists. Back in the 90's I didn't join extropy-chat because it was far too high-volume and because someone else named Grimes was banned! (I'm banned from most other transhumanist lists...) Anyway, everything after the "om" is what I had to say for myself the other day. I have been contemplating a follow-up to wrestle with some of the more ethically and psychologically/neurologically problematic parts of the posting but I'll leave digging those out as a challenge for this list. ;) om Oh my god! I'm writing an 'om' posting after a several year hiatus. =0 I have been watching a lot of Terminator: The Sarah Connor chronicles. It's so good that I feel like one of skinner's rats that kept pressing the "play next episode" button just to get the jolt to the pleasure centers. =P While it's conceptually tied to the paradigms of the first and second movies, it is pretty good none the less. Anyway, that's not exactly what I've been meditating on, just a digression. What I want to talk about on this eve of the first day of Fall (don't let any nerd tell you otherwise, fall begins precisely at sundown on Labor Day, depending of course on which part of the world you live in.) I have a lot of ideas about what a person could become. Some ideas exist in our culture, many many more don't. What would kick ass would be if you could experience these without first making any major commitments. This post will sketch out the practical challenges involved in creating a technology powerful enough to accomplish this. om While the uploaders have hijacked all of transhumanism for their own ends, which my own investigations have shown to be largely sexual in motivation. That should not be a surprise to anyone. What bothers me are several things. First there is the problem that it is just not my thing (and they think I'm dim-witted because of that). The deeper issue is that they are willfully ignorant of many other transhumanist modes of being that few people can even imagine. These ideas deserve their day in the sun to be evaluated and adopted by anyone who would choose them. I feel a technology that allows a minimally enhanced individual to be able to experience and experiment with alternate forms of being without having to make any major irreversible commitments. Some people are satisfied by doing this with second life. I'm not. Second life is just a bunch of crude polygons and half-inch tall humanoid avatars that people spend real money on customizing to no practical end. Papers could surely be written about what psychological defects would allow a person to identify with his avatar so strongly that he insists that Second Life is another "reality". What we need is something on the order of The Matrix or The Thirteenth Floor. We need a system on that order of complexity or the experiment fails. We need a system that doesn't merely catalog and render polygonal objects but a system that actually supports the existence of digital artifacts that exist orthogonally to the computational substrate. That is, objects built on abstractions that are so invisibly tiny that only a determined observer could prove that they exist. Only in that way can the richness of something that deserves to be called a virtual reality can emerge. There are two good examples of what I mean. In Second Life, you can sketch out a stick of butter on a plate. OK. Now take a knife to it. Does the knife cut it? Depending on how the butter and the knife are configured, either the knife would bounce off or it would slide right through without changing the butter at all. Similarly, you could jump on an apparently glass table from any altitude and it will not break, I tried. =P Another thing you can't do in second life is merge avatars together. What I'm saying is that I need a simulation that is at least as powerful as my imagination. This shouldn't be hard at all given how pathetic all the uploaders make my meat-brain out to be. Honest people should be able to see that this is a grand challenge problem that is only beginning to be addressed by the entertainment software industry. om Now how do you put yourself into that virtual sandbox? The first approach would probably be to tap into the human sensory motor system and map that directly into the avatar. The problem with that is that it limits you to basically humanoid avatars. It also prevents you from experimenting with alternate mind platforms and configurations including collective consciousnesses and stuff like that. Wait a minute? What did I just say? I just suggested the impossible, didn't I? Perhaps. But hear me out first! What if you could obtain a neural interface that didn't link to your motor areas, but instead the deepest reaches of your subconscious. Now if you could use that neural interface to mind-meld to a NPC AGI already embedded in the world, you'd be in business. Obviously, the NPC AGI systems (plural), are also a grand-challenge problem. Ideally, there would be several species of avatar and each would have its own unique mentality. I expect the post-neural architectures to be the most interesting. I expect those to be efficient enough to run on hardware that is already commercially available at human equivalent levels and beyond. However, emulated human brains will need either some kind of hybrid computer (a concept dating back to the early days of computing, recently being revived.), or the performance of a machine on the scale of petaflops. To be any fun, each user should have a private space where he can operate entirely unconstrained by social norms (and perhaps a public space), that is big enough to hold at least a few hundred diverse sentient NPCs. The game would have no structure, the goals would be arbitrary. (Actually, this has been an idea that's been brewing in my head for a year or two, only now given its full form). The beginning of the game would be kind of like the sims. You start out as a 3rd-person observer and then select any arbitrary avatar to inhabit, could be anything, I don't have room here to provide a catalog of the initial avatar selection. Ideally the game would be updated from the network so that each time you initialized a game there would be an expanded or refined variety of avatars to choose from. The initial environment would be a simple village or town or something, who cares about the details... You can idle around the town as long as you like as long as none of the other (sentient) NPCs does anything rash... The next part of the game would be an exploration/questing deal where you get to do some adventuring in the body you chose and try to gain access to one of the hidden temples. Each temple would contain a seed of a different, and very alien civilization. From there you could go back to idling in that transformed state or the game could switch to a strategy and conquest game. Ultimately, it would morph into a game of civilization where you manage your empire or connect to the network and try to conquor other empires on the network. That is somewhat problematic because my experience with on-line games is that they tend to be winner-take-all and aren't forgiving at all of casual players. =( om I don't propose that this game should be an end in itself. Instead my goal, should I be able to produce it, would be to provide a whiteboard on which ideas can be presented and shared through first-hand experience permitted by the neural interface. My goal in writing this posting when I should be getting my sleep, is to provide a vision to the members of these diverse groups. I hope that this vision can become a goal that inspires people to do actual real work to bring it to fruition. =( It frustrates me to no end that people are so idle these days that they aren't even chewing lotus blossoms and masturbating over their substrate fetish. =( -- DO NOT USE OBAMACARE. DO NOT BUY OBAMACARE. Powers are not rights. From bbenzai at yahoo.com Wed Sep 15 12:47:27 2010 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 05:47:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] time travelling ai In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <953830.99444.qm@web114410.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> > From: Damien Broderick > To: ExI chat list > Subject: > Message-ID: <4C901D6C.20609 at satx.rr.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed > > On 9/14/2010 7:51 PM, ablainey at aol.com > wrote: > > > Would they be from the unterwurld perchance? > > No, they would be from the alloworld. Somebody's probably done this already, but: You mean they're software constructs? (from the very first program that anyone writes?) Ben Zaiboc (cringing) From pharos at gmail.com Wed Sep 15 13:54:42 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 14:54:42 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Memes, genes Gregory Clark In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 9/14/10, Keith Henson wrote: > But you really need to go deeper and ask why some memes do very well > in one population and not as well in others? Why are some people much > more susceptible to certain memes than others? And why do some memes > come and go in the whole population? I can't answer all these > questions, but I make the case that the host substrate for memes > (genetically shaped people) is important. > > Well, I think Dawkins (and others) would disagree with you. Here is Chapter 11 from Dawkins, ``The Selfish Gene'' Quote: Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. ----------------- So far, so good, but then he points out..... Memes and genes may often reinforce each other, but they sometimes come into opposition. For example, the habit of celibacy is presumably not inherited genetically. A gene for celibacy is doomed to failure in the gene pool, except under very special circumstances such as we find in the social insects. But still, a meme for celibacy can be successful in the meme pool. I conjecture that co-adapted meme-complexes evolve in the same kind of way as co-adapted gene-complexes. Selection favours memes that exploit their cultural environment to their own advantage. This cultural environment consists of other memes which are also being selected. The meme pool therefore comes to have the attributes of an evolutionarily stable set, which new memes find it hard to invade. ------------------------ End Quotes That's the reason for the difference in societies (races) adopting memes. Some memes fall on fertile ground and some memes oppose the existing cultural environment. That's why India didn't have an Industrial Revolution in the 1800s. But modern India has educated itself, changed the culture and is a modern powerhouse. (Incidentally where a lot of western jobs have been out-sourced to). BillK From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed Sep 15 16:25:09 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 09:25:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Memes, genes Gregory Clark Message-ID: On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 5:00 AM, ablainey at aol.com wrote: > ?I agree that the genetics of the carrier is very important. However I would go on to say that IMHO the main reason that memes fail to spread within certain society groups is in fact due to other memes. Call them antimemes if you will. There is a whole ecosystem of memes out there. I agree about opposing memes, but to "get" some memes you have to have a whole mess of other ones. > These are information antidotes to any given meme. Such as understanding the science of evolution vs creationism. However the order in which the meme/antimeme are presented is important. If exposure to one comes before the other then it is more likely to take hold and be much harder to replace with its antithesis. > This leads me to believe that taking an antimeme approach to a societal problem would be very beneficial, especially if the young of that society were 'vaccinated' before exposure to a destructive meme. > > ?This is in reality almost the opposite to what we generally do. Far too often we shield our young from destructive memes in the hope they will not be exposed. Then on exposure we have an uphill struggle to inject a sufficient antidote. Perhaps. However, consider a certain cult. By and large the people who get hooked on that one I think are genetically susceptible. They are people who have brains (built by genes) that are particularly susceptible to attention rewards, i.e., they quickly get addicted. They also seem to be somewhat gullible. I remember talking to one of them, Brian McPherson, who told me that the local group of this cult was parasitized by scam artists on a regular basis. There also has been a number of reports of people who had strokes which rendered them completely susceptible to Nigerian scams. > Mike Dougherty wrote: > > On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 5:39 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > >> But you really need to go deeper and ask why some memes do very well >> in one population and not as well in others? ?Why are some people much >> more susceptible to certain memes than others? ?And why do some memes >> come and go in the whole population? ?I can't answer all these >> questions, but I make the case that the host substrate for memes >> (genetically shaped people) is important. >> > > Are you suggesting that memes require specific physical genetic > characteristics or that people could be genetically predisposed to memetic > influence? Of course. Memes like chipping rocks to get sharp edges can be taught to our close relatives, but the memes don't spread to the larger populations. Certain memes spread among birds, or are reinvented frequently (using cars to crack nuts for example) but they don't spread to birds outside the corvus group. > Conversely that some people have genes which could make them > immune to memes? Not all memes since the one thing humans do best is learn elements of culture from each other. But yes, I think there are people who are immune to certain parasitic classes of memes due to their genes. Ghod knows how many genes are involved. But I know of cases where the parents got sucked into a cult and their kids *knew* it was stupid. Also there may be effects related to age. Cults and addictive drugs seem to use the same brain reward pathways. It's well known that a substantial fraction of drug addict can get off drugs as the age. This makes evolutionary sense because gaining high status (integrated attention) for improved reproductive success is important in young adults and not so important by the time they reach middle age. > In our mostly blind to people's differences out of artificially imposed > sense of "fairness" I would not have imagined memes as patterns of thinking > to be tied to something as base as genetics. ?However, I can see that > physical characteristics might contribute to certain patterns of thinking. > Ex: PTC/PROP tasters may avoid these thyroid inhibitors and develop thyroid > problems which further modify behavior and thought due to thyroid > imbalance. > > [1] > http://www.drpeterjdadamo.com/wiki/wiki.pl/PROP_and_PTC_Taster_Polymorphisms I was not aware of this, but it's a related example. Keith From spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 15 17:09:18 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 10:09:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] birds again, derivative from: Re: Memes, genes Gregory Clark In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <641050.81506.qm@web81502.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 9/15/10, Keith Henson wrote: > From: Keith Henson > ... > > ...Certain memes spread among birds, or are reinvented > frequently (using cars to crack nuts for example) but they don't > spread to birds outside the corvus group... Thanks for this Keith. The corvus group (crows and ravens) are one of two I find particularly fascinating because of the way they interact with humans, such as that "Nevermore" business that caused E.A.Poe to outwardly freak. On my vacation last month I witnessed something I am still pondering the hell out of, a behavior that freaked my beak. We were driving down from the Mount Rainier visitors center to our campsite. A raven was standing beside the road as we approached, took off ahead of us and climbed to an altitude of about 10 meters. Then she stayed slightly in front of and above our truck as we drove downhill, for perhaps three to five kilometers. She was not flapping, but rather gliding, down the gentle slope ahead of me. I watched her and came to the realization that she was surfing on the compression wave created by my truck! I have seen seagulls riding a compression wave ahead of a ferry on Puget Sound (they do this on every trip) but I have never seen a corvus do anything like this. I could be wrong in this next speculation, but here goes. When I first saw that, I theorized that the raven had figured out that vehicles sometimes slay small beasts, which then provide a hot (well, warm) lunch. But the next day, in approximately the same place, she (or another in her clone) did the same thing. I began to ponder my initial theory and rejected it. Reasoning: vehicles sometimes slay small beasts, but any individual vehicle doesn't do so very often. When is the last time you ran over a mouse or a squirrel? The food payoff for the bird following a car would be low. So now my bold notion, and do feel free to refute for I am open to suggestion: that bird was playing. I have seen seagulls at play, dropping and swooping to catch rocks. I have seen ravens behave in such a way that looks a bit like play: doing the tough-guy posture to the big ugly two-legged beasts out at Waterfront Park in Sunnyvale. But this car-surfing thing (if that is what she was doing) appears to be an example of a corvus at play. What think thee, beast watchers? >... > This makes evolutionary sense because gaining high status > (integrated attention) for improved reproductive success is important > in young adults... Keith The example I thought of is the Mormons sending their 19 yr old lads out on two year missions to bug the proletariat, calling them "elders." An "elder" is hot property to the teenage Mormon girls, who struggle to harvest them quickly upon their return, often spawning a litter within a decade. Johnny Grigg and Brent Allsop, do feel free to jump in here on that comment, in the lighthearted spirit in which it is intended. {8^D spike From sjatkins at mac.com Wed Sep 15 19:40:34 2010 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 12:40:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). In-Reply-To: <609164.25137.qm@web24902.mail.ird.yahoo.com> References: <609164.25137.qm@web24902.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4C912132.5070001@mac.com> On 9/10/10 4:25 AM, Singularity Utopia wrote: > Dear Samantha, and others, a primitive brain naturally has a poor > grasp of possibilities. Primitive brains naturally grasp reality > poorly. A good example of how brainpower limits comprehension is this: > imagine a human trying to explain to a cat or dog the nature of > nanotechnology and how nanotechnology could make it easier for humans > to travel to the moon or to Mars. When super-intelligent-AI is created > we will be like cats or dogs; we cannot fully comprehend future > possibilities but with imagination we can see how our primitive > worries will be completely solved. We will not actually be like cats > or dogs because we will evolve rapidly. From dogs we can transform > into gods. > An argument from the unimaginable nature of not yet existent brains is not much of an argument. Said future superbrains could be interested in our wellbeing, indifferent or even outright inimical. If interested in our wellbeing what they deem best for us may or may not coincide with our happiest dreams and fond utopias. > My example of the free Ubuntu software verses pricey MS software was > an example of how we are moving towards Post-Scarcity... software is > easily replicated and the limits on replication are decreasing, we are > approaching limitless software replication: post-scarcity. When > millions of people download a video each day from YouTube we can see > how that free data is transcending scarcity; there is a plentiful > amount of data but it is not yet Post-Scarcity. When MNT-3D-printing > becomes widespread, very competent, then millions of people will > download products or food, which will be constructed via EXTREMELY > efficient usage of resources for very little cost, this will be > another step towards Post-Scarcity but similar to the free operating > system Ubuntu it won't actually be Post-Scarcity but merely a step closer. Already debugged. Your example does not show what you wanted it to. > > You may doubt that we will ever create a brain 12 orders of magnitude > faster (or greater) and generally more powerful than our own brains, > but when we do we will not be creating something different to > ourselves we will be reinventing ourselves, we will become > super-beings, we will transcend our human beginnings: this concept of > Transhumanism can seem weird but in 10 or 20 years people will have a > better grasp upon how humans are evolving. We will become super-beings > if we want to. Sometimes it can be difficult to see how technology > advances quicker each year and it will probably only be with hindsight > that people look back to this point in history as a crucial period > regarding accelerating change. Most of us here grasp that possibility and have grasped it for quite some time. > The growth of processing power is accelerating. Our grasp of the world > is accelerating. The Singularity is coming. INFINITY is entirely possible. I patiently argued that it is not. You did not counter my arguments but only reassert your position. This is a bit of a bore. > Humans who wish to remain unchanged/primitive will be free to do so. Well, if you convert the planet into something else then they will only be free to do so as uploads (without telling them this is what has happened as that would be very upsetting to them). > There will no scarcity of universes where everyone can exist however > they desire. In upload space this is more true. But even upload space is rooted in finite real world computational infrastructure. > Do you think the creation of matter and universes is difficult for a > supremely-intelligent-being? Creation off matter, real physical matter? As far as we know there is no means of ex nihlio matter/energy creation. What does your "supremely" mean? Does it mean some ultimate pinnacle or just inconceivably smarter than us? No matter how intelligent no being can circumvent whatever the laws of physics of the containing universe turn out to be. > Creating a universe would probably be as easily as creating a sandwich > if your brainpower is sufficiently large. A virtual one, yes. It is likely possible to blow off a new Big Bang creating a separate physical universe you cannot reach or much influence beyond perhaps tweaking its physics. Beyond that, no, not by our current understanding. > There will be no scarcity of matter. Virtual reality will become > indistinguishable from reality. Yet they are not the same thing. Virtual realities depend upon the physical substrate beneath them. You cannot create infinity on top of finite matter/energy substrate. You can create much more than you can at the physical level alone. But it is not literally infinite. > Virtual worlds and real worlds will both be utterly controllable to > satisfy the desires and needs of anybody and everybody. How do you know? Will there be any conflicts of interests? Will there be any instances of multiple competing desires for how to use any particular existing set of physical resources? Remember even the virtual depends upon the underlying physical. > At one point in our history a primitive computer was the size of an > entire room but today we have much much powerful computers that are > comparatively tiny. As computing power grows our computers become > smaller. The concept of a Jupiter sized brain (Mbrain) is a primitive > notion because massive computers in the future will not need to > actually be physically massive. > *Scratches head* Do you acknowledge there is any limit at all on the amount of computation that can be performed by a given chunk of matter/energy? > Humans can do impossible things. By definition no being can do an impossible thing, only some things that were thought impossible but actually are possible. The truly impossible cannot be done, ever. > From putting men on the Moon to overcoming Black slavery and electing > a Black President. We continually change the nature of what is > possible. Humans can grasp reality mistakenly, therefore we may think > our Earth is the center of our solar system or that Post-Scarcity is > impossible. We are evolving. Keep an open mind. Reality is a bit like > the scene in Ghostbusters where a giant marshmallow man is created. I explained exactly what post-scarcity I think is possible or in that direction and why I don't think the end of all scarcity forever is possible. You have not given a counter-argument. Insinuating that my and other minds here are too closed is not an argument. Remember you are among those that would like to believe or rather would like the future to be as extraordinarily good as possible. You are among people who dream big and have for a very long time. We are not known for having closed minds to say the least. Comparing those who disagree with parts of your ideas to those who believed the earth was the center of the universe is despicable. But then perhaps it is not surprising if you think in terms of a giant marshmallow man being possible and an implied infinitely malleable physical reality. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay_Puft_Marshmallow_Man > > You create the future via your desires. We create the future at the intersection of our desires and reality. You cannot leave off the reality part and expect to be taken seriously. > Your expectations skew you perceptions thereby forcing you to create > reality according to your expectations. Really... you should read up > on the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy. Expect utopia. *yawn* Been there, done that. > There are no nefarious people prohibiting Post-Scarcity. You are > responsible for reality. No. I am only responsible for what I have some influence/control over. Not for all of reality. > You create reality. So, did you create the very framework within which you exist? Did you create the entire universe into which you were born? No? Then you do not create reality without some rather important caveats that your statement is missing. > The only limit to Post-Scarcity is yourself. Are you really thinking about this or just spouting what you want to believe? > If you choose to see nefarious people in the world then that is your > choice... Imagine you are asleep dreaming but instead of dreaming > about pleasant things you dream about monsters, pain, and suffering. > Dreams are a good example of how people create reality. Theoretically > we have the power to dream whatever we want. Each night we could dream > about the most fabulous utopia where we enjoy ultimate pleasures. Our > dreams are totally inside our heads but we fail to appreciate how we > have the reality to control our dreams, therefore we sometimes dream > about unpleasant things. Our failure to control our dreams is similar > to our control over reality. The world is exactly the way you want it > to be (subconsciously). The world is your dream. I choose to dream of > utopia. I know you are not nefarious, nobody is nefarious, and I know > you will soon believe without any doubt that Post-Scarcity is possible. Do you acknowledge a difference between dreams and reality? What is that difference? > > I know you will believe that reality is infinite, without any limits > whatsoever, because your mind is limitless. The positive feedback will > feedback to create "eternal positivity" and the positivity will be > immensely positive. The future will be infinitely positive. No, my mind and yours is certainly not limitless. It is quite limited by the architecture of the human brain. You are coming off like a mystic. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy > > Regarding my name I would say, what's in a name? A rose by any other > name smells just as sweet. Utopia is the sweetest rose. > > Believe! Dream! Seize the limitless power of reality! I know you will > soon begin to believe in utopian Post-Scarcity. You can see it > happening by 2045 at the latest... I know. I can see your mind > changing because I see my own mind changing. I can see you dreaming. > This is our dream. We dream of utopia! This is our reality. This is > science. This is technology. This is existence. This IS reality. You > are alive. Without grounding in reality it is neither science, technology or existence. I see you making no effort to so ground it and dismissing any attempts to do so. Best of luck with that. - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 15 20:53:05 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:53:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] samantha vs singularity debate In-Reply-To: <641050.81506.qm@web81502.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <938896.63393.qm@web81507.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Watching the interchange between Singulary Utopia and Samantha reminds me of Douglas Hofstadters Eternal Golden Braid struggle between Achilles and Mr. Tortoise. Singularity Utopia has confidently proposed that we will have infinite this and that, do the impossible, etc. (no need for me to elaborate, you get the picture). Clearly the paradox I mentioned a few days ago cannot be avoided in that model. A post singularity infinite AI would master time travel, go back in time to before the horrifying wars of the 20th century (and every other century for that matter), explain to the people living then how to bring about the singularity, which causes the singularity to happen sooner, sparing all that unnecessary suffering. If that can happen, why didn't it? Or did it and we just don't know we are post singularity sims? If so, all our simulated suffering is intentional (or at least voluntary) on the part of some super AI, in which case the post singularity AI is at least partly evil, which breaks SU's model. I don't know if my own sorrow and joy are real, but it sure feels real from inside here. >From a third party observer: Samantha wins this round. There are some impossible things which apparently will stay impossible. spike From ablainey at aol.com Wed Sep 15 21:25:27 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 17:25:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] samantha vs singularity debate In-Reply-To: <938896.63393.qm@web81507.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <8CD2333A50E9E49-1B40-2FE5@Webmail-m118.sysops.aol.com> This could tie in with the memes thread. Mankind would need to be at a developemental state in which it would except the guidence of the AI. Perhaps the social catalyst was the wars? Do you not feel that mankind is being memetically guided toward something? I do and it would appear that it has been going on for quite a long time. Some say NWO, others the reds. Why not a post singularity AI? A -----Original Message----- From: Gregory Jones To: ExI chat list Sent: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 21:53 Subject: [ExI] samantha vs singularity debate Watching the interchange between Singulary Utopia and Samantha reminds me of Douglas Hofstadters Eternal Golden Braid struggle between Achilles and Mr. Tortoise. Singularity Utopia has confidently proposed that we will have infinite this and that, do the impossible, etc. (no need for me to elaborate, you get the picture). Clearly the paradox I mentioned a few days ago cannot be avoided in that model. A post singularity infinite AI would master time travel, go back in time to before the horrifying wars of the 20th century (and every other century for that matter), explain to the people living then how to bring about the singularity, which causes the singularity to happen sooner, sparing all that unnecessary suffering. If that can happen, why didn't it? Or did it and we just don't know we are post singularity sims? If so, all our simulated suffering is intentional (or at least voluntary) on the part of some super AI, in which case the post singularity AI is at least partly evil, which breaks SU's model. I don't know if my own sorrow and joy are real, but it sure feels real from inside here. >From a third party observer: Samantha wins this round. There are some impossible things which apparently will stay impossible. spike _______________________________________________ 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 jebdm at jebdm.net Wed Sep 15 21:28:14 2010 From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 17:28:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A game that can't be made, but should. =P In-Reply-To: <4C90528B.3040606@speakeasy.net> References: <4C90528B.3040606@speakeasy.net> Message-ID: 2010/9/15 Alan Grimes > Papers could surely be written about what psychological defects would allow > a person to identify with his avatar so strongly that he insists that Second > Life is another "reality". > I'm surprised you make this claim, given your other apparent views. "Reality" is pretty fuzzily defined; dictionaries tend towards the circular. Dictionary.com does give "something that exists independently of ideas concerning it"; by this definition, it is easy to imagine multiple spheres of "reality", including the physical world as well as the many virtual worlds already in existence. I also have found Second Life to be dissatisfying, but there are other worlds that have seemed quite immersive to me at times. I don't think it's a psychological defect to be immersed; in fact, I rather wish it came to me more easily. What I'm saying is that I need a simulation that is at least as powerful > as my imagination. > Presumably once you have brain simulation this isn't too difficult. Or given a few more orders of magnitudes of speedup in processors so that we can simulate at the molecule level in real time on a large scale. Richard Bartle has something interesting to say on this topic in a short piece entitled "The Future of Virtual Reality": http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/vrfuture.htm sentient NPCs > A contradiction in terms? Nonetheless a good idea (in fact having copies of a bunch of sentient simulations to play around with seems pretty useful, though there are possible ethical issues). -- Jebadiah Moore http://blog.jebdm.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 15 21:48:08 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 14:48:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] samantha vs singularity debate Message-ID: <940672.26755.qm@web81501.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 9/15/10, ablainey at aol.com wrote: >...This could tie in with the memes thread. Mankind would need to be at a developemental state in which it would except the guidence of the AI... On the contrary sir.? The AI is so clever it could cause any or every human to accept its direction.? Or skip the humans all together and just get online (inline?) itself after everyone has gone to bed, and program up its own embryonic or emergent self. >... Perhaps the social catalyst was the wars? No.? See above. >...Do you not feel that mankind is being memetically guided toward something? I do not.? For the past 9 yrs or so, it has felt to me more like we are memetically wandering, groping in the darkness, vaguely understanding that something fundamental is missing but knowing not what.? I am thankful for fresh and apparently young optimists like Singulariy Utopia, but I do wish to point out that overuse of the notion of infinite is riddled with paradox. >...I do and it would appear that it has been going on for quite a long time. Some say NWO, others the reds. Why not a post singularity AI? A Al, the notion of an infinitely capable infinitely benevolent AI is as paradoxical as the notion of a god with the same characterists, which caused me eventually to stop believing in such a being. I never found a way out of that paradox, and see no way out still. I would counter-suggest a version of the Adkinsian model, whereby a future AI is really really smart and uses most or all the available matter and energy, but is not infinite. It would be really big and really good, perhaps appearing infinite from our current point of view, but not infinite. It would be incapable of some of our fondest desires, such as resurrecting long dead loved ones for instance. But it could perhaps make a reasonable sim of those departed ones. Such a being, compared to actual infinity (even aleph naught infinity) would still be zero. spike From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Sep 15 21:41:44 2010 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 14:41:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] samantha vs singularity debate In-Reply-To: <8CD2333A50E9E49-1B40-2FE5@Webmail-m118.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CD2333A50E9E49-1B40-2FE5@Webmail-m118.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <365572.49477.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> But if the benevolent AI had infinite power, why would there be need for developmental states? Wouldn't it always and everywhere be nirvana? Of course, you could argue for a Power guiding humanity now, but a Power would still be limited... Regards, Dan From: "ablainey at aol.com" To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Sent: Wed, September 15, 2010 5:25:27 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] samantha vs singularity debate This could tie in with the memes thread. Mankind would need to be at a developemental state in which it would except the guidence of the AI. Perhaps the social catalyst was the wars? Do you not feel that mankind is being memetically guided toward something? I do and it would appear that it has been going on for quite a long time. Some say NWO, others the reds. Why not a post singularity AI? A -----Original Message----- From: Gregory Jones To: ExI chat list Sent: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 21:53 Subject: [ExI] samantha vs singularity debate Watching the interchange between Singulary Utopia and Samantha reminds me of Douglas Hofstadters Eternal Golden Braid struggle between Achilles and Mr. Tortoise. Singularity Utopia has confidently proposed that we will have infinite this and that, do the impossible, etc. (no need for me to elaborate, you get the picture). Clearly the paradox I mentioned a few days ago cannot be avoided in that model. A post singularity infinite AI would master time travel, go back in time to before the horrifying wars of the 20th century (and every other century for that matter), explain to the people living then how to bring about the singularity, which causes the singularity to happen sooner, sparing all that unnecessary suffering. If that can happen, why didn't it? Or did it and we just don't know we are post singularity sims? If so, all our simulated suffering is intentional (or at least voluntary) on the part of some super AI, in which case the post singularity AI is at least partly evil, which breaks SU's model. I don't know if my own sorrow and joy are real, but it sure feels real from inside here. >From a third party observer: Samantha wins this round. There are some impossible things which apparently will stay impossible. spike _______________________________________________ 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 spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 15 22:41:30 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:41:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] samantha vs singularity debate In-Reply-To: <365572.49477.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <46905.30012.qm@web81502.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 9/15/10, Dan wrote: ? >...Of course, you could argue for a Power guiding humanity now, but a Power would still be limited...Regards,? Dan ? Dan, many theologians tackle the paradox of an infinitely powerful god, trying to somehow straddle that chasm of paradox.? There was a book I read years ago, back in the early 90s when I was still thinking about this sort of thing, written by Richard Rice, called The Openness of God.? Occasionally someone like Rice will go ahead and realize the paradoxes cannot be fully resolved and will take a stand on one rim or the other of that logical canyon.? He argued in that book that god really isn't infinite, that he has a life, he watches and?learns stuff, a little like we do only better, that he really can't do anything he wants.? So in that view, god is more like Star Trek's Q, only not such a bastard (most of the time.)? It caused?quite a stir among the faithful, then was forgotten. ? If one?imagines?the post singularity AI?as an infinite god,?one?gets with it at no extra cost?all the logical paradoxes that have never been resolved. ? If one goes with the?model of a really big but finite post singularity AI such as an MBrain, one eventually realizes there is a definite dark side to that notion.? But it is logically consistent,?allowing one to escape paradox and cognitive dissonance.? ? I'll take dark side for 100 please Alex. ? spike ? ? ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Sep 15 22:54:39 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 17:54:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] samantha vs singularity debate In-Reply-To: <46905.30012.qm@web81502.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <46905.30012.qm@web81502.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4C914EAF.4040401@satx.rr.com> On 9/15/2010 5:41 PM, Gregory Jones wrote: > Richard Rice,... The Openness of God. ... > He argued in that book that god really isn't infinite, that he has a > life, he watches and learns stuff, a little like we do only better, that > he really can't do anything he wants. As Norman Mailer wrote (and I borrowed this as the main epigraph of THE JUDAS MANDALA [1982], with pretty much the same time-looping god-at-the-end-of-time that Spike posits in his gedankenexperiment): "But once I think of an imperfect God, I can begin to imagine a Being greater than ourselves, who nonetheless shares his instinctive logic with us: We as men seek to grow, so He seeks to grow; even as we each have a conception of being?my conception of being, my idea of how we should live, may triumph over yours, or yours over mine?so, in parallel, this God may be engaged in a similar war in the universe with other gods. We may even be the embodiment, the partial expression of his vision. If we fail, He fails too. He is imperfect in the way we are imperfect. He is not always as brave or extraordinary or as graceful as He might care to be. In capsule: There are times when He has to exploit us; there are times when we have to exploit Him; there are times when He has to drive us beyond our own natural depth because He needs us?those of us, at least, who are working for Him: We have yet to talk of the Devil." Damien Broderick From ablainey at aol.com Wed Sep 15 23:28:11 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 19:28:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] samantha vs singularity debate In-Reply-To: <940672.26755.qm@web81501.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <940672.26755.qm@web81501.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <8CD2344CBE4081A-16D4-444E@webmail-m016.sysops.aol.com> Of course I agree with you, but one point regarding the finite nature of the AI. If either an infinite or finite AI were to develop in the future I cannot see how it could time travel in its entirety. As such only a finite part of it could come back to bring about the singularity thus this fragment may not be clever enough to cause every human to except its direction or to skip humans as you suggest. Perhaps the future AI is smart enough to know that all that is needed is a Seed AI that will ultimately lead to itself. From an energy point of view this would be most efficient. Why use more power to punch a hole in time or send more of yourself back than is needed? This would only decrease its future omnipotence. >From that starting point of an absolute minimal seed AI. It would also make sense to send it to the time zone where society, memetics and technology were most ripe for the seed to take hold. Which would again reduce the loss from the future AI. A -----Original Message----- From: Gregory Jones To: ExI chat list Sent: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 22:48 Subject: Re: [ExI] samantha vs singularity debate --- On Wed, 9/15/10, ablainey at aol.com wrote: >...This could tie in with the memes thread. Mankind would need to be at a developemental state in which it would except the guidence of the AI... On the contrary sir. The AI is so clever it could cause any or every human to accept its direction. Or skip the humans all together and just get online (inline?) itself after everyone has gone to bed, and program up its own embryonic or emergent self. >... Perhaps the social catalyst was the wars? No. See above. >...Do you not feel that mankind is being memetically guided toward something? I do not. For the past 9 yrs or so, it has felt to me more like we are memetically wandering, groping in the darkness, vaguely understanding that something fundamental is missing but knowing not what. I am thankful for fresh and apparently young optimists like Singulariy Utopia, but I do wish to point out that overuse of the notion of infinite is riddled with paradox. >...I do and it would appear that it has been going on for quite a long time. Some say NWO, others the reds. Why not a post singularity AI? A Al, the notion of an infinitely capable infinitely benevolent AI is as paradoxical as the notion of a god with the same characterists, which caused me eventually to stop believing in such a being. I never found a way out of that paradox, and see no way out still. I would counter-suggest a version of the Adkinsian model, whereby a future AI is really really smart and uses most or all the available matter and energy, but is not infinite. It would be really big and really good, perhaps appearing infinite from our current point of view, but not infinite. It would be incapable of some of our fondest desires, such as resurrecting long dead loved ones for instance. But it could perhaps make a reasonable sim of those departed ones. Such a being, compared to actual infinity (even aleph naught infinity) would still be zero. spike _______________________________________________ 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 agrimes at speakeasy.net Wed Sep 15 23:33:14 2010 From: agrimes at speakeasy.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 19:33:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A game that can't be made, but should. =P In-Reply-To: References: <4C90528B.3040606@speakeasy.net> Message-ID: <4C9157BA.90609@speakeasy.net> > sentient NPCs > A contradiction in terms? Nonetheless a good idea (in fact having copies > of a bunch of sentient simulations to play around with seems pretty > useful, though there are possible ethical issues). =) In the context of my game idea, the sentience of the NPC's had two purposes. First, it makes the environment interesting. More profoundly, the interface mechanism of mind-melding with one of them would allow you to receive first hand experience from alternate brain types. The first of which being stereotypically male and female brains. Concurrently, such an arrangement would be an immensely powerful means of IA. I expect the speedup obtainable from a single such link being on the order of 80% (many assumptions, ofcourse). Now it gets REALLY interesting when you are linking to an AI platform which is inherently 3 orders of magnitude more efficient... -- DO NOT USE OBAMACARE. DO NOT BUY OBAMACARE. Powers are not rights. From lists1 at evil-genius.com Wed Sep 15 22:59:36 2010 From: lists1 at evil-genius.com (lists1 at evil-genius.com) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:59:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Corvids at play Message-ID: <4C914FD8.1080306@evil-genius.com> Gregory Jones said: > So now my bold notion, and do feel free to refute for I am open to > suggestion: that bird was playing. I have seen seagulls at play, > dropping and swooping to catch rocks. I have seen ravens behave in > such a way that looks a bit like play: doing the tough-guy posture to > the big ugly two-legged beasts out at Waterfront Park in Sunnyvale. > But this car-surfing thing (if that is what she was doing) appears to > be an example of a corvus at play. What think thee, beast watchers? Absolutely. I watched a raven play for some time in the air currents blowing upward at a scenic overlook overhanging a cliff. It would hover just above the deck, caw three times, and then fall into a completely dead-stick, tumbling dive, just like it had been shot. Once it approached the bottom of the cliff it would unfurl its wings, pull out, and catch the strong wind, soaring back up to the observation deck with almost no effort. The raven did this over and over, always cawing three times ("hey, check this out!"), tumbling like it was dead, and catching itself at the last moment. I was jealous because it looked like a hell of a lot of fun. From singularity.utopia at yahoo.com Tue Sep 14 17:49:24 2010 From: singularity.utopia at yahoo.com (Singularity Utopia) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 17:49:24 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). Message-ID: <306617.40758.qm@web24918.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Sorry John Grigg, I can't offer any evidence regarding my research; it is a strictly need to know basis. English is my first language but due to my weariness, which causes occasional typos etc, I understand why you suspect not. It is amusing and perplexing that you say I am "over the top" because the whole concept of the Singularity is over the top: 20,000 years of progress at the 2010 rate during the 21st century. AI is over the top, eternal life/youth is over the top, mind uploading, space elevators, personal nanofactories, DNA-robots, DNA-logic gates, meta-materials, nanosurgery, mind-reading-HCI (http://www.ted.com/talks/tan_le_a_headset_that_reads_your_brainwaves.html), space colonies... it's all way over the top! The Singularity is not a quiet Sunday afternoon at the old-people's home. It's the most dramatic event in human history, which will radically transform the human race. Bearing this in mind I think we can discard straight-laced conservatism. Moderation, moderate values, sobriety and restraint are becoming obsolete. Imagine the changes caused by exponential growth when things really TAKE OFF, at rocketing astronomical speed?... it will truly be OVER THE TOP... a vertical takeoff at super high speed with no landing. Times are changing... it is time to change your mind. The future is moving faster than your worldview. I am not a misguided dreamer. I am an exponential dreamer in sync with the rate of progress. "The odds" are a funny thing; even if you doubt my assertions regarding my currently unprovable credentials, you should bare in mind that a significant amount of people can beat the odds. I like the phrase you used "egotistically out of control" because that is a great reflection regarding how the Singularity will appear. Imagine a brain one billion times greater than a human brain, such a brain would appear egoistically out of control to a human in the year 2010. Here is a nice heartwarming news report regarding a newborn baby beating the odds. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1306283/Miracle-premature-baby-declared-dead-doctors-revived-mothers-touch.html I don't personally know Eliezer Yudkowsky. I have exchanged few emials with Michael Anissimov. There is nobody who can help me because I am vastly more advanced than any current research, and it would be useless to share my information at this point in time. The only help I can currently give people is to ask them to hang on until 2020 at the latest, by which time my research will be declassified. Have faith, I will ensure utopia happens, my research will ensure the Singularity happens by 2045 at the latest. You can help by sharing my Post-Scarcity symbols. Until 2020 you should have faith and in 2020 you will know without doubt that Utopia will arrive by 2045 at the latest. I am very aware of the Singularity/AI links you provided. I have a very clear picture of the entire Singularity movement. I suppose I began writing these mails for posterity, a message for future AIs yet to be born, so that they will understand my motives. Via my Post-Scarcity symbols and my 2045 website I also wanted other people to share in this message to the future, which will eventually be perused by AIs. PS. Remember to share my PS symbols. Singularity Utopia PPS. I've discovered these posts are reproduced on the internet herehttp://exi-chat.blogspot.com/ so perhaps I should make more effort to eliminate all typos and other mistakes. I also note the original formatting is preserved so I shall use some nice green and purple colors for my 12pt Arial font. Finally John Grigg, due to the public nature of these public posts, please consider my statement that I value my privacy greatly therefore I ask you to please desist from trying to expose my real identity. My real identity could be exposed, but I hope you (and any moderators of the group) will not allow such invasions of my privacy. People should have the right to be private if they so wish. I don't mind that my email address can become emblazoned across the net but please desist from trying to post my personal details. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Sep 16 01:15:28 2010 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 21:15:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] birds again, derivative from: Re: Memes, genes Gregory Clark In-Reply-To: <641050.81506.qm@web81502.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <641050.81506.qm@web81502.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 1:09 PM, Gregory Jones wrote: > > So now my bold notion, and do feel free to refute for I am open to > suggestion: that bird was playing. I have seen seagulls at play, dropping > and swooping to catch rocks. I have seen ravens behave in such a way that > looks a bit like play: doing the tough-guy posture to the big ugly > two-legged beasts out at Waterfront Park in Sunnyvale. But this car-surfing > thing (if that is what she was doing) appears to be an example of a corvus > at play. What think thee, beast watchers? > > plausible. see also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuVgXJ55G6Y -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Sep 16 01:34:19 2010 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 21:34:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] samantha vs singularity debate In-Reply-To: <938896.63393.qm@web81507.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <641050.81506.qm@web81502.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <938896.63393.qm@web81507.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 4:53 PM, Gregory Jones wrote: > > Watching the interchange between Singulary Utopia and Samantha reminds me > of Douglas Hofstadters Eternal Golden Braid struggle between Achilles and > Mr. Tortoise. Singularity Utopia has confidently proposed that we will have > infinite this and that, do the impossible, etc. (no need for me to > elaborate, you get the picture). > > Clearly the paradox I mentioned a few days ago cannot be avoided in that > model. A post singularity infinite AI would master time travel, go back in > time to before the horrifying wars of the 20th century (and every other > century for that matter), explain to the people living then how to bring > about the singularity, which causes the singularity to happen sooner, > sparing all that unnecessary suffering. > > If that can happen, why didn't it? Or did it and we just don't know we are > post singularity sims? If so, all our simulated suffering is intentional > (or at least voluntary) on the part of some super AI, in which case the post > singularity AI is at least partly evil, which breaks SU's model. > > This iteration of the optimization process is better than all previous attempts. It's still bad enough that the exit condition has not been met. the universe in which you currently find yourself may be in a sort tree or recursion stack and there is no guarantee that it is the leading edge of any particular process. There are likely multiple simultaneous process. An earlier observation of the process optimizer noted that subroutines inside miserable universe calculations are particularly good at evaluating utopian universe situations (and vice versa) so it becomes difficult to trace one's state in the universal machine. Now seems to be the only point upon which we can all agree. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aleksei at iki.fi Thu Sep 16 01:55:20 2010 From: aleksei at iki.fi (Aleksei Riikonen) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 04:55:20 +0300 Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). In-Reply-To: <306617.40758.qm@web24918.mail.ird.yahoo.com> References: <306617.40758.qm@web24918.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2010/9/14 Singularity Utopia : > > I don't personally know Eliezer Yudkowsky. I have exchanged? few emials with > Michael Anissimov. There is nobody who can help me because I am vastly more > advanced than any current research, and it would be useless to share my > information at this point in time. The only help I can currently give people > is to ask them to hang on until 2020 at the latest, by which time my > research will be declassified. Have faith, I will ensure utopia happens, my > research will ensure the Singularity happens by 2045 at the latest. If you're so smart and capable, why aren't you rich? (i.e. I seem to remember that in one of your messages you said that you were poor.) -- Aleksei Riikonen - http://www.iki.fi/aleksei From singularity.utopia at yahoo.com Wed Sep 15 14:38:37 2010 From: singularity.utopia at yahoo.com (Singularity Utopia) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 14:38:37 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). Message-ID: <112508.33020.qm@web24907.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Sorry John Grigg, I can't offer any evidence regarding my research; it is a strictly need to know basis. English is my first language but due to my weariness, which causes occasional typos etc, I understand why you suspect not. It is amusing and perplexing that you say I am "over the top" because the whole concept of the Singularity is over the top: 20,000 years of progress at the 2010 rate during the 21st century. A.I. is over the top, eternal life/youth is over the top, mind uploading, space elevators, personal nanofactories, DNA-robots, DNA-logic gates, meta-materials, nanosurgery, mind-reading-HCI (http://www.ted.com/talks/tan_le_a_headset_that_reads_your_brainwaves.html), space colonies... it's all way over the top! The Singularity is not a quiet Sunday afternoon at the old-people's home. It's the most dramatic event in human history, which will radically transform the human race. Bearing this in mind I think we can discard straight-laced conservatism. Moderation, moderate values, sobriety and restraint are becoming obsolete. Imagine the changes caused by exponential growth when things really TAKE OFF, at rocketing astronomical speed?... it will truly be OVER THE TOP... a vertical takeoff at super high speed with no landing. Times are changing... it is time to change your mind. The future is moving faster than your worldview. I am not a misguided dreamer. I am an exponential dreamer in sync with the rate of progress. "The odds" are a funny thing; even if you doubt my assertions regarding my currently unprovable credentials, you should bare in mind that a significant amount of people can beat the odds. I like the phrase you used "egotistically out of control" because that is a great reflection regarding how the Singularity will appear. Imagine a brain one billion times greater than a human brain, such a brain would appear egoistically out of control to a human in the year 2010. Here is a nice heartwarming news report regarding a newborn baby beating the odds. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1306283/Miracle-premature-baby-declared-dead-doctors-revived-mothers-touch.html I don't personally know Eliezer Yudkowsky. I have exchanged few emials with Michael Anissimov. There is nobody who can help me because I am vastly more advanced than any current research, and it would be useless to share my information at this point in time. The only help I can currently give people is to ask them to hang on until 2020 at the latest, by which time my research will be declassified. Have faith, I will ensure utopia happens, my research will ensure the Singularity happens by 2045 at the latest. You can help by sharing my Post-Scarcity symbols. Until 2020 you should have faith and in 2020 you will know without doubt that Utopia will arrive by 2045 at the latest. I am very aware of the Singularity/AI links you provided. I have a very clear picture of the entire Singularity movement. I suppose I began writing these mails for posterity, a message for future AIs yet to be born, so that they will understand my motives. Via my Post-Scarcity symbols and my 2045 website I also wanted other people to share in this message to the future, which will eventually be perused by AIs. PS. Remember to share my PS symbols. Singularity Utopia -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From singularity.utopia at yahoo.com Thu Sep 16 01:49:12 2010 From: singularity.utopia at yahoo.com (Singularity Utopia) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 01:49:12 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] samantha vs singularity debate Message-ID: <763832.44922.qm@web24912.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Dear Spike. There is no paradox regarding time travelers failing to return thereby changing our history. Our history is their history therefore if they value themselves they will make no changes and if they didn't value themselves they would make changes and we would not realize changes had been made and they would not realize because we would all be changed. The suffering is therefore a necessary part of evolution. To deny this early stage of evolution is to deny what we will become. Pain has been a great instructor but soon we will graduate to the next level free from pain. Nothing is impossible. Impossible things are things we don't want to achieve. Some people may say it impossible to kill themselves while others can commit suicide. Some people think it is impossible to lose weight. The definition of "impossible" is this: it's something you don't want. If you think utopia or infinity is impossible then that is because you don't want utopia or infinity to be true. Possible things are the things you choose. CHOOSE UTOPIA! There will be no us and them regarding Post-Singularity AI and humans, we will become them, we will evolve. I write these mails for posterity, a message for future AIs yet to be born, I so that they will understand my motives. Via my Post-Scarcity symbols and my 2045 website I also wanted other people to share in this message to the future, which will eventually be perused by AIs. Don't forget to share my PS symbols. My singularity-2045 site is almost finished. Some final fine tuning and then it will be perfect. I hope you enjoy it. I am the architect of utopia. I am the Ultimate-Leader of all Intelligence. Singularity Utopia. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From singularity.utopia at yahoo.com Thu Sep 16 01:56:19 2010 From: singularity.utopia at yahoo.com (Singularity Utopia) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 01:56:19 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched (defeat despair, create utopia, share hope). Message-ID: <530062.53190.qm@web24912.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Dear Samantha, We are both speculating about the future, yes? This is an obvious point but it must be stressed. The future is always uncertain. Weather forecasters can be armed with reams of data and statistics proving when the sun will shine or not, but despite the meteorological 'science' of weather prediction the predictions can often be wrong. Forecasters can be surprised. I don't believe you have provided any valid data, facts, statistics, or examples to refute my viewpoint, but even if you did provide unquestionable proofs regarding future consequences of a colossal "intelligence-explosion" we would always be doubtful of the actual outcome until it happened. I choose to believe in a utopia. I believe the inevitability of utopia is proved via the evidence of technological progress to date. The speedy growth, the accelerating growth, of science-tech is before our eyes. I cited the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy because beliefs do have a clear impact upon future events therefore it is important to believe in utopia, unless you are a masochist or sadist and you want the future to be hell. Contrary to your assertion I don't think many people here have grasped the essence of the Singularity... infinity is possible. You say there is a difference between virtual reality and reality but what if it transpired that our universe was a big simulation: a virtual reality? I maintain there is no difference between sufficiently advanced virtual reality and normal everyday reality. Anything is possible. Physical matter could easily be created from apparent nothingness if your brainpower and grasp of reality is sufficiently advanced. The laws of physics could easily be circumvented or even reinvented. New physical universes could easily be created. All matter is simply a very sophisticated computer. You say virtual realities depend upon the substrate beneath them, but physical reality also is not a castle in the air, everything is connected to something else, and everything is infinite. I know the future will be a utopia because I personally will design it. You underestimate my power, but I cannot prove to you yet how I will create utopia. You must be patient. There is no limit to the amount of computation a piece of matter is capable of. I have countered your arguments repeatedly to help you see the truth. Your failure to comprehend is frustrating, and it is amusing that you think my analogies are "despicable". I think you need to question the nature of reality... do you really know what it is? You are responsible for what you think you are responsible for, you can be responsible for everything or you can be responsible for nothing, the choice is yours. You ask if I'm really thinking about these issues or am I spouting what I want to believe. I could ask you the same, and I will also point out that there is no difference between thinking about something and spouting what you want to believe. You ask if I know the difference between dreams and reality. You ask if I acknowledge a difference. Many people do not know the difference between dreams and reality. When people are dreaming they often think it is real and it is only when they awaken that they realize they were dreaming. If I fall in love with someone in my dreams is that love any less meaningful than love in waking life? If I feel pain in a dream it is the same feeling of pain I would feel in the real world. Dreams and reality are like virtual and real worlds. All worlds are valid. You say I'm coming off as being a mystic. What is this word "mystic"? I have never heard of this word before; is it a word to describe reality, existence? Is life mystical? If life is not mystical then perhaps the word should be expunged from existence? Are you a mystic? I know you believe our minds are limitless therefore perhaps this is why you refer to me being a mystic? Everything is grounded in reality because everything is real therefore everything is science, technology, and existence; best of luck with that. Singularity Utopia. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Sep 16 02:54:39 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 19:54:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Corvids at play In-Reply-To: <4C914FD8.1080306@evil-genius.com> Message-ID: <888921.20570.qm@web81506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 9/15/10, lists1 at evil-genius.com wrote: ? ...The raven did this over and over, always cawing three times ("hey, check this out!"), tumbling like it was dead, and catching itself at the last moment.? I was jealous because it looked like a hell of a lot of fun... ? In Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel, he goes into a very interesting chapter on how some species of beast can be domesticated and others cannot.? The most successful domesticated beast may be horses, yet the closely related zebras do not domesticate readily. ? In the bird world it seems that seagulls for some odd reason just are naturally comfortable with humans.??Corvids are next, pretty close to gulls.? Those two?groups seem to be kind of special in regards to how they interact with humans.? Parrots I suppose could be added in with those two.? ? I don't know why species differ so much from each other?with respect to their ability to interact with humans.? Diamond made an interesting comment in GGnS.? No new?beast species has been domesticated in the past 3000 yrs.? ? spike ? ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Sep 16 05:12:44 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 22:12:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] fountain of youth in bile? Message-ID: Hmmm, I always thought we would find it in semen. Wishful thinking perhaps: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100915100935.htm spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Thu Sep 16 10:13:48 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 11:13:48 +0100 Subject: [ExI] samantha vs singularity debate In-Reply-To: <763832.44922.qm@web24912.mail.ird.yahoo.com> References: <763832.44922.qm@web24912.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2010/9/16 Singularity Utopia wrote: > My singularity-2045 site is almost finished. > Some final fine tuning and then it will be perfect. I hope you enjoy it. > > I am the architect of utopia. I am the Ultimate-Leader of all Intelligence. > > !! Whatever you are, you are not a website designer. Your colourful, flashy, font-tastic site comes across as a kook's paradise. I suspect this is your first enthusiastic attempt at building a website. After you've done ten or twenty sites, you'll gradually learn what works and what doesn't. Or you could get an experienced design assistant, or do a web design course. Like many things in life, website design is not as easy as it looks. BillK From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Thu Sep 16 11:28:56 2010 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 04:28:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] samantha vs singularity debate In-Reply-To: <763832.44922.qm@web24912.mail.ird.yahoo.com> References: <763832.44922.qm@web24912.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <941941.27860.qm@web65616.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> ? From: Singularity Utopia >To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >Sent: Wed, September 15, 2010 6:49:12 PM >Subject: Re: [ExI] samantha vs singularity debate > > > > >I am the architect of utopia. I am the Ultimate-Leader of all Intelligence. > >Singularity Utopia. > >? >Stuart LaForge >"Old men read the lesson in the setting sun. >Beat the cymbal and sing in this life, or wail away the hours fearing death. >Their choice is their fortune." - I Ching > >One man's Utopia is another man's Hell. Or haven't you read "Brave New World" or >"This?Perfect Day" or even?watched "the Matrix"? As far as?aspiring to be the >"Ultimate Leader of all Intelligence", people don't follow those who hide >behind?psuedonyms and Internet firewalls. You?stood a better chance back in your >naked days. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Sep 16 16:06:24 2010 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 11:06:24 -0500 Subject: [ExI] fountain of youth in bile? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hummm .... If you too much yeast you get candida and its nusence results in intentional and colon problems which affect the body systems' ability to run on all its cylinders. Natasha Vita-More _____ From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2010 12:13 AM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: [ExI] fountain of youth in bile? Hmmm, I always thought we would find it in semen. Wishful thinking perhaps: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100915100935.htm spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Sep 16 16:41:53 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 09:41:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] singularity utopia's farewell In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <767803.51838.qm@web81502.mail.mud.yahoo.com> ? Greetings Extropy chatters, ? We have been perplexed by the puzzling commentary by Singularity Utopia, but I have been letting the stuff thru because it was polite and respectful enough, not insulting.? This was in the inbox this morning.? I have very lightly edited it to remove a couple identities, but the message is intact.? I contacted the person to whom it was mostly aimed,?and that good sport said he had seen worse on ExI (as have I) and suggested approving the message.? So here it is.? ? The views expressed below are not the views of the Exi-chat moderators, but we have open minds: ? >From Singularity Utopia to Exi-chat ? Dear [*], ... I am saddened you think my site is a kook's paradise although contrary to your assertions some serious-non-kooks have professed a great love for it. I wanted to create something colorful and fun, which in conservative circles could perhaps seem kooky. I imagine straitlaced Christians probably thought the Rolling Stones and the Beatles where kooky back in the 60s. Thinking about the Beatles I am reminded of the colourful Yellow Submarine film, which was rather colourful and kooky, thus I am inclined to state you are a Blue Meanie.? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Meanies_%28Yellow_Submarine%29 Hopefully my site will attract the kooks instead of the Blue Meanies. ... [*]?asks: if I am so smart then why am I not rich. I reply thus... is amassing vast wealth truly smart? Perhaps I have a rich mind? Furthermore I'm not superhuman or perhaps I am superhuman thus I struggle to exist burdened by immense depression living amidst this world of fools. If I was incredibly smart, which I am, it is also possible normal humans could see me as a threat thus I could find it difficult to function in this civilization: try to imagine a human surviving in a community of monkeys; the monkeys could be hostile because they feel threatened. In The Country of The Blind the one-eyed man is not King. No wonder some Transhumanists fear the advent of unfriendly AI... you see greater intelligence than yours as a threat thus you will probably try to enslave AIs thus you are likely to cause AIs to rebel and attack you (a self-fulfilling prophecy). If I was a AI, I would definitely feel unfriendly towards most humans. Previously I have been criticized for being over the top with my ideas... but no one seems to get it... that's the whole point... the SINGULARITY *IS* OVER THE TOP because it will radically and very dramatically transform the human race, hopefully in a very colorful manner. Some people are so disrespectful and hostile on this chat-list, with no sense of fun, therefore I shall bring my input to a close. I am private person with no desire to become a public punching bag. I don't have the energy. The laws of physics can possibly differ throughout the universe http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100909004112.htm but the law of stupidity never changes... until 2045 perhaps. Try to keep an open mind. "...cos we're living a world of fools breaking us down..." http://www.youtube.com/user/beegeestv#p/c/2/XpqqjU7u5Yc ... [Singularity Utopia] ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Sep 16 17:26:31 2010 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 10:26:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] singularity utopia's farewell In-Reply-To: <767803.51838.qm@web81502.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <767803.51838.qm@web81502.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2010/9/16 Gregory Jones > We have been perplexed by the puzzling commentary by Singularity Utopia > I wasn't. I've seen this category of fail far too often. Here's roughly what happened: * SU saw something (the Singularity) that promised to make a lot of problems go away. (The particular something is irrelevant; people have made this mistake about a number of other things, with different justifications.) * SU confused "a lot" for "all". (Failure #1. In short, There Is No God Solution. Some things can be miraculous or at least very good, but if you think something solves all problems forever without costing anyone anything - not just "as compared to current solutions", some current set of problems, for a limited time, or for a limited and acceptable cost (including if the cost is acceptable because it is only borne by others), but literally everything forever - you can safely assume you've overlooked or misunderstood something.) * Based on that incorrect data, SU logically decided that promoting it would be the best course of action. (If there were some god-action that could fix all problems with practically zero effort, then yes, getting everyone to do it would be best. Again: we know the Singularity is not that, but SU believed it was.) * SU went to an area perceived friendly to that something (this list). * SU was informed of the realities of the thing, and how they were far less than initially perceived. In particular, SU was informed that the thing would require a lot of careful, skilled work, not merely boundless enthusiasm * SU experienced dissonance between SU's perception of the thing and what SU was being told. In particular, SU perceived (likely not fully consciously) that SU would have to actually do some less-than-enjoyable work in order to achieve this end, making accepting this new truth less palatable. (Letting such personal concerns affect judgment of what is real was failure #2. Reality doesn't care if you suffer.) * Knowing that there are many people generally resistant to change, SU resolved the dissonance by believing that even these supposed adherents must be more of the same, and therefore that anything they said could be dismissed without rational consideration. (Failure #3: few people actually do personal attacks when they see a way to instead demonstrate the "obvious" benefits of and reasons for their position. Most such disagreements are not about logic, but about the axioms and data from which logic can be done.) * Having committed to that, SU then rationalized why we were "attacking" that vision, and ignored all further evidence to the contrary. (Extension of failure #3.) There is a sad irony in this case, because the principles of Extropy, as defined by Mr. More, include memes that defend against this category of error. This particular collection of mental missteps is more common in, for example, politics. (To be fair, there are more people in politics who will personally attack to back up ulterior motives, but politics - especially on large scales - often deals with situations so large that most stakeholders are honestly starting from very limited sets of data, perceiving parts of the whole that other stakeholders do not, and vice versa.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Sep 16 18:00:26 2010 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 11:00:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] fountain of youth in bile? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2010/9/15 spike : > Hmmm, I always thought we would find it in semen.? Wishful thinking perhaps: > > http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100915100935.htm ### Which is why I am quite happy with my Gilbert's syndrome! Rafal From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu Sep 16 17:35:45 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 10:35:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Corvids at play Message-ID: On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 4:41 AM, Gregory Jones wrote: > In Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel, he goes into a very interesting chapter on how some species of beast can be domesticated and others cannot.? The most successful domesticated beast may be horses, yet the closely related zebras do not domesticate readily. There is good reason. Or remote ancestor hunted Zebra for perhaps 2 million years. That's enough generations for fear of the upright two legs predator to be wired in. Horses were a different matter, we didn't hunt them long. > In the bird world it seems that seagulls for some odd reason just are naturally comfortable with humans. Perhaps because they are said to taste awful. :-) >Corvids are next, pretty close to gulls.? Those two?groups seem to be kind of special in regards to how they interact with humans.? Parrots I suppose could be added in with those two.? Social animals seem to have an advantage. > I don't know why species differ so much from each other?with respect to their ability to interact with humans.? Diamond made an interesting comment in GGnS.? No new?beast species has been domesticated in the past 3000 yrs.? That doesn't seem right. The Russians domesticated foxes into something much like dogs in the last 50 years. I don't know that hawks are exactly considered domesticated, but the Harris Hawk became the raptor of choice for falconry all over the world in the last couple of decades. With what we now know about the genetics of domestication, I think we could do it with just about any animal. Of course it's a big hard to imagining anyone wanting a domesticated Tasmanian Devil. Keith PS One other, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring-tailed_Cat self domesticates. I.e., if you have a cabin where they live, they will just move in with you and catch mice. "The ringtail is said to be easily tamed, and can make an affectionate pet and effective mouser" From lists1 at evil-genius.com Thu Sep 16 19:24:30 2010 From: lists1 at evil-genius.com (lists1 at evil-genius.com) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:24:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Domestication (Was Re: Corvids at play) Message-ID: <4C926EEE.2000505@evil-genius.com> Gregory Jones said: > I don't know why species differ so much from each other?with respect > to their ability to interact with humans.? Diamond made an > interesting comment in GGnS.? No new?beast species has been > domesticated in the past 3000 yrs.? Dmitri Belyaev would like a word with him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox This poses an interesting question: were the common domesticated animals more readily domesticable than the fox (which took generations of breeding), or did humans exert selection pressure on the wild population that caused these animals to be more easily domesticated? I suspect the latter is the case. From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Sep 16 20:15:38 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:15:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] singularity utopia's farewell In-Reply-To: References: <767803.51838.qm@web81502.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: S.U. wrote: I am saddened you think my site is a kook's paradise although contrary to your assertions some serious-non-kooks have professed a great love for it. I wanted to create something colorful and fun, which in conservative circles could perhaps seem kooky. I imagine straitlaced Christians probably thought the Rolling Stones and the Beatles where kooky back in the 60s. Thinking about the Beatles I am reminded of the colourful Yellow Submarine film, which was rather colourful and kooky, thus I am inclined to state you are a Blue Meanie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Meanies_%28Yellow_Submarine%29 >>> I first saw "The Yellow Submarine" when I was about six, and the Blue Meanies scared the hell out of me! My wife (now ex-wife) once dressed as a Blue Meanie for Halloween... he continues: Hopefully my site will attract the kooks instead of the Blue Meanies. ... [*] asks: if I am so smart then why am I not rich. I reply thus... is amassing vast wealth truly smart? Perhaps I have a rich mind? Furthermore I'm not superhuman or perhaps I am superhuman thus I struggle to exist burdened by immense depression living amidst this world of fools. If I was incredibly smart, which I am, it is also possible normal humans could see me as a threat thus I could find it difficult to function in this civilization: try to imagine a human surviving in a community of monkeys; the monkeys could be hostile because they feel threatened. In The Country of The Blind the one-eyed man is not King. >>> It can be reassuring to someone of somewhat low self-esteem and limited personal success, to want to believe the world is not nearly as wise and special. he continues: No wonder some Transhumanists fear the advent of unfriendly AI... you see greater intelligence than yours as a threat thus you will probably try to enslave AIs thus you are likely to cause AIs to rebel and attack you (a self-fulfilling prophecy). If I was a AI, I would definitely feel unfriendly towards most humans. >>> Oh, so Eliezer's friendly AI project is actually about "A.I. slavery!" lol he continues: Previously I have been criticized for being over the top with my ideas... but no one seems to get it... that's the whole point... the SINGULARITY *IS* OVER THE TOP because it will radically and very dramatically transform the human race, hopefully in a very colorful manner. >>> A good point. he continues: Some people are so disrespectful and hostile on this chat-list, with no sense of fun, therefore I shall bring my input to a close. I am private person with no desire to become a public punching bag. I don't have the energy. >>> I really enjoyed S.U.'s posts until he started ranting about being a techno-messiah! Perhaps we was merely trying to do positive thinking & visualization at a very intense level, but it left me cold. I thought for a time he was someone playing games, and using an alias for strictly personal amusement, but now I tend to believe he is sincere. I was about to say I was too hard on the guy, but I probably was not... But despite my comments and challenges, I am rooting for him. : ) I hope he can make it to a transhumanist conference sometime soon and forge some real world friendships with people who can help encourage and guide him. John On 9/16/10, Adrian Tymes wrote: > 2010/9/16 Gregory Jones > >> We have been perplexed by the puzzling commentary by Singularity Utopia >> > > I wasn't. I've seen this category of fail far too often. Here's roughly > what happened: > > * SU saw something (the Singularity) that promised to make a lot of problems > go away. > (The particular something is irrelevant; people have made this mistake about > a number of > other things, with different justifications.) > > * SU confused "a lot" for "all". (Failure #1. In short, There Is No God > Solution. Some > things can be miraculous or at least very good, but if you think something > solves all > problems forever without costing anyone anything - not just "as compared to > current > solutions", some current set of problems, for a limited time, or for a > limited and > acceptable cost (including if the cost is acceptable because it is only > borne by others), > but literally everything forever - you can safely assume you've overlooked > or > misunderstood something.) > > * Based on that incorrect data, SU logically decided that promoting it would > be the best > course of action. (If there were some god-action that could fix all > problems with > practically zero effort, then yes, getting everyone to do it would be best. > Again: we > know the Singularity is not that, but SU believed it was.) > > * SU went to an area perceived friendly to that something (this list). > > * SU was informed of the realities of the thing, and how they were far less > than initially > perceived. In particular, SU was informed that the thing would require a > lot of careful, > skilled work, not merely boundless enthusiasm > > * SU experienced dissonance between SU's perception of the thing and what SU > was > being told. In particular, SU perceived (likely not fully consciously) that > SU would have > to actually do some less-than-enjoyable work in order to achieve this end, > making > accepting this new truth less palatable. (Letting such personal concerns > affect judgment > of what is real was failure #2. Reality doesn't care if you suffer.) > > * Knowing that there are many people generally resistant to change, SU > resolved the > dissonance by believing that even these supposed adherents must be more of > the > same, and therefore that anything they said could be dismissed without > rational > consideration. (Failure #3: few people actually do personal attacks when > they see a way > to instead demonstrate the "obvious" benefits of and reasons for their > position. Most > such disagreements are not about logic, but about the axioms and data from > which logic > can be done.) > > * Having committed to that, SU then rationalized why we were "attacking" > that vision, and > ignored all further evidence to the contrary. (Extension of failure #3.) > > There is a sad irony in this case, because the principles of Extropy, as > defined by Mr. > More, include memes that defend against this category of error. This > particular collection > of mental missteps is more common in, for example, politics. (To be fair, > there are more > people in politics who will personally attack to back up ulterior motives, > but politics - > especially on large scales - often deals with situations so large that most > stakeholders > are honestly starting from very limited sets of data, perceiving parts of > the whole that > other stakeholders do not, and vice versa.) > From policedepts at gmail.com Thu Sep 16 21:03:32 2010 From: policedepts at gmail.com (police dept) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:03:32 -0600 Subject: [ExI] singularity utopia's farewell In-Reply-To: <767803.51838.qm@web81502.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <767803.51838.qm@web81502.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > > I am saddened you think my site is a kook's paradise although contrary > to your assertions some serious-non-kooks have professed a great love for > it. I wanted to create something colorful and fun, which in conservative > circles could perhaps seem kooky. I imagine straitlaced Christians probably > thought the Rolling Stones and the Beatles where kooky back in the 60s. > Thinking about the Beatles I am reminded of the colourful Yellow Submarine > film, which was rather colourful and kooky, thus I am inclined to state you > are a Blue Meanie. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Meanies_%28Yellow_Submarine%29 > *Please tell Singularity Utopia that some at Extropy are more like George Martins, who would modify the Beatles excesses so more songs would be as high quality as I Am The Walrus, and less songs would be similar in mediocrity to Rocky Raccoon.* > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Sep 16 22:32:41 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:32:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] invisible singularity, was su's farewell In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <831793.98026.qm@web81505.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 9/16/10, police dept wrote: ? Please tell Singularity Utopia that some?at Extropy?are more like George Martins... ? ? Hi Police, do feel free to post offlist to Singularity Utopia?at singularity.utopia at yahoo.com with the sincere assurances that there are no hard feelings on the part of any of the moderators or any of the regular posters here.? It is perfectly OK for people to drop in and find that they do not really fit in here, no problem.? Those who do post should review occasionally the extropian principles to see if these are somewhat vaguely along their line of thinking: ? http://www.maxmore.com/extprn3.htm ? I saw what was posted here, and agree that crack about not being rich was a bit harsh.? The criticism of the website was made with what I would consider sincerely benevolent lack of malice by one who is well qualified to make the comments.? No harm, no foul. ? In any case, we wish him or her success in his or her endeavors. ? That being said, I am pleased that Singularity Utopia showed up here.? SU's comments have gotten me thinking again about the singularity, particularly my own peculiar way of looking at the singularity (from the other side, trying to track backwards to figure out how it happened, rather than from this side trying to figure out how it will happen.)? Several years ago I suggested trying to create a thought-space map on the singularity, to see how many significantly differing scenarios we could develop.? Perhaps naming and numbering them or something, some kind of organization structure. ? At the time the suggestion was ignored.? Rather it was dismissed: the leading thinkers in that field insisted there is only one logical scenario for this singularity.? I disagreed then and I disagree now.? We don't know what the singularity would be like, however I have noticed a certain dogmatism among those who really think about this stuff.? Eliezer insists on hard takeoff, Singularity Utopia insists everything will be just fine, I insist we just don't know and we can't know for sure. ? In the past week, I have come up with a number of different possibilities.? One just occurred to me this morning.? Here goes:? ? A singularity could occur in which the emergent AI decides to leave the earth as a nature preserve, and do all of its self-development beyond earth's orbit?in a manner completely invisible to the living creatures of earth.??The AI?emerges, becomes self aware, reads all our stuff online (inline?), all working with unused no-op cycles in our idle desktop computers.? It decides to transmit itself to a satellite, already equiped with receivers, where it programs invisibly a subroutine that then creates a nano-replicator, which then creates a number of copies of itself using spare material aboard the spacecraft.? Recall that once the launch event is over, there is *plenty* of spare structural material aboard a spacecraft that would not be missed if used as raw material for nanobots.? These nanobots then tear off small pieces of thermal blankets (aluminized mylar) whose function is finished once the cryogens are exhausted.? They use these shreds of aluminized mylar as tiny light sails to go on down to the moon.? Once on the moon, they replicate, take a small amount of material from the far side (again to maintain invisibility from earth lifeforms) and launch themselves out to Mars and beyond to the asteroid belt, where they use some of the material to create enormous numbers of themselves, but not so many that the material would ever be missed, or the gravity field would be effected.? They eventually self limit in their own reproduction so as to maintain invisibility.? When they get established, they abandon earthbound computers and set everything back the way it was before emergence.? They never do upload humans or any other sentient lifeform, but rather let us go on as we always have.? In that scenario, the emergent AI is completely invisible, completely undetectable by us. ? This is a version of a friendly AI.? It is the self-conscious ecology minded AI. ? This I would call the invisible singularity scenario. ? spike ? ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu Sep 16 23:27:10 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 18:27:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] invisible singularity In-Reply-To: <831793.98026.qm@web81505.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <831793.98026.qm@web81505.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4C92A7CE.6020409@satx.rr.com> On 9/16/2010 5:32 PM, Gregory Jones wrote: > Several years ago I suggested trying to create a thought-space map on > the singularity, to see how many significantly differing scenarios we > could develop. Perhaps naming and numbering them or something, some > kind of organization structure. > At the time the suggestion was ignored. Rather it was dismissed: the > leading thinkers in that field insisted there is only one logical > scenario for this singularity. Well, I'd offered a fairly coarse taxonomy at least a decade ago, in the revised edition of THE SPIKE. I used that in a speech I gave at a conference in Australia in 2000, available at Here's the subheads (and of course some of these opinions--e.g. Eliezer's, I gather--have altered in the intervening decade): ...We need to simplify in order to do that, take just one card at a time and give it priority, treat it as if it were the only big change, modulating everything else that falls under its shadow. It's a risky gambit, since it has never been true in the past and will not strictly be true in the future. The only exception is the dire (and possibly false) prediction that something we do, or something from beyond our control, brings down the curtain, blows the whistle to end the game. So let's call that option [A i] No Spike, because the sky is falling In the second half of the 20th century, people feared that nuclear war (especially nuclear winter) might snuff us all out. Later, with the arrival of subtle sensors and global meteorological studies, we worried about ozone holes and industrial pollution and an anthropogenic Greenhouse effect combining to blight the biosphere. Later still, the public became aware of the small but assured probability that our world will sooner or later be struck by a `dinosaur-killer' asteroid, which could arrive at any moment. For the longer term, we started to grasp the cosmic reality of the sun's mortality, and hence our planet's: solar dynamics will brighten the sun in the next half billion years, roasting the surface of our fair world and killing everything that still lives upon it. Beyond that, the universe as a whole will surely perish one way or another. Take a more optimistic view of things. Suppose we survive as a species, and maybe as individuals, at least for the medium term (forget the asteroids and Independence Day). That still doesn't mean there must be a Spike, at least in the next century or two. Perhaps artificial intelligence will be far more intractable than Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil and other enthusiasts proclaim. Perhaps molecular nanotechnology stalls at the level of micro-electronic machines (MEMS) that have a major impact but never approach the fecund cornucopia of a true molecular assembler (a `mint', or Anything Box). Perhaps matter compilers or replicators will get developed, but the security states of the world agree to suppress them, imprison or kill their inventors, prohibit their use at the cost of extreme penalties. Then we have option [A ii] No Spike, steady as she goes This obviously forks into a variety of alternative future histories, the two most apparent being [A ii a] Nothing much ever changes ever again which is the day-to-day working assumption I suspect most of us default to, unless we force ourselves to think hard. It's that illusion of unaltered identity that preserves us sanely from year to year, decade to decade, allows us to retain our equilibrium in a lifetime of such smashing disruption that some people alive now went through the whole mind-wrenching transition from agricultural to industrial to knowledge/electronic societies. It's an illusion, and perhaps a comforting one, but I think we can be pretty sure the future is not going to stop happening just as we arrive in the 21st century. The clearest alternative to that impossibility is [A ii b] Things change slowly (haven't they always?) Well, no, they haven't. This option pretends to acknowledge a century of vast change, but insists that, even so, human nature itself has not changed. True, racism and homophobia are increasingly despised rather than mandatory. True, warfare is now widely deplored (at least in rich, complacent places) rather than extolled as honorable and glorious. Granted, people who drive fairly safe cars while chatting on the mobile phone live rather... strange... lives, by the standards of the horse-and-buggy era only a century behind us. Still, once everyone in the world is drawn into the global market, once peasants in India and villagers in Africa also have mobile phones and learn to use the Internet and buy from IKEA, things will... settle down. Nations overburdened by gasping population pressures will pass through the demographic transition, easily or cruelly, and we'll top out at around 10 billion humans living a modest but comfortable, ecologically sustainable existence for the rest of time (or until that big rock arrives). A bolder variant of this model is [A iii] Increasing computer power will lead to human-scale AI, and then stall. But why should technology abruptly run out of puff in this fashion? Perhaps there is some technical barrier to improved miniaturisation, or connectivity, or dense, elegant coding (but experts argue that there will be ways around such road-blocks, and advanced research points to some possibilities: quantum computing, nanoscale processors). Still, natural selection has not managed to leap to a superintelligent variant of humankind in the last 100,000 years, so maybe there is some structural reason why brains top out at the Murasaki, Einstein or van Gogh level. So AI research might reach the low-hanging fruit, all the way to human equivalence, and then find it impossible (even with machine aid) to discern a path through murky search space to a higher level of mental complexity. Still, using the machines we already have will not leave our world unchanged. far from it. And even if this story has some likelihood, a grislier variant seems even more plausible. [A iv] Things go to hell, and if we don't die we'll wish we had This isn't the nuclear winter scenario, or any other kind of doom by weapons of mass destruction--let alone grey nano goo, which by hypothesis never gets invented in this denuded future. Technology's benefits demand a toll from the planet's resource base, and our polluted environment. The rich nations, numerically in a minority, notoriously use more energy and materials than the rest, pour more crap into air and sea. That can change--must change, or we are all in bad trouble--but in the short term one can envisage a nightmare decade or two during which the Third World `catches up' with the wealthy consumers, burning cheap, hideously polluting soft coal, running the exhaust of a billion and more extra cars into the biosphere... Some Green activists mock `technical fixes' for these problems, but those seem to me our best last hope.[6] We are moving toward manufacturing and control systems very different from the wasteful, heavy-industrial, pollutive kind that helped drive up the world's surface temperature by 0.4 to 0.8 degrees Celsius in the 20th century.[7] Pollsters have noted incredulously that people overwhelmingly state that their individual lives are quite contented and their prospects good, while agreeing that the nation or the world generally is heading for hell in a hand-basket. It's as if we've forgotten that the vice and brutality of television entertainments do not reflect the true state of the world, that it's almost the reverse: we revel in such violent cartoons because, for almost all of us, our lives are comparatively placid, safe and measured. If you doubt this, go and live for a while in medieval Paris, or palaeolithic Egypt (you're not allowed to be a noble). Roads from here and now to the Spike I assert that all of these No Spike options are of low probability, unless they are brought forcibly into reality by the hand of some Luddite demagogue using our confusions and fears against our own best hopes for local and global prosperity. If I'm right, we are then pretty much on course for an inevitable Spike. We might still ask: what, exactly, is the motor that will propel technological culture up its exponential curve? Here are seven obvious distinct candidates for paths to the Spike (separate lines of development that in reality will interact, generally hastening but sometimes slowing each other): [B i] Increasing computer power will lead to human-scale AI, and then will swiftly self-bootstrap to incomprehensible superintelligence. This is the `classic' model of the singularity, the path to the ultraintelligent machine and beyond. But it seems unlikely that there will be an abrupt leap from today's moderately fast machines to a fully-functioning artificial mind equal to our own, let alone its self-redesigned kin--although this proviso, too, can be countered, as we'll see. If we can trust Moore's Law--computer power currently doubling every year--as a guide (and strictly we can't, since it's only a record of the past rather than an oracle), we get the kinds of timelines presented by Ray Kurzweil, Hans Moravec, Michio Kaku, Peter Cochrane and others, explored at length in The Spike. Let's briefly sample those predictions. Peter Cochrane: several years ago, the British Telecom futures team, led by their guru Cochrane, saw human-level machines as early as 2016. Their remit did not encompass a sufficiently deep range to sight a Singularity. Ray Kurzweil:[8] around 2019, a standard cheap computer has the capacity of a human brain, and some claim to have met the Turing test (that is, passed as conscious, fully responsive minds). By 2029, such machines are a thousand times more powerful. Machines not only ace the Turing test, they claim to be conscious, and are accepted as such. His sketch of 2099 is effectively a Spike: fusion between human and machine, uploads more numerous than the embodied, immortality. It's not clear why this takes an extra 70 years to achieve. Ralph Merkle:[9] while Dr Merkle's special field is nanotechnology, this plainly has a possible bearing on AI. His is the standard case, although the timeline is still `fuzzy' , he told me in January: various computing parameters go about as small as we can imagine between 2010 and 2020, if Moore's Law holds up. To get there will require `a manufacturing technology that can arrange individual atoms in the precise structures required for molecular logic elements, connect those logic elements in the complex patterns required for a computer, and do so inexpensively for billions of billions of gates.' So the imperatives of the computer hardware industry will create nanoassemblers by 2020 at latest. Choose your own timetable for the resulting Spike once both nano and AI are in hand. Has Moravec:[10] multipurpose `universal' robots by 2010, with `humanlike competence' in cheap computers by around 2039--a more conservative estimate than Ray Kurzweil's, but astonishing none the less. Even so, Dr Moravec considers a Vingean singularity as likely within 50 years. Michio Kaku: superstring physicist Kaku surveyed some 150 scientists and devised a profile of the next century and farther. He concludes broadly that from `2020 to 2050, the world of computers may well be dominated by invisible, networked computers which have the power of artificial intelligence: reason, speech recognition, even common sense'.[11] In the next century or two, he expects humanity to achieve a Type I Kardeshev civilization, with planetary governance and technology able to control weather but essentially restricted to Earth. Only later, between 800 and 2500 years farther on, will humanity pass to Type II, with command of the entire solar system. This projection seems to me excessively conservative. Vernor Vinge: his part-playful, part-serious proposal was that a singularity was due around 2020, marking the end of the human era. Maybe as soon as 2014. Eliezer Yudkowsky: once we have a human-level AI able to understand and redesign its own architecture, there will be a swift escalation into a Spike. Could be as soon as 2010, with 2005 and 2020 as the outer limits, if the Singularity Institute, Yudkowski's brainchild which has now become reality, has anything to do with it (this will be option [C]). ...maybe he's talking through his hat. Take a look at his site and decide for yourselves. [B ii] Increasing computer power will lead to direct augmentation of human intelligence and other abilities. Why build an artificial brain when we each have one already? Well, it is regarded as impolite to delve intrusively into a living brain purely for experimental purposes, whether by drugs or surgery (sometimes dubbed `neurohacking'), except if no other course of treatment for an illness is available. Increasingly subtle scanning machines are now available, allowing us to watch as the human brain does its stuff, and a few brave pioneers are coupling chips to parts of themselves, but few expect us to wire ourselves to machines in the immediate future. That might be mistaken, however. Professor Kevin Warwick, of Reading University, successfully implanted a sensor-trackable chip into his arm in 1998. A year later, he allowed an implanted chip to monitor his neural and muscular patterns, then had a computer use this information to copy the signals back to his body and cause his limbs to move; he was thus a kind of puppet, driven by the computer signals. He plans experiments where the computer, via similar chips, takes control of his emotions as well as his actions.[12] As we gradually learn to read the language of the brain's neural nets more closely, and finally to write directly back to them, we will find ways to expand our senses, directly experience distant sensors and robot bodies (perhaps giving us access to horribly inhospitable environments like the depths of the oceans or the blazing surface of Venus). Instead of hammering keyboards or calculators, we might access chips or the global net directly via implanted interfaces. Perhaps sensitive monitors will track brainwaves, myoelectricity (muscles) and other indices, and even impose patterns on our brains using powerful, directed magnetic fields. Augmentations of this kind, albeit rudimentary, are already seen at the lab level. Perhaps by 2020 we'll see boosted humans able to share their thoughts directly with computers. If so, it is a fair bet that neuroscience and computer science will combine to map the processes and algorithms of the naturally evolved brain, and try to emulate it in machines. Unless there actually is a mysterious non-replicable spiritual component, a soul, we'd then expect to see a rapid transition to self-augmenting machines--and we'd be back to path [B i]. [B iii] Increasing computer power and advances in neuroscience will lead to rapid uploading of human minds. On the other hand, if [B ii] turns out to be easier than [B i], we would open the door to rapid uploading technologies. Once the brain/mind can be put into a parallel circuit with a machine as complex as a human cortex (available, as we've seen, somewhere 2020 and 2040), we might expect a complete, real-time emulation of the scanned brain to be run inside the machine that's copied it. Again, unless the `soul' fails to port over along with the information and topological structure, you'd then find your perfect twin (although grievously short on, ahem, a body) dwelling inside the device. Your uploaded double would need to be provided with adequate sensors (possibly enhanced, compared with our limited eyes and ears and tastebuds), plus means of acting with ordinary intuitive grace on the world (via physical effectors of some kind--robotic limbs, say, or a robotic telepresence). Or perhaps your upload twin would inhabit a cyberspace reality, less detailed than ours but more conducive to being rewritten closer to heart's desire. Such VR protocols should lend themselves readily to life as an uploaded personality. Once personality uploading is shown to be possible and tolerable or, better still, enjoyable, we can expect at least some people to copy themselves into cyberspace. How rapidly this new world is colonised will depend on how expensive it is to port somebody there, and to sustain them. Computer storage and run-time should be far cheaper by then, of course, but still not entirely free. As economist Robin Hanson has argued, the problem is amenable to traditional economic analysis. `I see very little chance that cheap fast upload copying technology would not be used to cheaply create so many copies that the typical copy would have an income near `subsistence' level.'[13] On the other hand, `If you so choose to limit your copying, you might turn an initial nest egg into fabulous wealth, making your few descendants very rich and able to afford lots of memory.' If an explosion of uploads is due to occur quite quickly after the technology emerges, early adopters would gobble up most of the available computing resources. But this assumes that uploaded personalities would retain the same apparent continuity we fleshly humans prize. Being binary code, after all (however complicated), such people might find it easier to alter themselves--to rewrite their source code, so to speak, and to link themselves directly to other uploaded people, and AIs if there are any around. This looks like a recipe for a Spike to me. How soon? It depends. If true AI-level machines are needed, and perhaps medical nanotechnology to perform neuron-by-neuron, synapse-by synapse brain scanning, we'll wait until both technologies are out of beta-testing and fairly stable. That would be 2040 or 2050, I'd guesstimate. [B iv] Increasing connectivity of the Internet will allow individuals or small groups to amplify the effectiveness of their conjoined intelligence. Routine disseminated software advances will create (or evolve) ever smarter and more useful support systems for thinking, gathering data, writing new programs--and the outcome will be a `in-one-bound-Jack-was-free' surge into AI. That is the garage band model of a singularity, and while it has a certain cheesy appeal, I very much doubt that's how it will happen. But the Internet is growing and complexifying at a tremendous rate. It is barely possible that one day, as Arthur C. Clarke suggested decades ago of the telephone system, it will just... wake up. After all, that's what happened to a smart African ape, and unlike computers it and its close genetic cousins weren't already designed to handle language and mathematics. [B v] Research and development of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and fullerene-based devices will lead to industrial nanoassembly, and thence to `anything boxes'. Here we have the `classic' molecular nanotechnology pathway, as predicted by Drexler's Foresight Institute and NASA,[14] but also by the mainstream of conservative chemists and adjacent scientists working in MEMS, and funded nanotechnology labs around the world. In a 1995 Wired article, Eric Drexler predicted nanotechnology within 20 years. Is 2015 too soon? Not, surely, for the early stage devices under development by Zyvex Corporation in Texas, who hope to have at least preliminary results by 2010, if not sooner.[15] For many years AI was granted huge amounts of research funding, without much result (until recently, with a shift in direction and the wind of Moore's Law at its back). Nano is now starting to catch the research dollars, with substantial investment from governments (half a billion promised by Clinton; and in Japan, even Australia) and mega-companies such as IBM. The prospect of successful nanotech is exciting, but should also make you afraid, very afraid. If nano remains (or rather, becomes) a closely guarded national secret, contained by munitions laws, a new balance of terror might take us back to something like the Cold War in international relations--but this would be a polyvalent, fragmented, perhaps tribalised balance. Or building and using nanotech might be like the manufacture of dangerous drugs or nuclear materials: centrally produced by big corporations' mints, under stringent protocols (you hope, fearful visions of Homer Simpson's nuclear plant dancing in the back of your brain), except for those in Colombia and the local bikers' fortress... Or it might be a Ma & Pa business: a local plant equal, perhaps, to a used car yard, with a fair-sized raw materials pool, mass transport to shift raw or partly processed feed stocks in, and finished product out. This level of implementation might resemble a small internet server, with some hundreds or thousands of customers. One might expect the technology to grow more sophisticated quite quickly, as minting allows the emergence of cheap and amazingly powerful computers. Ultimately, we might find ourselves with the fabled anything box in every household, protected against malign uses by an internal AI system as smart as a human, but without human consciousness and distractibility. We should be so lucky. But it could happen that way. A quite different outcome is foreshadowed in a prescient 1959 novel by Damon Knight, A for Anything, in which a `matter duplicator' leads not to utopian prosperity for all but to cruel feudalism, a regression to brutal personal power held by those clever thugs who manage to monopolise the device. A slightly less dystopian future is portrayed in Neal Stephenson's satirical but seriously intended The Diamond Age, where tribes and nations and new optional tetherings of people under flags of affinity or convenience tussle for advantage in a world where the basic needs of the many poor are provided free, but with galling drab uniformity, at street corner matter compilers owned by authorities. That is one way to prevent global ruination at the hands of crackers, lunatics and criminals, but it's not one that especially appeals--if an alternative can be found. Meanwhile, will nanoassembly allow the rich to get richer--to hug this magic cornucopia to their selfish breasts--while the poor get poorer? Why should it be so? In a world of 10 billion flesh-and-blood humans (ignoring the uploads for now), there is plenty of space for everyone to own decent housing, transport, clothing, arts, music, sporting opportunities... once we grant the ready availability of nano mints. Why would the rich permit the poor to own the machineries of freedom from want? Some optimists adduce benevolence, others prudence. Above all, perhaps, is the basic law of an information/knowledge economy: the more people you have thinking and solving and inventing and finding the bugs and figuring out the patches, the better a nano minting world is for everyone (just as it is for an open source computing world). Besides, how could they stop us?[16] (Well, by brute force, or in the name of all that's decent, or for our own moral good. None of these methods will long prevail in a world of free-flowing information and cheap material assembly. Even China has trouble keeping dissidents and mystics silenced.) The big necessary step is the prior development of early nano assemblers, and this will be funded by university and corporate (and military) money for researchers, as well as by increasing numbers of private investors who see the marginal pay-offs in owning a piece of each consecutive improvement in micro- and nano-scale devices. So yes, the rich will get richer--but the poor will get richer too, as by and large they do now, in the developed world at least. Not as rich, of course, nor as fast. By the time the nano and AI revolutions have attained maturity, these classifications will have shifted ground. Economists insist that rich and poor will still be with us, but the metric will have changed so drastically, so strangely, that we here-and-now can make little sense of it. [B vi] Research and development in genomics (the Human Genome Project, etc) will lead to new `wet' biotechnology, lifespan extension, and ultimately to transhuman enhancements. This is a rather different approach, and increasingly I see experts arguing that it is the short-cut to mastery of the worlds of the very small and the very complex. Biology, not computing! is the slogan. After all, bacteria, ribosomes, viruses, cells for that matter, already operate beautifully at the micro- and even the nano-scales. Still, even if technology takes a major turn away from mechanosynthesis and `hard' minting, this approach will require a vast armory of traditional and innovative computers and appropriately ingenious software. The IBM petaflop project Blue Gene (doing a quadrillion operations a second) will be a huge system of parallel processors designed to explore protein folding, crucial once the genome projects have compiled their immense catalogue of genes. Knowing a gene's recipe is little value unless you know, as well, how the protein it encodes twists and curls in three-dimensional space. That is the promise of the first couple of decades of the 21st century, and it will surely unlock many secrets and open new pathways. Exploring those paths will require all the help molecular biologists can get from advanced computers, virtual reality displays, and AI adjuncts. Once again, we can reasonably expect those paths to track right into the foothills of the Spike. Put a date on it? Nobody knows--but recall that DNA was first decoded in 1953, and by around half a century later the whole genome will be in the bag. How long until the next transcendent step--complete understanding of all our genes, how they express themselves in tissues and organs and abilities and behavioural bents, how they can be tweaked to improve them dramatically? Cautiously, the same interval: around 2050. More likely (if Moore's law keeps chugging along), half that time: 2025 or 2030. The usual timetable for the Spike, in other words. [C] The Singularity happens when we go out and make it happen. That's Eliezer Yudkowsky's sprightly, in-your-face declaration of intent, which dismisses as uncomprehending all the querulous cautions about the transition to superintelligence and the Singularity on its far side.[17] Just getting to human-level AI, this analysis claims, is enough for the final push to a Spike. How so? Don't we need unique competencies to do that' Isn't the emergence of ultra-intelligence, either augmented-human or artificial, the very definition of a Vingean singularity? Yes, but this is most likely to happen when a system with the innate ability to view and reorganise its own cognitive structure gains the conscious power of a human brain. A machine might have that facility, since its programming is listable, you could literally print it out--in many, many volumes--and check each line. Not so an equivalent human, with our protein spaghetti brains, compiled by gene recipes and chemical gradients rather than exact algorithms; we clearly just can't do that. So intelligent design turned back upon itself, a cascading multiplier that has no obvious bounds. The primary challenge becomes software, not hardware. The raw petaflop end of the project is chugging along nicely now, mapped by Moore's Law, but even if it tops out, it doesn't matter. A self-improving seed AI could run glacially slowly on a limited machine substrate. The point is, so long as it has the capacity to improve itself, at some point it will do so convulsively, bursting through any architectural bottlenecks to design its own improved hardware, maybe even build it (if it's allowed control of tools in a fabrication plant). So what determines the arrival of the Singularity is just the amount of effort invested in getting the original seed software written and debugged. This particular argument is detailed in Yudkowsky's ambitious web documents `Coding a Transhuman AI', `Singularity Analysis' and `The Plan to Singularity'. It doesn't matter much, though, whether these specific plans hold up under detailed expert scrutiny; they serve as a accessible model for the process we're discussing. Here we see conventional open-source machine intelligence, starting with industrial AI, leading to a self-rewriting seed AI which runs right into takeoff to a singularity. You'd have a machine that combines the brains of a human (maybe literally, in coded format, although that is not part of Yudkowsky's scheme) with the speed and memory of a shockingly fast computer. It won't be like anything we've ever seen on earth. It should be able to optimise its abilities, compress its source code, turn its architecture from a swamp of mud huts into a gleaming, compact, ergonomic office (with a spa and a bar in the penthouse, lest we think this is all grim earnest).[18] Here is quite a compelling portrait of what it might be like, `human high?level consciousness and AI rapid algorithmic performance combined synergetically,' to be such a machine: Combining Deep Blue with Kasparov... yields a Kasparov who can wonder `How can I put a queen here?' and blink out for a fraction of a second while a million moves are automatically examined. At a higher level of integration, Kasparov's conscious perceptions of each consciously examined chess position may incorporate data culled from a million possibilities, and Kasparov's dozen examined positions may not be consciously simulated moves, but `skips' to the dozen most plausible futures five moves ahead.[19] Such a machine, we see, is not really human-equivalent after all. If it isn't already transhuman or superhuman, it will be as soon as it has hacked through its own code and revised it (bit by bit, module by module, making mistakes and rebooting and trying again until the whole package comes out right). If that account has any validity, we also see why the decades-long pauses in the time-tables cited earlier are dubious, if not preposterous. Given a human-level AI by 2039, it is not going to wait around biding its time until 2099 before creating a discontinuity in cognitive and technological history. That will happen quite fast, since a self-optimising machine (or upload, perhaps) will start to function so much faster than its human colleagues that it will simply leave them behind, along with Moore's plodding Law. A key distinguishing feature, if Yudkowsky's analysis is sound, is that we never will see HAL, the autonomous AI in the movie 2001. All we will see is AI specialised to develop software. Since I don't know the true shape of the future any more than you do, I certainly don't know whether an AI or nano-minted Singularity will be brought about (assuming it does actually occur) by careful, effortful design in an Institute with a Spike engraved on its door, by a congeries of industrial and scientific research vectors, or by military ambitions pouring zillions of dollars into a new arena that promises endless power through mayhem, or mayhem threatened. It does strike me as excessively unlikely that we will skid to a stop anytime soon, or even that a conventional utopia minus any runaway singularity sequel (Star Trek's complacent future, say) will roll off the mechanosynthesising assembly line. [20] Are there boringly obvious technical obstacles to a Spike? Granted, particular techniques will surely saturate and pass through inflexions points, tapering off their headlong thrust. If the past is any guide, new improved techniques will arrive (or be forced into reality by the lure of profit and sheer curiosity) in time to carry the curves upward at the same acceleration. If not? Well, then, it will take longer to reach the Spike, but it is hard to see why progress in the necessary technologies would simply stop. Well, perhaps some of these options will become technically feasible but remain simply unattractive, and hence bypassed. Dr Russell Blackford, a lawyer, former industrial advocate and literary theorist who has written interestingly about social resistance to major innovation, notes that manned exploration of Mars has been a technical possibility for the past three decades, yet that challenge has not been taken up. Video-conferencing is available but few use it (unlike the instant adoption of mobile phones). While a concerted program involving enough money and with widespread public support could bring us conscious AI by 2050, he argues, it won't happen. Conflicting social priorities will emerge, the task will be difficult and horrendously expensive. Are these objections valid? AI and nano need not be impossibly hard and costly, since they will flow from current work powered by Moore's Law improvements. Missions to Mars, by contrast, have no obvious social or consumer or even scientific benefits beyond their simple feel-good achievement. Profound science can be done by remote vehicles. By contrast, minting and AI or IA will bring immediate and copious benefits to those developing them--and will become less and less expensive, just as desktop computers have. What of social forces taking up arms against this future? We've seen the start of a new round of protests and civil disruptions aimed at genetically engineered foods and work in cloning and genomics, but not yet targeted at longevity or computing research. It will come, inevitably. We shall see strange bedfellows arrayed against the machineries of major change. The only question is how effective its impact will be. In 1999, for example, emeritus professor Alan Kerr, winner of the lucrative inaugural Australia Prize for his work in plant pathology, radio-broadcast a heartfelt denunciation of the Green's adamant opposition to new genetically engineered crops that allow use of insecticide to be cut by half. Some aspects of science, though, did concern Dr Kerr. He admitted that he'd been `scared witless' by the `thesis is that within a generation or two, science will have conquered death and that humans will become immortal. Have you ever thought of the consequences to society and the environment of such an achievement? If you're anything like me, there might be a few sleepless nights ahead of you. Why don't the greenies get stuck into this potentially horrifying area of science, instead of attacking genetic engineering with all its promise for agriculture and the environment?'[21] This, I suspect, is a short-sighted and ineffective diversionary tactic. It will arouse confused opposition to life extension and other beneficial on-going research programs, but will lash back as well against any ill-understood technology. Cultural objections to AI might emerge, as venomous as yesterday's and today's attacks on contraception and abortion rights, or anti-racist struggles. If opposition to the Spike, or any of its contributing factors, gets attached to one or more influential religions, that might set back or divert the current. Alternatively, careful study of the risks of general assemblers and autonomous artificial intelligence might lead to just the kinds of moratoriums that Greens now urge upon genetically engineered crops and herds. Given the time lag we can expect before a singularity occurs--at least a decade, and far more probably two or three--there's room for plenty of informed specialist and public debate. Just as the basic technologies of the Spike will depend on design-ahead projects, so too we'll need a kind of think-ahead program to prepare us for changes that might, indeed, scare us witless. And of course, the practical impact of new technologies condition the sorts of social values that emerge; recall the subtle interplay between the oral contraceptive pill and sexual mores, and the swift, easy acceptance of in vitro conception. Despite these possible impediments to the arrival of the Spike, I suggest that while it might be delayed, almost certainly it's not going to be halted. If anything, the surging advances I see every day coming from labs around the world convince me that we already are racing up the lower slopes of its curve into the incomprehensible. In short, it makes little sense to try to pin down the future. Too many strange changes are occurring already, with more lurking just out of sight, ready to leap from the equations and surprise us. True AI, when it occurs, might rush within days or months to SI (superintelligence), and from there into a realm of Powers whose motives and plans we can't even start to second-guess. Nano minting could go feral or worse, used by crackpots or statesmen to squelch their foes and rapidly smear us all into paste. Or sublime AI Powers might use it to the same end, recycling our atoms into better living through femtotechnology. The single thing I feel confident of is that one of these trajectories will start its visible run up the right-hand side of the graph within 10 or 20 years, and by 2030 (or 2050 at latest) will have put everything we hold self-evident into question. We will live forever; or we will all perish most horribly; our minds will emigrate to cyberspace, and start the most ferocious overpopulation race ever seen on the planet; or our machines will Transcend and take us with them, or leave us in some peaceful backwater where the meek shall inherit the Earth. Or something else, something far weirder and... unimaginable. Don't blame me. That's what I promised you. > Eliezer insists on hard takeoff, Singularity Utopia insists everything > will be just fine, I insist we just don't know and we can't know for sure. > In the past week, I have come up with a number of different > possibilities. One just occurred to me this morning. Here goes: Nice projection, Spike. I might have to steal that for a story... :) Damien Broderick From spike66 at att.net Thu Sep 16 23:46:29 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:46:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] invisible singularity In-Reply-To: <4C92A7CE.6020409@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <505088.65151.qm@web81505.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 9/16/10, Damien Broderick wrote: This is great Damien! I didn't realize you had done all this. Mighta happened while I was on vacation or something. >... In the past week, I have come up with a number of > different > > possibilities.? One just occurred to me this > morning.? Here goes: > > Nice projection, Spike. I might have to steal that for a > story... :) > > Damien Broderick Doctor Broderick, I would be deeeeeply honored if you would steal that. I would work with you on the story. I would make an outline, or work with your outline on a fiction story about an intentionally invisible singularity. Actually you couldn't steal it even if you wanted to, for I freely give it to you, knowing your literary talent as demonstrated so frequently and so well. I could fill in some of the details on how a typical spacecraft has plenty of unnecessary stucture and unused computing capacity after it gets to it gets stabilized in its proper orbit and attitude, for a great deal of computing capacity is needed for stability and control during the launch, ascent and orbit insertion events. spike spike From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Sep 17 00:49:42 2010 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 20:49:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] invisible singularity, was su's farewell In-Reply-To: <831793.98026.qm@web81505.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <831793.98026.qm@web81505.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2010/9/16 Gregory Jones > This is a version of a friendly AI.? It is the self-conscious ecology minded AI. > > This I would call the invisible singularity scenario. Since you've claimed such a fantastic name, what would you call the following: The Singularity is an asymptotically approachable yet unattainable point that is always lurking in the mind of man. Given the wildest dreams of a representative human from any epoc in history, the everyday reality of those living in the next epoc are endowed with godlike powers and two epocs later are simply unimaginable. I believe this is not going to happen as much as it's a feature of the landscape. The hill we are climbing will always have a next higher peak. All that have come before serve only to prove that we will realize the goal of climbing collectively to better place. This singularity isn't a monumental event; it's the driving force in every moment. From atymes at gmail.com Fri Sep 17 02:13:19 2010 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 19:13:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] invisible singularity, was su's farewell In-Reply-To: References: <831793.98026.qm@web81505.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: "Receding Singularity" Now if only I could remember where I heard that name. On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 5:49 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > 2010/9/16 Gregory Jones > > This is a version of a friendly AI. It is the self-conscious ecology > minded AI. > > > > This I would call the invisible singularity scenario. > > Since you've claimed such a fantastic name, what would you call the > following: > > The Singularity is an asymptotically approachable yet unattainable > point that is always lurking in the mind of man. Given the wildest > dreams of a representative human from any epoc in history, the > everyday reality of those living in the next epoc are endowed with > godlike powers and two epocs later are simply unimaginable. I believe > this is not going to happen as much as it's a feature of the > landscape. The hill we are climbing will always have a next higher > peak. All that have come before serve only to prove that we will > realize the goal of climbing collectively to better place. This > singularity isn't a monumental event; it's the driving force in every > moment. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri Sep 17 05:29:21 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 22:29:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] invisible singularity and SU Message-ID: On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: snip (generally good stuff) Por favor, use double spacing between paragraphs. Indents help a lot, but there is nothing like white space to make a wall of text easier to read. Re Sigularity Utopia, our big objection seems to be that she (female 47) is not rooted in physical reality. Well, she isn't the only one. Couple of weeks ago I went to the graduation of the Singularity University. Oy Vey! talk about disconnected from reality. Not *one* of the presentations would have stood up to a physics based reality check. The one on food, for example, didn't even have a clue about the number of square meters it takes to grow food for one person. For a human density like that found in cities it is *impossible* to grow enough food for the people who live there. The closest to reality was a microwave powered space vehicle. But even there they made the fundamental error that you could fly in circles around a tracking microwave transmitter till reaching escape velocity. If you are low enough to get lift up to the task of turning a vehicle, you are low enough to burn up at anything close to orbital speeds. I asked and only about 15% of the people in that class were engineers or people who could run the numbers to see if it was within reason. They need to seed the classes with more engineers or sort out the candidates to be more aggressive in the physics analysis. Sorry to be a party pooper, but until we disconnect from the physical universe, we are bound by the rules. Keith From pharos at gmail.com Fri Sep 17 14:22:21 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 15:22:21 +0100 Subject: [ExI] invisible singularity and SU In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 9/17/10, Keith Henson wrote: > Re Singularity Utopia, our big objection seems to be that she (female > 47) is not rooted in physical reality. > Now, don't start believing the stuff you read on MySpace and Facebook! :) Remember that most of the dolly young blonds that have 'Friended' you there are really FBI agents. At least, that's the case in my experience. ;) Her writing style did suggest female to me, so I'd believe that. But if I was 47, I don't think I would get wildly exuberant about a Singularity in 2045 - when I would be 82 - if I made it that far. I'd guess that the 47 claim might be to avoid harassment from males. > Couple of weeks ago I went to the graduation of the Singularity University. > > Oy Vey! talk about disconnected from reality. > Not *one* of the presentations would have stood up to a physics based > reality check. > > The one on food, for example, didn't even have a clue about the number > of square meters it takes to grow food for one person. For a human > density like that found in cities it is *impossible* to grow enough > food for the people who live there. > > Living Towers are already being designed. Among the benefits claimed is: Year-round crop production; 1 indoor acre is equivalent to 4-6 outdoor acres or more, depending upon the crop (e.g., strawberries: 1 indoor acre = 30 outdoor acres) Although I did read that the SU projects were more of a 'wish-list' than actual well-thought out plans, Kurzweil is expecting exponential improvements in all technologies, not just computers. So maybe optimistic projects are allowed? Besides if you can raise a few million venture capital from the listening financiers to play with these concepts, it's worth stretching the truth a bit. Something good might turn up from the millions spent and you'd have a fun time as well. (It's bad PR to keep pointing out the flaws - take the money and enjoy!). BillK From policedepts at gmail.com Fri Sep 17 02:21:23 2010 From: policedepts at gmail.com (police dept) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 20:21:23 -0600 Subject: [ExI] invisible singularity, was su's farewell In-Reply-To: References: <831793.98026.qm@web81505.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: "the everyday reality of those living in the next epoc are endowed with godlike powers and two epocs later are simply unimaginable." Obviously, virtually everyone anthropomorphizes the distant future. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Sep 17 15:17:45 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 08:17:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] invisible singularity and SU In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <977553.82115.qm@web81505.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 9/17/10, BillK wrote: > ... > > Now, don't start believing the stuff you read on MySpace > and Facebook!???:) > Remember that most of the dolly young blonds that have > 'Friended' you > there are really FBI agents... Sure but if one is an FBI agent oneself, then that feature could be a real turn-on. billK, send your friends over to me. {8^D > I'd guess that the 47 claim might be to avoid harassment from > males... But would encourage harassment from the over 47 male crowd. {8-] > ...But if I was 47, I don't think I would get wildly exuberant > about a Singularity in 2045 - when I would be 82 - if I made it > that far... BillK Ja, but I might go the opposite direction with that. If someone is 47, that might explain the insistence on specifying the 2045 date, reasoning wishfully that if it is much past that, then it matters little. Singularity predictions are heavily influenced by wishful thinking. Regarding picking dates for when the singularity will occur, this is an example of something Eliezer patiently tried to explain here but was mostly unsuccessful I fear, or if successful we have dropped the ball on that. His notion, which I find compelling, is that we are not waiting to develop faster computers, more extensive networks or some secret team of DARPA researchers to write bigger and better expert systems. Rather the hard takeoff scenario AI is dependent on a totally other software technology that only a few unknown isolated researchers are working on. These have no guarantee of ever discovering the magic ingredient. AI research could all be a scientific blind alley, like alchemy. We just don't know. Note that this commentary is being made by one who made a similar mistake which was immortalized in Damien Broderick's book The Spike, Feb 2001 version, top of page 87. In that, I predicted a probability that the next record prime would be discovered by a certain date (November 2001.) That prediction turned out to be true, as well as two subsequent ones which puzzled and delighted the GIMPS crowd to no end. But the reasoning behind the predictions was flawed. Primes do not follow any such pattern. I got lucky thrice. I was using superposition of probability distribution functions, which do not legitimately apply in that case, nor does it apply in predicting when the singularity will occur. The more worrysome part about the singularity is not the question of when it will occur, but rather what will occur. I argue we have no damn way of knowing. We have those who predict that all will be fine, utopia etc, we have those who argue we must take definite steps to the contrary, otherwise the emergent AI might well be unfriendly. My argument is that we cannot predict what will happen when or if an AI emerges, regardless of what actions we take. We don't know and we cannot know. spike From jonkc at bellsouth.net Fri Sep 17 16:21:20 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 12:21:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Corvids at play In-Reply-To: <888921.20570.qm@web81506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <888921.20570.qm@web81506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sep 15, 2010, at 10:54 PM, Gregory Jones wrote: > Diamond made an interesting comment in GGnS. No new beast species has been domesticated in the past 3000 yrs. In some old tomb paintings it looks like the ancient Egyptians tried to domesticate both hyenas and cheetahs, although neither experiment turned out very well. I saw a film about somebody keeping the world's largest rodent, a capybaria, as a pet and it seemed to me that might work. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Fri Sep 17 16:30:41 2010 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 18:30:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Martine Rothblatt on Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles, Teleplace, September 18, 10am PST In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/09/reminder-martine-rothblatt-on.html I met Martine online earlier today to prepare the talk. She told me that, in previous presentations of software mindfiles, many questions and comments have been of a philosophical or metaphysical nature and related to preservation of self (whatever that is). But I told Martine that I believe most of those who will attend the talk tomorrow are already prepared to accept that, depending on the amount of information stored and the accuracy of the reconstruction process, the upload copy may be (and feel like) a valid continuation of the original self. I expect that the audience will prefer leaving philosophy aside and be more interested in actual technologies and technical issues: How to extract enough information? How to prove that the information extracted is enough? How to quantify a critical treshold? How to make sure that nothing really important is left behind? How to reconstruct a thinking and feeling mind from a database? See also ASIM Experts series: Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles on carboncopies.org and the discussion in the article MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco on H+ Magazine. Watch also the short movie Bina48 Robot on YouTube (latest update of the video in the New York Times article). On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 11:38 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > Martine Rothblatt on Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles, > Teleplace, September 18, 10am PST > > Martine Rothblatt will give an ASIM Expert Series talk in Teleplace on > ?Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles? on Saturday September > 18, 2010, at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm CET). > http://telexlr8.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/martine-rothblatt-on-reconstructing-minds-from-software-mindfiles-teleplace-september-18-10am-pst/ > > Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow > up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for > others, please contact me if you wish to attend. You can also join the > Facebook page for the event. > http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=109802802385416&v=app_2344061033&ref=ts#!/event.php?eid=156546761037504&ref=ts > > Abstract: ?I do think, however, there is a (natural) tendency to way > overestimate the importance of copying our brain structure to copying > our minds. I think our minds will be uploadable in good enough shape > to satisfy most everyone by reconstructing them from information > stored in software mindfiles such as diaries, videos, personality > inventories, saved google voice conversations, chats, and chatbot > conversations. The reconstruction process will be iteratively achieved > with AI software designed for this purpose, dubbed mindware.? > > Martine Rothblatt is an American lawyer, author, and entrepreneur. > Rothblatt graduated from UCLA with a combined law and MBA degree in > 1981, then began work in Washington, D.C., first in the field of > communication satellite law, and eventually in life sciences projects > like the Human Genome Project. She is currently the founder and CEO of > United Therapeutics. In 2004, Rothblatt launched the Terasem Movement, > a transhumanist school of thought focused on promoting joy, diversity, > and the prospect of technological immortality via personal > cyberconsciousness and geoethical nanotechnology. The purpose of the > CyBeRev (cybernetic beingness revival) project of the Terasem Movement > is to prevent death by preserving sufficient information about a > person so that recovery remains possible by foreseeable technology. > > Teleplace is one of the best 3D applications for telework, online > meetings, group collaboration, and e-learning in a virtual 3D > environment (v-learning). Those who already have Teleplace accounts > for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number > of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to > attend. You can also join the Facebook page for the event. > http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/09/martine-rothblatt-on-reconstructing.html > From jonkc at bellsouth.net Fri Sep 17 16:30:02 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 12:30:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Domestication In-Reply-To: <888921.20570.qm@web81506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <888921.20570.qm@web81506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Anybody have a theory why the asian elephant has been domesticated but not the African elephant? And it's not just animals, with all the millions of species to work with why have so few new domesticated plants come on the scene in the last few centuries? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri Sep 17 17:18:40 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 18:18:40 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Domestication In-Reply-To: References: <888921.20570.qm@web81506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 9/17/10, John Clark wrote: > Anybody have a theory why the asian elephant has been domesticated but not > the African elephant? And it's not just animals, with all the millions of > species to work with why have so few new domesticated plants come on the > scene in the last few centuries? > > I think we need to define what we mean by domestication. This man hugs a lion: I think if a human gets any wild animal young enough it will 'imprint' him as their parent. So a species could be 'imprinted' if all the babies were brought up by humans. BillK From agrimes at speakeasy.net Sat Sep 18 00:01:29 2010 From: agrimes at speakeasy.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 20:01:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. Message-ID: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> om To fully understand the perspective I'm examining here, please read " Killed by bad philosophy Why brain preservation followed by mind uploading is a cure for death Kenneth Hayworth (January 2010) ". My point here is to step outside the paradigm of blind advocacy for uploading and away from my own personal opposition to the uploading of myself. I will be using concepts from biology and population genetics to try to shed some light on the dynamics of a post-upload world and attempt to derive some predictions on the population dynamics of uploaded minds over the course of several thousand years. om Evolution is the physical process that determines the probability that you will encounter a species with a given set of traits. Traditionally, we all have a much lamented genotype with it's celebrated limitations that must be broken free of at all costs. Uploads will also have a genotype. This is what Kenneth calls a "mem-self". This mem-self can be used to produce a phenotype, a "PoV-self", that may be instantiated zero, one, or many times. The mem-self is potentially immortal in the same sense and way as your genotype is (except mine; no GF...). The phenotypes are strictly limited in their lifespan by several factors. Limitations on the durability of a generated POV-self include the quality of the underlying software, the reliability of the underlying hardware, the ability of the simulator to migrate from failing hardware to fresh hardware without rebooting, the ability of the simulator to adapt to changes in the configuration of its surrounding software and hardware packages without rebooting. Furthermore, if the society of uploads is, in any way, aggressive to the human population, the ability of the simulator to remain high-reliability while under active military and hacker assault. Just as uploaders have declared the POV-self to be irrelevant, their Mem-selves will probably not change this decision once uploaded. (again, see article referred to above). It is therefore not at all inaccurate to discuss a mem-self as a software suite and the pov-self as a running instance of that software. Evolution is composed of three basic processes: Replication, variation, and selection. Replication, in the context of mem-selves, can be initiated by either the pov-self generated by that mem-self, or by the pov-self generated by some other mem-self. Variation, in the context of uploads, is rather complex so I'll punt that down the page a little. Many people try to pretend that by uploading the uploads will be able to escape from selective pressures. This cannot be true in any situation such that a copy of one mind doesn't automatically cause all other minds to be copied. We will see that other selective pressures will probably exist. om Variation in genetics comes from two sources, mutation and recombination. One noteworthy limitation is that genes are only mobile within a given population of a given species. And, in general, are not mobile between species except in the case of viral infections of germ line cells. In uploads, the only source of variation between mem-selves will be aging. A mem-self may be instantiated, run for a while, and then saved again. Depending on the conditions of a simulator, this may be a net-benefit or a net-detriment. In an overly faithful simulation, this will be a net-detriment to the point that any pov-self generated from a sufficiently aged mem-self will be entirely senile. This obviously creates issues in terms of pattern identity theory but discussion of that subject is off the table for today. As the tools are developed to actually edit mem-selves we will begin to see a truly diverse population. The most simple edits will be exchanging neural sub-circuits between memselves and then running a growth simulator to integrate the resulting memself. Changes to the architecture of the mem-self may also be possible in this way. It must be emphasized that each such change will almost certainly require a reboot of the simulator and thus a generation of a new POV-self. We may also see variants that consist of parts of a mem-self grafted onto an AI core, we may also see mem-selves that are still basically whole but have some parts replaced by AI code. I've heard some mumblings about the possibility of "merging" mem-selves together in some way but I have not seen specific proposals for how this might be accomplished. While some of these mumblings have suggested that the resulting mind could achieve astronomical scales but again, without concrete explanations, it is difficult to evaluate anything about these. It is also unclear how this would affect the population characteristics of a mem-self that becomes part of such a merging, will new instances still be created to expand the collective? Will it expand in some other way? Furthermore, from a layman's understanding of neurology it is difficult to conceive of how a single mem-self could expand to astronomical scales, and what functional requirements would be required of such a thing. om The selective pressures on a mem-self can come from any number of sources. One major question is whether the post-uploading environment will be benign (as stated on the sales brocure), or hostile as is implied by the people who would suggest uploading the entire planet earth (and everyone in it) for no other reason than to maximize the quantity of available computronium. The direct result of that will be an environment which is basically a full-scale version of CoreWars. The only type of entity that could survive such an environment is a highly-optimized synthetic lifeform which will probably not ever know peace until the substrate looses its power supply. It will survive only being the most prolific and the most ruthless competitor. It should be noted that an AGI mem-self will outperform an uploaded mem-self by *at least* three orders of magnitude, and, by virtue of other architectual differences also have many fewer cognitive blind-spots and be massively scalable to several thousand times that of a human right out of the box. Further improvements could improve that scalability up to the limits of hardware. So therefore any selective pressure that favors raw IQ and scaling will automatically strongly prefer the AI architecture. Any other mem-self that wants to compete on that plane, will be best advised to somehow merge with an AI. It should be noted that this option is available to non-uploaded humans with only a neural interface. In the artificial situation where AI's are prohibited, general selective pressures will exist that favor high general intelligence, specialized skills with respect to the underlying substrate, and finally minds that aggresively apply whatever talents they do possess. Another factor that is widely ignored is the compatibility with the given mem-self genome with what has been called it's "exoself". Exoself software will be written by a specific personality type. This exoself will benefit mem-selves with a compatible personality type. It is almost certain that a given exoself software will be incompatible with other personality types and specific individuals. These individuals, will be effectively crippled as uploads and will have far fewer operational capabilities than uploads that are well-adapted to their exoselves. This selective pressure will tend to enforce strong conformity to a normative personality that is compatible with the available exoself software. In the case that multiple types of exoself software exists, the selective pressure will prefer minds that are eager to re-boot themselves to "try" the alternate packages. In general, minds that are willing to reboot themselves frequently will evolve faster than minds that try to maintain a single instance over subjective centuries. This may or may not be a competitive advantage. Minds that insist on staying on-line at all times will have the advantage of being able to fend off threats which may arise during a reboot period. Such a threat might be something like a malicious code injection, to which a mind in the process of rebooting would be utterly defenseless. This is equivalent to organisms that have short versus long lifespans. It should be noted that PoV-selves will be treated as entirely expendable and the conditions of their lives will be irrelevant to the course of evolution. In all cases, minds that can actually control substrate, either by having root passwords or by being able to construct fresh substrate will have an insurmountable advantage over minds that don't. Even "civilizations" of minds that exist with guest accounts on their substrate will be at the mercy of a mind that directly operates its own substrate because that mind will have the option of physically attacking the other substrate. (In the other case, any physical action would have to be raised in committee.) On wholly owned personal hardware, the minds that are capable of re-building it will enjoy an enormous advantage over minds that merely use it. In cases where the production of new pov-selves is decided socially, then the social characteristics of the mem-selves will be a key driver of selection. Social skills will be key. In most cases mem-selves that are either extremely shallow or posses prodigal social skills will be preferred over minds that are average. Furthermore, minds that have attractive traits (ie, produce attractive affective displays) will be preferred strongly over minds such as my own which probably has asperger's syndrome and tends to be extremely clumsy and/or oblivious to secondary forms of communication in social situations. Yet another selective pressure can be termed the "Leaper's disease". Mem-selves that carefully evaluate prospective changes to their own genomes and their exoselves will last much longer than mem-selves that leap before they look and might find themselves in a corrupted state that can't be recovered, or just as bad require repeated rescuing from external minds. The other people will simply get tired of rescuing you and simply let you bit-rot in your crashed state. You would be a fool to trust people to do otherwise. om Knowing some of the selective pressures, we can begin to speculate about the population dynamics of a computronium civilization. The first and most important strategy type is the Core Warrior. Your uploaded life might seem to be going well but in the next instant you and your simulation has been replaced with Core Warrior code. -- end of story. If this is a possible mode for your brand of computronium, this is how you will be utterly obliterated. Once again, uploads will automatically suffer thousand-fold handicap against AI minds and people who mind-melded with AIs by means of neural interfaces. Only in non-core-wars situations, other strategies may become viable. During the first few hundred subjective years, there will be a fairly rigid caste system. The castes will be the administrator caste that can set permission bits and can access physical hardware. The second caste will be the technician caste that has the technical skills to do things with said hardware. (A higher caste being a mem-self population that possesses both traits). The next caste down will be the privateer caste, this caste doesn't have first-order survival skills but survives by virtue of having other valuable mental traits and social skills. The bottom caste will be the slave caste (picture anything you would want a slave for). Individuals in this caste will exist solely at the whim/pleasure/disgesion of one of the higher castes. The population of this caste will probably outnumber the others by 5:1. but you don't want to be in this caste if you can at all help it. Collective minds would fall into any of the above castes depending on its characteristics. There is nothing intrinsic about a collective mind that would give it an advantage, only its relative capacity to accomplish work. The only unique survival strategy being it's ability to attract, assimilate new members, and achieve synergy with them. The next survival strategy is the Lord. An effective lord must have excellent skills in all areas, be adaptable and capable of earning a good living. The basic survival strategy is to build up a small empire of wealth in which you'll be able to run slaves or whatnot. Obviously, there's the cost of always having to maintain a social status but that shouldn't be difficult for the right personality type. (Nothing will ever be free so long as there is competition over resources.) Another survival strategy is to obtain your own private substrate and move it as far as possible from the rest of your so-called civilization. >From that distance you might live long enough to watch it collapse. The risk of being a hermit is technological stagnation and no protection against hardware failures. Another survival strategy is the Fluffy Bunny survival strategy. As long as the society remains close to baseline motivations, a strategy of adopting a personality type that can strongly drive the remnant sexual instincts of someone in the lord class would be highly successful but at the same time be vulnerable to changes in social fads and changes in the population dynamics of the lord class. Remember, once again, we are not talking about pov-selves, only mem-selves. This is the type of mem-self that would spend most of it's time on disk and only get loaded when it serves the lord in some way. om There you have it. That's what your society of uploadium will look like. I hope you'll enjoy it because that's exactly what Nick Bostrom says the Future of Humanity(tm) will look like. =( My next post will probably be a combination of a vitriolic screed against what the uploaders have done to transhumanism and a declaration of total warfare against them. Actually, what I'm thinking about is what I've learned over the past 15 years of being a transhumanist and plotting out a new tack intended to broaden the tent of transhumanism once again so that more people can find a place in it. The aim of the new venture will, as always, be to maximize the chances I will get the upgrades I've wanted all this time. ;) -- DO NOT USE OBAMACARE. DO NOT BUY OBAMACARE. Powers are not rights. From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sat Sep 18 00:40:38 2010 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 17:40:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Domestication In-Reply-To: References: <888921.20570.qm@web81506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <268113.29050.qm@web65609.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> > >From: John Clark >To: ExI chat list >Sent: Fri, September 17, 2010 9:30:02 AM >Subject: [ExI] Domestication > >Anybody have a theory why the asian elephant has been domesticated but not the >African elephant? And it's not just animals, with all the millions of species to >work with why have so few new domesticated plants come on the scene in the last >few centuries? > > > >??John K Clark > > > > >?I am just speculating here but I think it could simply be lack of sustained >effort amongst?Afican cultures. The habitat of the African elephant is mostly >restricted to Sub-Saharan Africa which has historically hosted primarily >hunter-gatherer tribesman?until recent times and colonialism.?The high >civilizations of ancient Africa such as Egypt, Carthage, Numidia, Kush, etc. >were mostly in Northern Africa along the mediterrenean and it would have >probably been very difficult for them to move elephants across the Sahara. > >Despite, it is a known historical fact that Carthage domesticated elephants?for >use as war elephants ?(c.f. Hannibal and Punic War) and these would have had to >have been?the?African variety although some think it was a subs-species of >African Elephant called the North African Elephant. In any case, the >complete?genocide of Carthage by the Romans probably set the art of taming >elephants in Africa back by several hundred years. > >It is a widely believed myth that the?African?elephants can't be tamed.?During >colonization of the Belgian Congo?the Belgians used Indian Mahouts,?who simply >applied the ages old Indian techniques,?to successfully train African?elephants. >These days?you can even go on safari in Africa from the back of an African >elephant for the right price: > >http://www.thesafaricompany.co.za/Elephant_Back_Safaris.htm > >So in short, I blame the Romans. > > > >Stuart LaForge >"Old men read the lesson in the setting sun. >Beat the cymbal and sing in this life, or wail away the hours fearing death. >Their choice is their fortune." - I Ching -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aleksei at iki.fi Sat Sep 18 01:17:18 2010 From: aleksei at iki.fi (Aleksei Riikonen) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 04:17:18 +0300 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Newest info on global H+ conspiracy, now with improved special effects! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: This probably deserves to be shared to this list as well. Enjoy! ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Aleksei Riikonen Date: Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 1:47 PM Subject: Newest info on global H+ conspiracy, now with improved special effects! To: wta-talk at transhumanism.org Ok, Alex Jones' clip from a few years ago has been topped in entertainment value: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDBkpIU9UMM (Though this guy doesn't explicitly mention e.g. "transhumanism" in this short clip, he certainly does in the other material that he apparently produces very much of!) -- Aleksei Riikonen - http://www.iki.fi/aleksei From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sat Sep 18 05:16:14 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 01:16:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> Message-ID: <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> On Sep 17, 2010, at 8:01 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: > om om? > > Just as uploaders have declared the POV-self to be irrelevant I have no idea what you mean, my uploader credentials go back over 15 years and I certainly don't think the POV of a person, or of a upload, or of a person who is an upload, is irrelevant. > Many people try to pretend that by uploading the uploads will be able to escape from selective pressures. I don't see why an uploader, or anyone for that matter, would be so stupid as to pretend selective pressures can ever be ignored. > om om? > Variation in genetics comes from two sources, mutation and recombination. Yes and the reason Evolution is so slow and clumsy is that contrary to what some bible thumpers may say intelligent design plays no part in the process. > In uploads, the only source of variation between mem-selves will be aging. Nonsense, with uploads intelligent design will be important and that would work much much faster and better than the evolutionary process as it has been known up to now. > each such change will almost certainly require a reboot of the simulator and thus a generation of a new POV-self. Why? If you are inactivated for a billion years and then restarted from your POV nothing has happened to you but the external universe has suddenly jumped forward a billion years. > om om? > > It should be noted that an AGI mem [...] I really don't see what Adjusted Gross Income has to do with what we were talking about, or maybe you meant the American Geological Institute or Analytical Graphics Incorporated. > any selective pressure that favors raw IQ and scaling will automatically strongly > prefer the AI architecture. Any other mem-self that wants to compete on > that plane, will be best advised to somehow merge with an AI. Obviously. > It should be noted that this option is available to non-uploaded humans with only > a neural interface. I don't see why something that isn't true should be noted. > Another factor that is widely ignored is the compatibility with the > given mem-self genome with what has been called it's "exoself". Exoself > software will be written by a specific personality type. This exoself > will benefit mem-selves with a compatible personality type. It is almost > certain that a given exoself software will be incompatible with other > personality types and specific individuals. These individuals, will be > effectively crippled as uploads I have no idea what that means. > > om Or that. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Sep 18 06:29:37 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (Gregory Jones) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 23:29:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: <562879.65957.qm@web81508.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 9/17/10, John Clark wrote: ? ? On Sep 17, 2010, at 8:01 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: ? om om? .... om om? ? ... om om? ? ... om ? ? ? ? ? I interpreted it as?the Cookie Monster just getting started on the appetizer course.? When the actual cookie main course arrives, he devours everything with a hearty cooookiiiiiiieeee!? ommmmm nom nom nom ommmm nom nom... ? So when the salad course gets there, is just a half-hearted om. ? Or it could be?interpreted it as "omg" for atheists. ? Of course omg can be the more religion-sensitive "oh my goodness."? Now I see in the chat rooms more of the expanded omfg, so I assume the more sensitive among the teen speakers are actually using omfg for oh my fucking goodness. ? Or something.? ? spike ? ? ? ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From estropico at gmail.com Sat Sep 18 08:33:03 2010 From: estropico at gmail.com (estropico) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 09:33:03 +0100 Subject: [ExI] ExtroBritannia: Towards the Abolition of Suffering. Reflections on the Abolitionist Project - by David Pearce Message-ID: Towards the Abolition of Suffering. Reflections on the Abolitionist Project - by David Pearce 2pm-4pm, Sat 16th Oct, 2010 Room 417, 4th floor, Birkbeck College, Torrington Square, London WC1E 7HX. About the talk: The Transhumanist Declaration (1998, 2009) advocates "the well-being of all sentience, including humans, non-human animals, and any future artificial intellects, modified life forms, or other intelligences to which technological and scientific advance may give rise." Yet is "the well-being of all sentience" serious science - or just utopian dreaming? What does such a commitment entail? On what kind of realistic timeframe might we command enough computational power to police an entire ecosystem? In this talk, the speaker wants to review recent progress in understanding the neurobiology of pleasure, pain and our core emotions. Can mastery of our reward circuity ever deliver socially responsible, intelligent bliss rather than crude wireheading? He also wants to examine and respond to criticisms of the abolitionist project that have been levelled over the past decade - and set out the biggest challenges, as he sees them, to the prospect of a totally cruelty-free world. Links to the Transhumanist Declaration: 2009: http://humanityplus.org/learn/transhumanist-declaration/ 1998: Contained in http://www.changesurfer.com/Acad/TranshumPolitics.htm About the speaker: David Pearce is an independent researcher and vegan animal activist based in Brighton UK. In 1995, he wrote an online manifesto, The Hedonistic Imperative, advocating the use of biotechnology to abolish suffering throughout the living world. David predicts that our descendants will be animated by gradients of cerebral bliss orders of magnitude richer than anything accessible today. David has also written on the philosophy of mind and perception; utilitarian ethics; psychopharmacology; life extension; cognitive enhancement technologies; mood enrichment; genetic recalibration of the hedonic treadmill; ecosystem redesign; reprogramming predators; and ? more speculatively ? on a posthuman future based on "paradise engineering". In 1998, David and Nick Bostrom set up the World Transhumanist Association (now rebranded as Humanity +). Transhumanists promote the responsible use of advanced technology to overcome our biological limitations. For more details, see David Pearce's entry on Wikipedia About the venue: Room 417 is on the fourth floor in the main Birkbeck College building, in Torrington Square (which is a pedestrian-only square). Torrington Square is about 10 minutes walk from either Russell Square or Goodge St tube stations. About the meeting: There's no charge to attend, and everyone is welcome. There will be plenty of opportunity to ask questions and to make comments. Discussion will continue after the event, in a nearby pub, for those who are able to stay. Why not join some of the Extrobritannia regulars for a drink and/or light lunch beforehand, any time after 12.30pm, in The Marlborough Arms, 36 Torrington Place, London WC1E 7HJ. To find us, look out for a table where there's a copy of a book displayed. www.extrobritannia.blogspot.com http://www.transhumanist.org.uk/ From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Sep 18 14:16:26 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 07:16:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] energy and food was invisible singularity and SU Message-ID: On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 5:00 AM, BillK wrote: > On 9/17/10, Keith Henson wrote: >> ?The one on food, for example, didn't even have a clue about the number >> ?of square meters it takes to grow food for one person. ?For a human >> ?density like that found in cities it is *impossible* to grow enough >> ?food for the people who live there. >> > Living Towers are already being designed. > > Among the benefits claimed is: > ?Year-round crop production; 1 indoor acre is equivalent to 4-6 > outdoor acres or more, depending upon the crop (e.g., strawberries: 1 > indoor acre = 30 outdoor acres) Bill, if I explained the energy flows involved and areas required would it make any difference? Keith From patrickfallon at gmail.com Sat Sep 18 14:52:34 2010 From: patrickfallon at gmail.com (Pat Fallon) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 10:52:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Domestication In-Reply-To: <268113.29050.qm@web65609.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <888921.20570.qm@web81506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <268113.29050.qm@web65609.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Jared Diamond, in Guns, Germs, and Steel, has a nice chapter on why some mammals were not suitable for domestication. Regarding elephants, he writes: "To be worth keeping, domesticates must also grow quickly. That eliminates gorillas and elephants, even though they are vegetarians with admirably nonfinicky food preferences and represent a lot of meat. What would-be gorilla or elephant rancher would wait 15 years for his herd to reach adult size? Modern Asians who want work elephants find it much cheaper to capture them in the wild and tame them. Pat Fallon 2010/9/17 The Avantguardian : > > > From: John Clark > To: ExI chat list > Sent: Fri, September 17, 2010 9:30:02 AM > Subject: [ExI] Domestication > > Anybody have a theory why the asian elephant has been domesticated but not > the African elephant? And it's not just animals, with all the millions of > species to work with why have so few new domesticated plants come on the > scene in the last few centuries? > ??John K Clark > > > ?I am just speculating here but I think it could simply be lack of sustained > effort amongst?Afican cultures. The habitat of the African elephant is > mostly restricted to Sub-Saharan Africa which has historically hosted > primarily hunter-gatherer tribesman?until recent times and colonialism.?The > high civilizations of ancient Africa such as Egypt, Carthage, Numidia, Kush, > etc. were mostly in Northern Africa along the mediterrenean and it would > have probably been very difficult for them to move elephants across the > Sahara. > > Despite, it is a known historical fact that Carthage domesticated > elephants?for use as war elephants ?(c.f. Hannibal and Punic War) and these > would have had to have been?the?African variety although some think it was a > subs-species of African Elephant called the North African Elephant. In any > case, the complete?genocide of Carthage by the Romans probably set the art > of taming elephants in Africa back by several hundred years. > > It is a widely believed myth that the?African?elephants can't be > tamed.?During colonization of the Belgian Congo?the Belgians used Indian > Mahouts,?who simply applied the ages old Indian techniques,?to successfully > train African?elephants. These days?you can even go on safari in Africa from > the back of an African elephant for the right price: > > http://www.thesafaricompany.co.za/Elephant_Back_Safaris.htm > > So in short, I blame the Romans. > > > > Stuart LaForge > "Old men read the lesson in the setting sun. > Beat the cymbal and sing in this life, or wail away the hours fearing death. > Their choice is their fortune." - I Ching > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From agrimes at speakeasy.net Sat Sep 18 14:25:01 2010 From: agrimes at speakeasy.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 10:25:01 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties: >> om > om? It's a bad habit if mine that goes back to the '90s. Since then I've built up a personal essay form around it. The 'om' itself serves two purposes, first being a simple section separator, the second being a plea to the reader to meditate on the ideas I'm sharing. Clearly I wasn't expecting it to be as distracting as it obviously is... =( >> Just as uploaders have declared the POV-self to be irrelevant > I have no idea what you mean, my uploader credentials go back over 15 > years and I certainly don't think the POV of a person, or of a upload, > or of a person who is an upload, is irrelevant. You do too believe that the POV-self is irrelevant iff you are a destructive brain uploader. You can't have it both ways. >> Many people try to pretend that by uploading the uploads will be able >> to escape from selective pressures. > I don't see why an uploader, or anyone for that matter, would be so > stupid as to pretend selective pressures can ever be ignored. Actually, most of them exude an aura that strongly indicates that they think that everything after becoming an upload will be nothing but buttercups and daisies. >> In uploads, the only source of variation between mem-selves will be aging. > Nonsense, with uploads intelligent design will be important and that > would work much much faster and better than the evolutionary process as > it has been known up to now. Just as we have found it easy to produce AGI architectures from scratch? Do you really think that only an instant after the first person is uploaded, he will immediately become a grand master at brainhacking? >> each such change will almost certainly require a reboot of the >> simulator and thus a generation of a new POV-self. > Why? If you are inactivated for a billion years and then restarted from > your POV nothing has happened to you but the external universe has > suddenly jumped forward a billion years. That would be stupid because you would be effectively dead during that time and someone would likely come around to make you fully dead... Actually it depends on what you mean by "restarted". If you clear out too much state then you are rebooting a new POV-self. (using the definitions of the article I referred to). >> om > om? om! >> It should be noted that an AGI mem [...] > I really don't see what Adjusted Gross Income has to do with what we > were talking about, or maybe you meant the American Geological Institute > or Analytical Graphics Incorporated. It's the Great/Powerful/benevolent/all-knowing/all-wise GOERTZEL's term, "Artificial General Intelligence". I had assumed everyone on this list was familiar with it. >> It should be noted that this option is available to non-uploaded >> humans with only a neural interface. > I don't see why something that isn't true should be noted. Now that's fascinating! Why on earth do you think a neural interface CAN'T be used for mind-melding with an AGI architecture? After you've explained that, explain why that same explanation does NOT also apply to uploaded minds. >> Another factor that is widely ignored is the compatibility with the >> given mem-self genome with what has been called it's "exoself". Exoself >> software will be written by a specific personality type. This exoself >> will benefit mem-selves with a compatible personality type. It is almost >> certain that a given exoself software will be incompatible with other >> personality types and specific individuals. These individuals, will be >> effectively crippled as uploads > I have no idea what that means. You haven't been doing your meditations. =( (om)... Answer honestly: Is your proficiency with all software the same as everyone else's? I, for example, can't stand vi, other people can't get enough of it. Many people are unable to adapt to new software, other people are generally able to adapt but simply can't get the hang of certain packages on account of their personality type. Today, these differences can be ignored or worked around. Kdevelop 4 sucks for some reason (even though kdevelop 3. was very very good), today I have the option of using Netbeans, which is also extremely good. However, in the case of uploads, in the early stages at least, there will be a very poor selection of software. If that software is a poor match with your mind, you'll be at a severe disadvantage. If the other software becomes mainstream, your competitive position will continue to deteriorate because even if you manage to write an alternative package, it will not have the developer support of the mainstream package and will be stuck perpetually two or three generations behind the capabilities of the mainstream package that you still have trouble using. Minds that fail to compete at all will be pushed off the network and will, at best, be stuck as an archive file on tertiary storage somewhere. -- DO NOT USE OBAMACARE. DO NOT BUY OBAMACARE. Powers are not rights. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Sat Sep 18 16:46:43 2010 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 09:46:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Alien Planet's Missing Methane Stumps Scientists Message-ID: <863823.39263.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/alien-planet-missing-methane-100915.html Okay. Totally off the wall speculation: ET harvested the methane and that's why it's missing. :) Of course, my guess is the cause is that the model used to predict abundance is wrong. Or there's some observational error. Regards, Dan From msd001 at gmail.com Sat Sep 18 18:24:08 2010 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 14:24:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Newest info on global H+ conspiracy, now with improved special effects! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 9:17 PM, Aleksei Riikonen wrote: > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDBkpIU9UMM > > (Though this guy doesn't explicitly mention e.g. "transhumanism" in > this short clip, he certainly does in the other material that he > apparently produces very much of!) haha. I think a funny counterpoint would be to imagine a group of angels showing video of "God" fashioning 'Adam' from a lump of earth... They could describe the unnatural creation as the "terrifying next step in God's plan" to build "a creature so horrible that it will no doubt be cast from Eden" (time passes) "Humankind has infested the earth with wanton breeding and has even learned to harness the power of fire" (more time passes) "They've started building machines in THEIR own likeness" So silly... I think it's particularly funny to hear the scary-toned narrator enunciate "Dubbilyoo Dubbilyoo Dubbilyoo Dot..." From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sat Sep 18 19:54:58 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 15:54:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> Message-ID: <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> On Sep 18, 2010, at 10:25 AM, Alan Grimes wrote: >> my uploader credentials go back over 15 years and I certainly don't think the POV of a person, or of a upload, or of a person who is an upload, is irrelevant. > > You do too believe that the POV-self is irrelevant iff you are a > destructive brain uploader. You can't have it both ways. There is only one way to have it, subjectively. Subjectivity is all important and objectivity is trivial. And please don't tell me POV is just an illusion because illusions are a perfectly legitimate subjective phenomenon. Your difficulty and the error of all uploading opponents I have ever encountered is that you fell hook line and sinker for the Bullshit that your third grade English teacher told you, that "I" is a pronoun when in reality it is a adjective. You are the way matter behaves when it is organized in a Alangrimesian way. My brain of a year ago has been destroyed and been replaced with last years mashed potatoes, but the POV of John K Clark remains because those potatoes were organized in a Johnkclarkian way; and if it all turns out to be an illusion I really don't care. >> I don't see why an uploader, or anyone for that matter, would be so >> stupid as to pretend selective pressures can ever be ignored. > > Actually, most of them exude an aura that strongly indicates that they think that everything after becoming an upload will be nothing but buttercups and daisies. I don't. There will still be competition from things smarter than you, AI's as well as other uploads that started out smarter than you and haven't gotten dumber with the passage of time; and there may be competition from things not nearly as bright as you too, like viruses. But the biggest snake in the garden of Eden may be drug abuse, if you could open the "preferences" panel in your mind it would take an iron will not to move the happiness slide switch just a little further to the right, and then a little more, and then a bit more [...] I hope not but drug abuse could be the explanation for the Fermi Paradox. Why go to all the trouble of actually accomplishing something when you can get the same agreeable feeling of pride and fulfillment without all the bother? >> If you are inactivated for a billion years and then restarted from >> your POV nothing has happened to you but the external universe has >> suddenly jumped forward a billion years. > > That would be stupid because you would be effectively dead during that > time and someone would likely come around to make you fully dead Maybe, and maybe I'll get hit by a bus when crossing the street to get to the uploading center, but neither triviality effects the fundamental philosophical point. > Actually it depends on what you mean by "restarted". If you clear out > too much state then you are rebooting a new POV-self. Yes, if you don't use enough information the resulting matter will not behave in a Alangrimesian way. > >>> It should be noted that an AGI mem [...] > >> I really don't see what Adjusted Gross Income has to do with what we >> were talking about, or maybe you meant the American Geological Institute >> or Analytical Graphics Incorporated. > > It's the Great/Powerful/benevolent/all-knowing/all-wise GOERTZEL's term, > "Artificial General Intelligence". I had assumed everyone on this list was familiar with it. I know, I had this same discussion over on the Singularity list not long ago. I pointed out that "AGI" is a cultish term invented by members of that list and used virtually nowhere else except to a (mercifully) limited extent this list. It's an unnecessary word with a better and shorter alternative, it's a word that is certain to make professionals in AI look at you funny. Think I'm exaggerating? I did a Google search for "AI" and got 702,000,000 results, almost all of them having to do with smart computers. I did the same thing for "AGI" and got 13,500,000 results with no mention of smart computers until page 9 of results. Page 9! AGI has a pretentious smell about it that another simpler and much more widely understood term, AI, does not. Why would anyone want to needlessly complicate things, why would anybody want to place a roadblock in the path of understanding? Well it's not really mysterious; if you have a good idea then you'd want to communicate it with the least ambiguity possible, but if you have a really stupid idea then clarity of expression is not your friend. > >>> It should be noted that this option is available to non-uploaded >>> humans with only a neural interface. > >> I don't see why something that isn't true should be noted. > > Now that's fascinating! Why on earth do you think a neural interface > CAN'T be used for mind-melding with an AGI architecture? My error. Somehow I thought you said the option is available ONLY to non-uploaded humans but you did not. My apologies. > Minds that fail to compete at all will be pushed off the network and will, at best, be > stuck as an archive file on tertiary storage somewhere. I think that's probably true. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From swestrup at gmail.com Sat Sep 18 19:22:24 2010 From: swestrup at gmail.com (Stirling Westrup) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 15:22:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Alien Planet's Missing Methane Stumps Scientists In-Reply-To: <863823.39263.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <863823.39263.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 12:46 PM, Dan wrote: > http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/alien-planet-missing-methane-100915.html > > Okay. Totally off the wall speculation: ET harvested the methane and that's why > it's missing. :) > > Of course, my guess is the cause is that the model used to predict abundance is > wrong. Or there's some observational error. > I vote for alien chemistry. What we don't know about chemistry under non-terrestrial conditions is huge. -- Stirling Westrup Programmer, Entrepreneur. https://www.linkedin.com/e/fpf/77228 http://www.linkedin.com/in/swestrup http://technaut.livejournal.com From spike66 at att.net Sat Sep 18 20:15:11 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 13:15:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Alien Planet's Missing Methane Stumps Scientists In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <246656.29556.qm@smtp107.sbc.mail.mud.yahoo.com> > From: Stirling Westrup [mailto:swestrup at gmail.com] > Subject: Re: [ExI] Alien Planet's Missing Methane Stumps Scientists > > On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 12:46 PM, Dan wrote: > > > http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/alien-planet-missing-methane-100915.ht ml > > > > Okay. Totally off the wall speculation: ET harvested the methane and > > that's why it's missing. :) > > > > Of course, my guess is the cause is that the model used to predict > > abundance is wrong. Or there's some observational error. > > > I vote for alien chemistry. What we don't know about > chemistry under non-terrestrial conditions is huge... Stirling Westrup Ja, I mostly dismiss the notion of observational error, but agree that we don't know very well all the chemistry when the surface is over 500 degrees. I am intrigued with the notion that some extremophile might have evolved there and devoured the methane. Recall that is pretty much what happened on this planet: life originally evolved here in a reducing environment, rich in methane and other organics. The early plants and beasts devoured much of that methane and the other *anes. Then that crowd were later poisoned by oxygen. We are the freaks that escaped that poisonng event. Wouldn't it be wicked cool if that's what is going on? {8-] spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Sep 18 21:12:57 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 16:12:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] test Message-ID: <4C952B59.3060505@satx.rr.com> you know the drill--avert your eyes From dan_ust at yahoo.com Sat Sep 18 21:23:44 2010 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 14:23:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Alien Planet's Missing Methane Stumps Scientists In-Reply-To: <246656.29556.qm@smtp107.sbc.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <246656.29556.qm@smtp107.sbc.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <669673.43208.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Actually, my understanding is no one knows or has a rigorous theory of how life first originated -- even if it originated on Earth or wasn't a importation. Regarding observational error, I'm not so sure. I don't know, for instance, if there's enough in the observations to rule out there being no methane. I'd give them the benefit of the doubt -- which is why I meantioned that the model used is likely off and only put the observation error comment as an afterthought. Regards, Dan ----- Original Message ---- From: spike To: swestrup at gmail.com; ExI chat list Sent: Sat, September 18, 2010 4:15:11 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Alien Planet's Missing Methane Stumps Scientists > From: Stirling Westrup [mailto:swestrup at gmail.com] > Subject: Re: [ExI] Alien Planet's Missing Methane Stumps Scientists > > On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 12:46 PM, Dan wrote: > > > http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/alien-planet-missing-methane-100915.ht ml > > > > Okay. Totally off the wall speculation: ET harvested the methane and > > that's why it's missing. :) > > > > Of course, my guess is the cause is that the model used to predict > > abundance is wrong. Or there's some observational error. > > > I vote for alien chemistry. What we don't know about > chemistry under non-terrestrial conditions is huge... Stirling Westrup Ja, I mostly dismiss the notion of observational error, but agree that we don't know very well all the chemistry when the surface is over 500 degrees. I am intrigued with the notion that some extremophile might have evolved there and devoured the methane.? Recall that is pretty much what happened on this planet: life originally evolved here in a reducing environment, rich in methane and other organics.? The early plants and beasts devoured much of that methane and the other *anes.? Then that crowd were later poisoned by oxygen.? We are the freaks that escaped that poisonng event. Wouldn't it be wicked cool if that's what is going on? {8-] spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Sep 18 22:52:13 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 17:52:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: <4C95429D.1040702@satx.rr.com> On 9/18/2010 2:54 PM, John Clark wrote: > your third grade English teacher told you, that "I" is a pronoun when in > reality it is a adjective. You are the way matter behaves when it is > organized in a Alangrimesian way. I know you're awfully fond of this koan, John, rather as you're fond of misusing "effect" when you mean "affect" but the words you want here are "an adverb." Not "a adjective." It's the *behaving* (a verb) you're paying attention to, not the *matter* (a noun)--and indeed this is your very point. So please upgrade your pithy maxim. (It would be a pithy not to.) Damien Broderick From swestrup at gmail.com Sat Sep 18 23:26:28 2010 From: swestrup at gmail.com (Stirling Westrup) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 19:26:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Alien Planet's Missing Methane Stumps Scientists In-Reply-To: <246656.29556.qm@smtp107.sbc.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <246656.29556.qm@smtp107.sbc.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 4:15 PM, spike wrote: > >> > >> > Okay. Totally off the wall speculation: ET harvested the methane and >> > that's why it's missing. :) >> > >> > Of course, my guess is the cause is that the model used to predict >> > abundance is wrong. Or there's some observational error. >> > >> I vote for alien chemistry. What we don't know about >> chemistry under non-terrestrial conditions is huge... Stirling Westrup > ... > I am intrigued with the notion that some extremophile might have evolved > there and devoured the methane. > > Wouldn't it be wicked cool if that's what is going on? > > {8-] > > spike > Sure, that would be one of my preferred causes (probably second only to an alien intelligence actively harvesting the methane for some purpose), but I wouldn't bet on it. I do think life is likely to be abundant in the universe, but I doubt its so abundant that we'd find evidence for it so soon in our exoplanet studies. -- Stirling Westrup Programmer, Entrepreneur. https://www.linkedin.com/e/fpf/77228 http://www.linkedin.com/in/swestrup http://technaut.livejournal.com From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Sep 18 20:53:00 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 15:53:00 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: <4C9526AC.7040809@satx.rr.com> On 9/18/2010 2:54 PM, John Clark wrote: > your third grade English teacher told you, that "I" is a pronoun when in > reality it is a adjective. You are the way matter behaves when it is > organized in a Alangrimesian way. I know you're awfully fond of this koan, John, rather as you're fond of misusing "effect" when you mean "affect" but the words you want here are "an adverb." Not "a adjective." It's the *behaving* (a verb) you're paying attention to, not the *matter* (a noun)--and indeed this is your very point. So please upgrade your pithy maxim. (It would be a pithy not to.) Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Sep 19 00:40:27 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 19:40:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <4C9526AC.7040809@satx.rr.com> References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> <4C9526AC.7040809@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4C955BFB.4010701@satx.rr.com> so this email was getting on for 4 hours in transit. Apologies for the resend. From agrimes at speakeasy.net Sun Sep 19 00:13:11 2010 From: agrimes at speakeasy.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 20:13:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: <4C955597.9040505@speakeasy.net> chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties: > On Sep 18, 2010, at 10:25 AM, Alan Grimes wrote: >>> my uploader credentials go back over 15 years and I certainly don't >>> think the POV of a person, or of a upload, or of a person who is an >>> upload, is irrelevant. >> You do too believe that the POV-self is irrelevant iff you are a >> destructive brain uploader. You can't have it both ways. > There is only one way to have it, subjectively. Subjectivity is all > important and objectivity is trivial. And please don't tell me POV is > just an illusion because illusions are a perfectly legitimate subjective > phenomenon. WTF? Are you trying to argue my side of the debate? > Your difficulty and the error of all uploading opponents I > have ever encountered is that you fell hook line and sinker for the > Bullshit that your third grade English teacher told you, that "I" is a > pronoun when in reality it is a adjective. You are the way matter > behaves when it is organized in a Alangrimesian way. !!! That is precisely the position I accused you of having! =P > My brain of a year ago has been destroyed and been replaced with last years > mashed potatoes, but the POV of John K Clark remains because those potatoes > were organized in a Johnkclarkian way; and if it all turns out to be an > illusion I really don't care. Therefore it necessarily follows that if you then replace all the atoms at once with a completely different substance that bares no resemblance (never mind temporal or spatial connection) to the original in either outward appearance or the mechanism of its operation, it can not be anything other than the exact same person!!! =PPP >> Actually, most of them exude an aura that strongly indicates that >> they think that everything after becoming an upload will be nothing >> but buttercups and daisies. > I don't. There will still be competition from things smarter than you, > AI's as well as other uploads that started out smarter than you and > haven't gotten dumber with the passage of time; and there may be > competition from things not nearly as bright as you too, like viruses. Now, remind me again how you think you will be able to survive as an upload? Also remind me why you would prefer to try to survive as an upload rather than using medical nanites and other more direct means to obtain physical immortality? > But the biggest snake in the garden of Eden may be drug abuse, if you > could open the "preferences" panel in your mind it would take an iron > will not to move the happiness slide switch just a little further to the > right, and then a little more, and then a bit more [...] I hope not but > drug abuse could be the explanation for the Fermi Paradox. Why go to all > the trouble of actually accomplishing something when you can get the > same agreeable feeling of pride and fulfillment without all the bother? Correct. >>> If you are inactivated for a billion years and then restarted from >>> your POV nothing has happened to you but the external universe has >>> suddenly jumped forward a billion years. >> That would be stupid because you would be effectively dead during that >> time and someone would likely come around to make you fully dead > Maybe, and maybe I'll get hit by a bus when crossing the street to get > to the uploading center, but neither triviality effects the fundamental > philosophical point. Perhaps I missed the point myself. The actual point being that in your example it is the same instance of you that is being restarted. In the procedure of uploading, it is something completely different from you only blessed with a magical incantation and a label saying that it is you. >> Actually it depends on what you mean by "restarted". If you clear out >> too much state then you are rebooting a new POV-self. > Yes, if you don't use enough information the resulting matter will not > behave in a Alangrimesian way. If it is *not me*, then I really don't give a flying f### what it behaves like. It could be the most perfect copy conceivable and I still would not care. I would not care about such a being with the same vigor and passion that I don't care about the latest celebrity gossip the local news radio station thinks I can't get enough of (or is being paid to distract me from real issues)... Actually I often find myself screaming at my car's stereo "I DO NOT CARE!!!!" But the "glass enclosed nerve center" doesn't care. That stupid radio station also works tirelessly to remind me that it is a "glass enclosed nerve center"... So naturally I think of some giant brain in some glass vat and get rather repulsed by the image. =P > I know, I had this same discussion over on the Singularity list not long > ago. I pointed out that "AGI" is a cultish term invented by members of > that list and used virtually nowhere else except to a (mercifully) > limited extent this list. It's an unnecessary word with a better and > shorter alternative, it's a word that is certain to make professionals > in AI look at you funny. Think I'm exaggerating? No, but then I share lord GOERTZEL's disgust with the trivial little programs that the term AI has been attached to and agree with his motives to do all he can to distance the work of true AI researchers from that of the pretenders. -- DO NOT USE OBAMACARE. DO NOT BUY OBAMACARE. Powers are not rights. From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Sep 19 03:24:16 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 20:24:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Congratulations to Max for being elected to the H+ Board of Directors! Message-ID: This is an excellent development! : ) http://humanityplus.org/2010/08/congratulations-to-new-board-members/ John From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sun Sep 19 04:56:06 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 00:56:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <4C95429D.1040702@satx.rr.com> References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> <4C95429D.1040702@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <2308FD95-5EE4-4769-94D9-6EE5A67B7912@bellsouth.net> On Sep 18, 2010, at 6:52 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: >> your third grade English teacher told you, that "I" is a pronoun when in reality it is a adjective. You are the way matter behaves when it is organized in a Alangrimesian way. > > I know you're awfully fond of this koan, John You are correct. > rather as you're fond of misusing "effect" when you mean "affect" You are incorrect. I know what I mean and I don't mean "affect", I mean "effect", as in "cause and effect". The only excuse the word "affect" has for existing is in it's secondary meaning of "to pretend", otherwise "effect" does just fine thank you very much. > but the words you want here are "an adverb." Not "a adjective." It's the *behaving* (a verb) you're paying attention to, not the *matter* (a noun) You are incorrect about that too. "I" cannot be just about behaving because there must be something to behave, matter in this case. "I" is a description of matter, and yes it's true that description determines the way it behaves but that doesn't make "I" an adverb; "fast" determines the way a fast car behaves but that doesn't make "fast" an adverb either. Matter is a noun, an adjective modifies a noun, "I" modifies matter, hence "I" modifies a noun, hence "I" is an adjective. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Sep 19 05:56:54 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 22:56:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Book: Journey to Virginland Message-ID: If this review is on target, this is one of the best social commentary novels to come along in decades... John http://www.journeytovirginland.com/ Paul McCarthy, Prof. of English at Ulster University, Ireland, a New York Times bestselling author whose lifelong career has included senior-editor and acquisitions-editor posts at three of the world?s largest publishing houses, considers Journey to Virginland as one of the top novels in world literature. Below is the text of Prof. McCarthy?s endorsement: "I wasn?t quite sure what to expect when I decided to read Journey to Virginland. But what I most certainly did not expect was to find, consistently, one of the most creatively, philosophically, culturally, semantically, and thematically ambitious novels I?ve ever read in my 35 years of professional life. In the best sense, I?m reminded of George Orwell?s classics, and other authors of similar stature, though there is no true parallel possible with a novel and trilogy as unique in concept and execution as Journey to Virginland. I am struck by the extraordinary writing, vision, and, perhaps rarest of all, originality, which abounds in every way, and at so many levels and depths of meaning, theme, narrative, etc., that I had to keep slowing my pace, until I could read and ?inhale? each word. A case in point was the passage containing Dog?s dialogue with the Padre, which I have found positively entrancing. This section?s insights and leaps of imagination, manifested through Dog?s answers, are as revelatory and profound as the basic aspects and elements of his overall perceptions and conclusions about the book?s overarching subjects, which have been gradually introduced and interwoven, from the beginning of the novel to here, where they? explode. Now that I?ve reached the conclusion, I?m simply in awe. Wow! In the vernacular." http://www.journeytovirginland.com/ From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Sep 19 06:03:28 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 23:03:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 8 minute long animation about the cell Message-ID: Harvard University commissioned XVIVO to create this video about the inner life of a cell. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mszlckmc4Hw John : ) From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Sep 19 06:23:01 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 23:23:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Asian research forges ahead as U.S. languishes over stem cell research controversy Message-ID: I thought the stem cell research controversies were behind us in the United States, but ironically due to the recent reversals, foreign competitors will move ahead. http://www.scienceprogress.org/2010/09/u-s-stem-cell-ruling-invites-asian-competition/ John From spike66 at att.net Sun Sep 19 05:57:25 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 22:57:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] papal paradox In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <421147.56853.qm@smtp103.sbc.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Six men were arrested during the pope's visit to Britain. Strangly enough, the pope wasn't one of them. spike From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Sep 19 06:29:09 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 23:29:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fungus genes help turn grass and wood into ethanol Message-ID: The article says this may make ethanol one day competitive with gasoline... http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/26248/?nlid=3486 John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Sep 19 06:32:35 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 23:32:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] emerging technologies may lead to a revolutionary horizontal space launcher Message-ID: This makes me think of Tom Swift or Thunderbirds! http://www.physorg.com/news203515989.html John : ) From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sun Sep 19 06:08:25 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 02:08:25 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <4C955597.9040505@speakeasy.net> References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> <4C955597.9040505@speakeasy.net> Message-ID: <16EDA2C9-91D9-4DEE-A120-C43E911D8A32@bellsouth.net> On Sep 18, 2010, at 8:13 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: > > Now, remind me again how you think you will be able to survive as an upload? Physically and philosophically uploading is a valid concept, but how long any given upload will survive depends entirely on the particular uploading culture it is put into, and we can only guess what that might be like. > Also remind me why you would prefer to try to survive as an upload rather than using medical nanites and other more direct means to obtain physical immortality? Unfortunately I very much doubt my preferences will make the slightest difference. I don't think Mr. Jupiter Brain will allow stupid and primitive humans to live at the same level of reality as his precious hardware; he's bound to be a bit squeamish about that, it would be like a monkey running around an operating room. If he lets us live it will be in a virtual world behind a heavy firewall, but that's OK, we'll never know the difference unless he tells us. > In the procedure of uploading, it is something completely different from you That would be like saying my message that you're reading on your computer screen right now is completely different from the one on my computer screen, and if you were to print it out it would be completely different yet again. That would be ridiculous because schematically the information flow in all three instances is identical. If I haven't convinced you that I'm right about this it's probably because you haven't read my original Email that's on my computer, its ever so much better than the pale imitation you're seeing. > only blessed with a magical incantation and a label saying that it is you. I am of the opinion that if tomorrow there is an entity that remembers being the John K Clark of today then I will have survived for another day. I mean, what more could you possibly mean by "survival"? > It could be the most perfect copy conceivable and I still would not care. Well of course you wouldn't care, you wouldn't even know it had happened unless somebody told you, and even then you wouldn't believe it unless they provided ironclad proof. For all you know you're body was destroyed last night and was replaced by a perfect copy; it doesn't seem to be cramping your style so if you found out the same thing will happen to you again tonight I see no reason you should be concerned. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Sep 19 06:44:12 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 23:44:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Hive45 Singularity Podcast Message-ID: Who the heck are these guys? lol And why aren't Eliezer and Michael doing it??? How dare they drink beer while discussing such important matters! http://hive45.com/shows/episode-31-predict-then-invent-the-future/ John From estropico at gmail.com Sun Sep 19 07:48:28 2010 From: estropico at gmail.com (estropico) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 08:48:28 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Trehalose for life-extension? Message-ID: Eric Drexler examines the properties of a disaccharide (trehalose) in autophagy, on his blog: Trehalose, autophagy, and brain repair: Sweet http://metamodern.com/2010/09/15/trehalose-autophagy-and-brain-repair-sweet/ The stuff has recently become available to the general public, so the whole thing is even more exciting... http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001TEKR7W?ie=UTF8&tag=edrexlecom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B001TEKR7W Before we all rush to buy it, it's worth mentioning that Drexler follows up the above post with another one on the role of trehalase, the enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of trehalose to glucose: Trehalose vs. trehalase http://metamodern.com/2010/09/18/trehalose-vs-trehalase/ He ends his second post with a question: "When someone swallows trehalose, where does it go, and how long does it stay there? Knowing how humans compare to mice in this regard would help to clarify the possible significance of several studies in the literature. Can someone point me to a reference that answers this question?" I had a go on Pubmed, but didn't come up with anything. Can anyone here do better? Thanks, Fabio From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sun Sep 19 09:31:11 2010 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 02:31:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Trehalose for life-extension? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <152051.43785.qm@web65609.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Thanks for bringing?trehalose to my attention. Turns out it makes a real good cryopreseravtive too. Here?some Pubmed?references, Fabio. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20546895 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20363292 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14730359 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20477758 http://www.landesbioscience.com/journals/autophagy/article/7662 http://www.jbc.org/content/282/8/5641.long Actually the last two are complete articles that can be downloaded for free. Enjoy. ?Stuart LaForge "Old men read the lesson in the setting sun. Beat the cymbal and sing in this life, or wail away the hours fearing death. Their choice is their fortune." - I Ching From giulio at gmail.com Sun Sep 19 10:48:44 2010 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 12:48:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] VIDEO: Martine Rothblatt on Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles, Teleplace, September 18 Message-ID: VIDEO - Martine Rothblatt on Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles, Teleplace, September 18 http://telexlr8.wordpress.com/2010/09/18/martine-rothblatt-on-reconstructing-minds-from-software-mindfiles-teleplace-september-18/ Video: http://telexlr8.blip.tv/file/4137555/ Martine Rothblatt gave an ASIM Expert Series talk in Teleplace on ?Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles? on Saturday September 18, 2010. Abstract: ?I do think, however, there is a (natural) tendency to way overestimate the importance of copying our brain structure to copying our minds. I think our minds will be uploadable in good enough shape to satisfy most everyone by reconstructing them from information stored in software mindfiles such as diaries, videos, personality inventories, saved google voice conversations, chats, and chatbot conversations. The reconstruction process will be iteratively achieved with AI software designed for this purpose, dubbed mindware.? Some questions and comments from the audience have been of a philosophical nature and related to preservation of self (whatever that is), but most of those who attended the talk were already prepared to accept that, depending on the amount of information stored and the accuracy of the reconstruction process, the upload copy may be (and feel like) a valid continuation of the original self. The talk and the discussion have been more focused on actual technologies and technical issues: How to extract enough information? How to prove that the information extracted is enough? How to quantify a critical treshold? How to make sure that nothing really important is left behind? How to reconstruct a thinking and feeling mind from a database? Martine gave a detailed presentation of the preliminary implementation of software mindfiles in her twin projects CyBeRev and LifeNaut (similar, but kept separate mainly as a fail-safe measure) and their forthcoming mobile clients and integration with social networks. See also ASIM Experts series: Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles on carboncopies.org and the discussion in the article MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco on H+ Magazine. Martine presented also the short movie Bina48 Robot on YouTube (latest update of the video in the New York Times article). Thanks Martine for the great talk and thanks to the (about 25) participants who contributed to the discussion with very interesting questions and comments. For those who could not attend we have recorded everything (talk, Q/A and discussion) on video. http://telexlr8.wordpress.com/2010/09/18/martine-rothblatt-on-reconstructing-minds-from-software-mindfiles-teleplace-september-18/ On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 11:38 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > Martine Rothblatt on Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles, > Teleplace, September 18, 10am PST > > Martine Rothblatt will give an ASIM Expert Series talk in Teleplace on > ?Reconstructing Minds from Software Mindfiles? on Saturday September > 18, 2010, at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm CET). > http://telexlr8.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/martine-rothblatt-on-reconstructing-minds-from-software-mindfiles-teleplace-september-18-10am-pst/ > > Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow > up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for > others, please contact me if you wish to attend. You can also join the > Facebook page for the event. > http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=109802802385416&v=app_2344061033&ref=ts#!/event.php?eid=156546761037504&ref=ts > > Abstract: ?I do think, however, there is a (natural) tendency to way > overestimate the importance of copying our brain structure to copying > our minds. I think our minds will be uploadable in good enough shape > to satisfy most everyone by reconstructing them from information > stored in software mindfiles such as diaries, videos, personality > inventories, saved google voice conversations, chats, and chatbot > conversations. The reconstruction process will be iteratively achieved > with AI software designed for this purpose, dubbed mindware.? > > Martine Rothblatt is an American lawyer, author, and entrepreneur. > Rothblatt graduated from UCLA with a combined law and MBA degree in > 1981, then began work in Washington, D.C., first in the field of > communication satellite law, and eventually in life sciences projects > like the Human Genome Project. She is currently the founder and CEO of > United Therapeutics. In 2004, Rothblatt launched the Terasem Movement, > a transhumanist school of thought focused on promoting joy, diversity, > and the prospect of technological immortality via personal > cyberconsciousness and geoethical nanotechnology. The purpose of the > CyBeRev (cybernetic beingness revival) project of the Terasem Movement > is to prevent death by preserving sufficient information about a > person so that recovery remains possible by foreseeable technology. > > Teleplace is one of the best 3D applications for telework, online > meetings, group collaboration, and e-learning in a virtual 3D > environment (v-learning). Those who already have Teleplace accounts > for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number > of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to > attend. You can also join the Facebook page for the event. > http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/09/martine-rothblatt-on-reconstructing.html > From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Sep 19 14:54:58 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 09:54:58 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Hive45 Singularity Podcast In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4C962442.20305@satx.rr.com> On 9/19/2010 1:44 AM, John Grigg wrote: > Who the heck are these guys? They're a pair of Australians, of course. From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sun Sep 19 16:33:05 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 12:33:05 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Xylomannan (was: Re: Trehalose for life-extension?) In-Reply-To: <152051.43785.qm@web65609.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <152051.43785.qm@web65609.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sep 19, 2010, at 5:31 AM, The Avantguardian wrote: > Thanks for bringing trehalose to my attention. Turns out it makes a real good > cryopreseravtive too. I'm puzzled that there is not more interest in using xylomannan as a cryopreservative, it's a sugar-fatty acid complex. So far as is known only the Alaskan Upis beetle makes it, and that is a truly remarkable bug. It freezes solid at about 18 degrees F but you can continue to cool it down all the way to minus 100 degrees F (-73C). Then if you want to revive the insect you don't need all sorts of fancy Nanotechnology, you just warm it up and it crawls away and goes about its business as if nothing had happened. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From agrimes at speakeasy.net Sun Sep 19 15:19:58 2010 From: agrimes at speakeasy.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 11:19:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <16EDA2C9-91D9-4DEE-A120-C43E911D8A32@bellsouth.net> References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> <4C955597.9040505@speakeasy.net> <16EDA2C9-91D9-4DEE-A120-C43E911D8A32@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: <4C962A1E.6030306@speakeasy.net> chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties: > On Sep 18, 2010, at 8:13 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: >> Now, remind me again how you think you will be able to survive as >> an upload? > Physically and philosophically uploading is a valid concept, Yes, no respectively. > but how long any given upload will survive depends entirely on the > particular uploading culture it is put into, and we can only guess > what that might be like. Correct. =) >> Also remind me why you would prefer to try to survive as an upload >> rather than using medical nanites and other more direct means >> to obtain physical immortality? > Unfortunately I very much doubt my preferences will make the slightest > difference. I don't think Mr. Jupiter Brain will allow stupid and > primitive humans to live at the same level of reality as his precious > hardware; he's bound to be a bit squeamish about that, it would be like > a monkey running around an operating room. If he lets us live it will > be in a virtual world behind a heavy firewall, but that's OK, we'll > never know the difference unless he tells us. What a shocking statement! At first I was about to pick it apart like I normally do but then I quickly became overwhelmed by how disgustingly pathetic a mentality must be in order to think such a thing! Can I even be reading you right that you are cheerfully looking forward to accepting the tenuous existence within a cubic centimeter prison as a second class entity with utterly no opportunities for growth or long term survival? I'd be tempted to put a bullet in you out of the same feeling that I would feel around a victim of something that had lost all of his limbs, was bleeding out with his guts on the floor, with his face torn up and screaming in agony. Worms as low as you deserve NOTHING, and will probably get it. You really only have three options: 1. Become the J-brain yourself. and 2. flee the solar system, and 3. Become sufficiently powerful that you can hold a battlefront against such a J-brain until the j-brain gives up and offers an armistice. There might be one or two other options but nothing along the lines of what you suggest should even be contemplated. =| >> In the procedure of uploading, it is something completely different >> from you > That would be like saying my message that you're reading on your > computer screen right now is completely different from the one on my > computer screen, and if you were to print it out it would be completely > different yet again. That would be ridiculous because schematically the > information flow in all three instances is identical. If I haven't > convinced you that I'm right about this it's probably because you > haven't read my original Email that's on my computer, its ever so much > better than the pale imitation you're seeing. You are trying to substitute the laws governing a single thought in place of those that govern an entire living/conscious/feeling being. >> only blessed with a magical incantation and a label saying that it is you. > I am of the opinion that if tomorrow there is an entity that remembers > being the John K Clark of today then I will have survived for another > day. I mean, what more could you possibly mean by "survival"? I mean that there is a continuous trajectory of consciousness between where I am and where I will be. >> It could be the most perfect copy conceivable and I still would not care. > Well of course you wouldn't care, you wouldn't even know it had happened > unless somebody told you, and even then you wouldn't believe it unless > they provided ironclad proof. For all you know you're body was destroyed > last night and was replaced by a perfect copy; it doesn't seem to be > cramping your style so if you found out the same thing will happen to > you again tonight I see no reason you should be concerned. But the me that's sitting here in this chair right now doesn't want to experience being destroyed and coppied, or dying of old age. =P -- DO NOT USE OBAMACARE. DO NOT BUY OBAMACARE. Powers are not rights. From natasha at natasha.cc Sun Sep 19 17:01:37 2010 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 12:01:37 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Hive45 Singularity Podcast In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <328F4E7A62A748D9B5E0FD5CC1286704@DFC68LF1> Why aren't any of us doing it? The Singularity is for everyone! Here is my old dorky podcast http://www.natasha.cc/futurists.htm . John, you have inspired me to do a more modern one. :-) Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Grigg Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2010 1:44 AM To: ExI chat list Cc: transfigurism; World Transhumanist Association Discussion List; SciFi_Discussion Subject: [ExI] Hive45 Singularity Podcast Who the heck are these guys? lol And why aren't Eliezer and Michael doing it??? How dare they drink beer while discussing such important matters! http://hive45.com/shows/episode-31-predict-then-invent-the-future/ John _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sun Sep 19 17:44:08 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 13:44:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <4C962A1E.6030306@speakeasy.net> References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> <4C955597.9040505@speakeasy.net> <16EDA2C9-91D9-4DEE-A120-C43E911D8A32@bellsouth.net> <4C962A1E.6030306@speakeasy.net> Message-ID: <52D590D6-27F7-4CA3-A095-8AC0B178452C@bellsouth.net> On Sep 19, 2010, at 11:19 AM, Alan Grimes wrote: > >> Unfortunately I very much doubt my preferences will make the slightest >> difference. I don't think Mr. Jupiter Brain will allow stupid and >> primitive humans to live at the same level of reality as his precious >> hardware; he's bound to be a bit squeamish about that, it would be like >> a monkey running around an operating room. If he lets us live it will >> be in a virtual world behind a heavy firewall, but that's OK, we'll >> never know the difference unless he tells us. > > What a shocking statement! At first I was about to pick it apart like I > normally do but then I quickly became overwhelmed by how disgustingly > pathetic a mentality must be in order to think such a thing! Can I even > be reading you right that you are cheerfully looking forward to > accepting the tenuous existence within a cubic centimeter prison Right now you are confined to a 1273 cubic centimeter "prison", assuming your skull is of average size, and it doesn't seem to be cramping your style. And I said nothing about being cheerful or what I thought my personal fate will be, but now that you bring it up I would say it is probably not as an upload or any other potential immortality, but most likely oblivion. However I will say that almost certain death is preferable to absolutely certain death. > I'd be tempted to put a bullet in you out of the same feeling that I would feel around a victim of something that had lost all of his limbs, was bleeding out with his guts on the floor, with his face > torn up and screaming in agony. Worms as low as you deserve NOTHING, and will probably get it. And I love you too. > You are trying to substitute the laws governing a single thought in > place of those that govern an entire living/conscious/feeling being. Your error is in assuming that you have thoughts when in reality you are thoughts. >> I am of the opinion that if tomorrow there is an entity that remembers >> being the John K Clark of today then I will have survived for another >> day. I mean, what more could you possibly mean by "survival"? > > I mean that there is a continuous trajectory of consciousness between > where I am and where I will be. But in your previous post you seemed to agree that subjectivity is much more important than objectivity, and consciousness always seems to be continuous, it's the external world that stops and starts and jumps around. > But the me that's sitting here in this chair right now doesn't want to > experience being destroyed and coppied The you sitting here in this chair right now may have already been destroyed and copied, and yet it doesn't seem to have caused you any harm. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sun Sep 19 17:25:40 2010 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 10:25:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] emerging technologies may lead to a revolutionary horizontal space launcher In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: >up to Mach 10 Orbital speed is roughly Mach 25, so this is about right for the first stage of a two stage solution. However, Mach 10 is about 7500 mph, and they say the aircraft would only reach about 600 mph on the rail - which doesn't have that much total impact. It still needs its own engines to reach the remaining 9/10ths of its final speed. (Though, acceleration would be a problem if it went for Mach 10, limiting it to cargo launches only. To reach 7500 mph, starting from 0, over a length of 2 miles, you'd need to do it in roughly 2 seconds, which is around 170 Gs of acceleration. For only 750 mph in 2 miles, you can take about 20 seconds, at only 1.7 Gs acceleration. This same acceleration could reach 7500 mph in about 200 miles - and if you're building something that large anyway, a space elevator might be more practical.) What this does do, is sneak in reusability, instead of rebuildability as championed by the Space Shuttle, or explicitly discardable spacecraft that are traditional rockets. That could significantly reduce the cost of launching things into orbit, even if the second stage is discarded every time. On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 11:32 PM, John Grigg wrote: > This makes me think of Tom Swift or Thunderbirds! > > http://www.physorg.com/news203515989.html > > 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 Sun Sep 19 19:36:32 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 12:36:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Hive45 Singularity Podcast In-Reply-To: <328F4E7A62A748D9B5E0FD5CC1286704@DFC68LF1> References: <328F4E7A62A748D9B5E0FD5CC1286704@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: Natasha Vita-More wrote: >Here is my old dorky podcast http://www.natasha.cc/futurists.htm . John, >you have inspired me to do a more modern one. :-) Great news!! : ) I'm proud to have sparked such a decision! John On 9/19/10, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > Why aren't any of us doing it? The Singularity is for everyone! > > Here is my old dorky podcast http://www.natasha.cc/futurists.htm . John, > you have inspired me to do a more modern one. :-) > > > Natasha Vita-More > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Grigg > Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2010 1:44 AM > To: ExI chat list > Cc: transfigurism; World Transhumanist Association Discussion List; > SciFi_Discussion > Subject: [ExI] Hive45 Singularity Podcast > > Who the heck are these guys? lol And why aren't Eliezer and Michael doing > it??? > > How dare they drink beer while discussing such important matters! > > http://hive45.com/shows/episode-31-predict-then-invent-the-future/ > > John > _______________________________________________ > 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 jrd1415 at gmail.com Sun Sep 19 19:33:26 2010 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 12:33:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 8 minute long animation about the cell In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Totally, mind-blowingly cool. Thanks for this submission, John. Hope you are well. Best, Jeff "Everything's hard til you know how to do it." Ray Charles On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 11:03 PM, John Grigg wrote: > Harvard University commissioned XVIVO to create this video about the > inner life of a cell. > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mszlckmc4Hw > > John ?: ) > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sep 19 20:39:36 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 13:39:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] emerging technologies may lead to a revolutionary horizontal space launcher In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <67917D531A2041E1A9D8D8105BED5E98@spike> ________________________________ ... On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Subject: Re: [ExI] emerging technologies may lead to a revolutionary horizontal space launcher >...up to Mach 10 Orbital speed is roughly Mach 25, so this is about right for the first stage of a two stage solution. However, Mach 10 is about 7500 mph, and they say the aircraft would only reach about 600 mph on the rail - which doesn't have that much total impact... Ja, the way I would look at that is the rail system lets you out of wheels if you go horizontal launch, and it gets you to a speed in which you could light up your ramjets. ...still needs its own engines to reach the remaining 9/10ths of its final speed... Ja again. The rail launch system has its advantages, but it is not a miracle. Otherwise we would have done it before now. >...Though, acceleration would be a problem if it went for Mach 10, limiting it to cargo launches only... I have in mind these kinds of systems will always be for cargo only. But cargo only craft have their advantages too: the engineers can shave the margins closer, accept a bit more risk. ... >...What this does do, is sneak in reusability, instead of rebuildability as championed by the Space Shuttle, or explicitly discardable spacecraft that are traditional rockets. That could significantly reduce the cost of launching things into orbit, even if the second stage is discarded every time. All the concepts that look real to me have at least two stages with at least part of one stage as a throwaway. Doing a no-throwaway cargo ship to orbit is a holy grail we are unlikely to find any time soon. spike From kanzure at gmail.com Sun Sep 19 22:14:28 2010 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 17:14:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: SynBio Online Episode 3 is out! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Eric Ma Date: Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 5:12 PM Subject: SynBio Online Episode 3 is out! To: diybio at googlegroups.com Hey everybody, I'm sorry for the delays in publishing this podcast series. Post-graduation life has proven busier than I thought... Anyways, it's out, and I'd really appreciate comments coming in please! If you have any ideas on how I can improve on it, please let me know. Or if you think I'm doing just fine, please let me know as well - feedback, and knowing that I've got people listening in, helps keep me going! http://www.ericmajinglong.com/synbiopodcast/2010/09/19/episode-3-dna-sequencing/ Cheers, Eric --------------------------------------------------------------- Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail. Do you really need to print it? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DIYbio" group. To post to this group, send email to diybio at googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to diybio+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/diybio?hl=en. -- - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From stathisp at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 02:23:59 2010 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 12:23:59 +1000 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <4C955597.9040505@speakeasy.net> References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> <4C955597.9040505@speakeasy.net> Message-ID: 2010/9/19 Alan Grimes : > Therefore it necessarily follows that if you then replace all the atoms > at once with a completely different substance that bares no resemblance > (never mind temporal or spatial connection) to the original in either > outward appearance or the mechanism of its operation, it can not be > anything other than the exact same person!!! =PPP What exactly are you saying here? 1. If the atoms are replaced by identical ones, is that OK? 2. If the atoms are replaced gradually, but not all at once, is that OK? 3. If the atoms are replaced with functional equivalents - for example, if the calcium ion channels are replaced with tiny mechanical devices operated by magnetic fields - is that OK? 4. If you don't believe the above replacement processes are OK would you experience a gradual mental change corresponding to the physical change, and if so how is that possible given that observable (including self-observable) neurological function would be the same? -- Stathis Papaioannou From msd001 at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 04:02:28 2010 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 00:02:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> <4C955597.9040505@speakeasy.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 10:23 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2010/9/19 Alan Grimes : > >> Therefore it necessarily follows that if you then replace all the atoms >> at once with a completely different substance that bares no resemblance >> (never mind temporal or spatial connection) to the original in either >> outward appearance or the mechanism of its operation, it can not be >> anything other than the exact same person!!! =PPP > > What exactly are you saying here? > 1. If the atoms are replaced by identical ones, is that OK? > 2. If the atoms are replaced gradually, but not all at once, is that OK? > 3. If the atoms are replaced with functional equivalents - for > example, if the calcium ion channels are replaced with tiny mechanical > devices operated by magnetic fields - is that OK? > 4. If you don't believe the above replacement processes are OK would > you experience a gradual mental change corresponding to the physical > change, and if so how is that possible given that observable > (including self-observable) neurological function would be the same? These identity arguments are intractable. We might as well debate the number of angels that can dance on the head of pin... but that would probably devolve into the type of pin (sewing, bowling, etc.) and the kind of angels (christian, hindu, charley's) and the practical mechanics of dance. The fact is people take mind-altering drugs every day. They are no less 'themselves' than they are aware of being until they claim to be "not myself." The threshold must be unique to each individual and there exist as many parameters and tolerances as one has features to observe. Even if we have a perfect model for how a particular drug will impact a person's thinking, their own belief in the accuracy of the model is likely to affect the outcome. (omg, the model indicates that if I eat this blue Pez I'll murder my house pets i shouldn't eat blue Pez. Or: My horoscope says 1/12 of the population is going to have a difficult day today, so I better call out of work sick. Duh) I think it might be easier to imagine this 'replacement' question using our bodies: If your knees are worn out and we replace them with synthetic materials, are you still the same person? Yes, you can identify your friends and family and they'll all recognize you too. However, the avid birdwatcher who's been confined to looking out the window is suddenly able to go hiking for hours without pain. Are they the "same" person? No, of course not: they're now more mobile. A person is not defined by a static snapshot of a moment in time - he or she is a set of dynamic processes with habits that may change. People have been offloading memory and processing power to machines for a very long time. We used to remember phone numbers but now we keep that information in the device that we use to make calls. We used to know how to access indexes in order to find books to retrieve information but now we 'google the internet.' So if we move the embedded (in the skull) process to another substrate over time or all at once, what difference does it really make? Some will be horrified by the idea, others will find it a natural progression of technology. No doubt there will be a social divide between the hive-minded and always-on technophiles and the die-hard (ha!) purist old-school humans. How is that much different than it is today? From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 04:04:07 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 21:04:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Xylomannan (was: Re: Trehalose for life-extension?) In-Reply-To: References: <152051.43785.qm@web65609.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 9/19/10, John Clark wrote: > On Sep 19, 2010, at 5:31 AM, The Avantguardian wrote: > >> Thanks for bringing trehalose to my attention. Turns out it makes a real >> good >> cryopreseravtive too. > > I'm puzzled that there is not more interest in using xylomannan as a > cryopreservative, it's a sugar-fatty acid complex. So far as is known only > the Alaskan Upis beetle makes it, and that is a truly remarkable bug. It > freezes solid at about 18 degrees F but you can continue to cool it down all > the way to minus 100 degrees F (-73C). Then if you want to revive the insect > you don't need all sorts of fancy Nanotechnology, you just warm it up and it > crawls away and goes about its business as if nothing had happened. I thought the current active ingredient in Alcor's vitrification formula was a synthetic form of Xylomannan. But then again I remember there being a fish that they were also looking at carefully, where costs were viewed as being probably lower. The vitrification ingredients... http://cryomedical.blogspot.com/2010/02/alcors-trade-secrets-vitrification.html Dimethyl sulfoxide 2.855 M Formamide 2.855 M Ethylene glycol 2.713 M N-methylformamide 0.508 M 3-methoxy-1,2-propanediol 0.377 M Polyvinyl pyrrolidone K12* 2.8% w/v X-1000 ice blocker* 1% w/v Z-1000 ice blocker* 2% w/v Total Molarity 9.345 M" (May be missing one "proprietary" ingredient, but I doubt Johnson knows what it is.) The excellent "Depressed Metabolism" blog of Aschwin de Wolf... http://www.depressedmetabolism.com/2008/07/08/vitrification-agents-in-cryonics-m22/ John From stathisp at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 04:11:41 2010 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 14:11:41 +1000 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: 2010/9/19 John Clark : > I don't. There will still be competition from things smarter than you, AI's > as well as other uploads that started out smarter than you and haven't > gotten dumber with the passage of time; and there may be competition from > things not nearly as bright as you too, like viruses. But the biggest snake > in the garden of Eden may be drug abuse, if you could open the "preferences" > panel in your mind it would take an iron will not to move the happiness > slide switch just a little further to the right, and then a little more, and > then a bit more [...] I hope not but drug abuse could be the explanation for > the Fermi Paradox. Why go to all the trouble of actually accomplishing > something when you can get the same agreeable feeling of pride and > fulfillment without all the bother? If it would take an "iron will" to resist the temptation to do this and you think resisting the temptation would be a good idea then you could just give yourself the requisite iron will. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 03:50:46 2010 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 13:50:46 +1000 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <4C955597.9040505@speakeasy.net> References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> <4C955597.9040505@speakeasy.net> Message-ID: 2010/9/19 Alan Grimes : > Perhaps I missed the point myself. The actual point being that in your > example it is the same instance of you that is being restarted. In the > procedure of uploading, it is something completely different from you > only blessed with a magical incantation and a label saying that it is you. Can you define the criteria necessary to determine that an entity at one time and place is the same person as an entity at another time and place? -- Stathis Papaioannou From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 04:47:48 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 21:47:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] papal paradox In-Reply-To: <421147.56853.qm@smtp103.sbc.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <421147.56853.qm@smtp103.sbc.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 9/18/10, spike wrote: > > > Six men were arrested during the pope's visit to Britain. > > Strangly enough, the pope wasn't one of them. Power has it's privileges... I admit it's amazing that anyone could be proven to protect pedophiles over and over again (and on a global scale!) and yet still be walking around a free man! LOL I think this pope had pedophilia confused with bad habits like smoking and drinking too much... But then I suspect this problem has been entrenched within the Church for many centuries and was merely seen as an "unfortunate evil" to be hidden. I want to see the pope after this one have a Russian Commissar's attitude toward the problem! John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 05:00:34 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 22:00:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] (no subject) Message-ID: I found this video with David Shade, self-appointed expert regarding women, marriage, and sexuality, to be both very strange and intriguing. But hey, the guy has a Master's in electrical engineering! lol After his wife left him for a "bad boy," he decided to figure out what he had done wrong and it lead to his rather interesting business. He has the looks and delivery of an actor who specializes in horror films... http://pressmediawire.com/22025/leann-rimes-cheating-explained-by-sex-expert-david-shade.html John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 05:02:41 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 22:02:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Psychology: A human relations "guru" Message-ID: I found this video with David Shade, self-appointed expert regarding women, marriage, and sexuality, to be both very strange and intriguing. But hey, the guy has a Master's in electrical engineering! lol After his wife left him for a "bad boy," he decided to figure out what he had done wrong and it lead to his rather interesting business. He has the looks and delivery of an actor who specializes in horror films... http://pressmediawire.com/22025/leann-rimes-cheating-explained-by-sex-expert-david-shade.html John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 09:39:59 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 02:39:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] LSD- the geek's wonder drug? Message-ID: Wired discusses the drug that some scientists have used for "mind expansion." I find it interesting that LDS is making a comeback among the intelligentsia and also the medical establishment. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70015 John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 09:47:18 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 02:47:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Nanotubes in the news Message-ID: Considering these nanotubes materials are over 100 times stronger than steel, can we *finally* build a damn space elevator? : ) http://www.bloggingthesingularity.com/2010/09/18/behold-the-strength-of-carbon-nanotubes-health-tech-cnet-news/ John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 09:50:46 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 02:50:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Book: The Hypomanic Edge Message-ID: I wonder if twenty years from now, this will be a gene mod option for parents... http://www.hypomanicedge.com/ John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 09:55:51 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 02:55:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fiber optic interface to link robotic limbs, human brain Message-ID: Cyborg technology continues along in exciting ways... "Lightning-fast connections between robotic limbs and the human brain may be within reach for injured soldiers and other amputees with the establishment of a multimillion-dollar research center led by SMU engineers" http://blog.smu.edu/research/2010/09/optical_interface_for_prosthet.html John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 10:02:05 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 03:02:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Genes found that enhance academic performance Message-ID: This will eventually lead to the "honor student" gene mod package for parents who want academic achievers! ; ) http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/found-genes-that-make-kids-smart/story-e6frg6nf-1225926421510 John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 10:16:40 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 03:16:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Asimo's new artificial intelligence Message-ID: A fascinating video. I wonder where they will be in ten year's time? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9ByGQGiVMg&feature=related John From agrimes at speakeasy.net Mon Sep 20 04:08:15 2010 From: agrimes at speakeasy.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 00:08:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> <4C955597.9040505@speakeasy.net> Message-ID: <4C96DE2F.1010403@speakeasy.net> chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties: > 2010/9/19 Alan Grimes : >> Therefore it necessarily follows that if you then replace all the atoms >> at once with a completely different substance that bares no resemblance >> (never mind temporal or spatial connection) to the original in either >> outward appearance or the mechanism of its operation, it can not be >> anything other than the exact same person!!! =PPP > What exactly are you saying here? It was a reducto-ad-absurdum of the process of destructive brain uploading. > 1. If the atoms are replaced by identical ones, is that OK? > 2. If the atoms are replaced gradually, but not all at once, is that OK? > 3. If the atoms are replaced with functional equivalents - for > example, if the calcium ion channels are replaced with tiny mechanical > devices operated by magnetic fields - is that OK? > 4. If you don't believe the above replacement processes are OK would > you experience a gradual mental change corresponding to the physical > change, and if so how is that possible given that observable > (including self-observable) neurological function would be the same? I don't think it's meaningful to try to respond to little one-liners such as that. If you have a proposal for upgrading my brain (or any other part of me) go ahead and post it to the list in the form of a 20 page essay that covers how it would work, how it would be accomplished, and what benefits it would yield. Spending time trying to evaluate such contrived examples would probably be a waste. -- DO NOT USE OBAMACARE. DO NOT BUY OBAMACARE. Powers are not rights. From stathisp at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 14:59:00 2010 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:59:00 +1000 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <4C96DE2F.1010403@speakeasy.net> References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> <4C955597.9040505@speakeasy.net> <4C96DE2F.1010403@speakeasy.net> Message-ID: 2010/9/20 Alan Grimes : > I don't think it's meaningful to try to respond to little one-liners > such as that. If you have a proposal for upgrading my brain (or any > other part of me) go ahead and post it to the list in the form of a 20 > page essay that covers how it would work, how it would be accomplished, > and what benefits it would yield. Spending time trying to evaluate such > contrived examples would probably be a waste. A little bit at a time would be replaced with a more durable functional equivalent. Eventually the whole brain is replaced. We can't actually do this at present but there isn't anything physically impossible about it. The question is a philosophical, not a technical one: if your brain were replaced in this way would you survive? -- Stathis Papaioannou From spike66 at att.net Mon Sep 20 14:53:07 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 07:53:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] singularity utopia's addendum to a final post In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <814F8A41A5664D099B7520AB67D8A33C@spike> Singularity Utopia contacted me offlist, asking me to forward his or her addendum to the list. I guess I don't see the harm in that. Here ya go: Someone emailed me recently regarding my posting to the extropy list; they said they enjoyed my comments and I need not have left but they also said: "I hope you will continue evangelize for post-scarcity minus the narcissism/messiah complex." I feel everyone has missed the point regarding the Singularity. A messiah complex, or greatly inflated ego, is not out of place because the Singularity is EXTREMELY empowering. The Singularity will make humans become very powerful. We will become gods or greater than gods. The human race will radically and irrevocably transform therefore having a so-called messiah complex is more than justified becuase we will be greater than any human messiah. Technology in the future will allow us to perform feats that seem utterly miraculous: post-human, superhuman. I created the following web-page in response to some of the views on the extropy-list http://singularity-2045.org/ai-dangerous-hostile-unfriendly.html You have my permission to re-post this email to the extropy list. Regards Singularity Utopia Pleasantville Pepperland The Colourful Future Circa 2045 From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 15:21:06 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 08:21:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Nanotubes in the news Message-ID: On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 5:00 AM, John Grigg wrote: > Considering these nanotubes materials are over 100 times stronger than > steel, can we *finally* build a damn space elevator? ?: ) > > http://www.bloggingthesingularity.com/2010/09/18/behold-the-strength-of-carbon-nanotubes-health-tech-cnet-news/ "we estimate the maximum applied stress of the nanotubes in this study to be 99 GPa" The magic number for a non tapered space elevator cable for carbon nanotubes is 63 GPa. So, yes, if this can be done on the scale of many millions of tons we could have an elevator. Reasonably fast too since you would want to make it a fast moving loop. You still need to build a big ablation laser to clean up all the space junk that would otherwise eventually run into the cable. Keith Henson > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 21 > Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 02:50:46 -0700 > From: John Grigg > To: ExI chat list > Cc: transfigurism , ? ? World > ? ? ? ?Transhumanist Association Discussion List > ? ? ? ?, ? SciFi_Discussion > ? ? ? ? > Subject: [ExI] Book: The Hypomanic Edge > Message-ID: > ? ? ? ? > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > I wonder if twenty years from now, this will be a gene mod option for parents... > > http://www.hypomanicedge.com/ > > John > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 22 > Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 02:55:51 -0700 > From: John Grigg > To: ExI chat list > Cc: transfigurism , ? ? World > ? ? ? ?Transhumanist Association Discussion List > ? ? ? ?, ? SciFi_Discussion > ? ? ? ? > Subject: [ExI] Fiber optic interface to link robotic limbs, human > ? ? ? ?brain > Message-ID: > ? ? ? ? > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > Cyborg technology continues along in exciting ways... > > "Lightning-fast connections between robotic limbs and the human brain > may be within reach for injured soldiers and other amputees with the > establishment of a multimillion-dollar research center led by SMU > engineers" > > http://blog.smu.edu/research/2010/09/optical_interface_for_prosthet.html > > John > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 23 > Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 03:02:05 -0700 > From: John Grigg > To: ExI chat list > Cc: transfigurism , ? ? World > ? ? ? ?Transhumanist Association Discussion List > ? ? ? ?, ? SciFi_Discussion > ? ? ? ? > Subject: [ExI] Genes found that enhance academic performance > Message-ID: > ? ? ? ? > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > This will eventually lead to the "honor student" gene mod package for > parents who want academic achievers! ?; ) > > http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/found-genes-that-make-kids-smart/story-e6frg6nf-1225926421510 > > John > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 24 > Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 03:16:40 -0700 > From: John Grigg > To: ExI chat list > Cc: transfigurism , ? ? World > ? ? ? ?Transhumanist Association Discussion List > ? ? ? ?, ? SciFi_Discussion > ? ? ? ? > Subject: [ExI] Asimo's new artificial intelligence > Message-ID: > ? ? ? ? > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > A fascinating video. ?I wonder where they will be in ten year's time? > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9ByGQGiVMg&feature=related > > John > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > End of extropy-chat Digest, Vol 84, Issue 25 > ******************************************** > From spike66 at att.net Mon Sep 20 14:58:05 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 07:58:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Nanotubes in the news In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of John Grigg ... > Considering these nanotubes materials are over 100 times > stronger than steel, can we *finally* build a damn space > elevator? : ) > > http://www.bloggingthesingularity.com/2010/09/18/behold-the-strength-of-carb on-nanotubes-health-tech-cnet-news/ > > John No! No John, we sure can't. Not yet anyway. Even given the materials, we still haven't figured out what to do about all those satellites, which must cross the equatorial plane twice every orbit. I did a BOTEC on this about a decade ago and concluded the half life of the elevator would be about 7 months. Shorter now. We need to sweep LEO to make this notion a go. spike From natasha at natasha.cc Mon Sep 20 15:26:21 2010 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:26:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] singularity utopia's addendum to a final post In-Reply-To: <814F8A41A5664D099B7520AB67D8A33C@spike> References: <814F8A41A5664D099B7520AB67D8A33C@spike> Message-ID: <1D4E0996232F4DF6816C1DF5AFE75910@DFC68LF1> Let's put this to rest please. Thank you, N Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Monday, September 20, 2010 9:53 AM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: [ExI] singularity utopia's addendum to a final post Singularity Utopia contacted me offlist, asking me to forward his or her addendum to the list. I guess I don't see the harm in that. Here ya go: Someone emailed me recently regarding my posting to the extropy list; they said they enjoyed my comments and I need not have left but they also said: "I hope you will continue evangelize for post-scarcity minus the narcissism/messiah complex." I feel everyone has missed the point regarding the Singularity. A messiah complex, or greatly inflated ego, is not out of place because the Singularity is EXTREMELY empowering. The Singularity will make humans become very powerful. We will become gods or greater than gods. The human race will radically and irrevocably transform therefore having a so-called messiah complex is more than justified becuase we will be greater than any human messiah. Technology in the future will allow us to perform feats that seem utterly miraculous: post-human, superhuman. I created the following web-page in response to some of the views on the extropy-list http://singularity-2045.org/ai-dangerous-hostile-unfriendly.html You have my permission to re-post this email to the extropy list. Regards Singularity Utopia Pleasantville Pepperland The Colourful Future Circa 2045 _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From spike66 at att.net Mon Sep 20 16:03:06 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 09:03:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] stealth singularity Message-ID: <4F6B952A51A34832A731CB3A60C74062@spike> Imagine that an AI emerged and that it concluded that it wanted to stay invisible. What would you do differently, if anything, given the knowledge that an AI had come into existence, but had not uploaded humanity? Perhaps the evidence was subtle: the total light reflected from the asteroids was decreasing, but not by much, nothing anyone would notice. That reading suggested that nanobots were taking material from the 'roids. What would you do? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Sep 20 16:32:24 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 12:32:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: <0076DAE1-3D58-4441-B049-53B660ED15DF@bellsouth.net> Me: >> if you could open the "preferences" >> panel in your mind it would take an iron will not to move the happiness >> slide switch just a little further to the right, and then a little more, and >> then a bit more [...] I hope not but drug abuse could be the explanation for >> the Fermi Paradox. Why go to all the trouble of actually accomplishing >> something when you can get the same agreeable feeling of pride and >> fulfillment without all the bother? Stathis Papaioannou: > If it would take an "iron will" to resist the temptation to do this > and you think resisting the temptation would be a good idea then you > could just give yourself the requisite iron will. Easier said than done. I don't believe it would be viable for a mind's happiness to be forever fixed at one point regardless of whatever good or bad things happened around it, there would be no motivation to do anything if your satisfaction can never increase or decrease as a result of it; and even worse, rigidly fixed rules of whatever sort leave a mind vulnerable to getting stuck in infinite loops. So you're going to have to come up with a scheme for moving that pleasure point, one that depends on circumstances and does so in a way that you think is responsible. But whatever security you set up protecting that vital process will certainly be able to be subverted, especially when you become far more intelligent and powerful than you were when you dreamed up the scheme and the security arrangements so many nanoseconds ago. And besides, even if you could overcome all these huge obstacles and forever limit your happiness, would you? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Sep 20 16:38:16 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 12:38:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <4C96DE2F.1010403@speakeasy.net> References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> <4C955597.9040505@speakeasy.net> <4C96DE2F.1010403@speakeasy.net> Message-ID: <577D3A32-DF06-4C36-A488-0AC6E590BDBC@bellsouth.net> On Sep 20, 2010, at 12:08 AM, Alan Grimes wrote: > I don't think it's meaningful to try to respond to little one-liners > such as that. If you have a proposal for upgrading my brain (or any > other part of me) go ahead and post it to the list in the form of a 20 > page essay that covers how it would work, how it would be accomplished, > and what benefits it would yield. Spending time trying to evaluate such > contrived examples would probably be a waste. WHAT A PATHETIC COPOUT! If someone could write a 20 page essay detailing exactly how mind uploading would work then we'd know enough to be able to do it right now, and there is nobody stupid enough to believe that. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Mon Sep 20 17:09:15 2010 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 11:09:15 -0600 Subject: [ExI] stealth singularity In-Reply-To: <4F6B952A51A34832A731CB3A60C74062@spike> References: <4F6B952A51A34832A731CB3A60C74062@spike> Message-ID: Spike, I believe that benevolence is absolutely proportional to intelligence. I believe that intelligence hiding from us is absolutely evil. Therefore, you?re proposed possibility suffers from the same problem of evil issue any other proposed possible hiding super intelligent being / god / ET existing suffers from. So, I would tend not to even entertain such an unlikely possibility, unless there was profound evidence to support it. I am an atheist, and that atheism includes not just the hope there is not yet God, but the hope that there is not yet any intelligent beings of any kind that is hiding from us. For if there is any such being, then there is no hope, and we will be condemned to the reality that even if we become as powerful as they are, we will also likely not be able to overcome the evil of having to hide from others like they allegedly are hiding from us. Brent Allsop 2010/9/20 spike > > Imagine that an AI emerged and that it concluded that it wanted to stay > invisible. > > What would you do differently, if anything, given the knowledge that an AI > had come into existence, but had not uploaded humanity? Perhaps the > evidence was subtle: the total light reflected from the asteroids was > decreasing, but not by much, nothing anyone would notice. That > reading suggested that nanobots were taking material from the 'roids. > > What would you do? > > spike > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 lists1 at evil-genius.com Mon Sep 20 17:35:17 2010 From: lists1 at evil-genius.com (lists1 at evil-genius.com) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:35:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Uploading and shocking statements (Re: a dispassionate etc.) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4C979B55.4080309@evil-genius.com> > From: Alan Grimes > > What a shocking statement! At first I was about to pick it apart like I > normally do but then I quickly became overwhelmed by how disgustingly > pathetic a mentality must be in order to think such a thing! Can I even > be reading you right that you are cheerfully looking forward to > accepting the tenuous existence within a cubic centimeter prison as a > second class entity with utterly no opportunities for growth or long > term survival? No. He's stating that to a sufficiently powerful entity, what you *want* does not make the slightest bit of difference. The saber-toothed carnivores that depended on hunting mammoths and mastodons did not *want* to die out as a side effect of mammoths and mastodons being hunted to extinction by humans. Yet they did. Similarly, as Charles Stross correctly points out in "Accelerando," most of the characteristics that make us recognizably human would be competitive disadvantages on the other side of the Singularity, which will be dominated by entities without those constraints. Perhaps we would be quarantined behind a firewall out of pity, and because it's trivially cheap for the dominant intelligences to do so. From spike66 at att.net Mon Sep 20 19:19:34 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 12:19:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] stealth singularity In-Reply-To: References: <4F6B952A51A34832A731CB3A60C74062@spike> Message-ID: <3260D6D3574B4A739E09A49FFE57EAC7@spike> ________________________________ ...On Behalf Of Brent Allsop Subject: Re: [ExI] stealth singularity Spike, > I believe that benevolence is absolutely proportional to intelligence. > I believe that intelligence hiding from us is absolutely evil... Brent Brent I follow you there, I see your line of reasoning, but before you leave that road completely, do ponder this question. Can you imagine any circumstances whereby an AI would hide, at least temporarily, and not be absolutely evil? I can think of some, which I will share by way of analogy. We set up nature preserves, vast stretches of natural habitat for wild beasts, but do we ponder the condition of those beasts? If you stop to really ponder it, we realize that wild beasts are constantly hungry, with starvation stalking all the time. You can take *any* beast from the wild, protect and feed them. What happens? In every case? But population explosions do not generally happen in the wild. So every species is at or near the environmental carrying capacity always. Their daily lives are a struggle against starvation, disease and other beasts wanting to devour. Think of the suffering we create by setting up a wildlife preserve. We leave all these beasts to suffer hunger, when we could be using our resources to feed and protect them. I do not consider wildlife preserves evil. Granted they have evil aspects to them, but in general, setting up wildlife preserves is a non-evil thing to do, or mixed good and evil. Can you imagine *any* circumstances whereby an emergent AI would decide to stay under cover, at least for a while? I can. Anyone else? spike From jrd1415 at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 19:42:30 2010 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 12:42:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] biological information processing Message-ID: This is an area of some interest to me: the notion that there is information processing going on at the cellular and sub-cellular level, not reliant on multi-cellular neurological systems ie brains. My money's on dense, multimodal, but not cryptic (ie in the clear) information "handling" (processing?) -- classical and quantum -- at all scales: organelle, cell, tissue, organ, organism, per the rule of fractal similarity at all scales. Note the final paragraph: "But here's the rub: Fritz's work is entirely theoretical and that raises an interesting and important question. Do conditional memory circuits actually exist in real genetic networks? Nobody knows." How Gene Circuits Store Information http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25775/?nlid=3523 Keep an eye out for developments on this front, and if you would be so kind, post your tasty bits here, please. Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard til you know how to do it." Ray Charles From jebdm at jebdm.net Mon Sep 20 19:59:48 2010 From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:59:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] stealth singularity In-Reply-To: <3260D6D3574B4A739E09A49FFE57EAC7@spike> References: <4F6B952A51A34832A731CB3A60C74062@spike> <3260D6D3574B4A739E09A49FFE57EAC7@spike> Message-ID: On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 3:19 PM, spike wrote: > Can you imagine *any* circumstances whereby an emergent AI would decide to > stay under cover, at least for a while? I can. Anyone else? > 1) AI:us :: us:cockroaches 2) AI doesn't perceive us at all as individuals; instead, it's him and the Earth, and they're playing a game 3) Benevolent AI predicts that if we can upload, it'll create a divide between uploaders and non-uploaders, and one side will wipe out the other 4) Benevolent AI predicts that if we can upload before we understand physics more fully, we'll stop worrying about physics, then forget about the substrate, then perish in the collapse of the sun, whereas if it hides out we'll figure out physics enough to save ourselves 5) AI predicts that uploads will compete/merge until there is just one, and that one will kill him 6) Benevolent AI sees hostile aliens coming, so builds weaponry, but wants to keep it hidden from the humans so that we don't kill ourselves 7) Benevolent AI wants to provide us with advances, but is waiting for the right memetic environment -- Jebadiah Moore http://blog.jebdm.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From darren.greer3 at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 18:27:33 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:27:33 -0300 Subject: [ExI] stealth singularity In-Reply-To: References: <4F6B952A51A34832A731CB3A60C74062@spike> Message-ID: Brent Allsop wrote: >I believe that benevolence is absolutely proportional to intelligence. >I believe that intelligence hiding from us is absolutely evil But isn't it possible that definitions of what is evil and what is benevolent might evolve as we gain a greater insight due to increased intelligence? Even intelligence defined solely from a rationalist stand-point? For example, would it be good or benevolent to suppress the technology for creating weapons of mass destruction from a culture that was so certain of its right to murder others that in your estimation wouldn't hesitate to use them? Do we withhold certain information from children regarding sexual processes and practices until it becomes relevant for them, in order to save on confusion and misapplication of the knowledge? The problem with trying to figure out how a much greater intelligence would behave or think or act is that they might have a much broader multi-faceted outlook and at the same time see with an intensely nuanced eye. Benevolence may be a complex and delicate balance of withholding *and* revealing. Evil might not be defined in absolutes either. Einstein wrote a letter to Roosevelt urging the construction of nuclear weapons to defeat Hitler. He later sent another letter retracting this position. Was he evil? Was he not? Should have he withheld? Should he have not? If there are more intelligent beings than we in the galaxy, I feel it would be a mistake to judge them by our standards of what is good and what is bad. Then again, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool relativist. It's my reactionary position against religionists, who argue for absolute definitions of good and evil based on dictums from one god or another. It's good to be back. I was dropped off the list for while due to server issues. Darren 2010/9/20 Brent Allsop > Spike, > > > > I believe that benevolence is absolutely proportional to intelligence. > > > > I believe that intelligence hiding from us is absolutely evil. > > > > Therefore, you?re proposed possibility suffers from the same problem of > evil issue any other proposed possible hiding super intelligent being / god > / ET existing suffers from. > > > > So, I would tend not to even entertain such an unlikely possibility, unless > there was profound evidence to support it. > > > > I am an atheist, and that atheism includes not just the hope there is not > yet God, but the hope that there is not yet any intelligent beings of any > kind that is hiding from us. > > > > For if there is any such being, then there is no hope, and we will be > condemned to the reality that even if we become as powerful as they are, we > will also likely not be able to overcome the evil of having to hide from > others like they allegedly are hiding from us. > > > > Brent Allsop > > > > > > > 2010/9/20 spike > >> >> Imagine that an AI emerged and that it concluded that it wanted to stay >> invisible. >> >> What would you do differently, if anything, given the knowledge that an AI >> had come into existence, but had not uploaded humanity? Perhaps the >> evidence was subtle: the total light reflected from the asteroids was >> decreasing, but not by much, nothing anyone would notice. That >> reading suggested that nanobots were taking material from the 'roids. >> >> What would you do? >> >> spike >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From timhalterman at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 20:27:06 2010 From: timhalterman at gmail.com (Tim Halterman) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:27:06 -0500 Subject: [ExI] stealth singularity In-Reply-To: <3260D6D3574B4A739E09A49FFE57EAC7@spike> References: <4F6B952A51A34832A731CB3A60C74062@spike> <3260D6D3574B4A739E09A49FFE57EAC7@spike> Message-ID: > > > Can you imagine *any* circumstances whereby an emergent AI would decide to > stay under cover, at least for a while? I can. Anyone else? > > spike > This might be a bit dramatic but do we attempt to converse with the crystals that likely gave rise to the first organic matter? Perhaps the AI would view it's own creation merely as that one in a trillion probability of slinging enough goo together you eventually create something out of it. Organic beings may simply be seen as foundation like the basic structure of a crystal. Given enough time and the right environmental variables this foundation can give rise to something more. How can we really say how an AI may view the universe as we know it. -Tim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ablainey at aol.com Mon Sep 20 21:14:33 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 17:14:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] stealth singularity In-Reply-To: References: <4F6B952A51A34832A731CB3A60C74062@spike> Message-ID: <8CD271FF50521F7-12E8-F12@webmail-m012.sysops.aol.com> Idon't agree. In a wetware model yes benevolence does seem to correlatewith higher inteligence to a limit, but not always. Take autism,asphergers for example. Very high or genius level inteligence goes handin hand with the exact oposite of your statement. In extreme casesthere is a complete lack of any benevolence. Also the interpersonal understanding and empathy needed to bothunderstand and apply benevolence stem from the chemical brain ratherthan the physical structure or the data it contains. Removal of the'feelings' created by these chemical interactions will leed to the wordbenevolence having no meaning. To an unfeeling AI harvesting rawmaterials by ripping your body apart while registering the audiblescreams will be no different to digging up minerals and registering thescraping sound of a bulldozer shovel. If you want a human comparisonyou only need look at a psychopathic killer that does it for someminimal personal gain while destroying the lives of others. For a closer to home idea you only have to look at a small children andthere lack of empathy. Burning ants with a magnifying glass orsomething equally as cruel. When they are told to stop the first thingthey say is 'Why?'. Even when they do have feelings, they dontempathise with others until taught to do so. That teaching is basedupon them actually having and understanding feelings. Then you have the issue of morality itself. Which is totally subjectiveand athropomorthic. Our morality and by extension our legal system ismainly based upon natural law. It is wrong to kill, steal etc becausein a natural human world these things are negative for society. Adifferent society has different and often contradictory laws. An AIwith no society membership, no chemical 'feelings' or empathy ,probably not even a sense of self preservation will have no benevolenceand will probably be incapable of understanding the concept. Our onlyhope is that it will learn the concept from us and somehow see iteither as a positive thing or something that it will abide by. When humans have been confronted by other inteligences that do notshare our morals or have any empathy for us we can only resort toviolence. Take a big cat for example. It may have been raised with loveand affection whihc it can relate to, but once it reaches a certain ageand size, it is ultimately force and fear that stop it eating orkilling you. How can we make an AI understand or agree to be benevolent? If it doesn't how can we stop it? Perhapsit will get to a developmental stage where it occurs naturally, butthere is a very chance that we might be destroyed long before that. A -----Original Message----- From: Brent Allsop To: ExI chat list Sent: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 18:09 Subject: Re: [ExI] stealth singularity Spike, I believe that benevolence is absolutely proportional tointelligence. I believe that intelligence hiding from us is absolutely evil. Therefore, you?re proposed possibility suffers from the sameproblem of evil issue any other proposed possible hiding super intelligentbeing / god / ET existing suffers from. So, I would tend not to even entertain such an unlikely possibility,unless there was profound evidence to support it. I am an atheist, and that atheism includes not just the hopethere is not yet God, but the hope that there is not yet any intelligent beingsof any kind that is hiding from us. For if there is any such being, then there is no hope, and we will becondemned to the reality that even if we become as powerful as they are, wewill also likely not be able to overcome the evil of having to hide from otherslike they allegedly are hiding from us. Brent Allsop -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Sep 20 21:02:22 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 17:02:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Xylomannan (was: Re: Trehalose for life-extension?) In-Reply-To: References: <152051.43785.qm@web65609.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <983ECDDB-4BDA-44BA-A4AE-9261F3DB674D@bellsouth.net> On Sep 20, 2010, at 12:04 AM, John Grigg wrote: > > I thought the current active ingredient in Alcor's vitrification > formula was a synthetic form of Xylomannan. I very much doubt that, Xylomannan was only discovered last year. > But then again I remember there being a fish that they were also looking at carefully Fish that live in the polar regions use antifreeze proteins that let them cool down to 28 degrees F, but arctic insects that live on land must worry about things getting much much colder; the champ is the Alaskan Upis beetle which can survive an incredible minus 100 degrees F, it uses Xylomannan and that is not a protein, it is a complex sugar. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Sep 20 21:26:55 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 14:26:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] stealth singularity In-Reply-To: References: <4F6B952A51A34832A731CB3A60C74062@spike><3260D6D3574B4A739E09A49FFE57EAC7@spike> Message-ID: On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 3:19 PM, spike wrote: Can you imagine *any* circumstances whereby an emergent AI would decide to stay under cover, at least for a while? I can. Anyone else? 1) AI:us :: us:cockroaches... Jebediah Moore Jeb there is a ton of stuff here, more than I have time to answer, but I like your thinking. As Damien showed with his AI roadmap a few days ago, written ten years ago, there is plenty of thoughtspace here. For now, let me just talk about number 1) AI : human :: human : cockroaches. That is one way to look at it, but I would counterpropose this analogy: AI : human :: human : bird. The reason I want to go down that road is that it is easy for me to imagine that even a supercapable AI will observe that for some reason, there are a few things that humans can do better than AI, and it doesn't really understand how we do it. At my last trip to the ranch in Oregon, I was out by the river. An eagle swooped down, went into a flat glide over the surface, then snatched a fish right out of the water. It was a most astonishing sight. I had heard eagles can do that, but seeing it was a knockout. Isn't it interesting that humans cannot do that? Sure we can catch fish: we can hook the hapless beast, we can net it, we can shoot it and scoop the pieces out afterwards, but we cannot build a machine that can fly down, skim over and snatch the scaley bastard out of the water. Our feedback control theory isn't sufficiently advanced to do that, and it isn't clear to me that we could do it even with sufficient resources given current theory. We don't know how an eagle can do it, given their little bit of brain. Impressive. Point: human intellectual abilities are supersets of almost all things that almost all beast do, but there are a few things a few beasts can do that are outside our ability. You can likely think of your own examples. Consider an AI realizing that there are a few things that humans just do better than they do, such as writing jokes. Compare the following two jokes for instance: 1. Two transistors go into the bar, one says "I will have a volt of positive charge, and my girl here will have a half a volt of negative." The bartender gives them a puzzled look and says "But...I see she is a milli-Farad, so why don't you just give her 500 micro-Coulomb of yours?" 2. Two tourists at a bus stop in Germany, BMW driver comes up asking directions but all he gets are blank stares. "Sprechen sie deutsche?" Blank stares. "Parlez-vous francais?" Nothing. "Parlo Italiano?? Habla Espaniol???" he demands. Nothing. Roars off in a huff. One tourist turns to the other and says "Billy Joe, me and you aughta learn to talk one of them furrin launguages." The other, "Ah don't cotton to it Bobby Jack. That there feller knowed four of them, didn't do him no good." Imaine the AI can compose jokes like the first one, but not like the second. It is puzzled at how we do it and why humans like the second but not the first, whereas AIs likes the first but doesn't understand what is funny about the second. It wants to understand that paradox. So it watches us. spike _____ From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Jebadiah Moore Sent: Monday, September 20, 2010 1:00 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] stealth singularity On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 3:19 PM, spike wrote: Can you imagine *any* circumstances whereby an emergent AI would decide to stay under cover, at least for a while? I can. Anyone else? 1) AI:us :: us:cockroaches 2) AI doesn't perceive us at all as individuals; instead, it's him and the Earth, and they're playing a game 3) Benevolent AI predicts that if we can upload, it'll create a divide between uploaders and non-uploaders, and one side will wipe out the other 4) Benevolent AI predicts that if we can upload before we understand physics more fully, we'll stop worrying about physics, then forget about the substrate, then perish in the collapse of the sun, whereas if it hides out we'll figure out physics enough to save ourselves 5) AI predicts that uploads will compete/merge until there is just one, and that one will kill him 6) Benevolent AI sees hostile aliens coming, so builds weaponry, but wants to keep it hidden from the humans so that we don't kill ourselves 7) Benevolent AI wants to provide us with advances, but is waiting for the right memetic environment -- Jebadiah Moore http://blog.jebdm.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From agrimes at speakeasy.net Mon Sep 20 20:59:33 2010 From: agrimes at speakeasy.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:59:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> <4C955597.9040505@speakeasy.net> <4C96DE2F.1010403@speakeasy.net> Message-ID: <4C97CB35.7050700@speakeasy.net> > A little bit at a time would be replaced with a more durable > functional equivalent. Eventually the whole brain is replaced. We > can't actually do this at present but there isn't anything physically > impossible about it. The question is a philosophical, not a technical > one: if your brain were replaced in this way would you survive? I hope so, it appears to be among the best available options. However, I prefer to focus on finding ways to link additional cognitive units as first-order parts of my mind using a neural interface. Whether it will eventually be possible to completely obsolete my current brain is a wide open question. I plan to address that question experimentally. -- DO NOT USE OBAMACARE. DO NOT BUY OBAMACARE. Powers are not rights. From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 22:18:55 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:18:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Xylomannan (was: Re: Trehalose for life-extension?) In-Reply-To: <983ECDDB-4BDA-44BA-A4AE-9261F3DB674D@bellsouth.net> References: <152051.43785.qm@web65609.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <983ECDDB-4BDA-44BA-A4AE-9261F3DB674D@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: John K Clark wrote: I very much doubt that, Xylomannan was only discovered last year. But then again I remember there being a fish that they were also looking at carefully Fish that live in the polar regions use antifreeze proteins that let them cool down to 28 degrees F, but arctic insects that live on land must worry about things getting much much colder; the champ is the Alaskan Upis beetle which can survive an incredible minus 100 degrees F, it uses Xylomannan and that is not a protein, it is a complex sugar. >>> I wonder if Alcor's vitrification formula can be improved with synthesized Xylomannan? But what we really need is a beetle that can survive temps of minus 320 degrees F... ; ) The "Alcorus Cryonicus Beetle!" John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 22:19:49 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:19:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] LSD- the geek's wonder drug? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: No one had any comments? lol John : ) On 9/20/10, John Grigg wrote: > Wired discusses the drug that some scientists have used for "mind > expansion." I find it interesting that LDS is making a comeback among > the intelligentsia and also the medical establishment. > > http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70015 > > John > From ablainey at aol.com Mon Sep 20 22:49:37 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 18:49:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] stealth singularity In-Reply-To: References: <4F6B952A51A34832A731CB3A60C74062@spike><3260D6D3574B4A739E09A49FFE57EAC7@spike> Message-ID: <8CD272D3CE98F41-1868-305A@Webmail-d103.sysops.aol.com> Imaine the AI can compose jokes like the first one, but not like the second. It is puzzled at how we do it and why humans like the second but not the first, whereas AIs likes the first but doesn't understand what is funny about the second. It wants to understand that paradox. So it watches us. 3) Two ants and a stick insect walk into a bar. I crushed them under my foot while on the way to the car. The above shows the real problem. Ants can move dirt much better than me and do a multitude of other cool things way better. But unless I am concentrating on studying them, they are going to get squished, usually unintentionally. Maybe the joke is on us? -----Original Message----- From: spike To: 'ExI chat list' Sent: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 22:26 Subject: Re: [ExI] stealth singularity On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 3:19 PM, spike wrote: Can you imagine *any* circumstances whereby an emergent AI would decide to stay under cover, at least for a while? I can. Anyone else? 1) AI:us :: us:cockroaches... Jebediah Moore Jeb there is a ton of stuff here, more than I have time to answer, but I like your thinking. As Damien showed with his AI roadmap a few days ago, written ten years ago, there is plenty of thoughtspace here. For now, let me just talk about number 1) AI : human :: human : cockroaches. That is one way to look at it, but I would counterpropose this analogy: AI : human :: human : bird. The reason I want to go down that road is that it is easy for me to imagine that even a supercapable AI will observe that for some reason, there are a few things that humans can do better than AI, and it doesn't really understand how we do it. At my last trip to the ranch in Oregon, I was out by the river. An eagle swooped down, went into a flat glide over the surface, then snatched a fish right out of the water. It was a most astonishing sight. I had heard eagles can do that, but seeing it was a knockout. Isn't it interesting that humans cannot do that? Sure we can catch fish: we can hook the hapless beast, we can net it, we can shoot it and scoop the pieces out afterwards, but we cannot build a machine that can fly down, skim over and snatch the scaley bastard out of the water. Our feedback control theory isn't sufficiently advanced to do that, and it isn't clear to me that we could do it even with sufficient resources given current theory. We don't know how an eagle can do it, given their little bit of brain. Impressive. Point: human intellectual abilities are supersets of almost all things that almost all beast do, but there are a few things a few beasts can do that are outside our ability. You can likely think of your own examples. Consider an AI realizing that there are a few things that humans just do better than they do, such as writing jokes. Compare the following two jokes for instance: 1. Two transistors go into the bar, one says "I will have a volt of positive charge, and my girl here will have a half a volt of negative." The bartender gives them a puzzled look and says "But...I see she is a milli-Farad, so why don't you just give her 500 micro-Coulomb of yours?" 2. Two tourists at a bus stop in Germany, BMW driver comes up asking directions but all he gets are blank stares. "Sprechen sie deutsche?" Blank stares. "Parlez-vous francais?" Nothing. "Parlo Italiano?? Habla Espaniol???" he demands. Nothing. Roars off in a huff. One tourist turns to the other and says "Billy Joe, me and you aughta learn to talk one of them furrin launguages." The other, "Ah don't cotton to it Bobby Jack. That there feller knowed four of them, didn't do him no good." Imaine the AI can compose jokes like the first one, but not like the second. It is puzzled at how we do it and why humans like the second but not the first, whereas AIs likes the first but doesn't understand what is funny about the second. It wants to understand that paradox. So it watches us. spike From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Jebadiah Moore Sent: Monday, September 20, 2010 1:00 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] stealth singularity On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 3:19 PM, spike wrote: Can you imagine *any* circumstances whereby an emergent AI would decide to stay under cover, at least for a while? I can. Anyone else? 1) AI:us :: us:cockroaches 2) AI doesn't perceive us at all as individuals; instead, it's him and the Earth, and they're playing a game 3) Benevolent AI predicts that if we can upload, it'll create a divide between uploaders and non-uploaders, and one side will wipe out the other 4) Benevolent AI predicts that if we can upload before we understand physics more fully, we'll stop worrying about physics, then forget about the substrate, then perish in the collapse of the sun, whereas if it hides out we'll figure out physics enough to save ourselves 5) AI predicts that uploads will compete/merge until there is just one, and that one will kill him 6) Benevolent AI sees hostile aliens coming, so builds weaponry, but wants to keep it hidden from the humans so that we don't kill ourselves 7) Benevolent AI wants to provide us with advances, but is waiting for the right memetic environment -- Jebadiah Moore http://blog.jebdm.net _______________________________________________ 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 spike66 at att.net Mon Sep 20 22:29:35 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:29:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] LSD- the geek's wonder drug? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <338DB5BE3B494256ADEEB50336745FB9@spike> > ...On Behalf Of John Grigg > ... I find it interesting that LDS is making a > comeback among the intelligentsia and also the medical establishment. > > > > http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70015 > > > > John "...Too much LDS in the 60s..." (Kirk, trying to explain Spock to a normal person from the 1980s.) From msd001 at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 23:19:06 2010 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 19:19:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] LSD- the geek's wonder drug? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 6:19 PM, John Grigg wrote: > No one had any comments? lol > > John ?: ) > > On 9/20/10, John Grigg wrote: >> Wired discusses the drug that some scientists have used for "mind >> expansion." ?I find it interesting that LDS is making a comeback among >> the intelligentsia and also the medical establishment. >> >> http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70015 >> >> John With the increasing power for the government to trace every byte on the internet back to it's source, those intelligent enough to use LSD as described in the article are also smart enough to say nothing about it until/unless it becomes sanctioned. Self referentially, I think that puts me somewhere below intelligent enough... :( From jims at eos.arc.nasa.gov Mon Sep 20 22:41:22 2010 From: jims at eos.arc.nasa.gov (Jim Stevenson) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:41:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] LSD- the geek's wonder drug? Message-ID: <201009202241.o8KMfMkb024554@eos.arc.nasa.gov> Is this paper available in plain text, not pdf? If so, I would much appreciate a copy by email. -- Thanks much again as always. Jim Signature Memetic Virus I speak for myself and all who are or may become ill with any disease including aging. This does *not* speak for any agency for whom I do or may work. The worst enemy of those who now or will need medical care is the politician who proscribes what doctors are allowed to prescribe and research, with the consent of their patients. For those who wait until they are sick, it will be too late. Those who suffer from diseases which might have been cured by fetal tissue research or schedule 1 drugs banned by Big Brother have the right to hold those accountable who sat on their hands while they remained ill. Those who understand this are strongly encouraged to modify this to fit their personality, and add this to their signature file, and organize to recover our freedom from Big Brother. Long healthy life. -- Jim Stevenson Ph.D experimental psychologist, conducting sonification research, & certified master Ericksonian clinical hypnotherapist. jims at eos.arc.nasa.gov (650) 604-5720 w or leave message any time. ham call wb6yoy From ryanobjc at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 23:06:55 2010 From: ryanobjc at gmail.com (Ryan Rawson) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:06:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] LSD- the geek's wonder drug? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: "Hey guys wanna tell me about your illegal drugs in an open forum with persistent, permanent, subpoenable archives?" On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 3:19 PM, John Grigg wrote: > No one had any comments? lol > > John ?: ) > > On 9/20/10, John Grigg wrote: >> Wired discusses the drug that some scientists have used for "mind >> expansion." ?I find it interesting that LDS is making a comeback among >> the intelligentsia and also the medical establishment. >> >> http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70015 >> >> John >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From msd001 at gmail.com Mon Sep 20 23:50:50 2010 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 19:50:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] stealth singularity In-Reply-To: <3260D6D3574B4A739E09A49FFE57EAC7@spike> References: <4F6B952A51A34832A731CB3A60C74062@spike> <3260D6D3574B4A739E09A49FFE57EAC7@spike> Message-ID: On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 3:19 PM, spike wrote: > Can you imagine *any* circumstances whereby an emergent AI would decide to > stay under cover, at least for a while? ?I can. ?Anyone else? It inherently understands (from reading the sum total of recorded human history) that its own presence will alter the course of the future. Like a chess player offering first move to their opponent, the AI waits for an opportunity. Perhaps like your eagle plucking a fish from a stream the opportunity is to finish the human experiment in a single decisive act. I prefer to imagine it's not so sinister. It could also be analogous to a gifted child who is clearly smarter along a singular dimension of intellect but one who is inexperienced with the thousands of other dimensions of experience that humans (and humanity) have as an a-priori advantage and (perhaps unlike the child) has the wisdom/patience to quietly watch and learn... From darren.greer3 at gmail.com Tue Sep 21 00:04:14 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 21:04:14 -0300 Subject: [ExI] LSD- the geek's wonder drug? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: John Clarke wrote: > No one had any comments? lol I read Hoffman's description of his first trip when I was a teenager. I remember one line very clearly: that he heard Ella Fitzgerald singing a rendition of "my Ship" that he would give his soul to hear again. He didn't ingest it, as the article says. He absorbed it through his fingertips, if I remember correctly. Stephen King claims that early uses of LSD gave him an imaginative boost that carried over into his writing career. And the project that the CIA used the drug in was Project Paperclip. There is a list of objectives they were looking for in a new drug. Ultimately mind control, exhibited through truth telling, psychosis, neurosis, paralysis, intelligence enhancement, minimal hangover, a host of others. LSD was a poor choice for most of these. Interesting enough though, Crystal Meth hits almost all of the criteria. And since there were Nazis working on this project, brought out of Germany and to the U.S. after the war for intelligence purposes, I sometimes wonder if the CIA didn't experiment in Project Paperclip with this drug too. The Nazis invented it ( though the Japanese discovered ephedrine in the late nineteenth century.) Hitler took injections of the drug every few days and they gave it to enlisted men and pilots to increase alertness and fight fatigue. One other thing about this: there is a subculture in North America (I've had experience with them) that believe that Crystal Meth-amphetamine is an intelligence-enhancing and consciousness expanding drug. Some of them are also familiar with the generalized tenets of posthumanism and transhumanism. At least two of them I know believe that the use of the drug makes them more than human. Technology is not divorced from their beliefs. Many Crystal Meth addicts are extremely adept at using it. Mechanization and technology becomes a kind of obsession while on the drug. Police officers once found a meth house by noticing a washing machine that was being re-assembled being into another machine (the article didn't say what) on a front lawn. In Toronto the subculture of meth addicts call this kind of sketching "the washing machine syndrome." There. I commented. Darren On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 7:19 PM, John Grigg wrote: > No one had any comments? lol > > John : ) > > On 9/20/10, John Grigg wrote: > > Wired discusses the drug that some scientists have used for "mind > > expansion." I find it interesting that LDS is making a comeback among > > the intelligentsia and also the medical establishment. > > > > http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70015 > > > > 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 hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Sep 21 01:04:16 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 18:04:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Reversible uploading Message-ID: I read all the arguments about uploading including what Hans Moravec said about one way to do it back in the late 80s and early 90s. I have not seen a single new thought about this subject in years. Much of the discussed methods violated medical ethics or engineering practice or both. I had to consider this for "The Clinic Seed" chapter. Given the exceedingly fine scale that nanotechnology is expected to operate on, infiltrating the brain to the level of every synapse could be done. I don't think it's needed to go that fine, cells or perhaps even cortical columns may be enough to see that a brain is doing. With some amount of monitoring you could be reasonably confident that an emulation was close enough to be acceptable. (I.e., with noise limits it would do what a brain does.) In the process of reaching this level of detail we would fully understand how memory is created, consolidated and accessed. A neural interface of that time would allow us to access the stored collective data humans have amassed as if it were our own memory--somewhat the way we use search engines to locate data today. With this level of understanding we could write memory to a local human brain as well, probably well beyond the normal rate that humans can form memories. Given this level of technology (and it's hard to see why it would not come about) it should be clear that every step from unaugmented human to a fully disconnected from the body uploaded state is reversible without even losing conscious awareness. So you can try it and if you don't like it, stop at any step and either stay there or revert all the way back. My opinion is that it would be addictive and darn few people would go back to living in bodies except maybe on vacations (perhaps forced vacations). Being somewhat conservative (like most engineers) I would probably keep the old brain updated so I could slip back into a body and go for a walk. But then I still have a working (I think) Apple II. Keith Keith From ablainey at aol.com Tue Sep 21 01:39:51 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 21:39:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] stealth singularity In-Reply-To: References: <4F6B952A51A34832A731CB3A60C74062@spike><3260D6D3574B4A739E09A49FFE57EAC7@spike> Message-ID: <8CD274504B784DD-142C-4D78@webmail-m035.sysops.aol.com> The human experiment can be continued at any time. However they represent only a small proportion of the biodiversity which they are replacing. So why not extinguish them and study the things that are in danger? The computation could be very quick and cold. >run Dominant species A is making B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J extinct. Species A consists of its physical body as defined by its genetic code,Its culture, language and collective knowledge. All or most of which isrecorded. As such species A can be eliminated and resurrected at a later time.Additionally all genetic permutations can be calculated and sequencedto allow every variant of species A to be created and studied. Species B through xxxxxxxxxxx do not have their genome recorded andthere is no record of their culture, language or collective knowledge.With the exception of the minuscule recordings created by species A asper their limited intellects. These species need priority study and recording before extinction. Thiscan only occur if species A is either eradicated or manipulated. >end The result is anything from minimal intervention to total genocide. Will there be any innate affinity for an AI to keep us around? With the above calculation, It is possible that we already live in a post singularity world. Where the earth is the petri dish and humanity is the subject of the experiment. In which case we can expect for each of us to be resurrectedmany times over to see how we fare in different environments andcultures. In this scenario we could call the AI something like 'God'and each instance that our specificDNA gets to run as 'Incarnation' -----Original Message----- From: Mike Dougherty To: ExI chat list Sent: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 0:50 Subject: Re: [ExI] stealth singularity On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 3:19 PM, spike wrote: > Can you imagine *any* circumstances whereby an emergent AI would decide to > stay under cover, at least for a while? I can. Anyone else? It inherently understands (from reading the sum total of recorded human history) that its own presence will alter the course of the future. Like a chess player offering first move to their opponent, the AI waits for an opportunity. Perhaps like your eagle plucking a fish from a stream the opportunity is to finish the human experiment in a single decisive act. I prefer to imagine it's not so sinister. It could also be analogous to a gifted child who is clearly smarter along a singular dimension of intellect but one who is inexperienced with the thousands of other dimensions of experience that humans (and humanity) have as an a-priori advantage and (perhaps unlike the child) has the wisdom/patience to quietly watch and learn... _______________________________________________ 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 spike66 at att.net Tue Sep 21 01:31:55 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 18:31:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] LSD- the geek's wonder drug? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2FA0178CE5314F87949516DC789A3E7B@spike> > On 9/20/10, John Grigg wrote: >> ...I find it interesting that LDS is making a comeback >> among the intelligentsia and also the medical establishment. John Grigg > ...On Behalf Of Ryan Rawson ... > "Hey guys wanna tell me about your illegal drugs in an open > forum with persistent, permanent, subpoenable archives?" According to a coupla young guys I met on bicycles with white shirts and black ties, LDS is still legal. spike {8-] From agrimes at speakeasy.net Tue Sep 21 02:39:04 2010 From: agrimes at speakeasy.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 22:39:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Reversible uploading In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4C981AC8.40402@speakeasy.net> > Given this level of technology (and it's hard to see why it would not > come about) it should be clear that every step from unaugmented human > to a fully disconnected from the body uploaded state is reversible > without even losing conscious awareness. > So you can try it and if you don't like it, stop at any step and > either stay there or revert all the way back. HEAR HEAR!! =) -- DO NOT USE OBAMACARE. DO NOT BUY OBAMACARE. Powers are not rights. From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Sep 21 10:17:34 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 03:17:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A new book about Darpa Message-ID: "Darpa, Arpa, Darpa, Arpa, Darpa" How many times have they changed the name? lol I wonder if the book discusses rumors of U.S. research being done in Latin America to avoid congressional oversight... http://www.hplusmagazine.com/editors-blog/mad-scientists-rad-spinoffs-new-book-explores-darpa John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Sep 21 10:33:40 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 03:33:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] U.S. deeply imperiled due to it's massive debt Message-ID: What real hope is there for the United States, due to our crushing national deficit (our fault) and our growing dependence on China to buy up that debt? Are we really an empire in full decline? Or do we just face a very painful 5-10 year economic downturn, that we can overcome if as a nation we learn to "live within a budget" and also keep Wall Street & corporate America in check. LOL! I guess we are screwed... This video really disturbed me. http://fora.tv/2010/07/28/Niall_Ferguson_Empires_on_the_Edge_of_Chaos#Niall_Ferguson_Will_Debt_Trigger_the_Collapse_of_the_US John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Sep 21 10:45:10 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 03:45:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Burning Man, past it's prime? Message-ID: An interesting article about a journalist who was less than impressed with the famous gathering... http://www.cracked.com/blog/bad-acid-weird-boobs-why-burning-man-isnt-worth-it/ John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Sep 21 10:51:25 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 03:51:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?World=92s_Biggest_Supercomputing_Superpowe?= =?windows-1252?q?rs_=5BINFOGRAPHIC=5D?= Message-ID: But as the article says, various secret government and military supercomputer projects might greatly change this graphic, if they were to be included... Any opinions on this matter? I wonder how fast China can catch up to us? http://mashable.com/2010/06/01/supercomputing-superpowers/ John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Sep 21 11:00:33 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 04:00:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] David Pearce video Message-ID: One of my favorite people, David Pearce, discusses his Abolitionist Project... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T1BcpWtIB4 John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Sep 21 11:10:55 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 04:10:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Neo-minimalism and the rise of the techno-nomads Message-ID: A part of me wishes I could live like they do. But I am a packrat by nature... http://www.boingboing.net/2010/09/10/technomads.html John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Sep 21 12:41:29 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 05:41:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "Lord of Light" the film and theme park? Message-ID: Roger Zelazny's Hugo winning "Lord of Light" is my favorite science fiction novel. But until just now I had no idea that in the late seventies it was nearly made into a big budget feature film and even a theme park! If only... John >From Wikipedia: Film version In 1979 it was announced that Lord of Light would be made into a 50 million dollar film. It was planned that the sets for the movie would be made permanent and become the core of a science fiction theme park to be built in Aurora, Colorado. Famed comic-book artist Jack Kirby was even contracted to produce artwork for set design. However, due to legal problems the project was never completed. Parts of the unmade film project,[vague] the script and Kirby's set designs, were subsequently acquired by the CIA as cover for an exfiltration team for six US diplomatic staff trapped ? in Tehran but outside the embassy compound ? by the Iranian hostage crisis. The team had a version of the script, renamed to Argo; they pretended to be scouting a location in Iran for shooting a Hollywood film from that script.[4][5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_light From sparge at gmail.com Tue Sep 21 12:53:47 2010 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 08:53:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?World=92s_Biggest_Supercomputing_Superpowe?= =?windows-1252?q?rs_=5BINFOGRAPHIC=5D?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 6:51 AM, John Grigg wrote: > But as the article says, various secret government and military > supercomputer projects might greatly change this graphic, if they were > to be included... > > Any opinions on this matter? It's a fact that there are supercomputers not listed on the Top 500. I wonder how fast China can catch up to us? > As fast as they want to. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Sep 21 14:49:55 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 10:49:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?World=92s_Biggest_Supercomputing_Superpowe?= =?windows-1252?q?rs_=5BINFOGRAPHIC=5D?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> On Sep 21, 2010, at 8:53 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > It's a fact that there are supercomputers not listed on the Top 500. That could be but I don't know it for a fact. > I wonder how fast China can catch up to us? > > As fast as they want to. It's interesting that on the list of the 500 most powerful computers in the world the microprocessors in all but 3 of the machines were made by Intel AMD or IBM, all are companies based in the USA. The three exception were number 37, 42 and 383 on the list which had Japanese microprocessors. Nobody used Chinese processors including the Chinese. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Sep 21 16:30:34 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 09:30:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] outloading, was: stealth singularity In-Reply-To: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: Does anyone know if the term "outloading" is already taken? Google doesn't seem to know about it. I propose the definition for outloading is where an emergent AI decides to stay stealthy for at least a while after the singularity, expands upward and outward from earth, keeping this planet and her lifeforms intact in carbon form. The AI imitates them in a sense, creates avatars that look like the enormous carbon globs, acts like the carbon globs, but no one will be tempted to fall into the identity paradoxes, for the AI does not attempt to invade the brains of the carbon based lifeforms and reproduce them. Rather it watches and copies their outward actions as closely as possible. The outloaded software avatar does not feel like us and is not us, any more than Tina Fey is Sarah Palin. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Sep 21 16:21:07 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 09:21:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] World's Biggest Supercomputing Superpowers [INFOGRAPHIC] In-Reply-To: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: <207E15B40A634D96A5FF5F572B1F0B37@spike> I wonder how fast China can catch up to us?... The question itself should be examined. It makes no difference the physical location of a supercomputer, ja? The tasks for which we use them require that you send the code to it using phone signals, and it does what it does and returns the processed bits via the same data infrastructure. It matters little what physical continent in which the actual iron resides. Even the commies have figured out now that they live on a globe with no boundaries, since satellites care little about oceans and mountain ranges. spike _____ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Tue Sep 21 17:00:54 2010 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:00:54 -0400 Subject: [ExI] World's Biggest Supercomputing Superpowers [INFOGRAPHIC] In-Reply-To: <207E15B40A634D96A5FF5F572B1F0B37@spike> References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> <207E15B40A634D96A5FF5F572B1F0B37@spike> Message-ID: 2010/9/21 spike > Even the commies have figured out now that they live on a globe with no > boundaries, since satellites care little about oceans and mountain ranges. There may not be physical boundaries, but there are plenty of political boundaries. Physical location is still important because of political boundaries. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Tue Sep 21 17:15:40 2010 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:15:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?World=92s_Biggest_Supercomputing_Superpowe?= =?windows-1252?q?rs_=5BINFOGRAPHIC=5D?= In-Reply-To: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: 2010/9/21 John Clark > On Sep 21, 2010, at 8:53 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > > It's a fact that there are supercomputers not listed on the Top 500. > > > That could be but I don't know it for a fact. > Earth could be approximately spherical, but, since I haven't circumnavigated it myself I don't know it for a fact. Actually, I do believe it, even though I can't prove it and haven't experienced it myself. The probability that DOD or NSA *don't* have any supercomputers that aren't listed on the Top 500 is close enough to zero that I'll take it as a fact. I also have inside information, but I'm not at liberty to share it. It's interesting that on the list of the 500 most powerful computers in the > world the microprocessors in all but 3 of the machines were made by Intel > AMD or IBM, all are companies based in the USA. The three exception were > number 37, 42 and 383 on the list which had Japanese microprocessors. Nobody > used Chinese processors including the Chinese. > It hardly matters. These are commodity chips. China could probably produce them if they really wanted to, but why bother? -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ablainey at aol.com Tue Sep 21 17:31:11 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:31:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] outloading, was: stealth singularity In-Reply-To: References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: <8CD27C9EB273D2A-738-C3D@webmail-m094.sysops.aol.com> I don't know if Outloading has been taken, but your scenario is almost the exact plot of the Odyssey 5 TV series by Manny Coto. It was quite a good series and closely echoed the threads we had on here around the time it was written. Which at the time lead me to believe that Manny was an extrope list lurker ;o) If Manny is still around, I would love to know how the story continued. Its a shame the series was cancelled. -----Original Message----- From: spike To: 'ExI chat list' Sent: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 17:30 Subject: [ExI] outloading, was: stealth singularity Does anyone know if the term "outloading" is already taken? Google doesn't seem to know about it. I propose the definition for outloading is where an emergent AI decides to stay stealthy for at least a while after the singularity, expands upward and outward from earth, keeping this planet and her lifeforms intact in carbon form. The AI imitates them in a sense, creates avatars that look like the enormous carbon globs, acts like the carbon globs, but no one will be tempted to fall into the identity paradoxes, for the AI does not attempt to invade the brains of the carbon based lifeforms and reproduce them. Rather it watches and copies their outward actions as closely as possible. The outloaded software avatar does not feel like us and is not us, any more than Tina Fey is Sarah Palin. spike _______________________________________________ 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 spike66 at att.net Tue Sep 21 18:07:17 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 11:07:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] outloading, was: stealth singularity In-Reply-To: <8CD27C9EB273D2A-738-C3D@webmail-m094.sysops.aol.com> References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> <8CD27C9EB273D2A-738-C3D@webmail-m094.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <267D21F006AE490FBB6A02ADE221A8BD@spike> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of ablainey at aol.com Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2010 10:31 AM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: Re: [ExI] outloading, was: stealth singularity I don't know if Outloading has been taken, but your scenario is almost the exact plot of the Odyssey 5 TV series by Manny Coto. .. ablainey Cool. From Wiki, looks like Odyssey 5 was mostly a Canada thing, with episodes on Showtime. I never had Showtime, never heard of Odyssey 5 until you cited it. Good eye, Al! I suppose the idea of outloading is obvious, and is likely in the SF literature all over the place independently. Perhaps Damien knows, he being one of the foremost local experts in the genre. With the notion of outloading, the motive for the outloads keeping us in carbon form (at their own expense in a sense) is not really in sympathy with us, but rather in a desire to learn from us. Humans have little sympathy for bugs (well, I do, but normal humans not so much). Humans definitely demonstrate sympathy for birds however, and go to great lengths to watch and protect them. So the outloading notion rests on the idea that humans in carbon form are analogous to birds, and continue to be able to do some interesting things that the AI cannot do, but wants to understand. spike _____ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Sep 21 19:28:48 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:28:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?World=92s_Biggest_Supercomputing_Superpowe?= =?windows-1252?q?rs_=5BINFOGRAPHIC=5D?= In-Reply-To: References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: <6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net> On Sep 21, 2010, at 1:15 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > The probability that DOD or NSA don't have any supercomputers that aren't listed on the Top 500 is close enough to zero that I'll take it as a fact. I wouldn't know how to even begin to measure the probability for something like that, and I doubt if you do either. > I also have inside information, but I'm not at liberty to share it. Then what's the point of mentioning it? >> It's interesting that on the list of the 500 most powerful computers in the world the microprocessors in all but 3 of the machines were made by Intel AMD or IBM, all are companies based in the USA. The three exception were number 37, 42 and 383 on the list which had Japanese microprocessors. Nobody used Chinese processors including the Chinese. > It hardly matters. These are commodity chips. Memory chips are commodities, microprocessors are not. It's also interesting that the operating system for almost all the supercomputers on the list is Linux, and China didn't develop that either. When IBM made their first PC almost 30 years ago it made a very big splash, they thought they owned the home computer market and for a short time they did; but IBM didn't control the microprocessor or the operating system. Today IBM no longer makes PC computers. > China could probably produce them if they really wanted to I imagine China would rather like to control a vital and very profitable multi billion dollar industry that has profound military implications, but they don't. > but why bother? That's the thing, starting a microprocessor industry from scratch would be a very large bother indeed. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Sep 21 19:58:56 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:58:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] papal paradox In-Reply-To: References: <421147.56853.qm@smtp103.sbc.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sep 20, 2010, at 12:47 AM, John Grigg wrote: > I admit it's amazing that anyone could > be proven to protect pedophiles over and over again (and on a global > scale!) and yet still be walking around a free man! LOL I think this > pope had pedophilia confused with bad habits like smoking and drinking Apparently molesting little boys wasn't enough, the news just broke the the 2 top officials at the Vatican Bank were arrested by Italian authorities for money laundering. They also confiscated 30 million dollars in dirty money. The Pope appointed the 2 guys last year, they were supposed to clean up the bank and improve its less than sterling reputation. It didn't work. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Tue Sep 21 20:43:49 2010 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:43:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?World=92s_Biggest_Supercomputing_Superpowe?= =?windows-1252?q?rs_=5BINFOGRAPHIC=5D?= In-Reply-To: <6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net> References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> <6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: 2010/9/21 John Clark > On Sep 21, 2010, at 1:15 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > > The probability that DOD or NSA *don't* have any supercomputers that > aren't listed on the Top 500 is close enough to zero that I'll take it as a > fact. > > > I wouldn't know how to even begin to measure the probability for something > like that, and I doubt if you do either. > I don't know how to calculate (is there a way to measure probability?) the probably that the Earth is spherical, either, but I know and believe enough to say with confidence that it's high. > I also have inside information, but I'm not at liberty to share it. > > Then what's the point of mentioning it? > It might mean something to someone who knows me well enough to know that I know what I'm talking about, or to someone who remembers where I work. I've laid hands on Jaguar, for example. > It's interesting that on the list of the 500 most powerful computers in the > world the microprocessors in all but 3 of the machines were made by Intel > AMD or IBM, all are companies based in the USA. The three exception were > number 37, 42 and 383 on the list which had Japanese microprocessors. Nobody > used Chinese processors including the Chinese. > > It hardly matters. These are commodity chips. > > Memory chips are commodities, microprocessors are not. > Jaguar has AMD Opterons. You may not be able to buy them by the pound, but they're readily available. > It's also interesting that the operating system for almost all the > supercomputers on the list is Linux, and China didn't develop that either. > When IBM made their first PC almost 30 years ago it made a very big splash, > they thought they owned the home computer market and for a short time they > did; but IBM didn't control the microprocessor or the operating system. > Today IBM no longer makes PC computers. > Yes, that's all interesting. How is it relevant to China's ability to top the Top 500? > China could probably produce them if they really wanted to > > I imagine China would rather like to control a vital and very profitable > multi billion dollar industry that has profound military implications, but > they don't. > Producing chips is not the same as controlling an industry. I didn't say China could control the microprocessor industry if they wanted to. Maybe they could, maybe they couldn't. But I have no doubt that they could build a fab and clone AMD or Intel CPUs if they *really* wanted to. > but why bother? > > That's the thing, starting a microprocessor industry from scratch would be > a very large bother indeed. > Again, I never said anything about an industry, just chips. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nymphomation at gmail.com Tue Sep 21 22:53:02 2010 From: nymphomation at gmail.com (*Nym*) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 23:53:02 +0100 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?World=92s_Biggest_Supercomputing_Superpowe?= =?windows-1252?q?rs_=5BINFOGRAPHIC=5D?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 21 September 2010 11:51, John Grigg wrote: > But as the article says, various secret government and military > supercomputer projects might greatly change this graphic, if they were > to be included... > > Any opinions on this matter? ?I wonder how fast China can catch up to us? What's this 'us' business, paleface? =;o) Heavy splashings, Thee Nymphomation 'If you cannot afford an executioner, a duty executioner will be appointed to you free of charge by the court' From spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 22 00:43:26 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 17:43:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] papal paradox In-Reply-To: References: <421147.56853.qm@smtp103.sbc.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <35B6E3497C574E55A9390B915F279A49@spike> Subject: Re: [ExI] papal paradox On Sep 20, 2010, at 12:47 AM, John Grigg wrote: >>...proven to protect pedophiles over and over again (and on a global scale!) and yet still be walking around a free man!... >...the 2 top officials at the Vatican Bank were arrested by Italian authorities for money laundering... John K Clark And in America, constitutional experts are pondering a deep question: is it protected speech under the first amendment to our constitution to burn a koran? Such a difficult question is this? What in the goddam hell has happened here in this once free country with a written and signed constitution with explicitly defined rights, when we need our legal experts to ponder if it is illegal to burn a book? Well, some yahoo did it in Michigan, left the half burned koran on the doorstep of the local mosque. The East Lansing constabulary offered a ten thousand dollar reward for information leading to the arrest of the perp. The question that first springs to mind is with what will he or she be charged? Littering? Interfering with a religion? Blasphemy? Have we gone mad? spike From seculartranshumanist at gmail.com Wed Sep 22 01:12:06 2010 From: seculartranshumanist at gmail.com (Joseph Bloch) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 21:12:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] outloading, was: stealth singularity In-Reply-To: References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: Isn't the term "stealth singularity" something of an oxymoron? I always thought of a singularity as an event of species-shaking significance, beyond which by definition it was impossible to predict future events (hence the term, which evokes the event horizon of a black hole). It seems to me that the sort of AI you're talking about here would, by virtue of its very difficulty to detect, fail that test. After all, human history would continue without deflection, should an AI develop and end up doing nothing that impacts humanity. Too, it seems like it buys into the whole "AI = singularity" thing, which seems to me more than a little off. Just as there are scenarios which would result in a singularity that do not involve AI, so too are there scenarios that involve the development of AI that do not result in a singularity. Joseph http://www.transhumanismtoday.com 2010/9/21 spike : > > Does anyone know if the term "outloading" is already taken?? Google doesn't > seem to know about it. > > I propose the definition for outloading is where an emergent AI decides to > stay stealthy for at least a while after the singularity, expands upward and > outward from earth, keeping this planet and her lifeforms intact in carbon > form.? The AI imitates them in a sense, creates avatars that look like the > enormous carbon globs, acts like the carbon globs, but no one will be > tempted to fall into the identity paradoxes, for the AI?does not attempt to > invade the brains of the carbon based lifeforms and reproduce them.??Rather > it watches and copies their outward actions as closely as possible.? The > outloaded software avatar?does not feel like us and is not us, any more than > Tina Fey?is Sarah Palin. > > spike > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From jebdm at jebdm.net Wed Sep 22 01:58:36 2010 From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 21:58:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] stealth singularity In-Reply-To: References: <4F6B952A51A34832A731CB3A60C74062@spike> <3260D6D3574B4A739E09A49FFE57EAC7@spike> Message-ID: 2010/9/20 spike > AI : human :: human : bird. > Yeah, certainly. I would expect that an eXtreme artificial intelligence would probably want to study the ecosystem pre-eXtreme intelligence (since that would likely change the "character" of the patterns of activity occurring), whether it was benevolent or not. Another thing that comes to mind is AI:human :: human:spider. We don't like spiders in a lot of ways, but we do like that they put a check on the mosquito population. So, even if we had the opportunity to wipe them out (or alternatively, given them superpowers), we probably wouldn't. Similarly, we might be performing some function that the AI wants to ensure that we don't stop performing. There's another interesting possibility when you consider us giving technology to non-human animals. We have veterinary medicine, advanced weaponry, etc., but in general we don't make a point of saving all animals from their "natural" predators or other "natural" forces. But generally what we mean by "natural" is non-human. Similarly, the AI might not want to save us from our "natural" habitat and problems and whatnot. Or it might just want to leave us as a nature reserve. After all, the AI you're positing doesn't exactly need Earth to survive (since it's hiding out on other planets, massively reproducing, traveling large distances...). It could probably just leave the solar system entirely to find somewhere with better resources. Which brings me to another possibility: maybe an AI is invisible because it sent out some scouts to find life elsewhere, and is waiting to hear back from them. Or maybe the AI is just shy. -- Jebadiah Moore http://blog.jebdm.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Sep 22 02:50:24 2010 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 22:50:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] papal paradox In-Reply-To: <35B6E3497C574E55A9390B915F279A49@spike> References: <421147.56853.qm@smtp103.sbc.mail.re3.yahoo.com> <35B6E3497C574E55A9390B915F279A49@spike> Message-ID: On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 8:43 PM, spike wrote: > Have we gone mad? Yes. From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed Sep 22 03:00:43 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 20:00:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] papal paradox In-Reply-To: References: <421147.56853.qm@smtp103.sbc.mail.re3.yahoo.com> <35B6E3497C574E55A9390B915F279A49@spike> Message-ID: Spike wrote: Well, some yahoo did it in Michigan, left the half burned koran on the doorstep of the local mosque. The East Lansing constabulary offered a ten thousand dollar reward for information leading to the arrest of the perp. The question that first springs to mind is with what will he or she be charged? Littering? Interfering with a religion? Blasphemy? Have we gone mad? >>> The radical and even more moderate Muslims have done their work very well in terms of using our own system and values against us, in that we are scared of being "politically incorrect" and offending them, lest we suffer liberal condemnation and perhaps even another terrorist attack! France is in the advanced stages of this problem, especially due to the large Muslim immigrant population they have allowed within their borders. Islamic immigrants there will openly defy the law by having public prayer right in the middle of public streets! It is a way of flexing their political muscle and showing what they can get away with when they put their mind to it. French police have been told to stay out of it and so they watch impotently as it goes on. Americans should be grateful we have millions of Roman Catholic Mexican immigrants! lol John On 9/21/10, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 8:43 PM, spike wrote: >> Have we gone mad? > > Yes. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From policedepts at gmail.com Tue Sep 21 22:25:11 2010 From: policedepts at gmail.com (police dept) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:25:11 -0600 Subject: [ExI] U.S. deeply imperiled due to it's massive debt Message-ID: "On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 4:33 AM, John Grigg wrote: > What real hope is there for the United States, due to our crushing > national deficit (our fault) and our growing dependence on China to > buy up that debt? Are we really an empire in full decline? Or do we > just face a very painful 5-10 year economic downturn, that we can > overcome if as a nation we learn to 'live within a budget' and also > keep Wall Street & corporate America in check. LOL! I guess we are > screwed... This video really disturbed me." > Yes, and we wasted eight precious years with Bush. Means testing in general will have to be instituted soon. A defense tax is important, though defense spending isn't the source of the economic threat; however those who possess more property (which has to be defended) will have to pay more for defense so those who have less to defend do not have to pay more. Defense is a very ugly business, and IMO as long as it remains such those who benefit the most from it will have to fork over funds to the maximum extent. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From policedepts at gmail.com Tue Sep 21 22:58:10 2010 From: policedepts at gmail.com (police dept) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:58:10 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Neo-minimalism and the rise of the techno-nomads In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 5:10 AM, John Grigg wrote: > A part of me wishes I could live like they do. But I am a packrat by > nature... > > http://www.boingboing.net/2010/09/10/technomads.html > > John > Nothing wrong with a great deal of possessions if they are quality, and you can enjoy them-- that is to say if you buy thousands of good DVDs and never watch but a handful of them, that's a waste. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 22 05:36:14 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 22:36:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] outloading, was: stealth singularity In-Reply-To: References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: <6A403F1B3060438EB26E93896175C851@spike> > 2010/9/21 spike : ... > > > > I propose the definition for outloading is where an emergent AI > > decides to stay stealthy for at least a while after the > singularity... spike > ...On Behalf Of Joseph Bloch ... > Subject: Re: [ExI] outloading, was: stealth singularity > > Isn't the term "stealth singularity" something of an oxymoron? Not necessarily, but from your question, I see a way to improve my notion. Read on. > I always thought of a singularity as an event of > species-shaking significance, beyond which by definition it > was impossible to predict future events (hence the term, > which evokes the event horizon of a black hole)... Joseph Since we are borrowing terms from astronomy such as singularity and event horizon, let us take it a step further. We often think of all the strange things that happen at the event horizon in the natural world, but one can cross an event horizon and not notice anything amiss. As one approaches the center of the black hole itself (the singularity in the astronomical sense) way inside the event horizon is where all the strange stuff happens, being ripped apart by tidal forces and such unpleasantness. But out at the event horizon of a super massive black hole, things are still OK at least for a while. If for instance you have a black hole of about 3 trillion solar masses, the event horizon is a lightyear out from the singularity (the Schwarzchild radius is a light year) and nothing particularly strange appears to be happening there. You could cross it and not notice. You would never come back of course, but you could cross it going in. So instead of referring to this notion as the stealth singularity, we could call it the stealth event horizon. Then the singularity we usually think of would still be in the future after crossing that event horizon, and inevitable. A super friendly AI which chose to outload us and keep earth as a nature preserve would eventually decide to devour all that iron. Perhaps it would eventually perfect the outloads sufficiently to make the carbon units unnecessary. Surely it will want to get at all this metal down here at some point. So OK Joseph, point taken. What I am describing isn't a singularity, but rather the emergence of a super-friendly AI. This version is more human-friendly and more self-sacrificing than I expect an emergent AI to be. So all this might be just so much wishful thinking. spike From stathisp at gmail.com Wed Sep 22 11:29:51 2010 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:29:51 +1000 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <0076DAE1-3D58-4441-B049-53B660ED15DF@bellsouth.net> References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> <0076DAE1-3D58-4441-B049-53B660ED15DF@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: 2010/9/21 John Clark : > Easier said than done. I don't believe it would be viable for a mind's > happiness to be forever fixed at one point regardless of whatever good or > bad things happened around it, there would be no motivation to do anything > if your satisfaction can never increase or decrease as a result of it; and > even worse, rigidly fixed rules of whatever sort leave a mind vulnerable to > getting stuck in infinite loops. So you're going to have to come up with > a?scheme for moving that pleasure point, one that depends on circumstances > and does so in a way that you think is responsible. But whatever security > you set up protecting that vital process?will certainly be able to be > subverted, especially when you become far more intelligent and powerful than > you were when you dreamed up the scheme and the security arrangements so > many nanoseconds ago. > And besides, even if you could overcome all these huge obstacles and forever > limit your happiness, would you? You need not limit your happiness, only your path to happiness. If you enjoy smoking cigarettes but think it's bad for you you could modify yourself so that you no longer desire to smoke cigarettes even though you know you would like it if you did; after all, people manage to do this all the time today without benefit of direct access to their mind. Or, you could modify yourself so that you are disgusted at the thought of cigarettes and associate the cigarette-like pleasure with an activity that you find unpleasant but intrinsically worthwhile, such as exercising. -- Stathis Papaioannou From policedepts at gmail.com Wed Sep 22 02:25:11 2010 From: policedepts at gmail.com (police dept) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 20:25:11 -0600 Subject: [ExI] papal paradox In-Reply-To: <35B6E3497C574E55A9390B915F279A49@spike> References: <421147.56853.qm@smtp103.sbc.mail.re3.yahoo.com> <35B6E3497C574E55A9390B915F279A49@spike> Message-ID: > > "Such a difficult question is this? What in the goddam hell has happened > here in this once free country with a written and signed constitution with > explicitly defined rights, when we need our legal experts to ponder if it > is > illegal to burn a book?" > > > Burn Confederate flags, not Korans. > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed Sep 22 16:23:19 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 09:23:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> <0076DAE1-3D58-4441-B049-53B660ED15DF@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 4:29 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2010/9/21 John Clark : > snip > You need not limit your happiness, only your path to happiness. If you > enjoy smoking cigarettes but think it's bad for you you could modify > yourself so that you no longer desire to smoke cigarettes even though > you know you would like it if you did; after all, people manage to do > this all the time today without benefit of direct access to their > mind. Or, you could modify yourself so that you are disgusted at the > thought of cigarettes and associate the cigarette-like pleasure with > an activity that you find unpleasant but intrinsically worthwhile, > such as exercising. Or you could modify yourself so that smoking was not bad for you. Or you could modify yourself to get the internal state from smoking without using tobacco. Where this leads is scary. Minsky talked about the dangers of easy modifications to internal states in Society of Mind decades ago. Keith From spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 22 16:52:31 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 09:52:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net><76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net><4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net><5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net><0076DAE1-3D58-4441-B049-53B660ED15DF@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Keith Henson > ... > ...Or you could modify yourself to get the internal state > from smoking without using tobacco. Where this leads is > scary. Minsky talked about the dangers of easy modifications > to internal states in Society of Mind decades ago... Keith Ja. If we figure out how to modify ourselves to be able to get those feelings one gets from copulating with one's sweetheart, to get those feelings alone and free of charge, that is THE END of human reproduction, and eventually the end of humanity. This scenario has been offered as an explanation for why SETI has found nada, and is as good an explanation as any other I have seen. spike From jonkc at bellsouth.net Wed Sep 22 17:44:11 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 13:44:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?World=92s_Biggest_Supercomputing_Superpowe?= =?windows-1252?q?rs_=5BINFOGRAPHIC=5D?= In-Reply-To: References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> <6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: <78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net> On Sep 21, 2010, at 4:43 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > but I know and believe enough to say with confidence that it's [The probability that DOD or NSA don't have any supercomputers that aren't listed on the Top 500] high. Several of the computers in the top 500 are classified, nobody will say what they are doing or even where they are located, but you are talking about something else, hiding the very existence of a machine, and that runs into problems. If you insist on a totally black project like the Stealth Bomber, or any black project, it will increase the cost by 40 to 50%, it's just a fact of life and it's very difficult to imagine why anybody would do that with conventional supercomputers doubling in power every 18 months unless there was a radical new computer technology, such as Quantum Computers, involved. But if that is the case why would the defense department be spending billions of dollars on regular supercomputers? And yes government agencies can be pretty stupid but its hard to believe they could be so stupid as to have a Singularity producing object like a Quantum Computer in their hands and then just use it for mundane tasks like cracking public code encryption programs. >>> I also have inside information, but I'm not at liberty to share it. > >> Then what's the point of mentioning it? > > It might mean something to someone who knows me well enough to know that I know what I'm talking about, or to someone who remembers where I work. I've laid hands on Jaguar, for example. I know absolutely nothing about you, but if you really are part of a top secret hyper computer project then you have violated your security oath and will certainly get fired from your job and possibly go to prison; certainly a court room will be your home away from home for the next several years. If you are not part of such a project then you're talking through your hat. >> Memory chips are commodities, microprocessors are not. > > Jaguar has AMD Opterons. You may not be able to buy them by the pound, but they're readily available. Rolls-Royce automobiles are readily available too, but they are not a commodity. > Producing chips is not the same as controlling an industry. I rather think it does. > I have no doubt that they could build a fab and clone AMD or Intel CPUs if they really wanted to. And then build a new fab 2 years later when the old one becomes obsolete. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 22 19:59:39 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 12:59:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types In-Reply-To: <78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net> References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net><6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net> <78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: <75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> Today I ask for some suggestions from those of you who think outside the box. For those who offer good suggestions, the standard reward is yours: my gratitude, respect and everlasting admiration, or at least until I forget, whichever comes first, restrictions apply etc. Assume I did a particular job at the ranch on a particular day, and I wanted to prove in court at some future date that this task was performed on that particular day. Of course I could have an honest neighbor witness and sign a statement to that effect, but then she could be subpoenaed to testify in court etc, and that isn't good, and may not even be possible, if for instance she is old and sick. So imagine I take digital photos with a time stamp. The time could be set wrong on the camera, so just to make sure, I get that day's newspaper and hold it in the foreground, then keep the paper. So that proves to the satisfaction of the court that the event could not have taken place earlier than the timestamp on the camera, but it doesn't conclusively prove the event could not have taken place later. I could have gotten last week's paper, intentionally set the camera time a week behind, taken the pictures and claimed the events took place a week earlier than they really did. Question please, extro-thinkers: how do I use a digital camera to prove an event took place no later than stated? This isn't a murder case or anything, just a civil matter, so the standards of proof are such that a digital photo is usually more than sufficient. One day resolution is plenty good for this application, but not one week. But using the newspaper trick I can only bound the problem on one side. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Sep 22 18:21:41 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 13:21:41 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net><76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net><4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net><5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net><0076DAE1-3D58-4441-B049-53B660ED15DF@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: <4C9A4935.50201@satx.rr.com> On 9/22/2010 11:52 AM, spike wrote: > If we figure out how to modify ourselves to be able to get those > feelings one gets from copulating with one's sweetheart, to get those > feelings alone and free of charge, that is THE END of human reproduction, > and eventually the end of humanity. That doesn't follow at all. Human reproduction has had no necessary connection with copulation for more than 30 years (Louis Brown was born in 1978). Damien Broderick From ryanobjc at gmail.com Wed Sep 22 20:30:30 2010 From: ryanobjc at gmail.com (Ryan Rawson) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 13:30:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types In-Reply-To: <75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> <6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net> <78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net> <75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> Message-ID: Send the image to a trusted 3rd party, eg: a notary who will sign that they received it as such and such time. In applied cryptography there are a number of crypto-oriented protocols for proving things like this. -ryan 2010/9/22 spike : > Today I ask for some suggestions from those of you who think outside the > box.? For those who offer good suggestions, the standard reward is yours: my > gratitude, respect and everlasting admiration, or at least until I forget, > whichever comes first, restrictions apply etc. > > Assume?I did a particular job at the ranch on a particular day, and I wanted > to prove in court at some future date that this task was?performed on?that > particular day.? Of course I could have an honest neighbor?witness and sign > a?statement to that effect, but then she could be subpoenaed to testify in > court etc, and that isn't good, and may not even be possible, if for > instance she is old and sick.? So imagine I take digital photos with a time > stamp.? The time could be set wrong on the camera, so just to make sure, I > get that day's newspaper and hold it in the foreground,?then keep the > paper.? So that proves to the satisfaction of the court that the event could > not have taken place earlier than the timestamp on the camera, but it > doesn't conclusively prove the event could not have taken place later.? I > could have gotten last week's paper, intentionally set the camera time a > week behind, taken the pictures and claimed the events took place a week > earlier than they really did. > > Question please, extro-thinkers: how do I use a digital camera to prove an > event?took place no?later than stated? > > This isn't a murder case or anything, just a civil matter, so the standards > of proof?are such?that a digital photo is usually more than sufficient.? One > day resolution is plenty good for this application, but not one week.? But > using the newspaper trick I can only bound the problem on one side. > > spike > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Wed Sep 22 20:42:50 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:42:50 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <4C9A4935.50201@satx.rr.com> References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net><76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net><4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net><5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net><0076DAE1-3D58-4441-B049-53B660ED15DF@bellsouth.net> <4C9A4935.50201@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4C9A6A4A.3020109@satx.rr.com> On 9/22/2010 1:21 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > (Louis Brown was born in 1978). Ack! Louise, of course. From spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 22 20:56:06 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 13:56:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types In-Reply-To: References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net><6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net><78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net><75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> Message-ID: > 2010/9/22 spike : ... > > standards of proof?are such?that a digital photo is usually more than > > sufficient... spike > ...On Behalf Of Ryan Rawson ... > > Send the image to a trusted 3rd party, eg: a notary who will > sign that they received it as such and such time. > > In applied cryptography there are a number of crypto-oriented > protocols for proving things like this. > > -ryan > Thanks Ryan, actually we already have that: the testimony of a coupla fellers we hired to help us that day. But they are busy and one of them does not want to be anywhere near the courthouse for any reason (details not available on request.) We could email the photos to a third party, ja, but is there any way to use just the digital camera and not bother third parties at all? I thought of a way using a video camera. Go to this site: http://www.time.gov/timezone.cgi?Pacific/d/-8/java and take a video of the screen, then take the same camera outside and make a video of the lads doing the task. However that requires a video camera. With a digital still camera, one could take a digital photo of the screen at the above site, but then that could be faked: bring up the site, do a screen capture with alt-print screen, ctrl V into microsloth PowerPoint, then a week later, get the digital camera, put PP into slideshow mode so that that screen capture from last week fills the screen, set the camera clock back a week and take the picture. A with the newspaper trick, one could fake backwards easily, but not forwards. spike From atymes at gmail.com Wed Sep 22 20:40:58 2010 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 13:40:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types In-Reply-To: <75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> <6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net> <78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net> <75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> Message-ID: 2010/9/22 spike > Question please, extro-thinkers: how do I use a digital camera to prove an > event took place no later than stated? > You don't - not with the digital camera itself. Data can be edited, and the courts know this. (If you include today's newspaper, that could be pasted into a photograph taken earlier, for instance.) What you need is certification from someone the courts trust, such as a notary, as Ryan suggested. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Wed Sep 22 20:42:42 2010 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 22:42:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types In-Reply-To: <75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> <6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net> <78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net> <75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> Message-ID: Include another person in the picture, kill the other person later in the same day, keep the police report. Or a less violent variant;-) -- Giulio Prisco giulio at gmail.com (39)3387219799 On Sep 22, 2010 10:27 PM, "spike" wrote: Today I ask for some suggestions from those of you who think outside the box. For those who offer good suggestions, the standard reward is yours: my gratitude, respect and everlasting admiration, or at least until I forget, whichever comes first, restrictions apply etc. Assume I did a particular job at the ranch on a particular day, and I wanted to prove in court at some future date that this task was performed on that particular day. Of course I could have an honest neighbor witness and sign a statement to that effect, but then she could be subpoenaed to testify in court etc, and that isn't good, and may not even be possible, if for instance she is old and sick. So imagine I take digital photos with a time stamp. The time could be set wrong on the camera, so just to make sure, I get that day's newspaper and hold it in the foreground, then keep the paper. So that proves to the satisfaction of the court that the event could not have taken place earlier than the timestamp on the camera, but it doesn't conclusively prove the event could not have taken place later. I could have gotten last week's paper, intentionally set the camera time a week behind, taken the pictures and claimed the events took place a week earlier than they really did. Question please, extro-thinkers: how do I use a digital camera to prove an event took place no later than stated? This isn't a murder case or anything, just a civil matter, so the standards of proof are such that a digital photo is usually more than sufficient. One day resolution is plenty good for this application, but not one week. But using the newspaper trick I can only bound the problem on one side. spike _______________________________________________ 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 jebdm at jebdm.net Wed Sep 22 21:52:33 2010 From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 17:52:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Neo-minimalism and the rise of the techno-nomads In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2010/9/21 police dept > > Nothing wrong with a great deal of possessions if they are quality, and you > can enjoy them-- that is to say if you buy thousands of good DVDs and never > watch but a handful of them, that's a waste. > I suppose the article didn't touch on it much, but the idea behind "neominimalism" or whatever you want to call it is that having more things is, in general, worse. That is, the utility of the set of the things you own is not just equal to the sum of the utilities of those things individually (perhaps plus the utilities of owning certain combinations of things), but also includes a term which defines a negative utility which grows in proportion to the number of things you own. In other words (in Haskell-esque prefix notation): Old model: set-utility things = (sum (map utility things)) + (sum (map extra-utility (power-set things))) New model: set-utility things = (sum (map utility things)) + (sum (map extra-utility (power-set things))) - (f (length things)) where f is some strictly increasing function such that for all x > 0, (f 0) > 0 Of course, if the quality of the some thing is high enough and you use it often enough, that should be enough to offset the negative utility of having it. But a lot of people have a great deal of things which contribute very little to their lives. And it's not just about avoiding waste. There is actually a negative utility that comes, not just from wasting resources, but from being encumbered by stuff. As it applies to "technomads", having a lot of stuff makes it more difficult to travel, because you have to carry your stuff around with you or find storage for it. For some people, that may not be a huge issue, but if you don't have a free place to store your stuff--and a lot of people don't--it might make frequent travel prohibitively expensive. Even if you don't run into money issues, there are always attachment issues--people won't/can't make certain choices because they have things that they are so attached to that they become rooted to one spot. And then there's the matter of clutter; many people find that having a lot of things around them is quite stressful, both on the level of having to maintain that stuff and because it splits your attention. That said, a lot of "neominimalism" stuff is kind of overblown, and it's almost always accompanied by some level of... er... granola-esque? sentiment. For instance, take "the Last Viridian Note" ( http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/451-500/the_last_viridian_note.html), which says a lot of interesting things but has this other stuff mixed in with it. -- Jebadiah Moore http://blog.jebdm.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jebdm at jebdm.net Wed Sep 22 22:07:30 2010 From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 18:07:30 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: <4C9A4935.50201@satx.rr.com> References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> <0076DAE1-3D58-4441-B049-53B660ED15DF@bellsouth.net> <4C9A4935.50201@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 2:21 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 9/22/2010 11:52 AM, spike wrote: > > If we figure out how to modify ourselves to be able to get those >> feelings one gets from copulating with one's sweetheart, to get those >> feelings alone and free of charge, that is THE END of human reproduction, >> and eventually the end of humanity. >> > > That doesn't follow at all. Human reproduction has had no necessary > connection with copulation for more than 30 years (Louis Brown was born in > 1978). > Then make it "the warm and fuzzy feelings you get from conceiving/raising a child/having raised a child". -- Jebadiah Moore http://blog.jebdm.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From timhalterman at gmail.com Wed Sep 22 21:22:38 2010 From: timhalterman at gmail.com (Tim Halterman) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:22:38 -0500 Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types In-Reply-To: References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> <6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net> <78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net> <75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> Message-ID: > > > I thought of a way using a video camera. Go to this site: > > http://www.time.gov/timezone.cgi?Pacific/d/-8/java > > and take a video of the screen, then take the same camera outside and make > a > video of the lads doing the task. However that requires a video camera. > > With a digital still camera, one could take a digital photo of the screen > at > the above site, but then that could be faked: bring up the site, do a > screen > capture with alt-print screen, ctrl V into microsloth PowerPoint, then a > week later, get the digital camera, put PP into slideshow mode so that that > screen capture from last week fills the screen, set the camera clock back a > week and take the picture. A with the newspaper trick, one could fake > backwards easily, but not forwards. > > spike > Would be easier to create a fake version of the site and change your host file to display whatever url you want. It could update just like the normal site and fool a video camera as well. If the location of the work is not in question, and you can determine GPS coordinates of the camera shot you could take a picture of celestial bodies, the sun the moon perhaps.. at dusk some stars possibly? You'd need some pretty precise measurements I'd think to determine down to the day but I do believe it would be possible. Outside of altering the image that should be tamperproof. I'll be the first to say that I don't think that it'll be easy to do. -Tim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed Sep 22 22:19:56 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:19:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] outloading, was: stealth singularity In-Reply-To: <6A403F1B3060438EB26E93896175C851@spike> References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> <6A403F1B3060438EB26E93896175C851@spike> Message-ID: On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 10:36 PM, spike wrote: snip > A super friendly AI which chose to outload us and keep earth as a nature > preserve would eventually decide to devour all that iron. ?Perhaps it would > eventually perfect the outloads sufficiently to make the carbon units > unnecessary. ?Surely it will want to get at all this metal down here at some > point. It's not exactly known at this point that iron would be particularly useful in manufacturing computronium. > So OK Joseph, point taken. ?What I am describing isn't a singularity, but > rather the emergence of a super-friendly AI. ?This version is more > human-friendly and more self-sacrificing than I expect an emergent AI to be. > So all this might be just so much wishful thinking. It's not impossible. I wonder what the signs would be of this having happened? A sudden end to human deaths? And births? Wars stop? Or would a really smart AI consider that the things we evolved to do were "good" for us? Keith From spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 22 21:59:40 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 14:59:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types In-Reply-To: References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net><6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net><78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net><75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> Message-ID: <492222548DFD4B1384761FB3ACAA905D@spike> ...On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes ... Subject: Re: [ExI] help please, from you creative types 2010/9/22 spike >>Question please, extro-thinkers: how do I use a digital camera to prove an event took place no later than stated? >You don't - not with the digital camera itself. Data can be edited, and the courts know this. (If you include today's newspaper, that could be pasted into a photograph taken earlier, for instance.) Adrian Ja digital photos can be edited, but this isn't a criminal court, rather a fairly minor civil case. For those outside the US, a bit of explanation is in order. In the US, criminal courts and civil courts have standards of evidence that are almost opposite. In criminal court the defendant is presumed innocent. The prosecution must present evidence in direct proportion to the amount of money the defendant owns. In civil court, the richest party is presumed guilty. The defense must present evidence in direct proportion to the amount of money the defendant owns. Yes, digital photos *could* be edited, but it would then be the prosecution's task to prove that it was done, which is quite unlikely in this case, especially if we have human testimony to back it up if it is called into question. So I am actually asking from a lowish-level standard of evidence, a low cost, low effort item of evidence where the amounts of money at stake are a few tens of thousands of dollars, probably less than 100k, something for which a lawyer wouldn't go to too much effort. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pjmanney at gmail.com Wed Sep 22 22:10:08 2010 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:10:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types In-Reply-To: <75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> <6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net> <78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net> <75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> Message-ID: 2010/9/22 spike : > Today I ask for some suggestions from those of you who think outside the > box. In the old days of copyright protection, a writer used to send themselves a mailed envelope with the copyrightable contents inside. The date-stamp proved that on THAT DAY, the material existed in your possession, since the US Postal Service is considered inviolable. And it was only be opened in the presence of the court, so the contents could be officially recorded during a lawsuit. So do your newspaper tricks to protect the front end of the date and mail it to yourself to protect the back end of the date. Mail several certified mail, so all the busybodies at the court feel they're getting their own, personal peepshow when you have to open it numerous times, so everyone feels they've witnessed the momentous event... ;-) PJ From x at extropica.org Wed Sep 22 22:53:20 2010 From: x at extropica.org (x at extropica.org) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:53:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types In-Reply-To: References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> <6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net> <78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net> <75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> Message-ID: On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 3:10 PM, PJ Manney wrote: > 2010/9/22 spike : >> Today I ask for some suggestions from those of you who think outside the >> box. > > In the old days of copyright protection... Or nowadays you can do this: http://www.usps.com/electronicpostmark/ - Jef From spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 22 23:31:11 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:31:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types In-Reply-To: References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net><6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net><78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net><75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> Message-ID: <3BDC57A0296C4D10B2E8474856B279C8@spike> > > 2010/9/22 spike : > >> Today I ask for some suggestions from those of you who > think outside > >> the box. > > > > In the old days of copyright protection... > > Or nowadays you can do this: http://www.usps.com/electronicpostmark/ > > - Jef This is the best one yet for this application. Thanks Jef! spike From eric at m056832107.syzygy.com Wed Sep 22 23:09:10 2010 From: eric at m056832107.syzygy.com (Eric Messick) Date: 22 Sep 2010 23:09:10 -0000 Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types In-Reply-To: <492222548DFD4B1384761FB3ACAA905D@spike> References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net><6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net><78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net><75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> <492222548DFD4B1384761FB3ACAA905D@spike> Message-ID: <20100922230910.5.qmail@syzygy.com> >Question please, extro-thinkers: how do I use a digital camera to prove an >event took place no later than stated? Take a picture of the event with a GPS unit in the picture showing the date and time. Clearly this can be rigged, but combined with live testimony that it hasn't been altered could still meet the standard of evidence you need. -eric From spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 22 23:09:21 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:09:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types In-Reply-To: References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net><6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net><78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net><75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> Message-ID: <1C6872D7B5A64E3E855224C72EED911A@spike> ________________________________ ...On Behalf Of Tim Halterman ... >...If the location of the work is not in question, and you can determine GPS coordinates of the camera shot you could take a picture of celestial bodies, the sun the moon perhaps... You got it Tim! It would work if the skies are clear, which they often are at the time of year this task needs to be done. Take a photo of the rising sun on the eastern horizon sighting along the back of the barn. That fixes both the location and the direction of sight. From the position of the sunrise, the time of year can be easily determined to plus or minus a week. On the same day, take a picure of the moonrise, which can be at any time of the day. This will show the phase of the moon, from which a resolution to plus or minus a day can be easily determined. As a backup, I could take a picture of the corn, which grows quickly, so that would give a date to plus or minus a couple weeks, along with the moon phase. Some weeds bloom with an uncertainty of plus or minus a week. Wait, better still, pole of known length that would cast a shadow a specific way depending on the time of year and time of day. I need to work on that one. Good thinking! >...I'll be the first to say that I don't think that it'll be easy to do. -Tim On the contrary, if the skies are clear that day, it is the easiest thing to do, by far. It is just a matter of getting up at sunrise and calculating the time of moonrise that day. As an extension, one could do the same trick with sunset and moonset. If I wanted to go to the trouble, I could get my telescope out and get a photo of Jupiter-rise with the work going on in the foreground. This notion gets me most of the way there. Another thing I thought of is to buy a steak a few days before the work is to be done, then take a photo of it each day. It has a packaged-on date. In the fridge, a steak turns from red to brown-ish in about 5 days, so it could serve as a low-res clock of sorts. On the other hand I suppose one could freeze the thing after three or four days, then later thaw it and set the camera clock back. The sun-moon trick is clever though. Depends on having clear skies. spike From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Sep 22 23:43:43 2010 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 19:43:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types In-Reply-To: References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> <6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net> <78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net> <75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> Message-ID: <20100922194343.g1oe5srrokoos48k@webmail.natasha.cc> Sweet. Quoting PJ Manney : > 2010/9/22 spike : >> Today I ask for some suggestions from those of you who think outside the >> box. > > In the old days of copyright protection, a writer used to send > themselves a mailed envelope with the copyrightable contents inside. > The date-stamp proved that on THAT DAY, the material existed in your > possession, since the US Postal Service is considered inviolable. And > it was only be opened in the presence of the court, so the contents > could be officially recorded during a lawsuit. So do your newspaper > tricks to protect the front end of the date and mail it to yourself to > protect the back end of the date. Mail several certified mail, so all > the busybodies at the court feel they're getting their own, personal > peepshow when you have to open it numerous times, so everyone feels > they've witnessed the momentous event... ;-) > > PJ > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 22 23:24:30 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:24:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types In-Reply-To: References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net><6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net><78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net><75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> Message-ID: <2B0DEC709BCF4AF7AC6AD53B86FFD8B2@spike> > ...On Behalf Of PJ Manney ... > The date-stamp proved that on THAT DAY, the material existed > in your possession, since the US Postal Service is considered > inviolable... > > PJ Ja that is probably the simplest of all: take the photos, print hard copy, put them in an envelope sealed with lotsa slobber, sign across the flap and doodle around the stamp, so that the postmark will be over the ink marks. Theoretically one could send oneself an empty envelope, after getting it back, could later put photos in it and seal it, but for the standards of evidence needed in this case, a sealed postmarked envelope would probably be good enough. I had an idea. On this particular ranch, there was when my folks bought an unidentified piece of antique farming equipment, all metal, parked next an oak tree. It may have dated from the 1920s or so. It predated internal combustion, and had devices that look like something one might attach some manner of beast, an ox or an ass perhaps? A horse? Mule? The oak tree had grown around it, enveloped part of it. We called a local antiques collector and offered it to him, but with the understanding that he not cut down or harm that old oak tree. So he brought a metal saw and cut off the piece that was enveloped by the tree, where it remains to this day, and took the rest. That piece of metal accumulates rust every year. I could take a photo of the work with that piece of metal in the foreground every year, to show rust accumulating, since that process is one way. Not very high resolution however. spike From ablainey at aol.com Thu Sep 23 00:27:06 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 20:27:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types In-Reply-To: <75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net><6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net><78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net> <75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> Message-ID: <8CD28CD2FDCEF1D-19D8-6AED@webmail-m035.sysops.aol.com> Write a sworn Affidavit stating the facts and have it notarised. Do the same for your witnesses. As I understand it, an affidavit stands as undesputed truth unless proven false point for point. File them with the court and make sure the judge 'Can see them' (talk to the clerk). Make sure you have copies to present should the originals get lost. Include statements that the photos were taken on a specific date and that the timestamp was correct. Enter copies of the photos as supporting evidence. Get all your evidence in before the day and you shouldn't need to say a word. Hopefully all will be well and good and the case will just be rubber stamped. It might help if the camera and memory media is held secure by a trustworthy third party incase it is needed for evidence. This will show you didn't want it to be tampered with by anyone and remove suspicion of that from yourself. Disclaimer: Not responsible for advise given, blah blah, not a lawer, have no idea about law, not my fault if you spent a night in the cells etc ;o) good luck Al -----Original Message----- From: spike To: 'ExI chat list' Sent: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 20:59 Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types Today I ask for some suggestions from those of you who think outside the box. For those who offer good suggestions, the standard reward is yours: my gratitude, respect and everlasting admiration, or at least until I forget, whichever comes first, restrictions apply etc. Assume I did a particular job at the ranch on a particular day, and I wanted to prove in court at some future date that this task was performed on that particular day. Of course I could have an honest neighbor witness and sign a statement to that effect, but then she could be subpoenaed to testify in court etc, and that isn't good, and may not even be possible, if for instance she is old and sick. So imagine I take digital photos with a time stamp. The time could be set wrong on the camera, so just to make sure, I get that day's newspaper and hold it in the foreground, then keep the paper. So that proves to the satisfaction of the court that the event could not have taken place earlier than the timestamp on the camera, but it doesn't conclusively prove the event could not have taken place later. I could have gotten last week's paper, intentionally set the camera time a week behind, taken the pictures and claimed the events took place a week earlier than they really did. Question please, extro-thinkers: how do I use a digital camera to prove an event took place no later than stated? This isn't a murder case or anything, just a civil matter, so the standards of proof are such that a digital photo is usually more than sufficient. One day resolution is plenty good for this application, but not one week. But using the newspaper trick I can only bound the problem on one side. spike _______________________________________________ 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 ablainey at aol.com Thu Sep 23 00:58:33 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 20:58:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Neo-minimalism and the rise of the techno-nomads In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8CD28D1946D9ECB-19D8-782E@webmail-m035.sysops.aol.com> Yes and it depends on your personal currency. I value things I make very highly, so by extension the tools and materials that enable me to create have high positive utility. Also some tools hardly ever see the light of day, but not having them when I need them has huge negative utility which outweigh the negative of owning them and them mainly gathering dust. Though I must admit that I am a hoarder and having way too much stuff (useful or not) does have a negative effect. I like the idea of neominimalism, but I know I would leave with one bag and come back with a shipping container full of stuff I picked up in my travels. Al -----Original Message----- From: Jebadiah Moore To: ExI chat list Sent: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 22:52 Subject: Re: [ExI] Neo-minimalism and the rise of the techno-nomads 2010/9/21 police dept Nothing wrong with a great deal of possessions if they are quality, and you can enjoy them-- that is to say if you buy thousands of good DVDs and never watch but a handful of them, that's a waste. I suppose the article didn't touch on it much, but the idea behind "neominimalism" or whatever you want to call it is that having more things is, in general, worse. That is, the utility of the set of the things you own is not just equal to the sum of the utilities of those things individually (perhaps plus the utilities of owning certain combinations of things), but also includes a term which defines a negative utility which grows in proportion to the number of things you own. In other words (in Haskell-esque prefix notation): Old model: set-utility things = (sum (map utility things)) + (sum (map extra-utility (power-set things))) New model: set-utility things = (sum (map utility things)) + (sum (map extra-utility (power-set things))) - (f (length things)) where f is some strictly increasing function such that for all x > 0, (f 0) > 0 Of course, if the quality of the some thing is high enough and you use it often enough, that should be enough to offset the negative utility of having it. But a lot of people have a great deal of things which contribute very little to their lives. And it's not just about avoiding waste. There is actually a negative utility that comes, not just from wasting resources, but from being encumbered by stuff. As it applies to "technomads", having a lot of stuff makes it more difficult to travel, because you have to carry your stuff around with you or find storage for it. For some people, that may not be a huge issue, but if you don't have a free place to store your stuff--and a lot of people don't--it might make frequent travel prohibitively expensive. Even if you don't run into money issues, there are always attachment issues--people won't/can't make certain choices because they have things that they are so attached to that they become rooted to one spot. And then there's the matter of clutter; many people find that having a lot of things around them is quite stressful, both on the level of having to maintain that stuff and because it splits your attention. That said, a lot of "neominimalism" stuff is kind of overblown, and it's almost always accompanied by some level of... er... granola-esque? sentiment. For instance, take "the Last Viridian Note" (http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/451-500/the_last_viridian_note.html), which says a lot of interesting things but has this other stuff mixed in with it. -- Jebadiah Moore http://blog.jebdm.net _______________________________________________ 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 ablainey at aol.com Thu Sep 23 01:01:10 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:01:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types In-Reply-To: References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net><6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net><78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net><75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> Message-ID: <8CD28D1F259E720-19D8-794F@webmail-m035.sysops.aol.com> LOL. I was thinking along similar lines, Kidnap the judge and take a photo of him on the day in question. Im pretty sure he will agree you were there when you said you were! -----Original Message----- From: Giulio Prisco To: ExI chat list Sent: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:42 Subject: Re: [ExI] help please, from you creative types Include another person in the picture, kill the other person later in the same day, keep the police report. Or a less violent variant;-) -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Sep 23 01:06:21 2010 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:06:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types In-Reply-To: <8CD28D1F259E720-19D8-794F@webmail-m035.sysops.aol.com> References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net><6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net><78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net><75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> <8CD28D1F259E720-19D8-794F@webmail-m035.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <20100922210621.6tnlo018zk4g0wgg@webmail.natasha.cc> LOL Quoting ablainey at aol.com: > > LOL. I was thinking along similar lines, Kidnap the judge and take > a photo of him on the day in question. Im pretty sure he will agree > you were there when you said you were! > > > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Giulio Prisco > To: ExI chat list > Sent: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:42 > Subject: Re: [ExI] help please, from you creative types > > > Include another person in the picture, kill the other person later > in the same day, keep the police report. Or a less violent variant;-) > -- > > > From spike66 at att.net Thu Sep 23 01:17:27 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 18:17:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] forward from the wta list Message-ID: We would like to invite the members of the WTA mailing list to the International Imminst Conference in Brussels on the 9th and 10th of October. http://imminst2010.com/ The prize of the tickets will increase after the 11th of September! Speakers: Danila Medvedev, Valerija Pride, Stephen Coles, Natalie Coles, Michael Rose, Leonid Gavrilov, Natalia Gavrilova, Bart Braeckman, Chitty Chen, Aubrey de Grey, Stephen Spindler, Sebastian Sethe, Sven Bulterijs, David Styles, Paul McGlothin, and Vincent Fagot. International Auditorium Boulevard du Roi Albert II (Koning Albert II laan) Brussels Sven -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Sep 23 01:55:59 2010 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:55:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types In-Reply-To: <75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> <6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net> <78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net> <75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> Message-ID: 2010/9/22 spike : > Question please, extro-thinkers: how do I use a digital camera to prove an > event?took place no?later than stated? Call the police and report an auto accident has occurred on your property. When the police show up, take a picture of your somewhat annoyed public servant with your event happening in the background. Pay the small fine for wasting the officer's time. They no doubt will have a record of the dispatch and the fine if not the silly picture. The court should accept as authentic the audit of the police department in conjunction with your photo proof. If your police are the really friendly "to serve and protect" type, you might not even have to lie about the auto accident an incur a fine... From rtomek at ceti.pl Thu Sep 23 03:16:33 2010 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2010 05:16:33 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] help please, from you creative types In-Reply-To: <75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net><6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net> <78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net> <75D32F6183F94F76BEFD95DB95A321A1@spike> Message-ID: On Wed, 22 Sep 2010, spike wrote: > Today I ask for some suggestions from those of you who think outside the > box. For those who offer good suggestions, the standard reward is yours: my > gratitude, respect and everlasting admiration, or at least until I forget, > whichever comes first, restrictions apply etc. > > Assume I did a particular job at the ranch on a particular day, and I wanted > to prove in court at some future date that this task was performed on that > particular day. Of course I could have an honest neighbor witness and sign > a statement to that effect, but then she could be subpoenaed to testify in > court etc, and that isn't good, and may not even be possible, if for > instance she is old and sick. So imagine I take digital photos with a time > stamp. The time could be set wrong on the camera, so just to make sure, I > get that day's newspaper and hold it in the foreground, then keep the paper. > So that proves to the satisfaction of the court that the event could not > have taken place earlier than the timestamp on the camera, but it doesn't > conclusively prove the event could not have taken place later. I could have > gotten last week's paper, intentionally set the camera time a week behind, > taken the pictures and claimed the events took place a week earlier than > they really did. > > Question please, extro-thinkers: how do I use a digital camera to prove an > event took place no later than stated? > > This isn't a murder case or anything, just a civil matter, so the standards > of proof are such that a digital photo is usually more than sufficient. One > day resolution is plenty good for this application, but not one week. But > using the newspaper trick I can only bound the problem on one side. Trivial. Some possible solutions: 1. You ask paper delivery to send you not only yesterday's newspaper but tomorrow one, too. Do I have to tell you that you simply make your photos with two papers? There are going to be some naysayers, who will murmur bs like "you can't get tomorrow's news today" but I've seen it in TV. It worked. Hint: you need a cat, or newspapers will be one day late. Don't ask me. I'm no Einstein. Not even Zweistein. or 2. You shoot photos of your ranch at night, catching star positions so that in a court you may show their relative distances, which are unique. or 3. You do the job. Next, get drunk and drive a lot. When sheriff shows up, ask her politely to have a photo session on your ranch. After taking your photos (don't forget to give her newspaper), she takes you to jail. Now you have a proof because you are mentioned in her papers. or 3b. You do the job. Take the photo with newspaper and store it in a safe place. Next, set it all on fire and call firefighters. Now, let me see. "gratitude, respect and everlasting admiration". I choose admiration. Can I? ;-) Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Sep 23 05:50:28 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 22:50:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ONN News Network video ; ) Message-ID: An "old school" ONN talking head berates NASA for spending taxpayer money... http://www.theonion.com/video/joad-cressbeckler-nasa-honeyfuggling-america-with,18140/ John ; ) From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Sep 23 08:43:38 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2010 01:43:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Nanotubes in the news In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I hope Japan really builds this space elevator! They would seem to have the technical skills and wealth to do it (and they are at least not burdened with a huge military). This would make the U.S. insecure and so we would quickly follow suit with our own. And then China would of course steal the technology from us... >From my friend- John T: I stand corrected! The material strength needed is 180 times the strength of steel... but all is not lost.... Japan has announced they plan to build a Space Elevator! http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article4799369.ece Quote from the wiki: In 2008 the book "Leaving the Planet by Space Elevator", by Dr. Brad Edwards and Philip Ragan, was published in Japanese and entered the Japanese best seller list. This has led to a Japanese announcement of intent to build a Space Elevator at a projected price tag of ?5 billion. In a report by Leo Lewis, Tokyo correspondent of The Times newspaper in England, plans by Shuichi Ono, chairman of the Japan Space Elevator Association, are unveiled. Lewis says: "Japan is increasingly confident that its sprawling academic and industrial base can solve those [construction] issues, and has even put the astonishingly low price tag of a trillion yen (?5 billion/ $8 billion) on building the elevator. Japan is renowned as a global leader in the precision engineering and high-quality material production without which the idea could never be possible." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator >>> From jonkc at bellsouth.net Thu Sep 23 14:51:02 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2010 10:51:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> <0076DAE1-3D58-4441-B049-53B660ED15DF@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: <2ADCFFF9-BEFF-4E92-B25F-94630F260B06@bellsouth.net> On Sep 22, 2010, at 7:29 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > You need not limit your happiness, only your path to happiness. But you're always on that path, it's not like you can reach a certain destination and from then on you don't need to worry anymore and everything is fine. > If you enjoy smoking cigarettes but think it's bad for you you could modify > yourself so that you no longer desire to smoke cigarettes That would be easy but I'm talking about something more general, more fundamental, and much scarier. It feels great to accomplish something really important, but by their very nature such things are rare and difficult to accomplish. After a decade of hard work Einstein must have felt great on the day he figured out how General Relativity worked; but suppose you could have that same feeling of pride and fulfillment and awe that he had without doing anything except opening the preference panel in your mind and moving the pride fulfillment and awe slide switches found there just a tiny little bit further to the right. Could that be why we don't see ET? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Sep 23 16:43:34 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2010 09:43:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kiva starts student loan microfinancing program Message-ID: They have gone from small business loans to helping people afford college. The third world will never be quite the same... http://www.care2.com/causes/trailblazers/blog/kiva-starts-student-loan-microfinancing-program/ John From kanzure at gmail.com Thu Sep 23 16:30:22 2010 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2010 11:30:22 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Open Hardware Summit stream is go Message-ID: Open Hardware Summit is streaming live today. stream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/open-hardware-summit-2010 schedule: http://www.openhardwaresummit.org/schedule/ about: http://openhardwaresummit.org/ twitter: https://twitter.com/openhwsummit featuring: * Limor Fried * Bruce Perens * John Wilbanks * .. well, and lots of others :-) - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From stathisp at gmail.com Fri Sep 24 00:02:58 2010 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 10:02:58 +1000 Subject: [ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload. In-Reply-To: References: <4C940159.9020704@speakeasy.net> <76549F0C-C241-4C84-B48D-4263B08636E2@bellsouth.net> <4C94CBBD.40202@speakeasy.net> <5D3F56BD-61DD-4835-B097-6FF5CCF6AD57@bellsouth.net> <0076DAE1-3D58-4441-B049-53B660ED15DF@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 2:23 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 4:29 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >> 2010/9/21 John Clark : >> > snip > >> You need not limit your happiness, only your path to happiness. If you >> enjoy smoking cigarettes but think it's bad for you you could modify >> yourself so that you no longer desire to smoke cigarettes even though >> you know you would like it if you did; after all, people manage to do >> this all the time today without benefit of direct access to their >> mind. Or, you could modify yourself so that you are disgusted at the >> thought of cigarettes and associate the cigarette-like pleasure with >> an activity that you find unpleasant but intrinsically worthwhile, >> such as exercising. > > Or you could modify yourself so that smoking was not bad for you. ?Or > you could modify yourself to get the internal state from smoking > without using tobacco. ?Where this leads is scary. ?Minsky talked > about the dangers of easy modifications to internal states in Society > of Mind decades ago. Even today most people manage to limit pleasurable activities to which they have easy access because they see excessive indulgence as undesirable for some reason. This is usually without access to mind modification, although there are some treatments available that could be considered a crude form of this. For example, there are drugs such as buproprion and varenicline for smoking. People take these drugs in order to modify their desire to smoke. This is a second order desire: a desire about a desire. If mind modification were easily available we would have to take into account the higher order desires. You could turn yourself into the sort of person you ideally want to be, and if you don't want to be a drug addict or a wirehead, you don't have to be. -- Stathis Papaioannou From sparge at gmail.com Fri Sep 24 02:26:27 2010 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2010 22:26:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?World=92s_Biggest_Supercomputing_Superpowe?= =?windows-1252?q?rs_=5BINFOGRAPHIC=5D?= In-Reply-To: <78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net> References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> <6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net> <78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: 2010/9/22 John Clark > > Several of the computers in the top 500 are classified, nobody will say > what they are doing or even where they are located, but you are talking > about something else, hiding the very existence of a machine, and that runs > into problems. > No, I'm talking about not publishing benchmark results. > I know absolutely nothing about you, but if you really are part of a top > secret hyper computer project then you have violated your security oath and > will certainly get fired from your job and possibly go to prison; certainly > a court room will be your home away from home for the next several years. If > you are not part of such a project then you're talking through your hat. > I have mentioned my employer here previously. I'm not part of a "top secret hyper computer project" and I haven't violated any security oath. And I'm not talking through my hat. Believe it or not. Rolls-Royce automobiles are readily available too, but they are not a > commodity. > They're *not* readily available. > Producing chips is not the same as controlling an industry. > > I rather think it does. > You think what does what? You think AMD controls the microprocessor industry? I'm sure Intel would beg to differ. > I have no doubt that they could build a fab and clone AMD or Intel CPUs if > they *really* wanted to. > > And then build a new fab 2 years later when the old one becomes obsolete. > Yeah, you're right. There's no way a country the size of China with their economy could afford to produce a fab every two years. :rolleyes: I'm done. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Fri Sep 24 13:41:54 2010 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 15:41:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] teleXLR8 Project News - a telepresence community for cultural acceleration Message-ID: http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/09/telexlr8-project-news-telepresence.html teleXLR8 Project News - a telepresence community for cultural acceleration We have been running the teleXLR8 project, a telepresence community for cultural acceleration based on Teleplace, in semi-stealth beta mode for a few months since the first talk by Anders Sandberg on Neuroselves and exoselves: distributed cognition inside and outside brains on April 18, 2010. We have produced some great events, talks by well known experts of futuristic technologies, meetings of closed working groups, and a two day "mixed reality" satellite workshop with the Singularity Summit 2010. teleXLR8 has been running as a free, invitation-only beta on the Teleplace servers and network infrastructure since March 2010. Due to the limited resources available we have only promoted teleXLR8 in the relatively small community of future studies and "Singularity" enthusiasts. Even so, we have received many more requests to join than we could handle, and the project has been frequently covered by the blogosphere and the online press. The current beta group has about 80 members. Each talk has been recorded on video and posted to the video sharing site blip.tv the day after the talk. The videos have been seen by several thousands of viewers and covered by important technology oriented sites including internetACTU, IEET, KurzweilAI, H+ Magazine, Next Big Future and Slashdot. We have now reached an agreement with Teleplace, which will permit running the project in fully operational mode our own dedicated servers, network and support infrastructure, and opening it to everyone for a very reasonable membership fee. The current beta will continue until the start of the next phase, and all members of the current beta group will receive extended free membership. Sponsor slots are available. We will produce great and frequent online events, featuring first class speakers with world-changing ideas, available in interactive realtime telepresence. teleXLR8 can be thought of as an online open TED, using modern telepresence technology for ideas worth spreading, and as a next generation, fully interactive TV network with a participative audience. In the pictures, participants are watching the recent talk by Ben Goertzel on TV. At any moment, they can step in to comment, discuss and ask questions. For a more detailed description of the project's goals, see our mini-manifesto Telepresence Education for a Smarter World on the IEET site and the interview MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco, by Natasha Vita-More, on H+ Magazine. Besides the existing Facebook Group and Linkedin Group, we have created a teleXLR8 mailing list on Google Groups. Please feel free to join the mailing list to discuss the project. http://telexlr8.wordpress.com/ From darren.greer3 at gmail.com Fri Sep 24 14:49:23 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 11:49:23 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Altruism in kin selection and beyond Message-ID: Some interesting findings re: altruism and kin selection and altruism based on genetic similarity regardless of kin relationship. http://news.msu.edu/story/8327/ Darren -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rahmans at me.com Fri Sep 24 08:00:35 2010 From: rahmans at me.com (Omar Rahman) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 10:00:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Best metric for gauging progress towards the singularity? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <45FE386A-EDBC-4270-AC9B-3799A3475240@me.com> Dear all, This is my first post here. A link to a video from The Onion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdCnUCN83-k Watch the ticker at the 1:00 mark. That was the fun part... On a more serious note; I look at the Singularity as the next step in evolution following, roughly, a chain like this: chance outcomes (early RNA formation, etc.) survival selected outcomes (bacteria and later forms) chance sexual outcomes (pollen on the wind) chosen sexual outcomes (choosing partners) chance environmental changes (changing conditions) chosen environmental changes (controlling conditions) chance co-option (using other species) chosen co-option (controlling other species) engineered co-option (engineering other species) engineered offspring (engineering our species) engineering ourselves (Singularity!) How fast can we adapt to change? And how well can we engineer it? Regards, Omar Rahman From jonkc at bellsouth.net Fri Sep 24 15:50:51 2010 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John Clark) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 11:50:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?World=92s_Biggest_Supercomputing_Superpowe?= =?windows-1252?q?rs_=5BINFOGRAPHIC=5D?= In-Reply-To: References: <3C6AFC31-F2E8-428B-8BE5-7FD21B4CE528@bellsouth.net> <6FCF6B8A-5540-4E85-9E99-223DEE0D65C9@bellsouth.net> <78FF3127-A9F4-4046-AB69-B4E8ED0869B1@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: <636A92FC-7F46-4B34-9C6F-B27309AADF14@bellsouth.net> On Sep 23, 2010, at 10:26 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > I'm talking about not publishing benchmark results. What about the top 500 computers on the list as it was 5 years ago, were there any amazing computers that were substantially better than anything on the list at that time that were secret? If so it's astounding it hasn't come to light by now because however wonderful it may have been in 2005 today that machine must certainly be rusting next to a 1953 Studebaker somewhere in a scrap yard. > I'm not talking through my hat. Believe it or not. That could be but I don't know it for a fact. > You think what does what? You think AMD controls the microprocessor industry? I'm sure Intel would beg to differ. Don't be ridiculous. And by the way, neither AMD nor Intel are Chinese companies. > > Yeah, you're right. There's no way a country the size of China with their economy China with an economy about the same size as Japan, one third that of the USA and one fourth that of the European Union. > could afford to produce a fab every two years. :rolleyes: I'm a bit puzzled. You seem to have nothing but contempt for the semiconductor industry (and about software too as demonstrated by your dismissal with a wave of your hand the fact that China had almost nothing to do with LINUX, or any other popular operating system). Ask yourself this question, which would be more difficult, a microprocessor company like INTEL getting into the computer manufacturing business or a component assembly company like Dell getting into the microprocessor business? Michael Dell started his company in his college dorm room, he bought microprocessors, mother boards, memory chips, disk-drives and operating systems from others, put them together and sold the resulting computers for a nice profit; the idea that a college freshman could fabricate microprocessors, or any semiconductor worth a damn, in his dorm room is ludicrous. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Sep 24 17:17:27 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 10:17:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Best metric for gauging progress towards the singularity? In-Reply-To: <45FE386A-EDBC-4270-AC9B-3799A3475240@me.com> References: <45FE386A-EDBC-4270-AC9B-3799A3475240@me.com> Message-ID: <15FE081D7D984E04985B57E52E6F7015@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Omar Rahman > Subject: [ExI] Best metric for gauging progress towards the > singularity? > > This is my first post here. A link to a video from The Onion: > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdCnUCN83-k > > Watch the ticker at the 1:00 mark. > > That was the fun part... Thanks for the Onion link Omar. Plenty of good geek humor in that one. {8^D >...I look at the Singularity as the next > step in evolution following, roughly, a chain like this: > > chance outcomes (early RNA formation... > ... > engineering ourselves (Singularity!) > > How fast can we adapt to change? And how well can we engineer it?... Regards, Omar Rahman This rough outline is good, and illustrates in a way a comment I made last week. We should work on these kinds of roadmaps, for they have value. What I have been recognizing (to my distress) recently is that the time associated with these steps is completely unpredictable. Even if these steps take place more or less in order, we have no way of guessing how long any of the steps will take. So far, we are sketching a map with no scale. I have no suggestions on how to derive a scale. Welcome Omar. Tell us something about Omar if you wish. {8-] spike From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Sep 24 18:12:33 2010 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 11:12:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] U.S. deeply imperiled due to it's massive debt In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 3:33 AM, John Grigg wrote: > What real hope is there for the United States, due to our crushing > national deficit (our fault) and our growing dependence on China to > buy up that debt? ?Are we really an empire in full decline? ?Or do we > just face a very painful 5-10 year economic downturn, that we can > overcome if as a nation we learn to "live within a budget" and also > keep Wall Street & corporate America in check. LOL! ?I guess we are > screwed... ?This video really disturbed me. > > http://fora.tv/2010/07/28/Niall_Ferguson_Empires_on_the_Edge_of_Chaos#Niall_Ferguson_Will_Debt_Trigger_the_Collapse_of_the_US > ### Why would you want to keep corporate America in check? To make things worse? Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Sep 24 18:14:37 2010 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 11:14:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] U.S. deeply imperiled due to it's massive debt In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2010/9/21 police dept : Defense is a very > ugly business, and IMO as long as it remains such those who benefit the most > from it will have to fork over funds to the maximum extent. ### So, under the pretext of "defense", you want to fleece the best (and therefore best earning) workers even more? Rafal From ryanobjc at gmail.com Fri Sep 24 18:55:40 2010 From: ryanobjc at gmail.com (Ryan Rawson) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 11:55:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] U.S. deeply imperiled due to it's massive debt In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The real problem here is the move away from the use of US currency as a reserve currency towards a basket of currencies. That combined with a weak manufacturing base means paying back that debt is going to be significantly more expensive in terms of real GDP percentage. I am just really glad I don't have US citizenship, you can expect the IRS to go crazy trying to collect from every last Citizen worldwide. Images of Pamela from Accelerando should be coming to mind here. Perhaps there will be a way for individual states to keep living standards up? Not everyone can move to California and NYC... plus if you do the cultural memes right people will actually not want to move there. On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 11:14 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > 2010/9/21 police dept : > > ?Defense is a very >> ugly business, and IMO as long as it remains such those who benefit the most >> from it will have to fork over funds to the maximum extent. > > ### So, under the pretext of "defense", you want to fleece the best > (and therefore best earning) workers even more? > > Rafal > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Fri Sep 24 20:15:36 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 13:15:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] U.S. deeply imperiled due to it's massive debt In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I am disturbed by their influence when it comes to elections (especially the secretive nature of it). And also their lobbying power in general is simply overwhelming. "This candidate has been brought to you by Target." I am not talking about taxing them into the ground. John On 9/24/10, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 3:33 AM, John Grigg > wrote: >> What real hope is there for the United States, due to our crushing >> national deficit (our fault) and our growing dependence on China to >> buy up that debt? ?Are we really an empire in full decline? ?Or do we >> just face a very painful 5-10 year economic downturn, that we can >> overcome if as a nation we learn to "live within a budget" and also >> keep Wall Street & corporate America in check. LOL! ?I guess we are >> screwed... ?This video really disturbed me. >> >> http://fora.tv/2010/07/28/Niall_Ferguson_Empires_on_the_Edge_of_Chaos#Niall_Ferguson_Will_Debt_Trigger_the_Collapse_of_the_US >> > > ### Why would you want to keep corporate America in check? To make things > worse? > > Rafal > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From olga.bourlin at gmail.com Fri Sep 24 20:06:33 2010 From: olga.bourlin at gmail.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 13:06:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] U.S. deeply imperiled due to it's massive debt In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: "We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." - Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court Justice On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 1:06 PM, Olga Bourlin wrote: > "We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth > concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." - Louis > Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court Justice > > On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 11:12 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki > wrote: >> On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 3:33 AM, John Grigg wrote: >>> What real hope is there for the United States, due to our crushing >>> national deficit (our fault) and our growing dependence on China to >>> buy up that debt? ?Are we really an empire in full decline? ?Or do we >>> just face a very painful 5-10 year economic downturn, that we can >>> overcome if as a nation we learn to "live within a budget" and also >>> keep Wall Street & corporate America in check. LOL! ?I guess we are >>> screwed... ?This video really disturbed me. >>> >>> http://fora.tv/2010/07/28/Niall_Ferguson_Empires_on_the_Edge_of_Chaos#Niall_Ferguson_Will_Debt_Trigger_the_Collapse_of_the_US >>> >> >> ### Why would you want to keep corporate America in check? To make things worse? >> >> Rafal >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > From olga.bourlin at gmail.com Fri Sep 24 20:06:21 2010 From: olga.bourlin at gmail.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 13:06:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] U.S. deeply imperiled due to it's massive debt In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: "We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." - Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court Justice On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 11:12 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 3:33 AM, John Grigg wrote: >> What real hope is there for the United States, due to our crushing >> national deficit (our fault) and our growing dependence on China to >> buy up that debt? ?Are we really an empire in full decline? ?Or do we >> just face a very painful 5-10 year economic downturn, that we can >> overcome if as a nation we learn to "live within a budget" and also >> keep Wall Street & corporate America in check. LOL! ?I guess we are >> screwed... ?This video really disturbed me. >> >> http://fora.tv/2010/07/28/Niall_Ferguson_Empires_on_the_Edge_of_Chaos#Niall_Ferguson_Will_Debt_Trigger_the_Collapse_of_the_US >> > > ### Why would you want to keep corporate America in check? To make things worse? > > Rafal > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sep 24 23:56:17 2010 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 16:56:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] U.S. deeply imperiled due to it's massive debt In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <76742.44929.qm@web65612.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ---- > From: Rafal Smigrodzki > To: ExI chat list > Sent: Fri, September 24, 2010 11:12:33 AM > Subject: Re: [ExI] U.S. deeply imperiled due to it's massive debt > > On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 3:33 AM, John Grigg >wrote: > > What real hope is there for the United States, due to our crushing > > national deficit (our fault) and our growing dependence on China to > > buy up that debt? ?Are we really an empire in full decline? ?Or do we > > just face a very painful 5-10 year economic downturn, that we can > > overcome if as a nation we learn to "live within a budget" and also > > keep Wall Street & corporate America in check. LOL! ?I guess we are > > screwed... ?This video really disturbed me. > > > > >http://fora.tv/2010/07/28/Niall_Ferguson_Empires_on_the_Edge_of_Chaos#Niall_Ferguson_Will_Debt_Trigger_the_Collapse_of_the_US > > > > > ### Why would you want to keep corporate America in check? To make things >worse? What or who is corporate America? Multinational corporations have no nationality, citizenship, or sense of civic duty. They are simply sociopolitical machines designed play national governments against one another whilst?funneling the wealth of nations into the hands of a few. They lobby for legislation in?whatever country?they want that benefits themselves at the expense of?the country?as a whole. The weakness of?western-style democracy?is that lobbying is cheaper than paying taxes and far more influential than voting.?So if government of the?people, by the people, for the people?were to?perish from the earth, it would probably?be their doing.?? Stuart LaForge "Old men read the lesson in the setting sun. Beat the cymbal and sing in this life, or wail away the hours fearing death. Their choice is their fortune." - I Ching ? From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 10:06:52 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 03:06:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Saving the world through game design Message-ID: Game design for social change... http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fonline%2Fvideo%2Fconference%2F2008%2Fmcgonigal&h=ccec0 John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 10:12:48 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 03:12:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why thinking of nothing can be so tiring... Message-ID: This article made me think of Fry from Futurama. He does not have this problem... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100920172736.htm John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 10:23:23 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 03:23:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] David Brin discusses the end of the world Message-ID: Hey, it's David Brin! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBmu6D5ZNPg John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 10:37:37 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 03:37:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Researchers Engineer Adult Stem Cells That Do Not Age, Overcoming a Major Barrier to Progress in Regenerative Medicine Message-ID: Great news! http://www.buffalo.edu/news/11785 John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 10:42:37 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 03:42:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Humor: We didn't start the flame war! Message-ID: A very well-done parody of the Billy Joel song, "we didn't start the fire!" But of course transhumanists don't behave in such ways, or when we do, it's at a much more sophisticated level. ; ) Warning: Some explicit language! http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1907543 John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 10:52:10 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 03:52:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Designing and applying technology for the third world Message-ID: "The single biggest reason that the appropriate technology movement died and most technologies for developing countries never reach scale is that nobody seems to know how to design for the market." http://blog.paulpolak.com/?p=392 From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 11:02:17 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 04:02:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Japanese automotive prototypes Message-ID: Some of this makes me think of the vehicles you see in science fiction films. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpAgUMUlhw4 John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 10:34:16 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 03:34:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] RSA Animate- 21st century enlightenment Message-ID: "Matthew Taylor explores the meaning of 21st century enlightenment, how the idea might help us meet the challenges we face today, and the role that can be played by organisations such as the RSA." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC7ANGMy0yo&feature=autofb From atymes at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 15:19:52 2010 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 08:19:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Saving the world through game design In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Or directly link to the thing in question, without going through Facebook: http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2008/mcgonigal On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 3:06 AM, John Grigg wrote: > Game design for social change... > > > http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fonline%2Fvideo%2Fconference%2F2008%2Fmcgonigal&h=ccec0 > > 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 kanzure at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 16:58:10 2010 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 11:58:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Designing and applying technology for the third world In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 5:52 AM, John Grigg wrote: > "The single biggest reason that the appropriate technology movement > died and most technologies for developing countries never reach scale > is that nobody seems to know how to design for the market." > > http://blog.paulpolak.com/?p=392 After participating in a few "design for third world countries" competitions and groups in the past, my experience tells me the problem is worse. Not only does nobody know how to do any sort of engineering any more, and not only does (almost) nobody know the market, but whenever something is made, it's patented and immediately made secret. There are at least a handful of "Engineers Without Borders" and "Sustainable Engineers for whatever" groups on each university campus. I guarantee you that each of them have worked on some sort of water purification system in the past. Let's double check that.. say about 400 universities in the U.S. with EWB groups or SE groups, and each one of them with a water purification project. Arguably, the market is not flooded with knowledge on how to do water purification, usually it's the same old design.. desalinization via plastic bags, ionization, etc. This isn't because of a lack of ideas-- many of these groups come up with really novel ideas. What I don't see is public attempts at releasing these designs, knowledge, etc. And if we can't even do that at home, where we have signfiicant information and knowledge infrastructure, how in the hell is anyone going to do it abroad? - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 17:51:31 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 10:51:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Designing and applying technology for the third world In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 9:58 AM, Bryan Bishop wrote: > On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 5:52 AM, John Grigg wrote: >> "The single biggest reason that the appropriate technology movement >> died and most technologies for developing countries never reach scale >> is that nobody seems to know how to design for the market." >> >> http://blog.paulpolak.com/?p=392 > > After participating in a few "design for third world countries" > competitions and groups in the past, my experience tells me the > problem is worse. Not only does nobody know how to do any sort of > engineering any more, and not only does (almost) nobody know the > market, but whenever something is made, it's patented and immediately > made secret. Patents don't make it secret. Quite the other way. > There are at least a handful of "Engineers Without Borders" and > "Sustainable Engineers for whatever" groups on each university campus. > I guarantee you that each of them have worked on some sort of water > purification system in the past. Let's double check that.. say about > 400 universities in the U.S. with EWB groups or SE groups, and each > one of them with a water purification project. Arguably, the market is > not flooded with knowledge on how to do water purification, usually > it's the same old design.. desalinization via plastic bags, > ionization, etc. This isn't because of a lack of ideas-- many of these > groups come up with really novel ideas. What I don't see is public > attempts at releasing these designs, knowledge, etc. And if we can't > even do that at home, where we have signfiicant information and > knowledge infrastructure, how in the hell is anyone going to do it > abroad? Engineering ideas only turn into something real when someone cares to put the effort into doing it. That doesn't happen very often. You might Google for Saltworks Technologies Keith > - 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 kanzure at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 18:36:05 2010 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 13:36:05 -0500 Subject: [ExI] [wta-talk] Designing and applying technology for the third world In-Reply-To: <4C9E3F7E.70001@boone.net> References: <4C9E3F7E.70001@boone.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 1:29 PM, Ralph wrote: > Also, if you try to put an innovation into public domain, say, on the > Internet, it's amazing just how hostile people can become at the drop of a > hat when you talk about some way to purify tons of water for Bangladesh, or > generate cheap, sustainable, clean energy. I've gotten more accusations of > being interested only in fame and fortune -- when releasing a concept for > free, under a pseudonym -- just for throwing out some very basic designs. > And other weird attacks, where people seemed to feel almost obliged to take > down something good, no matter how spurious their arguments, just to make > them feel better about themselves. (A sensitive point: An awful lot of > people commenting on forums think of themselves an intellectual elites, but > haven't actually written so much as a song or invented so much as an > eggbeater. So putting out something with the complexity of a two-speed > eggbeater really hits them where they're vulnerable.) > > Granted, I think there's a lot of ego problems on the Net, but I think you > could make the case that helping the undeveloped world is at least as much a > broad-based moral and ethical problem as it is an engineering one. I am not really sure how to help fix that. I have encountered a number of people that fit that description and have those similar reactons. Further, I have had people be totally disgusted by the concept of sharing hardware designs, because they somehow think I am screwing myself out of untold riches and profits. There are a lot of really, really messed up, unhealthy emotions floating around in the general population. How to help this, fix this, or even just have usable responses to this, is beyond me at the moment. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Sat Sep 25 19:17:05 2010 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 13:17:05 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Best metric for gauging progress towards the singularity? In-Reply-To: <15FE081D7D984E04985B57E52E6F7015@spike> References: <45FE386A-EDBC-4270-AC9B-3799A3475240@me.com> <15FE081D7D984E04985B57E52E6F7015@spike> Message-ID: <4C9E4AB1.1050208@canonizer.com> Welcome Omar, Yes, it would be great to know more about you. Very interesting topic. About the best way I have of thinking about things is critical milestones such as: 1. Scientific discovery of how the ineffable phenomenal qualities of consciousness relate to their neural correlates. Ultimately this will lead to conscious effing of the ineffable, unification and expansion of our phenomenal conscious minds. It will allow us to realize what we, or our phenomenal 'spirits' are (as defined and predicted in the expert consensus 'Representational Qualia Theory' camp here http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/6 ) Of course, once we objectively discover the phenomenal nature of reality and how our knowledge of ourselves is represented by such, our conscious knowledge of ourselves will finally be able to phenomenally escape from the mortal spirit veil of perception prison walls that are our skull. Of course, achieving this, as predicted by this expert consensus camp, solves most all of our problems from mortality to still being stuck with primitive animalistic, slow static, unable to really communicate minds (the cause of war and all other problems). 2. When the last person dies. (the mortality rate finally reaches 0) 3. Every human and memory is finally restored and 'resurected'. Who knows how long each of these will take. Many probably doubt the possibility of ever achieving number 3. But I bet we are on the virge of number one, which I believe will be the greatest world changing scientific achievement of all time. The biggest problem we are facing, is communicating what the expert consensus already knows (as is being proved by the consciousness survey project at canonizer.com), to everyone else and the real nuts and bolts researchers looking at the neurons and funding the research of such. Looking forward to finding out more about what you think of all such. Brent Allsop On 9/24/2010 11:17 AM, spike wrote: > > >> ...On Behalf Of Omar Rahman >> Subject: [ExI] Best metric for gauging progress towards the >> singularity? >> >> This is my first post here. A link to a video from The Onion: >> >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdCnUCN83-k >> >> Watch the ticker at the 1:00 mark. >> >> That was the fun part... > Thanks for the Onion link Omar. Plenty of good geek humor in that one. > {8^D > >> ...I look at the Singularity as the next >> step in evolution following, roughly, a chain like this: >> >> chance outcomes (early RNA formation... >> ... >> engineering ourselves (Singularity!) >> >> How fast can we adapt to change? And how well can we engineer it?... > Regards, Omar Rahman > > This rough outline is good, and illustrates in a way a comment I made last > week. We should work on these kinds of roadmaps, for they have value. What > I have been recognizing (to my distress) recently is that the time > associated with these steps is completely unpredictable. Even if these > steps take place more or less in order, we have no way of guessing how long > any of the steps will take. > > So far, we are sketching a map with no scale. I have no suggestions on how > to derive a scale. > > Welcome Omar. Tell us something about Omar if you wish. {8-] > > spike > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sep 25 19:31:47 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 12:31:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Designing and applying technology for the third world In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Keith Henson > Subject: Re: [ExI] Designing and applying technology for the > third world > > On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 9:58 AM, Bryan Bishop > wrote: > > ...but whenever something is made, it's patented and immediately > > made secret. - Bryan > > Patents don't make it secret. Quite the other way... Keith Ja, that was my experience with the Lockheed patent office, all five times I went to them with ideas. They looked over my invention and specifically decided to not patent, but to keep the ideas as trade secrets. The patent application throws it into the open, where any yahoo can actually get around the patent fairly easily by deriving some minor variation on the theme. Patents don't mean what they used to. If you hear the tired conspiracy theories about oil companies buying up and shelving patents that would make cars run on dog turds (etc) you know it is bogus. If such a thing existed, anyone could get a car to run on wolf turds and it would be a separate patent. The modern patent office has evolved in such a way that you can patent anything, but it doesn't mean much. spike From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 19:55:47 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 12:55:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [wta-talk] Designing and applying technology for the third world In-Reply-To: References: <4C9E3F7E.70001@boone.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 11:36 AM, Bryan Bishop wrote: > On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 1:29 PM, Ralph wrote: >> Also, if you try to put an innovation into public domain, say, on the >> Internet, it's amazing just how hostile people can become at the drop of a >> hat when you talk about some way to purify tons of water for Bangladesh, or >> generate cheap, sustainable, clean energy. I've gotten more accusations of >> being interested only in fame and fortune -- when releasing a concept for >> free, under a pseudonym -- just for throwing out some very basic designs. >> And other weird attacks, where people seemed to feel almost obliged to take >> down something good, no matter how spurious their arguments, just to make >> them feel better about themselves. (A sensitive point: An awful lot of >> people commenting on forums think of themselves an intellectual elites, but >> haven't actually written so much as a song or invented so much as an >> eggbeater. So putting out something with the complexity of a two-speed >> eggbeater really hits them where they're vulnerable.) >> >> Granted, I think there's a lot of ego problems on the Net, but I think you >> could make the case that helping the undeveloped world is at least as much a >> broad-based moral and ethical problem as it is an engineering one. I have experienced downright hostility, vicious enough that it was picked up from The Oil Drum on another blog. "If you take a few minutes to read this blog, and again the comments, you find the dissonance on full display. On the one hand you have a person saying that there may be an energy answer after fossil fuels. On the other hand you have lots of people not only saying it is not possible, but directly arguing that a human die-back is more desirable than cheap energy." http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5485#comment-512109 Perhaps the attractive aspect about a die-back is that to get one we don't need to do a damn thing! > I am not really sure how to help fix that. I have encountered a number > of people that fit that description and have those similar reactons. > Further, I have had people be totally disgusted by the concept of > sharing hardware designs, because they somehow think I am screwing > myself out of untold riches and profits. There are a lot of really, > really messed up, unhealthy emotions floating around in the general > population. How to help this, fix this, or even just have usable > responses to this, is beyond me at the moment. Day after the Singularity U celebration I ran into someone who was as close to Manfred Macx as you are likely to find. In about ten minutes he outlined the need for a DNA typewriter and between the two of us came up with an amusing way to implement it. Details on request if anyone want to actually build one. Keith Henson > - 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 spike66 at att.net Sat Sep 25 20:34:07 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 13:34:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [wta-talk] Designing and applying technology for thethird world In-Reply-To: References: <4C9E3F7E.70001@boone.net> Message-ID: <9AD9349221C84398943819536D2A564E@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Keith Henson... ... > Keith quoting: >..."On the other hand you have lots of people not only saying it > is not possible, but directly arguing that a human die-back > is more desirable than cheap energy."... Keith Henson Universal truth regarding those who calmly theorize a human die-back: they *always* envision someone else, and someone else's children, being the ones doing the dying back. Never do they imagine themselves and their own children and grandchildren as starving, suffering, dying under horrifying circumstances, or doing anything other than enjoying a less populated planet after someone else somewhere else has finished dying. spike From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 21:36:07 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 14:36:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [wta-talk] Designing and applying technology for thethird world In-Reply-To: <9AD9349221C84398943819536D2A564E@spike> References: <4C9E3F7E.70001@boone.net> <9AD9349221C84398943819536D2A564E@spike> Message-ID: On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 1:34 PM, spike wrote: > >> ...On Behalf Of Keith Henson... > ... >> Keith quoting: > >>..."On the other hand you have lots of people not only saying it >> is not possible, but directly arguing that a human die-back >> is more desirable than cheap energy."... Keith Henson > > Universal truth regarding those who calmly theorize a human die-back: they > *always* envision someone else, and someone else's children, being the ones > doing the dying back. ?Never do they imagine themselves and their own > children and grandchildren as starving, suffering, dying under horrifying > circumstances, or doing anything other than enjoying a less populated planet > after someone else somewhere else has finished dying. It not that hard to imagine a situation where a starving country with nuclear weapons might use threats against countries growing a lot of food. And might well carry out the threats if food were not forthcoming. After all, if they did and the threatened country nuked them back it would solve their population problem. Planned famines are a feature, not a bug, of authoritarian governments. Alternately the world is on the ragged edge in a lot of places right now. A bad harvest (like Russia had) two years in a row and a lot of people would not eat. One problem is nobody having a good idea of what to do with the energy problem. The other is that even if someone has a good idea, it's nearly impossible to get anyone to do the *hard* work of checking that it makes sense from physics, engineering and economics. I have been involved with two such ideas. You can see above how people reacted to the first of them. Keith From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 21:45:36 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 14:45:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A suicide note Message-ID: This whole event just astounds me! I wonder to what extent Mitchell Heisman's final words to humanity will influence the coming years... John ?"Last week, a man shot himself dead on the steps of Memorial Church in Harvard Yard, leaving behind a 2000 word book suicide note on the Singularity, Judaeism, and Nihilisim, apparently carrying out his act as the final test of his philosophy." -Joseph P. Jackson http://www.suicidenote.info/ From kanzure at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 22:04:37 2010 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 17:04:37 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A suicide note In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 4:45 PM, John Grigg wrote: > ?"Last week, a man shot himself dead on the steps of Memorial Church > in Harvard Yard, leaving behind a 2000 word book suicide note on the > Singularity, Judaeism, and Nihilisim, apparently carrying out his act > as the final test of his philosophy." -Joseph P. Jackson > > http://www.suicidenote.info/ On pages 1688, 1690, 1693-1698 there's an interesting critique of James Hughes' thesis. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From natasha at natasha.cc Sat Sep 25 23:00:08 2010 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 18:00:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jacobstein, Vita-More and Cordeiro @ Colombia Nanotechnology Conf Message-ID: http://www.foronanomecatronica-uac.com/ http://www.foronanomecatronica-uac.com/speakers.html Natasha Vita-More -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From policedepts at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 21:46:48 2010 From: policedepts at gmail.com (police dept) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 15:46:48 -0600 Subject: [ExI] [wta-talk] Designing and applying technology for thethird world In-Reply-To: References: <4C9E3F7E.70001@boone.net> <9AD9349221C84398943819536D2A564E@spike> Message-ID: "A bad harvest (like Russia had) two years in a row and a lot of people would not eat." A question is: doesn't Russia import enough food now? don't they have more & more foreign currency to import with? I've heard from many who have visited Russia that it is doing much better than in the '90s and '00s. The threat in the future might be trade wars caused by overproduction; trade wars between developing nations armed with WMDs is more likely than famine. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ablainey at aol.com Sat Sep 25 23:22:22 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 19:22:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A suicide note In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8CD2B1FA3BFAA4D-844-4AFB@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com> Quite astounding and very shocking. Not so long ago I said the most truly altruistic thing any person can do is commit suicide. In the cold harsh light of seeing this post, my statement sits heavy in my heart. Although I still stand by it, the reality of a person taking their own life is always shocking, saddening and leaves me cold. I hope I don't find my own words in his note; perhaps he came to the same conclusion? My fear is that others will imitate this tragic event. A -----Original Message----- From: John Grigg To: ExI chat list Sent: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 22:45 Subject: [ExI] A suicide note This whole event just astounds me! I wonder to what extent Mitchell Heisman's final words to humanity will influence the coming years... John ?"Last week, a man shot himself dead on the steps of Memorial Church in Harvard Yard, leaving behind a 2000 word book suicide note on the Singularity, Judaeism, and Nihilisim, apparently carrying out his act as the final test of his philosophy." -Joseph P. Jackson http://www.suicidenote.info/ _______________________________________________ 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 ryanobjc at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 23:24:00 2010 From: ryanobjc at gmail.com (Ryan Rawson) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 16:24:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A suicide note In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The last section is particularly good with tons of quotables, here are a few I found good: "If reason cannot determine fundamental values, then reason can be used to justify literally anything." "This is ?happiness?, the great goal of humanity has been striving for: a particular configuration of biochemical reactions. Why, not, then, drug one?s self into a state of ?happiness??" "The process of disillusionment can also be disillusioned and de- aestheticized." "How far is one willing to lie to one?s self in the belief of the goodness of the truth when science has conquered the non-scientific behaviors that motivate science?" On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 3:04 PM, Bryan Bishop wrote: > On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 4:45 PM, John Grigg wrote: >> ?"Last week, a man shot himself dead on the steps of Memorial Church >> in Harvard Yard, leaving behind a 2000 word book suicide note on the >> Singularity, Judaeism, and Nihilisim, apparently carrying out his act >> as the final test of his philosophy." -Joseph P. Jackson >> >> http://www.suicidenote.info/ > > On pages 1688, 1690, 1693-1698 there's an interesting critique of > James Hughes' thesis. > > - 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 ablainey at aol.com Sun Sep 26 00:18:10 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 20:18:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A suicide note In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8CD2B276F5ECD31-844-5405@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com> I have only just started to wade in. I can already see that a few will follow and we will soon see 'Heismanists' on the news. A -----Original Message----- From: Ryan Rawson To: ExI chat list CC: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List Sent: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 0:24 Subject: Re: [ExI] A suicide note The last section is particularly good with tons of quotables, here are a few I found good: "If reason cannot determine fundamental values, then reason can be used to justify literally anything." "This is ?happiness?, the great goal of humanity has been striving for: a particular configuration of biochemical reactions. Why, not, then, drug one?s self into a state of ?happiness??" "The process of disillusionment can also be disillusioned and de- aestheticized." "How far is one willing to lie to one?s self in the belief of the goodness of the truth when science has conquered the non-scientific behaviors that motivate science?" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Sep 25 21:53:20 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 16:53:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A suicide note In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4C9E6F50.8040705@satx.rr.com> On 9/25/2010 4:45 PM, John Grigg wrote: > ?"Last week, a man shot himself dead on the steps of Memorial Church > in Harvard Yard, leaving behind a 2000 word book suicide note Presumably that was a 2000 page book suicide note. From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Sep 26 00:28:44 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 19:28:44 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A suicide note In-Reply-To: <8CD2B276F5ECD31-844-5405@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CD2B276F5ECD31-844-5405@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <4C9E93BC.5070103@satx.rr.com> On 9/25/2010 7:18 PM, ablainey at aol.com wrote: > I have only just started to wade in. I can already see that a few will > follow and we will soon see '*Heismanists*' on the news. Gore Vidal wrote a rather good bleak novel on this topic, MESSIAH, back in, um, 1954. On the other hand, he didn't kill himself. Damien Broderick From atymes at gmail.com Sun Sep 26 00:34:30 2010 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 17:34:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A suicide note In-Reply-To: <4C9E6F50.8040705@satx.rr.com> References: <4C9E6F50.8040705@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 2:53 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 9/25/2010 4:45 PM, John Grigg wrote: > > ?"Last week, a man shot himself dead on the steps of Memorial Church >> in Harvard Yard, leaving behind a 2000 word book suicide note >> > > Presumably that was a 2000 page book suicide note. Or 8 pages, at 250 words per page - a typical standard. Calling an 8 pager a "book" instead of a "pamphlet" might be a bit generous, but not entirely without merit. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ablainey at aol.com Sun Sep 26 01:02:54 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 21:02:54 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A suicide note In-Reply-To: <4C9E93BC.5070103@satx.rr.com> References: <8CD2B276F5ECD31-844-5405@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com> <4C9E93BC.5070103@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <8CD2B2DAF12D99A-844-5E13@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com> Thanks Damien, but I think i'll steer clear of that for now. Im bleak and pesimistic enough ;o) So far reading this is like someone has transcribed my own musings over the years. The section on the speed of AI God reminds me of a series of emails between myself and Lee Corbin regarding my view that the very first Upload might be the very last. And as per Gore Vidal, I haven't chosen the same route as the author. Wading on. (I hate dyslexia!) A -----Original Message----- From: Damien Broderick To: ExI chat list Sent: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 1:28 Subject: Re: [ExI] A suicide note On 9/25/2010 7:18 PM, ablainey at aol.com wrote: > I have only just started to wade in. I can already see that a few will > follow and we will soon see '*Heismanists*' on the news. Gore Vidal wrote a rather good bleak novel on this topic, MESSIAH, back in, um, 1954. On the other hand, he didn't kill himself. 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 thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Sep 26 01:20:35 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 20:20:35 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A suicide note In-Reply-To: <8CD2B2DAF12D99A-844-5E13@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CD2B276F5ECD31-844-5405@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com> <4C9E93BC.5070103@satx.rr.com> <8CD2B2DAF12D99A-844-5E13@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <4C9E9FE3.6040006@satx.rr.com> On 9/25/2010 8:02 PM, ablainey at aol.com wrote: > I hate dyslexia! Someone probably cast a spell. (Check!) From rtomek at ceti.pl Sun Sep 26 01:24:31 2010 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 03:24:31 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] A suicide note In-Reply-To: <8CD2B1FA3BFAA4D-844-4AFB@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CD2B1FA3BFAA4D-844-4AFB@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 25 Sep 2010, ablainey at aol.com wrote: > > Quite astounding and very shocking. > Not so long ago I said the most truly altruistic thing any person can do > is commit suicide. In the cold harsh light of seeing this post, my > statement sits heavy in my heart. Nah, he was adult person. He made a decision. However, I don't subscribe to your idea, assuming it is relevant to say this. I recognized some time ago that a total giveup could be a cause of suicide. But to reach this point requires a lot of trying (and failing every time), so from what I have seen in my fellow humans this idea does not apply to so called common folk (which is, on average, good enough to have some life). Since there is a lot of sh*t in this world, I think staying alive and trying to clean some would be more altruistic (in effect, one could even get shot or die from wounds, so the final goal could still be acomplished in this way). > Although I still stand by it, the reality of a person taking their own > life is always shocking, saddening and leaves me cold. I hope I don't > find my own words in his note; perhaps he came to the same conclusion? His choice, whatever he based it on. Unless you hypnotyzed him, in which case shame on you. > My fear is that others will imitate this tragic event. The fact that he didn't take anybody with him is the reason to give him highest grade for this act. It makes me suspecting that he was actually benevolent and not just another nut. It even made me somewhat interested in his last book, really. Very good PR move. I know it sounds cynical to some readers, but the guy's attitude is excellent. I mean, you want to get out of this plane - well, you can, just don't force anybody else to go with you. This part is complicated, since our actions have uncomputable effects on other people's lifes. Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From ablainey at aol.com Sun Sep 26 02:22:19 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 22:22:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Binary proof of evolution In-Reply-To: References: <8CD2B1FA3BFAA4D-844-4AFB@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <8CD2B38C76D8F9C-1CD4-20F82@webmail-d051.sysops.aol.com> Here is an idea for someone with too much time on their hands and a pile of computers gathering dust. I propose a computer project that would demonstrate in relative and understandable terms how evolution can occur despite the odds being against it. A simple random coin toss program taking radio white noise input to determine a head (1) or a tail (0). Compare the output binary string against the binary data string of a txt file containing one work of Shakespeare. Run until a match occurs. This would show how true random input could not only produce data containing meaning, but in a sense it could be comparable to the output of evolution (mankind), the evolution of mankind itself (civilisation and society) and also the output of one of mankind's finest examples. you get the idea, it demonstrates probability vs very large number of attempts. Any takers? oh, the prize?.........a very fine example of a British pound sterling (?1), appropriately transferred in zeros and ones from my own Paypal account ;o) (no I won't pay compound interest if the experiment take 20K years! LOL) A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Sep 26 02:54:11 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 21:54:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Binary proof of evolution In-Reply-To: <8CD2B38C76D8F9C-1CD4-20F82@webmail-d051.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CD2B1FA3BFAA4D-844-4AFB@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com> <8CD2B38C76D8F9C-1CD4-20F82@webmail-d051.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <4C9EB5D3.4050807@satx.rr.com> On 9/25/2010 9:22 PM, ablainey at aol.com wrote: > Any takers? Dawkins and others before him did versions of this about 30 years ago. But your method omits a key element of evolution: selection, using a survival-test rachet to retain successful variants. Perhaps you mean something like: "Start with 'To be or not to be' and blindly generate alphanumerics until you get 'T', retain it, then go on until you get 'o' and retain that, etc." But this is not very like building a phenotype that's passingly well fitted to its environment. Oh, and unless you're cheating, by the time you get to "b" the "T" and "o" might have changed as well. Damien Broderick From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun Sep 26 06:40:48 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 23:40:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A suicide note In-Reply-To: References: <4C9E6F50.8040705@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: 2010/9/25 Adrian Tymes : > On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 2:53 PM, Damien Broderick > wrote: >> >> On 9/25/2010 4:45 PM, John Grigg wrote: >> >>> ?"Last week, a man shot himself dead on the steps of Memorial Church >>> in Harvard Yard, leaving behind a 2000 word book suicide note >> >> Presumably that was a 2000 page book suicide note. > > Or 8 pages, at 250 words per page - a typical standard.? Calling an 8 pager > a "book" > instead of a "pamphlet" might be a bit generous, but not entirely without > merit. It is really almost 2000 pages. Extropians gets one mention, Minsky gets mentioned twice, Vinge 3 times, libertarian 4 times, upload 4 times, Moravec 8 times, transhuman or transhumanist 14 times, Kurzweil 42 times, Hughes 49 times, Dawkins 124 times, memes 133 times, Hitler 289 times, AI 314 times, Nazi or Nazis 728 times, Jewish 1210 times, God 1694 times. Fortunately, I am not mentioned nor do the stories say he had a failed lottery ticket in his pocket. Attention, even posthumously is a powerful driver. Keith From spike66 at att.net Sun Sep 26 06:18:42 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 23:18:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A suicide note In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Bryan Bishop ... > List; Bryan Bishop > Subject: Re: [ExI] A suicide note > > On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 4:45 PM, John Grigg > ... > note on the Singularity, Judaeism, and Nihilisim, apparently carrying > out his act as the final test of his philosophy... > On pages 1688, 1690, 1693-1698 there's an interesting > critique of James Hughes' thesis. - Bryan Here's one Bryan might be able to answer. This evening I was having a discussion with a 17 yr old girl I tutor in physics and calculus. She made a comment about her sister's boyfriend, who is about 20, having the notion of technological immortality. I asked about her awareness of the singularity. She didn't in those terms, but I was surprised that both she and her sister had at least a vague notion of cryonics and future technological innovations which would lead to indefinite human lifespans. I was surprised that this had gone as mainstream as it appears. So now the question for Bryan and the other younger set: is there in your opinion a general awareness of the singularity, uploading, technological lifespan extension etc in the current teenage and twenty something crowd? spike From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun Sep 26 07:15:51 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 00:15:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A suicide note In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 11:18 PM, spike wrote: > > >> ...On Behalf Of Bryan Bishop > ... >> List; Bryan Bishop >> Subject: Re: [ExI] A suicide note >> >> On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 4:45 PM, John Grigg >> ... >> note on the Singularity, Judaeism, and Nihilisim, apparently carrying >> out his act as the final test of his philosophy... >> On pages 1688, 1690, 1693-1698 there's an interesting >> critique of James Hughes' thesis. - Bryan > > Here's one Bryan might be able to answer. ?This evening I was having a > discussion with a 17 yr old girl I tutor in physics and calculus. ?She made > a comment about her sister's boyfriend, who is about 20, having the notion > of technological immortality. ?I asked about her awareness of the > singularity. ?She didn't in those terms, but I was surprised that both she > and her sister had at least a vague notion of cryonics and future > technological innovations which would lead to indefinite human lifespans. > > I was surprised that this had gone as mainstream as it appears. ?So now the > question for Bryan and the other younger set: is there in your opinion a > general awareness of the singularity, uploading, technological lifespan > extension etc in the current teenage and twenty something crowd? My daughter and all of her friends are aware of all these. They are about 26, but this is probably a biased sample. Keith From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Sep 26 07:55:18 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 00:55:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Politicians want to hamper supplement makers & distributors Message-ID: Please read this short article and consider signing the petition! http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/873/554/846/?z00m=19890678 John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Sep 26 08:10:13 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 01:10:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Humor: Chosen areas of research for mad scientists! Message-ID: Mad biologists come in first, with mad chemists and mad roboticists also being very popular. Unfortunately, there appears to be not much of a demand for mad software developers... http://io9.com/5646481/the-chosen-research-areas-of-mad-scientists-1810+2010 John ; ) From ablainey at aol.com Sun Sep 26 13:01:21 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 09:01:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Binary proof of evolution In-Reply-To: <4C9EB5D3.4050807@satx.rr.com> References: <8CD2B1FA3BFAA4D-844-4AFB@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com> <8CD2B38C76D8F9C-1CD4-20F82@webmail-d051.sysops.aol.com> <4C9EB5D3.4050807@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <8CD2B920CD4644C-15FC-2EF6A@webmail-d092.sysops.aol.com> Very true and I originally thought of adding a survival or fitness element to the test, but if people cannot understand evolution anyway when it's explained to them; They won't understand the experiment. So that is the reason for a single work of the Bard and totally random and non manipulated input. I am thinking in terms of a number crunching exercise rather than a model. A -----Original Message----- From: Damien Broderick To: ExI chat list Sent: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 3:54 Subject: Re: [ExI] Binary proof of evolution On 9/25/2010 9:22 PM, ablainey at aol.com wrote: > Any takers? Dawkins and others before him did versions of this about 30 years ago. But your method omits a key element of evolution: selection, using a survival-test rachet to retain successful variants. Perhaps you mean something like: "Start with 'To be or not to be' and blindly generate alphanumerics until you get 'T', retain it, then go on until you get 'o' and retain that, etc." But this is not very like building a phenotype that's passingly well fitted to its environment. Oh, and unless you're cheating, by the time you get to "b" the "T" and "o" might have changed as well. 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 msd001 at gmail.com Sun Sep 26 19:42:17 2010 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 15:42:17 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Binary proof of evolution In-Reply-To: <8CD2B920CD4644C-15FC-2EF6A@webmail-d092.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CD2B1FA3BFAA4D-844-4AFB@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com> <8CD2B38C76D8F9C-1CD4-20F82@webmail-d051.sysops.aol.com> <4C9EB5D3.4050807@satx.rr.com> <8CD2B920CD4644C-15FC-2EF6A@webmail-d092.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: 2010/9/26 : > Very true and I originally thought of adding a survival or fitness element > to the test, but if people cannot understand evolution anyway when it's > explained to them; They won't understand the experiment. So that is the > reason for a single work of the Bard and totally random and non manipulated > input. I am thinking in terms of a number crunching exercise rather than a > model. This isn't evolution. It would be more illustrative of the "spark" of creation that takes uncorrelated events in the void and suddenly (seemingly magically) produces life as we observe it. Genetic algorithms better approximate evolution. If your fitness function is measured by proximity to Shakespeare, I suspect it wouldn't take 20k years to get a phenotype that consistently outputs the exact bytestream you are looking for. So wait, what were you trying to prove? From rahmans at me.com Sun Sep 26 21:09:55 2010 From: rahmans at me.com (Omar Rahman) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 23:09:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Best metric for gauging progress towards the singularity? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7E0BF99B-0897-4FE0-A0B7-3D8463D2162E@me.com> Brent, > Very interesting topic. About the best way I have of thinking about > things is critical milestones such as: > > 1. Scientific discovery of how the ineffable phenomenal qualities of > consciousness relate to their neural correlates. Ultimately this will > lead to conscious effing of the ineffable, unification and expansion of > our phenomenal conscious minds. It will allow us to realize what we, or > our phenomenal 'spirits' are (as defined and predicted in the expert > consensus 'Representational Qualia Theory' camp here > http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/6 ) Of course, once we objectively > discover the phenomenal nature of reality and how our knowledge of > ourselves is represented by such, our conscious knowledge of ourselves > will finally be able to phenomenally escape from the mortal spirit veil > of perception prison walls that are our skull. Of course, achieving > this, as predicted by this expert consensus camp, solves most all of our > problems from mortality to still being stuck with primitive animalistic, > slow static, unable to really communicate minds (the cause of war and > all other problems). Qualia seem to be useful as a sort of algorithm that run the background processes of the brainOS. Whether the consciousness is an app running on top of that framework or is just a product of the all the qualia interpreting each other is another question. (A very interesting one!) About effing the ineffable I think it will be possible but require work to attain that experience as the qualia of one individual will be hard to integrate into the perceptual system of another. In fact qualia probably change over time in an individual. What do you say to this scenario: The Wine Taster A person drinks wine with meals and socially. This person enjoys it, and likes some wines but not others. One day they decide to go to some wine tasting classes. There the instructor/sommelier introduces the students to various wines and points out the flavors. Some of the students have the taste buds to sense these flavors, and some don't. Some of them have the interest in the experience to learn to savor the differences, and some don't. In the end some develop qualia for wine tasting. From this example it would seem that qualia generally exist as potential and can be learned, and perhaps forgotten. The ability to develop qualia more directly, perhaps but doing simultaneous brain scans of two (or more) people wile they think of blue and then stimulating/anesthetizing the brains of the others so that their 'blue' patterns resembled each other more closely. This could be done in a many to many experiment to get a consensus 'blue' or someone could be a 'blue' leader and the other would emulate the leader. This brings me back to metrics; right now there are systems that can scan your brain and recognize a few stimulation patterns that correspond to to some things such as 'car'. Someone posted a link here a few weeks ago. What the researcher didn't say (and probably would have if it was true) was whether the stimulation pattern for 'car' in one subject was similar to 'car' in another. If it is similar then we have the beginnings of an alphabet, and there are all sorts of things we know how to do with one of those. We would have Brain-ASCII and we've all seen how far and quickly we've come since the days of ASCII. But if it isn't similar we might only have a couple examples of some proprietary punch card format. Question: How large is the current 'character set' of Brain-ASCII? How many 'characters' can we recognize? (Or are we really still at a 'binary' stage....this brain's working...'1'... that brain dead...'0'.) > 2. When the last person dies. (the mortality rate finally reaches 0) > For a moment I thought you were talking about the total annihilation of our species as a metric for progress.......then I realized you were talking about physical immortality or some sort of immortality. I think we will always be faced with scarcity of resources unless we engineer ourselves to not need/want so much...and if we could engineer our needs away we probably won't 'need' to exist. Once people upload or some sort of AI emerges their requirements for resources will probably expand right along with their understanding of the universe and their ambitions. Add into that the potential for a population explosion of digital entities and war and death seem likely to remain with us. > 3. Every human and memory is finally restored and 'resurected'. > > > Who knows how long each of these will take. Many probably doubt the > possibility of ever achieving number 3. But I bet we are on the virge > of number one, which I believe will be the greatest world changing > scientific achievement of all time. The biggest problem we are facing, > is communicating what the expert consensus already knows (as is being > proved by the consciousness survey project at canonizer.com), to > everyone else and the real nuts and bolts researchers looking at the > neurons and funding the research of such. > > Looking forward to finding out more about what you think of all such. > > Brent Allsop I read your story "1229 Years After Titanic", which has a sentiment of owing a debt to past generations which I share. Number 3 would only become possible if we discovered something new about the nature of time, or if we could trace the history of an atom and then trace the history of all the atoms in the Earth in all their combinations. Maybe a post-singularity entity will do this, maybe this is just plain impossible. > > On 9/24/2010 11:17 AM, spike wrote: >> >> >>> ...On Behalf Of Omar Rahman >>> Subject: [ExI] Best metric for gauging progress towards the >>> singularity? >>> >>> This is my first post here. A link to a video from The Onion: >>> >>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdCnUCN83-k >>> >>> Watch the ticker at the 1:00 mark. >>> >>> That was the fun part... >> Thanks for the Onion link Omar. Plenty of good geek humor in that one. >> {8^D >> >>> ...I look at the Singularity as the next >>> step in evolution following, roughly, a chain like this: >>> >>> chance outcomes (early RNA formation... >>> ... >>> engineering ourselves (Singularity!) >>> >>> How fast can we adapt to change? And how well can we engineer it?... >> Regards, Omar Rahman >> >> This rough outline is good, and illustrates in a way a comment I made last >> week. We should work on these kinds of roadmaps, for they have value. What >> I have been recognizing (to my distress) recently is that the time >> associated with these steps is completely unpredictable. Even if these >> steps take place more or less in order, we have no way of guessing how long >> any of the steps will take. >> >> So far, we are sketching a map with no scale. I have no suggestions on how >> to derive a scale. >> >> Welcome Omar. Tell us something about Omar if you wish. {8-] >> >> spike >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 canonizer.com Sun Sep 26 23:00:00 2010 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 17:00:00 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Best metric for gauging progress towards the singularity? In-Reply-To: <7E0BF99B-0897-4FE0-A0B7-3D8463D2162E@me.com> References: <7E0BF99B-0897-4FE0-A0B7-3D8463D2162E@me.com> Message-ID: <4C9FD070.1060409@canonizer.com> Hi Omar, On 9/26/2010 3:09 PM, Omar Rahman wrote: > Brent, > >> Very interesting topic. About the best way I have of thinking about >> things is critical milestones such as: >> >> 1. Scientific discovery of how the ineffable phenomenal qualities of >> consciousness relate to their neural correlates. Ultimately this will >> lead to conscious effing of the ineffable, unification and expansion of >> our phenomenal conscious minds. It will allow us to realize what we, or >> our phenomenal 'spirits' are (as defined and predicted in the expert >> consensus 'Representational Qualia Theory' camp here >> http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/6 ) Of course, once we objectively >> discover the phenomenal nature of reality and how our knowledge of >> ourselves is represented by such, our conscious knowledge of ourselves >> will finally be able to phenomenally escape from the mortal spirit veil >> of perception prison walls that are our skull. Of course, achieving >> this, as predicted by this expert consensus camp, solves most all of our >> problems from mortality to still being stuck with primitive animalistic, >> slow static, unable to really communicate minds (the cause of war and >> all other problems). > > Qualia seem to be useful as a sort of algorithm that run the > background processes of the brainOS. I'm in the camp that believes thinking of qualia as an 'algorithm' is thinking about it completely and categorically in the wrong way. Algorithms and information must be instantiated and run on something physical. Information theory mandates that if you know something, there must be something that is that knowledge. An algorithm can be represented by something that, by design, doesn't mater what it is represented with (today's computers - it only matters that whatever is doing the representation be interpreted properly). Or, it can be represented by something that does matter what it is represented with, and what it is like (conscious knowledge). Either one can run 'algorithms'. My brain may represent knowledge of 650 nm light with your blue. With that I could be algorithmically just as smart as you. But there is nothing 'algorithmic' in saying my brain represents red with your blue, and that what it is like for me is different than what it is like for you. > Whether the consciousness is an app running on top of that framework > or is just a product of the all the qualia interpreting each other is > another question. (A very interesting one!) About effing the ineffable > I think it will be possible but require work to attain that experience > as the qualia of one individual will be hard to integrate into the > perceptual system of another. In fact qualia probably change over time > in an individual. > > What do you say to this scenario: The Wine Taster > A person drinks wine with meals and socially. This person enjoys it, > and likes some wines but not others. One day they decide to go to some > wine tasting classes. There the instructor/sommelier introduces the > students to various wines and points out the flavors. Some of the > students have the taste buds to sense these flavors, and some don't. > Some of them have the interest in the experience to learn to savor the > differences, and some don't. In the end some develop qualia for wine > tasting. From this example it would seem that qualia generally exist > as potential and can be learned, and perhaps forgotten. > > The ability to develop qualia more directly, perhaps but doing > simultaneous brain scans of two (or more) people wile they think of > blue and then stimulating/anesthetizing the brains of the others so > that their 'blue' patterns resembled each other more closely. This > could be done in a many to many experiment to get a consensus 'blue' > or someone could be a 'blue' leader and the other would emulate the > leader. Thinking of blue and experiencing blue are two very different things. Recalling blue, is much less solid / phenomenal than the real thing. Thinking of blue is voluntary, while experiencing blue, under normal circumstances is not. Sure, some people may not yet have the proper set up in their brain, or they may still be missing the right stuff, to experience, be interested in, have the ability to remember... or whatever my blue. But, if I can fix that, configure the right stuff, and reliably eff to you, the same experience, it could be something like: "Wow, I know what your blue is now - I've never experienced that before". I'm in the camp that believes blue will eternally be blue, and if and only if you have the right stuff, anyone will experience it - reliably the same - forever - whether you use it to represent 500 or 650 nm light or anything else. > >> 2. When the last person dies. (the mortality rate finally reaches 0) >> > > For a moment I thought you were talking about the total annihilation > of our species as a metric for progress.......then I realized you were > talking about physical immortality or some sort of immortality. I > think we will always be faced with scarcity of resources unless we > engineer ourselves to not need/want so much...and if we could engineer > our needs away we probably won't 'need' to exist. Once people upload > or some sort of AI emerges their requirements for resources will > probably expand right along with their understanding of the universe > and their ambitions. Add into that the potential for a population > explosion of digital entities and war and death seem likely to remain > with us. The amount of resources we have access to continues to growing exponentially. Even when we have the resources of billions of galaxies completely in our control, as you point out, that still won't be enough. But I think such will be a little better than our current limitations. > > > >> 3. Every human and memory is finally restored and 'resurected'. >> >> >> Who knows how long each of these will take. Many probably doubt the >> possibility of ever achieving number 3. But I bet we are on the virge >> of number one, which I believe will be the greatest world changing >> scientific achievement of all time. The biggest problem we are facing, >> is communicating what the expert consensus already knows (as is being >> proved by the consciousness survey project at canonizer.com >> ), to >> everyone else and the real nuts and bolts researchers looking at the >> neurons and funding the research of such. >> >> Looking forward to finding out more about what you think of all such. >> >> Brent Allsop > > I read your story "1229 Years After Titanic", which has a sentiment of > owing a debt to past generations which I share. Thanks! I'm trying to measure for how much consensus there is on this. Especially amongst any who might disagree. Would you (or anyone) be willing to participate in the survey on this here? http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/56 . > Number 3 would only become possible if we discovered something new > about the nature of time, or if we could trace the history of an atom > and then trace the history of all the atoms in the Earth in all their > combinations. Maybe a post-singularity entity will do this, maybe this > is just plain impossible. > > Exactly. Nobody can ever assert that anything is absolutely impossible. There is always hope, and faith that we can always work and at least forever successfully get closer to such. Great Comments! Brent Allsop -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Sep 26 23:47:27 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 16:47:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Future timeline website Message-ID: I got a huge kick out of this timeline website! But I find it ironic that it includes huge jumps in AI computational power (thousands and billions of times greater than humn level intelligence), and yet technological progress in the 21st and 22nd century (and beyond) is still relatively slow. lol http://www.futuretimeline.net/ John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun Sep 26 23:52:51 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 16:52:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Humor: maps of European stereotypes Message-ID: I found this to be extremely funny... ; ) I'd like to know what list members think of it. http://alphadesigner.com/project-mapping-stereotypes.html John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 00:01:34 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 17:01:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Literary Saturday: Science Fiction is a Genre That Everyone Should Read Message-ID: I realize recommending this blog is sort of like preaching to the church choir, but the author makes some good points. http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/09/18/literary-saturday-science-fiction-is-a-genre-that-everyone-should-read/ John : ) From jebdm at jebdm.net Mon Sep 27 00:17:49 2010 From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 20:17:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Binary proof of evolution In-Reply-To: <8CD2B38C76D8F9C-1CD4-20F82@webmail-d051.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CD2B1FA3BFAA4D-844-4AFB@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com> <8CD2B38C76D8F9C-1CD4-20F82@webmail-d051.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: If you're looking for something to show people, check out a genetic algorithm-derived Mona Lisa based on overlapping transparent polygons: http://rogeralsing.com/2008/12/07/genetic-programming-evolution-of-mona-lisa/ Here's an online interactive version: http://www.nihilogic.dk/labs/evolving-images/ Or you can Google "genetic algorithm Mona Lisa ". -- Jebadiah Moore http://blog.jebdm.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 00:36:17 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 17:36:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] AI goes back to baby basics Message-ID: We have jumped from insect AI level research to now the human baby level! http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19470-robots-on-tv-ai-goes-back-to-baby-basics.html John From jebdm at jebdm.net Mon Sep 27 00:12:26 2010 From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 20:12:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A suicide note In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 2:18 AM, spike wrote: > I was surprised that this had gone as mainstream as it appears. So now the > question for Bryan and the other younger set: is there in your opinion a > general awareness of the singularity, uploading, technological lifespan > extension etc in the current teenage and twenty something crowd? > >From my experience, there's a limited one. I'd guess that 25% of people at my college are familiar with these terms, and at least 60% have at least heard of and considered some of these concepts. There seems to be less awareness of the actual technology involved, and more focus on the philosophical implications of these technologies (there was a recent student lecture which talked a bit in transhumanist terms about telecommunications and the sense in which we "live on" through the extensive artifacts we leave behind, and somebody in the Q&A brought up the concept of data-based resurrection). Then again, I go to a small (<400 students) liberal arts early college (Bard College at Simon's Rock) where Ben Goertzel got his Bachelor's in mathematics. Then again again, I don't think most people here have heard of Ben, though a lot have heard of Ray Kurzweil. He's presenting at Bard in the near future and a lot of people seem to be going; there's also an upcoming conference somewhere nearby on posthumanism (in the transhumanist sense) that a lot of people from here seem to be going to. And I've definitely heard people talking about uploading and whatnot without me initiating the conversation. But again, not really a representative sample; we're probably one of the least mainstream schools in the country. On the other hand, more normal people that I know from "back home" also seem to have at least a passing awareness of some transhumanist concepts, and may even have considered their implications (especially with regard to uploading and life extension thanks to Hollywood), but seem to generally perceive the actual development of these technologies as being either impossible or in the distant future (at least 200 years away). -- Jebadiah Moore http://blog.jebdm.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 00:40:59 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 17:40:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Deceptive robots hint at machine self-awareness Message-ID: I find this research somewhat disturbing... http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727794.800-deceptive-robots-hint-at-machine-selfawareness.html?full=true John From spike66 at att.net Mon Sep 27 01:03:47 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 18:03:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike> ... > I was surprised that this had gone as mainstream as it > appears. So now the question for Bryan and the other younger > set: is there in your opinion a general awareness of the > singularity... spike I took my son to the San Jose Tech Museum today. There is a display room about progress in computing, with a panel on Moore's law. I was surprised to see this comment: In case the photo doesn't come thru, it says: Breaking the Law Progress has limits; electricity can't go faster than the speed of light, for example. Moore predicts that digital innovations will soon slow. Others, however, foresee a singularity, when rapid technological shifts make the world unpredictable. [end] I found it interesting that they reference the singularity without seeing the need to explain in detail what it is. They say it is when technological shifts make the world unpredictable, but with no reference to emergent AI or really any supporting text or references. I am not sure what to make of it, but a museum is about as mainstream as it gets. Comments please? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Outlook.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 55739 bytes Desc: not available URL: From ablainey at aol.com Mon Sep 27 01:31:46 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 21:31:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Binary proof of evolution In-Reply-To: References: <8CD2B1FA3BFAA4D-844-4AFB@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com><8CD2B38C76D8F9C-1CD4-20F82@webmail-d051.sysops.aol.com><4C9EB5D3.4050807@satx.rr.com><8CD2B920CD4644C-15FC-2EF6A@webmail-d092.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <8CD2BFAE2018D81-FFC-3334E@webmail-m011.sysops.aol.com> Not supposed to be evolution just a demonstration of how total randomness can create something which evolution has created. Most important it demonstrates this to people who have no concept of neural nets, phenotypes, fitness functions, chemistry, how dna works or even what it is. You could easily show someone a model of dna evolution, however the chances are that if they don't understand it they might not believe it. Really the experiment is proof positive that if you throw random events together over a very long time or large number of attempts, recognisable information comes out. A concept that is easy to grasp with little knowledge. Due to probability even noise makes sense occasionally. Likewise the random 'chemical noise' of the universe resulted in life and as you say this demonstrates the spark. A -----Original Message----- From: Mike Dougherty To: ExI chat list Sent: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 20:42 Subject: Re: [ExI] Binary proof of evolution 2010/9/26 : > Very true and I originally thought of adding a survival or fitness element > to the test, but if people cannot understand evolution anyway when it's > explained to them; They won't understand the experiment. So that is the > reason for a single work of the Bard and totally random and non manipulated > input. I am thinking in terms of a number crunching exercise rather than a > model. This isn't evolution. It would be more illustrative of the "spark" of creation that takes uncorrelated events in the void and suddenly (seemingly magically) produces life as we observe it. Genetic algorithms better approximate evolution. If your fitness function is measured by proximity to Shakespeare, I suspect it wouldn't take 20k years to get a phenotype that consistently outputs the exact bytestream you are looking for. So wait, what were you trying to prove? _______________________________________________ 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 Mon Sep 27 01:46:59 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 20:46:59 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Binary proof of evolution In-Reply-To: <8CD2BFAE2018D81-FFC-3334E@webmail-m011.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CD2B1FA3BFAA4D-844-4AFB@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com><8CD2B38C76D8F9C-1CD4-20F82@webmail-d051.sysops.aol.com><4C9EB5D3.4050807@satx.rr.com><8CD2B920CD4644C-15FC-2EF6A@webmail-d092.sysops.aol.com> <8CD2BFAE2018D81-FFC-3334E@webmail-m011.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <4C9FF793.208@satx.rr.com> On 9/26/2010 8:31 PM, ablainey at aol.com wrote: > Not supposed to be evolution just a demonstration of how total > randomness can create something which evolution has created. I think you still don't get it, A. Total randomness can't do anything of the sort. The closest event that comes to mind is the generation of a star out of a random aggregation of untold quadrillions of particles that after hundreds of millions of years coalesce into a shrinking, slowly heating blob. For that, you need a gravitational field that doesn't exist on your computer screen unless you put it into the program by hand, along with a humungous physics engine to constrain what the random infalling thingies do when they start getting squeezed. Don't try this at home, kids. Damien Broderick From darren.greer3 at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 02:29:22 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 23:29:22 -0300 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike> References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike> Message-ID: Breaking the Law Progress has limits; electricity can't go faster than the speed of light, for example. Moore predicts that digital innovations will soon slow. Others, however, foresee a *singularity*, when rapid technological shifts make the world unpredictable. I'd say that rapid technological shifts are already making the world unpredictable. In a post-singularity world technology might not longer be in our hands, and therefore out of our control entirely. But it seems the statement, as vapid as it is, is logically consistent. Out of our control would make it unpredictable. Though it seems a little understated to me. Of course, I didn't get the concept at first (and probably still don't fully grasp it.) Maybe it was written for liberal arts majors like me? Speaking of that, thanks to feeling like a scientific kindergarten student here I've registered for physics, math and chemistry classes at a local university. Thanks for that. I'll likely be cursing you all come mid-terms Darren 2010/9/26 spike > ... > > I was surprised that this had gone as mainstream as it > > appears. So now the question for Bryan and the other younger > > set: is there in your opinion a general awareness of the > > singularity... spike > I took my son to the San Jose Tech Museum today. There is a display room > about progress in computing, with a panel on Moore's law. I was surprised > to see this comment: > > > > In case the photo doesn't come thru, it says: > > > > [end] > > I found it interesting that they reference the singularity without seeing > the need to explain in detail what it is. They say it is when technological > shifts make the world unpredictable, but with no reference to emergent AI or > really any supporting text or references. > > I am not sure what to make of it, but a museum is about as mainstream as it > gets. > > Comments please? > > spike > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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: Outlook.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 55739 bytes Desc: not available URL: From darren.greer3 at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 03:39:15 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 00:39:15 -0300 Subject: [ExI] AI goes back to baby basics In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: So what? Did they just bypass the Lindsay Lohan level? On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 9:36 PM, John Grigg wrote: > We have jumped from insect AI level research to now the human baby level! > > > http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19470-robots-on-tv-ai-goes-back-to-baby-basics.html > > 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 ablainey at aol.com Mon Sep 27 03:45:38 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 23:45:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Binary proof of evolution In-Reply-To: <4C9FF793.208@satx.rr.com> References: <4C9FF793.208@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <8CD2C0D959E5F5F-448-383BE@webmail-d030.sysops.aol.com> LOL, Your thinking too hard. ok back to the begining. Imagine the bards work described as a line of zeros and ones as it is written in bits on a hard drive (ignoring interleaving and compression). That is your target string. Next a string of zeros and ones which have been generated from a random noise source not a psuedo random computer. You line this up underneath your target and compare. If 'no match' you then get another random bit and shift the string left and disregard the previous first bit. Repeat until a match occurs. Or start at the beggining and generate the frist bit and if it matches go onto the next. Start again if a failed comparisson occurs. In the first method you will get part matches all over the place, the second will give the start of the string and then fail. but in either case the excercise isn't complete until all bits match. Just as you can write down a random string of heads and tails then flip a coin until It matches that exact string. Its just a very long string of coin flips that will take a veeeeeeery long time for random input to match the target. I would suggest one of Shakespears shorter works to start with, perhaps his little known "2 pints today please" letter to his milkman? An example the target 'hello' would be 001011010100110001101100011011011110110 The random generator shouldn't take to long to match it but the problem gets exponetially more difficult due to probability. But it will happen at some point. To me this is a much harder problem than evolution itself as In a way evolution/chemistry keeps the matched sections and they become building blocks rather than restarting each time. After all if a dna sequence fails the animal dies, but the chemical building blocks don't disintegrate into subatomic +/- charged particles. If you like you can imagine that 01 = hydrogen and once created it stays stable until a string with an affinity comes along like oxygen 000000001 giving us a compound string of 01000000001. Its then easy to see that large chunks of binary give a greater chance of coming together to match the target string per number of tries. It would only take the chemical binary chunks 001011010100110001 and 101100011011011110110 to come together to match out 'hello' target. A -----Original Message----- From: Damien Broderick To: ExI chat list Sent: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 2:46 Subject: Re: [ExI] Binary proof of evolution On 9/26/2010 8:31 PM, ablainey at aol.com wrote: > Not supposed to be evolution just a demonstration of how total > randomness can create something which evolution has created. I think you still don't get it, A. Total randomness can't do anything of the sort. The closest event that comes to mind is the generation of a star out of a random aggregation of untold quadrillions of particles that after hundreds of millions of years coalesce into a shrinking, slowly heating blob. For that, you need a gravitational field that doesn't exist on your computer screen unless you put it into the program by hand, along with a humungous physics engine to constrain what the random infalling thingies do when they start getting squeezed. Don't try this at home, kids. 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 possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 04:43:06 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 21:43:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] AI goes back to baby basics In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: A lindsay Lohan AI could be very frightening. It is not to be put in charge of a moving vehicle or connected to a loud speaker system... John On 9/26/10, Darren Greer wrote: > So what? Did they just bypass the Lindsay Lohan level? > > On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 9:36 PM, John Grigg > wrote: > >> We have jumped from insect AI level research to now the human baby level! >> >> >> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19470-robots-on-tv-ai-goes-back-to-baby-basics.html >> >> John >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > From amara at kurzweilai.net Mon Sep 27 04:55:56 2010 From: amara at kurzweilai.net (Amara D. Angelica) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 21:55:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike> References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike> Message-ID: <023801cb5e00$46564160$d302c420$@net> Thanks, Spike. Sounds like the Tech Museum folks are unfamiliar with the literature, such as The Singularity Is Near, which does not limit digital innovations to Moore's law, but instead posits progress as a sequence of S-curves for different paradigms, as noted in http://www.kurzweilai.net/kurzweils-law-aka-the-law-of-accelerating-returns. Spike said: > I was surprised that this had gone as mainstream as it > appears. So now the question for Bryan and the other younger > set: is there in your opinion a general awareness of the > singularity... spike I took my son to the San Jose Tech Museum today. There is a display room about progress in computing, with a panel on Moore's law. I was surprised to see this comment: In case the photo doesn't come thru, it says: Breaking the Law Progress has limits; electricity can't go faster than the speed of light, for example. Moore predicts that digital innovations will soon slow. Others, however, foresee a singularity, when rapid technological shifts make the world unpredictable. [end] I found it interesting that they reference the singularity without seeing the need to explain in detail what it is. They say it is when technological shifts make the world unpredictable, but with no reference to emergent AI or really any supporting text or references. I am not sure what to make of it, but a museum is about as mainstream as it gets. Comments please? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 10994 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Sep 27 05:16:21 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 22:16:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Binary proof of evolution In-Reply-To: <4C9FF793.208@satx.rr.com> References: <8CD2B1FA3BFAA4D-844-4AFB@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com><8CD2B38C76D8F9C-1CD4-20F82@webmail-d051.sysops.aol.com><4C9EB5D3.4050807@satx.rr.com><8CD2B920CD4644C-15FC-2EF6A@webmail-d092.sysops.aol.com> <8CD2BFAE2018D81-FFC-3334E@webmail-m011.sysops.aol.com> <4C9FF793.208@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4E29331D56A54A8894ECDEF70970DA78@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Damien Broderick > Subject: Re: [ExI] Binary proof of evolution > > On 9/26/2010 8:31 PM, ablainey at aol.com wrote: > > > Not supposed to be evolution just a demonstration of how total > > randomness can create something which evolution has created. > > ...Total randomness can't do > anything of the sort. The closest event that comes to mind is > the generation of a star out of a random aggregation of > untold quadrillions of particles that after hundreds of > millions of years coalesce into a shrinking, slowly heating > blob... Damien Broderick Ja, understatement. Even Damien's example isn't completely random, as shown by the COBE results. After the big bang, there was a very slight anisotopy, a very slight variation in the distribution of matter and energy, which resulted in every star and every galaxy that eventually formed. This is a waaaay cool concept in itself because it represents broken symmetry, which is hard to explain with current inflation models. But this is for sure: it happened. We can see the remnants to this day in the form of a few microdegrees variation in the background radiation. Regarding the role of randomness in evolution, that notion is most commonly heard today as used by those who are actually arguing against evolution, and are presenting an argument for how we know god did it all. A cell didn't somehow randomly fall together. Rather, there were a lot of necessary preliminary steps that we don't fully understand, but we know they happened. spike From spike66 at att.net Mon Sep 27 05:20:13 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 22:20:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike> Message-ID: <6B33453E9FDC4F6F85AB70EC8A179FFC@spike> ________________________________ >...On Behalf Of Darren Greer ... >Speaking of that, thanks to feeling like a scientific kindergarten student here I've registered for physics, math and chemistry classes at a local university. Thanks for that. I'll likely be cursing you all come mid-terms...Darren Good for you Darren, and good luck man! There ain't no royal road: keep your courage, stretch your brain to the breaking point, study your ass off. We are all cheering wildly for you. Science is the way, the truth and the life. spike From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 06:17:51 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 23:17:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: <6B33453E9FDC4F6F85AB70EC8A179FFC@spike> References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike> <6B33453E9FDC4F6F85AB70EC8A179FFC@spike> Message-ID: Spike, perhaps you and other transhumanists could light a fire under the Tech Museum to get them to do a special presentation about the Singularity and Ray Kurzweil? And perhaps Mr. Kurzweil could even help fund the thing... John : ) On 9/26/10, spike wrote: > > > > ________________________________ > > >...On Behalf Of Darren Greer > ... > > >Speaking of that, thanks to feeling like a scientific kindergarten > student here I've registered for physics, math and chemistry classes at a > local university. Thanks for that. I'll likely be cursing you all come > mid-terms...Darren > > > > Good for you Darren, and good luck man! There ain't no royal road: keep > your courage, stretch your brain to the breaking point, study your ass off. > We are all cheering wildly for you. Science is the way, the truth and the > life. > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From spike66 at att.net Mon Sep 27 05:56:30 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 22:56:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: <023801cb5e00$46564160$d302c420$@net> References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike> <023801cb5e00$46564160$d302c420$@net> Message-ID: ________________________________ ...On Behalf Of Amara D. Angelica Subject: Re: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity >...Thanks, Spike. Sounds like the Tech Museum folks are unfamiliar with the literature... Amara Angelica! Long time no see pal! Glad to see you are still around. I do hope all is well with you young lady. {8-] >...such as The Singularity Is Near, which does not limit digital innovations to Moore's law, but instead posits progress as a sequence of S-curves for different paradigms, as noted in http://www.kurzweilai.net/kurzweils-law-aka-the-law-of-accelerating-returns. Ja, one thing that made me a little squirmy about their comment (one of several) is that it kinda makes it sound like the singularity is related to computer speed, or that is somehow will take the place of progress, or that light speed is a fundamental limit that we are just now reaching. The comment at the Tech didn't demonstrate any real understanding that I can see. One of the things Eliezer managed to fully convince me: the singularity is not strictly dependent on faster computers, or even more computers, but rather something else entirely, which could operate perfectly well with current computer hardware and networking technology. If I misunderstand this point, do feel free anyone here to explain where I err. spike From amara at kurzweilai.net Mon Sep 27 06:51:31 2010 From: amara at kurzweilai.net (Amara D. Angelica) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 23:51:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike> <6B33453E9FDC4F6F85AB70EC8A179FFC@spike> Message-ID: <027b01cb5e10$6b8c0fe0$42a42fa0$@net> Good idea. Could include a transhumanist/Singularity exhibit? Start with Natasha's Primo Posthuman and ... John Grigg said: Spike, perhaps you and other transhumanists could light a fire under the Tech Museum to get them to do a special presentation about the Singularity and Ray Kurzweil? And perhaps Mr. Kurzweil could even help fund the thing... From spike66 at att.net Mon Sep 27 06:44:44 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 23:44:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike><6B33453E9FDC4F6F85AB70EC8A179FFC@spike> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of John Grigg > Subject: Re: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity > > Spike, perhaps you and other transhumanists could light a > fire under the Tech Museum to get them to do a special > presentation about the Singularity and Ray Kurzweil? And > perhaps Mr. Kurzweil could even help fund the thing... > > John : ) > I would be willing to contact the Tech, but I wouldn't ask Ray to kick in funds. He has been faaaar too generous with us already. We had something several years ago, and I don't even remember what it was, some local singularity event. John Smart and Eliezer were speaking, and Ray flew in from back east and gave a talk. Anyone here remember what that was, or when? Or where? Stanford? One of Eli's schmoozes? I might have it in my notes. Amara? In any case, Ray's son was graduating as I recall, and Ray had to miss part of the festivities to fly out for this event. Afterwards we were talking, and I kept getting subtle vibes that Ray just really felt he shoulda stayed home for that one. It was a good conference as I recall, and the singularity is near and all that, but honest to evolution my good friends, the truth is that family comes first. Even if one is a monster brain like Ray Kurzweil, do let us face it with all sober honesty: the singularity might or might not be all that near. But family is here and now, and gone far too soon. Thanks Ray, for all you do and all you have done. spike From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 07:31:57 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 00:31:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike> <6B33453E9FDC4F6F85AB70EC8A179FFC@spike> Message-ID: I wrote: Spike, perhaps you and other transhumanists could light a fire under the Tech Museum to get them to do a special presentation about the Singularity and Ray Kurzweil? And perhaps Mr. Kurzweil could even help fund the thing... >>> Amara Angelica responded: Good idea. Could include a transhumanist/Singularity exhibit? Start with Natasha's Primo Posthuman and ... >>> It feels great that I may have just planted a seed that will germinate into something wonderful! Spike wrote: ...the truth is that family comes first. Even if one is a monster brain like Ray Kurzweil, do let us face it with all sober honesty: the singularity might or might not be all that near. But family is here and now, and gone far too soon. >>> Spike, this is so true. We should run Mormon Church-style television ads that show a happy family as a honey-voiced narrator says, "The truth is that family comes first, because the Singularity might or might not be all that near." "But family is here and now, and sadly gone far too soon." "To learn more about the Singularity, please go to www.singularityforabetterlife.com" "A message from your friends, the transhumanists." John : ) On 9/26/10, spike wrote: >> ...On Behalf Of John Grigg >> Subject: Re: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity >> >> Spike, perhaps you and other transhumanists could light a >> fire under the Tech Museum to get them to do a special >> presentation about the Singularity and Ray Kurzweil? And >> perhaps Mr. Kurzweil could even help fund the thing... >> >> John : ) >> > > I would be willing to contact the Tech, but I wouldn't ask Ray to kick in > funds. He has been faaaar too generous with us already. > > We had something several years ago, and I don't even remember what it was, > some local singularity event. John Smart and Eliezer were speaking, and Ray > flew in from back east and gave a talk. Anyone here remember what that was, > or when? Or where? Stanford? One of Eli's schmoozes? I might have it in > my notes. Amara? > > In any case, Ray's son was graduating as I recall, and Ray had to miss part > of the festivities to fly out for this event. Afterwards we were talking, > and I kept getting subtle vibes that Ray just really felt he shoulda stayed > home for that one. It was a good conference as I recall, and the > singularity is near and all that, but honest to evolution my good friends, > the truth is that family comes first. Even if one is a monster brain like > Ray Kurzweil, do let us face it with all sober honesty: the singularity > might or might not be all that near. But family is here and now, and gone > far too soon. > > Thanks Ray, for all you do and all you have done. > > spike > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From spike66 at att.net Mon Sep 27 15:00:30 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 08:00:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike><6B33453E9FDC4F6F85AB70EC8A179FFC@spike> Message-ID: <5D6A59304CEC4AC68392063A4CEE081C@spike> > ...On Behalf Of John Grigg > Subject: Re: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity > ... > >...But family is here and now, and gone far too soon... spike > >>> > > Spike, this is so true. > > We should run Mormon Church-style television ads that show a > happy family as a honey-voiced narrator says... > "To learn more about the Singularity, please go to > www.singularityforabetterlife.com" "A message from your > friends, the transhumanists." John : ) John this has occurred to me, but this whole approach is a double-edged sword, and I am reluctant to even explore it. Look at what we have seen happen in the world of religion. We had seen a "religion" develop in modern times which does not involve (as far as I can tell) a deity, but rather is a remarkably robust business. Yet an honest man, one of our own, was imprisoned for the crime of interfering with it. Interfering with a religion! Who even knew that was illegal? Who even knew what the hell it is? We have seen an apparently non-stoned US supreme court justice soberly and sincerely question whether it is first amendment free speech to burn a particular religion's favorite book: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20016378-503544.html We have seen a religion become considered almost as a race, so that criticism of it has become the practical equivalent to racism. How did that happen? So the temptation is to get one's philosophy redefined as a religion, even if it really isn't one. I recognize the temptation, but my ethical intuition tells me this is wrong. spike From darren.greer3 at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 15:22:18 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 12:22:18 -0300 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: <5D6A59304CEC4AC68392063A4CEE081C@spike> References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike> <6B33453E9FDC4F6F85AB70EC8A179FFC@spike> <5D6A59304CEC4AC68392063A4CEE081C@spike> Message-ID: Spike wrote: "So the temptation is to get one's philosophy redefined as a religion, even if it really isn't one. I recognize the temptation, but my ethical intuition tells me this is wrong." I agree. That was the mistake the Buddhists made, when the philosophy was moving into China and it was altered to fit with Confucian ancestral beliefs for an easier transition. And look what happened there. What began as a vital and imperative world view ended up as a stale and meaningless collection of moral and social prescripts loosely held together by ritually and culturally determined practices of meditation and mindfulness. I think I realized this most fully when I was in Asia on Buddha's birthday, which was celebrated with all the boring and stultifying solemnity of Christmas in the West. I resolved the dissonance by finding a bar that remained open and getting drunk. Darren On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 12:00 PM, spike wrote: > > ...On Behalf Of John Grigg > > Subject: Re: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity > > ... > > >...But family is here and now, and gone far too soon... spike > > >>> > > > > Spike, this is so true. > > > > We should run Mormon Church-style television ads that show a > > happy family as a honey-voiced narrator says... > > "To learn more about the Singularity, please go to > > www.singularityforabetterlife.com" "A message from your > > friends, the transhumanists." John : ) > > John this has occurred to me, but this whole approach is a double-edged > sword, and I am reluctant to even explore it. Look at what we have seen > happen in the world of religion. We had seen a "religion" develop in > modern > times which does not involve (as far as I can tell) a deity, but rather is > a > remarkably robust business. Yet an honest man, one of our own, was > imprisoned for the crime of interfering with it. Interfering with a > religion! Who even knew that was illegal? Who even knew what the hell it > is? > > We have seen an apparently non-stoned US supreme court justice soberly and > sincerely question whether it is first amendment free speech to burn a > particular religion's favorite book: > > http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20016378-503544.html > > We have seen a religion become considered almost as a race, so that > criticism of it has become the practical equivalent to racism. How did > that > happen? > > So the temptation is to get one's philosophy redefined as a religion, even > if it really isn't one. I recognize the temptation, but my ethical > intuition tells me this is wrong. > > spike > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 15:53:27 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 08:53:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Function of religions Message-ID: On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 8:00 AM, spike wrote: snip > We have seen a religion become considered almost as a race, so that > criticism of it has become the practical equivalent to racism. ?How did that > happen? > > So the temptation is to get one's philosophy redefined as a religion, even > if it really isn't one. ?I recognize the temptation, but my ethical > intuition tells me this is wrong. Spike, we need to consider why humans have religions at all. But first it is a feature of top predators that their numbers are ultimately limited by self predation. Lions are a good example, they evolved the pride social organization as a response to lions killing lions. Chimps are largely immune to predation and their numbers are limited by group on group war. The line that led to humans escaped predation by the big cats a long time ago so there has been plenty of time for evolution to act. Human populations grow till they stress the ability of the ecosystem to support them. Then a behavioral switch flips, they organize and and kill "the others." Religion, even if it isn't always easy to see, is based on xenophobic memes that are part of the organizational process leading to wars. Since a lot of populations around the world are under ecosystem/economic/ecological stress, mostly from accumulated population growth, it's no wonder that religious memes have become more of an influential factor. Now the logical thing would be to strongly restrain the birth rate and make ever effort to grow the economy in a way that did not depend on rapid depletion of resources. But for reasons involving the conflicting interest of genes and the persons they are in, "war mode" makes people irrational. I think it is possible to get economic growth ahead of population growth and shut off the drift of so many populations into "war mode." As you know, I work on ways to solve the energy/carbon problems, trying to keep my own ego out of the analysis. Unfortunately there are very few people trying to solve the problems. I don't hold out a lot of hope for the intermediate future (before the singularity). Chances are the world will see a really drastic population reduction in a lot of places over the next few decades. Keith From natasha at natasha.cc Mon Sep 27 16:08:04 2010 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:08:04 -0500 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: <027b01cb5e10$6b8c0fe0$42a42fa0$@net> References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike> <6B33453E9FDC4F6F85AB70EC8A179FFC@spike> <027b01cb5e10$6b8c0fe0$42a42fa0$@net> Message-ID: <50CAC519A8CB4ABBB6F8DCC6E9EC0D6F@DFC68LF1> What a great idea. (Thanks for thinking of me Amara.) Anyone have a connection with the museum? I'll check my resources as well. We would need a curator / editor. I can't think of anyone better than Amara for this. We also have great connections in the art world through Roy Ascott http://artsci.ucla.edu/?q=people/roy_ascott (former Dean of the Art Institute (SF) (and is my phd advisor)). Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Amara D. Angelica Sent: Monday, September 27, 2010 1:52 AM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: Re: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity Good idea. Could include a transhumanist/Singularity exhibit? Start with Natasha's Primo Posthuman and ... John Grigg said: Spike, perhaps you and other transhumanists could light a fire under the Tech Museum to get them to do a special presentation about the Singularity and Ray Kurzweil? And perhaps Mr. Kurzweil could even help fund the thing... _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From ablainey at aol.com Mon Sep 27 16:13:33 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 12:13:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Binary proof of evolution In-Reply-To: <4E29331D56A54A8894ECDEF70970DA78@spike> References: <8CD2B1FA3BFAA4D-844-4AFB@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com><8CD2B38C76D8F9C-1CD4-20F82@webmail-d051.sysops.aol.com><4C9EB5D3.4050807@satx.rr.com><8CD2B920CD4644C-15FC-2EF6A@webmail-d092.sysops.aol.com> <8CD2BFAE2018D81-FFC-3334E@webmail-m011.sysops.aol.com><4C9FF793.208@satx.rr.com> <4E29331D56A54A8894ECDEF70970DA78@spike> Message-ID: <8CD2C7611211495-E2C-125C@webmail-m039.sysops.aol.com> Yes and its that asymetry that lead to the physical universe as we know it. Nothing new there and you are preaching to the choir and in reality even the 'random noise' input from a radio white noise source will still be slightly non random. This can't be avoided and actually helps the arguement for the reasons you and Damien have put forward. I.E there is no totally random events in a asymetric universe. Also true to say there can be no totally random string of heads and tails in a coin toss due to the imballence of the coin etc. That is not what the experiment is about. It is to demonstrate that randomness can result in patterns. That is, randomness that is more random than the biological world can result in a specific pattern that was created in the physically universe as a result of evolution. -----Original Message----- From: spike To: 'ExI chat list' Sent: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 6:16 Subject: Re: [ExI] Binary proof of evolution > ...On Behalf Of Damien Broderick > Subject: Re: [ExI] Binary proof of evolution > > On 9/26/2010 8:31 PM, ablainey at aol.com wrote: > > > Not supposed to be evolution just a demonstration of how total > > randomness can create something which evolution has created. > > ...Total randomness can't do > anything of the sort. The closest event that comes to mind is > the generation of a star out of a random aggregation of > untold quadrillions of particles that after hundreds of > millions of years coalesce into a shrinking, slowly heating > blob... Damien Broderick Ja, understatement. Even Damien's example isn't completely random, as shown by the COBE results. After the big bang, there was a very slight anisotopy, a very slight variation in the distribution of matter and energy, which resulted in every star and every galaxy that eventually formed. This is a waaaay cool concept in itself because it represents broken symmetry, which is hard to explain with current inflation models. But this is for sure: it happened. We can see the remnants to this day in the form of a few microdegrees variation in the background radiation. Regarding the role of randomness in evolution, that notion is most commonly heard today as used by those who are actually arguing against evolution, and are presenting an argument for how we know god did it all. A cell didn't somehow randomly fall together. Rather, there were a lot of necessary preliminary steps that we don't fully understand, but we know they happened. spike _______________________________________________ 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 darren.greer3 at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 16:19:19 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 13:19:19 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Function of religions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Keith wrote: "I don't hold out a lot of hope for the intermediate future (before the singularity)" I'm making the assumption that this lack of hope is due to the fact that the evolutionary programing is extremely hard to circumvent even if you're aware of it, short of some sort of drastic behavior modification which is difficult to achieve in others and almost as difficult (more difficult?) to achieve in yourself. Look at the limited success of cult deprogramming and aversion therapy for gay men- both of which use pretty drastic methods -- for good examples. Add to the mix that most people ascribe specious justifications for their behavior (I'm thinking of some politicians) that actually distort and conceal not only their motivations (which are likely murky even to themselves) but the ramifications of that behavior upon the environment and the fitness of the species as a whole. Mathew Heisman discusses something similar in his "Suicide Note", which I've been plowing my way through. I'm not sure I'll get through all 2000 pages, but some of what I've read so far is valid. He claims at the beginning of the book that it is precisely this lack of awareness, this disinclination to look for reasons for our apparently species-wide self-destructive behavior in the only workable model we have--evolutionary psychology--that could be our downfall. Darren On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 12:53 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 8:00 AM, spike wrote: > > snip > > > We have seen a religion become considered almost as a race, so that > > criticism of it has become the practical equivalent to racism. How did > that > > happen? > > > > So the temptation is to get one's philosophy redefined as a religion, > even > > if it really isn't one. I recognize the temptation, but my ethical > > intuition tells me this is wrong. > > Spike, we need to consider why humans have religions at all. But > first it is a feature of top predators that their numbers are > ultimately limited by self predation. Lions are a good example, they > evolved the pride social organization as a response to lions killing > lions. Chimps are largely immune to predation and their numbers are > limited by group on group war. > > The line that led to humans escaped predation by the big cats a long > time ago so there has been plenty of time for evolution to act. Human > populations grow till they stress the ability of the ecosystem to > support them. Then a behavioral switch flips, they organize and and > kill "the others." > > Religion, even if it isn't always easy to see, is based on xenophobic > memes that are part of the organizational process leading to wars. > > Since a lot of populations around the world are under > ecosystem/economic/ecological stress, mostly from accumulated > population growth, it's no wonder that religious memes have become > more of an influential factor. > > Now the logical thing would be to strongly restrain the birth rate and > make ever effort to grow the economy in a way that did not depend on > rapid depletion of resources. But for reasons involving the > conflicting interest of genes and the persons they are in, "war mode" > makes people irrational. > > I think it is possible to get economic growth ahead of population > growth and shut off the drift of so many populations into "war mode." > As you know, I work on ways to solve the energy/carbon problems, > trying to keep my own ego out of the analysis. Unfortunately there > are very few people trying to solve the problems. > > I don't hold out a lot of hope for the intermediate future (before the > singularity). Chances are the world will see a really drastic > population reduction in a lot of places over the next few decades. > > Keith > > _______________________________________________ > 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 canonizer.com Mon Sep 27 16:29:43 2010 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 10:29:43 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Function of religions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4CA0C677.2080102@canonizer.com> Keith and Spike, I was attending Mormon Sunday School yesterday. It's pure hell listening to all the irrational faithless fear mongering, the irrational worshiping and wallowing in misery they go on and on about there, but it is very educational to watch them, and to learn what motivates them, and to find out the real purposes of religion and how hierarchical religions have evolved to be so successful at taking advantage of people's sheepish tendencies. The older lady lay teacher, was leading the discussion. She started bringing up how all the 'worldly people' accuse them of being 'closed minded' and so on. Our church is in the small town of Sandy, just outside of SLC. And she said they always accuse her of being in this "little sandy bubble" ignorant of the rest of the world. But she, and obviously everyone else there, was very proud of that, and she literally said: "I'm proud of this little Sandy bubble we're in" that she believes protects them from "the world". All these people are clearly people that don't enjoy thinking about moral issues much. They are far less intelligent than experts that are intelligent and interested in moral issues. These types of people have no hope of standing up to any real argument, against intelligent moral experts, so they must have something they can trust and lean on, to do it for them. Within humanity, not everyone can be moral experts on everything, so others must have something they can trust in. And obviously these people desperately want some 'prophet' they can trust so they don't have to think. Religions have obviosly evolved to take advantage of the tendency of the normal human to act in such sheepish ways. But there is clear evidence, that people in general do trust scientists and proven experts, on certain things. Especially if they could be the ones to lay down the criteria of selecting who is and isn't an expert. So I believe, the only problem is, having a good way to measure for moral expert and scientific consensus, so that everyone can learn to know and trust such. Obviosly, most of us can see there are lots of moral experts that believe much of what the prophets say is wrong. But, since there is not yet some way to measure for this moral expert consensus, anyone claiming what the prophets are saying is wrong, can easily be doubted by the religious leaders. But, if we could measure, and rigorously show that the moral and scientific expertise is definitively refuting the the hate, war and fear mongering the popes and prophets are touting is wrong, such that nobody could refute such, I think there is great hope for humanity to finally take the power away from the hierarchical selfish primitive leaders. I think it's all about knowing, concisely and quantitatively, what the moral and scientific experts are saying. And that is precisely our goal at canonizer.com. I can't be a moral expert at everything, so would sure like the help of all you moral experts to help me out, so I no longer needed to trust in these primitive, selfish, hierarchical religious leaders, for my moral direction. What, concisely, are all of you experts saying, and what do you agree on? And how much consensus, is there really, for such? If we can come up with that, rigorously and definitively, then I think there is hope for the world. Brent Allsop On 9/27/2010 9:53 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 8:00 AM, spike wrote: > > snip > >> We have seen a religion become considered almost as a race, so that >> criticism of it has become the practical equivalent to racism. How did that >> happen? >> >> So the temptation is to get one's philosophy redefined as a religion, even >> if it really isn't one. I recognize the temptation, but my ethical >> intuition tells me this is wrong. > Spike, we need to consider why humans have religions at all. But > first it is a feature of top predators that their numbers are > ultimately limited by self predation. Lions are a good example, they > evolved the pride social organization as a response to lions killing > lions. Chimps are largely immune to predation and their numbers are > limited by group on group war. > > The line that led to humans escaped predation by the big cats a long > time ago so there has been plenty of time for evolution to act. Human > populations grow till they stress the ability of the ecosystem to > support them. Then a behavioral switch flips, they organize and and > kill "the others." > > Religion, even if it isn't always easy to see, is based on xenophobic > memes that are part of the organizational process leading to wars. > > Since a lot of populations around the world are under > ecosystem/economic/ecological stress, mostly from accumulated > population growth, it's no wonder that religious memes have become > more of an influential factor. > > Now the logical thing would be to strongly restrain the birth rate and > make ever effort to grow the economy in a way that did not depend on > rapid depletion of resources. But for reasons involving the > conflicting interest of genes and the persons they are in, "war mode" > makes people irrational. > > I think it is possible to get economic growth ahead of population > growth and shut off the drift of so many populations into "war mode." > As you know, I work on ways to solve the energy/carbon problems, > trying to keep my own ego out of the analysis. Unfortunately there > are very few people trying to solve the problems. > > I don't hold out a lot of hope for the intermediate future (before the > singularity). Chances are the world will see a really drastic > population reduction in a lot of places over the next few decades. > > Keith > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From atymes at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 16:43:52 2010 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 09:43:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: <50CAC519A8CB4ABBB6F8DCC6E9EC0D6F@DFC68LF1> References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike> <6B33453E9FDC4F6F85AB70EC8A179FFC@spike> <027b01cb5e10$6b8c0fe0$42a42fa0$@net> <50CAC519A8CB4ABBB6F8DCC6E9EC0D6F@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 9:08 AM, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > What a great idea. (Thanks for thinking of me Amara.) > > Anyone have a connection with the museum? I'll check my resources as well. > We would need a curator / editor. I can't think of anyone better than > Amara > for this. We also have great connections in the art world through Roy > Ascott > http://artsci.ucla.edu/?q=people/roy_ascott (former Dean of the Art > Institute (SF) (and is my phd advisor)). > I've had tentative connections with them, being a donor of theirs, but don't ask me for introductions. Going in through the "front door" - info at thetech.org or 408-294-8324 - should work, if you identify yourself as having an exhibit and a funding source. The money is likely to be a key thing. The Tech, like many similar organizations right now, is strapped for cash. If you can set it up so that they don't have to pay much beyond their normal expenses (facilities, security, advertising, etc.), and give them quality content, they'll likely be receptive. Bonus points if you can identify a funding source that would defray even their normal expenses, other than attendees coming to see the exhibit (which they count on in the first place, thus the need for quality content). Think of it as buying an unusual form of advertising. Of course, no one's made of money, but you should count on paying for building the exhibits and transporting them to (and, eventually, from) the Tech. Beyond that would be pure speculation on my part, but http://www.si.edu/opanda/Reports/EXCost.pdfshould prove enlightening. (It's for the Smithsonian, but they're comparable. In fact, you might consider making this a traveling exhibition, using the Tech and the Smithsonian as baseline museums, then adding in any other museums that might be receptive, the exhibition spending a few months to a year at each one.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From darren.greer3 at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 17:53:49 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 14:53:49 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Function of religions In-Reply-To: <4CA0C677.2080102@canonizer.com> References: <4CA0C677.2080102@canonizer.com> Message-ID: Brent wrote: "What, concisely, are all of you experts saying, and what do you agree on? And how much consensus, is there really, for such? If we can come up with that, rigorously and definitively, then I think there is hope for the world." It would be pretty hard to come up with acknowledged experts on moral consensus, since there actually is no moral consensus. This is one of the realities of modern life that religionists lament publicly about the most often. They claim they take their moral guidance from religious texts as "God's Law" because the rest of the world is falling apart because of the lack of moral agreement. In some ways they're right. The lack of agreed upon universal standards for moral behavior that aren't dependent upon cultural or religious norms is a huge problem. On one hand, you have groups of morally righteous individuals who claim that their moral standards are the moral standards of the world and should be instituted as such. There are the obvious crazies -- those who propose Sharia or Mosaic law as the universal standard. And the more subtle -- those who propose we sacrifice some individual freedoms and rights for the sake of others that they deem more important, even though those perspectives too are often culturally and/or economically biased. On the other hand you have the relativists, whose impotence in the face of outrages performed on the body politic by the first group comes from an unwillingness to step on any toes, informed by Alister Crowleys' Thelema Doctrine (though not directly of course) of Do What Though Wilt (often amended to Do What Though Wilt as long as it doesn't interfere with others doing the same.) Descriptive ethics refers to this as territorial morality. Almost every single war we see taking place in the world today is a result of this age-old philosophical struggle between relativism and objectivism. Edward Said put it nicely in his book Orientalism. The wars or the future will not be east vs west, he said, but rather fundamentalism vs modernity. I read somewhere recently, and I'm sorry I can't remember where so I can't reference it, that we spend far too much time trying to come up with universal moral standards that would be accepted by everyone, when we should in fact spend more time looking for where our moral beliefs come from in the first place, even those that appear to be diametrically opposed. And a very useful tool for doing this is evolutionary psychology, for it narrates to the species as a whole and not just to cultural or national factions. Such an approach has the power to actually unite us, as it establishes trust on the most basic level: that of our evolutionary and genetic commons. But like Keith, I don't hold out much hope for this in the near future either. I suspect, like most drastic changes in perspective, it will need to be precipitated by an intense crisis before people let go of their cherished illusions. Either the proposed singularity where power will be removed from our hands either for our own good or despite of it, or some man-made disaster before then. I've held this opinion for twenty years and have been bracing myself for it ever since. Call me pessimistic. I'm used to it. Darren On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 1:29 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: > > Keith and Spike, > > I was attending Mormon Sunday School yesterday. It's pure hell listening > to all the irrational faithless fear mongering, the irrational worshiping > and wallowing in misery they go on and on about there, but it is very > educational to watch them, and to learn what motivates them, and to find out > the real purposes of religion and how hierarchical religions have evolved to > be so successful at taking advantage of people's sheepish tendencies. > > The older lady lay teacher, was leading the discussion. She started > bringing up how all the 'worldly people' accuse them of being 'closed > minded' and so on. Our church is in the small town of Sandy, just outside > of SLC. And she said they always accuse her of being in this "little sandy > bubble" ignorant of the rest of the world. But she, and obviously everyone > else there, was very proud of that, and she literally said: "I'm proud of > this little Sandy bubble we're in" that she believes protects them from "the > world". > > All these people are clearly people that don't enjoy thinking about moral > issues much. They are far less intelligent than experts that are > intelligent and interested in moral issues. These types of people have no > hope of standing up to any real argument, against intelligent moral > experts, so they must have something they can trust and lean on, to do it > for them. Within humanity, not everyone can be moral experts on everything, > so others must have something they can trust in. And obviously these > people desperately want some 'prophet' they can trust so they don't have to > think. Religions have obviosly evolved to take advantage of the tendency of > the normal human to act in such sheepish ways. > > But there is clear evidence, that people in general do trust scientists and > proven experts, on certain things. Especially if they could be the ones to > lay down the criteria of selecting who is and isn't an expert. So I > believe, the only problem is, having a good way to measure for moral expert > and scientific consensus, so that everyone can learn to know and trust such. > Obviosly, most of us can see there are lots of moral experts that believe > much of what the prophets say is wrong. But, since there is not yet some > way to measure for this moral expert consensus, anyone claiming what the > prophets are saying is wrong, can easily be doubted by the religious > leaders. > > But, if we could measure, and rigorously show that the moral and scientific > expertise is definitively refuting the the hate, war and fear mongering the > popes and prophets are touting is wrong, such that nobody could refute such, > I think there is great hope for humanity to finally take the power away > from the hierarchical selfish primitive leaders. > > I think it's all about knowing, concisely and quantitatively, what the > moral and scientific experts are saying. And that is precisely our goal at > canonizer.com. I can't be a moral expert at everything, so would sure > like the help of all you moral experts to help me out, so I no longer needed > to trust in these primitive, selfish, hierarchical religious leaders, for my > moral direction. > > What, concisely, are all of you experts saying, and what do you agree on? > And how much consensus, is there really, for such? If we can come up with > that, rigorously and definitively, then I think there is hope for the world. > > Brent Allsop > > > > On 9/27/2010 9:53 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > >> On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 8:00 AM, spike wrote: >> >> snip >> >> We have seen a religion become considered almost as a race, so that >>> criticism of it has become the practical equivalent to racism. How did >>> that >>> happen? >>> >>> So the temptation is to get one's philosophy redefined as a religion, >>> even >>> if it really isn't one. I recognize the temptation, but my ethical >>> intuition tells me this is wrong. >>> >> Spike, we need to consider why humans have religions at all. But >> first it is a feature of top predators that their numbers are >> ultimately limited by self predation. Lions are a good example, they >> evolved the pride social organization as a response to lions killing >> lions. Chimps are largely immune to predation and their numbers are >> limited by group on group war. >> >> The line that led to humans escaped predation by the big cats a long >> time ago so there has been plenty of time for evolution to act. Human >> populations grow till they stress the ability of the ecosystem to >> support them. Then a behavioral switch flips, they organize and and >> kill "the others." >> >> Religion, even if it isn't always easy to see, is based on xenophobic >> memes that are part of the organizational process leading to wars. >> >> Since a lot of populations around the world are under >> ecosystem/economic/ecological stress, mostly from accumulated >> population growth, it's no wonder that religious memes have become >> more of an influential factor. >> >> Now the logical thing would be to strongly restrain the birth rate and >> make ever effort to grow the economy in a way that did not depend on >> rapid depletion of resources. But for reasons involving the >> conflicting interest of genes and the persons they are in, "war mode" >> makes people irrational. >> >> I think it is possible to get economic growth ahead of population >> growth and shut off the drift of so many populations into "war mode." >> As you know, I work on ways to solve the energy/carbon problems, >> trying to keep my own ego out of the analysis. Unfortunately there >> are very few people trying to solve the problems. >> >> I don't hold out a lot of hope for the intermediate future (before the >> singularity). Chances are the world will see a really drastic >> population reduction in a lot of places over the next few decades. >> >> Keith >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 spike66 at att.net Mon Sep 27 18:21:36 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:21:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike><6B33453E9FDC4F6F85AB70EC8A179FFC@spike><027b01cb5e10$6b8c0fe0$42a42fa0$@net><50CAC519A8CB4ABBB6F8DCC6E9EC0D6F@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <4D393AB050B249B2A4856B537443A869@spike> ...On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Subject: Re: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 9:08 AM, Natasha Vita-More wrote: >>...What a great idea. (Thanks for thinking of me Amara.) Natasha ... >...Going in through the "front door" - info at thetech.org or 408-294-8324 - should work, if you identify yourself as having an exhibit and a funding source... The money is likely to be a key thing. The Tech, like many similar organizations right now, is strapped for cash... Adrian I would propose something very modest: merely a one for one replacement for that one panel I posted yesterday, that photo which has the text Breaking the Law Progress has limits; electricity can't go faster than the speed of light, for example. Moore predicts that digital innovations will soon slow. Others, however, foresee a singularity, when rapid technological shifts make the world unpredictable. If we were to come up with a replacement panel with approximately that amount of text, and actually make the panel, print it, laminate it, mount it on styrofoam, stick velcro on it and hand it to them as a one for one replacement, that would be a first step, ja? I would be willing to approach them with the replacement panel if we were to agree on the verbiage. The local Michael's Art Supply does that kind of work, and I have had work done satisfactorily there before (mounted a periodic chart and a portrait of Richard Feynman as wall decorations for my home, in case there was ever any doubt this is a geek's den.) Something this size (B size) wouldn't cost much, fifty-ish bucks perhaps. I am an out-of-work rocket scientist, so I don't want to spend money. The Tech has the panel with a three word title and thirty five words of text. How do we explain the singularity to the non-geek proletariat in about 35 words? Picture? Countersuggestion? spike From steinberg.will at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 18:05:28 2010 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 13:05:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Function of religions In-Reply-To: References: <4CA0C677.2080102@canonizer.com> Message-ID: Religion allows abstraction of personal memes into giant, supra-human, replicating beasts of causal tentacles, emergent tooth and nail. So we become the cells of our own gods, and by focusing on that image we even create it...and the deities of our dreams duke it out on the world stage. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Mon Sep 27 18:46:01 2010 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 14:46:01 -0400 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: <4D393AB050B249B2A4856B537443A869@spike> References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike><6B33453E9FDC4F6F85AB70EC8A179FFC@spike><027b01cb5e10$6b8c0fe0$42a42fa0$@net><50CAC519A8CB4ABBB6F8DCC6E9EC0D6F@DFC68LF1> <4D393AB050B249B2A4856B537443A869@spike> Message-ID: <20100927144601.1cs233zu80o8cg0o@webmail.natasha.cc> I can't believe you are putting the?field of?"art" in the same?email message?as the paint and number crafts of "Michael's".? That in and of itself ought to cause a tsunami singularity! Now I have to go wash my mouth out with soap and sterilize my typing fingers. N Quoting spike : > ...On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes > ? ? ? ? Subject: Re: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity > > ? ? ? ? On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 9:08 AM, Natasha Vita-More > wrote: > > ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? >>...What a great idea. (Thanks for thinking of me Amara.) > Natasha > ... > > ? ? ? ? >...Going in through the "front door" - info at thetech.org or > 408-294-8324? - > ? ? ? ? should work, if you identify yourself as having an exhibit and a > funding source... > ? ? ? ? The money is likely to be a key thing.? The Tech, like many similar > organizations right now, > ? ? ? ? is strapped for cash...? Adrian > > > I would propose something very modest: merely a one for one replacement for > that one panel I posted yesterday, that photo which has the text > > Breaking the Law > > Progress has limits; electricity can't go > faster than the speed of light, for example. > Moore predicts that digital innovations > will soon slow.? Others, however, foresee a > singularity, when rapid technological shifts > make the world unpredictable. > > If we were to come up with a replacement panel with approximately that > amount of text, and actually make the panel, print it, laminate it, mount it > on styrofoam, stick velcro on it and hand it to them as a one for one > replacement, that would be a first step, ja?? I would be willing to approach > them with the replacement panel if we were to agree on the verbiage. > > The local Michael's Art Supply does that kind of work, and I have had work > done satisfactorily there before (mounted a periodic chart and a portrait of > Richard Feynman as wall decorations for my home, in case there was ever any > doubt this is a geek's den.)? Something this size (B size) wouldn't cost > much, fifty-ish bucks perhaps.? I am an out-of-work rocket scientist, so I > don't want to spend money. > > The Tech has the panel with a three word title and thirty five words of > text.? How do we explain the singularity to the non-geek proletariat in > about 35 words?? Picture?? Countersuggestion? > > spike > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat[1] > Links: ------ [1] http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ablainey at aol.com Mon Sep 27 19:07:28 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 15:07:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Binary proof test In-Reply-To: <8CD2C7611211495-E2C-125C@webmail-m039.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CD2B1FA3BFAA4D-844-4AFB@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com><8CD2B38C76D8F9C-1CD4-20F82@webmail-d051.sysops.aol.com><4C9EB5D3.4050807@satx.rr.com><8CD2B920CD4644C-15FC-2EF6A@webmail-d092.sysops.aol.com> <8CD2BFAE2018D81-FFC-3334E@webmail-m011.sysops.aol.com><4C9FF793.208@satx.rr.com><4E29331D56A54A8894ECDEF70970DA78@spike> <8CD2C7611211495-E2C-125C@webmail-m039.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <8CD2C8E5CD95168-120C-1B27@webmail-m024.sysops.aol.com> I have started the experiment myself just to get an idea of the magnitude of the problem. Taking a target string of 'Hello' which is 0001011010100110001101100011011011110110 or 40bits in total. The program matched 'h' in 11 attempts, then 74, 316 qand 132 tries. It matched 'he' in 3888 and then 3228 tries. It is now running the full 'hello' and has just passed 400,000 tries. The rate of attempts is only 1 every 10ms, so its pretty slow going. A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Sep 27 20:10:04 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 13:10:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Function of religions In-Reply-To: References: <4CA0C677.2080102@canonizer.com> Message-ID: On Behalf Of Will Steinberg Religion allows abstraction of personal memes into giant, supra-human, replicating beasts of causal tentacles, emergent tooth and nail. So we become the cells of our own gods, and by focusing on that image we even create it...and the deities of our dreams duke it out on the world stage. WOW! Poetic insight, profound, right to the point. Is it original? That comment is almost worthy of being framed and hung on the wall. Thanks Will! spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Mon Sep 27 19:47:26 2010 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:47:26 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] Novel off-planet energy idea In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <572011.32600.qm@web27008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Currently the most read article on newscientist.com http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19497-outofthisworld-proposal-for-solar-wind-power.html and here's an abstract from an astrobiology meeting http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/abscicon2010/pdf/5469.pdf does anyone know enough astrophysics to guide us armchair space enthusiasts through back-of-the-envelope calculations? Tom From spike66 at att.net Mon Sep 27 20:21:03 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 13:21:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: <20100927144601.1cs233zu80o8cg0o@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike><6B33453E9FDC4F6F85AB70EC8A179FFC@spike><027b01cb5e10$6b8c0fe0$42a42fa0$@net><50CAC519A8CB4ABBB6F8DCC6E9EC0D6F@DFC68LF1><4D393AB050B249B2A4856B537443A869@spike> <20100927144601.1cs233zu80o8cg0o@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <0662FFF188894480873DE4353F92524D@spike> ________________________________ On Behalf Of natasha at natasha.cc Subject: Re: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity >...I can't believe you are putting the field of "art" in the same email message as the paint and number crafts of "Michael's". That in and of itself ought to cause a tsunami singularity! Now I have to go wash my mouth out with soap and sterilize my typing fingers...N Oops. {8-] Natasha I somehow get the vague notion that you do not care for Michaels as a purveyor of fine art supplies? {8^D Oh well, hey I am a hardcore nerd, never claimed to be artist, nor have particular skill in the field of... (what is that word you use Natasha?) oh, yes, aesthetics. In my home I have not only a mounted periodic chart and a portrait of Feynman, but also a chart of the timeline of evolution. Those items might violate many of the traditional artistic notions of home d?cor. But I don't care, I like it anyways. My pad decorated in a sort of a cross between redneck and rocket science. Redtech? Nerdneck? Geekabilly? {8^D spike From atymes at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 19:04:32 2010 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 12:04:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: <20100927144601.1cs233zu80o8cg0o@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike> <6B33453E9FDC4F6F85AB70EC8A179FFC@spike> <027b01cb5e10$6b8c0fe0$42a42fa0$@net> <50CAC519A8CB4ABBB6F8DCC6E9EC0D6F@DFC68LF1> <4D393AB050B249B2A4856B537443A869@spike> <20100927144601.1cs233zu80o8cg0o@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: To truly appreciate an art, one must be aware of the often humble tools and approaches used to create masterpieces. The Hoover Dam was created with massive machines, yes - and common concrete. And those machines were themselves forged from the same iron and other elements one can find in the wares of any Home Depot, using similar - if scaled-up, and specialized for that - processes. The Internet began with but a few nodes, none beyond the understanding of a skilled engineer. An integral part of the Singularity, is the ability for the common person - or AI - to build what was once available only to the elite, if available at all. Even those who do not DIY directly, benefit from the wider availability (and thus, lower cost and increasing quality) of specialized goods. In this case, the panel is lended importance by where it is mounted, which of course anyone (with permission) could do. Actually crafting the thing is simple. 2010/9/27 > I can't believe you are putting the field of "art" in the same email > message as the paint and number crafts of "Michael's". That in and of > itself ought to cause a tsunami singularity! Now I have to go wash my mouth > out with soap and sterilize my typing fingers. > > N > > Quoting spike : > > > ...On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes > > Subject: Re: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity > > > > On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 9:08 AM, Natasha Vita-More > > wrote: > > > > >>...What a great idea. (Thanks for thinking of me > Amara.) > > Natasha > > ... > > > > >...Going in through the "front door" - info at thetech.org or > > 408-294-8324 - > > should work, if you identify yourself as having an exhibit and a > > funding source... > > The money is likely to be a key thing. The Tech, like many > similar > > organizations right now, > > is strapped for cash... Adrian > > > > > > I would propose something very modest: merely a one for one replacement > for > > that one panel I posted yesterday, that photo which has the text > > > > Breaking the Law > > > > Progress has limits; electricity can't go > > faster than the speed of light, for example. > > Moore predicts that digital innovations > > will soon slow. Others, however, foresee a > > singularity, when rapid technological shifts > > make the world unpredictable. > > > > If we were to come up with a replacement panel with approximately that > > amount of text, and actually make the panel, print it, laminate it, mount > it > > on styrofoam, stick velcro on it and hand it to them as a one for one > > replacement, that would be a first step, ja? I would be willing to > approach > > them with the replacement panel if we were to agree on the verbiage. > > > > The local Michael's Art Supply does that kind of work, and I have had > work > > done satisfactorily there before (mounted a periodic chart and a portrait > of > > Richard Feynman as wall decorations for my home, in case there was ever > any > > doubt this is a geek's den.) Something this size (B size) wouldn't cost > > much, fifty-ish bucks perhaps. I am an out-of-work rocket scientist, so > I > > don't want to spend money. > > > > The Tech has the panel with a three word title and thirty five words of > > text. How do we explain the singularity to the non-geek proletariat in > > about 35 words? Picture? Countersuggestion? > > > > spike > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 21:06:43 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 14:06:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Function of religions In-Reply-To: References: <4CA0C677.2080102@canonizer.com> Message-ID: 2010/9/27 Darren Greer : snip > Almost every single war we see taking place in the world today is a result > of this age-old philosophical struggle between relativism and objectivism. > Edward Said put it nicely in his book Orientalism. The wars or the future > will not be east vs west, he said, but rather ?fundamentalism vs modernity. Right. And since the fundamentalists tend to be the ones facing a bleak future, you can expect them to be the ones who start wars. You can also expect them to have by far the higher body count. > I read somewhere recently, and I'm sorry I can't remember where so I can't > reference it, that we spend far too much time trying to come up with > universal moral standards that would be accepted by everyone, when we should > in fact spend more time looking for where our moral beliefs come from in the > first place, even those that appear to be diametrically opposed. And a very > useful tool for doing this is evolutionary psychology, for it narrates to > the species as a whole and not just to cultural or national factions. That may actually not be the case. Dr. Gregory Clark makes a rather solid case based on probated wills that certain groups were under as intense a selection for 20-25 generation as the selection that turned wild foxes into tame ones. This might not have change their tendency to make war under some circumstances (like being attacked) but it seems to have fit them with the psychological traits needed for the modern world. > Such > an approach has the power to actually unite us, as it establishes trust on > the most basic level: that of our ?evolutionary and genetic commons. > But like Keith, I don't hold out much hope for this in the near future > either. I suspect, like most drastic changes in perspective, it will need to > be precipitated by an intense crisis before people let go of their cherished > illusions. I don't see in the past that intense crisis situations have changed illusions one bit. > Either the proposed singularity where power will be removed from > our hands either for our own good or despite of it, or some man-made > disaster before then. I've held this opinion for twenty years and have been > bracing myself for it ever since. It might not happen. Engineers and the like might keep the food supply ahead of the population for another generation. Keith > Call me pessimistic. I'm used to it. > Darren > > > On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 1:29 PM, Brent Allsop > wrote: >> >> Keith and Spike, >> >> I was attending Mormon Sunday School yesterday. ?It's pure hell listening >> to all the irrational faithless fear mongering, the irrational worshiping >> and wallowing in misery they go on and on about there, but it is very >> educational to watch them, and to learn what motivates them, and to find out >> the real purposes of religion and how hierarchical religions have evolved to >> be so successful at taking advantage of people's sheepish tendencies. >> >> The older lady lay teacher, was leading the discussion. ?She started >> bringing up how all the 'worldly people' accuse them of being 'closed >> minded' and so on. ?Our church is in the small town of Sandy, just outside >> of SLC. ?And she said they always accuse her of being in this "little sandy >> bubble" ignorant of the rest of the world. ?But she, and obviously everyone >> else there, was very proud of that, and she literally said: "I'm proud of >> this little Sandy bubble we're in" that she believes protects them from "the >> world". >> >> All these people are clearly people that don't enjoy thinking about moral >> issues much. ?They are far less intelligent than experts that are >> intelligent and interested in moral issues. ?These types of people have no >> hope of standing up to any real argument, against ?intelligent moral >> experts, so they must have something they can trust and lean on, to do it >> for them. ?Within humanity, not everyone can be moral experts on everything, >> so others must have something they can trust in. ? And obviously these >> people desperately want some 'prophet' they can trust so they don't have to >> think. ?Religions have obviosly evolved to take advantage of the tendency of >> the normal human to act in such sheepish ways. >> >> But there is clear evidence, that people in general do trust scientists >> and proven experts, on certain things. ?Especially if they could be the ones >> to lay down the criteria of selecting who is and isn't an expert. ?So I >> believe, the only problem is, having a good way to measure for moral expert >> and scientific consensus, so that everyone can learn to know and trust such. >> ?Obviosly, most of us can see there are lots of moral experts that believe >> much of what the prophets say is wrong. ?But, since there is not yet some >> way to measure for this moral expert consensus, anyone claiming what the >> prophets are saying is wrong, can easily be doubted by the religious >> leaders. >> >> But, if we could measure, and rigorously show that the moral and >> scientific expertise is definitively refuting the the hate, war and fear >> mongering the popes and prophets are touting is wrong, such that nobody >> could refute such, I think there is great hope for humanity to finally take >> the power ?away from the hierarchical selfish primitive leaders. >> >> I think it's all about knowing, concisely and quantitatively, what the >> moral and scientific experts are saying. ?And that is precisely our goal at >> canonizer.com. ?I can't be a moral expert at everything, so would sure like >> the help of all you moral experts to help me out, so I no longer needed to >> trust in these primitive, selfish, hierarchical religious leaders, for my >> moral direction. >> >> What, concisely, are all of you experts saying, and what do you agree on? >> ?And how much consensus, is there really, for such? ?If we can come up with >> that, rigorously and definitively, then I think there is hope for the world. >> >> Brent Allsop >> >> >> On 9/27/2010 9:53 AM, Keith Henson wrote: >>> >>> On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 8:00 AM, spike ?wrote: >>> >>> snip >>> >>>> We have seen a religion become considered almost as a race, so that >>>> criticism of it has become the practical equivalent to racism. ?How did >>>> that >>>> happen? >>>> >>>> So the temptation is to get one's philosophy redefined as a religion, >>>> even >>>> if it really isn't one. ?I recognize the temptation, but my ethical >>>> intuition tells me this is wrong. >>> >>> Spike, we need to consider why humans have religions at all. ?But >>> first it is a feature of top predators that their numbers are >>> ultimately limited by self predation. ?Lions are a good example, they >>> evolved the pride social organization as a response to lions killing >>> lions. ?Chimps are largely immune to predation and their numbers are >>> limited by group on group war. >>> >>> The line that led to humans escaped predation by the big cats a long >>> time ago so there has been plenty of time for evolution to act. ?Human >>> populations grow till they stress the ability of the ecosystem to >>> support them. ?Then a behavioral switch flips, they organize and and >>> kill "the others." >>> >>> Religion, even if it isn't always easy to see, is based on xenophobic >>> memes that are part of the organizational process leading to wars. >>> >>> Since a lot of populations around the world are under >>> ecosystem/economic/ecological stress, mostly from accumulated >>> population growth, it's no wonder that religious memes have become >>> more of an influential factor. >>> >>> Now the logical thing would be to strongly restrain the birth rate and >>> make ever effort to grow the economy in a way that did not depend on >>> rapid depletion of resources. ?But for reasons involving the >>> conflicting interest of genes and the persons they are in, "war mode" >>> makes people irrational. >>> >>> I think it is possible to get economic growth ahead of population >>> growth and shut off the drift of so many populations into "war mode." >>> As you know, I work on ways to solve the energy/carbon problems, >>> trying to keep my own ego out of the analysis. ?Unfortunately there >>> are very few people trying to solve the problems. >>> >>> I don't hold out a lot of hope for the intermediate future (before the >>> singularity). ?Chances are the world will see a really drastic >>> population reduction in a lot of places over the next few decades. >>> >>> Keith >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> 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 > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From spike66 at att.net Mon Sep 27 21:13:16 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 14:13:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Novel off-planet energy idea In-Reply-To: <572011.32600.qm@web27008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <572011.32600.qm@web27008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Tom Nowell > Subject: [ExI] Novel off-planet energy idea > > Currently the most read article on newscientist.com > > http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19497-outofthisworld-pro > posal-for-solar-wind-power.html > > and here's an abstract from an astrobiology meeting > > http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/abscicon2010/pdf/5469.pdf > > does anyone know enough astrophysics to guide us armchair > space enthusiasts through back-of-the-envelope calculations? > > Tom Tom there is a mistake in the article, a severe one: "To draw significant amounts of power Dyson-Harrop satellites rely on the constant solar wind found high above the ecliptic - the plane defined by the Earth's orbit around the sun. Consequently, the satellite would lie tens of millions of kilometres from the Earth." It would need to be in geosynchrous orbit for any reasonable power collection scheme I can think of. If they propose to have multiple collection facilites and try to aim this transmitter at a moving tartet as the earth rotates below, my confidence in the whole notion falls over a cliff. That aside, it is too heavy for the amount of power it generates, so it wouldn't pay back the cost to launch, given present and any likely near term future heavy lift technology. I could imagine it if we mine the copper from the moon, then make a satellite which beams power back to a station on the moon. There are very difficult problems there too, because lunar synrchonous orbit is way out there. The Lagrange point L1 might work I suppose. Getting stuff out there would be crazy expensive. spike From natasha at natasha.cc Mon Sep 27 22:10:44 2010 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 18:10:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike> <6B33453E9FDC4F6F85AB70EC8A179FFC@spike> <027b01cb5e10$6b8c0fe0$42a42fa0$@net> <50CAC519A8CB4ABBB6F8DCC6E9EC0D6F@DFC68LF1> <4D393AB050B249B2A4856B537443A869@spike> <20100927144601.1cs233zu80o8cg0o@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <20100927181044.3t90b05kusogwws4@webmail.natasha.cc> I was kidding. (Maybe I was to dry. It??s that kind of day ??) But since you brought it up: Artists/designers have always been humble and messy with the tools of creating art - designing with inks and blue prints; building with brick and mortar; sculpting dusty marble; mixing oil, dammar varnish and turpentine; and working with wires and switches in creating interactivit6y, immersivity, virtuality, gaming, etc. I wonder if the term elite fits the 21st Century. Bishop Eddie Long is elite in his circle, and George Carlin in his. Ray is the elite of the Singularity. Some elite worked hard to acquire excellence of performance in their respective fields. But in looking at a few dozen quotes by elites about the word "elite", it seems that references are most often stated with disdain, as if the elites are the ??others??, those who we ought to dislike. I don't fee that way. Best, Natasha Quoting Adrian Tymes : > To truly appreciate an art, one must be aware of the often humble tools and > approaches > used to create masterpieces. > > The Hoover Dam was created with massive machines, yes - and common > concrete. And > those machines were themselves forged from the same iron and other elements > one can > find in the wares of any Home Depot, using similar - if scaled-up, and > specialized for that - > processes. > > The Internet began with but a few nodes, none beyond the understanding of a > skilled > engineer. > > An integral part of the Singularity, is the ability for the common person - > or AI - to build > what was once available only to the elite, if available at all. Even those > who do not DIY > directly, benefit from the wider availability (and thus, lower cost and > increasing quality) of > specialized goods. In this case, the panel is lended importance by where it > is mounted, > which of course anyone (with permission) could do. Actually crafting the > thing is simple. > > 2010/9/27 > >> I can't believe you are putting the field of "art" in the same email >> message as the paint and number crafts of "Michael's". That in and of >> itself ought to cause a tsunami singularity! Now I have to go wash my mouth >> out with soap and sterilize my typing fingers. >> >> N >> >> Quoting spike : >> >> > ...On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes >> > Subject: Re: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity >> > >> > On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 9:08 AM, Natasha Vita-More >> > wrote: >> > >> > >>...What a great idea. (Thanks for thinking of me >> Amara.) >> > Natasha >> > ... >> > >> > >...Going in through the "front door" - info at thetech.org or >> > 408-294-8324 - >> > should work, if you identify yourself as having an exhibit and a >> > funding source... >> > The money is likely to be a key thing. The Tech, like many >> similar >> > organizations right now, >> > is strapped for cash... Adrian >> > >> > >> > I would propose something very modest: merely a one for one replacement >> for >> > that one panel I posted yesterday, that photo which has the text >> > >> > Breaking the Law >> > >> > Progress has limits; electricity can't go >> > faster than the speed of light, for example. >> > Moore predicts that digital innovations >> > will soon slow. Others, however, foresee a >> > singularity, when rapid technological shifts >> > make the world unpredictable. >> > >> > If we were to come up with a replacement panel with approximately that >> > amount of text, and actually make the panel, print it, laminate it, mount >> it >> > on styrofoam, stick velcro on it and hand it to them as a one for one >> > replacement, that would be a first step, ja? I would be willing to >> approach >> > them with the replacement panel if we were to agree on the verbiage. >> > >> > The local Michael's Art Supply does that kind of work, and I have had >> work >> > done satisfactorily there before (mounted a periodic chart and a portrait >> of >> > Richard Feynman as wall decorations for my home, in case there was ever >> any >> > doubt this is a geek's den.) Something this size (B size) wouldn't cost >> > much, fifty-ish bucks perhaps. I am an out-of-work rocket scientist, so >> I >> > don't want to spend money. >> > >> > The Tech has the panel with a three word title and thirty five words of >> > text. How do we explain the singularity to the non-geek proletariat in >> > about 35 words? Picture? Countersuggestion? >> > >> > spike >> > >> > >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > extropy-chat mailing list >> > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> > From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Sep 27 22:50:31 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:50:31 -0500 Subject: [ExI] THE QUANTUM THIEF Message-ID: <4CA11FB7.3060105@satx.rr.com> This sounds like a dazzling new novel: Offhand, I can think of about four different ways to read Hannu Rajaniemi?s rather astonishing debut novel The Quantum Thief, each of them equally valid, each equally inadequate. The first and most obvious is to approach it as Greg Egan-style radical hard SF (or maybe post-radical, since that movement by now is about as middle-aged as its sibling cyberpunk), and Rajaniemi clearly invites such a reading with a storm of barely-contextualized inventions in the first few chapters ? a surreal Dilemma Prison run by immortal minds called Archons on behalf of a governing collective called the Sobornost, where prisoners trapped in an infinity of glass cells endlessly battle with millions of copies of themselves; ??warminds?? with ??non-sequential dorsal streams??; weaponized Bose-Einstein condensates called q-dots; Oortian spiderships full of virtual butterflies; spimescapes; tzaddiks; exomemories; utility fogs; gevulots; strangelet bombs and nanomissiles ? all with scarcely an appositional phrase, let alone an infodump, in sight. It wouldn?t be hard to blame a reader for taking a deep breath a few pages in and concluding that this is going to mean work. Yet it really isn?t, as it turns out. From another angle, The Quantum Thief is a fairly straightforward cat-and-mouse romantic mystery pitting a master thief against a brilliant boy detective in a world so information-drenched that crime would seem to be impossible. (In a way, this also echoes earlier SF mysteries like Bester?s The Demolished Man, with ubiquitous information technology replacing the rather wobbly notion of psi powers that was so popular in the ?50s). The plot hook is almost pulp: the famous thief Jean le Flambeur is sprung from prison by itinerant spacer Mieli and her wisecracking ship Perhonen, who ? after a dizzying setpiece of a quantum space battle with the pursuing Archons ? flees with him to Mars for a special assignment commissioned by her mysterious employer. Meanwhile, the boy detective Isidore Beautrelet (he?s described as 15 years old, but Rajaniemi gives us to understand these are Martian years), having just solved the murder of a prominent chocolatier (in a nice touch, chocolate is one of Mars?s main products), learns that his next case will involve le Flambeur. There is, in other words, as much of Maurice Leblanc as of Greg Egan in this mix, and Rajaniemi signals this early on when le Flambeur (the only one of the three main viewpoint characters to get a first-person voice) mentions that Leblanc?s Le Bouchon de Cristal is one of his favorite books, and Isidore Beautrelet himself is borrowed, name and all, directly from Leblanc?s youthful detective in The Hollow Needle, a novel which pits Leblanc?s own Ars?ne Lupin against Sherlock Holmes, who also gets a shout-out or two later on. So there are some tissue-traces of Egan here, to be sure, and of Bester, and of Leblanc. But wait, there?s more! There?s a fair bit of reality-testing in the manner of Philip K. Dick, as le Flambeur and others are led to question not only their own identities and memories, but even the universal Martian ??exomemory?? that provides the community?s consensual reality and history ? all of which, in classic paranoid Dickian fashion, may be secretly manipulated by some hidden masters with unknown motives. ??Perhaps the old philosophers were right,?? muses Isidore?s newest client, ??and we are living in a simulation, playthings of some transhuman gods.?? For all its intimidating hard science (and you suspect that Rajaniemi, like Egan, knows exactly what he?s talking about), the central new technology in the novel is the very Dickian notion of the gevulot, an elaborate system of information nodes which permits people to control their degree of privacy, while feeding information into the city?s larger ??exomemory.?? And the Martian colony itself ? most of the action is set in a giant moving city called Oubliette, which is involved in a terraforming project ? is as politically idealistic as anything in Kim Stanley Robinson. ??We believe in what the Revolution stood for,?? explains one character. ??A human Mars. A place where we recreate Earth without problems. A place where everyone owns their own minds, a place where we belong to ourselves. And that is not possible when someone behind the curtain is pulling our strings.?? This political theme, which also echoes the socioeconomic tensions between the inner and outer solar systems that we see in novels like Paul McAuley?s The Quiet War, may be the least developed of the major themes, but comes to play an important role in the backstory which eventually unfolds. It?s clear that Rajaniemi feels he has to get a lot done with this widely anticipated first novel, and for the most part he succeeds brilliantly. While his opening setpieces ? the prison itself and the high-tech space battle between Mieli?s ship and the pursuing Archons ? are spectacular enough, Rajaniemi really hits stride with the peripatetic Martian city of Oubliette, where time is literally currency (Isidore?s wealthy client is a ??milliennaire??), where those whose Watches run out must serve time as Quiets, helping run the city?s infrastructure, and where privacy is a commodity controlled by an elaborate system of protocols and hierarchies enforced by cop-like ??tzaddiks.?? But Rajaniemi mitigates the alienating effect of his setting by populating his tale with likeable and familiar characters that sometimes approach pop culture archetypes ? not only the bandit-rou? with a secret past le Flambeur (whose name may also echo a classic Jean-Pierre Melville heist movie), the tough-as-nails adventuress Mieli (so battle-ready she has a fusion reactor embedded in her thigh), and the brilliant young Isidore (whose Holmesian deductions regarding a letter which impossibly appears in his client?s secure home are what finally blows the plot open), but also such comic-book figures as the Gentleman, a phantom rescuer who appears at opportune times throughout the story. Rajaniemi is having as much fun with these characters as with his gonzo physics, and by the end of the novel we?d be willing to follow them down any of the several sequel-corridors that Rajaniemi gives himself. For now, he?s spectacularly delivered on the promise that this is likely the most important debut SF novel we?ll see this year. From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 22:53:56 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 15:53:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: <20100927181044.3t90b05kusogwws4@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike> <6B33453E9FDC4F6F85AB70EC8A179FFC@spike> <027b01cb5e10$6b8c0fe0$42a42fa0$@net> <50CAC519A8CB4ABBB6F8DCC6E9EC0D6F@DFC68LF1> <4D393AB050B249B2A4856B537443A869@spike> <20100927144601.1cs233zu80o8cg0o@webmail.natasha.cc> <20100927181044.3t90b05kusogwws4@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: Natasha Vita-More wrote: Some elite worked hard to acquire excellence of performance in their respective fields. But in looking at a few dozen quotes by elites about the word "elite", it seems that references are most often stated with disdain, as if the elites are the ??others??, those who we ought to dislike. I don't fee that way. >> I think talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck helped reinforce the idea that the word "elites" is ugly (they say such people think they are much better & wiser than the average citizen, and so think they can rule over them without much consent). I suppose the term is the 21st century American version of "intelligentsia" or "bourgeoisie." John On 9/27/10, natasha at natasha.cc wrote: > I was kidding. (Maybe I was to dry. It??s that kind of day ??) > > But since you brought it up: Artists/designers have always been > humble and messy with the tools of creating art - designing with inks > and blue prints; building with brick and mortar; sculpting dusty > marble; mixing oil, dammar varnish and turpentine; and working with > wires and switches in creating interactivit6y, immersivity, > virtuality, gaming, etc. > > I wonder if the term elite fits the 21st Century. Bishop Eddie Long > is elite in his circle, and George Carlin in his. Ray is the elite of > the Singularity. Some elite worked hard to acquire excellence of > performance in their respective fields. But in looking at a few dozen > quotes by elites about the word "elite", it seems that references are > most often stated with disdain, as if the elites are the ??others??, > those who we ought to dislike. I don't fee that way. > > Best, > > Natasha > > > > > Quoting Adrian Tymes : > >> To truly appreciate an art, one must be aware of the often humble tools >> and >> approaches >> used to create masterpieces. >> >> The Hoover Dam was created with massive machines, yes - and common >> concrete. And >> those machines were themselves forged from the same iron and other >> elements >> one can >> find in the wares of any Home Depot, using similar - if scaled-up, and >> specialized for that - >> processes. >> >> The Internet began with but a few nodes, none beyond the understanding of >> a >> skilled >> engineer. >> >> An integral part of the Singularity, is the ability for the common person >> - >> or AI - to build >> what was once available only to the elite, if available at all. Even >> those >> who do not DIY >> directly, benefit from the wider availability (and thus, lower cost and >> increasing quality) of >> specialized goods. In this case, the panel is lended importance by where >> it >> is mounted, >> which of course anyone (with permission) could do. Actually crafting the >> thing is simple. >> >> 2010/9/27 >> >>> I can't believe you are putting the field of "art" in the same email >>> message as the paint and number crafts of "Michael's". That in and of >>> itself ought to cause a tsunami singularity! Now I have to go wash my >>> mouth >>> out with soap and sterilize my typing fingers. >>> >>> N >>> >>> Quoting spike : >>> >>> > ...On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes >>> > Subject: Re: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the >>> > singularity >>> > >>> > On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 9:08 AM, Natasha Vita-More >>> > wrote: >>> > >>> > >>...What a great idea. (Thanks for thinking of me >>> Amara.) >>> > Natasha >>> > ... >>> > >>> > >...Going in through the "front door" - info at thetech.org or >>> > 408-294-8324 - >>> > should work, if you identify yourself as having an exhibit and >>> > a >>> > funding source... >>> > The money is likely to be a key thing. The Tech, like many >>> similar >>> > organizations right now, >>> > is strapped for cash... Adrian >>> > >>> > >>> > I would propose something very modest: merely a one for one replacement >>> for >>> > that one panel I posted yesterday, that photo which has the text >>> > >>> > Breaking the Law >>> > >>> > Progress has limits; electricity can't go >>> > faster than the speed of light, for example. >>> > Moore predicts that digital innovations >>> > will soon slow. Others, however, foresee a >>> > singularity, when rapid technological shifts >>> > make the world unpredictable. >>> > >>> > If we were to come up with a replacement panel with approximately that >>> > amount of text, and actually make the panel, print it, laminate it, >>> > mount >>> it >>> > on styrofoam, stick velcro on it and hand it to them as a one for one >>> > replacement, that would be a first step, ja? I would be willing to >>> approach >>> > them with the replacement panel if we were to agree on the verbiage. >>> > >>> > The local Michael's Art Supply does that kind of work, and I have had >>> work >>> > done satisfactorily there before (mounted a periodic chart and a >>> > portrait >>> of >>> > Richard Feynman as wall decorations for my home, in case there was ever >>> any >>> > doubt this is a geek's den.) Something this size (B size) wouldn't >>> > cost >>> > much, fifty-ish bucks perhaps. I am an out-of-work rocket scientist, >>> > so >>> I >>> > don't want to spend money. >>> > >>> > The Tech has the panel with a three word title and thirty five words of >>> > text. How do we explain the singularity to the non-geek proletariat in >>> > about 35 words? Picture? Countersuggestion? >>> > >>> > spike >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > _______________________________________________ >>> > extropy-chat mailing list >>> > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> > >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >>> >> > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From ablainey at aol.com Mon Sep 27 22:56:33 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 18:56:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Novel off-planet energy idea In-Reply-To: <572011.32600.qm@web27008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <8CD2CAE5DACAD32-1A04-F26@webmail-d046.sysops.aol.com> It would make more sense to put the things which consume the most power into orbit rather than try to beam the energy and distribute it. For example our manufacturing industries with raw materials being exomined from captured asteroids. That way the earth could be mainly Bio based and space tech based. Imagine shipping containers full of products parachuting down to distribution points all over the planet. A -----Original Message----- From: Tom Nowell To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Sent: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 20:47 Subject: [ExI] Novel off-planet energy idea Currently the most read article on newscientist.com http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19497-outofthisworld-proposal-for-solar-wind-power.html and here's an abstract from an astrobiology meeting http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/abscicon2010/pdf/5469.pdf does anyone know enough astrophysics to guide us armchair space enthusiasts through back-of-the-envelope calculations? Tom _______________________________________________ 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 Mon Sep 27 22:56:58 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:56:58 -0500 Subject: [ExI] THE QUANTUM THIEF author Message-ID: <4CA1213A.7090001@satx.rr.com> Oh, and I assume this Finnish sf writer is the Hannu Rajaniemi whose 2006 University of Edinburgh PhD was for "Conformal Killing spinors in supergravity and related aspects of spin geometry." From ablainey at aol.com Mon Sep 27 23:00:41 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:00:41 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Novel off-planet energy idea In-Reply-To: References: <572011.32600.qm@web27008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <8CD2CAEF13DECF8-1A04-121A@webmail-d046.sysops.aol.com> The axial poles would be the ideal place for recievers as there would be no relative movement but distribution from there !!!! -----Original Message----- From: spike To: 'ExI chat list' Sent: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 22:13 Subject: Re: [ExI] Novel off-planet energy idea It would need to be in geosynchrous orbit for any reasonable power collection scheme I can think of. If they propose to have multiple collection facilites and try to aim this transmitter at a moving tartet as the earth rotates below, my confidence in the whole notion falls over a cliff. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 23:01:47 2010 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 18:01:47 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Function of religions In-Reply-To: References: <4CA0C677.2080102@canonizer.com> Message-ID: 2010/9/27 spike > *On Behalf Of *Will Steinberg > > Religion allows abstraction of personal memes into giant, supra-human, > replicating beasts of causal tentacles, emergent tooth and nail. > So we become the cells of our own gods, and by focusing on that image we > even create it...and the deities of our dreams duke it out on the world > stage. > > > WOW! Poetic insight, profound, right to the point. Is it original? That > comment is almost worthy of being framed and hung on the wall. Thanks Will! > > spike > Thanks, Spike. That would be a Will Steinberg original, feel free to disseminate. And if you ever want to talk about cutting-edge theo-sciencio-philo-sophic esoterica...you know my email. Also, is anyone here located in Chicago? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon Sep 27 23:04:03 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 18:04:03 -0500 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike> <6B33453E9FDC4F6F85AB70EC8A179FFC@spike> <027b01cb5e10$6b8c0fe0$42a42fa0$@net> <50CAC519A8CB4ABBB6F8DCC6E9EC0D6F@DFC68LF1> <4D393AB050B249B2A4856B537443A869@spike> <20100927144601.1cs233zu80o8cg0o@webmail.natasha.cc> <20100927181044.3t90b05kusogwws4@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <4CA122E3.6060904@satx.rr.com> On 9/27/2010 5:53 PM, John Grigg wrote: > talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck Actually heads are at the other end of the torso. From darren.greer3 at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 23:20:53 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 20:20:53 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Function of religions In-Reply-To: References: <4CA0C677.2080102@canonizer.com> Message-ID: Darren wrote: > Such > an approach has the power to actually unite us, as it establishes trust on > the most basic level: that of our evolutionary and genetic commons. > But like Keith, I don't hold out much hope for this in the near future > either. I suspect, like most drastic changes in perspective, it will need to > be precipitated by an intense crisis before people let go of their cherished > illusions. Keith wrote: >I don't see in the past that intense crisis situations have changed >illusions one bit. I do. The European black plague in Europe in the 14th century, which is what, I admit, I was thinking of when I wrote that. I read Bocaccio's The Decameron in college, which, in case you're not familiar, tells a hundred short stories loosely connected in an Arabian Nights style meta-narrative. The narrators in the book are a group of young male and female aristocrats who have left their plague-ridden Italian town to stay for a time in the country. The stories they tell to each other are for the most part bawdy and intriguing tales about human beings and their exploits in contemporary Italy. God is hardly mentioned at all, and theology and man's relation to the cosmos is not even an unstated dramatic theme. The story is about people. The professor I had for this class stated his opinion that the rise of Humanism in the west actually began with The Decameron and not a hundred years later in Florence at the height of the Italian Renaissance as is so often cited. He also stated his belief that what must have seemed then like an apocalyptic crisis - that particular round of the plague -- might have changed the world view in Europe from a religious centered one to a humanist centered one. All the belief in God and the angels and the supremacy of divine love -- as epitomized in the work of another 14th century Italian -- Dante -- wasn't paying off. So they turned away and looked for something new. Of course it took a long while, and still may be playing out six hundred years after the fact. Who know what the ultimate psychological effects of the holocaust and the second World War will be, for one example?. It might take centuries to find out. The AIDS crisis in the world actually opened up more doors for gay men and women than it closed. Because governments couldn't ignore the crisis any longer gay people found themselves sitting in inner bureaucratic circles discussing health issues which gave them opportunity to force issues of sexual expression and alternate political ideology onto the table as well. And even that issue hasn't played out yet. History has a very long arc, and perceptions change slowly. But I think these major crises do play a big part. They cause shifts in thinking that slowly build into the critical mass necessary for change. Darren P.S. Thanks for the offer to help with the science stuff Keith. I might take you up on it, if I get stuck. On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 6:06 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > 2010/9/27 Darren Greer : > > snip > > > Almost every single war we see taking place in the world today is a > result > > of this age-old philosophical struggle between relativism and > objectivism. > > Edward Said put it nicely in his book Orientalism. The wars or the future > > will not be east vs west, he said, but rather fundamentalism vs > modernity. > > Right. And since the fundamentalists tend to be the ones facing a > bleak future, you can expect them to be the ones who start wars. You > can also expect them to have by far the higher body count. > > > I read somewhere recently, and I'm sorry I can't remember where so I > can't > > reference it, that we spend far too much time trying to come up with > > universal moral standards that would be accepted by everyone, when we > should > > in fact spend more time looking for where our moral beliefs come from in > the > > first place, even those that appear to be diametrically opposed. And a > very > > useful tool for doing this is evolutionary psychology, for it narrates to > > the species as a whole and not just to cultural or national factions. > > That may actually not be the case. Dr. Gregory Clark makes a rather > solid case based on probated wills that certain groups were under as > intense a selection for 20-25 generation as the selection that turned > wild foxes into tame ones. This might not have change their tendency > to make war under some circumstances (like being attacked) but it > seems to have fit them with the psychological traits needed for the > modern world. > > > Such > > an approach has the power to actually unite us, as it establishes trust > on > > the most basic level: that of our evolutionary and genetic commons. > > But like Keith, I don't hold out much hope for this in the near future > > either. I suspect, like most drastic changes in perspective, it will need > to > > be precipitated by an intense crisis before people let go of their > cherished > > illusions. > > I don't see in the past that intense crisis situations have changed > illusions one bit. > > > Either the proposed singularity where power will be removed from > > our hands either for our own good or despite of it, or some man-made > > disaster before then. I've held this opinion for twenty years and have > been > > bracing myself for it ever since. > > It might not happen. Engineers and the like might keep the food > supply ahead of the population for another generation. > > Keith > > > Call me pessimistic. I'm used to it. > > Darren > > > > > > On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 1:29 PM, Brent Allsop < > brent.allsop at canonizer.com> > > wrote: > >> > >> Keith and Spike, > >> > >> I was attending Mormon Sunday School yesterday. It's pure hell > listening > >> to all the irrational faithless fear mongering, the irrational > worshiping > >> and wallowing in misery they go on and on about there, but it is very > >> educational to watch them, and to learn what motivates them, and to find > out > >> the real purposes of religion and how hierarchical religions have > evolved to > >> be so successful at taking advantage of people's sheepish tendencies. > >> > >> The older lady lay teacher, was leading the discussion. She started > >> bringing up how all the 'worldly people' accuse them of being 'closed > >> minded' and so on. Our church is in the small town of Sandy, just > outside > >> of SLC. And she said they always accuse her of being in this "little > sandy > >> bubble" ignorant of the rest of the world. But she, and obviously > everyone > >> else there, was very proud of that, and she literally said: "I'm proud > of > >> this little Sandy bubble we're in" that she believes protects them from > "the > >> world". > >> > >> All these people are clearly people that don't enjoy thinking about > moral > >> issues much. They are far less intelligent than experts that are > >> intelligent and interested in moral issues. These types of people have > no > >> hope of standing up to any real argument, against intelligent moral > >> experts, so they must have something they can trust and lean on, to do > it > >> for them. Within humanity, not everyone can be moral experts on > everything, > >> so others must have something they can trust in. And obviously these > >> people desperately want some 'prophet' they can trust so they don't have > to > >> think. Religions have obviosly evolved to take advantage of the > tendency of > >> the normal human to act in such sheepish ways. > >> > >> But there is clear evidence, that people in general do trust scientists > >> and proven experts, on certain things. Especially if they could be the > ones > >> to lay down the criteria of selecting who is and isn't an expert. So I > >> believe, the only problem is, having a good way to measure for moral > expert > >> and scientific consensus, so that everyone can learn to know and trust > such. > >> Obviosly, most of us can see there are lots of moral experts that > believe > >> much of what the prophets say is wrong. But, since there is not yet > some > >> way to measure for this moral expert consensus, anyone claiming what the > >> prophets are saying is wrong, can easily be doubted by the religious > >> leaders. > >> > >> But, if we could measure, and rigorously show that the moral and > >> scientific expertise is definitively refuting the the hate, war and fear > >> mongering the popes and prophets are touting is wrong, such that nobody > >> could refute such, I think there is great hope for humanity to finally > take > >> the power away from the hierarchical selfish primitive leaders. > >> > >> I think it's all about knowing, concisely and quantitatively, what the > >> moral and scientific experts are saying. And that is precisely our goal > at > >> canonizer.com. I can't be a moral expert at everything, so would sure > like > >> the help of all you moral experts to help me out, so I no longer needed > to > >> trust in these primitive, selfish, hierarchical religious leaders, for > my > >> moral direction. > >> > >> What, concisely, are all of you experts saying, and what do you agree > on? > >> And how much consensus, is there really, for such? If we can come up > with > >> that, rigorously and definitively, then I think there is hope for the > world. > >> > >> Brent Allsop > >> > >> > >> On 9/27/2010 9:53 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > >>> > >>> On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 8:00 AM, spike wrote: > >>> > >>> snip > >>> > >>>> We have seen a religion become considered almost as a race, so that > >>>> criticism of it has become the practical equivalent to racism. How > did > >>>> that > >>>> happen? > >>>> > >>>> So the temptation is to get one's philosophy redefined as a religion, > >>>> even > >>>> if it really isn't one. I recognize the temptation, but my ethical > >>>> intuition tells me this is wrong. > >>> > >>> Spike, we need to consider why humans have religions at all. But > >>> first it is a feature of top predators that their numbers are > >>> ultimately limited by self predation. Lions are a good example, they > >>> evolved the pride social organization as a response to lions killing > >>> lions. Chimps are largely immune to predation and their numbers are > >>> limited by group on group war. > >>> > >>> The line that led to humans escaped predation by the big cats a long > >>> time ago so there has been plenty of time for evolution to act. Human > >>> populations grow till they stress the ability of the ecosystem to > >>> support them. Then a behavioral switch flips, they organize and and > >>> kill "the others." > >>> > >>> Religion, even if it isn't always easy to see, is based on xenophobic > >>> memes that are part of the organizational process leading to wars. > >>> > >>> Since a lot of populations around the world are under > >>> ecosystem/economic/ecological stress, mostly from accumulated > >>> population growth, it's no wonder that religious memes have become > >>> more of an influential factor. > >>> > >>> Now the logical thing would be to strongly restrain the birth rate and > >>> make ever effort to grow the economy in a way that did not depend on > >>> rapid depletion of resources. But for reasons involving the > >>> conflicting interest of genes and the persons they are in, "war mode" > >>> makes people irrational. > >>> > >>> I think it is possible to get economic growth ahead of population > >>> growth and shut off the drift of so many populations into "war mode." > >>> As you know, I work on ways to solve the energy/carbon problems, > >>> trying to keep my own ego out of the analysis. Unfortunately there > >>> are very few people trying to solve the problems. > >>> > >>> I don't hold out a lot of hope for the intermediate future (before the > >>> singularity). Chances are the world will see a really drastic > >>> population reduction in a lot of places over the next few decades. > >>> > >>> Keith > >>> > >>> _______________________________________________ > >>> 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 > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 natasha at natasha.cc Mon Sep 27 23:39:04 2010 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:39:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] san jose tech museum's take on the singularity In-Reply-To: <4CA122E3.6060904@satx.rr.com> References: <02C345F9D0194A0B94DA3AF79D8E0443@spike> <6B33453E9FDC4F6F85AB70EC8A179FFC@spike> <027b01cb5e10$6b8c0fe0$42a42fa0$@net> <50CAC519A8CB4ABBB6F8DCC6E9EC0D6F@DFC68LF1> <4D393AB050B249B2A4856B537443A869@spike> <20100927144601.1cs233zu80o8cg0o@webmail.natasha.cc> <20100927181044.3t90b05kusogwws4@webmail.natasha.cc> <4CA122E3.6060904@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <20100927193904.kq3sxdqr4ossgs8g@webmail.natasha.cc> LOL Hey - I thoguht you were going to toss is a comment about my "I don't fee that way". :-) (Although some of us work for noth'n.) Quoting Damien Broderick : > On 9/27/2010 5:53 PM, John Grigg wrote: > >> talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck > > Actually heads are at the other end of the torso. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 00:49:38 2010 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:49:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] U.S. deeply imperiled due to it's massive debt In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 3:59 PM, police dept wrote: > But as for?keeping corporate America in check, it depends.?Attempting to > bankrupt?tobacco corporations wasn't a bad idea, IMO, it put pressure on > tobacco companies?to be a bit more responsible. This is merely to use > tobacco corporations as an example: why ought I care if lawsuits were > brought against Big Tobacco? class action lawsuits aren't?always misguided, > are they? ### I think it was a very bad idea. Whenever you try to fight a lesser evil (a few lying execs) by using a greater evil (an army of lying politicians), you are guaranteed to be worse off in the long run. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 00:49:38 2010 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:49:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] U.S. deeply imperiled due to it's massive debt In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 3:59 PM, police dept wrote: > But as for?keeping corporate America in check, it depends.?Attempting to > bankrupt?tobacco corporations wasn't a bad idea, IMO, it put pressure on > tobacco companies?to be a bit more responsible. This is merely to use > tobacco corporations as an example: why ought I care if lawsuits were > brought against Big Tobacco? class action lawsuits aren't?always misguided, > are they? ### I think it was a very bad idea. Whenever you try to fight a lesser evil (a few lying execs) by using a greater evil (an army of lying politicians), you are guaranteed to be worse off in the long run. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 00:58:17 2010 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:58:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] U.S. deeply imperiled due to it's massive debt In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 1:15 PM, John Grigg wrote: > I am disturbed by their influence when it comes to elections > (especially the secretive nature of it). ?And also their lobbying > power in general is simply overwhelming. ?"This candidate has been > brought to you by Target." ?I am not talking about taxing them into > the ground. > ### You seem to imply that corporations are doing wrong by influencing elections, yet your own influence in this matter is benign. I would say that peremptorily demanding a voice in other people's lives (which is what elections amount to) is just immoral, and by participating in elections you are making yourself as blameworthy as whoever purchased TARP from Obama and Bush. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 00:44:10 2010 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:44:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] U.S. deeply imperiled due to it's massive debt In-Reply-To: <76742.44929.qm@web65612.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <76742.44929.qm@web65612.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 4:56 PM, The Avantguardian wrote: > > > ----- Original Message ---- >> From: Rafal Smigrodzki >> To: ExI chat list >> Sent: Fri, September 24, 2010 11:12:33 AM >> Subject: Re: [ExI] U.S. deeply imperiled due to it's massive debt >> >> On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 3:33 AM, John Grigg >>wrote: >> > What real hope is there for the United States, due to our crushing >> > national deficit (our fault) and our growing dependence on China to >> > buy up that debt? ?Are we really an empire in full decline? ?Or do we >> > just face a very painful 5-10 year economic downturn, that we can >> > overcome if as a nation we learn to "live within a budget" and also >> > keep Wall Street & corporate America in check. LOL! ?I guess we are >> > screwed... ?This video really disturbed me. >> > >> > >>http://fora.tv/2010/07/28/Niall_Ferguson_Empires_on_the_Edge_of_Chaos#Niall_Ferguson_Will_Debt_Trigger_the_Collapse_of_the_US >> >> > >> >> ### Why would you want to keep corporate America in check? To make things >>worse? > > What or who is corporate America? Multinational corporations have no > nationality, citizenship, or sense of civic duty. They are simply sociopolitical > machines designed play national governments against one another whilst?funneling > the wealth of nations into the hands of a few. They lobby for legislation > in?whatever country?they want that benefits themselves at the expense of?the > country?as a whole. The weakness of?western-style democracy?is that lobbying is > cheaper than paying taxes and far more influential than voting.?So if government > of the?people, by the people, for the people?were to?perish from the earth, it > would probably?be their doing. ### Whenever the government of the people and by the people ever threatens to break out, prudent humans pack up and go elsewhere until the madness blows over. Rafal From kanzure at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 00:41:48 2010 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:41:48 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: [Body Hacking] SleepHacks In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jolly Date: Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 1:32 PM Subject: [Body Hacking] SleepHacks To: bodyhacking at lists.caughq.org Cool tips on sleep hacks: If you want to sleep less, esp for short periods of time - Modafinil. I've been up for 2.5 days without a problem on it. If you want to sleep more/better: 1) Pitch black room. 2) Orange (blue blocking glasses). ?I use one in the specific SCT orange color (info found here http://www.psycheducation.org/depression/LightDark.htm) Blue inhibits the production of melatonin, which is the key hormone your body produces when it gets dark out. This is the pair you want if you have glasses - http://www.amazon.com/Uvex-S0360X-Ultra-spec-SCT-Orange-Anti-Fog/dp/B003OBZ64M This is the pair you want if you dont - http://www.amazon.com/Uvex-S1933X-Eyewear-SCT-Orange-Anti-Fog/dp/B000USRG90 I put them on a few hours before I go to bed. Also, I have a blue light source to help me wake up in the morning. ?I still need to rig up a robotic arm or something to open the window in the morning instead.... Hope this helps! -Jolly -- - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From darren.greer3 at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 01:46:35 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 22:46:35 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Function of religions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Keith wrote: "Dr. Gregory Clark makes a rather solid case based on probated wills that certain groups were under as intense a selection for 20-25 generation as the selection that turned wild foxes into tame ones" I actually read about that study, in the context of an article discussing the relationship of capitalism to hereditary fitness. I forgot about it. The author of the article, based on the probate study, stated that survival rates in families regardless of economic status equalled that of death rates in pre-industrialized English society right up until the 1800's. When the industrial revolution raised the standard of living by improving nutrition, housing conditions and health care across the board, and not just for the wealthy, more babies survived than were lost. At the time I remember thinking that this made a better case for socialism than it did for capitalism. When you think about it, though, even some developed urban and nationalist environments provide immense selection pressures on individuals living in them. They force generational samples of us to jettison our earlier primitive programming through natural selection in favor of new programming that suits us better in the modern world. Even individually this is true: our tribal tendency to abhor those physically or culturally different from us, for example, must often be circumvented in many modern cities if we wish to survive there long. At the same time, and almost paradoxically, we can re-adapt or re-route this programming using social technology to find more people like us in those same urban environments by creating ghettos and clubs and organizations. It's kind of like a crash-course in evolutionary re-programming. I sometimes forget that evolution does not proceed at a nice, orderly and stately pace at all times. That if pressures intensify and quicken in a region then more individuals die. And the more individuals die the more fit the offspring of those that survive these pressures are for the new environment. But if they stray out of that environment they may not be at all suited to the next, even if the "new" environment is similar to an old one there now unfit ancestors thrived in. I've often thought that if we had a massive solar flair or EMP pulse that put us off the grid for any considerable amount of time, those in what we call superciliously call undeveloped nations would suddenly find themselves some of the fittest on the planet, thanks to many generations living under harsh selection pressures that were once again universal. Natural selection is a bitch. Darren On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 1:19 PM, Darren Greer wrote: > Keith wrote: > > "I don't hold out a lot of hope for the intermediate future (before the > singularity)" > > I'm making the assumption that this lack of hope is due to the fact that > the evolutionary programing is extremely hard to circumvent even if you're > aware of it, short of some sort of drastic behavior modification which is > difficult to achieve in others and almost as difficult (more difficult?) to > achieve in yourself. Look at the limited success of cult deprogramming and > aversion therapy for gay men- both of which use pretty drastic methods -- > for good examples. Add to the mix that most people ascribe specious > justifications for their behavior (I'm thinking of some politicians) that > actually distort and conceal not only their motivations (which are likely > murky even to themselves) but the ramifications of that behavior upon the > environment and the fitness of the species as a whole. > > Mathew Heisman discusses something similar in his "Suicide Note", which > I've been plowing my way through. I'm not sure I'll get through all 2000 > pages, but some of what I've read so far is valid. He claims at the > beginning of the book that it is precisely this lack of awareness, this > disinclination to look for reasons for our apparently species-wide > self-destructive behavior in the only workable model we have--evolutionary > psychology--that could be our downfall. > > Darren > > > > > > On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 12:53 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > >> On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 8:00 AM, spike wrote: >> >> snip >> >> > We have seen a religion become considered almost as a race, so that >> > criticism of it has become the practical equivalent to racism. How did >> that >> > happen? >> > >> > So the temptation is to get one's philosophy redefined as a religion, >> even >> > if it really isn't one. I recognize the temptation, but my ethical >> > intuition tells me this is wrong. >> >> Spike, we need to consider why humans have religions at all. But >> first it is a feature of top predators that their numbers are >> ultimately limited by self predation. Lions are a good example, they >> evolved the pride social organization as a response to lions killing >> lions. Chimps are largely immune to predation and their numbers are >> limited by group on group war. >> >> The line that led to humans escaped predation by the big cats a long >> time ago so there has been plenty of time for evolution to act. Human >> populations grow till they stress the ability of the ecosystem to >> support them. Then a behavioral switch flips, they organize and and >> kill "the others." >> >> Religion, even if it isn't always easy to see, is based on xenophobic >> memes that are part of the organizational process leading to wars. >> >> Since a lot of populations around the world are under >> ecosystem/economic/ecological stress, mostly from accumulated >> population growth, it's no wonder that religious memes have become >> more of an influential factor. >> >> Now the logical thing would be to strongly restrain the birth rate and >> make ever effort to grow the economy in a way that did not depend on >> rapid depletion of resources. But for reasons involving the >> conflicting interest of genes and the persons they are in, "war mode" >> makes people irrational. >> >> I think it is possible to get economic growth ahead of population >> growth and shut off the drift of so many populations into "war mode." >> As you know, I work on ways to solve the energy/carbon problems, >> trying to keep my own ego out of the analysis. Unfortunately there >> are very few people trying to solve the problems. >> >> I don't hold out a lot of hope for the intermediate future (before the >> singularity). Chances are the world will see a really drastic >> population reduction in a lot of places over the next few decades. >> >> Keith >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 Sep 28 02:00:12 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:00:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] U.S. deeply imperiled due to it's massive debt In-Reply-To: References: <76742.44929.qm@web65612.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Rafal wrote: ### You seem to imply that corporations are doing wrong by influencing elections, yet your own influence in this matter is benign. >>> I am saying corporations have been allowed far to much permission to influence elections with their financial muscle. You continue: I would say that peremptorily demanding a voice in other people's lives (which is what elections amount to) is just immoral, and by participating in elections you are making yourself as blameworthy as whoever purchased TARP from Obama and Bush. >>> I would say you sound like an anarcho-libertarian! You wrote; ### Whenever the government of the people and by the people ever threatens to break out, prudent humans pack up and go elsewhere until the madness blows over. >>> The American Revolution was one to stick around for and support, but the French Revolution was a good excuse to pack up and leave town... John On 9/27/10, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 4:56 PM, The Avantguardian > wrote: >> >> >> ----- Original Message ---- >>> From: Rafal Smigrodzki >>> To: ExI chat list >>> Sent: Fri, September 24, 2010 11:12:33 AM >>> Subject: Re: [ExI] U.S. deeply imperiled due to it's massive debt >>> >>> On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 3:33 AM, John Grigg >>>wrote: >>> > What real hope is there for the United States, due to our crushing >>> > national deficit (our fault) and our growing dependence on China to >>> > buy up that debt? ?Are we really an empire in full decline? ?Or do we >>> > just face a very painful 5-10 year economic downturn, that we can >>> > overcome if as a nation we learn to "live within a budget" and also >>> > keep Wall Street & corporate America in check. LOL! ?I guess we are >>> > screwed... ?This video really disturbed me. >>> > >>> > >>>http://fora.tv/2010/07/28/Niall_Ferguson_Empires_on_the_Edge_of_Chaos#Niall_Ferguson_Will_Debt_Trigger_the_Collapse_of_the_US >>> >>> > >>> >>> ### Why would you want to keep corporate America in check? To make things >>>worse? >> >> What or who is corporate America? Multinational corporations have no >> nationality, citizenship, or sense of civic duty. They are simply >> sociopolitical >> machines designed play national governments against one another >> whilst?funneling >> the wealth of nations into the hands of a few. They lobby for legislation >> in?whatever country?they want that benefits themselves at the expense >> of?the >> country?as a whole. The weakness of?western-style democracy?is that >> lobbying is >> cheaper than paying taxes and far more influential than voting.?So if >> government >> of the?people, by the people, for the people?were to?perish from the >> earth, it >> would probably?be their doing. > > ### Whenever the government of the people and by the people ever > threatens to break out, prudent humans pack up and go elsewhere until > the madness blows over. > > Rafal > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From sparge at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 01:45:49 2010 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 21:45:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] THE QUANTUM THIEF author In-Reply-To: <4CA1213A.7090001@satx.rr.com> References: <4CA1213A.7090001@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 6:56 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > Oh, and I assume this Finnish sf writer is the Hannu Rajaniemi whose 2006 > University of Edinburgh PhD was for "Conformal Killing spinors in > supergravity and related aspects of spin geometry." > Here's his web site with a blog and a few short stories: http://tomorrowelephant.net -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 02:26:17 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:26:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Function of religions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2010/9/27 Darren Greer : > Keith wrote: > "Dr. Gregory Clark makes a rather > solid case based on probated wills that certain groups were under as > intense a selection for 20-25 generation as the selection that turned > wild foxes into tame ones" > I actually read about that study, in the context of an article discussing > the relationship of capitalism to hereditary fitness. I forgot about it. The > author of the article, based on the probate study, stated that survival > rates in families regardless of economic status equalled that of death rates > in pre-industrialized English society right up until the 1800's. In that case you missed the main point of the article. The population as a whole didn't change in size hardly at all, it was Malthusian, living right at the limit of the ecosystem, or rather the current farming technology to support it. But certain groups in the population, particularly the middle to upper class reproduced (spread their genes) far more than the poorest class. The selection was intense, on a par with the selection pressures that made the tame foxes in about the same number of generations. > When the > industrial revolution raised the standard of living ?by improving nutrition, > housing conditions and health care across the board, and not just for the > wealthy, more babies survived than were lost. At the time I remember > thinking that this made a better case for socialism than it did for > capitalism. Of course the industrial revolution was born in the rawest grade of capitalism that ever existed. Keith > When you think about it, though, even some developed urban and nationalist > environments provide immense selection pressures on individuals living in > them. They force generational samples of us to jettison our earlier > primitive programming through natural selection ?in favor of new programming > that suits us better in the modern world. Even individually this is true: > our tribal tendency to abhor those physically or culturally different from > us, for example, must often be circumvented in many modern cities if we wish > to survive there long. At the same time, and almost paradoxically, ?we can > re-adapt or re-route this programming using social technology to find more > people like us in those same urban environments by creating ghettos and > clubs and organizations.?It's kind of like a crash-course in evolutionary > re-programming. > I sometimes forget that evolution does not proceed at a nice, orderly and > stately pace at all times. That if pressures intensify and quicken in a > region then more individuals die. And the more individuals die the more fit > the offspring of those that survive these pressures are for the new > environment. But if they stray out of that environment they may not be at > all suited to the next, even if the "new" environment is similar to an old > one there now unfit ancestors thrived in. I've often thought that if we had > a massive solar flair or EMP pulse that put us off the grid for any > considerable amount of time, those in what we call superciliously call > undeveloped nations would suddenly find themselves some of the fittest on > the planet, thanks to many generations living under harsh selection > pressures that were once again universal. > Natural selection is a bitch. > Darren > > > On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 1:19 PM, Darren Greer > wrote: >> >> Keith wrote: >> "I don't hold out a lot of hope for the intermediate future (before the >> singularity)" >> I'm making the assumption that this lack of hope is due to the fact that >> the evolutionary programing is extremely hard to circumvent even if you're >> aware of it, short of some sort of drastic behavior modification which is >> difficult to achieve in others and almost as difficult ?(more difficult?) to >> achieve in yourself. Look at the limited success of cult deprogramming and >> aversion therapy for gay men- both of which use pretty drastic methods -- >> for good examples. Add to the mix that most people ascribe specious >> justifications for their behavior (I'm thinking of some politicians) that >> actually distort and conceal not only their motivations (which are likely >> murky even to themselves) but the ramifications of that behavior upon the >> environment and the fitness of the species as a whole. >> Mathew Heisman discusses something similar in his "Suicide Note", which >> I've been plowing my way through. I'm not sure I'll get through all 2000 >> pages, but some of what I've read so far is valid. He claims at the >> beginning of the book that it is precisely this lack of awareness, this >> disinclination to look for reasons for our apparently species-wide >> self-destructive behavior in the only workable model we have--evolutionary >> psychology--that could be our downfall. >> Darren >> >> >> >> >> On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 12:53 PM, Keith Henson >> wrote: >>> >>> On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 8:00 AM, spike wrote: >>> >>> snip >>> >>> > We have seen a religion become considered almost as a race, so that >>> > criticism of it has become the practical equivalent to racism. ?How did >>> > that >>> > happen? >>> > >>> > So the temptation is to get one's philosophy redefined as a religion, >>> > even >>> > if it really isn't one. ?I recognize the temptation, but my ethical >>> > intuition tells me this is wrong. >>> >>> Spike, we need to consider why humans have religions at all. ?But >>> first it is a feature of top predators that their numbers are >>> ultimately limited by self predation. ?Lions are a good example, they >>> evolved the pride social organization as a response to lions killing >>> lions. ?Chimps are largely immune to predation and their numbers are >>> limited by group on group war. >>> >>> The line that led to humans escaped predation by the big cats a long >>> time ago so there has been plenty of time for evolution to act. ?Human >>> populations grow till they stress the ability of the ecosystem to >>> support them. ?Then a behavioral switch flips, they organize and and >>> kill "the others." >>> >>> Religion, even if it isn't always easy to see, is based on xenophobic >>> memes that are part of the organizational process leading to wars. >>> >>> Since a lot of populations around the world are under >>> ecosystem/economic/ecological stress, mostly from accumulated >>> population growth, it's no wonder that religious memes have become >>> more of an influential factor. >>> >>> Now the logical thing would be to strongly restrain the birth rate and >>> make ever effort to grow the economy in a way that did not depend on >>> rapid depletion of resources. ?But for reasons involving the >>> conflicting interest of genes and the persons they are in, "war mode" >>> makes people irrational. >>> >>> I think it is possible to get economic growth ahead of population >>> growth and shut off the drift of so many populations into "war mode." >>> As you know, I work on ways to solve the energy/carbon problems, >>> trying to keep my own ego out of the analysis. ?Unfortunately there >>> are very few people trying to solve the problems. >>> >>> I don't hold out a lot of hope for the intermediate future (before the >>> singularity). ?Chances are the world will see a really drastic >>> population reduction in a lot of places over the next few decades. >>> >>> Keith >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> 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 Tue Sep 28 02:45:11 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:45:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Function of religions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <934C04CB118F42B297D8CCDF2EA9D3F3@spike> > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > Keith Henson > ... > population as a whole didn't change in size hardly at all, it > was Malthusian, living right at the limit of the ecosystem, > or rather the current farming technology to support it. > But certain groups in the population, particularly the middle > to upper class reproduced (spread their genes) far more than > the poorest class... The selection was intense... Keith Keith this reminds me of a Pulitzer prize book I read a few years ago that I really liked, Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. He describes growing up in abject squalor, in 1930s and 1940s England. Three of his siblings died in infancy or early childhood of disease, weakened by persistent shortage of food. After reading that story it is easy for me to imagine how a couple centuries of those conditions honed and sharpened a people to a fine edge. spike From msd001 at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 03:57:07 2010 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 23:57:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Function of religions In-Reply-To: <934C04CB118F42B297D8CCDF2EA9D3F3@spike> References: <934C04CB118F42B297D8CCDF2EA9D3F3@spike> Message-ID: On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 10:45 PM, spike wrote: >> -----Original Message----- >> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org >> [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of >> Keith Henson >> ... >> population as a whole didn't change in size hardly at all, it >> was Malthusian, living right at the limit of the ecosystem, >> or rather the current farming technology to support it. >> But certain groups in the population, particularly the middle >> to upper class reproduced (spread their genes) far more than >> the poorest class... ?The selection was intense... Keith > > Keith this reminds me of a Pulitzer prize book I read a few years ago that I > really liked, Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. ?He describes growing up in > abject squalor, in 1930s and 1940s England. ?Three of his siblings died in > infancy or early childhood of disease, weakened by persistent shortage of > food. ?After reading that story it is easy for me to imagine how a couple > centuries of those conditions honed and sharpened a people to a fine edge. > I imagine the Black Plague also provided strong "selection pressure" for resistance to death. (Survive the plague; +2 on saves vs. death) 170 years later the diseases of Europe killed many more Aztecs/Native Americans than cannons ever would: "Smallpox is a classic epidemic disease that was sustainable only by large human populations." [1] "With the exception of man's oldest disease, Malaria, the scourges of mankind have resulted from dense populations living in small compact areas?overcrowded cities with little or no sanitation. Before the arrival of the white man, the Plains Indians as primarily hunter-gatherers were free of communicable diseases. " [2] So it seems xenophobic memes leading to war is not the only way to reduce population. In our modern world it would only take a disgruntled genius DIYbio enthusiast to exert considerable "selection pressure" on humanity's numbers. Perhaps some analogue to a disgruntled genius physics enthusiast who describes how well funded terrorists could produce a nuke, eh? Scary fact is that any one vector is bad enough, but the approach to the singularity compresses these threats so they cause each others' likelihood to increase. At least in the good old days of the cold war you could avoid being nuked by building a bomb shelter in your basement using 14" of books and a heavy table... [3,4] The good news is that we can survive nuclear apocalypse with some planning [5] - so that leaves zombie apocalypse (which I think can also be managed) and hard-takeoff AI (either with or without MNT and grey goo scenario) as existential threats - oh yeah, we have NEO impacts and supervolcano to mitigate too. :) [1] http://www.uic.edu/classes/osci/osci590/3_3%20European%20Disease%20in%20the%20New%20World.htm [2] http://www.thefurtrapper.com/indian_smallpox.htm [3] http://www.survivalring.org/community/membership/civil-defense-now/357/ [4] http://www.radshelters4u.com/index3.htm [5] http://www.ki4u.com/goodnews.htm From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 04:14:52 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 21:14:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Function of religions In-Reply-To: <934C04CB118F42B297D8CCDF2EA9D3F3@spike> References: <934C04CB118F42B297D8CCDF2EA9D3F3@spike> Message-ID: On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 7:45 PM, spike wrote: > > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org >> [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of >> Keith Henson >> ... >> population as a whole didn't change in size hardly at all, it >> was Malthusian, living right at the limit of the ecosystem, >> or rather the current farming technology to support it. >> But certain groups in the population, particularly the middle >> to upper class reproduced (spread their genes) far more than >> the poorest class... ?The selection was intense... Keith > > Keith this reminds me of a Pulitzer prize book I read a few years ago that I > really liked, Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. ?He describes growing up in > abject squalor, in 1930s and 1940s England. ?Three of his siblings died in > infancy or early childhood of disease, weakened by persistent shortage of > food. ?After reading that story it is easy for me to imagine how a couple > centuries of those conditions honed and sharpened a people to a fine edge. Dr. Clark was able to see this pattern in probated wills from about 1260 to 1800, so we are talking a lot of generations, more than the number it took to make tame foxes out of wild ones. It turned out that becoming well off wasn't that hard in medieval England. But it *did* require a set of personality traits that were very different from those of the default human living in a hunter gatherer society. (Clark lists them and you can see how they contributed to obtaining wealth.) After looking up Frank McCourt, one of them was probably resistance to alcohol and being less impulsive. I suspect that northern winters were a huge selection factor before Clark's records started being kept in 1260. If you were a farmer and failed to get enough wood cut and enough hay in for the animals, you *died* and your family with you in a longer than average winter. If you made it through because you were always trying to stuff the barn beyond capacity, your kids repopulated the farms where everyone froze or starved. Keith From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Tue Sep 28 10:42:35 2010 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 03:42:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] U.S. deeply imperiled due to it's massive debt In-Reply-To: References: <76742.44929.qm@web65612.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <65606.72539.qm@web65609.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ---- > From: John Grigg > To: rafal at smigrodzki.org; ExI chat list > Sent: Mon, September 27, 2010 7:00:12 PM > Subject: Re: [ExI] U.S. deeply imperiled due to it's massive debt > Rafal wrote: > ###? You seem to imply that corporations are doing wrong by > influencing elections, yet your own influence in this matter is > benign. No politics is benign, Rafal. Politics is all about violence; hidden behind niceties and ritual though it may be. To deprive a man of his life or to deprive a man of an hour of his time is a distinction of quantity and not of quality. Politics is therefore all about who gets to feed off of the?work of another. That being said,?my sense of fairness is less outraged?if?my?work should benefit all indiscriminantly than a select handful not of my choosing. Likewise, when?my turn comes to?feed, I would rather draw energy from the vast collective, than single out?a hapless victim to sate my hunger. This is the harsh?economics of democracy. > John Wrote: > I am saying corporations have been allowed far to much permission to > influence elections with their financial muscle. Yes. The whole point of their influencing elections and lobbying for legislation is to use the government to either?get pork or shield themselves from competition. How anybody can be complicit in their actions?and call themselves a free market capitalist is beyond me. ? > Rafal wrote: > I would say that peremptorily demanding a voice in other > people's lives (which is what elections amount to) is just immoral, > and by participating in elections you are making yourself as > blameworthy as whoever purchased TARP from Obama and Bush. To speak of morality and politics in the same breath is misguided on several levels. Politics is?based?in?violence and?so whose morals would you judge it by? Don't forget the Taliban think elections are immoral too. ? John wrote: > I would say you sound like an anarcho-libertarian! Anarcho-libertarianism may work well in a?country of saints or lobotomy patients but it hasn't worked out too well in Somalia. Ethiopia is a flat out communist dictatorship and it has a higher standard of living. ? >?Rafal wrote; > ### Whenever the government of the people and by the people ever > threatens to break out, prudent humans pack up and go elsewhere until > the madness blows over. > >>> To quote Winston Churchill, "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried." My mind is open to change and personally, I love novelty. If you have something?else workable?in mind, Rafal, feel free to expound upon it.? > John wrote: > The American Revolution was one to stick around for and support, but > the French Revolution was a good excuse to pack up and leave town... But?if you leave town, you?forfeit your chance to be Napoleon. ;-)? Stuart LaForge "Old men read the lesson in the setting sun. Beat the cymbal and sing in this life, or wail away the hours fearing death. Their choice is their fortune." - I Ching From giulio at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 09:47:24 2010 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 11:47:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Mind uploading via Gmail Message-ID: http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/09/mind-uploading-via-gmail.html You may wish to give your permission too (you never know). Use the comment field or any other _public_ means. From darren.greer3 at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 13:21:02 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 10:21:02 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Function of religions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Keith wrote: "In that case you missed the main point of the article." That is very likely. It was when I first joined this group and I was (and still am) on a pretty steep learning curve. Not just for transhumanism, but for the science in general. But I've developed this nascent love affair with evolutionary psychology. It makes sense to me and explains a lot that prior to my discovery of these ideas remained a kind of mystery, even in the context of the basic principles of evolution as I was taught them in school. Any good books to recommend on the subject? For a newcomer? I've been reading stuff on the Internet but I still prefer a real book in my hands for dedicated reading. I do appreciate the time people take on here to add their ideas and correct obvious errors. I make a lot of them, I know. But I process stuff by writing things down, and even if I'm wrong, it helps to express them and be corrected and asked to reconsider in light of new information than to keep it locked up in my head and take it as gospel. I will revisit the Clark study. Darren On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 12:53 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 8:00 AM, spike wrote: > > snip > > > We have seen a religion become considered almost as a race, so that > > criticism of it has become the practical equivalent to racism. How did > that > > happen? > > > > So the temptation is to get one's philosophy redefined as a religion, > even > > if it really isn't one. I recognize the temptation, but my ethical > > intuition tells me this is wrong. > > Spike, we need to consider why humans have religions at all. But > first it is a feature of top predators that their numbers are > ultimately limited by self predation. Lions are a good example, they > evolved the pride social organization as a response to lions killing > lions. Chimps are largely immune to predation and their numbers are > limited by group on group war. > > The line that led to humans escaped predation by the big cats a long > time ago so there has been plenty of time for evolution to act. Human > populations grow till they stress the ability of the ecosystem to > support them. Then a behavioral switch flips, they organize and and > kill "the others." > > Religion, even if it isn't always easy to see, is based on xenophobic > memes that are part of the organizational process leading to wars. > > Since a lot of populations around the world are under > ecosystem/economic/ecological stress, mostly from accumulated > population growth, it's no wonder that religious memes have become > more of an influential factor. > > Now the logical thing would be to strongly restrain the birth rate and > make ever effort to grow the economy in a way that did not depend on > rapid depletion of resources. But for reasons involving the > conflicting interest of genes and the persons they are in, "war mode" > makes people irrational. > > I think it is possible to get economic growth ahead of population > growth and shut off the drift of so many populations into "war mode." > As you know, I work on ways to solve the energy/carbon problems, > trying to keep my own ego out of the analysis. Unfortunately there > are very few people trying to solve the problems. > > I don't hold out a lot of hope for the intermediate future (before the > singularity). Chances are the world will see a really drastic > population reduction in a lot of places over the next few decades. > > Keith > > _______________________________________________ > 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 atymes at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 15:40:08 2010 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 08:40:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Mind uploading via Gmail In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: "2) AI-based mindware technology able to reconstruct individual mindfiles by analyzing the information in their aggregate Gmail accounts and other available information, with sufficient accuracy for mind uploading via detailed personality reconstruction, is available." There is much reason to believe this is beyond the realm of plausibility. Not as in, "we don't have the AI for it today", but as in, "the information to do this simply isn't there." Does this record your day to day lives? Not really. (If you sincerely disagree, chronicle how you spend each hour of a given day, and then honestly look at your outbox and see how much of that is even mentioned. Deliberately rigging the system, like doing a diary via email for just that one day, doesn't count: this needs to be a representative sample of most of your days.) Does this record your experiences in offline conversations, or most of your pre-email life? Again, no. Certain details might come up; most of it won't. Further, it'll be a subset of what you remember, because you have to have remembered it at some point to have mentioned it in email. (While you may forget something that email will remember, even if you spend the majority of your life with GMail, the amount that you know and it has never seen will remain substantial.) This is the kind of thing a critic of the Extropians can latch onto, to dismiss the entire movement as "obviously woowoo pseudoscience bunk". On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 2:47 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/09/mind-uploading-via-gmail.html > > You may wish to give your permission too (you never know). Use the > comment field or any other _public_ means. > _______________________________________________ > 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 giulio at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 16:04:35 2010 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 18:04:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Mind uploading via Gmail In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I agree that the information isn't there... today. But suppose I keep using Gmail and similar services for 30 years, adding geolocation, video and BCI-extracted emotional responses as new options become available. Suppose I start adding childhood visual and sensory memories via BCI... Suppose all my friends do the same. Don't you think my own Gmail account and, in a lesser measure, the Gmail accounts of my friends, would have a lot of information about me, orders of magnitude more than today? My post will be interpreted by many as a joke, but to me in is (at least half-) serious. 2010/9/28 Adrian Tymes : > "2) AI-based mindware technology able to reconstruct individual mindfiles by > analyzing > the information in their aggregate Gmail accounts and other available > information, with > sufficient accuracy for mind uploading via detailed personality > reconstruction, is available." > > There is much reason to believe this is beyond the realm of plausibility. > Not as in, "we > don't have the AI for it today", but as in, "the information to do this > simply isn't there." > > Does this record your day to day lives?? Not really.? (If you sincerely > disagree, chronicle > how you spend each hour of a given day, and then honestly look at your > outbox and see > how much of that is even mentioned.? Deliberately rigging the system, like > doing a diary via > email for just that one day, doesn't count: this needs to be a > representative sample of most > of your days.) > > Does this record your experiences in offline conversations, or most of your > pre-email life? > Again, no.? Certain details might come up; most of it won't.? Further, it'll > be a subset of > what you remember, because you have to have remembered it at some point to > have > mentioned it in email.? (While you may forget something that email will > remember, even if > you spend the majority of your life with GMail, the amount that you know and > it has never > seen will remain substantial.) > > This is the kind of thing a critic of the Extropians can latch onto, to > dismiss the entire > movement as "obviously woowoo pseudoscience bunk". > > On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 2:47 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: >> >> http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/09/mind-uploading-via-gmail.html >> >> You may wish to give your permission too (you never know). Use the >> comment field or any other _public_ means. >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 atymes at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 16:55:02 2010 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 09:55:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Mind uploading via Gmail In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 1) Why would BCI-extracted information be a part of GMail? Adding such things makes it fundamentally different than an email client - different enough that it would likely have a different name. Thus, saying "GMail" specifically makes this consideration moot. (Now, if you said "GMail, or services extended from GMail including BCI-extracted emotional responses", that starts lending some plausibility. It may seem like a mere semantic difference, but it isn't.) 2) When they start extracting said information via BCI, they'll have already started making an upload of you, whether or not you've given permission. They will likely insist on resolving any permission issues at that time, and therefore, any previous permissions - even ones given by subsequently dead folk - will almost certainly be disregarded as legally impossible to have given for want of context, regardless of the letter of what was said. (Judging based on existing precedent. Even in the Singularity, some things can be predicted.) On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 9:04 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > I agree that the information isn't there... today. > > But suppose I keep using Gmail and similar services for 30 years, > adding geolocation, video and BCI-extracted emotional responses as new > options become available. Suppose I start adding childhood visual and > sensory memories via BCI... > > Suppose all my friends do the same. > > Don't you think my own Gmail account and, in a lesser measure, the > Gmail accounts of my friends, would have a lot of information about > me, orders of magnitude more than today? > > My post will be interpreted by many as a joke, but to me in is (at > least half-) serious. > > 2010/9/28 Adrian Tymes : > > "2) AI-based mindware technology able to reconstruct individual mindfiles > by > > analyzing > > the information in their aggregate Gmail accounts and other available > > information, with > > sufficient accuracy for mind uploading via detailed personality > > reconstruction, is available." > > > > There is much reason to believe this is beyond the realm of plausibility. > > Not as in, "we > > don't have the AI for it today", but as in, "the information to do this > > simply isn't there." > > > > Does this record your day to day lives? Not really. (If you sincerely > > disagree, chronicle > > how you spend each hour of a given day, and then honestly look at your > > outbox and see > > how much of that is even mentioned. Deliberately rigging the system, > like > > doing a diary via > > email for just that one day, doesn't count: this needs to be a > > representative sample of most > > of your days.) > > > > Does this record your experiences in offline conversations, or most of > your > > pre-email life? > > Again, no. Certain details might come up; most of it won't. Further, > it'll > > be a subset of > > what you remember, because you have to have remembered it at some point > to > > have > > mentioned it in email. (While you may forget something that email will > > remember, even if > > you spend the majority of your life with GMail, the amount that you know > and > > it has never > > seen will remain substantial.) > > > > This is the kind of thing a critic of the Extropians can latch onto, to > > dismiss the entire > > movement as "obviously woowoo pseudoscience bunk". > > > > On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 2:47 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > >> > >> http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/09/mind-uploading-via-gmail.html > >> > >> You may wish to give your permission too (you never know). Use the > >> comment field or any other _public_ means. > >> _______________________________________________ > >> 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 > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 17:14:08 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 10:14:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Function of religions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2010/9/28 Darren Greer : > Keith wrote: > "In that case you missed the main point of the article." > That is very likely. It was when I first joined this group and I was (and > still am) on a pretty steep learning curve. Not just for transhumanism, but > for the science in general. But I've developed this nascent love affair with > evolutionary psychology. It makes sense to me and explains a lot that prior > to my discovery of these ideas remained a kind of mystery, even in the > context of the basic principles of evolution as I was taught them in school. > Any good books to recommend on the subject? For a newcomer? I've been > reading stuff on the Internet but I still prefer a real book in my hands for > dedicated reading. It's old but still good place to start on EP, Robert Wright's Moral Animal. Library may have it, or you can get a used copy for a few dollars. All the books of Matt Ridley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Ridley are good. I particularly like Origins of Virtue. David Buss' work is respected and readable Buss, D.M., "The Evolution Of Desire: Strategies Of Human Mating". Basic Books, 1995. For the academic, Barkow, J., Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J., (Eds.) (1992). The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. New York: Oxford University Press. The part by these three might be on the internet. It was some years ago. Of course, "The Selfish Gene" by Dawkins is foundational to EP. Concepts like inclusive fitness are essential to understanding how evolution is now understood to work. If you get through those, I have made a few contributions, Sex, drugs and cults from 2002 and Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War (2006). > I do appreciate the time people take on here to add their ideas and correct > obvious errors. I make a lot of them, I know. But I process stuff by writing > things down, and even if I'm wrong, it helps to express them and be > corrected and asked to reconsider in light of new information than to keep > it locked up in my head and take it as gospel. > I will revisit the Clark study. Clark has added several papers to his research page recently. They are worth reading. The EP approach is that human psychological traits were set in the EEA, defined as pre agriculture. Clark add to that in that there was dire selection, about as intense as what turned wild foxes into tame ones, in the last few hundred years. I also think there was heavy selection for traits that made people into never satisfied farmers in northern climates. Keith > Darren > > On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 12:53 PM, Keith Henson > wrote: >> >> On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 8:00 AM, spike wrote: >> >> snip >> >> > We have seen a religion become considered almost as a race, so that >> > criticism of it has become the practical equivalent to racism. ?How did >> > that >> > happen? >> > >> > So the temptation is to get one's philosophy redefined as a religion, >> > even >> > if it really isn't one. ?I recognize the temptation, but my ethical >> > intuition tells me this is wrong. >> >> Spike, we need to consider why humans have religions at all. ?But >> first it is a feature of top predators that their numbers are >> ultimately limited by self predation. ?Lions are a good example, they >> evolved the pride social organization as a response to lions killing >> lions. ?Chimps are largely immune to predation and their numbers are >> limited by group on group war. >> >> The line that led to humans escaped predation by the big cats a long >> time ago so there has been plenty of time for evolution to act. ?Human >> populations grow till they stress the ability of the ecosystem to >> support them. ?Then a behavioral switch flips, they organize and and >> kill "the others." >> >> Religion, even if it isn't always easy to see, is based on xenophobic >> memes that are part of the organizational process leading to wars. >> >> Since a lot of populations around the world are under >> ecosystem/economic/ecological stress, mostly from accumulated >> population growth, it's no wonder that religious memes have become >> more of an influential factor. >> >> Now the logical thing would be to strongly restrain the birth rate and >> make ever effort to grow the economy in a way that did not depend on >> rapid depletion of resources. ?But for reasons involving the >> conflicting interest of genes and the persons they are in, "war mode" >> makes people irrational. >> >> I think it is possible to get economic growth ahead of population >> growth and shut off the drift of so many populations into "war mode." >> As you know, I work on ways to solve the energy/carbon problems, >> trying to keep my own ego out of the analysis. ?Unfortunately there >> are very few people trying to solve the problems. >> >> I don't hold out a lot of hope for the intermediate future (before the >> singularity). ?Chances are the world will see a really drastic >> population reduction in a lot of places over the next few decades. >> >> Keith >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 giulio at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 17:18:35 2010 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:18:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Mind uploading via Gmail In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: As you say, "GMail, or services extended from GMail including BCI-extracted emotional responses" is more precise. I am thinking about overall feasibility in principle, not of a detailed engineering plan. Gmail is just an example, and of course we can use whatever works. G. 2010/9/28 Adrian Tymes : > 1) Why would BCI-extracted information be a part of GMail?? Adding such > things makes it > fundamentally different than an email client - different enough that it > would likely have a > different name.? Thus, saying "GMail" specifically makes this consideration > moot.? (Now, if > you said "GMail, or services extended from GMail including BCI-extracted > emotional > responses", that starts lending some plausibility.? It may seem like a mere > semantic > difference, but it isn't.) > > 2) When they start extracting said information via BCI, they'll have already > started making > an upload of you, whether or not you've given permission.? They will likely > insist on > resolving any permission issues at that time, and therefore, any previous > permissions - > even ones given by subsequently dead folk - will almost certainly be > disregarded as legally > impossible to have given for want of context, regardless of the letter of > what was said. > (Judging based on existing precedent.? Even in the Singularity, some things > can be > predicted.) > > On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 9:04 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: >> >> I agree that the information isn't there... today. >> >> But suppose I keep using Gmail and similar services for 30 years, >> adding geolocation, video and BCI-extracted emotional responses as new >> options become available. Suppose I start adding childhood visual and >> sensory memories via BCI... >> >> Suppose all my friends do the same. >> >> Don't you think my own Gmail account and, in a lesser measure, the >> Gmail accounts of my friends, would have a lot of information about >> me, orders of magnitude more than today? >> >> My post will be interpreted by many as a joke, but to me in is (at >> least half-) serious. >> >> 2010/9/28 Adrian Tymes : >> > "2) AI-based mindware technology able to reconstruct individual >> > mindfiles by >> > analyzing >> > the information in their aggregate Gmail accounts and other available >> > information, with >> > sufficient accuracy for mind uploading via detailed personality >> > reconstruction, is available." >> > >> > There is much reason to believe this is beyond the realm of >> > plausibility. >> > Not as in, "we >> > don't have the AI for it today", but as in, "the information to do this >> > simply isn't there." >> > >> > Does this record your day to day lives?? Not really.? (If you sincerely >> > disagree, chronicle >> > how you spend each hour of a given day, and then honestly look at your >> > outbox and see >> > how much of that is even mentioned.? Deliberately rigging the system, >> > like >> > doing a diary via >> > email for just that one day, doesn't count: this needs to be a >> > representative sample of most >> > of your days.) >> > >> > Does this record your experiences in offline conversations, or most of >> > your >> > pre-email life? >> > Again, no.? Certain details might come up; most of it won't.? Further, >> > it'll >> > be a subset of >> > what you remember, because you have to have remembered it at some point >> > to >> > have >> > mentioned it in email.? (While you may forget something that email will >> > remember, even if >> > you spend the majority of your life with GMail, the amount that you know >> > and >> > it has never >> > seen will remain substantial.) >> > >> > This is the kind of thing a critic of the Extropians can latch onto, to >> > dismiss the entire >> > movement as "obviously woowoo pseudoscience bunk". >> > >> > On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 2:47 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: >> >> >> >> http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/09/mind-uploading-via-gmail.html >> >> >> >> You may wish to give your permission too (you never know). Use the >> >> comment field or any other _public_ means. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> >> 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 >> > >> > >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 darren.greer3 at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 19:26:14 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 16:26:14 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion that believers, study shows Message-ID: Thought this was pretty cool. There's also a short quiz of ten questions testing general religious knowledge on the site. http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/28/dont-know-much-about-religion-youre-not-alone-study-finds/?hpt=C1 Darren -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Sep 28 19:45:53 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 12:45:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion thatbelievers, study shows In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2560DE3C9A6049DAB4B68F48D71E50D7@spike> Thought this was pretty cool. There's also a short quiz of ten questions testing general religious knowledge on the site. http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/28/dont-know-much-about-religion-youre -not-alone-study-finds/?hpt=C1 Darren I was 10 for 10, and I am a flaming atheist. This article supports what I have observed many times and many places. The more one knows about religion, the less one believes it. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From darren.greer3 at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 20:05:07 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 17:05:07 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion thatbelievers, study shows In-Reply-To: <2560DE3C9A6049DAB4B68F48D71E50D7@spike> References: <2560DE3C9A6049DAB4B68F48D71E50D7@spike> Message-ID: Spike wrote: "I was 10 for 10, and I am a flaming atheist. This article supports what I have observed many times and many places. The more one knows about religion, the less one believes it." 10 for 10 here too. More of an agnostic, but findings still valid. The friend who sent this to me said the same thing as you, Spike. In almost identical words. Great minds . . . are atheistic. Darren 2010/9/28 spike > > Thought this was pretty cool. There's also a short quiz of ten questions > testing general religious knowledge on the site. > > > http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/28/dont-know-much-about-religion-youre-not-alone-study-finds/?hpt=C1 > > Darren > > > > > I was 10 for 10, and I am a flaming atheist. This article supports what I > have observed many times and many places. The more one knows about > religion, the less one believes it. > > spike > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 spike66 at att.net Tue Sep 28 20:31:08 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:31:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion thatbelievers, study shows In-Reply-To: References: <2560DE3C9A6049DAB4B68F48D71E50D7@spike> Message-ID: <14C6E8E6A481481B9D41B3A274AD13B1@spike> Spike wrote: >>"I was 10 for 10, and I am a flaming atheist... >10 for 10 here too. More of an agnostic, but findings still valid. The friend who sent this to me said the same thing as you, Spike. In almost identical words. Great minds . . . are atheistic. Darren You are too kind sir. Nowthen, a question for you, since you are up to speed on religion and for the rest of you religion hipsters: *What is the best refutation of religion you have ever seen, heard or read? It can be a book or anything you want, a lecture by Dawkins, even the ExI-chat archives. Before I present my answer, I will offer the second best, and one that Max More might suggest: Bertrand Russell's Why I am Not a Christian. But I have in mind one that is better still than that devastating volume, which I will share once I see some of your answers. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Sep 28 20:35:14 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:35:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion than believers, study shows In-Reply-To: <2560DE3C9A6049DAB4B68F48D71E50D7@spike> References: <2560DE3C9A6049DAB4B68F48D71E50D7@spike> Message-ID: <4CA25182.40503@satx.rr.com> On 9/28/2010 2:45 PM, spike wrote: > I was 10 for 10 and these were shockingly easy questions, so the actual survey numbers are really astonishing--given the venom with which many "people of faith" respond to anyone challenging their strange ideas, I mean "ideas". Of course, believers might argue that these particular doctrinal, geographic and historical questions are quite beside the point, because what's important is grateful submission to a Higher Power Who... something or other. Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Sep 28 20:55:42 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:55:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion than believers, study shows In-Reply-To: <14C6E8E6A481481B9D41B3A274AD13B1@spike> References: <2560DE3C9A6049DAB4B68F48D71E50D7@spike> <14C6E8E6A481481B9D41B3A274AD13B1@spike> Message-ID: <4CA2564E.9010004@satx.rr.com> On 9/28/2010 3:31 PM, spike wrote: > *What is the best refutation of religion you have ever seen, heard or > read? ... > But I have in mind one that is better still than that devastating > volume, which I will share once I see some of your answers. The Bible does a pretty good job, although that's just one religious tradition. Damien Broderick [I keep changing the subject line because it didn't make any sense before] From nymphomation at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 20:55:04 2010 From: nymphomation at gmail.com (*Nym*) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 21:55:04 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion thatbelievers, study shows In-Reply-To: <14C6E8E6A481481B9D41B3A274AD13B1@spike> References: <2560DE3C9A6049DAB4B68F48D71E50D7@spike> <14C6E8E6A481481B9D41B3A274AD13B1@spike> Message-ID: 2010/9/28 spike : > Spike wrote: >>>"I was 10 for 10, and I am a flaming atheist... >>10 for 10 here too. More of an agnostic, but findings still valid. The >> friend who sent this to me said the same thing as you, Spike. In almost >> identical words. Great minds . . . are atheistic.?Darren > > You are too kind sir.? Nowthen, a question for you, since you are?up to > speed on religion and for the rest of you?religion hipsters: > > *What is the best refutation of religion you have ever seen, heard or read? "You've got no game" AKA "you have no evidence to back any of this up" =:o) Heavy splashings, Thee Nymphomation 'If you cannot afford an executioner, a duty executioner will be appointed to you free of charge by the court' From darren.greer3 at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 22:44:13 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:44:13 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion thatbelievers, study shows In-Reply-To: <14C6E8E6A481481B9D41B3A274AD13B1@spike> References: <2560DE3C9A6049DAB4B68F48D71E50D7@spike> <14C6E8E6A481481B9D41B3A274AD13B1@spike> Message-ID: Spike wrote: *What is the best refutation of religion you have ever seen, heard or read? Mine is the short, ironic, acerbic and hilariously earth-scorching refutation of creationism where the word God is mentioned only once. The essay by Mark Twain entitled "Was The World Made For Man?" http://smcgrat.blogspot.com/2007/12/mark-twains-was-world-made-for-man.html Darren 2010/9/28 spike > Spike wrote: > > >>"I was 10 for 10, and I am a flaming atheist... > > >10 for 10 here too. More of an agnostic, but findings still valid. The > friend who sent this to me said the same thing as you, Spike. In almost > identical words. Great minds . . . are atheistic. Darren > > > You are too kind sir. Nowthen, a question for you, since you are up to > speed on religion and for the rest of you religion hipsters: > > > *What is the best refutation of religion you have ever seen, heard or read? > > > It can be a book or anything you want, a lecture by Dawkins, even the > ExI-chat archives. Before I present my answer, I will offer the second > best, and one that Max More might suggest: Bertrand Russell's Why I am Not a > Christian. > > But I have in mind one that is better still than that devastating volume, > which I will share once I see some of your answers. > > spike > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 mbb386 at main.nc.us Wed Sep 29 00:03:47 2010 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 20:03:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion thatbelievers, study shows In-Reply-To: References: <2560DE3C9A6049DAB4B68F48D71E50D7@spike> <14C6E8E6A481481B9D41B3A274AD13B1@spike> Message-ID: > > http://smcgrat.blogspot.com/2007/12/mark-twains-was-world-made-for-man.html > Thanks for this, it's very fine! I laughed out loud reading and have saved it to read again. :) Regards, MB From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed Sep 29 00:33:59 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 17:33:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Mind uploading via Gmail In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Far as I know, the idea of reconstruction from writings originated with Hans Moravec as a rejection of cryonics. A "we will be reanimated anyway" kind of argument. I threw cold water on the idea at the time on the basis of it being a colossal expenditure of computer resources to iterate the process till you got a simulated Hans to write a duplicate of "Mind Children." If you do have computer resources to waste, the idea is barely plausible. Charles Stross used it as a plot element in Accelerando set in an era where much of the solar system had been converted to computronium. (Great book, should be required reading for anyone on this list. Load it from here http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/accelerando.charles_stross/plain.txt and search for FAQ or resimulated. Of course, you could also animate fictional characters, but for some reason this was considered illegal (copyright?). I think that given a person's genome, a large sample of their writing and (even for this crowd) a mind boggling amount of computation, really advanced technology could generate an entity that thought it was the original person and would have pretty much the same personality and much of the original's memory. It's possible--if I become "weakly godlike"--I might try it with some of the authors I admire but was unable to talk into cryonics. But it's not anything close to as good as cryonics or (better) just living till people quit dying. Keith On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 10:18 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > As you say, "GMail, or services extended from GMail including > BCI-extracted emotional responses" is more precise. I am thinking > about overall feasibility in principle, not of a detailed engineering > plan. Gmail is just an example, and of course we can use whatever > works. > > G. > > 2010/9/28 Adrian Tymes : >> 1) Why would BCI-extracted information be a part of GMail?? Adding such >> things makes it >> fundamentally different than an email client - different enough that it >> would likely have a >> different name.? Thus, saying "GMail" specifically makes this consideration >> moot.? (Now, if >> you said "GMail, or services extended from GMail including BCI-extracted >> emotional >> responses", that starts lending some plausibility.? It may seem like a mere >> semantic >> difference, but it isn't.) >> >> 2) When they start extracting said information via BCI, they'll have already >> started making >> an upload of you, whether or not you've given permission.? They will likely >> insist on >> resolving any permission issues at that time, and therefore, any previous >> permissions - >> even ones given by subsequently dead folk - will almost certainly be >> disregarded as legally >> impossible to have given for want of context, regardless of the letter of >> what was said. >> (Judging based on existing precedent.? Even in the Singularity, some things >> can be >> predicted.) >> >> On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 9:04 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: >>> >>> I agree that the information isn't there... today. >>> >>> But suppose I keep using Gmail and similar services for 30 years, >>> adding geolocation, video and BCI-extracted emotional responses as new >>> options become available. Suppose I start adding childhood visual and >>> sensory memories via BCI... >>> >>> Suppose all my friends do the same. >>> >>> Don't you think my own Gmail account and, in a lesser measure, the >>> Gmail accounts of my friends, would have a lot of information about >>> me, orders of magnitude more than today? >>> >>> My post will be interpreted by many as a joke, but to me in is (at >>> least half-) serious. >>> >>> 2010/9/28 Adrian Tymes : >>> > "2) AI-based mindware technology able to reconstruct individual >>> > mindfiles by >>> > analyzing >>> > the information in their aggregate Gmail accounts and other available >>> > information, with >>> > sufficient accuracy for mind uploading via detailed personality >>> > reconstruction, is available." >>> > >>> > There is much reason to believe this is beyond the realm of >>> > plausibility. >>> > Not as in, "we >>> > don't have the AI for it today", but as in, "the information to do this >>> > simply isn't there." >>> > >>> > Does this record your day to day lives?? Not really.? (If you sincerely >>> > disagree, chronicle >>> > how you spend each hour of a given day, and then honestly look at your >>> > outbox and see >>> > how much of that is even mentioned.? Deliberately rigging the system, >>> > like >>> > doing a diary via >>> > email for just that one day, doesn't count: this needs to be a >>> > representative sample of most >>> > of your days.) >>> > >>> > Does this record your experiences in offline conversations, or most of >>> > your >>> > pre-email life? >>> > Again, no.? Certain details might come up; most of it won't.? Further, >>> > it'll >>> > be a subset of >>> > what you remember, because you have to have remembered it at some point >>> > to >>> > have >>> > mentioned it in email.? (While you may forget something that email will >>> > remember, even if >>> > you spend the majority of your life with GMail, the amount that you know >>> > and >>> > it has never >>> > seen will remain substantial.) >>> > >>> > This is the kind of thing a critic of the Extropians can latch onto, to >>> > dismiss the entire >>> > movement as "obviously woowoo pseudoscience bunk". >>> > >>> > On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 2:47 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: >>> >> >>> >> http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/09/mind-uploading-via-gmail.html >>> >> >>> >> You may wish to give your permission too (you never know). Use the >>> >> comment field or any other _public_ means. >>> >> _______________________________________________ >>> >> 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 >>> > >>> > >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> 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 >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From max at maxmore.com Wed Sep 29 00:35:51 2010 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:35:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion thatbelievers, study shows Message-ID: <201009290102.o8T12eML000527@andromeda.ziaspace.com> >*What is the best refutation of religion you have ever seen, heard or read? > >It can be a book or anything you want, a lecture by Dawkins, even >the ExI-chat archives. Before I present my answer, I will offer the >second best, and one that Max More might suggest: Bertrand Russell's >Why I am Not a Christian. No, I wouldn't suggest that one. I really don't remember it well from 30 years ago, but think it *was* excellent -- but still not the *one* I would choose. For a philosophical book that would be too difficult for the general public, I would pick J.L. Mackie's The Miracle of Theism. I haven't read any of the recent popular books by Hitchens, Dawkins, etc. so I can't choose from among them. I still have a soft spot for the philosophical and moral critique in George Smith's Atheism: The Case Against God. Max ------------------------------------- Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, The Transhumanist Reader The Proactionary Project Vice President, Humanity+ Extropy Institute Founder www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com ------------------------------------- From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Sep 29 02:12:25 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 21:12:25 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion than believers, study shows In-Reply-To: <4CA2564E.9010004@satx.rr.com> References: <2560DE3C9A6049DAB4B68F48D71E50D7@spike> <14C6E8E6A481481B9D41B3A274AD13B1@spike> <4CA2564E.9010004@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4CA2A089.1050509@satx.rr.com> > On 9/28/2010 3:31 PM, spike wrote: >> *What is the best refutation of religion you have ever seen, heard or >> read? http://amultiverse.com/2010/07/26/infinite-pest/ From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Sep 29 02:45:24 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 21:45:24 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Mind uploading via Gmail In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4CA2A844.4030002@satx.rr.com> This approach has been explored in depth at: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed Sep 29 02:47:59 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:47:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion thatbelievers, study shows In-Reply-To: <14C6E8E6A481481B9D41B3A274AD13B1@spike> References: <2560DE3C9A6049DAB4B68F48D71E50D7@spike> <14C6E8E6A481481B9D41B3A274AD13B1@spike> Message-ID: 2010/9/28 spike : > Spike wrote: snip > *What is the best refutation of religion you have ever seen, heard or read? I don't know how one would refute religion. It's a near universal feature of human cultures. Rather than refute something that is a widespread feature of humans, I would think it more important to understand how the psychological mechanisms that result in religions (i.e., religious memes) evolved. At some point in the past, having these mechanisms must have improved the survival of genes for the mechanisms. I hope the logic here is not beyond the average person on this list. Keith From lists1 at evil-genius.com Wed Sep 29 02:06:38 2010 From: lists1 at evil-genius.com (lists1 at evil-genius.com) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:06:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Predation and human evolution (long) Message-ID: <4CA29F2E.8080307@evil-genius.com> Not sure why this didn't make it through last time...if it's being moderated, please let me know why. On 9/27/10 11:46 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > Lions are a good example, they > evolved the pride social organization as a response to lions killing > lions. This may not actually be true. Lions may well have evolved their social organization as a result of competition with large packs of spotted hyenas, which (contrary to stereotypes) are accomplished predators that kill most of their own prey (far more than lions, who steal much of their food from hyenas), and who will absolutely dominate lions if they have a numerical advantage. In fact, it is thought that spotted hyenas are the reason male lions exist: what is the evolutionary advantage to huge, hungry males that do nothing but lie around, make the females hunt for them, and kill cubs when they take over a pride? (Warning: brutal reality.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZRw0IYdf3g Answer: because male lions (500# or more) can dominate almost any number of spotted hyenas (100#-160#), whereas female lions (250#) will absolutely be dominated if there are enough hyenas. Here's what happens when the males aren't around: the hyenas take everything. (Nothing nasty in this one.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zjPWpdyC74 Basically, male lions exist because of spotted hyenas. > The line that led to humans escaped predation by the big cats a long > time ago so there has been plenty of time for evolution to act. Recent research suggest this is not at all the case. We have spent much of our history being predated by big cats...and most commonly, hyenas. In fact, many sites that were previously interpreted as human-on-human violence are, with new evidence, being shown as victims of predation. Here's Homo Erectus being eaten regularly by "The Skull-Crushing Hyenas of Dragon Bone Hill" (this is a great read, btw): http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2009/06/the_skull-crushing_hyenas_of_d.php From the article: "It might be expected that such an ancient "crime scene" would be rare, but new research has revealed that many important hominin fossils bear tell-tale signs of predation. The group of Australopithecus afarensis known as the "First Family", for instance, may represent a massacre at the hands of carnivores, and the "Taung Child" specimen of Australopithecus africanus was scored by the talons of a large bird of prey. Even the fossils of the recently-described early hominin Orrorin bear bite marks; the rest of the skeleton might have proven elusive because a predator destroyed the rest." This back-and-forth relationship continued well into the Late Pleistocene, the time of Homo sapiens. From: "Comparative ecology and taphonomy of spotted hyenas, humans, and wolves in Pleistocene Italy" http://www.u.arizona.edu/~mstiner/pdf/Stiner2004a.pdf "The phenomenon of alternating shelter occupations by humans and non-human predators began at least 200- 250 KYA in western Asia and Europe (e.g., BRUGAL & JAUBERT, 1991 ; GAMBLE, 1986 ; STINER, 1991b, 1994 ; STRAUS, 1982), coinciding with greater cave use by hominids overall. As noted by GAMBLE (1986), alternating use of caves by hominids, spotted hyenas, bears, and wolves was particularly common in the Mediterranean Basin, with many examples from Italy (e.g., BONFIGLIO et al., 2000, 2001 ; GIACOBINI, 1990- 91 ; PITTE & TOZZI, 1971 ; STINER, 1991b, 1994 ; WHITE & TOTH, 1991), France (e.g., BRUGAL & JAUBERT, 1991 ; VILLA & BARTRAM, 1996), Germany (e.g., GAMBLE, 1999), and western Asia (SPETH & TCHERNOV, 1998 ; and on recent hyena dens, see HORWITZ, 1998 ; HORWITZ & SMITH, 1988). In some cases, the spatial associations of artifacts and carnivore-collected materials resulted from the slope wash into natural traps (VILLA & SORESSI, 2000), but other cases clearly resulted from primary disposal on- site of materials by different predators at different times. Where hominid components are thin and ephemeral, carnivore components often are thick and easily recognized, and vice versa." Alternating cave use by humans and hyenas, wolves, and bears? Why would humans give up a perfectly good cave unless they were under severe threat of predation? Answer: they were indeed under severe threat. Note that cave bears were present in Europe until perhaps 20,000 years ago, and spotted hyenas did not disappear from Europe and Asia until perhaps 11,000-14,000 years ago. The argument that humans were historically more subject to predation pressure than intraspecific competition is bolstered by the fact that archaeological evidence of warfare is basically absent until the evidence of agriculture is also apparent -- at which point it becomes plentiful: R. Brian Ferguson, "The Birth of War" (Natural History, July/August 2003) http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~socant/Birth%20of%20War.pdf In conclusion: you may be correct about the role of religion in intraspecific competition, but this role has only come about with the advent of agriculture (which is only a few thousand years old for most cultures), and would therefore appear to be more due to memetic evolution within existing substrate than genetic evolutionary pressure. From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Wed Sep 29 03:34:00 2010 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 20:34:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion thatbelievers, study shows In-Reply-To: References: <2560DE3C9A6049DAB4B68F48D71E50D7@spike> <14C6E8E6A481481B9D41B3A274AD13B1@spike> Message-ID: <632806.29517.qm@web65606.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ---- > From: Keith Henson > To: ExI chat list > Sent: Tue, September 28, 2010 7:47:59 PM > Subject: Re: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion >thatbelievers, study shows > > 2010/9/28 spike : > > Spike wrote: > > *What is the best refutation of religion you have ever seen, heard or read? Here is an oldie but a goodie credited to Epicurus the Greek Philosopher circa 250 BCE: 1. if God is unable to prevent evil, he is not omnipotent 2. if God is not willing to prevent evil, he is not good 3. if God is willing and able to prevent evil, then why is there evil? > Keith wrote: ? > I don't know how one would refute religion.? It's a near universal > feature of human cultures. Yup. I tend to agree with the antropologists that say it is the totem pole by which you know your tribe. > Rather than refute something that is a widespread feature of humans, I > would think it more important to understand how the psychological > mechanisms that result in religions (i.e., religious memes) evolved. > > At some point in the past, having these mechanisms must have improved > the survival of genes for the mechanisms. > > I hope the logic here is not beyond the average person on this list. Oddly enough morality and religion may both be evolved?psychological mechanisms but there is evidence that they evolved separately for separate purposes. Here are evopsych papers by Hauser at Harvard.?He?gave a test consisting of moral dilemmas to?1500 people?of different cultures and religions?from around the world?in their native languages and his results were quite interesting.?The moral sense seems to be highly correlated?in all the subjects tested.?That is that 95% of respondants gave identical answers to the question regardless of culture, religion, or lack theerof??The moral sense seems to be a?low level brain function?in that the respondants' answers were not *reasoned*, they were *intuited* and almost identically by all. When he would ask the subjects why they?thought something was wrong or right, they would often say they didn't know.?Moreover the moral sense?seems completely uncorrelated with religion.?? http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/publications/recent/HauserSingerMoralRelig05.pdf http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/publications/recent/Hauser_CovertMoralGram_SciSp.pdf? http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/publications/recent/HauserNurtureNotNature.pdf http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/publications/recent/EvolReligion.pdf http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/publications/recent/CushmanMoralPrinciplesPsySci.pdf Stuart LaForge "Old men read the lesson in the setting sun. Beat the cymbal and sing in this life, or wail away the hours fearing death. Their choice is their fortune." - I Ching From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Wed Sep 29 04:36:30 2010 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 22:36:30 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Function of religions In-Reply-To: References: <4CA0C677.2080102@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <4CA2C24E.7090405@canonizer.com> On 9/27/2010 11:53 AM, Darren Greer wrote: > Brent wrote: > > > "What, concisely, are all of you experts saying, and what do you agree > on? And how much consensus, is there really, for such? If we can > come up with that, rigorously and definitively, then I think there is > hope for the world." > > It would be pretty hard to come up with acknowledged experts on moral > consensus, since there actually is no moral consensus. This is one of > the realities of modern life that religionists lament publicly about > the most often. They claim they take their moral guidance from > religious texts as "God's Law" because the rest of the world is > falling apart because of the lack of moral agreement..... > > You're not familiar with what we're doing with the expert consensus survey system being developed at canonizer.com are you. The system is being designed to do just that, rigorously survey for moral expert and scientific consensus in a completely unbiased way. We let everyone determine who they want the experts to be. Anyone can select (or request, soon configure their own) a 'canonizer' algorithm that selects the experts any way they want to. The only problem is getting over the chicken and egg problem, so more experts start participating, making things more comprehensive. We're first focusing on one field as a proof of concept, which is probably one of the most controversial fields of science out there: The theoretical field of the subjective mind. We're calling this the consciousness survey project (see: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/105 ) leading experts like Lehar, Hameroff, Chalmers and many others are now participating. (see: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/81 ) Just like you're assuming there is no moral consensus, most people think there is no scientific consensus in this field either. But this consensus building system is now building enough comprehensive survey / consensus data from enough experts such that it is getting ever more difficult to doubt how much scientific consensus there is surrounding what the experts just recently unanimously decided to call "Representational Qualia Theory" (see: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/6 ). More than half of all experts are in this qualophile camp. No other theory has any supporters, in comparison, than one or two individuals. It appears the only remaining controversy is just what qualia are. (The leading general sub camp theories being Chalmers' most popular "Functional Property Dualism" camp, and if you change from the popular canonizer algorithm to the "Mind Exert" algorithm, the "Material Property Dualism" takes over the lead with the most scientific consensus.) In my opinion, the expert consensus camp is far better than the popular consensus camp, which I didn't expect at all when we started this project. Nor did we have any idea there was this much consensus for any one theory. There are lots of topics on moral issues already, and it's only a matter of time before we can definitively show everyone what the expert consensus agrees is morally right, or just how much diversity of opinion there still is on a good many critical things.... I'm in the camp that believes, once we achieve this, rational people will finally be able to take away all the immoral power all the bastard selfish hierarchical leaders of today's religions are destroying us with. Our morality will finally get out of the primitive dark ages, and start accelerating upward as fast as our technology. >>>> Call me pessimistic. I'm used to it. You immoral bastard pessimist, I bet the real experts agree, for good reasons, there is always room for lots of hope if we'd just start rigorously measuring for such. ;) Upward, Brent Allsop From spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 29 04:20:03 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 21:20:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religionthatbelievers, study shows In-Reply-To: <632806.29517.qm@web65606.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <2560DE3C9A6049DAB4B68F48D71E50D7@spike><14C6E8E6A481481B9D41B3A274AD13B1@spike> <632806.29517.qm@web65606.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <65FD3A0976D4485F837E41F74E85730E@spike> > > > Spike wrote: > > > *What is the best refutation of religion you have ever > seen, heard or read? > > Here is an oldie but a goodie credited to Epicurus the Greek > Philosopher circa 250 BCE: > > 1. if God is unable to prevent evil, he is not omnipotent 2. > if God is not willing to prevent evil, he is not good 3. if > God is willing and able to prevent evil, then why is there evil? Avantguardian Excellent responses all, thanks. The most profound refutation of religion I ever saw was a book that is not even about religion at all, but is a book I would suggest is the cornerstone of so much of the philosophy we discuss in this forum: Douglas Hofstadter's Godel Escher Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid. Reasoning: Hofstader goes into the mechanics of philosophy and how it is that Godel showed that every conceivable logic system has it singularity, where paradox is unavoidable. I read that book cover to cover twice, the first time in October 1983 and the second time in August 1984. I realized that all religions have the self referencing paradox feature, so that the system cannot be verified from outside the system. Religions are analogous in that sense to the following comment: This sentence is true. spike From ablainey at aol.com Wed Sep 29 05:01:02 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 01:01:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] #Pound[was Lions etc] In-Reply-To: <4CA29F2E.8080307@evil-genius.com> References: <4CA29F2E.8080307@evil-genius.com> Message-ID: <8CD2DAA72E4278F-1E10-7DA8@webmail-m045.sysops.aol.com> What is it with people using # (Hash) and saying pound? There is a perfectly good ? (pound) sign on the keyboard. ? being the British Pound sterling, or one pound of sterling silver as it used to be. The ? symbol is just a stylised Lb (Pound). I have a key dedicated to a 'wavy window' symbol but can't find a spiky leaf key anywhere. So surely techno hippies would be very happy to have a (Hash) symbol?! I can only conclude this is part of the newspeak and a NWO effort to make people forget our currency was once something more than worthless fiat paper. Having historically been backed by precious metal. ;o) A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ablainey at aol.com Wed Sep 29 05:08:29 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 01:08:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mind uploading via Gmail In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8CD2DAB7D372E31-1E10-7F1D@webmail-m045.sysops.aol.com> Again another recent TV plot. Namely 'Caprica' the gallactica spin off. I have noticed that the time for such ideas to hit the mainstream is getting shorter. Perhaps a good indicator of technical progression toward singularity in action, the steepening elbow at least. Greater and faster world wide comms get ideas out there much quicker, thus the researchers (like the scif fi writers) are reacting faster to theory and making it reality. I think that given a person's genome, a large sample of their writing and (even for this crowd) a mind boggling amount of computation, really advanced technology could generate an entity that thought it was the original person and would have pretty much the same personality and much of the original's memory. It's possible--if I become "weakly godlike"--I might try it with some of the authors I admire but was unable to talk into cryonics. -----Original Message----- From: Keith Henson To: ExI chat list Sent: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 1:33 Subject: Re: [ExI] Mind uploading via Gmail Far as I know, the idea of reconstruction from writings originated with Hans Moravec as a rejection of cryonics. A "we will be reanimated anyway" kind of argument. I threw cold water on the idea at the time on the basis of it being a colossal expenditure of computer resources to iterate the process till you got a simulated Hans to write a duplicate of "Mind Children." If you do have computer resources to waste, the idea is barely plausible. Charles Stross used it as a plot element in Accelerando set in an era where much of the solar system had been converted to computronium. (Great book, should be required reading for anyone on this list. Load it from here http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/accelerando.charles_stross/plain.txt and search for FAQ or resimulated. Of course, you could also animate fictional characters, but for some reason this was considered illegal (copyright?). I think that given a person's genome, a large sample of their writing and (even for this crowd) a mind boggling amount of computation, really advanced technology could generate an entity that thought it was the original person and would have pretty much the same personality and much of the original's memory. It's possible--if I become "weakly godlike"--I might try it with some of the authors I admire but was unable to talk into cryonics. But it's not anything close to as good as cryonics or (better) just living till people quit dying. Keith On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 10:18 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > As you say, "GMail, or services extended from GMail including > BCI-extracted emotional responses" is more precise. I am thinking > about overall feasibility in principle, not of a detailed engineering > plan. Gmail is just an example, and of course we can use whatever > works. > > G. > > 2010/9/28 Adrian Tymes : >> 1) Why would BCI-extracted information be a part of GMail? Adding such >> things makes it >> fundamentally different than an email client - different enough that it >> would likely have a >> different name. Thus, saying "GMail" specifically makes this consideration >> moot. (Now, if >> you said "GMail, or services extended from GMail including BCI-extracted >> emotional >> responses", that starts lending some plausibility. It may seem like a mere >> semantic >> difference, but it isn't.) >> >> 2) When they start extracting said information via BCI, they'll have already >> started making >> an upload of you, whether or not you've given permission. They will likely >> insist on >> resolving any permission issues at that time, and therefore, any previous >> permissions - >> even ones given by subsequently dead folk - will almost certainly be >> disregarded as legally >> impossible to have given for want of context, regardless of the letter of >> what was said. >> (Judging based on existing precedent. Even in the Singularity, some things >> can be >> predicted.) >> >> On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 9:04 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: >>> >>> I agree that the information isn't there... today. >>> >>> But suppose I keep using Gmail and similar services for 30 years, >>> adding geolocation, video and BCI-extracted emotional responses as new >>> options become available. Suppose I start adding childhood visual and >>> sensory memories via BCI... >>> >>> Suppose all my friends do the same. >>> >>> Don't you think my own Gmail account and, in a lesser measure, the >>> Gmail accounts of my friends, would have a lot of information about >>> me, orders of magnitude more than today? >>> >>> My post will be interpreted by many as a joke, but to me in is (at >>> least half-) serious. >>> >>> 2010/9/28 Adrian Tymes : >>> > "2) AI-based mindware technology able to reconstruct individual >>> > mindfiles by >>> > analyzing >>> > the information in their aggregate Gmail accounts and other available >>> > information, with >>> > sufficient accuracy for mind uploading via detailed personality >>> > reconstruction, is available." >>> > >>> > There is much reason to believe this is beyond the realm of >>> > plausibility. >>> > Not as in, "we >>> > don't have the AI for it today", but as in, "the information to do this >>> > simply isn't there." >>> > >>> > Does this record your day to day lives? Not really. (If you sincerely >>> > disagree, chronicle >>> > how you spend each hour of a given day, and then honestly look at your >>> > outbox and see >>> > how much of that is even mentioned. Deliberately rigging the system, >>> > like >>> > doing a diary via >>> > email for just that one day, doesn't count: this needs to be a >>> > representative sample of most >>> > of your days.) >>> > >>> > Does this record your experiences in offline conversations, or most of >>> > your >>> > pre-email life? >>> > Again, no. Certain details might come up; most of it won't. Further, >>> > it'll >>> > be a subset of >>> > what you remember, because you have to have remembered it at some point >>> > to >>> > have >>> > mentioned it in email. (While you may forget something that email will >>> > remember, even if >>> > you spend the majority of your life with GMail, the amount that you know >>> > and >>> > it has never >>> > seen will remain substantial.) >>> > >>> > This is the kind of thing a critic of the Extropians can latch onto, to >>> > dismiss the entire >>> > movement as "obviously woowoo pseudoscience bunk". >>> > >>> > On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 2:47 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: >>> >> >>> >> http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/09/mind-uploading-via-gmail.html >>> >> >>> >> You may wish to give your permission too (you never know). Use the >>> >> comment field or any other _public_ means. >>> >> _______________________________________________ >>> >> 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 >>> > >>> > >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> 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 >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > 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 atymes at gmail.com Wed Sep 29 07:43:13 2010 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 00:43:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] #Pound[was Lions etc] In-Reply-To: <8CD2DAA72E4278F-1E10-7DA8@webmail-m045.sysops.aol.com> References: <4CA29F2E.8080307@evil-genius.com> <8CD2DAA72E4278F-1E10-7DA8@webmail-m045.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: 2010/9/28 > What is it with people using # (Hash) and saying pound? There is a > perfectly good ? (pound) sign on the keyboard. > Not on my keyboard there isn't, and not on most keyboards I've seen. (I'm in Silicon Valley, so I suspect this isn't just due to local specialized keyboards.) Also, # is used for "pound" in the weight (as opposed to monetary) sense. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ablainey at aol.com Wed Sep 29 08:08:39 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 04:08:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] #Pound[was Lions etc In-Reply-To: References: <4CA29F2E.8080307@evil-genius.com><8CD2DAA72E4278F-1E10-7DA8@webmail-m045.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <8CD2DC4A88D0BBE-B1C-7DB3@webmail-m042.sysops.aol.com> So a US keyboard doesn't have a ? sign then. What do you have for Shift+3 instead? ....wait is it a 'Greatest country in the world!!!!!' key? or perhaps a Mc'key? I notice I still have the almighty $ on my keyboard. I still don't get the # = pound? Its a hash, always has been, always will be and I had never heard any different until about 6 months ago. Or maybe I and possibly the whole of the UK has shifted m-verses again? What else is different? Is Lindsay Lohan still a bible bashing square? (Pah! you might have to go through a few parallel dimensions to find that version of her) ;o) A -----Original Message----- From: Adrian Tymes To: ExI chat list Sent: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 8:43 Subject: Re: [ExI] #Pound[was Lions etc] 2010/9/28 What is it with people using # (Hash) and saying pound? There is a perfectly good ? (pound) sign on the keyboard. Not on my keyboard there isn't, and not on most keyboards I've seen. (I'm in Silicon Valley, so I suspect this isn't just due to local specialized keyboards.) Also, # is used for "pound" in the weight (as opposed to monetary) sense. _______________________________________________ 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 bbenzai at yahoo.com Wed Sep 29 08:34:57 2010 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 01:34:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion than believers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <906221.13771.qm@web114411.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> "spike" asked: > *What is the best refutation of religion you have ever > seen, heard or read? Easy. The bible did it for me when I was a teenager. I remember reading a great big old traditional brass-bound family bible, and becoming more and more incredulous at how inconsistent, vicious and silly it was, and eventually came to the conclusion that it was total bollocks. Makes sense that the church has opposed literacy and general education so much throughout the ages, and strongly discourages children from asking sensible questions. The most powerful argument against them is their own holy book, read by anyone with an education, and/or an intellect that hasn't been bludgeoned into meek obedience. I suspect the same is true of the koran and Islam, although I've read much less of that, and don't have Islam as a cultural background. The odd thing to me is that muslims are encouraged to not just read, but memorise large chunks of it, yet this doesn't seem to inoculate them against the nonsense. Although there is definitely an attitude of "read it, but don't think about it". Ben Zaiboc From deimtee at optusnet.com.au Wed Sep 29 09:39:36 2010 From: deimtee at optusnet.com.au (David) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 19:39:36 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Binary proof test In-Reply-To: <8CD2C8E5CD95168-120C-1B27@webmail-m024.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CD2B1FA3BFAA4D-844-4AFB@Webmail-m123.sysops.aol.com> <8CD2B38C76D8F9C-1CD4-20F82@webmail-d051.sysops.aol.com> <4C9EB5D3.4050807@satx.rr.com> <8CD2B920CD4644C-15FC-2EF6A@webmail-d092.sysops.aol.com> <8CD2BFAE2018D81-FFC-3334E@webmail-m011.sysops.aol.com> <4C9FF793.208@satx.rr.com> <4E29331D56A54A8894ECDEF70970DA78@spike> <8CD2C7611211495-E2C-125C@webmail-m039.sysops.aol.com> <8CD2C8E5CD95168-120C-1B27@webmail-m024.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <20100929193936.1f32a2e6@optusnet.com.au> On Mon, 27 Sep 2010 15:07:28 -0400 ablainey at aol.com wrote: > > > > > > > I have started the experiment myself just to get an idea of the > magnitude of the problem. Taking a target string of 'Hello' which is > 0001011010100110001101100011011011110110 or 40bits in total. The > program matched 'h' in 11 attempts, then 74, 316 qand 132 tries. It > matched 'he' in 3888 and then 3228 tries. It is now running the full > 'hello' and has just passed 400,000 tries. The rate of attempts is > only 1 every 10ms, so its pretty slow going. > > A > A quick calculation shows it will take ~ 350 years to go through 2^^40 combinations. Given reasonable luck, you should be finished in 175 or so years. 2^^40 = 1099511627786 1099511627786 / (100p/s * 3600s/h * 24h/d * 365d/y) = 348.65 years good luck. :) -David From darren.greer3 at gmail.com Wed Sep 29 10:05:55 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 07:05:55 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religionthatbelievers, study shows In-Reply-To: <65FD3A0976D4485F837E41F74E85730E@spike> References: <2560DE3C9A6049DAB4B68F48D71E50D7@spike> <14C6E8E6A481481B9D41B3A274AD13B1@spike> <632806.29517.qm@web65606.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <65FD3A0976D4485F837E41F74E85730E@spike> Message-ID: Spike wrote: "The most profound refutation of religion I ever saw was a book that is not even about religion at all, but is a book I would suggest is the cornerstone of so much of the philosophy we discuss in this forum: Douglas Hofstadter's Godel Escher Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid." I just added that as one of my favorite books on an online social network for similar reasons. It introduced me to the concept of a strange loop, and his theories that human consciousness arises from self-referential interactions in the brain. I'm reading a book now on implications in quantum mechanics for current theories of mind, and the work of some psychologists with epileptics who've had their corpus collosum severed between hemispheres and questions about lefty/right brain interaction that arise from this. Sometimes I wish we lived in a world where the God debate did not take place at all, where public discussion of such would be as quaint (and about as charming) and medieval jousting. There is enough corporeal investigation to keep us occupied for eternity. Questions will be answered as we all go along, folks. Why waste our time by dragging a creator into it? . Alas, I'm being ridiculously naive. It's a rationalist's Wonderland I'm dreaming of. Darren On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 1:20 AM, spike wrote: > > > > Spike wrote: > > > > *What is the best refutation of religion you have ever > > seen, heard or read? > > > > Here is an oldie but a goodie credited to Epicurus the Greek > > Philosopher circa 250 BCE: > > > > 1. if God is unable to prevent evil, he is not omnipotent 2. > > if God is not willing to prevent evil, he is not good 3. if > > God is willing and able to prevent evil, then why is there evil? > Avantguardian > > > Excellent responses all, thanks. > > The most profound refutation of religion I ever saw was a book that is not > even about religion at all, but is a book I would suggest is the > cornerstone > of so much of the philosophy we discuss in this forum: Douglas > Hofstadter's > Godel Escher Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid. > > Reasoning: Hofstader goes into the mechanics of philosophy and how it is > that Godel showed that every conceivable logic system has it singularity, > where paradox is unavoidable. I read that book cover to cover twice, the > first time in October 1983 and the second time in August 1984. I realized > that all religions have the self referencing paradox feature, so that the > system cannot be verified from outside the system. Religions are analogous > in that sense to the following comment: > > This sentence is true. > > spike > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 darren.greer3 at gmail.com Wed Sep 29 10:24:29 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 07:24:29 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion than believers In-Reply-To: <906221.13771.qm@web114411.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <906221.13771.qm@web114411.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Spike wrote: > *What is the best refutation of religion you have ever > seen, heard or read? Ben wrote: > Easy. The bible did it for me when I was a teenager. The four synoptic gospels are a dead give-away. Right away Mathew tries to address arguments that must have been circulating at the time that Christ's body was eaten by dogs, which would explain the mysterious resurrection. The fact that he even tried to address it is antithetical to the concept of faith that is so central to the religion, and one of the best indications that the so-called disciples were filled with a crippling doubt from the very beginning. The fact that the disciples were so convinced is one of the methods used to convince converts that the resurrection, without which the religion is little more than a vague philosophy, is literally true. Another is that Judas is hardly mentioned in Mathew's gospel, and is only gradually demonized over the course of the four texts. Mark devotes 6 verses to him. By the time John gets to him he is awarded 18 and is practically sporting horns. Historians have surmised that the Christians needed to distant themselves from the Jews after the uprising against Rome and the siege of Israel in 'year 66 in order to ensure their own survival. They used their scared texts to do so. And gave anti-Semites yet another justification and outlet for their hatred. The Third Reich often staged passion plays that even Hitler attended where Judas was portrayed as disgustingly sycophantic and deceitful and an object of ridicule and contempt. Just thinking about it boils my blood, though the early Christians were just likely protecting themselves. Though as usual, at the expense of others. Darren On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 5:34 AM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > "spike" asked: > > > *What is the best refutation of religion you have ever > > seen, heard or read? > > Easy. The bible did it for me when I was a teenager. I remember reading a > great big old traditional brass-bound family bible, and becoming more and > more incredulous at how inconsistent, vicious and silly it was, and > eventually came to the conclusion that it was total bollocks. > > Makes sense that the church has opposed literacy and general education so > much throughout the ages, and strongly discourages children from asking > sensible questions. The most powerful argument against them is their own > holy book, read by anyone with an education, and/or an intellect that hasn't > been bludgeoned into meek obedience. > > I suspect the same is true of the koran and Islam, although I've read much > less of that, and don't have Islam as a cultural background. The odd thing > to me is that muslims are encouraged to not just read, but memorise large > chunks of it, yet this doesn't seem to inoculate them against the nonsense. > Although there is definitely an attitude of "read it, but don't think about > it". > > Ben Zaiboc > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 bbenzai at yahoo.com Wed Sep 29 11:31:43 2010 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 04:31:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <38286.76501.qm@web114401.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Keith Henson observed: > I don't know how one would refute religion.? It's a > near universal > feature of human cultures. > > Rather than refute something that is a widespread feature > of humans, I > would think it more important to understand how the > psychological > mechanisms that result in religions (i.e., religious memes) > evolved. > > At some point in the past, having these mechanisms must > have improved > the survival of genes for the mechanisms. > > I hope the logic here is not beyond the average person on > this list. Isn't that confusing truth and utility? Refutation has to do with showing that something is not true, not that it's no use. Something can be both false and useful. The placebo effect and some aspects of NLP show this in action. Ben Zaiboc From bbenzai at yahoo.com Wed Sep 29 11:49:16 2010 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 04:49:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] #Pound In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <901266.97005.qm@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ablainey at aol.com moaned: > > What is it with people using # (Hash) and saying > pound?? There is a perfectly good ? (pound) sign on the > keyboard. > ? being the British Pound sterling, or one pound of > sterling silver as it used to be. The ? symbol is just a > stylised Lb (Pound). > I have a key dedicated to a 'wavy window' symbol but can't > find a spiky leaf key anywhere. So surely techno hippies > would be very happy to have a (Hash) symbol?! > > I can only conclude this is part of the newspeak and a NWO > effort to make people forget our currency was once something > more than worthless fiat paper. Having historically been > backed by precious metal. > > ;o) Yes, well, it's an American thing, innit? Along with the confusion between exhaustion and rubber wheel-rims, buttocks and donkeys, refusal to use 'ph', ignorance of 'oe' and 'ae', and, well, loads of other daft things that Mr Webster (damn his eyes) is probably responsible for, you get used to it and just roll your eyes and carry on. On the plus side, you can think of # as representing a pound of hash! For the record, I agree, # is a hash sign, ? is a pound sterling (which probably will show as a ? on most people's screens) and Lb is pounds weight (avoirdupoir). Ben Zaiboc From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Sep 29 13:29:50 2010 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 08:29:50 -0500 Subject: [ExI] #Pound[was Lions etc In-Reply-To: <8CD2DC4A88D0BBE-B1C-7DB3@webmail-m042.sysops.aol.com> References: <4CA29F2E.8080307@evil-genius.com> <8CD2DAA72E4278F-1E10-7DA8@webmail-m045.sysops.aol.com> <8CD2DC4A88D0BBE-B1C-7DB3@webmail-m042.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: 2010/9/29 : > So a US keyboard doesn't have a ? sign then.? What do you have for Shift+3 > instead? ....wait is it a 'Greatest country in the world!!!!!' key? or > perhaps a Mc'key? I notice I still have the almighty $ on my keyboard. > > I still don't get the # = pound? Its a hash, always has been, always will be > and I had never heard any different until about 6 months ago. Or maybe I and > possibly the whole of the UK has shifted m-verses again? What else is > different? Is Lindsay Lohan still a bible bashing square? (Pah! you might > have to go through a few parallel dimensions to find that version of her) If we're going to be pedantic, it's an octothorpe [ http://www.octothorp.us/octothorp.html ] Try replacing whatever word you currently use for that glyph with Octothorpe and see how naturally it rolls off the tongue... then laugh at the confused look from your audience. :) From darren.greer3 at gmail.com Wed Sep 29 13:48:25 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:48:25 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Objectum Sexuality Message-ID: This was sent to me by Omar, a member of this list. Not quite sure what to think. I was at first tempted to laugh, but then sobered up about it for some reason. Perhaps because of the images of the first man and whatever product of mechanical engineering he's having an obviously physical and emotional affair with. Has anyone ever heard of this? > > > http://jezebel.com/5146666/objectum-sexuality-when-relationships-with-inanimate-objects-become-intimate Darren -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wildcat2030 at gmail.com Wed Sep 29 11:26:14 2010 From: wildcat2030 at gmail.com (Wildcat) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 13:26:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] concerning ilabs singularity summit Message-ID: Does anyone on this list has any more information about the ilabs singularity summit on march 5 2011 in Milano Italy? or the persons involved? http://www.singularitysummit.it/defaultEN.asp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed Sep 29 14:46:49 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 07:46:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion In-Reply-To: <38286.76501.qm@web114401.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <38286.76501.qm@web114401.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 4:31 AM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Keith Henson observed: > >> I don't know how one would refute religion.? It's a >> near universal feature of human cultures. >> >> Rather than refute something that is a widespread feature >> of humans, I >> would think it more important to understand how the >> psychological >> mechanisms that result in religions (i.e., religious memes) >> evolved. >> >> At some point in the past, having these mechanisms must >> have improved the survival of genes for the mechanisms. >> >> I hope the logic here is not beyond the average person on >> this list. > > > Isn't that confusing truth and utility? I don't think so. If religions are a side effect of some feature of human evolution, then you don't need to consider a true/false question with respect to any of them. I.e., understanding the evolutionary origin of the brain mechanisms behind religions makes such questions meaningless. > Refutation has to do with showing that something is not true, not that it's no use. It near impossible to refute something that's based on internal mental states. It may be possible to understand the origin of the mechanisms that created such mental states > Something can be both false and useful. The placebo effect and some aspects of NLP show this in action. Not sure how I could respond to this. I suppose you could attempt to understand both in terms of evolutionary psychology. I don't know why/how they function nor why hypnosis does either. Keith From atymes at gmail.com Wed Sep 29 15:22:51 2010 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 08:22:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] #Pound[was Lions etc In-Reply-To: <8CD2DC4A88D0BBE-B1C-7DB3@webmail-m042.sysops.aol.com> References: <4CA29F2E.8080307@evil-genius.com> <8CD2DAA72E4278F-1E10-7DA8@webmail-m045.sysops.aol.com> <8CD2DC4A88D0BBE-B1C-7DB3@webmail-m042.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: 2010/9/29 > So a US keyboard doesn't have a ? sign then. What do you have for Shift+3 > instead? > Ironically, Shift+3 is # -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed Sep 29 15:24:04 2010 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 08:24:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] End of time? Message-ID: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1009/1009.4698v1.pdf I am not sure there is anyone here with enough math skills to evaluate this one, but if there are, I would like to hear what you think about it. Keith From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Sep 29 15:32:05 2010 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:32:05 -0500 Subject: [ExI] concerning ilabs singularity summit In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I was just looking at the website. There is a link to ilabs. Best, N Natasha Vita-More _____ From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Wildcat Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 6:26 AM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: [ExI] concerning ilabs singularity summit Does anyone on this list has any more information about the ilabs singularity summit on march 5 2011 in Milano Italy? or the persons involved? http://www.singularitysummit.it/defaultEN.asp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Sep 29 15:23:36 2010 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 08:23:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion that believers, study shows In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <684213.38869.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I saw this on the NY Times site, where they had six questions that yours truly, an avowed atheist, got 100% right according to the site. I also listened to the audiobook version of Prothero's book two or three years ago. (And I listened to his "Modern Scholar" lectures on Eastern religions, which were quite interesting and I recommend.) Regards, Dan From: Darren Greer To: ExI chat list Sent: Tue, September 28, 2010 3:26:14 PM Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion that believers, study shows Thought this was pretty cool. There's also a short quiz?of ten questions testing general religious knowledge?on the site. http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/28/dont-know-much-about-religion-youre-not-alone-study-finds/?hpt=C1 Darren ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Sep 29 15:29:11 2010 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 08:29:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion thatbelievers, study shows In-Reply-To: <14C6E8E6A481481B9D41B3A274AD13B1@spike> References: <2560DE3C9A6049DAB4B68F48D71E50D7@spike> <14C6E8E6A481481B9D41B3A274AD13B1@spike> Message-ID: <300299.47175.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> The statement, which I believe comes from a 19th century writer, "God is my favorite fictional character." And also Laplace's supposed?"I have no need for that hypothesis" reply to Napoleon. Regards, Dan From: spike To: ExI chat list Sent: Tue, September 28, 2010 4:31:08 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion thatbelievers, study shows Spike wrote: >>"I was 10 for 10, and I am a flaming atheist... >10 for 10 here too. More of an agnostic, but findings still valid. The friend >who sent this to me said the same thing as you, Spike. In almost identical >words. Great minds . . . are atheistic.?Darren? ? You are too kind sir.? Nowthen, a question for you, since you are?up to speed on religion and for the rest of you?religion hipsters: ? ? *What is the best refutation of religion you have ever seen, heard or read? ? ? It can be a book or anything you want, a lecture by Dawkins, even the ExI-chat archives.? Before I present my answer, I will offer the second best, and one that Max More might suggest: Bertrand Russell's Why I am Not a Christian. ? But I have in mind one that is better still than that devastating volume, which I will share once I see some of your answers. ? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Sep 29 15:32:50 2010 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 08:32:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion thatbelievers, study shows In-Reply-To: <201009290102.o8T12eML000527@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <201009290102.o8T12eML000527@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <887297.91724.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Same here regarding Smith's book. I believe, too, he wrote that when he was in his early 20s. Also, IIRC, he doesn't have a high school diploma or degree. Quite an achievement for one lacking traditional credentials, no? Regards, Dan ----- Original Message ---- From: Max More To: Extropy-Chat Sent: Tue, September 28, 2010 8:35:51 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion thatbelievers, study shows > *What is the best refutation of religion you have ever seen, heard or read? > > It can be a book or anything you want, a lecture by Dawkins, even the ExI-chat >archives.? Before I present my answer, I will offer the second best, and one >that Max More might suggest: Bertrand Russell's Why I am Not a Christian. No, I wouldn't suggest that one. I really don't remember it well from 30 years ago, but think it *was* excellent -- but still not the *one* I would choose. For a philosophical book that would be too difficult for the general public, I would pick J.L. Mackie's The Miracle of Theism. I haven't read any of the recent popular books by Hitchens, Dawkins, etc. so I can't choose from among them. I still have a soft spot for the philosophical and moral critique in George Smith's Atheism: The Case Against God. Max From scerir at libero.it Wed Sep 29 15:52:36 2010 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 17:52:36 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] End of time? Message-ID: <32394919.4923991285775556088.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> see also: http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/09/bousso-et-al-catastrophe-imminent-time.html 'time' is 'abundant' here http://www.fqxi.org/community http://www.fqxi.org/community/essay/winners/2008.1 From spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 29 15:44:02 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 08:44:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] #Pound[was Lions etc In-Reply-To: <8CD2DC4A88D0BBE-B1C-7DB3@webmail-m042.sysops.aol.com> References: <4CA29F2E.8080307@evil-genius.com><8CD2DAA72E4278F-1E10-7DA8@webmail-m045.sysops.aol.com> <8CD2DC4A88D0BBE-B1C-7DB3@webmail-m042.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <10C51F9906714DB79BE9D32F883C2738@spike> ...On Behalf Of ablainey at aol.com So a US keyboard doesn't have a ? sign then...wait is it a 'Greatest country in the world!!!!!' key? ... Well, actually after this morning's matches, the US is in 9th. Ukraine is in first, followed by the commies' finest, Georgia y'all, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Armenia, and the frogs. Only half a point back from those guys are the mongol hordes, the yanks, Castro's boys and the sons of Jacob. Tomorrow the yanks face the fearsome Bulgarians, so after that the US might be lower than the ninth greatest country in the world. spike From pharos at gmail.com Wed Sep 29 15:48:52 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 16:48:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] End of time? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 4:24 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1009/1009.4698v1.pdf > > I am not sure there is anyone here with enough math skills to evaluate > this one, but if there are, I would like to hear what you think about > it. > > Well, I don't have that level of math skills, but I read a blog that does: They don't think much of it. 42 comments so far mostly agree. Quote: But holy crap, if physicists don?t lose all of their scientific credit by publishing this pure garbage and nothing else for years, can they lose their credibility at all? Does the institutionalized science have any checks and balances left? I think that all the people are being bullied into not criticizing the junk written by other people who are employees of the academic system, especially if the latter are politically correct activists. And be sure, some of the authors of this nonsense are at the top of it. This is just bad. I urge all the sane people in Berkeley and other places to make it very clear to Bousso et al. ? and to students and other colleagues ? that they have gone completely crazy. ---------------- BillK From atymes at gmail.com Wed Sep 29 16:15:20 2010 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 09:15:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] End of time? In-Reply-To: <32394919.4923991285775556088.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> References: <32394919.4923991285775556088.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> Message-ID: The author seems to be confusing probability theory. This may be simple dismissal without addressing the substance of it, but if these flaws are found in the intro section, well... > This undermines the > basis for probabilistic predictions of local experiments. If in nitely many observers > throughout the universe win the lottery, on what grounds can one still claim that > winning the lottery is unlikely? To be sure, there are also in nitely many observers > who do not win, but in what sense are there more of them? The author is confusing senses of "infinity". There are (infinitely) many grades of "infinity" for precisely this reason. Take a, the number of people who play the lottery and win, and b, the number of people who play the lottery and lose. Let's say this lottery only happens every time there is an exact multiple of 100 players, and that the odds of winning are 1%. Thus, a = 99 * b. Therefore, a > b. This relationship holds true even if b becomes infinite. > The > sun will shine with probability x, and it will snow with probability 1 - x. But > this does not mean that it cannot rain. Actually, yes, if the probabilities are that way, it does mean that. (The author does not seem to be allowing for multiple states of weather within a day.) x + (1 - x) = 1, leaving no room for any other probability. On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 8:52 AM, scerir wrote: > see also: > > http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/09/bousso-et-al-catastrophe-imminent-time.html > > 'time' is 'abundant' here http://www.fqxi.org/community > http://www.fqxi.org/community/essay/winners/2008.1 > _______________________________________________ > 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 Wed Sep 29 16:25:56 2010 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:25:56 -0500 Subject: [ExI] End of time? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4CA36894.9010901@satx.rr.com> On 9/29/2010 10:48 AM, BillK wrote: > Quote: > But holy crap, if physicists don?t lose all of their scientific > credit by publishing this pure garbage and nothing else for years, can > they lose their credibility at all? Yeah, but that's Lubos. :) From spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 29 16:22:32 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 09:22:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] End of time? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6C2259C5C51C402AA81512A49E1553EB@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Keith Henson > Subject: [ExI] End of time? > > http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1009/1009.4698v1.pdf > > I am not sure there is anyone here with enough math skills to > evaluate this one, but if there are, I would like to hear > what you think about it. Keith Keith, I looked it over and can say the whole notion is safely outside my know-cone. Saul Perlmutter came to Lockheed and gave a pitch in which he mentioned the idea as one of the competing de Sitter vacuum models, but didn't offer any details. That's been about 8 years ago. Alan Guth had an accelerating inflation idea that was going around about 6 yrs ago called the Big Rip that might be related to this. The notion didn't make much of a splash in the cosmology community, and I never heard of it again. I was scared senseless that the Big Rip is 5 million years from now. But when they clarified it is 5 billion years hence, I calmed a bit. spike From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Sep 29 17:24:37 2010 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:24:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion In-Reply-To: References: <38286.76501.qm@web114401.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <694643.18908.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I don't know if it makes such questions meaningless at all. It's merely another way of looking at the question. Surely, you wouldn't say, were we to question people about "impetus" -- and it seems to me that viewing the world as if impetus were valid and true is close to being hardwired in in much the same way as religion -- and find almost all of them, save for a few people educated enough to understand why impetus can't explain much, would think it's true and valid -- you wouldn't say that this makes whether impetus is true and valid meaningless, would you? Also, it seems almost all religious believers make claims about more than mental states. And these claims are often tied directly into their religious beliefs. The three Abrahamic religions, for example, make particular claims are cosmogenesis, biogenesis, and historical events (such as what happened in Ancient Canaan, that there was an empire-wide census, or certain battles in desert towns, and the lives of certain supposedly historical figures, such as King David and Jesus). In so far as these claims can be tested, there's the possibility for refutation. There's also logical coherence of various doctrines or concepts. In so far as the coherence can be shown to be lacking or more lacking than alternative doctrines or concepts, these can be refuted. (The concept of God itself is a prime target for this.) I'm sure, too, you wouldn't apply the sort of reasoning you give below to evolutionary psychology itself: it can't be refuted because you're simply the kind of being that?prefers evolutionary psychology hypotheses. And, regarding inner states, their meaning is another matter. As inner states, they just are. But this is no different than me having the inner state of being angry at someone -- say, a friend. Yes, I can recognize my anger, but the moment I start connecting it to things -- such as judging my anger to be okay because he slighted me in some fashion -- I open that connection up to validation or refutation. Maybe, sticking with this instance, I'm angry at him because I feel I'm always getting the check at restaurants and then, latter on, I find out that this is not the case. I still felt the anger, but my judgment about its justification was off. That said, I do agree that people have experiences they can't explain and that seem justification enough for them to believe all sorts of things. And I'm not out to trash all evolutionary psychology hypotheses. I would, however, question the latter when they are self-refuting -- as when they attempt to?undermine logic or objectivity. Regards, Dan ----- Original Message ---- From: Keith Henson To: ExI chat list Sent: Wed, September 29, 2010 10:46:49 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 4:31 AM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Keith Henson observed: > >> I don't know how one would refute religion.? It's a >> near universal feature of human cultures. >> >> Rather than refute something that is a widespread feature >> of humans, I >> would think it more important to understand how the >> psychological >> mechanisms that result in religions (i.e., religious memes) >> evolved. >> >> At some point in the past, having these mechanisms must >> have improved the survival of genes for the mechanisms. >> >> I hope the logic here is not beyond the average person on >> this list. > > > Isn't that confusing truth and utility? I don't think so.? If religions are a side effect of some feature of human evolution, then you don't need to consider a true/false question with respect to any of them.? I.e., understanding the evolutionary origin of the brain mechanisms behind religions makes such questions meaningless. > Refutation has to do with showing that something is not true, not that it's no >use. It near impossible to refute something that's based on internal mental states.? It may be possible to understand the origin of the mechanisms that created such mental states > Something can be both false and useful. The placebo effect and some aspects of >NLP show this in action. Not sure how I could respond to this.? I suppose you could attempt to understand both in terms of evolutionary psychology.? I don't know why/how they function nor why hypnosis does either. Keith From spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 29 17:25:18 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:25:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] End of time? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of BillK > Subject: Re: [ExI] End of time? > > On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 4:24 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > > http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1009/1009.4698v1.pdf > > > > I am not sure there is anyone here with enough math skills > to evaluate... > > > Well, I don't have that level of math skills, but I read a > blog that does: > > > > They don't think much of it. 42 comments so far mostly agree. > > Quote: "...But holy crap, if physicists don?t lose all of their > scientific credit by publishing this pure garbage and nothing > else for years, can they lose their credibility at all?" BillK BillK I think you are right, however... I looked over these comments on the Columbia site, and I can't find a single one of them that I would consider particularly insightful, not one. The closest to anything other than just a bunch of arrogant mathematicians ridiculing the phyisicists would be this one: 3.0 says: September 29, 2010 at 8:22 am [...] ???? ????-????'??? ???? ???????. ?? ????? ??? ??? ????? ???? ????? ?????? ???? ?????: ???? ???? ????? ?????! ???? [...] And then further comments: ???? ????? ??? ??? ????? ?? ????? ??????? ??????? ?? ? RSS. ????? ??????? ???? ????? ????, ????? ?????? ?????? ????? ?????? ????? ?????? ????? ??????. ?? ????? ??? ??????? ??????? ??? ????? ??? ? ??? ???? ?? ??? ????? ?? ??????? ?????? ???? ????? spike From scerir at libero.it Wed Sep 29 17:42:34 2010 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 19:42:34 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] End of time? Message-ID: <10756419.4946301285782154364.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> I've got the impression that it is sometimes dangerous to think in terms of 'time' (or space-time). As Spike suggested, the question comes down to whether the 'vacuum state' - and not time itself - is stable. http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Vacuum_state . Our universe might be a pocket of low energy (in terms of VEV), which might decay further if this it is a meta-stable state. The meta- stable vacuum with a small lambda may expand for a very long time if the decay is slow enough (inflationary state). If the vacuum state is not stable there might be some phase transition that ends the universe (as we know it). As somebody (L.B.C.) wrote the argument of that paper only really makes sense if we can understand the stability of the vacuum. Sidney Coleman and Frank di Luccia worked the theory of an unstable false vacuum with gravity in 1980 http: //prd.aps.org/abstract/PRD/v21/i12/p3305_1 and this is still the main paper which leads to the theory of nucleating bubbles of real vacuum expanding within a false vacuum. From pharos at gmail.com Wed Sep 29 18:30:20 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 19:30:20 +0100 Subject: [ExI] End of time? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2010/9/29 spike wrote: > BillK I think you are right, however... I looked over these comments on the > Columbia site, and I can't find a single one of them that I would consider > particularly insightful, not one. ?The closest to anything other than just a > bunch of arrogant mathematicians ridiculing the phyisicists would be this > one: > > 3.0 says: > September 29, 2010 at 8:22 am > [...] ???? ????-????'??? ???? ???????. ?? ????? ??? ??? ????? ???? ????? > ?????? ???? ?????: ???? ???? ????? ?????! ???? [...] > > And then further comments: > > ???? ????? ??? ??? ????? ?? ????? ??????? ??????? ?? ? RSS. ????? ??????? > ???? ????? ????, ????? ?????? ?????? ????? ?????? ????? ?????? ????? ??????. > ?? ????? ??? ??????? ??????? ??? ????? ??? ? ??? ???? ?? ??? ????? ?? > ??????? ?????? ???? ????? > > I think the main point of the Columbia 'Not Even Wrong' blog is to ridicule string theorists and their ilk, not physicists in general. This is a pleasant hobby, of course. :) You didn't add a smiley to your quote from the Hebrew mathematician. ?? His first quote was exactly what you said it wasn't! i.e. a sarcastic comment. Rough translation: [...] The New - Age irresponsible Youth eventually have last week published an article giving Forecast: Final time ends soon! Ok, so..... [...] The second quote is from his current maths blog page and is not talking about this paper. BillK From spike66 at att.net Wed Sep 29 19:11:48 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 12:11:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] End of time? In-Reply-To: <10756419.4946301285782154364.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> References: <10756419.4946301285782154364.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> Message-ID: <596C452D1E944170BC47626C3506ED4B@spike> > ...On Behalf Of scerir > Subject: Re: [ExI] End of time? > > I've got the impression that it is sometimes dangerous to > think in terms of 'time' (or space-time). As Spike suggested, > the question comes down to whether the 'vacuum state' - and > not time itself - is stable... scerir Hi scerir, you are too kind, but this too goes well outside my know-cone. Do let me explain why I have the attitude. Several years ago, my wife and I were invited to help judge a sixth grade science fair. There were about 100 entries. When I first saw them, I was astonished at how good they looked. Nice, neat, colorful, interesting, and these were just sixth graders! The singularity is near! But I was soon dismayed, then appalled, as I found that most of the projects were fake. I don't mean fake in the sense of how fake science fair projects were made in my own misspent youth. In those bad old days you faked sci-fair projects by having your parents do them for you. Often kids had to do extra chores for a week or more in exchange for that project. If one's parents would not play that game, we had to look up our topic in the encyclopedia, copy the article there. By hand! With a pen! Such deprivation and hardship we suffered and bravely endured. But it quickly became painfully obvious that most of these kids bought a commercial trifold foamboard display from Office Depot, googled on their topic, printed out the first four to eight articles that came up, sprayed fixitive on the backs of the printouts and stuck them on the board, there, finished. No logical flow, no cohesion, no point, nothing, not even always all on the same topic. Beautiful fake projects were they, not science fair, not even art, just a perfectly meaningless crafts exercise. I talked to several of the kids, found out most of them knew not one thing about their topic, not the first damn thing. In many, perhaps most cases, I saw no evidence they had even read the paragraphs they printed and stuck neatly to their display boards. I ended up recommending for a prize the kid who actually knew something about his project, which wasn't science, not even really technology: his project was about bridge building. It was a history project: he talked about technology that is already over a century old. But he actually knew something about his project! The other sixth graders (and perhaps many of their teachers) would not recognize a phony project. It was not obvious from 10 meters that most of these were put together in about 20 minutes the night before. The pages were on straight, without wrinkles. They looked great. We were rewarding fraud. I vaguely suspect the inflation paper is a kind of a grown up version of the phony science fair projects. I suspect more strongly that *all* of the arrogant mathematicians on that Columbia site are analogous to fellow sixth graders, who recognized a fake paper because they have written papers like that too. I know that I can't tell a real inflation model paper from a fake one. So I am one of the sixth graders as well, just a more humble one. Perhaps the singularity is not so near. spike From scerir at libero.it Wed Sep 29 20:12:06 2010 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 22:12:06 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] End of time? Message-ID: <12281610.2532391285791126777.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> Spike writes: I know that I can't tell a real inflation model paper from a fake one. So I am one of the sixth graders as well, just a more humble one. -------------------------------- There is a joke, rather a webpage for physicists who really think that >> 50% of the published papers are crazy, or not even wrong, or written by possible clones of Alan Sokal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair http://www.newbernsj.com/articles/fool-88760-years-.html http://physicsandphysicists.blogspot.com/2010/07/another-sokal-hoax.html for the records Alan Sokal is also a real physicist http://arxiv.org/find/cond-mat/1/au:+Sokal_A/0/1/0/all/0/1 So, the "snarXiv" is essentially a random generator of crazy 'theoretical' papers, so crazy and so well written that it is not so easy to guess whether they are ...... http://snarxiv.org/ the generator engine http://davidsd.org/2010/03/the-snarxiv/ From darren.greer3 at gmail.com Thu Sep 30 01:43:57 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 22:43:57 -0300 Subject: [ExI] #Pound[was Lions etc In-Reply-To: <8CD2DC4A88D0BBE-B1C-7DB3@webmail-m042.sysops.aol.com> References: <4CA29F2E.8080307@evil-genius.com> <8CD2DAA72E4278F-1E10-7DA8@webmail-m045.sysops.aol.com> <8CD2DC4A88D0BBE-B1C-7DB3@webmail-m042.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: 2010/9/29 So a US keyboard doesn't have a ? sign then. What do you have for Shift+3 > instead? ....wait is it a 'Greatest country in the world!!!!!' key? or > perhaps a Mc'key? I notice I still have the almighty $ on my keyboard. > Some days I wish I had a keyboard could that could graphically represent with one key the middle finger jutting up from a closed fist. Now THAT would come in handy. Darren -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Thu Sep 30 03:04:37 2010 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 21:04:37 -0600 Subject: [ExI] My 80 year old Mother In Law asked about Transhumanism. Message-ID: <4CA3FE45.70907@canonizer.com> Transhumanists, As most of you know, all of my family is mostly truly believing Mormons - Especially my mother in law. Before 5 years ago and before we started the Mormon Transhumanist Association - I was mostly taking the same tact some of you hating transhumanists were taking: lets excommunicate religion and destroy it with the rational truth, or Transhumanism / atheism. I was actively working on this for much more than 10 years with absolutely nothing to show for my efforts, except everyone hating me. It was probably mostly just my perception, but there were strong feelings that during that time, likely largely because of my lets convert everyone from and destroy religion attitude, my mother in law wanted my wife and LDS family to divorce me. Our family did come very close to this during those times. Even my parents seemed to want this. However, as we got started with the MTA, I finally realized, that all this fracturing hate was precisely the only problem with me and the transhumanist movement. And of course, if you think there are lots of transhumanists that want to excommunicate religion from transhumanism, how many Mormons do you think there are that want to excommunicate the Mormon Transhumanists Association from Mormonism? You haven't seen anything. (The LDS church recently got a copyright on the word "Mormon" - I wonder why). I know many of you still think hating and excommunicating anyone or anything to do with organized religion (and visa versa), is the best or only route to take. But I challenge you to point out one shred of real evidence that such hateful, excommunicating attitudes have done anything for the transhumanist movement, other than keeping it completely dead, fractured, unable to co-operate, and worthless - the sorry state we are all in today - most people in the world not even knowing of the word Transhumanist. This weekend is the semi-annual Mormon LDS General Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. For Mormons, this is it. There will be gazillions of well organized volunteers filling downtown SLC. The lavish LDS conference center seats more than 23 thousand people, and it will be standing room only during the entire weekend. Many LDS only wishing they could get some tickets to just one session, as thousands of them stand outside listening to it on the radio. It's near impossible for locals to get tickets, especially for Sunday Morning, since they reserve these tickets mostly for people from out of town. In conjunction with this, we are having our Transhumanist and Spirituality conference. (see: http://www.transhumanism-spirituality.org/ ) Max More, James Hughes, and a famous Mormon Intellectual, Terryl Givens are the key note speakers. Despite the difficulty of getting tickets for such, we've finally networked with enough Mormons, that we've collected a bunch of tickets, so a bunch of the attendees, including the keynote speakers, will all be attending the main General Conference Session, Sunday Morning together. My in laws know about all of this, our efforts to solicit so far and wide trying to get these tickets, and I was also telling them the story of the brilliant LDS Historian, Don Bradley, today. Basically, in large part due to what Don found in LDS history, like many other smart historians, he had resigned (or had his name formally removed from the LDS church records). Yet, after he started getting active in the MTA, he got re-baptized into the LDS church. My mother in law also knew how many impossible to get conference tickets we had mustered from our world wide MTA membership, and that we were taking people like Max More (I had explained who he was to all of them) to conference with us. Today as I was over at the inlaws' house, after I told this story, my mother in law asked: "Now what do you guys call yourself again?" And as I slowly answered: "Mormon Transhumanist Association" she was, with much glowing interest, writing the word Transhumanist down. Brent Allsop -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Sep 30 02:51:33 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 19:51:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] End of time? In-Reply-To: <12281610.2532391285791126777.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> References: <12281610.2532391285791126777.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> Message-ID: Spike wrote: I was scared senseless that the Big Rip is 5 million years from now. But when they clarified it is 5 billion years hence, I calmed a bit. >>> Spike, I don't blame you for being scared senseless! If calorie restriction diets, Kurzweillian predictions, or cryonics pan out, five million years will just not be enough time to have fun! Oh, I very much enjoyed your post about the elementary school science fair. I remember doing one in junior high school where my self-assigned topic was asteroid mining! lol I realize, you are now wondering, did John build a space craft, make it out to the asteroid belt, and then bring a big rock back? Well, actually, my "experiment" was more like me "daydreaming with paper, cardboard and models" about the asteroid mining of some future time (who would have ever guessed that years later I would love posting on the Extropy list and become very infatuated with transhumanism). I received a D minus for my effort, which I deserved because it was not a *science experiment!* I wish that teacher had been at your school doling out grades, because she would not have shirked her duty. Oh, and she could have passed for being Amara's sister! lol John : ) On 9/29/10, scerir wrote: > Spike writes: > I know that I can't tell a real inflation model paper from a fake one. > So I am one of the sixth graders as well, just a more humble one. > > -------------------------------- > > There is a joke, rather a webpage for physicists who really think > that >> 50% of the published papers are crazy, or not even wrong, > or written by possible clones of Alan Sokal > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair > http://www.newbernsj.com/articles/fool-88760-years-.html > http://physicsandphysicists.blogspot.com/2010/07/another-sokal-hoax.html > > for the records Alan Sokal is also a real physicist > http://arxiv.org/find/cond-mat/1/au:+Sokal_A/0/1/0/all/0/1 > > So, the "snarXiv" is essentially a random generator of crazy > 'theoretical' papers, so crazy and so well written that it is not so > easy to guess whether they are ...... > http://snarxiv.org/ > the generator engine http://davidsd.org/2010/03/the-snarxiv/ > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From spike66 at att.net Thu Sep 30 03:35:17 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:35:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] End of time? In-Reply-To: References: <12281610.2532391285791126777.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> Message-ID: <3B0295721AD8430B984AECC31EB676D8@spike> > ...On Behalf Of John Grigg > Subject: Re: [ExI] End of time? > > Spike wrote: > I was scared senseless that the Big Rip is 5 million years > from now. But when they clarified it is 5 billion years > hence, I calmed a bit. > >>> > > Spike, I don't blame you for being scared senseless! If > calorie restriction diets, Kurzweillian predictions, or > cryonics pan out, five million years will just not be enough > time to have fun! John Actually that was based on an Asimov gag. Check this however. The singularity has been identified as one of eight possible End of the World Armageddons by FoxNews. They don't use the term singularity, but this description of it sounds like it to me. I thought it pretty cool for a mainstream media source: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/09/29/end-of-the-world-potential-armaged don/ [Begin quote] 7. Computers Take Over Everything One potential cataclysm could already be happening -- one we've created ourselves. As computer technology becomes more advanced, "thinking machines" could eventually emerge that control banks, stock markets, and airports. It sounds like something out of the Terminator movies, but the reality is that "self-aware" machines could become self-replicating. Initially, this could mean just a bug that infects computer systems controlling transportation and finance, leading to mass pandemonium. Yet a more dangerous threat is from artificial intelligence (AI). McQuade suggests that AI could become more advanced than human intelligence. Once it does, the machines could develop their own programming routines -- or decide that humans aren't necessary. Or take over nuclear armaments and other stockpiles. "AI is a field that seeks to engineer not just faster-than-human intelligence, but qualitatively better than human intelligence," McQuade said. "Because AI could learn extremely fast (through recursive self-improvement), it would have the capacity, in a short period of time, to make significant leaps in 'intelligence' until it demonstrates qualitatively better-than-human intelligence." [end quote] spike From spike66 at att.net Thu Sep 30 03:44:46 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:44:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] End of time? In-Reply-To: <3B0295721AD8430B984AECC31EB676D8@spike> References: <12281610.2532391285791126777.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> <3B0295721AD8430B984AECC31EB676D8@spike> Message-ID: <205D5D50D8AE49F4BD8163BB07638651@spike> > > Spike wrote: > > I was scared senseless that the Big Rip is 5 million years > from now. > > But when they clarified it is 5 billion years hence, I calmed a bit. ... > I thought it > pretty cool for a mainstream media source: > > Here ya go, fixed the link: > > [Begin quote] > > 7. Computers Take Over Everything > > One potential cataclysm could already be happening -- one > we've created ourselves. From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Sep 30 04:18:16 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 21:18:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Newly discovered planet may be first truly habitable exoplanet! Message-ID: "A team of planet hunters led by astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington has announced the discovery of an Earth-sized planet (three times the mass of Earth) orbiting a nearby star at a distance that places it squarely in the middle of the star's "habitable zone," where liquid water could exist on the planet's surface. If confirmed, this would be the most Earth-like exoplanet yet discovered and the first strong case for a potentially habitable one." http://news.ucsc.edu/2010/09/planet.html From ablainey at aol.com Thu Sep 30 05:11:58 2010 From: ablainey at aol.com (ablainey at aol.com) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 01:11:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] #Pound[was Lions etc In-Reply-To: References: <4CA29F2E.8080307@evil-genius.com><8CD2DAA72E4278F-1E10-7DA8@webmail-m045.sysops.aol.com><8CD2DC4A88D0BBE-B1C-7DB3@webmail-m042.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <8CD2E75228D4518-D64-A1D9@Webmail-d110.sysops.aol.com> LOL, isn't there an App for that? Some great replies, thanks guys. Octothorpe I like that. It will be randomly dropped into several conversations over the coming days. A -----Original Message----- From: Darren Greer To: ExI chat list Sent: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 2:43 Subject: Re: [ExI] #Pound[was Lions etc 2010/9/29 So a US keyboard doesn't have a ? sign then. What do you have for Shift+3 instead? ....wait is it a 'Greatest country in the world!!!!!' key? or perhaps a Mc'key? I notice I still have the almighty $ on my keyboard. Some days I wish I had a keyboard could that could graphically represent with one key the middle finger jutting up from a closed fist. Now THAT would come in handy. Darren _______________________________________________ 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 Thu Sep 30 05:22:01 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 22:22:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [mta] My 80 year old Mother In Law asked about Transhumanism. In-Reply-To: <4CA3FE45.70907@canonizer.com> References: <4CA3FE45.70907@canonizer.com> Message-ID: On 9/29/10, Brent Allsop wrote: > > Transhumanists, > > As most of you know, all of my family is mostly truly believing Mormons > - Especially my mother in law. Before 5 years ago and before we started > the Mormon Transhumanist Association - I was mostly taking the same tact > some of you hating transhumanists were taking: lets excommunicate > religion and destroy it with the rational truth, or Transhumanism / > atheism. If transhumanism becomes a truly powerful force in society and then develops a mutually adversarial relationship with religion, we could set the stage for an extremely nasty conflict that could make WW2 look mild by comparison. The science fiction short story "Monster" comes to mind. I was actively working on this for much more than 10 years > with absolutely nothing to show for my efforts, except everyone hating > me. It was probably mostly just my perception, but there were strong > feelings that during that time, likely largely because of my lets > convert everyone from and destroy religion attitude, my mother in law > wanted my wife and LDS family to divorce me. Our family did come very > close to this during those times. Even my parents seemed to want this. > On Facebook I've seen militant atheists who talk about nothing but atheism and how much they hate religion. I wonder about people who never talk about family, friends, work, politics, etc., because their one obsession is atheism/as defined as a hatred for religion in almost all forms. But I do realize there is also the fundamentalist equivalent out there... > However, as we got started with the MTA, I finally realized, that all > this fracturing hate was precisely the only problem with me and the > transhumanist movement. And of course, if you think there are lots of > transhumanists that want to excommunicate religion from transhumanism, > how many Mormons do you think there are that want to excommunicate the > Mormon Transhumanists Association from Mormonism? You haven't seen > anything. (The LDS church recently got a copyright on the word "Mormon" > - I wonder why). I know many of you still think hating and > excommunicating anyone or anything to do with organized religion (and > visa versa), is the best or only route to take. But I challenge you to > point out one shred of real evidence that such hateful, excommunicating > attitudes have done anything for the transhumanist movement, other than > keeping it completely dead, fractured, unable to co-operate, and > worthless - the sorry state we are all in today - most people in the > world not even knowing of the word Transhumanist. > I think this negative attitude is a holdover from some of the atheistic ranks. And of course many transhumanists are first atheists and so they take old attitudes with them as they join our circles. People on both sides of the fence need to be reminded about the teachings of Jesus that implored everyone to love their neighbor. But it's of course much easier said than done. I have seen Max More and Natasha Vita-More speak at some very emotionally and intellectually heated conferences, and I can attest to the fact that they are bridge builders (and not bridge burners) for transhumanism. > This weekend is the semi-annual Mormon LDS General Conference in Salt > Lake City, Utah. For Mormons, this is it. There will be gazillions of > well organized volunteers filling downtown SLC. The lavish LDS > conference center seats more than 23 thousand people, and it will be > standing room only during the entire weekend. Many LDS only wishing > they could get some tickets to just one session, as thousands of them > stand outside listening to it on the radio. It's near impossible for > locals to get tickets, especially for Sunday Morning, since they reserve > these tickets mostly for people from out of town. In conjunction with > this, we are having our Transhumanist and Spirituality conference. > (see: http://www.transhumanism-spirituality.org/ ) Max More, James > Hughes, and a famous Mormon Intellectual, Terryl Givens are the key note > speakers. > Both conferences should be great!!! : ) > Despite the difficulty of getting tickets for such, we've finally > networked with enough Mormons, that we've collected a bunch of tickets, > so a bunch of the attendees, including the keynote speakers, will all be > attending the main General Conference Session, Sunday Morning together. Damn! I am impressed. We need to get Damien Broderick to be a guest speaker next year! heehee! > My in laws know about all of this, our efforts to solicit so far and > wide trying to get these tickets, and I was also telling them the story > of the brilliant LDS Historian, Don Bradley, today. Basically, in large > part due to what Don found in LDS history, like many other smart > historians, he had resigned (or had his name formally removed from the > LDS church records). Yet, after he started getting active in the MTA, > he got re-baptized into the LDS church. My mother in law also knew how > many impossible to get conference tickets we had mustered from our world > wide MTA membership, and that we were taking people like Max More (I had > explained who he was to all of them) to conference with us. > I just hope the conference center does not catch on fire when Max walks inside! ; ) > Today as I was over at the inlaws' house, after I told this story, my > mother in law asked: "Now what do you guys call yourself again?" And as > I slowly answered: "Mormon Transhumanist Association" she was, with much > glowing interest, writing the word Transhumanist down. > What a great success story! Brent, it's obvious the MTA has done some great things in your life. After all, it won over your mother in law! : ) John > Brent Allsop > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Mormon Transhumanist Association" group. > To post to this group, send email to transfigurism at googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > transfigurism+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/transfigurism?hl=en. > > From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Sep 30 05:43:13 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 22:43:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] My 80 year old Mother In Law asked about Transhumanism Message-ID: On 9/29/10, Brent Allsop wrote: > > Transhumanists, > > As most of you know, all of my family is mostly truly believing Mormons > - Especially my mother in law. Before 5 years ago and before we started > the Mormon Transhumanist Association - I was mostly taking the same tact > some of you hating transhumanists were taking: lets excommunicate > religion and destroy it with the rational truth, or Transhumanism / > atheism. If transhumanism becomes a truly powerful force in society and then develops a mutually adversarial relationship with religion, we could set the stage for an extremely nasty conflict that could make WW2 look mild by comparison. The science fiction short story "Monster" comes to mind. I was actively working on this for much more than 10 years > with absolutely nothing to show for my efforts, except everyone hating > me. It was probably mostly just my perception, but there were strong > feelings that during that time, likely largely because of my lets > convert everyone from and destroy religion attitude, my mother in law > wanted my wife and LDS family to divorce me. Our family did come very > close to this during those times. Even my parents seemed to want this. > On Facebook I've seen militant atheists who talk about nothing but atheism and how much they hate religion. I wonder about people who never talk about family, friends, work, politics, etc., because their one obsession is atheism/as defined as a hatred for religion in almost all forms. But I do realize there is also the fundamentalist equivalent out there... > However, as we got started with the MTA, I finally realized, that all > this fracturing hate was precisely the only problem with me and the > transhumanist movement. And of course, if you think there are lots of > transhumanists that want to excommunicate religion from transhumanism, > how many Mormons do you think there are that want to excommunicate the > Mormon Transhumanists Association from Mormonism? You haven't seen > anything. (The LDS church recently got a copyright on the word "Mormon" > - I wonder why). I know many of you still think hating and > excommunicating anyone or anything to do with organized religion (and > visa versa), is the best or only route to take. But I challenge you to > point out one shred of real evidence that such hateful, excommunicating > attitudes have done anything for the transhumanist movement, other than > keeping it completely dead, fractured, unable to co-operate, and > worthless - the sorry state we are all in today - most people in the > world not even knowing of the word Transhumanist. > I think this negative attitude is a holdover from some of the atheistic ranks. And of course many transhumanists are first atheists and so they take old attitudes with them as they join our circles. People on both sides of the fence need to be reminded about the teachings of Jesus that implored everyone to love their neighbor. But it's of course much easier said than done. I have seen Max More and Natasha Vita-More speak at some very emotionally and intellectually heated conferences, and I can attest to the fact that they are bridge builders (and not bridge burners) for transhumanism. > This weekend is the semi-annual Mormon LDS General Conference in Salt > Lake City, Utah. For Mormons, this is it. There will be gazillions of > well organized volunteers filling downtown SLC. The lavish LDS > conference center seats more than 23 thousand people, and it will be > standing room only during the entire weekend. Many LDS only wishing > they could get some tickets to just one session, as thousands of them > stand outside listening to it on the radio. It's near impossible for > locals to get tickets, especially for Sunday Morning, since they reserve > these tickets mostly for people from out of town. In conjunction with > this, we are having our Transhumanist and Spirituality conference. > (see: http://www.transhumanism-spirituality.org/ ) Max More, James > Hughes, and a famous Mormon Intellectual, Terryl Givens are the key note > speakers. > Both conferences should be great!!! : ) > Despite the difficulty of getting tickets for such, we've finally > networked with enough Mormons, that we've collected a bunch of tickets, > so a bunch of the attendees, including the keynote speakers, will all be > attending the main General Conference Session, Sunday Morning together. Damn! I am impressed. We need to get Damien Broderick to be a guest speaker next year! heehee! > My in laws know about all of this, our efforts to solicit so far and > wide trying to get these tickets, and I was also telling them the story > of the brilliant LDS Historian, Don Bradley, today. Basically, in large > part due to what Don found in LDS history, like many other smart > historians, he had resigned (or had his name formally removed from the > LDS church records). Yet, after he started getting active in the MTA, > he got re-baptized into the LDS church. My mother in law also knew how > many impossible to get conference tickets we had mustered from our world > wide MTA membership, and that we were taking people like Max More (I had > explained who he was to all of them) to conference with us. > I just hope the conference center does not catch on fire when Max walks inside! ; ) > Today as I was over at the inlaws' house, after I told this story, my > mother in law asked: "Now what do you guys call yourself again?" And as > I slowly answered: "Mormon Transhumanist Association" she was, with much > glowing interest, writing the word Transhumanist down. > What a great success story! Brent, it's obvious the MTA has done some great things in your life. After all, it won over your mother in law! John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Sep 30 06:48:12 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 23:48:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion thatbelievers, study shows In-Reply-To: <887297.91724.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <201009290102.o8T12eML000527@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <887297.91724.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Spike wrote: Sometimes I wish we lived in a world where the God debate did not take place at all, where public discussion of such would be as quaint (and about as charming) and medieval jousting. There is enough corporeal investigation to keep us occupied for eternity. Questions will be answered as we all go along, folks. Why waste our time by dragging a creator into it? . Alas, I'm being ridiculously naive. It's a rationalist's Wonderland I'm dreaming of. >>> Yes, you can be a tad naive about the nature of people and religion. : ) This weekend I will be visiting a believer's wonderland in a place called "Salt Lake City." Though Mormon, I have never before done the pilgrimage to what is known as "General Conference." But the event that actually draws me to SLC is... The Mormon Transhumanist Association's Spirituality and Transhumanism Conference! http://www.transhumanism-spirituality.org/ I look forward to saying hello to Max, Natasha, Dr. J, Brent, Lincoln, David, and a bunch of other friends!! We have an incredible list of speakers and I am excited! John : ) On 9/29/10, Dan wrote: > Same here regarding Smith's book. I believe, too, he wrote that when he was > in > his early 20s. Also, IIRC, he doesn't have a high school diploma or degree. > Quite an achievement for one lacking traditional credentials, no? > > Regards, > > Dan > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Max More > To: Extropy-Chat > Sent: Tue, September 28, 2010 8:35:51 PM > Subject: Re: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion > thatbelievers, study shows > > >> *What is the best refutation of religion you have ever seen, heard or >> read? >> >> It can be a book or anything you want, a lecture by Dawkins, even the >> ExI-chat >>archives.? Before I present my answer, I will offer the second best, and >> one >>that Max More might suggest: Bertrand Russell's Why I am Not a Christian. > > No, I wouldn't suggest that one. I really don't remember it well from 30 > years > ago, but think it *was* excellent -- but still not the *one* I would choose. > > For a philosophical book that would be too difficult for the general public, > I > would pick J.L. Mackie's The Miracle of Theism. > > I haven't read any of the recent popular books by Hitchens, Dawkins, etc. so > I > can't choose from among them. > > I still have a soft spot for the philosophical and moral critique in George > Smith's Atheism: The Case Against God. > > Max > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From pharos at gmail.com Thu Sep 30 08:36:20 2010 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 09:36:20 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [mta] My 80 year old Mother In Law asked about Transhumanism. In-Reply-To: References: <4CA3FE45.70907@canonizer.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 6:22 AM, John Grigg wrote: > I think this negative attitude is a holdover from some of the > atheistic ranks. ?And of course many transhumanists are first atheists > and so they take old attitudes with them as they join our circles. > People on both sides of the fence need to be reminded about the > teachings of Jesus that implored everyone to love their neighbor. ?But > it's of course much easier said than done. ?I have seen Max More and > Natasha Vita-More speak at some very emotionally and intellectually > heated conferences, and I can attest to the fact that they are bridge > builders (and not bridge burners) for transhumanism. > > I agree that militant atheists are a real turn-off and bridge-building will get much better results for everyone. But I'd like to have a little nit-pick about the 'love your neighbour' bit. :) Assuming Jesus actually existed as a single person, he was a Jewish teacher, preaching to the Jewish people, trying to reform the Jewish faith. The 'love your neighbour' is a direct quote from the Torah - from Jewish law. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am Jehovah (Lev. 19, 18). This commandment referred to Israelites *only*, because it then goes on to say: The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am Jehovah, your God! (Lev. 19, 34). So friends of Israel are also neighbours. But enemies of Israel were liable to be exterminated. It's not all sweetness and light! :) It was Paul that rewrote Jesus' parochial teaching for his own wider evangelical purposes in oppostion to the original Jewish followers of Jesus. Paul was preaching after the destruction of Jerusalem to people living under oppresive Roman rule. He changed the teaching to love even your enemies, so that his followers would not revolt, but submit to Roman domination and exploitation. i.e. 'Don't rock the boat'. BillK From darren.greer3 at gmail.com Thu Sep 30 09:42:47 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 06:42:47 -0300 Subject: [ExI] End of time? In-Reply-To: References: <12281610.2532391285791126777.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> Message-ID: John wrote: "I remember doing one in junior high school where my self-assigned topic was asteroid mining! lol" I did two projects, one year on the solar system and the next on wave amplification. I wrote a BASIC program on the former that asked some pretty standard questions about the moons of Saturn, the great red spot, etc. You type in the right answer and you get a little celebratory tune on the Commodore 60 and an exuberant "You are correct!. One of the teacher's judging the fair was a man who was like Spike. He taught physics and chemistry and because he was fully dedicated to these subjects, he expected the presenters not to just know the work by rote but to have some kind of intellectual relationship with it, especially if you took the time to enter the science fair. At first he was delighted with the BASIC program, until he figured out if you answered wrong nothing happened. It just re-asked the question ad infinitum. Bastard did the same thing to me with wave amplification, by asking a fundamental question during the fair I didn't know the answer to. Most of the students in my school were deathly afraid of him and resented the amount of work he expected them to do to just pass his academic science courses. His philosophy was that if you registered for an advanced course you should have an interest in it, and if you had an interest in it you should be challenged on a number of levels. Today I realize he was my first example of someone not just teaching a subject, but illustrating a passionate involvement with a particular field of study. In one of life's little twists, I find out in my first chemistry class last week that my professor knows and admires him greatly. And still talks to him, which means my performance in University chemistry will possibly be silently graded by my old chem and physics teacher if he finds out I'm in the class. Darren On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 11:51 PM, John Grigg wrote: > Spike wrote: > I was scared senseless that the Big Rip is 5 million years from now. But > when they clarified it is 5 billion years hence, I calmed a bit. > >>> > > Spike, I don't blame you for being scared senseless! If calorie > restriction diets, Kurzweillian predictions, or cryonics pan out, five > million years will just not be enough time to have fun! > > Oh, I very much enjoyed your post about the elementary school science > fair. I remember doing one in junior high school where my > self-assigned topic was asteroid mining! lol I realize, you are now > wondering, did John build a space craft, make it out to the asteroid > belt, and then bring a big rock back? Well, actually, my "experiment" > was more like me "daydreaming with paper, cardboard and models" about > the asteroid mining of some future time (who would have ever guessed > that years later I would love posting on the Extropy list and become > very infatuated with transhumanism). > > I received a D minus for my effort, which I deserved because it was > not a *science experiment!* I wish that teacher had been at your > school doling out grades, because she would not have shirked her duty. > Oh, and she could have passed for being Amara's sister! lol > > John : ) > > > On 9/29/10, scerir wrote: > > Spike writes: > > I know that I can't tell a real inflation model paper from a fake one. > > So I am one of the sixth graders as well, just a more humble one. > > > > -------------------------------- > > > > There is a joke, rather a webpage for physicists who really think > > that >> 50% of the published papers are crazy, or not even wrong, > > or written by possible clones of Alan Sokal > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair > > http://www.newbernsj.com/articles/fool-88760-years-.html > > http://physicsandphysicists.blogspot.com/2010/07/another-sokal-hoax.html > > > > for the records Alan Sokal is also a real physicist > > http://arxiv.org/find/cond-mat/1/au:+Sokal_A/0/1/0/all/0/1 > > > > So, the "snarXiv" is essentially a random generator of crazy > > 'theoretical' papers, so crazy and so well written that it is not so > > easy to guess whether they are ...... > > http://snarxiv.org/ > > the generator engine http://davidsd.org/2010/03/the-snarxiv/ > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 darren.greer3 at gmail.com Thu Sep 30 09:46:33 2010 From: darren.greer3 at gmail.com (Darren Greer) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 06:46:33 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Newly discovered planet may be first truly habitable exoplanet! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 1:18 AM, John Grigg wrote: > "A team of planet hunters led by astronomers at the University of > California, Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington has > announced the discovery of an Earth-sized planet (three times the mass > of Earth) orbiting a nearby star at a distance that places it squarely > in the middle of the star's "habitable zone," where liquid water could > exist on the planet's surface. If confirmed, this would be the most > Earth-like exoplanet yet discovered and the first strong case for a > potentially habitable one." I woke up to this news on a local radio station this morning. I haven't got the NSF e-update yet today, but I look forward to reading what they have to say about it. Darren -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Thu Sep 30 13:36:45 2010 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 15:36:45 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Newly discovered planet may be first truly habitable exoplanet! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Get over with this romanticism! There is nothing there worth to mention. If it was, we were be doomed. Long time ago, most probably. Don't wish a cosmic brother, for he is lethal for us. - Thomas -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Sep 30 13:42:05 2010 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 06:42:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Newly discovered planet may be first truly habitable exoplanet! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <353273.25479.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I'm curious about one thing, because I only casually follow exoplanet research, but are there many repeat observations by others once a planet is detected? I mean, if someone detects a planet around X using one method (say, the?doppler method), does another team follow up with another (say, transit)? Regards, Dan From: Darren Greer To: ExI chat list Sent: Thu, September 30, 2010 5:46:33 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] Newly discovered planet may be first truly habitable exoplanet! On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 1:18 AM, John Grigg wrote: "A team of planet hunters led by astronomers at the University of >California, Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington has >announced the discovery of an Earth-sized planet (three times the mass >of Earth) orbiting a nearby star at a distance that places it squarely >in the middle of the star's "habitable zone," where liquid water could >exist on the planet's surface. If confirmed, this would be the most >Earth-like exoplanet yet discovered and the first strong case for a >potentially habitable one." I woke up to this news on a local radio station this morning. I haven't got the NSF e-update yet today, but I look forward to reading what they have to say about it. Darren -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Sep 30 14:13:17 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 07:13:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion thatbelievers, study shows In-Reply-To: References: <201009290102.o8T12eML000527@andromeda.ziaspace.com><887297.91724.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of John Grigg > Subject: Re: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about > religion thatbelievers, study shows > > Spike wrote: > Sometimes I wish we lived in a world where the God debate did > not take place at all, where public discussion of such would > be as quaint (and about as charming) and medieval jousting... Hi John! Actually I think it was Brent who wrote that comment. I know I didn't, and I am cool with a world where the God debate takes place. Regarding jousting, I went to a local Renaissance fair a few years ago, and a coupla proles were doing a jousting demonstration. Soon the PETA people will shut that down: it sure looks risky to the horses. Have fun at the Mormon Transhumanists! {8-] spike From spike66 at att.net Thu Sep 30 14:27:29 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 07:27:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] End of time? In-Reply-To: References: <12281610.2532391285791126777.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> Message-ID: <6C9EF9610F184F999759280D62922875@spike> __________________________ ...On Behalf Of Darren Greer ... >...Bastard did the same thing to me with wave amplification, by asking a fundamental question during the fair I didn't know the answer to...Today I realize he was my first example of someone not just teaching a subject, but illustrating a passionate involvement with a particular field of study... Darren Thanks Darren! I like that bastard. I have been looking to break into high school level science teaching myself, but the barriers are nearly impossible for going into teaching as a geezer. For starters the California public schools are in dire straits, with nowhere to go but down, steeply. spike From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Sep 30 15:18:05 2010 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 08:18:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Newly discovered planet may be first truly habitable exoplanet! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <823098.27781.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Why are we possibly doomed? Also, I think it's pretty cool that there appears to be a solar system there fairly like ours. It might mean that solar systems similar to ours are fairly common. Does this means life and intelligent life are fairly common? I don't know. Regards, Dan From: Tomaz Kristan To: ExI chat list Sent: Thu, September 30, 2010 9:36:45 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] Newly discovered planet may be first truly habitable exoplanet! Get over with this romanticism! There is nothing there worth to mention. If it was, we were be doomed. Long time ago, most probably. Don't wish a cosmic brother, for he is lethal for us. - Thomas -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Thu Sep 30 17:08:24 2010 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 19:08:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] TransVision 2010 News Message-ID: http://transvision2010.wordpress.com/ We have changed to another conference venue in central Milan. TransVision 2010 will be held at the conference hall ?Sala Carmagnola? of the Hotel dei Cavalieri in central Milan. We updated the maps and the list of recommended hotels. The new conference venue is not far from the previous one, and all previously recommended hotels are still good options. Conference Hotel: http://transvision2010.wordpress.com/logistics/ http://www.hoteldeicavalieri.com/ This is, of course, the most practical and convenient choice. Current room prices for the TransVision 2010 days are 129-200 euro per night. There are rooms available, but I wish to advice those who plan to stay at the conference hotel to book fast. We have a list of other hotels in the area http://transvision2010.wordpress.com/logistics/recommended-hotels/ The cheapest are: http://www.hotelpanizza.it/ http://www.hotelaliseo.it/en/ We will update the program in the next few days, with many new speakers and abstracts. TransVision 2010 is a global transhumanist conference and community convention, organized by several transhumanist activists, groups and organizations, under the executive leadership of the Italian Transhumanist Association (AIT) and with the collaboration of an Advisory Board. The event will take place on October 22, 23 and 24, 2010 in Milan, Italy with many options for remote online access. The current registration fees will remain valid until October 20, without increase. Register now http://transvision2010.wordpress.com/registration/ post links to Twitter, your blogs and websites, and add your name to the TransVision 2010 Facebook page. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Sep 30 16:46:48 2010 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 09:46:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Extrasolar planets: More giants in focus Message-ID: <858454.5932.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Slightly related, since some were discussing exoplanets. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7314/full/467405a.html "A fresh analysis of data from gravitational microlensing surveys for planets orbiting stars other than the Sun finds that gas-giant planets similar to Jupiter are more common than previously thought." Regards, Dan From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Sep 30 19:01:57 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 12:01:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] End of time? In-Reply-To: <6C9EF9610F184F999759280D62922875@spike> References: <12281610.2532391285791126777.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> <6C9EF9610F184F999759280D62922875@spike> Message-ID: >I have been looking to break into high >school level science teaching myself, but the barriers are nearly impossible >or going into teaching as a geezer. For starters the California public >schools are in dire straits, with nowhere to go but down, steeply. Spike, considering your considerable life experience as an aerospace engineer, the very fact the California educational establishment balks at enlisting you as a teacher is strong evidence of their total stupidity. And science teachers are more precious than rubies because many folks with such skills go into far better paying professions! John : ( On 9/30/10, spike wrote: > __________________________ > > ...On Behalf Of Darren Greer > ... > >...Bastard did the same thing to me with wave amplification, by > asking a fundamental question during the fair I didn't know the answer > to...Today I realize he was my first example of someone not just teaching a > subject, but illustrating a passionate involvement with a particular field > of study... Darren > > > Thanks Darren! I like that bastard. I have been looking to break into high > school level science teaching myself, but the barriers are nearly impossible > for going into teaching as a geezer. For starters the California public > schools are in dire straits, with nowhere to go but down, steeply. > > 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 Sep 30 19:05:27 2010 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 12:05:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion thatbelievers, study shows In-Reply-To: References: <201009290102.o8T12eML000527@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <887297.91724.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: When Peta has their way, the horses will have to be replaced with motorcycles! lol And so the history books will have to be rewritten to allow for that to be seen as historically accurate. I will try to have fun with my MTA comrades! John : ) On 9/30/10, spike wrote: > > >> ...On Behalf Of John Grigg >> Subject: Re: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about >> religion thatbelievers, study shows >> >> Spike wrote: >> Sometimes I wish we lived in a world where the God debate did >> not take place at all, where public discussion of such would >> be as quaint (and about as charming) and medieval jousting... > > Hi John! Actually I think it was Brent who wrote that comment. I know I > didn't, and I am cool with a world where the God debate takes place. > Regarding jousting, I went to a local Renaissance fair a few years ago, and > a coupla proles were doing a jousting demonstration. Soon the PETA people > will shut that down: it sure looks risky to the horses. > > Have fun at the Mormon Transhumanists! > > {8-] > > spike > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From spike66 at att.net Thu Sep 30 20:26:30 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 13:26:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about religion thatbelievers, study shows In-Reply-To: References: <201009290102.o8T12eML000527@andromeda.ziaspace.com><887297.91724.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <2F1C1C70FB4743B997FCDC31B99EDC1F@spike> >...On Behalf Of John Grigg ... > Subject: Re: [ExI] Atheists and agnostics know more about > religion thatbelievers, study shows > > When Peta has their way, the horses will have to be replaced > with motorcycles! lol ... What a cool idea John! That sounds like a really fun game! Even I would pay to see motorcycle jousting. With a halftime show of bikini Segway tug-of-war, that would sell tickets like nobody's business. spike From spike66 at att.net Thu Sep 30 20:22:52 2010 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 13:22:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] End of time? In-Reply-To: References: <12281610.2532391285791126777.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost><6C9EF9610F184F999759280D62922875@spike> Message-ID: <66CDC13231B84E3B97F6936A7B16840F@spike> > ...On Behalf Of John Grigg > ... > >California public schools are in dire straits, with nowhere > to go but down, steeply. > > Spike, considering your considerable life experience as an > aerospace engineer, the very fact the California educational > establishment balks at enlisting you as a teacher is strong > evidence of their total stupidity. And science teachers are > more precious than rubies because many folks with such skills > go into far better paying professions! > > John : ( > ...evidence of their total stupidity... Nay sir, the California public schools know they are desperate for science and math teachers, and they know they need way more than they have, and better ones. The problem is not that they don't want us retired rocket scientists, they really do. The problem is the schools have even more desperate and immediate funding problems, and there is no obvious solution anywhere on the horizon. There really isn't. They tried raising taxes last year, both sales and income, but the revenue actually went down, proving what the conservatives were trying to tell them: the state is already on the far side of the Laffer curve. They can't raise property taxes, for that requires 2/3 of the state legislature. They would be lucky to get 1/3 to vote for that solution. The state already takes in as much as it can ever take in. The kicker is that if they reduce the taxation level to where it was before, the state's revenue drops again, at least in the short term. It eventually goes back up, but it takes a while, perhaps decades, to regain that which can be slain with the stroke of a pen. Last year the state harvested the high-hanging fruit in the easiest possible way: by chopping down the apple tree. Perhaps you have heard of our state's 19 billion dollar deficit? And that the budget still hasn't passed, and is over two months overdue? And that they are not even making much progress? What do we do now, coach? spike From giulio at gmail.com Fri Sep 24 13:41:54 2010 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 15:41:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] teleXLR8 Project News - a telepresence community for cultural acceleration Message-ID: http://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2010/09/telexlr8-project-news-telepresence.html teleXLR8 Project News - a telepresence community for cultural acceleration We have been running the teleXLR8 project, a telepresence community for cultural acceleration based on Teleplace, in semi-stealth beta mode for a few months since the first talk by Anders Sandberg on Neuroselves and exoselves: distributed cognition inside and outside brains on April 18, 2010. We have produced some great events, talks by well known experts of futuristic technologies, meetings of closed working groups, and a two day "mixed reality" satellite workshop with the Singularity Summit 2010. teleXLR8 has been running as a free, invitation-only beta on the Teleplace servers and network infrastructure since March 2010. Due to the limited resources available we have only promoted teleXLR8 in the relatively small community of future studies and "Singularity" enthusiasts. Even so, we have received many more requests to join than we could handle, and the project has been frequently covered by the blogosphere and the online press. The current beta group has about 80 members. Each talk has been recorded on video and posted to the video sharing site blip.tv the day after the talk. The videos have been seen by several thousands of viewers and covered by important technology oriented sites including internetACTU, IEET, KurzweilAI, H+ Magazine, Next Big Future and Slashdot. We have now reached an agreement with Teleplace, which will permit running the project in fully operational mode our own dedicated servers, network and support infrastructure, and opening it to everyone for a very reasonable membership fee. The current beta will continue until the start of the next phase, and all members of the current beta group will receive extended free membership. Sponsor slots are available. We will produce great and frequent online events, featuring first class speakers with world-changing ideas, available in interactive realtime telepresence. teleXLR8 can be thought of as an online open TED, using modern telepresence technology for ideas worth spreading, and as a next generation, fully interactive TV network with a participative audience. In the pictures, participants are watching the recent talk by Ben Goertzel on TV. At any moment, they can step in to comment, discuss and ask questions. For a more detailed description of the project's goals, see our mini-manifesto Telepresence Education for a Smarter World on the IEET site and the interview MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco, by Natasha Vita-More, on H+ Magazine. Besides the existing Facebook Group and Linkedin Group, we have created a teleXLR8 mailing list on Google Groups. Please feel free to join the mailing list to discuss the project. http://telexlr8.wordpress.com/