From alfio.puglisi at gmail.com Sat Jun 1 13:12:21 2013 From: alfio.puglisi at gmail.com (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 15:12:21 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Arkyd In-Reply-To: <76455FDE-564E-4BF3-8367-869099EB70B3@yahoo.com> References: <76455FDE-564E-4BF3-8367-869099EB70B3@yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 12:04 AM, Dan Ust wrote: > > http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1458134548/arkyd-a-space-telescope-for-everyone-0/description > > Comments? > > What? After lining up such an impressive list of "investors", as they call them: http://www.planetaryresources.com/team/ now they need kickstarter to raise $1M? Must be a joke Alfio -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alfio.puglisi at gmail.com Sat Jun 1 13:46:23 2013 From: alfio.puglisi at gmail.com (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 15:46:23 +0200 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 2:54 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > > Passive English comes out of that practically for free, and you can > leverage your Italian and Latin to quickly grasp the basic grammar and > vocabulary of all neo-Latin languages. In turn, German provides you a > sufficient root lexicon to learn to understand Dutch or Swedish by > yourself, not to mention the fact that words with a Greek etimology are one > and the same across the entire spectrum of European languages (I do not > know how to say theatre, epathitis or philosophy in Czech, but am confident > that I would recognise the words) > Let's see.. philosophy - filozofie that looks easy, but then: theathre - divadlo hepatitis - z?n?t jater Oops. Languages in East Europe are in a class of their own :-) Alfio -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Sat Jun 1 14:02:05 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 07:02:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Bullies (Was: Re: chinese synthesis) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1370095325.73425.YahooMailNeo@web165006.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> John Grigg wrote: > ...even church leaders have to > concede that they cannot stop young people from dating and marrying whom > they choose, well, unless they are romantically pursuing non-members, which > then results in a top notch guilt trip! lol That "lol" at the end rather disturbs me. Do you not think this is immoral?? It is, after all, attempted coercion.? Bullying at the very least. Or am I over-reacting, and nobody takes much notice of these church leaders? Ben Zaiboc From spike at rainier66.com Sat Jun 1 14:42:22 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 07:42:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Bullies (Was: Re: chinese synthesis) In-Reply-To: <1370095325.73425.YahooMailNeo@web165006.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1370095325.73425.YahooMailNeo@web165006.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <004a01ce5ed6$3a9af850$afd0e8f0$@rainier66.com> >...On Behalf Of Ben Zaiboc Subject: [ExI] Bullies (Was: Re: chinese synthesis) John Grigg wrote: >> ...even church leaders have to > concede that they cannot stop young people from dating and marrying > whom they choose, well, unless they are romantically pursuing > non-members, which then results in a top notch guilt trip! lol >...That "lol" at the end rather disturbs me. >...Do you not think this is immoral?? It is, after all, attempted coercion.? Bullying at the very least. >...Or am I over-reacting, and nobody takes much notice of these church leaders? >...Ben Zaiboc _______________________________________________ Ben there has been a lot written about this phenomenon, specifically for Mormons. The Google words are "psychological dynamics of voluntary tyranny." The people in those kinds of organizations are there by choice, even to some extent the children. The teens, definitely. They have the option of leaving and coming back later. Many do. A guilt trip is voluntary as well: if a person refuses to go on that trip, no one can make them go. spike From spike at rainier66.com Sat Jun 1 14:51:12 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 07:51:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again Message-ID: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> This came up about a year ago, but I don't recall the details. Who here has done anything with 23AndMe? I just got my results back yesterday and it has blown my mind. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ginakathleenmiller at gmail.com Sat Jun 1 15:23:43 2013 From: ginakathleenmiller at gmail.com (Gina Miller) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 09:23:43 -0600 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> References: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I sent my DNA out a couple weeks ago - what did your results tell you? Gina "Nanogirl" Miller www.nanogirl.com www.nanoindustries.com On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 8:51 AM, spike wrote: > ** ** > > This came up about a year ago, but I don?t recall the details. Who here > has done anything with 23AndMe? I just got my results back yesterday and > it has blown my mind.**** > > ** ** > > 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 clementlawyer at gmail.com Sat Jun 1 15:59:48 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 11:59:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> References: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I did 23andMe for myself, parents, sister, other relatives, and a few friends back in 2010. I also had my whole-genome sequenced in 2010. 23andMe does a better and better job at presenting the SNP info in an understandable format. We're only beginning to have tools for DIY whole-genome analysis, so it's still a bit early to make use of such, unless you're really into genetics. James On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 10:51 AM, spike wrote: > ** ** > > This came up about a year ago, but I don?t recall the details. Who here > has done anything with 23AndMe? I just got my results back yesterday and > it has blown my mind.**** > > ** ** > > 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 dan_ust at yahoo.com Sat Jun 1 15:51:38 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 08:51:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1370101898.92461.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Yeah, I'm not surprised. When I was in high school, I read _Cancer Ward_ by Solzhenitsyn. In the novel, one of the patients in the cancer ward reads his folder and it states "casus inoperabilis." For an English speaker -- and probably a French or Italian speaker -- it's quite easy to understand what this means. But for a native Russian speaker with no knowledge of Latin or of the aforementioned languages, it's opaque -- and that's the point in the novel: the patient can read it, but not have a clue what it means. My guess would be Slavic languages would be, overall, not as influenced by Latin. Maybe some of them would have some Latin and Greek influence, but nothing like those of Germanic and Romance languages. Of course, the technical terms likely are similar in many cases, but they might alien to a native speaker without a technical background -- whereas an English speaker would be very likely to guess what "inoperabilis" means even if she never studied Latin and knew nothing about medical terminology. ? Regards, Dan From: Alfio Puglisi To: ExI chat list Sent: Saturday, June 1, 2013 9:46 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] chinese synthesis On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 2:54 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > >Passive English comes out of that practically for free, and you can leverage your Italian and Latin to quickly grasp the basic grammar and vocabulary of all neo-Latin languages. In turn, German provides you a sufficient root lexicon to learn to understand Dutch or Swedish by yourself, not to mention the fact that words with a Greek etimology are one and the same across the entire spectrum of European languages (I do not know how to say theatre, epathitis or philosophy in Czech, but am confident that I would recognise the words) Let's see.. philosophy -?filozofie that looks easy, but then: theathre - divadlo hepatitis -?z?n?t jater Oops. Languages in East Europe are in a class of their own :-) Alfio -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sat Jun 1 16:11:55 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 09:11:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Arkyd In-Reply-To: References: <76455FDE-564E-4BF3-8367-869099EB70B3@yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 6:12 AM, Alfio Puglisi wrote: > What? After lining up such an impressive list of "investors", as they call > them: > > http://www.planetaryresources.com/team/ > > now they need kickstarter to raise $1M? Must be a joke > Every source of funding. Also, this may be more PR than actual fundraising. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sat Jun 1 15:57:43 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 16:57:43 +0100 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 4:23 PM, Gina Miller wrote: > I sent my DNA out a couple weeks ago - what did your results tell you? > > That's a very personal question! :) Spike won't tell you if they found alien DNA. :) I feel there is still an element of astrology-style analysis going on. i.e. Results in general terms that could apply to many people. They won't want to get sued for giving specific wrong information that ruins someone's life. BillK From pharos at gmail.com Sat Jun 1 16:25:55 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 17:25:55 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Space Gnats (Was: Re: Gold) In-Reply-To: <1370009172.67064.YahooMailNeo@web165002.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1370009172.67064.YahooMailNeo@web165002.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 3:06 PM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Indeed, and one of the best things about it is, once you're solid-state, and once the > infrastructure is in place, you can literally travel at the speed of light. > > That will be an interesting and strange scenario: Matter being s-l-o-w-l-y shifted around > the solar system, like elephants hauling felled logs, while minds can flit between them > like gnats. Space gnats. > > Is this feasible? Or have I been reading too much Greg Egan? (would the power and > other requirements be too high to make beaming minds around the place, encoded > on lasers, a practical thing?) > > I like the idea, but solid-state doesn't mean you can travel at the speed of light. Solid means a solid block with no moving parts, except the electrons (photons?) inside. So you still have to find the power to drive a block up to high speeds and slow it down at the far end. But your idea of intelligences travelling at light speed might still be feasible if the computronium block was sent on ahead and waited for the mind to be lasered across the solar system into it. If your standard Type 1483 mind bricks were scattered around, then minds might be able to connect to empty bricks and move at light speed, leaving an empty brick behind for someone else. BillK From spike at rainier66.com Sat Jun 1 16:24:46 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 09:24:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <007b01ce5ee4$88574c20$9905e460$@rainier66.com> >>.This came up about a year ago, but I don't recall the details. Who here has done anything with 23AndMe? I just got my results back yesterday and it has blown my mind. spike From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Gina Miller >.I sent my DNA out a couple weeks ago - what did your results tell you? Gina "Nanogirl" Miller www.nanogirl.com www.nanoindustries.com Hi Nanogirl! We have missed you, pal! Regarding my results, I am still trying to digest it. More later, after I figure out what I am looking atwardly. >. what did your results tell you?...nanogirl Well for starters. that I am a goddam caveman! But that this is a good thing. Perhaps. Depending on how one views it. I am busily learning what it means that I have so much Neanderthal DNA, but now I know why my great^974 grandfather had that reputation: he was always slipping away for a little fling with that sly little Cro Magnon trollop, that's why. Of course that trollop is, um, technically. my. great^974 grandmother. But still. What I was hoping is to find others who are high Neanderthals. I am 99th percentile in that. My friend who talked me into doing 23AndMe is 96th percentile. I was hoping some of the cavemen on ExI would share their Neanderthal percentages, so we can derive some kind of wild-ass theory on that. We could go on the Mensa site and see if we have 23ers there who would share their Neanderthal percentages. Idea: we could get a high-Neanderthal percentage singles group together. Then we encourage the highest N to copulate with the highest N, the offspring form their own group, repeat, until we eventually in a few thousand years, breed new Neanderthals! We could even give them some cutesy name, such as Neonderthals. {8^D It would be like taking a group of cur dogs and selectively breeding them to produce wolves. I sent my 23 my spit kit on 3 April and the results were ready on 30 May, so about 8 weeks it took them to call me a caveman. Oh by the way Gina, you and I may be distant cousins. 23 found over 900 genetic matches, including one who I think is a direct descendant of the man for whom I named my own son. Any other Neanderthals present? If so you are among friends. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Jun 1 16:50:28 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 09:50:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <009801ce5ee8$1f884150$5e98c3f0$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 4:23 PM, Gina Miller wrote: >>... I sent my DNA out a couple weeks ago - what did your results tell you? >...That's a very personal question! :) Hey, that's my favorite kind of question. >...Spike won't tell you if they found alien DNA. :) I'll tell, they did find it. Specifically illegal alien DNA. >...I feel there is still an element of astrology-style analysis going on, i.e. Results in general terms that could apply to many people... This I will know soon. Reason: they give a list of people who are genetic matches and who have consented to allow other 23ers to see. I did this too, even giving my real name. Hey I have been an openness advocate, so it is time to put my genetics where my mouth is. Yesterday I initiated contact with a guy who I think is a fourth cousin in an ancestral line that interests me. I have done the genealogy from census records and I do know from shinola on that particular line. If he answers, I will know more. Problem: he is 90 yrs old, and I don't know if he is an email user or if he gets his messages off of 23AndMe. I will continue to contact fourth and closer cousins, see if I can verify if this cheapy DNA sequencing really works. >...They won't want to get sued for giving specific wrong information that ruins someone's life. BillK _______________________________________________ Ja, looks to me like 23 has indemnified themselves, by stressing repeatedly that this is a research project rather than a medical diagnosis tool. They give you (if you want to view it) the information on the genetic markers that increase risk for Alzheimers and Parkinsons. Thank evolution and that caveman way back there, I escaped having the markers on both of those bad guys, whew. spike From max at maxmore.com Sat Jun 1 17:04:51 2013 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 10:04:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> References: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Natasha and I have done 23andme and, I suspect, many others on this list. I hope it blew your mind by revealing that you have low-risk genes... --Max On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 7:51 AM, spike wrote: > ** ** > > This came up about a year ago, but I don?t recall the details. Who here > has done anything with 23AndMe? I just got my results back yesterday and > it has blown my mind.**** > > ** ** > > spike**** > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* Kindle available now: http://www.amazon.com/The-Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-ebook/dp/B00BQZK6MU/ref=tmm_kin_title_0 President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Jun 1 17:20:22 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 10:20:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00b901ce5eec$4c776930$e5663b90$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Max More Sent: Saturday, June 01, 2013 10:05 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again Natasha and I have done 23andme and, I suspect, many others on this list. I hope it blew your mind by revealing that you have low-risk genes... --Max Low risk in every area except one, in which my risk is elevated by a factor of about 8, damn. But it was a good trade-off for being lower risk for Alzheimers. With that one, you lose everything; for the cryonicist, you lose with all caps EVERYTHING. This has been on my mind a lot, since we are dealing with an AD family member. I have witnessed how that condition rips through the family well-being like a hot chainsaw through cotton candy. Max, your comment is an excellent blessing for fellow 23ers: May the sequencing reveal you have low-risk genes. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From B.Mesman at tue.nl Sat Jun 1 19:09:17 2013 From: B.Mesman at tue.nl (Mesman, B.) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 19:09:17 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Space Gnats Message-ID: <45A42BA25D81AF438C5725BFD9AE8ABCA35F@XSERVER21B.campus.tue.nl> BillK wrote: I like the idea, but solid-state doesn't mean you can travel at the speed of light. Solid means a solid block with no moving parts, except the electrons (photons?) inside. I think what Ben is referring to with 'solid-state' is semiconductor devices. Chips. Neural chips. No matter whether "you" are hard-coded in the chip-floorplan, or as a neural configuration on a "general-purpose" neural chipset, both can be described in a binary file, containing synaptic strengths on O(10^12) synapses. That's a lot of data, but it's finite. Now as a description, space 'travel' would actually amount to communicating data, via the laser. No physical mass is moved in the process. Necessary requirement is that the neural substrate (the chipset) on sender and receiver side are compatible. The neural configuration on the sender side does not 'disappear' in the process. So if you want to have only one unique copy of you active at any time, a wise protocol would inactivate the sender configuration. Bart From ALONZOTG at verizon.net Sat Jun 1 18:10:12 2013 From: ALONZOTG at verizon.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Sat, 01 Jun 2013 14:10:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Space Gnats (Was: Re: Gold) In-Reply-To: References: <1370009172.67064.YahooMailNeo@web165002.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51AA3904.9040403@verizon.net> BillK wrote: > On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 3:06 PM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > I like the idea, but solid-state doesn't mean you can travel at the > speed of light. > Solid means a solid block with no moving parts, except the electrons > (photons?) inside. > So you still have to find the power to drive a block up to high speeds > and slow it down at the far end. > But your idea of intelligences travelling at light speed might still > be feasible if the computronium block was sent on ahead and waited for > the mind to be lasered across the solar system into it. If your > standard Type 1483 mind bricks were scattered around, then minds might > be able to connect to empty bricks and move at light speed, leaving an > empty brick behind for someone else. W R 0 N G ! ! ! The fastest travel time using that method is a bit worse than C/3 Here's a reasonable protocol: 1. Transmitter broadcasts a fuck-ton of data into the ether. 2. Receiver computes a checksum on each block and broadcasts it back to the sender to prove that it's radio was switched on and that it actually received something usable. 3. Depending on the reply, the transmitter either goes back to #1 or broadcasts a "Clear to continue" message. 4. The receiver begins computations. Conceivably, you could shorten this by including the checksums with the initial transmission but, given the payload, it seems more reasonable that the sender have as much control over the process as possible. -- NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE Powers are not rights. From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Sat Jun 1 19:43:09 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 01 Jun 2013 13:43:09 -0600 Subject: [ExI] [mta] Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: References: <1684255918.331108.1369325715932.JavaMail.root@sz0038a.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net> <51A00F3A.5090002@canonizer.com> <51A0B89B.2080108@canonizer.com> <51A0E030.6030209@canonizer.com> <51A5418C.50907@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <51AA4ECD.30006@canonizer.com> Future Theoreticians, Multiple thoughts have been percolating in my mind that has further falsified my fears of a Bitcoin Deflationary Catastrophe. Help me see if I'm making any mistakes with this line of reasoning. Currently, economies have a general instability in them, causing destructive boom and bust cycles. During the boom, everyone is spending all their cash, to get into the stock market. This tends to cause currency to become worth less, or inflation, since everybody is getting rid of it, to purchase stocks. But when the herd goes to far in this direction it creates a bubble. When a pull back starts the 'bubble' pops. This is compounded as people want to sell stocks (or not buy them), but instead put the capital into something like Cash. reversing everything in a compounding the problem unstable way. All this causes people to reduce spending and investing, which causes jobs to be lost, real estate values, where most wealth is, crash, the stock market crashes, and governments attempt to counteract this cycle buy pumping more money into the system. They attempt to stop the deflation, and further drive down interest rates, hoping to motivate people to move money back into the stock market and real estate. What scared me was thinking of a fixed size inflexible currency, like Bitcion, if it was prevalent enough, it would really compound these unstable cycles. I believe when the next recession hits, it will really drive up Bitcion valuations, and no government will be able to counteract this flow of capital out of everything else into rapidly increasing in value Bitcoins. But what I realized was that this would make at least some people significantly more wealthy, and make them want to spend that much more money. In other words, instead of the government being the only one spending and putting people to work, Bitcion holders would likely fill this responsibility. The one problem would be, like most things, it makes the rich or those holding the most Bitcoins richer, making everyone else poorer. Where as governments tend to spend money to help the poor, the rich would spend money on what they want, helping the poor the way they wanted, after funding themselves. Also, when the rich really do get richer, eventually the people at the bottom, revolt, taking all the wealth away from the wealthy, as has occurred in so many revolutions in the past. But Bitcoins would make this impossible. As no government can steal a Bitcion from anyone, like they can a factory or farm. So, what does everyone think? Would Bitcion becoming the dominant currency increase or decrease boom bust cycles in the economy, and by how much? Brent Allsop On 5/29/2013 8:57 AM, James Carroll wrote: > On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 3:25 AM, Carl Youngblood > wrote: > > James, all I'm saying is that I don't think bitcoin will cause the > human race to go extinct against our wills. Anything more than > this is beyond my claim. If you do think that bitcoin will > probably cause the human race to go extinct, then you disagree > with me. Otherwise I think we agree. > > > > I think we generally agree that bitcoin is unlikely to have that > effect. I simply took slight issue with your stated reasoning for why. > But I think we agree in general. > > James > > -- > Web: http://james.jlcarroll.net > -- > To learn more about the Mormon Transhumanist Association, visit > http://transfigurism.org > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Mormon Transhumanist Association" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send > an email to transfigurism+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to transfigurism at googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/transfigurism?hl=en-US. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sat Jun 1 20:05:39 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 01 Jun 2013 22:05:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <00b901ce5eec$4c776930$e5663b90$@rainier66.com> References: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> <00b901ce5eec$4c776930$e5663b90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51AA5413.1000608@aleph.se> On 2013-06-01 19:20, spike wrote: > Low risk in every area except one, in which my risk is elevated by a > factor of about 8, damn. But it was a good trade-off for being lower > risk for Alzheimers. Exactly: not all risks are equal - we multiply the probability by a different loss value for each of them. And being X times more likely to get something very rare is not much of a worry - X times something small is still typically small. (Have not done 23andme yet, but will likely do it soonish. Next week I will start participating in a big longitudinal health study, which at least will keep an eye on my metabolic and cardiovascular health) -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford University From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 2 00:38:11 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 17:38:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <51AA5413.1000608@aleph.se> References: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> <00b901ce5eec$4c776930$e5663b90$@rainier66.com> <51AA5413.1000608@aleph.se> Message-ID: <001b01ce5f29$76610250$632306f0$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again On 2013-06-01 19:20, spike wrote: >>... Low risk in every area except one, in which my risk is elevated by a > factor of about 8, damn. But it was a good trade-off for being lower > risk for Alzheimers. >...Exactly: not all risks are equal - we multiply the probability by a different loss value for each of them. And being X times more likely to get something very rare is not much of a worry - X times something small is still typically small... This one isn't that small: my risk goes from less than 1 percent to about 6 percent, and if untreated it is fatal. But we have a treatment for it, as I found out after I did some research. The above sentence points out a great advantage of 23ing: if you have an elevated risk or a marker for something, you get online, read all the latest, learn, study, figure out how to spot the early signs or take any known preventive measures, perhaps saving your life. With cryonics, we are an oddball case: Alzheimer's is worse than inoperable cancer in a way. >...(Have not done 23andme yet, but will likely do it soonish. Next week I will start participating in a big longitudinal health study, which at least will keep an eye on my metabolic and cardiovascular health) -- Anders Sandberg _______________________________________________ Good I hope you do, Anders. I suspect you and I are at least 6ths cousins. I noticed how much of my ancestry was suggesting Swedish or Norwegian, possibly Baltics. I am intrigued by the one factor I came up 99th percentile: high Neanderthal genes. I know they weren't cavemen (researched it today.) But still, I like the idea of having a good scientific excuse for acting like one. I want to start an online group for 2 sigma and above Neanderthal, and perhaps another group for 2 sigma and below. Then we get a local picnic together with both groups, the highs wearing red tags and the lows wearing blue, see if we can notice any differences between the highs and lows. COOL! Now THIS my friend is SCIENCE! 23AndMe is a true crowd-sourced honest to evolution SCIENCE PROJECT! Now come on guys, anyone here who can pop for a Charlie, get a spit-kit, share with your own pals here your percent Neanderthal genes, for you are among FRIENDS. Let us take bumpy clubs, slay mastodon, roast, EAT, have rock pounding contest, hunt for cavewomen, og! (Hunt only, stop when find them, Mrs. Neanderspike not allow more than that, enforce rule ith bumpy club of her own.) https://www.23andme.com/ spike Hey, just because it's real science doesn't mean we are not allowed to have some fun with it. {8^D From max at maxmore.com Sun Jun 2 02:17:38 2013 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 19:17:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <51AA5413.1000608@aleph.se> References: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> <00b901ce5eec$4c776930$e5663b90$@rainier66.com> <51AA5413.1000608@aleph.se> Message-ID: Yes, exactly. Happily, I am average or below-risk for almost everything, and the exceptions are relatively minor and/or low probability base rates. The one that concerns me most is having 3.39x the average risk for age-related macular degeneration. About 7% of people over 75 have AMD, so the resulting risks for me are higher than I'd like. However, I've never smoked, and that's a major non-genetic risk factor, and I eat plenty of fruit, vegetables, and fish and nuts. Overall, I can't complain. Thanks Mum and Dad! Praise be to the Random Genetic Lottery! --Max On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 1:05 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-06-01 19:20, spike wrote: > >> Low risk in every area except one, in which my risk is elevated by a >> factor of about 8, damn. But it was a good trade-off for being lower >> risk for Alzheimers. >> > > Exactly: not all risks are equal - we multiply the probability by a > different loss value for each of them. And being X times more likely to get > something very rare is not much of a worry - X times something small is > still typically small. > > (Have not done 23andme yet, but will likely do it soonish. Next week I > will start participating in a big longitudinal health study, which at least > will keep an eye on my metabolic and cardiovascular health) > > -- > Anders Sandberg > Future of Humanity Institute > Oxford University > > ______________________________**_________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/**mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-**chat > -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* Kindle available now: http://www.amazon.com/The-Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-ebook/dp/B00BQZK6MU/ref=tmm_kin_title_0 President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 2 04:58:15 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 21:58:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <001b01ce5f29$76610250$632306f0$@rainier66.com> References: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> <00b901ce5eec$4c776930$e5663b90$@rainier66.com> <51AA5413.1000608@aleph.se> <001b01ce5f29$76610250$632306f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <003a01ce5f4d$cb66b730$62342590$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of spike >...I want to start an online group for 2 sigma and above Neanderthal, and perhaps another group for 2 sigma and below. Then we get a local picnic together with both groups, the highs wearing red tags and the lows wearing blue, see if we can notice any differences between the highs and lows. COOL! Now THIS my friend is SCIENCE! 23AndMe is a true crowd-sourced honest to evolution SCIENCE PROJECT! https://www.23andme.com/ Hey, just because it's real science doesn't mean we are not allowed to have some fun with it. {8^D spike _______________________________________________ I understated my case. Recall the history of the human genome project: back in the late 90s, there was all this buildup of how this sequencing would solve this disease and that one. So in about 2000 or so, Craig Venter came along, we got the human genome ahead of schedule. Then suddenly, nothing happened. After I thought of the Neanderthal/No-anderthal picnic idea, it occurred to me that this kind of social/crowdsourcing activity really is the only way, or certainly the best, fastest and most fun way to develop and exploit the information we got out of the human genome project. If we put together such a picnic, perhaps we would notice that the red tag people are more likely to have a bald spot or wear concave glasses, whereas the blue tags were more likely to drive sports cars and drink iced coffee. For that matter, it wouldn't need to be that particular trait. It could be anything that has a spectrum. Who the heck knows what we would find? That's why it's called research. If we knew what was there, it would be called refind. My point: the traditional scientist in a lab coat working a 9 to 5 cannot get at the kinds of insights we might be able to discover if we do things like the caveman picnic. Any big metropolis will likely have a few thousand proles who have done the 23 thing, so that means perhaps a couple hundred two-sigma outliers, and with that we might be able to get enough of them to come to some local park or a fun place such as the San Jose Tech Museum to gather and observe the difference between the cavemen and the vexmen. Has anyone any clue how to organize something like that? spike From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 2 05:26:14 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 22:26:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <004501ce5f51$b3bcd610$1b368230$@rainier66.com> >. On Behalf Of Gina Miller Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again I sent my DNA out a couple weeks ago - what did your results tell you? Gina "Nanogirl" Miller www.nanogirl.com www.nanoindustries.com Hi Nanogirl, What I found so far is a bunch of third and fourth cousins, nearly a thousand of them. I learned where one genetic line came from in Germany, learned the names of a buttload of relatives, all common northern European names with one oddball exception that was right up at the top of the list: Reffitt. I don't know any Reffitts, never heard of the name. When I saw that, I remembered your comments from about 15 years ago, when you said you were trying to find people with the name Barwarth or Barwart or Barworth or some reasonable variant of that. Gina your personal journey of self-discovery and root searching was so good and so well written, I have carried it around in my memory to this day, including the unusual name and its variants, which I still remember without looking it up. I don't remember all that many details from the 90s, but I remember that very clearly. It has been a long time and you are among friends. Do feel free to share what has happened in your life since then. We are all cheering for you. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Sun Jun 2 09:05:53 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2013 02:05:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Space Gnats In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1370163953.43361.YahooMailNeo@web165006.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> BillK wrote: >On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 3:06 PM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: >> Indeed, and one of the best things about it is, once you're solid-state, and once the >> infrastructure is in place, you can literally travel at the speed of light. >> >> That will be an interesting and strange scenario:? Matter being s-l-o-w-l-y shifted around >> the solar system, like elephants hauling felled logs, while minds can flit between them >> like gnats.? Space gnats. >> >> Is this feasible?? Or have I been reading too much Greg Egan?? (would the power and >> other requirements be too high to make beaming minds around the place, encoded >> on lasers, a practical thing?) >> >> > >I like the idea, but solid-state doesn't mean you can travel at the >speed of light. >Solid means a solid block with no moving parts, except the electrons >(photons?) inside. > >So you still have to find the power to drive a block up to high speeds >and slow it down at the far end. > >But your idea of intelligences travelling at light speed might still >be feasible if the computronium block was sent on ahead and waited for >the mind to be lasered across the solar system into it. If your >standard Type 1483 mind bricks were scattered around, then minds might >be able to connect to empty bricks and move at light speed, leaving an >empty brick behind for someone else. That's almost what I mean, but I'd assume that rather than the 'mind-bricks' only being able to hold and run a single mind, they'd be capable of running millions.? My analogy was that the mind-bricks would be the elephant/logs component, and the minds could be encoded onto lasers for transmission between them.? Obviously, as you say, the travel-at-the-speed-of-light bit would only be possible once the infrastructure was in place at the destination.? Spreading the mind-bricks over the solar system (or galaxy) would be the slow(-est) part.? Greg Egan describes it better than I can, in books like 'Incandescence' (which incidentally annoyed the hell out of me for not having an ending.? It just has a beginning and a middle.). Bart wrote: >I think what Ben is referring to with 'solid-state' is semiconductor devices. Chips. Neural chips. No matter whether "you" are hard-coded in the chip-floorplan, or as a neural configuration on a "general-purpose" neural chipset, > >both can be described in a binary file, containing synaptic strengths on O(10^12) synapses. That's a lot of data, but it's finite. Now as a description, space 'travel' would actually amount to communicating data, via the laser. No physical mass is moved in the process. Necessary requirement is that the neural substrate (the chipset) on sender and receiver side are compatible. The neural configuration on the sender side does not 'disappear' in the process. So if you want to have only one unique copy of you active at any time, a wise protocol would inactivate the sender configuration. Alan Grimes wrote: >The fastest travel time using that method is a bit worse than C/3 > > >Here's a reasonable protocol: > >1. Transmitter broadcasts a fuck-ton of data into the ether. > >2. Receiver computes a checksum on each block and broadcasts it back to >the sender to prove that it's radio was switched on and that it actually >received something usable. > >3. Depending on the reply, the transmitter either goes back to #1 or >broadcasts a "Clear to continue" message. > >4. The receiver begins computations. Conceivably, you could shorten this >by including the checksums with the initial transmission but, given the >payload, it seems more reasonable that the sender have as much control >over the process as possible. Good points, both of these. Naturally, for this kind of travel to be possible, the hardware would have to be capable of suporting /any/ mind, not just one specific one, and I envision an entire ecosystem at each node, not just a single brain-equivalent.? It would be more like beaming into a simulated body/brain, created on demand in a virtual city.? The nodes would be huge, in terms of the vertual space and machinery inside, although physically small, and capable of supporting millions of minds and all the associated support. Re. error-checking, yes, that's a reasonable assumption, we may have a system much like the current Internet Protocol, but even so, travelling at even 1/10 the speed of light is waaaay better than anything we have now.? The catch, of course, is that you can't take anything with you except information.? Everything physical you might need has to already be there, but I don't see that being a problem, with the level of technology that would be needed. But this is all background, taken as given.? What I was asking was, is the idea workable, from a physics pov?? Making various assumptions about the size of a 'mind-file' (from a few magabytes to many terabytes, depending on how compressible the data would be (can a mind be encoded as variations from a standard mind-template, etc.)), how much power would be needed, would this method of travel be prohibitively expensive, only doable for the tiniest of minds, or would it be no problem, and could the solar system easily be teeming with space-gnats? Come to think of it, could the galaxy /already/ be teeming with them?? Another solution to the Fermi Paradox? Ben Zaiboc From eugen at leitl.org Sun Jun 2 09:44:42 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2013 11:44:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Space Gnats (Was: Re: Gold) In-Reply-To: <51AA3904.9040403@verizon.net> References: <1370009172.67064.YahooMailNeo@web165002.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <51AA3904.9040403@verizon.net> Message-ID: <20130602094442.GF2380@leitl.org> On Sat, Jun 01, 2013 at 02:10:12PM -0400, Alan Grimes wrote: > BillK wrote: > >On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 3:06 PM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > >I like the idea, but solid-state doesn't mean you can travel at the > >speed of light. > >Solid means a solid block with no moving parts, except the electrons > >(photons?) inside. > > >So you still have to find the power to drive a block up to high speeds > >and slow it down at the far end. Never underestiamte the bandwidth of a relativistic station wagon full of tapes. http://what-if.xkcd.com/31/ > >But your idea of intelligences travelling at light speed might still > >be feasible if the computronium block was sent on ahead and waited for > >the mind to be lasered across the solar system into it. If your > >standard Type 1483 mind bricks were scattered around, then minds might > >be able to connect to empty bricks and move at light speed, leaving an > >empty brick behind for someone else. > > W R 0 N G ! ! ! > > The fastest travel time using that method is a bit worse than C/3 Look into the difference between UDP and TCP. > > Here's a reasonable protocol: > > 1. Transmitter broadcasts a fuck-ton of data into the ether. > > 2. Receiver computes a checksum on each block and broadcasts it back > to the sender to prove that it's radio was switched on and that it > actually received something usable. > > 3. Depending on the reply, the transmitter either goes back to #1 or > broadcasts a "Clear to continue" message. > > 4. The receiver begins computations. Conceivably, you could shorten > this by including the checksums with the initial transmission but, > given the payload, it seems more reasonable that the sender have as > much control over the process as possible. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Jun 2 13:20:36 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2013 15:20:36 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Are we too stupid? (Was: Cold fusion) In-Reply-To: <51A38DBA.2030408@aleph.se> References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> <00c901ce58ec$cba9ebc0$62fdc340$@rainier66.com> <51A0D7B2.1000109@libero.it> <51A0E90B.3060609@aleph.se> <51A0FA43.5010401@libero.it> <51A1084B.9020700@aleph.se> <1369630742.94925.YahooMailNeo@web126201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <002d01ce5ae6$0c504c50$24f0e4f0$@rainier66.com> <51A38DBA.2030408@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 27 May 2013 18:45, Anders Sandberg wrote: > This is actually a really good question. How smart do you have to be in > order to trigger a singularity? > Let us give a more Nietzchean turn: how much WILL do you have to summon up to trigger a singularity? My own take of historical singularities is closer than average to the physical origin of the concept: a singularity is simply the threshold where our predictive tools and theories collapse, not a somewhat mystical place, time or event where actually we are faced with infinite quantities, probabilities higher than one or lower than zero, or other mathematical artifacts simply showing the inadequateness of our (current) equations. Accordingly, it is only natural that singularities are in the nature of horizons, constantly receding before those approaching them. OTOH, a singularity, a Zeit-Umbruch can well be identified in catastrophic changes of status, in paradigm shifts, in radical breakthroughs changing the very nature and sense of our "being in the world". Now, I have been persuaded since the eighties that we do stand on the verge of one such metamorphosis. Only, nothing prevents us from staying there forever (that is, until a merciful extinction terminates a presence having so become devoid of sense), and my concern is that powers and worldviews willingly and deliberately embracing stagnation, ? la Brave New World, remain, or rather become more and more, dominant in our societies. Transhumanism for me is basically the ideology of those embracing change and self-overcoming as a fundamental ethical option, and offer that as an alternative to the humanist biased. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Jun 2 13:48:22 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2013 15:48:22 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Bullies (Was: Re: chinese synthesis) In-Reply-To: <1370095325.73425.YahooMailNeo@web165006.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1370095325.73425.YahooMailNeo@web165006.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 1 June 2013 16:02, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Do you not think this is immoral? It is, after all, attempted coercion. > Bullying at the very least. > Hey, wouldn't it be immoral to have one of us married with somebody of a different persuasion? A christian, for instance? :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Jun 2 13:53:37 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2013 15:53:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On 1 June 2013 15:46, Alfio Puglisi wrote: > hepatitis - z?n?t jater > OK, we can say "mal di fegato" in Italian, but I would be surprised if the "hepat" root or the "it, ite, itis" suffix did not exist at all, while in Bulgarian I say "???????" for the same thing. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 2 14:38:52 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2013 07:38:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <003a01ce5f4d$cb66b730$62342590$@rainier66.com> References: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> <00b901ce5eec$4c776930$e5663b90$@rainier66.com> <51AA5413.1000608@aleph.se> <001b01ce5f29$76610250$632306f0$@rainier66.com> <003a01ce5f4d$cb66b730$62342590$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <003b01ce5f9e$e78297d0$b687c770$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of spike Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again >... On Behalf Of spike >>...I want to start an online group for 2 sigma and above Neanderthal, >and perhaps another group for 2 sigma and below... {8^D spike _______________________________________________ >... gather and observe the difference between the cavemen and the vexmen. spike _______________________________________________ Hey cool another idea please. The notion of that medical condition for which I am at about 8x risk has been rattling around in my brain. I realized it can be an application for one of my favorite mathematical modeling techniques, superposition of probability distribution functions. Imagine some fictional disease, call it Hoerkeimer's Snarkoma, or HS. Suppose you do a 23 on a fetus and recognize it has a 40% chance of developing HS. Baby born, 40 years go by, no HS, so a rather anti-intuitive result is that if HS has develops at any time in life, then the risk of that guy getting HS is now only 20%. If that guy makes it to 60 with no HS, then his risk of ever getting the disease drops to 10%, and so forth. Agreed? We know that some diseases have certain profiles: they show up early in life or late in life, some can happen any time. There is a form of childhood leukemia with a risk/age profile that peaks early, otherwise it wouldn't be called childhood leukemia, ja? Likewise with testicular cancer: by the time you hit 40, most of the risk of that is behind you. Alzheimers on the other hand, has a risk profile that is low for most of your life and goes way up later. So it occurred to me that my 23 results give me this disturbing 8x risk factor, but now I need to study the risk/age profile and multiply through in order to get a realistic risk profile. It might be that people who get this disease mostly present with it before age 40, in which case my geezerly but still healthy self might be way less than 8x risk. I see this as a nice benefit to 23AndMe: I have no intention of studying all diseases. I turned down medical school 30 yrs ago, and I have no intentions of going there now. But I will study the hell out of one disease which has been identified on my 23 results as a high-risk. Then we get others to do likewise, which forms a pool of amateur experts in a particular condition. Form an internet group, yak, then we can have a local picnic with high-risk-for-Hoerkheimer's Snarkoma and invite a few normal people as a control group, see if we can pass some useful information or discover some oddball characteristics about the HS-riskies, compare them in realtime to the non-riskies. COOL! spike From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 2 14:54:31 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2013 07:54:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again References: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> <00b901ce5eec$4c776930$e5663b90$@rainier66.com> <51AA5413.1000608@aleph.se> <001b01ce5f29$76610250$632306f0$@rainier66.com> <003a01ce5f4d$cb66b730$62342590$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <004201ce5fa1$177ffc00$467ff400$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of spike Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again >... On Behalf Of spike >>>...I want to start an online group for 2 sigma and above Neanderthal, >and perhaps another group for 2 sigma and below... {8^D spike _______________________________________________ >>... gather and observe the difference between the cavemen and the vexmen. spike _______________________________________________ >... have a local picnic with high-risk-for-Hoerkheimer's Snarkoma and ... spike WAIT, no, scratch that, bad idea. You know what would happen. Any event like this always turns into a lonely hearts club. Those of you who have ever been to a Mensa gathering know exactly what I mean. There are plenty of people who might have high risk of HS but are happily married with families. They wouldn't come: they are busy with their families. The Mensa stuff is always a lot of fun, but I don't go to them either; I am busy with the fam. So life filters the lonely hearts who are more likely to frequent interesting oddball stuff like a picnic for HS riskies. The result is as foreseeable as the sunrise on a crystal-clear dawn: the riskies meet, like each other, copulate, produce children with two copies of the HS genetics, so no. Let's just stop this line of reasoning right here. NO HS PICNICS please, or if so, no single women under the age of about 50 allowed, or if so, no double HS-risky couples. The opposite is true for the high Neanderthals: we can do picnics for them. A few thousand years of that, we could resurrect an extinct subspecies of humans, COOL! spike From listsb at infinitefaculty.org Sun Jun 2 14:39:39 2013 From: listsb at infinitefaculty.org (Brian Manning Delaney) Date: Sun, 02 Jun 2013 16:39:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <00b901ce5eec$4c776930$e5663b90$@rainier66.com> References: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> <00b901ce5eec$4c776930$e5663b90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51AB592B.5050403@infinitefaculty.org> El 2013-06-01 19:20, spike escribi?: > *From:*extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On Behalf Of *Max More > *Sent:* Saturday, June 01, 2013 10:05 AM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] 23andme again > >> Natasha and I have done 23andme and, I suspect, many others on this list. >> >> I hope it blew your mind by revealing that you have low-risk genes... >> >> --Max [....] > Max, your comment is an excellent blessing for fellow 23ers: May the > sequencing reveal you have low-risk genes. Agreed! My results have changed my life fundamentally. I got all four categories of health risk news: expected good, unexpected good, expected bad, and unexpected bad. The "unexpecteds", both good but esp. bad, have necessitated a radical rewrite of my health program. But my main reaction, despite some unexpected bad news, has been: This is so cool! 23andMe's health reports just scratch the surface of course. One has to run Promethease, join PGP, and so on, to begin to see the possibilities this information about your genes offers. And the information grows in value rapidly as research continues. "Citizen science" projects -- outside of 23andMe's own projects -- are now being discussed among various 23andMe customers. These could be extremely powerful as more people get sequenced. The possibilities are extraordinary. Brian From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 2 15:09:11 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2013 08:09:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again References: <004b01ce5ed7$7635a5d0$62a0f170$@rainier66.com> <00b901ce5eec$4c776930$e5663b90$@rainier66.com> <51AA5413.1000608@aleph.se> <001b01ce5f29$76610250$632306f0$@rainier66.com> <003a01ce5f4d$cb66b730$62342590$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <004301ce5fa3$24300d80$6c902880$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: spike [mailto:spike at rainier66.com] Sent: Sunday, June 02, 2013 7:55 AM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: RE: [ExI] 23andme again >... On Behalf Of spike Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again >... On Behalf Of spike >>>...I want to start an online group for 2 sigma and above Neanderthal, >and perhaps another group for 2 sigma and below... {8^D spike _______________________________________________ >>... gather and observe the difference between the cavemen and the vexmen. spike _______________________________________________ >... have a local picnic with high-risk-for-Hoerkheimer's Snarkoma and ... NO HS PICNICS please... The opposite is true for the high Neanderthals: we can do picnics for them...spike COSTUMES! We could dress up like cave people, that would be a hoot! Could you imagine a picnic with most of the women dressed like Betty Rubble? One-shoulder-bare tiger skin miniskirts, rrrrowwwwwsers, that would be kick in the ass fun. spike Note: replying to one's own post is allowed now, welcomed even. If you have an idea and think of a better one later before anyone else has replied, go ahead with it: no one has complained since we started that policy. s From alfio.puglisi at gmail.com Sun Jun 2 19:26:17 2013 From: alfio.puglisi at gmail.com (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2013 21:26:17 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Arkyd In-Reply-To: References: <76455FDE-564E-4BF3-8367-869099EB70B3@yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 6:11 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 6:12 AM, Alfio Puglisi wrote: > >> What? After lining up such an impressive list of "investors", as they >> call them: >> >> http://www.planetaryresources.com/team/ >> >> now they need kickstarter to raise $1M? Must be a joke >> > > Every source of funding. Also, this may be more PR than > actual fundraising. > I agree it's most likely a PR move. By the way, I am a little surprised by how small the Arkyd telescope really is. A diameter of 20 cm? I had previously read most of Planetary Resources' web site, but the size of the Arkyd had escaped me for some reason. Being so small, it will have a resolving power of about 1 arcsecond - about the same as you can get on the ground ! Basically, you don't need to send such a telescope in orbit, except maybe to gain some wavelength coverage. But for the same $1M, you could buy hundreds of commercially available 20cm telescopes. So yes, it's PR and PR only. Maybe it's useful as a training system to remotely operate stuff in orbit. Whatever, I'm a bit disappointed. Alfio -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From romanyam at gmail.com Sun Jun 2 19:48:17 2013 From: romanyam at gmail.com (Roman Yampolskiy) Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2013 15:48:17 -0400 Subject: [ExI] New Book on Artificial Superintelligence Message-ID: I have recently started working on my book on Artificial Superintelligence which I think might be of interest to members of this list: http://igg.me/at/ASFA ** *Introduction* Many philosophers, futurologists and artificial intelligence researchers have conjectured that *in the next 20 to 200 years a machine capable of at least human level performance on all tasks will be developed*. Since such a machine would among other things be capable of designing the next generation of even smarter intelligent machines, it is generally assumed that an intelligence explosion will take place shortly after such a technological self-improvement cycle begins. While specific predictions regarding the consequences of such an intelligence singularity are varied from potential economic hardship to the complete extinction of the humankind, many of the involved researchers agree that the issue is of utmost importance and needs to be seriously addressed. This book, ?*Artificial Superintelligence: A Futuristic Approach*? will directly address this issue and consolidate research aimed at *making sure that emerging superintelligence is beneficial to humanity*. *Tentative List of Chapters:* 1) Introduction to Artificial Superintelligence. 2) AI-Completeness ? the Problem Domain of Superintelligent Machines. 3) The Space of Mind Designs and the Human Mental Model. 4) How to Prove that You Invented Superintelligence So No One Else Can Steal It. 5) Wireheading, Addiction and Mental Illness in Machines. 6) On the Limits of Recursively Self-Improving Artificially Intelligent Systems. 7) Singularity Paradox and What to Do About It. 8) Superintelligence Safety Engineering. 9) Artificial Intelligence Confinement Problem (and Solution). 10) Controlling Impact of Future Super AI. Best, -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * *Roman V. Yampolskiy*, PhD * Computer Engineering and Computer Science * Director ? Cyber Security Laboratory * * *Email:* roman.yampolskiy at louisville.edu ** Phone:* (502) 852-3624 * *Fax:* (502) 852-4713 ** Web:* http://cecs.louisville.edu/ry * *Lab:* http://cecs.louisville.edu/security * * J.B. Speed School of Engineering * Duthie Center for Engineering, DC-215 * University of Louisville * Louisville, KY 40292, USA -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sun Jun 2 20:02:39 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 02 Jun 2013 22:02:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [mta] Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: <51AA4ECD.30006@canonizer.com> References: <1684255918.331108.1369325715932.JavaMail.root@sz0038a.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net> <51A00F3A.5090002@canonizer.com> <51A0B89B.2080108@canonizer.com> <51A0E030.6030209@canonizer.com> <51A5418C.50907@canonizer.com> <51AA4ECD.30006@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <51ABA4DF.8020001@libero.it> Il 01/06/2013 21:43, Brent Allsop ha scritto: > > Future Theoreticians, > > Multiple thoughts have been percolating in my mind that has further > falsified my fears of a Bitcoin Deflationary Catastrophe. Help me see > if I'm making any mistakes with this line of reasoning. > > Currently, economies have a general instability in them, causing > destructive boom and bust cycles. During the boom, everyone is spending > all their cash, to get into the stock market. During the boom, people consume more, invest more, save less, produce less, because the cost of money (interest rates) is lower than the market would support. This happen because the quantity of money circulation is increased by the central bank (another reason is if they looted someone from his money - E.G. the spaniards looted the gold and silver from america and spent it in Europe; for Europe, essentially the monetary mass of gold and silver increased). > This tends to cause > currency to become worth less, or inflation, since everybody is getting > rid of it, to purchase stocks. It is the other way around. The quantity of money increase (usually faster than the economy can grow), some people spend more (the ones with more money), then the prices start increase (for all). In essence people recognize they have too much money and not enough stuff, time, services. So they swap money for them. As people have too much money, a lot more is available to be loaned and interest rates go down (interest rates are the price of money) > But when the herd goes to far in this direction it creates a bubble. But the herd go there because it was pushed there. It is not the fault of the herd, it is the fault of the herder. The herd, must be recognized, reacted to price signals in the expected way. But the signals were false. Then people see something going up and start speculation it will continue to go up. They get in debt to buy and resell later. The first speculator get out and the suckers get in. > When a pull back starts the 'bubble' pops. At some point, people get too much indebted, someone become unable to pay, then they must sell their properties to payback the debts. But there is so much people in the same situation, there are not enough people to buy what is offered and then the market in the bubble must correct the evaluations down to more realistic levels. Usually the excess of stuff produced drive the prices down the equilibrium point, until the excess supply is cleared. In the great majority of these cases, a lot of capital is destroyed, because a house built can not be returned to its components without large losses. Labor done, time is lost, the timber is largely lost, and so on. > This is compounded as people want to sell stocks (or not buy > them), but instead put the capital into something like Cash. reversing > everything in a compounding the problem unstable way. This is the effect of understanding the problem, correcting the evaluations done, and acting on them. > All this causes people to reduce spending and investing, which causes > jobs to be lost, real estate values, where most wealth is, crash, the > stock market crashes, and governments attempt to counteract this cycle > buy pumping more money into the system. They attempt to stop the > deflation, and further drive down interest rates, hoping to motivate > people to move money back into the stock market and real estate. They try to re-inflate the last bubble or another; every actions put them in a smaller, nastier, corner. People reduce spending and investment because the previous level are unsustainable. If I have not enough money to eat properly, I can not invest in life extension. > What scared me was thinking of a fixed size inflexible currency, like > Bitcion, if it was prevalent enough, it would really compound these > unstable cycles. I believe when the next recession hits, it will really > drive up Bitcoin valuations, and no government will be able to > counteract this flow of capital out of everything else into rapidly > increasing in value Bitcoins. What a currency like Bitcoin (or gold and silver) would do is to make evident many more wrong allocations of capital and force the market to correct them, the governments be damned. It will be a huge, rapid, shock, but after it is absorbed (and it would be absorbed very rapidly) would be very difficult for any bubble to be inflated again, because the government need the printing presses to be able to print money and create the conditions for mis-allocation of capitals and the creations of bubbles. And Bitcoin take away the power of the monetary presses from the government. > But what I realized was that this would make at least some people > significantly more wealthy, and make them want to spend that much more > money. In other words, instead of the government being the only one > spending and putting people to work, Bitcoin holders would likely fill > this responsibility. Better again, Bitcoin holders would be, increasingly, people working and producing something useful (as decided by the market) and the government could not as easily impoverish them as it does now. And we could suppose, if the power of spend stay in the hand of people producing useful things, they will continue to produce useful things. And more useful things they produce, more they would be rewarded by the market. And they would request, from the market, useful things. > The one problem would be, like most things, it makes the rich or those > holding the most Bitcoins richer, making everyone else poorer. Where as > governments tend to spend money to help the poor, the rich would spend > money on what they want, helping the poor the way they wanted, after > funding themselves. I would reconsider the part "as governments tend to spend money to help the poor". Because these last few years show the governments spend money to help the rich and connected people at the expense of the poor and unconnected people. Everywhere, every time. If a wealthy person use his wealth to help a poor person, he will make sure the wealth is well used to this purpose. Because it is his purpose and he want the most satisfaction from the least sum. A bureaucrat or a politician, instead will try to spend all the sum available, because his success is measured more in how much they spend and not in how much the effectively helped people. And this also is true everywhere, every time. > Also, when the rich really do get richer, eventually the people at the > bottom, revolt, taking all the wealth away from the wealthy, as has > occurred in so many revolutions in the past. But Bitcoins would make > this impossible. As no government can steal a Bitcion from anyone, like > they can a factory or farm. If you look at these revolutions you will see a big government and wealthy people using the government to preserve their position at the expenses of the poor. The difference are minimal between the Czarist Russia and the USSR. > So, what does everyone think? Would Bitcion becoming the dominant > currency increase or decrease boom bust cycles in the economy, and by > how much? As with gold and without the bank fractional reserve, with Bitcoin, people would be unable to spend and loan money they have not earned first. This would prevent the formation of bubbles or, anyway, the bubbles would be smaller and they would pop much more faster. Why? Because if the money supply is fixed an unchangeable, the price signals immediately start to work. There could not be a house bubble, because there would not be enough money to be loaned to start it. Without these large mis-allocation of capital there would be, in the medium long term, a lot more capital accumulation. Without a bubble, houses would have a lower prices and would be more affordable, not less. People would be required to pay higher interest on their mortage, but the mortage would be way smaller. And they would be required to have 30-50% money down before buying the house, but as they save, they would be paid a decent interest. Higher interest rates would prevent too much investment, but would support investment in higher yield investments. It is easy to be wrong if an investment with a 3% year return in started, because it require 35 years to pay it back, and if conditions change, the return could easily become 2%, 1% o nil or negative. But if the investment must yield 20% yearly, you pay it back in five years, and obtain a profit much more faster so the risk and uncertain are reduced. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sun Jun 2 20:54:44 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 02 Jun 2013 22:54:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Arkyd In-Reply-To: References: <76455FDE-564E-4BF3-8367-869099EB70B3@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51ABB114.2070608@libero.it> Il 01/06/2013 15:12, Alfio Puglisi ha scritto: > On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 12:04 AM, Dan Ust > wrote: > > http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1458134548/arkyd-a-space-telescope-for-everyone-0/description > > Comments? > > > What? After lining up such an impressive list of "investors", as > they call them: > > http://www.planetaryresources.com/team/ > > now they need kickstarter to raise $1M? Must be a joke It is not. It is the way real free market capitalists operate: they find new customers for their products. I think it was in their presentation a few months ago. They developed the Arkid and they will use it (and its brothers) to look for NE asteroids. But the same telescope useful to them will be useful to others, so if they can recoup their costs faster AND built a customer base for other services, they will do so. If the first telescope pay itself back even before being launched, they have another good reason to build more of them. > Being so small, it will have a resolving power of about 1 arcsecond - > about the same as you can get on the ground ! Basically, you don't > need to send such a telescope in orbit, except maybe to gain some > wavelength coverage. But for the same $1M, you could buy hundreds of > commercially available 20cm telescopes. And not the manpower and the money to pay it. There will be a lot more Arkid than one. And they will analyze the sky together and will put together their images. And Earth telescopes can not be pointed down to Earth to be used as a personal Google Earth. If they cost little to use, many people or entities will be willing to use them for mundane economical uses and there are places of Earth where a telescope would be not economical to place. The money stream will payback the initial investment faster, allow to iterate the development of new generations of satellites and build more satellites, bringing down the production costs and, if more are built, more satellites will need to be lifted in orbit and will use more launchers allowing more launches and reduced costs of the single launch. Mirco From anders at aleph.se Sun Jun 2 21:46:26 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 02 Jun 2013 23:46:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] This Man Is Not a Cyborg. Yet. Message-ID: <51ABBD32.9080404@aleph.se> NYT on Dmitry Iskov: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/business/dmitry-itskov-and-the-avatar-quest.html?_r=0 -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Sun Jun 2 22:06:40 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 03 Jun 2013 00:06:40 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Are we too stupid? (Was: Cold fusion) In-Reply-To: References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> <00c901ce58ec$cba9ebc0$62fdc340$@rainier66.com> <51A0D7B2.1000109@libero.it> <51A0E90B.3060609@aleph.se> <51A0FA43.5010401@libero.it> <51A1084B.9020700@aleph.se> <1369630742.94925.YahooMailNeo@web126201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <002d01ce5ae6$0c504c50$24f0e4f0$@rainier66.com> <51A38DBA.2030408@aleph.se> Message-ID: <51ABC1F0.7060203@aleph.se> On 2013-06-02 15:20, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 27 May 2013 18:45, Anders Sandberg > wrote: > > This is actually a really good question. How smart do you have to be > in order to trigger a singularity? > > > Let us give a more Nietzchean turn: how much WILL do you have to summon > up to trigger a singularity? Well, while I think you have an interesting question, it is also somewhat limited. Without the right preconditions you cannot do it, and likely cannot even make the right preconditions no matter what your will is. After all, a dog that truly Wants a singularity will likely (1) have an erroneous concept of what it is, and (2) cannot even conceptualize what he should do to get it, let alone do it. We might argue that humans are smart enough to actually will something eventually real, but that is basically my original question. > OTOH, a singularity, a Zeit-Umbruch can well be identified in > catastrophic changes of status, in paradigm shifts, in radical > breakthroughs changing the very nature and sense of our "being in the > world". In my sketch for a paper on the thread subject, I was looking at a model of intelligence enhancement. The vanilla scenario of something/someone being able to improve its own intelligence/ability to improve leading to a runaway growth can be expressed as iterating a function: f(x) denotes how smart you can make yourself if you have intelligence x, so x_{n+1}=f(x_n) describes a simplified dynamics across time. This is a well understood area of math, and the behavior if f(x) is monotonously increasing is pretty simple: either you cannot improve (f(x)<=x) or you can (f(x)>x), in which case you will now move off towards the next largest fixed point f(x)=x. So from a large perspective it looks like the intelligence increases slowly (due to evolution, random drift, waiting for some smart enough to come up with the trick) until it reaches a critical threshold where it makes a jump to a higher level. Very much a paradigm shift, although in this case inside a simplistic model rather than with the full complexity of how being in the world changes. > Now, I have been persuaded since the eighties that we do stand > on the verge of one such metamorphosis. What persuaded you? This is what I think is the interesting question: what would provide plausible evidence for a singularity? Or even imminent conceptual breakthrough? Consider making a guess at when the next Michael Bay blockbuster action movie will happen versus when somebody will prove/disprove the Riemann conjecture. One seems to be far, far more predictable than the other. Of course, one can "cheat" by simply making self-overcoming popular, which I guess is the proper Nietzschean approach. But I find the question about what deduction/induction can tell us about cultural changes interesting too. > Transhumanism for me is basically the ideology of those embracing change > and self-overcoming as a fundamental ethical option, and offer that as > an alternative to the humanist biased. Amen to that. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford University From bbenzai at yahoo.com Mon Jun 3 09:42:07 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2013 02:42:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Space Gnats In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1370252527.74299.YahooMailNeo@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Eugen Leitl suggested: > > Look into the difference between UDP and TCP. Eek! If the Essential Me is going to be flung into the Aether, I don't think I want to travel using something like UDP. Quite happy to sacrifice travel speed for an assurance that all my memories are intact. I suspect we'll want a protocol that makes TCP look reckless. Ben Zaiboc From pharos at gmail.com Mon Jun 3 10:06:50 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2013 11:06:50 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Space Gnats In-Reply-To: <1370252527.74299.YahooMailNeo@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1370252527.74299.YahooMailNeo@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 10:42 AM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > If the Essential Me is going to be flung into the Aether, I don't think I want to travel using something like UDP. > Quite happy to sacrifice travel speed for an assurance that all my memories are intact. > I suspect we'll want a protocol that makes TCP look reckless. > > Checksums and a reply that everything arrived OK should be sufficient. That equates to light-speed travel for the receiver, but half light-speed at the sender, before the original is erased. BillK From eugen at leitl.org Mon Jun 3 12:28:48 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2013 14:28:48 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Space Gnats In-Reply-To: <1370252527.74299.YahooMailNeo@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1370252527.74299.YahooMailNeo@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130603122848.GA2380@leitl.org> On Mon, Jun 03, 2013 at 02:42:07AM -0700, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Eugen Leitl suggested: > > > > > Look into the difference between UDP and TCP. > > > Eek! > > If the Essential Me is going to be flung into the Aether, I don't think I want to travel using something like UDP. UDP works very well if packet loss is negligible. > Quite happy to sacrifice travel speed for an assurance that all my memories are intact. That's what checksums are there for. > I suspect we'll want a protocol that makes TCP look reckless. In general if you want to avoid travelling as a material packet stream you want to space your relais stations closely, so retransmission penality, if any, is limited to short hops. From eugen at leitl.org Mon Jun 3 12:47:16 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2013 14:47:16 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Space Gnats In-Reply-To: References: <1370252527.74299.YahooMailNeo@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130603124715.GB2380@leitl.org> On Mon, Jun 03, 2013 at 11:06:50AM +0100, BillK wrote: > Checksums and a reply that everything arrived OK should be sufficient. > That equates to light-speed travel for the receiver, but half > light-speed at the sender, before the original is erased. Space networks have different constraints, and these are addressed in projects like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-tolerant_networking From bbenzai at yahoo.com Mon Jun 3 13:17:57 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2013 06:17:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1370265477.86625.YahooMailNeo@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> I'm curious about the effect of gene patents on this.? For example, do the 23andme results include info. on the BRCA1 gene? Ben Zaiboc From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Jun 3 15:02:55 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2013 11:02:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Uploading article in the New York Times: Message-ID: The following was on the front page of the business section of Sunday's New York Times: ============ Get right up close to Dmitry Itskov and sniff all you like - you will not pick up even the faintest hint of crazy. He is soft-spoken and a bit shy, but expansive once he gets talking, and endearingly mild-mannered. He never seems ruffled, no matter what question you ask. Even if you ask the obvious one, which he has encountered more than a few times since 2011, when he started "this project," as he sometimes calls it. Namely: Are you insane? This is no more wild than in the early '60s, when we saw the advent of liver and kidney transplants. "I hear that often," he said with a smile, over lunch one recent afternoon. "There are quotes from people like Arthur C. Clarke and Gandhi saying that when people come up with new ideas they're called 'nuts'. Then everybody starts believing in the idea and nobody can remember a time when it seemed strange." Photographs of Dmitry Itskov making different facial expressions were used in building the model. It is hard to imagine a day when the ideas championed by Itskov, 32, a Russian multimillionaire and former online media magnate, will not seem strange, or at least far-fetched and unfeasible. His project, called the 2045 Initiative, for the year he hopes it is completed, envisions the mass production of lifelike, low-cost avatars that can be uploaded with the contents of a human brain, complete with all the particulars of consciousness and personality. What Itskov is striving for makes wearable computers, like Google Glass, seem as about as futuristic as Lego. This would be a digital copy of your mind in a nonbiological carrier, a version of a fully sentient person that could live for hundreds or thousands of years. Or longer. Itskov unabashedly drops the word "immortality" into conversation. Yes, we have seen this movie and, yes, it always leads to evil robots enslaving humanity, the Earth reduced to smouldering ruins. And it's quite possible that Itskov's plans, in the fullness of time, will prove to be nothing more than sci-fi bunk. Dmitry Itskov: a Russian multimillionaire and former online media magnate. But he has the attention, and in some cases the avid support, of august figures at Harvard, MIT and Berkeley and leaders in fields like molecular genetics, neuroprosthetics and other realms that you've probably never heard of. Roughly 30 speakers from these and other disciplines will appear at the second annual 2045 Global Future Congress on June 15 and 16 in New York. Though billed as a congress, the event is more like a showcase and conference that is open to the public, with general admission tickets starting at $US750. (About 400 tickets, roughly half the total available, have been sold so far.) Attendees will hear people like Sir Roger Penrose, an emeritus professor of mathematical physics at Oxford, who appears on the 2045.com website with a video teaser about "the quantum nature of consciousness", and George M. Church, a genetics professor at Harvard Medical School, whose video on the site concerns "brain healthspan extension". As these videos suggest, scientists are taking tiny, incremental steps towards melding humans and machine all the time. Ray Kurzweil, the futurist and now Google's director of engineering, argued in The Singularity Is Near, a 2005 book, that technology is advancing exponentially and that "human life will be irreversibly transformed" to the point that there will be no difference between "human and machine or between physical and virtual reality". Kurzweil was projecting based on the scientific and intellectual ferment of the time. And technological achievements have continued their march since he wrote the book - from creating computers that can that can outplay humans to technology that tracks a game player's heartbeat and perhaps his excitement (like the new Kinect) to digital tools for those with disabilities (like brain implants that can help quadriplegics move robotic arms). But most researchers do not aspire to upload our minds to cyborgs; even in this crowd, the concept is a little out there. Academics seem to regard Itskov as sincere and well-intentioned, and if he wants to play global cheerleader for fields that generally toil in obscurity, fine. Ask participants in the 2045 conference if Itskov's dreams could ultimately be realised and you'll hear everything from lukewarm versions of "maybe" to flat-out enthusiasm. "I have a rule against saying something is impossible unless it violates laws of physics," Church says, adding about Itskov: "I just think that there's a lot of dots that aren't connected in his plans. It's not a real road map." Martine A. Rothblatt, another speaker at the coming conference and founder of United Therapeutics, a biotech company that makes cardiovascular products, sounds more optimistic. "This is no more wild than in the early '60s, when we saw the advent of liver and kidney transplants," Rothblatt says. "People said at the time, 'This is totally crazy.' Now, about 400 people have organs transplanted every day." At a minimum, she and others believe that interest in building Itskovian avatars will give birth to and propel legions of startups. Some of these far-flung projects have caught the eyes of angel investors, and one day these enterprises may do for the brain and androids what Silicon Valley did for the internet and computers. Itskov says he will invest at least part of his fortune in such ventures, but his primary goal with 2045 is not to become richer. In fact, the more you know about Itskov, the less he seems like a businessman and the more he seems like the world's most ambitious utopian. He maintains that his avatars would not just end world hunger - because a machine needs maintenance but not food - but that they would also usher in a more peaceful and spiritual age, when people could stop worrying about the petty anxieties of day-to-day living. "We need to show that we're actually here to save lives," he said. "To help the disabled, to cure diseases, to create technology that will allow us in the future to answer some existential questions. Like what is the brain, what is life, what is consciousness and, finally, what is the universe?" The $3 Million Man Itskov's role in the 2045 Initiative is bit like that of a producer in the Hollywood sense of the word: the guy who helps underwrite the production, shapes the script and oversees publicity. He says he will have spent roughly $US3 million of his own money by the time the second congress is over, and though he is reluctant to disclose his net worth - aside from scoffing at the often-published notion that he's a billionaire - he is ready to spend much more. For now, he is buying a lot of plane tickets. He flies around the globe introducing himself to scientists, introducing scientists to one another and prepping the public for what he regards as the inevitable age of avatars. In the span of two weeks, his schedule took him from New York (for an interview), to India (to enlist the support of a renowned yogi), home to Moscow, then to Berkeley, California (to meet with scientists), back to Moscow and then to Shanghai (to meet with a potential investor). When he isn't pushing his initiative, he leads a life that could best be described as monastic. He meditates and occasionally spends days in silent retreat in the Russian countryside. He is single and childless, and he asked to keep mention of his personal life to a minimum, for fear that he would come across either as an oddball or an ascetic boasting about his powers of restraint. "In some ways, I'm a monk," he said. "Not entirely. Some monks struggle to stay monks. But I'm happiest when I live like a monk." A few weeks ago, Itskov travelled to the University of California, Berkeley, where a group of researchers and professors gave him a tour of their labs. The main point of his visit was to discuss a brain-related project that is now under wraps. That happened at a private dinner, and Itskov politely declined to say anything about it. But during the day, it was basically show-and-tell time for brain-tech fanboys, and it started at the Berkeley Wireless Research Centre. The centre is sponsored by Intel, Samsung and other companies eager for a first look at whatever is being conceived there. The day ended on the other side of the campus, at the Swarm Lab, which is subsidised by Qualcomm. At the Swarm Lab, Peter Ledochowitsch, a researcher with a thick red beard, described a minimally invasive brain implant designed to read intentions from the surface of the brain. So far, the device has been implanted in an anaesthetised rat; a prototype for alert animals is in the works. But eventually, he said, it would allow paralysed people to communicate, or to control a robotic arm or a wheelchair. It could also allow you to start your car if you think, "Start my car." Like other researchers on campus, Ledochowitsch has founded a company - his is called Cortera Neurotechnologies - that he hopes will eventually mass-produce and market this device. He has no expectation that Itskov will be an angel investor in the business, but angel investor money is what he will seek. "We've talked to a number of venture capitalists," he said. "The problem is that they're spoiled by Silicon Valley, where six guys can turn around some stupid social networking software in six months. If your timeline is 2021, it makes them very nervous." 'Dmitry is not an ordinary person' Itskov's timeline is even further out, but he is still eager for progress. He was mostly silent during the tour of the Berkeley labs, aside from asking variations on the theme of, "When will this be ready?" He could have discussed Berkeley's secret project over the phone, rather than flying from Moscow for a dinner, but he relishes visiting any place that could produce breakthroughs in cybernetic immortality. "It's good to see the atmosphere," he said the next day over lunch at a restaurant in Berkeley. "I want my project to be international, a huge collaboration of different scientists. It's worth meeting, in person, everyone who is in this field." Itskov has apparently never done anything halfway. He was raised in Bryansk, a city about 370 kilometres southwest of Moscow, with a father who directed musical theatre and a mother who was a schoolteacher. The father, Ilya Itskov, said through an interpreter in a phone interview that his son was a perfectionist who would not stop trying to learn a subject - be it a foreign language or windsurfing - until he'd mastered it. "From the very beginning," he said, "we realised that Dmitry is not an ordinary person." He attended the Plekhanov Russian Academy of Economics, where he met his future business partner, Konstantin Rykov. In 1998, Rykov started an e-zine with an English-language obscenity for a name, which was loaded with jokes about culture, showbiz and relationships. Itskov came on board the next year, and the two began branding their collaborations as Goodoo Media. The company built tarakan.ru, a blog about the Russian internet, and an online newspaper, Dni.ru, a tabloidy take on sports, politics and entertainment. Online game sites and other online newspapers would follow, along with a glossy print magazine, a book publisher and internet TV channel. A media empire was born. In The Net Delusion, Evgeny Morozov, an expert on the tangle of Russian politics and the web, writes that Rykov became "an undisputed Godfather of the Russian internet". The sites earned money through ads, Itskov says, but the company, renamed New Media Stars, also came to have very highly placed allies. At some point, Rykov segued from counterculture bad boy to friend of the Kremlin. Morozov writes that the company and its media empire have churned out "heaps of highly propagandistic video content" for the United Russia party of President Vladimir Putin. One of the company's sites was called zaputina.ru, which translates to "For Putin!" Rykov declined a request for an interview. Itskov, whose principal roles were business development and managing New Media's roughly 250 employees, says the company never received money from the United Russia party. He has never met Putin, he adds, though he voted for him. "In Russia, the majority of people love him," he said. Itskov was helping to build New Media Stars when he had an uncomfortable epiphany. It was 2005, and he was staring at his computer screen at the company's offices, then housed on a barge on the Moscow River. In an instant, he knew that a life spent accumulating money would not suffice. "At the time, we'd had a very interesting proposal to sell some shares of the company," he recalls, "and I realised, given what the offer meant for the valuation of the company, that I could live very well. And then I realised that I wouldn't be happy, just working and spending money. I would just age and then die. I thought there should be something deeper." At the age of 25, he started to have the symptoms of a midlife crisis. He anticipated the regrets he might have as an old man - the musical instruments unlearned, the books unread. The standard span of 80 or so years suddenly seemed woefully inadequate. He soon was seeking out leaders from almost every religion, in a search for purpose and peace. The more he contemplated the world, the more broken it seemed. "Look at this," he said, opening his laptop on the table and starting a slideshow with one heartbreaking statistic after another: Almost 1 billion people are starving. Forty-nine countries are involved in military conflict. Ten per cent of people are disabled. And so on. "That is the picture of this world that we created, with the minds we have today, with our set of values, with our egotism, our selfishness, our aggression," he went on. "Most of the world is suffering. What we're doing here does not look like the behaviour of grown-ups. We're killing the planet and killing ourselves." To change that picture, he reasons, we must change our minds, or give them a chance to "evolve," to use one of his favourite words. Before our minds can evolve, though, we need a new paradigm of what it means to be human. That requires a transition to a world where most people aren't consumed by the basic questions of survival. Hence, avatars. They may sound like an improbable way to solve the real problems on Itskov's laptop, or like the perfect gift for the superrich of the future. But the laws of supply and demand abide in Itskov's utopia, and he assumes that once production of avatars is ramped up, costs will plunge. He also assumes that charities now devoted to feeding, clothing and healing the poor will focus on the goal of making and distributing affordable bodies, which in this case means machines. For now, just acquiring a lifelike robotic head is a splurge. Among the highlights of the New York congress will be the unveiling of what Itskov describes as the most sophisticated mechanical head in history. It is a replica of Itskov from the neck up, and it is now under construction in Plano, Texas, home of Hanson Robotics, a company founded by David Hanson, who has a doctorate in interactive arts and engineering and who has previously fabricated robotic heads for research labs around the world. (Itskov said Hanson would not allow him to discuss price.) "Most robotic heads have 20 motors," Hanson said in a phone interview. "Mine have 32. This one will have 36. So, more facial expressions, simulating all the major muscle groups. We've had four people working on this full time since March." The even more remarkable expectation is that while Itskov is in another room, sitting before a screen with sensors to pick up his every movement, the head will be able to reproduce his expressions and voice. "He's controlling that robot, controlling its gestures, its expression and its speaking with his voice in real time," Hanson says. "It's somewhere between a cellphone call and teleportation." Do people want to live forever? Itskov's initiative is nothing if not forward-looking, but he sees it as a present-day end in itself. "The whole problem with humanity is that we don't currently plan for the future," he said. "Our leaders are focused on stability. We don't have something which will unite the whole of humanity. The initiative will inspire people. It's about changing the whole picture, and it's not just a science-fiction book. It's a strategy already being developed by scientists." Do people want to live forever? If yes, would they like to spend that eternity in a "nonbiological carrier"? What happens to your brain once it's uploaded? What about your body? If you could choose when to acquire an avatar body, what's the ideal age to acquire it? Can avatars have sex? These are just a few of the dozens of questions raised by the 2045 Initiative. (Yes, avatars can have sex, Itskov writes in an email, because "an artificial body can be designed to receive any sensations.") One point of the coming congress is to address such issues. But a larger question hovers above all others: Should Itskov be taken seriously? Much about his initiative sounds preposterous. On the other hand, many of those conversant in the esoteric disciplines that would produce an avatar are huge fans. So one can imagine two radically different legacies for this singular man. If he succeeds, history will remember Itskov as a daring visionary whose money and energy redefined life in ways that solved some of the world's most intransigent problems. If he fails, the word "cockamamie" is sure to show up somewhere in his obituary. On the road to avatars: Some random stops along the way to joining humans and machines. 1784: First known use of the word "avatar'', according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. From Sanskrit, it refers to a Hindu deity in human form. 1924: Hans Berger begins the history of brain-computer interfaces by developing EEG, which measures electrical activity in the brain. 1958: In Sweden, Arne Larsson becomes the first person to receive a surgically implanted pacemaker. 1961: The first cochlear implant, called a bionic ear. It marks the first time a machine is able "to restore a human sense''. 1987: Max Headroom, about a fictional avatar, makes its debut on TV. In the story line, Max was created by downloading the memories of a TV reporter into a computer. 1992: Snow Crash, a Neal Stephenson novel, helps popularise avatars. "If you're ugly," he writes, "you can make your avatar beautiful." 1997: Researchers at Emory University teach a stroke victim to use electrodes implanted in his brain, and sensors taped to his body, to move a cursor and spell words with his thoughts. 2003: Linden Lab starts Second Life, an online world that allows users to create avatars that can interact with other avatars. 2008: At Duke University, a monkey implanted with a brain-computer interface controls a robot on a treadmill in Japan. 2011: Dmitry Itskov starts the 2045 Initiative. 2012: At the University of Pittsburgh, a quadriplegic woman, Jan Scheuermann, eats a chocolate bar attached to a robotic arm controlled by implants in her brain. 2013: The MIT Technology Review reports that Samsung is working on a tablet computer that can be controlled by your mind. The New York Times -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon Jun 3 15:17:50 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2013 16:17:50 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Space Gnats In-Reply-To: <20130603124715.GB2380@leitl.org> References: <1370252527.74299.YahooMailNeo@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <20130603124715.GB2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 1:47 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Space networks have different constraints, and these are > addressed in projects like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-tolerant_networking > Yes, I know that technically it's more complicated than just sending a message, but the user isn't worried about exactly how the message gets there and the OK gets returned. Quite apart from the fact that there probably won't be much mind transmission going on anyway, unless in emergency escape mode. As we are sending a mind image as data at light speed, these computronium minds would have to go into stasis at transmission time and wake up at the reception point. After the OK has been received back the original stasis mind can be erased. (If not OK, then retransmit). But even at lightspeed, it takes hours to get to the further out planets and a year to get to the Oort cloud. Due to the speedup of computronium minds, this effectively means being asleep for aeons. And that will probably not be acceptable for idle jaunts about the solar system. BillK From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Jun 3 20:05:46 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2013 13:05:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Arkyd In-Reply-To: References: <76455FDE-564E-4BF3-8367-869099EB70B3@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1370289946.42137.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Saturday, June 1, 2013 12:11 PM Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 6:12 AM, Alfio Puglisi wrote: >> What? After lining up such an impressive list of "investors", as they call them: >> >> http://www.planetaryresources.com/team/ >> >> now they need kickstarter to raise $1M? Must be a joke > > Every source of funding. ?Also, this may be more PR than > actual fundraising. Could be. It might be a way of gauging public participation too. It's easy to take a poll and get many people saying they'd love to see X done, but getting them to pony up money might be a much better gauge. (Or maybe not. I'm just guessing.) Regards, Dan ?See my SF short story "Residue": http://www.amazon.com/Residue-ebook/dp/B00BS3T0RM/ -- US http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BS3T0RM -- UK http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00BS3T0RM -- Canada -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon Jun 3 22:04:12 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2013 23:04:12 +0100 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 1:54 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > Passive English comes out of that practically for free, and you can leverage > your Italian and Latin to quickly grasp the basic grammar and vocabulary of > all neo-Latin languages. In turn, German provides you a sufficient root > lexicon to learn to understand Dutch or Swedish by yourself, not to mention > the fact that words with a Greek etimology are one and the same across the > entire spectrum of European languages (I do not know how to say theatre, > epathitis or philosophy in Czech, but am confident that I would recognise > the words), which is also of help to approach the last remaining big family, > namely that of slavic legacy. > The BBC has an item saying that Germany has just deleted their longest word. Quotes: Rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz - meaning "law delegating beef label monitoring" - was introduced in 1999 in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. It was repealed following changes to EU regulations on the testing of cattle. German is famous - or notorious - for making compound words, often to describe something legal or scientific. They are known in Germany as "tapeworm" words. The longest word to be found in the dictionary is Kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung, meaning "automobile liability insurance". ----------------- BillK From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 3 22:50:21 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2013 15:50:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <011b01ce60ac$bae60040$30b200c0$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] chinese synthesis ... >...The BBC has an item saying that Germany has just deleted their longest word. >...German is famous - or notorious - for making compound words, often to describe something legal or scientific. They are known in Germany as "tapeworm" words.----BillK _______________________________________________ Ja I see that as a flaw in the language, equivalent to some of the more severe flaws in English. It works against reading comprehension, since we read to some extent by measuring the length of a word and noting its first and last letters. Most of us here have seen that exercise where the first and last letters are correct, but the rest of the word is scrambled. Somehow you can still read the passage. In case you haven't seen it, here it is: I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too. I could read it with no trouble at all. The German tapeworm word characteristic would defeat this feature of English. I thought of teaching my son Chinese, but that has a characteristic which caused me to reconsider: the fact that it is tonal. As it was explained to me, a homophone can be pronounced in different ways. For instance, the upward inflection almost makes it sound like a question, so that the phrase lawng choi? means "more rice please," but the term lawng choi? means "DIE, filthy wretch!" and the term lawng choi? means "aardvarks are devouring the canoe." All three pronunciations sounded identical to me, a trained musician. So. No Chinese for my son. The flaw in Spanish is that the young senoritas love it, and they are too beautiful for any teenage boy to resist, so the high school years are devoured by copulation. So I am back to square 1 in choosing a language, and once again questioning whether or not it is worth the time investment, when the time is otherwise profitably spent learning math and such. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Mon Jun 3 23:51:54 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2013 00:51:54 +0100 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51AD2C1A.4010906@aleph.se> On 03/06/2013 23:04, BillK wrote: > German is famous - or notorious - for making compound words, often to > describe something legal or scientific. They are known in Germany as > "tapeworm" words. The Swedish counterpart is ordmonster - literally word-monsters. According to Guinness the longest Swedish compound word is nordv?stersj?kustartilleriflygspaningssimulatoranl?ggningsmaterielunderh?llsuppf?ljningssystemdiskussionsinl?ggsf?rberedelsearbeten I actually used a variant of this when lecturing on hyphenation algorithms! ...that was likely the closest this word has ever come to being used for anything. Had it denoted something real (apparently a bureaucratic procedure within the material administration of a flight simulator for the northwestern coastal artillery) it would have been turned into an acronym or nickname, of course. The longest word in the Swedish Academy Word List is merely realisationsvinstbeskattning (a form of tax, which is all too real). When playing Swedish Scrabble that word list is the official final arbiter, but this word cannot be written in Scrabble since it is too long for the board. I like compound words. Most are not too complex, just two or three components joined together and with a tight semantic coupling. Nothing to be scared of. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From msd001 at gmail.com Tue Jun 4 01:31:55 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2013 21:31:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Space Gnats In-Reply-To: References: <1370252527.74299.YahooMailNeo@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <20130603124715.GB2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 11:17 AM, BillK wrote: > Quite apart from the fact that there probably won't be much mind > transmission going on anyway, unless in emergency escape mode. > > As we are sending a mind image as data at light speed, these > computronium minds would have to go into stasis at transmission time > and wake up at the reception point. After the OK has been received > back the original stasis mind can be erased. (If not OK, then > retransmit). > But even at lightspeed, it takes hours to get to the further out > planets and a year to get to the Oort cloud. Due to the speedup of > computronium minds, this effectively means being asleep for aeons. And > that will probably not be acceptable for idle jaunts about the solar > system. Why do we have to erase the "original"? People don't currently procreate then self-terminate. If you know the receiver will be subjective aeons removed from the local day-to-day, why wouldn't you treat "going there" as a legitimate reason to spawn? The divergence of a thousand years should be ample time to appreciate your 'offspring' as a close friend with his or her own life, don't you think? I like when someone across the Internet shares an idea I've had - that would be easier if we shared life experience to the moment I/we hit "send" to start a new adventure on the other side of the galaxy. (communications would effectively be postcards from the edge in both directions) From anders at aleph.se Tue Jun 4 10:44:47 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2013 11:44:47 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Golem (Was: Are we too stupid?) In-Reply-To: <51ABC1F0.7060203@aleph.se> References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> <00c901ce58ec$cba9ebc0$62fdc340$@rainier66.com> <51A0D7B2.1000109@libero.it> <51A0E90B.3060609@aleph.se> <51A0FA43.5010401@libero.it> <51A1084B.9020700@aleph.se> <1369630742.94925.YahooMailNeo@web126201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <002d01ce5ae6$0c504c50$24f0e4f0$@rainier66.com> <51A38DBA.2030408@aleph.se> <51ABC1F0.7060203@aleph.se> Message-ID: <51ADC51F.3020803@aleph.se> Incidentally, I came across this little short based on Lem's "Golem XIV". Just a few paragraphs from the titular supertintelligence, but beautifully done: http://vimeo.com/50984940 And seems to fit into the overall theme of the past thread. The rat-in-the-maze case is a problem for my analysis of conditions for singularity: does it count if you just use brute force? I think what matters is the conditions for getting an *efficient* singularity: how much do you need to know in order to find a method to vastly increase your power? -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Jun 4 17:41:16 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2013 11:41:16 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Arkyd In-Reply-To: References: <76455FDE-564E-4BF3-8367-869099EB70B3@yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 1:26 PM, Alfio Puglisi wrote: > On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 6:11 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > >> On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 6:12 AM, Alfio Puglisi wrote: >> >>> What? After lining up such an impressive list of "investors", as they >>> call them: >>> >>> http://www.planetaryresources.com/team/ >>> >>> now they need kickstarter to raise $1M? Must be a joke >>> >> >> Every source of funding. Also, this may be more PR than >> actual fundraising. >> > > I agree it's most likely a PR move. By the way, I am a little surprised by > how small the Arkyd telescope really is. A diameter of 20 cm? I had > previously read most of Planetary Resources' web site, but the size of the > Arkyd had escaped me for some reason. Being so small, it will have a > resolving power of about 1 arcsecond - about the same as you can get on the > ground ! Basically, you don't need to send such a telescope in orbit, > except maybe to gain some wavelength coverage. But for the same $1M, you > could buy hundreds of commercially available 20cm telescopes. So yes, it's > PR and PR only. Maybe it's useful as a training system to remotely operate > stuff in orbit. Whatever, I'm a bit disappointed. > But being in space, you don't get the diffraction of the atmosphere... Shouldn't a 20cm space telescope be able to see much more than one on the ground? Besides, this is all about involving schools and other organizations in science. Just for that reason, I think it's a great idea. Science has a bad reputation among too many people. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alfio.puglisi at gmail.com Tue Jun 4 18:56:54 2013 From: alfio.puglisi at gmail.com (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2013 20:56:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Arkyd In-Reply-To: References: <76455FDE-564E-4BF3-8367-869099EB70B3@yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 7:41 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 1:26 PM, Alfio Puglisi wrote: > >> >> I agree it's most likely a PR move. By the way, I am a little surprised >> by how small the Arkyd telescope really is. A diameter of 20 cm? I had >> previously read most of Planetary Resources' web site, but the size of the >> Arkyd had escaped me for some reason. Being so small, it will have a >> resolving power of about 1 arcsecond - about the same as you can get on the >> ground ! Basically, you don't need to send such a telescope in orbit, >> except maybe to gain some wavelength coverage. But for the same $1M, you >> could buy hundreds of commercially available 20cm telescopes. So yes, it's >> PR and PR only. Maybe it's useful as a training system to remotely operate >> stuff in orbit. Whatever, I'm a bit disappointed. >> > > But being in space, you don't get the diffraction of the atmosphere... > Shouldn't a 20cm space telescope be able to see much more than one on the > ground? > No, not really. The atmosphere will smear a point-like source into a blob about 1 arcsecond wide, or maybe half of that in a really good site. A 20 cm telescope can't resolve anything smaller than 1 arcsec, so it won't gain any resolution in going out in space. Since resolution scales linearly with the telescope diameter, a bigger one would gain a lot (the Hubble space telescope is only 2.4 meters, which counts as "small" in modern astronomy, but up to recent times it was the sharpest eye on the sky). Compared to a ground-based 20cm telescope, the Arkyd will gain a factor of about 4 in efficiency, because you can observe for 24 hours instead of 8 and the weather is always good, plus a factor of nearly two in sensitivity because the atmosphere does scatter some light away, and some UV wavelengths that the atmosphere blocks. Besides, this is all about involving schools and other organizations in > science. Just for that reason, I think it's a great idea. Science has a bad > reputation among too many people. > I agree it's a good idea from this angle, it's just that I see it as a side show compared to the main one. Alfio > -Kelly > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 anders at aleph.se Tue Jun 4 18:56:54 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:56:54 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Arkyd In-Reply-To: References: <76455FDE-564E-4BF3-8367-869099EB70B3@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51AE3876.8050100@aleph.se> On 2013-06-04 18:41, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > But being in space, you don't get the diffraction of the atmosphere... > Shouldn't a 20cm space telescope be able to see much more than one on > the ground? The resolution of a telescope depends on how wide it is. If you have several openings far away (like connected telescopes across the globe) you can get a synthetic aperture that is very hi-res. Atmospheric noise however blurs everything beyond a certain resolution. But the *sensitivity* depends on how large the "light bucket" is: the total area collecting light. 20 cm is not much at all, plenty of amateurs have that. You can get a better picture by looking longer, but the signal/noise ratio only grows with the square root of time. So 20 cm is not going to be doing anything radical compared to existing telescopes, image-wise. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 5 01:03:28 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2013 18:03:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again Message-ID: <003b01ce6188$7f3bb8f0$7db32ad0$@rainier66.com> After getting my 23AndMe results back, I have made a remarkable discovery. I went down through the list of relatives who came up 3rd cousins and contacted them. Some have done extensive genealogy, as have I, so I know all 32 of my great^3 grandparents. None of the family names match. Therefore, apparently all my great great great grandmothers were promiscuous sluts. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Jun 5 05:24:22 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2013 22:24:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <003b01ce6188$7f3bb8f0$7db32ad0$@rainier66.com> References: <003b01ce6188$7f3bb8f0$7db32ad0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1370409862.59880.YahooMailNeo@web126201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Tuesday, June 4, 2013 9:03 PM spike wrote: > After getting my 23AndMe results back, I have made a > remarkable discovery. ?I went down through the list of > relatives who came up 3rd cousins and contacted them.? > Some have done extensive genealogy, as have I, so I know > all 32 of my great^3 grandparents. ?None of the family > names match. ?Therefore, apparently all my great great > great grandmothers were promiscuous sluts. Are you sure of the 23AndMe results themselves? Also, let's say the results are accurate, is it possible some of them might have been mothers who were widowed who remarried and had more kids? (That said, though, the truth is out of wedlock children and promiscuity are not something invented in recent times. So, I'm not totally surprised.) ? Regards, Dan ?See my SF short story "Residue": http://www.amazon.com/Residue-ebook/dp/B00BS3T0RM/ -- US http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BS3T0RM -- UK http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00BS3T0RM -- Canada -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed Jun 5 08:28:25 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 10:28:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Arkyd In-Reply-To: <51AE3876.8050100@aleph.se> References: <76455FDE-564E-4BF3-8367-869099EB70B3@yahoo.com> <51AE3876.8050100@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20130605082825.GD2380@leitl.org> On Tue, Jun 04, 2013 at 07:56:54PM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote: > But the *sensitivity* depends on how large the "light bucket" is: > the total area collecting light. 20 cm is not much at all, plenty of > amateurs have that. You can get a better picture by looking longer, > but the signal/noise ratio only grows with the square root of time. > So 20 cm is not going to be doing anything radical compared to > existing telescopes, image-wise. One of the problems of incoming asteroid detection is that these coming out of the sun are hard to see. I can imagine that a space-based telescope can improve things there, even if it's small. I agree that a fleet of automated coordinated instruments on the ground could be a lot more cost-effective. From spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 5 13:13:01 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 06:13:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <1370409862.59880.YahooMailNeo@web126201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <003b01ce6188$7f3bb8f0$7db32ad0$@rainier66.com> <1370409862.59880.YahooMailNeo@web126201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <008301ce61ee$688042f0$3980c8d0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dan Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2013 10:24 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again On Tuesday, June 4, 2013 9:03 PM spike wrote: >>. After getting my 23AndMe results back, I have made a > remarkable discovery. I went down through the list of > relatives who came up 3rd cousins and contacted them. > Some have done extensive genealogy, as have I, so I know > all 32 of my great^3 grandparents. None of the family > names match. Therefore, apparently all my great great > great grandmothers were promiscuous sluts. >.Are you sure of the 23AndMe results themselves? We will soon know. I am sending them my son's DNA. If that DNA doesn't match about half of mine, either 23 or my bride are in biiiig trouble. >.Also, let's say the results are accurate, is it possible some of them might have been mothers who were widowed who remarried and had more kids? Possibly, but this doesn't apply in my own case. >. (That said, though, the truth is out of wedlock children and promiscuity are not something invented in recent times. So, I'm not totally surprised.) Regards Dan I can see one or two of them scoring on one of the farm hands occasionally, but to find that all 16 of them were sleazy bitches would be a shock. The astonishing thing about all this is how this kind of knowledge accumulates. If you have done any genealogy in the past couple decades, you may be astonished at how easy it has become. For instance, I spent several weekends in the summers of 1989 and 1990 digging through microfilmed census records to discover my roots. The time investment in the archives was about 120 to 140 hours or so, with about 20 trips to the National Archives in San Bruno. Recently I used the web and reproduced all of that in one evening without leaving my house. I did another family line as well, one which I couldn't find, again in one evening. We can easily extrapolate and realize that as more and more people do these DNA tests, if great^3 grandma was doing one of the field hands 150 years ago, we will not only be able to catch her sleazy ass, but we can figure out which one she was doing when great^2 grandpa was conceived. Is this a fun time to be living or what? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clementlawyer at gmail.com Wed Jun 5 13:41:43 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 09:41:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <1370409862.59880.YahooMailNeo@web126201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <003b01ce6188$7f3bb8f0$7db32ad0$@rainier66.com> <1370409862.59880.YahooMailNeo@web126201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 1:24 AM, Dan wrote: > > > Are you sure of the 23AndMe results themselves? > > Also, let's say the results are accurate, is it possible some of them > might have been mothers who were widowed who remarried and had more kids? > (That said, though, the truth is out of wedlock children and promiscuity > are not something invented in recent times. So, I'm not totally surprised.) > > "In a recent study in England, for example, Baker (2002) has suggested that about 10% of people do not have the genetic father which they think they have. This varies tremendously dependent on some variables, especially social class. " James -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 5 14:54:53 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 07:54:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <003b01ce6188$7f3bb8f0$7db32ad0$@rainier66.com> <1370409862.59880.YahooMailNeo@web126201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00b101ce61fc$a3bf5000$eb3df000$@rainier66.com> >. On Behalf Of James Clement Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 1:24 AM, Dan wrote: >>.Are you sure of the 23AndMe results themselves?...out of wedlock children and promiscuity are not something invented in recent times. So, I'm not totally surprised.) >."In a recent study in England, for example, Baker (2002) has suggested that about 10% of people do not have the genetic father which they think they have. This varies tremendously dependent on some variables, especially social class. " James If you have ever spent any time doing genealogy the old fashioned way, the kind that involves looking through census records on microfilm and paper books, you know that in general, genealogy is the very best example of crowdsourced amateur "science." I use the term science a little loosely, but it works: figuring out who spawned who is a map of natural history in a way. If you have visited archives, you know how much knowledge has accumulated, from the collective efforts of perhaps millions of people, with perhaps hundreds of thousands who have gone to the trouble of recording the findings and binding them in a book. If you have never visited a genealogical library, it isn't too late but it is certainly getting late. Those will likely be gone in the next couple decades. Just yesterday, I discovered a bound book in my mother's collection in which someone had done a complete genealogy of a guy who lived in the USA in the early 1700s. I am among his larvae. I compared with my own notes and realized this distant cousin did it all correctly, and went beyond what I already knew. It is foreseeable to me that in twenty years, there will be enough accumulated knowledge in DNA archives, that a client can submit a sample and the archive will send you back a complete history of your ancestors, not the legal ones necessarily but the genetic ones. Note this, remember who said it. We can imagine competitions, where we score a point if our legal father is our father, half a point if a parents is the legal offspring of our grandparents (so a total of one point available in that generation) a quarter of a point for each legitimate grandparent, and so forth. Then we calculate a ratio of genetic ancestors to legal ancestors ratio. Go back three generations, you have a total of three points available, so if you have one illegitimate grandparent and one illegitimate great grandparent, your score would be 2.25/3, or .75. Then we could have competitions to see who descended from the flooziest family! Or which parent contributed the most promiscuity to one's own character, so if one is oneself sleazy, you know which parent or grandparent is most to blame. Great grandma, we are closing in on your loose ways. Your youthful indiscretions are clawing their way out of the grave; we are coming. Is this a great time to be living, or what? {8^D spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Jun 6 01:02:58 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 18:02:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Fukushima radiation disaster toll: 0? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1370480578.65931.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> http://www.theage.com.au/comment/japans-radiation-disaster-toll-none-dead-none-sick-20130604-2nomz.html Comments? Regards, Dan ?See my SF short story "Residue": http://www.amazon.com/Residue-ebook/dp/B00BS3T0RM/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Jun 6 02:43:19 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 19:43:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima radiation disaster toll: 0? In-Reply-To: <1370480578.65931.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1370480578.65931.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 6:02 PM, Dan wrote: > > http://www.theage.com.au/comment/japans-radiation-disaster-toll-none-dead-none-sick-20130604-2nomz.html > Quite a dramatic claim, if true. It seems too good to be true - possibly someone overlooking something. But if it is true... Of course, much of the general public will reject it out of cognitive dissonance. "Thousands of people died from Fukushima. There's tons of evidence. So if you're saying otherwise, you don't merit rational consideration, just like someone who still claims the Earth is flat." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Jun 6 09:19:25 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 10:19:25 +0100 Subject: [ExI] AUJIK Message-ID: <51B0541D.7060608@aleph.se> Anybody up for some Shinto transhumanist new age biotech art? http://vimeo.com/13567516 - A forest within a forest. http://vimeo.com/66303323 - Impermanence trajectory: the limbic nest http://vimeo.com/53072706 - Cathexis, the longest composition. Beautiful, odd, very Japanese. I think doing a metaheuristic gradient wave meditation looks fun, and the eye-tracking mandalas seem like a great idea. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From bbenzai at yahoo.com Thu Jun 6 13:16:36 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2013 06:16:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Fukushima radiation disaster toll: 0? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1370524596.47426.YahooMailNeo@web165006.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Dan asked: >http://www.theage.com.au/comment/japans-radiation-disaster-toll-none-dead-none-sick-20130604-2nomz.html > >Comments? No surprise there, whatsoever. Nuclear energy is a bit like saturated fat:? A great big bogeyman that everyone is terrified of (mostly driven by the media, who love a good horror story), with hardly anyone taking notice of the actual facts. The sad thing is that it's dreaded Nukular Reactors that get all the attention, and nobody takes any notice of the tens of thousands of people who died as a direct result of the tsunami.? Water is boring, compared to radiation. Ben Zaiboc From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Jun 6 13:44:18 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 15:44:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima radiation disaster toll: 0? In-Reply-To: <1370524596.47426.YahooMailNeo@web165006.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1370524596.47426.YahooMailNeo@web165006.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51B09232.4020708@libero.it> Il 06/06/2013 15:16, Ben Zaiboc ha scritto: > Dan asked: >> http://www.theage.com.au/comment/japans-radiation-disaster-toll-none-dead-none-sick-20130604-2nomz.html >> Comments? > No surprise there, whatsoever. > > Nuclear energy is a bit like saturated fat: A great big bogeyman that everyone is terrified of (mostly driven by the media, who love a good horror story), with hardly anyone taking notice of the actual facts. > > The sad thing is that it's dreaded Nukular Reactors that get all the attention, and nobody takes any notice of the tens of thousands of people who died as a direct result of the tsunami. Water is boring, compared to radiation. It is difficult to add anything over this. Mirco From pharos at gmail.com Thu Jun 6 16:36:30 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2013 17:36:30 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Space Gnats In-Reply-To: References: <1370252527.74299.YahooMailNeo@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <20130603124715.GB2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 2:31 AM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > Why do we have to erase the "original"? People don't currently > procreate then self-terminate. > > If you know the receiver will be subjective aeons removed from the > local day-to-day, why wouldn't you treat "going there" as a legitimate > reason to spawn? The divergence of a thousand years should be ample > time to appreciate your 'offspring' as a close friend with his or her > own life, don't you think? I like when someone across the Internet > shares an idea I've had - that would be easier if we shared life > experience to the moment I/we hit "send" to start a new adventure on > the other side of the galaxy. (communications would effectively be > postcards from the edge in both directions) > _________________ Spawning multiple copies is really a different discussion. :) I can think of reasons not to create copies. The computronium society probably has laws about the subject. At least, to say that your resources would have to be shared among all your copies, if not just an outright ban. It would be too easy for a rogue mind to create thousands of copies, so self protection of the other minds must exist. If individual minds still exist, that is. There may just be one hive mind in overall control that decides when a new explorer AI is needed. Another point is that communication between minds where one is subjectively thousands of years behind in development may just not be possible to any meaningful extent. In effect, they would be an alien species. BillK From jrd1415 at gmail.com Thu Jun 6 18:41:11 2013 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2013 12:41:11 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima radiation disaster toll: 0? In-Reply-To: <1370480578.65931.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1370480578.65931.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: The massive stupidity of emotionalism which forced the political gesture of shutting down all the Japanese nuke plants, also drove TEPCO's stock price from 3000 yen to 120 yen. Now that the screaming and hair pulling are over, and the fact that Japan can't function without the power that the nuke plants provide, those plants are being gradually reopened,... and the stock price is recovering. My wife and I are currently liquidating some real estate, and if I can convince her, I'll put a substantial chunk into TEPCO. Anyone care to comment on that? Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." Ray Charles On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 7:02 PM, Dan wrote: > > http://www.theage.com.au/comment/japans-radiation-disaster-toll-none-dead-none-sick-20130604-2nomz.html > > Comments? > > Regards, > > Dan > See my SF short story "Residue": > http://www.amazon.com/Residue-ebook/dp/B00BS3T0RM/ > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 eugen at leitl.org Thu Jun 6 19:29:44 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2013 21:29:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima radiation disaster toll: 0? In-Reply-To: References: <1370480578.65931.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130606192944.GQ2380@leitl.org> On Thu, Jun 06, 2013 at 12:41:11PM -0600, Jeff Davis wrote: > The massive stupidity of emotionalism which forced the political gesture of > shutting down all the Japanese nuke plants, also drove TEPCO's stock price It's dead, Jim. > from 3000 yen to 120 yen. Now that the screaming and hair pulling are over, > and the fact that Japan can't function without the power that the nuke > plants provide, those plants are being gradually reopened,... and the stock > price is recovering. > > My wife and I are currently liquidating some real estate, and if I can > convince her, I'll put a substantial chunk into TEPCO. > > Anyone care to comment on that? Yes. It's your funeral. Don't do it. From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Jun 6 19:21:41 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 21:21:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima radiation disaster toll: 0? In-Reply-To: References: <1370480578.65931.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51B0E145.5000305@libero.it> Il 06/06/2013 20:41, Jeff Davis ha scritto: > The massive stupidity of emotionalism which forced the political gesture > of shutting down all the Japanese nuke plants, also drove TEPCO's stock > price from 3000 yen to 120 yen. Now that the screaming and hair pulling > are over, and the fact that Japan can't function without the power that > the nuke plants provide, those plants are being gradually reopened,... > and the stock price is recovering. > > My wife and I are currently liquidating some real estate, and if I can > convince her, I'll put a substantial chunk into TEPCO. > > Anyone care to comment on that? Smart people have a duty to gain from the stupidity of stupid people. Mirco From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 6 19:37:17 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2013 12:37:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima radiation disaster toll: 0? In-Reply-To: References: <1370480578.65931.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <010601ce62ed$41b03040$c51090c0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Davis >.My wife and I are currently liquidating some real estate, and if I can convince her, I'll put a substantial chunk into TEPCO. Anyone care to comment on that? Best, Jeff Davis Your reasoning is unquestionable: we need power, regardless of how we get it. Rooftop solar is a contributor, but can't do everything. Coal is dirty, wind turbines are ugly, ground based solar is better than nothing but can't do the heavy lifting alone, especially in Japan. So the nukes must come back online eventually. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri Jun 7 10:43:31 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2013 03:43:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Fukushima radiation disaster toll: 0? In-Reply-To: <010601ce62ed$41b03040$c51090c0$@rainier66.com> References: <1370480578.65931.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <010601ce62ed$41b03040$c51090c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1370601811.5961.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> I still worry about another major earthquake hitting Japan before they can fix reactor 4. Are my concerns unfounded? Fukushima Reactor 4 poses massive global risk http://www.ctvnews.ca/fukushima-reactor-4-poses-massive-global-risk-1.829254 Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jun 7 11:08:41 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2013 13:08:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima radiation disaster toll: 0? In-Reply-To: <1370601811.5961.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1370480578.65931.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <010601ce62ed$41b03040$c51090c0$@rainier66.com> <1370601811.5961.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130607110841.GY2380@leitl.org> On Fri, Jun 07, 2013 at 03:43:31AM -0700, Gordon wrote: > I still worry about another major earthquake hitting Japan before they can fix reactor 4. Are my concerns unfounded? > > Fukushima Reactor 4 poses massive global risk > http://www.ctvnews.ca/fukushima-reactor-4-poses-massive-global-risk-1.829254 I don't worry about that at all. Do you know what I worry about? That Japan had set themselves up to be suddenly reliant upon massive imports of fossil fuels just as they're peaking. This will crater their economy even deeper than it already is. I don't see how they're going to recover from that, without introducing massive austerity programs which will cripple their ability to retool for renewable energy resources. Dunno, I think some very public acts of sepukku on parts of responsible officials are in order. Not that it will change anything, but at least there used to be some form of honor in a honorless caste. From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri Jun 7 12:19:09 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2013 05:19:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin again In-Reply-To: <1370601811.5961.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1370480578.65931.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <010601ce62ed$41b03040$c51090c0$@rainier66.com> <1370601811.5961.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1370607549.23790.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Most governments around the world should have reason to fear Bitcoin, even if most still do not, but China seems to be different. It appears that the Chinese government might actively be promoting Bitcoin to its citizens, perhaps as part of some larger strategy to undermine the US Dollar as a reserve currency. This is potentially huge. "For the month of January, China ranked seventh amongst downloaders of the software, accounting for just 3.66 percent of downloads. As recently as April, Chinese downloads accounted for 13.15 percent of the total, lagging the US, which downloaded 27 percent of the clients. Things have changed considerably over the last month. From the start of May until June 4, China soared to the top of the charts, surpassing even the US during that period"? China?s romance with Bitcoin continues http://www.coindesk.com/chinas-romance-with-bitcoin-continues/ Bitcoin: The Newest Tool In China?s Currency War Chest http://www.thegenesisblock.com/bitcoin-the-newest-tool-in-chinas-currency-war-chest/ Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Fri Jun 7 13:16:28 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2013 07:16:28 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin again In-Reply-To: <1370607549.23790.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1370480578.65931.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <010601ce62ed$41b03040$c51090c0$@rainier66.com> <1370601811.5961.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1370607549.23790.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hi Gordon, Yes, I noticed this as very surprising and significant also. Thanks for bringing this up. Some of those articles mentioned: "The reserve currency?s issuing nation receives a number of unique benefits, not the least of which is the ability to borrow money at significantly lower rates, as has been heavily taken advantage of by the US." But it's more than that. As the economy exponentially grows, they must get exponentially more dollars into the system, which is free money for governments to spend. Most of this is done as low interest rates, but central banks also collect interest rate on money it lends, and so on. All free money. China has also been printing lots of money, trying to keep their currency from deflating, despite exporting so much. But it looks like they spend a significant amount of this purchasing USD - again to keep their currency from deflating in comparison. Again, the US benefits from this, as it gets to print and loan more USD, giving it significantly more money to spend, and why we get all the goods china makes. All while China need to try to just spend it's money on more USD. I wouldn't be surprised of all the BRIC countries realize this and jump on this bandwagon. The first ones that do will profit significantly, the more bitcoins in the country, the sooner, the more wealth will move towards that country as inflation kicks into high gear, trying to accommodate everyone else in the world. So what is everyone's predictions about what the value of a Bitcoin will be in one year? I bet knowing, concisely and quantitatively, what all transhumanists believe would be way more intelligent and accurate than any one of us. I'm thinking the 300% / year prediction being made here is too high: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/2 so thinking of changing that to 100% / year. Anyone else agree? Anyone else think that is moving in the wrong direction? And why has the price been dropping during the last few weeks? What do you all think? If we all put our brains together, that could be thousands of time more intelligent than any one of us. But we can't achieve anything like that unless people are willing to take a minute or two to communicate. Brent Allsop On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 6:19 AM, Gordon wrote: > Most governments around the world should have reason to fear Bitcoin, even > if most still do not, but China seems to be different. It appears that the > Chinese government might actively be promoting Bitcoin to its citizens, > perhaps as part of some larger strategy to undermine the US Dollar as a > reserve currency. This is potentially huge. > > "For the month of January, China ranked seventh amongst downloaders of the > software, accounting for just 3.66 percent of downloads. As recently as > April, Chinese downloads accounted for 13.15 percent of the total, lagging > the US, which downloaded 27 percent of the clients. Things have changed > considerably over the last month. From the start of May until June 4, China > soared to the top of the charts, surpassing even the US during that period" > > China?s romance with Bitcoin continues > http://www.coindesk.com/chinas-romance-with-bitcoin-continues/ > > Bitcoin: The Newest Tool In China?s Currency War Chest > > http://www.thegenesisblock.com/bitcoin-the-newest-tool-in-chinas-currency-war-chest/ > > Gordon > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Fri Jun 7 15:55:12 2013 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2013 10:55:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: [biomed] [DIYbio] Re: Glowing Plant kickstarter - helkp us reach our final DIYbio stretch goal! In-Reply-To: <20130607113741.GF2380@leitl.org> References: <20130607113741.GF2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: From: Eugen Leitl Date: Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 6:37 AM Subject: [biomed] [DIYbio] Re: Glowing Plant kickstarter - helkp us reach our final DIYbio stretch goal! To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net, biomed at postbiota.org ----- Forwarded message from Patrik D'haeseleer ----- Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2013 17:11:43 -0700 (PDT) From: Patrik D'haeseleer To: diybio at googlegroups.com Subject: [DIYbio] Re: Glowing Plant kickstarter - helkp us reach our final DIYbio stretch goal! Reply-To: diybio at googlegroups.com *?Is this Legal?? * ?Is this Legal?? is probably the #1 questions people ask us when they hear about the Glowing Plant project (well, after ?Can I have one??, of course). The short answer is ?Yes?. But the long answer is far more interesting? Regulatory oversight in the US over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is covered by an alphabet soup of laws and agencies. Different rules apply when you are dealing with a GMO food crop such as soy (covered by the Food and Drug Agency - FDA), a microbe, an animal, or anything that has been engineered using a plant pathogen. I would hesitate to call this a patchwork quilt of regulations, because a patchwork quilt isn?t supposed to have any holes in it, and these regulations definitely do: big, ragged, oddly shaped holes. Most plant genetic engineering historically has been done by taking advantage of the plant pathogen Agrobacterium tumefaciens. You may have seen Agrobacterium at work if you?ve seen a tree with a large outgrowth on its trunk. Agrobacterium is a bacterium (duh) that infects plants. During infection, it literally injects some of its own DNA into the plant, subverting its host?s machinery to make a nice little home for the bacteria. Plant genetic engineers have been using that trick to their own advantage, by engineering Agrobacterium to inject whatever genes they want to insert into the plant instead. However, the US Department of Agriculture has been understandably cautious about releasing any plant that has been infected by this pathogen, especially an engineered strain of Agrobacterium that could potentially infect other plants in the environment. In fact, this has historically been one of the primary justifications the USDA has used for regulating GMO plants. Now, it turns out that Agrobacterium isn?t the only tool genetic engineers have at their disposal to get genes into plants. In 1987, Klein and Sanford discovered that you can literally fire tiny bullets loaded with DNA into cells using an air gun. And when I say tiny, I do mean tiny: the usual ammunition for this ?gene gun? are gold nanoparticles that are 1/100?th the width of a human hair. Each gold particle is coated with strands of DNA coding for the genes that we want to the inside the cell. The use of gold allows the bullets to be much smaller than the size of the cell, yet heavy enough to carry enough momentum to pierce the tough plant cell wall. This is the same reason that real bullets are make out of lead (or the even heavier depleted uranium) except that the gold particles will be inert once inside the cell. [Image: ?Give us your money, and the plant gets it!?] The use of this gene gun technology to circumvent USDA?s regulations on non-food plants did not escape notice of the 800 pound gorilla in the field of plant engineering. Monsanto, in collaboration with Scotts Miracle-Gro, has been developing a bluegrass strain (the lawn variety, not the banjo variety) that was engineered to be resistant to their favorite herbicide glyphosate (aka Roundup). And because nobody but your dog eats lawn grass it?s not covered by FDA regulations. And because they used gene gun technology instead of our friend Agrobacterium, it?s not covered by USDA?s plant-pathogen-based regulations. Scotts/Monsanto saw a huge gap in GMO regulations, and waltzed right through it! Mind you, there were still plenty of voices saying that they should never have gotten away with this. After all, there are plenty of weed grasses that their bluegrass could potentially outcross with. And by inserting the herbicide resistance genes, they?ve given this grass an evolutionary advantage wherever there are traces of Roundup in the environment. But get away with it they did: USDA ruled that their bluegrass did not pose a risk to become an agricultural pest, and that was that. Now, compare that Roundup Ready bluegrass with our little Glowing Plant: Arabidopsis is not a very hardy plant, and since it is self-pollinating it is highly unlikely to outcross with more vigorously growing weeds to begin with (unlike grasses). And the genes we?re inserting into its genome will drain a small amount of its energy to produce light, so it will likely do slightly worse than its unmodified cousins in the environment, rather than giving it a fitness advantage by making it resistant to herbicides. Other than that (and a multi-billion dollar company with thousands of lawyers), the two are fairly analogous. So where Monsanto waltzed through the regulatory gap, we will be happy to sneak through after it, and give you something you really want: not just another water and herbicide guzzling lawn, but a glowing garden of bioluminescent plants. Mind you, I have nothing against rational, sensible regulation of genetically modified organisms. This is after all a very powerful technology. We also regulate car manufacturers, because we prefer our cars not to fall apart on the roadway. But if billion dollar companies can get away with bringing a herbicide resistant grass on the market without any regulatory oversight, then surely our ragtag band of biohackers should be allowed to create a little glowing plant as well? So ? that was the long answer: yes, what we?re doing is legal. We have talked to the relevant regulatory agencies, and Monsanto already set the precedent with their Roundup Ready grass. There is still a small possibility that our Glowing Plant project might get shut down by one of the alphabet soup agencies, but then they?d need to reverse their decision on Monsanto as well. And if a bunch of DIYbio amateurs is able to insert some more rational thought into the national debate around GMO regulation, then, personally, I wouldn?t consider that a bad outcome either? *Patrik D?haeseleer is a scientific advisor of the Glowing Plant project, and community projects coordinator at BioCurious, neither of which is in any way related or funded by his day job at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Joint BioEnergy Institute. The views presented here are his own, and do not represent those of the Glowing Plant project, BioCurious, LLNL, or JBEI. * -- -- 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 https://groups.google.com/d/forum/diybio?hl=en Learn more at www.diybio.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DIYbio" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to diybio+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to diybio at googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/diybio?hl=en. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/diybio/11c91ed5-7722-41cc-a172-f97a82e6b856%40googlegroups.com?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 _______________________________________________ biomed mailing list biomed at postbiota.org http://postbiota.org/mailman/listinfo/biomed -- - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From clementlawyer at gmail.com Sun Jun 9 02:20:39 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2013 22:20:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Do online courses spell the end for the traditional university? Message-ID: Do online courses spell the end for the traditional university? Publishing, music, shopping, journalism ? all revolutionised by the internet. Next in line? Education. Now US academics are offering world-class tuition ? free ? to anyone who can log on, anywhere in the world, is this the end of campus life? A thing of the past? University graduates at Cambridge. Photograph: Trigger Image/Alamy Two years ago, I sat in the back seat of a Toyota Prius in a rooftop car park in California and gripped the door handle as the car roared away from the kerb, headed straight towards the roof's edge and then at the last second sped around a corner without slowing down. There was no one in the driver's seat. It was the prototype of Google's self-driving car and it felt a bit like being Buck Rogers and catapulted into another century. Later, I listened to Sebastian Thrun, a German-born professor of artificial intelligence at Stanford University, explain how he'd built it, how it had already clocked up 200,000 miles driving around California, and how one day he believed it would mean that there would be no traffic accidents. A few months later, the *New York Times* revealed that Thrun was the head of Google's top-secret experimental laboratory Google X, and was developing, among other things, Google Glasses ? augmented reality spectacles. And then, a few months after that, I came across Thrun again. The self-driving car, the glasses, Google X, his prestigious university position ? they'd all gone. He'd resigned his tenure from Stanford, and was working just a day a week at Google. He had a new project. Though he didn't call it a project. "It's my mission now," he said. "This is the future. I'm absolutely convinced of it." The future that Thrun believes in, that has excited him more than self-driving cars, or sci-fi-style gadgets, is education. Specifically, massive online education free to all. The music industry, publishing, transportation, retail ? they've all experienced the great technological disruption. Now, says Thrun, it's education's turn. "It's going to change. There is no doubt about it." Specifically, Thrun believes, higher education is going to change. He has launched Udacity , an online university, and wants to provide mass high quality education for the world. For students in developing countries who can't get it any other way, or for students in the first world, who can but may choose not to. Pay thousands of pounds a year for your education? Or get it free online? University, of course, is about so much more than the teaching. There's the socialising, of course, or, as we call it here in Britain, drinking. There's the living away from home and learning how to boil water stuff. And there's the all-important sex and catching a social disease stuff. But this is the way disruptions tend to work: they disrupt first, and figure out everything else at some unspecified time later. Thrun's great revelation came just over a year ago at the same TED conference where he unveiled the self-driving car. "I heard Salman Khan talk about the Khan Academy and I was just blown away by it," he says. "And I still am." Salman Khan, a softly spoken 36-year-old former hedge fund analyst, is the founding father of what's being called the classroom revolution, and is feted by everyone from Bill Gates (who called him "the world's favourite teacher") down. The Khan Academy, which he set up almost accidentally while tutoring his niece and nephew, now has 3,400 short videos or tutorials, most of which Khan made himself, and 10 million students. "I was blown away by it," says Thrun. "And frankly embarrassed that I was teaching 200 students. And he was teaching millions." Thrun decided to open up his Stanford artificial intelligence class,CS221, to the world. Anybody could join, he announced. They'd do the same coursework as the Stanford students and at the end of it take the same exam. CS221 is a demanding, difficult subject. On campus, 200 students enrolled, and Thrun thought they might pull in a few thousand on the web. By the time the course began, 160,000 had signed up. "It absolutely blew my mind," says Thrun. There were students from every single country in the world ? bar North Korea. What's more, 23,000 students graduated. And all of the 400 who got top marks were students who'd done it online. It was, says Thrun, his "wonderland" moment. Having taught a class of 160,000 students, he couldn't go back to being satisfied with 200. "I feel like there's a red pill and a blue pill," Thrun said in a speech a few months later. "I've taken the red pill, and I've seen wonderland. We can really change the world with education." By the time I sign up to Udacity's beginners' course in computer science, how to build a search engine, 200,000 students have already graduated from it. Although when I say "graduate" I mean they were emailed a certificate. It has more than a touch of Gillian McKeith's PhD about it, though it seems employers are taking it seriously: a bunch of companies, including Google, are sponsoring Udacity courses and regularly cream off the top-scoring students and offer them jobs. I may have to wait a while for that call, though I'm amazed at how easy Udacity videos are to follow (having tips and advice on search-engine building from Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, doesn't hurt). Like the Khan Academy, it avoids full-length shots of the lecturer and just shows a doodling hand. According to Brin, if you have basic programming ability ? which we'll all have if we complete the course ? and a bit of creativity, "you could come up with an idea that might just change the world". But then that's Silicon Valley for you. What's intriguing is how this will translate into a British context. Because, of course, when it comes to revolutionising educational access, Britain has led the world. We've had the luxury of open access higher education for so long ? more than 40 years now ? that we're blas? about it. When the Open University was launched in 1969, it was both radical and democratic. It came about because of improvements in technology ? television ? and it's been at the forefront of educational innovation ever since. It has free content ? on OpenLearn and iTunesU . But at its heart, it's no longer radically democratic. From this year, fees are ?5,000. In America, Thrun is not the only one to have taken the pills. A year on from the Stanford experiment, and the world of higher education and the future of universities is completely different. Thrun's wasn't the only class to go online last autumn. Two of his computer science colleagues, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, also took part, with equally mind-blowing results. They too have set up a website, Coursera. And while Udacity is developing its own courses, Coursera is forming partnerships with universities to offer existing ones. When I met Koller in July, shortly after the website's launch, four universities had signed up ? Stanford, Princeton, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Just four months later, it has 33 partner universities, 1.8 million students and is having venture capital thrown at it ? $16m (?10m) in the first round. And it doesn't stop there. It's pretty remarkable that Coursera and Udacity were spun out of the same university, but also the same department (Thrun and Koller still supervise a PhD student together). And they have the dynamic entrepreneurial change-the-world quality that characterise the greatest and most successful Silicon Valley startups. "We had a million users faster than Facebook, faster than Instagram," says Koller. "This is a wholesale change in the educational ecosystem." But they're not alone. Over at Massachusetts Institute of Technology,Anant Argarwal , another professor of computer science, who also cites Khan as his inspiration (and who was, in a neat twist, once his student), has launched edX , featuring content from MIT, Harvard, Berkeley and the University of Texas System. Argarwal is not a man prone to understatement. This, he says, is the revolution. "It's going to reinvent education. It's going to transform universities. It's going to democratise education on a global scale. It's the biggest innovation to happen in education for 200 years." The last major one, he says, was "probably the invention of the pencil". In a decade, he's hoping to reach a billion students across the globe. "We've got 400,000 in four months with no marketing, so I don't think it's unrealistic." More than 155,000 students took the first course he taught, including a whole class of children in Mongolia. "That was amazing!" says Argarwal. "And we discovered a prot?g?. One of his students, Batthushig, got a perfect score. He's a high school student. I can't overstate how hard this course was. If I took it today, I wouldn't get a perfect score. We're encouraging him to apply to MIT." This is the year, Argarwal says, that everything has changed. There's no going back. "This is the year of disruption." A month ago, I signed up for one of the Coursera courses: an introduction to genetics and evolution, taught by Mohamed Noor, a professor at Duke University. Unlike Udacity's, Coursera's courses have a start date and run to a timetable. I quite fancied a University of Pennsylvania course on modern poetry but it had already started. This one was 10 weeks long, would feature "multiple mini-videos roughly 10-15 minutes in length", each of which would contain a number of quizzes, and there would also be three tests and a final exam. It's just me, Noor, and my 36,000 classmates. We're from everywhere: Kazakhstan, Manila, Donetsk, Iraq. Even Middlesbrough. And while I watch the first videos and enjoy Noor's smiley enthusiasm, I'm not blown away. They're just videos of lectures, really. There's coursework to do, but I am a journalist. I am impervious to a deadline until the cold sweat of impending catastrophe is upon me. I ignore it. And it's a week or so later when I go back and check out the class forum. And that's when I have my being-blown-away moment. The traffic is astonishing. There are thousands of people asking ? and answering ? questions about dominant mutations and recombination. And study groups had spontaneously grown up: a Colombian one, a Brazilian one, a Russian one. There's one on Skype, and some even in real life too. And they're so diligent! If you are a vaguely disillusioned teacher, or know one, send them to Coursera: these are people who just want to learn. Four weeks in, Noor announces that he's organising a Google hangout: it's where a limited number of people can talk via their webcams. But it's scheduled for 1am GMT on Sunday morning. I go to sleep instead. However I do watch the YouTube video of it the next day and it's fascinating viewing. Despite the time, Richard Herring, a train driver from Sheffield, is there, bright and alert and wanting to tell Noor how much he's enjoying the course. "Richard!" says Noor. "Nice to meet you! Your posts are amazing. I often find that before I have a chance to go in and answer a question, somebody else has already answered it, and it's often Richard. Thank you." "I just love science," says Richard. "I was never any good at school, but I've just picked it up along the way. It's a brilliant course. To get something like this without paying anything is marvellous. I'm loving it." So is Sara Groborz, a graphic designer who was born in Poland but now lives in Britain. And then there's Naresh Ramesh, from Chennai, who's studying for a degree in biotechnology, and Maria, who lives in the US and is using the course to teach her students in a juvenile correction institute. Aline, a high school student in El Salvador, comes on. She took the course, she says, because she goes to a Catholic school where they don't teach evolution. "And you're the best teacher I've ever had!" she tells Noor. How gratifying must it be to be a teacher on one of these courses? When I catch up by email with Noor the next day, he writes. "I'm absolutely LOVING it!" By phone, he says it's one of the most exciting things he's ever done. What's more, it means that next semester he's going to be able to "flip the classroom". This is a concept that Khan has popularised and shown to be successful: students do the coursework at home by watching the videos, and then the homework in class, where they can discuss the problems with the instructor. There are still so many issues to figure out with online education. Not least the fact that you don't get a degree out of it, although a university in the US has just announced that it will issue credit for it. At the moment, most people are doing courses for the sake of simply learning new stuff. "And a certificate, basically a pdf, which says this person may or may not be who they say they are," says Noor. And while computers are excellent at grading maths questions, they're really much less hot at marking English literature essays. There's a preponderance of scientific and technical subjects, but the number of humanties courses is increasing with what Koller says is "surprisingly successful" peer assessment techniques. "It can't replace a one-to-one feedback from an expert in the field, but with the right guidance, peer assessment and crowd-sourcing really does work." And in terms of content, the course I'm doing is pretty much the same as the one Noor's students take. At Duke, they have more interaction, and a hands-on lab environment, but they are also charged $40,000 a year for the privilege. It's a lot of money. And it's this, that makes Udacity's and Coursera's and edX's courses so potentially groundbreaking. At the moment, they're all free. And while none of them can compete with traditional degrees, almost every other industry knows what happens when you give teenagers the choice between paying a lot of money for something or getting it for nothing. Of course, education isn't quite an industry, but it is a business, or as Matt Grist, an education analyst from the thinktank Demos tells me, "a market", although he immediately apologises for saying this. "I know. It's terrible. That's the way we talk about it these days. I don't really like it, but I do it. But it is a market. And universities are high-powered businesses with massive turnovers. Some of the best institutions in Britain are global players these days." Grist has been looking at the funding model of British universities, and sees trouble ahead. The massive rise in fees this year is just the start of it. "We've set off down this road now, and if you create competition and a market for universities, I think you're going to have to go further." He foresees the best universities becoming vastly more expensive, and the cheaper, more vocational ones "holding up". "It's the middle-tier, 1960s campus ones that I think are going to struggle." When I ask Koller why education has suddenly become the new tech miracle baby, she describes it as "the perfect storm. It's like hurricane Sandy, all these things have come together at the same time. There's an enormous global need for high quality education. And yet it's becoming increasingly unaffordable. And at the same time, we have technological advances that make it possible to provide it at very low marginal cost." And, in Britain, the storm is perhaps even more perfect. This is all happening at precisely the moment that students are having to pay up to ?9,000 a year in fees and being forced to take on unprecedented levels of debt. Students, whether they like it or not, have been turned into consumers. Education in Britain has, until now, been a very pure abstraction, a concept untainted by ideas of the market or value. But that, inevitably, is now changing. University applications by UK-born students this year were down almost 8%. "Though the number who turned up was much lower than that," Peter Lampl, the founder of the Sutton Trust, tells me. "They were 15% down." The trust champions social mobility and nothing accelerates that more than university. "That's why we're so keen on it," says Lampl. "We're monitoring the situation. We don't know what the true impact of the fees will be yet. Or what the impact of coming out of university with ?50,000 worth of debt will have on the rest of your life. "Will it delay you buying a house? Or starting a family? People compare it to the States, but in America one third of graduates have no debt, and two-thirds have an average of $25,000. This is on a completely different scale." And it's amid this uncertainty and this market pressure that these massive open online courses ? or Moocs as they're known in the jargon ? may well come to play a role. There are so many intangible benefits to going to university. "I learned as much if not more from my fellow students than I did from the lectures," says Lampl. But they're the things ? making life-long friends, joining a society, learning how to operate a washing machine ? that are free. It's the education bit that's the expensive part. But what Udacity and the rest are showing is that it doesn't necessarily have to be." The first British university to join the fray is Edinburgh. It's done a deal with Coursera and from January, will offer six courses, for which 100,000 students have already signed up. Or, to put this in context, four times as many undergraduates as are currently at the university. It's an experiment, says Jeff Hayward, the vice-principal, a way of trying out new types of teaching "I'll be happy if we break even." At the moment Coursera doesn't charge students to receive a certificate of completion, but at some point it's likely to, and when it does, Edinburgh will get a cut. But then Edinburgh already has an online model. More than 2,000 students studying for a masters at the university aren't anywhere near it; they're online. "And within a few years, we're ramping that up to 10,000," says Hayward. For undergraduates, on the other hand, study is not really the point of university, or at least not the whole point. I know a student at Edinburgh called Hannah. "Do you have any lectures tomorrow?" I text her. "Only philosophy at 9am," she texts back. "So obviously I'm not going to that." She's an example of someone who would be quite happy to pay half the fees, and do some of the lectures online. "God yes. Some of the lecturers are so crap, anyway. We had a tutorial group the other day, and he just sat there and read the paper and told us to get on with it." Max Crema, the vice-president of the student union, tells me that he's already used online lectures from MIT to supplement his course. "Though that may be because I'm a nerd," he concedes. "The problem with lectures is that they are about 300 years out of date. They date back to the time when universities only had one book. That's why you still have academic positions called readers." I trot off to one of them, an actual lecture in an actual lecture theatre, the old anatomy theatre, a steeply raked auditorium that's been in use since the 19th century when a dissecting table used to hold centre stage, whereas today there's just Mayank Dutia, professor of systems neurophysiology, talking about the inner ear. He's one of the first academics signed up to co-deliver one of the Coursera courses come January, although he defends the real-life version too: "Universities are special places. You can't do what we do online. There's something very special in being taught by a world leader in the field. Or having a conversation with someone who's worked on a subject their whole lives. There's no substitute for this." There isn't. But what the new websites are doing is raising questions about what a university is and what it's for. And how to pay for it. "Higher education is changing," says Hayward. "How do we fund mass global education? There are agonies all over the world about this question." There are. And there's no doubting that this is something of a turning point. But it may have an impact closer to home too. Argarwal sees a future in which universities may offer "blended" models: a mixture of real-life and online teaching. Coursera has already struck its first licensing deal. Antioch College, a small liberal arts institution in Ohio, has signed an agreement under which it will take content from Duke University and the University of Pennsylvania. And a startup called the Minerva Project is attempting to set up an online Ivy League university, and is going to encourage its students to live together in "dorm clusters" so that they'll benefit from the social aspects of university life. Seeing how the students on Coursera and Udacity organise themselves, it's not impossible to see how in the future, students could cluster together and take their courses online together. For free. There's so much at stake. Not least the economies of dozens of smallish British cities, the "second-tier" universities that Matt Grist of Demos foresees could struggle in the brave new free education market world. At Edinburgh, fees are having an effect ? applications are down ? but "most students seem to see it as *ma?ana* money," says Jeff Hayward. "It's still hypothetical at the moment." But this is the first year of ?9,000 fees. An English student at Edinburgh (it's free for Scottish students), where courses are four years, is looking at ?36,000 of debt just for tuition. And maybe another ?30,000 of living expenses on top of that. These websites are barely months old. They're still figuring out the basics. Universities aren't going anywhere just yet. But who knows what they'll look like in 10 years' time? A decade ago, I thought newspapers would be here for ever. That nothing could replace a book. And that KITT, David Hasselhoff's self-driving car in *Knight Rider *was nothing more than a work of fantasy. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sun Jun 9 10:36:12 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 09 Jun 2013 11:36:12 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Do online courses spell the end for the traditional university? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <51B45A9C.20805@aleph.se> On 09/06/2013 03:20, James Clement wrote: > Publishing, music, shopping, journalism -- all revolutionised by the > internet. Next in line? Education. I think this is an apt comparision. It is not so much that everything universities are doing is doomed, but that (1) some segments will be seriously changed, and (2) that the business model will have to change. I have posted to the list about this topic before, looking at how different roles change. Online courses seem really transformative in the areas where teaching is mostly about distributing semantic information and having people interact with it, especially if one can automate testing and experimentation - mathematics might be a prime example. I am less convinced they work for practical procedural skills: not only might it be hard to train chemical synthesis or welding this way, doing procedural tasks like accounting might be tricky. Similarly evaluation difficulties in domains where the output is natural language (like law) might be problematic. But these issues are a bit like what goods are easy to sell via Amazon - yeah, pets might be less practical than books, but that doesn't mean you can't do greats in the non-pet market. Sitting on the pure research side I am less concerned, of course. Here the internet has already transformed things by making everybody within the same language sphere accessible to everybody else, and by the ongoing earthquakes in scientific publishing. One interesting aspect is of course that global collaboration has become easier - not super-easy, since keeping momentum when you do not meet in the coffee room all the time is tricky - but definitely easier. One of my most productive co-authors is 99% of the time in Germany, and it always feels surprising to meet him in RL. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clementlawyer at gmail.com Sun Jun 9 18:01:49 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2013 14:01:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin In-Reply-To: <1367484325.81919.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1365660980.69718.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <516C1951.7060609@libero.it> <1366043990.59977.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130415165222.GD15179@leitl.org> <1366046843.50001.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <516D9C03.5000100@libero.it> <1366145698.43947.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <516E9B00.5030002@libero.it> <1366922475.65664.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <517B2A04.10908@libero.it> <1367061765.46249.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367134993.44854.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <01a601ce4465$9edf19d0$dc9d4d70$@rainier66.com> <1367193181.21683.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367356151.1533.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51804D6C.3060706@libero.it> <1367363307.90731.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518197C9.3060100@libero.it> <1367484325.81919.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: http://www.meetup.com/Bitcoin-Cryptocurrency-Mining-Group/?gj=ej1b&a=wg2.3_grpn SF Bay Area group to discuss Bitcoin mining hardware and general cryptocurreny topics. Meetings will be held in the East Bay, San Francisco, and San Jose areas. We're 10 Miners Also in? Join us! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon Jun 10 09:40:00 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 11:40:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death Message-ID: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2338434/Three-senior-Oxford-University-academics-pay-deep-frozen-die-day-brought-life.html Three senior Oxford University academics will pay to be deep frozen when they die so they could one day be 'brought back to life' Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death Two will just have heads frozen and one will have whole body preserved The after-death procedure costs anything up to ?50,000 By TOM LEONARD PUBLISHED: 16:28 GMT, 9 June 2013 | UPDATED: 06:47 GMT, 10 June 2013 Stuart Armstrong, with his wife Miriam, and Anders Sandberg have signed up to be frozen after their death They were a shattered world?s last hope ? three great minds from the past who might be able to avert a catastrophe that threatened to extinguish mankind. In a medical storage facility in the Arizona desert, digital screens that had been dark for centuries suddenly flickered into life as the remains of three beings stirred into life after aeons of slumber. It?s difficult to say whether this sort of Hollywood sci-fi scenario ever occurred to three Oxford University dons when they signed up to be frozen after death. But what they cannot deny is that along with thousands of others they are putting their faith in a future ? known as cryonics ? that is more science fiction than science fact. It was revealed yesterday that the trio ? Nick Bostrom, professor of philosophy at Oxford?s Future of Humanity Institute, and his fellow lead researchers, Anders Sandberg and Stuart Armstrong ? have agreed to pay a U.S. company anything up to ?50,000 to have their remains frozen at death. The hope is a future society will have the technology to restore them to life. Armstrong has arranged for his entire body to be frozen by the Michigan-based Cryonics Institute. His wife is expecting their first baby and he is so enthused by the idea that he wants to sign the child up, too. His two colleagues have opted for the less glamorous but cheaper and supposedly more reliable option of having just their heads frozen when they are declared dead, by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation outside Phoenix, Arizona. Their heads will be perfused with a cocktail of antifreeze chemicals and preserved in liquid nitrogen at -196c. Professor of philosophy Nick Bostrom (right), and fellow researcher Anders Sandberg (left) have signed up to pay an American company up to ?50,000 to have their heads stored in liquid nitrogen after death Previous acolytes of cryonics have often been dismissed as head-in-the-clouds cranks, sci-fi buffs who have watched too much TV or victims of vanity. Britney Spears and Paris Hilton have both waxed lyrical about being frozen. Simon Cowell is believed to be among several dozen Britons who have joined a cryonics programme, although several hundred have reportedly shown interest. But most of them are ordinary people ? usually retirees who are thinking about defeating death. The science may be sketchy but the principle is simple: nothing ventured, nothing gained. But Prof Bostrom and his colleagues are young, highly educated specialists who have devoted their careers to humanity. If they are signing up for cryonics, one might think, perhaps we should all pay attention. Stuart Armstrong, a colleague at the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI), part of the prestigious Oxford Martin School, has opted to have his whole body frozen And while scientists generally dismiss cryonics for human beings, saying it is far beyond our capabilities, it is interesting that Prof Bostrom has a science background that includes physics and neuroscience. The 40-year-old Swede is on Foreign Policy magazine?s list of 100 Global Thinkers. His institute is part of the Oxford Martin School, where 300 academics tackle issues such as population growth, inequality and climate change. It?s encouraging that, in the midst of so much doom-mongering about the future, he is keen to come back again. ?Look back at what has happened over the past 100 years, and how many features of today?s world somebody from 1913 would have failed to anticipate,? he told a newspaper. ?The more uncertain you are about the future, the more it makes sense to keep your options alive ? for example, by trying to preserve as much as possible of the information content in your brain, rather than throwing it away.? On his internet home page, Sandberg, 41, also Swedish, describes himself as ?questing? and ?always very happy?. He says it will be ?very exciting? to wake up in a new world. Admittedly, his life would be limited as a disembodied head but, in the future, he predicts people will be able to make ?real connections? to computers. He hopes his memories and personality could be downloaded. He and Bostrom may not even have to put up with living with just their heads: some cryonics devotees insist future science will be able to clone human bodies so the defrosted, severed head can be attached to a new body. Their colleague, Stuart Armstrong, says it costs him ?25 a month in premiums to cover the cost of having his body cryopreserved ? far cheaper, he says, than the popular alternative of prolonging life, which is to join a gym. Like his colleagues, he seems one of life?s optimists: ?If you picture the world in, say, 200 years, when reanimation is possible, it will probably be a wonderful place.? By the time they are rushed down to the liquid nitrogen tanks of Alcor, the Oxford academics will be in illustrious company. Alcor has 117 patients already in cryopreservation and 985 members waiting to join them. Those already lying in state include Ted Williams, one of the greatest stars of baseball, who died in 2002. And Dick Clair, a U.S. TV sitcom writer, has been there since 1988 following his death from AIDS. Prof Bostrom and Dr Sandberg have agreed to be frozen with the help of Alcor, which is based near Phoenix, in Arizona Williams became the focus of a family row over how he wanted his body disposed of which focused on the authenticity of a note in which he supposedly chose cryonics. It was later claimed that a technician at Alcor took baseball-style swings at Williams? severed head with a monkey wrench. As for those still alive but already committed to Alcor, the list includes film director Charles Matthau and British thinkers Aubrey de Grey and Max More. Recognisable by a silver bracelet they usually wear to specify their wishes to be frozen when they die, believers in Britain even have a support group: Cryonics UK. Alan Sinclair, 75, a retired electronics expert from West Sussex, has been a leading light in British cryonics since the mid-Eighties. A few weeks ago his wife, Sylvia, became the first Briton to be properly cryonically preserved. She died of lung cancer after an illness of just three weeks, and was rushed to the Cryonics Institute in America. With the possibility on his mind of a reunion with his beloved wife of 40 years, he tells me scientific progress has led British interest in cryonics to ?mushroom? in the past five years. But he says: ?There wouldn?t be any point bringing back a 90-year-old.? Who wouldn?t be interested in having a good few years added to their lives, I observe. Isn?t the difference that most people want them now when their loved ones are still with them? Dr. Jerry Lemler, president and CEO of Alcor Life Extension Foundation, stands in the Patient Care Bay area where the heads and bodies of 49 individuals are being held in cold storage suspension ?I don?t see that as a problem,? says Sinclair. ?What happens when you leave school and move to Australia. We move to completely alien environments all the time.? But will a future world want to bring back people who have opted to be frozen? When Simon Cowell dropped his cryonics plan bombshell at a Downing Street party, his host, Gordon Brown, reportedly pointed out he wasn?t sure if his reanimation would be so popular. Prof Bostrom is already a regular on TV and in the media. A future society would doubtless be intrigued to know what an academic of his standing has to say about its world. But what about an ex-housewife or former electrical technician? ?That?s the biggest problem,? says Sinclair. ?Why would anyone bring me back?? Cryonics patients won?t have much novelty value when there are millions of them. Indeed, the cryonics companies don?t really guarantee much. Success depends on the body first getting to them in the U.S. as quickly as possible. And although their freezing fee ? which varies between ?16,500 and ?125,000 ? is supposed to cover an indefinite period, who is to know the company will stay in business? It is a ?leap of faith, but a leap of faith in science?, Sinclair insists. ?Unless we want to go into oblivion, this is the only scientific means I know of to avoid it.? For people like him and his fellow death-defiers at Oxford, there can be no possible concession to the idea that oblivion may be something to be embraced. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2338434/Three-senior-Oxford-University-academics-pay-deep-frozen-die-day-brought-life.html#ixzz2Vnwy6psL Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook _______________________________________________ cryo mailing list cryo at postbiota.org http://postbiota.org/mailman/listinfo/cryo -- -- Zero State mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/DoctrineZero --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Doctrine Zero" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to DoctrineZero+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. From florent.berthet at gmail.com Mon Jun 10 10:12:52 2013 From: florent.berthet at gmail.com (Florent Berthet) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:12:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: What is their rationale behind spending all that money on themselves versus using it to save dozens of lives via an effective charity (or potentially saving billions of lives through x-risk research)? 2013/6/10 Eugen Leitl > > > http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2338434/Three-senior-Oxford-University-academics-pay-deep-frozen-die-day-brought-life.html > > Three senior Oxford University academics will pay to be deep frozen when > they > die so they could one day be 'brought back to life' > > Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death > > Two will just have heads frozen and one will have whole body preserved > > The after-death procedure costs anything up to ?50,000 By TOM LEONARD > > PUBLISHED: 16:28 GMT, 9 June 2013 | UPDATED: 06:47 GMT, 10 June 2013 > > Stuart Armstrong, with his wife Miriam, and Anders Sandberg have signed up > to > be frozen after their death > > They were a shattered world?s last hope ? three great minds from the past > who > might be able to avert a catastrophe that threatened to extinguish mankind. > > In a medical storage facility in the Arizona desert, digital screens that > had > been dark for centuries suddenly flickered into life as the remains of > three > beings stirred into life after aeons of slumber. > > It?s difficult to say whether this sort of Hollywood sci-fi scenario ever > occurred to three Oxford University dons when they signed up to be frozen > after death. > > But what they cannot deny is that along with thousands of others they are > putting their faith in a future ? known as cryonics ? that is more science > fiction than science fact. > > It was revealed yesterday that the trio ? Nick Bostrom, professor of > philosophy at Oxford?s Future of Humanity Institute, and his fellow lead > researchers, Anders Sandberg and Stuart Armstrong ? have agreed to pay a > U.S. > company anything up to ?50,000 to have their remains frozen at death. The > hope is a future society will have the technology to restore them to life. > > Armstrong has arranged for his entire body to be frozen by the > Michigan-based > Cryonics Institute. His wife is expecting their first baby and he is so > enthused by the idea that he wants to sign the child up, too. > > His two colleagues have opted for the less glamorous but cheaper and > supposedly more reliable option of having just their heads frozen when they > are declared dead, by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation outside Phoenix, > Arizona. Their heads will be perfused with a cocktail of antifreeze > chemicals > and preserved in liquid nitrogen at -196c. > > > Professor of philosophy Nick Bostrom (right), and fellow researcher Anders > Sandberg (left) have signed up to pay an American company up to ?50,000 to > have their heads stored in liquid nitrogen after death > > Previous acolytes of cryonics have often been dismissed as > head-in-the-clouds > cranks, sci-fi buffs who have watched too much TV or victims of vanity. > > Britney Spears and Paris Hilton have both waxed lyrical about being frozen. > Simon Cowell is believed to be among several dozen Britons who have joined > a > cryonics programme, although several hundred have reportedly shown > interest. > > But most of them are ordinary people ? usually retirees who are thinking > about defeating death. The science may be sketchy but the principle is > simple: nothing ventured, nothing gained. > > But Prof Bostrom and his colleagues are young, highly educated specialists > who have devoted their careers to humanity. If they are signing up for > cryonics, one might think, perhaps we should all pay attention. > > Stuart Armstrong, a colleague at the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI), > part > of the prestigious Oxford Martin School, has opted to have his whole body > frozen > > And while scientists generally dismiss cryonics for human beings, saying it > is far beyond our capabilities, it is interesting that Prof Bostrom has a > science background that includes physics and neuroscience. > > The 40-year-old Swede is on Foreign Policy magazine?s list of 100 Global > Thinkers. > > His institute is part of the Oxford Martin School, where 300 academics > tackle > issues such as population growth, inequality and climate change. It?s > encouraging that, in the midst of so much doom-mongering about the future, > he > is keen to come back again. > > ?Look back at what has happened over the past 100 years, and how many > features of today?s world somebody from 1913 would have failed to > anticipate,? he told a newspaper. ?The more uncertain you are about the > future, the more it makes sense to keep your options alive ? for example, > by > trying to preserve as much as possible of the information content in your > brain, rather than throwing it away.? > > On his internet home page, Sandberg, 41, also Swedish, describes himself as > ?questing? and ?always very happy?. > > He says it will be ?very exciting? to wake up in a new world. Admittedly, > his > life would be limited as a disembodied head but, in the future, he predicts > people will be able to make ?real connections? to computers. He hopes his > memories and personality could be downloaded. > > He and Bostrom may not even have to put up with living with just their > heads: > some cryonics devotees insist future science will be able to clone human > bodies so the defrosted, severed head can be attached to a new body. > > Their colleague, Stuart Armstrong, says it costs him ?25 a month in > premiums > to cover the cost of having his body cryopreserved ? far cheaper, he says, > than the popular alternative of prolonging life, which is to join a gym. > > Like his colleagues, he seems one of life?s optimists: ?If you picture the > world in, say, 200 years, when reanimation is possible, it will probably > be a > wonderful place.? > > By the time they are rushed down to the liquid nitrogen tanks of Alcor, the > Oxford academics will be in illustrious company. Alcor has 117 patients > already in cryopreservation and 985 members waiting to join them. > > Those already lying in state include Ted Williams, one of the greatest > stars > of baseball, who died in 2002. And Dick Clair, a U.S. TV sitcom writer, has > been there since 1988 following his death from AIDS. > > Prof Bostrom and Dr Sandberg have agreed to be frozen with the help of > Alcor, > which is based near Phoenix, in Arizona > > Williams became the focus of a family row over how he wanted his body > disposed of which focused on the authenticity of a note in which he > supposedly chose cryonics. It was later claimed that a technician at Alcor > took baseball-style swings at Williams? severed head with a monkey wrench. > > As for those still alive but already committed to Alcor, the list includes > film director Charles Matthau and British thinkers Aubrey de Grey and Max > More. Recognisable by a silver bracelet they usually wear to specify their > wishes to be frozen when they die, believers in Britain even have a support > group: Cryonics UK. Alan Sinclair, 75, a retired electronics expert from > West > Sussex, has been a leading light in British cryonics since the > mid-Eighties. > > A few weeks ago his wife, Sylvia, became the first Briton to be properly > cryonically preserved. She died of lung cancer after an illness of just > three > weeks, and was rushed to the Cryonics Institute in America. > > With the possibility on his mind of a reunion with his beloved wife of 40 > years, he tells me scientific progress has led British interest in cryonics > to ?mushroom? in the past five years. > > But he says: ?There wouldn?t be any point bringing back a 90-year-old.? > > Who wouldn?t be interested in having a good few years added to their > lives, I > observe. Isn?t the difference that most people want them now when their > loved > ones are still with them? > > Dr. Jerry Lemler, president and CEO of Alcor Life Extension Foundation, > stands in the Patient Care Bay area where the heads and bodies of 49 > individuals are being held in cold storage suspension > > ?I don?t see that as a problem,? says Sinclair. ?What happens when you > leave > school and move to Australia. We move to completely alien environments all > the time.? > > But will a future world want to bring back people who have opted to be > frozen? > > When Simon Cowell dropped his cryonics plan bombshell at a Downing Street > party, his host, Gordon Brown, reportedly pointed out he wasn?t sure if his > reanimation would be so popular. > > Prof Bostrom is already a regular on TV and in the media. A future society > would doubtless be intrigued to know what an academic of his standing has > to > say about its world. But what about an ex-housewife or former electrical > technician? > > ?That?s the biggest problem,? says Sinclair. ?Why would anyone bring me > back?? Cryonics patients won?t have much novelty value when there are > millions of them. > > Indeed, the cryonics companies don?t really guarantee much. Success depends > on the body first getting to them in the U.S. as quickly as possible. > > And although their freezing fee ? which varies between ?16,500 and > ?125,000 ? > is supposed to cover an indefinite period, who is to know the company will > stay in business? > > It is a ?leap of faith, but a leap of faith in science?, Sinclair insists. > ?Unless we want to go into oblivion, this is the only scientific means I > know > of to avoid it.? > > For people like him and his fellow death-defiers at Oxford, there can be no > possible concession to the idea that oblivion may be something to be > embraced. > > > Read more: > > http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2338434/Three-senior-Oxford-University-academics-pay-deep-frozen-die-day-brought-life.html#ixzz2Vnwy6psL > > Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook > _______________________________________________ > cryo mailing list > cryo at postbiota.org > http://postbiota.org/mailman/listinfo/cryo > > -- > -- > Zero State mailing list: > http://groups.google.com/group/DoctrineZero > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Doctrine Zero" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to DoctrineZero+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 eugen at leitl.org Mon Jun 10 10:26:51 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:26:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130610102651.GW2380@leitl.org> On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 12:12:52PM +0200, Florent Berthet wrote: > What is their rationale behind spending all that money on themselves versus Ideal cryopreservation as integral part of end of life care would be cost neutral or have cost benefits by opting out of futile yet extremely expensive end of life care at terrible quality of life in the final days, weeks and months in the ICU. > using it to save dozens of lives via an effective charity (or potentially So you would rob Peter to pay Paul? > saving billions of lives through x-risk research)? Human cryopreservation is precisely about saving billions of lives *RIGHT NOW* which are tragically, senselessly wasted. Existential risks? What of existential risks? You want these addressed, feel free to fund these. Your biggest existential risk by far is falling off the energy cliff. You need about a TUSD/year world wide to prevent that. We have known that for 40-50 years about it. So, what are you doing about it? From eugen at leitl.org Mon Jun 10 11:35:27 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 13:35:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] SF Author Iain Banks R.I.P. Message-ID: <20130610113527.GG2380@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from Birger Johansson ----- Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2013 23:18:19 +0000 From: Birger Johansson To: S-Lem listan CC: Steven Mills , "matad at earthlink.net" Subject: SF Author Iain Banks R.I.P. Reply-To: lem-l at lists.rpi.edu http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22835047 Charlie Stross: "I?d like to pause for a moment and reflect on my personal sense of loss. Iain?s more conventional literary works were generally delightful, edgy and fully engaged with the world in which he set them: his palpable outrage at inequity and iniquity shone through the page. And in his science fiction he achieved something, I think, that the genre rarely manages to do: he was intensely political, and infused his science fiction with a conviction that a future was possible in which people could live better ? he brought to the task an an angry, compassionate, humane voice that single-handedly drowned out the privileged nerd chorus of the technocrat/libertarian fringe and in doing so managed to write a far-future space operatic universe that sane human beings would actually want to live in (if only it existed)." --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- Jack Vance passed away less than a fortnight ago, but as he was in his nineties he had a full life and it was not such a tragedy. Banks was rather young but got one of those cancers that have no symptoms until after they have spread. Cancer sucks. B J ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 From anders at aleph.se Mon Jun 10 11:46:32 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:46:32 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: <51B5BC98.4080707@aleph.se> On 2013-06-10 11:12, Florent Berthet wrote: > What is their rationale behind spending all that money on themselves > versus using it to save dozens of lives via an effective charity (or > potentially saving billions of lives through x-risk research)? We are *doing* xrisk research. Give us money, and we can do more. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From clementlawyer at gmail.com Mon Jun 10 14:08:07 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 10:08:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 6:12 AM, Florent Berthet wrote: > What is their rationale behind spending all that money on themselves > versus using it to save dozens of lives via an effective charity (or > potentially saving billions of lives through x-risk research)? > > Because that's *their* choice, until someone with guns takes that choice away from them. Neither you nor anyone else has the right to demand a rationale for how they spend their time or money. James -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Mon Jun 10 14:11:48 2013 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 16:11:48 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 12:12 PM, Florent Berthet wrote: > What is their rationale behind spending all that money on themselves versus > using it to save dozens of lives via an effective charity (or potentially > saving billions of lives through x-risk research)? What's your rationale behind buying food to stay alive versus giving the money to charity? From florent.berthet at gmail.com Mon Jun 10 14:54:24 2013 From: florent.berthet at gmail.com (Florent Berthet) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 16:54:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: Guys, I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm asking for answers because I want to know how it's the best way to spend money, on an utilitarian point of view. If our main goal is to mitigate x-risks (as explained in Bostrom's astronomical waste argument), it would seem to me that any amount of money would be better spent directly on research rather than on cryopreservation. The articles says that it costs between ?16,500 and ?125,000 to be cryopreserved. That could pay a researcher full time. If I had that much money, wouldn't you prefer me to give it to the FHI rather than on my own cryopreservation? Sure I can do whatever I want with my money, but that doesn't mean any decision is equally good. Again, I'm not saying it's illegal or that it shouldn't be allowed, and there are far worse ways to spend money than cryonics (wars for example), but coming from guys who want to do the most positive impact they can, I find it surprising. One explanation may be that such moves can make other people interested in these issues, which could bring in more funding. I'm not sure that's the reason they chose that option though. That's what I'm asking. Giulio, if I don't buy food, I won't be able to do any long term good. The mathematics are pretty straightforward on this one. 2013/6/10 Giulio Prisco > On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 12:12 PM, Florent Berthet > wrote: > > What is their rationale behind spending all that money on themselves > versus > > using it to save dozens of lives via an effective charity (or potentially > > saving billions of lives through x-risk research)? > > What's your rationale behind buying food to stay alive versus giving > the money to charity? > _______________________________________________ > 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 eugen at leitl.org Mon Jun 10 15:15:01 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 17:15:01 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130610151501.GT22824@leitl.org> On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 04:54:24PM +0200, Florent Berthet wrote: > Guys, I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm asking for answers because I want to > know how it's the best way to spend money, on an utilitarian point of view. If Nobody can tell you the best way to spend your money since that would mean future has no surprises. > our main goal is to mitigate x-risks (as explained in Bostrom's The global death rate is 100% over sufficiently long run. I would say that definitely qualifies as existential risk. > astronomical waste argument), it would seem to me that any amount of money > would be better spent directly on research rather than on cryopreservation. The Guess what: some of us do research in cryopreservation. > articles says that it costs between ?16,500 and ?125,000 to be > cryopreserved. That could pay a researcher full time. If I had that much > money, wouldn't you prefer me to give it to the FHI rather than on my own > cryopreservation? Sure I can do whatever I want with my money, but that > doesn't mean any decision is equally good. What do you want to do? We cannot decide that for you. It depends on how much you value your life versus everything else. > Again, I'm not saying it's illegal or that it shouldn't be allowed, and > there are far worse ways to spend money than cryonics (wars for example), > but coming from guys who want to do the most positive impact they can, I I happen to think that validating solid state hypothermia is about the most positive impact you can have -- save of preventing us from falling off the net energy cliff (the reasoning is obvious: starving people couldn't hardly care less about keeping dewars topped off). > find it surprising. One explanation may be that such moves can make other > people interested in these issues, which could bring in more funding. I'm > not sure that's the reason they chose that option though. That's what I'm > asking. > > Giulio, if I don't buy food, I won't be able to do any long term good. The > mathematics are pretty straightforward on this one. Are you really sure about that? Most people are net consumers, not producers. Careful going down that road. That's no longer millihitler country. From kanzure at gmail.com Mon Jun 10 15:49:25 2013 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 10:49:25 -0500 Subject: [ExI] [tt] [x-risk] Yampolsky: AI research too risky, needs regulation In-Reply-To: <51B5206D.3070809@philosophy.ox.ac.uk> References: <3631A119EB15854B832730C5CA624B2423CA5693@exmb3.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu> <51B5206D.3070809@philosophy.ox.ac.uk> Message-ID: On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 7:40 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > If this had been about nuclear safety or synthetic biology we would have had > some benchmarks and theories that could be compared I think we have already proven that nobody is capable of correctly thinking about synthetic biology. We have ETC Group hounding our asses just because of some botanists. fuck. We make for the lamest DDOS.. ETC is just 8 people but we can't even get them hosed. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From analyticphilosophy at gmail.com Mon Jun 10 15:13:08 2013 From: analyticphilosophy at gmail.com (Jeff Medina) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 11:13:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: >> if I don't buy food, I won't be able to do any long term good. The mathematics are pretty straightforward on this one. So you never buy any food beyond the most minimally expensive to keep you alive and functional? (And you never go see films, buy books, travel, put gas in a car, buy clothing beyond bare necessities, etc.?) -- Jeff Medina "Do you want to live forever?" "Dunno. Ask me again in five hundred years." (_Guards! Guards!_, Terry Pratchett) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 10 16:03:12 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 09:03:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] commentary from those safely outside: RE: [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death Message-ID: <001a01ce65f4$032bf0c0$0983d240$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl >...Careful going down that road. That's no longer millihitler country. _______________________________________________ Hi Gene, I have a question for you and those of you who are safely outside the system: have you any commentary on what is happening in the USA? In just the past few weeks, we have seen it revealed the IRS is corrupt to the bone and is targeting its political adversaries, the Justice Department is apparently corrupt and is targeting news agencies, and when caught assigns itself to investigate itself, and now our National Security Agency is being reported by an insider to be recording everything. Clearly I am not in a position to comment: I could be called in for an IRS audit and never heard from again. But you can. It appears that all that stuff the alarmists were alarming about has become alarming. Comments? spike From florent.berthet at gmail.com Mon Jun 10 16:42:49 2013 From: florent.berthet at gmail.com (Florent Berthet) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 18:42:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: 2013/6/10 Jeff Medina > > So you never buy any food beyond the most minimally expensive to keep you > alive and functional? > > (And you never go see films, buy books, travel, put gas in a car, buy > clothing beyond bare necessities, etc.?) > I try to do the good thing and I spend very little. It's not about being perfect but about being reasonable. Now, it's hard to draw the line between spending too little and spending too much, but just because it's hard doesn't mean we shouldn't aim for it. It's sad that when some people talk about how they make efforts to make the world a better place (giving money or switching to veganism for example), other people often jump to the extremes and say "AHA! You are not acting perfectly! Therefore your argument is invalid!" I'm not pointing fingers here, I want to know why several x-risk researchers made the decision to allocate a non-negligible amount of money on their cryopreservation. I highly respect these guys and it is their job to think about the most important things in the world, so most likely I'm missing something, I just want to know what. There are two possibilities: - they did this to send a message to the public and to fuel research, in which case it may be a smart move. - they did for selfish reasons, in which case I wouldn't consider it reasonable given the amounts involved. I don't expect anybody to be perfect all the time - I'm certainly not - but spending ?50,000 for selfish reasons is highly debatable, to say the least, especially coming from people whose job is to raise awareness on important issues (one issue being the underfunding of high-impact science). I'm sure there is a better explanation. Anders? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon Jun 10 17:28:49 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 18:28:49 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 5:42 PM, Florent Berthet wrote: > I don't expect anybody to be perfect all the time - I'm certainly not - but > spending ?50,000 for selfish reasons is highly debatable, to say the least, > especially coming from people whose job is to raise awareness on important > issues (one issue being the underfunding of high-impact science). I'm sure > there is a better explanation. Anders? > The best explanation is that humans are not rational. Decisions are made before our conscious mind becomes aware of it. Then once your consciousness has received a decision it sets about generating the best looking reasons for the decision. And, boy, is it good at creating rationalizations! You are asking the cryonics people for their best set of reasons. Google it - you can find many reasons for and against. Choose the ones (for and against) that suit your self-image. BillK From anders at aleph.se Mon Jun 10 19:19:47 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 20:19:47 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: <51B626D3.1030307@aleph.se> On 2013-06-10 15:54, Florent Berthet wrote: > Guys, I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm asking for answers because I want > to know how it's the best way to spend money, on an utilitarian point > of view. If our main goal is to mitigate x-risks (as explained in > Bostrom's astronomical waste argument), it would seem to me that any > amount of money would be better spent directly on research rather than > on cryopreservation. The articles says that it costs between ?16,500 > and ?125,000 to be cryopreserved. That could pay a researcher full > time. If I had that much money, wouldn't you prefer me to give it to > the FHI rather than on my own cryopreservation? Well, we do not have that money either *as a lump sum*, so we pay using life insurances. Which is about 15 quid per month for me, about one dinner's worth. In fact, stocks and flows are very different things: the cost of a cryopreservation is actually not enough to pay for a postdoc for very long. > Sure I can do whatever I want with my money, but that doesn't mean any > decision is equally good. Yup. I think your question might have sounded shrill, but it is a good one. We have Peter Singer dropping by the neighbourhood from time to time, and we share office with the effective altruists, so these issues are on our minds. My answer is something like this: I am a friendly, selfish guy who doesn't follow a consistent ethical system (I just work in the department!) I like to maximize my enjoyment long-term, and that means that I want to extend and enhance myself, avoid dying, and avoid xrisk. I also somewhat agree with the Parfitian view about the fragility of the self, so I also try to ensure that a lot of the other minds in the world get the same benefit - but I give some preference to minds like my own. The end result of these considerations is that I (1) spend a fairly modest amount of money for "care of the self" - nice food, beetles, cryonics. (2) Another fraction of my income is used for travel and other activities linked to transhumanism, xrisk and academic pursuits - ensuring that the right memes and research get done. Basically I am using my salary to do more work. (3) I am uncertain about where charity does the best good: while we have reasonable arguments for maximizing QUALYs, it is not clear how to compare that with (say) reducing xrisk or promoting enhancement. Hence I think it is rational to actually save and invest money for the future where I will have a better idea. Since I think we should not regard temporal separation as different for spatial separation morally speaking, helping in the future is almost as good as helping in the present (minus issues of uncertainty and that some things affect the amount of future - again xrisk and GCRs rear their ugly heads and likely get extra priority this way, if we knew effective ways of reducing them by paying). That is roughly my approach. One thing I like to point out to cryonics sceptics is that I have a strong motivation to be the kind of person the future would want to have around. And I am motivated to help ensure that the future does happen and is reasonably nice. (I have been interviewed about cryonics 7 times today by different BBC channels, personal best!) -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Mon Jun 10 20:10:14 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 21:10:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] commentary from those safely outside In-Reply-To: <001a01ce65f4$032bf0c0$0983d240$@rainier66.com> References: <001a01ce65f4$032bf0c0$0983d240$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51B632A6.6020800@aleph.se> On 2013-06-10 17:03, spike wrote: > I have a question for you and those of you who are safely outside the > system: have you any commentary on what is happening in the USA? In > just the past few weeks, we have seen it revealed the IRS is corrupt > to the bone and is targeting its political adversaries, the Justice > Department is apparently corrupt and is targeting news agencies, and > when caught assigns itself to investigate itself, and now our National > Security Agency is being reported by an insider to be recording > everything. Clearly I am not in a position to comment: I could be > called in for an IRS audit and never heard from again. But you can. It > appears that all that stuff the alarmists were alarming about has > become alarming. Comments? In a way the US has always been alarming. I did a little research for a blog post about whether we had become better at stopping terrorism ( http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2013/06/is_the_surveillance_working.html ), and found the list of US terrorist incidents rather alarming. The Wikipedia category "rebellions in the United States" also show that there were quite a bit more mess than that big civil war. When you read history you will see that there have been plenty of venality, corruption and very iffy legality of much what the federal government has done. In short, business as usual. What has changed is the scale of things. There are more people, more layers, more technology, more money, longer tails. Things that were not too bad when society was smaller and personal connections could to some extent rein in ambitions now get scaled up to enormous levels. J Edgar Hoover did some damage, but had to work hard at it. Now imagine him with Prism or drone technology. The first problem for the US today is that it has scaling problems. The routines and assumptions in the political system - including the venerated constitution - were set for a smaller, agricultural society that worked very differently. The US has not undergone a real constitutional reform since its foundation (since it has always been on the rise it didn't need to). As the US has boomed the differences between what they say and reality have successively become too large, somebody has patched the holes, and so on, building up a real mess. The result is that many institutions seem to be fundamentally broken. In most other countries there have been more recent (often painful) constitutional and structural resets, giving them new systems that scale better for the current era. (or just crash them) The second big problem is that the US is starting to crash its myth. All societies are based on shared memes, often expressed as unifying myths. They give meaning and stability to the structure. When they break - like it happened in the Soviet Union - the repercussions are harsh. Nobody really wants to work for something meaningless, and nobody supports the structure. People who lose their collective myths feel bad too; they are part of the infrastructure of their lives. The US has had a few strong myths, partially supported by the open and critical society that has actually helped them by questioning them (just you wait until China get a similar crisis). But when the US is no longer #1, is not the moral guardian of the western world, and does not have a manifest destiny except as another big post-industrial country, then the US is in real trouble. That is my diagnosis. Curing it requires a re-evaluation and reinvention, something that might be quite painful and dramatic, especially since it is easier in smaller and more cohesive societies. Since the US is largely held together by certain myths and cultural tricks this can be really hard - it is not obvious it is possible to unite 300 million modern people about anything. But the rest of us are standing by the sickbed with flowers and get well cards. (partially because Uncle China is pretty creepy...) -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From pharos at gmail.com Mon Jun 10 21:14:47 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 22:14:47 +0100 Subject: [ExI] commentary from those safely outside In-Reply-To: <51B632A6.6020800@aleph.se> References: <001a01ce65f4$032bf0c0$0983d240$@rainier66.com> <51B632A6.6020800@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 9:10 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > The second big problem is that the US is starting to crash its myth. All > societies are based on shared memes, often expressed as unifying myths. They > give meaning and stability to the structure. When they break - like it > happened in the Soviet Union - the repercussions are harsh. Nobody really > wants to work for something meaningless, and nobody supports the structure. > Perhaps a shorter summing up might be the destruction of trust. If every institution, IRS, NSA, Wall Street, Government, police, justice system, etc. seems intent on screwing the public over, then it is a natural reaction to treat them as enemies. When every contact means you end up on the bad end of the deal, then you don't trust them and avoid dealing with them. But with 47 million living on food stamps and millions more surviving on other benefits, who will be prepared to upset the system? An unhappy time lies ahead for the US. BillK From atymes at gmail.com Tue Jun 11 00:08:33 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 17:08:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Jun 10, 2013 9:44 AM, "Florent Berthet" wrote: > There are two possibilities: > > - they did this to send a message to the public and to fuel research, in which case it may be a smart move. > - they did for selfish reasons, in which case I wouldn't consider it reasonable given the amounts involved. I would. To some - many, perhaps most - the self naturally comes first. It takes wisdom to realize that collaboration with others is far more beneficial to oneself than spending all resources on self...but this does not mean that all resources should best be spent on such collaborations, either. The optimal balance depends on the situation and opportunities encountered (not to mention one's ability to make use of said opportunities), but it is always a balance, never all one or the other. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Tue Jun 11 06:31:05 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 08:31:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] commentary from those safely outside: RE: [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: <001a01ce65f4$032bf0c0$0983d240$@rainier66.com> References: <001a01ce65f4$032bf0c0$0983d240$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130611063104.GS22824@leitl.org> On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 09:03:12AM -0700, spike wrote: > I have a question for you and those of you who are safely outside the > system: have you any commentary on what is happening in the USA? In just the Business as usual. Empire's busy failing. Orlov's slides from 2006 still apply http://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-12-04/closing-collapse-gap-ussr-was-better-prepared-collapse-us > past few weeks, we have seen it revealed the IRS is corrupt to the bone and > is targeting its political adversaries, the Justice Department is apparently > corrupt and is targeting news agencies, and when caught assigns itself to > investigate itself, and now our National Security Agency is being reported by > an insider to be recording everything. Clearly I am not in a position to Exactly, business as usual. Nothing to see here. Those people who are now surprised have not been paying attention, and due to their short attention span they will forget in 3, 2, 1, oh, a bright and shiny object. So I'm not sure this is even an opportunity to educate. It does however motivate a small community to at least make the surveillance part more challenging. We have to thank our valiant leaker and the general bureukratchik bungling for that. > comment: I could be called in for an IRS audit and never heard from again. > But you can. It appears that all that stuff the alarmists were alarming > about has become alarming. Comments? Far less interesting than what is going on is how it's going to affect your long-term plans. Specifically for the US we know it's going to get worse, a lot. I don't know when exactly and how exactly it happens, but I wouldn't want to be there. If you want economical advice for an exit strategy, I'd check out International Man from Casey Research and Sovereign Man (Simon Black) -- notice both of them are trying to sell you something, so you have to compensate for that. I do think that the investing into agriculture part is pretty sound, but don't blame me if it isn't. Europe is at least as screwed up, but in a slightly different way. If you're not yet feeling like a sitting duck, you should. We can discuss it in more detail, but we need more constraints for that first. Is it about you personally, about a small community or the big picture? From anders at aleph.se Tue Jun 11 08:53:19 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 09:53:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Exit, voice, loyalty (Was: commentary from those safely outside) In-Reply-To: <20130611063104.GS22824@leitl.org> References: <001a01ce65f4$032bf0c0$0983d240$@rainier66.com> <20130611063104.GS22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: <51B6E57F.1020601@aleph.se> On 2013-06-11 07:31, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Far less interesting than what is going on is how it's going to affect > your long-term plans. This is an important and interesting point. All of us who plan to live long and interesting lives should consider this - statistically it is not unlikely that the society we happen to live in at some point will have a disruption (planning for a world war and a pandemic per century also seems prudent). *How* should one plan for societies in trouble? I suspect one very good source would be to investigate who thrived or at least didn't loose too much during previous implosions. History and biography buffs should be consulted. I think good analogies might be checking out the Soviet implosion and maybe when various European states turned bad in the 1920s and 30s (the Roman empire, the chosen metaphor of many early Americans, changed too slowly to be useful in this exercise). I borrowed the subject from Hischman, who suggested that the two main ways of handling an organisation in decline is exit or giving voice, trying to change it. These are inhibited by loyalty. In the case of a society exits can be both external (emigrating) or internal (not really taking part). The above examples will be biased towards exit, since the cases where societies managed to avoid crashes sometimes involved a lot of voice. But knowing how to and when to exit is likely useful. I felt enormously liberated by emigrating myself, although I did it at the lowest possible difficulty setting. One problem for a society is that as things get worse exit becomes a preferable strategy for a lot of the less-political upper half, and that produces a big drain that can boost the decline (less voice, less resources). Blocking exit becomes relevant for the powers that be after a while. On the other hand, historically emigrant communities have sometimes been clusters of creativity and enterpreneurship, so an occasional shuffle is not bad in the large. One of the starting points should be to learn more about the world. I recommend having The Economist as breakfast reading, it gives a good global look at what is going (it is not just relevant to figure out the flaws of your own society, but also in other places, so you can compare). -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Tue Jun 11 09:01:30 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 10:01:30 +0100 Subject: [ExI] commentary from those safely outside In-Reply-To: References: <001a01ce65f4$032bf0c0$0983d240$@rainier66.com> <51B632A6.6020800@aleph.se> Message-ID: <51B6E76A.70601@aleph.se> On 2013-06-10 22:14, BillK wrote: > Perhaps a shorter summing up might be the destruction of trust. If > every institution, IRS, NSA, Wall Street, Government, police, justice > system, etc. seems intent on screwing the public over, then it is a > natural reaction to treat them as enemies. One of the unusual things about US society is that it was a high trust society based on the myth of not trusting the government too much. This worked really well, but can break in two ways: if civil society trust declines or if untrusted government is unavoidable. When that happens the friction (less voluntary interactions, more resources placed on enforcing agreements and safety) becomes so large that things grind to a halt. The US seems to have a bit of both problems. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From giulio at gmail.com Tue Jun 11 10:49:44 2013 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 12:49:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] commentary from those safely outside In-Reply-To: <51B6E76A.70601@aleph.se> References: <001a01ce65f4$032bf0c0$0983d240$@rainier66.com> <51B632A6.6020800@aleph.se> <51B6E76A.70601@aleph.se> Message-ID: Anders: "The routines and assumptions in the political system - including the venerated constitution - were set for a smaller, agricultural society that worked very differently." But the same assumptions made the U.S. to become what it is today (or perhaps better, what it was a few decades ago, before all the control freakery). This seems to show that they may still be applied in today's world and in the future, with a few tweaks. From kpj at sics.se Tue Jun 11 15:04:27 2013 From: kpj at sics.se (KPJ) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:04:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] commentary from those safely outside: RE: [ZS] [cryo] In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2013-06-10 09:03:12 -0700 spike : | | I have a question for you and those of you who are safely outside the | system: have you any commentary on what is happening in the USA? In just | the past few weeks, we have seen it revealed the IRS is corrupt to the | bone and is targeting its political adversaries, the Justice Department is | apparently corrupt and is targeting news agencies, and when caught assigns | itself to investigate itself, and now our National Security Agency is | being reported by an insider to be recording everything. Clearly I am not | in a position to comment: I could be called in for an IRS audit and never | heard from again. But you can. It appears that all that stuff the | alarmists were alarming about has become alarming. Comments? Politics is like the game of Nomic. Instead of winning when you have 100 points, you win when you have absolute power. If you look at the ruleset of United States, you will notice that there are no immutable rules: all rules (laws) can be changed. It is therefore inherent in the United States law that the leaders of United States can in theory change the system into dictatorship. Just as most governments. If you do not care, you are home free. Stop reading this. If you do care, here are some ideas about what you can do: Apply the Internet protocol approach: assume that everything you do will be under surveillance, any data you generate will be stored and controlled, anything you say can and will be used against you. Create personae which you use on-line for different purposes, including some low-security ones for the governments to track. Remember that other people do not care about security: anything you let them know can and will appear on the Internet. Think about this like you are in the Matrix: anyone can be a government agent. This is what it is/was for people who live(d) under the old Nazi and Communist regimes as well as under other authoritarian regimes of the world. Welcome to the club. From eugen at leitl.org Tue Jun 11 15:27:12 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:27:12 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Profs freezing bodies for reincarnation Message-ID: <20130611152712.GE22824@leitl.org> http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/science/news/profs-freezing-bodies-for-reincarnation-1.1530069#.UbdBcPnfAXp Profs freezing bodies for reincarnation June 10 2013 at 06:00pm By TOM LEONARD Comment on this story File photo: Head of Russian cryonics firm KrioRus Danila Medvedev looks inside a liquid nitrogen filled human storage unit just outside Moscow. Related Stories Revered sci-fi author Iain Banks dies Cryonics: the chilling facts London - They were a shattered world?s last hope - three great minds from the past who might be able to avert a catastrophe that threatened to extinguish mankind. In a medical storage facility in the Arizona desert, digital screens that had been dark for centuries suddenly flickered into life as the remains of three beings stirred into life after aeons of slumber. It?s difficult to say whether this sort of Hollywood sci-fi scenario ever occurred to three Oxford University dons when they signed up to be frozen after death. But what they cannot deny is that along with thousands of others they are putting their faith in a future - known as cryonics - that is more science fiction than science fact. It was revealed on Sunday that the trio - Nick Bostrom, professor of philosophy at Oxford?s Future of Humanity Institute, and his fellow lead researchers, Anders Sandberg and Stuart Armstrong - have agreed to pay a US company anything up to ?50 000 to have their remains frozen at death. The hope is a future society will have the technology to restore them to life. Armstrong has arranged for his entire body to be frozen by the Michigan-based Cryonics Institute. His wife is expecting their first baby and he is so enthused by the idea that he wants to sign the child up, too. His two colleagues have opted for the less glamorous but cheaper and supposedly more reliable option of having just their heads frozen when they are declared dead, by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation outside Phoenix, Arizona. Their heads will be perfused with a cocktail of antifreeze chemicals and preserved in liquid nitrogen at -196c. Previous acolytes of cryonics have often been dismissed as head-in-the-clouds cranks, sci-fi buffs who have watched too much TV or victims of vanity. Britney Spears and Paris Hilton have both waxed lyrical about being frozen. Simon Cowell is believed to be among several dozen Britons who have joined a cryonics programme, although several hundred have reportedly shown interest. But most of them are ordinary people - usually retirees who are thinking about defeating death. The science may be sketchy but the principle is simple: nothing ventured, nothing gained. But Prof Bostrom and his colleagues are young, highly educated specialists who have devoted their careers to humanity. If they are signing up for cryonics, one might think, perhaps we should all pay attention. And while scientists generally dismiss cryonics for human beings, saying it is far beyond our capabilities, it is interesting that Prof Bostrom has a science background that includes physics and neuroscience. The 40-year-old Swede is on Foreign Policy magazine?s list of 100 Global Thinkers. His institute is part of the Oxford Martin School, where 300 academics tackle issues such as population growth, inequality and climate change. It?s encouraging that, in the midst of so much doom-mongering about the future, he is keen to come back again. ?Look back at what has happened over the past 100 years, and how many features of today?s world somebody from 1913 would have failed to anticipate,? he told a newspaper. ?The more uncertain you are about the future, the more it makes sense to keep your options alive - for example, by trying to preserve as much as possible of the information content in your brain, rather than throwing it away.? On his internet home page, Sandberg, 41, also Swedish, describes himself as ?questing? and ?always very happy?. He says it will be ?very exciting? to wake up in a new world. Admittedly, his life would be limited as a disembodied head but, in the future, he predicts people will be able to make ?real connections? to computers. He hopes his memories and personality could be downloaded. He and Bostrom may not even have to put up with living with just their heads: some cryonics devotees insist future science will be able to clone human bodies so the defrosted, severed head can be attached to a new body. Their colleague, Stuart Armstrong, says it costs him ?25 (about R320) a month in premiums to cover the cost of having his body cryopreserved - far cheaper, he says, than the popular alternative of prolonging life, which is to join a gym. Like his colleagues, he seems one of life?s optimists: ?If you picture the world in, say, 200 years, when reanimation is possible, it will probably be a wonderful place.? By the time they are rushed down to the liquid nitrogen tanks of Alcor, the Oxford academics will be in illustrious company. Alcor has 117 patients already in cryopreservation and 985 members waiting to join them. Those already lying in state include Ted Williams, one of the greatest stars of baseball, who died in 2002. And Dick Clair, a US.TV sitcom writer, has been there since 1988 following his death from Aids. Williams became the focus of a family row over how he wanted his body disposed of which focused on the authenticity of a note in which he supposedly chose cryonics. It was later claimed that a technician at Alcor took baseball-style swings at Williams? severed head with a monkey wrench. As for those still alive but already committed to Alcor, the list includes film director Charles Matthau and British thinkers Aubrey de Grey and Max More. Recognisable by a silver bracelet they usually wear to specify their wishes to be frozen when they die, believers in Britain even have a support group: Cryonics UK. Alan Sinclair, 75, a retired electronics expert from West Sussex, has been a leading light in British cryonics since the mid-Eighties. A few weeks ago his wife, Sylvia, became the first Briton to be properly cryonically preserved. She died of lung cancer after an illness of just three weeks, and was rushed to the Cryonics Institute in America. With the possibility on his mind of a reunion with his beloved wife of 40 years, he tells me scientific progress has led British interest in cryonics to ?mushroom? in the past five years. But he says: ?There wouldn?t be any point bringing back a 90-year-old.? Who wouldn?t be interested in having a good few years added to their lives, I observe. Isn?t the difference that most people want them now when their loved ones are still with them? ?I don?t see that as a problem,? says Sinclair. ?What happens when you leave school and move to Australia. We move to completely alien environments all the time.? But will a future world want to bring back people who have opted to be frozen? When Simon Cowell dropped his cryonics plan bombshell at a Downing Street party, his host, Gordon Brown, reportedly pointed out he wasn?t sure if his reanimation would be so popular. Prof Bostrom is already a regular on TV and in the media. A future society would doubtless be intrigued to know what an academic of his standing has to say about its world. But what about an ex-housewife or former electrical technician? ?That?s the biggest problem,? says Sinclair. ?Why would anyone bring me back?? Cryonics patients won?t have much novelty value when there are millions of them. Indeed, the cryonics companies don?t really guarantee much. Success depends on the body first getting to them in the US as quickly as possible. And although their freezing fee - which varies between ?16 500 and ?125 000 - is supposed to cover an indefinite period, who is to know the company will stay in business? It is a ?leap of faith, but a leap of faith in science?, Sinclair insists. ?Unless we want to go into oblivion, this is the only scientific means I know of to avoid it.? For people like him and his fellow death-defiers at Oxford, there can be no possible concession to the idea that oblivion may be something to be embraced. - Daily Mail From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Jun 11 21:16:23 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 23:16:23 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Are we too stupid? (Was: Cold fusion) In-Reply-To: <51ABC1F0.7060203@aleph.se> References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> <00c901ce58ec$cba9ebc0$62fdc340$@rainier66.com> <51A0D7B2.1000109@libero.it> <51A0E90B.3060609@aleph.se> <51A0FA43.5010401@libero.it> <51A1084B.9020700@aleph.se> <1369630742.94925.YahooMailNeo@web126201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <002d01ce5ae6$0c504c50$24f0e4f0$@rainier66.com> <51A38DBA.2030408@aleph.se> <51ABC1F0.7060203@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 3 June 2013 00:06, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-06-02 15:20, Stefano Vaj wrote: > Now, I have been persuaded since the eighties that we do stand > >> on the verge of one such metamorphosis. >> > > What persuaded you? This is what I think is the interesting question: what > would provide plausible evidence for a singularity? Or even imminent > conceptual breakthrough? What persuaded me is basically described in the interview the translation of which is online at http://www.biopolitix.com :-) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Jun 11 22:10:04 2013 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:10:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 5:00 AM, Florent Berthet wrote: snip > I'm not pointing fingers here, I want to know why several x-risk > researchers made the decision to allocate a non-negligible amount of money > on their cryopreservation. I highly respect these guys and it is their job > to think about the most important things in the world, so most likely I'm > missing something, I just want to know what. There are two possibilities: > > - they did this to send a message to the public and to fuel research, in > which case it may be a smart move. > - they did for selfish reasons, in which case I wouldn't consider it > reasonable given the amounts involved. There are more than two possibilities. Another one is that a person who is signed up for cryonics may think longer term than someone who is not. > I don't expect anybody to be perfect all the time - I'm certainly not - but > spending ?50,000 for selfish reasons is highly debatable, to say the > least, especially coming from people whose job is to raise awareness on > important issues (one issue being the underfunding of high-impact science). As Anders mentioned, the payment is from life insurance and as he says, it's less than the cost of a dinner out a week. You are, incidentally, condemning a fair fraction of the people who post on this list. Max More is president of Alcor, and historically many of the people here have been signed up. I have been signed up since 1985 and have participated in 20 of the 100 plus suspensions Alcor has done. Keith Henson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Henson From pharos at gmail.com Tue Jun 11 22:45:02 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 23:45:02 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 11:10 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > As Anders mentioned, the payment is from life insurance and as he > says, it's less than the cost of a dinner out a week. > Correct, but it also involves giving the life insurance payout to a cryonics company rather than to his estate for his family. > You are, incidentally, condemning a fair fraction of the people who > post on this list. Max More is president of Alcor, and historically > many of the people here have been signed up. I have been signed up > since 1985 and have participated in 20 of the 100 plus suspensions > Alcor has done. > > He isn't condemning cryonics supporters. He just wants to know the reasons for their choice. BillK From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 11 23:27:41 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 16:27:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <006d01ce66fb$4570d510$d0527f30$@rainier66.com> >... I don't expect anybody to be perfect all the time - I'm certainly not > - but spending ?50,000 for selfish reasons is highly debatable, to > say the least, especially coming from people whose job is to raise > awareness on important issues (one issue being the underfunding of high-impact science). Another take on this: when we spend 50k on cryonics, the money isn't actually destroyed; rather it merely changes hands. If we spend a few dozen bucks a month on life insurance set for cryonics, that money isn't destroyed either, but rather is just taken out of my bank account and put into circulation. If we argue that the money spent on cryonics should go to a worthy charity, I would suggest that worthy charities set up cryonics facilities, then apply for tax-exempt status based on the notion that views across the political spectrum are represented among those who choose cryonics. We could even take as clients those who perish while being unable to pay for their own cryo-preservation, thus fulfilling the requirement that a charity promote the general welfare. spike From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 11 23:31:56 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 16:31:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <007d01ce66fb$dd95a780$98c0f680$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of BillK ... >...He isn't condemning cryonics supporters. He just wants to know the reasons for their choice. BillK _______________________________________________ BillK I can answer that one: cryonics *might* work. All known alternatives definitely do not. If cryonics works, then some future world will be blessed with my insights on what life was like back when there was no chance of survival. I could regale the young with stories of the development of a chance, granted a remote one, that perhaps there is a way to survive this brief mortal existence. I would really enjoy being me in that future world. spike From anders at aleph.se Tue Jun 11 23:47:34 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 00:47:34 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <51B7B716.4010404@aleph.se> On 2013-06-11 23:45, BillK wrote: > On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 11:10 PM, Keith Henson wrote: >> As Anders mentioned, the payment is from life insurance and as he >> says, it's less than the cost of a dinner out a week. >> > Correct, but it also involves giving the life insurance payout to a > cryonics company rather than to his estate for his family. But is this a general problem? At least in my family I am the least well-off: none of the others need my inheritance. Since people live longer inheritance has also become less important for transfering wealth between generations. Once people inherited their parents about the time they set out in the world, now you inhereit your parents in time for retirement. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From florent.berthet at gmail.com Wed Jun 12 06:21:16 2013 From: florent.berthet at gmail.com (Florent Berthet) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:21:16 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: <51B7B716.4010404@aleph.se> References: <51B7B716.4010404@aleph.se> Message-ID: 2013/6/12 Anders Sandberg > On 2013-06-11 23:45, BillK wrote: > >> On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 11:10 PM, Keith Henson wrote: >> >>> As Anders mentioned, the payment is from life insurance and as he >>> says, it's less than the cost of a dinner out a week. >>> >>> Correct, but it also involves giving the life insurance payout to a >> cryonics company rather than to his estate for his family. >> > > But is this a general problem? At least in my family I am the least > well-off: none of the others need my inheritance. > What if the insurance payout is given to x-risk mitigation? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed Jun 12 06:41:13 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:41:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130612064113.GF22824@leitl.org> On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 06:42:49PM +0200, Florent Berthet wrote: > I don't expect anybody to be perfect all the time - I'm certainly not - but > spending ?50,000 for selfish reasons is highly debatable, to say the I'm sure the next time you wind up in the ICU, and, selfishly, incur bills an order of magnitude higher you will have the consistency to refuse such selfish treatment, and unselfishly expire. Because everything else would be, oh so selfish. You seem to subscribe to the notion that there's an alloted lifetime (by whom?) for a specific purpose (which?) and tampering with that plan is streng verboten. We here believe no such nonsense, and fart in death's general direction. (His father smelt of elderberries, too). If you need other arguments: t takes about 30 years to produce a borderline usable human, and then she dies and you have to start from scratch again. That's wasteful. In terms of IPD, sticking around longer results in nicer people overall. You like environment? There's more incentive to keep this planet in good shape. Etc. Now that wasn't hard, was it. > least, especially coming from people whose job is to raise awareness on > important issues (one issue being the underfunding of high-impact science). > I'm sure there is a better explanation. Anders? From spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 12 06:48:42 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 23:48:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: <20130612064113.GF22824@leitl.org> References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> <20130612064113.GF22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: <009301ce6738$e16a4270$a43ec750$@rainier66.com> >... We here believe no such nonsense, and fart in death's general direction. (His father smelt of elderberries, too). Gene Hey I like that. May I use it? Perhaps a plaque on my wall: I fart in death's general direction. spike From eugen at leitl.org Wed Jun 12 09:08:59 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:08:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20130612090859.GI22824@leitl.org> On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 11:45:02PM +0100, BillK wrote: > He isn't condemning cryonics supporters. He just wants to know the > reasons for their choice. I don't see his inquiry quite as value-neutral as you. From anders at aleph.se Wed Jun 12 10:30:34 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:30:34 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <51B7B716.4010404@aleph.se> Message-ID: <51B84DCA.8020509@aleph.se> On 2013-06-12 07:21, Florent Berthet wrote: > 2013/6/12 Anders Sandberg > > > On 2013-06-11 23:45, BillK wrote: > > On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 11:10 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > > As Anders mentioned, the payment is from life insurance > and as he > says, it's less than the cost of a dinner out a week. > > Correct, but it also involves giving the life insurance payout > to a > cryonics company rather than to his estate for his family. > > > But is this a general problem? At least in my family I am the > least well-off: none of the others need my inheritance. > > > What if the insurance payout is given to x-risk mitigation? Depends on what xrisk mitigation we are talking about. If that money would reduce the probability of eventual extinction by 0.1%, sure, I would put the money there (I think the astronomical waste argument is pretty strong: the future is worth *a lot*). But realistically, it would be used to allow some people to think a bit more about xrisk (about a few postdoc man-months if we are lucky), maybe coming up with good ideas, which maybe get implemented and maybe have effect. Multiplying together all that produces a much, much smaller impact. I am not certain that impact is worth less than the subjective value of my life to me, but it seems at least possible. [*] It would likely be more useful to spend that money on doing xrisk advocacy to get much more funding. Max Tegmark made the point pretty well in his recent talk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZDVv-MI0VU - this particular point starts at 41:10). The amount of funding for xrisk research is minuscule, and if we could get some tiny faction of the money wasted on truly frivolous or destructive pursuits redirected in this direction we would get far, far more than what we could get from all cryonicists switching their insurance to xrisk reduction. Now, I happen to spend a fair amount of my time trying to convince people about the importance of xrisk reduction, as well as contribute to the research. I have no good measure of my effectiveness, but it seems likely that I have a positive impact - I am already doing those man-months mentioned above as part of my job and overall lifestyle. It would hence be a really good thing if I could go on doing this for a long time: hence cryonics. That argument might get the handful of xrisk researchers with cryonics contracts off the hook (a surprisingly large number, by the way, given the rarity of either pursuit) but I think there is a general efficiency argument too. Quibbling over individual health choices in a rather small population while enormous resources are going to waste is... wasteful. It is a bit like building managers asking people to remove AC-adapters from plugs in order to save energy, while maintaining floodlights to light up the fa?ade at night. It is easier to point at the discrete individual actions than the overall system, but it is usually at the system level the big wins are. [*] Fun counting exercise. Suppose we regard ozone depletion as an averted potential xrisk. I doubt it would have been 100% fatal: let's assume ozone depletion if it happens has 10% chance of wiping out humanity (this is on par with numbers I get for nuclear winter scenarios from experts). If we ignore the research necessary for its discovery (lots and lots of chemistry, meteorology and the work needed to launch the satellite that saw it), there is still a lot of research effort. Crutzen, Molina, and Rowland devoted at least a fraction of their research careers to it, and it is likely safe to assume that there was much relevant research outside that group. Let's assume 10 years of work for each of them, making 30 man-years. There are 50,000 hits in Google scholar for pre-1976 papers with "ozone depletion"; assuming just 1% are relevant and each took a month to write, that is still 500 man-months of work, about 41 man-years. (The 1976 Academy of Science report on halocarbons was written by about 15 people: if they took a month of work each to write their part it would already have been more than my cryonics insurance could pay for). So if we sum all of this up, it seems reasonable to say that the total effort that led to the discovery and recognition (not counting the later mitigation work) is on the order of 50 man-years. So 50 man-years can buy a 10% reduction of a xrisk risk. If a research scientist salary is $80k, the total cost of that is $48 million. This is of course a debatable example, since it was in many ways an *easy* xrisk to fix - single cause, anthropogenic, not too powerful vested interests, easy substitutes - and we resolved it. The amount of money and effort spent on decreasing nuclear war risk is likely orders of magnitude larger, and has perhaps yielded less. In any case, if my $100k were spent on ozone depletion reduction back in the day (I am already handwaving so much we can ignore inflation) I would have helped the field by 0.2%. That means an xrisk reduction of 10% * 0.2% = 0.02%. But that assumes I picked the right xrisk to reduce: of all the research topics only a handful turn out to be xrisk-relevant. There are about 5 million researchers in the world; if each topic gets 10-100 researchers it means there are about 50,000-500,000 research topics at present. We know of less than 100 xrisks, so the chance of one topic discovering one might be around 0.2%-0.02%. So my help, if applied randomly, might reduce xrisk by a factor of 4*10^-5 or 4*10^-6. Nick's astronomical waste argument *still* multiplies this with a huge factor of saved future, of course. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From florent.berthet at gmail.com Wed Jun 12 10:37:24 2013 From: florent.berthet at gmail.com (Florent Berthet) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 12:37:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: <20130612064113.GF22824@leitl.org> References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> <20130612064113.GF22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: 2013/6/12 Eugen Leitl > On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 06:42:49PM +0200, Florent Berthet wrote: > > > I don't expect anybody to be perfect all the time - I'm certainly not - > but > > spending ?50,000 for selfish reasons is highly debatable, to say the > > I'm sure the next time you wind up in the ICU, and, selfishly, > incur bills an order of magnitude higher you will have the > consistency to refuse such selfish treatment, and unselfishly > expire. > > Because everything else would be, oh so selfish. > If I had a choice between spending ?500,000 on saving my own life versus using it to save 200+ lives (which is what would be achieved through the Against Malaria Foundation, according to Givewell's estimates of $2,500 per life saved), I would seriously consider sacrificing my life. But I would also have to take into account how much good I could do by staying alive and living a life of altruism, which could represent a lot more than 200 lives saved in the long run. What's more, there is a difference between your example and signing for cryonics because, once dead and cryopreserved, you will only be able to help in x years when you are revived (if you are revived). But in x years the world could be so different that it may not need your help as much as our present world (after all, it would be a world where technology allows us to revive people, which could mean, for example, that an AGI has been created). This consideration doesn't negate the expected utility of "getting frozen to help the world later", but it lowers it. > You seem to subscribe to the notion that there's an alloted > lifetime (by whom?) for a specific purpose (which?) and > tampering with that plan is streng verboten. > I'm all for indefinite life extension, I never said we should die as a matter of principle, I was talking about expected utility. It's a matter of priorities, we live in a world where there are death AND existential risks, the question is: how should we allocate our money between them? Let me quote Nick Bostrom about his Maxipok principle (which I agree with): "*Maxipok* Maximise the probability of an ?OK outcome?, where an OK outcome is any outcome that avoids existential catastrophe. At best, maxipok is a rule of thumb or a prima facie suggestion. It is not a principle of absolute validity, since there clearly are moral ends other than the prevention of existential catastrophe. The principle?s usefulness is as an aid to prioritisation. Unrestricted altruism is not so common that we can afford to fritter it away on a plethora of feel-good projects of suboptimal ef?cacy. If bene?ting humanity by increasing existential safety achieves expected good on a scale many orders of magnitude greater than that of alternative contributions, we would do well to focus on this most ef?cient philanthropy." Now, since Bostrom has written that and has also signed for cryonics, I find it logical to ask "so, how do cryonics fit within the Maxipok rule of thumb?" I'm not saying cryonics can't possibly be the best thing to do, I want to know the reasoning of people who sign up while being aware of other important issues. Don't try to read between the lines here, I'm certainly not bashing cryonics, in fact I am glad this field exists, I think it's good that money goes into it, I'm just genuinely asking if there isn't an even better way to spend money. If you need other arguments: t takes about 30 years to > produce a borderline usable human, and then she dies > and you have to start from scratch again. That's > wasteful. > > In terms of IPD, sticking around longer results in > nicer people overall. You like environment? There's > more incentive to keep this planet in good shape. > Etc. > I agree, and this is the kind of arguments I'm asking for. Thanks for bringing that up, and while I'm at it, thanks to Anders for his explanations and honesty. If there is a place where I expect people to be able to debate freely and without having to justify every word they say, it's this one. Let's keep it that way. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed Jun 12 11:05:46 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 13:05:46 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: <009301ce6738$e16a4270$a43ec750$@rainier66.com> References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> <20130612064113.GF22824@leitl.org> <009301ce6738$e16a4270$a43ec750$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130612110546.GJ22824@leitl.org> On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 11:48:42PM -0700, spike wrote: > > >... We here believe no such nonsense, and fart in death's general direction. (His father smelt of elderberries, too). Gene > > > > Hey I like that. May I use it? Perhaps a plaque on my wall: I fart in death's general direction. Credits where due: Monty Python. From eugen at leitl.org Wed Jun 12 15:28:06 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 17:28:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] After NSA revelations, end-to-end encryption is more important than ever Message-ID: <20130612152806.GA27758@leitl.org> http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/12/4422480/is-prism-good-news-for-cryptographers Spy stoppers: meet the companies benefiting from the PRISM privacy scare After NSA revelations, end-to-end encryption is more important than ever By Russell Brandom on June 12, 2013 09:49 am Email 11COMMENTS The world is still reeling from the leaked details of the NSA's PRISM program, reported to give the government's top spies access to personal user data collected by Google, Apple, Microsoft, and other services. But while the mainstream is fighting over the precise nature of PRISM, the world of cryptography is feeling strangely validated. "People put their trust in Apple, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, but now they see it's being handed over," said Mike Janke, CEO of the iPhone encryption service Silent Circle. "It takes something like this for people to wake up." Nadim Kobeissi, founder of Cryptocat, took a similar line. "This is how you develop security software," Kobeissi told The Verge. "You always assume the very worst." IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE FIRST LEAKS, CRYPTOCAT SAW NEARLY DOUBLE ITS NORMAL USAGE While PRISM is bad news for privacy advocates, it's good news for cryptography software, which has seen a range of previously obscure features become newly relevant in light of the government?s mass surveillance operations. The most important function in programs like Cryptocat is end-to-end encryption, a design feature that prevents the company handling your email from being able to open your data up to the NSA. In end-to-end encryption, only users have copies of the keys ? so if a government agency wants access, they need to get it directly from you. This stands in contrast to services like Gmail, which use SSL encryption as a standard but keep the keys on the company servers and are able to decrypt messages at will. Last week that wasn't a worrying thought, but with the allegations that the NSA has direct access to such servers, it's a newly sensitive point. Many programs offer end-to-end encryption, from paid services like Silent Circle to free and open source projects like GnuPG and Cryptocat, but they all involve venturing outside the familiar world of large corporations and friendly user interfaces. Still, it may be a leap many consumers are willing to take. In a recent survey more than half the country described itself as uncomfortable with email surveillance, and some programs have already seen numbers rise. Kobeissi says in the days following the first leaks, Cryptocat saw nearly double its normal usage. On Tuesday, Silent Circle announced a half-off deal "in light of the latest wave of concerns." "IF YOU'RE EDWARD SNOWDEN, NONE OF THESE TOOLS WILL SAVE YOU." At the same time, developers are careful to acknowledge the limits of this approach. Kobeissi says up front, "If you're Edward Snowden, none of these tools will save you." The problem isn't the encryption itself, but the difficulty of maintaining security through every step of the process. An airtight encryption protocol can protect messages in transit, but any would-be snoopers could still find a way to break into the phones on either end, or find a weak spot in the program's implementation. Developers look hard for these kinds of weaknesses, but the NSA is presumably looking harder, and with more resources to throw behind the effort. Even more troubling are tools like weaponized malware built on unpublished exploits, which government agencies have been buying up at an alarming pace in recent years. If a user were to be successfully targeted by these programs, all the encryption in the world wouldn't keep the NSA out of their phone or computer. The result is that, despite forward-thinking assumptions, most cryptography tools are still only partial solutions ? something cryptographers will often be the first to admit. As Kobeissi put it, "These tools are just shims. They're not a substitute for policy and having a political discussion." From pharos at gmail.com Wed Jun 12 15:54:57 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:54:57 +0100 Subject: [ExI] After NSA revelations, end-to-end encryption is more important than ever In-Reply-To: <20130612152806.GA27758@leitl.org> References: <20130612152806.GA27758@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 4:28 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > After NSA revelations, end-to-end encryption is more important than ever > By Russell Brandom on June 12, 2013 09:49 am Email 11COMMENTS > > The world is still reeling from the leaked details of the NSA's PRISM > program, reported to give the government's top spies access to personal user > data collected by Google, Apple, Microsoft, and other services. But while the > mainstream is fighting over the precise nature of PRISM, the world of > cryptography is feeling strangely validated. "People put their trust in > Apple, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, but now they see it's being handed over," > said Mike Janke, CEO of the iPhone encryption service Silent Circle. "It > takes something like this for people to wake up." > Well of course it is an illegal system, breaks the Constitution and their managers have lied to Congress, denying that they were spying on Americans. So they have gone rogue and are out of control. Somebody made the point that it all has nothing to do with the terrorism used as justification. Terrorists have long been aware that the NSA is recording everything. Why do you think Osama used personal couriers? The system will only catch complete idiots and those poor smucks set up deliberately by the FBI & CIA. The real objective is control of ordinary people by fear. It is the East German Stasi all over again. BillK From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Jun 12 16:06:00 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 12:06:00 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 Florent Berthet wrote: > What is their rationale behind spending all that money > We're not talking about a huge amount of money here, Cryonics suspension by Alcor would cost you about as much as buying a run of the mill Lexus LS. So it's a nice car verses a lottery ticket where the probability of hitting the jackpot is greater than zero but less than 1, the jackpot being achieving immortality. They've decided on the way they'd prefer to spend their money, you can spend your money however you wish. > on themselves versus using it to save dozens of lives via an effective > charity (or potentially saving billions of lives through x-risk research)? I can't speak for them but if you were asking me I'd say that the answer is obvious, your happiness and well being is important but mine is more important. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Jun 12 16:26:26 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 12:26:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 Florent Berthet wrote: > I try to do the good thing and I spend very little > Well I guess you're just a selfless being. I am not a selfless being and have no desire to become one. > I don't expect anybody to be perfect all the time - I'm certainly not - > but spending ?50,000 for selfish reasons is highly debatable, to say the > least, > It's odd, if somebody spent that much money on a car or a boat or even a funeral nobody would bat an eye even though at the end of the ceremony the center of atention is just as dead as he was when it started, but spend it on Cryonics and people go into a tizzy. > I'm sure there is a better explanation. Anders? > Anders is not required to explain his actions to you. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Jun 12 16:44:39 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 12:44:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> <20130612064113.GF22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 Florent Berthet wrote: > If I had a choice between spending ?500,000 on saving my own life versus > using it to save 200+ lives (which is what would be achieved through the > Against Malaria Foundation, according to Givewell's estimates of $2,500 per > life saved), I would seriously consider sacrificing my life. > OK whatever floats your boat, if I were in that situation I would choose otherwise but there is no disputing matters of taste. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Jun 12 17:19:37 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 13:19:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 12:42 PM, Florent Berthet wrote: > when some people talk about how they make efforts to make the world a > better place (giving money or switching to veganism for example), > "I am not a vegetarian because I love animals. I am a vegetarian because I hate plants." - A. Whitney Brown John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed Jun 12 18:48:38 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 20:48:38 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [SALT] Taming asteroids next TUESDAY June 18 (for forwarding) Message-ID: <20130612184838.GE22824@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from Stewart Brand ----- Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:04:43 -0700 From: Stewart Brand To: SALT list Subject: [SALT] Taming asteroids next TUESDAY June 18 (for forwarding) X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1283) Reply-To: services at longnow.org In the long now, the greatest threat to life on Earth, or (more frequently) to civilization, or (still more frequently) to cities, is asteroid impact. The threat can be eliminated permanently with existing technology, at modest cost, considering. Former NASA astronaut Ed Lu is CEO and Chairman of the B612 Foundation, which, in partnership with Ball Aerospace is building an asteroid-detection system called Sentinel, aiming for launch in 2018. Lu is also the co-inventor of the ?gravity tractor? -- one of the several techniques that can be used to nudge threatening asteroids out their collision paths with Earth. Asteroid threat is an attention-span problem blended with a delayed-gratification problem---exactly the kind of thing that Long Now was set up to help with. Taking the extreme danger of asteroids seriously requires thinking at century and millennium scale. Dealing with the threat requires programs that span decades, because asteroids can only be deflected if they are found and dealt with many years before their potential impact. That?s what B612?s Sentinel is designed to do. This is activist astronomy... "Anthropocene Astronomy: Thwarting Dangerous Asteroids Begins with Finding Them," Ed Lu, Marines' Memorial Theater, Union Square, San Francisco, 7pm, Tuesday June 18. The show starts promptly at 7:30pm. To be sure of a seat: ? Long Now Members can use the discount code on the Lu Seminar page to reserve 2 free seats. ? You can purchase tickets for $15 each. ? Tune into the live audio stream for Long Now Members at 7:30 PST - become a member for just $8 a month. Share this talk: Ed Lu, "Anthropocene Astronomy: Thwarting Dangerous Asteroids Begins with Finding Them" Long Now talk on 6/18 http://goo.gl/DCJ6D Talks coming up: July 29 (Mon.) - Craig Childs, ?Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to the Everending Earth? Aug. 13 (Tue.) - Daniel Kahneman, "Thinking Fast and Slow" High-quality videos of the talks and other benefits (such as priority tickets) are available to Long now members. Membership, which starts at $8/month ($96/year), helps support the series and other Long Now projects. Joinable here. This is one of a monthly series of Seminars About Long-term Thinking (SALT) organized by The Long Now Foundation. Free audio and my summaries of all previous talks are available for download here (or stay up to date with the podcast here). You'll find a range of long-term thinking items on our Blog (RSS). If you would like to be notified by email (like this one) of forthcoming talks, go here to sign up online. Any questions, contact Danielle Engelman at Long Now -- 415-561-6582 x1 or danielle at longnow.org. You are welcome to forward this notice to anyone you think might be interested. --Stewart Brand -- Stewart Brand -- sb at longnow.org The Long Now Foundation -- http://longnow.org/ Seminars & downloads -- http://longnow.org/seminars/ ?Twitter - up to the minute info on tickets and events ?Long Now Blog - daily updates on events and ideas ?Facebook - stay in touch through our fan page _______________________________________________ SALT mailing list unsubscribe / change email: http://list.longnow.org/mailman/listinfo/salt ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 From spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 12 22:36:13 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:36:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] FW: National Review slant on Bostrom's cryo. signup In-Reply-To: <1371075405.7060.YahooMailNeo@web161006.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1371075405.7060.YahooMailNeo@web161006.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <006801ce67bd$3f34fc40$bd9ef4c0$@rainier66.com> I am posting this forward for a long time lurker: Wouldja post this, Spike?: http://www.nationalreview.com/human-exceptionalism/350848/head-transhumanist -have-dead-head-frozen-wesley-j-smith -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 12 22:48:53 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:48:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again Message-ID: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> I did 23AndMe, got a list of genetic matches, found several with the same obscure name which doesn't match any names in my extensive genealogy. I managed to contact one of the family members who also had access to an extensive and accurate genealogy. We compared notes and found no common names. But we kept working at it, and now we have found that the two families' trajectories crossed briefly in a small community of about 400 souls way the hell out in the middle of nowhere in the 1860s, a place that is still little more than a gas stop on the freeway, on the way to somewhere else. I am coming up genetically related to them for completely unexplained reasons, but we noticed that in 1866, my great great grandfather for whom I named my own son, was aged 23 years and was looking for a place to live after his North Carolina farm was wrecked by General Sherman's boys. The inexplicably-related cousins are apparently descended from a local girl who was 17 in that year. I haven't proven it yet so it is merely a suspicion based on it being a convenient explanation for a collection of baffling observations. There is much detective work to do. But what a sitch: these two sleepwalkers get caught nearly a century and a half later. The human genome project was supposed to help us solve humanities most vexing medical problems. Instead it is helping us figure out long after the fact who was jumping whom and when. It's the scientific version of using all that internet bandwidth to exchange pornography. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gjlewis37 at gmail.com Wed Jun 12 22:53:47 2013 From: gjlewis37 at gmail.com (Gregory Lewis) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:53:47 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> <20130612064113.GF22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: <51B8FBFB.90600@gmail.com> [New person: Pre-emptive apologies for inadvertent breaches of listequette etc.] I think it's at least controversial whether indefinite life extension (or any life extension) would be a pro tanto good thing from a utilitarian perspective. Although extension does avoid upfront 'investment costs' in terms of making a new human, and limits the incidence of the badness of death if everyone lives longer, there are come concerns in favour of not extending lives and having more rapid cycling of persons under a given resource constraint. 1. Given we time discount, and possible 'low hanging fruit' concerns, lifespan may have decreasing marginal value. So (depending on investment costs, and degree of decay) many short lives might be better than a single long life, even on strictly aggregative consequentialism. 2. If you're a prioritarian (hold that a given increment of value is better given to someone with less value than someone with more, all else equal; or that the welfare to value function is concave), then you might prefer many shorter lives over one long one even at the expense of some total value. It might be generally fairer/better to package lifespan in many small packets than one large one, so fewer potential people 'miss out' on the goods of having existed at all. Obviously, lots of complicated ethics (esp. population ethics) underlie all of these (should we value those who *could exist* with similar weight to those who actually do? Is not-existing harmful, or bringing into existence beneficial?) And all sorts of empirical things can change the calculus (AIs, rejuvenation, etc.). Despite all that, there seem a fairly large plurality of scenarios where life extension is not a good thing. On 12/06/13 11:37, Florent Berthet wrote: > 2013/6/12 Eugen Leitl > > If you need other arguments: t takes about 30 years to > > produce a borderline usable human, and then she dies > and you have to start from scratch again. That's > wasteful. > > In terms of IPD, sticking around longer results in > nicer people overall. You like environment? There's > more incentive to keep this planet in good shape. > Etc. > > > I agree, and this is the kind of arguments I'm asking for. Thanks for > bringing that up, and while I'm at it, thanks to Anders for his > explanations and honesty. If there is a place where I expect people to > be able to debate freely and without having to justify every word they > say, it's this one. Let's keep it that way. > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Thu Jun 13 00:17:04 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 17:17:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: <51B8FBFB.90600@gmail.com> References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> <20130612064113.GF22824@leitl.org> <51B8FBFB.90600@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Jun 12, 2013 5:04 PM, "Gregory Lewis" wrote: > 1. Given we time discount, and possible 'low hanging fruit' concerns, lifespan may have decreasing marginal value. You're going to have to explain that premise, as it is not obvious. > 2. If you're a prioritarian (hold that a given increment of value is better given to someone with less value than someone with more, all else equal; or that the welfare to value function is concave), then you might prefer many shorter lives over one long one even at the expense of some total value. It might be generally fairer/better to package lifespan in many small packets than one large one, so fewer potential people 'miss out' on the goods of having existed at all. There are an infinite number of those who might have existed. Further, people can help make the world better: existence is not zero-sum, or even readily convertible between different people. If one's continued existence leads, however incrementally, toward a world in which birth rates may be higher (including "birth" of AIs), wouldn't your argument suggest one should attempt to live as long as possible? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Jun 13 05:34:21 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 06:34:21 +0100 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> References: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51B959DD.3080202@aleph.se> On 2013-06-12 23:48, spike wrote: > > I haven't proven it yet so it is merely a suspicion based on it being > a convenient explanation for a collection of baffling observations. > There is much detective work to do. But what a sitch: these two > sleepwalkers get caught nearly a century and a half later. > Great story! And a good example of how technology is making the past transparent in ways it couldn't foresee. We are right now fairly transparent to the future: we are leaving gigantic data shadows that imply much more than we think. A few facebook likes, the rhythm of keyboard writing, patterns of IP-addresses - they all reveal our identities and activities much more than we normally think. And in the future every kid will have tools that make Prism look pretty trivial. If you want to keep secrets from the future you really have to work on it. > The human genome project was supposed to help us solve humanities most > vexing medical problems. Instead it is helping us figure out long > after the fact who was jumping whom and when. It's the scientific > version of using all that internet bandwidth to exchange pornography. > We mammals know our priorities. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Thu Jun 13 06:14:25 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 08:14:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [New_Cryonet] Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last. What should I try after I die? Message-ID: <20130613061425.GK22824@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from Aaron Winborn ----- Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 21:31:48 -0000 From: Aaron Winborn To: New_Cryonet at yahoogroups.com Subject: [New_Cryonet] Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last. What should I try after I die? User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 X-Mailer: Yahoo Groups Message Poster Reply-To: New_Cryonet at yahoogroups.com http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1g7h69/anything_awesome_i_should_try_after_i_die/ before edits: First, some background. My name is Aaron Winborn, and I am a developer for Drupal, which is an open source content management system, used to make web sites. I also the father of two young girls, who bring much joy into my life, and married to a beautiful woman. You may have heard of her, her name is Wonder Woman. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXsmTXYHjxA Just over two years ago, I was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. In short, that means that my mind will increasingly become trapped in my body as the motor neurons continue to die, and the muscles atrophy and waste away, until my diaphragm dies, bringing me with it. My hands and arms are already completely paralyzed, and I'm confined to a power wheelchair. My diaphragm strength is largely diminished, and I am using breathing assistance 24/7, and I am at imminent risk for respiratory failure. Even if I am fortunate enough to survive another year, which is only likely if I opt for a tracheostomy, my chances of surviving much longer become increasingly unlikely, as pneumonia becomes a specter haunting the late stages of ALS. There is no cure for this awful disease. My family gets to take care of all my needs and wipe the drool off my face, until I die, and leave them to pick up the pieces. But yes, there is a silver lining to this all, such as it is. Kim Suozzi made a similar plea to the Internet a year ago today, and came up with the brilliant idea of freezing her body in the hopes of a distant advanced technology being able to revive her someday. Her body now rests at liquid nitrogen temperatures. http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/uvaqe/today_is_my_23rd_birthday_and_probably_my_last/ I approached the organization responsible for raising the funds to help her out, the Society for Venturism, last November, and they agreed to take on my case as well. We have raised roughly half of the necessary $35,000 to freeze my body after I've gone, and you are welcome to pitch in if you would like to donate a few dollars. http://venturist.info/aaron-winborn-charity.html But I am actually telling you all this in order to come up with a sort of reverse bucket list. I've had a full life, with no regrets. I've done some travel, have lived in some cool places, like the Netherlands and London. I've made lots of good friends, and continue to do so. I've contributed to my debt to society, working hard throughout my life, as a teacher, a waiter, an open source software developer. I've worked with a few interesting characters, like Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and even lived in a Buddhist monastery before I met the woman of my dreams. But I'm not ready to hang up my jacket quite yet. When I was ten, I came up with three things that I wanted to be when I grew up: a teacher, a writer, and an astronaut. I've been two of the things, which is not bad. As an aside, I once told that to some people, and was asked, "Oh, what did you write?" To which I replied, "I didn't say I've written anything." Joking aside, I'm looking for some grandiose ideas of things to do after I've died, and have hopefully been revived. And by that, I mean the sky's the limit. Don't worry about whether something seems technically feasible. This is your opportunity to think big. Like, go skinny dipping in the methane oceans of Neptune. I want to do so much more with my life, but it's not in the cards this go around. I've become a spectator in life, living vicariously through my daughters, and relegated to typing with my eyes at fifteen words per minute on a good day. But I'm not complaining. I awaken each morning as I always have, excited to take on the day. This is just a way to do some more brainstorming, to come up with a list of things to do during the next century, should we be so fortunate. Stay strong, Aaron ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/New_Cryonet/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/New_Cryonet/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: New_Cryonet-digest at yahoogroups.com New_Cryonet-fullfeatured at yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: New_Cryonet-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 From pharos at gmail.com Thu Jun 13 06:47:16 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 07:47:16 +0100 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> References: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 11:48 PM, spike wrote: > I haven?t proven it yet so it is merely a suspicion based on it being a > convenient explanation for a collection of baffling observations. There is > much detective work to do. But what a sitch: these two sleepwalkers get > caught nearly a century and a half later. > The big genealogy web sites are getting involved in gene research as well. Originally, genealogy meant going through old records and producing a large tree of births marriages and deaths. But when you think that up to 10% of the breeding was off-piste for a variety of reasons (good and bad), that invalidates a lot of the family trees. And there are also mistakes and omissions in the records. So maybe I am related to Henry VIII after all? BillK From eugen at leitl.org Thu Jun 13 08:11:08 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 10:11:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [New_Cryonet] Invitation to join an online conversation Message-ID: <20130613081108.GZ22824@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from ChrisCorte ----- Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 03:33:57 -0000 From: ChrisCorte To: New_Cryonet at yahoogroups.com Subject: [New_Cryonet] Invitation to join an online conversation User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 X-Mailer: Yahoo Groups Message Poster Reply-To: New_Cryonet at yahoogroups.com Anyone interested in cryonics and transhumanism is invited to join in an online discussion this Sunday at 11:30 noon PST. That's California time. Our previous conversations have been lively, entertaining and have covered a wide range of topics. These chats are a great way to meet like-minded people, make personal connections and help us build a stronger cryonics community. We now have a Meetup page http://www.meetup.com/Transhumanism-and-Cryonics-Online-Conversation-Group/ . If you would like to join us, just send an email to kekik2336 at gmail.com. On Sunday at 11:30 you'll receive an email from Google+ inviting you to join the Hangout. Just click the link and join in the conversation. You'll need to sign up for a Google+ account to access the Hangout. No one will mind if you use a pseudonym and the software allows you to mask your identity on the video. Of course, your privacy will be respected. No part of our discussion will be reproduced, broadcast or recorded. ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/New_Cryonet/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/New_Cryonet/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: New_Cryonet-digest at yahoogroups.com New_Cryonet-fullfeatured at yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: New_Cryonet-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 From pharos at gmail.com Thu Jun 13 11:01:01 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 12:01:01 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [New_Cryonet] Invitation to join an online conversation In-Reply-To: <20130613081108.GZ22824@leitl.org> References: <20130613081108.GZ22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 9:11 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > ----- Forwarded message from ChrisCorte ----- > > Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 03:33:57 -0000 > From: ChrisCorte > To: New_Cryonet at yahoogroups.com > Subject: [New_Cryonet] Invitation to join an online conversation > User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 > X-Mailer: Yahoo Groups Message Poster > Reply-To: New_Cryonet at yahoogroups.com > No one will mind if you use a pseudonym and the software allows you to mask your identity > on the video. Of course, your privacy will be respected. No part of our discussion will be > reproduced, broadcast or recorded. > ------------------------------------ Has the NSA and Google agreed? ;) Presumably he means that he personally will not be recording anything. As you know, anything that passes across someone's screen could be recorded by them. (and re-distributed, of course). BillK From eugen at leitl.org Thu Jun 13 11:15:56 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 13:15:56 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [New_Cryonet] Invitation to join an online conversation In-Reply-To: References: <20130613081108.GZ22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130613111556.GI22824@leitl.org> On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 12:01:01PM +0100, BillK wrote: > Has the NSA and Google agreed? ;) I advised against Hangouts, and we tried OpenQwaq with good results, but Hangouts still emerged as the default. There are options like Jitsi which you can run on your own server. Given that Google has given the boot to open standards like XMPP Hangouts are not officially Deprecated. As is G+, and Gmail. > Presumably he means that he personally will not be recording anything. > As you know, anything that passes across someone's screen could be > recorded by them. > (and re-distributed, of course). At least you'd know it was one of participants. The problem with automatic data collection is that it's large scale, and you have to assume it happens whenever you're using a corporate service (because corporations can be strong-armed into cooperation more easily than volunteers distributed all over the world. From eugen at leitl.org Thu Jun 13 11:42:21 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 13:42:21 +0200 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <51B959DD.3080202@aleph.se> References: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> <51B959DD.3080202@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20130613114221.GL22824@leitl.org> On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 06:34:21AM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote: > identities and activities much more than we normally think. And in > the future every kid will have tools that make Prism look pretty > trivial. Even if that kid has his private meganode botnet, he's not running piece of core infrastructure and probably has a slightly smaller budget (no nuclear cable-splice submarine for you today, go back to your room and sulk). So the question is not about how good you are with Splunk or R, but how much probes you have, and how many large scale clusters you can afford. From gjlewis37 at gmail.com Thu Jun 13 10:43:41 2013 From: gjlewis37 at gmail.com (Gregory Lewis) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 11:43:41 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> <20130612064113.GF22824@leitl.org> <51B8FBFB.90600@gmail.com> Message-ID: <51B9A25D.4070009@gmail.com> On 13/06/13 01:17, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > On Jun 12, 2013 5:04 PM, "Gregory Lewis" > wrote: > > 1. Given we time discount, and possible 'low hanging fruit' > concerns, lifespan may have decreasing marginal value. > > You're going to have to explain that premise, as > it is not obvious. > Sure. When given certain lifespan gambles (would you rather P=1 of 40 years or P=0.5 of 80 years and P=0.5 of death right now?) we tend to be risk averse. There are a variety of debunking explanations one can offer (scope insensitivity, status quo bias, the intuitions seem a bit unstable if we change the magnitude of the gambles), but at least one account of our apparent time discounting is that life has decreasing marginal value, so twice as much is not quite twice as good. Another reason for decreasing marginal value (at least locally) would be that, if we're rational, we'll prioritize the most valuable things to do with our lives first, so we tend to do less valuable projects later on. So there's diminishing marginal value as it becomes harder work to realize value as we live longer. > > 2. If you're a prioritarian (hold that a given increment of value is > better given to someone with less value than someone with more, all > else equal; or that the welfare to value function is concave), then > you might prefer many shorter lives over one long one even at the > expense of some total value. It might be generally fairer/better to > package lifespan in many small packets than one large one, so fewer > potential people 'miss out' on the goods of having existed at all. > > There are an infinite number of those who might > have existed. Further, people can help make the > world better: existence is not zero-sum, or even > readily convertible between different people. > > If one's continued existence leads, however > incrementally, toward a world in which birth > rates may be higher (including "birth" of AIs), > wouldn't your argument suggest one should > attempt to live as long as possible? > I don't think there are infinite possible future people (although it will be very large). Also, the relevant decision cases we have to make will be between finite numbers of counter factual people (e.g. if I opt to extend my life 10x over, there will be 9 people squeezed out of the earths carrying capacity who would have existed - veil of ignorance concerns etc. would therefore favour me not extending my life, and those 8 people having a short go too). I agree there are various externalities which are not accounted for: although carrying capacity across universe's future has an upper bound, maybe some lives, if extended, will increase this bound by an amount greater than their life extension 'takes away', making it a good deal even for prioritarians. But one could note empirical concerns going the other way (maybe cycling through more people increases the chances of getting the requisite number of geniuses needed for a safe posthuman future, etc. etc.) It is also false to imply that we have a fully fungible blob of lifespan to distribute between people wholly elastically. But it seems this granularity becomes less of a big deal when lots of people are extending their lives: if 10x life extension is widespread, then a lot of people who would exist will not. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johntc at gmail.com Thu Jun 13 06:29:18 2013 From: johntc at gmail.com (John Tracy Cunningham) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 08:29:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> References: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I did FTDNA a while back and got a very strong Y-DNA match with a guy whose surname wasn't Cunningham. So I emailed him. I'm from Illinois, and he was in New Hampshire. We compared genealogies. Took a while, but bottom line: My grandfather and his grandmother were friendly in Illinois before they married other people. We're first cousins. My strongest Y-DNA match is a guy in Georgia, also not a Cunningham, and we still haven't figured that out... Regards John On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 12:48 AM, spike wrote: > ** ** > > ** ** > > I did 23AndMe, got a list of genetic matches, found several with the same > obscure name which doesn?t match any names in my extensive genealogy. I > managed to contact one of the family members who also had access to an > extensive and accurate genealogy. We compared notes and found no common > names. But we kept working at it, and now we have found that the two > families? trajectories crossed briefly in a small community of about 400 > souls way the hell out in the middle of nowhere in the 1860s, a place that > is still little more than a gas stop on the freeway, on the way to > somewhere else. I am coming up genetically related to them for completely > unexplained reasons, but we noticed that in 1866, my great great > grandfather for whom I named my own son, was aged 23 years and was looking > for a place to live after his North Carolina farm was wrecked by General > Sherman?s boys. The inexplicably-related cousins are apparently descended > from a local girl who was 17 in that year.**** > > ** ** > > I haven?t proven it yet so it is merely a suspicion based on it being a > convenient explanation for a collection of baffling observations. There is > much detective work to do. But what a sitch: these two sleepwalkers get > caught nearly a century and a half later.**** > > ** ** > > The human genome project was supposed to help us solve humanities most > vexing medical problems. Instead it is helping us figure out long after > the fact who was jumping whom and when. It?s the scientific version of > using all that internet bandwidth to exchange pornography.**** > > ** ** > > 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 clementlawyer at gmail.com Thu Jun 13 13:53:26 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 09:53:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <51B959DD.3080202@aleph.se> References: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> <51B959DD.3080202@aleph.se> Message-ID: Anders Sandberg wrote: > Great story! And a good example of how technology is making the past > transparent in ways it couldn't foresee. We are right now fairly > transparent to the future: we are leaving gigantic data shadows that imply > much more than we think. A few facebook likes, the rhythm of keyboard > writing, patterns of IP-addresses - they all reveal our identities and > activities much more than we normally think. And in the future every kid > will have tools that make Prism look pretty trivial. > > If you want to keep secrets from the future you really have to work on it. > > **** > > ** > > Coming soon to an AI near you: it will likely be possible in the near future to create a very accurate simulated (not emulated) prediction machine for each of us based on our search history, email history, social network (written and photographic) and credit card histories, that can fairly accurately predict what choices you'd make in given circumstances. James -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 13 13:43:07 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 06:43:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <015001ce683b$f0a5cd00$d1f16700$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 11:48 PM, spike wrote: >> ... But what a sitch: these two > sleepwalkers get caught nearly a century and a half later. > >...The big genealogy web sites are getting involved in gene research as well. >.... up to 10% of the breeding was off-piste for a variety of reasons (good and bad), that invalidates a lot of the family trees. And there are also mistakes and omissions in the records. ...BillK _______________________________________________ BillK, that is exactly the reason why I decided to not invest another minute into genealogy 20 some years ago. It is interesting and insightful, but if you can find all 32 of your great^3 grandparents, you may eventually find only about half of them are genetically related. I found some good evidence of exactly that, two decades before 23andMe. But all the stuff a fourth cousin and I are now doing can theoretically be automated. It is easy to imagine a company that uses the same 100 dollar spit kit used by 23 starts up with the explicit mission of finding out that kind of information. That info has been obscured by time, poor records and in many cases, intentional obscuration. Some people don't want it known that their ancestors did all the same kinds of things modern people do. It would be a really cool programming challenge to create a software toolbox which would browse through a collection of data, census records, time and place data, then create a profile to determine ways to explain why two people are showing up as related even if there are no common names in their old family bibles. spike From eugen at leitl.org Thu Jun 13 14:03:52 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 16:03:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> <51B959DD.3080202@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20130613140352.GP22824@leitl.org> On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 09:53:26AM -0400, James Clement wrote: > Coming soon to an AI near you: it will likely be possible in the near > future to create a very accurate simulated (not emulated) prediction > machine for each of us based on our search history, email history, social > network (written and photographic) and credit card histories, that can > fairly accurately predict what choices you'd make in given circumstances. And it will be used to maximize profits (not your profits, of course), which is why you should make sure to keep that information private. More interestingly, we're in touching distance of engineering future behaviour of human groups, using methods related to building numerical models of instrumented biological neural networks. If you can predict the thing you can influence it. From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 13 14:36:04 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 07:36:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> <51B959DD.3080202@aleph.se> Message-ID: <017701ce6843$56414a20$02c3de60$@rainier66.com> On Behalf Of James Clement Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again Anders Sandberg wrote: >>.Great story! And a good example of how technology is making the past transparent in ways it couldn't foresee.If you want to keep secrets from the future you really have to work on it. >.Coming soon to an AI near you: it will likely be possible in the near future to create a very accurate simulated (not emulated) prediction machine for each of us based on our search history, email history, social network (written and photographic) and credit card histories, that can fairly accurately predict what choices you'd make in given circumstances. .James James what I really want is some kind of AI at the hardware store. Then when I get there it reminds me of what it was I came down there for. If we invent brain prosthetics, it would free our minds from the mundane, which allows us to focus our creative intellectual skills on cool interesting stuff, such as inventing brain prosthetics, which would free our minds from the mundane. >.I did FTDNA a while back and got a very strong Y-DNA match with a guy whose surname wasn't Cunningham. We're first cousins. John Cunningham Well now let us think about this. John's cousin suddenly finds out he is not genetically related to his own beloved legal grandfather. He now wants to know everything he can find out about his genetic grandfather, what medical conditions he had, what and who he did in his life, who his newly-discovered genetic cousins are, possibly who his parent's genetic half siblings are. Does John's cousin now lose interest in the family reunion? Or does he show up and tell what he knows? Does he crash the party when the genetic cousins have their family reunion, and if so, does he talk? Or just show up saying he is a friend of the family? What if he has some mannerism that grandpa had, a quirky facial feature, a way of walking, so that all the little old ladies present figure it out? Little old ladies are good at that for some strange reason. However, it could be that plenty of the affected people don't want this information known. Grandma would be high on the list of those who would not be pleased at her grandson's detective work. Perhaps she mended her ways right after she discovered her pregnancy, quickly married her long-time boyfriend (not the embryo's father), gave birth to a robust 9 pound "preemie" seven months after the wedding (the poor little thing placed in the incubator by the local nurses with a sense of humor and charity), became a paragon of virtue at the local Methodist church, and doesn't cut any slack to the local harlots. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 13 18:27:43 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 11:27:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] After NSA revelations, end-to-end encryption is more important than ever In-Reply-To: <20130612152806.GA27758@leitl.org> References: <20130612152806.GA27758@leitl.org> Message-ID: <01c501ce6863$b29d5730$17d80590$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Eugen wrote: http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/12/4422480/is-prism-good-news-for-cryptographers gene If the INS scandal has any bright side, it is that new attention has been called to Orwell's excellent work, in particular a short work of sci-fi that I feel should be required reading for everyone who applies for a high school diploma, 1984: There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. ?How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. - George Orwell ?1984? So it took three decades longer than Orwell guessed, but the man was brilliant. spike From atymes at gmail.com Thu Jun 13 20:38:48 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 13:38:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: <51B9A25D.4070009@gmail.com> References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> <20130612064113.GF22824@leitl.org> <51B8FBFB.90600@gmail.com> <51B9A25D.4070009@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Jun 13, 2013 6:30 AM, "Gregory Lewis" wrote: > > On 13/06/13 01:17, Adrian Tymes wrote: >> >> On Jun 12, 2013 5:04 PM, "Gregory Lewis" wrote: >> > 1. Given we time discount, and possible 'low hanging fruit' concerns, lifespan may have decreasing marginal value. >> >> You're going to have to explain that premise, as >> it is not obvious. > > Sure. When given certain lifespan gambles (would you rather P=1 of 40 years or P=0.5 of 80 years and P=0.5 of death right now?) we tend to be risk averse. There are a variety of debunking explanations one can offer (scope insensitivity, status quo bias, the intuitions seem a bit unstable if we change the magnitude of the gambles), but at least one account of our apparent time discounting is that life has decreasing marginal value, so twice as much is not quite twice as good. So, you believe that just because most people believe, based on historical evidence, that later years = lesser years, this must inevitably be the case for everyone always? That is a logical fallacy, and a slightly offensive one if you have indeed been lurking this list and thus seen the counterexamples we come up with. > Another reason for decreasing marginal value (at least locally) would be that, if we're rational, we'll prioritize the most valuable things to do with our lives first, so we tend to do less valuable projects later on. So there's diminishing marginal value as it becomes harder work to realize value as we live longer. Ha! You assume we even KNOW all the things we'll want to do early on. This is laughably absurd for all but the smallest, most limited lives. I, for one, don't know what project I may work on 5 to 10 years from now, as is the case for nearly all adults that I know. (Children get a pass only because grade school & college is a well established pattern, but even they can't predict their extracirriculars that far in advance.) >> > 2. If you're a prioritarian (hold that a given increment of value is better given to someone with less value than someone with more, all else equal; or that the welfare to value function is concave), then you might prefer many shorter lives over one long one even at the expense of some total value. It might be generally fairer/better to package lifespan in many small packets than one large one, so fewer potential people 'miss out' on the goods of having existed at all. >> >> There are an infinite number of those who might >> have existed. Further, people can help make the >> world better: existence is not zero-sum, or even >> readily convertible between different people. >> >> If one's continued existence leads, however >> incrementally, toward a world in which birth >> rates may be higher (including "birth" of AIs), >> wouldn't your argument suggest one should >> attempt to live as long as possible? > > I don't think there are infinite possible future people (although it will be very large). I didn't say future people. I referred to the present. Granted, if you take all the permutations, the number of those who might have existed had things gone different might not actually be infinite, but it's close enough here. Of course, not all of them could exist at once, and there's the flaw in caring about those who might have existed: for any one person to exist, a (practically) infinite number of alternates can not. The only way to be at all fair is to deny any of them the chance to exist - emulating several current Republican arguments in Congress, with similarly unproductive results. > I agree there are various externalities which are not accounted for: although carrying capacity across universe's future has an upper bound, This assumption is questionable, but granting it for sake of discussion. > maybe some lives, if extended, will increase this bound by an amount greater than their life extension 'takes away', making it a good deal even for prioritarians. And if enough do that another person-year for any person results, on average, in more than a person-year's worth of capacity added? (Which is arguably analogous to what's happened on Earth over the past century or two.) > if 10x life extension is widespread, then a lot of people who would exist will not. And many who would not have existed, will. Quite possibly many, many more. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Jun 13 21:11:12 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 17:11:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <20130613140352.GP22824@leitl.org> References: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> <51B959DD.3080202@aleph.se> <20130613140352.GP22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 10:03 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > And it will be used to maximize profits (not your profits, of course), > which is why you should make sure to keep that information private. > > More interestingly, we're in touching distance of engineering > future behaviour of human groups, using methods related to > building numerical models of instrumented biological neural > networks. > > If you can predict the thing you can influence it. Given your usually lengthy responses, I'm surprised you would say so little on this. I think it's an important point despite the fact (or because of?) that it needs so few words to express. From clementlawyer at gmail.com Thu Jun 13 21:35:20 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 17:35:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <017701ce6843$56414a20$02c3de60$@rainier66.com> References: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> <51B959DD.3080202@aleph.se> <017701ce6843$56414a20$02c3de60$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 10:36 AM, spike wrote: > ** ** > > > James what I really want is some kind of AI at the hardware store. Then > when I get there it reminds me of what it was I came down there for.**** > > ** ** > > If we invent brain prosthetics, it would free our minds from the mundane, > which allows us to focus our creative intellectual skills on cool > interesting stuff, such as inventing brain prosthetics, which would free > our minds from the mundane.**** > > > If you just tie together a few of Google's datum (search history, Chrome history, Calendar, contacts, G+, and Tasks) you could pretty much predict what I was seeking when I came down to the hardware store. That's where all of this is quickly going - tell me what I want before I ask for it, and sprinkle in a few relevant commercials (hey, instead of going to all of that trouble to research jailbreaking my phone, here's an app they're showing that will do it for just $9.99 - well worth all of the time and effort I'm saving.., or so it goes in theory). This kind of AI isn't all that difficult, compared to emulating a human mind. JWC -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 13 22:14:50 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:14:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> <51B959DD.3080202@aleph.se> <017701ce6843$56414a20$02c3de60$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <023901ce6883$6cebf2d0$46c3d870$@rainier66.com> >. On Behalf Of James Clement Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 10:36 AM, spike wrote: >>.James what I really want is some kind of AI at the hardware store. Then when I get there it reminds me of what it was I came down there for. >.If you just tie together a few of Google's datum (search history, Chrome history, Calendar, contacts, G+, and Tasks) you could pretty much predict what I was seeking when I came down to the hardware store. This kind of AI isn't all that difficult, compared to emulating a human mind. JWC We already have those internet music sites that can watch what one listens to and suggest vaguely related music in the same genre. I had the computer suggest something that I missed that has been one of my very favorites, Sarah Brightman singing the Kansas classic Dust in the Wind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6lYSL_Gub0 Oh so cool. I never told the internet that the song Dust in the Wind has a very special meaning for me, for reasons I have never shared online. I never told it that Sarah Brightman is one of my top tune-babes. But somehow some faceless internet company found this and post it to me. I have listened to it about 100 times, and it moves me every time. There should be something analogous in the consumer world, which would watch what you buy and suggest stuff you might like. Oh Sarah is soooo gorgeous, oh my, the pulse races. Here's one that shows her pretty face: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6Jb-4Zo548 spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jun 13 23:03:49 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 17:03:49 -0600 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 12:47 AM, BillK wrote: > On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 11:48 PM, spike wrote: > > > I haven?t proven it yet so it is merely a suspicion based on it being a > > convenient explanation for a collection of baffling observations. There > is > > much detective work to do. But what a sitch: these two sleepwalkers get > > caught nearly a century and a half later. > > > > The big genealogy web sites are getting involved in gene research as well. > > Originally, genealogy meant going through old records and producing a > large tree of births marriages and deaths. But when you think that up > to 10% of the breeding was off-piste for a variety of reasons (good > and bad), that invalidates a lot of the family trees. And there are > also mistakes and omissions in the records. > > So maybe I am related to Henry VIII after all? > Of course the Latter Day Saint's church is the biggest spender in genealogy and all the big companies in the area are based in Utah. I find it absolutely hilarious that the LDS are so into using the science of DNA for their version of ancestor worship, but completely ignore that same science when it comes to the Book of Mormon. It's simply too inconvenient in the latter case, and too real in the former. Ah, double standards. I'm glad to be mostly done with those... -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jun 13 23:06:18 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 17:06:18 -0600 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> <51B959DD.3080202@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 7:53 AM, James Clement wrote: > >> **** >> >> ** >> >> Coming soon to an AI near you: it will likely be possible in the near > future to create a very accurate simulated (not emulated) prediction > machine for each of us based on our search history, email history, social > network (written and photographic) and credit card histories, that can > fairly accurately predict what choices you'd make in given circumstances. Very near to me indeed... only twenty miles away in Bluffdale, Utah... LOL... BUT, and this is VERY important, it is ONLY to be used to simulate terrorists... ordinary citizens please ignore the man behind the curtain! Please! -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Jun 14 03:05:45 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 23:05:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> <51B959DD.3080202@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 7:06 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > BUT, and this is VERY important, it is ONLY to be used to simulate > terrorists... ordinary citizens please ignore the man behind the curtain! > Please! I have a feeling the response to simulated terrorists will be as devastating "irl" as whatever the simulated terrorist devastated in the simulation. I also suspect that ordinary citizens hadn't noticed the man behind the curtain. Now that you've made them look, they'll lose interest if he isn't either naked, eating something tasty, or making fun of someone else. From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jun 14 08:15:35 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 10:15:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] Edward Snowden's Transhumanist Girlfriend Message-ID: <20130614081534.GL22824@leitl.org> No comment. ----- Forwarded message from Nyc Labret? ----- Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 23:55:46 -0400 From: Nyc Labret? To: doctrinezero at googlegroups.com Subject: [ZS] Edward Snowden's Transhumanist Girlfriend Reply-To: DoctrineZero at googlegroups.com Let's all try to keep everyone's heads from exploding from this bombshell. Courtesy of the UK's Daily Mail tabloid, may I present Mr. Snowden's paramour, one Ms. Lindsay Mills: http://dailym.ai/12KgqBt Yes, that is a copy of Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity Is Near" that she's tastefully toplessly reading wearing nothing but library glasses, panties and nylons. For my money that is right up there with Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses http://bit.ly/142EPOe As always, your mileage may vary. -- Nyc Labret?, HMFIC Digital Komponents Produktions DC B?ro 202-696-8313 NYC B?ro: 1-917-720-4276 Facebook: Nyc Labrets Twitter: NycLabretsDC -- -- Zero State mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/DoctrineZero --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Doctrine Zero" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to DoctrineZero+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 From painlord2k at libero.it Fri Jun 14 13:03:45 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 15:03:45 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] Edward Snowden's Transhumanist Girlfriend In-Reply-To: <20130614081534.GL22824@leitl.org> References: <20130614081534.GL22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: <51BB14B1.7000303@libero.it> Il 14/06/2013 10:15, Eugen Leitl ha scritto: > No comment. Apparently, after the Singularity is a good place to be. Mirco From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jun 14 13:41:04 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 15:41:04 +0200 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> <51B959DD.3080202@aleph.se> <20130613140352.GP22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130614134104.GJ22824@leitl.org> On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 05:11:12PM -0400, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 10:03 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > And it will be used to maximize profits (not your profits, of course), > > which is why you should make sure to keep that information private. > > > > More interestingly, we're in touching distance of engineering > > future behaviour of human groups, using methods related to > > building numerical models of instrumented biological neural > > networks. > > > > If you can predict the thing you can influence it. > > Given your usually lengthy responses, I'm surprised you would say so > little on this. I think it's an important point despite the fact (or > because of?) that it needs so few words to express. Would love to, but it's not my work, so I can't say anything about it, and be it because I know zero details. From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jun 14 14:23:33 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:23:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] NSA Prism is motivated in part by fears that environmentally-linked disasters could spur anti-government activism Message-ID: <20130614142333.GQ22824@leitl.org> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/earth-insight/2013/jun/14/climate-change-energy-shocks-nsa-prism Pentagon bracing for public dissent over climate and energy shocks NSA Prism is motivated in part by fears that environmentally-linked disasters could spur anti-government activism US domestic surveillance has targeted anti-fracking activists across the country. Photograph: Les Stone/REUTERS Top secret US National Security Agency (NSA) documents disclosed by the Guardian have shocked the world with revelations of a comprehensive US-based surveillance system with direct access to Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft and other tech giants. New Zealand court records suggest that data harvested by the NSA's Prism system has been fed into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance whose members also include the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. But why have Western security agencies developed such an unprecedented capacity to spy on their own domestic populations? Since the 2008 economic crash, security agencies have increasingly spied on political activists, especially environmental groups, on behalf of corporate interests. This activity is linked to the last decade of US defence planning, which has been increasingly concerned by the risk of civil unrest at home triggered by catastrophic events linked to climate change, energy shocks or economic crisis - or all three. Just last month, unilateral changes to US military laws formally granted the Pentagon extraordinary powers to intervene in a domestic "emergency" or "civil disturbance": "Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances." Other documents show that the "extraordinary emergencies" the Pentagon is worried about include a range of environmental and related disasters. In 2006, the US National Security Strategy warned that: "Environmental destruction, whether caused by human behavior or cataclysmic mega-disasters such as floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, or tsunamis. Problems of this scope may overwhelm the capacity of local authorities to respond, and may even overtax national militaries, requiring a larger international response." Two years later, the Department of Defense's (DoD) Army Modernisation Strategy described the arrival of a new "era of persistent conflict" due to competition for "depleting natural resources and overseas markets" fuelling "future resource wars over water, food and energy." The report predicted a resurgence of: "... anti-government and radical ideologies that potentially threaten government stability." In the same year, a report by the US Army's Strategic Studies Institute warned that a series of domestic crises could provoke large-scale civil unrest. The path to "disruptive domestic shock" could include traditional threats such as deployment of WMDs, alongside "catastrophic natural and human disasters" or "pervasive public health emergencies" coinciding with "unforeseen economic collapse." Such crises could lead to "loss of functioning political and legal order" leading to "purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency... "DoD might be forced by circumstances to put its broad resources at the disposal of civil authorities to contain and reverse violent threats to domestic tranquility. Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance." That year, the Pentagon had begun developing a 20,000 strong troop force who would be on-hand to respond to "domestic catastrophes" and civil unrest - the programme was reportedly based on a 2005 homeland security strategy which emphasised "preparing for multiple, simultaneous mass casualty incidents." The following year, a US Army-funded RAND Corp study called for a US force presence specifically to deal with civil unrest. Such fears were further solidified in a detailed 2010 study by the US Joint Forces Command - designed to inform "joint concept development and experimentation throughout the Department of Defense" - setting out the US military's definitive vision for future trends and potential global threats. Climate change, the study said, would lead to increased risk of: "... tsunamis, typhoons, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and other natural catastrophes... Furthermore, if such a catastrophe occurs within the United States itself - particularly when the nation's economy is in a fragile state or where US military bases or key civilian infrastructure are broadly affected - the damage to US security could be considerable." The study also warned of a possible shortfall in global oil output by 2015: "A severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity. While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and developed worlds. Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate other unresolved tensions." That year the DoD's Quadrennial Defense Review seconded such concerns, while recognising that "climate change, energy security, and economic stability are inextricably linked." Also in 2010, the Pentagon ran war games to explore the implications of "large scale economic breakdown" in the US impacting on food supplies and other essential services, as well as how to maintain "domestic order amid civil unrest." Speaking about the group's conclusions at giant US defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton's conference facility in Virginia, Lt Col. Mark Elfendahl - then chief of the Joint and Army Concepts Division - highlighted homeland operations as a way to legitimise the US military budget: "An increased focus on domestic activities might be a way of justifying whatever Army force structure the country can still afford." Two months earlier, Elfendahl explained in a DoD roundtable that future planning was needed: "Because technology is changing so rapidly, because there's so much uncertainty in the world, both economically and politically, and because the threats are so adaptive and networked, because they live within the populations in many cases." The 2010 exercises were part of the US Army's annual Unified Quest programme which more recently, based on expert input from across the Pentagon, has explored the prospect that "ecological disasters and a weak economy" (as the "recovery won't take root until 2020") will fuel migration to urban areas, ramping up social tensions in the US homeland as well as within and between "resource-starved nations." NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was a computer systems administrator for Booz Allen Hamilton, where he directly handled the NSA's IT systems, including the Prism surveillance system. According to Booz Allen's 2011 Annual Report, the corporation has overseen Unified Quest "for more than a decade" to help "military and civilian leaders envision the future." The latest war games, the report reveals, focused on "detailed, realistic scenarios with hypothetical 'roads to crisis'", including "homeland operations" resulting from "a high-magnitude natural disaster" among other scenarios, in the context of: "... converging global trends [which] may change the current security landscape and future operating environment... At the end of the two-day event, senior leaders were better prepared to understand new required capabilities and force design requirements to make homeland operations more effective." It is therefore not surprising that the increasing privatisation of intelligence has coincided with the proliferation of domestic surveillance operations against political activists, particularly those linked to environmental and social justice protest groups. Department of Homeland Security documents released in April prove a "systematic effort" by the agency "to surveil and disrupt peaceful demonstrations" linked to Occupy Wall Street, according to the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF). Similarly, FBI documents confirmed "a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector" designed to produce intelligence on behalf of "the corporate security community." A PCJF spokesperson remarked that the documents show "federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America." In particular, domestic surveillance has systematically targeted peaceful environment activists including anti-fracking activists across the US, such as the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition, Rising Tide North America, the People's Oil & Gas Collaborative, and Greenpeace. Similar trends are at play in the UK, where the case of undercover policeman Mark Kennedy revealed the extent of the state's involvement in monitoring the environmental direct action movement. A University of Bath study citing the Kennedy case, and based on confidential sources, found that a whole range of corporations - such as McDonald's, Nestle and the oil major Shell, "use covert methods to gather intelligence on activist groups, counter criticism of their strategies and practices, and evade accountability." Indeed, Kennedy's case was just the tip of the iceberg - internal police documents obtained by the Guardian in 2009 revealed that environment activists had been routinely categorised as "domestic extremists" targeting "national infrastructure" as part of a wider strategy tracking protest groups and protestors. Superintendent Steve Pearl, then head of the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (Nectu), confirmed at that time how his unit worked with thousands of companies in the private sector. Nectu, according to Pearl, was set up by the Home Office because it was "getting really pressured by big business - pharmaceuticals in particular, and the banks." He added that environmental protestors were being brought "more on the radar." The programme continues today, despite police acknowledgements that environmentalists have not been involved in "violent acts." The Pentagon knows that environmental, economic and other crises could provoke widespread public anger toward government and corporations in coming years. The revelations on the NSA's global surveillance programmes are just the latest indication that as business as usual creates instability at home and abroad, and as disillusionment with the status quo escalates, Western publics are being increasingly viewed as potential enemies that must be policed by the state. Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed From gjlewis37 at gmail.com Fri Jun 14 10:45:22 2013 From: gjlewis37 at gmail.com (Gregory Lewis) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:45:22 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> <20130612064113.GF22824@leitl.org> <51B8FBFB.90600@gmail.com> <51B9A25D.4070009@gmail.com> Message-ID: <51BAF442.6090409@gmail.com> On 13/06/13 21:38, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > > On Jun 13, 2013 6:30 AM, "Gregory Lewis" > wrote: > > Sure. When given certain lifespan gambles (would you rather P=1 of > 40 years or P=0.5 of 80 years and P=0.5 of death right now?) we tend > to be risk averse. There are a variety of debunking explanations one > can offer (scope insensitivity, status quo bias, the intuitions seem a > bit unstable if we change the magnitude of the gambles), but at least > one account of our apparent time discounting is that life has > decreasing marginal value, so twice as much is not quite twice as good. > > So, you believe that just because most people > believe, based on historical evidence, that > later years = lesser years, this must inevitably > be the case for everyone always? > > That is a logical fallacy, and a slightly > offensive one if you have indeed been lurking > this list and thus seen the counterexamples > we come up with. > As I said above, I believe the fact most (myself included) are intuitively risk adverse with these gambles is evidence for us putting diminishing marginal value in lifespan (although there are other possible accounts). I don't see the logical fallacy, just an application of something like the equal weight view of disagreement epistemology. I haven't lurked long, so I might have missed something on the list. But I should note the fact we can come up with counter-examples where either more life is worth more - or where are intuitions here are mistaken - doesn't significantly undercut the principle unless we think some collection of counter-example circusmtances is probably the case. > > Another reason for decreasing marginal value (at least locally) > would be that, if we're rational, we'll prioritize the most valuable > things to do with our lives first, so we tend to do less valuable > projects later on. So there's diminishing marginal value as it becomes > harder work to realize value as we live longer. > > Ha! You assume we even KNOW all the things > we'll want to do early on. This is laughably > absurd for all but the smallest, most limited > lives. I, for one, don't know what project I > may work on 5 to 10 years from now, as is > the case for nearly all adults that I know. > (Children get a pass only because grade > school & college is a well established pattern, > but even they can't predict their > extracirriculars that far in advance.) > Most of us make choices about how to spend our lives, and so implicitly judge what we'd find most valuable. (E.g. I'm currently training to be a doctor, but I would also have liked to have been a philosopher, a scientist, or a writer). Although our estimates are error prone, I think they're better than chance. If so, if spent my 'next few livespans' on life-extension doing some philosophy, science and writing, this would generally accrue less value per unit time than medicine. Mutatis Mutandis relationships, hobbies, and however else we spend our time. > Of course, not all of them could exist at once, > > and there's the flaw in caring about those who > might have existed: for any one person to exist, > a (practically) infinite number of alternates can > not. The only way to be at all fair is to deny > any of them the chance to exist - emulating > several current Republican arguments in > Congress, with similarly unproductive results. > I don't think that is true. Imagine a parliament of souls which have a (small) chance to be embodied in a life on earth. Grant (arguendo) the choice is to divide lifespan into N 800 year 'lifespan tickets', versus 10N 80 year 'lifespan tickets'. I think our parliament, if behind a veil of ignorance about whether they'd 'win' or not on either lottery, would prefer the second distribution, as they have a much better chance of existing at all. That said, if you don't trust your decision function at very low probabilities, you might do something else (see Carl Shulman here: http://reflectivedisequilibrium.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/rawls-original-position-potential.html) (Aside: there are some theoretical reasons to disprefer 'not caring about people who could exist or not' from the population ethics literature. Most importantly, if you only care about people who do exist, you can get caught in various intransitivities when offered choices between worlds with differing 'overlaps' of people who could exist in each.) > > maybe some lives, if extended, will increase this bound by an amount > greater than their life extension 'takes away', making it a good deal > even for prioritarians. > > And if enough do that another person-year > for any person results, on average, in more > than a person-year's worth of capacity > added? (Which is arguably analogous to > what's happened on Earth over the past > century or two.) > If so, then great! However, I'm doubtful that will be generally true, even if granting rejuvenation and superintelligence. I'm also unsure the 19-20th C earth has this property - and if it did, I don't think it will carry into the immediate future: although lifeexp rose in step with general person-year capacity, this gain has been predominantly in the period where people are sick and economically unproductive (at least in the developed world). > > if 10x life extension is widespread, then a lot of people who would > exist will not. > > And many who would not have existed, > will. Quite possibly many, many more. > Possibly. But it requires a lot of externalities to line up in the right way to get to the happy conclusion that life extension gets both *longer* and *more* lives. Given some upper bound (on lifespan, negentropy, whatever) which doesn't happily rise in step with life-extension tech, ultimately others taking more mean there is less for the rest, and if we all occupy our 'person-slot' in the universe for 10x longer, there will be about 10x fewer people over history. Bw, Gregory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 14 15:25:14 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 08:25:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] Edward Snowden's Transhumanist Girlfriend In-Reply-To: <20130614081534.GL22824@leitl.org> References: <20130614081534.GL22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: <034801ce6913$5eb505e0$1c1f11a0$@rainier66.com> On Behalf Of Eugen >...Let's all try to keep everyone's heads from exploding from this bombshell. >...Courtesy of the UK's Daily Mail tabloid, may I present Mr. Snowden's paramour, one Ms. Lindsay Mills: >...http://dailym.ai/12KgqBt Ja but do we know that the book was hers? Or the photographers, which she used as a prop? Dare we yanks even discuss Snwden here knowing our email is being archived and we could land on the IRS's hit list? The recent revelation is that the IRS has vast and arbitrary power and apparently exactly zero accountability. We are finding out why the former IRS director can testify that she did nothing wrong, then immediately invoke the fifth amendment in apparent self-contradiction, then walk out of court unchallenged: there is absolutely no known law which forbids the IRS from targeting one side of the political spectrum. If one is called in for an IRS audit, there is no jury, no appeal, nothing. If the IRS says you are guilty, you lose, game over. Do you guys remember Mike Lorrey? Remember his particular burden, warning us about arbitrary government power? Ten years after he is gone, everything he said is coming to pass, and the surprising thing is I would have expected all this power-grabbing overreach to happen with a far right government. The USA has the farthest left government we are likely to ever see in our lifetimes, and yet we have seen one power grab after another, corruption rising to the surface, government officials claiming innocence then invoking the fifth, gross incompetence, cover-ups, invasions of privacy, gross power grabs, a long list of dirty laundry all coming out now. The IRS makes the US a functional dictatorship. Mike was right. spike From mrjones2020 at gmail.com Fri Jun 14 15:57:39 2013 From: mrjones2020 at gmail.com (J.R. Jones) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:57:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] Edward Snowden's Transhumanist Girlfriend In-Reply-To: <034801ce6913$5eb505e0$1c1f11a0$@rainier66.com> References: <20130614081534.GL22824@leitl.org> <034801ce6913$5eb505e0$1c1f11a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 11:25 AM, spike wrote: > The USA has the farthest left government we are likely to ever see in our > lifetimes, What a disgustingly depressive thought.. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Jun 14 16:09:11 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 12:09:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: <51BAF442.6090409@gmail.com> References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> <20130612064113.GF22824@leitl.org> <51B8FBFB.90600@gmail.com> <51B9A25D.4070009@gmail.com> <51BAF442.6090409@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 6:45 AM, Gregory Lewis wrote: > Possibly. But it requires a lot of externalities to line up in the right way > to get to the happy conclusion that life extension gets both *longer* and > *more* lives. Given some upper bound (on lifespan, negentropy, whatever) > which doesn't happily rise in step with life-extension tech, ultimately > others taking more mean there is less for the rest, and if we all occupy our > 'person-slot' in the universe for 10x longer, there will be about 10x fewer > people over history. I think that's ok. Evolution would prefer 5 generations per 100 years. I prefer my lifetime over at least that many years, possibly more. If people stopped having unwanted children, or possibly worse: having children because the feel compelled to do so by societal mores - then those already living would have less competition for resources. The argument above usually puts my old-self as a greedy methuselah somehow "stealing" quality of life from children. If those children aren't born, the argument falls apart. We're a long way from responsible/intelligent procreation as a species. Of course we are. Selfish genes don't care about the species, only maximizing propagation. I'd say spike's 23andme posts have illustrated how well those selfish genes are working despite our cultural memes for fidelity and restraint. :) From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 14 16:39:56 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 09:39:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] Edward Snowden's Transhumanist Girlfriend In-Reply-To: References: <20130614081534.GL22824@leitl.org> <034801ce6913$5eb505e0$1c1f11a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <037801ce691d$d0a4ea80$71eebf80$@rainier66.com> >. On Behalf Of J.R. Jones Subject: Re: [ExI] [ZS] Edward Snowden's Transhumanist Girlfriend On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 11:25 AM, spike wrote: >>.The USA has the farthest left government we are likely to ever see in our lifetimes, >.What a disgustingly depressive thought.. JR, they had their big chance, with a far left white house, iron grip left control of the house and between 2008 and 2010 a left wing supermajority in the senate, a very rare SUPERmajority that allows them to pass laws without debating them with the other side of the aisle, as it demonstrated. That side of the political spectrum could have done anything it wanted. We ended up with an overhaul of our medical system that made the problems worse: the system is in greater need of an overhaul from the day the "reform" went into law than it was before. Nothing was fixed, we didn't get transparency in government, or at least not voluntarily so. What transparency we did get only uncovered corruption, not just minor surface irregularities but rot all the way to the bone. All those power grabs and government oppression that had been associated with the far right since the days of Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s is now associated with the current left of center US government. We have evidence that the feds suppressed the Tea Party across two election cycles. They have expressed no remorse, but rather are shamelessly saying there is no law against that. Then they claim the fifth. Astonishing. It's all been a terrific civics lesson for Americans. Orwell's Animal Farm was right on. The left drove out the pigs and immediately became the new pigs. If you haven't read Animal Farm, stop what you are doing and read that short book right now. Orwell was right on: it doesn't matter which side of the political spectrum, power corrupts all humans equally. If I get called in on an IRS audit and I am never heard from again, you will know what happened to me. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 14 16:43:36 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 09:43:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> <20130612064113.GF22824@leitl.org> <51B8FBFB.90600@gmail.com> <51B9A25D.4070009@gmail.com> <51BAF442.6090409@gmail.com> Message-ID: <037d01ce691e$518ea000$f4abe000$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty >...We're a long way from responsible/intelligent procreation as a species. Of course we are. Selfish genes don't care about the species, only maximizing propagation. I'd say spike's 23andme posts have illustrated how well those selfish genes are working despite our cultural memes for fidelity and restraint. :) _______________________________________________ I am thinking of a way to automate the process of figuring out a person's genetic genealogy from their DNA. The process is extremely laborious the way I am doing it, shuffling around through traditional genealogies, looking for common names, etc, when we know the traditional genealogy does not necessarily match the biological genealogy. If we were to develop a software toolbox of some sort which can automate some of this process, it would be worth a fortune. spike From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Jun 14 17:21:12 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:21:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: <037d01ce691e$518ea000$f4abe000$@rainier66.com> References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> <20130612064113.GF22824@leitl.org> <51B8FBFB.90600@gmail.com> <51B9A25D.4070009@gmail.com> <51BAF442.6090409@gmail.com> <037d01ce691e$518ea000$f4abe000$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 12:43 PM, spike wrote: > I am thinking of a way to automate the process of figuring out a person's > genetic genealogy from their DNA. The process is extremely laborious the > way I am doing it, shuffling around through traditional genealogies, looking > for common names, etc, when we know the traditional genealogy does not > necessarily match the biological genealogy. > > If we were to develop a software toolbox of some sort which can automate > some of this process, it would be worth a fortune. To whom? How do you measure the value of this knowledge of genetic ancestry? I'm not even being facetious. I really don't understand what to do with it. From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 14 18:11:47 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:11:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] [cryo] Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong to be frozen after death In-Reply-To: References: <20130610094000.GM2380@leitl.org> <20130612064113.GF22824@leitl.org> <51B8FBFB.90600@gmail.com> <51B9A25D.4070009@gmail.com> <51BAF442.6090409@gmail.com> <037d01ce691e$518ea000$f4abe000$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <03c301ce692a$a2f2d810$e8d88830$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty ... > >>... If we were to develop a software toolbox of some sort which can > automate some of this process, it would be worth a fortune. >...To whom? >...How do you measure the value of this knowledge of genetic ancestry? I'm not even being facetious. >...I really don't understand what to do with it. Mike _______________________________________________ We use it to figure out what genes do what. This was the early and yet-unfulfilled promise of the human genome project. Mike you might not be one who buys that service, but there are plenty who would. Actually I think you would too eventually, after it is demonstrated there is something cool to be found. We measure the value of the service by how much the proles are willing to pay for it. I gave 180 bucks for two 23andMe kits, and now some of my relatives are doing likewise. I have learned so much that my extensive investment into traditional genealogical research couldn't tell me. I eventually lost interest in traditional genealogy, after I did a cumulative probability distribution calculation and realized one is mostly wasting one's time once you get back about 5 or 6 generations: you have no way to know if the people you are seeking are genetically related. I have a notion that all those promises we were given regarding the medical value of decoding the human genome cannot come to pass until we map out who has what genes in common, then collect the people somehow, virtually perhaps into a massive online party or picnic, then figure out what those people have that is different from the rest. That will be the path to figuring out what the gene do. This is our best path to finding that info. As far as I can tell, there is no alternative path to figuring out what the individual genome segments do. Take that oddball Neanderthal business. I have observed something already that high-caveman people all seem to have in common. I can't explain why, and I don't have enough data to publish the results. But if I can get a local party or even an online community of high-Neanderthal, I think we can figure out what is different about us. All that being said, I think 23andMe is well worth the 99 bucks now, and it gets more valuable as more people sign on at a rate exceeding 1000 per day now. Currently there are over 300k proles in that database. People will pay to see where their DNA came from and how it diffused thru the land, especially Americans, since almost all of our DNA came from somewhere else fairly recently, the last couple hundred yrs or less in most cases. spike From jrd1415 at gmail.com Fri Jun 14 19:32:19 2013 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:32:19 -0600 Subject: [ExI] NSA Prism is motivated in part by fears that environmentally-linked disasters could spur anti-government activism In-Reply-To: <20130614142333.GQ22824@leitl.org> References: <20130614142333.GQ22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: At the end of world war two, the United States was in thrall to the military idea. Addicted to military worship, in love with all things military. This irrational devotion was amplified by a perfect storm of social conditions. In addition to defeating Nazism and fascism, the war had also lifted people from the depths of the great depression. It was a heady mixture that would lead to the very downfall of the United States. President Eisenhower was prescient regarding the danger and warned the country in his 1961 farewell address. Now, 60 years later we stand on the brink of what is essentially a military takeover of the United States. The first stage was the massive expansion of the military industrial complex in the postwar years. Though the United States had been allied with the Soviet Union in the fight against Germany and Japan, with hugs and kisses at the Elbe, that all changed in the blink of an eye. It's hardly to be argued that a combative instinct is rooted deep within the human psyche. Energized by military victory, the US military bureaucracy looked for and found the enemy it needed in the Soviet Union, and the Soviet military bureaucracy must have been equally thrilled at the justification for its own massive expansion. And this reciprocal self-justification fed the growth of the two adversarial death machines, depleting the non-military resources of both nations until finally, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the upward spiral of militarization came to an end. Although the great danger of a nuclear war had been avoided, the loss of the Soviet Union, the loss of its adversary, the loss of its justification, turned the US military bureaucracy into a kind of cancer ready to metastasize. Violent drug lords in foreign lands served for the briefest of moments. China with the communist taint was considered, but rejected because it was a substantial trading partner offering valuable investment opportunities and the promise of massive future export markets. But then, out of the blue, as if sent by god, came the Pentagon's savior: Osama bin wonderful. In a timely partnership with meat puppet Bush and death worshiper Cheney, they carved a hole in the American psyche and poured in the sepsis of terrorism. The pentagon leaped on the opportunity, along with corporations and media, turning the helpless American populace into a mob of raging and clueless hysterics to be fed upon. And feed they did -- a carnival of cannibals -- until the personal catastrophe of economic collapse and the fading of phantom terrorism allowed the American populace to regain a lukewarm awareness of reality. And what do they see? A jobless and homeless future for all but the most talented or the vastly wealthy, and for the rest, a massive police and surveillance state looming over them dripping with anticipation for any sign of disrespect. Best pray that you have some connection to the 1% or that you inhabit a province far removed from the Gorgan stare of the imperial city. We're all Harkonens now. Best, Jeff Davis "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." Martin Luther King On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 8:23 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/earth-insight/2013/jun/14/climate-change-energy-shocks-nsa-prism > > Pentagon bracing for public dissent over climate and energy shocks > > NSA Prism is motivated in part by fears that environmentally-linked > disasters > could spur anti-government activism > > US domestic surveillance has targeted anti-fracking activists across the > country. Photograph: Les Stone/REUTERS > > Top secret US National Security Agency (NSA) documents disclosed by the > Guardian have shocked the world with revelations of a comprehensive > US-based > surveillance system with direct access to Facebook, Apple, Google, > Microsoft > and other tech giants. New Zealand court records suggest that data > harvested > by the NSA's Prism system has been fed into the Five Eyes intelligence > alliance whose members also include the UK, Canada, Australia and New > Zealand. > > But why have Western security agencies developed such an unprecedented > capacity to spy on their own domestic populations? Since the 2008 economic > crash, security agencies have increasingly spied on political activists, > especially environmental groups, on behalf of corporate interests. This > activity is linked to the last decade of US defence planning, which has > been > increasingly concerned by the risk of civil unrest at home triggered by > catastrophic events linked to climate change, energy shocks or economic > crisis - or all three. > > Just last month, unilateral changes to US military laws formally granted > the > Pentagon extraordinary powers to intervene in a domestic "emergency" or > "civil disturbance": > > "Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency > circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and > duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to > engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, > unexpected civil disturbances." > > Other documents show that the "extraordinary emergencies" the Pentagon is > worried about include a range of environmental and related disasters. > > In 2006, the US National Security Strategy warned that: > > "Environmental destruction, whether caused by human behavior or cataclysmic > mega-disasters such as floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, or tsunamis. > Problems > of this scope may overwhelm the capacity of local authorities to respond, > and > may even overtax national militaries, requiring a larger international > response." > > Two years later, the Department of Defense's (DoD) Army Modernisation > Strategy described the arrival of a new "era of persistent conflict" due to > competition for "depleting natural resources and overseas markets" fuelling > "future resource wars over water, food and energy." The report predicted a > resurgence of: > > "... anti-government and radical ideologies that potentially threaten > government stability." > > In the same year, a report by the US Army's Strategic Studies Institute > warned that a series of domestic crises could provoke large-scale civil > unrest. The path to "disruptive domestic shock" could include traditional > threats such as deployment of WMDs, alongside "catastrophic natural and > human > disasters" or "pervasive public health emergencies" coinciding with > "unforeseen economic collapse." Such crises could lead to "loss of > functioning political and legal order" leading to "purposeful domestic > resistance or insurgency... > > "DoD might be forced by circumstances to put its broad resources at the > disposal of civil authorities to contain and reverse violent threats to > domestic tranquility. Under the most extreme circumstances, this might > include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United > States. Further, DoD would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for > the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil > conflict or disturbance." > > That year, the Pentagon had begun developing a 20,000 strong troop force > who > would be on-hand to respond to "domestic catastrophes" and civil unrest - > the > programme was reportedly based on a 2005 homeland security strategy which > emphasised "preparing for multiple, simultaneous mass casualty incidents." > > The following year, a US Army-funded RAND Corp study called for a US force > presence specifically to deal with civil unrest. > > Such fears were further solidified in a detailed 2010 study by the US Joint > Forces Command - designed to inform "joint concept development and > experimentation throughout the Department of Defense" - setting out the US > military's definitive vision for future trends and potential global > threats. > Climate change, the study said, would lead to increased risk of: > > "... tsunamis, typhoons, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and other > natural > catastrophes... Furthermore, if such a catastrophe occurs within the United > States itself - particularly when the nation's economy is in a fragile > state > or where US military bases or key civilian infrastructure are broadly > affected - the damage to US security could be considerable." > > The study also warned of a possible shortfall in global oil output by 2015: > "A severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of > production and refining capacity. While it is difficult to predict > precisely > what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might > produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the > developing and developed worlds. Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate > other unresolved tensions." > > That year the DoD's Quadrennial Defense Review seconded such concerns, > while > recognising that "climate change, energy security, and economic stability > are > inextricably linked." > > Also in 2010, the Pentagon ran war games to explore the implications of > "large scale economic breakdown" in the US impacting on food supplies and > other essential services, as well as how to maintain "domestic order amid > civil unrest." > > Speaking about the group's conclusions at giant US defence contractor Booz > Allen Hamilton's conference facility in Virginia, Lt Col. Mark Elfendahl - > then chief of the Joint and Army Concepts Division - highlighted homeland > operations as a way to legitimise the US military budget: "An increased > focus > on domestic activities might be a way of justifying whatever Army force > structure the country can still afford." > > Two months earlier, Elfendahl explained in a DoD roundtable that future > planning was needed: > > "Because technology is changing so rapidly, because there's so much > uncertainty in the world, both economically and politically, and because > the > threats are so adaptive and networked, because they live within the > populations in many cases." > > The 2010 exercises were part of the US Army's annual Unified Quest > programme > which more recently, based on expert input from across the Pentagon, has > explored the prospect that "ecological disasters and a weak economy" (as > the > "recovery won't take root until 2020") will fuel migration to urban areas, > ramping up social tensions in the US homeland as well as within and between > "resource-starved nations." > > NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was a computer systems administrator for > Booz Allen Hamilton, where he directly handled the NSA's IT systems, > including the Prism surveillance system. According to Booz Allen's 2011 > Annual Report, the corporation has overseen Unified Quest "for more than a > decade" to help "military and civilian leaders envision the future." > > The latest war games, the report reveals, focused on "detailed, realistic > scenarios with hypothetical 'roads to crisis'", including "homeland > operations" resulting from "a high-magnitude natural disaster" among other > scenarios, in the context of: > > "... converging global trends [which] may change the current security > landscape and future operating environment... At the end of the two-day > event, senior leaders were better prepared to understand new required > capabilities and force design requirements to make homeland operations more > effective." > > It is therefore not surprising that the increasing privatisation of > intelligence has coincided with the proliferation of domestic surveillance > operations against political activists, particularly those linked to > environmental and social justice protest groups. > > Department of Homeland Security documents released in April prove a > "systematic effort" by the agency "to surveil and disrupt peaceful > demonstrations" linked to Occupy Wall Street, according to the Partnership > for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF). > > Similarly, FBI documents confirmed "a strategic partnership between the > FBI, > the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector" designed to > produce intelligence on behalf of "the corporate security community." A > PCJF > spokesperson remarked that the documents show "federal agencies functioning > as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America." > > In particular, domestic surveillance has systematically targeted peaceful > environment activists including anti-fracking activists across the US, such > as the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition, Rising Tide North America, the > People's Oil & Gas Collaborative, and Greenpeace. Similar trends are at > play > in the UK, where the case of undercover policeman Mark Kennedy revealed the > extent of the state's involvement in monitoring the environmental direct > action movement. > > A University of Bath study citing the Kennedy case, and based on > confidential > sources, found that a whole range of corporations - such as McDonald's, > Nestle and the oil major Shell, "use covert methods to gather intelligence > on > activist groups, counter criticism of their strategies and practices, and > evade accountability." > > Indeed, Kennedy's case was just the tip of the iceberg - internal police > documents obtained by the Guardian in 2009 revealed that environment > activists had been routinely categorised as "domestic extremists" targeting > "national infrastructure" as part of a wider strategy tracking protest > groups > and protestors. > > Superintendent Steve Pearl, then head of the National Extremism Tactical > Coordination Unit (Nectu), confirmed at that time how his unit worked with > thousands of companies in the private sector. Nectu, according to Pearl, > was > set up by the Home Office because it was "getting really pressured by big > business - pharmaceuticals in particular, and the banks." He added that > environmental protestors were being brought "more on the radar." The > programme continues today, despite police acknowledgements that > environmentalists have not been involved in "violent acts." > > The Pentagon knows that environmental, economic and other crises could > provoke widespread public anger toward government and corporations in > coming > years. The revelations on the NSA's global surveillance programmes are just > the latest indication that as business as usual creates instability at home > and abroad, and as disillusionment with the status quo escalates, Western > publics are being increasingly viewed as potential enemies that must be > policed by the state. > > Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research > & > Development and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And > How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed > _______________________________________________ > 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 aleksei at iki.fi Fri Jun 14 20:27:54 2013 From: aleksei at iki.fi (Aleksei Riikonen) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 23:27:54 +0300 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] Edward Snowden's Transhumanist Girlfriend In-Reply-To: <20130614081534.GL22824@leitl.org> References: <20130614081534.GL22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 11:15 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > No comment. Here's some good fresh commentary on the matter though: http://www.facebook.com/notes/naomi-wolf/my-creeping-concern-that-the-nsa-leaker-is-not-who-he-purports-to-be-/10151559239607949 -- Aleksei Riikonen - http://www.iki.fi/aleksei From anders at aleph.se Fri Jun 14 19:14:40 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 15:14:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <20130613114221.GL22824@leitl.org> References: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> <51B959DD.3080202@aleph.se> <20130613114221.GL22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: <51BB6BA0.4060303@aleph.se> On 2013-06-13 07:42, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 06:34:21AM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote: > >> identities and activities much more than we normally think. And in >> the future every kid will have tools that make Prism look pretty >> trivial. > Even if that kid has his private meganode botnet, he's not > running piece of core infrastructure and probably has a > slightly smaller budget (no nuclear cable-splice > submarine for you today, go back to your room and sulk). > > So the question is not about how good you are with > Splunk or R, but how much probes you have, and how > many large scale clusters you can afford. In order to figure things out, you need to be able to acquire information, process it and know how to notice interesting things. Right now we are somewhat obsessed with the big data idea where the data all resides in a central location, having been acquired piecemeal or wholesale over time by some organisation. It is effective, but there are other ways of gathering data like distributed searches and P2P. Currently they are inefficient, yet we cannot be certain they are not going to become big. The Internet of Things looks like it is going to store lots locally rather than in the cloud. The processing depends on what algorithm you runs. Right now we are getting good at the algorithms that run well on clusters, but again that might just be a low-hanging fruit. There are plenty of interesting distributed algorithms, and it is not too unlikely that people might have options for running algorithms in some of the clouds. I suspect that the key thing is people asking the right kind of new question. Much of the big data infrastructures today are set up to answer general questions or anticipated future questions, yet they might well enable new user categories asking unprecedented questions. 23andMe was not intended to support genealogy. Flickr was not intended to build ontologies. Google was not intended for finding unsecured surveillance cameras. So the real thing to watch out for is people who come up with clever questions. We have built an infrastructure that makes it easier to answer them. A Logic Named Joe is coming our way. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 14 21:27:30 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 14:27:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] NSA Prism is motivated in part by fears that environmentally-linked disasters could spur anti-government activism In-Reply-To: References: <20130614142333.GQ22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: <044101ce6945$fab3cb70$f01b6250$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Davis Subject: Re: [ExI] NSA Prism is motivated in part by fears that environmentally-linked disasters could spur anti-government activism >. At the end of world war two, the United States was in thrall to the military idea. Addicted to military worship, in love with all things military.Best, Jeff Davis Interesting take by Jeff Davis, thanks Jeff. If I were to run with that theme, and attempt a brief history of our times, it would go like this: World War 3 began before World War 2 ended, and continued nearly half a century, gradually sputtering out in about the mid 1990s. The Middle Eastern terrorists were a temporary replacement bad guy, but they didn't have nukes and when it came down to an actual shooting war, they didn't show. Now Osama is dead, and his following is far less scary than it was, so the current government/military/industrial complex needs a new bad guy. So now they are trying to drum up the threat from massive uprisings as a result of. climate change. Climate change? Indeed? Is this really the very best we can do? Are we really so hard up for scary enemies to justify massive government spending that we need to resort to some nebulous something that will take at least decades to attack us? The actual threat is right there in front of us: unlimited and unchecked growth of government snooping into everything we do and threatening us with a completely unaccountable IRS, yet we cry out for climate change to come along and save us? Sheesh. I have news for them: climate change cannot save us from us. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 14 21:57:43 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 14:57:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] NSA Prism is motivated in part by fears that environmentally-linked disasters could spur anti-government activism In-Reply-To: <044101ce6945$fab3cb70$f01b6250$@rainier66.com> References: <20130614142333.GQ22824@leitl.org> <044101ce6945$fab3cb70$f01b6250$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <04a901ce694a$332cbf30$99863d90$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike >. So now they are trying to drum up the threat from massive uprisings as a result of. climate change. Climate change? Indeed? . The actual threat is right there in front of us: unlimited and unchecked growth of government snooping into everything we do and threatening us with a completely unaccountable IRS, yet we cry out for climate change to come along and save us?... I have news for them: climate change cannot save us from us. Spike I can do better than that. The real threat is not just out of control government, but in how to supply future needs for cheap energy. The most optimistic among us can see that oil supplies cannot last forever, coal is dirty, wind is ugly, solar is expensive and is in the dark most of the time. I keep going back to nukes. Who would have guessed in the 1980s that in a mere 30 years, we would be here where a dedicated environmentalist might have the bumper stick: Nuke the whales, and save the nukes. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri Jun 14 22:15:32 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 18:15:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] Edward Snowden's Transhumanist Girlfriend In-Reply-To: <034801ce6913$5eb505e0$1c1f11a0$@rainier66.com> References: <20130614081534.GL22824@leitl.org> <034801ce6913$5eb505e0$1c1f11a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51BB9604.6060308@aleph.se> On 2013-06-14 11:25, spike wrote: > The recent revelation is that the IRS has vast and arbitrary power and > apparently exactly zero accountability. This is the important point. Not really any issues of surveillance or government power, but the fact that it is secret and unaccountable. I strongly recommend http://www.harvardlawreview.org/symposium/papers2012/richards.pdf The Dangers of Surveillance by Neil M. Richards. He does a great analysis from a legal perspective, somewhat mirroring my own on http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2013/06/secret-snakes-biting-their-own-tails-secrecy-and-surveillance/ (but his is much better). The key point is that secret surveillance is illegitimate. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From clementlawyer at gmail.com Fri Jun 14 22:54:22 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 18:54:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] NSA Prism is motivated in part by fears that environmentally-linked disasters could spur anti-government activism In-Reply-To: <044101ce6945$fab3cb70$f01b6250$@rainier66.com> References: <20130614142333.GQ22824@leitl.org> <044101ce6945$fab3cb70$f01b6250$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 5:27 PM, spike wrote: > > ** ** > > World War 3 began before World War 2 ended, and continued nearly half a > century, gradually sputtering out in about the mid 1990s. The Middle > Eastern terrorists were a temporary replacement bad guy, but they didn?t > have nukes and when it came down to an actual shooting war, they didn?t > show. Now Osama is dead, and his following is far less scary than it was, > so the current government/military/industrial complex needs a new bad guy. > So now they are trying to drum up the threat from massive uprisings as a > result of? climate change. > > Climate change? Indeed? Is this really the very best we can do? Are we > really so hard up for scary enemies to justify massive government spending > that we need to resort to some nebulous something that will take at least > decades to attack us?**** > > The actual threat is right there in front of us: unlimited and unchecked > growth of government snooping into everything we do and threatening us with > a completely unaccountable IRS, yet we cry out for climate change to come > along and save us?**** > > Sheesh. I have news for them: climate change cannot save us from us. *** > * > > 1) The PAST: My take on the end of WWII was that the U.S.S.R., having defeated Germany, was set to roll over much of Europe and claim as much as it could. Truman, fearing this, set off two nukes in Japan (needlessly vis-a-vis ending the war with Japan) to threaten Moscow that we had an Ace up our sleeve that would trump their superior numbers and military might. The technological advantage that the U.S. showed off became the motivating force behind the tremendous scientific/technological war that both countries engaged in for the next several decades. 2) THE PRESENT: Diplomats in Europe have known and talked about for 5-10 years that America was buying up "crowd control" armaments at an astounding (and troubling) pace. They knew "something was up" long before we felt the impact of the Economic Downturn of the past several years (also indicating that our Gov't knew this was coming, despite their pronouncements that everything was okay). The true terrorists that have been keeping the intelligence community (IC) and our leaders up at night are the Occupy et al movements that are growing here at home. That's why most of the Presidential Orders over the past few years have been directed at taking over the Media, Internet, and other strategic industries, and instituting Martial Law in the event (not of a war, but) of a domestic emergency. It's also why the IRS targeted the Tea Party. They're deathly worried about unemployed graduates, with huge student loans and no job prospects getting together with Libertarians and diverse groups with diverse agendas, all wanting to overthrow the crony-capitalismsystem they've worked so hard to put in place. PRISM is intentionally directed at Americans, so as to know who is inciting and directing these movements. "Shiny, shiny" (media diversions and non-coverage on television of the riots) has worked here to keep the Occupy and Tea Party movements out of the spotlight. They've also, IMHO, infiltrated those movements and diverted their original missions in ways to make them more radical and scary (something which will render them less popular and make the label of terrorist more applicable). Shiny, shiny didn't stopped the riots in Spain, Greece, and elsewhere, so they're going to continue to amass power/control, so that they can (hope to) guaranty that this won't happen here in America. 3) THE FUTURE: There are good people in both the U.S. Military and IC that hate what the U.S. Gov't and our crony-capitalists are doing. I think they'll be on the transhumanist side, if/when the sh*t hits the fan and, if we're lucky, the 21st-Century exponential increases on the way toward a Technological Singularity will allow us to outpace the 20th-Century command-and-control methods that our Gov't will attempt to use to maintain its power. *Who* uplifts/enhances first will be a big part of what happens next. Watch who's supporting and who's opposing DIY movements/projects, in the meantime. James -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sat Jun 15 03:44:28 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 21:44:28 -0600 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] Edward Snowden's Transhumanist Girlfriend In-Reply-To: <51BB9604.6060308@aleph.se> References: <20130614081534.GL22824@leitl.org> <034801ce6913$5eb505e0$1c1f11a0$@rainier66.com> <51BB9604.6060308@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 4:15 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-06-14 11:25, spike wrote: > >> The recent revelation is that the IRS has vast and arbitrary power and >> apparently exactly zero accountability. >> > > This is the important point. Not really any issues of surveillance or > government power, but the fact that it is secret and unaccountable. > I feel compelled to add that there are other facets of the US governmental system that are similarly run "in the dark" and don't function with any balance of powers. The one that I am personally most familiar with is the "Juvenile Justice System". In this system, a judge can be seated who is a former senior worker in the Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS) where she can hear her former friends and colleagues throw unfounded accusations against well intentioned parents who have a different style of parenting than that which they approve of (say, the only parent has a penis, for example) and the judge listens to her friends. One might think one was entitled to be deprived of one's children only through a trial in front of one's peers. But OH NO, that is not the case. The sole decider is the judge who is biased to believe everything the division (DCFS) says. When the state Ombudsman (supposedly the check and balance against DCFS) creates a 29 page report outlining 72 specific cases where DCFS violated their OWN guidelines, DCFS is left to police it's own workers, and in my case did absolutely NOTHING to chastise the worker who has since been promoted. You might think that the public had a right to see these trials, but alas, because of the immutable need for protecting the privacy of the children, the public is not allowed to attend these mock trials. Darkness (or lack of transparency) is all that is needed for cockroaches to take over the world. The IRS system, with it's own judges, no juries, and their own system of rules with no checks and balances is no doubt similarly diseased. Someday, I may tell my whole story, but I don't know that anyone would be interested. The idea of a child abuser being given any kind of fair hearing doesn't strike at the heart of most plebes. But when they come and take away your children, you'll then know that you don't live in a free country, just as I now know it. Every time I have interacted with the government, they have made things immensely worse. They placed my sweet daughter in the custody of her mentally ill mother. She still suffers from the mental abuse that was heaped upon her for years. There is no justice in this world, or the next (hehe), but I hope that some day we get judges with sufficient intelligence (i.e. beyond human intelligence) and detachment that things may get better. But until then, I'm afraid it is hopeless. Especially when very few people are interested in shining the light on these dark corners of the gargantuan government that we have allowed to grow under our feet. Thanks for listening to today's installment of "Why I'm a libertarian"... :-) -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Sat Jun 15 06:25:13 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 08:25:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <51BB6BA0.4060303@aleph.se> References: <007401ce67bf$042e7110$0c8b5330$@rainier66.com> <51B959DD.3080202@aleph.se> <20130613114221.GL22824@leitl.org> <51BB6BA0.4060303@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20130615062512.GO22824@leitl.org> On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 03:14:40PM -0400, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-06-13 07:42, Eugen Leitl wrote: > In order to figure things out, you need to be able to acquire > information, process it and know how to notice interesting things. And in the intelligence business, without anyone being the wiser. > Right now we are somewhat obsessed with the big data idea where the > data all resides in a central location, having been acquired > piecemeal or wholesale over time by some organisation. It is > effective, but there are other ways of gathering data like > distributed searches and P2P. Currently they are inefficient, yet we > cannot be certain they are not going to become big. The Internet of > Things looks like it is going to store lots locally rather than in > the cloud. Absolutely. But nobody is going to offer the spooks full access to their network infrastructure and cluster facilities, or end users letting them run code on their routers and their mobile devices -- not voluntarily, and not without noticing it, at least occasionally. In fact, it is possible to make the job of data and metadata collection very hard without inconveniencing the end user very much. > The processing depends on what algorithm you runs. Right now we are > getting good at the algorithms that run well on clusters, but again > that might just be a low-hanging fruit. There are plenty of If you want to cross-correlate data on billions of entities, you will need a lot of memory and a fast interconnect. There are use cases where you can process data on the edge (in spatial processing), and it is being done. That kind of processing is relatively simple, however. > interesting distributed algorithms, and it is not too unlikely that > people might have options for running algorithms in some of the > clouds. Clouds consist of data centers full of hardware, running virtualized applications. Spooks have their own data centers and their own cloud, as well as classical supercomputer clusters. > I suspect that the key thing is people asking the right kind of new > question. Much of the big data infrastructures today are set up to > answer general questions or anticipated future questions, yet they > might well enable new user categories asking unprecedented > questions. 23andMe was not intended to support genealogy. Flickr was > not intended to build ontologies. Google was not intended for > finding unsecured surveillance cameras. > > So the real thing to watch out for is people who come up with clever > questions. We have built an infrastructure that makes it easier to > answer them. A Logic Named Joe is coming our way. A Botnet Named Joe, more likely. From eugen at leitl.org Sat Jun 15 06:50:59 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 08:50:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] Edward Snowden's Transhumanist Girlfriend In-Reply-To: References: <20130614081534.GL22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130615065059.GY22824@leitl.org> On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 11:27:54PM +0300, Aleksei Riikonen wrote: > On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 11:15 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > > No comment. > > Here's some good fresh commentary on the matter though: > > http://www.facebook.com/notes/naomi-wolf/my-creeping-concern-that-the-nsa-leaker-is-not-who-he-purports-to-be-/10151559239607949 The thought did cross my mind as well, but it doesn't matter in the end. Whatever the original intent has been, the result is will be a measurable amount of traffic going dark, and data collection made more difficult. There is really no good points for the spooks if the public attention are are focused on them. Notice how Mossad or Shin Bet almost never appears in the press? They are smaller, but they're also better at keeping a low profile. From eugen at leitl.org Sat Jun 15 06:58:51 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 08:58:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] NSA Prism is motivated in part by fears that environmentally-linked disasters could spur anti-government activism In-Reply-To: <044101ce6945$fab3cb70$f01b6250$@rainier66.com> References: <20130614142333.GQ22824@leitl.org> <044101ce6945$fab3cb70$f01b6250$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130615065851.GB22824@leitl.org> On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 02:27:30PM -0700, spike wrote: > Sheesh. I have news for them: climate change cannot save us from us. A collapsing state is a weaker state. The climate change are not the droids we're looking for. Notice that they (currently) are strong on sigint but weak on humint, and will be weaker on both points if budgets are slashed (they will). You can easily evade sigint by low-tech means. From eugen at leitl.org Sat Jun 15 07:07:03 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 09:07:03 +0200 Subject: [ExI] NSA Prism is motivated in part by fears that environmentally-linked disasters could spur anti-government activism In-Reply-To: <04a901ce694a$332cbf30$99863d90$@rainier66.com> References: <20130614142333.GQ22824@leitl.org> <044101ce6945$fab3cb70$f01b6250$@rainier66.com> <04a901ce694a$332cbf30$99863d90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130615070703.GE22824@leitl.org> On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 02:57:43PM -0700, spike wrote: > I can do better than that. The real threat is not just out of control > government, but in how to supply future needs for cheap energy. The most You nailed it. > optimistic among us can see that oil supplies cannot last forever, coal is > dirty, wind is ugly, solar is expensive and is in the dark most of the time. Ugly is irrelevant, expensive is irrelevant. The only questions you need to be asking: a) is it a source of energy? (EROEI >5:1) b) how quickly can it scale up (TW/year) c) will we run out if it in less than 50 years? > I keep going back to nukes. Fails on most of above points. Will never be a major source of cheap energy in the inner solar system. I can see how you could use a nuclear reactor for process heat and steam to mine tar sands and such, but that's more in the problem than the solution set either. Like fracking, nuke is a mirage for the desperate. Good recipe to perish in the energy desert, if followed. > Who would have guessed in the 1980s that in a mere 30 years, we would be > here where a dedicated environmentalist might have the bumper stick: Nuke > the whales, and save the nukes. From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Jun 15 10:17:57 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 12:17:57 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [ZS] Edward Snowden's Transhumanist Girlfriend In-Reply-To: <037801ce691d$d0a4ea80$71eebf80$@rainier66.com> References: <20130614081534.GL22824@leitl.org> <034801ce6913$5eb505e0$1c1f11a0$@rainier66.com> <037801ce691d$d0a4ea80$71eebf80$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51BC3F55.5030008@libero.it> Il 14/06/2013 18:39, spike ha scritto: > It?s all been a terrific civics lesson for Americans. Orwell?s Animal > Farm was right on. The left drove out the pigs and immediately became > the new pigs. If you haven?t read Animal Farm, stop what you are doing > and read that short book right now. Orwell was right on: it doesn?t > matter which side of the political spectrum, power corrupts all humans > equally. They were not virgins when they entered the House, they were not corrupted by the power. But the corrupted look for power over others. And I do not know you, but at the time of McCarthy, I do not remember the Democratic Party being a the cowered minority. It do not matter the political window dressing: if their solution is more power to the government they are all the same and if you look at their policies you are hard pressed to see any real difference. Mirco From M2darwin at aol.com Fri Jun 14 20:20:10 2013 From: M2darwin at aol.com (M2darwin at aol.com) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:20:10 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] [CCM-L] CCM-L Digest, Vol 47, Issue 62 Message-ID: <88a5f.6c33c99d.3eecd4f9@aol.com> I thought my response to this lady, posted on the Gerontology Research Forum, might be of some interest to CCM-Lers. In a message dated 6/10/2013 8:43:12 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, mallory.e.mclaren at gmail.com writes: I just came home from a conference about the mechanics of aging in Baltimore and I went in very hopeful, but left feeling frightened and shocked at the apparent state of affairs in longevity medicine. The focus was on "nutraceuticals": cranberries, blueberries, strawberries, cumin, and grapes. As a layperson, I was thinking "This is horrifying. What on earth are these scientists thinking, focusing on this stuff??!!?? If we focus on this stuff we're all going to be in the grave before no time." This is because nutritional changes are like rearranging deck chairs on a sinking Titanic when we're talking about preserving life. Even a "layperson" knows that. I have a hard time marrying my excitement and faith in our future against the landscape as it exists -- not only in our mastery of biology but in energy, space and air transport, materials tech, overall infrastructure and urban planning. I can only continue to do whatever I can on my end of things (law and governance) to turn red lights green for those who have the know-how to put rubber to road in making things like gene-changing treatments come to pass. Where was I going with any of this? One good strong cup of French press and reading about Ferraris and gene tech compelled me to start typing. Oh well! I think my point was that I'm having a hard time juxtaposing what inspires me: the articles, the TedTalks, the conversations -- versus those things that cause concern: (oftentimes) the conferences, hearing the actual scientists talk, what I perceive to be the scientific community's lack of urgency. Does anyone out there have any words of reassurance? -Mallory McLaren Lady, you crack me up, you really crack me up! I don't know what I find more amusing, your frantic anger that the pursuit of effective gerontological research isn't proceeding at the pace you anticipated, or the implied sense of outrage and entitlement that if things don't change soon, YOU are going to die! I haven't had such a good hard (crying hard) laugh since the day before yesterday, when an historian from a major East Coast university interviewed me for >4 hours about the history of efforts to achieve suspended animation and radical extension of the human life span from 1968 through the present. It seems I'm pretty much a unique specimen in that regard, since almost all of my "contemporaries" in that effort (from that period) are dead, long dead, incoherent, or otherwise inactivated by old age. Me, I'm no miracle Methuselah, I just happened to get involved - deeply involved - in trying to overcome aging death at the tender age of 13. My contemporaries at that time were thus probably about the same age as you are now. This was me in 1968: My Science Fair project was entitled "Suspended Animation in Plants and Animals," and the following year, an article with this picture of this man appeared in my local newspaper's weekly Sunday Supplement magazine section in an article entitled "Will We Live Forever?" I'm betting you have no idea who this gentlemen was? At the time, he was one of the foremost and most credible research gerontologists in the world. His name was Johan Bjorksten, and he had a very clever idea about what might be the root cause of aging. He had noticed that as organisms age, they tend to accumulate insoluble, often pigmented matter inside their non-dividing cells. Lipofuscin, which accumulates most prominently in brain and cardiac cells, is one such "age pigment." Bjorksten was a chemist, in fact he was an early polymer chemist, and had invented a number of _refinements_ (http://www.google.com/patents?id=4qxmAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage& q&f=false) to the first practical document duplicating device the _hectograph_ (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/259209/hectograph) , which had been invented by the Russian Mikhail Alisov, in 1869. Bjorksten determined that this insoluble material, which could occupy as much as as 30% to 40% of the volume of non-dividing cells in aged animals, consisted largely of cross linked molecules of lipids and proteins. So molecularly cross linked, compact and tough was this material that it was completely resistant to digestion by trypsin and other commonly available "digestive" biological enzymes. This posed a puzzle for Bjorksten, because if no living systems could decompose this material, it was so stable that it would necessarily remain as indigestible debris after each organism died. Thus, the earth should be covered in such debris by now! Clearly, this is not case, and so this implied to Bjorksten that there must, in fact, be living organisms with specialized enzymes capable of breaking down this material. The source of these cross links? Free radicals were a good candidate for generating such dense, insoluble macromolecules. As it turns out, Bjorksten wasn't far off the mark. Today, we know that lipofuscin and related species are the indigestible and highly cross linked debris of old mitochondria that have been reprocessed through the lysosomes of cells. Bjorksten thought these cross linked molecules interfered with normal cell metabolism and possibly acted as toxic species which caused cells to senesce. He set out to find enzymes in nature which could reverse these cross links and thus, he thought, reverse aging. Whether or not Bjorksten did indeed find the "microproteases" and "microlipases" he was looking for remains unknown, but he did find a strain of microorganism that could digest the age pigment from geriatric humans and animals in the form of the beta hemolytic bacterium Bacillus cereus - a ubiquitous bug present in soil which is also the cause of Fried Rice Syndrome - a variety of "24-hour food poisoning" that is characterized by nausea, vomiting diarrhea and abdominal cramping. By the early 1970s, Bjorksten was optimistic he had the tools in hand to if not defeat aging, then to dramatically prolong lifespan. Of course, Bjorksten has been dead for many years, but his cross linkage theory of aging lives on. He clearly identified a significant factor in the pathophysiology of aging - though whether it is a cause or effect is still a subject of debate. However, the most important points in this story are: Johan Bjorksten is dead and you have to do a very careful search of the literature to find out who he was and what his contributions were to experimental gerontology. He doesn't even have a Wikipedia page! [A bibliography of Bjorksten's work is appended at the end.] Bjorksten, and many of his contemporaries in both experimental and interventive gerontology were truly optimistic that aging would be conquered in their lifetimes. And who was I, a 15 year old boy, to disagree? When Steve Harris says that aging is an incredibly complex problem, he is right. There's actually a very easy way to tell that he is right, and that is to look around for any non-aging or immortal mammals, or other vertebrates, for that matter. There aren't any. Why is that? Well, one cogent explanation (and probably the correct one) is that for an immortal organism to exist it would be necessary for it to continuously maintain and repair itself so that it remained youthful, or at least non-senescent, indefinitely. Of course, there are a couple of problems with that. The first is that any such "maintenance program" would necessarily be both "costly and complex" in evolutionary terms. Think about it, what kinds of biological, biochemical or other processes would be required to maintain, say a brain or a heart in indefinite good health? What do you do with cross linked, let alone mis-folded proteins? What is required to replace one of those brain cells (and its unique, encoded memory information) if it should die or be destroyed? We have no idea. As to evolution in the form of natural selection? Well, the critical question to ask and answer is, "what incentive would evolution have to "develop" such complex mechanisms which would also necessarily be energy intensive (e.g., costly)? The answer would seem to be, "none." In fact, reproduction seems to be the answer "nature" has arrived at in the face of the ever increasing costs of maintaining individual organisms in indefinite good health over long periods of time. The simple fact is that nature simply doesn't do this. Instead, evolution puts precisely the amount of effort into maintaining the health and vitality of individual organisms as is justified by the rate at which they succumb to misadventure and macro- and micro-predation. The take home message is as brutal as it is simple: somebody is going to have to create the enormously complex maintenance and renewal procedures for complex organisms which or nature (or god if you are mystic) had no "reason" to "write." I first realized this in my mid-teens - I understood that aging was likely to be a hugely complex set of problems and that there was unlikely to be any elixir of youth, or any compound or group of chemical compounds that would "solve" the aging problem. Aging was going to be a engineering problem on the molecular, genetic, cellular and even the organismal level, and not a "pill problem." So, I asked myself, "Which is the easier problem; achieving suspended animation or conquering aging, and which is more the stuff of unsubstantiated science fiction: an anti-aging "immortality pill", or reversible organ cryopreservation?" As you can see from the news clip above, my bet was on the latter. That was in 1972 when I was 17 years old. So far, that bet has been wrong. As it turns out, achieving reversible cryopreservation of a mammalian kidney or brain is also very, very complicated. See: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CDwQFjAB &url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.21cm.com%2Fpdfs%2Fcryopreservation_advances.pdf&ei=3HO 7UdfCIMO-yQHes4GYCw&usg=AFQjCNEpGSqcjH23IQxcWb8BcjtrE_uwKw&sig2=-2b7-Rtatqr0 _xrfztyBWg Probably still not as complicated as "curing" aging, but still complicated enough that it hasn't happened yet. When you write: "I have a hard time marrying my excitement and faith in our future against the landscape as it exists -- not only in our mastery of biology but in energy, space and air transport, materials tech, overall infrastructure and urban planning." I don't know whether I want to slap you, or sit down and have a good cry with you. Since neither of those courses of action seems likely to be productive, I've chosen, instead, to write this instructional missive. While I may have been just a kid in 1968, I wasn't a moron and I did not live in a vacuum. My interests in science and coming developments in technology was keen. I was an avid reader of classic 1950s-60s science fiction as well as popular and ?hard? science publications and books. In 1968 my country was the richest and most technologically sophisticated in the world, and it was about to land a man on the moon, and return him safely to earth. In fact, it was about to land a number of men on the moon and recover them all safely. At that time, the United States (US) Federal Government was funding the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to an unprecedented degree. Not since the Manhattan Project had so much money and effort been expended upon a scientific undertaking. A world view emerged from this effort, and it was a world view promulgated, endorsed by, and made completely credible to the populace by the US government. That world view was one that posited as inevitable the construction of a large, orbiting space station, the establishment of a permanent lunar base, and the beginning of the expansion of humanity into the solar system ? and more speculatively, beyond. This worldview is best summarized and most accessible today in the first half of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey which premiered in 1968, the year I was becoming deeply involved in cryonics. While the film was undeniably science fiction in its premise of encountering extraterrestrial life, it?s technological predictions of what life would be like at the turn of century were universally considered completely reasonable by far sighted and respected scientists and futurists ? even conservative ones such Dandridge Cole and Isaac Asimov. Below is a picture of my "cryobiology lab" taken in 1973. If you look closely at the poster on the door you'll see that it is a promotional poster for the creation of what was to become National Institute on Aging: "the broad scientific effort to understand the nature of aging and to extend the healthy, active years of life," The NIA was created in 1974. I'm still waiting for the first FDA approved "anti-aging pill." Hell, I'm still waiting for any proven pill that will slow or halt aging, FDA approved or not. That world, then over 30 years in the future, became my model, and the model for millions of other thinking, forward-looking people, young and old alike, for how the future would be. It was a world where space colonization was underway, life spans had been modestly extended, human hibernation was a reality and solid state organ cryopreservation was in use for storing transplanted organs. It was a reassuring view of the future, and in particular of my future, if I didn?t die before getting there. By 1976, like you, I was becoming uncomfortably aware that the future I expected was not materializing at a rate consistent with the worldview in 2001. Organ cryopreservation programs had been abandoned in all but one facility in world, the US manned space program was doomed, and interest in serious, interventive gerontology, let alone meaningful research, was nil. The money and intellectual resources required to achieve these goals had been redirected to an endless series of wars, first in Vietnam and later in the Middle East and East, as well as a succession of botched and unsuccessful programs to end poverty in the US (the Great Society), cure cancer, and deal with longstanding mishandling of the environment. The spending spree of the latter days of the Cold War bankrupted the Soviet Union and, in truth, bankrupted the West, as well. The focus of the planet?s population was on protecting itself against bogeymen of its own making and it spent and spent maniacally to create weapons systems of vast lethality and ever increasing complexity. So, sometime in late in 1976 I wrote out a timeline of milestones that I thought would be necessary if I were to survive. This was a simple list of critical achievements with the dates by which they must be accomplished alongside them. It took a conservative and probably all too unfortunately realistic prediction, of the likely arc of my productive life which is shown in the image above. While it has proved a more accurate road map than my naive first imaginings of my future, it too has fallen short and has proven flawed, perhaps fatally flawed. Since I was not then, nor am I now, either poorly informed about cryonics or lacking in real world experience in its practice, I suggest you might want to pay careful attention to what went wrong with this very conservative timeline, because it very likely has important implications for your future as well. Whether you believe that it will ever be feasible to "cure frostbite," or to cure cancer, for that matter, you still can't escape from the question of which is more likely to save your life; basic research in gerontology, or basic research in cryobiology that enables truly reversible cryopreservation of the brain? The latter will provide a kind of one way "medical time travel." It may be your only chance at an indefinitely long and healthy life. For myself, I think that a combination of efforts in both cryobiology and interventive gerontology is likely to be the most productive for healthy, reasonably young individuals (say, 40 and younger). Fetal stem cells are now understood to colonize the mother and to be capable of providing regenerative rescue if non-dividing cells in the maternal heart or brain are injured during pregnancy. Indeed, fetal-maternal stem colonization occurs even in the case of surrogacy where there is no genetic relationship between the fetus and the mother! This suggests that "third party" embryonic stem cells may be used to achieve critical cellular repair in aged and injured organs and organisms. Take a good long look at this paper: Transplantation of mesenchymal stem cells from young donors delays aging in mice which is available as free full-text here: http://www.nature.com/srep/2011/110818/srep00067/full/srep00067.html The purpose of this research was to treat osteoporosis in old mice. It not only ameliorated osteoporosis, it markedly extended the life span's of already aged mice, including the maximum life span of the animals. This suggests that there may be a way to adapt or hijack existing tissue and organ repair and regeneration mechanisms that were developed by evolution not to counter aging, but rather to create new multicellular organisms in the first place (via embryogenesis/reproduction). See: Chan WF, Gurnot C, Montine TJ, Sonnen JA, Guthrie KA, Nelson JL. Male microchimerism in the human female brain. PLoS One. 2012;7(9):e45592. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0045592. Epub 2012 Sep 26. PubMed PMID: 23049819; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3458919. Kara RJ, Bolli P, Matsunaga I, Tanweer O, Altman P, Chaudhry HW. A mouse model for fetal maternal stem cell transfer during ischemic cardiac injury. Clin Transl Sci. 2012 Aug;5(4):321-8. doi: 10.1111/j.1752-8062.2012.00424.x. Epub 2012 Jun 18. PubMed PMID: 22883609; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3419501. Pritchard S, Bianchi DW. Fetal cell microchimerism in the maternal heart: baby gives back. Circ Res. 2012 Jan 6;110(1):3-5. doi: 10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.111.260299. PubMed PMID: 22223204. Lim GB. Stem cells: Do fetal cells repair maternal hearts? Nat Rev Cardiol. 2011 Dec 6;9(2):67. doi: 10.1038/nrcardio.2011.197. PubMed PMID: 22143081. Kara RJ, Bolli P, Karakikes I, Matsunaga I, Tripodi J, Tanweer O, Altman P, Shachter NS, Nakano A, Najfeld V, Chaudhry HW. Fetal cells traffic to injured maternal myocardium and undergo cardiac differentiation. Circ Res. 2012 Jan 6;110(1):82-93. doi: 10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.111.249037. Epub 2011 Nov 14. PubMed PMID: 22082491; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3365532. There is also rapidly growing understanding about the nature of aging in the vascular endothelium and with it, emerging possibilities for greatly slowing it. The uncoupling of nitric oxide synthase (both endothelial and neuronal) and the accompanying injury from superoxide production, as well as disrupted signal transduction has been traced to the Rho/Rho-kinase, or ROCK pathway, and the ROCK inhibitor drug, Fasudil, is already on the market in Europe. Similarly, the 5-PDE inhibitors, now used to treat erectile dysfunction and primary pulmonary hypertension have been found to reverse some age associated changes in the vascular endothelium as well as to induce the bone marrow to release endothelial stem cells. When Steve Harris writes that "You lose 100,000 neurons a day, and there's nothing you can do about it, apparently," he is articulating what has been our understanding of aging in the brain, until very recently. Recent research seems to indicate that there is not a great deal of neuronal loss during aging of the human brain, but rather that there is neuronal cell atrophy with loss or arborization. See: Alme MN, Wibrand K, Dagestad G, Bramham CR. Chronic fluoxetine treatment induces brain region-specific upregulation of genes associated with BDNF-induced long-term potentiation. Neural Plast. 2007;2007:26496. doi: 10.1155/2007/26496. PubMed PMID: 18301726; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2248427. De Foubert G, Carney SL, Robinson CS, Destexhe EJ, Tomlinson R, Hicks CA, Murray TK, Gaillard JP, Deville C, Xhenseval V, Thomas CE, O'Neill MJ, Zetterstr?m TS. Fluoxetine-induced change in rat brain expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor varies depending on length of treatment. Neuroscience. 2004;128(3):597-604. PubMed PMID: 15381288. Khundakar AA, Zetterstr?m TS. Biphasic change in BDNF gene expression following antidepressant drug treatment explained by differential transcript regulation. Brain Res. 2006 Aug 23;1106(1):12-20. Epub 2006 Jul 13. PubMed PMID: 16842762. Pei Q, Zetterstr?m TS, Sprakes M, Tordera R, Sharp T. Antidepressant drug treatment induces Arc gene expression in the rat brain. Neuroscience. 2003;121(4):975-82. PubMed PMID: 14580947. Burke SN, Barnes CA. Neural plasticity in the ageing brain. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2006 Jan;7(1):30-40. Review. PubMed PMID: 16371948. Fabricius K, Jacobsen JS, Pakkenberg B. Effect of age on neocortical brain cells in 90+ year old human females--a cell counting study. Neurobiol Aging. 2013 Jan;34(1):91-9. doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2012.06.009. Epub 2012 Aug 9. PubMed PMID: 22878165. Freeman SH, Kandel R, Cruz L, Rozkalne A, Newell K, Frosch MP, Hedley-Whyte ET, Locascio JJ, Lipsitz LA, Hyman BT. Preservation of neuronal number despite age-related cortical brain atrophy in elderly subjects without Alzheimer disease. J Neuropathol Exp Neurol. 2008 Dec;67(12):1205-12. doi: 10.1097/NEN.0b013e31818fc72f. PubMed PMID: 19018241; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2734185. Terry RD, DeTeresa R, Hansen LA. Neocortical cell counts in normal human adult aging. Ann Neurol. 1987 Jun;21(6):530-9. PubMed PMID: 3606042. In other words, the neurons are still there, but they are disabled and quiescent. This is similar to what is seen in both bipolar and major depressive disorder. Importantly, these changes can be reversed in animals using molecules such as brain derived nerve growth factor (BDNGF). See: Weissmiller AM, Wu C. Current advances in using neurotrophic factors to treat neurodegenerative disorders. Transl Neurodegener. 2012 Jul 26;1(1):14. doi: 10.1186/2047-9158-1-14. PubMed PMID: 23210531; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3542569. Nagahara AH, Bernot T, Moseanko R, Brignolo L, Blesch A, Conner JM, Ramirez A, Gasmi M, Tuszynski MH. Long-term reversal of cholinergic neuronal decline in aged non-human primates by lentiviral NGF gene delivery. Exp Neurol. 2009 Jan;215(1):153-9. doi: 10.1016/j.expneurol.2008.10.004. Epub 2008 Oct 25. PubMed PMID: 19013154; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2632603. Bishop KM, Hofer EK, Mehta A, Ramirez A, Sun L, Tuszynski M, Bartus RT.Therapeutic potential of CERE-110 (AAV2-NGF): targeted, stable, and sustained NGF delivery and trophic activity on rodent basal forebrain cholinergic neurons. Exp Neurol. 2008 un;211(2):574-84. doi: 10.1016/j.expneurol.2008.03.004. Epub 2008 Mar 19. PubMed PMID: 18439998; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2709503. Capsoni S, Giannotta S, Cattaneo A. Nerve growth factor and galantamine ameliorate early signs of neurodegeneration in anti-nerve growth factor mice. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2002 Sep 17;99(19):12432-7. Epub 2002 Aug 30. PubMed PMID: 12205295; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC129462. Cooper JD, Salehi A, Delcroix JD, Howe CL, Belichenko PV, Chua-Couzens J, Kilbridge JF, Carlson EJ, Epstein CJ, Mobley WC. Failed retrograde transport of NGF in a mouse model of Down's syndrome: reversal of cholinergic neurodegenerative phenotypes following NGF infusion. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001 Aug 28;98(18):10439-44. Epub 2001 Aug 14. PubMed PMID: 11504920; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC56979. Conner JM, Darracq MA, Roberts J, Tuszynski MH. Nontropic actions of neurotrophins: subcortical nerve growth factor gene delivery reverses age-related degeneration of primate cortical cholinergic innervation. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001 Feb 13;98(4):1941-6. PubMed PMID: 11172055; PubMed Central PMCID:PMC29361. Synthetic BDNF mimetics have recently been made which cross the blood brain barrier and reverse age related changes in the neurons of animals and it has also been discovered that antidepressants work by acutely increasing trkB signaling in the brain which in turn results in up-regulated BDNF production in the cerebral cortex. Alme MN, Wibrand K, Dagestad G, Bramham CR. Chronic fluoxetine treatment induces brain region-specific upregulation of genes associated with BDNF-induced long-term potentiation. Neural Plast. 2007;2007:26496. doi: 10.1155/2007/26496.PubMed PMID: 18301726; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2248427. De Foubert G, Carney SL, Robinson CS, Destexhe EJ, Tomlinson R, Hicks CA, Murray TK, Gaillard JP, Deville C, Xhenseval V, Thomas CE, O'Neill MJ, Zetterstr?m TS. Fluoxetine-induced change in rat brain expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor varies depending on length of treatment. Neuroscience. 2004;128(3):597-604. PubMed PMID: 15381288. Khundakar AA, Zetterstr?m TS. Biphasic change in BDNF gene expression following antidepressant drug treatment explained by differential transcriptregula tion. Brain Res. 2006 Aug 23;1106(1):12-20. Epub 2006 Jul 13. PubMed PMID: 16842762. Pei Q, Zetterstr?m TS, Sprakes M, Tordera R, Sharp T. Antidepressant drug treatment induces Arc gene expression in the rat brain. Neuroscience. 2003;121(4):975-82. PubMed PMID: 14580947. I've written an extensive summary here: http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/05/30/going-going-gone/ http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/05/31/going-going-gone%E2%80%A6-part-2 / http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/05/31/going-going-gone-part-3/ These are hopeful developments, and they strongly suggest the direction and nature in which effective, near term interventive gerontological research should proceed. But they don't by any means constitute any foreseeable solution to the problems of aging and death. Not for me, and not for you, either. Any such solution will require the perfection of suspended animation, as well as huge, complex advances in gerontology. Most importantly, these developments are not "technological inevitabilities." In fact, they are technological unlikelihood's unless and until individuals take action to fight the floodtide of human efforts and desires which run contrary to these achievements. (See: http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/02/07/67/) The take home message is that even if you do everything you can do to advance "aging research" you are still going to end up dead - just like Johan Bjorksten and all the other dead gerontologists. So, what are you going to do about it? http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/04/04/michael-g-darwin-a-biographical- precis/ Bjorksten Bibliography 1: Bjorksten J, Tenhu H. The crosslinking theory of aging--added evidence. ExpGerontol. 1990;25(2):91-5. PubMed PMID: 2115005. 2: Bjorksten J. The role of aluminum and age-dependent decline. Environ Health Perspect. 1989 May;81:241-2. PubMed PMID: 2759061; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC1567539. 3: Bjorksten JA. Dietary aluminum and Alzheimer's disease. Sci Total Environ. 1982 Sep;25(1):81-6. PubMed PMID: 7146892. 4: Bjorksten JA. Aluminum as a cause of senile dementia. Compr There. 1982 May;8(5):73-6. PubMed PMID: 7094562. 5: Bjorksten J. Selenium in nutrition. Compr There. 1981 Jul;7(7):35-8. Review. PubMed PMID: 7026153. 6: Bjorksten J. A unifying concept for degenerative diseases. Compr There. 1978 Jan;4(1):44-52. PubMed PMID: 620512. 7: Bjorksten J. Some therapeutic implications of the crosslinkage theory of aging. Adv Exp Med Biol. 1977;86B:579-602. Review. PubMed PMID: 333873. 8: Bjorksten J. The crosslinkage theory of aging: clinical implications. Compr There. 1976 Feb;2(2):65-74. PubMed PMID: 1253543. 9: Bjorksten J, Bloodworth JM Jr, Buetow R. Enzymatic lysis in vitro of hyalin deposits in human kidney. J Am Geriatr Soc. 1972 Apr;20(4):148-50. PubMed PMID: 4111563. 10: Bjorksten J, Acharya PV, Ashman S, Wetlaufer DB. Gerogenic fractions in the tritiated rat. J Am Geriatr Soc. 1971 Jul;19(7):561-74. PubMed PMID: 5106728. 11: Bjorksten J. Approaches and prospects for the control of age-dependent deterioration. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 1971 Jun 7;184:95-102. PubMed PMID: 5286667. 12: Bjorksten J, Ashman S. Nitrogenous compounds immobilized in an aged rat. J Am Geriatr Soc. 1970 Feb;18(2):115-23. PubMed PMID: 5461109. 13: Andrews F, Bjorksten J, Trenk FB, Henick AS, Koch RB. The reaction of an autoxidized lipid with proteins. J Am Oil Chem Soc. 1965 Sep;42(9):779-81. PubMed PMID: 5827901. 14: ANDREWS F, BJORKSTEN J, UND, LAAKSOPERWOOD C, THOMSON D. CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF ENZYME-FRACTIONATED AGED HEART TISSUE. J Am Geriatr Soc. 1965 Feb;13:94-102. PubMed PMID: 14255636. 15: Bjorksten J. The crosslinkage theory of aging. J Am Geriatr Soc. 1968 Apr;16(4):408-27. Review. PubMed PMID: 4868749. 16: Bjorksten J. Pathways to the decisive extension of the human specific lifespan. J m Geriatr Soc. 1977 Sep;25(9):396-9. PubMed PMID: 893909. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Jones wrote: > > On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 11:25 AM, spike wrote: >> >> The USA has the farthest left government we are likely to ever see in our >> lifetimes, > > What a disgustingly depressive thought.. ### Hey, this is a very vague statement - depressive because it's so far left or depressive because there may not be a more leftist one coming? But this brings me to the question of who are those leftists one keeps hearing about. Let's leave aside any analysis of the historical meaning of the political left, and instead look at what kind of people in today's America would be called "leftist". Leftists consist of two major subgroups: the losers and the winners. The losers are rank and file blue collar proles, inept hippie types, various Occupy freaks and catspaws, low-ranking academics and other assorted riffraff. Not very interesting. The winners however are, despite spouting the same slogans, a completely different species. The two outstanding features they exhibit are hypocrisy and obsession with social status. Enviously looking around, they are driven by a desire to claw their way to the top of the status pyramid. In a bygone era they might have worked for the holy church, or for General Motors - any institution where bureaucratic ranks provide a clear structure for individual social progression. In today's world the nation- or world-state is the locus of power which is why the culturally Marxist flock there. The ideal habitat for the leftist winner is the school or university, where elevated status is built into the job description of the teacher or professor. The accumulation of leftists in schools lead to increasing leftist indoctrination of consecutive generations, and eventual leftist "takeover" of the society with 90% or more of government bureaucrats and academics voting for a nominally leftist party. I am using the word in parentheses, since nothing has really changed: The same kind of people who might have spouted Christian sermons in 1913 now spout traditional leftist shibboleths but their essence, hypocrisy and obsession with status, are still there. The kind of people currently referred to as "leftists" have to be hypocritical. Their idea of eudaimonia involves a relative superiority which implies the existence of inferiors. Since hardly anybody likes being called inferior, the aspiring leftist who wants to avoid pushback must be at pains to deny the importance of status, or even deny the possibility of somebody being inferior. This explains their public, flat denial of the importance of IQ (and a private obsession with it), and the denial of gender or racial differences. In order to appear less threatening and more humane, the leftist endlessly expresses concern for various victim groups. Of course, the leftist is not very willing to part with his own resources to help those in need because he does not truly care about them (not surprising, since almost nobody cares, but this is another story altogether), and usually demands that other people's money should be used - but the credit should flow the the leftist. That's why homeless people's cell phones are called "Obamaphones" and not "MyTaxDollarPhones". The above explains the seemingly strange combination of egalitarian rhetoric used by our masters, and their resolute practical commitment to ruthless, hierarchical control. Because of all that, it is not only unsurprising but rather completely inevitable that the administration using more traditionally leftist rhetoric ends up being even more authoritarian than their junior partners in the scam (the Republicams, in case you don't get my drift). 99.9% of government employees are unelected, and most of them are culturally leftist but in practice conventionally power-grabby hacks, just like their spiritual predecessors since ancient Babylon's first clerics. You let them work with a few elected, arrogant, narcissistic, hypocritical social strivers steeped in commie rhetoric, and the sky is the limit (at least as far as the budget deficit goes). Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Jun 15 17:52:57 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 13:52:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Declaration of subservience Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 4:15 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > Courtesy of the UK's Daily Mail tabloid, may I present Mr. Snowden's > paramour, one Ms. Lindsay Mills: > > Yes, that is a copy of Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity Is Near" ### This could imply something like 2 degrees of separation between me and a major enemy of the USG. And only a couple of years ago it transpired that another enemy, Julian Assange, frequented this same list. To the powerful supervisors who may direct their esteemed attention to our list, let it be known that I abjectly grovel in their presence, and do not pose any danger to their ascendant power. Please don't be mad at me for the crimethink that fills my mind. It will never lead to action, I promise. Now, for a silver lining in the NSA-Cloud: Back in the day, given crappy intelligence-gathering methods, the Gestapo, and the KGB tended to cast rather wide nets in their effort to subdue the individuals truly dangerous to their power. Millions of people ended gassed or frozen in Siberia just so the Generalissimus could sleep unafraid. Today, with detailed social graphs and awareness stretching in time for decades, the USG can direct its attention to the always very small cadre of real troublemakers, and will most likely leave irrelevant whiners like us alone. Sure, being a member of this list could make it impossible to obtain security clearance, or get a job working for them but at least we are not likely to be dragged off in the night. So don't worry Spike, you are safe despite your crimethink. Rafal From protokol2020 at gmail.com Sat Jun 15 20:09:16 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 22:09:16 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Who are the "leftists"? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: This is the second best description of the leftism I read so far. Very good, very good, Rafal! On Sat, Jun 15, 2013 at 9:12 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 11:57 AM, J.R. Jones > wrote: > > > > On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 11:25 AM, spike wrote: > >> > >> The USA has the farthest left government we are likely to ever see in > our > >> lifetimes, > > > > What a disgustingly depressive thought.. > > ### Hey, this is a very vague statement - depressive because it's so > far left or depressive because there may not be a more leftist one > coming? > > But this brings me to the question of who are those leftists one keeps > hearing about. Let's leave aside any analysis of the historical > meaning of the political left, and instead look at what kind of people > in today's America would be called "leftist". > > Leftists consist of two major subgroups: the losers and the winners. > The losers are rank and file blue collar proles, inept hippie types, > various Occupy freaks and catspaws, low-ranking academics and other > assorted riffraff. Not very interesting. > > The winners however are, despite spouting the same slogans, a > completely different species. The two outstanding features they > exhibit are hypocrisy and obsession with social status. Enviously > looking around, they are driven by a desire to claw their way to the > top of the status pyramid. In a bygone era they might have worked for > the holy church, or for General Motors - any institution where > bureaucratic ranks provide a clear structure for individual social > progression. In today's world the nation- or world-state is the locus > of power which is why the culturally Marxist flock there. > > The ideal habitat for the leftist winner is the school or university, > where elevated status is built into the job description of the teacher > or professor. The accumulation of leftists in schools lead to > increasing leftist indoctrination of consecutive generations, and > eventual leftist "takeover" of the society with 90% or more of > government bureaucrats and academics voting for a nominally leftist > party. I am using the word in parentheses, since nothing has really > changed: The same kind of people who might have spouted Christian > sermons in 1913 now spout traditional leftist shibboleths but their > essence, hypocrisy and obsession with status, are still there. > > The kind of people currently referred to as "leftists" have to be > hypocritical. Their idea of eudaimonia involves a relative superiority > which implies the existence of inferiors. Since hardly anybody likes > being called inferior, the aspiring leftist who wants to avoid > pushback must be at pains to deny the importance of status, or even > deny the possibility of somebody being inferior. This explains their > public, flat denial of the importance of IQ (and a private obsession > with it), and the denial of gender or racial differences. In order to > appear less threatening and more humane, the leftist endlessly > expresses concern for various victim groups. Of course, the leftist is > not very willing to part with his own resources to help those in need > because he does not truly care about them (not surprising, since > almost nobody cares, but this is another story altogether), and > usually demands that other people's money should be used - but the > credit should flow the the leftist. That's why homeless people's cell > phones are called "Obamaphones" and not "MyTaxDollarPhones". > > The above explains the seemingly strange combination of egalitarian > rhetoric used by our masters, and their resolute practical commitment > to ruthless, hierarchical control. > > Because of all that, it is not only unsurprising but rather completely > inevitable that the administration using more traditionally leftist > rhetoric ends up being even more authoritarian than their junior > partners in the scam (the Republicams, in case you don't get my > drift). 99.9% of government employees are unelected, and most of them > are culturally leftist but in practice conventionally power-grabby > hacks, just like their spiritual predecessors since ancient Babylon's > first clerics. You let them work with a few elected, arrogant, > narcissistic, hypocritical social strivers steeped in commie rhetoric, > and the sky is the limit (at least as far as the budget deficit goes). > > Rafal > _______________________________________________ > 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 rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Jun 15 23:13:49 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 19:13:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A vote of no-confidence Message-ID: A few months ago we had a little discussion here on the value of voting in government official elections, where I expressed my unwillingness to participate, in part due to my perception that voting provides legitimacy to a highly inefficient system of social organization. Others countered with perceptions of inherent duty to participate and vote. It occurred to me that legitimate alternatives to the existing system could harness both perceptions and craft a system of non-voting or anti-voting specifically designed to give voice those who want to say "None of the above". Imagine the Tea Party, or the Libertarian Party, instead of futile engagement on their enemy's turf, would instead organize alternative events, on the same day as government-sponsored ones where voters would, either physically or on-line, vow not to vote. These would be active pledges of non-participation, in a way, a form of participation but on our terms, not on the terms dictated by the gerrymandered, bought-and-paid-for election system. They could sell official-looking non-voting slips, saying that Mr/Ms So-and-so, on this fine morning of November 8, 2016, did not vote for Ms. Clinton or for her Republican team-mate. Maybe all participants would get T-shirts saying "I did not vote - so why the hell did you?" Maybe we could even elect our own non-president who for the next four years would be in charge of telling others "See, I told you so". Both the legitimacy folks and the voting-is-duty could walk away satisfied from here. These non-voters would dispense with the illusion of voting to win and accept that the only winners in latter-day elections are the 99.9% who are not on the ballots. A bit of good natured political theatre might be a great antidote to the acrimony of the Tweedledee vs. Tweedledum contest. Rafal From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 16 02:39:24 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 19:39:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Who are the "leftists"? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <008801ce6a3a$b75791e0$2606b5a0$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki ... >...### Hey, this is a very vague statement - depressive because it's so far left or depressive because there may not be a more leftist one coming?...Because of all that, it is not only unsurprising but rather completely inevitable that the administration using more traditionally leftist rhetoric ends up being even more authoritarian than their junior partners in the scam (the Republicams, in case you don't get my drift). 99.9% of government employees are unelected, and most of them are culturally leftist but in practice conventionally power-grabby hacks, just like their spiritual predecessors since ancient Babylon's first clerics. You let them work with a few elected, arrogant, narcissistic, hypocritical social strivers steeped in commie rhetoric, and the sky is the limit (at least as far as the budget deficit goes)....Rafal _______________________________________________ EXCELLENT post Rafal, me lad. I don't have any problem with the fed being leftist, so long as it stays within the strict constraints of the constitution, something it has not wanted to do for a long time. The constitution describes a federal government that doesn't really do much other than military, some infrastructure such as interstate highways, and so on, but not very so far on. The founders had in mind the real political power at the state level, so we have a number of competing states. Everyone gets to choose their favorite form of government, everyone wins. spike From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 16 02:56:01 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 19:56:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Declaration of subservience In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <008901ce6a3d$0992fba0$1cb8f2e0$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki ... >...### This could imply something like 2 degrees of separation between me and a major enemy of the USG. And only a couple of years ago it transpired that another enemy, Julian Assange, frequented this same list... Do you guys remember what happened when Julian came in? I may be wrong on this, so I should consult the archives. As I vaguely recall from at least a dozen yrs ago, he only posted a few times and posited some kind of central anonymous repository for people to submit leaked info. Generally he was a hardline openness advocate. He got into a big quarrel with one of our most prolific posters who was a hardline privacy advocate. >...Today, with detailed social graphs and awareness stretching in time for decades, the USG can direct its attention to the always very small cadre of real troublemakers, and will most likely leave irrelevant whiners like us alone... The problem with that line of reasoning is that once it takes care of the small cadre of real troublemakers, there is a vacuum that draws from the irrelevant whiners like us into the new small cadre of real troublemakers. The process is repeated until it draws up all the irrelevant whiners. >... but at least we are not likely to be dragged off in the night... ...yet. >... So don't worry Spike, you are safe despite your crimethink. Rafal _______________________________________________ For now. But we must recognize the real threat: if we allow this new power to go unchallenged, it becomes established with a precedent. Those on the left seem to be unaware that it is the power that corrupts, absolutely without regard to the position on the political spectrum of the person in power. We are due for another far right government, which we haven't had in 25 years. When the new guys arrive, I suspect we will find the right is just as corruptible as the left. spike From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 16 05:10:14 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 22:10:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Declaration of subservience In-Reply-To: <008901ce6a3d$0992fba0$1cb8f2e0$@rainier66.com> References: <008901ce6a3d$0992fba0$1cb8f2e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <009901ce6a4f$c925a050$5b70e0f0$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of spike _______________________________________________ >... When the new guys arrive, I suspect we will find the right is just as corruptible as the left...spike _______________________________________________ Here you go, a perfect example of what I meant when I commented it is power that corrupts, regardless of where they are on the political spectrum. Current VP Joe Biden was all against NSA surveillance until he became the one with the power. Then it is suddenly OK. It would all be a big joke except for the growing possibility that our current president may be leaving office in disgrace within a year, with scandals closing in on all fronts. In that case, this Joe Biden becomes the next president. For your Saturday evening entertainment: http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/11/biden-in-2006-dont-count-me-in-on-trusting -nsa-phone-call-surveillance/ Biden in 2006: 'Don't count me in' on trusting NSA phone call surveillance 11:21 PM 06/11/2013 Back in 2006, in an appearance on CBS's "The Early Show," then-Democratic Delaware Sen. Joe Biden railed against the controversial National Security Administration program to monitor domestic phone calls. Biden likened the program to blind faith in giving up personal financial information. "I don't think it passes the test, but it clearly doesn't pass the test of two existing statutes that say you can't do these kinds of things, forgetting the fourth amendment," Biden said on CBS's May 12, 2006 "The Early Show." "And, Harry [Smith], the bottom line here is: Here you have the president of the United States making a judgment that's not reviewable by the courts and not reviewable by the Congress, and we're supposed to say OK, and they tell us - it's a little bit like what would happen if the banks turned over all your checking records, without your name, but gave the checking account number and every single purchase you made and pattern of your behavior - and then you were told, 'Don't worry, they - that's not invasion of your privacy.'" Biden, who as vice president has been quiet on the recent revelations about NSA seizure of phone records from major providers, then made the same argument many are making today - that seizing records of calls made, even without listening to the specific calls, can be an invasion of privacy. "Harry, I don't have to listen to your phone calls to know what you're doing," Biden said. "If I know every single phone call you made, I'm able to determine every single person you talk to, I can get a pattern about your life that is very, very intrusive. And the real question here is: What do they do with this information that they collect that does not have anything to do with al Qaeda? There's a whole deal when you talk about this kind of stuff, where the - under the law they're supposed to demonstrate that they're getting rid of and not keeping any extraneous information that they pick up on wiretaps and/or pick up in sweeps like this. And the president's saying-I think I wrote down - he said, `this is not mining or trolling.' If it's true that 200 million Americans' phone calls were monitored, in terms of not listening to what they said but to whom they spoke and who spoke to them, I don't know, the Congress should investigate this." Biden told "The Early Show" host Harry Smith that he did not care to put trust in then-President George W. Bush and then-Vice President Dick Cheney. "We have - no one's arguing whether or not you have the right to go out and tap and go and do everything you need to do to track down al Qaida. That's not the question here. Years ago, Harry, I was one of those guys that co-sponsored the bill called FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Everyone I've spoken to, who's been briefed on this matter, says that everything that they want to do to deal with al Qaida is able to be done under FISA and maybe with a small amendment to FISA. But this idea that no court will review, no Congress will know and we're going to trust the president and the vice president of the United States, that they're doing the right thing, don't count me in on that." Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/11/biden-in-2006-dont-count-me-in-on-trusting -nsa-phone-call-surveillance/#ixzz2WLuTWfwA From atymes at gmail.com Sun Jun 16 06:02:51 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 23:02:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A vote of no-confidence In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Jun 15, 2013 at 4:13 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > It occurred to me that legitimate alternatives to the existing system > could harness both perceptions and craft a system of non-voting or > anti-voting specifically designed to give voice those who want to say > "None of the above". > Unfortunately, the truth is that the vast, vast majority of those who don't vote (at least, in the US among those able to vote), are simply too lazy to do so. They come up with excuses and reasons if pressed - which is what most people assume all such excuses and reasons are. In other words, there's no way you could prevent the majority of people from completely ignoring all reasons you claimed to not vote, and wrongly lump you in with the "too lazy to vote" crowd. For your words to be paid any attention to, first they must have some perceived legitimacy. On this topic, for the most part, only those who vote have any such perceived legitimacy. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Sun Jun 16 07:09:54 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 09:09:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Who are the "leftists"? In-Reply-To: <008801ce6a3a$b75791e0$2606b5a0$@rainier66.com> References: <008801ce6a3a$b75791e0$2606b5a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: > Give me a link to the best one, I am curious. http://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/why-do-intellectuals-oppose-capitalism This one. On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 4:39 AM, spike wrote: > > >... On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki > ... > > >...### Hey, this is a very vague statement - depressive because it's so > far > left or depressive because there may not be a more leftist one > coming?...Because of all that, it is not only unsurprising but rather > completely inevitable that the administration using more traditionally > leftist rhetoric ends up being even more authoritarian than their junior > partners in the scam (the Republicams, in case you don't get my drift). > 99.9% of government employees are unelected, and most of them are > culturally > leftist but in practice conventionally power-grabby hacks, just like their > spiritual predecessors since ancient Babylon's first clerics. You let them > work with a few elected, arrogant, narcissistic, hypocritical social > strivers steeped in commie rhetoric, and the sky is the limit (at least as > far as the budget deficit goes)....Rafal > _______________________________________________ > > > EXCELLENT post Rafal, me lad. I don't have any problem with the fed being > leftist, so long as it stays within the strict constraints of the > constitution, something it has not wanted to do for a long time. The > constitution describes a federal government that doesn't really do much > other than military, some infrastructure such as interstate highways, and > so > on, but not very so far on. The founders had in mind the real political > power at the state level, so we have a number of competing states. > Everyone > gets to choose their favorite form of government, everyone wins. > > 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 spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 16 13:00:21 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 06:00:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A vote of no-confidence In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00d501ce6a91$76045280$620cf780$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Sent: Saturday, June 15, 2013 11:03 PM To: rafal at smigrodzki.org; ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] A vote of no-confidence On Sat, Jun 15, 2013 at 4:13 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >.give voice those who want to say "None of the above". We have that choice now. We can write in a name of a person on the ballot. >. They come up with excuses and reasons if pressed - which is what most people assume all such excuses and reasons are. Ja. I thought of a good excuse for not voting other than laziness: one does not want to risk voting for the winner, then after the fact having that winner turn into a corrupt and inept disaster of a leader, a complete catastrophe. I can imagine that feeling being very common after the events of the last couple months. Most of us realize the libertarians' day is coming. When they get in power, there is a risk they will forget their principles, fail to dismantle all the government power structures that have grown outside constitutionally legal bounds. Always in my mind is the fear that they too will be as inept and corruptible as the democrats and republicans have become. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Sun Jun 16 13:19:55 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 15:19:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] A vote of no-confidence In-Reply-To: <00d501ce6a91$76045280$620cf780$@rainier66.com> References: <00d501ce6a91$76045280$620cf780$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130616131954.GH22824@leitl.org> On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 06:00:21AM -0700, spike wrote: > Most of us realize the libertarians' day is coming. When they get in power, > there is a risk they will forget their principles, fail to dismantle all the > government power structures that have grown outside constitutionally legal > bounds. Always in my mind is the fear that they too will be as inept and > corruptible as the democrats and republicans have become. You can always make your ballot invalid, vote for a bogus or at least a hungry newcomer, create your own platform, drop out from the economy and join a grassroots/black economy or emigrate, or exercise the bullet box. All these are viable options. From pharos at gmail.com Sun Jun 16 13:39:32 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 14:39:32 +0100 Subject: [ExI] A vote of no-confidence In-Reply-To: <00d501ce6a91$76045280$620cf780$@rainier66.com> References: <00d501ce6a91$76045280$620cf780$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 2:00 PM, spike wrote: > Most of us realize the libertarians? day is coming. When they get in power, > there is a risk they will forget their principles, fail to dismantle all the > government power structures that have grown outside constitutionally legal > bounds. Always in my mind is the fear that they too will be as inept and > corruptible as the democrats and republicans have become. > > I doubt that (apart from wishful thinking). Libertarians are too isolated, independent. Power groups can separate them and pick them off one by one. If they ever do try to form a larger grouping, it will quickly fall apart into infighting and lots of sects. "I'm more libertarian than you!" Look at the history of Protestantism. What is happening already in Europe as the economy worsens is people voting for any new party that promises something different. UKIP in UK, New Dawn in Greece, Grillo in Italy. The hope is that 'something different' will be better than the corrupt politics we have at present. Longer-term, I think the Internet will drastically change politics. There are lots changes coming along with the next generation. Let's hope the imminent destruction of the present system leaves enough for them to work with. :) BillK From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 16 13:44:39 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 06:44:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Who are the "leftists"? In-Reply-To: References: <008801ce6a3a$b75791e0$2606b5a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00e601ce6a97$a6bad0b0$f4307210$@rainier66.com> >. On Behalf Of Tomaz Kristan Subject: Re: [ExI] Who are the "leftists"? > Give me a link to the best one, I am curious. Rafal Smigrodzki http://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/why-do-intellectuals-oppos e-capitalism This one. THANKS Kristan, Nozick's essay is brilliant. It has a ring of truth to it. My own notions on that topic came to a similar conclusion. I like the way Nozick distinguishes between the wordsmithing intellectuals vs the wordsmithing intellectuals. The numbersmith's world is much more objective; there is an answer that works in the math world, a prediction that is correct in most sciences. But consider journalism: who is the greatest journalist? If there is no universal way to answer that question, how can you distinguish the intellectuals from the fools in that field? It comes down to whether or not we agree with them. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pemca at comcast.net Sun Jun 16 12:32:59 2013 From: pemca at comcast.net (Peter E McAlpine) Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 08:32:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] NSA Prism is motivated in part by fears that environmentally-linked disasters could spur anti-government activism In-Reply-To: <20130615070703.GE22824@leitl.org> References: <20130614142333.GQ22824@leitl.org> <044101ce6945$fab3cb70$f01b6250$@rainier66.com> <04a901ce694a$332cbf30$99863d90$@rainier66.com> <20130615070703.GE22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: <012001ce6a8d$a345d9c0$e9d18d40$@comcast.net> > I can do better than that. The real threat is not just out of control > government, but in how to supply future needs for cheap energy. The > most The threat is the environmentalist, no-growth, depopulation, world government agenda of the super-rich ruling class elements that organized and operate the Council on Foreign Relations, UN, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Meetings, etc. Don't be confused because you don't like some of the fundamentalist and other wacko groups that focus on this situation. The situation is undeniable with just a little objective study, but needs to be interpreted by pro-growth, pro-technology, pro-reason forces like Extropians. The world-wide entrenched ruling class ("crony capitalist" is far too mild a word) must be up-rooted from the media and policy influence. The singularity never made much sense to me, but certainly, RIGHT NOW, society should be organized for full blast scientific, industrial, and technological progress, utilizing the free market as the best co-ordinator of human activity ever devised. If we are to run out of hydrocarbons eventually, in the meantime, we need the most productive, energy rich economy possible so we will be technologically and capital capable of taking whatever steps are necessary, as indicated by the market. The ruling class is committed to the opposite approach: pushing hard for stagnation and even depopulation to achieve a "sustainable" tyranny. From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 16 14:23:13 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 07:23:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Who are the "leftists"? In-Reply-To: <00e601ce6a97$a6bad0b0$f4307210$@rainier66.com> References: <008801ce6a3a$b75791e0$2606b5a0$@rainier66.com> <00e601ce6a97$a6bad0b0$f4307210$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <010301ce6a9d$0a33f4f0$1e9bded0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2013 6:45 AM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: Re: [ExI] Who are the "leftists"? >. On Behalf Of Tomaz Kristan Subject: Re: [ExI] Who are the "leftists"? > Give me a link to the best one, I am curious. Rafal Smigrodzki http://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/why-do-intellectuals-oppos e-capitalism This one. >.THANKS Kristan. I like the way Nozick distinguishes between the wordsmithing intellectuals vs the wordsmithing intellectuals. The numbersmith's world is much more objective; .spike Ooops I meant 'distinguishes between wordsmithing intellectuals and numbersmithing intellectuals.' Hey, I have a perfect excuse! I am the latter, definitely not the former. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clementlawyer at gmail.com Sun Jun 16 15:07:28 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 11:07:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] DNA India: The transhumanity timeline Message-ID: The transhumanity timeline Saturday, Jun 15, 2013, 18:32 IST | Place: Mumbai | Agency: DNA Joanna Lobo A chronological list of how transhumanity has evolved over the years. *1927: *Julian Huxley, a biologist, coined the term for what he hoped would be a new age of enlightenment: "transhumanism--man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realising new possibilities of and for his human nature." *1962: *Robert Ettinger, a World War II veteran who became a physics professor, published The Prospect of Immortality. He devised America's first science experiment with immortality: cryonics. In 1972 he wrote that instead of relying on cryonics to revive the dead, forthcoming technologies might make death obsolete. *1980's:* An Englishman named Max O'Connor/ More coined the term extropy which was the tendency for things to speed up. He founded the Extropy Institute. *1990:* He wrote an essay titled Transhumanism: Toward a Futurist Philosophy and a journal Extropy: The journal of Transhumanist Thought. Soon after, his Extropians began calling themselves transhumanists. The institute shut down in later years but tranhumanism kept mutating. *Today:* There is the World Transhumanist Association (now called Humanity+), the Foresight Nanotech Institute in Menlo Park, the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the Methuselah Foundation that works to extend biological life, the Immortality Institute advocates for indefinite life extension technologies, the Lifeboat Foundation works to alert the public about existential risks, the Institute for Ethics and emerging Technologies, the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Besides, several countries have their own associations. http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/1848479/report-the-transhumanity-timeline -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sun Jun 16 15:52:28 2013 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 08:52:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] A vote of no-confidence In-Reply-To: <00d501ce6a91$76045280$620cf780$@rainier66.com> References: <00d501ce6a91$76045280$620cf780$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1371397948.30132.YahooMailNeo@web160502.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> >________________________________ > From: spike >To: 'ExI chat list' >Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2013 6:00 AM >Subject: Re: [ExI] A vote of no-confidence >?? >? >From:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes >Sent: Saturday, June 15, 2013 11:03 PM >To: rafal at smigrodzki.org; ExI chat list >Subject: Re: [ExI] A vote of no-confidence >? >On Sat, Jun 15, 2013 at 4:13 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >? >>?give voice those who want to say"None of the above". >? >We have that choice now.? We can write in a name of a person on the ballot. >? >>?They come up with excuses and reasons if >pressed - which is what most people assume all such excuses and >reasons are? >Ja.? I thought of a good excuse for not voting other than laziness: one does not want to risk voting for the winner, then after the fact having that winner turn into a corrupt and inept disaster of a leader, a complete catastrophe.? I can imagine that feeling being very common after the events of the last couple months. You blame Obama, but the POTUS has become almost irrelevant. Rafal is right, 99.9% of the government is the unelected beauracracy and they are who truly rule. Elections are a sham. Elected officials are like skins for the real government who belongs to a powerful union, have Hillary Clinton's health care, and expects to?collect a pension at age?65. And the grand beauracracy is by nature leftist. The bigger the government, the more likely they are to keep their job. ? No matter who you elect, you just get a different skin for the same power structure, like a video game where two characters that look different, perform all the same moves.: TAX . . .?SPEND. . .?HADOUKEN! ? ------------------------------------------------------ >Most of us realize the libertariansday is coming.? When they get in power, there is a risk they will forget their principles, fail to dismantle all the government power structures that have grown outside constitutionally legal bounds.? Always in my mind is the fear that they too will be as inept and corruptible as the democrats and republicans have become. ? ----------------------------------------------------------- ? Don't forget the ability of fear to corrupt: as well: ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11Fl9ZVJ7B8 ? ?Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who so survive.- Frank Herbert From pemca at comcast.net Sun Jun 16 16:39:52 2013 From: pemca at comcast.net (Peter E McAlpine) Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 12:39:52 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A vote of no-confidence In-Reply-To: <1371397948.30132.YahooMailNeo@web160502.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <00d501ce6a91$76045280$620cf780$@rainier66.com> <1371397948.30132.YahooMailNeo@web160502.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <006101ce6ab0$2114e950$633ebbf0$@comcast.net> >>>You blame Obama, but the POTUS has become almost irrelevant. Rafal is right, 99.9% of the government is the unelected beauracracy and they are who truly rule. Elections are a sham. >>>>>>>>>>>>>> No, that is what the plethora of Obama's CZARS are for. . . by-passing the chain of command in the Bureaucracy so Obama can rule from his ulta-left, anti-US, pro-Muslim perspective. From atymes at gmail.com Sun Jun 16 17:15:58 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 10:15:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A vote of no-confidence In-Reply-To: <00d501ce6a91$76045280$620cf780$@rainier66.com> References: <00d501ce6a91$76045280$620cf780$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 6:00 AM, spike wrote: > On Sat, Jun 15, 2013 at 4:13 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < > rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > > ** ** > > >?give voice those who want to say "None of the above".**** > > ** ** > > We have that choice now. We can write in a name of a person on the ballot. > **** > > ** ** > > >? They come up with excuses and reasons if > pressed - which is what most people assume all such excuses and > reasons are?**** > > Ja. I thought of a good excuse for not voting other than laziness: one > does not want to risk voting for the winner, then after the fact having > that winner turn into a corrupt and inept disaster of a leader, a complete > catastrophe. I can imagine that feeling being very common after the events > of the last couple months. > Yeah. If you want to vote against those in power (at least in the US), your best choice is to vote third party. That way, you will have actually voted, which is required for your voice to be heard. Trying to justify not voting at all simply fails, when you measure by the amount of influencing and convincing it does. It's as effective as trying to burn water as a protest to all this oil burning, rather than burning alcohol or just using electricity. And, really, are we not about promoting solutions that actually work? > **** > > Most of us realize the libertarians? day is coming. When they get in > power, there is a risk they will forget their principles, fail to dismantle > all the government power structures that have grown outside > constitutionally legal bounds. Always in my mind is the fear that they too > will be as inept and corruptible as the democrats and republicans have > become. > This is true, but it is highly likely they will at least break up the entrenched interests in the mean time. Even if they then start to encrust new masters - just vote third party again (because, by then, the libertarians won't be). Maybe the corruption can't (yet) be permanently banished, but we can at least keep beating it down. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pemca at comcast.net Sun Jun 16 17:03:21 2013 From: pemca at comcast.net (Peter E McAlpine) Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 13:03:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A vote of no-confidence In-Reply-To: <1371397948.30132.YahooMailNeo@web160502.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <00d501ce6a91$76045280$620cf780$@rainier66.com> <1371397948.30132.YahooMailNeo@web160502.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <006201ce6ab3$68f4ffa0$3adefee0$@comcast.net> ////No matter who you elect, you just get a different skin for the same power structure, like a video game where two characters that look different, perform all the same moves.: TAX . . . SPEND. . . HADOUKEN!>>>>>>>>>>>>> FURTHER! At least when a Republican is in office, the Media does it job scrutinizing government. Except for Fox, the Media is 95% partisan Democrats, purposely selected by the main faction of capital: what I call the Rockefeller / Big Oil / OPEC / Saudi camarilla. Read David Rockefeller's AutoBio for confirmation. Fox represents a different faction of BIG CAPITAL. . . From eugen at leitl.org Mon Jun 17 09:40:43 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:40:43 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [New_Cryonet] Fundraising effort for Aaron Message-ID: <20130617094043.GX22824@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from Christine Gaspar ----- Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 05:31:56 -0400 From: Christine Gaspar To: "New_Cryonet at yahoogroups.com" , Cryonics Society of Canada Members Forum , The Cryonics Institute Subject: [New_Cryonet] Fundraising effort for Aaron Reply-To: New_Cryonet at yahoogroups.com Hi everyone. I hope this helps. Thank you to Shannon Vyff, Maitera One and Amara Angelica at KurzweilAI for making this happen. Christine Gaspar http://www.kurzweilai.net/als-patient-hopes-to-be-cryopreserved**** ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 From pharos at gmail.com Tue Jun 18 08:25:54 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 09:25:54 +0100 Subject: [ExI] UltraRope could make kilometer-high elevators possible Message-ID: Using traditional steel lifting cables, elevators can?t go farther than 500 meters (1,640 ft) in one vertical run. Any higher, and the weight of all the cable required is simply too much. Currently in the world's few buildings that are over 500 meters tall, passengers must transfer from one elevator line to another, part way up. Thanks to a new lightweight material known as UltraRope, however, elevators should now be able to travel up to one kilometer (3,281 ft) continuously. --------------- Another step towards the space elevator. BillK From ALONZOTG at verizon.net Mon Jun 17 21:34:27 2013 From: ALONZOTG at verizon.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:34:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] story posted to freenet. Message-ID: <51BF80E3.8070409@verizon.net> Since I don't have static IP, and since darknets are the topic of the day, I just posted part 1 of my story to Freenet. Freenet is a fairly heavy-weight application. Here is the freenet address of what I uploaded: (paste as one line into the homepage of your local freenet node). USK at 2ou5HHIwXyVhvEkxWEtRcSrhiTSA~da1M-ydZfajyFc,ASok4tbDGrRe~KQjQCYBzbJne3byfhffKMJ-OFqmKZI,AQACAAE/atgstuff-1/0/ -- NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE Powers are not rights. From jhughes at changesurfer.com Tue Jun 18 14:55:22 2013 From: jhughes at changesurfer.com (Hughes, James J.) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:55:22 +0000 Subject: [ExI] [tp] NSA flag terms Message-ID: <3631A119EB15854B832730C5CA624B2423CBFBF4@exmb3.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu> My favorites are 'utopia' and 'Zen' From: Khannea Suntzu [mailto:khannea.suntzu at gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2013 10:02 AM To: Hughes, James J. Subject: No seriously This is an (admittedly huge) list of words that supposedly cause the NSA to flag you as a potential terrorist if you over-use them in an email. We found this on Reddit, where James Bamford, a veteran reporter with 30 years experience covering the NSA, is answering questions from the community. This list comes from Reddit user GloriousDawn, who found it on Attrition.org, a site that very closely follows the security industry. You may want to peruse this entire list yourself, but here are some of our favourites that stick out: * dictionary * sweeping * ionosphere * military intelligence * Steve Case * Scully And the full list for your browsing pleasure: Waihopai, INFOSEC, Information Security, Information Warfare, IW, IS, Privacy, Information Terrorism, Terrorism Defensive Information, defence Information Warfare, Offensive Information, Offensive Information Warfare, National Information Infrastructure, InfoSec, Reno, Compsec, Computer Terrorism, Firewalls, Secure Internet Connections, ISS, Passwords, DefCon V, Hackers, Encryption, Espionage, USDOJ, NSA, CIA, S/Key, SSL, FBI, Secert Service, USSS, Defcon, Military, White House, Undercover, NCCS, Mayfly, PGP, PEM, RSA, Perl-RSA, MSNBC, bet, AOL, AOL TOS, CIS, CBOT, AIMSX, STARLAN, 3B2, BITNET, COSMOS, DATTA, E911, FCIC, HTCIA, IACIS, UT/RUS, JANET, JICC, ReMOB, LEETAC, UTU, VNET, BRLO, BZ, CANSLO, CBNRC, CIDA, JAVA, Active X, Compsec 97, LLC, DERA, Mavricks, Meta-hackers, ^?, Steve Case, Tools, Telex, Military Intelligence, Scully, Flame, Infowar, Bubba, Freeh, Archives, Sundevil, jack, Investigation, ISACA, NCSA, spook words, Verisign, Secure, ASIO, Lebed, ICE, NRO, Lexis-Nexis, NSCT, SCIF, FLiR, Lacrosse, Flashbangs, HRT, DIA, USCOI, CID, BOP, FINCEN, FLETC, NIJ, ACC, AFSPC, BMDO, NAVWAN, NRL, RL, NAVWCWPNS, NSWC, USAFA, AHPCRC, ARPA, LABLINK, USACIL, USCG, NRC, ~, CDC, DOE, FMS, HPCC, NTIS, SEL, USCODE, CISE, SIRC, CIM, ISN, DJC, SGC, UNCPCJ, CFC, DREO, CDA, DRA, SHAPE, SACLANT, BECCA, DCJFTF, HALO, HAHO, FKS, 868, GCHQ, DITSA, SORT, AMEMB, NSG, HIC, EDI, SAS, SBS, UDT, GOE, DOE, GEO, Masuda, Forte, AT, GIGN, Exon Shell, CQB, CONUS, CTU, RCMP, GRU, SASR, GSG-9, 22nd SAS, GEOS, EADA, BBE, STEP, Echelon, Dictionary, MD2, MD4, MDA, MYK, 747,777, 767, MI5, 737, MI6, 757, Kh-11, Shayet-13, SADMS, Spetznaz, Recce, 707, CIO, NOCS, Halcon, Duress, RAID, Psyops, grom, D-11, SERT, VIP, ARC, S.E.T. Team, MP5k, DREC, DEVGRP, DF, DSD, FDM, GRU, LRTS, SIGDEV, NACSI, PSAC, PTT, RFI, SIGDASYS, TDM. SUKLO, SUSLO, TELINT, TEXTA. ELF, LF, MF, VHF, UHF, SHF, SASP, WANK, Colonel, domestic disruption, smuggle, 15kg, nitrate, Pretoria, M-14, enigma, Bletchley Park, Clandestine, nkvd, argus, afsatcom, CQB, NVD, Counter Terrorism Security, Rapid Reaction, Corporate Security, Police, sniper, PPS, ASIS, ASLET, TSCM, Security Consulting, High Security, Security Evaluation, Electronic Surveillance, MI-17, Counterterrorism, spies, eavesdropping, debugging, interception, COCOT, rhost, rhosts, SETA, Amherst, Broadside, Capricorn, Gamma, Gorizont, Guppy, Ionosphere, Mole, Keyhole, Kilderkin, Artichoke, Badger, Cornflower, Daisy, Egret, Iris, Hollyhock, Jasmine, Juile, Vinnell, B.D.M.,Sphinx, Stephanie, Reflection, Spoke, Talent, Trump, FX, FXR, IMF, POCSAG, Covert Video, Intiso, r00t, lock picking, Beyond Hope, csystems, passwd, 2600 Magazine, Competitor, EO, Chan, Alouette,executive, Event Security, Mace, Cap-Stun, stakeout, ninja, ASIS, ISA, EOD, Oscor, Merlin, NTT, SL-1, Rolm, TIE, Tie-fighter, PBX, SLI, NTT, MSCJ, MIT, 69, RIT, Time, MSEE, Cable & Wireless, CSE, Embassy, ETA, Porno, Fax, finks, Fax encryption, white noise, pink noise, CRA, M.P.R.I., top secret, Mossberg, 50BMG, Macintosh Security, Macintosh Internet Security, Macintosh Firewalls, Unix Security, VIP Protection, SIG, sweep, Medco, TRD, TDR, sweeping, TELINT, Audiotel, Harvard, 1080H, SWS, Asset, Satellite imagery, force, Cypherpunks, Coderpunks, TRW, remailers, replay, redheads, RX-7, explicit, FLAME, Pornstars, AVN, Playboy, Anonymous, Sex, chaining, codes, Nuclear, 20, subversives, SLIP, toad, fish, data havens, unix, c, a, b, d, the, Elvis, quiche, DES, 1*, NATIA, NATOA, sneakers, counterintelligence, industrial espionage, PI, TSCI, industrial intelligence, H.N.P., Juiliett Class Submarine, Locks, loch, Ingram Mac-10, sigvoice, ssa, E.O.D., SEMTEX, penrep, racal, OTP, OSS, Blowpipe, CCS, GSA, Kilo Class, squib, primacord, RSP, Becker, Nerd, fangs, Austin, Comirex, GPMG, Speakeasy, humint, GEODSS, SORO, M5, ANC, zone, SBI, DSS, S.A.I.C., Minox, Keyhole, SAR, Rand Corporation, Wackenhutt, EO, Wackendude, mol, Hillal, GGL, CTU, botux, Virii, CCC, Blacklisted 411, Internet Underground, XS4ALL, Retinal Fetish, Fetish, Yobie, CTP, CATO, Phon-e, Chicago Posse, l0ck, spook keywords, PLA, TDYC, W3, CUD, CdC, Weekly World News, Zen, World Domination, Dead, GRU, M72750, Salsa, 7, Blowfish, Gorelick, Glock, Ft. Meade, press-release, Indigo, wire transfer, e-cash, Bubba the Love Sponge, Digicash, zip, SWAT, Ortega, PPP, crypto-anarchy, AT&T, SGI, SUN, MCI, Blacknet, Middleman, KLM, Blackbird, plutonium, Texas, jihad, SDI, Uzi, Fort Meade, supercomputer, bullion, 3, Blackmednet, Propaganda, ABC, Satellite phones, Planet-1, cryptanalysis, nuclear, FBI, Panama, fissionable, Sears Tower, NORAD, Delta Force, SEAL, virtual, Dolch, secure shell, screws, Black-Ops, Area51, SABC, basement, data-haven, black-bag, TEMPSET, Goodwin, rebels, ID, MD5, IDEA, garbage, market, beef, Stego, unclassified, utopia, orthodox, Alica, SHA, Global, gorilla, Bob, Pseudonyms, MITM, grey Data, VLSI, mega, Leitrim, Yakima, Sugar Grove, Cowboy, Gist, 8182, Gatt, Platform, 1911, Geraldton, UKUSA, veggie, 3848, Morwenstow, Consul, Oratory, Pine Gap, Menwith, Mantis, DSD, BVD, 1984, Flintlock, cybercash, government, hate, speedbump, illuminati, president, freedom, cocaine, $, Roswell, ESN, COS, E.T., credit card, b9, fraud, assasinate, virus, anarchy, rogue, mailbomb, 888, Chelsea, 1997, Whitewater, MOD, York, plutonium, William Gates, clone, BATF, SGDN, Nike, Atlas, Delta, TWA, Kiwi, PGP 2.6.2., PGP 5.0i, PGP 5.1, siliconpimp, Lynch, 414, Face, Pixar, IRIDF, eternity server, Skytel, Yukon, Templeton, LUK, Cohiba, Soros, Standford, niche, 51, H&K, USP, ^, sardine, bank, EUB, USP, PCS, NRO, Red Cell, Glock 26, snuffle, Patel, package, ISI, INR, INS, IRS, GRU, RUOP, GSS, NSP, SRI, Ronco, Armani, BOSS, Chobetsu, FBIS, BND, SISDE, FSB, BfV, IB, froglegs, JITEM, SADF, advise, TUSA, HoHoCon, SISMI, FIS, MSW, Spyderco, UOP, SSCI, NIMA, MOIS, SVR, SIN, advisors, SAP, OAU, PFS, Aladdin, chameleon man, Hutsul, CESID, Bess, rail gun, Peering, 17, 312, NB, CBM, CTP, Sardine, SBIRS, SGDN, ADIU, DEADBEEF, IDP, IDF, Halibut, SONANGOL, Flu, &, Loin, PGP 5.53, EG&G, AIEWS, AMW, WORM, MP5K-SD, 1071, WINGS, cdi, DynCorp, UXO, Ti, THAAD, package, chosen, PRIME, SURVIAC -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Tue Jun 18 16:12:45 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 09:12:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin In-Reply-To: References: <1365660980.69718.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <516C1951.7060609@libero.it> <1366043990.59977.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130415165222.GD15179@leitl.org> <1366046843.50001.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <516D9C03.5000100@libero.it> <1366145698.43947.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <516E9B00.5030002@libero.it> <1366922475.65664.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <517B2A04.10908@libero.it> <1367061765.46249.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367134993.44854.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <01a601ce4465$9edf19d0$dc9d4d70$@rainier66.com> <1367193181.21683.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367356151.1533.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51804D6C.3060706@libero.it> <1367363307.90731.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518197C9.3060100@libero.it> <1367484325.81919.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1371571965.16546.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> The IRS has better things to do, so far anyway. "Federal auditors are recommending that the Internal Revenue Service not issue regulations for taxpayers on filing returns for the money earned through the exchange of virtual currencies, such as Bitcoins. The tax agency has neither the money nor the time to craft compliance rules for the emerging market, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office." AUDITORS AND IRS PAN TAX REGULATIONS FOR BITCOINS http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2013/06/auditors-and-irs-pan-tax-regulations-bitcoin/65051/?oref=ng-HPriver -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 18 18:23:46 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:23:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [tp] NSA flag terms In-Reply-To: <3631A119EB15854B832730C5CA624B2423CBFBF4@exmb3.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu> References: <3631A119EB15854B832730C5CA624B2423CBFBF4@exmb3.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu> Message-ID: <00f801ce6c50$f9cc91c0$ed65b540$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Hughes, James J. Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2013 7:55 AM To: technoprogressive at yahoogroups.com Subject: [ExI] [tp] NSA flag terms >.My favorites are 'utopia' and 'Zen' From: Khannea Suntzu [mailto:khannea.suntzu at gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2013 10:02 AM To: Hughes, James J. Subject: No seriously This is an (admittedly huge) list of words that supposedly cause the NSA to flag you as a potential terrorist if you over-use them in an email. . You may want to peruse this entire list yourself, but here are some of our favourites that stick out: . dictionary . sweeping . . And the full list for your browsing pleasure: OK so I did a copy into excel, sorted by alphabetical to eliminate redundancy, looked at the list. If I copied it in here, I would be on NSA's list which would land me on the IRS list, which means I would likely never been seen again. So I won't. There are some terms on there I just gotta know about, but don't feel as though I can do an audit-free internet search. So one of you hipsters will need to tell me what is "Bubba the love sponge." Of course it might be one of those things that once I know it I will wish I didn't. {8^D spike __,_._,___ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Tue Jun 18 18:33:28 2013 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:33:28 -0300 Subject: [ExI] RES: UltraRope could make kilometer-high elevators possible In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <013701ce6c52$55c62490$01526db0$@gmail.com> > -----Mensagem original----- > De: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat- > bounces at lists.extropy.org] Em nome de BillK > Enviada em: ter?a-feira, 18 de junho de 2013 05:26 > Para: Extropy Chat > Assunto: [ExI] UltraRope could make kilometer-high elevators possible > > Using traditional steel lifting cables, elevators can?t go farther than 500 meters (1,640 > ft) in one vertical run. Any higher, and the weight of all the cable required is simply too > much. Currently in the world's few buildings that are over 500 meters tall, passengers > must transfer from one elevator line to another, part way up. Thanks to a new > lightweight material known as UltraRope, however, elevators should now be able to > travel up to one kilometer (3,281 ft) continuously. > > > > UltraRope%28TM%29-elevator-hoisting-technology-enables-the-next-big-leap-in- high- > rise-building-design-2013-06-10.aspx> > --------------- I read this a few days ago and got me thinking. Why do elevators have to use cables at all? Can't they build a maglev elevator or something? Not talking about the space elevator obviously, but building elevators. From pharos at gmail.com Tue Jun 18 18:56:54 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:56:54 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [tp] NSA flag terms In-Reply-To: <00f801ce6c50$f9cc91c0$ed65b540$@rainier66.com> References: <3631A119EB15854B832730C5CA624B2423CBFBF4@exmb3.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu> <00f801ce6c50$f9cc91c0$ed65b540$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 7:23 PM, spike wrote: > OK so I did a copy into excel, sorted by alphabetical to eliminate redundancy, looked at the list. > If I copied it in here, I would be on NSA?s list which would land me on the IRS list, which > means I would likely never been seen again. So I won?t. There are some terms on there > I just gotta know about, but don?t feel as though I can do an audit-free internet search. > So one of you hipsters will need to tell me what is ?Bubba the love sponge.? > Of course it might be one of those things that once I know it I will wish I didn?t. {8^D > If you want to use Google search via a non-tracking site go to: Other anon searches are: It is easier to set these as the search engines in your search box, then your searches automatically go there and Google has nothing to track. I don't see why Bubba has the NSA worried. :) BillK From pharos at gmail.com Tue Jun 18 19:30:34 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:30:34 +0100 Subject: [ExI] RES: UltraRope could make kilometer-high elevators possible In-Reply-To: <013701ce6c52$55c62490$01526db0$@gmail.com> References: <013701ce6c52$55c62490$01526db0$@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 7:33 PM, Henrique Moraes Machado wrote: > > I read this a few days ago and got me thinking. Why do elevators have to use > cables at all? Can't they build a maglev elevator or something? Not talking > about the space elevator obviously, but building elevators. > Elevators are actually pretty complex devices. They do build other types of elevators for special uses. The reason for cables is basically economics. A cable elevator has a huge counterweight that goes down as the elevator goes up, so little energy is used. See: BillK From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 18 19:48:02 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:48:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [tp] NSA flag terms In-Reply-To: References: <3631A119EB15854B832730C5CA624B2423CBFBF4@exmb3.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu> <00f801ce6c50$f9cc91c0$ed65b540$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <013901ce6c5c$bf78d040$3e6a70c0$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of BillK >... >...If you want to use Google search via a non-tracking site go to: Thanks BillK, but how can we ever really know we are not being tracked? >...I don't see why Bubba has the NSA worried. :) BillK ______________________________________________ OK a radio disc jockey, I see, thanks. So I can imagine the authorities using random stuff like this that sounds like of mysterious, just to see who is scrounging around and what keywords have leaked. Anyone who searches on the sponge thing now likely has access to the entire list. Now that the list of keywords has leaked, it seems like it would be useless. Those with nothing to hide but are openness advocates can just append the entire list duplicated a dozen times in white font at the bottom of every reply. The pace of life that has developed in the past three decades has caused a former means of secure information transmission to become functionally useless: messages written on paper and sent thru the mail. It is way too slow, but it is remarkably secure. Now all data must be transmitted thru some means which can theoretically be collected and archived. It is easy to envision paper mail becoming illegal in the foreseeable future: messages written on paper and sent thru the mail enable Episcopalian terrorists to plot securely. If someone is posting encrypted email, the authorities still can see who is sending and who is receiving. I can imagine a new form of secure communications: a skype cam aimed at a second computer screen with the second screen on a stand-alone computer. The messages are sent via skype as they are typed realtime, viewed eyes-only by the Evangelical Presybterian with no sound being transmitted, or rather with sound; a background Beatles anthology. Now we are learning that anyone can fall under surveillance specifically excepting the Methodists. The CAIR, or Council on American-Methodist Relations, sued the feds. Now any house of worship can be infiltrated except theirs. This is said to be why the Boston Marathon perpetrator escaped attention. He is said to have had an outburst in his church two weeks before, where he urged his fellow Methodists that they needed to fight the infidel non-Methodists. The FBI missed it because they were not allowed to do surveillance there. Anywhere else is fair game, just not there. I don't know what to make of that contention. spike From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 18 21:50:02 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:50:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] escape artist Message-ID: <017301ce6c6d$caa1a7b0$5fe4f710$@rainier66.com> I regret getting distracted by silliness when there is a timely relevant discussion going on ExI-chat, the NSA business. But these guys had me deep into the sides-aching laughter zone: http://www.flixxy.com/exotic-bird-escape.htm {8^D I don't know what birds think, but if we work out uploading, I want to try it on these beasts. That whole carry-the-lock-to-the-top-of-the-cage-and-drop-it act makes it appear they were thinking: See there, your paltry locks will never prevail, all your base are belong to us, neener neener. spike From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Jun 19 00:24:11 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:24:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] story posted to freenet. In-Reply-To: <51BF80E3.8070409@verizon.net> References: <51BF80E3.8070409@verizon.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 5:34 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: > Since I don't have static IP, and since darknets are the topic of the day, I > just posted part 1 of my story to Freenet. > > Freenet is a fairly heavy-weight application. > > Here is the freenet address of what I uploaded: (paste as one line into the > homepage of your local freenet node). > > USK at 2ou5HHIwXyVhvEkxWEtRcSrhiTSA~da1M-ydZfajyFc,ASok4tbDGrRe~KQjQCYBzbJne3byfhffKMJ-OFqmKZI,AQACAAE/atgstuff-1/0/ > you could have made a public googledoc that I'd click on. That gobbledegook isn't worth the effort it takes to figure out what you're trying to tell me to do. From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Jun 19 00:29:34 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:29:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] escape artist In-Reply-To: <017301ce6c6d$caa1a7b0$5fe4f710$@rainier66.com> References: <017301ce6c6d$caa1a7b0$5fe4f710$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 5:50 PM, spike wrote: > > I regret getting distracted by silliness when there is a timely relevant > discussion going on ExI-chat, the NSA business. But these guys had me deep > into the sides-aching laughter zone: > > http://www.flixxy.com/exotic-bird-escape.htm > > {8^D > > I don't know what birds think, but if we work out uploading, I want to try > it on these beasts. That whole > carry-the-lock-to-the-top-of-the-cage-and-drop-it act makes it appear they > were thinking: See there, your paltry locks will never prevail, all your > base are belong to us, neener neener. Also, any cage for AI is likely to be equally escaped. Granted the padlocks were not locked. Out of complacency at underestimating the birds, the safety was easily overcome. When AI exits the sandbox, you'll never get a second chance to lock the padlock. From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Wed Jun 19 01:35:41 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:35:41 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin In-Reply-To: <1371571965.16546.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1365660980.69718.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <516D9C03.5000100@libero.it> <1366145698.43947.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <516E9B00.5030002@libero.it> <1366922475.65664.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <517B2A04.10908@libero.it> <1367061765.46249.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367134993.44854.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <01a601ce4465$9edf19d0$dc9d4d70$@rainier66.com> <1367193181.21683.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367356151.1533.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51804D6C.3060706@libero.it> <1367363307.90731.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518197C9.3060100@libero.it> <1367484325.81919.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1371571965.16546.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51C10AED.9030709@canonizer.com> Interesting! But this doesn't seem like much of an issue, since Bitcoins are like anything else you can purchase, such as a piece of artwork, that can appreciate in value, and so the IRS would expect them to be taxed and enforced, in the same way. Certainly this article is about any special difference for Bitcoins, from that, if any? Brent On 6/18/2013 10:12 AM, Gordon wrote: > The IRS has better things to do, so far anyway. > > "Federal auditors are recommending that the Internal Revenue Service > not issue regulations for taxpayers on filing returns for the money > earned through the exchange of virtual currencies, such as Bitcoins. > The tax agency has neither the money nor the time to craft compliance > rules for the emerging market, according to a new report from the > Government Accountability Office." > > AUDITORS AND IRS PAN TAX REGULATIONS FOR BITCOINS > http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2013/06/auditors-and-irs-pan-tax-regulations-bitcoin/65051/?oref=ng-HPriver > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 19 02:04:17 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:04:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] FW: do-over: National Review slant on Bostrom's cryo. signup In-Reply-To: <1371601430.34014.YahooMailNeo@web161003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1371075405.7060.YahooMailNeo@web161006.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <1371601430.34014.YahooMailNeo@web161003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <01d901ce6c91$4f99cba0$eecd62e0$@rainier66.com> Forward from a long time lurker, seldom poster: From: Alan ? Subject: do-over: National Review slant on Bostrom's cryo. signup Spike, this post at exl was a blind link. Couldja do it over?- note the ultra- snarky comment at the end. http://www.nationalreview.com/human-exceptionalism/350848/head-transhumanist-have-dead-head-frozen-wesley-j-smith Oxford Professor (of course!) Nick Bostrom, one of transhumanism?s founding would-be post humans, intends to be decapitated after death and have his head frozen so he can live forever. The belief that death is the only certainty in life is a concept senior academic staffs at an Oxford University Institute are hoping to dismantle, by paying to be cryogenically preserved and brought back to life in the future. Nick Bostrom, professor of philosophy at the Future of Humanity Institute [FHI] and his co researcher Anders Sandberg have agreed to pay an American company to detach and deep freeze their heads in the advent of their deaths. Wait. I thought Bostrom was going to upload his mind into a computer. Oh, that?s the point: Speaking to the Sunday Times, Sandberg said that life with just a head would be limited, but that he hoped by that point the process could involve downloading his personality and memories onto a computer. Good thing these guys don?t have to make a living in the real world. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed Jun 19 04:17:11 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:17:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] story posted to freenet. In-Reply-To: References: <51BF80E3.8070409@verizon.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 5:24 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 5:34 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: > > Since I don't have static IP, and since darknets are the topic of the > day, I > > just posted part 1 of my story to Freenet. > > > > Freenet is a fairly heavy-weight application. > > > > Here is the freenet address of what I uploaded: (paste as one line into > the > > homepage of your local freenet node). > > > > USK at 2ou5HHIwXyVhvEkxWEtRcSrhiTSA > ~da1M-ydZfajyFc,ASok4tbDGrRe~KQjQCYBzbJne3byfhffKMJ-OFqmKZI,AQACAAE/atgstuff-1/0/ > > > > you could have made a public googledoc that I'd click on. That > gobbledegook isn't worth the effort it takes to figure out what you're > trying to tell me to do. > Especially for those of us who don't have local freenet nodes. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed Jun 19 04:09:41 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:09:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin In-Reply-To: <51C10AED.9030709@canonizer.com> References: <1365660980.69718.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <516D9C03.5000100@libero.it> <1366145698.43947.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <516E9B00.5030002@libero.it> <1366922475.65664.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <517B2A04.10908@libero.it> <1367061765.46249.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367134993.44854.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <01a601ce4465$9edf19d0$dc9d4d70$@rainier66.com> <1367193181.21683.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367356151.1533.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51804D6C.3060706@libero.it> <1367363307.90731.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518197C9.3060100@libero.it> <1367484325.81919.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1371571965.16546.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51C10AED.9030709@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <1371614981.46048.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: >Interesting! >But this doesn't seem like much of an issue, since Bitcoins are like anything else you can purchase, such as a piece of artwork, that can appreciate in value, and so >the IRS would expect them to be taxed and enforced, in the same way. ? The Government Accountability Office.is saying that the IRS should consider bitcoins no different from, say, baseball cards.? If you buy a baseball card for $50 and sell it to your neighbor for $100, should you report the gain on your tax return and pay the tax? Strictly speaking, you should. But if you don't, the IRS won't know about it.?At least for now.? AUDITORS AND IRS PAN TAX REGULATIONS FOR BITCOINS > >http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2013/06/auditors-and-irs-pan-tax-regulations-bitcoin/65051/?oref=ng-HPriver > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From daniel at kungfuchicken.com Wed Jun 19 04:37:04 2013 From: daniel at kungfuchicken.com (Daniel Shown) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 23:37:04 -0500 Subject: [ExI] story posted to freenet. In-Reply-To: References: <51BF80E3.8070409@verizon.net> Message-ID: This is the second reference to freenet I've come across today. I've been meaning to check it out. It's like the old Xanadu network idea, right? It might allow the kind of p2p market economy online that Jaron Lanier has been opining about more of late? Best! Daniel On Jun 18, 2013 11:25 PM, "Adrian Tymes" wrote: > On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 5:24 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > >> On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 5:34 PM, Alan Grimes >> wrote: >> > Since I don't have static IP, and since darknets are the topic of the >> day, I >> > just posted part 1 of my story to Freenet. >> > >> > Freenet is a fairly heavy-weight application. >> > >> > Here is the freenet address of what I uploaded: (paste as one line into >> the >> > homepage of your local freenet node). >> > >> > USK at 2ou5HHIwXyVhvEkxWEtRcSrhiTSA >> ~da1M-ydZfajyFc,ASok4tbDGrRe~KQjQCYBzbJne3byfhffKMJ-OFqmKZI,AQACAAE/atgstuff-1/0/ >> > >> >> you could have made a public googledoc that I'd click on. That >> gobbledegook isn't worth the effort it takes to figure out what you're >> trying to tell me to do. >> > > Especially for those of us who don't have local freenet nodes. > > _______________________________________________ > 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 eugen at leitl.org Wed Jun 19 09:16:22 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 11:16:22 +0200 Subject: [ExI] story posted to freenet. In-Reply-To: References: <51BF80E3.8070409@verizon.net> Message-ID: <20130619091622.GO22824@leitl.org> On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 08:24:11PM -0400, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 5:34 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: > > Since I don't have static IP, and since darknets are the topic of the day, I > > just posted part 1 of my story to Freenet. > > > > Freenet is a fairly heavy-weight application. > > > > Here is the freenet address of what I uploaded: (paste as one line into the > > homepage of your local freenet node). > > > > USK at 2ou5HHIwXyVhvEkxWEtRcSrhiTSA~da1M-ydZfajyFc,ASok4tbDGrRe~KQjQCYBzbJne3byfhffKMJ-OFqmKZI,AQACAAE/atgstuff-1/0/ > > > > > you could have made a public googledoc that I'd click on. That > gobbledegook isn't worth the effort it takes to figure out what you're > trying to tell me to do. It assumes you have a working Freenet (a darknet) installation. Then the address will resolve. From eugen at leitl.org Wed Jun 19 09:19:30 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 11:19:30 +0200 Subject: [ExI] escape artist In-Reply-To: References: <017301ce6c6d$caa1a7b0$5fe4f710$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130619091930.GP22824@leitl.org> On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 08:29:34PM -0400, Mike Dougherty wrote: > Also, any cage for AI is likely to be equally escaped. Granted the A perfectly sandboxed AI is perfectly useless. Nobody will bother with perfectly useless very expensive somethings, so the AI will be not perfectly sandboxed. Q.E.D. > padlocks were not locked. Out of complacency at underestimating the > birds, the safety was easily overcome. When AI exits the sandbox, > you'll never get a second chance to lock the padlock. You'll never notice that Elvis has left the building. (Until he kicks you in the nuts, hard, from behind). From eugen at leitl.org Wed Jun 19 09:38:57 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 11:38:57 +0200 Subject: [ExI] story posted to freenet. In-Reply-To: References: <51BF80E3.8070409@verizon.net> Message-ID: <20130619093857.GT22824@leitl.org> On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 11:37:04PM -0500, Daniel Shown wrote: > This is the second reference to freenet I've come across today. I've been How many references to Tor, I2P, Retroshare or Tahoe LAFS have you came around today? > meaning to check it out. It's like the old Xanadu network idea, right? It > might allow the kind of p2p market economy online that Jaron Lanier has > been opining about more of late? I've long stopped caring about anything Lanier writes. From daniel at kungfuchicken.com Wed Jun 19 11:54:29 2013 From: daniel at kungfuchicken.com (Daniel Shown) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 06:54:29 -0500 Subject: [ExI] story posted to freenet. In-Reply-To: <20130619093857.GT22824@leitl.org> References: <51BF80E3.8070409@verizon.net> <20130619093857.GT22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Jun 19, 2013 4:42 AM, "Eugen Leitl" wrote: > > On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 11:37:04PM -0500, Daniel Shown wrote: > > This is the second reference to freenet I've come across today. I've been > > How many references to Tor, I2P, Retroshare or Tahoe LAFS have you > came around today? The first ref to Freenet also mentioned Tahoe LAFS. Never heard of I2P or retroshare, but I'm well aware of Tor. I probably saw several dozen references to it yesterday alone. > > meaning to check it out. It's like the old Xanadu network idea, right? It > > might allow the kind of p2p market economy online that Jaron Lanier has > > been opining about more of late? > > I've long stopped caring about anything Lanier writes. Being interested and being aware are kilometers apart. :) Best! Daniel _______________________________________________ > 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 pharos at gmail.com Wed Jun 19 12:25:46 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:25:46 +0100 Subject: [ExI] story posted to freenet. In-Reply-To: <20130619093857.GT22824@leitl.org> References: <51BF80E3.8070409@verizon.net> <20130619093857.GT22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 10:38 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > How many references to Tor, I2P, Retroshare or Tahoe LAFS have you > came around today? > Well, I'm glad the geeks are working on stuff like that ans wish them well. But I hope they don't forget about usability and making the software user friendly. Linux was a techie secret for the first 15 years or so because of their contempt for ordinary users. What is needed is something as friendly as the Tor bundle where you just click to install and click to run. BillK From eugen at leitl.org Wed Jun 19 12:29:57 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:29:57 +0200 Subject: [ExI] story posted to freenet. In-Reply-To: References: <51BF80E3.8070409@verizon.net> <20130619093857.GT22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130619122957.GJ22824@leitl.org> On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 06:54:29AM -0500, Daniel Shown wrote: > > I've long stopped caring about anything Lanier writes. > > Being interested and being aware are kilometers apart. :) Yes, I'm all too aware, and that's the reason for my disinterest. From clementlawyer at gmail.com Wed Jun 19 14:26:24 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:26:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] IEEE ISTAS13 SMARTWORLDs, CYBORGlass, etc.. Message-ID: IEEE ISTAS13 SMARTWORLDs, CYBORGlass, etc.. The IEEE is the world's largest technical society, and they're having an impressive, 3-day conference, http://veillance.me, in Toronto next weekend. They've got Ray Kurzweil, Chief Engineer Google, Marvin Minsky, the Father of AI, as well also as the President of the ACLU and many other great speakers, on a very important and timely topic: CYBORGlass. See also Steve Mann's recent exhibit http://wearcam.org/arvis.htm which will be coming to IEEE ISTAS13 next. James Clement -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clementlawyer at gmail.com Wed Jun 19 18:02:36 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:02:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <003b01ce6188$7f3bb8f0$7db32ad0$@rainier66.com> References: <003b01ce6188$7f3bb8f0$7db32ad0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 9:03 PM, spike wrote: FYE. Prince William's DNA June 19, 2013 The UK's *Times *ran a splashy headline late last week claiming that Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and husband to Kate Middleton, is part Indian, based on DNA tests of the royal's distant relatives. The article says that saliva tests of two of the prince's third cousins established a direct lineage, via mtDNA, to a woman named Eliza Kewark, an ancestor of the late Princess Diana. Kewark lived in western India, but was said to be Armenian. The analysis, conducted by University of Edinburgh and BritainsDNA geneticist Jim Wilson, found that Eliza's "descendants had an incredibly rare type" of mtDNA that has so far only been recorded in a few Indian and Nepalese individuals. According to The *Times*, the royal family is not likely to be plunged into any sort of scandal over the finding that the future king has small dollop of Indian mtDNA. "I always assumed that I was part-Armenian so I am delighted that I also have an Indian background," says Princess Diana's maternal aunt, Mary Roach. The PHG Foundation's Philippa Brice is not as carefree about the article, but not due to the "trivial" and unsurprising finding that the Duke possesses DNA sequences from another ethnic group. "What is noteworthy is the ethics of publishing details of this genetic analysis at all," Brice says, noting that "one of the major ethical concerns about genetic information and privacy" is that individual information can lead to the disclosures about family members. The Duke's cousins are free to have genetic tests if they want, but disclosing information about other, non-consenting individuals, is "highly questionable," Brice says. "Would this have been considered acceptable if the revelation were, say, that he might have inherited genetic variants associated with disease risk?" she asks. In addition, newspaper has received criticism in journalism circles as it included a special offer from BritainsDNA for readers, which the Knight Science Journalism Tracker calls "harmful to journalists' credibility." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Thu Jun 20 02:38:42 2013 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:38:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] DNA India: The transhumanity timeline In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I want to note that I didn't actually coin "extropy". It was my co-editor of *Extropy *magazine, T.O. Morrow. --Max On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 8:07 AM, James Clement wrote: > The transhumanity timeline > Saturday, Jun 15, 2013, 18:32 IST | Place: Mumbai | Agency: DNA > Joanna Lobo > > > A chronological list of how transhumanity has evolved over the years. > > *1927: *Julian Huxley, a biologist, coined the term for what he hoped > would be a new age of enlightenment: "transhumanism--man remaining man, but > transcending himself, by realising new possibilities of and for his human > nature." > > *1962: *Robert Ettinger, a World War II veteran who became a physics > professor, published The Prospect of Immortality. He devised America's > first science experiment with immortality: cryonics. In 1972 he wrote that > instead of relying on cryonics to revive the dead, forthcoming technologies > might make death obsolete. > > *1980's:* An Englishman named Max O'Connor/ More coined the term extropy > which was the tendency for things to speed up. He founded the Extropy > Institute. > > *1990:* He wrote an essay titled Transhumanism: Toward a Futurist > Philosophy and a journal Extropy: The journal of Transhumanist Thought. > Soon after, his Extropians began calling themselves transhumanists. The > institute shut down in later years but tranhumanism kept mutating. > > *Today:* There is the World Transhumanist Association (now called > Humanity+), the Foresight Nanotech Institute in Menlo Park, the Singularity > Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the Methuselah Foundation that works > to extend biological life, the Immortality Institute advocates for > indefinite life extension technologies, the Lifeboat Foundation works to > alert the public about existential risks, the Institute for Ethics and > emerging Technologies, the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Besides, > several countries have their own associations. > > > http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/1848479/report-the-transhumanity-timeline > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* Kindle available now: http://www.amazon.com/The-Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-ebook/dp/B00BQZK6MU/ref=tmm_kin_title_0 President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jun 20 03:45:54 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 21:45:54 -0600 Subject: [ExI] RES: UltraRope could make kilometer-high elevators possible In-Reply-To: <013701ce6c52$55c62490$01526db0$@gmail.com> References: <013701ce6c52$55c62490$01526db0$@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 12:33 PM, Henrique Moraes Machado < cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com> wrote: > > I read this a few days ago and got me thinking. Why do elevators have to > use > cables at all? Can't they build a maglev elevator or something? Not talking > about the space elevator obviously, but building elevators. > One significant obstacle to a maglev building elevator would be the safety issues solved by the Otis elevator brake. Perhaps it's not such a stretch to solve the issue, but then is it really a maglev elevator? I do think you've got a really good point here, and I suspect the issue probably revolves around the expense of building such a beastie. Have you done a cost analysis Henrique? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Thu Jun 20 03:47:01 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 21:47:01 -0600 Subject: [ExI] [mta] Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: <70ddaf21-9dd3-45ba-9146-0e2944934e1c@googlegroups.com> References: <51A00F3A.5090002@canonizer.com> <51A0B89B.2080108@canonizer.com> <51A0E030.6030209@canonizer.com> <51A5418C.50907@canonizer.com> <51AA4ECD.30006@canonizer.com> <70ddaf21-9dd3-45ba-9146-0e2944934e1c@googlegroups.com> Message-ID: <51C27B35.8030006@canonizer.com> Not just Paypal. Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover, all near $100 billion capitalization companies, all built on their ability to muscle their way into steeling 3% of every effing transaction in the world. Making money by shorting MasterCard International because of Bitcoin? Priceless! So, what's your current thinking about what a Bisection will be worth in 1 year, and long term. How high could they go? Anywhere near 1 Satoshi = $1? At that value all of them would start to be close to all the real estate in all the world, at today's prices. Brent Allsop On 6/19/2013 3:15 PM, sparrohawc at gmail.com wrote: > Alright, I'm late to the party, but being a fan of Bitcoin I have a > few things to add. > > Bitcoin will settle down as they are disseminated more widely. The > market suffers when the assets are held in few hands, because it's > easier for it to flow one way or the other - and thus easier for the > value to shift quickly. The recent booms and busts are drastically > less pronounced than they used to be. I hope this is a trend that > continues, because it will encourage the use of bitcoins as a payment > method instead of just a store of value that is likely to give good > returns - and BTC as a payment method is, in my opinion, the best use > of bitcoins. Having a single authority for online payments (see: > Paypal) is counter-productive, as the opportunity for the authority to > exploit its position increases with the number of people using it. > > Paypal is already practically a card-carrying villain if you happen to > be in the business of selling things. It's far too easy to get bit by > them, and the response is usually a shrug followed by a "We already > have all your money" and "Who else are you going to go with?" > Frankly, anything that can take them, and their ilk, down a couple > pegs, is alright by me. > > The thing people keep failing to realize is that the creation of > Bitcoins is the creation of a commodity, not a Ponzi scheme. It's > only an investment in the sense that you are buying something that may > increase in value in the future; it is in no way guaranteed, and the > boom-and-busts are proof of that to anyone with a pair of eyes. If > you go into it expecting to see nothing but a climb in value, you're > exceptionally naive. I hope we'll see $1K/BTC in the future, but I'll > admit that's just a wish born of greed. In reality, the only way > that's going to happen is if people *use* bitcoins. With a Ponzi > scheme, you're being told up-front that you should expect X amount of > return. On top of that, the only use of a Ponzi is to get money > back. That is far from the only use for bitcoins. > > I'll reiterate: I only care about Bitcoins climbing in price because I > happen to have a few. Wholly separate from that is the hope that > Bitcoins are USED, and used WIDELY, because I see them as a superior > method of online payment. > > On Saturday, June 1, 2013 12:43:09 PM UTC-7, Brent.Allsop wrote: > > > Future Theoreticians, > > Multiple thoughts have been percolating in my mind that has > further falsified my fears of a Bitcoin Deflationary Catastrophe. > Help me see if I'm making any mistakes with this line of reasoning. > > Currently, economies have a general instability in them, causing > destructive boom and bust cycles. During the boom, everyone is > spending all their cash, to get into the stock market. This tends > to cause currency to become worth less, or inflation, since > everybody is getting rid of it, to purchase stocks. But when the > herd goes to far in this direction it creates a bubble. When a > pull back starts the 'bubble' pops. This is compounded as people > want to sell stocks (or not buy them), but instead put the capital > into something like Cash. reversing everything in a compounding > the problem unstable way. > > All this causes people to reduce spending and investing, which > causes jobs to be lost, real estate values, where most wealth is, > crash, the stock market crashes, and governments attempt to > counteract this cycle buy pumping more money into the system. > They attempt to stop the deflation, and further drive down > interest rates, hoping to motivate people to move money back into > the stock market and real estate. > > What scared me was thinking of a fixed size inflexible currency, > like Bitcion, if it was prevalent enough, it would really compound > these unstable cycles. I believe when the next recession hits, it > will really drive up Bitcion valuations, and no government will be > able to counteract this flow of capital out of everything else > into rapidly increasing in value Bitcoins. > > But what I realized was that this would make at least some people > significantly more wealthy, and make them want to spend that much > more money. In other words, instead of the government being the > only one spending and putting people to work, Bitcion holders > would likely fill this responsibility. > > The one problem would be, like most things, it makes the rich or > those holding the most Bitcoins richer, making everyone else > poorer. Where as governments tend to spend money to help the > poor, the rich would spend money on what they want, helping the > poor the way they wanted, after funding themselves. > > Also, when the rich really do get richer, eventually the people at > the bottom, revolt, taking all the wealth away from the wealthy, > as has occurred in so many revolutions in the past. But Bitcoins > would make this impossible. As no government can steal a Bitcion > from anyone, like they can a factory or farm. > > So, what does everyone think? Would Bitcion becoming the dominant > currency increase or decrease boom bust cycles in the economy, and > by how much? > > Brent Allsop > > > On 5/29/2013 8:57 AM, James Carroll wrote: >> On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 3:25 AM, Carl Youngblood >> > wrote: >> >> James, all I'm saying is that I don't think bitcoin will >> cause the human race to go extinct against our wills. >> Anything more than this is beyond my claim. If you do think >> that bitcoin will probably cause the human race to go >> extinct, then you disagree with me. Otherwise I think we agree. >> >> >> >> I think we generally agree that bitcoin is unlikely to have that >> effect. I simply took slight issue with your stated reasoning for >> why. But I think we agree in general. >> >> James >> >> -- >> Web: http://james.jlcarroll.net >> -- >> To learn more about the Mormon Transhumanist Association, visit >> http://transfigurism.org >> --- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the >> Google Groups "Mormon Transhumanist Association" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, >> send an email to transfiguris... at googlegroups.com . >> To post to this group, send email to transf... at googlegroups.com >> . >> Visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/transfigurism?hl=en-US >> . >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out >> . >> >> > > -- > To learn more about the Mormon Transhumanist Association, visit > http://transfigurism.org > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Mormon Transhumanist Association" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send > an email to transfigurism+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to transfigurism at googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/transfigurism. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gsantostasi at gmail.com Thu Jun 20 03:52:02 2013 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 22:52:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] My son stop action science-fiction movie Message-ID: My son Saverio Madis made a pretty good stop action movie about space exploration and an eventful encounter between galactic civilizations. Please support and encourage this budding science-artist and visit his youtube page, like and leave a comment if you can. Thank you for your support, Giovanni PS He told me that his next project would be a movie to spread transhumanism memes. We come in peace by Saverio Madis Santostasi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKWB0mGdLGc&feature=youtu.be -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Thu Jun 20 08:24:13 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 10:24:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Tor Browser Bundle 3.0alpha1 Message-ID: <20130620082413.GX22824@leitl.org> The new realease has turned out nice (no more extra Vidalia, yay), provided you use the workaround against a known bug (below). I encourage all ZS members to install it, and to test it. Yes, it also works with AdBlocker. https://blog.torproject.org/blog/announcing-tor-browser-bundle-30alpha1 Update 2013/6/28: Describe workaround for the Windows d2d1.dll crash. After almost 6 months of solid development, the Tor Project is proud to announce the first alpha in the 3.0 series of the Tor Browser Bundle! The 3.0alpha1 bundles are downloadable from the Tor Package Archive. Release Highlights Here are the major highlights of the 3.0 series: Usability, usability, usability! We've attempted to solve several major usability issues in this series, including: No more Vidalia The Tor process management is handled by the new Tor Launcher Firefox extension. If you want the Vidalia map and other features, you can point an existing Vidalia binary at control port 9151 after Tor Browser has launched, and it should still work (and even allow you to reconfigure the TBB Tor as a bridge or a relay). Local homepage with search box The browser now uses a local about:tor homepage instead of https://check.torproject.org. A local verification against the Tor control port is still performed, to ensure Tor is working, and a link to https://check.torproject.org is provided from the about:tor homepage for manual verification as well. Guided Extraction for Windows For Windows users, an NSIS-based extractor now guides you through the TBB extraction and ensures the extracted bundle ends up on your Desktop, or in a known location chosen by you (but make sure you have permissions on that location). Hopefully this will mean no more losing track of the extracted bundle files! Email-sized bundles The bundles are all under the 25M gmail attachment size limit, so direct email and gettor attachments are once again possible. Improved build security and integrity verification We now use Gitian to build the bundles. The idea behind Gitian is to allow independent people to take our source code and produce exactly identical binaries on their own. We're not quite at the point where you always get a matching build, but the remaining differences are minor, and within a couple more releases we should have it fully reproducible. For now, we are posting all of the builds for comparison, and you can of course build and compare your own. Known issues Of course, being an alpha release (in fact, the first alpha release of this series), we expect these bundles to have some issues. Here's the major user-facing issues that we know about so far: Crash Issue: Windows Permissions On Windows, if you install the bundle to anywhere other than the Desktop, permissions issues can cause the bundles to crash at startup. Crash Issue: Windows Software Conflict(s) There appears to be an issue with direct2d rendering acceleration that affects some video cards, and has a crash report with a module d2d1.dll. The simplest workaround is to right click on 'Start Tor Browser' and select "Properties->Compatibility->Run in Windows XP Compatibility mode". Extraction: Delete or rename your old TBB directory first! These bundles are significantly different than the previous alphas or stable releases. You must not extract this bundle on top of a previous TBB directory, or multiple things will break. If you want to preserve your bookmarks and history, you can do so by copying only the places.sqlite file from your old bundle directory into the new one. The good news is that the elimination of Vidalia should make it much simpler for us to finally deploy an autoupdater, but please bear with us until we can finally complete that important usability work. Misc: Missing Translations Some of the translations strings for the Tor Launcher startup got munged by Transifex. In particular, the Farsi and the German builds both have missing button labels and strings. If you experience any other issues, please let us know and/or file a bug! From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Jun 20 09:27:02 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 11:27:02 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [mta] Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: <51C27B35.8030006@canonizer.com> References: <51A00F3A.5090002@canonizer.com> <51A0B89B.2080108@canonizer.com> <51A0E030.6030209@canonizer.com> <51A5418C.50907@canonizer.com> <51AA4ECD.30006@canonizer.com> <70ddaf21-9dd3-45ba-9146-0e2944934e1c@googlegroups.com> <51C27B35.8030006@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <51C2CAE6.20202@libero.it> Il 20/06/2013 05:47, Brent Allsop ha scritto: > > > Not just Paypal. Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover, all near $100 > billion capitalization companies, all built on their ability to muscle > their way into steeling 3% of every effing transaction in the world. > > Making money by shorting MasterCard International because of Bitcoin? > > Priceless! > > So, what's your current thinking about what a Bisection will be worth in > 1 year, and long term. How high could they go? Anywhere near 1 Satoshi > = $1? At that value all of them would start to be close to all the real > estate in all the world, at today's prices. Not just them, near all the banking sector is about payments: receiving and sending payments. With bitcoin they are made obsolete. This is a chart from, bitcointalk: The first half is mine (using Bitcoincharts), the second part is the projected exponential trend (on a log scale) "the lowest line bring us to 10K in April 2016, 100K in May 2017 and 1 M$ in July 2017. The "median" line to 10K in June 2016 and 100K in July 2017 and 1 M in August 2017" Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Jun 20 12:01:25 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 14:01:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Experimental Null Test of Mach Effect In-Reply-To: <5126922C.2040703@libero.it> References: <5126922C.2040703@libero.it> Message-ID: <51C2EF15.7050901@libero.it> Il 21/02/2013 22:31, Mirco Romanato ha scritto: http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/06/2012-38-khz-mach-effect-thrusters.html 2012 38 KHz Mach Effect Thrusters experiments get 2-3 micronewtons which is close to updated theoretically expected 3.2 micronewtons I hope they are able to scale up the frequency, because the effects should grow exponentially if the theory is correct. http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2215&start=1875#p102063 This is a post of Paul March, very interesting. Mirco From pharos at gmail.com Thu Jun 20 12:02:42 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 13:02:42 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Tor Browser Bundle 3.0alpha1 In-Reply-To: <20130620082413.GX22824@leitl.org> References: <20130620082413.GX22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 9:24 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > The new realease has turned out nice (no more > extra Vidalia, yay), provided you use the workaround > against a known bug (below). > > I encourage all ZS members to install it, and to > test it. Yes, it also works with AdBlocker. > > https://blog.torproject.org/blog/announcing-tor-browser-bundle-30alpha1 > > Good news! But remember this is an alpha release that you are being encouraged to test if you like living on the edge and won't panic if your computer crashes. ;) Version 2.3.25-8 is solid and quite useable. BillK From M2darwin at aol.com Thu Jun 20 04:38:44 2013 From: M2darwin at aol.com (M2darwin at aol.com) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:38:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] [GRG] NewAbs: Frailty Is a Biomarker for Death Message-ID: <14f81.3680537c.3ef3e154@aol.com> In a message dated 6/18/2013 11:05:36 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, scoles at grg.org writes: Everyone older than 70 should be checked for frailty, a condition that is both easily treated and potentially deadly, according to an article by representatives from six major international and U.S. medical organizations (see also Gerontology). They've got to be kidding when they write that, "frailty...is both easily treated and potentially deadly"! Really?! Frailty is a clinical sign of impending end stage multi-system failure. As such, it is virtually impossible to treat, let alone to easily treat. As the authors note, the typical elderly frail person presents with at least the following pathologies in an advanced state and flagrantly evident: * sarcopenia: as evidenced by dramatically reduced muscle mass, weakness and difficulty moving loads - most cannot push a chair across a room! * grave compromise of the CNS: as evidenced by difficulty maintaining balance, altered gait (the old man or old woman shuffle), apathy, lack of motivation/interest (with or without clinically evident depression), and loss of fluid movements in bending, reaching for objects or rising from a sitting or recumbent position. These signs almost invariably signal some degree of cognitive comprise, the extent of which can be difficult to determine absent spending some meaningful amount of time interviewing the patient and asking the right questions. There is almost invariably marked cerebral atrophy and/or the presence of disseminated cerebrovascular disease, * inappetance and malnutrition which often signal loss of olfactory receptors and their associated sensory neurons, * major loss of bone mass due to both organic osteoporosis and additional loss of bone mass from decreased mobility and load bearing. The classically frail elderly individual is a person drained of organic reserves in virtually every major organ system. They are not just "unfit" or "malnourished" - indeed, if you use any reasonably rigorous objective laboratory measurements, there will be ample evidence of low or negligible cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, cerebral, renal and immune reserves. Thus, frailty might be fairly described as the "penultimate one hoss shay of human aging," with super centenartians being the ultimate one hoss shay. While I understand why gerontologists are interested in super centenarians and the longevity genes and lifestyle(s) which permit them to reach such an advanced age, the bottom line is that the end product is uniformly nightmarish and only preferable when compared to death itself: These individuals represent the near perfect definition of "frailty absent discrete disease." The only difference between these poor souls and the more common (and much younger) frail elderly individual is that the typical frail old person is usually afflicted with multiple, discrete pathologies. While the frailty of super centenarians does indeed translate into more "well and productive years," it is critically important to understand that the end product is nothing more or less than distilled senescence - i.e., biological aging divorced from any particular, diagnosable disease. As such, these individuals represent not some extraordinary key to avoiding aging, but rather, the pathway to dying of just aging - and nothing else. This may be justifiably called "longevity." But what it is not, and should not be mistaken for, is extended youth. These people lost their youth many decades before they lost their lives; and that is a great tragedy which, it seems, is largely unappreciated by gerontologists the world over. Mike Darwin -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ GRG mailing list GRG at lists.ucla.edu http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/grg From eugen at leitl.org Thu Jun 20 14:18:00 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 16:18:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Web=E2=80=99s_Reach_Binds_N=2ES=2EA=2E_and_Silico?= =?utf-8?q?n_Valley_Leaders?= Message-ID: <20130620141800.GN22824@leitl.org> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/technology/silicon-valley-and-spy-agency-bound-by-strengthening-web.html?pagewanted=print Web?s Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders By JAMES RISEN and NICK WINGFIELD WASHINGTON ? When Max Kelly, the chief security officer for Facebook, left the social media company in 2010, he did not go to Google, Twitter or a similar Silicon Valley concern. Instead the man who was responsible for protecting the personal information of Facebook?s more than one billion users from outside attacks went to work for another giant institution that manages and analyzes large pools of data: the National Security Agency. Mr. Kelly?s move to the spy agency, which has not previously been reported, underscores the increasingly deep connections between Silicon Valley and the agency and the degree to which they are now in the same business. Both hunt for ways to collect, analyze and exploit large pools of data about millions of Americans. The only difference is that the N.S.A. does it for intelligence, and Silicon Valley does it to make money. The disclosure of the spy agency?s program called Prism, which is said to collect the e-mails and other Web activity of foreigners using major Internet companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook, has prompted the companies to deny that the agency has direct access to their computers, even as they acknowledge complying with secret N.S.A. court orders for specific data. Yet technology experts and former intelligence officials say the convergence between Silicon Valley and the N.S.A. and the rise of data mining ? both as an industry and as a crucial intelligence tool ? have created a more complex reality. Silicon Valley has what the spy agency wants: vast amounts of private data and the most sophisticated software available to analyze it. The agency in turn is one of Silicon Valley?s largest customers for what is known as data analytics, one of the valley?s fastest-growing markets. To get their hands on the latest software technology to manipulate and take advantage of large volumes of data, United States intelligence agencies invest in Silicon Valley start-ups, award classified contracts and recruit technology experts like Mr. Kelly. ?We are all in these Big Data business models,? said Ray Wang, a technology analyst and chief executive of Constellation Research, based in San Francisco. ?There are a lot of connections now because the data scientists and the folks who are building these systems have a lot of common interests.? Although Silicon Valley has sold equipment to the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies for a generation, the interests of the two began to converge in new ways in the last few years as advances in computer storage technology drastically reduced the costs of storing enormous amounts of data ? at the same time that the value of the data for use in consumer marketing began to rise. ?These worlds overlap,? said Philipp S. Kr?ger, chief executive of Explorist, an Internet start-up in New York. The sums the N.S.A. spends in Silicon Valley are classified, as is the agency?s total budget, which independent analysts say is $8 billion to $10 billion a year. Despite the companies? assertions that they cooperate with the agency only when legally compelled, current and former industry officials say the companies sometimes secretly put together teams of in-house experts to find ways to cooperate more completely with the N.S.A. and to make their customers? information more accessible to the agency. The companies do so, the officials say, because they want to control the process themselves. They are also under subtle but powerful pressure from the N.S.A. to make access easier. Skype, the Internet-based calling service, began its own secret program, Project Chess, to explore the legal and technical issues in making Skype calls readily available to intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials, according to people briefed on the program who asked not to be named to avoid trouble with the intelligence agencies. Project Chess, which has never been previously disclosed, was small, limited to fewer than a dozen people inside Skype, and was developed as the company had sometimes contentious talks with the government over legal issues, said one of the people briefed on the project. The project began about five years ago, before most of the company was sold by its parent, eBay, to outside investors in 2009. Microsoft acquired Skype in an $8.5 billion deal that was completed in October 2011. A Skype executive denied last year in a blog post that recent changes in the way Skype operated were made at the behest of Microsoft to make snooping easier for law enforcement. It appears, however, that Skype figured out how to cooperate with the intelligence community before Microsoft took over the company, according to documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, a former contractor for the N.S.A. One of the documents about the Prism program made public by Mr. Snowden says Skype joined Prism on Feb. 6, 2011. Microsoft executives are no longer willing to affirm statements, made by Skype several years ago, that Skype calls could not be wiretapped. Frank X. Shaw, a Microsoft spokesman, declined to comment. In its recruiting in Silicon Valley, the N.S.A. sends some of its most senior officials to lure the best of the best. No less than Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the agency?s director and the chief of the Pentagon?s Cyber Command, showed up at one of the world?s largest hacker conferences in Las Vegas last summer, looking stiff in an uncharacteristic T-shirt and jeans, to give the keynote speech. His main purpose at Defcon, the conference, was to recruit hackers for his spy agency. N.S.A. badges are often seen on the lapels of officials at other technology and information security conferences. ?They?re very open about their interest in recruiting from the hacker community,? said Jennifer Granick, the director of civil liberties at Stanford Law School?s Center for Internet and Society. But perhaps no one embodies the tightening relationship between the N.S.A. and the valley more than Kenneth A. Minihan. A career Air Force intelligence officer, Mr. Minihan was the director of the N.S.A. during the Clinton administration until his retirement in the late 1990s, and then he ran the agency?s outside professional networking organization. Today he is managing director of Paladin Capital Group, a venture capital firm based in Washington that in part specializes in financing start-ups that offer high-tech solutions for the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies. In effect, Mr. Minihan is an advanced scout for the N.S.A. as it tries to capitalize on the latest technology to analyze and exploit the vast amounts of data flowing around the world and inside the United States. The members of Paladin?s strategic advisory board include Richard C. Schaeffer Jr., a former N.S.A. executive. While Paladin is a private firm, the American intelligence community has its own in-house venture capital company, In-Q-Tel, financed by the Central Intelligence Agency to invest in high-tech start-ups. Many software technology firms involved in data analytics are open about their connections to intelligence agencies. Gary King, a co-founder and chief scientist at Crimson Hexagon, a start-up in Boston, said in an interview that he had given talks at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., about his company?s social media analytics tools. The future holds the prospect of ever greater cooperation between Silicon Valley and the N.S.A. because data storage is expected to increase at an annual compound rate of 53 percent through 2016, according to the International Data Corporation. ?We reached a tipping point, where the value of having user data rose beyond the cost of storing it,? said Dan Auerbach, a technology analyst with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an electronic privacy group in San Francisco. ?Now we have an incentive to keep it forever.? Social media sites in the meantime are growing as voluntary data mining operations on a scale that rivals or exceeds anything the government could attempt on its own. ?You willingly hand over data to Facebook that you would never give voluntarily to the government,? said Bruce Schneier, a technologist and an author. James Risen reported from Washington, and Nick Wingfield from Seattle. Kitty Bennett contributed reporting. From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 20 14:42:20 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 07:42:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Web=E2=80=99s_Reach_Binds_N=2ES=2EA=2E_and_Silico?= =?utf-8?q?n_Valley_Leaders?= In-Reply-To: <20130620141800.GN22824@leitl.org> References: <20130620141800.GN22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: <016701ce6dc4$5f6894b0$1e39be10$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Subject: [ExI] Web?s Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders >...http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/technology/silicon-valley-and-spy-agency-bound-by-strengthening-web.html?pagewanted=print >...Web?s Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders >...By JAMES RISEN and NICK WINGFIELD >...WASHINGTON ? When Max Kelly, the chief security officer for Facebook, left the social media company in 2010...Mr. Kelly?s move to the spy agency, which has not previously been reported, underscores the increasingly deep connections between Silicon Valley and the agency and the degree to which they are now in the same business. Both hunt for ways to collect, analyze and exploit large pools of data about millions of Americans... Foresight does have its advantages. Recall about 15 or more years ago, when we had a discussion on this forum about this topic. As I recall it was that every text you send or post to any forum theoretically lasts forever and that it is easily searched indefinitely into the future, being ASCII text. Our German friends took note of this in particular, for they know how a country can become a brutal dictatorship inside of a decade. Now we are seeing the same thing in the US. Back in those days, among the actions we derived was to become a group of people. Every time you have friends over, have them log on to your computer account, write random emails, do internet searches, generally obscure your own search patterns. I did that. Over the years I think there are at least 60 people who have posted stuff under my name or done internet searches. At one party alone, the one after Extro-5, there were about 30 people doing that. Now my online tracks have been made by a group of people some of which I don't even know. Lesson, especially for Americans: get your friends to post stuff as you. Do that early and often. spike From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu Jun 20 16:03:43 2013 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:03:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] DNA India: The transhumanity timeline Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 5:00 AM, Max More wrote: > I want to note that I didn't actually coin "extropy". It was my co-editor > of *Extropy *magazine, T.O. Morrow. While we are correcting the record . . . . http://www.extropy.org/neologo.htm#j Jupiter-Brain "A posthuman being of extremely high computational power and size. This is the archetypal concentrated intelligence. The term originated due to an idea by Keith Henson that nanomachines could be used to turn the mass of Jupiter into computers running an upgraded version of himself." The idea actually came from Perry Metzger, I found the original postings on Extropy, and my contribution was to throw cold water on the idea from the problems with speed of light delays and the brain cooking in it's own waste heat. From the speed of light, the thinking rate of a Jupiter brain would be ~50 times slower than a human brain. If you want to do a lot of thinking, small dimensions, lots of power and plenty of cold water are needed. http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/04/12/transhumanism-and-the-human-expansion-into-space-a-conflict-with-physics/ Keith From anders at aleph.se Thu Jun 20 16:14:08 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 17:14:08 +0100 Subject: [ExI] BIS: Extraterrestrial liberty and colonising the universe Message-ID: <51C32A50.3060303@aleph.se> My colleague Stuart lectures at the British Interplanetary Society on colonizing the universe and what this might mean for liberty: http://youtu.be/mrUWkfeJABY -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 20 17:42:55 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 10:42:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] BIS: Extraterrestrial liberty and colonising the universe In-Reply-To: <51C32A50.3060303@aleph.se> References: <51C32A50.3060303@aleph.se> Message-ID: <01d101ce6ddd$9d4b2270$d7e16750$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: [ExI] BIS: Extraterrestrial liberty and colonising the universe >...My colleague Stuart lectures at the British Interplanetary Society on colonizing the universe and what this might mean for liberty: http://youtu.be/mrUWkfeJABY -- Dr Anders Sandberg Thanks Anders. This reminds us of the Star Wars franchise, which had space travel, colonizing far flung planets, etc, all the usual SciFi elements, but was really all about liberty. spike From pharos at gmail.com Thu Jun 20 18:22:05 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 19:22:05 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [tp] NSA flag terms In-Reply-To: <013901ce6c5c$bf78d040$3e6a70c0$@rainier66.com> References: <3631A119EB15854B832730C5CA624B2423CBFBF4@exmb3.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu> <00f801ce6c50$f9cc91c0$ed65b540$@rainier66.com> <013901ce6c5c$bf78d040$3e6a70c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 8:48 PM, spike wrote: >>... On Behalf Of BillK >>... > >>...If you want to use Google search via a non-tracking site go to: > > > Thanks BillK, but how can we ever really know we are not being tracked? > Many eyes. Internet techies watch what is going on. False claims don't last for long. Quote: DuckDuckGo Search Engine Gets Boost After PRISM Scandal DuckDuckGo, a search engine that claims it gives its users complete anonymity, has seen a 33 percent increase in users since the NSA news broke over a week ago, said founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg on CNBC's Closing Bell Tuesday. "We had zero inquiries (from government) and the reason for that is because we don't store any data," Weinberg said. "So if they come to us?which they know because it's in our privacy policy?we have nothing to hand over, it's all anonymous data." ------------ BillK From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Thu Jun 20 19:52:27 2013 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 16:52:27 -0300 Subject: [ExI] RES: RES: UltraRope could make kilometer-high elevators possible In-Reply-To: References: <013701ce6c52$55c62490$01526db0$@gmail.com> Message-ID: <08fb01ce6def$b29cb9b0$17d62d10$@gmail.com> Not at all. I don't think I've got the resources to do a cost analysis (neither know how to). I was just brainstorming and MagLev was just one idea. For instance, why do elevators have to have a shaft? They could as well spiral around the building. They only need energy to go up and could be lifted by some kind of crank like rollercoasters and go down by gravity alone, with air dampening or using Lenz current (or some other method) to slow it down. Elevator companies lack imagination. J De: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] Em nome de Kelly Anderson Enviada em: quinta-feira, 20 de junho de 2013 00:46 Para: ExI chat list Assunto: Re: [ExI] RES: UltraRope could make kilometer-high elevators possible On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 12:33 PM, Henrique Moraes Machado wrote: I read this a few days ago and got me thinking. Why do elevators have to use cables at all? Can't they build a maglev elevator or something? Not talking about the space elevator obviously, but building elevators. One significant obstacle to a maglev building elevator would be the safety issues solved by the Otis elevator brake. Perhaps it's not such a stretch to solve the issue, but then is it really a maglev elevator? I do think you've got a really good point here, and I suspect the issue probably revolves around the expense of building such a beastie. Have you done a cost analysis Henrique? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 20 20:32:02 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 13:32:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] RES: RES: UltraRope could make kilometer-high elevators possible In-Reply-To: <08fb01ce6def$b29cb9b0$17d62d10$@gmail.com> References: <013701ce6c52$55c62490$01526db0$@gmail.com> <08fb01ce6def$b29cb9b0$17d62d10$@gmail.com> Message-ID: <003101ce6df5$3a7ae230$af70a690$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Henrique Moraes Machado Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2013 12:52 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: [ExI] RES: RES: UltraRope could make kilometer-high elevators possible Not at all. I don't think I've got the resources to do a cost analysis (neither know how to). I was just brainstorming and MagLev was just one idea. For instance, why do elevators have to have a shaft? They could as well spiral around the building. They only need energy to go up and could be lifted by some kind of crank like rollercoasters and go down by gravity alone, with air dampening or using Lenz current (or some other method) to slow it down. Elevator companies lack imagination. J That is a cool idea Henrique. We could have concentric helical coil tracks that elevators would go up driven by linear magnetic actuation, like a scaled up linear stepper motor. Each loop around the perimeter of the building could raise the proles two floors, or more for that matter, then we could arrange cars going in the opposite direction continuously. Might be too slow perhaps. But it would look cool, especially if it is on the outside of the building. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Jun 20 21:08:32 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 17:08:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] RES: RES: UltraRope could make kilometer-high elevators possible In-Reply-To: <003101ce6df5$3a7ae230$af70a690$@rainier66.com> References: <013701ce6c52$55c62490$01526db0$@gmail.com> <08fb01ce6def$b29cb9b0$17d62d10$@gmail.com> <003101ce6df5$3a7ae230$af70a690$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 4:32 PM, spike wrote: > That is a cool idea Henrique. We could have concentric helical coil tracks > that elevators would go up driven by linear magnetic actuation, like a > scaled up linear stepper motor. Each loop around the perimeter of the > building could raise the proles two floors, or more for that matter, then we > could arrange cars going in the opposite direction continuously. Might be > too slow perhaps. But it would look cool, especially if it is on the > outside of the building. Put the tracks around the outside of the building then raise or lower the entire building as needed... Everyone gets to have a ground-floor office. (More enginerring at work) From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jun 20 21:26:47 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 15:26:47 -0600 Subject: [ExI] RES: RES: UltraRope could make kilometer-high elevators possible In-Reply-To: <08fb01ce6def$b29cb9b0$17d62d10$@gmail.com> References: <013701ce6c52$55c62490$01526db0$@gmail.com> <08fb01ce6def$b29cb9b0$17d62d10$@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 1:52 PM, Henrique Moraes Machado < cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com> wrote: > Not at all. I don?t think I?ve got the resources to do a cost analysis > (neither know how to). > Well, we just have to find out what this UltraRope is going to cost. It's probably researchy stuff at this point, so likely no good number for that. Then you compare it to steel cable, which would be easy to price. > **** > > I was just brainstorming and MagLev was just one idea. For instance, why > do elevators have to have a shaft? They could as well spiral around the > building. > Sure, but they would be either slow, or make the passengers dizzy, or scare the hell out of people. Would be great for tourists though! > They only need energy to go up and could be lifted by some kind of crank > like rollercoasters > Or maglev them up around the circle. > and go down by gravity alone, with air dampening or using Lenz current (or > some other method) to slow it down. > Are you saying we use the same method of braking that the Prius does to recover electricity from braking? That's cool. > **** > > Elevator companies lack imagination. J > Clearly, you do not! Congratulations! One of my ideas for getting people down from the top of a building is to create a soft plastic chute (clear for the adventurous) inside of a hard plastic shell... There would be air that would have to travel around the person to get around them and that would provide the braking. Putting the people's lower legs into some plastic thing that looks like a big dixie cup would make the travel speed more predictable. At the bottom, you just go into a big air bag and roll quickly out of the way (or something... LOL) Have to think about it for another 5 minutes. :-) But you could control the speed of descent to anything you wanted it to be. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Thu Jun 20 21:36:57 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 22:36:57 +0100 Subject: [ExI] RES: RES: UltraRope could make kilometer-high elevators possible In-Reply-To: References: <013701ce6c52$55c62490$01526db0$@gmail.com> <08fb01ce6def$b29cb9b0$17d62d10$@gmail.com> <003101ce6df5$3a7ae230$af70a690$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 10:08 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > Put the tracks around the outside of the building then raise or lower > the entire building as needed... > > Everyone gets to have a ground-floor office. > > Have a rack of hydrogen balloons and clip on the harness to go up with an automatic catcher net at the requested floor. A helter-skelter slide (tornado slide) is all you need to go down. BillK From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jun 20 22:37:17 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 16:37:17 -0600 Subject: [ExI] RES: RES: UltraRope could make kilometer-high elevators possible In-Reply-To: References: <013701ce6c52$55c62490$01526db0$@gmail.com> <08fb01ce6def$b29cb9b0$17d62d10$@gmail.com> <003101ce6df5$3a7ae230$af70a690$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Like this one? http://blogs.herald.com/dave_barrys_blog/2009/03/office-workers.html Would be OK if it were inside and an airplane didn't fly through the middle of it... LOL. -Kelly On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 3:36 PM, BillK wrote: > On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 10:08 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > > Put the tracks around the outside of the building then raise or lower > > the entire building as needed... > > > > Everyone gets to have a ground-floor office. > > > > > > Have a rack of hydrogen balloons and clip on the harness to go up with > an automatic catcher net at the requested floor. A helter-skelter > slide (tornado slide) is all you need to go down. > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > 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 dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Jun 21 01:43:03 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 18:43:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] BIS: Extraterrestrial liberty and colonising the universe In-Reply-To: <51C32A50.3060303@aleph.se> References: <51C32A50.3060303@aleph.se> Message-ID: <1371778983.37152.YahooMailNeo@web126203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Thursday, June 20, 2013 12:14 PM Anders Sandberg wrote: > My colleague Stuart lectures at the British Interplanetary > Society on colonizing the universe and what this might > mean for liberty: > > http://youtu.be/mrUWkfeJABY This reminds me of something someone wrote almost a decade ago: http://uweb1.superlink.net/~neptune/SpaceFreedom.html ? Regards, Dan ?See my SF short story "Residue": http://www.amazon.com/Residue-ebook/dp/B00BS3T0RM/ -- US http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BS3T0RM -- UK http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00BS3T0RM -- Canada -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 21 03:59:44 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 20:59:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] BIS: in Message-ID: hapPy SOlsTlce EvERyoNe! Splke Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Smartphone -------- Original message -------- From: Dan Date: 06/20/2013 6:43 PM (GMT-08:00) To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] BIS: Extraterrestrial liberty and colonising the universe On Thursday, June 20, 2013 12:14 PM Anders Sandberg wrote: > My colleague Stuart lectures at the British Interplanetary > Society on colonizing the universe and what this might > mean for liberty: > > http://youtu.be/mrUWkfeJABY This reminds me of something someone wrote almost a decade ago: http://uweb1.superlink.net/~neptune/SpaceFreedom.html ? Regards, Dan ?See my SF short story "Residue": http://www.amazon.com/Residue-ebook/dp/B00BS3T0RM/ -- US http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BS3T0RM -- UK http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00BS3T0RM -- Canada -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri Jun 21 04:32:44 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 21:32:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Quatro-quark-icle Message-ID: <1371789164.17204.YahooMailNeo@web126203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> http://www.nature.com/news/quark-quartet-opens-fresh-vista-on-matter-1.13225 Interesting to see if there's anything more stable in this realm. ? Regards, Dan ?See my SF short story "Residue": http://www.amazon.com/Residue-ebook/dp/B00BS3T0RM/ -- US http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BS3T0RM -- UK http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00BS3T0RM -- Canada -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 21 05:04:10 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 22:04:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] happy solstice! Message-ID: <00b701ce6e3c$c83d8090$58b881b0$@rainier66.com> hapPy SOlsTlce EvERyoNe! Splke It wasn?t drugs that did this! There is a perfectly logical explanation. I climbed Mission Peak to watch the city lights come on as the summer solstice approached. So I went up there, but since I was hiking I didn?t bring my glasses: I need those only for reading. More later, I want to send this message right on the minute of the solstice, which is RIGHT NOW, 10:04 PDT, so HAPPY SOLSTICE EVERYONE! spike From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2013 9:00 PM To: dan_ust at yahoo.com; extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: Re: [ExI] BIS: in hapPy SOlsTlce EvERyoNe! Splke Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Smartphone -------- Original message -------- From: Dan Date: 06/20/2013 6:43 PM (GMT-08:00) To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] BIS: Extraterrestrial liberty and colonising the universe On Thursday, June 20, 2013 12:14 PM Anders Sandberg wrote: > My colleague Stuart lectures at the British Interplanetary > Society on colonizing the universe and what this might > mean for liberty: > > http://youtu.be/mrUWkfeJABY This reminds me of something someone wrote almost a decade ago: http://uweb1.superlink.net/~neptune/SpaceFreedom.html Regards, Dan See my SF short story "Residue": http://www.amazon.com/Residue-ebook/dp/B00BS3T0RM/ -- US http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BS3T0RM -- UK http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00BS3T0RM -- Canada -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 21 05:36:59 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 22:36:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] happy solstice! In-Reply-To: <00b701ce6e3c$c83d8090$58b881b0$@rainier66.com> References: <00b701ce6e3c$c83d8090$58b881b0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00bf01ce6e41$5a11d210$0e357630$@rainier66.com> From: spike [mailto:spike at rainier66.com] Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2013 10:04 PM To: 'spike'; 'ExI chat list'; dan_ust at yahoo.com Subject: happy solstice! hapPy SOlsTlce EvERyoNe! Splke Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Smartphone >?It wasn?t drugs that did this! There is a perfectly logical explanation. >?I climbed Mission Peak to watch the city lights come on as the summer solstice approached. So I went up there, but since I was hiking I didn?t bring my glasses: I need those only for reading. More later, I want to send this message right on the minute of the solstice, which is RIGHT NOW, 10:04 PDT, so HAPPY SOLSTICE EVERYONE! spike OK so I have been trying for years to send a solstice greeting to my friends on ExI right on the minute of the solstice and in all those years, this is the first time I ever managed to make that happen. I had to cut short my previous explanation in order to get that message out on the minute. So here is what happened: there were solstice festivals here and there in the area, pagan rituals, nekkid bike rides and so forth, but I didn?t go to any of them. I went up Mission Peak from which a prole can look out over the entire Bay, and this was such a gorgeous evening for that, waxing gibbous moon, Venus and Mercury right together, clear skies, 20 degrees, just perfect, and so I was up there looking it all over, and realized that this hip new phone I have allows me to send email, but since I was going for a hike I hadn?t brought my glasses, so everything was a blur closer than about a meter from my face. I hit the wrong key or something and couldn?t get the soft keyboard to come up, but I kept messing with it until I realized it was a handwriting recognition pad, but I had no stylus so I was trying to form letters with my finger but I couldn?t see a thing and I wasn?t about to ask some young passerby to read it for me, no, I am soooo not going there, and staying not there, and I wasn?t going to ask a fellow geezer to borrow his or her reading glasses either, far too undignified. So I had to write the letters and kinda guess if I had them approximately right and in the right order. So when I arrived home a few minutes before the solstice, I find this apparently drug-addled post from Your Humble Servant, and had just enough time to write a sane-appearing solstice greeting but not enough time to write out this explanation for the first one. That?s my story, and I am sticking with it. Parting observation: I have been climbing Mission Peak above Fremont California for nearly a quarter of a century. This observation I share with great pleasure: the air is sooooo daaaaamn much cleaner now than it was back in those days, so much clearer, one can often see fifty miles on an evening such as this. I remember back in the late 80s when most of the time you couldn?t see much more than Fremont and maybe as far as Oakland in good conditions. Today you can see way down to the south end of San Jose, way out across the bay to San Francisco, way up above Oakland from up there. Life is good. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jun 21 06:49:34 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 08:49:34 +0200 Subject: [ExI] DNA India: The transhumanity timeline In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20130621064934.GV22824@leitl.org> On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 09:03:43AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > The idea actually came from Perry Metzger, I found the original > postings on Extropy, and my contribution was to throw cold water on > the idea from the problems with speed of light delays and the brain > cooking in it's own waste heat. From the speed of light, the thinking > rate of a Jupiter brain would be ~50 times slower than a human brain. Diameter of Jupiter is 0.46 lightseconds, spike time to cross the brain is 1.6 ms -- 270x, if my math is right All assuming that you're looking at a top level coherent process, which is a red herring. > If you want to do a lot of thinking, small dimensions, lots of power > and plenty of cold water are needed. > > http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/04/12/transhumanism-and-the-human-expansion-into-space-a-conflict-with-physics/ Too many assumptions there. "Twenty million subjective years to get an answer back is just ridiculous." -- you're thinking like a human here. "Due to this line of thinking, I no longer think it?s practical to surround a star with computronium." -- why, obviously Amerigo Vespucci and Cristobal Colon never set sail, so the colonization never happened, so Keith Henson never happened. Since you're obviously there, there seems to be a problem with your line of reasoning. It obviously has to do with the need to communicate with everyone else within a given minimal time, which is a bogus requirement. Back then, the opposite site of the Earth was as remote as the next star in terms of communication latency. Yet it still got settled. ?Just to give you a sense of what microseconds are, it takes you 500,000 microseconds just to click a mouse. But if you?re a Wall Street algorithm and you?re fivemicroseconds behind, you?re a loser.? -- the problem with HFT is not that is fast (it is), but that it's systematically fraudulent. From pharos at gmail.com Fri Jun 21 06:53:24 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 07:53:24 +0100 Subject: [ExI] happy solstice! In-Reply-To: <00bf01ce6e41$5a11d210$0e357630$@rainier66.com> References: <00b701ce6e3c$c83d8090$58b881b0$@rainier66.com> <00bf01ce6e41$5a11d210$0e357630$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 6:36 AM, spike wrote: > Parting observation: I have been climbing Mission Peak above Fremont > California for nearly a quarter of a century. This observation I share with > great pleasure: the air is sooooo daaaaamn much cleaner now than it was back > in those days, so much clearer, one can often see fifty miles on an evening > such as this. I remember back in the late 80s when most of the time you > couldn?t see much more than Fremont and maybe as far as Oakland in good > conditions. Today you can see way down to the south end of San Jose, way > out across the bay to San Francisco, way up above Oakland from up there. > Life is good. > [image: Inline image 1] BillK -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jun 21 11:17:10 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 13:17:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Web=E2=80=99s_Reach_Binds_N=2ES=2EA=2E_and_Silico?= =?utf-8?q?n_Valley_Leaders?= In-Reply-To: <016701ce6dc4$5f6894b0$1e39be10$@rainier66.com> References: <20130620141800.GN22824@leitl.org> <016701ce6dc4$5f6894b0$1e39be10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130621111710.GF22824@leitl.org> On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 07:42:20AM -0700, spike wrote: > Lesson, especially for Americans: get your friends to post stuff as you. Do that early and often. Unfortunately simple statistical analysis will smoke out the real spike, and arguably even uniquely identify people who helped to try obscuring your data shadow. Just use the Tor Browser Bundle, along with AdBlocker, and don't login anywhere in the other tabs. From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Fri Jun 21 11:52:27 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 05:52:27 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Mathematical Help with Bitcoin historical curve future projection? (was re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe) In-Reply-To: <51C2CAE6.20202@libero.it> References: <51A00F3A.5090002@canonizer.com> <51A0B89B.2080108@canonizer.com> <51A0E030.6030209@canonizer.com> <51A5418C.50907@canonizer.com> <51AA4ECD.30006@canonizer.com> <70ddaf21-9dd3-45ba-9146-0e2944934e1c@googlegroups.com> <51C27B35.8030006@canonizer.com> <51C2CAE6.20202@libero.it> Message-ID: <51C43E7B.8020808@canonizer.com> Hi Micro, Did you intend on having an attachment or link with this that had your chart? I'd sure like to see that as we're working on the same thing for the "Canonized Crypto Coin Law" camp here: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/2 We're working on a new version of the statement that will include a graph from MtGox's significant growth historical data and projecting this into the future according to expert consensus and something like Polynomial Curve Fitting. Josh Seims (CCed), the author of this great Tech Crunch Bitcoin valuation article has been helping. http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/02/calculating-the-long-term-value-of-a-bitcoin/ Josh, Notice that Per your great suggestion, I've changed the name of the survey project to "Crypto Coin Survey Project". I've included the orders of magnatude growth dates in the history (noting each of the 7 times a coin has increased in value by 10 times, and how long it took) and some other notes about "Polynomial curve fitting" and so on in the new Google doc working version of the new camp statement that anyone can help to edit in a wiki way so anyone interested in helping can earn shares in Canonizer.com: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ocUpwBIy-OI2YYYMSKs6nucF5aqa7_syAGxEl93GSgU/edit?usp=sharing In particular, is anyone good at mathematical graphing artwork? Is there a good online graphing tool that would help? Would you be willing to get a graph started for us to add this kind of data into a chart we can add into camp statement? We want a graph that can be easily modified as ever more growth data is included, able to convert ever more people to this "Canonized Crypto Coin Law" camp. Anyone that spends time on such can send info about this so we can get you're contribution shares recognized. Also, Micro, I've started a 'peer ranking' camp to determine who the best Crypto Coin experts are, so in a year or two we can measure who are the best Bitcoin Future Value Predictors and use them for better quantitative predictions about Bitcoins Future valuations. http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/151/1 Micro, or anyone, would you care to provide some kind of a bio, or statement so we can get a camp started for you to get everyone's peer ranked historical accuracy reputation started? Should soon make a great addition to a resume! If anyone else knows or or sees any other good quality articles or information about future Bitcoin valuations, I hope you'll point such out to us! Upwards, Brent Allsop On 6/20/2013 3:27 AM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 20/06/2013 05:47, Brent Allsop ha scritto: >> >> Not just Paypal. Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover, all near $100 >> billion capitalization companies, all built on their ability to muscle >> their way into steeling 3% of every effing transaction in the world. >> >> Making money by shorting MasterCard International because of Bitcoin? >> >> Priceless! >> >> So, what's your current thinking about what a Bisection will be worth in >> 1 year, and long term. How high could they go? Anywhere near 1 Satoshi >> = $1? At that value all of them would start to be close to all the real >> estate in all the world, at today's prices. > Not just them, near all the banking sector is about payments: receiving > and sending payments. > > With bitcoin they are made obsolete. > > This is a chart from, bitcointalk: > > The first half is mine (using Bitcoincharts), the second part is the > projected exponential trend (on a log scale) > > "the lowest line bring us to 10K in April 2016, 100K in May 2017 and 1 > M$ in July 2017. > The "median" line to 10K in June 2016 and 100K in July 2017 and 1 M in > August 2017" > > Mirco From daniel at kungfuchicken.com Fri Jun 21 12:25:45 2013 From: daniel at kungfuchicken.com (Daniel Shown) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 07:25:45 -0500 Subject: [ExI] BIS: Extraterrestrial liberty and colonising the universe In-Reply-To: <51C32A50.3060303@aleph.se> References: <51C32A50.3060303@aleph.se> Message-ID: Will watch when not mobile (and almost to my stop). As far as human socio-ethical constructs go Liberty has always seemed far less useful to me than Justice. I get confused by the Anglo/Franco liberty obsession. On Jun 20, 2013 11:51 AM, "Anders Sandberg" wrote: > My colleague Stuart lectures at the British Interplanetary Society on > colonizing the universe and what this might mean for liberty: > http://youtu.be/mrUWkfeJABY > > -- > Dr Anders Sandberg > Future of Humanity Institute > Oxford Martin School > Oxford University > > ______________________________**_________________ > 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 eugen at leitl.org Fri Jun 21 12:28:43 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 14:28:43 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [tp] NSA flag terms In-Reply-To: References: <3631A119EB15854B832730C5CA624B2423CBFBF4@exmb3.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu> <00f801ce6c50$f9cc91c0$ed65b540$@rainier66.com> <013901ce6c5c$bf78d040$3e6a70c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130621122843.GJ22824@leitl.org> On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 07:22:05PM +0100, BillK wrote: > DuckDuckGo, a search engine that claims it gives its users complete > anonymity, has seen a 33 percent increase in users since the NSA news > broke over a week ago, said founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg on CNBC's > Closing Bell Tuesday. > > "We had zero inquiries (from government) and the reason for that is > because we don't store any data," Weinberg said. "So if they come to > us?which they know because it's in our privacy policy?we have nothing > to hand over, it's all anonymous data." Notice that DuckDuckGo has an official .onion address http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/ if you happen to use Tor. From pharos at gmail.com Fri Jun 21 12:42:27 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 13:42:27 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [tp] NSA flag terms In-Reply-To: <20130621122843.GJ22824@leitl.org> References: <3631A119EB15854B832730C5CA624B2423CBFBF4@exmb3.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu> <00f801ce6c50$f9cc91c0$ed65b540$@rainier66.com> <013901ce6c5c$bf78d040$3e6a70c0$@rainier66.com> <20130621122843.GJ22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 1:28 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Notice that DuckDuckGo has an official .onion address > http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/ if you happen to use Tor. > _______________________________________________ > Note: that link doesn't work in ordinary Firefox. You have to use it in the Tor browser. Query: Does using that link in the Tor browser have a different effect to setting DuckDuckGo as your preferred search engine in the search box in the Tor browser? BillK From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jun 21 12:51:00 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 14:51:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [tp] NSA flag terms In-Reply-To: References: <3631A119EB15854B832730C5CA624B2423CBFBF4@exmb3.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu> <00f801ce6c50$f9cc91c0$ed65b540$@rainier66.com> <013901ce6c5c$bf78d040$3e6a70c0$@rainier66.com> <20130621122843.GJ22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130621125100.GL22824@leitl.org> On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 01:42:27PM +0100, BillK wrote: > On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 1:28 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > Notice that DuckDuckGo has an official .onion address > > http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/ if you happen to use Tor. > > _______________________________________________ > > > > Note: that link doesn't work in ordinary Firefox. You have to use it > in the Tor browser. Notice that the 3.0 alpha browser is much faster, and has dispensed with Vidalia, a source of confusion for some people. There are known bugs, see https://blog.torproject.org/blog/announcing-tor-browser-bundle-30alpha1 > Query: Does using that link in the Tor browser have a different effect > to setting DuckDuckGo as your preferred search engine in the search > box in the Tor browser? Yes, it does. You can see it for yourself, if you make a test search over the .onion address versus the built-in DuckDuckGo search provider. The results for the search query are also served over the hidden service. From anders at aleph.se Fri Jun 21 11:05:50 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 12:05:50 +0100 Subject: [ExI] happy solstice! In-Reply-To: <00b701ce6e3c$c83d8090$58b881b0$@rainier66.com> References: <00b701ce6e3c$c83d8090$58b881b0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51C4338E.8080708@aleph.se> Happy solstice! What I like about the Swedish midsummer festivities is that they are actually linked to a real, observable state of the world that does have a real meaning. (Of course, most people like them for the drink, dance and excuse to go into nature rather than the geometry/meteorology). -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jun 21 13:50:06 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 15:50:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [Server-sky] cathing up Message-ID: <20130621135006.GZ22824@leitl.org> This project could use some funding. Can you think of someone who can help? ----- Forwarded message from "Jonathan \"Duke\" Leto" ----- Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 12:46:24 -0700 From: Jonathan Duke Leto To: Eugen Leitl Cc: server-sky at server-sky.com Subject: Re: [Server-sky] cathing up Howdy, As far as I understand (Keith will correct me): 1) Keith "Lofstrom" invented the loop, but does not feel it is the best way these days. He will tell you why. 2) They will be launched, thousands or millions at a time, with traditional rocketry. 3) Line-of-site radio will be used, IIRC 4) Keith is studying nonlinear configurations which optimize various parameters, such as not disrupting the mating of corals and other crazy stuff 5) We need help with funding. If you want to help with that or if you know of people that would help fund the software and/or hardware required for this project, please put them in touch. Duke -- Jonathan "Duke" Leto Leto Labs LLC http://letolabs.com 209.691.DUKE http://duke.leto.net @dukeleto ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 21 14:54:45 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 07:54:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] happy solstice! In-Reply-To: References: <00b701ce6e3c$c83d8090$58b881b0$@rainier66.com> <00bf01ce6e41$5a11d210$0e357630$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <011401ce6e8f$45d6b240$d18416c0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2013 11:53 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] happy solstice! On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 6:36 AM, spike wrote: > Parting observation: I have been climbing Mission Peak above Fremont > California for nearly a quarter of a century. This observation I share with > great pleasure: the air is sooooo daaaaamn much cleaner now than it was back > in those days.> Life is good. > Hi BillK, thanks for posting the photo. This picture was taken from what I call the second bench, a rest stop about 40 minutes' walk if you hustle from the parking lot you see down there slightly right of center. The first bench is close to where that gang of people are down there near the bottom left of the photo. There are two more rest benches above this one. This photo is a good example of what I am talking about. That structure right under the word Mission is are the hangars at Moffett Field. In the old days, you could seldom see that far. The actual peak is about another hour walk from this point, if you don't dawdle or stop to watch any Pagan solstice festivals. Inline image 1 BillK It is entertaining that this would be listed under redwoodhikes; there are no redwoods out there, very few trees of any kind. Those white areas in the top right side of the photo are salt harvesting areas. They built earthen walls you can see there that look like zigzag lines, then they pump seawater in there, let the water evaporate, collect the salt. You can walk along those walls in some places, and create a surreal experience. Reason: There is nothing but water (or dried salt) on either side and the wall itself never changes. It feels a little like walking on water. So if you walk on that wall, especially if you go alone, your mind so accustomed to receiving ever-changing sensory input now has a very rare situation where nothing is changing. My brain goes to sleep under those conditions. Clearly that is not among its options when hiking. So you can walk for an extended period of time where the goal doesn't appear to be getting any closer and the near-field surroundings don't change at all. It can cause one to kinda hallucinate, where one gets the feeling that some cosmic joker has set one on a huge treadmill, waiting to see how long before one figures it out. That treadmill effect works on the salt ponds as well as out over the water. There is a 9 mile loop out there, which you can find on Google maps, out behind Moffett Field and Lockheed Martin. If one is out there with a companion or group, it is really cool, because the lack of external sensory input causes your fellows to concentrate on the discussion, making for interesting high quality content. I would propose an experiment: get a friend or a group of them, go out to someplace that has a lot of flashy distractions, such as the strip at Las Vegas. Discuss some weighty matter that requires a lot of concentration, not sports or current events but some heavy philosophical something. Record discussion, transcribe. Take the proles out to the salt ponds, start walking, repeat experiment, record, transcribe, compare. My theory is that the discussion will be an order of magnitude deeper, more profound, with more discovery and transfer of actual data on the salt pond walk. Note of caution: that loop is lonely, as you can see. When you are out there, there are no boats around, a car or ambulance cannot come get you. If you break down, your lads cannot carry you out, even if you are a light person; it's too far. There is no water available, no McDonalds. There is a ghost town called Drawbridge, but no one lives there. Drawbridge might be findable on Google Maps. It isn't completely void of external stimulation: birds entertain a hiker. It is an ideal place to watch birds, for there is little competition for attention. I noticed things out there I had never seen elsewhere: gulls dropping and catching pebbles for instance, and ravens doing their macho act, trying to impress their buddies by letting the big ugly two-legged things get within a couple meters. Ravens will dare you: they spread their wings and stand there. Ravens gangs have a leader who will do this. Apparently he gains status and presumably later gets rewarded with tail feather for letting the bipeds get close. Life is good. {8-] spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dennislmay at yahoo.com Fri Jun 21 14:29:23 2013 From: dennislmay at yahoo.com (Dennis May) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 07:29:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Extraterrestrial liberty and colonising the universe In-Reply-To: <1371760398.23806.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51C32A50.3060303@aleph.se> <1371760398.23806.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1371824963.42841.YahooMailNeo@web160701.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> My colleague Stuart lectures at the British Interplanetary Society on colonizing the universe and what this might mean for liberty: http://youtu.be/mrUWkfeJABY -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University ? ***** ? Not bad.? We need to learn?more lessons from nature however. The Fermi Paradox is not?solved in this video. ? Why aren't we a thousand miles deep in grasshoppers? A: disease, parasites, predators, cannibalism, resources to survive/replicate. ? Locust grasshoppers turn to cannibalism when water runs low. ? Given time to evolve - grasshoppers and their diseases, parasites, and predators will evolve new relationships?and capabilities.? So whatever started out is not what will exist a short time later during the process of spreading into the universe. Getting there first gives an advantage in some ways but it also creates the opportunity for predators to thrive off of the first arrivals.? Given the large amount of time available you would expect many waves of immigrants to have passed through each bringing with them diseases, parasites, predators, and prey - just as we have on Earth today.? In each case we never get the thousand mile deep grasshopper situation.? Local blooms of one kind or another of many types of creatures but nothing that lasts. Dennis May???? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri Jun 21 16:02:44 2013 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 09:02:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] DNA India: The transhumanity timeline Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 5:00 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 09:03:43AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > >> The idea actually came from Perry Metzger, I found the original >> postings on Extropy, and my contribution was to throw cold water on >> the idea from the problems with speed of light delays and the brain >> cooking in it's own waste heat. From the speed of light, the thinking >> rate of a Jupiter brain would be ~50 times slower than a human brain. > > Diameter of Jupiter is 0.46 lightseconds, spike time to > cross the brain is 1.6 ms -- 270x, if my math is right I was basing it on an estimation of the human "equivalent cycle" of 200 Hz. But a factor of 5 at this level of discussion is essentially the same. > All assuming that you're looking at a top level coherent > process, which is a red herring. If you are trying to talk to a Jupiter brain, the top level coherent process is what you would be talking to. At least I think that's the case. >> If you want to do a lot of thinking, small dimensions, lots of power >> and plenty of cold water are needed. >> >> http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/04/12/transhumanism-and-the-human-expansion-into-space-a-conflict-with-physics/ > > Too many assumptions there. "Twenty million subjective years to get an answer back is just ridiculous." -- > you're thinking like a human here. I agree with you. Unfortunately I don't know how to think other than like a human. Any advice? > "Due to this line of thinking, I no longer think it?s practical to surround a star with computronium." -- > why, obviously Amerigo Vespucci and Cristobal Colon never set sail, so the colonization never happened, > so Keith Henson never happened. Since you're obviously there, there seems to be a problem with your > line of reasoning. It obviously has to do with the need to communicate with everyone else within > a given minimal time, which is a bogus requirement. Back then, the opposite site of the Earth > was as remote as the next star in terms of communication latency. Yet it still got settled. By the time of Magellan, it only took 3 years sail around the Earth. Point accepted that the Earth got settled, or rather conquered since the entire planet had been settled long before Europeans started exploring. But that's not the point. Is the best substrate for thinking beings a fog of computronium around a star? I don't think so for engineering reasons of waste heat and latency. It's a question akin to where people live today, i.e., a desert supports only a small fraction of those in lush surroundings. For the uploaded who want to think fast, plenty of power, lots of cold water and a compact community are what you need. By comparison, a disbursed cloud of computronium would be like a bleak desert. > ?Just to give you a sense of what microseconds are, it takes you 500,000 microseconds just to click a > mouse. But if you?re a Wall Street algorithm and you?re fivemicroseconds behind, you?re a loser.? -- > the problem with HFT is not that is fast (it is), but that it's systematically fraudulent. No argument there. Have you noted that HF trading is way down? Seems the competition took the profit out of it and now there is hardly enough to pay the electric bills. Keith From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 21 16:11:35 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 09:11:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Web's Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders In-Reply-To: <20130621111710.GF22824@leitl.org> References: <20130620141800.GN22824@leitl.org> <016701ce6dc4$5f6894b0$1e39be10$@rainier66.com> <20130621111710.GF22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: <013401ce6e9a$036199b0$0a24cd10$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Sent: Friday, June 21, 2013 4:17 AM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: Re: [ExI] Web's Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 07:42:20AM -0700, spike wrote: >>... Lesson, especially for Americans: get your friends to post stuff as you. Do that early and often. >...Unfortunately simple statistical analysis will smoke out the real spike, and arguably even uniquely identify people who helped to try obscuring your data shadow... Ja. Of course the friends may have intentionally used only words and phrases known to be used by me, such as {8^D just to add to the gag. Also, the whole technique is not really about hiding but rather about plausible deniability. Posts from your computer cannot really be used against you as evidence in court if it is known that a number of people used the computer. Then the burden of proof is on the prosecutor. Of course if the prosecutor is the IRS, they need not worry about burden of proof; their word is proof. That organization has unlimited power as they have shown: it targeted and suppressed one side of the political spectrum. When caught, the former director Lois Lerner testified before congress that she did nothing wrong, then immediately invoked her fifth amendment rights allowing her to refuse to testify if she could incriminate herself. Indeed! She then walked out of court unchallenged. Now Lois Lerner is on paid leave, pending investigation in which she is the defendant and holder of the evidence, but is not required to testify, as well as being in a position to extract revenge in the form of a tax audit on any prosecutor or judge. Remarkable. Conclusion: in free America, the IRS holds unlimited power and zero accountability. They are free to suppress anyone they choose, without consequences, and even arrange to imprison their political enemies, such as libertarians. We always worried about the president becoming a dictator. Turns out all along it was the head of the IRS who had that power, and who promptly abused it. That power is still there, waiting for the next person to abuse it. It is all just astonishing, appalling. spike From atymes at gmail.com Fri Jun 21 16:30:58 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 09:30:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [Server-sky] cathing up In-Reply-To: <20130621135006.GZ22824@leitl.org> References: <20130621135006.GZ22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: Please define what "this" is. But if it is what I think it is, you can define some lesser milestone - something you can achieve for only $100K - and Kickstarter it. If you are successful, then use that funding to achieve the milestone and build on that success with another, larger Kickstarter. You'll have to put in serious outreach to make it. I'd advise minimum 2 people putting in 40 hour weeks just on advertising the campaign (not splitting time between that and any other duties) for the full month, plus at least 20 hour weeks (split between finding audiences and crafting the campaign) for a month before the campaign launches. Also, go for 1 month campaign at first: that should be long enough to tell you're not going to make it. (Yeah, I know, there have been $1M+ Kickstarters, but you need SERIOUS marketing talent for that - the folks who take home six figures annually for their marketing, not engineering, work - and I suspect you only have engineers at this point. Even $100K might take more marketing mojo than you currently have, but it may be within reach. Despite appearances, Kickstarter is not "just post it and people will come"; that's what most of the failed projects believed.) On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 6:50 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > This project could use some funding. Can you think of > someone who can help? > > ----- Forwarded message from "Jonathan \"Duke\" Leto" > ----- > > Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 12:46:24 -0700 > From: Jonathan Duke Leto > To: Eugen Leitl > Cc: server-sky at server-sky.com > Subject: Re: [Server-sky] cathing up > > Howdy, > > As far as I understand (Keith will correct me): > > 1) Keith "Lofstrom" invented the loop, but does not feel it is the > best way these days. He will tell you why. > 2) They will be launched, thousands or millions at a time, with > traditional rocketry. > 3) Line-of-site radio will be used, IIRC > 4) Keith is studying nonlinear configurations which optimize various > parameters, such as not disrupting the mating of corals and other > crazy stuff > 5) We need help with funding. If you want to help with that or if you > know of people that would help fund the software and/or hardware > required for this project, please put them in touch. > > Duke > > -- > Jonathan "Duke" Leto > Leto Labs LLC http://letolabs.com > 209.691.DUKE http://duke.leto.net > @dukeleto > > ----- End forwarded message ----- > -- > Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org > ______________________________________________________________ > ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org > AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 > _______________________________________________ > 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 eugen at leitl.org Fri Jun 21 16:41:01 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 18:41:01 +0200 Subject: [ExI] DNA India: The transhumanity timeline In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20130621164101.GI22824@leitl.org> On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 09:02:44AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > If you are trying to talk to a Jupiter brain, the top level coherent > process is what you would be talking to. At least I think that's the > case. I'm not sure there can be a hierarchical assembly that can act coherently. How would you talk to a planet full of 7 GPeople? Large top-scale processes can relate to other large top-scale processes, for plans that can take arbitrary amounts of time to execute. By why would a whale talk to an amoeba? The don't share the same time scale, they don't share the concepts. There is really no common base for communication at all. > >> If you want to do a lot of thinking, small dimensions, lots of power > >> and plenty of cold water are needed. > >> > >> http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/04/12/transhumanism-and-the-human-expansion-into-space-a-conflict-with-physics/ > > > > Too many assumptions there. "Twenty million subjective years to get an answer back is just ridiculous." -- > > you're thinking like a human here. > > I agree with you. Unfortunately I don't know how to think other than > like a human. Any advice? I would just look at which behaviour constraints are available for systems of all scales of complexity, including very small nonsentient systems and dauer spores, up to very large scale systems and supersystems in the context of Darwinian evolution. It seems that the only constraints there are that of metabolism and relativistic travel. Motivation differs across scales, and we definitely can't assume any human motivators apply. We already have thousands of volunteers applying for a one-way essential suicide mission. Extreme environments like Mt. Everest have plenty of dead bodies to be used as landmarks. Even people do things which they apparently shouldn't be doing. > > "Due to this line of thinking, I no longer think it?s practical to surround a star with computronium." -- > > why, obviously Amerigo Vespucci and Cristobal Colon never set sail, so the colonization never happened, > > so Keith Henson never happened. Since you're obviously there, there seems to be a problem with your > > line of reasoning. It obviously has to do with the need to communicate with everyone else within > > a given minimal time, which is a bogus requirement. Back then, the opposite site of the Earth > > was as remote as the next star in terms of communication latency. Yet it still got settled. > > By the time of Magellan, it only took 3 years sail around the Earth. Yes, 3 years is basically interstellar distances. I can now send ping any node on the Internet in less than a second. They didn't have telecommunications back then, messages took many years hitching rides on ships and travelers, and yet people expanded in increments just fine. People just sailed into the seas without having a good story that they will ever return, and countless perished. Yet we're all descendants from these survivors, and the wanderlust is in our DNA. We don't contract, we expand. We would have expanded into space a long time ago, if we could. > Point accepted that the Earth got settled, or rather conquered since > the entire planet had been settled long before Europeans started Yes, precisely, the planet was already settled by people with much more primitive tools and even no concept of global communication at all -- the language bareer alone would make such a thing nonsensical. > exploring. But that's not the point. Is the best substrate for > thinking beings a fog of computronium around a star? I don't think so We know that computronium is the best substrate for computation, by definition. Everything else is about how much power you can dissipate. You'll need enough 4 K background visible to dump your heat into, and you'll expand into utilizing all available energy flux, so it means that you have a halo of nodes around the star. Whether the nodes are thin, or fat is not really that important, other that they've spread across space lighthours across, and other such sphere are across other stars lightyears away, and so on. > for engineering reasons of waste heat and latency. It's a question > akin to where people live today, i.e., a desert supports only a small > fraction of those in lush surroundings. For the uploaded who want to Lush surroundings = lots of solar flux, and atoms to make use of it. Deserts = interstellar space with no flux, and even no fusion fuel. > think fast, plenty of power, lots of cold water and a compact > community are what you need. By comparison, a disbursed cloud of > computronium would be like a bleak desert. No, because the cloud is immaterial, just what's in the node is important. Whether a node is cm^3, m^3 or even larger, it's not important. The point is that that there are many nodes like that (about Avogadro number of human equivalents in just this solar system alone). They're not all in one location, because you couldn't compute that way without suffering the corium or plasma cloud as failure modes. I don't think you can compute warmer than 700 K, and arguably it could be useful to go lower, perhaps a lot lower. > > ?Just to give you a sense of what microseconds are, it takes you 500,000 microseconds just to click a > > mouse. But if you?re a Wall Street algorithm and you?re fivemicroseconds behind, you?re a loser.? -- > > the problem with HFT is not that is fast (it is), but that it's systematically fraudulent. > > No argument there. Have you noted that HF trading is way down? Seems > the competition took the profit out of it and now there is hardly > enough to pay the electric bills. From atymes at gmail.com Fri Jun 21 16:42:39 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 09:42:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Web's Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders In-Reply-To: <013401ce6e9a$036199b0$0a24cd10$@rainier66.com> References: <20130620141800.GN22824@leitl.org> <016701ce6dc4$5f6894b0$1e39be10$@rainier66.com> <20130621111710.GF22824@leitl.org> <013401ce6e9a$036199b0$0a24cd10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 9:11 AM, spike wrote: > We always worried about the president becoming a dictator. Turns out all > along it was the head of the IRS who had that power, and who promptly > abused > it. That power is still there, waiting for the next person to abuse it. > It > is all just astonishing, appalling. > If you really believe that, consider the power the heads of other major federal agencies have. Then consider if they all try to act that way, with somewhat conflicting (though occasionally coinciding) agendas. Now consider the President's job through this lens. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jun 21 16:55:27 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 18:55:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Web's Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders In-Reply-To: References: <20130620141800.GN22824@leitl.org> <016701ce6dc4$5f6894b0$1e39be10$@rainier66.com> <20130621111710.GF22824@leitl.org> <013401ce6e9a$036199b0$0a24cd10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130621165527.GK22824@leitl.org> On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 09:42:39AM -0700, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Now consider the President's job through this > lens. A politician only has one job: being (re)elected. From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 21 17:19:45 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 10:19:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Web's Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders In-Reply-To: References: <20130620141800.GN22824@leitl.org> <016701ce6dc4$5f6894b0$1e39be10$@rainier66.com> <20130621111710.GF22824@leitl.org> <013401ce6e9a$036199b0$0a24cd10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <015d01ce6ea3$873bf060$95b3d120$@rainier66.com> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Subject: Re: [ExI] Web's Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 9:11 AM, spike wrote: >>.We always worried about the president becoming a dictator. Turns out all along it was the head of the IRS who had that power, and who promptly abused it. That power is still there, waiting for the next person to abuse it. It is all just astonishing, appalling. >.If you really believe that, consider the power the heads of other major federal agencies have. Ja, but as far as I know the IRS is the only agency which has the power to deeply impact you personally, by calling you in for an audit. If they decide they don't like you for whatever reason, I know of no avenue of appeal. You eventually die in prison, far from cryonics facilities, as did Al Capone. You are put on the same list with those sorts of bad guys. As far as I can tell, your claim that you didn't even make any actual money doesn't mean there is any existing branch of government that can or will attempt to overrule the decision. Lois Lerner has demonstrated that the IRS is a naked singularity of power. >.Now consider the President's job through this lens. Considering recent revelations, the president becomes nearly irrelevant. She has the theoretical power to pardon someone jailed on IRS charges, but I have not heard of that actually happening. The president has all kinds of constitutional checks and balances on her office. It appears to me the IRS, which came along later, is operating completely without those checks and balances, as demonstrated a month ago: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/05/irs-lois-lerner-takes-fifth-shu ns-congress/ She still has not testified. This establishes that the only consequences for an IRS director abusing power is an indefinitely paid leave, and a generous paycheck it is at that level. We could argue that this makes the IRS director more powerful than the presidency, for the president cannot order the IRS to do anything. If they do, they risk getting caught, and there definite repercussions to that, as we are seeing with the current president. But the IRS can act unilaterally without answering to anyone, even congress. The fifth amendment covers the 16th amendment but the 16th trumps the entire document. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dennislmay at yahoo.com Fri Jun 21 18:08:55 2013 From: dennislmay at yahoo.com (Dennis May) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 11:08:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Vision, people. Vision! Message-ID: <1371838135.6353.YahooMailNeo@web160702.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Anders Sandberg wrote:?[Mon May 20 08:26:13 UTC 2013] "I have been thinking about mid-term strategic goals for a while now. ...achieving transhumanist aims requires getting involved in what can only be called politics." "One approach might of course be to try for coming up with new, even more radical ideas. [...] Blowing?minds attracts the swarmers and seekers, while repelling the doers and mainstream." "Another approach is to focus.?[...] Having people actually work out projects or theories in detail and getting supporters bringing them about or spreading the knowledge does matter." "A third way, which I think has not happened much yet, is to deliberately look for a new transhumanist vision. [...] But where is the next liminal appearing? We want to be there and seed it. ***** Developing a?new vision?for transhumanist future requires a correct coherent view of which political model successfully generates growing economic investment and entrepreneurial creativity in technology. That seems to be the debate which has raged since the early years of the industrial revolution.? My on and off discussions on various lists has lead me to believe that either a large minority or in fact the majority of people involved in extropy/transhumanism do not?possess even?a basic understanding of?the?fundamental foundations of economics.? That being the case most are not prepared to rationally discuss politics?or the questions related to how do we get there from here. That leaves the "doers" and the entrepreneurs?to determine the future.? The extent to which they - and the economy they live in - can escape being micro-managed and second guessed by central planners will determine the extent and rate of progress. Seed money is indeed important in developing the future.? The value of seed money is inversely proportional to?the degree it is?micro-managed and second guessed by central planners [private or public bean counters].? Throwing money at difficult problems is a complete waste if the solution is top-down rather than allowing creativity?and the entrepreneurial spirit to work.? This simple fact seems to elude the vast majority of people and the management in large?organizations?- understandable since most have never been part of the creative process?in developing?new technology and have never?understood the damage done by the top-down approach. _____ Side note:? I've also noticed?many extropy/transhumanism supporters embracing what I can only call bad science/bad cosmology?and politicized environmental science.? Care needs to be taken before investing so much in popular ideas without?authentic foundations. Dennis May -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Jun 21 19:24:10 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 13:24:10 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Web's Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders In-Reply-To: <015d01ce6ea3$873bf060$95b3d120$@rainier66.com> References: <20130620141800.GN22824@leitl.org> <016701ce6dc4$5f6894b0$1e39be10$@rainier66.com> <20130621111710.GF22824@leitl.org> <013401ce6e9a$036199b0$0a24cd10$@rainier66.com> <015d01ce6ea3$873bf060$95b3d120$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 11:19 AM, spike wrote: > is all just astonishing, appalling. > Indeed. > >?If you really believe that, consider the power the > heads of other major federal agencies have?**** > > Ja, but as far as I know the IRS is the only agency which has the power to > deeply impact you personally, by calling you in for an audit. If they > decide they don?t like you for whatever reason, I know of no avenue of > appeal. > While it isn't federal, the Division of Child and Family Services operates under nearly identical impunity to checks and balances. They can't take away your freedom (directly), but they can take away your children. >?Now consider the President's job through this lens? > The President has more and more limited power as the bureaucracy continues to grow. Most mid level management remains unchanged as we go from Dem to Rep. The only solution is to downsize it as near zero as possible. Then the President will have the powers that were originally envisioned, and the capacity to actually pay attention to the things under him enough to get the job done efficiently. Nobody, (human anyway) no matter how smart, can wrap their head around the entire Federal Government. > Considering recent revelations, the president becomes nearly irrelevant. > Precisely. > She has the theoretical power to pardon someone jailed on IRS charges, but > I have not heard of that actually happening. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Rich - John Stinson Howell, III (1979 Income tax evasion) - Bernice Lena Telgemeier (1980 Attempted income tax evasion) - Julius Henry Telgemeier (1980 Attempted income tax evasion) - Charles Arnold Jacobs (1979 Submission of false income tax return ) - George Caldwell ? income tax evasion; pardoned - Seymour Weiss ? tax evasion and mail fraud; pardoned - Pincus Green ? business partners with Marc Rich; indicted by U.S. Attorney on charges of tax evasion and illegal trading with Iran. Pardoned at the request of 3 Republicans including Lewis Libby .[16] - Edward Downe, Jr. ? wire fraud, filing false income tax returns, and securities fraud; pardoned - John Fries , for his role in Fries's Rebellion; convicted of treason due to opposition to a tax; Fries and others were pardoned, and a general amnesty was issued for everyone involved. Admittedly, not terribly common... and this list is likely quite incomplete. > The president has all kinds of constitutional checks and balances on her > office. It appears to me the IRS, which came along later, is operating > completely without those checks and balances > Yes. This is more common still at the state level. But look at the VA. What checks and balances are in place with those bastards? > We could argue that this makes the IRS director more powerful than the > presidency, for the president cannot order the IRS to do anything. If they > do, they risk getting caught, and there definite repercussions to that, as > we are seeing with the current president. But the IRS can act unilaterally > without answering to anyone, even congress. The fifth amendment covers the > 16th amendment but the 16th trumps the entire document. > Apparently so. You see, the government's ability to steal money from the proles is the first and most important concept in today's governmental system. It trumps nearly everything else. Freedom is one of the earliest victims, and not nearly the last. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Jun 21 19:39:11 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 13:39:11 -0600 Subject: [ExI] DNA India: The transhumanity timeline In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 10:02 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > I agree with you. Unfortunately I don't know how to think other than > like a human. Any advice? > I don't think that it is necessary to think like a human to see where this will actually likely end up... We can look at any kind of animal, plant or bacteria and see a pattern that generally emerges. If you take the population per square unit of area of your choice, and you plot the number of any given species that lives within that square (or cube), and compare that number to all the other squares, you're going to get a population distribution that will be roughly the shape of a high peak followed by a downward curve. Whether it's Poisson or exponential doesn't really matter for this discussion. The point is that there are optimal environments for every type of creature, yet some smaller number of creatures live away from these population centers. With humans, we call the densest population centers cities, while less dense areas are towns, and finally country and wilderness. Very few humans live in Antarctica, for example. But the same pattern holds if you are talking about geese or redwood trees or bacteria. No human thinking pattern required. I would suggest from this that highly intelligent beings would likely follow a similar distribution with many living in densely packed areas, but some choosing to venture out and get a little space between them and the neighbors. If it is true from bacteria up to humans, why not up further still? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jun 21 20:40:04 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 22:40:04 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [Server-sky] [Beowulf] Server Sky - Internet and computation in orbit Message-ID: <20130621204004.GB22824@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from Keith Lofstrom ----- Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 13:01:22 -0700 From: Keith Lofstrom To: Eugen Leitl Cc: server-sky at server-sky.com, "Lux, Jim (337C)" Subject: Re: [Server-sky] [Beowulf] Server Sky - Internet and computation in orbit Reply-To: keithl at keithl.com User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.2i Most questions are answered on the wiki, http://server-sky.com There's a search function that will help sift through the hundreds of pages. Plenty of unanswered questions, but that is why I am sharing the idea, so others can contribute and claim some of the credit. Forwarded message from "Lux, Jim (337C)" > 1) orbital debris - fling those thousands of widgets out there. Are they high enough to stay in orbit for a while? Are they going to damage things that hit them? 6411km altitude / 12789km radius, about one Re out. Thinsats might damage some objects in crossing orbits if we let collisions happen, but arrays are capable of both continuous maneuvering and high luminance lookdown radar. There aren't many objects in crossing orbits, and all are derelicts, according to the NORAD database. Thinsats are much thinner than the Whipple shields enclosing most critical spacecraft systems. They will remove some paint and some material underneath, but they are unlikely to do anything more than micrometeoroids do. And your next question will be about radiation - we are aiming for the lower van Allen belt. I'm a chip designer. Recent rad-hard developments in semiconductors and integrated circuits are what led me to server-sky. Look at the website for more. > 2) orbital mechanics - the "array" pretty much has to be flat, that is, they're all at the same orbit height, otherwise they'll drift apart, since the period is different. All thinsats in an array have identical orbital periods (and the same semimajor axis, to first order), though all have slightly different orbital elements. The arrays rotate, though their shape is skewed by the velocity changes associated with radius variations. Rule of thumb - a 1 meter radial "apogee" turns into a 2 meter retrograde displacement relatve to array center 1/4 orbit later. To see how an array of thinsats evolves over an orbit, look at http://server-sky.com/IEEESustech2013 There are small second order distortions (J? and light pressure, for example), factored into array shape and central orbit choice, and third order distortions ( lunar/solar/jupiter tides for example ) that will be dealt with by orbit shape again. The small residual errors ( < 1E-9 of orbit velocity ) can be dealt with by light sail maneuvering. > 3) does it really save anything to put the computation in orbit? Server Sky doesn't save much for developed nations. Google and Amazon will still build 100 megawatt data centers and pump CO? into the atmosphere while pretending to be "green". Much of the CO? generated while making the concrete and metal and plastic constituting 99.99% by weight of those data centers. Part of the pretense is building solar arrays as if replacing plants with solar panels and destabilizing the electrical grid with intermittent and unpredictable power demand somehow helps the environment. It is quite different for poor nations with large rural populations that haven't deployed much communication infrastructure. India has 400,000 cell towers, connected by microwave and powered by diesel, with the "backbone" being a mix of fiber and microwave that follows their rail network. No way they can afford to deploy much fiber beyond that. Even their microwave grid is way oversubscribed with the rapid uptake of cell phones. Bringing broadband to half a billion rural Indians can create trillions of dollars a year of economic value. The cheapest way to do that is with computation, and large-aperture/millimeter-wave communication in orbit. > I'd like to see more justification of the 100x cost differential > between ground and space 25 years from now. My career as a chip designer has spanned a 1 billion times decrease in the cost of a transistor, and a 1 million times increase in the speed-power capability of transistors. By 2015, we will have deployed a zettatransistor, 1e21 devices. Much of that growth came from invading and transforming seemingly unrelated fields, like biology and publishing and transportation. We point the transistor hose at problems and wash them away. Meanwhile, space development has stagnated - we've built a bunch of plausible-but-wrong systems like shuttle, but our workhorse launchers (Atlas and Proton) are incremental improvements of 1960 designs. The major advances in space technology have been electronic systems like Opportunity, using semiconductors 10 years behind the stuff you can buy at Walmart, and system construction techniques resembling 1950s aircraft. Craig Venter used modern semiconductor technology to sequence the human genome, turning a planned two decade multibillion dollar government effort into a 2 year 300 million dollar transformation of biology. As a direct result of his work, you can get a 1M-SNP genotyping for $99, and can expect a whole genome sequence for less than $1K in a year or two. I've spent my whole life waiting for the "cheap-rocket-first" community to deliver. I'm not waiting any more. I'm not nearly as smart as Craig Venter, but shifting attention from rockets to electronics and market needs doesn't require the same brainpower, just assembling off-the-shelf processes into new systems serving ignored markets, and doing so at Moore's law rates. There's a cornucopia of new technology and new opportunities out there, and those who cling to the old ideas will be left in the dust. 25 years? I've organized chip products in 25 weeks (design/fab/ test/sell). Server sky's long lead times involve team building at the front end, and negotiating with the ITU at the back end. There are plenty of revenue opportunities along the path to deployed arrays, and a team whose combined cleverness far exceeds mine will be rich before we put the first thinsat in space. The job now is to define viable long term goals, discover people who share them, and develop a search process that finds the easiest and most lucrative stepping stones on the shortest path from here to there. There are certainly trillions of plausible-but-wrong ways to do this, and with bad planning my team will pick one of those. But the opportunity is far too large to be ignored, and even a magnificent failure will inspire thousands of others who think they can do better. Some of them will be right. Keith -- Keith Lofstrom keithl at keithl.com Voice (503)-520-1993 ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jun 21 20:40:14 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 22:40:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [Server-sky] [Beowulf] Server Sky - Internet and computation in orbit Message-ID: <20130621204014.GC22824@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from "Lux, Jim (337C)" ----- Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 20:32:14 +0000 From: "Lux, Jim (337C)" To: "keithl at keithl.com" , Eugen Leitl CC: "server-sky at server-sky.com" Subject: Re: [Server-sky] [Beowulf] Server Sky - Internet and computation in orbit user-agent: Microsoft-MacOutlook/14.3.5.130515 James Lux, P.E. Task Manager, FINDER ? Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response Co-Principal Investigator, SCaN Testbed (n?e CoNNeCT) Project Jet Propulsion Laboratory 4800 Oak Grove Drive, MS 161-213 Pasadena CA 91109 +(818)354-2075 On 6/21/13 1:01 PM, "Keith Lofstrom" wrote: >Most questions are answered on the wiki, http://server-sky.com >There's a search function that will help sift through the hundreds of >pages. >Plenty of unanswered questions, but that is why I am sharing the idea, >so others can contribute and claim some of the credit. > > >Forwarded message from "Lux, Jim (337C)" > >> 1) orbital debris - fling those thousands of widgets out there. Are >>they high enough to stay in orbit for a while? Are they going to damage >>things that hit them? > >6411km altitude / 12789km radius, about one Re out. Thinsats might >damage some objects in crossing orbits if we let collisions happen, >but arrays are capable of both continuous maneuvering and high >luminance lookdown radar. There aren't many objects in crossing >orbits, and all are derelicts, according to the NORAD database. > >Thinsats are much thinner than the Whipple shields enclosing >most critical spacecraft systems. They will remove some paint >and some material underneath, but they are unlikely to do >anything more than micrometeoroids do. > >And your next question will be about radiation - we are aiming >for the lower van Allen belt. I'm a chip designer. Recent >rad-hard developments in semiconductors and integrated circuits >are what led me to server-sky. Look at the website for more. Actually, radiation probably isn't much of an issue. It's much overthought.. I am unaware of any actual loss of satellite using commercial non rad-hard parts, and there's been a lot flown. Yes, there's a latchup problem with some parts, but that's design-around-able. > >> 2) orbital mechanics - the "array" pretty much has to be flat, that is, >>they're all at the same orbit height, otherwise they'll drift apart, >>since the period is different. > >All thinsats in an array have identical orbital periods (and >the same semimajor axis, to first order), though all have >slightly different orbital elements. The arrays rotate, >though their shape is skewed by the velocity changes associated >with radius variations. Rule of thumb - a 1 meter radial >"apogee" turns into a 2 meter retrograde displacement relatve >to array center 1/4 orbit later. To see how an array of thinsats >evolves over an orbit, look at http://server-sky.com/IEEESustech2013 > >There are small second order distortions (J? and light pressure, >for example), factored into array shape and central orbit choice, >and third order distortions ( lunar/solar/jupiter tides for example ) >that will be dealt with by orbit shape again. The small residual >errors ( < 1E-9 of orbit velocity ) can be dealt with by light sail >maneuvering. > >> 3) does it really save anything to put the computation in orbit? > >Server Sky doesn't save much for developed nations. Google and Amazon >will still build 100 megawatt data centers and pump CO? into the >atmosphere while pretending to be "green". Much of the CO? generated >while making the concrete and metal and plastic constituting 99.99% >by weight of those data centers. Part of the pretense is building >solar arrays as if replacing plants with solar panels and destabilizing >the electrical grid with intermittent and unpredictable power demand >somehow helps the environment. But it's not like making silicon is particularly green either.. But that's a complex issue and one others will have to thrash away on. It's the whole externalities thing and where do you draw the boundary line. That's essentially political, not technological. > >It is quite different for poor nations with large rural populations >that haven't deployed much communication infrastructure. India has >400,000 cell towers, connected by microwave and powered by diesel, >with the "backbone" being a mix of fiber and microwave that follows >their rail network. Like Sprint and the SP railroad > No way they can afford to deploy much fiber >beyond that. Even their microwave grid is way oversubscribed with >the rapid uptake of cell phones. Bringing broadband to half a >billion rural Indians can create trillions of dollars a year of >economic value. The cheapest way to do that is with computation, >and large-aperture/millimeter-wave communication in orbit. OK.. I can buy that. > >> I'd like to see more justification of the 100x cost differential >> between ground and space 25 years from now. > >My career as a chip designer has spanned a 1 billion times decrease >in the cost of a transistor, and a 1 million times increase in the >speed-power capability of transistors. By 2015, we will have deployed >a zettatransistor, 1e21 devices. Much of that growth came from >invading and transforming seemingly unrelated fields, like biology >and publishing and transportation. We point the transistor hose at >problems and wash them away. Yes, for the logic part. But I don't see similar improvements in, say, 30 Ghz RF devices, although I will readily concede that the amount of money being thrown at the problem is a lot less, and it's true that fT for the transistors is steadily climbing. There is, though, a challenge of coupling the RF energy to space in some way. I've seen on-die and in-package antennas for, say, 60 Ghz (Hittite), so I can envision that one could make a large array of them. And as you know, once it's just a matter of lithography, it gets very cheap in large scales. However, you're probably still talking exotic materials (e.g. It's not regular old CMOS, just smaller). There are some challenges with poor power added efficiency, too. Even if you have an array of thousands of little 100mW or 10mW transmitters it takes a lot more juice to make them work and there's still the not inconsiderable effort of phasing, etc., although that's clearly solvable in a distributed sense.. I've done a fair amount of research on distributed antennas that self calibrate for deformation and while it might not be practical today, it's not a "breaking the laws of physics" thing, more an economics. Same sort of applies on the receive side. I'll have to take a look at your telecom link design to see what you're thinking of on the ground terminal side. Cheap hydroformed dishes (1.5 meter dishes can be stamped out for a few bucks) or printed phased arrays? Or active arrays? If you're looking at megabits/sec for 6000-10000 km range that's not all that big a deal. If you're looking at Gbit/sec, It's somewhat more challenging.. > >Meanwhile, space development has stagnated - we've built a bunch >of plausible-but-wrong systems like shuttle, but our workhorse >launchers (Atlas and Proton) are incremental improvements of >1960 designs. The major advances in space technology have >been electronic systems like Opportunity, using semiconductors >10 years behind the stuff you can buy at Walmart, and system >construction techniques resembling 1950s aircraft. I would agree with you, except we use parts that are more like 20-30 years behind state of the art. But that *is* starting to change. It partly comes from conservatism.. You spend a billion dollars on a Mars probe and you want your perceived risk to be in the science, not in the infrastructure, so you make do with what performance you get with your 20-30 year old parts. It is what I call the penguin approach to technology infusion.. All the penguins stand at the edge of the ice, hungry, but unwilling to jump in because there might be a leopard seal waiting. They jostle around, and one falls in, and doesn't get eaten, so all the rest cascade in. The system construction is a bit more modern than 50s aircraft (not many composites in the 50s, for instance). But to a certain extent, this comes from the one-off nature and conservatism. It's easier to partition the job with old style system engineering. Again, this is slowly changing, but nobody is seriously proposing mass production of anything at NASA. A not so subtle aspect is also that if Jim Lux's college class puts up a small satellite built with commercial parts and it has issues, it's "look at those plucky students trying to do space on a budget". If JPL puts up exactly the same satellite and it has issues, it's "JPL satellite fails, wasting money" > >Craig Venter used modern semiconductor technology to sequence the >human genome, turning a planned two decade multibillion dollar >government effort into a 2 year 300 million dollar transformation >of biology. As a direct result of his work, you can get a 1M-SNP >genotyping for $99, and can expect a whole genome sequence for >less than $1K in a year or two. > >I've spent my whole life waiting for the "cheap-rocket-first" >community to deliver. I'm not waiting any more. I'm not nearly >as smart as Craig Venter, but shifting attention from rockets to >electronics and market needs doesn't require the same brainpower, >just assembling off-the-shelf processes into new systems serving >ignored markets, and doing so at Moore's law rates. There's a >cornucopia of new technology and new opportunities out there, >and those who cling to the old ideas will be left in the dust. Rockets are hard to do cheap. SpaceX is making excellent progress and I think they will set the new bar. But ultimately, there's regulatory stuff that makes it hard to do grass roots innovation. The second you put any kind of guidance system on a rocket, no matter how small, you're building a "guided missile" and that attracts a LOT of attention from the authorities. So that tends to make it hard for clever folks at small scales. Not exactly regulatory capture, but still, in the same sort of vein. That's really where the cleverness needs to come.. It's not about better technology: that exists, and you don't need 100% performance engines, and such.. You can throw more fuel at it, to a certain point. We need to find a cheaper way to get launch sites, etc. > >25 years? I've organized chip products in 25 weeks (design/fab/ >test/sell). Server sky's long lead times involve team building at >the front end, and negotiating with the ITU at the back end. There >are plenty of revenue opportunities along the path to deployed >arrays, and a team whose combined cleverness far exceeds mine will >be rich before we put the first thinsat in space. The job now is >to define viable long term goals, discover people who share them, >and develop a search process that finds the easiest and most >lucrative stepping stones on the shortest path from here to there. > >There are certainly trillions of plausible-but-wrong ways to do >this, and with bad planning my team will pick one of those. >But the opportunity is far too large to be ignored, and even a >magnificent failure will inspire thousands of others who think >they can do better. Some of them will be right. Certainly interesting.. And I'll be sure to look at the web stuff this weekend.. BTW, this is all my own and shouldn't be construed to be representing what JPL or NASA think.. > ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 From pharos at gmail.com Fri Jun 21 21:30:31 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 22:30:31 +0100 Subject: [ExI] DNA India: The transhumanity timeline In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 8:39 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > With humans, we call the densest population centers cities, while less dense > areas are towns, and finally country and wilderness. Very few humans live in > Antarctica, for example. But the same pattern holds if you are talking about > geese or redwood trees or bacteria. No human thinking pattern required. > > I would suggest from this that highly intelligent beings would likely follow > a similar distribution with many living in densely packed areas, but some > choosing to venture out and get a little space between them and the > neighbors. If it is true from bacteria up to humans, why not up further > still? > > Because the Matrix changes everything. Once we achieve mind-linked posthumans the definition of 'individual' gets rewritten. (Your example isn't true for all species. If ants or bees wander off, they die). BillK From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Jun 21 22:38:14 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 16:38:14 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Liberty vs. Justice (was Re: BIS: Extraterrestrial liberty and colonising the universe) Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 6:25 AM, Daniel Shown wrote: > o-ethical constructs go Liberty has always seemed far less useful to me > than Justice. I get confused by the Anglo/Franco liberty obsession. > Back in my religious days, I remember arguments that went which is more important faith or obedience... and those arguments never really served any purpose. Hopefully, in this venue we can create more light than heat. First, definitions... If you define Justice as "equally enforcing the law independent of the individual", then Justice is a poor contender for "most important" because bad laws lead to bad outcomes even if judiciously enforced. Ask anyone serving time for marijuana possession in the United States how that worked out for them. Or anyone serving life in prison under California's Three Strikes laws for three rather minor crimes. I suspect by "Justice" you mean something a little more like Just Law Justly Enforced. However, any time you enact a law, it has unintended consequences that inevitably impact someone negatively. For example, you can call it "social justice" to take a dollar from a very wealthy individual and give a cent to 50 poor individuals (keeping 50 cents for the redistributing bureaucracy). But this wealth redistribution deprives the well off person of his dollar, so it affects him negatively. So the more laws one has, the more unintended consequences build up, and eventually you get to the point where many elderly people are with Western Medicine... taking 5 pills to do something helpful, and ten more medications to counteract the bad effects of the combination of the first 5 pills. More laws to fix bad laws just leads to more bad laws in most cases. Today in the United States we are passing laws with greater than 1500 pages. The entire US constitution, with all the amendments, by comparison is only 18 similar pages. The alternative is Freedom, by which I mean the absolute minimum number of laws to protect us from predators (internal and external) who would deprive us of our life, liberty and/or property. I think this includes protecting the environment from freeloaders who would save money by polluting without paying. With Freedom comes Responsibility, and we have not had freedom in the United States for so long that we have a lot of citizens that don't know what Responsibility is anymore. So reinstating freedom at this point would be irresponsible because we have so many people who have given up their freedom for security (financial and otherwise) from the government. It's probably even worse in Europe, but not yet as bad in some other places. To restore freedom would require a program that first restored individual responsibility. That is difficult for most of the proles. And you can't do it through more laws and more government programs, sadly. So it falls to the citizenry. And thus I fear that freedom as I envision it will never be restored in the modern world because I see little chance of responsibility being restored first. But ideally, a responsible populace, with the maximum degree of freedom would produce the society that most closely approximates the ideal. That is why I value freedom over justice. I welcome your well thought out response. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Jun 21 22:40:31 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 16:40:31 -0600 Subject: [ExI] 1000 Terabytes on a DVD Message-ID: http://theconversation.com/more-data-storage-heres-how-to-fit-1-000-terabytes-on-a-dvd-15306 Can anyone with a physics background comment on this please? How does one make a doughnut of light? Isn't the edge of the doughnut also "fuzzy"? I kind of get it, but it makes me wonder if these guys are smoking their own crack. That being said, the idea of 1000 terabytes on a DVD sized format is way cool to think about. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clementlawyer at gmail.com Sat Jun 22 01:12:05 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 21:12:05 -0400 Subject: [ExI] 1000 Terabytes on a DVD In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 6:40 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > http://theconversation.com/more-data-storage-heres-how-to-fit-1-000-terabytes-on-a-dvd-15306 > > Can anyone with a physics background comment on this please? How does one > make a doughnut of light? Isn't the edge of the doughnut also "fuzzy"? I > kind of get it, but it makes me wonder if these guys are smoking their own > crack. > > That being said, the idea of 1000 terabytes on a DVD sized format is way > cool to think about. > > -Kelly > > > I can't speak to the physics of this, but if it's true, wouldn't an important use of it would be to create much smaller (excimer laser lithography) beams to etch silicon wafers, used to make CPUs? Current technical limitations are at the 50nm range. This "doughnut" system claims beams as small as 9nm. James -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Jun 22 01:56:28 2013 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 18:56:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] DNA India: The transhumanity timeline Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 12:24 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 09:02:44AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > >> If you are trying to talk to a Jupiter brain, the top level coherent >> process is what you would be talking to. At least I think that's the >> case. > > I'm not sure there can be a hierarchical assembly that can > act coherently. Then what's the point of such a thing existing if it can't act coherently? > How would you talk to a planet full of 7 GPeople? Certainly you don't have a conversation with 7 billion. It's hard enough talking to more than one. > Large top-scale processes can relate to other large top-scale > processes, for plans that can take arbitrary amounts of time > to execute. > > By why would a whale talk to an amoeba? The don't share > the same time scale, they don't share the concepts. There > is really no common base for communication at all. If one of these "Jupiter Brains" was talking to another, the conversation would be painfully slow even to a human. >> >> If you want to do a lot of thinking, small dimensions, lots of power >> >> and plenty of cold water are needed. >> >> >> >> http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/04/12/transhumanism-and-the-human-expansion-into-space-a-conflict-with-physics/ >> > >> > Too many assumptions there. "Twenty million subjective years to get an answer back is just ridiculous." -- >> > you're thinking like a human here. >> >> I agree with you. Unfortunately I don't know how to think other than >> like a human. Any advice? > > I would just look at which behaviour constraints are available > for systems of all scales of complexity, including very small > nonsentient systems and dauer spores, up to very large scale > systems and supersystems in the context of Darwinian evolution. That doesn't help, at least not me. > It seems that the only constraints there are that of metabolism > and relativistic travel. Motivation differs across scales, and > we definitely can't assume any human motivators apply. > > We already have thousands of volunteers applying for a one-way > essential suicide mission. Extreme environments like Mt. Everest > have plenty of dead bodies to be used as landmarks. Even people > do things which they apparently shouldn't be doing. Great. A world full of powerful beings even more irrational than humans. >> > "Due to this line of thinking, I no longer think it?s practical to surround a star with computronium." -- >> > why, obviously Amerigo Vespucci and Cristobal Colon never set sail, so the colonization never happened, >> > so Keith Henson never happened. Since you're obviously there, there seems to be a problem with your >> > line of reasoning. It obviously has to do with the need to communicate with everyone else within >> > a given minimal time, which is a bogus requirement. Back then, the opposite site of the Earth >> > was as remote as the next star in terms of communication latency. Yet it still got settled. >> >> By the time of Magellan, it only took 3 years sail around the Earth. > > Yes, 3 years is basically interstellar distances. I can now send > ping any node on the Internet in less than a second. They didn't > have telecommunications back then, messages took many years hitching > rides on ships and travelers, and yet people expanded in increments > just fine. People just sailed into the seas without having a good > story that they will ever return, and countless perished. Yet we're > all descendants from these survivors, and the wanderlust is in > our DNA. We don't contract, we expand. We would have expanded into > space a long time ago, if we could. I was involved with this for a considerable time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Henson#L5_Society I came to my current view of humanity's future reluctantly. I would greatly prefer that humanity left for the stars, but now suspect that they will not even get off the planet in self sustaining numbers, with the majority of them uploading into fast hardware that makes the stars and even other planets seem impossibly far away. In spite of that, I still work on things, SBSP, that could result in at least a small human presence in space. >> Point accepted that the Earth got settled, or rather conquered since >> the entire planet had been settled long before Europeans started > > Yes, precisely, the planet was already settled by people with > much more primitive tools and even no concept of global communication > at all -- the language bareer alone would make such a thing nonsensical. > >> exploring. But that's not the point. Is the best substrate for >> thinking beings a fog of computronium around a star? I don't think so > > We know that computronium is the best substrate for computation, > by definition. Everything else is about how much power you can > dissipate. You'll need enough 4 K background visible to dump > your heat into, and you'll expand into utilizing all available > energy flux, so it means that you have a halo of nodes around > the star. Whether the nodes are thin, or fat is not really that > important, other that they've spread across space lighthours > across, and other such sphere are across other stars lightyears > away, and so on. Computronium at 1 Au can only collect a kW/m^2 and dissipate the same amount. Given a kW per brain, the inhabitants will be spaced a meter apart. or about a million per square km. Compare that with a deep ocean where the inhabitants can be spaced at 10 cm and powered by 2 kW per inhabitant. The ones in space will have 100 times smaller communities for the same clock rate and latency. OK, people might inhabit space this way, but it's not the prestigious location of cold deep ocean with half a GW to power it. >> for engineering reasons of waste heat and latency. It's a question >> akin to where people live today, i.e., a desert supports only a small >> fraction of those in lush surroundings. For the uploaded who want to > > Lush surroundings = lots of solar flux, and atoms to make use of it. > Deserts = interstellar space with no flux, and even no fusion fuel. > >> think fast, plenty of power, lots of cold water and a compact >> community are what you need. By comparison, a disbursed cloud of >> computronium would be like a bleak desert. > > No, because the cloud is immaterial, just what's in the node > is important. Whether a node is cm^3, m^3 or even larger, it's > not important. The point is that that there are many nodes like > that (about Avogadro number of human equivalents in just this > solar system alone). They're not all in one location, because > you couldn't compute that way without suffering the corium or > plasma cloud as failure modes. I don't think you can compute > warmer than 700 K, and arguably it could be useful to go lower, > perhaps a lot lower. You mentioned evolution up post. I see speeding up as an arms race where the goal of being smarter than your neighbors pushes the clock rates up to the limits of hardware or cooling. Out in space or in the deep cold ocean, people running at high rates of thinking are going to find travel tedious. I suspect that if intelligent life evolved elsewhere in our light cone, that's what happened to them. When Drexler first figured out nanotechnology he went looking through a catalog of unusual galaxies for ones that looked like Cookie Monster had taken a bite out of them, the result of an expanding front of civilization that was dimming the stars behind the front. Had he found one, he would have had someone take a look in the infrared He didn't find any. Options that fit the observations: They figure out uploading and never leave their home planet, they make computronium around their star, but don't go beyond it, there are none, i.e., we are the first, some disaster eats them, but makes no subsequent visible mark on the universe. Or it could be that 50 million years of subjective experience (which could happen to us by the end of this century) changes us and aliens beyond comprehension. Or perhaps simulated environments are enough to sate the desire to explore. Stick around and you can find out. Keith From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Jun 22 02:17:32 2013 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 19:17:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "Stick around and you can find out." Message-ID: There was a time when a high fraction of the people on this list knew Hugh Daniel, either in person or by reputation. Hugh died suddenly from undiagnosed congestive heart failure June 3. Another person known equally far across the net, Eric Raymond wrote this about Hugh. http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4955 Hugh was in the cryonics sign up process for a long time, perhaps ten years, but never completed it. If you are serious about cryonics, you might take this as a wake up call. As a matter of fact, it was the death of a friend in Tucson that got my family to finish the sign up process. http://www.alcor.org/BecomeMember/scheduleA.html http://www.cryonics.org/become.html Keith From rolandodegilead at gmail.com Sat Jun 22 01:08:47 2013 From: rolandodegilead at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Eugenio_Mart=EDnez?=) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 03:08:47 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Vision, people. Vision! In-Reply-To: <1371838135.6353.YahooMailNeo@web160702.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1371838135.6353.YahooMailNeo@web160702.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: First of all: Sorry for my english. I am a Spanish student of English and I make a lot of mistakes. I try to improve myself everyday. Now, related to the topic: I am not a communist, but, on the very first day an IA rises, there are two possible ways to follow: With private property: Business owners buy some IA?s and they don?t need employees anymore, so unemployment get closer to 100% and poor people (mainly everybody) can?t defend themselves because IA army is not defeatable. An existencial risk Without private property: Government have a IA for each person. They collect the money and distribute it amongst the citizens, so people don?t have to work never ever, so they could use all their lifes to study. Related to abolitionism. A Transhumanist socialism (?Transocialism? ?S+?) In ?50? years IA will be developed. In 70 a country will finish the deployment of a Transhumanist socialism. In 71 all the other countries will pay homage to them On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 8:08 PM, Dennis May wrote: > Anders Sandberg wrote: [Mon May 20 08:26:13 UTC 2013] > > "I have been thinking about mid-term strategic goals for a while now. > ...achieving transhumanist aims requires getting involved in what can only > be called politics." > > "One approach might of course be to try for coming up with new, even more > radical ideas. [...] Blowing minds attracts the swarmers and seekers, while > repelling the doers and mainstream." > > "Another approach is to focus. [...] Having people actually work out > projects or theories in detail and getting supporters bringing them > about or spreading the knowledge does matter." > > "A third way, which I think has not happened much yet, is to deliberately > look for a new transhumanist vision. [...] But where is the next liminal > appearing? We want to be there and seed it. > > ***** > > Developing a new vision for transhumanist future requires a correct > coherent view of which political model successfully generates growing > economic investment and entrepreneurial creativity in technology. > > That seems to be the debate which has raged since the early years of the > industrial revolution. My on and off discussions on various lists has lead > me to believe that either a large minority or in fact the majority of > people involved in extropy/transhumanism do not possess even a basic > understanding of the fundamental foundations of economics. That being the > case most are not prepared to rationally discuss politics or the questions > related to how do we get there from here. > > That leaves the "doers" and the entrepreneurs to determine the future. > The extent to which they - and the economy they live in - can escape being > micro-managed and second guessed by central planners will determine the > extent and rate of progress. > > Seed money is indeed important in developing the future. The value of > seed money is inversely proportional to the degree it is micro-managed and > second guessed by central planners [private or public bean counters]. > Throwing money at difficult problems is a complete waste if the solution is > top-down rather than allowing creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit to > work. This simple fact seems to elude the vast majority of people and the > management in large organizations - understandable since most have never > been part of the creative process in developing new technology and have > never understood the damage done by the top-down approach. > _____ > > Side note: I've also noticed many extropy/transhumanism supporters > embracing what I can only call bad science/bad cosmology and politicized > environmental science. Care needs to be taken before investing so much in > popular ideas without authentic foundations. > > Dennis May > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- OLVIDATE.DE Tatachan.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Jun 22 02:25:52 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 19:25:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Web's Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders In-Reply-To: References: <20130620141800.GN22824@leitl.org> <016701ce6dc4$5f6894b0$1e39be10$@rainier66.com> <20130621111710.GF22824@leitl.org> <013401ce6e9a$036199b0$0a24cd10$@rainier66.com> <015d01ce6ea3$873bf060$95b3d120$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <020801ce6eef$d38e71d0$7aab5570$@rainier66.com> >. On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson >. >>.Ja, but as far as I know the IRS is the only agency which has the power to deeply impact you personally, by calling you in for an audit. If they decide they don't like you for whatever reason, I know of no avenue of appeal. >.While it isn't federal, the Division of Child and Family Services operates under nearly identical impunity to checks and balances. They can't take away your freedom (directly), but they can take away your children.. -Kelly Thanks Kelly. I hadn't really thought of it that way, but you are right. Imagine this scenario. We know that the IRS has the authority to put a padlock on the door of your business, and leave that lock there until they complete their investigation. We have seen where an investigation can die on someone's desk for no apparent reason. Imagine you have a business and you find a lock on the front door one morning with a big NO TRESPASSING sign. You ask why. A week later you hear it is for an investigation, they will get back with you. You ask if you can go inside to water your plants. Two weeks later your receive: NO, get cacti for your office, some species can live for over a year without being watered. You ask if you might go in to feed your tropical fish in the office aquarium. Four weeks later, you receive: NO, the bigger ones will devour the smaller ones, as is the way of the world. In panicky desperation you explain that your office building houses a number of scaled-up thermos bottles which contain severed human heads; therefore you need to get inside the office to replenish the supply of liquid nitrogen, for otherwise these cryonauts will thaw and perish. Twenty minutes later, three husky lads in white lab coats show up, introducing you to a sturdy canvas jacket with a number of buckles and straps. You are never heard from again. I fervently request all ExI-chatters to pay close attention to what is happening in the US. I reprove myself for not paying closer attention to this back in the days when others were calling attention to it. We have gradually made a transition from paper mail (slow but very secure) to email which is now known to be impossible to completely secure. Eugen gets it, which is understandable and commendable, considering where he is from. Clearly he is one who learned from history. What we have seen is a part of the political spectrum which was, and is still being stifled by powerful government forces, without consequences to the agency doing the silencing. If we let this pass and do nothing, then clearly we have not learned from history. The event of modern times about which there are more books written than perhaps any other topic is the rise of a brutal dictatorship from a European democracy in one decade (Eugen, do feel free to comment.) If we sit and watch while that happens again, then all those books are words, just words, written in vain, for we have learned nothing from that bitter experience, not one goddam thing. First they came for the Tea Party, but I am not a tea bagger, so I said nothing. You can fill in the rest, but do let me note that in that progression, cryonicists, transhumanists, extropians, are all on the list of small powerless groups for which others will likely not speak up if we fail to speak up for the tea party. Fifty years ago next week, President Kennedy uttered the stirring words Ich bin ein Berliner! We are all Berliners now. First they came for the tea baggers. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Sat Jun 22 03:32:50 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 05:32:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] DNA India: The transhumanity timeline In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20130622033250.GH22824@leitl.org> On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 10:30:31PM +0100, BillK wrote: > Because the Matrix changes everything. You keep claiming that, but you never say why. > Once we achieve mind-linked posthumans the definition of 'individual' > gets rewritten. No, it doesn't. Organisation is substrate-invariant. > (Your example isn't true for all species. If ants or bees wander off, they die). But there will be far more species than than we have now. More diversity, more diversity in behavior. From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Jun 22 04:27:13 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 00:27:13 -0400 Subject: [ExI] BIS: Extraterrestrial liberty and colonising the universe In-Reply-To: <51C32A50.3060303@aleph.se> References: <51C32A50.3060303@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 12:14 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > My colleague Stuart lectures at the British Interplanetary Society on > colonizing the universe and what this might mean for liberty: > http://youtu.be/mrUWkfeJABY ### Wow, the coolest lecture of the past 15 years! The lecture suggests something I claimed on this list a long time ago, that we are the Firstborn, the so far one and only sentient species in our light cone, to a high degree of confidence. Or else, our understanding of the universe is so far off track it's not even funny. Gives me goosebumps to think about it. Rafal From pharos at gmail.com Sat Jun 22 10:48:19 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 11:48:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [tp] NSA flag terms In-Reply-To: <20130621125100.GL22824@leitl.org> References: <3631A119EB15854B832730C5CA624B2423CBFBF4@exmb3.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu> <00f801ce6c50$f9cc91c0$ed65b540$@rainier66.com> <013901ce6c5c$bf78d040$3e6a70c0$@rainier66.com> <20130621122843.GJ22824@leitl.org> <20130621125100.GL22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 1:51 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 01:42:27PM +0100, BillK wrote: >> Query: Does using that link in the Tor browser have a different effect >> to setting DuckDuckGo as your preferred search engine in the search >> box in the Tor browser? > > Yes, it does. You can see it for yourself, if you make a test search > over the .onion address versus the built-in DuckDuckGo search provider. > The results for the search query are also served over the hidden service. > Now that was 'quite interesting', as Stephen Fry might say. (QI program reference). Both routes are via an anonymous IP address, but the Tor hidden service does make a difference. (Correct me if I have misunderstood) :) Normal Tor traffic has to come back to your computer through exitnodes. At the exitnodes, everything needs to be decrypted unless it's ssl or similarly encrypted at the application layer. Additionally the traffic is also directed to the REAL IP address. So setting up a false NSA-controlled exitnode is a method of snooping Tor traffic. And the NSA can afford the latest fastest computers to attract Tor traffic. In addition, people are advised to avoid running a Tor exitnode on their home pc, as any dangerous traffic (terrorists, child pornography, etc.) would be traced back to their IP address. Tor exitnode pcs have been impounded by the police for this very reason. When using hidden services, everything is encrypted along the whole route. The onionrouting will ensure high barrier of entry for adversaries and snoopers. So using hidden services is indeed preferable. Now, how do we find out what Tor hidden services are available? BillK From anders at aleph.se Sat Jun 22 11:29:37 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 12:29:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] 1000 Terabytes on a DVD In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <51C58AA1.3090100@aleph.se> On 21/06/2013 23:40, Kelly Anderson wrote: > http://theconversation.com/more-data-storage-heres-how-to-fit-1-000-terabytes-on-a-dvd-15306 > > Can anyone with a physics background comment on this please? How does > one make a doughnut of light? Isn't the edge of the doughnut also > "fuzzy"? I kind of get it, but it makes me wonder if these guys are > smoking their own crack. For the real details, check out the paper http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130619/ncomms3061/full/ncomms3061.html Beams can have near arbitrary cross-sections. The standard beam is Gaussian-shaped, but it is entirely possible to make beams with holes in them. In this case they use the trick of having a resin that reacts to two beams, one of which inhibits the change. Only points where the writing beam intensity is high enough will be changed, and the optical trickery is all about ensuring this is as tiny as possible. If you handle that right you can make patterns smaller than the wavelength of light. Whether this actually is a good way for data storage is another question. How do you read them without an electron microscope? They also note that making lines had a scanning speed around 160 microns per second. If we assume 52 nm resolution between the lines, there will be 192,307 lines per cm. So writing a square centimeter takes 192,307 * (0.01/160e-6) = 12 million seconds, or about 140 days. This can presumably be speeded up by parallel writing, but I suspect the individual line writing speed is tough to change since it is about having enough photons absorbed in a certain volume without heating it too much - it is likely thermally limited. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Sat Jun 22 11:45:31 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 12:45:31 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Extraterrestrial liberty and colonising the universe In-Reply-To: <1371824963.42841.YahooMailNeo@web160701.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <51C32A50.3060303@aleph.se> <1371760398.23806.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1371824963.42841.YahooMailNeo@web160701.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51C58E5B.1030107@aleph.se> On 21/06/2013 15:29, Dennis May wrote: > Why aren't we a thousand miles deep in grasshoppers? > A: disease, parasites, predators, cannibalism, resources to > survive/replicate. This applies if you have a system where evolution applies. The standard interstellar replicator scenarios tend to use multiple local hops, allowing many generations between the start and end point. Plenty of chance for evolutionary drift or divergence, although artificial probes can be equipped with error correction making any accidental diversity as negligible as you want. Stuarts and mine scenario has two generations: the end-state will not have had much chance to evolve (and, again, error correction can prevent it). The assumption that given time parasites will evolve is based on the image that the system is free to evolve. But non-evolving replicators getting there first can also prevent the appearance of evolving replicators. If the first seeders didn't want to allow them, they could do it. We might *like* the concept of evolving replicators a great deal more than those boring non-evolving, but the latter can win against the rest if they are programmed to be through. ...however. I have a poster at a conference in two weeks (http://star-www.st-and.ac.uk/~ap22/setinam2013.html ) where I do a further analysis of the stability of this kind of scenario. Basically non-evolving probes preventing the spread of evolving parasites (that is, other civilisations) must be vigilant and effective in order to be an explanation of the Fermi question. I show that even when taking anthropics into account our existence is a counter-argument, and in addition such systems do not seem to be stable against invasion - the only way to be truly certain nobody else can invade is to turn everything into your kind of replicator. Hence the "deadly probe scenario" is not a likely answer to the Fermi question. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Sat Jun 22 18:12:09 2013 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 11:12:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing Message-ID: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> Hi everyone! Have you read the recent writings by Alex Jones and his transhumanism-bashing? If so, would you like to be a voice of reason on his ridiculous articles? (And another one which is far-fetched). http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/maddow-right-wing-mainstreaming-alex-jones- (Rachel Maddow suggests Alex Jones is gaining momentum). http://www.infowars.com/new-matt-damon-movie-reveals-mankinds-transhumanist- destiny/ (Alex Jones' site). http://www.naturalnews.com/040859_Skynet_quantum_computing_D-Wave_Systems.ht ml (by Mike Adams which like reading National Enquirer). Natasha Vita-More, PhD NEW Book: Co-Editor: The Transhumanist Reader: Contemporary and Classical Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future (Wiley-Blackwell Pub.) Available at Amazon! Final Cover Design_email Adjunct Professor, University of Advancing Technology Chairman, Humanity+ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.png Type: image/png Size: 13790 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dennislmay at yahoo.com Sat Jun 22 22:53:19 2013 From: dennislmay at yahoo.com (Dennis May) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 15:53:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Extraterrestrial liberty and colonising the universe Message-ID: <1371941599.54231.YahooMailNeo@web160702.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> On 21/06/2013 15:29,?I wrote: "Why aren't we a thousand miles deep in grasshoppers? A: disease, parasites, predators, cannibalism, resources to survive/replicate." On 22/06/2013 11:45,?Anders Sandberg wrote: ? "This applies if you have a system where evolution applies. The standard interstellar replicator scenarios tend to use multiple local hops, allowing many generations between the start and end point. Plenty of chance for evolutionary drift or divergence, although artificial probes can be equipped with error correction making any accidental diversity as negligible as you want. Stuarts and mine scenario has two generations: the end-state will not have had much chance to evolve (and, again, error correction can prevent it). The assumption that given time parasites will evolve is based on the image that the system is free to evolve. But non-evolving replicators getting there first can also prevent the appearance of evolving replicators. If the first seeders didn't want to allow them, they could do it. We might *like* the concept of evolving replicators a great deal more than those boring non-evolving, but the latter can win against the rest if they are programmed to be [thorough]." There seem to be a few assumptions implicit in your statements.? You seem to assume some kind of central planner control of probe launches into the universe - which implies economic and technology control over individuals. Otherwise anyone wealthy enough can do their own probe launches.? If I were interested in such probe launches and replicating systems I would recognize that evolution can happen in both software and hardware such that a single probe going out can create entire ecosystems of predator-prey- parasites and do its own launches at any point in time later.? A single AI which can replicate and spread in free space is enough to populate every scenario including war-gaming against its own creations to evolve impossibly efficient predators.? Before the first centrally-planned probe reaches another galaxy, independently evolved probes could have sent out a trillion competing probes ahead of it. On 22/06/2013 11:45,?Anders Sandberg wrote: "...the only way to be truly certain nobody else can invade is to turn everything into your kind of replicator. Hence the "deadly probe scenario" is not a likely answer to the Fermi question." It?always takes less energy and resources to destroy than to create. This is part of the reason why offensive WoMD are so much more effective than defenses against them.? The greater the energy involved the?more effective offense?becomes. The smallest technological footprint for AI to replicate is presently unknown. There is the time footprint, the resources footprint, the signals generated by replication footprint, the?trails left?in both traveling and replication, and the thermodynamic footprints both in matter and radiation. Ideally replication would take place in high noise environments to minimize detection.? High noise environments?are only available in limited regions and what qualifies as high noise is technology dependent. There are many assumptions inherent in what replicating AI systems are going to do.? I assume they will use wide band impulse communications which appear as white noise [SETI detection won't work].? I assume they will leave as little footprint as possible to keep from being tracked [military 101], I assume they will stay on the move, disperse themselves, and act in a stealthy manner to avoid WoMD.? In space stealth also means small footprint in every way possible. So the Fermi Paradox is not hard to understand.? If a single civilization allows AI - not controlled by central-planners - military strategy for AI that can replicate will quickly lead to quiet well dispersed mobile AI with small footprints we will never see.? The predators among the AI replicators will also hunt other predators.? The Earth may be nothing more than a loud baby animal drawing in predators while other predators watch and wait.? There are too many possible scenarios to calculate. Dennis May -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ALONZOTG at verizon.net Sat Jun 22 22:42:42 2013 From: ALONZOTG at verizon.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 18:42:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> Message-ID: <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> =\ Yes, Alex has some problems understanding some transhumanist concepts however, I think his recent coverage (in the past few weeks) of Kurzweil's ideas to be dead on accurate. =( Why am I the ONLY person who always gets upset when people spew garbage about how the entire universe will be converted to computronium, by human intention, and that everyone will be uploaded by means of destructive scanning, and, especially, that there is something *GOOD* about that future... I mean, why can't we have a discussion about how what criteria we will use to determine which limited parts of the universe will be used for computronium and which we will use for other purposes? Why can't we have a discussion about how to preserve humanoid life as an available choice? I've spent the last few months trolling for information about what good things will happen to an upload, once it is duly scanned and simulated. I have not gotten a good answer yet. What I found is that most of the websites of the people I know to be hard-core uploaders have been, um, *sanitized*. If you read their rantings, they are still absolutely in favor of every available nucleon being re-purposed for "simulation", whatever the hell that word means... (What the hell kind of "simulation" actually substitutes for reality instead of being a crude model of it??) -- I'm looking at you, Anissimov! Actually, my only real find came last week when I came across: http://enthea.org/writing/reality-3-0-hypermediation-paradise-engineering/ Now how should I respond to this? "Oh it's only fiction, just an idea..." ??? "How nice..." ???? Or, should I say: "OMFG!!! Jeff Lutty actually intends to release the Nats, I've gotta stop him!!!" Even H+ magazine recently spewed out http://hplusmagazine.com/2013/06/17/clearing-up-misconceptions-about-mind-uploading/ where the alleged facts were hardly distinguishable from the alleged misconceptions. Furthermore an entirely implausible argument was made about how easy it will be to "modify" an upload. A moment's thought will see that any low level emulation of a mind will be extremely difficult to modify by virtue of it's extreme complexity. Furthermore, the types of modifications possible will be tightly constrained by the limitations of the software running the simulation, where in the physical world they are effectively unbounded. What part of that vision is supposed to be appealing anyway? Lets say that everything this Paul Hughes character said was plausible, even where it's logically contradictory. (ie, if the normal state of being is a heavily medicated -- er, I mean mediated, self-delusion, then how is that compatible with the existence of a simulated star-wars universe where the beings would have to be forced to accept their provided perceptions as the one true reality in order for them to be at all interested with the problem the simulation provides them. Why would you want to sit there and watch all the natural wonders of the universe being obliterated by the expansion front? That would be a nightmare in itself! Here's another good question. Transhumanism seems to have degenerated into discussing two things Uploading (not what life will be like after being uploaded, but the process of uploading itself and only that) and living long enough to be uploaded (cryonics, life extension etc...) Why can't we talk about how awesome it will be to be a nano-cyborg and what we need to do to push that type of technology forward? =\ Alex Jones is simply trying to invite more people to discuss this stuff because it really is important. Natasha Vita-More wrote: > > Hi everyone! > > Have you read the recent writings by Alex Jones and his > transhumanism-bashing? If so, would you like to be a voice of reason > on his ridiculous articles? (And another one which is far-fetched). > > http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/maddow-right-wing-mainstreaming-alex-jones- > (Rachel Maddow suggests Alex Jones is gaining momentum). > > http://www.infowars.com/new-matt-damon-movie-reveals-mankinds-transhumanist-destiny/ > (Alex Jones? site). > > http://www.naturalnews.com/040859_Skynet_quantum_computing_D-Wave_Systems.html > (by Mike Adams which like reading National Enquirer). > -- NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE Powers are not rights. From protokol2020 at gmail.com Sun Jun 23 06:55:58 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 08:55:58 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Extraterrestrial liberty and colonising the universe In-Reply-To: <1371941599.54231.YahooMailNeo@web160702.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1371941599.54231.YahooMailNeo@web160702.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: A massive error checking and redundancy can suppress evolution of any kind. What does the state of the Fermi paradox tells us? It tells us, that evolution, at least interesting evolution of the complex machines is rare or almost not present in the Universe. Evolution is easy to prevent. Its somehow already prevented almost everywhere - naturally. A probe with the wrong checksum should destroy itself. Better, shouldn't be able to function in the first place. Very much like the nuclear weapons are functioning for decades. A malfunction in an accidentally fallen bomb will NOT ENABLE the explosion. It must be enabled by a complicated procedure, a small error is fatal in that process. With this principle on steroids, evolution isn't a problem at all. They say, everything change, except the change is eternal. Well, this is about to change! After a certain threshold, a cosmic super-civilization must freeze itself on the present state. No more progress! No big deal. It's a small prize to pay for the whole Universe. Many Tranhumanist don't like that at least, I know. They start with the usual mantra how horrible is to be wireheaded, as they weren't already for the entire history of the Universe. P.S. I have a blog now. www.protokol2020.wordpress.com Maybe some of you may be interested in reading it. On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 12:53 AM, Dennis May wrote: > On 21/06/2013 15:29, I wrote: > > "*Why aren't we a thousand miles deep in grasshoppers?* > *A: disease, parasites, predators, cannibalism, resources to ** > survive/replicate."* > > On 22/06/2013 *11:45*, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > "This applies if you have a system where evolution applies. The standard > interstellar replicator scenarios tend to use multiple local hops, > allowing many generations between the start and end point. Plenty of > chance for evolutionary drift or divergence, although artificial probes > can be equipped with error correction making any accidental diversity as > negligible as you want. Stuarts and mine scenario has two generations: > the end-state will not have had much chance to evolve (and, again, error > correction can prevent it). > > The assumption that given time parasites will evolve is based on the > image that the system is free to evolve. But non-evolving replicators > getting there first can also prevent the appearance of evolving > replicators. If the first seeders didn't want to allow them, they could > do it. We might *like* the concept of evolving replicators a great deal > more than those boring non-evolving, but the latter can win against the > rest if they are programmed to be [thorough]." > > There seem to be a few assumptions implicit in your statements. You seem > to assume some kind of central planner control of probe launches into > the universe - which implies economic and technology control over > individuals. > Otherwise anyone wealthy enough can do their own probe launches. If I > were interested in such probe launches and replicating systems I would > recognize that evolution can happen in both software and hardware such > that a single probe going out can create entire ecosystems of > predator-prey- > parasites and do its own launches at any point in time later. A single AI > which can replicate and spread in free space is enough to populate every > scenario including war-gaming against its own creations to evolve > impossibly > efficient predators. Before the first centrally-planned probe reaches > another galaxy, independently evolved probes could have sent out a trillion > competing probes ahead of it. > > On 22/06/2013 *11:45*, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > "...the only way to be truly certain nobody else can invade is to turn > everything into your kind of replicator. Hence the "deadly probe > scenario" is not a likely answer to the Fermi question." > > It always takes less energy and resources to destroy than to create. > This is part of the reason why offensive WoMD are so much more effective > than defenses against them. The greater the energy involved the more > effective offense becomes. > > The smallest technological footprint for AI to replicate is presently > unknown. > There is the time footprint, the resources footprint, the signals generated > by replication footprint, the trails left in both traveling and > replication, > and the thermodynamic footprints both in matter and radiation. > > Ideally replication would take place in high noise environments to minimize > detection. High noise environments are only available in limited regions > and what qualifies as high noise is technology dependent. > > There are many assumptions inherent in what replicating AI systems are > going to do. I assume they will use wide band impulse communications which > appear as white noise [SETI detection won't work]. I assume they will > leave > as little footprint as possible to keep from being tracked [military 101], > I assume they will stay on the move, disperse themselves, and act in > a stealthy manner to avoid WoMD. In space stealth also means small > footprint > in every way possible. > > So the Fermi Paradox is not hard to understand. If a single civilization > allows AI - not controlled by central-planners - military strategy for AI > that > can replicate will quickly lead to quiet well dispersed mobile AI with > small > footprints we will never see. The predators among the AI replicators will > also hunt other predators. The Earth may be nothing more than a loud baby > animal drawing in predators while other predators watch and wait. There > are too many possible scenarios to calculate. > > Dennis May > > _______________________________________________ > 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 protokol2020 at gmail.com Sun Jun 23 07:03:25 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 09:03:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> Message-ID: I don't think, Mr. Grimes, a Jurassic Park you are proposing is very likely. I don't think, the concept of the museum under the sky is that good. Nobody would want to live there. On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 12:42 AM, Alan Grimes wrote: > =\ > > Yes, Alex has some problems understanding some transhumanist concepts > however, I think his recent coverage (in the past few weeks) of Kurzweil's > ideas to be dead on accurate. =( > > Why am I the ONLY person who always gets upset when people spew garbage > about how the entire universe will be converted to computronium, by human > intention, and that everyone will be uploaded by means of destructive > scanning, and, especially, that there is something *GOOD* about that > future... > > I mean, why can't we have a discussion about how what criteria we will use > to determine which limited parts of the universe will be used for > computronium and which we will use for other purposes? > > Why can't we have a discussion about how to preserve humanoid life as an > available choice? > > I've spent the last few months trolling for information about what good > things will happen to an upload, once it is duly scanned and simulated. I > have not gotten a good answer yet. > > What I found is that most of the websites of the people I know to be > hard-core uploaders have been, um, *sanitized*. If you read their rantings, > they are still absolutely in favor of every available nucleon being > re-purposed for "simulation", whatever the hell that word means... (What > the hell kind of "simulation" actually substitutes for reality instead of > being a crude model of it??) -- I'm looking at you, Anissimov! > > Actually, my only real find came last week when I came across: > http://enthea.org/writing/**reality-3-0-hypermediation-** > paradise-engineering/ > > Now how should I respond to this? > > "Oh it's only fiction, just an idea..." ??? > > "How nice..." ???? > > Or, should I say: > > "OMFG!!! Jeff Lutty actually intends to release the Nats, I've gotta stop > him!!!" > > Even H+ magazine recently spewed out > http://hplusmagazine.com/2013/**06/17/clearing-up-** > misconceptions-about-mind-**uploading/ > where the alleged facts were hardly distinguishable from the alleged > misconceptions. Furthermore an entirely implausible argument was made about > how easy it will be to "modify" an upload. A moment's thought will see that > any low level emulation of a mind will be extremely difficult to modify by > virtue of it's extreme complexity. Furthermore, the types of modifications > possible will be tightly constrained by the limitations of the software > running the simulation, where in the physical world they are effectively > unbounded. > > What part of that vision is supposed to be appealing anyway? Lets say that > everything this Paul Hughes character said was plausible, even where it's > logically contradictory. (ie, if the normal state of being is a heavily > medicated -- er, I mean mediated, self-delusion, then how is that > compatible with the existence of a simulated star-wars universe where the > beings would have to be forced to accept their provided perceptions as the > one true reality in order for them to be at all interested with the problem > the simulation provides them. Why would you want to sit there and watch all > the natural wonders of the universe being obliterated by the expansion > front? That would be a nightmare in itself! > > Here's another good question. Transhumanism seems to have degenerated into > discussing two things Uploading (not what life will be like after being > uploaded, but the process of uploading itself and only that) and living > long enough to be uploaded (cryonics, life extension etc...) Why can't we > talk about how awesome it will be to be a nano-cyborg and what we need to > do to push that type of technology forward? =\ > > Alex Jones is simply trying to invite more people to discuss this stuff > because it really is important. > > > > Natasha Vita-More wrote: > >> >> Hi everyone! >> >> Have you read the recent writings by Alex Jones and his >> transhumanism-bashing? If so, would you like to be a voice of reason on his >> ridiculous articles? (And another one which is far-fetched). >> >> http://crooksandliars.com/**karoli/maddow-right-wing-** >> mainstreaming-alex-jones-(Rachel Maddow suggests Alex Jones is gaining momentum). >> >> http://www.infowars.com/new-**matt-damon-movie-reveals-** >> mankinds-transhumanist-**destiny/(Alex Jones? site). >> >> http://www.naturalnews.com/**040859_Skynet_quantum_** >> computing_D-Wave_Systems.html(by Mike Adams which like reading National Enquirer). >> >> > -- > NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE > > Powers are not rights. > > ______________________________**_________________ > 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 ilia.stambler at gmail.com Sun Jun 23 07:24:47 2013 From: ilia.stambler at gmail.com (Ilia Stambler) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 10:24:47 +0300 Subject: [ExI] Please sign the petition in support of aging research in the US Message-ID: Dear friends Please sign and invite friends to sign the petition in support of aging research in the US. http://www.change.org/petitions/u-s-government-prioritize-technological-development-to-increase-healthy-human-lifespans We actually plan to proceed toward a formal submission of this petition to politicians, hence any show of public support of this initiative will be very helpful. The voting process is extremely convenient and rapid. Thanks! Ilia -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Jun 23 17:44:32 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 13:44:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Jun 22, 2013 at 6:42 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: > Why am I the ONLY person who always gets upset when people spew garbage > about how the entire universe will be converted to computronium, You are not the only one and in fact most people think as you do, just not most people on this list. > by human intention, and that everyone will be uploaded by means of > destructive scanning, We can't talk about that because, considering the fact that one atom is as good as another, you can't rationally explain exactly what is being destroyed in that "destructive" scanning. > and, especially, that there is something *GOOD* about that future > We can't talk about that because there is no disputing matters of taste. > > I mean, why can't we have a discussion about how what criteria we will > use to determine which limited parts of the universe will be used for > computronium and which we will use for other purposes? > We can't talk about that because the decision will not be made by you or me or by anybody we know. > Why can't we have a discussion about how to preserve humanoid life as an > available choice? > Nor that one. > I've spent the last few months trolling for information Well there's your problem. John k Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sun Jun 23 20:10:13 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 22:10:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Mathematical Help with Bitcoin historical curve future projection? (was re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe) In-Reply-To: <51C43E7B.8020808@canonizer.com> References: <51A00F3A.5090002@canonizer.com> <51A0B89B.2080108@canonizer.com> <51A0E030.6030209@canonizer.com> <51A5418C.50907@canonizer.com> <51AA4ECD.30006@canonizer.com> <70ddaf21-9dd3-45ba-9146-0e2944934e1c@googlegroups.com> <51C27B35.8030006@canonizer.com> <51C2CAE6.20202@libero.it> <51C43E7B.8020808@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <51C75625.4020800@libero.it> Il 21/06/2013 13:52, Brent Allsop ha scritto: > > Hi Micro, > > Did you intend on having an attachment or link with this that had your > chart? I'd sure like to see that as we're working on the same thing for > the "Canonized Crypto Coin Law" camp here: > > http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/2 Sorry, I probably forgot to add the link The chart is there https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=210298.msg2483987#msg2483987 Another guy modified the chart to show where the projected trend in the future https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=210298.msg2525861#msg2525861 > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ocUpwBIy-OI2YYYMSKs6nucF5aqa7_syAGxEl93GSgU/edit?usp=sharing I disagree with using the word "bubble" for the movements of bitcoin price. Bubble do not grow back after they deflate (unless Uncle Ben print a billion or a trillion for them to inflate again) I would suggest you use the word "spike" --------MIRCO------> NO MICRO > Also, Micro, I've started a 'peer ranking' camp to determine who the > best Crypto Coin experts are, so in a year or two we can measure who are > the best Bitcoin Future Value Predictors and use them for better > quantitative predictions about Bitcoins Future valuations. > http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/151/1 I try to use Canonizer, but it is not very intuitive for me (my fault for sure). > Micro, or anyone, would you care to provide some kind of a bio, or > statement so we can get a camp started for you to get everyone's peer > ranked historical accuracy reputation started? Should soon make a great > addition to a resume! I can give you the this link to Rick Falkvinge (one of the first Pirate Party Founders) "Bitcoin The Target Value For Bitcoin Is Not Some $50 Or $100. It Is $100,000 To $1,000,000. " http://falkvinge.net/2013/03/06/the-target-value-for-bitcoin-is-not-some-50-or-100-it-is-100000-to-1000000/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Falkvinge-on-Infopolicy+%28Falkvinge+on+Infopolicy%29 > If anyone else knows or or sees any other good quality articles or > information about future Bitcoin valuations, I hope you'll point such > out to us! Mirco From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 23 21:48:17 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 14:48:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Mathematical Help with Bitcoin historical curve future projection? (was re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe) In-Reply-To: <51C75625.4020800@libero.it> References: <51A00F3A.5090002@canonizer.com> <51A0B89B.2080108@canonizer.com> <51A0E030.6030209@canonizer.com> <51A5418C.50907@canonizer.com> <51AA4ECD.30006@canonizer.com> <70ddaf21-9dd3-45ba-9146-0e2944934e1c@googlegroups.com> <51C27B35.8030006@canonizer.com> <51C2CAE6.20202@libero.it> <51C43E7B.8020808@canonizer.com> <51C75625.4020800@libero.it> Message-ID: <007301ce705b$625426a0$26fc73e0$@rainier66.com> >... Mirco Romanato ... >...I disagree with using the word "bubble" for the movements of bitcoin price. Bubble do not grow back after they deflate (unless Uncle Ben print a billion or a trillion for them to inflate again) >...I would suggest you use the word "spike" >...--------MIRCO------> NO MICRO Why spike? spike From clementlawyer at gmail.com Sun Jun 23 23:36:29 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 19:36:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] State crackdown on Bitcoin? Message-ID: Bitcoin Foundation Receives Cease And Desist Order From California [Disclosure: Author serves on Board of Directors for Bitcoin Foundation.] Directly following last month?s Bitcoin 2013 conference event in San Jose, CA that brought decent revenue into the state, California?s Department of Financial Institutions decided to issue a cease and desist warning to conference organizer Bitcoin Foundation for allegedly engaging in the business of money transmission without a license or proper authorization. If found to be in violation of California Financial Code, penalties can be severe ranging from $1,000 to $2,500 per violation per day plus criminal prosecution which could result in fines and/or imprisonment. Additionally, it is a felony violation of federal law to engage in the business of money transmission without the appropriate state license or failure to register with the U.S. Treasury Department. Convictions under the federal statute are punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The Bitcoin Foundation is a nonprofit corporation registered in Washington, D.C. with mailing address in Seattle, WA. As a nonprofit, its mission is to standardize and promote the open source Bitcoin protocol and they receive generous support from individuals and corporations to advance those objectives. The foundation also boasts significant international membership . One activity that the foundation does not engage in is the owning, controlling, or conducting of money transmission business. Furthermore, that activity would also be against the original charter of the foundation. As general counsel for the Bitcoin Foundation, Patrick Murck has lead responsibility for corresponding with the California Department of Financial Institutions. At this stage, it?s difficult to tell whether or not it was a general blanket action and if other bitcoin-related entities received cease and desist letters from California. If Bitcoin Foundation was not the only recipient, then expect other companies to come forward in the days and weeks ahead. The issued letter was signed by State of California Senior Counsel Paul T. Crayton and the letter was copied to Department of Financial Institutions Deputy Commissioner Robert Venchiarutti, who also serves on the Board of Directors of the Money Transmitter Regulators Association , ironically a national *nonprofit* organization dedicated to the efficient and effective regulation of the money transmission industry. Recently, the State of Illinois also issued a cease and desist letter to mobile payments processor Square for failing to have the proper licensing in accordance with the state?s Transmitters of Money Act. Prepaid card provider NetSpend and six other payments companies also received Illinois cease and desist orders. If this practice grows among states, it could have a potentially significant ?chilling effect ? on financial services innovation, especially upon lawful businesses that are designing infrastructure to support and grow the Bitcoin technology.Freedom of choice in currencies is probably the most important free speech issue of our time. For similar but not wholly unrelated reasons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and several law school clinics established the collaborative archive*Chilling Effects Clearinghouse* in 2001 to protect lawful online activity from harassing legal threats related to intellectual property. Harkening back to the saga of FaceCash and Aaron Greenspan, this new far-reaching action from California?s financial regulator apparently now scoops up nonprofit scientific and educational organizations. California, the cradle of technological innovation and home to the inspiring Silicon Valley venture capital community, is now focusing its sights on the futuristic Bitcoin. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/06/23/bitcoin-foundation-receives-cease-and-desist-order-from-california/ James -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ALONZOTG at verizon.net Sun Jun 23 17:34:08 2013 From: ALONZOTG at verizon.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 13:34:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> Message-ID: <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> Tomaz Kristan wrote: > I don't think, Mr. Grimes, a Jurassic Park you are proposing is very > likely. > > I don't think, the concept of the museum under the sky is that good. > Nobody would want to live there. My contention is that 96% of the existing human population would prefer to live the way they are now, with only modest upgrades. The only way to change that number is to apply force. The uploaders claim that adoption of uploading will be 100%, any hold-outs being sacrificed. Therefore I presume that the uploaders intend to apply force. That's what happens in chapter 1 of part 2 of my story. The bulk of the story will be a catalog of the nightmares which follow, in each case explaining every choice I make as an author using in-line footnotes. As I have said before, I want to identify the latest, best vision of uploading in order to ensure that I'm actually tilting at the dragon instead of the scarecrow that could be claimed to be obsolete. (the SL4-noids do that... They claim their only published works are obsolete and not worth arguing over...) Furthermore, there is something extremely wrong here. Why have all of the uploaders shut up? Where are all the brave visions? Where is the discussion of what comes after? I remember there being a great deal more documentation ten years ago. Where did it all go? Could it be that the uploaders have started to meet push-back and have gone to ground? Could it be that the uploaders have finally felt the shame of going to their parents and telling them the good news that they will be replaced my a digital version of themselves? Seriously. we need to Talk about this. This situation of of you telling me that I'm going to be dead and uploaded is not a dialog. -- NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE Powers are not rights. From kanzure at gmail.com Sun Jun 23 23:58:44 2013 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 18:58:44 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 12:34 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: > Seriously. we need to Talk about this. This situation of of you telling me > that I'm going to be dead and uploaded is not a dialog. > Unfortunately, I see no evidence that you have taken in any of the insights from the previous times we have engaged you. Why should we bother with you again and again if there's nothing constructive coming out of it? That's not our job. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nanite1018 at gmail.com Mon Jun 24 00:34:56 2013 From: nanite1018 at gmail.com (Joshua Job) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 17:34:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> Message-ID: I can give it a try. You say 96% of the population won't upload or otherwise make radical upgrades. That may well be true, at first. But as the decades and centuries wear on, it will change. People will be more comfortable with uploading and radical modifications, and they'll let them do lots of things they couldn't otherwise do. And young people will embrace it more and more. The percentage won't go to 100% but it will be high. And nanotechnology allows tons of computation with little energy, so MOSHs as Kurzweil calls them will be immersed in a world which contains trillions of minds, mostly without their notice. Uploads could basically let them have their orbitals and houses at negligible cost. The number of MOSHs will be low enough they probably won't ever expand much outside the Solar system and so the rest of the Galaxy would be available for the uploaded humans and AIs. At best upload vs instantiated will be a matter of fashion. But the sheer efficiency of cyberspace will mean most people will be in cyberspace. And of course since energy will be the chief source of scarcity, beyond MOSHs with some capital, most uploads wouldn't be able to afford being instantiated - - - it'd just cost too much. -Josh. On Jun 23, 2013 4:53 PM, "Alan Grimes" wrote: > Tomaz Kristan wrote: > >> I don't think, Mr. Grimes, a Jurassic Park you are proposing is very >> likely. >> >> I don't think, the concept of the museum under the sky is that good. >> Nobody would want to live there. >> > > My contention is that 96% of the existing human population would prefer to > live the way they are now, with only modest upgrades. > > The only way to change that number is to apply force. > The uploaders claim that adoption of uploading will be 100%, any hold-outs > being sacrificed. > Therefore I presume that the uploaders intend to apply force. > > That's what happens in chapter 1 of part 2 of my story. The bulk of the > story will be a catalog of the nightmares which follow, in each case > explaining every choice I make as an author using in-line footnotes. > > As I have said before, I want to identify the latest, best vision of > uploading in order to ensure that I'm actually tilting at the dragon > instead of the scarecrow that could be claimed to be obsolete. (the > SL4-noids do that... They claim their only published works are obsolete and > not worth arguing over...) > > Furthermore, there is something extremely wrong here. Why have all of the > uploaders shut up? Where are all the brave visions? Where is the discussion > of what comes after? I remember there being a great deal more documentation > ten years ago. Where did it all go? Could it be that the uploaders have > started to meet push-back and have gone to ground? Could it be that the > uploaders have finally felt the shame of going to their parents and telling > them the good news that they will be replaced my a digital version of > themselves? > > Seriously. we need to Talk about this. This situation of of you telling me > that I'm going to be dead and uploaded is not a dialog. > > -- > NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE > > Powers are not rights. > > ______________________________**_________________ > 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 gts_2000 at yahoo.com Mon Jun 24 00:37:19 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 17:37:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] State crackdown on Bitcoin? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1372034239.34551.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> The Bitcoin Foundation is not a money transmitter, so this cease and desist order is ridiculous. Actual money transmitters need to be registered. We might see more news on this if any non-registered transmitters are operating in California. But I don't see it as a crackdown on Bitcoin. Gordon? ________________________________ From: James Clement To: ExI chat list Sent: Sunday, June 23, 2013 5:36 PM Subject: [ExI] State crackdown on Bitcoin? Bitcoin Foundation Receives Cease And Desist Order From California? [Disclosure: Author serves on Board of Directors for Bitcoin Foundation.] Directly following last month?s Bitcoin 2013 conference event in San Jose, CA that brought decent revenue into the state, California?s Department of Financial Institutions decided to issue a cease and desist warning to conference organizer Bitcoin Foundation for allegedly engaging in the business of money transmission without a?license?or proper authorization. If found to be in violation of California Financial Code, penalties can be severe ranging from $1,000 to $2,500 per violation per day plus criminal prosecution which could result in fines and/or imprisonment.?Additionally, it is a felony violation of federal law to engage in the business of money transmission without the appropriate state license or failure to register with the U.S. Treasury Department.?Convictions under the federal statute are punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The Bitcoin Foundation is a nonprofit corporation registered in Washington, D.C. with mailing address in Seattle, WA.?As a nonprofit, its mission is to standardize and promote the open source Bitcoin protocol and they receive generous support from individuals and corporations to advance those objectives.? The foundation also boasts significant international membership. One activity that the foundation does not engage in is the owning, controlling, or conducting of money transmission business.?Furthermore, that activity would also be against the original charter of the foundation.?As general counsel for the Bitcoin Foundation, Patrick Murck has lead responsibility for corresponding with the California Department of Financial Institutions. At this stage, it?s difficult to tell whether or not it was a general blanket action and if other bitcoin-related entities received cease and desist letters from California.?If Bitcoin Foundation was not the only recipient, then expect other companies to come forward in the days and weeks ahead. The issued letter was signed by State of California Senior Counsel Paul T. Crayton and the letter was copied to Department of Financial Institutions Deputy Commissioner Robert Venchiarutti, who also serves on the Board of Directors of the?Money Transmitter Regulators Association?, ironically a national?nonprofit?organization dedicated to the efficient and effective regulation of the money transmission industry. Recently, the State of Illinois also?issued?a cease and desist letter to mobile payments processor Square for failing to have the proper licensing in accordance with the state?s Transmitters of Money Act.?Prepaid card provider NetSpend and six other payments companies also?received?Illinois cease and desist orders.?If this practice grows among states, it could have a potentially significant ?chilling effect?? on financial services innovation, especially upon lawful businesses that are designing infrastructure to support and grow the Bitcoin technology.Freedom of choice in currencies is probably the most important free speech issue of our time. For similar but not wholly unrelated reasons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and several law school clinics established the collaborative archiveChilling Effects Clearinghouse?in 2001 to protect lawful online activity from harassing legal threats related to intellectual property. Harkening back to the?saga?of FaceCash and Aaron Greenspan, this new far-reaching action from California?s financial regulator apparently now scoops up nonprofit scientific and educational organizations.?California, the cradle of technological innovation and home to the inspiring Silicon Valley venture capital community, is now focusing its sights on the futuristic Bitcoin. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/06/23/bitcoin-foundation-receives-cease-and-desist-order-from-california/?? James _______________________________________________ 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 rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon Jun 24 02:58:51 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 22:58:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 1:34 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: > The uploaders claim that adoption of uploading will be 100%, any hold-outs > being sacrificed. > Therefore I presume that the uploaders intend to apply force. ### I expect that solid-state entities will drive biological humans extinct. Indeed, it's possible they might use force and simply eat (i.e. disassemble) human habitat and humans themselves. This has hardly anything to do with uploaders, since they would be an infinitesimally small minority among post-human entities, if present at all. What are you going to do about it? Rafal From msd001 at gmail.com Mon Jun 24 03:43:17 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 23:43:17 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 8:34 PM, Joshua Job wrote: > I can give it a try. You say 96% of the population won't upload or otherwise > make radical upgrades. That may well be true, at first. But as the decades > and centuries wear on, it will change. People will be more comfortable with Right. I don't think it takes much "vision" or predictive power to imagine this. Look at the Amish. Sure, they can teach their kids to value hard work on the farm - but their culture dwindles. The view tourists get is probably as [in]accurate as the anachronistic recreations of colonial settlers at Williamsburg. I wonder, Alan, if you'd sacrifice any amount of your limited resources (time, money, etc) to keep a habitat of neanderthals alive and well in your backyard. Maybe you say you would, at first. Over the course of years, I expect the novelty would wear off. Maybe you could charge admission fees for others to go look at them - and you might have enough profit to make it worth your continued support. But after a while the novelty wears off again. Ultimately, I think the problem you'll need to solve is that novelty wears off more quickly as exponential change happens. At some point, the old yields to the new. Uploads will likely rediscover this principle when their replacement threatens them. From nanite1018 at gmail.com Mon Jun 24 04:04:28 2013 From: nanite1018 at gmail.com (Joshua Job) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 21:04:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Dealing_with_transhumanism_bashing?= In-Reply-To: References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> Message-ID: On 2013 June 23 at 8:43:17 PM, Mike Dougherty (msd001 at gmail.com) wrote: I wonder, Alan, if you'd sacrifice any amount of your limited resources (time, money, etc) to keep a habitat of neanderthals alive and well in your backyard. Maybe you say you would, at first. Over the course of years, I expect the novelty would wear off. Maybe you could charge admission fees for others to go look at them - and you might have enough profit to make it worth your continued support. But after a while the novelty wears off again. I think the difference though is that, I almost certainly *would* donate 20 dollars to keep a preserve of neanderthals running in perpetuity if it was in some far off place I didn't much care about or effect me in any way (like Indian reservations, etc.). In the future, keeping the preserve of Earth and surrounding environs running and giving MOSHs everything they could ever want would ever require probably the equivalent in terms of resources. Let's see, giving the Earth all it's radiant solar energy is approximately 10^-9 of the energy output of our star. So for our global economy now, we're talking about ~60 thousand dollars per year if we think that energy will be the only truly scarce resource in the upload future (which is true, basically, as creating material objects is trivial with advanced molecular nanotechnology). Given even modest rates of return like 2% per year, we can say that about three million dollars of startup capital (in today's economy) would support that in perpetuity. It seems completely reasonable that the early uploads could set that up, and that at that point MOSHs would be able to live forever happily without interference from the uploads, and it wouldn't cost the uploads anything at all, ultimately. (Hell, using the energy from hydrogen fusion using hydrogen from the oceans, we could build orbital structures which would be able to run the Earth even without the Sun's resources, rendering the Earth an effectively self-contained ecological preserve, again at little cost ---- planets, after all, are very inefficient places to get basic resources.) -Josh. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Mon Jun 24 04:40:40 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 22:40:40 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Bitcion Moore's Law? Message-ID: <51C7CDC8.7060709@canonizer.com> The new version of the "Canonized Law of the Crypto Coin" camp predicting future values of Bitcion just went live. It includes help from experts including Joshua Seims, Micro Rominato, and a growing number of others. http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/2 It's predicting a continued Moore's Law like 100% / year growth, for the foreseeable future, which will result in All Bitcions being worth more than all Gold around 2025. I'd love to know if any of you think anything contained in that camp statement is in any way, irrational, or not completely believable by any of you? And if you think differently, what do you believe, why, and most importantly, how many experts agree with you? We'll be judging the quality of each expert's predictions, about when the next order of magnitude of growth in value will be achieved, and using that to better predict when future orders of magnitude will be achieved, and so on for this crypto currency expert survey topic. http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/151 Upwards, Brent Allsop From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Mon Jun 24 05:04:37 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 22:04:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Bitcion Moore's Law? In-Reply-To: <51C7CDC8.7060709@canonizer.com> References: <51C7CDC8.7060709@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <1372050277.1634.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: > The new version of the "Canonized Law of the Crypto Coin" camp? > predicting future values of Bitcion just went live. ? >?http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/2 >It's predicting a continued Moore's Law like 100% / year growth... I have difficulty believing there is anything like a Moore's Law for Bitcoin. Currency and commodity markets don't work that way, and I don't see why Bitcoin should be different.? Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Mon Jun 24 05:04:37 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 22:04:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Bitcion Moore's Law? In-Reply-To: <51C7CDC8.7060709@canonizer.com> References: <51C7CDC8.7060709@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <1372050277.1634.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: > The new version of the "Canonized Law of the Crypto Coin" camp? > predicting future values of Bitcion just went live. ? >?http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/2 >It's predicting a continued Moore's Law like 100% / year growth... I have difficulty believing there is anything like a Moore's Law for Bitcoin. Currency and commodity markets don't work that way, and I don't see why Bitcoin should be different.? Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon Jun 24 08:10:11 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 09:10:11 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 4:43 AM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > Right. I don't think it takes much "vision" or predictive power to > imagine this. Look at the Amish. Sure, they can teach their kids to > value hard work on the farm - but their culture dwindles. The view > tourists get is probably as [in]accurate as the anachronistic > recreations of colonial settlers at Williamsburg. > Correction of 'vision' here. In the 21-year period from 1992 to 2013, the Amish of North America (adults and children) more than doubled in population, increasing from an estimated 128,000 in 1992 to 282,000 in 2013. > Ultimately, I think the problem you'll need to solve is that novelty > wears off more quickly as exponential change happens. At some point, > the old yields to the new. Uploads will likely rediscover this > principle when their replacement threatens them. > Once (If) uploading becomes a standard cheap process I expect the number of uploads to increase very rapidly. Millions die every day. If people are faced with the choice of 'death or upload' the decision becomes easy. On the same level as signing up your body for organ donation after death. BillK From giulio at gmail.com Mon Jun 24 08:30:20 2013 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 10:30:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 7:34 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: > Seriously. we need to Talk about this. This situation of of you telling me > that I'm going to be dead and uploaded is not a dialog. Nobody is telling you that. You are welcome to look for a third alternative. Let us know if and when you find one. From bbenzai at yahoo.com Mon Jun 24 09:04:20 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 02:04:20 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Mathematical Help with Bitcoin historical curve future projection? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1372064660.76304.YahooMailNeo@web165005.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Mirco Romanato wrote: > I try to use Canonizer, but it is not very intuitive for me (my fault > for sure). > I have nothing to say about the Bitcoin stuff, but Mirco's assumption that if he can't easily use a software interface, he is somehow at fault made me stop and blink. If an interface is not intuitive, it's not the fault of the user, but the designer.? You shouldn't be apologising for not being able to figure out an interface, you should be complaining that it's not usable!? You'll be doing the other users a favour as well. Ben Zaiboc From giulio at gmail.com Mon Jun 24 09:41:12 2013 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 11:41:12 +0200 Subject: [ExI] State crackdown on Bitcoin? In-Reply-To: <1372034239.34551.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1372034239.34551.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: The BTC Foundation is a public relation front-end. Bitcoin is the people using Bitcoin, there is not much that they can do to stop them. On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 2:37 AM, Gordon wrote: > The Bitcoin Foundation is not a money transmitter, so this cease and desist > order is ridiculous. Actual money transmitters need to be registered. We > might see more news on this if any non-registered transmitters are operating > in California. But I don't see it as a crackdown on Bitcoin. > > Gordon > > ________________________________ > From: James Clement > To: ExI chat list > Sent: Sunday, June 23, 2013 5:36 PM > Subject: [ExI] State crackdown on Bitcoin? > > Bitcoin Foundation Receives Cease And Desist Order From California > > [Disclosure: Author serves on Board of Directors for Bitcoin Foundation.] > Directly following last month?s Bitcoin 2013 conference event in San Jose, > CA that brought decent revenue into the state, California?s Department of > Financial Institutions decided to issue a cease and desist warning to > conference organizer Bitcoin Foundation for allegedly engaging in the > business of money transmission without a license or proper authorization. > If found to be in violation of California Financial Code, penalties can be > severe ranging from $1,000 to $2,500 per violation per day plus criminal > prosecution which could result in fines and/or imprisonment. Additionally, > it is a felony violation of federal law to engage in the business of money > transmission without the appropriate state license or failure to register > with the U.S. Treasury Department. Convictions under the federal statute are > punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. > The Bitcoin Foundation is a nonprofit corporation registered in Washington, > D.C. with mailing address in Seattle, WA. As a nonprofit, its mission is to > standardize and promote the open source Bitcoin protocol and they receive > generous support from individuals and corporations to advance those > objectives. The foundation also boasts significant international > membership. > One activity that the foundation does not engage in is the owning, > controlling, or conducting of money transmission business. Furthermore, that > activity would also be against the original charter of the foundation. As > general counsel for the Bitcoin Foundation, Patrick Murck has lead > responsibility for corresponding with the California Department of Financial > Institutions. > At this stage, it?s difficult to tell whether or not it was a general > blanket action and if other bitcoin-related entities received cease and > desist letters from California. If Bitcoin Foundation was not the only > recipient, then expect other companies to come forward in the days and weeks > ahead. > The issued letter was signed by State of California Senior Counsel Paul T. > Crayton and the letter was copied to Department of Financial Institutions > Deputy Commissioner Robert Venchiarutti, who also serves on the Board of > Directors of the Money Transmitter Regulators Association , ironically a > national nonprofit organization dedicated to the efficient and effective > regulation of the money transmission industry. > Recently, the State of Illinois also issued a cease and desist letter to > mobile payments processor Square for failing to have the proper licensing in > accordance with the state?s Transmitters of Money Act. Prepaid card provider > NetSpend and six other payments companies also received Illinois cease and > desist orders. If this practice grows among states, it could have a > potentially significant ?chilling effect ? on financial services innovation, > especially upon lawful businesses that are designing infrastructure to > support and grow the Bitcoin technology.Freedom of choice in currencies is > probably the most important free speech issue of our time. > For similar but not wholly unrelated reasons, the Electronic Frontier > Foundation and several law school clinics established the collaborative > archiveChilling Effects Clearinghouse in 2001 to protect lawful online > activity from harassing legal threats related to intellectual property. > Harkening back to the saga of FaceCash and Aaron Greenspan, this new > far-reaching action from California?s financial regulator apparently now > scoops up nonprofit scientific and educational organizations. California, > the cradle of technological innovation and home to the inspiring Silicon > Valley venture capital community, is now focusing its sights on the > futuristic Bitcoin. > http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/06/23/bitcoin-foundation-receives-cease-and-desist-order-from-california/ > > > James > > _______________________________________________ > 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 eugen at leitl.org Mon Jun 24 09:44:40 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 11:44:40 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Extraterrestrial liberty and colonising the universe In-Reply-To: References: <1371941599.54231.YahooMailNeo@web160702.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130624094440.GH25587@leitl.org> On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 08:55:58AM +0200, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > A massive error checking and redundancy can suppress evolution of any kind. But it doesn't prevent the rest of us from using darwinian systems which are nonbrittle, and hence antifragile. So not only does this prevent the scenario, the brittle strain self-terminates over time and space. > What does the state of the Fermi paradox tells us? It tells us, that > evolution, at least interesting evolution of the complex machines is rare > or almost not present in the Universe. > > Evolution is easy to prevent. Its somehow already prevented almost > everywhere - naturally. Duh -- higher life is easily killed. > A probe with the wrong checksum should destroy itself. Better, shouldn't be > able to function in the first place. Very much like the nuclear weapons are > functioning for decades. A malfunction in an accidentally fallen bomb will > NOT ENABLE the explosion. It must be enabled by a complicated procedure, a > small error is fatal in that process. > > With this principle on steroids, evolution isn't a problem at all. You're forgetting that we're operating in a darwinian regime. You need to show how a population bottleneck gives rise to a population of dispersive but sterile (and sterilizing, since the point of origin would still be fertile) diaspora. > They say, everything change, except the change is eternal. Well, this is > about to change! After a certain threshold, a cosmic super-civilization > must freeze itself on the present state. No more progress! Some intermediate steps are missing. > No big deal. It's a small prize to pay for the whole Universe. Many > Tranhumanist don't like that at least, I know. They start with the usual > mantra how horrible is to be wireheaded, as they weren't already for the > entire history of the Universe. > > P.S. > > I have a blog now. > > www.protokol2020.wordpress.com > > Maybe some of you may be interested in reading it. So many blogs, so little time. From bbenzai at yahoo.com Mon Jun 24 09:42:21 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 02:42:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1372066941.36364.YahooMailNeo@web165002.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Alan Grimes wrote: > My contention is that 96% of the existing human population would prefer > to live the way they are now, with only modest upgrades. > > The only way to change that number is to apply force. An odd (and rather disturbing) conclusion. Did it take force to persuade most of the people on the planet to move from landlines to mobile phones?? Get internet connections? Start using electricity?? Ditch bronze in favour of steel?? Wear clothes?? Bang rocks together?? In every case, 96% of the population were probably happy with things as they were, and quite possibly scared of the new thing.? Until they saw how much better the other 4% were doing. Ben Zaiboc From eugen at leitl.org Mon Jun 24 10:07:10 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 12:07:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Extraterrestrial liberty and colonising the universe In-Reply-To: <1371941599.54231.YahooMailNeo@web160702.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1371941599.54231.YahooMailNeo@web160702.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130624100710.GJ25587@leitl.org> On Sat, Jun 22, 2013 at 03:53:19PM -0700, Dennis May wrote: > The assumption that given time parasites will evolve is based on the > image that the system > is free to evolve. But non-evolving replicators > getting there first can also prevent the appearance of evolving The assumption that there can be non-evolving replicators 1) arising 2) outcompeting Darwin has big problem: missing mechanism. > replicators. If the first seeders didn't want to allow them, they could > do it. We might *like* the concept of evolving replicators a great deal Most people hate it. > more than those boring non-evolving, but the latter can win against the > rest if they are programmed to be [thorough]." I program you to be false. Oops, doesn't seem to do much in practice. It seems you have to actually control all the other darwinian agents by superior force. I have bad news for you: a global self-relicating superior force is something that most likely will emerge via a darwinian design. The result won't be brittle, or controllable. I'm afraid the genie was firmly out of the bottle billions of years ago, and there does not seem to be a way to rebottle it, assuming it would be at all desirable (it would be not). > There seem to be a few assumptions implicit in your statements.? You seem Well, so are in yours. > to assume some kind of central planner control of probe launches into > the universe - which implies economic and technology control over individuals. > Otherwise anyone wealthy enough can do their own probe launches.? If I > were interested in such probe launches and replicating systems I would > recognize that evolution can happen in both software and hardware such > that a single probe going out can create entire ecosystems of predator-prey- > parasites and do its own launches at any point in time later.? A single AI > which can replicate and spread in free space is enough to populate every > scenario including war-gaming against its own creations to evolve impossibly > efficient predators.? Before the first centrally-planned probe reaches > another galaxy, independently evolved probes could have sent out a trillion > competing probes ahead of it. Competition is a dynamic equilibrium. Fixed systems are provably at a disadvantage. > On 22/06/2013 11:45,?Anders Sandberg wrote: > > "...the only way to be truly certain nobody else can invade is to turn > everything into your kind of replicator. Hence the "deadly probe > scenario" is not a likely answer to the Fermi question." The deadly probe scenario is a partial answer to the Fermi question, because nonexpansive observers observing an expansive front is arbitrarily improbable due to anthropic principle. However, the strongest explanation by far is that we're not in anybody's smart lightcone. > It?always takes less energy and resources to destroy than to create. That may sound profound, but it isn't. > This is part of the reason why offensive WoMD are so much more effective Measured in what? > than defenses against them.? The greater the energy involved the?more A few m of packed dirt are a great defense against them. > effective offense?becomes. > > The smallest technological footprint for AI to replicate is presently unknown. It doesn't take AI to replicate. It takes about a cubic micron to encode a self-replicator, and enough payload to generate a complex result, if you know what you're doing. > There is the time footprint, the resources footprint, the signals generated > by replication footprint, the?trails left?in both traveling and replication, > and the thermodynamic footprints both in matter and radiation. > > Ideally replication would take place in high noise environments to minimize > detection.? High noise environments?are only available in limited regions > and what qualifies as high noise is technology dependent. The whole solar system would qualify as indetectable. In fact, I could be replicating right under your nose (feel that itch?) and you won't notice. In fact, if I take over the CNS of 7 gigamonkeys right now with self-replicating stealthy nanoware they'll never be the wiser. > There are many assumptions inherent in what replicating AI systems are The biggest ASSumption is the word AI. A self-replicator is a self-replicator. It can be dumb, it can be smart, the word artificial or intelligent has nothing to do with it. > going to do.? I assume they will use wide band impulse communications which You don't need communication. If you need communication, you can use highly collimated beams or relativistic matter pellet stream. > appear as white noise [SETI detection won't work].? I assume they will leave > as little footprint as possible to keep from being tracked [military 101], They're not military. They're animals, for gawd's sake. Just as you and me. > I assume they will stay on the move, disperse themselves, and act in > a stealthy manner to avoid WoMD.? In space stealth also means small footprint WoMD in space doesn't work even less than on Earth. Space is really, really big, and really, really empty. Visiting in person is not an option, detection is very difficult, targeted beams are difficult and easy to shield again. > in every way possible. > > So the Fermi Paradox is not hard to understand.? If a single civilization The Fermi paradoxon is indeed very easy to understand. It starts with being that there is no paradoxon. We are really not in anyone's smart light cone. > allows AI - not controlled by central-planners - military strategy for AI that > can replicate will quickly lead to quiet well dispersed mobile AI with small > footprints we will never see.? The predators among the AI replicators will Bullshit. > also hunt other predators.? The Earth may be nothing more than a loud baby > animal drawing in predators while other predators watch and wait.? There Yes, they come for our women, and chocolate. Because, if you live in deep space and dine on solar flux you really would bother to target rocks with icky volatiles on them. Makes total sense, now. > are too many possible scenarios to calculate. From eugen at leitl.org Mon Jun 24 10:08:14 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 12:08:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> Message-ID: <20130624100814.GK25587@leitl.org> On Sat, Jun 22, 2013 at 06:42:42PM -0400, Alan Grimes wrote: > Why am I the ONLY person who always gets upset when people spew It's not us. It's you. > garbage about how the entire universe will be converted to > computronium, by human intention, and that everyone will be uploaded > by means of destructive scanning, and, especially, that there is > something *GOOD* about that future... Seek professional help. This thing is getting worse. From pharos at gmail.com Mon Jun 24 12:05:05 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 13:05:05 +0100 Subject: [ExI] State crackdown on Bitcoin? In-Reply-To: References: <1372034239.34551.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 10:41 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > The BTC Foundation is a public relation front-end. Bitcoin is the > people using Bitcoin, there is not much that they can do to stop them. > You appear to be under the mistaken impression that the rule of law still applies in the USA. BillK From eugen at leitl.org Mon Jun 24 12:27:10 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 14:27:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] State crackdown on Bitcoin? In-Reply-To: References: <1372034239.34551.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130624122710.GR25587@leitl.org> On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 01:05:05PM +0100, BillK wrote: > On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 10:41 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > > The BTC Foundation is a public relation front-end. Bitcoin is the > > people using Bitcoin, there is not much that they can do to stop them. > > > > You appear to be under the mistaken impression that the rule of law > still applies in the USA. The only law the Internet understands are ACLs, and there's no way to ACL an adaptively mutating protocol save of cripping the Internet as know it. (The Bluecoat approach: we block everything we don't know, and we don't know anything else but the World Wide Web). If you see this happen, feel free to use the guns you've stockpiled. This is the time where you need to start shooting the bastards. From eugen at leitl.org Mon Jun 24 13:57:45 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 15:57:45 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Server Sky, thermal radiation Message-ID: <20130624135745.GH25587@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from Keith Lofstrom ----- Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 10:21:45 -0700 From: Keith Lofstrom To: Eugen Leitl Cc: server-sky at server-sky.com, astro at postbiota.org, tt at postbiota.org Subject: Server Sky, thermal radiation Reply-To: keithl at keithl.com User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.2i Some notes on thermal radiation: With the corner electrochromic thrusters, thinsats have plenty of torque to stay exactly sun-oriented, so they get 1360W/m?. I am assuming 900nm graded-junction semi-amorphous InP cells with 15% efficiency on sunside. Higher efficiency is possible, but thin InP cells can be super radiation resistant. Some sunlight "wasted", but there's more where that came from! Server Sky orbits at one radii out, 12789km radius, 6411km altitude above the equator. At that altitude, the 250K earth is 60 degrees across and 6.7% of the sky. That's 6000 times the area of the moon, but 1/7th the solid angle of the earth seen from LEO. The hottest thing in the sky is the cloud of other thinsats. They must be spaced far enough apart for light to penetrate the array, and for heat to leave. That means longer delays for intra-array communication, and precludes some kinds of highly-coupled parallel computations. At noon, most of the sky is still deep space, and a good heat sink. At midnight thinsats get pretty damned cold, no thermal inertia to speak of. Lots of thermal cycling stress, but we know how to design planar systems for that. Lots of identical cells in a grid array, so we can route around damage. Thinsats will get hot, but not hotter than the CPU in your computer. Because of the lousy lateral thermal conductivity, we can anneal some of the radiation damage segment by segment. We can connect all the PV segments together, heat one of the segments enough to induce thermal runaway, and cook it at 250C. That will be especially useful to mobilize trapped charges in the insulators of the backside CMOS chips. The key to server sky is thin and stackable. They weigh 0.2kg/m?, and can weigh a lot less if we can add extra ballast mass in orbit (that's what you do with obsolete thinsats). They stack into cylinders for launch, with the mechanical properties of a solid slab of aluminum, very robust. A heck of a lot of design is needed, but the cost of design is divided by millions and someday trillions of thinsats. Lots more disorganized stuff at the website, http://server-sky.com . Use text search to find keywords, look at RecentChanges to see what I've been working on. Lately, preparing presentations, and trying to figure out OpenCL on an nVidia GPU to compute radio emission patterns of whole arrays (and later, array thermal properties). After that, studying thinsats as Rutherford scatterers. I love looking at problems from new and unexplored angles. I'm discovering lots of stuff, some of it world-changing (good and bad), and some of it $$$+ . I'll never set foot on another planet, but I do get to boldly go where no man has gone before. Fun! Keith P.S. I present Server Sky to DC-L5 in a week, and will visit family in MD the week after. If anyone in the area wants to meet F2F, contact me. -- Keith Lofstrom keithl at keithl.com Voice (503)-520-1993 ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 From eugen at leitl.org Mon Jun 24 14:09:37 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 16:09:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> Message-ID: <20130624140937.GI25587@leitl.org> On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 01:34:08PM -0400, Alan Grimes wrote: > Furthermore, there is something extremely wrong here. Why have all That feeling of wrongness seems to follow you, wherever you go. That seems to be eliminating all the variables. What is the only constant left? > of the uploaders shut up? Where are all the brave visions? Where is TeH UpLOADeRZ!!!!111 are getting shit done. Does that scare you? > the discussion of what comes after? I remember there being a great > deal more documentation ten years ago. Where did it all go? Could it To the implementation phase, of course. The same thing we do every night, Pinky. (Have you looked at the clouds lately? Did they look funny to you? Not my best work, I must admit) > be that the uploaders have started to meet push-back and have gone > to ground? Could it be that the uploaders have finally felt the > shame of going to their parents and telling them the good news that > they will be replaced my a digital version of themselves? I like you. I upload you last. > Seriously. we need to Talk about this. This situation of of you > telling me that I'm going to be dead and uploaded is not a dialog. If you want a dialogue, stop behaving like a nutcase. Jeez. From pharos at gmail.com Mon Jun 24 14:30:16 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 15:30:16 +0100 Subject: [ExI] DNA India: The transhumanity timeline In-Reply-To: <20130622033250.GH22824@leitl.org> References: <20130622033250.GH22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sat, Jun 22, 2013 at 4:32 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 10:30:31PM +0100, BillK wrote: >> Because the Matrix changes everything. >> Once we achieve mind-linked posthumans the definition of 'individual' >> gets rewritten. > > No, it doesn't. Organisation is substrate-invariant. > So, you think that a million intelligences (equivalent) existing in a small sphere of computronium will not be organised much different from present human society? Even society in the stages approaching this phase will be changing in ways that we can't really contemplate. > > But there will be far more species than than we have now. > More diversity, more diversity in behavior. > Posthumans have the power to diverge, but they also have the power to converge towards the optimum. Higher intelligences will probably value more efficient computation and seize on each improvement as it arrives. To me you seem to hold some contradictory opinions. (Not unusual, most people do). :) You seem to have an emotional attachment to the Star Trek style of humans (or solid state copies) rampaging across the galaxy. I see the appeal, but to me logic seems to indicate that future won't happen. You also like uploading, computronium, solid-state AIs, etc. but you seem to think that once humans upload into a ball of fast computronium that they won't much like it there and return to the slow outside universe. I go along with Keith's thinking, that fast processing intelligences won't travel in the (to them) dead outside universe. A step further is that fast processing intelligences linked inextricably in a computronium universe won't even consider the idea of leaving. It would be like dying to them. BillK From ALONZOTG at verizon.net Mon Jun 24 05:35:06 2013 From: ALONZOTG at verizon.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 01:35:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> Message-ID: <51C7DA8A.1000306@verizon.net> Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 1:34 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: > >> The uploaders claim that adoption of uploading will be 100%, any hold-outs >> being sacrificed. >> Therefore I presume that the uploaders intend to apply force. > ### I expect that solid-state entities will drive biological humans > extinct. Indeed, it's possible they might use force and simply eat > (i.e. disassemble) human habitat and humans themselves. > > This has hardly anything to do with uploaders, since they would be an > infinitesimally small minority among post-human entities, if present > at all. > > What are you going to do about it? 1. Muster a pose and go after people who would advocate that outcome or policies that would inevitably lead to that outcome. 2. Develop a family of technologies that could provide an alternative path of self evolution, focusing on what my own needs are but respectful of everyone else. (I don't feel respected at all. Nobody in recent memory has even asked me what my own ideas are with respect to self-modification, instead the only thing people have done is to try to convince me that the way to fulfill all of my desires, whatever they may be, is uploading my brain. I'm sick of it.) 3. Defend with all available means my right to live in the body I wish to design for myself forever. =| For example, if I had a starship and the solar system had been reduced to a matroshaka brain, and was threatening to expand to the rest of the 'verse, I'd risk taking my ship into the sun itself and use the FTL drive to implode the star. I would do this to protect the existence of the rest of the universe. -- NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE Powers are not rights. From rolandodegilead at gmail.com Mon Jun 24 10:22:19 2013 From: rolandodegilead at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Eugenio_Mart=EDnez?=) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 12:22:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <20130624100814.GK25587@leitl.org> References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <20130624100814.GK25587@leitl.org> Message-ID: More transhumanist Bashing (in Spanish): http://www.finanzas.com/xl-semanal/firmas/juan-manuel-de-prada/20130428/cuerpo-5228.html Juan Manuel de prada writes in one of the most important magazines in Spain. He writes about "the old idea of get rid of our body" (sic) and use Kevin Warwick as an example, and about the "new idea of the resurrected body because of the Christ". He is considered an intelectual in my country. Pathetic imho. On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 12:08 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Sat, Jun 22, 2013 at 06:42:42PM -0400, Alan Grimes wrote: > > > Why am I the ONLY person who always gets upset when people spew > > It's not us. It's you. > > > garbage about how the entire universe will be converted to > > computronium, by human intention, and that everyone will be uploaded > > by means of destructive scanning, and, especially, that there is > > something *GOOD* about that future... > > Seek professional help. This thing is getting worse. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- OLVIDATE.DE Tatachan.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon Jun 24 15:06:55 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 17:06:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] DNA India: The transhumanity timeline In-Reply-To: References: <20130622033250.GH22824@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130624150654.GM25587@leitl.org> On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 03:30:16PM +0100, BillK wrote: > So, you think that a million intelligences (equivalent) existing in a > small sphere of computronium will not be organised much different from It's not a small sphere, it's slabs linked up with fat pipes across planetary surfaces, or gravitationally contained clouds with LoS photonic signalling. Substrate follows geography. This is not that different from how your ecosystem looks like. > present human society? Not just human society. Humans are a transient species, and will be over pretty soon. > Even society in the stages approaching this phase will be changing in > ways that we can't really contemplate. If you're making predictions, you have to make reasonable assumptions. If you pick the constraints that they occupy space, need energy and atoms and Darwin still applies (it does apply to us, and every other imperfectly self-replicating system, the feature of errors and limitedness and hence selection pressure are really secondary and emerge naturally) then certain things do follow. You'll notice that particular point in the ability to process information is not part of it. Because it's not necessary, and does not change the outcome. > > > > But there will be far more species than than we have now. > > More diversity, more diversity in behavior. > > > > Posthumans have the power to diverge, but they also have the power to No, they have not the power to diverge, they *must* diverge. They have no power to not to diverge. > converge towards the optimum. Higher intelligences will probably value > more efficient computation and seize on each improvement as it We already know how perfect classical computation looks like. We also know how to work around Landauer's limit, at the cost of speed, which might not an option because if you're too slow you're good with ketchup. Predators and prey will be fast, so perhaps no adiabatic computing for them. > arrives. > > To me you seem to hold some contradictory opinions. (Not unusual, most They do resolve nicely over here, so perhaps the contradictions are only apparent. > people do). :) > > You seem to have an emotional attachment to the Star Trek style of I hate Star Drek with a passion. For the same reason Asimov is so horribly dull. They have no imagination, a mechanistic way of looking at things which where thoroughly obsolete at the time of their writing. Popular stuff is always subject to Sturgeon's law. > humans (or solid state copies) rampaging across the galaxy. I see the We don't rampage. We live here. Please do not step on the grass, it hates that and will bite your ankles clean off. > appeal, but to me logic seems to indicate that future won't happen. Logic seems to indicate that we fully follow the Limits of Rome business as usual trajectory, and go out with a whimper and a bang at 2050 or thereabouts. Logic is also a pretty flower that smells bad. > You also like uploading, computronium, solid-state AIs, etc. but you No, I like postbiota. The terms you use are quite steampunky, but people have to use analogies, like cogs and wheels, and belts, and pneumatic pipes, or these new-fangled paper tape looms. What will they think of next? > seem to think that once humans upload into a ball of fast computronium There is no ball. > that they won't much like it there and return to the slow outside > universe. How do you return to something you never left in the first place? Why are there so many goddamn dualists roaming the premises? Shoo! Shoo! You can't stop here, this is materialist country. > I go along with Keith's thinking, that fast processing intelligences They're not intelligences, and not nessarily faster. It all depends on the fitness function. A girl has to eat, after all. > won't travel in the (to them) dead outside universe. A step further is If you're a slab of catatonic organics in the landscape, then you are not a slab of organics much longer. This nanomold kills, man. > that fast processing intelligences linked inextricably in a > computronium universe won't even consider the idea of leaving. It > would be like dying to them. What is left of the Internet if you remove all the AS, the switches, routers, fiber? Your cloud cuckoo land seems to have a very real underpinnings under it. From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 24 15:53:26 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 08:53:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> Message-ID: <00b501ce70f2$f965fbd0$ec31f370$@rainier66.com> >? On Behalf Of Joshua Job Subject: Re: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing On 2013 June 23 at 8:43:17 PM, Mike Dougherty (msd001 at gmail.com) wrote: >? if you'd sacrifice any amount of your limited resources (time, money, etc) to keep a habitat of neanderthals alive and well in your backyard? It isnt? necessarily a sacrifice. After I got my 23andMe results back and found I am 99th percentile in Neanderthal content, I have been trying to organize a local caveman picnic. You know what happens in those kinds of events: they are lonely hearts clubs. Nature takes its course the way nature does so very well, we eventually see offspring of even higher caveman content, then more picnics with those offspring, and eventually Neanderthal Man is among us again, vaguely analogous to collecting domestic dogs and from that group breeding wolves, the species from whence they came. No success on that yet, but don?t give up yet. >? to keep a habitat of Neanderthals? No special habitat needed. I can easily envision the original Neanderthal Man being perfectly comfortable and content living in the suburbs with a car and a 9 to 5, attending local picnics with their cousins, etc. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Jun 24 16:27:20 2013 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 09:27:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing Message-ID: On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: > My contention is that 96% of the existing human population would prefer > to live the way they are now, with only modest upgrades. > > The only way to change that number is to apply force. > The uploaders claim that adoption of uploading will be 100%, any > hold-outs being sacrificed. > Therefore I presume that the uploaders intend to apply force. How much force was used to get people to accept cell phones? To my knowledge, none. > That's what happens in chapter 1 of part 2 of my story. The bulk of the > story will be a catalog of the nightmares which follow, in each case > explaining every choice I make as an author using in-line footnotes. I wrote a story, The Clinic Seed, about the singularity coming to a tiny African village. If you want the population to upload, as a way of improving human welfare, then making it reversible and increasing better on the uploaded side seems like the best marketing strategy. The automobile industry would have had a harder time selling cars if you were irreversibly glued into one of them. Cell phones may become implants, they are headed that way with bluetooth gadgets plugged into your ear. But if buying a cell phone included irreversibly gluing it to your ear, they would have seen a lot slower acceptance. > As I have said before, I want to identify the latest, best vision of > uploading in order to ensure that I'm actually tilting at the dragon > instead of the scarecrow that could be claimed to be obsolete. (the > SL4-noids do that... They claim their only published works are obsolete > and not worth arguing over...) An early version of The Clinic Seed was posted to SL-4 in installments back in 2006. From subsequent in person conversations, the people on that list read it and remember it to this day, though it generated no comments at the time. > Furthermore, there is something extremely wrong here. Why have all of > the uploaders shut up? They ran out of new things to talk about would be my estimation. > Where are all the brave visions? Where is the > discussion of what comes after? I remember there being a great deal more > documentation ten years ago. Where did it all go? Could it be that the > uploaders have started to meet push-back and have gone to ground? Could > it be that the uploaders have finally felt the shame of going to their > parents and telling them the good news that they will be replaced my a > digital version of themselves? > > Seriously. we need to Talk about this. This situation of of you telling > me that I'm going to be dead and uploaded is not a dialog. If you can upload to hardware, there is no reason I can think of that you could not be downloaded back into a body with full memory of what you did while in the uploaded state. There is no reason you should even lose consciousness during the transmission either direction. Can you explain to me how a person who spent the weekend in an unloaded state and is back in his body on Monday is dead? Keith From eugen at leitl.org Mon Jun 24 16:38:25 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 18:38:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20130624163825.GW25587@leitl.org> On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 09:27:20AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > If you can upload to hardware, there is no reason I can think of that > you could not be downloaded back into a body with full memory of what > you did while in the uploaded state. There is no reason you should There is a good reason -- you're talking to a Believer, who thinks that would irreversibly kill him. This is like LDS members, who'd rather die than accept blood transfusion as a life-saving measure. No amount of argumentation will help where belief is involved. People are weird, nothing to see there, let's move on. > even lose consciousness during the transmission either direction. Can > you explain to me how a person who spent the weekend in an unloaded > state and is back in his body on Monday is dead? From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Jun 24 18:14:24 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 20:14:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Mathematical Help with Bitcoin historical curve future projection? (was re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe) In-Reply-To: <007301ce705b$625426a0$26fc73e0$@rainier66.com> References: <51A00F3A.5090002@canonizer.com> <51A0B89B.2080108@canonizer.com> <51A0E030.6030209@canonizer.com> <51A5418C.50907@canonizer.com> <51AA4ECD.30006@canonizer.com> <70ddaf21-9dd3-45ba-9146-0e2944934e1c@googlegroups.com> <51C27B35.8030006@canonizer.com> <51C2CAE6.20202@libero.it> <51C43E7B.8020808@canonizer.com> <51C75625.4020800@libero.it> <007301ce705b$625426a0$26fc73e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51C88C80.8070308@libero.it> Il 23/06/2013 23:48, spike ha scritto: >> ... Mirco Romanato > ... > >> ...I disagree with using the word "bubble" for the movements of bitcoin > price. Bubble do not grow back after they deflate (unless Uncle Ben print a > billion or a trillion for them to inflate again) > >> ...I would suggest you use the word "spike" > >> ...--------MIRCO------> NO MICRO > > Why spike? Because a "spike" is a raising of the value falling immediately after, but do not convey the image of "bubble". A spike (up or down) can happen and it is not indicative of the long term trend. A bubble convey the idea of something popping once and forever. For now bitcoin had many spikes and not a bubble, because long term trend was and is up. Mirco From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 24 18:04:24 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 11:04:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <20130624163825.GW25587@leitl.org> References: <20130624163825.GW25587@leitl.org> Message-ID: <00df01ce7105$46129080$d237b180$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl >... >...There is a good reason -- you're talking to a Believer, who thinks that would irreversibly kill him. This is like LDS members, who'd rather die than accept blood transfusion as a life-saving measure... It is easy to get these conflated. The Jehovah's Witnesses are the no-blood-transfusion, bug you at your own home people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah's_Witnesses_and_blood_transfusions The LDS (Mormon) are the Two-young-guys-in-white-shirts-and-black-ties group with the terrific genealogy resources, who bug you only if you ask them to, crowd. The Christian Scientists are the All-diseases-are-in-your-head people. The Seventh Day Adventists are the vegetarian go to church on Saturday bunch. Believers are mostly known for their quirkiness, but each group has its own specialty quirks. spike From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Jun 24 18:23:54 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 20:23:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] State crackdown on Bitcoin? In-Reply-To: References: <1372034239.34551.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51C88EBA.8040002@libero.it> Il 24/06/2013 14:05, BillK ha scritto: > On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 10:41 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: >> The BTC Foundation is a public relation front-end. Bitcoin is the >> people using Bitcoin, there is not much that they can do to stop them. >> > > You appear to be under the mistaken impression that the rule of law > still applies in the USA. The rest of Western World is not in any better shape. Mirco From natasha at natasha.cc Mon Jun 24 18:43:34 2013 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 11:43:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> Message-ID: <00c801ce710a$bb224500$3166cf00$@natasha.cc> Hi everyone, I?m sorry that my initial message became convoluted with responses that are a bit irrational and even disturbing. So please let?s not do this when I am being serious about a problem that could affect our culture. Anyway, I?m proceeding forward with looking into this Alex Jones guy. On the Transhumanist Art FB page, someone posted this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded &v=M9YS6hVuxhs#at=128 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcnTdO47p0Q From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Joshua Job Sent: Sunday, June 23, 2013 9:04 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing On 2013 June 23 at 8:43:17 PM, Mike Dougherty (msd001 at gmail.com) wrote: I wonder, Alan, if you'd sacrifice any amount of your limited resources (time, money, etc) to keep a habitat of neanderthals alive and well in your backyard. Maybe you say you would, at first. Over the course of years, I expect the novelty would wear off. Maybe you could charge admission fees for others to go look at them - and you might have enough profit to make it worth your continued support. But after a while the novelty wears off again. I think the difference though is that, I almost certainly *would* donate 20 dollars to keep a preserve of neanderthals running in perpetuity if it was in some far off place I didn't much care about or effect me in any way (like Indian reservations, etc.). In the future, keeping the preserve of Earth and surrounding environs running and giving MOSHs everything they could ever want would ever require probably the equivalent in terms of resources. Let's see, giving the Earth all it's radiant solar energy is approximately 10^-9 of the energy output of our star. So for our global economy now, we're talking about ~60 thousand dollars per year if we think that energy will be the only truly scarce resource in the upload future (which is true, basically, as creating material objects is trivial with advanced molecular nanotechnology). Given even modest rates of return like 2% per year, we can say that about three million dollars of startup capital (in today's economy) would support that in perpetuity. It seems completely reasonable that the early uploads could set that up, and that at that point MOSHs would be able to live forever happily without interference from the uploads, and it wouldn't cost the uploads anything at all, ultimately. (Hell, using the energy from hydrogen fusion using hydrogen from the oceans, we could build orbital structures which would be able to run the Earth even without the Sun's resources, rendering the Earth an effectively self-contained ecological preserve, again at little cost ---- planets, after all, are very inefficient places to get basic resources.) -Josh. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon Jun 24 18:55:49 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 14:55:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <51C7DA8A.1000306@verizon.net> References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> <51C7DA8A.1000306@verizon.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 1:35 AM, Alan Grimes wrote: > 1. Muster a pose and go after people who would advocate that outcome or > policies that would inevitably lead to that outcome. ### OK, let's see - Google is developing AI. IBM is developing AI. NSA, the Chinese, Russians, Japanese, and their uncle are developing AI. You want to take on Google, IBM, USG *and* China? Count me out of your posse. Rafal From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 24 19:37:36 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 12:37:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Mathematical Help with Bitcoin historical curve future projection? (was re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe) In-Reply-To: <51C88C80.8070308@libero.it> References: <51A00F3A.5090002@canonizer.com> <51A0B89B.2080108@canonizer.com> <51A0E030.6030209@canonizer.com> <51A5418C.50907@canonizer.com> <51AA4ECD.30006@canonizer.com> <70ddaf21-9dd3-45ba-9146-0e2944934e1c@googlegroups.com> <51C27B35.8030006@canonizer.com> <51C2CAE6.20202@libero.it> <51C43E7B.8020808@canonizer.com> <51C75625.4020800@libero.it> <007301ce705b$625426a0$26fc73e0$@rainier66.com> <51C88C80.8070308@libero.it> Message-ID: <010a01ce7112$4a448e80$decdab80$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato >... > >>> ...I would suggest you use the word "spike" > >> ...--------MIRCO------> NO MICRO > >>... Why spike? >...Because a "spike" is a raising of the value falling immediately after...Mirco _______________________________________________ OK so it's nothing personal, just a different spike. spike (Mirco the original question wasn't entirely serious. {8-] ) Ps What is serious to me is the California government's attitude towards Bitcoin. They are acting as though they feel very threatened by the whole concept. Note that California has its own income tax and is heavily dependent on that for its current revenue structure. California and the US government will be watching with an electron microscope any technology that might allow a prole to sidestep that tax structure. We saw this in the dot com bubble of the 1990s: plenty of local companies were starting up and paying its employees in stock options plus some nominal stipend which was only enough to pay the rent on some micro-apartment and not even enough to pay for groceries. The startups themselves would often supply all the free food on site the proles wanted to devour. Consequence: there were a number of young, single, talented, optimistic and idealistic employees who would eat three squares a day at the office, go home only to sleep, spend the rest of the time coding their brains out. If the product succeeded, the stock options were worth a fortune, otherwise nothing. Of course most of the internet fly-by-nights in the 1990s failed. The governments, both the fed and California, wanted to collect income tax not on the pittance the companies actually paid but on the theoretical market value of the stock options when they were issued. The tax bill in the latter case often was an order of magnitude higher than the prole had paid, leading to plenty of young programmers forced into bankruptcy by the tax man, wanting more money than they actually earned. In some cases, principals in these companies would attempt to sell their many stock options to pay the tax man. The principals selling their own stock options indicated that these principals had lost confidence their own product would succeed in the market, resulting in the stock value to plummet and any options not already underwater to become worthless. Of course the tax man, both of them, still wanted their money based on the market value of the options when they were issued. This may sound like an exaggeration, but it isn't. I have a young friend who in 1996 was paid 24k and the rest of his 200k salary was paid in options. The above scenario played out, his 200k$ in options became valueless, he ended up with income tax bills totaling over 60k in a year in which he only earned 24k, most of which went for apartment rental. He and all his colleagues practically lived in that office, but all went bust from being paid in toxic assets. All left town, none of them stayed, none returned, I miss them all. I don't know if that tax law was ever modified. Perhaps someone here knows. What happens if these companies pay their employees in bitcoin? Subsequently the employees claim the only income that really counts is the amount shown in dollars that goes to the bank. It will be round two of that situation where the tax man claims this company-issued scrip is taxable income. The tax man gets to choose the value of the bitcoin: whether it is the value at the time of issuance, or value now. Likely it will choose whichever is most advantageous to the tax man. Then a new generation of idealistic young workers could be victimized by being paid in toxic assets. spike From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Mon Jun 24 20:31:24 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 13:31:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Mathematical Help with Bitcoin historical curve future projection? (was re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe) In-Reply-To: <010a01ce7112$4a448e80$decdab80$@rainier66.com> References: <51A00F3A.5090002@canonizer.com> <51A0B89B.2080108@canonizer.com> <51A0E030.6030209@canonizer.com> <51A5418C.50907@canonizer.com> <51AA4ECD.30006@canonizer.com> <70ddaf21-9dd3-45ba-9146-0e2944934e1c@googlegroups.com> <51C27B35.8030006@canonizer.com> <51C2CAE6.20202@libero.it> <51C43E7B.8020808@canonizer.com> <51C75625.4020800@libero.it> <007301ce705b$625426a0$26fc73e0$@rainier66.com> <51C88C80.8070308@libero.it> <010a01ce7112$4a448e80$decdab80$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1372105884.6197.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> spike wrote: >This may sound like an exaggeration, but it isn't.? I have a young friend >who in 1996 was paid 24k and the rest of his 200k salary was paid in >options.? The above scenario played out, his 200k$ in options became >valueless, he ended up with income tax bills totaling over 60k in a year in >which he only earned 24k, most of which went for apartment rental.? He and >all his colleagues practically lived in that office, but all went bust from >being paid in toxic assets.? That doesn't sound right. Perhaps your friend found himself in a unique situation, but in general employee stock options are not taxed until they are exercised. "Because most employee stock options are non-transferable, are not immediately exercisable although they can be readily hedged to reduce risk, the?IRS?considers that their 'fair market value' cannot be 'readily determined', and therefore 'no taxable event' occurs when an employee receives an option grant." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_stock_option#Taxation Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 24 20:54:28 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 13:54:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> <51C7DA8A.1000306@verizon.net> Message-ID: <012e01ce711d$0765b7a0$163126e0$@rainier66.com> On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 1:35 AM, Alan Grimes wrote: > 1. Muster a pose and go after people who would advocate that outcome > or policies that would inevitably lead to that outcome. ______________________________________________ OK do refrain please from ever posting anything that could possibly be interpreted as a threat. Even if posed in language that brings forth imagery of a group of 19th century white hat men on horses, making comments such as "Head 'em off at the pass, boys!" it still gives me the creeps. We don't do posses here. We are a peaceful movement, filled with good will towards all. your friendly omnipotent moderator and still non-uploaded guy, spike From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 24 21:00:21 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 14:00:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] FW: Space Jockey In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <013601ce711d$d92d2d90$8b8788b0$@rainier66.com> OK cool, here it is. Forwarded from a long time lurker: From: Tara Maya [mailto:tara at taramayastales.com] Sent: Monday, June 24, 2013 1:07 PM To: spike Subject: Space Jockey Spike, could you pass this on to the Extropian list for me? (I still cannot post to the list, alas, though I enjoy reading all the discussions.) I'm the proprietor of Misque Press, a small press that will be publishing an anthology of science fiction stories about space pilots. I know we have both aspiring and established spec fic writers on this list. Reprints are also acceptable, as long as the rights have reverted to you. If anyone has a story they'd like to submit by July 15, or wants more information, please contact me at: tara at taramayastales.com or my assistant, katie at misquepress.com. Thanks! Tara Maya Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Amazon | Goodreads -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 24 21:11:37 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 14:11:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Mathematical Help with Bitcoin historical curve future projection? (was re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe) In-Reply-To: <1372105884.6197.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51A00F3A.5090002@canonizer.com> <51A0B89B.2080108@canonizer.com> <51A0E030.6030209@canonizer.com> <51A5418C.50907@canonizer.com> <51AA4ECD.30006@canonizer.com> <70ddaf21-9dd3-45ba-9146-0e2944934e1c@googlegroups.com> <51C27B35.8030006@canonizer.com> <51C2CAE6.20202@libero.it> <51C43E7B.8020808@canonizer.com> <51C75625.4020800@libero.it> <007301ce705b$625426a0$26fc73e0$@rainier66.com> <51C88C80.8070308@libero.it> <010a01ce7112$4a448e80$decdab80$ @rainier66.com> <1372105884.6197.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <013b01ce711f$6abeb110$403c1330$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Gordon Sent: Monday, June 24, 2013 1:31 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Mathematical Help with Bitcoin historical curve future projection? (was re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe) spike wrote: >>.This may sound like an exaggeration, but it isn't. I have a young friend >who in 1996 was paid 24k and the rest of his 200k salary was paid in >options. The above scenario played out, his 200k$ in options became >valueless, he ended up with income tax bills totaling over 60k in a year in >which he only earned 24k, most of which went for apartment rental. He and >all his colleagues practically lived in that office, but all went bust from >being paid in toxic assets. >.That doesn't sound right. Perhaps your friend found himself in a unique situation, but in general employee stock options are not taxed until they are exercised. >."Because most employee stock options are non-transferable, are not immediately exercisable although they can be readily hedged to reduce risk, the IRS considers that their 'fair market value' cannot be 'readily determined', and therefore 'no taxable event' occurs when an employee receives an option grant." >.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_stock_option#Taxation >.Gordon Good, sounds like this was fixed. As I understand it, in 1996, the options were transferable, could be exercised at the time they were issued. The options were to buy shares at ten for a stock that was at that time worth twelve dollars. This startup claimed these were worth two dollars each, and issued them to the employees at that time, as pay. But the guy who owned the company was the one who was indirectly buying up the stock and keeping its value at 12. Those getting the options really couldn't sell them, for that would signal they were selling stock in their own product, which would cause its price to plummet. The company, and subsequently the tax man, argued that the options were worth 2 bucks each. But someone did try to cash them out, the company owners stopped propping up the price, the share values dropped below ten, the remaining options became worthless, the guys went away with nothing. Well, nothing except a huge tax bill from both California and the US. They were fighting it when they left town. I didn't hear how it came out. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Tue Jun 25 00:32:30 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 20:32:30 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Mathematical Help with Bitcoin historical curve future projection? In-Reply-To: <1372064660.76304.YahooMailNeo@web165005.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1372064660.76304.YahooMailNeo@web165005.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 5:04 AM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Mirco Romanato wrote: >> I try to use Canonizer, but it is not very intuitive for me (my fault >> for sure). > > I have nothing to say about the Bitcoin stuff, but Mirco's assumption that if he can't easily use a software interface, he is somehow at fault made me stop and blink. > > If an interface is not intuitive, it's not the fault of the user, but the designer. You shouldn't be apologising for not being able to figure out an interface, you should be complaining that it's not usable! You'll be doing the other users a favour as well. > I don't want to comment on Canonizer specifically, but I want to agree 100% with Ben. As a developer who often has to provide functional designs (to be hated and later ruined by designers) I wish more people could not only find fault, but express their problem(s) with bad software. It's difficult work to design something that is easy to use. Your feedback is important. In many cases, I have no use for the software I'm writing. When it's finished, I move on to something else. If you didn't speak up during the proof of concept phase, you might have to live with my first attempt to understand your usage. I never understood why an ipod uses a clockwise rotation to move "down" a list, button to "advance" and left to "back" -- sure it's easy for everyone now that they've adapted to this bizarre set of usage patterns... but wouldn't "up and down" be more obvious interaction with "up and down" lists? I guess I'm just not cool enough for Apple. I also didn't understand the flush-mount power button on the back of the computer so you can't find it unless you already know where it is. Computers/software aren't the only things that are built incorrectly. ex: power strips with the outlets turned 90 degrees allows the transformer at the plug to not block the other outlets - why haven't all power strips adopted this orientation? anyway, yes; please inform the developer of your UI/UX concerns. :) From msd001 at gmail.com Tue Jun 25 00:58:30 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 20:58:30 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <012e01ce711d$0765b7a0$163126e0$@rainier66.com> References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> <51C7DA8A.1000306@verizon.net> <012e01ce711d$0765b7a0$163126e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 4:54 PM, spike wrote: > > On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 1:35 AM, Alan Grimes wrote: > >> 1. Muster a pose and go after people who would advocate that outcome >> or policies that would inevitably lead to that outcome. > ______________________________________________ > > > OK do refrain please from ever posting anything that could possibly be > interpreted as a threat. Even if posed in language that brings forth > imagery of a group of 19th century white hat men on horses, making comments > such as "Head 'em off at the pass, boys!" it still gives me the creeps. We > don't do posses here. We are a peaceful movement, filled with good will > towards all. > > your friendly omnipotent moderator and still non-uploaded guy, I wanted to share that "muster a pose" created in my mind a literal picture of summoning the energy to stand ready for a picture. I pretty much stopped reading the rest of that sentence. I have a bunch of other emails to read, if you're going to distract me with amusing typos I'll probably miss your actual point. I also have to admit I didn't take the time to watch the hour-plus long video that Natasha posted. I wish she had summarized to a few overview points so I could comment directly on those takeaways. BillK: I stand corrected re: Amish population. Unexpected. Not sure how to make sense of those facts. :) From natasha at natasha.cc Tue Jun 25 01:07:39 2013 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 20:07:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> <51C7DA8A.1000306@verizon.net> <012e01ce711d$0765b7a0$163126e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130624200739.q3qaepe6mo8o8wss@webmail.natasha.cc> Sorry, you are right. I should have summarized both. But I didn't have time and I wanted you all to form your own opinions. Quoting Mike Dougherty : > On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 4:54 PM, spike wrote: >> >> On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 1:35 AM, Alan Grimes wrote: >> >>> 1. Muster a pose and go after people who would advocate that outcome >>> or policies that would inevitably lead to that outcome. >> ______________________________________________ >> >> >> OK do refrain please from ever posting anything that could possibly be >> interpreted as a threat. Even if posed in language that brings forth >> imagery of a group of 19th century white hat men on horses, making comments >> such as "Head 'em off at the pass, boys!" it still gives me the creeps. We >> don't do posses here. We are a peaceful movement, filled with good will >> towards all. >> >> your friendly omnipotent moderator and still non-uploaded guy, > > I wanted to share that "muster a pose" created in my mind a literal > picture of summoning the energy to stand ready for a picture. I > pretty much stopped reading the rest of that sentence. > > I have a bunch of other emails to read, if you're going to distract me > with amusing typos I'll probably miss your actual point. > > I also have to admit I didn't take the time to watch the hour-plus > long video that Natasha posted. I wish she had summarized to a few > overview points so I could comment directly on those takeaways. > > BillK: I stand corrected re: Amish population. Unexpected. Not sure > how to make sense of those facts. :) > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From msd001 at gmail.com Tue Jun 25 03:15:33 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 23:15:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <20130624200739.q3qaepe6mo8o8wss@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> <51C7DA8A.1000306@verizon.net> <012e01ce711d$0765b7a0$163126e0$@rainier66.com> <20130624200739.q3qaepe6mo8o8wss@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: A completely orthogonal point is that we really need video to embed textual cues that can be scanned faster than video can be watched or easily text-mined. You don't have time to pre-chew content for me. I don't have time to consume that much video. I'm not sure what else is more important at any given moment... but seem to be wasting as much time in context-switches as we gain in multitasking and drinking less-deeply from any given content stream. In some sense, I guess the comment thread below a youtube/et al. video does act as that keyword/key-concept pool. Sorry, I'm way off-topic for this subject/thread. Please resume on-track. :) On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 9:07 PM, wrote: > Sorry, you are right. I should have summarized both. > But I didn't have time and I wanted you all to form your own opinions. > > Quoting Mike Dougherty : >> I also have to admit I didn't take the time to watch the hour-plus >> long video that Natasha posted. I wish she had summarized to a few >> overview points so I could comment directly on those takeaways. [top-posted to make the established quoting easier to follow] From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Jun 25 04:19:40 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 00:19:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Echoes of the Invincible Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 5:44 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > But it doesn't prevent the rest of us from using darwinian > systems which are nonbrittle, and hence antifragile. > > So not only does this prevent the scenario, the brittle > strain self-terminates over time and space. ### You are probably but not guaranteed to be right. Yes, a Darwinian system (many independent replicators able to fundamentally change their characteristics by mutation or directed mutagenesis) is likely to outcompete a non-evolving system (replicators with predominantly pre-defined unchangeable characteristics that limit the repertoire of their responses to threats), as long as both start out at a rough parity. But, there is a situation where the rigid system can stably take over: If the Darwinian system consists of microbes which have a very constrained space of development paths, for reasons of simple physics, it has to through a succession of developmental steps which are vulnerable to brute force attacks, before accumulating enough complexity to use directed mutagenesis. And without advanced evolution (self-modifying AI, directed evolution) it's probably hard to take on a superhuman AI. The microbe has to become multicellular, grow a brain, get bigger, learn, and during this time you can destroy or reset it down to microbe level. All it takes is an asteroid judiciously planted every few hundred million years. So, and established non-evolving advanced enough to survey and kill any upstarts could remain stable till the suns burn out. Stanislaw Lem tackled this in "The Invincible" but came to a different conclusion. Imagine we actually are the firstborn. An AI is created with a stable goal system, takes over the world, possibly eradicating us. The AI is able to make non-mutating replicating versions of itself, capable of colonizing space at 0.99 c, and completely takes over every scrap of real estate where competing life can emerge (presumably only a subset of planets). Local microbes have no chance of ever evolving high enough levels of complexity to take on the AI. They can't even evolve to infect the AI's bodies - I am assuming that an AI could recompile (for lack of a better word) its physical implementation to always remain invulnerable to a crude replicator attack. The AI could switch between trillions of informatically equivalent but chemically completely different body designs, and a microbial biosphere would never have a chance of getting a foothold, since a microbe always recognizes a small number of chemical characteristics of a target (a number limited by the size of a microbial genome). The intellectual history of the visible universe ends right there. Rafal From andymck35 at gmail.com Tue Jun 25 05:10:13 2013 From: andymck35 at gmail.com (Andrew Mckee) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 17:10:13 +1200 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <20130624100814.GK25587@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, 24 Jun 2013 22:22:19 +1200, Eugenio Mart?nez wrote: > More transhumanist Bashing (in Spanish): > http://www.finanzas.com/xl-semanal/firmas/juan-manuel-de-prada/20130428/cuerpo-5228.html > > Juan Manuel de prada writes in one of the most important magazines in > Spain. He writes about "the old idea of get rid of our body" (sic) and use > Kevin Warwick as an example, and about the "new idea of the resurrected > body because of the Christ". > > He is considered an intelectual in my country. Pathetic imho. That still sounds not as bad as it could be, as they say, sometimes even bad news is better than no news at all. At the least it can act as a starting point in getting people aware of and talking about a transhumanist viewpoint, in a complete intellectual vacuum on the other hand very little can be talked about at all - like the New Zealand media for instance. :-( From andymck35 at gmail.com Tue Jun 25 07:09:16 2013 From: andymck35 at gmail.com (Andrew Mckee) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 19:09:16 +1200 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <00c801ce710a$bb224500$3166cf00$@natasha.cc> References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> <00c801ce710a$bb224500$3166cf00$@natasha.cc> Message-ID: On Tue, 25 Jun 2013 06:43:34 +1200, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > Hi everyone, > I?m sorry that my initial message became convoluted with responses that are a bit irrational and even disturbing. So please let?s not do this when I am being serious about a problem that could affect our culture. > Anyway, I?m proceeding forward with looking into this Alex Jones guy. On the Transhumanist Art FB page, someone posted this: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded &v=M9YS6hVuxhs#at=128 > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcnTdO47p0Q Errm, that looks like Alex Jones doing what he does best, spouting every kind of crack pot conspiracy theory he can lay his hands on in an effort to boost readership and/or DVD sales numbers , etc. I don't think anyone takes anything he says at all seriously, at least not on purpose. That said, that sculpture does look kind of freaky, many would be hard pressed to come up with something positive to say about it. From andymck35 at gmail.com Tue Jun 25 07:29:04 2013 From: andymck35 at gmail.com (Andrew Mckee) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 19:29:04 +1200 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> <51C7DA8A.1000306@verizon.net> <012e01ce711d$0765b7a0$163126e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 25 Jun 2013 12:58:30 +1200, Mike Dougherty wrote: > BillK: I stand corrected re: Amish population. Unexpected. Not sure > how to make sense of those facts. :) I must have a dirty one tracked mind, because that there, what you just wrote strikes me as all kinds of funny. :-) From eugen at leitl.org Tue Jun 25 08:11:05 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 10:11:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Echoes of the Invincible In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20130625081105.GN25587@leitl.org> On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 12:19:40AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > Imagine we actually are the firstborn. An AI is created with a stable > goal system, takes over the world, possibly eradicating us. The AI is You just described something which can't be built by us, a Darwinian system. Have you noticed how explicit-codifying AI never went anywhere, and most people continued to plod along, as if nothing happened? The task is much too hard for anything less than a god (which can have arisen by a darwinian design, and could plunk down a hyperfit brittle system down in our midst which would flatten us, but be a pitiful toy in the original context it arose in, which *will* be expansive, so no chances for that hyperfit oddness cropping up in our midst. This is what I mean that there is no mechanism. People armwave a lot, but that's unfortunately not enough. > able to make non-mutating replicating versions of itself, capable of > colonizing space at 0.99 c, and completely takes over every scrap of > real estate where competing life can emerge (presumably only a subset > of planets). Local microbes have no chance of ever evolving high > enough levels of complexity to take on the AI. They can't even evolve My scenario is exactly the same, except that there is no AI, the first wavefront organisms are low-diversity and steamroll across pristine stellar terrain and pre-expansive observers alike, and subsequent organisim waves pass by adding complexity and completely displacing pioneers, until a semi-steady simmering state results, where the local ecosystem varies so widely across relatively small compartments so that crossing over species don't have an edge either way, and the result is entirely independant from the nucleating point that begat that particular ecosystem. Which means that when these meet, nothing exciting happens. > to infect the AI's bodies - I am assuming that an AI could recompile > (for lack of a better word) its physical implementation to always > remain invulnerable to a crude replicator attack. The AI could switch That's an undecidable problem, I'm afraid. Your brittle system is at a disadvantage. The only way it could meta-stable is a population of brittle monoclones, which will be wiped out completely if it encounters an advanced darwinian system. > between trillions of informatically equivalent but chemically > completely different body designs, and a microbial biosphere would The physics of this unverse results in convergent evolution for omega-fit systems. This means the bottom layer is extremely similiar (it looks conserved, as if it all came from the same point of origin), though upper layers differ dramatically. > never have a chance of getting a foothold, since a microbe always > recognizes a small number of chemical characteristics of a target (a > number limited by the size of a microbial genome). > > The intellectual history of the visible universe ends right there. From eugen at leitl.org Tue Jun 25 12:41:28 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 14:41:28 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [FoRK] Non-speech, non-keyboard direct communications will create a new class of humans Message-ID: <20130625124128.GL25587@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from Stephen Williams ----- Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 17:12:03 -0700 From: Stephen Williams To: Friends of Rohit Khare Subject: [FoRK] Non-speech, non-keyboard direct communications will create a new class of humans User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130509 Thunderbird/17.0.6 Reply-To: Friends of Rohit Khare Technical people and techno-savvy consumers already communicate differently than non-technical people, but it is somewhat constrained. What happens when one or more methods of fast, accurate, digital friendly communications channels are easily used in an always-there fashion? What are the social consequences of a certain subset invisibly communicating, a la telepathy, with each other and others not present? What if this communications happens at speeds not constrained by the mechanics of speech, typing, and drawing? How many multiples of 1x comm modes will we reach? Many of us think, at least at times, much faster than we can communicate. At the moment, we can only leverage and communicate stored information in external ways. We could probably communicate several times faster, plus boost that with shorthand and keyword-like inclusion of packets of existing knowledge. Given a much better visualization and representation method, we should be able to communicate a lot of information quickly in an absorbable way. As soon as we can communicate quietly and probably secretly, we can more easily and quickly leverage large stores of internal and external information. And what will be the rules about running and following an AI representation of a knowledge base to help with decision making or to supply relevant "unbiased" information? Your grandfather's wisdom? Your party leader's? CEO? Girlfriend/boyfriend? Hard to argue against this being good overall, but I suspect a lot of angst and confusion. Things like tests will require special handling. sdw _______________________________________________ FoRK mailing list http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 From msd001 at gmail.com Tue Jun 25 12:53:09 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 08:53:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> <51C7DA8A.1000306@verizon.net> <012e01ce711d$0765b7a0$163126e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 3:29 AM, Andrew Mckee wrote: > On Tue, 25 Jun 2013 12:58:30 +1200, Mike Dougherty wrote: >> BillK: I stand corrected re: Amish population. Unexpected. Not sure >> how to make sense of those facts. :) > > I must have a dirty one tracked mind, because that there, what you just > wrote strikes me as all kinds of funny. :-) heh. Those are not the "facts" I meant. Since actual attempts at humor rarely get comments, I'll take a laugh at an offhand remark read in an unintended way. :) I was talking about how I've seen "The Amish" community around Lancaster PA where kids own cell phones and hide their cars at friends' houses. Maybe that's just rebellious teen behavior and they adopt their parents' memes as they become adults? I tried to watch the tv show Breaking Amish/etc. about the kids experience in NYC. Perhaps I assumed incorrectly that fewer of them return. I guess if you don't have modern distractions like streaming content and the Internet, breeding is a fun way to spend your time? From painlord2k at libero.it Tue Jun 25 18:39:51 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 20:39:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Mathematical Help with Bitcoin historical curve future projection? (was re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe) In-Reply-To: <010a01ce7112$4a448e80$decdab80$@rainier66.com> References: <51A0B89B.2080108@canonizer.com> <51A0E030.6030209@canonizer.com> <51A5418C.50907@canonizer.com> <51AA4ECD.30006@canonizer.com> <70ddaf21-9dd3-45ba-9146-0e2944934e1c@googlegroups.com> <51C27B35.8030006@canonizer.com> <51C2CAE6.20202@libero.it> <51C43E7B.8020808@canonizer.com> <51C75625.4020800@libero.it> <007301ce705b$625426a0$26fc73e0$@rainier66.com> <51C88C80.8070308@libero.it> <010a01ce7112$4a448e80$decdab80$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51C9E3F7.7070007@libero.it> Il 24/06/2013 21:37, spike ha scritto: > (Mirco the original question wasn't entirely serious. {8-] ) > Ps What is serious to me is the California government's attitude towards > Bitcoin. They are acting as though they feel very threatened by the whole > concept. Note that California has its own income tax and is heavily > dependent on that for its current revenue structure. California and the US > government will be watching with an electron microscope any technology that > might allow a prole to sidestep that tax structure. We saw this in the dot > com bubble of the 1990s: plenty of local companies were starting up and > paying its employees in stock options plus some nominal stipend which was > only enough to pay the rent on some micro-apartment and not even enough to > pay for groceries. The startups themselves would often supply all the free > food on site the proles wanted to devour. Consequence: there were a number > of young, single, talented, optimistic and idealistic employees who would > eat three squares a day at the office, go home only to sleep, spend the rest > of the time coding their brains out. If the product succeeded, the stock > options were worth a fortune, otherwise nothing. IANAL warning Bitcoin are money so, in my opinion, they should be taxable income as if the guy is pain ? or yen or gold. If you have time to watch the many interesting video of Bitcoin 2013 in San Jose on YouTube, you could see a very boring (but very useful) talk about Bitcoin and taxes from an expert. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3_lkLh-Xw0 The Internet Archive pay some of its employees in Bitcoin. They just have an internal ATM where employees can exchange part of their paycheck in Bitcoin. The Internet Archive also incorporated as a Credit Union. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD6fVNGEnlI For now, the FinCen is interested only in the interface between US$ and BTC. They are not interested in people paying groceries with BTC, just with people exchanging US$ for BTC and the reverse. Anyway, there are forces at work that can solve many of these problems: Dan Dascalescu - Blueseed Ship - Bitcoin 2013 Conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S8EcdCDgzI Edan Yago - The World's First Cryptocurrency-based Political Zone - Bitcoin 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-oySaDJHoI Mirco From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Jun 25 21:20:37 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 17:20:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Echoes of the Invincible In-Reply-To: <20130625081105.GN25587@leitl.org> References: <20130625081105.GN25587@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 4:11 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 12:19:40AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > >> Imagine we actually are the firstborn. An AI is created with a stable >> goal system, takes over the world, possibly eradicating us. The AI is > > You just described something which can't be built by us, a > Darwinian system. Have you noticed how explicit-codifying > AI never went anywhere, and most people continued to plod > along, as if nothing happened? The task is much too hard > for anything less than a god (which can have arisen by > a darwinian design, and could plunk down a hyperfit brittle > system down in our midst which would flatten us, but be > a pitiful toy in the original context it arose in, which > *will* be expansive, so no chances for that hyperfit > oddness cropping up in our midst. > > This is what I mean that there is no mechanism. People > armwave a lot, but that's unfortunately not enough. ### I am assuming you expect that superhuman AI will be produced, just not using explicit programming techniques. Leaving aside the question of that programming techniques are employed in creating it, do you disagree that a superhuman AI with a stable goal system could exist? Maybe it could only be evolved using evolutionary programming techniques, maybe something more directly controlled by programmers but an AI with a stable goal system, and capable of cooperating with its copies, would create a stably non-evolving society, as long as the AI were smart enough to suppress the emergence of competing, evolving replicators. I agree that the stable-goal SAI is likely to perish if pitted against an ecosystem of less stable, evolving SAIs but this is not the situation I am considering here. Please note, the reason for the seemingly progressive nature of evolution is a combination of lack of a goal system of the process as a whole, and the existence of progressively more complex ecological niches that can be reached by progressively more complex beings. As long as something can evolve (i.e. there is an ecological niche for it), it will evolve, since there is no designer with god's-eye view of the process to stop it at some pre-determined point. The ecology dominated by SAI with stable goals would be different - if the SAI's goals involved prevention of competitor evolution, the SAI could nip the competition in the bud, before it became intelligent enough to pose too much of a challenge. The stable SAIs could keep eradicating upstart microbes forever, without ever having to deal with a real opponent. ---------------- > My scenario is exactly the same, except that there is no AI, > the first wavefront organisms are low-diversity and steamroll > across pristine stellar terrain and pre-expansive observers > alike, and subsequent organisim waves pass by adding complexity > and completely displacing pioneers, until a semi-steady simmering > state results, where the local ecosystem varies so widely > across relatively small compartments so that crossing over > species don't have an edge either way, and the result is > entirely independant from the nucleating point that begat > that particular ecosystem. Which means that when these > meet, nothing exciting happens. ### Indeed, this is the other possibility and I agree with you it's more likely than the non-evolving history - but which one will be realized is highly dependent on the starting condition. Which could occur in the next 100 years on this planet. --------- Your brittle system > is at a disadvantage. The only way it could meta-stable is a population > of brittle monoclones, which will be wiped out completely if > it encounters an advanced darwinian system. ### Agreed. Rafal From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 25 23:09:13 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 16:09:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again Message-ID: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> Zowwie, 23andMe has put me into a hell of an ethical dilemma, or perhaps more accurately, I have put myself in an ethical dilemma. Advice or comment from ethical hipsters most welcome. Background: inside of two weeks, I have discovered a second illegitimacy in my own ancestry. We knew from family tradition that one of our great great grandfathers was an illegitimate born in about 1855, so that branch of the tree came to an end, and has been a dead end for over a century: no one knew who his bio father was. I compared notes with a 23andMe cousin, and between us we figured out the likely candidate. Hey, it was 1855, in a town three hours from anything, with a total population of 200 people. In those kinds of places, after dark there is nothing to do. I was delighted to know this of course, and to be the first in the family to discover it. Yesterday, a young lady contacted me because I was on her list of 3rd or 4th cousins from 23andMe. She didn't know how to use any of the software tools in that, but suggested we share genomes, which I did. She revealed that she was an illegitimate child raised by a stepfather She commented that she wanted to find her bio-father but didn't know where or how to do those kinds of searches and couldn't afford a professional, and that the only thing she knew about her bio father was all her mother would tell: first name, middle initial and last name, which isn't much. But it is an unusual last name, and it matched one of the oddball names in my 23andMe list. This young lady is clearly unsophisticated, as is easy to tell from her post. Less than an hour of searching through Facebook pages, genealogy sites and Spokeo, I figured out who is the likely father, and that he lives not all that far from this third cousin. Ethical dilemma: do I tell her? My ethics intuition suggests that I refrain from mentioning even that I have that info. Unless someone comes up with an argument to the contrary, good chance I will stifle it. Principle: don't reveal information against someone else's will. But what if it contradicts the will of a third party who may be morally entitled to that information? Is it clear now that 23andMe will lead to tall piles of these kinds of moral dilemmas, and people's reaction to them will be all over the map. I don't feel very comfortable with either of my choices in this case. Gina Nanogirl Miller, comments please? Max and the ethics hipsters, comments please? What would Anders do? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Tue Jun 25 23:47:04 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 16:47:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [FoRK] Non-speech, non-keyboard direct communications will create a new class of humans In-Reply-To: <20130625124128.GL25587@leitl.org> References: <20130625124128.GL25587@leitl.org> Message-ID: Some of the stories I have been playing with of late involve "radiotelepathy": a node implanted in the sensorymotor cortex able to send and receive crude, low res signals. All the sophistication of encoding meaning and language is up to the brain connected to the device. There is reason to believe that the speed of speech and typing is not that much less than the speed of thought - or at least, thought modulated in a form that can be expressed to another brain. An easier way to start getting a sense of the consequences of invisible communication, at least for one way, is to try truly hidden audio receivers, so close observers can not tell a person is getting audio input. A classic test case is poker tables: have a confederate signal you as to the contents of other players' hands. Casinos deal with this issue all the time these days; a good pit boss can relay many tricks of the trade, albeit from the side of attempting to prevent it for the benefit of the unenhanced. On Jun 25, 2013 5:44 AM, "Eugen Leitl" wrote: > > ----- Forwarded message from Stephen Williams ----- > > Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 17:12:03 -0700 > From: Stephen Williams > To: Friends of Rohit Khare > Subject: [FoRK] Non-speech, non-keyboard direct communications will create a new class of humans > User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130509 Thunderbird/17.0.6 > Reply-To: Friends of Rohit Khare > > Technical people and techno-savvy consumers already communicate > differently than non-technical people, but it is somewhat constrained. > What happens when one or more methods of fast, accurate, digital > friendly communications channels are easily used in an always-there > fashion? > What are the social consequences of a certain subset invisibly > communicating, a la telepathy, with each other and others not present? > What if this communications happens at speeds not constrained by the > mechanics of speech, typing, and drawing? How many multiples of 1x > comm modes will we reach? > > Many of us think, at least at times, much faster than we can > communicate. At the moment, we can only leverage and communicate > stored information in external ways. We could probably communicate > several times faster, plus boost that with shorthand and keyword-like > inclusion of packets of existing knowledge. Given a much better > visualization and representation method, we should be able to > communicate a lot of information quickly in an absorbable way. > > As soon as we can communicate quietly and probably secretly, we can > more easily and quickly leverage large stores of internal and external > information. And what will be the rules about running and following > an AI representation of a knowledge base to help with decision making > or to supply relevant "unbiased" information? Your grandfather's > wisdom? Your party leader's? CEO? Girlfriend/boyfriend? > > Hard to argue against this being good overall, but I suspect a lot of > angst and confusion. Things like tests will require special handling. > > sdw > > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork > > ----- End forwarded message ----- > -- > Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org > ______________________________________________________________ > ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org > AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jun 25 23:57:42 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 16:57:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I'd say reveal. As you say, she arguably had a right to it. Whether or not she is capable of obtaining the info on her own (and she may well learn), she may have others who can get it. Further, who exactly would you be protecting (of those entitled to said protection)? You may wish to guide her through how to get the info, telling her she needs to learn how to do this as part of handling this info responsibly. But if you do, do let her know up front that the info is available, and that you're being roundabout only out of pure ethical concerns. On Jun 25, 2013 4:22 PM, "spike" wrote: > ** ** > > Zowwie, 23andMe has put me into a hell of an ethical dilemma, or perhaps > more accurately, I have put myself in an ethical dilemma. Advice or > comment from ethical hipsters most welcome.**** > > ** ** > > Background: inside of two weeks, I have discovered a second illegitimacy > in my own ancestry. We knew from family tradition that one of our great > great grandfathers was an illegitimate born in about 1855, so that branch > of the tree came to an end, and has been a dead end for over a century: no > one knew who his bio father was. I compared notes with a 23andMe cousin, > and between us we figured out the likely candidate. Hey, it was 1855, in a > town three hours from anything, with a total population of 200 people. In > those kinds of places, after dark there is nothing to do. I was delighted > to know this of course, and to be the first in the family to discover it.* > *** > > ** ** > > Yesterday, a young lady contacted me because I was on her list of 3rd or 4 > th cousins from 23andMe. She didn?t know how to use any of the software > tools in that, but suggested we share genomes, which I did. She revealed > that she was an illegitimate child raised by a stepfather She commented > that she wanted to find her bio-father but didn?t know where or how to do > those kinds of searches and couldn?t afford a professional, and that the > only thing she knew about her bio father was all her mother would tell: > first name, middle initial and last name, which isn?t much. But it is an > unusual last name, and it matched one of the oddball names in my 23andMe > list.**** > > ** ** > > This young lady is clearly unsophisticated, as is easy to tell from her > post. Less than an hour of searching through Facebook pages, genealogy > sites and Spokeo, I figured out who is the likely father, and that he lives > not all that far from this third cousin.**** > > ** ** > > Ethical dilemma: do I tell her? **** > > ** ** > > My ethics intuition suggests that I refrain from mentioning even that I > have that info. Unless someone comes up with an argument to the contrary, > good chance I will stifle it. Principle: don?t reveal information against > someone else?s will. **** > > ** ** > > But what if it contradicts the will of a third party who may be morally > entitled to that information?**** > > ** ** > > Is it clear now that 23andMe will lead to tall piles of these kinds of > moral dilemmas, and people?s reaction to them will be all over the map. I > don?t feel very comfortable with either of my choices in this case.**** > > ** ** > > Gina Nanogirl Miller, comments please? Max and the ethics hipsters, > comments please? What would Anders 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 spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 26 00:33:56 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 17:33:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <010001ce7204$d9785260$8c68f720$@rainier66.com> >I'd say reveal. You may wish to guide her through how to get the info. Thanks Adrian. Other voices please? I can make Adrian's case stronger, without actually saying I fully embrace it, as follows: This young lady did nothing wrong. She is an only child, as was her mother, so she has no known bio-first-cousins. Her step-father supplied genetically unrelated first cousins, who had little to do with her. My own first cousins, a round dozen of them, have enriched my life more than I can say: I love them all, never had a cross word with any of them, always had a good time, cried together at our grandparents funerals, laughed together often. This young lady is lonely for her own cousins, I get that. Now I come to find out there are plenty of them around: her bio-father was the youngest of five children, who were all apparently prolific. So this young lady had a definite non-zero risk of marrying or at least copulating with one of her own first cousins unbeknown, for they live in her general area. She has the right to know who they are. On the other hand. I really had no justification to go off Googling like some kind of Neanderthal cyber stalker. I put myself in this mess, so really it is my damn fault. If her mother wouldn't tell her own daughter, who the hell am I to come along and countermand that decision? I don't know these people, have very little knowledge of our apparent common ancestor. This bio-father is actually a third cousin once removed from me, and his bio-offspring are my fourth cousins. I didn't get their blessing in wedging my nose in their business. The potential for harm is great, and my vague intuition is that the potential harm may outweigh the benefits. But in any case, I am not the one who has the right to make that choice. I might go with Adrian's suggestion in gently guiding the young lady in how to find what I found. Before I do anything, I want to hear from Gina Nanogirl Miller, who has been there and back. I have long been the schizophrenic-on-that-topic openness advocate. But even I realize that between Facebook, Ancestry.com and 23andMe, it is easy to imagine all manner of long dead secrets could be dug up and yanked out of their graves, with or without their consent. I still don't feel good about either of my choices, but I may be tipping back the other way now. spike From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2013 4:58 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again I'd say reveal. As you say, she arguably had a right to it. Whether or not she is capable of obtaining the info on her own (and she may well learn), she may have others who can get it. Further, who exactly would you be protecting (of those entitled to said protection)? You may wish to guide her through how to get the info, telling her she needs to learn how to do this as part of handling this info responsibly. But if you do, do let her know up front that the info is available, and that you're being roundabout only out of pure ethical concerns. On Jun 25, 2013 4:22 PM, "spike" wrote: Zowwie, 23andMe has put me into a hell of an ethical dilemma, or perhaps more accurately, I have put myself in an ethical dilemma. Advice or comment from ethical hipsters most welcome. Background: inside of two weeks, I have discovered a second illegitimacy in my own ancestry. We knew from family tradition that one of our great great grandfathers was an illegitimate born in about 1855, so that branch of the tree came to an end, and has been a dead end for over a century: no one knew who his bio father was. I compared notes with a 23andMe cousin, and between us we figured out the likely candidate. Hey, it was 1855, in a town three hours from anything, with a total population of 200 people. In those kinds of places, after dark there is nothing to do. I was delighted to know this of course, and to be the first in the family to discover it. Yesterday, a young lady contacted me because I was on her list of 3rd or 4th cousins from 23andMe. She didn't know how to use any of the software tools in that, but suggested we share genomes, which I did. She revealed that she was an illegitimate child raised by a stepfather She commented that she wanted to find her bio-father but didn't know where or how to do those kinds of searches and couldn't afford a professional, and that the only thing she knew about her bio father was all her mother would tell: first name, middle initial and last name, which isn't much. But it is an unusual last name, and it matched one of the oddball names in my 23andMe list. This young lady is clearly unsophisticated, as is easy to tell from her post. Less than an hour of searching through Facebook pages, genealogy sites and Spokeo, I figured out who is the likely father, and that he lives not all that far from this third cousin. Ethical dilemma: do I tell her? My ethics intuition suggests that I refrain from mentioning even that I have that info. Unless someone comes up with an argument to the contrary, good chance I will stifle it. Principle: don't reveal information against someone else's will. But what if it contradicts the will of a third party who may be morally entitled to that information? Is it clear now that 23andMe will lead to tall piles of these kinds of moral dilemmas, and people's reaction to them will be all over the map. I don't feel very comfortable with either of my choices in this case. Gina Nanogirl Miller, comments please? Max and the ethics hipsters, comments please? What would Anders 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 msd001 at gmail.com Wed Jun 26 01:39:48 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 21:39:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <010001ce7204$d9785260$8c68f720$@rainier66.com> References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> <010001ce7204$d9785260$8c68f720$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 8:33 PM, spike wrote: > I really had no justification to go off Googling like some kind of > Neanderthal cyber stalker. I put myself in this mess, so really it is my > damn fault. If her mother wouldn?t tell her own daughter, who the hell am I > to come along and countermand that decision? I don?t know these people, > have very little knowledge of our apparent common ancestor. This bio-father > is actually a third cousin once removed from me, and his bio-offspring are > my fourth cousins. I didn?t get their blessing in wedging my nose in their > business. The potential for harm is great, and my vague intuition is that > the potential harm may outweigh the benefits. How long does privacy last after you're dead? What have we learned about Monroe & Kennedy? Should we have? Has the guy from 1855 recorded any desire to remain unfound? Is this the beginnings of digital resurrection? Perhaps we don't have a completely accurate picture of this man's character, but thanks to genetics clues we have a few glimpses into some of his ... behavior. Also, you used publicly available tools to coalesce these details into a coherent picture. Whether you consider yourself an extension of those tools in the service of this woman, she made a request (however indirectly) and your knowledge/skills brought forth this information. If you make this woman wait 5 years for the tools you used to become automated, all you have done is wasted 5 of her years. If some joker charges her to use those automated tools, you've cost her the time AND the money. I see this as an example of transparency and freedom of information. You gathered this information because it is your hobby and you were curious enough to check it out. If there was a business/contractual obligation beforehand, I'd hope the terms of that contract were clearly established. You're sharing information in-kind with someone who has contacted you through/because of a genetic assay. You are neither selling a service nor profiting from this exchange of information. If this kind of sleuthing and filling in the missing information isn't one of the immediate useful purposes of 23andMe, then what IS it for? Oh right, I already asked that question. This might just be part of the ongoing answer. :) From spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 26 03:03:13 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 20:03:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> <010001ce7204$d9785260$8c68f720$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <012e01ce7219$b4c48550$1e4d8ff0$@rainier66.com> THANKS MIKE, for that most excellent and insightful post. Two good commentaries so far. Others please? -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2013 6:40 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 8:33 PM, spike wrote: >>... I really had no justification to go off Googling like some kind of > Neanderthal cyber stalker. ...The potential > for harm is great, and my vague intuition is that the potential harm may outweigh the benefits. >...How long does privacy last after you're dead? I am vaguely going with the US census rule: they publish the census 72 yrs after the fact, so the 1940 census came out recently. >... Has the guy from 1855 recorded any desire to remain unfound? The guy from 1855 is fair game in my book. There is no one left alive who would have had any contact with him when he was alive. Reasoning: if he was about 18 then, and lived to be 90, that would take him to 1927, so anyone who would have had any kind of emotional bond would need to overlap by at least 7 or so yrs, so 1920 to now is 93, nah, all his secrets are fair game, all his base are belong to us. >... Is this the beginnings of digital resurrection? Hope so! {8-] >...If you make this woman wait 5 years for the tools you used to become automated, all you have done is wasted 5 of her years. If some joker charges her to use those automated tools, you've cost her the time AND the money... Excellent point. She has already been deprived of a childhood with her cousins. It isn't right to have her adulthood deprived of them as well. >...I see this as an example of transparency and freedom of information. You gathered this information because it is your hobby and you were curious enough to check it out. If there was a business/contractual obligation beforehand, I'd hope the terms of that contract were clearly established. You're sharing information in-kind with someone who has contacted you through/because of a genetic assay. You are neither selling a service nor profiting from this exchange of information... This is a better argument than I thought of, thanks. >...If this kind of sleuthing and filling in the missing information isn't one of the immediate useful purposes of 23andMe, then what IS it for? I hadn't really even thought of this when I sent in my spit kit. I was doing it for the medical end of it. >...Oh right, I already asked that question. This might just be part of the ongoing answer. :) Mike _______________________________________________ Thanks Mike, excellent post man. Others? spike From clementlawyer at gmail.com Wed Jun 26 03:29:18 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 23:29:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <012e01ce7219$b4c48550$1e4d8ff0$@rainier66.com> References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> <010001ce7204$d9785260$8c68f720$@rainier66.com> <012e01ce7219$b4c48550$1e4d8ff0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 11:03 PM, spike wrote: > THANKS MIKE, for that most excellent and insightful post. Two good > commentaries so far. Others please? > > As long as you're not encouraging her to use the info in any particular way (inheritance, confrontation with relatives, etc.) I don't have a problem with your giving her info which anyone else could pay to get. What happens after she gets the info is a complete crapshoot. Good luck, James -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 26 03:35:55 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 20:35:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> <010001ce7204$d9785260$8c68f720$@rainier66.com> <012e01ce7219$b4c48550$1e4d8ff0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <014a01ce721e$4499ab70$cdcd0250$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of James Clement Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2013 8:29 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 11:03 PM, spike wrote: THANKS MIKE, for that most excellent and insightful post. Two good commentaries so far. Others please? >.As long as you're not encouraging her to use the info in any particular way (inheritance, confrontation with relatives, etc.) I don't have a problem with your giving her info which anyone else could pay to get. What happens after she gets the info is a complete crapshoot. Good luck, James Ja, thanks. I wouldn't make any suggestions past how to find the person. I will do it in such a way that she still needs to do her due diligence, look up the info, etc. I have no commentary to offer on what she does with the info if anything at all. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Wed Jun 26 03:39:48 2013 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 20:39:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Echoes of the Invincible In-Reply-To: References: <20130625081105.GN25587@leitl.org> Message-ID: <3DCFE86FEDF448C8A6665FF8CC705BE4@mac.com> -- Samantha Atkins Sent with Sparrow (http://www.sparrowmailapp.com/?sig) On Tuesday, June 25, 2013 at 2:20 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 4:11 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 12:19:40AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > > > > Imagine we actually are the firstborn. An AI is created with a stable > > > goal system, takes over the world, possibly eradicating us. The AI is > > > > > > > > > You just described something which can't be built by us, a > > Darwinian system. Have you noticed how explicit-codifying > > AI never went anywhere, and most people continued to plod > > along, as if nothing happened? The task is much too hard > > for anything less than a god (which can have arisen by > > a darwinian design, and could plunk down a hyperfit brittle > > system down in our midst which would flatten us, but be > > a pitiful toy in the original context it arose in, which > > *will* be expansive, so no chances for that hyperfit > > oddness cropping up in our midst. > > Why conflate explicit codifying with being able to build an AGI at all? It is much more likely to be a hybrid of symbolic and sub-symbolic techniques. Significant parts of an AGI need to self unfold/develop from the "seed" which is about the best we can likely come up with as human programmers and system designers. I don't think that any godhood is required. > > > > This is what I mean that there is no mechanism. People > > armwave a lot, but that's unfortunately not enough. > > > > > ### I am assuming you expect that superhuman AI will be produced, just > not using explicit programming techniques. > > Leaving aside the question of that programming techniques are employed > in creating it, do you disagree that a superhuman AI with a stable > goal system could exist? Maybe it could only be evolved using > evolutionary programming techniques, maybe something more directly > controlled by programmers but an AI with a stable goal system, and > capable of cooperating with its copies, would create a stably > non-evolving society, as long as the AI were smart enough to suppress > the emergence of competing, evolving replicators. > > Why is a stable goal system being mixed up with a stably non-evolving society? They are not at all the same thing. Do humans have more or less stable goal systems? I would say yes, broadly speaking, as there is a common set of root goals most people have and divergence among individuals as to the particulars of values sufficient to satisfy those and then more individualized specific goals. But even this last are a bit range bound and not unstable per se. Has this led to a non-evolving society? Nope. > > I agree that the stable-goal SAI is likely to perish if pitted against > an ecosystem of less stable, evolving SAIs but this is not the > situation I am considering here. > > I don't see that relatively stable goal structure at all implies lack of considerable flexibility so I challenge what seems to be the root premise. > > Please note, the reason for the seemingly progressive nature of > evolution is a combination of lack of a goal system of the process as > a whole, and the existence of progressively more complex ecological > niches that can be reached by progressively more complex beings. As > long as something can evolve (i.e. there is an ecological niche for > it), it will evolve, since there is no designer with god's-eye view of > the process to stop it at some pre-determined point. > > The ecology dominated by SAI with stable goals would be different - if > the SAI's goals involved prevention of competitor evolution, the SAI > could nip the competition in the bud, before it became intelligent > enough to pose too much of a challenge. The stable SAIs could keep > eradicating upstart microbes forever, without ever having to deal with > a real opponent. > > Why would it bother to avoid all competitors arising? Why would it not prize diversity and new views and minds and capabilities at least as much as we do? - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 26 04:15:28 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 21:15:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Echoes of the Invincible In-Reply-To: <3DCFE86FEDF448C8A6665FF8CC705BE4@mac.com> References: <20130625081105.GN25587@leitl.org> <3DCFE86FEDF448C8A6665FF8CC705BE4@mac.com> Message-ID: <016c01ce7223$cbbcc150$633643f0$@rainier66.com> >? On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins ? -- Samantha Atkins Sent with Sparrow >?Why would it bother to avoid all competitors arising? Why would it not prize diversity and new views and minds and capabilities at least as much as we do? - Samantha Samantha! Where have you been out-hanging? We haven?t heard from you in months it seems like. Welcome back. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Jun 26 07:59:54 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 08:59:54 +0100 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <014a01ce721e$4499ab70$cdcd0250$@rainier66.com> References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> <010001ce7204$d9785260$8c68f720$@rainier66.com> <012e01ce7219$b4c48550$1e4d8ff0$@rainier66.com> <014a01ce721e$4499ab70$cdcd0250$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 4:35 AM, spike wrote: > Ja, thanks. I wouldn?t make any suggestions past how to find the person. I > will do it in such a way that she still needs to do her due diligence, look > up the info, etc. I have no commentary to offer on what she does with the > info if anything at all. > Looking for birth parents is a common situation for adopted children. There are many organisations and aids for this situation. e.g. forums, Mutual Consent registers, etc. Quote: Reunion Registries, also known as Mutual Consent Registries, are usually maintained by the state or private individuals. Basically the way in which a registry works is that each member of the adoption triad registers, hoping to be matched with someone else who might be searching for them. Many states and provinces have instituted intermediary or search and consent systems. These require an individual (usually limited to adult adoptees or birthparents) to express a desire to have the state, an agency official or a trained, confidential intermediary search for and locate his/her birthparents or child. The CI is then given access to the complete court and/or agency file and, using the information contained in it, attempts to locate the individuals. If and when contact is made by the intermediary, the person found is given the option of allowing or refusing contact by the party searching. The CI then reports the results to the court; if the contact has been refused that ends the matter. If the person located agrees to contact, the court will authorize the CI to give the name and current address of the person sought to the adoptee or birthparent. Check with the state your adoption occurred in as to the availability of an Intermediary System. ----------------- The birth parents often do not want to be contacted, when the adoption is a buried family secret, or the father is avoiding responsibilities. Remember, the parents are not necessarily 'nice guys'. The adopted child is warned not to have too high expectations. If you want to take on the job of being the intermediary, then you should contact the parents yourself and tell them that their daughter wants to talk to them. They may refuse, of course. Then you can just forget about it. Otherwise, put them in touch with each other. "Don't shoot the messenger" comes to mind here though. If it turns out badly, she may blame you. BillK From eugen at leitl.org Wed Jun 26 08:59:09 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 10:59:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Echoes of the Invincible In-Reply-To: <3DCFE86FEDF448C8A6665FF8CC705BE4@mac.com> References: <20130625081105.GN25587@leitl.org> <3DCFE86FEDF448C8A6665FF8CC705BE4@mac.com> Message-ID: <20130626085909.GG25587@leitl.org> On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 08:39:48PM -0700, Samantha Atkins wrote: > Why conflate explicit codifying with being able to build an AGI at all? It is much more likely to be a hybrid of symbolic and sub-symbolic techniques. Significant parts of an AGI need to self unfold/develop from the "seed" which is about the best we can likely come up with as human programmers and system designers. I don't think that any godhood is required. I'm willing to bet that we're barely smart enough to crib off biology, or create boundary conditions for emergence. Both result in evolutionary systems. I think the naturally inspired and expecially naturally derived intelligences have the best story and track record so far. > > > This is what I mean that there is no mechanism. People > > > armwave a lot, but that's unfortunately not enough. > > > > > > > > > ### I am assuming you expect that superhuman AI will be produced, just > > not using explicit programming techniques. > > > > Leaving aside the question of that programming techniques are employed > > in creating it, do you disagree that a superhuman AI with a stable > > goal system could exist? Maybe it could only be evolved using > > evolutionary programming techniques, maybe something more directly > > controlled by programmers but an AI with a stable goal system, and > > capable of cooperating with its copies, would create a stably > > non-evolving society, as long as the AI were smart enough to suppress > > the emergence of competing, evolving replicators. > > > > > > > Why is a stable goal system being mixed up with a stably non-evolving society? How would you implement a stable goal system in an animal? > They are not at all the same thing. Do humans have more or less stable goal systems? No, and it's a very good thing. > I would say yes, broadly speaking, as there is a common set of root Extremely broadly speaking. Speaking so broadly, specific directions become meaningless. Evolution has no specific purpose, even it pushes up complexity, it doesn't mean it abandons lower tiers. > goals most people have and divergence among individuals as to the > particulars of values sufficient to satisfy those and then more > individualized specific goals. But even this last are a bit range bound and not unstable per se. > > Has this led to a non-evolving society? Nope. > > > > I agree that the stable-goal SAI is likely to perish if pitted against > > an ecosystem of less stable, evolving SAIs but this is not the > > situation I am considering here. > > > > > > I don't see that relatively stable goal structure at all implies lack of considerable flexibility so I challenge what seems to be the root premise. Stable goal system in a spatially distributed system provably result in useless, brittle systems. > Why would it bother to avoid all competitors arising? Why would it not prize diversity and new views and minds and capabilities at least as much as we do? Biological diversity is nice. It can also kill you. From listsb at infinitefaculty.org Wed Jun 26 09:22:44 2013 From: listsb at infinitefaculty.org (Brian Manning Delaney) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 11:22:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> <010001ce7204$d9785260$8c68f720$@rainier66.com> <012e01ce7219$b4c48550$1e4d8ff0$@rainier66.com> <014a01ce721e$4499ab70$cdcd0250$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51CAB2E4.2070805@infinitefaculty.org> Spike- Noble of you to have thought so much about what's right for others here, but my first thought was your well-being. El 2013-06-26 09:59, BillK escribi?: > "Don't shoot the messenger" comes to mind here though. If it turns out > badly, she may blame you. My feelings exactly. But if you adopt this approach -- >> On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 4:35 AM, spike wrote: > Ja, thanks. I wouldn?t make any suggestions past how to find the person. I will do it in such a way that she still needs to do her due diligence, look up the info, etc. I have no commentary to offer on what she does with the info if anything at all. -- you'll probably be fine, and, moreover, will be doing the right thing: you were asked for info, you gave the info, not obtained illegally or unethically, to the asker. It's up to her to do more. Seems correct and good. (Of course, you may receive follow-up questions.) Brian From bbenzai at yahoo.com Wed Jun 26 10:48:17 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 03:48:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1372243697.7965.YahooMailNeo@web165001.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> "spike" wrote: > Zowwie, 23andMe has put me into a hell of an ethical dilemma, or perhaps > more accurately, I have put myself in an ethical dilemma.? Advice or comment > from ethical hipsters most welcome. Not an 'ethical hipster', but my common-sense says contact the guy, give him the facts, ask what /he/ wants.? Assure him that if he says no, you won't give away any information that may lead to him, but make sure he understands that this information is now easy to come by. No telling if he would be appalled or delighted, but in my book, his 'right' to decide if he wants anything to do with the child is at least equal to the child's 'right' to know who their biological father is.? He should at least know what the situation is though, and how things have changed to make this sort of thing possible.? Any conflicts need to be thrashed out between them, and are none of anybody else's business. It's up to you to decide if making the effort to find and contact him is something you want to do or feel you should do, of course. Ben Zaiboc From eugen at leitl.org Wed Jun 26 11:45:52 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 13:45:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> Message-ID: <20130626114552.GV25587@leitl.org> On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 09:10:11AM +0100, BillK wrote: > Once (If) uploading becomes a standard cheap process I expect the > number of uploads to increase very rapidly. Millions die every day. If > people are faced with the choice of 'death or upload' the decision > becomes easy. On the same level as signing up your body for organ > donation after death. Nothice that either cryopreservation (works today) or fixation/plastification (might or might not work soon) are agnostic to the mode of resuscitation. From painlord2k at libero.it Wed Jun 26 14:54:49 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 16:54:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51CB00B9.1010404@libero.it> Il 26/06/2013 01:09, spike ha scritto: > Zowwie, 23andMe has put me into a hell of an ethical dilemma, or > perhaps more accurately, I have put myself in an ethical dilemma. > Advice or comment from ethical hipsters most welcome. > Background: inside of two weeks, I have discovered a second > illegitimacy in my own ancestry. We knew from family tradition that > one of our great great grandfathers was an illegitimate born in about > 1855, so that branch of the tree came to an end, and has been a dead > end for over a century: no one knew who his bio father was. I > compared notes with a 23andMe cousin, and between us we figured out > the likely candidate. Hey, it was 1855, in a town three hours from > anything, with a total population of 200 people. In those kinds of > places, after dark there is nothing to do. I was delighted to know > this of course, and to be the first in the family to discover it. > Ethical dilemma: do I tell her? Some guidance from the Bible? > 1 Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that > they were trampling on one another, Jesus began to speak first to his > disciples, saying: ?Be on your guard against the yeast of the > Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. 2There is nothing concealed that will > not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. 3What you > have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you > have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from > the roofs. If the infos the young lady is looking for are available freely (as in beer and speech) you do nothing wrong revealing them to her. No more than someone reading a phone book at the request of someone unaccustomed to reading them to find an address and a name. It is there, you just know how to look for numbers and addresses and turn out a name associated to these. You also have a good reason to tell her: she should know who her cousins are so she is able to decide if and how connect to them in the proper way. The father have the right to refuse to connect with his children; no one have the right or the power to force him. But he is not entitled to have others to keep its secrets for him. What the young lady must understand is the truth can enable her to make informed decisions and could satisfy her curiosity, but there is no guarantee it will make her life better. Mirco From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Jun 26 17:00:02 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 13:00:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 1:34 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: > My contention is that 96% of the existing human population would prefer > to live the way they are now, with only modest upgrades. > I think that's probably true (I would have said 99% but never mind), that would mean that 4% want radical pedal to the metal upgrading, and that would mean that only 4% have even a fighting chance of surviving the singularity meat grinder. If anyone has a wish to survive they must shed the silly superstitions regarding identity and consciousness that are epidemic in society and even infects most members of this very list. If they can do that then there would be no reason not to upload and upgrade just as fast as they can, and if they are then also very lucky they just might survive. Maybe. And even if the atoms-soul superstition turns out to be 100% right and the people who think information is the key to identity are 100% wrong people with that (possibly incorrect) idea will still have vastly more influence on the future than people who believe atoms are sacred because they will not be held back by superstitious ideas about the soul or the mystical "ORIGINAL". So it's pedal to the metal upgrading, Jupiter brain ahead for them; while the more conservative gradually go extinct or at least become irrelevant. Right or wrong the old ideas have no future, and I think they're right. Perhaps after the Singularity the more conservative among us could survive in some little backwater like the Amish do today, but I doubt it. > > The only way to change that number is to apply force. > Yes, I don't know exactly what the singularity will be like but I do know that enormous forces will be unleashed, forces so powerful they could prove to be very very dangerous to the weak, and perhaps even to the strong. You have about a 0% chance of controlling what happens during the singularity, the best you can hope for is to survive it. > I presume that the uploaders intend to apply force. > All sorts of forces will be applied, but who or what will be doing it I don't know. And the opinions of anybody alive today regarding the morality or immorality of applying force will have virtually no effect on what happens during the singularity. > Powers are not rights. > Yeah but the problem is the powers aren't going to care, so you need to plan accordingly. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 26 17:55:25 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 10:55:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <51CB00B9.1010404@libero.it> References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> <51CB00B9.1010404@libero.it> Message-ID: <000c01ce7296$58bee750$0a3cb5f0$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again Il 26/06/2013 01:09, spike ha scritto: ... >>... Ethical dilemma: do I tell her? >...Some guidance from the Bible? > ... 2There is nothing concealed that will > not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. 3What you > have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have > whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the > roofs... {Luke chapter 12} >...If the infos the young lady is looking for are available freely (as in beer and speech) you do nothing wrong revealing them to her. No more than someone reading a phone book at the request of someone unaccustomed to reading them to find an address and a name...What the young lady must understand is the truth can enable her to make informed decisions and could satisfy her curiosity, but there is no guarantee it will make her life better...Mirco _______________________________________________ Thanks Mirco and all others who posted on this topic. So here's what I did, and why: Yesterday I had an offline discussion on the topic with one of ours who I respect greatly, and a long phone discussion on the topic with my former college roommate and proto-extropian, a guy who was one of the early computer science majors starting in 1979, and who is a monster brain. We used to do online Mensa stuff together in the early 1990s, back when it was Use groups, before the web. At first he was greatly annoyed, more so than he has ever been, at ME! But as we discussed the matter, he pretty much came to all the same conclusions I did, and got over his wrath. His surrender comment: SHEESH what a world we have made! A man cannot even casually sleep with a woman now without the risk of adverse consequences! ...ummmm, ayah... That is how it works, pal. I gave the lady in question the info, not in a neat package with a bow, but rather the links to the relevant Ancestry dot com pages and a temporary username and password for Spokeo. With that, she will find all the stuff I found, along with the verification by match to others in her DNA relatives list from 23andMe with the same name. With that being done, I step out of the loop and wish her the best of luck, and a feeling that I personally did my own best approximation of the right thing in this morally ambiguous situation. So who "outed" my cousin's father? Did I do it? Or was it 23andMe? If both, would that be 23andMe and me? Or was it grandma, who went through the old family bible and recorded it all into a software family tree such as Ancestral Quest, then submitted the file to Ancestry dot com? Or was it Facebook, who gave me the place and date of my cousin's birth, something she didn't offer to me personally, but published it to the whole world? Or was it Spokeo, which is really little more than the modern analog of a phonebook except with a loooot more information in it? In any case, my former college roommate and I agreed we are witnessing what Mike Dougherty aptly called the great digital resurrection, and what a dramatic resurrection it is, this GDR. We can easily extrapolate into the future, as we are known to do here. 23andMe is growing quickly. As more and more people go in for this, and more and more people put searchable family trees on Ancestry dot com, the internet accumulates knowledge that is never forgotten. Errors and intentional misinformation is discovered and eliminated. Secrets are revealed. It is easy enough to extrapolate and foresee that in a decade you will be able to send in a hundred dollar spit sample, a few weeks later get a password to a website that has a big red button that is capable of doing all the searching I did yesterday, finding all your DNA relatives all the way back to the discovery of fire. Would you hit that button? I would. Does it bother you that all your unintentional crypto-descendants can do the same, and find you? It doesn't bother me, I was a geek even back then. Geeks calculate, jocks copulate. spike From sjv2006 at gmail.com Wed Jun 26 18:18:08 2013 From: sjv2006 at gmail.com (Stephen Van Sickle) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 11:18:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Spike: Keep in mind that biodad might not even know he has a kid out there. If he is the rakish lady-killer sort, might not even remember biomom. As a mom of my acquaintance used to say, "I have three kids...that I know of." She also used to say "I have three kids...one of each". --steve vs On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 4:09 PM, spike wrote: > ** ** > > Zowwie, 23andMe has put me into a hell of an ethical dilemma, or perhaps > more accurately, I have put myself in an ethical dilemma. Advice or > comment from ethical hipsters most welcome.**** > > ** ** > > Background: inside of two weeks, I have discovered a second illegitimacy > in my own ancestry. We knew from family tradition that one of our great > great grandfathers was an illegitimate born in about 1855, so that branch > of the tree came to an end, and has been a dead end for over a century: no > one knew who his bio father was. I compared notes with a 23andMe cousin, > and between us we figured out the likely candidate. Hey, it was 1855, in a > town three hours from anything, with a total population of 200 people. In > those kinds of places, after dark there is nothing to do. I was delighted > to know this of course, and to be the first in the family to discover it.* > *** > > ** ** > > Yesterday, a young lady contacted me because I was on her list of 3rd or 4 > th cousins from 23andMe. She didn?t know how to use any of the software > tools in that, but suggested we share genomes, which I did. She revealed > that she was an illegitimate child raised by a stepfather She commented > that she wanted to find her bio-father but didn?t know where or how to do > those kinds of searches and couldn?t afford a professional, and that the > only thing she knew about her bio father was all her mother would tell: > first name, middle initial and last name, which isn?t much. But it is an > unusual last name, and it matched one of the oddball names in my 23andMe > list.**** > > ** ** > > This young lady is clearly unsophisticated, as is easy to tell from her > post. Less than an hour of searching through Facebook pages, genealogy > sites and Spokeo, I figured out who is the likely father, and that he lives > not all that far from this third cousin.**** > > ** ** > > Ethical dilemma: do I tell her? **** > > ** ** > > My ethics intuition suggests that I refrain from mentioning even that I > have that info. Unless someone comes up with an argument to the contrary, > good chance I will stifle it. Principle: don?t reveal information against > someone else?s will. **** > > ** ** > > But what if it contradicts the will of a third party who may be morally > entitled to that information?**** > > ** ** > > Is it clear now that 23andMe will lead to tall piles of these kinds of > moral dilemmas, and people?s reaction to them will be all over the map. I > don?t feel very comfortable with either of my choices in this case.**** > > ** ** > > Gina Nanogirl Miller, comments please? Max and the ethics hipsters, > comments please? What would Anders 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 spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 26 19:27:42 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 12:27:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <002501ce72a3$3d08b6a0$b71a23e0$@rainier66.com> >. On Behalf Of Stephen Van Sickle Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again >.Spike: Keep in mind that biodad might not even know he has a kid out there. If he is the rakish lady-killer sort, might not even remember biomom. .--steve vs Ja. That is one of a number of possible bad outcomes here. The bio-father could be a rapist. He might be the local Episcopalian minister, a group which takes a dim view of such activities. He could be a drug-addled ex-con. I know the guy's snail mail @, so I could easily punch it in to Google maps and Zillow, look at his house and his neighborhood, to easily find out to a first order approximation what kind of life he is having, but I did not and will not. He and his children are my third cousins, but until they contact me, I consider that whole episode past and they are off limits for now. So I had this guy's address and phone number, so I had the option of contacting him first. But I specifically chose to not do that; rather to give the links but not the specific info to his bio-daughter. She needs to deliberately carry out a series of steps to get the contact now, easy steps but not ones you would do accidentally. In this, I take the lead from the very well-done 23andMe: that test indicates if you are at risk for early Alzheimer's or Parkinson's but both of those indicators are specifically locked. In order to see them, you must read an explanation for what you are seeing, then you go to the bottom and click that you know what you are asking and you agree to it. You cannot accidentally find out on those two items, for there is some justification in some minds for intentionally not knowing that information. Similarly, I left it so the young lady in question can fairly easily dig out the info, even if she is only average intelligence and 1 sigma below average in internet skills, without asking help from anyone else. She has indicated that both her mother and step-father become very annoyed at any questions regarding her bio-ancestry. It sounds to me like she even found out the name accidentally. So I am close to where I started: I see plenty of ways this can all turn out badly. Do I feel good about what I did? No. I feel less bad about it than if I had done anything else. A long-past ambiguously tragic event has been digitally resurrected. It was perhaps tragic in some lives, but one would argue that without that event, this young lady would never have lived, so it is a miracle from her point of view. Regarding the long buried circumstances of her birth, I dug some of the soil off that grave, 23andMe dug some, Ancestry dot com, Facebook, Spokeo all dug soil off of that long-dead and buried event. Now it is up to her alone to decide to open that coffin. I will not encourage or discourage her in any way. I fear the odds of a happy ending are less than even, but I decided I have no right to make that decision, it is not mine to make; that is her right to make that call. Good luck, my distant cousin, good luck and my very best wishes to you and your family. I am with you pal, regardless of what you decide to do, and regardless of what line of reasoning, or lack thereof, employed by you to arrive at that decision. I am your cheerleader, not your coach. I marvel at how dramatically things have changed just in the past decade. In 1989 and 1990, I invested several hundred hours doing genealogy the old fashioned way. Back then there was a skillset. Good researchers could master them. Now it doesn't take much, either in talent or in time. 23andMe supplies a pile of clues, along with solid genetic evidence, that can confirm suspicions or invalidate huge amounts of research, for a hundred dollars. It is the great digital resurrection. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Wed Jun 26 22:40:05 2013 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 15:40:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Echoes of the Invincible In-Reply-To: <20130626085909.GG25587@leitl.org> References: <20130625081105.GN25587@leitl.org> <3DCFE86FEDF448C8A6665FF8CC705BE4@mac.com> <20130626085909.GG25587@leitl.org> Message-ID: <51CB6DC5.4040902@mac.com> On Wed 26 Jun 2013 01:59:09 AM PDT, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 08:39:48PM -0700, Samantha Atkins wrote: > >> Why conflate explicit codifying with being able to build an AGI at all? It is much more likely to be a hybrid of symbolic and sub-symbolic techniques. Significant parts of an AGI need to self unfold/develop from the "seed" which is about the best we can likely come up with as human programmers and system designers. I don't think that any godhood is required. > > I'm willing to bet that we're barely smart enough to crib > off biology, or create boundary conditions for emergence. > Both result in evolutionary systems. > > I think the naturally inspired and expecially naturally > derived intelligences have the best story and track > record so far. > They do within the environment or close enough to it that they evolved fitness for. It remains to be seen how adaptable they are to radically different environments that may or may not be conducive to creating enough of the natural environment within. Personally I think when we can program enough somewhat sloppy interconnected highly parallel artificial circuits into a system that we will see intelligence quite similar to what we see in biological systems. Whether it turns out to be much better than biology produces it any time soon is of course an open question. >> Why is a stable goal system being mixed up with a stably non-evolving society? > > How would you implement a stable goal system in an animal? We probably should clarify, or I should get clarity on, exactly what is meant by "stable goal system" in this conversation. Does it mean? a) concisely described; b) easy to evaluate and reason about; c) unable to drive unexpected actions; d) having an invariant core (supergoal[s]); e) having invariant subgoals.. ??? Or some mixture of the above and other elements? Until there is mutual agreement on this the discussion is not likely to be fruitful. - samantha From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Jun 27 00:06:13 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 20:06:13 -0400 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <000c01ce7296$58bee750$0a3cb5f0$@rainier66.com> References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> <51CB00B9.1010404@libero.it> <000c01ce7296$58bee750$0a3cb5f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 1:55 PM, spike wrote: > So who "outed" my cousin's father? Did I do it? Or was it 23andMe? If > both, would that be 23andMe and me? Or was it grandma, who went through the > old family bible and recorded it all into a software family tree such as > Ancestral Quest, then submitted the file to Ancestry dot com? Or was it > Facebook, who gave me the place and date of my cousin's birth, something she > didn't offer to me personally, but published it to the whole world? Or was > it Spokeo, which is really little more than the modern analog of a phonebook > except with a loooot more information in it? If you wanted to be that for-profit joker I mentioned, I offer this name and slogan 23andWe: Don't do it alone. Between now and that EZ button service offered directly from 23andMe, you have plenty of proles who would rather spend another $99 to have you do the modest digging. My guess is that few cases would really require more than that. (ok, so they might not like the riff on their name) From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Jun 27 00:13:49 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 20:13:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Echoes of the Invincible In-Reply-To: <20130626085909.GG25587@leitl.org> References: <20130625081105.GN25587@leitl.org> <3DCFE86FEDF448C8A6665FF8CC705BE4@mac.com> <20130626085909.GG25587@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 4:59 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > How would you implement a stable goal system in an animal? Threaten/promise: produce or die. It's been a pretty good motivator for a long time. Ok, before you call me on it... "produce and die" as well as "produce then die" have also been evolutionary strategies. I think those are much harder sales pitch to make. Reminds me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNjcuZ-LiSY From sjatkins at mac.com Thu Jun 27 00:34:50 2013 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 17:34:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Please sign the petition in support of aging research in the US In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <51CB88AA.6000707@mac.com> On Sun 23 Jun 2013 12:24:47 AM PDT, Ilia Stambler wrote: > Dear friends > > Please sign and invite friends to sign the petition in support of > aging research in the US. > > http://www.change.org/petitions/u-s-government-prioritize-technological-development-to-increase-healthy-human-lifespans > > We actually plan to proceed toward a formal submission of this > petition to politicians, hence any show of public support of this > initiative will be very helpful. I would rather keep government out of this and other areas of research. Having the R&D and/or its funding subject to politics and politicians doesn't seem at all helpful to me. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Thu Jun 27 00:49:52 2013 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 17:49:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Web=92s_Reach_Binds_N=2ES=2EA=2E_and_Silic?= =?windows-1252?q?on_Valley_Leaders?= In-Reply-To: <016701ce6dc4$5f6894b0$1e39be10$@rainier66.com> References: <20130620141800.GN22824@leitl.org> <016701ce6dc4$5f6894b0$1e39be10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51CB8C30.5090505@mac.com> On 06/20/2013 07:42 AM, spike wrote: > Back in those days, among the actions we derived was to become a group > of people. Every time you have friends over, have them log on to your > computer account, write random emails, do internet searches, generally > obscure your own search patterns. I did that. Over the years I think > there are at least 60 people who have posted stuff under my name or > done internet searches. At one party alone, the one after Extro-5, > there were about 30 people doing that. Now my online tracks have been > made by a group of people some of which I don't even know. Lesson, > especially for Americans: get your friends to post stuff as you. Do > that early and often. spike Surely you jest. Signal to noise ratio is bad enough as it is without throwing out a bunch of crap just to confuse the spooks. I have a hard enough time keeping straight what I actually said and why much less what was not said by me but by someone else to obscure my trail. The real answer is to encrypt everything you can and seek to encrypt the rest for everything except traffic pattern obscuration. I have wondered for a while why there is not a listserv equivalent with a PGP key-pair per mailing list and key-pair generation automated per signed up participant. Message to/from the server uses the keys always. There are services out there for encrypting phone traffic. For a web forum / social network you could do the same thing in groups/communities by not letting outsiders read messages which only exist on the server in encrypted form (say service private key and community public key). For faster browsing you could take advantage of HTML5 client side storage of the clear text if you wished. Worth thinking about and putting together some OS projects? But now we know why your communications can be a bit bizarre now and again, spike. Or at least you have something to put the blame on. :) - samantha > _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing > list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 27 01:03:53 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 18:03:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> <51CB00B9.1010404@libero.it> <000c01ce7296$58bee750$0a3cb5f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <000301ce72d2$323277f0$969767d0$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 1:55 PM, spike wrote: >>... So who "outed" my cousin's father? Did I do it? Or was it 23andMe? > If both, would that be 23andMe and me? ... >...If you wanted to be that for-profit joker I mentioned... Oy vey, I was up to my eyeballs in ethical dilemmas when I was doing this for nothing, with exactly zero external forces. I could scarcely imagine the orders of magnitude greater ethical dilemmas presented if one has a bunch of other motives, among them carrying out what one agreed to do as a business. I would rather make a living as a prostitute than even attempt doing this kind of research for profit. I wouldn't accept money for this unsavory business if I were starving. (The 23 business I mean. Prostitution? Sure no problem.) >...I offer this name and slogan >...23andWe: Don't do it alone... Waaaaahahahahahahahaaaaaahahahaaa! Excellent Mike. Hey just because the ethical dilemmas presented here are driving me nuts doesn't mean we aren't allowed to have fun with it. >...Between now and that EZ button service offered directly from 23andMe, you have plenty of proles who would rather spend another $99 to have you do the modest digging. My guess is that few cases would really require more than that... Ja I am astonished at how easy it has become to find out a ton of stuff, with only a bit of internet mining and modest reasoning skills. Here's another take on all this for you Mike. I am tripping all over myself on the ethics of being the one with potentially harmful knowledge, but I wouldn't give a second thought to the ethics of developing software which just runs, as software always does, cold-heartedly enabling potentially harmful knowledge to be generated. I would help develop an EZ service Go-find-em button. This episode has pointed out to me an ethical blind spot have had for years and never really pondered, one which is related to AI and singularity research. I will participate in development of software which performs duties I would not do myself. I did not and would not tell the information, but I pointed out how to use existing software to get the same info. So I will not be the bad guy myself, but I will explain how to use software which will do the same thing I wasn't willing to do, or even let my own computer code be the bad guy. Sheesh. spike From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 27 01:17:40 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 18:17:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Web's Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders In-Reply-To: <51CB8C30.5090505@mac.com> References: <20130620141800.GN22824@leitl.org> <016701ce6dc4$5f6894b0$1e39be10$@rainier66.com> <51CB8C30.5090505@mac.com> Message-ID: <000d01ce72d4$1ea02cd0$5be08670$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins Subject: Re: [ExI] Web's Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders On 06/20/2013 07:42 AM, spike wrote: >>... Back in those days, among the actions we derived was to become a group > of people. Every time you have friends over, have them log on to your > computer account, write random emails, do internet searches, generally > obscure your own search patterns. I did that. Over the years I think > there are at least 60 people who have posted stuff under my name ... >...But now we know why your communications can be a bit bizarre now and again, spike. Or at least you have something to put the blame on. :) - samantha > _______________________________________________ Hmmm, well actually no. The truly weird ones really were written by me. I did that sex lamas bit, and some of the really goofy stuff. I get in these moods sometimes. Well, depending on what my definition of "I" is. We should be able to do that trick Anders suggested: introduce a sedative directly into one of the carotid arteries, get one brain hemisphere to go to sleep while the other is still awake, post something, later do the same trick with the other hemisphere. We now have three possible cases: left only hemisphere awake, right only hemisphere awake, both hemispheres awake. Then we have a bunch of sub-cases, such as me in a rare serious mood or me in a normal mood. spike From ALONZOTG at verizon.net Mon Jun 24 14:53:06 2013 From: ALONZOTG at verizon.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 10:53:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <1372066941.36364.YahooMailNeo@web165002.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1372066941.36364.YahooMailNeo@web165002.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51C85D52.9040601@verizon.net> Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Alan Grimes wrote: > >> My contention is that 96% of the existing human population would prefer >> to live the way they are now, with only modest upgrades. >> >> The only way to change that number is to apply force. > An odd (and rather disturbing) conclusion. > > Did it take force to persuade most of the people on the planet to move from landlines to mobile phones? I don't carry a mobile phone. The cost benefit ratio is so obscenely bad that it is unlikely that I will ever carry a mobile phone except when it is absolutely required by my job (ie, they won't hire me without one). I make about two calls a month, so each call costs me $25. Furthermore there is an increased risk of cancer from the radio waves... All of my ancestors lived happily without one so I, too, am happy to not have one. -- NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE Powers are not rights. From ALONZOTG at verizon.net Mon Jun 24 15:01:32 2013 From: ALONZOTG at verizon.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 11:01:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <20130624140937.GI25587@leitl.org> References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> <20130624140937.GI25587@leitl.org> Message-ID: <51C85F4C.3070906@verizon.net> Eugen Leitl wrote: > >of the uploaders shut up? Where are all the brave visions? Where is > TeH UpLOADeRZ!!!!111 are getting shit done. Does that scare you? Yes, and I think it should based on their own writings. >> the discussion of what comes after? I remember there being a great >> deal more documentation ten years ago. Where did it all go? Could it > To the implementation phase, of course. The same thing we > do every night, Pinky. (Have you looked at the clouds lately? > Did they look funny to you? Not my best work, I must admit) That doesn't explain why it has mostly been purged off the internet. > >Seriously. we need to Talk about this. This situation of of you > >telling me that I'm going to be dead and uploaded is not a dialog. > > If you want a dialogue, stop behaving like a nutcase. Jeez. Who's the nutcase here? The person who says that we should enthusiastically work towards a future where no organic life exists anywhere in the Hubble volume or the person who wants to discuss alternatives? -- NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE Powers are not rights. From ALONZOTG at verizon.net Mon Jun 24 17:55:38 2013 From: ALONZOTG at verizon.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 13:55:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Playing with google docs Message-ID: <51C8881A.8040607@verizon.net> I wanted to see what would happen if I posted my story (part 1 only at this time) to Google Docs. Here's the link. I'm sorry that part 2 hasn't been written yet. =( https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d9wiR52hpkGnn3A3tqQqBP43lmflR_pXkj2IITa4olA/edit?usp=sharing -- NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE Powers are not rights. From ALONZOTG at verizon.net Tue Jun 25 00:58:59 2013 From: ALONZOTG at verizon.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 20:58:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> <51C7DA8A.1000306@verizon.net> Message-ID: <51C8EB53.7000000@verizon.net> Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 1:35 AM, Alan Grimes wrote: > >> 1. Muster a pose and go after people who would advocate that outcome or >> policies that would inevitably lead to that outcome. > ### OK, let's see - Google is developing AI. IBM is developing AI. > NSA, the Chinese, Russians, Japanese, and their uncle are developing > AI. You want to take on Google, IBM, USG *and* China? > > Count me out of your posse. I want to develop AI too because I think AI can actually be used for good things. =P AI does not imply that everyone will inevitably be destructively uploaded a week and a half later. It does not even imply that the nanites will eat everything. It simply means we have a Bigger Lever to get things done. There are many many interesting things to do with an AI. -- mind meld with it using a BCI. -- give it completely innocuous motivations and a relatively week desire to do anything at all... -- NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE Powers are not rights. From rolandodegilead at gmail.com Thu Jun 27 01:10:46 2013 From: rolandodegilead at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Eugenio_Mart=EDnez?=) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 03:10:46 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Please sign the petition in support of aging research in the US In-Reply-To: <51CB88AA.6000707@mac.com> References: <51CB88AA.6000707@mac.com> Message-ID: Money is money. Dont let pol?tics interfere in the fight against the dragon. El 27/06/2013 02:36, "Samantha Atkins" escribi?: > On Sun 23 Jun 2013 12:24:47 AM PDT, Ilia Stambler wrote: > >> Dear friends >> >> Please sign and invite friends to sign the petition in support of >> aging research in the US. >> >> http://www.change.org/**petitions/u-s-government-** >> prioritize-technological-**development-to-increase-** >> healthy-human-lifespans >> >> We actually plan to proceed toward a formal submission of this >> petition to politicians, hence any show of public support of this >> initiative will be very helpful. >> > > I would rather keep government out of this and other areas of research. > Having the R&D and/or its funding subject to politics and politicians > doesn't seem at all helpful to me. > > - samantha > ______________________________**_________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/**mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-**chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ALONZOTG at verizon.net Thu Jun 27 01:47:49 2013 From: ALONZOTG at verizon.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 21:47:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> <51C62862.30108@verizon.net> <51C73190.7060000@verizon.net> Message-ID: <51CB99C5.9040002@verizon.net> John Clark wrote: > On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 1:34 PM, Alan Grimes > wrote: > > > My contention is that 96% of the existing human population would > prefer to live the way they are now, with only modest upgrades. > > > I think that's probably true (I would have said 99% but never mind), > that would mean that 4% want radical pedal to the metal upgrading, and > that would mean that only 4% have even a fighting chance of surviving > the singularity meat grinder. If anyone has a wish to survive they > must shed the silly superstitions regarding identity and consciousness > that are epidemic in society and even infects most members of this > very list. If they can do that then there would be no reason not to > upload and upgrade just as fast as they can, and if they are then also > very lucky they just might survive. Maybe. Precisely what part of you do you propose would survive such a scenario? > Yes, I don't know exactly what the singularity will be like but I do > know that enormous forces will be unleashed, forces so powerful they > could prove to be very very dangerous to the weak, and perhaps even to > the strong. You have about a 0% chance of controlling what happens > during the singularity, the best you can hope for is to survive it. We gotta work on changing that 0% figure. =| -- NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE Powers are not rights. From ALONZOTG at verizon.net Thu Jun 27 02:09:28 2013 From: ALONZOTG at verizon.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 22:09:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] My mad memetic mayhem. =P Message-ID: <51CB9ED8.9080406@verizon.net> My problem right now is that I want to spread a whole new family of memes. The story that I've been going on and on about (I'm probably 1 / 10th as annoying as the Clinic Seed, which is at the upper bound of annoying at this point...) Part 1 of my story is really about the direction I want transhumanism to go in and so I present a bunch of ideas that you probably never thought about before and raise a bunch of issues that I seldom see discussed. Unfortunately, I rambled on for about 37,000 words. Do any of you intend to actually read what I wrote? If not, how should I go about spreading my memes? One of my biggest challenges right now is that the uploaders have memetically bulldozed all choices between being uploaded and being some miserable wretched creature like Gollum. My story is intended to present a set of ideas that are both attractive, to me at least, and have never been discussed before. So I really would like to talk them over with SOMEONE, even if that someone is viciously(sp?) hostile towards them. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d9wiR52hpkGnn3A3tqQqBP43lmflR_pXkj2IITa4olA/edit?usp=sharing http://www.infowars.com/transhumanism-debunked-why-drinking-the-kurzweil-kool-aid-will-only-make-you-dead-not-immortal/ -- NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE Powers are not rights. From atymes at gmail.com Thu Jun 27 03:18:48 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 20:18:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] My mad memetic mayhem. =P In-Reply-To: <51CB9ED8.9080406@verizon.net> References: <51CB9ED8.9080406@verizon.net> Message-ID: I rapidly lost interest while reading these, but I'll give you at least brief comments: On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 7:09 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: > > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d9wiR52hpkGnn3A3tqQqBP43lmflR_pXkj2IITa4olA/edit?usp=sharing > Gets quite a bit rambly after the first page. You may wish to use shorter paragraphs, and spend time developing the non-narrator characters. Worse, though you probably didn't intend it, the amount of control the narrator apparently has over everyone else makes them into playthings - extension of his whims. That makes them flat and uninteresting in their own right, and calls into question why he is letting them get away with stuff. (You probably meant to convey that they are their own people a lot more, but it didn't come across in a quick reading.) http://www.infowars.com/transhumanism-debunked-why-drinking-the-kurzweil-kool-aid-will-only-make-you-dead-not-immortal/ > This dead horse again. "A copy of you can never be 'you' in the quintessential unreplicatable sense, even if the original substrate no longer exists." That's got the same truth value as the claims that test tube babies are soulless unpeople, just like blacks and women and Indians... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu Jun 27 04:50:45 2013 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 21:50:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Echoes of the Invincible Message-ID: On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 5:00 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: snip > How would you implement a stable goal system in an animal? Evolution seems to have done that with humans. The goal from the genetic viewpoint is to reproduce. But that's not simple in a social animal so evolution generated psychological mechanisms that improve the chances. The most significant one (or so I think anyway) is the human drive for status in the group. Makes sense because during the whole of when our ancestors lived as hunter gatherers it took a certain amount of status to get a wife . . . or two . . . or three. However, if you write about doing things which seem to be driven by seeking status, then don't get hauled up before a federal judge. I was lambasted from the bench over things I had written because I had figured this out. (It's much more accepted today, and judges are the canonical example.) Keith From eugen at leitl.org Thu Jun 27 08:54:29 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 10:54:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] My mad memetic mayhem. =P In-Reply-To: References: <51CB9ED8.9080406@verizon.net> Message-ID: <20130627085429.GH25587@leitl.org> On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 08:18:48PM -0700, Adrian Tymes wrote: > This dead horse again. "A copy of you can never be 'you' in the > quintessential unreplicatable sense, even if the original substrate > no longer exists." That's got the same truth value as the claims > that test tube babies are soulless unpeople, just like blacks and > women and Indians... It's worse, since it implies that other people are not really people, since you can't see out of their eyes. Zombies. Everywhere. From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 27 10:56:20 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 03:56:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <000301ce72d2$323277f0$969767d0$@rainier66.com> References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> <51CB00B9.1010404@libero.it> <000c01ce7296$58bee750$0a3cb5f0$@rainier66.com> <000301ce72d2$323277f0$969767d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <001f01ce7324$f7c9d6a0$e75d83e0$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of spike >... >...I am tripping all over myself on the ethics of being the one with potentially harmful knowledge, but I wouldn't give a second thought to the ethics of developing software which just runs, as software always does, cold-heartedly enabling potentially harmful knowledge to be generated. I would help develop an EZ service Go-find-em button. This episode has pointed out to me an ethical blind spot have had for years and never really pondered, one which is related to AI and singularity research. I will participate in development of software which performs duties I would not do myself. I did not and would not tell the information, but I pointed out how to use existing software to get the same info. So I will not be the bad guy myself, but I will explain how to use software which will do the same thing I wasn't willing to do, or even let my own computer code be the bad guy. spike _______________________________________________ Oy vey, I am obsessing about this, with a belated realization. It is hard to explain why it took so long for me to recognize this ethical dilemma: by submitting my DNA to 23andMe, I have inadvertently outed not only my third cousins, but far more critically, my DNA exposes my male first cousins, second cousins, uncles, father and brother. If any of these guys had anything to hide or anyone to hid from, my DNA out there with my name on it makes it easy enough for any of their illegitimate children to find them. With the information freely available on the internet, it would be easy enough to figure out a list of suspects, then narrow them down one at a time by comparing maternal haplogroup mutation similarities with other DNA relatives. Anyone else could do just as I did with the unknown third cousin, using 23andMe, Facebook, Ancestry dot com and Spokeo, the four headless horsemen of the great digital resurrection. So here I am obsessing about my having outed my third cousin who I never heard of, when just doing 23andMe exposes a bunch of my closer relatives. I guess the object lesson here is that if you intend to copulate carelessly, don't have geeks for cousins; they are too na?ve. They expose secrets you never even told them, because your secrets hide in both your DNA and theirs. That never did occur to me until now, because I wasn't a player in college. Nor in high school, nor since then. But some of my male relatives were. I have not only let the cat out of the bag, I have snatched it out by the tail. Now there may be no way to undo what I have already done. spike From andymck35 at gmail.com Thu Jun 27 11:16:20 2013 From: andymck35 at gmail.com (Andrew Mckee) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 23:16:20 +1200 Subject: [ExI] Transhumanist bashing [was] - My mad memetic mayhem. In-Reply-To: <20130627085429.GH25587@leitl.org> References: <51CB9ED8.9080406@verizon.net> <20130627085429.GH25587@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, 27 Jun 2013 20:54:29 +1200, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 08:18:48PM -0700, Adrian Tymes wrote: > >> This dead horse again. "A copy of you can never be 'you' in the >> quintessential unreplicatable sense, even if the original substrate >> no longer exists." That's got the same truth value as the claims >> that test tube babies are soulless unpeople, just like blacks and >> women and Indians... > > It's worse, since it implies that other people are not > really people, since you can't see out of their eyes. > > Zombies. Everywhere. Oddly perhaps, but I'd say it's worse because philosophical differences aside, the whole article reads like a pro religious anti transhumanist slander fest. I take it the web site is hosted in a country with no libel laws, since I couldn't see a mainstream newspaper getting away un-sued if it decided to post an anti christian rant written like this. My apologies Natasha, perhaps I was a tad too hasty in my earlier brushing aside of your concerns about the words of the evil tongued Alex Jones and his ilk. Is there such a thing as a well funded Transhumanist organization that could put Alex Jones on a courtroom stand and have him defend his slanderous anti-Transhumanist writing? From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Jun 27 11:27:34 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 07:27:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] My mad memetic mayhem. =P In-Reply-To: <51CB9ED8.9080406@verizon.net> References: <51CB9ED8.9080406@verizon.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 10:09 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: > My problem right now is that I want to spread a whole new family of memes. > The story that I've been going on and on about (I'm probably 1 / 10th as > annoying as the Clinic Seed, which is at the upper bound of annoying at this > point...) 1) don't start by attacking someone else's success. Clinic Seed was pretty cool. There are literally thousands of books at the store with less good ideas making tons more money. You might not agree with the premise but Keith gave it to us for free. His story isn't competing with yours even if you do see it that way. > Part 1 of my story is really about the direction I want transhumanism to go > in and so I present a bunch of ideas that you probably never thought about > before and raise a bunch of issues that I seldom see discussed. 2) you aren't in control, stop thinking that you should be. If you really have even 1 genuinely new idea, congratulations. Most likely you have a bunch of ideas that aren't worth the level of discussion that you could casually detect. You know why nobody I talk to has any of the ideas I had when I was 15? Because I don't hang around with 15 year-olds anymore. Maybe the same selection bias is affecting your novel ideation? > Unfortunately, I rambled on for about 37,000 words. Do any of you intend to > actually read what I wrote? If not, how should I go about spreading my > memes? 3) stop trying so hard. It's easy to write too much. Can you cut that monster down to 25% of it's current bloat? A meme, by definition, is a self-replicator. You know how difficult it will be to make a self-replicator that needs an attention span willing to consume 37,000 words? Even if you find it, will it be influential enough in a world of smaller & faster memes to ever propagate itself? Crafting memes is hard work. If you want easier success: put on a funny outfit and hit your head while dancing to a popular song; post video. > One of my biggest challenges right now is that the uploaders have > memetically bulldozed all choices between being uploaded and being some > miserable wretched creature like Gollum. My story is intended to present a > set of ideas that are both attractive, to me at least, and have never been > discussed before. So I really would like to talk them over with SOMEONE, > even if that someone is viciously(sp?) hostile towards them. 4) another of your biggest challenges is that you have an ax to grind and that's just not endearing. If you believe the world (and the future) is a zero-sum game for attention span, then you would tailor you message to winning mindshare from that perspective. If you believe there is an infinite potential, you need only continue creating your content and eventually it will find an audience. Have you tried a blog? Develop conversation via commenting on your blog posts. If you have no comments, find some free advice for making your blog more appealing. Don't be disappointed if the Internet in general isn't ready for your ideas - there's always post-singularity humanity embracing a retro fad. > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d9wiR52hpkGnn3A3tqQqBP43lmflR_pXkj2IITa4olA/edit?usp=sharing Can you break that down and provide links from one part to another? My cooling fan went to high-speed as my scroll-bar view indicator shrank to a tiny line. I found that noise too distracting to read your content. Yeah, I'm being unforgiving. However, I am providing this [hopefully helpful] feedback. Well, to be fair, I waited until it loaded and everything calmed down. I skipped around a bunch... I felt like you are telling me too much by directly stating it. Illuminati, Georgia Guidestones, etc. just seems grabbed and shoved into this story. I'm not really sure what the point is. I would read a second draft. If you share me a comment-enabled version, I'll likely comment as I read and point out the typos (and lose/loose type stuff) > http://www.infowars.com/transhumanism-debunked-why-drinking-the-kurzweil-kool-aid-will-only-make-you-dead-not-immortal/ I saw someone post that in my facebook feed. I didn't read it there either. Honestly, that title slug says enough for me to know I don't care about kurzweil kool aid one way or the other. From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Jun 27 11:38:34 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 07:38:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <001f01ce7324$f7c9d6a0$e75d83e0$@rainier66.com> References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> <51CB00B9.1010404@libero.it> <000c01ce7296$58bee750$0a3cb5f0$@rainier66.com> <000301ce72d2$323277f0$969767d0$@rainier66.com> <001f01ce7324$f7c9d6a0$e75d83e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 6:56 AM, spike wrote: > I guess the object lesson here is that if you intend to copulate carelessly, > don't have geeks for cousins; they are too na?ve. They expose secrets you > never even told them, because your secrets hide in both your DNA and theirs. > > That never did occur to me until now, because I wasn't a player in college. > Nor in high school, nor since then. But some of my male relatives were. I > have not only let the cat out of the bag, I have snatched it out by the > tail. Now there may be no way to undo what I have already done. Stay home from work and watch some daytime TV. You will realize the average prole isn't overly concerned about consequences else they'd be more careful either doing the deed or living with it afterward. We'll likely learn that it's more common than we would have imagined. ex: Our society general frowns on liars and lying, however most people have faked an illness or other excuse to skip a day of school or work. Everybody knows this happens. You would not be exposing the scandal to crunch hard metrics and produce a chart. So quit worrying about this, it's surely no good for your mental health. http://www.wikihow.com/Call-in-Sick-when-You-Just-Need-a-Day-Off From eugen at leitl.org Thu Jun 27 13:38:54 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 15:38:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Father=E2=80=99s_genetic_quest_pays_off?= Message-ID: <20130627133854.GS25587@leitl.org> http://www.nature.com/news/father-s-genetic-quest-pays-off-1.13269 Father?s genetic quest pays off Mutation provides clue to daughter?s undefined syndrome. Brendan Maher 26 June 2013 Hugh Rienhoff prepared his daughter?s DNA for sequencing at home using second-hand equipment. LEAH FASTEN Hugh Rienhoff says that his nine-year-old daughter, Bea, is ?a fire cracker?, ?a tomboy? and ?a very sassy, impudent girl?. But in a forthcoming research paper, he uses rather different terms, describing her hypertelorism (wide spacing between the eyes) and bifid uvula (a cleft in the tissue that hangs from the back of the palate). Both are probably features of a genetic syndrome that Rienhoff has obsessed over since soon after Bea?s birth in 2003. Unable to put on much muscle mass, Bea wears braces on her skinny legs to steady her on her curled feet. She is otherwise healthy, but Rienhoff has long worried that his daughter?s condition might come with serious heart problems. Rienhoff, a biotech entrepreneur in San Carlos, California, who had trained as a clinical geneticist in the 1980s, went from doctor to doctor looking for a diagnosis. He bought lab equipment so that he could study his daughter?s DNA himself ? and in the process, he became a symbol for the do-it-yourself biology movement, and a trailblazer in using DNA technologies to diagnose a rare disease (see Nature 449, 773?776; 2007). ?Talk about personal genomics,? says Gary Schroth, a research and development director at the genome-sequencing company Illumina in San Diego, California, who has helped Rienhoff in his search for clues. ?It doesn?t get any more personal than trying to figure out what?s wrong with your own kid.? Now nearly a decade into his quest, Rienhoff has arrived at an answer. Through the partial-genome sequencing of his entire family, he and a group of collaborators have found a mutation in the gene that encodes transforming growth factor-?3 (TGF-?3). Genes in the TGF-? pathway control embryogenesis, cell differentiation and cell death, and mutations in several related genes have been associated with Marfan syndrome and Loeys?Dietz syndrome, both of which have symptomatic overlap with Bea?s condition. The mutation, which has not been connected to any disease before, seems to be responsible for Bea?s clinical features, according to a paper to be published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics. Hal Dietz, a clinician at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, where Rienhoff trained as a geneticist, isn?t surprised that the genetic culprit is in this pathway. ?The overwhelming early hypothesis was that this was related,? says Dietz, who co-discovered Loeys?Dietz syndrome in 2005. Rienhoff had long been tapping experts such as Dietz for assistance. In 2005, an examination at Johns Hopkins revealed Bea?s bifid uvula. This feature, combined with others, suggested Loeys?Dietz syndrome, which is caused by mutations in TGF-? receptors. But physicians found none of the known mutations after sequencing these genes individually. This was a relief: Loeys?Dietz is associated with devastating cardiovascular complications and an average life span of 26 years. In 2008, Jay Flatley, chief executive of Illumina, offered Rienhoff the chance to sequence Bea?s transcriptome ? all of the RNA expressed by a sample of her cells ? along with those of her parents and her two brothers. After drilling into the data, Rienhoff and his collaborators found that Bea had inherited from each parent a defective-looking copy of CPNE1, a poorly studied gene that seems to encode a membrane protein. It looked like the answer. But questions remained. The gene did not have obvious connections to Bea?s features, and publicly available genome data suggests that the CPNE1 mutations are present in about 1 in 1,000 people ? an indication that there should be many more people like Bea. Unsatisfied, Rienhoff went back to Illumina in 2009 to ask for more help. He proposed exome sequencing, which captures the whole protein-encoding portion of the genome, and is in some ways more comprehensive than transcriptome sequencing. At the time, Illumina was developing its exome-sequencing technology, and the company again took on the Rienhoff family as a test group. The analysis pulled up a mutation in one copy of the gene that encodes TGF-?3 ? just in Bea. In cell culture and experiments in frog eggs, the faulty gene seems to produce a non-functional protein that reduces TGF-? signalling. This mechanism would differ from what many suspect is going on in Marfan and Loeys?Dietz syndromes, in which mutations paradoxically amp up TGF-? signalling. A collaborator of Rienhoff is now engineering a mouse that shares Bea?s gene variant, which could help to clarify whether the mutation revs up signalling or suppresses it. The latest study does not define a new ?Rienhoff syndrome?. For that, Rienhoff and his collaborators would need to find other patients who share Bea?s features and genetic markers. Rienhoff says that he would be relieved if he found an older person with similar symptoms who seems as vivacious as his daughter, who recently earned an orange belt in karate; it would tell him that cardiovascular complications are not pre-ordained. ?If I saw a single case, I might say, ?Hallelujah?,? he says. Nature 498, 418?419 (27 June 2013) doi:10.1038/498418a From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Jun 27 13:49:20 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 15:49:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <51C85D52.9040601@verizon.net> References: <1372066941.36364.YahooMailNeo@web165002.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <51C85D52.9040601@verizon.net> Message-ID: <51CC42E0.9030104@libero.it> Il 24/06/2013 16:53, Alan Grimes ha scritto: > I don't carry a mobile phone. Bad. A mobile phone is like a gun. It is totally useless the majority of the time, but when you really need it, it is a life saver. > The cost benefit ratio is so obscenely bad that it is unlikely that I > will ever carry a mobile phone except when it is absolutely required by > my job (ie, they won't hire me without one). I thought so for a few years. > I make about two calls a month, so each call costs me $25. Furthermore > there is an increased risk of cancer from the radio waves... All of my > ancestors lived happily without one so I, too, am happy to not have one. In Italy we have this strange technology called prepaid traffic. You pay a sum and if you use it, they deduct the costs from your credit. It do not matter how much you do not use it, you just pay this. Because of a tax, you need to recharge at least 25 ? one time in a year. This add to your credit but 5 ? are for the tax. It is weird the US have only an outdated system of subscription and no alternatives. Mirco From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 27 15:07:26 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 08:07:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> <51CB00B9.1010404@libero.it> <000c01ce7296$58bee750$0a3cb5f0$@rainier66.com> <000301ce72d2$323277f0$969767d0$@rainier66.com> <001f01ce7324$f7c9d6a0$e75d83e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <002a01ce7348$0a4c5fa0$1ee51ee0$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty >...Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 6:56 AM, spike wrote: >>... I guess the object lesson here is that if you intend to copulate > carelessly, don't have geeks for cousins; they are too na?ve. They > expose secrets you never even told them, because your secrets hide in both your DNA and theirs. ... >...Stay home from work and watch some daytime TV. You will realize the average prole isn't overly concerned about consequences else they'd be more careful either doing the deed or living with it afterward... Ja but this isn't the average prole. This is a prole with a lot of money. That kind are vulnerable to lawsuits from people who have DNA which indicates the prole sired her and never paid child support. I don't know what happens in those long-cold cases where the contact occurred at a party, no commitments were made, the mother had several similar-looking partners, so no one paid child support, then many years later it becomes possible to determine which is the bio-father. Can the offspring now sue retroactively for 18 yrs of child support? This is legally unfamiliar territory. >...So quit worrying about this, it's surely no good for your mental health... I'll say it isn't. The reason my previous message went out at 4 a.m. is that this has been disturbing my sleep. But it isn't my mental health that concerns me, it is the financial health of my cousin, and the wellbeing of his family. As more and more people sign on to 23andMe, it becomes possible to discover bio-parentage from ever greater numbers of people. We are already to the point where it can be done with second and third cousins, and perhaps fourth cousins with a little detective work. We each likely have hundreds of fourth cousins, any one of which can inadvertently reveal your long lost offspring. spike From pharos at gmail.com Thu Jun 27 15:40:56 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 16:40:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <002a01ce7348$0a4c5fa0$1ee51ee0$@rainier66.com> References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> <51CB00B9.1010404@libero.it> <000c01ce7296$58bee750$0a3cb5f0$@rainier66.com> <000301ce72d2$323277f0$969767d0$@rainier66.com> <001f01ce7324$f7c9d6a0$e75d83e0$@rainier66.com> <002a01ce7348$0a4c5fa0$1ee51ee0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 4:07 PM, spike wrote: > I don't know what happens in those long-cold cases where the contact > occurred at a party, no commitments were made, the mother had several > similar-looking partners, so no one paid child support, then many years > later it becomes possible to determine which is the bio-father. Can the > offspring now sue retroactively for 18 yrs of child support? This is > legally unfamiliar territory. > Being the USA, probably the laws are different from state to state. :) But generally, if there was no child support order made when the child was a minor then after 18 years old, it's too late. The father cannot be liable for unpaid child support if no order was made and the child is now an adult. Backdating changes to existing child support orders is allowed by the court and, of course, the court will enforce payment of unpaid child support orders. (No statute of limitations applies). > I'll say it isn't. The reason my previous message went out at 4 a.m. is > that this has been disturbing my sleep. But it isn't my mental health that > concerns me, it is the financial health of my cousin, and the wellbeing of > his family. > > Yes, I was afraid that at first you were only looking at the situation from the POV of problem-solving to help the young lady. There are three people involved, father, mother and child, all with rights to be considered. This also affects people like sperm donors who were assured anonymity. . But the transparent society is approaching fast and laws and society will have to try and adjust. BillK From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Jun 27 17:05:47 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 11:05:47 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Tools, Intent and Culpability (was Re: 23andme again) Message-ID: On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 7:03 PM, spike wrote: > This episode has pointed out to me an ethical blind spot have had for years > and never really pondered, one which is related to AI and singularity > research. I will participate in development of software which performs > duties I would not do myself. I did not and would not tell the > information, > but I pointed out how to use existing software to get the same info. So I > will not be the bad guy myself, but I will explain how to use software > which > will do the same thing I wasn't willing to do, or even let my own computer > code be the bad guy. > As pattern-seeking, tool-making primates, I'm sure our ancestors have debated the ethical issues surrounding the use of tools since before the capture of fire. There is a rather common consensus that the maker of a tool has zero culpability for the use of said tool. http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/VV14362/policeman-holding-murder-weapon So in the above (fascinating and G rated) picture, one could ask, "What is the culpability of the maker of the horse shoes in the murder? I believe most rational people would say that the culpability of the blacksmith is zero. Horse shoes are not made with the intention of being used for murder. Similarly, the manufacturer of a knife is not held responsible for murders, even though knives are much more suited to this purpose than horse shoes. If you managed to commit murder with your computer, the manufacturer would not be held responsible, even though computers can be used to do practically anything. Then we come to hand guns and assault weapons. Here, for some reason that I cannot begin to fathom, the rules are different. Yes, an argument can be made that a gun is designed to inflict harm, but so is a whip. There are movements afoot to find gun manufacturers responsible for murders committed with their guns. But this makes no sense. They conflate these arguments with those about cigarette companies. The makers of cigarettes, however, had information that their product was harmful for its intended use, and intentionally mislead the public that it was indeed safe. I see no comparison. A gun is usually purchased for play, hunting or protection. The gun does its job. If the gun backfires and injures the user, that is the case where a law suit might be appropriate. The gun did something it wasn't intended to do. Now, getting back to 23andme and computer programs. The harm done by such mechanisms is tertiary to the intended positive outcome of providing people with fun and possibly useful medical information. The negative outcomes are much smaller than the positive ones. As Kevin Kelly said in "What Technology Wants", if things get 51% better and 49% worse, that still makes things 100% better every 35 years or so. We must accept the negative uses of tools like Google along with the positive outcomes. There are cases where I wonder if the positive outweighs the negative. For example, in doing facial recognition on every picture and video on the Internet. That seems like a case where the negative might well outweigh the positive in loss of privacy and potentially very negative outcomes indeed. So while I think some hand wringing is valid, the cases where the negative outweigh the positive are either rare or obvious. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mlatorra at gmail.com Thu Jun 27 17:39:47 2013 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 11:39:47 -0600 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <002501ce72a3$3d08b6a0$b71a23e0$@rainier66.com> References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> <002501ce72a3$3d08b6a0$b71a23e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Spike, It seems to me that you made the "right" (i.e., least wrong) decision in this matter. You supplied the tools/links/directional knowledge. It's up to your new-found relative what to do with them. I have to say, speaking as a mere spectator (someone with no skin in the game) that I'm curious about what she'll do and how it all will turn out. But I don't believe there are high odds that I'll ever find out! Best, Mike On Jun 26, 2013 1:43 PM, "spike" wrote: > ** ** > > ** ** > > *>?* *On Behalf Of *Stephen Van Sickle > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] 23andme again**** > > ** ** > > >?Spike: Keep in mind that biodad might not even know he has a kid out > there. If he is the rakish lady-killer sort, might not even remember > biomom. ?--steve vs **** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > Ja. That is one of a number of possible bad outcomes here. The > bio-father could be a rapist. He might be the local Episcopalian minister, > a group which takes a dim view of such activities. He could be a > drug-addled ex-con. I know the guy?s snail mail @, so I could easily punch > it in to Google maps and Zillow, look at his house and his neighborhood, to > easily find out to a first order approximation what kind of life he is > having, but I did not and will not. He and his children are my third > cousins, but until they contact me, I consider that whole episode past and > they are off limits for now.**** > > ** ** > > So I had this guy?s address and phone number, so I had the option of > contacting him first. But I specifically chose to not do that; rather to > give the links but not the specific info to his bio-daughter. She needs to > deliberately carry out a series of steps to get the contact now, easy steps > but not ones you would do accidentally. **** > > ** ** > > In this, I take the lead from the very well-done 23andMe: that test > indicates if you are at risk for early Alzheimer?s or Parkinson?s but both > of those indicators are specifically locked. In order to see them, you > must read an explanation for what you are seeing, then you go to the bottom > and click that you know what you are asking and you agree to it. You > cannot accidentally find out on those two items, for there is some > justification in some minds for intentionally not knowing that information. > **** > > ** ** > > Similarly, I left it so the young lady in question can fairly easily dig > out the info, even if she is only average intelligence and 1 sigma below > average in internet skills, without asking help from anyone else. She has > indicated that both her mother and step-father become very annoyed at any > questions regarding her bio-ancestry. It sounds to me like she even found > out the name accidentally.**** > > ** ** > > So I am close to where I started: I see plenty of ways this can all turn > out badly. Do I feel good about what I did? No. I feel less bad about it > than if I had done anything else. A long-past ambiguously tragic event has > been digitally resurrected. It was perhaps tragic in some lives, but one > would argue that without that event, this young lady would never have > lived, so it is a miracle from her point of view. **** > > ** ** > > Regarding the long buried circumstances of her birth, I dug some of the > soil off that grave, 23andMe dug some, Ancestry dot com, Facebook, Spokeo > all dug soil off of that long-dead and buried event. Now it is up to her > alone to decide to open that coffin. I will not encourage or discourage > her in any way. I fear the odds of a happy ending are less than even, but > I decided I have no right to make that decision, it is not mine to make; > that is her right to make that call. Good luck, my distant cousin, good > luck and my very best wishes to you and your family. I am with you pal, > regardless of what you decide to do, and regardless of what line of > reasoning, or lack thereof, employed by you to arrive at that decision. I > am your cheerleader, not your coach.**** > > ** ** > > I marvel at how dramatically things have changed just in the past decade. > In 1989 and 1990, I invested several hundred hours doing genealogy the old > fashioned way. Back then there was a skillset. Good researchers could > master them. Now it doesn?t take much, either in talent or in time. > 23andMe supplies a pile of clues, along with solid genetic evidence, that > can confirm suspicions or invalidate huge amounts of research, for a > hundred dollars. It is the great digital resurrection.**** > > ** ** > > 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 spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 27 17:43:15 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 10:43:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> <51CB00B9.1010404@libero.it> <000c01ce7296$58bee750$0a3cb5f0$@rainier66.com> <000301ce72d2$323277f0$969767d0$@rainier66.com> <001f01ce7324$f7c9d6a0$e75d83e0$@rainier66.com> <002a01ce7348$0a4c5fa0$1ee51ee0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <006d01ce735d$ce8fdad0$6baf9070$@rainier66.com> STOP FUCKING! IMMEDIATELY! At least until you read this post please, all the way to the bottom, or if you are in a hurry, read only the last sentence which pretty much sums up the rest of it. >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 4:07 PM, spike wrote: >>... I don't know what happens in those long-cold cases where the contact > occurred at a party, no commitments were made, the mother had several > similar-looking partners, so no one paid child support, then many > years later it becomes possible to determine which is the bio-father. > Can the offspring now sue retroactively for 18 yrs of child support? > This is legally unfamiliar territory. > >...Being the USA, probably the laws are different from state to state. >:) >...But generally, if there was no child support order made when the child was a minor then after 18 years old, it's too late... Thanks BillK. After I read your reply, it occurred to me that it wouldn't need to be 18 yrs later. To get DNA read, all it takes is a few cc of spit. Anyone could do this on a baby; even a babysitting grandmother could collect the sample without anyone knowing, since baby slobber is in plentiful supply. 23andMe doesn't know whose spit they are analyzing or who sent it. They do what software does: takes the sample, does the analysis, dumps the results onto a website where you have the option of revealing your identity or not. Only about a third of the users reveal their identity, and even then, you are not required to use the right one. >...The father cannot be liable for unpaid child support if no order was made and the child is now an adult... Ja, but what if the child is a newborn? With 18 yrs of potential child payments ahead of the bio-father? See the first line in this post please. >...Yes, I was afraid that at first you were only looking at the situation from the POV of problem-solving to help the young lady. There are three people involved, father, mother and child, all with rights to be considered... Ja. I have been working to master the software tools in 23andMe. It occurred to me that ANYONE could have done what I did. Once they get some skills with the many ancestry tools available, they don't need to be a genetic relative to figure out what I found. It helped to verify, since I had a huge clue, that the relationship to her had to be through her bio-father, and he has an oddball name. Later I found she was born in a very small town in a state where abortions are damn near impossible to get, so the puzzle pieces began to fall together easily. The lesson here is that if one copulates carelessly, there is a new threat. It used to be just herpes and AIDS. But now we have a SERIOUS threat, such as the sleazy sorority girl at that party has a mother who can figure out which of the frat brothers impregnated her drunken daughter, and she wants payments on that baby to begin forthwith. >...But the transparent society is approaching fast and laws and society >will have to try and adjust. BillK _______________________________________________ BillK, I made a table of my 100 closest genetic matches. The first column indicates male or female, the second column indicates relationship. 2-4 means second thru fourth cousin. All 100 are cousins. I used the code id to indicate if there is any identification, including just a first name. Reasoning: many of the women use their maiden names in this activity, even if they are happily married. Some of the participants think they are anonymizing themselves but are not. For instance, one guy nicknamed himself by what looked like three initials and a city name, for instance a nickname in the form of ejtashville (intentionally obfuscated.) He may have thought he was anonymous with that handle (which I obfuscated, it isn't really ejtashville). I googled on "ejtashville," found a guy with initials ejt from Ashville who mentions 23andMe on his otherwise uninformative facebook page. That took me less than 10 seconds to find him, along a photograph, with the names of his family members. I have half a mind to contact the guy and tell him if he wants to be anonymous, work harder at it. Note that 35 of the top 100 provided some form of ID. The other 2/3 gave nothing at all. You can contact them thru 23-mail, but you don't know who they are or anything about them. If they choose, they might communicate back with you thru 23-mail, but as far as I can tell, this is a rare form of secure communications from the outside world point of view. There is no way to trace it back to an individual person that I can see. 23andMe needs to know some kind of email @ to contact you when your results are ready, but you can set up a gmail account and use it only for that, or set up a bulletin board anonymously if you wish. 23andMe has no way of knowing who you are, even though they know the contents of your DNA and who you are related to. Note that 24 of the men provided some form of ID, as did 11 of the women. 65 provided no ID and no means of contacting other than thru 23-mail: 1 m 2-4 2 m 2-4 3 f 3-4 id 4 f 3-4 id 5 m 3-4 6 f 3-4 7 f 3-4 8 m 3-4 9 f 3-4 10 f 3-4 11 f 3-5 id 12 f 3-5 id 13 f 3-5 14 m 3-5 id 15 f 3-5 id 16 m 3-5 id 17 f 3-5 18 m 3-5 id 19 f 3-5 20 f 3-5 21 m 3-5 id 22 m 3-5 id 23 m 3-5 24 m 3-5 25 m 3-5 id 26 m 3-5 27 m 3-5 28 f 3-5 id 29 m 3-5 30 f 3-5 31 m 3-5 id 32 m 3-5 id 33 f 3-5 34 f 3-5 35 m 3-5 id 36 f 3-5 37 f 3-5 38 f 3-5 id 39 m 3-5 id 40 f 3-5 41 m 3-5 id 42 m 3-5 43 f 3-6 44 m 3-6 id 45 m 3-6 46 m 3-6 47 m 3-6 id 48 m 3-6 49 f 3-6 50 f 3-6 51 m 3-6 id 52 m 3-6 53 m 3-6 54 m 3-6 55 f 3-6 56 f 3-6 57 f 3-6 58 m 3-6 59 f 3-6 60 m 3-6 id 61 m 3-6 62 f 3-6 63 f 3-6 64 f 3-6 65 m 3-6 id 66 m 3-6 id 67 m 3-6 id 68 m 3-6 id 69 m 3-6 70 f 3-6 id 71 m 3-6 id 72 f 3-6 id 73 m 3-6 74 f 3-6 75 f 3-6 76 f 3-6 77 f 3-6 78 m 3-6 id 79 m 3-6 80 f 3-6 81 m 3-6 82 m 3-6 83 f 3-6 84 m 3-6 id 85 m 3-6 86 f 3-6 87 m 3-6 88 f 3-6 89 m 3-6 id 90 m 3-6 id 91 m 3-6 92 m 3-6 93 m 3-6 94 f 3-6 95 f 3-6 96 f 3-6 id 97 m 3-6 98 f 3-6 id 99 m 3-6 100 m 3-6 I have contacted about a dozen or so of my closest relatives and a few more down lower on the list whose family names match those I know from my own genealogy. I get replies from about half. Some of those on this list might be babies, but not mine I can assure you. If anyone here gets anything out of this post, it is that our hiding places are becoming as transparent as glass. Take heed if you are engaging in careless copulation: if your partner becomes impregnated by you, she can now find you easily enough if any of your even distant cousins have done 23andMe. Over 300k-proles have done 23andME, and the number grows by several hundred a day. I have 993 people on my DNA match list. Guys, see the first line of this post please. Otherwise take careful precautions, especially if you are on some wild fling in Vegas or on spring break in Daytona where you think no one knows you. This is your good old Uncle Spike talking here guys, and I am giving you some critically important advice. I mean it. Parting shot: I pondered BillK's comment and I still think the same as before. If you sire a pup, I feel as though that offspring's right to know who you are outweighs your right to hide. I will not reveal you intentionally, but your DNA will, even if it was a distant cousin who sent DNA to 23. Pay attention and walk circumspectly please. spike From mlatorra at gmail.com Thu Jun 27 18:03:56 2013 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 12:03:56 -0600 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <006d01ce735d$ce8fdad0$6baf9070$@rainier66.com> References: <00e301ce71f9$0afad850$20f088f0$@rainier66.com> <51CB00B9.1010404@libero.it> <000c01ce7296$58bee750$0a3cb5f0$@rainier66.com> <000301ce72d2$323277f0$969767d0$@rainier66.com> <001f01ce7324$f7c9d6a0$e75d83e0$@rainier66.com> <002a01ce7348$0a4c5fa0$1ee51ee0$@rainier66.com> <006d01ce735d$ce8fdad0$6baf9070$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Good advice, Spike. It got me to thinking about this equation: DNA + 23andMe + NSA = WTF?! On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 11:43 AM, spike wrote: > > > STOP FUCKING! IMMEDIATELY! > > At least until you read this post please, all the way to the bottom, or if > you are in a hurry, read only the last sentence which pretty much sums up > the rest of it. > > >... On Behalf Of BillK > Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again > > On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 4:07 PM, spike wrote: > >>... I don't know what happens in those long-cold cases where the contact > > occurred at a party, no commitments were made, the mother had several > > similar-looking partners, so no one paid child support, then many > > years later it becomes possible to determine which is the bio-father. > > Can the offspring now sue retroactively for 18 yrs of child support? > > This is legally unfamiliar territory. > > > > >...Being the USA, probably the laws are different from state to state. > >:) > > >...But generally, if there was no child support order made when the child > was a minor then after 18 years old, it's too late... > > Thanks BillK. After I read your reply, it occurred to me that it wouldn't > need to be 18 yrs later. To get DNA read, all it takes is a few cc of > spit. > Anyone could do this on a baby; even a babysitting grandmother could > collect > the sample without anyone knowing, since baby slobber is in plentiful > supply. 23andMe doesn't know whose spit they are analyzing or who sent it. > They do what software does: takes the sample, does the analysis, dumps the > results onto a website where you have the option of revealing your identity > or not. Only about a third of the users reveal their identity, and even > then, you are not required to use the right one. > > >...The father cannot be liable for unpaid child support if no order was > made and the child is now an adult... > > Ja, but what if the child is a newborn? With 18 yrs of potential child > payments ahead of the bio-father? See the first line in this post please. > > >...Yes, I was afraid that at first you were only looking at the situation > from the POV of problem-solving to help the young lady. There are three > people involved, father, mother and child, all with rights to be > considered... > > Ja. I have been working to master the software tools in 23andMe. It > occurred to me that ANYONE could have done what I did. Once they get some > skills with the many ancestry tools available, they don't need to be a > genetic relative to figure out what I found. It helped to verify, since I > had a huge clue, that the relationship to her had to be through her > bio-father, and he has an oddball name. Later I found she was born in a > very small town in a state where abortions are damn near impossible to get, > so the puzzle pieces began to fall together easily. > > The lesson here is that if one copulates carelessly, there is a new threat. > It used to be just herpes and AIDS. But now we have a SERIOUS threat, > such > as the sleazy sorority girl at that party has a mother who can figure out > which of the frat brothers impregnated her drunken daughter, and she wants > payments on that baby to begin forthwith. > > >...But the transparent society is approaching fast and laws and society > >will have to try and adjust. BillK > _______________________________________________ > > BillK, I made a table of my 100 closest genetic matches. The first column > indicates male or female, the second column indicates relationship. 2-4 > means second thru fourth cousin. All 100 are cousins. I used the code id > to indicate if there is any identification, including just a first name. > Reasoning: many of the women use their maiden names in this activity, even > if they are happily married. Some of the participants think they are > anonymizing themselves but are not. For instance, one guy nicknamed > himself > by what looked like three initials and a city name, for instance a nickname > in the form of ejtashville (intentionally obfuscated.) He may have thought > he was anonymous with that handle (which I obfuscated, it isn't really > ejtashville). I googled on "ejtashville," found a guy with initials ejt > from Ashville who mentions 23andMe on his otherwise uninformative facebook > page. That took me less than 10 seconds to find him, along a photograph, > with the names of his family members. I have half a mind to contact the > guy > and tell him if he wants to be anonymous, work harder at it. > > Note that 35 of the top 100 provided some form of ID. The other 2/3 gave > nothing at all. You can contact them thru 23-mail, but you don't know who > they are or anything about them. If they choose, they might communicate > back with you thru 23-mail, but as far as I can tell, this is a rare form > of > secure communications from the outside world point of view. There is no > way > to trace it back to an individual person that I can see. 23andMe needs to > know some kind of email @ to contact you when your results are ready, but > you can set up a gmail account and use it only for that, or set up a > bulletin board anonymously if you wish. 23andMe has no way of knowing who > you are, even though they know the contents of your DNA and who you are > related to. > > Note that 24 of the men provided some form of ID, as did 11 of the women. > 65 provided no ID and no means of contacting other than thru 23-mail: > > 1 m 2-4 > 2 m 2-4 > 3 f 3-4 id > 4 f 3-4 id > 5 m 3-4 > 6 f 3-4 > 7 f 3-4 > 8 m 3-4 > 9 f 3-4 > 10 f 3-4 > 11 f 3-5 id > 12 f 3-5 id > 13 f 3-5 > 14 m 3-5 id > 15 f 3-5 id > 16 m 3-5 id > 17 f 3-5 > 18 m 3-5 id > 19 f 3-5 > 20 f 3-5 > 21 m 3-5 id > 22 m 3-5 id > 23 m 3-5 > 24 m 3-5 > 25 m 3-5 id > 26 m 3-5 > 27 m 3-5 > 28 f 3-5 id > 29 m 3-5 > 30 f 3-5 > 31 m 3-5 id > 32 m 3-5 id > 33 f 3-5 > 34 f 3-5 > 35 m 3-5 id > 36 f 3-5 > 37 f 3-5 > 38 f 3-5 id > 39 m 3-5 id > 40 f 3-5 > 41 m 3-5 id > 42 m 3-5 > 43 f 3-6 > 44 m 3-6 id > 45 m 3-6 > 46 m 3-6 > 47 m 3-6 id > 48 m 3-6 > 49 f 3-6 > 50 f 3-6 > 51 m 3-6 id > 52 m 3-6 > 53 m 3-6 > 54 m 3-6 > 55 f 3-6 > 56 f 3-6 > 57 f 3-6 > 58 m 3-6 > 59 f 3-6 > 60 m 3-6 id > 61 m 3-6 > 62 f 3-6 > 63 f 3-6 > 64 f 3-6 > 65 m 3-6 id > 66 m 3-6 id > 67 m 3-6 id > 68 m 3-6 id > 69 m 3-6 > 70 f 3-6 id > 71 m 3-6 id > 72 f 3-6 id > 73 m 3-6 > 74 f 3-6 > 75 f 3-6 > 76 f 3-6 > 77 f 3-6 > 78 m 3-6 id > 79 m 3-6 > 80 f 3-6 > 81 m 3-6 > 82 m 3-6 > 83 f 3-6 > 84 m 3-6 id > 85 m 3-6 > 86 f 3-6 > 87 m 3-6 > 88 f 3-6 > 89 m 3-6 id > 90 m 3-6 id > 91 m 3-6 > 92 m 3-6 > 93 m 3-6 > 94 f 3-6 > 95 f 3-6 > 96 f 3-6 id > 97 m 3-6 > 98 f 3-6 id > 99 m 3-6 > 100 m 3-6 > > I have contacted about a dozen or so of my closest relatives and a few more > down lower on the list whose family names match those I know from my own > genealogy. I get replies from about half. Some of those on this list > might > be babies, but not mine I can assure you. > > If anyone here gets anything out of this post, it is that our hiding places > are becoming as transparent as glass. Take heed if you are engaging in > careless copulation: if your partner becomes impregnated by you, she can > now > find you easily enough if any of your even distant cousins have done > 23andMe. Over 300k-proles have done 23andME, and the number grows by > several hundred a day. I have 993 people on my DNA match list. Guys, see > the first line of this post please. Otherwise take careful precautions, > especially if you are on some wild fling in Vegas or on spring break in > Daytona where you think no one knows you. This is your good old Uncle > Spike > talking here guys, and I am giving you some critically important advice. I > mean it. > > Parting shot: I pondered BillK's comment and I still think the same as > before. If you sire a pup, I feel as though that offspring's right to know > who you are outweighs your right to hide. I will not reveal you > intentionally, but your DNA will, even if it was a distant cousin who sent > DNA to 23. Pay attention and walk circumspectly 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: From eugen at leitl.org Thu Jun 27 18:49:00 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 20:49:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <51CB00B9.1010404@libero.it> <000c01ce7296$58bee750$0a3cb5f0$@rainier66.com> <000301ce72d2$323277f0$969767d0$@rainier66.com> <001f01ce7324$f7c9d6a0$e75d83e0$@rainier66.com> <002a01ce7348$0a4c5fa0$1ee51ee0$@rainier66.com> <006d01ce735d$ce8fdad0$6baf9070$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130627184859.GK24217@leitl.org> On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 12:03:56PM -0600, Michael LaTorra wrote: > Good advice, Spike. It got me to thinking about this equation: > > DNA + 23andMe + NSA = WTF?! You actually expected your DNA fingerprint wouldn't wind up in a government database when you mailed in your buffer tube? (It's okay, I always wear my bunnysuit in a clean room, and wipe down anything anyway). From pharos at gmail.com Thu Jun 27 19:01:05 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 20:01:05 +0100 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <20130627184859.GK24217@leitl.org> References: <51CB00B9.1010404@libero.it> <000c01ce7296$58bee750$0a3cb5f0$@rainier66.com> <000301ce72d2$323277f0$969767d0$@rainier66.com> <001f01ce7324$f7c9d6a0$e75d83e0$@rainier66.com> <002a01ce7348$0a4c5fa0$1ee51ee0$@rainier66.com> <006d01ce735d$ce8fdad0$6baf9070$@rainier66.com> <20130627184859.GK24217@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 7:49 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > You actually expected your DNA fingerprint wouldn't wind up > in a government database when you mailed in your buffer tube? > (It's okay, I always wear my bunnysuit in a clean room, and > wipe down anything anyway). > I didn't know you were into Furries. Better change your profile photo to add the long white ears. :) BillK From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 27 19:52:09 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 12:52:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <20130627184859.GK24217@leitl.org> References: <51CB00B9.1010404@libero.it> <000c01ce7296$58bee750$0a3cb5f0$@rainier66.com> <000301ce72d2$323277f0$969767d0$@rainier66.com> <001f01ce7324$f7c9d6a0$e75d83e0$@rainier66.com> <002a01ce7348$0a4c5fa0$1ee51ee0$@rainier66.com> <006d01ce735d$ce8fdad0$6baf9070$@rainier66.com> <20130627184859.GK24217@leitl.org> Message-ID: <00ac01ce736f$d0fa6d00$72ef4700$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 12:03:56PM -0600, Michael LaTorra wrote: >>...DNA + 23andMe + NSA = WTF?! >...You actually expected your DNA fingerprint wouldn't wind up in a government database when you mailed in your buffer tube? (It's okay, I always wear my bunnysuit in a clean room, and wipe down anything anyway). Eugen _______________________________________________ Michael and Eugen, I do confess I never thought about it, but your comments have given me an epiphany. Do forgive me for hammering on this topic, for I think I am at my posting limit for the day. But this is important. Let me make a running start please. Before the last election cycle, our current president's campaign started a meme called "Life of Julia." http://www.barackobama.com/truth-team/entry/the-life-of-julia/ If you find references to Life of Julia now, most of them are parodies, but the above is (I think) the original. Note that there is never any mention of a male partner anywhere in Julia's raising a child. It is assumed from the start that there is no man anywhere in the picture, without question. The message in unmistakable for young women: don't worry about men being there for you, just pick your favorite pair of testicles and get on with it; Uncle Sam is here, we will take care of you. The whole notion was wildly popular with the young and fertile crowd, and was a hugely successful campaign tool. OK fine, but nowhere does it say what happens if Uncle is broke, or cannot come up with the funds for all this. It is easy enough to foresee: the fed pushes the responsibilities back down to the state level. States are much freer to impose conditions on all those social services the fed promised to the young mother Julia. This is as it should be: states should have powers. That is what states are for. If you don't like your state, you have 49 others to choose from, no visa or paperwork required, just a moving van. OK fine then, one of the things states are free to impose on young mothers currently is that they supply any knowledge of the father of the children, so that the state makes sure he is either destitute or is making the appropriate child support payments. Or making payments until he is destitute. Consequence: young mothers never know who those fathers are, even if they have had only one partner ever. The state doesn't require her to know, only to reveal what she does know, and no repercussions if she doesn't know. Is it so hard to extrapolate that state governments will require a DNA sample for any child it is supporting? And is it so hard to foresee that the state will hire people to take that DNA sample from a dependent child and figure out whose testicles it came from? Oh my, this could even be made into an online game. An informal open online group of competitors could be given a scenario, with a challenge as follows: Hortense Hoerkheimer looks and acts a little different from her siblings, but the parents get most annoyed at any suggestion of foul play. Hortense was born in Hackensack New Jersey; her mother's maiden name is Florence Dunkelmeister-Smith. This is Hortense's DNA profile. First to find Hortense's bio-father wins 500 dollars, GO! In the spirit of competition, several hundred amateur internet sleuths go to work, never worrying a minute about the ethical consequences of what they are doing. Game on! We are carried away by the human instinct for loving competition, any competition. We accept that there are injuries to the participants and sometimes to bystanders. Governments can arrange such contests, and put up the prize money, for anyone who applies for government assistance in any way related to their children. So how long will it take for this to spread and grow like a phase change throughout our society? Even if 23andMe is shut down tomorrow and all its records destroyed, there is already enough data out there in the public domain to reveal every secret. State governments are going to want their money, collected from Julia's reproductive partner, regardless of the fact that he is never mentioned in the federal government's vision of her life and that of her child. One of our posters has a tagline that reads "POWERS ARE NOT RIGHTS" but as someone else pointed out, powers don't care if they are rights. Even that is an understatement: powers would rather not be rights, for rights carry responsibilities. Powers free from responsibility, which is why they always lead to abuse and corruption. Powers don't want to be rights, they prefer being just powers. It is clear to me now what I should have pondered a bit more to start with: 23andMe empowers people and governments. This can be either a good thing or a bad thing, or both. I am fascinated and appalled at the same time, which is an odd emotion indeed. spike From romanyam at gmail.com Thu Jun 27 20:53:29 2013 From: romanyam at gmail.com (Roman Yampolskiy) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 16:53:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> Message-ID: Natasha, Check out my newest interview on Alex Jones show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9IlOUphGpc Doing my best to defend Transhumanism. Best, Roman On Sat, Jun 22, 2013 at 2:12 PM, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > Hi everyone!**** > > ** ** > > Have you read the recent writings by Alex Jones and his > transhumanism-bashing? If so, would you like to be a voice of reason on > his ridiculous articles? (And another one which is far-fetched).**** > > ** ** > > > http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/maddow-right-wing-mainstreaming-alex-jones- > (Rachel Maddow suggests Alex Jones is gaining momentum).**** > > ** ** > > > http://www.infowars.com/new-matt-damon-movie-reveals-mankinds-transhumanist-destiny/ > (Alex Jones? site).**** > > ** ** > > > http://www.naturalnews.com/040859_Skynet_quantum_computing_D-Wave_Systems.html > (by Mike Adams which like reading National Enquirer).**** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > Natasha Vita-More, PhD **** > > *NEW* Book: Co-Editor:* **The Transhumanist Reader: Contemporary and > Classical Essays on the > Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future (Wiley-Blackwell > Pub.) Available at Amazon! > ***** > > [image: Final Cover Design_email]**** > > *Adjunct Professor, University of Advancing Technology* > > *Chairman, Humanity+ > > * > > ** ** > > _______________________________________________ > 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: image001.png Type: image/png Size: 13790 bytes Desc: not available URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Jun 28 00:07:02 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 20:07:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <00ac01ce736f$d0fa6d00$72ef4700$@rainier66.com> References: <51CB00B9.1010404@libero.it> <000c01ce7296$58bee750$0a3cb5f0$@rainier66.com> <000301ce72d2$323277f0$969767d0$@rainier66.com> <001f01ce7324$f7c9d6a0$e75d83e0$@rainier66.com> <002a01ce7348$0a4c5fa0$1ee51ee0$@rainier66.com> <006d01ce735d$ce8fdad0$6baf9070$@rainier66.com> <20130627184859.GK24217@leitl.org> <00ac01ce736f$d0fa6d00$72ef4700$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 3:52 PM, spike wrote: > It is clear to me now what I should have pondered a bit more to start with: > 23andMe empowers people and governments. This can be either a good thing or > a bad thing, or both. I am fascinated and appalled at the same time, which > is an odd emotion indeed. Thank you for sharing your buyer's remorse. I have no doubt my DNA may have been extracted from the blood work I had for a cholesterol test. At least the nefarious & stealthy sampling isn't connected to nearly public databases. I'm sure the rest of my information profile is a business asset too. I'd be as willing to spend $99 to keep my DNA/id out of databases as you were to add it into one (likely several) From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Jun 28 01:47:01 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 21:47:01 -0400 Subject: [ExI] the transparent society Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 3:52 PM, spike wrote: > > It is clear to me now what I should have pondered a bit more to start with: > 23andMe empowers people and governments. This can be either a good thing or > a bad thing, or both. I am fascinated and appalled at the same time, which > is an odd emotion indeed. ### The transparent society is coming, we will be transparent to them, the only question is whether they will be also transparent to us. And it's not a question of ethics, as you noticed, powers (e.g. ones called forth into being by the wizards at the appropriately called Illumina) have a way of just nestling themselves into the world, whether we like them or not, so it's better to learn to live with them as well as we can. Talking about powers: Imagine the world of 2025, you are a scheming female who wishes to entrap a high-earning milquetoast. Of course, by now every high-earning man (the few that remain) is acutely aware of the danger of a scheming, fertile female on the prowl for an increase to her otherwise meager Basic Income. No matter what basic instinct drives the female, the prudent male craftily avoids any donation of sperm, knowing that its provenance could not be denied, the way you could sometimes do in the prehistoric 20th century. The hussy is kept behind a wall of high-quality polymer, and the man goes to sleep feeling safe. Little does he know that our destitute female protagonist is going to avail herself of a new power: On demand cloning services. She surreptitiously swipes a small speck of skin, sends it to a shady sequencer in Somalia, has it sequenced, cloned, and cultured to produce spermatocytes which undergo meiosis, producing haploid versions of the milquetoast genome, wiggling their tiny tails in a test tube. Not being able to deny carnal contact, and faced with incontrovertible genetic data, the rich man ends up blaming the polymer manufacturer, and the female laughs all the way to the bank. Yeah, if you think men have it rough today, just wait for the world of tomorrow :) Rafal From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Jun 28 02:17:49 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 22:17:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] the transparent society In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 9:47 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > Not being able to deny carnal contact, and faced with incontrovertible > genetic data, the rich man ends up blaming the polymer manufacturer, > and the female laughs all the way to the bank. > > Yeah, if you think men have it rough today, just wait for the world of > tomorrow :) Or maybe those in power pass some laws that make genetic information an irrelevant part of ownership and responsibility. Remember the "put a ring on it" requirement that made the scheming women of yesteryear 'hold out' until the contractual obligations were official? We're already seeing contracts for celebrity dating; reveal the details and pay a penalty, etc. Those legal contracts will be digitally signed more quickly than even spit-tests can be processed. They'll be easier to enforce too. You might as well get your whole genome sequenced now then publish the whole thing under an open source license. From that point onward you could claim someone used your public-domain genetic pattern to 3D print gametes on demand. If human genes can't be patented and held for profit, they also shouldn't be custom-crafted for extortion. I feel sorry for the pioneers who will have to set the legal precedent in these matters. From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Jun 28 03:25:14 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 23:25:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] the transparent society In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 10:17 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > > You might as well get your whole genome sequenced now then publish the > whole thing under an open source license. From that point onward you > could claim someone used your public-domain genetic pattern to 3D > print gametes on demand. If human genes can't be patented and held > for profit, they also shouldn't be custom-crafted for extortion. I > feel sorry for the pioneers who will have to set the legal precedent > in these matters. ### Indeed, for now the law is not on your side: There is a de facto strict liability standard as far as biological fatherhood goes, illustrated by the case of a 14 year old victim of rape who was sentenced to pay child support to the 35 year old rapist. Not only did she get off scot free, she actually got paid! It's clear that any contract attempting to indemnify a man against unwanted fatherhood would be voided by the court. Eventually the law could change, after a few million-man marches on Washington but this could take decades, since the social animus is very much anti-male nowadays, and unlikely to disappear overnight. In order to avoid becoming the victim of wrongful fatherhood (Is that how you could call this grievance?), non-destitute men will need to use full 24 hour validated recording of their lives to positively prove the absence of any activity that could in the normal course of events lead to fatherhood. Hopefully, the female plaintiff would not be able to claim her child's genes as sufficient evidence of the defendant's fatherhood - she would need to prove the recording to be insufficient or incorrect, barring that she would have to explain how on Earth did she come by the defendant's child without ever having the requisite form of physical contact with him. Should she disclose the cloning procedure as the source, the defendant would claim that the child was conceived by his twin brother, the little colony of spermatogonia in a dish in Somalia and the case would be hopefully dismissed, unless the judge was more feminist than usual. My prediction then is as follows: While today the Tiger hides his many dalliances, his successors would rather meticulously document and broadcast the absence of sexual activity involving any even the most remote likelihood of transfer of sperm to a female. The power of cloning will find its match in the power of Google Glass. Eventually, Google Glass will be built into the Google Woman, a home robot that would obviate the need for unchaste contact and legally prove you don't get any. Rafal From eugen at leitl.org Fri Jun 28 13:22:00 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2013 15:22:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Surveillance 'partnership' between NSA and telcos points to AT&T, Verizon Message-ID: <20130628132200.GQ24217@leitl.org> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57591391-38/surveillance-partnership-between-nsa-and-telcos-points-to-at-t-verizon/ Surveillance 'partnership' between NSA and telcos points to AT&T, Verizon Newly disclosed classified document suggests firms allowed spy agency to access e-mail and phone call data by tapping into their "fiber-optic cables, gateway switches, and data networks." by Declan McCullagh June 27, 2013 2:40 PM PDT The National Security Agency entered into "collection partnerships" with a pair of telecommunications companies that permitted tapping their fiber links. Evidence suggests it's AT&T and Verizon. Want to play a game of "guess who?" A newly disclosed top secret document lauds the National Security Agency's "productive" and long-standing surveillance "partnership" with a pair of telecommunications providers -- that permitted tapping into their fiber links -- but without naming names. This is where things get interesting for clue sleuths. Even in the top-secret document published by the Guardian today, the firms are described only as "Company A" and "Company B." But the NSA's inspector general did disclose that, at the time the program was being formed in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the agency entered into the partnerships because Company A had access to 39 percent of international phone calls, and Company B had access to 28 percent. Those figures closely correspond with Federal Communications Commission data (PDF). The most recent figures publicly available in late 2001, when the carrier "partnerships" were being expanded, reveal that AT&T carried 38.2 percent of international minutes billed to U.S. carriers. MCI, now part of Verizon, carried 29.1 percent. Verizon spokesman Ed McFadden would not confirm or deny his employer's identity as company B, and told CNET today that the company "always requires appropriate legal process" when responding to requests from any government agency. AT&T did not respond to questions. "Collection partnerships" with these two firms have allowed the spy agency to vacuum up e-mail and phone call content by tapping into their "fiber-optic cables, gateway switches, and data networks," says the 2009 report. That's consistent with previous reports that AT&T permitted the NSA to tap into its telecommunications facilities. The disclosures, part of a 2009 report prepared by the NSA's Office of the Inspector General, emphasize how crucial -- and sensitive -- the agency's relationships with U.S. telecommunications companies have become. These relationships also allowed the NSA to take advantage of the United States' role as an international Internet hub, which meant that an outsize share of worldwide traffic flows through the networks of AT&T, Verizon, and other U.S. providers. Even e-mail messages between Latin American and African countries, for instance, are typically routed through U.S. switches because of the lower cost. NSA Director Keith Alexander believed, according to the inspector general's report, "if the relationships with these companies were ever terminated," the agency's eavesdropping ability would be "irrevocably damaged, because NSA would have sacrificed America's home field advantage as the primary hub for worldwide telecommunications." Many of these relationships predated the September 11 attacks that dramatically increased the NSA's authority in a warrantless surveillance program secretly authorized by President Bush. A 1981 presidential executive order, for instance, authorized the collection of "signals intelligence information" for foreign intelligence purposes, which the NSA views as authorizing the interception of phone calls "transiting" the United States. Soon after the 2001 attacks, according to the report, representatives of both Company A and Company B "contacted NSA and asked 'What can we do to help?'" Both had previously been "providing telephony content to NSA before 2001" under the 1981 executive order and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Initially, under the Bush-era program, the NSA was temporarily authorized to intercept "communications with at least one communicant outside the United States or for which no communicant was known to be a citizen of the United States." Then, in 2007, the Justice Department secretly authorized the agency to "analyze communications metadata associated with United States persons and persons believed to be in the United States." Metadata is defined, according to the inspector general's report, as encompassing phone call records and "Internet Protocol" communications, which would include a person's IP address and what company or service they're communicating with. (Verizon turns over metadata of all customer calls to the NSA, meaning the logs of who called whom, every day.) The Guardian's report today also cited a December 2012 document prepared by the NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) directorate discussing classified programs codenamed EvilOlive and ShellTrumpet, which had "processed its one-trillionth metadata record" at the time. The newspaper, which did not make the SSO document public, summarized it as: With this new system, the NSA is able to direct more than half of the internet traffic it intercepts from its collection points into its own repositories. One end of the communications collected are inside the United States. The NSA called it the "One-End Foreign (1EF) solution". It intended the program, codenamed EvilOlive, for "broadening the scope" of what it is able to collect....This new system, SSO stated in December, enables vastly increased collection by the NSA of Internet traffic. "The 1EF solution is allowing more than 75% of the traffic to pass through the filter," the SSO December document reads. "This milestone not only opened the aperture of the access but allowed the possibility for more traffic to be identified, selected and forwarded to NSA repositories." One interpretation of EvilOlive is that the NSA is acquiring the majority of Americans' confidential Internet and phone communications -- or at least the majority flowing through the networks of its partner telecommunications companies -- and archiving them for years. Any subsequent restrictions on access by intelligence analysts would be policy-based, not technology-based, and could be modified in the future to be more permissive. The Obama administration has declined to discuss the NSA's vast collection apparatus in any detail. A statement last week from James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said an analyst cannot "can eavesdrop on domestic communications without proper legal authorization" -- but, pointedly, did not say what "proper legal authorization" meant. In an online chat earlier this month, Snowden said there were few practical restrictions on analysts' ability to target American citizens: NSA likes to use "domestic" as a weasel word here for a number of reasons....The reality is that due to [a 2008 federal law known as FAA 702], Americans' communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant. They excuse this as "incidental" collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications....If I target for example an email address, for example under FAA 702, and that email address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst gets it. All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets saved for a very long time -- and can be extended further with waivers rather than warrants." A document previously leaked by Snowden, the former NSA contractor believed to be staying in the transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, described "upstream" data collection from "fiber cables and infrastructure as data flows past." Documents that came to light in 2006 in a lawsuit brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation offer insight into the spy agency's relationship with AT&T and other Tier 1 providers. Mark Klein, who worked as an AT&T technician for over 22 years, disclosed (PDF) that he witnessed domestic voice and Internet traffic being surreptitiously "diverted" through a "splitter cabinet" to secure room 641A in one of the company's San Francisco facilities. The room was accessible only to NSA-cleared technicians. "This is a complete vindication," Klein, now retired and living in the San Francisco bay area, told Wired today. "They are collecting everything on everybody." During a hearing earlier this month, Alexander, the NSA director, said his agency's surveillance programs were valuable intelligence gathering techniques that have helped to keep Americans safe: Virtually all countries have lawful intercept programs under which they compel communications providers to share data about individuals they believe represent a threat to their societies. Communications providers are required to comply with those programs in the countries in which they operate. The United States is not unique in this capability. The U.S., however, operates its program under the strict oversight and compliance regime that was noted above, with careful oversights by the courts, Congress and the administration....We have created and implemented and continued to monitor a comprehensive mission compliance program inside NSA. Alexander said that an analyst who wants to "target the content of a U.S. person anywhere in the world" must get a specific court warrant." Today's disclosures about the NSA's so-called EvilOlive and other programs highlight the lack of strong encryption that would armor the communications of Internet users against warrantless surveillance. A CNET article last week reported that, with the exception of Google, few large e-mail providers use encryption to protect their customers' privacy. And few, another article yesterday reported, use strong encryption that would shield their customers' Web browsing from government snoops. Topics:Internet, Technology, Politics, Policy, Regulation, Legal Tags:nsa, keith alexander, surveillance, verizon, at&t, national security agency Declan McCullagh Declan McCullagh is the chief political correspondent for CNET. Declan previously was a reporter for Time and the Washington bureau chief for Wired and wrote the Taking Liberties section and Other People's Money column for CBS News' Web site. From pharos at gmail.com Fri Jun 28 13:45:49 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2013 14:45:49 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Surveillance 'partnership' between NSA and telcos points to AT&T, Verizon In-Reply-To: <20130628132200.GQ24217@leitl.org> References: <20130628132200.GQ24217@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 2:22 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57591391-38/surveillance-partnership-between-nsa-and-telcos-points-to-at-t-verizon/ > > Surveillance 'partnership' between NSA and telcos points to AT&T, Verizon > > Newly disclosed classified document suggests firms allowed spy agency to > access e-mail and phone call data by tapping into their "fiber-optic cables, > gateway switches, and data networks." > > Makes you wonder why News International people are on trial in the UK for reporters hacking into mobile phone voicemail. (Usually easy because people either didn't set passwords, or left the default passwords set). The UK government snoops were doing far more detailed hacking and recording. And as Slashdot pointed out corporations and private investigators were also snooping around. BillK From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 28 15:39:13 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2013 08:39:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: References: <51CB00B9.1010404@libero.it> <000c01ce7296$58bee750$0a3cb5f0$@rainier66.com> <000301ce72d2$323277f0$969767d0$@rainier66.com> <001f01ce7324$f7c9d6a0$e75d83e0$@rainier66.com> <002a01ce7348$0a4c5fa0$1ee51ee0$@rainier66.com> <006d01ce735d$ce8fdad0$6baf9070$@rainier66.com> <20130627184859.GK24217@leitl.org> <00ac01ce736f$d0fa6d00$72ef4700$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <003401ce7415$a52b32d0$ef819870$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 3:52 PM, spike wrote: >>... It is clear to me now what I should have pondered a bit more to start with: > 23andMe empowers people and governments. This can be either a good > thing or a bad thing, or both. I am fascinated and appalled at the > same time, which is an odd emotion indeed... spike >...Thank you for sharing your buyer's remorse. I have no doubt my DNA may have been extracted from the blood work I had for a cholesterol test. At least the nefarious & stealthy sampling isn't connected to nearly public databases. I'm sure the rest of my information profile is a business asset too. I'd be as willing to spend $99 to keep my DNA/id out of databases as you were to add it into one (likely several)... Mike _______________________________________________ Buyer's remorse: well, it isn't quite that simple. We can argue that stealth DNA sampling is available to various institutions. 23andMe is an example, the only one I know of, where my DNA signature is available to me. I do have partial buyer's remorse: I would likely do 23 again, but good chance I wouldn't put my name on it, even a nickname, or identify myself in any way. One of the options with 23andMe is to set up an email address with no personal identification (or even use someone else's where you have access) then use a non-identifying payment system such as give an open-minded friend 99 bucks and put the charge in her card. So if you do it correctly, 23andMe has no way of knowing who you are. But theoretically, that DNA can be used for profit: yours. Do follow me please. Early in my career I worked with an engineer who got his start in the late 1950s as the aerospace industry was cranking up in the Los Angeles area. He had a home in the burbs in the Anaheim area which was ideally located for everything, good schools, Disneyland had opened up only a couple miles away, the kids loved it, he could walk to his office when the weather was good, which was most of the time in the LA basin. In 1969, the aerospace industry went into a slump, and his small company suffered some contract losses. He and a number of others were laid off. Some left the area, others tried to find other employment hoping the work would come back. My colleague had two elementary school aged kids and a stay-at-home wife who had no job skills or experience. He chose to sell real estate, but that failed after a few months. He was desperate to try to hold onto that house in Anaheim, so he went into selling life insurance and catastrophic health insurance door to door, along with three other guys from his engineering company. The way this system worked in those days was they could sell the insurance policies, then the policies would go up for resale to a group of underwriters, who would study the characteristics of the client and make bids for the policies in an auction. The four engineering lads soon discovered which policies were worth a lot of money and which were not. The underwriters would not share the formula they used to determine how much they would bid for the policies, that being their proprietary info, but the engineers, being mathematical types, figured it out, at least the big factors. Right about that time a law was passed which forbade insurance companies from using race as a factor in insurance sales or pricing. The insurance majors were disallowed from what amounted to racial discrimination. That law created an industry, for suddenly the insurance majors could not legally do what the door-to-door guys could: they could look at the potential client, the house, the yard, the various big factors such as the presence or absence of ash trays in the home, then make a determination: what kind of insurance to offer, if any. They went into neighborhoods and did cherry-picking of the lowest risk people, who were paradoxically the highest probability of keeping up insurance payments for the longest time. They resold the policies to underwriters. Right after that anti-discrimination law passed in early 1970, those four guys made money hand over fist because the value of the cherry-picked policies went way up (the new law made insurance available to more people but drove up the price of the policies for everyone.) I was with this colleague when he got his earnings statements for 1988, long after he had returned to engineering. His children had grown and left home, and his wife had taken up a 9 to 5. He told me of all this as he looked over his tax statement, and mused that 1988 was the first time his combined earnings with his wife exceeded what he made himself working part time in 1970, not even compensating for inflation which was huge in the late 70s. The point of that story: the availability of 23andMe and DNA sampling in general is creating a huge opportunity in the insurance business. Insurance companies will find end runs around any conceivable law and figure out ways to make money from knowing how to evaluate longevity vs certain DNA markers. With the DNA in hand, the insurance companies need only two more pieces of information, both of which can be easily determined: body mass index and smoking. They don't really even need to know smoking: just write the policy to disqualify smokers specifically, and write it in such a way that the policy does not demand an autopsy to determine if the corpse took up smoking, which might have contributed to early death, in which case the insurance company wouldn't pay. Note to cryonicists: if you have a life insurance policy to pay for your preservation, do verify that payment is not dependent on an autopsy, which could spoil the purpose of your having to policy to start with. The availability of DNA mapping will create enormous potential profit in the insurance business. If you have access to that info, you too can profit enormously. But you need to know how to use it. Insurance companies will go out of their way to prevent your learning how to use it. spike From atymes at gmail.com Fri Jun 28 18:09:21 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:09:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Surveillance 'partnership' between NSA and telcos points to AT&T, Verizon In-Reply-To: References: <20130628132200.GQ24217@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Jun 28, 2013 6:46 AM, "BillK" wrote: > Makes you wonder why News International people are on trial in the UK > for reporters hacking into mobile phone voicemail. > (Usually easy because people either didn't set passwords, or left the > default passwords set). > > The UK government snoops were doing far more detailed hacking and recording. Because the News International folks weren't government snoops, of course. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pizerdavid at rocketmail.com Fri Jun 28 18:51:23 2013 From: pizerdavid at rocketmail.com (David Pizer) Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:51:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Cryonics Convention/Festival Message-ID: <1372445483.58958.YahooMailNeo@web161801.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Need Suggestions (see below) on upcoming Cryonics Convention/Festival ?? Planned PRESENTATIONS?SO FAR ????Aubrey de Grey, SENS? -- A Biologist's View on why cryonics is feasible ????Max More, representing Alcor? ????Catherine Baldwin, representing Suspended Animation ????Stephen Valentine? representing the TimeShip? project ????Cairn? Idun, from the Asset Preservation Group ????Mike Perry,?cryonics historian? ????Ben Best? retired president of Cryonics Institute? talk, "Cryonics in Wikipedia" ????Don Laughlin,?talk = Ask Don Lauglin Anything ????Rudi Hoffman, Cryonics Insurance Expert, The Affordable Immortalist, Maybe you CAN defeat Death & Taxes????????? ????Chana??de Wolf,?presents a research update from Advanced?Neural Bioservices?????????? ??? We?have invited a current representative from Cryonics Institute? ?Plus we are waiting on several more confirmations from life extension leaders and scientists. ? EXHIBITION ROOM 2. There will be an adjoining exhibition room with information tables and/or booths where attendees can pick up literature from leading cryonics and life extension organizations, and perhaps talk with some of their representatives in person.? Any cryonics organization, or any cryonicist individuals that attend the event, can have one info table (at no charge) to display their information,? offer handouts,? sell gifts, books or other items of interest to cryonicists. CRYONICS/LIFE EXTENSION FESTIVAL 3. There will be at least two buffet dinners, combined with informal parties similar to the old Lake Tahoe Life Extension Festivals, in an adjoining room, on Friday and Saturday evenings. This is where you can meet with other cryonicists and make new contacts. We hope to rekindle the spirit of the Lake Tahoe festivals where cryonicists met face to face, which resulted in the record high growth rates in cryonics and drew more resources into the movement to conduct useful research. ADDITIONAL FUN ?4. The Riverside Resort and Laughlin Nevada are great places to hold conventions and have?fun?at the same time. Besides the casino with gambling, bowling alley, several movie theaters, and conventional game rooms, you can swim in the Colorado River and?play on the river's beach. Or you can rent a ski-doo for river fun. And there is the whole rest of the town of Laughlin with several more casinos to explore. THIS WILL BE AN AFFORDABLE EVENT! The rates for the convention, meals, and the rooms will be extremely reduced rates for us as Mr. Laughlin is a long-time cryonicist and wants to help make this an annual and affordable event. You will want to be a "charter attendee" to these conferences! The purpose of this convention/festival is to help the cryonics/life extension movement gain more momentum.??Attendees can gather the latest information on advances in research, make new friends to?associate with, and gain?ideas on how they can work to help make cryonics and ageing reversal arrive sooner.? By attending you are helping the whole movement. ? ?IF YOU have any questions, or suggestions, please send them to me at THIS FORUM. Sincerely. David Pizer, President The Society for Venturism -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 28 18:03:06 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:03:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <003401ce7415$a52b32d0$ef819870$@rainier66.com> References: <51CB00B9.1010404@libero.it> <000c01ce7296$58bee750$0a3cb5f0$@rainier66.com> <000301ce72d2$323277f0$969767d0$@rainier66.com> <001f01ce7324$f7c9d6a0$e75d83e0$@rainier66.com> <002a01ce7348$0a4c5fa0$1ee51ee0$@rainier66.com> <006d01ce735d$ce8fdad0$6baf9070$@rainier66.com> <20130627184859.GK24217@leitl.org> <00ac01ce736f$d0fa6d00$72ef4700$@rainier66.com> <003401ce7415$a52b32d0$ef819870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <004a01ce7429$be20e0f0$3a62a2d0$@rainier66.com> >>. 23andMe empowers people and governments. This can be either a good > thing or a bad thing, or both. I am fascinated and appalled at the > same time, which is an odd emotion indeed... spike >...Thank you for sharing your buyer's remorse. Mike _______________________________________________ Please, a little humor from a headline typo: OK so even the news majors are talking about found fathers frowning next week. {8^D Apologies, I just *found* it humorous considering the timing and context. {8-] 23andMe empowers anyone with a hundred bucks to determine patrimony, so now we have a number of fathers found by long-forgotten offspring. Many of these found fathers may be frowning. But it also empowers a number of fathers who may be paying child support and who likely get occasional custody to collect a DNA sample to verify if his was indeed the lucky sperm at the frat party. Perhaps he was identified by the young mother, only because a quick Spokeo search showed he was the frat brother from the most wealthy family, or identified as the one most likely to keep up the payments on the offspring. The rich guy can collect some baby drool, look around for his frat brothers' cousins on 23andMe, figure out who is the real father. This is new: the number of participants on 23andMe has reached critical mass just in the past couple years to enable this kind of thing. We have empowered insurance companies to watch those who have made their DNA profiles public, along with their identity. A surprising number of 23ers have opted to do that. Insurance companies, or anyone for that matter, can watch the obits, correlate back and determine which genetic profiles are associated with which diseases and how much they cost to treat, which genetic profiles are associated with long or short life, etc. So we have suddenly enabled DNA-based health insurance. If the government moves to make DNA-based insurance illegal, the profit for doing stealth DNA-based insurance goes stratospheric. There is on 23andMe a forum dedicated to longevity. I have not hung out there, but it sounds interesting. I don't know if one must be a 23 participant to get in there; I think you do. You can bet the life insurance companies are watching that carefully, for there is a bunch of info which isn't available by other means. For instance, a 23er could post something like: "I am 78, my father lived to by 92, my mother is still alive and relatively well at 96." Life insurance companies would then stealthily offer her insurance cheaper than anyone anywhere after they verified what she posted. Those same insurance companies could offer long-lived people discount insurance in exchange for the keys to the DNA markers. My point: we are entering a new era, when health and life insurance prices will be determined by your DNA and two lifestyle indicators: smoking and BMI. There is no way to stop that by legal means, for any attempt to do so creates an industry: end runs around any law forbidding DNA-based insurance pricing. There is no way to stop insurance companies from offering discounts based on DNA but identified as something else, such as special discounts for those who drive a Prius, were born on a full moon in September (good luck is known to come to those people) and who studied at Fremont high school. The discounts could be tailored to fit exactly one person or family, as needed, and never mention DNA as a criterion. Laws can be made to stop insurance companies from *requiring* DNA samples, but no conceivable law could prevent the companies from offering stealth discounts to those who do supply DNA. 23andMe empowers insurance companies to find the cherry trees and start picking. Just as in 1970, once the risk-cherries are picked, the remaining risk pool gets riskier and more expensive to insure. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: image004.png Type: application/octet-stream Size: 29892 bytes Desc: not available URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Fri Jun 28 23:00:07 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2013 01:00:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] 23andme again In-Reply-To: <00ac01ce736f$d0fa6d00$72ef4700$@rainier66.com> References: <51CB00B9.1010404@libero.it> <000c01ce7296$58bee750$0a3cb5f0$@rainier66.com> <000301ce72d2$323277f0$969767d0$@rainier66.com> <001f01ce7324$f7c9d6a0$e75d83e0$@rainier66.com> <002a01ce7348$0a4c5fa0$1ee51ee0$@rainier66.com> <006d01ce735d$ce8fdad0$6baf9070$@rainier66.com> <20130627184859.GK24217@leitl.org> <00ac01ce736f$d0fa6d00$72ef4700$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51CE1577.3040104@libero.it> Il 27/06/2013 21:52, spike ha scritto: >> ...You actually expected your DNA fingerprint wouldn't wind up in a >> government database when you mailed in your buffer tube? > (It's okay, I always wear my bunnysuit in a clean room, and wipe down > anything anyway). Eugen > _______________________________________________ > > Michael and Eugen, I do confess I never thought about it, but your comments > have given me an epiphany. Do forgive me for hammering on this topic, for I > think I am at my posting limit for the day. But this is important. Let me > make a running start please. > > Before the last election cycle, our current president's campaign started a > meme called "Life of Julia." > > http://www.barackobama.com/truth-team/entry/the-life-of-julia/ Spike, do you understand DNA could be extracted from near any cell and injected in eggs, to produce an son or daughter? Given a DNA sample good enough people could fertilize a woman egg and have a child of an involuntary father. Do you want frame someone? Collect DNA, impregnate a woman with it, she deliver a baby nine months after, force the "father" to pay child support. Do it enough times and he will end in jail for being a deathbed father, will not have enough time to be a trouble or will be forced to emigrate somewhere else outside the US. Collect DNA from Bill Gates III, find willing woman, she deliver one or more children, profit from child support from the wealthiest guy in the world. Mirco From dan_ust at yahoo.com Sat Jun 29 12:14:56 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan Ust) Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2013 06:14:56 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Debate on Popper's views of induction Message-ID: <59F95783-2AFF-4B69-BD55-EDF96BA2F423@yahoo.com> Thought this might be of interest: http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9191#entry107292 That's George H. Smith, a critic of Popper and PCR, debating Daniel Barnes, a proponent of ditto. Regards, Dan See my SF short story "Residue": http://www.amazon.com/Residue-ebook/dp/B00BS3T0RM/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Sun Jun 30 01:11:48 2013 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2013 18:11:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing In-Reply-To: References: <01a701ce6f74$03b20190$0b1604b0$@natasha.cc> Message-ID: <000001ce752e$cbe94190$63bbc4b0$@natasha.cc> Alex Jones's hysteria appears cartoon-like. He is totally misinformed and irrational. Good for you to try to reason with him. Natasha Vita-More, PhD NEW Book: Co-Editor: The Transhumanist Reader: Contemporary and Classical Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future (Wiley-Blackwell Pub.) Available at Amazon! Final Cover Design_email Adjunct Professor, University of Advancing Technology Chairman, Humanity+ From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Roman Yampolskiy Sent: Thursday, June 27, 2013 1:53 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing Natasha, Check out my newest interview on Alex Jones show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9IlOUphGpc Doing my best to defend Transhumanism. Best, Roman On Sat, Jun 22, 2013 at 2:12 PM, Natasha Vita-More wrote: Hi everyone! Have you read the recent writings by Alex Jones and his transhumanism-bashing? If so, would you like to be a voice of reason on his ridiculous articles? (And another one which is far-fetched). http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/maddow-right-wing-mainstreaming-alex-jones- (Rachel Maddow suggests Alex Jones is gaining momentum). http://www.infowars.com/new-matt-damon-movie-reveals-mankinds-transhumanist- destiny/ (Alex Jones' site). http://www.naturalnews.com/040859_Skynet_quantum_computing_D-Wave_Systems.ht ml (by Mike Adams which like reading National Enquirer). Natasha Vita-More, PhD NEW Book: Co-Editor: The Transhumanist Reader: Contemporary and Classical Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future (Wiley-Blackwell Pub.) Available at Amazon! Final Cover Design_email Adjunct Professor, University of Advancing Technology Chairman, Humanity+ _______________________________________________ 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: image001.png Type: image/png Size: 13790 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 30 15:30:45 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 08:30:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] good news bad news for germans Message-ID: <003b01ce75a6$cad264d0$60772e70$@rainier66.com> Eugen, the good news is that the German government is not tapping your phone calls. The bad news is. http://news.yahoo.com/u-taps-half-billion-german-phone-internet-links-093938 180.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sun Jun 30 23:57:21 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:57:21 +0100 Subject: [ExI] good news bad news for germans In-Reply-To: <003b01ce75a6$cad264d0$60772e70$@rainier66.com> References: <003b01ce75a6$cad264d0$60772e70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51D0C5E1.8000806@aleph.se> And conversely, TeliaSonera International Carrier is a Tier 1 internet backbone with headquarters in Stockholm. By law the Swedish Defence Radio Authority can warrantlessly wiretap all telephone and Internet traffic that crosses Sweden's borders. But don't worry, they only act in the national interest... -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University