From msd001 at gmail.com Wed May 1 00:47:55 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:47:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: References: <1366603687.3168.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130424064540.GP15179@leitl.org> <1366787228.97128.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130424081616.GS15179@leitl.org> <5177E4B5.20401@aleph.se> <20130424145021.GV15179@leitl.org> <517C2F04.5010800@canonizer.com> <5E69A8EB-619E-423B-B845-EDC24032843A@gmail.com> <517D3CEC.5030307@canonizer.com> <39CCF149-55A5-4BB8-A617-4C519C48E767@gmail.com> <517D5B94.7030105@canonizer.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 1:37 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: > Another critical problem, at least with your terminology, is that much of it > is not focusing on the right thing. It is focusing more on picking the > For you guys that still aren?t getting it, let?s make this so elementary it > is impossible to miss. Let?s make an even more simplified theoretical > model, and hand hold you through every single step of the transmigration [snipped 3 pages of text] Another critical problem with terminology is that more of it doesn't make things elementary. I challenge you to present less of your words and more of mine (or spike's) so that those who would learn qualia do not need to first learn other new words. When I mentioned this thread to my wife (and forwarded some of my examples) she asked, "So if I eat a piece of cheese, the experience of cheese is something I know I'm having because of my awareness of this piece of cheese with all the other pieces of cheese I've ever eaten. And I recognize the commonality between them is cheesiness?" In that sense, no two people have exactly the same understanding/appreciation of "cheesy" but we can still agree that this property exists independently of any slice of cheddar or cube of swiss. btw, spike: what do you propose for the name of the unit of quantitative measure of a quale? (not to be confused with Quayle) From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 1 01:25:13 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:25:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: References: <1366603687.3168.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130424064540.GP15179@leitl.org> <1366787228.97128.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130424081616.GS15179@leitl.org> <5177E4B5.20401@aleph.se> <20130424145021.GV15179@leitl.org> <517C2F04.5010800@canonizer.com> <5E69A8EB-619E-423B-B845-EDC24032843A@gmail.com> <517D3CEC.5030307@canonizer.com> <39CCF149-55A5-4BB8-A617-4C519C48E767@gmail.com> <517D5B94.7030105@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <014001ce460a$bd235630$376a0290$@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 ... >...btw, spike: what do you propose for the name of the unit of quantitative measure of a quale? (not to be confused with Quayle) _______________________________________________ Dunno. Quant is taken. Quante? Many quante are a quantia? spike From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 1 03:24:39 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:24:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: <014001ce460a$bd235630$376a0290$@rainier66.com> References: <1366603687.3168.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130424064540.GP15179@leitl.org> <1366787228.97128.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130424081616.GS15179@leitl.org> <5177E4B5.20401@aleph.se> <20130424145021.GV15179@leitl.org> <517C2F04.5010800@canonizer.com> <5E69A8EB-619E-423B-B845-EDC24032843A@gmail.com> <517D3CEC.5030307@canonizer.com> <39CCF149-55A5-4BB8-A617-4C519C48E767@gmail.com> <517D5B94.7030105@canonizer.com> <014001ce460a$bd235630$376a0290$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <014a01ce461b$6b090e60$411b2b20$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2013 6:25 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: Re: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty ... >...btw, spike: what do you propose for the name of the unit of quantitative measure of a quale? (not to be confused with Quayle) _______________________________________________ >...Dunno. Quant is taken. Quante? Many quante are a quantia? spike _______________________________________________ Rather, I had only one quante, but now I have a bunch of quantia. As in many soft sciences, as soon as we can get some kind of hard numbers, the credibility of the field and my own confidence in it goes up dramatically. I am more a numbers guy than a words guy. spike From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed May 1 05:29:30 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan Ust) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 01:29:30 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Time crystals? Message-ID: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/04/time-crystals Mathematical artifact or real possibility? 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 anders at aleph.se Wed May 1 07:47:16 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 01 May 2013 08:47:16 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Time crystals? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5180C884.1030203@aleph.se> On 01/05/2013 06:29, Dan Ust wrote: > http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/04/time-crystals > > Mathematical artifact or real possibility? Doesn't seem to be that weird to me. Since time and space can be rotated into each other there should be temporal counterparts to spatial crystals. Of course, loads of people will say stupid things about perpetual motion in regards to the crystals, but these crystals can't do any work. It is a bit like how helium can be fluid at absolute zero: just because the temperature is zero doesn't mean there is no motion. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Wed May 1 07:52:05 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 01 May 2013 08:52:05 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Quoting previous posts In-Reply-To: <010e01ce45ea$8fd72af0$af8580d0$@rainier66.com> References: <002901ce45d9$e10a4710$a31ed530$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <010e01ce45ea$8fd72af0$af8580d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <5180C9A5.9020301@aleph.se> NO dammit! limit. Bottom time posting a only sets please, it and because trim useful your is replies posting so spiral it think makes I the Personally archives more Harvey! readable back thanks. Welcome spike Indeed! PS Harvey's back! Let's have a good old time extropian welcome home. This forum has had a Harvey-shaped hole in it for the last several years. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed May 1 08:26:25 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 01:26:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <014001ce4455$74a67ce0$5df376a0$@comcast.net> <20130429051806.GB8102@leitl.org> <000501ce44d5$0e901710$2bb04530$@comcast.net> <20130430074418.GO5257@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1367396785.42832.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Aug 20, 2012, at 4:17 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > FUCK YOU VERY MUCH, John. This is the only kind of response you'll be getting from me henceforth for a couple years: FUCK YOU. I hate to see this kind of language, but I can't say that I disagree with the sentiment. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Wed May 1 13:00:19 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 09:00:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Time crystals? In-Reply-To: <5180C884.1030203@aleph.se> References: <5180C884.1030203@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 3:47 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 01/05/2013 06:29, Dan Ust wrote: > > http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/04/time-crystals > > Mathematical artifact or real possibility? > > > Doesn't seem to be that weird to me. Since time and space can be rotated > into each other there should be temporal counterparts to spatial crystals. > Of course, loads of people will say stupid things about perpetual motion in > regards to the crystals, but these crystals can't do any work. > > It is a bit like how helium can be fluid at absolute zero: just because the > temperature is zero doesn't mean there is no motion. perpetual motion ... like looking at this: http://www.anopticalillusion.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Optical_Illusion_by_cybernation.jpg "I've been looking at it for hours, it keeps moving with no visible power source... mind=blown" :) From msd001 at gmail.com Wed May 1 13:17:59 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 09:17:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: <014a01ce461b$6b090e60$411b2b20$@rainier66.com> References: <1366603687.3168.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130424064540.GP15179@leitl.org> <1366787228.97128.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130424081616.GS15179@leitl.org> <5177E4B5.20401@aleph.se> <20130424145021.GV15179@leitl.org> <517C2F04.5010800@canonizer.com> <5E69A8EB-619E-423B-B845-EDC24032843A@gmail.com> <517D3CEC.5030307@canonizer.com> <39CCF149-55A5-4BB8-A617-4C519C48E767@gmail.com> <517D5B94.7030105@canonizer.com> <014001ce460a$bd235630$376a0290$@rainier66.com> <014a01ce461b$6b090e60$411b2b20$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 11:24 PM, spike wrote: > Rather, I had only one quante, but now I have a bunch of quantia. > > As in many soft sciences, as soon as we can get some kind of hard numbers, > the credibility of the field and my own confidence in it goes up > dramatically. I am more a numbers guy than a words guy. that doesn't look anything like an SI unit. We need to be able to measure a planck-scale-quale, count up a mole of qualia and define that a quante. It will just contribute to the confusion if arbitrarily "many" quante magically become quantia: We should stick with the SI convention and refer to megaquante (Mq) 'fading' down to kiloquante (Kq) then all the way down the microquante (?q) or the barely-perceptible picoquante (pq) [which everyone would intrinsically 'mind' because of the old adage] here's some familiar numbers for you: 5.39121e-44 s 2.17645e-8 kg 1.616252e-35 m 6.0221413e+23 "planck-scale-quale" hehe From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Wed May 1 14:56:44 2013 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 10:56:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Quoting previous posts In-Reply-To: <5180C9A5.9020301@aleph.se> References: <002901ce45d9$e10a4710$a31ed530$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <010e01ce45ea$8fd72af0$af8580d0$@rainier66.com> <5180C9A5.9020301@aleph.se> Message-ID: <001301ce467c$190b40e0$4b21c2a0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Spike wrote: > NO > dammit! limit. > Bottom time > posting a > only sets > please, it > and because > trim useful > your is > replies posting > so spiral > it think > makes I > the Personally > archives > more Harvey! > readable back > thanks. Welcome > spike Indeed! :etorw srednA Spiral posting only sets a time limit if it doesn't mutate into fractal posting. That could take forever. (And has too much repetitive quoting.) From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 1 15:17:43 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 08:17:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] dopers vs coffee drinkers quale contest, was: RE: Time crystals? Message-ID: <01ca01ce467f$07c78430$17568c90$@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 ... >...perpetual motion ... like looking at this: http://www.anopticalillusion.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Optical_Illusion _by_cybernation.jpg >..."I've been looking at it for hours, it keeps moving with no visible power source... mind=blown" :) _______________________________________________ Ja me too, cool! Every time I look at this, the wheels seem to be turning to the left, as does for my bride and my son. Does anyone here perceive rotation to the right? If so, you probably immediately figured out why funeral-girl killed her sister last week. (Kidding bygones.) If everyone (or at least every sane person) perceives the wheels as turning to the left, I have an idea. This is a computer graphic, so we could rig this image with a script which actually rotates the concentric wheels gradually to the right. If we did series of these at various speeds and had a bunch of proles gaze at them, one of the scripted right-rotating images should exactly compensate the falsely perceived left rotation. Then we get to see if everyone falsely perceives approximately the same rate, or does caffeine affect the perceived rate, or THC or alcohol. We get each prole to choose the image which appears to not be rotating, then take the average rotation rate image, and show that one to people exposed to various qualia-altering chemicals. Perhaps the sober people would see the image exactly stopped, the caffeiners rotating left, the stoners rotating right. Or it might not work that way at all: the sobers would see the image stopped, the drunks and stoners wouldn't care which way they turned but would enjoy the experience anyway, and the caffeiners would be whooping ass and urging everyone to stop gazing at computer images and get to work, forthwith. Mike now see what you started? Note to Brent and the qualia hipsters: this leftward rotation is an interesting quale, and evidence of what Gordon has been trying to tell us. I can imagine a really humanlike AGI which would look at this and perceive no rotation at all, regardless of how hard it tries. You try to explain to it that the wheels appear to turn left and all it can do is look at you in puzzlement and make comments such as "You and funeral-girl, stay away from me please, you make me nervous." spike From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 1 15:20:29 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 08:20:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: References: <1366603687.3168.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130424064540.GP15179@leitl.org> <1366787228.97128.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130424081616.GS15179@leitl.org> <5177E4B5.20401@aleph.se> <20130424145021.GV15179@leitl.org> <517C2F04.5010800@canonizer.com> <5E69A8EB-619E-423B-B845-EDC24032843A@gmail.com> <517D3CEC.5030307@canonizer.com> <39CCF149-55A5-4BB8-A617-4C519C48E767@gmail.com> <517D5B94.7030105@canonizer.com> <014001ce460a$bd235630$376a0290$@rainier66.com> <014a01ce461b$6b090e60$411b2b20$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <01cb01ce467f$6afab810$40f02830$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty Subject: Re: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 11:24 PM, spike wrote: > Rather, I had only one quante, but now I have a bunch of quantia. > >>... As in many soft sciences, as soon as we can get some kind of hard > numbers, the credibility of the field and my own confidence in it goes > up dramatically. I am more a numbers guy than a words guy. >... We need to be able to measure a planck-scale-quale... [which everyone would intrinsically 'mind' because of the old adage] >...here's some familiar numbers for you: 5.39121e-44 s 2.17645e-8 kg 1.616252e-35 m 6.0221413e+23 >..."planck-scale-quale" hehe _______________________________________________ My confidence in the quale notion is already increasing by several kiloqualia. spike From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed May 1 15:38:22 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 11:38:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: <1367352829.89452.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <5E69A8EB-619E-423B-B845-EDC24032843A@gmail.com> <517D3CEC.5030307@canonizer.com> <39CCF149-55A5-4BB8-A617-4C519C48E767@gmail.com> <517D5B94.7030105@canonizer.com> <01cf01ce4479$6735e540$35a1afc0$@rainier66.com> <20130429062515.GF8102@leitl.org> <20130430074217.GN5257@leitl.org> <1367312336.68615.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130430095906.GS5257@leitl.org> <1367352829.89452.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 4:13 PM, Gordon wrote: > nobody yet knows how ordinary matter can become mindful. > And yet somehow you Gordon Swobe "knows" that ordinary matter in the form of your fellow human beings have a mind, at least when they are not sleeping or under anesthesia or dead. AND somehow you Gordon Swobe "knows" that ordinary matter in the form of a computer can never have a mind no matter how brilliantly it behaves. That must be a rather difficult trick to pull off considering that you Gordon Swobe don't know how ordinary matter can become mindful. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Wed May 1 17:07:34 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 13:07:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] dopers vs coffee drinkers quale contest, was: RE: Time crystals? In-Reply-To: <01ca01ce467f$07c78430$17568c90$@rainier66.com> References: <01ca01ce467f$07c78430$17568c90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 11:17 AM, spike wrote: > Every time I look at this, the wheels seem to be turning to the left, as > does for my bride and my son. Does anyone here perceive rotation to the > right? If so, you probably immediately figured out why funeral-girl killed > her sister last week. (Kidding bygones.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_Dancer If you know that there are some who see the alternate rotation you can look for it. (you're really looking into / debugging your own mind's interpretation of your vision) I think it's easiest to see the other direction when the leg is pointed either towards or away from you. It will change direction in the same way that a necker cube will "pop" in or out depending on which visual cues you are normally anchored to and which are alternate for you. Once you get comfortable with that perception transition, you should be able to perceive not simply a clockwise or counter-clockwise pirouette, but a dancer wagging a forward-facing leg left and right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necker_cube > Mike now see what you started? Yeah, here's an audio version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone Is the tone ascending or descending? > Note to Brent and the qualia hipsters: this leftward rotation is an > interesting quale, and evidence of what Gordon has been trying to tell us. > I can imagine a really humanlike AGI which would look at this and perceive > no rotation at all, regardless of how hard it tries. You try to explain to > it that the wheels appear to turn left and all it can do is look at you in > puzzlement and make comments such as "You and funeral-girl, stay away from > me please, you make me nervous." Making an artificial intelligence capable of "experiencing" the exploitation of its visual system in order to appreciate the illusion feels wrong to me. If the AI has an analog of fear (concern for immanent damage) then such exploitation might trigger alarms. This might explain more simply: http://www.123opticalillusions.com/opt37.htm Then again, who knows what novel experience AI will "enjoy." From msd001 at gmail.com Wed May 1 17:09:49 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 13:09:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Quoting previous posts In-Reply-To: <001301ce467c$190b40e0$4b21c2a0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> References: <002901ce45d9$e10a4710$a31ed530$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <010e01ce45ea$8fd72af0$af8580d0$@rainier66.com> <5180C9A5.9020301@aleph.se> <001301ce467c$190b40e0$4b21c2a0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > > :etorw srednA > > Spiral posting only sets a time limit if it doesn't mutate into fractal > posting. > > That could take forever. (And has too much repetitive quoting.) > I feel like I've seen this comment before at another scale... From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Wed May 1 17:20:33 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Wed, 01 May 2013 11:20:33 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: <014001ce460a$bd235630$376a0290$@rainier66.com> References: <1366603687.3168.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <517C2F04.5010800@canonizer.com> <5E69A8EB-619E-423B-B845-EDC24032843A@gmail.com> <517D3CEC.5030307@canonizer.com> <39CCF149-55A5-4BB8-A617-4C519C48E767@gmail.com> <517D5B94.7030105@canonizer.com> <014001ce460a$bd235630$376a0290$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51814EE1.3080507@canonizer.com> Theoreticians, Very good points! The entire purpose of creating Canonizer.com, was on the premise that communication and terminology is the biggest problem, possibly the only thing standing in the way of a significant scientific discovery (the mappable relationship of qualities, to their particular underlying physics.) Before canonizer.com, you could never even start a conversation with most other people, especially if they were in a different field, until you spent hours and days, trying to agree on what various ways of saying things means. The goal is to survey for, so we can know, concisely and quantitatively, how everyone still currently thinks about this stuff, and for those in the camp with the least problems, to be able to collaboratively point out the problems in other camps, especially the most popular ones, in a way that is from the target audiences point of view, from within their current theoretical model, using their preferred language. This includes the most efficient development of any required improved language terminology. The most effecient and definitive way to determine the best terminology, is to build consensus around, and survey for what the most people consider to be the best way to say things. By default, everyone should use the state of the art of the most popular expert consensus terminology. On the Canonizer.com main page, you can set the "namespace" to be "/terminology/". When you do this you will find survey topics for things like: "What is the Best word to mean communication that which is ineffable" and so on. So feel free to participate in this survey or to start any other proposed surveys for new definitions, and I will always use whatever the state of the art expert consensus says, is the best terminology to use. Brent Allsop On 4/30/2013 7:25 PM, spike wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty > ... > >> ...btw, spike: what do you propose for the name of the unit of > quantitative measure of a quale? (not to be confused with Quayle) > > _______________________________________________ > > Dunno. Quant is taken. Quante? Many quante are a quantia? > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed May 1 17:33:26 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 13:33:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: <1367312336.68615.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <5E69A8EB-619E-423B-B845-EDC24032843A@gmail.com> <517D3CEC.5030307@canonizer.com> <39CCF149-55A5-4BB8-A617-4C519C48E767@gmail.com> <517D5B94.7030105@canonizer.com> <01cf01ce4479$6735e540$35a1afc0$@rainier66.com> <20130429062515.GF8102@leitl.org> <20130430074217.GN5257@leitl.org> <1367312336.68615.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Gordon wrote: > I think computer architectures will need to evolve a great deal to > achieve what organic brains can do. They won't be recognizable as digital > computers. They won't be digital software/hardware platforms. > That depends on what you mean. If a computer running Mathematica is solving a difficult equation symbolically not numerically would you call that a digital solution, and if is digital and a human solves the same equation and gets the same answer would that still be a digital answer? And If a digital computer is simulating a analog computer (and they can do so with much much higher precision than a real analog computer can in a sense simulate itself) is it still a purely digital platform? > Euglena are remarkable in that they seem to know lightness from darkness. > But do they really experience qualia? I think not. > If so then they know lightness and darkness but they don't know qualia thus lightness and darkness are not qualia. And thus I don't know what qualia is and I don't even know what "know" is. > I think real consciousness is about knowing what one knows. > I don't believe that Euglena or human beings spend much time thinking about thinking about something because there just isn't much profit in it, instead most of the time we're thinking (conscious) of other people and other things and of hypothetical future events and hypothetical actions that could be made in response to those hypothetical future events that could maximize the chances of reaching a goal. > I think there is something going on here besides ordinary chemical > reactions *as we currently understand them*. There is something happening > in the biology/chemistry/physics of the brain > If experimental scientists are skilled enough to measure a thing as subtle as a neutrino or dark matter or as profound as the mass of a star a billion light years away or the expansion and acceleration of the very universe itself why in hell are they unable to measure even a hint of a hint of mysterious new physics going on in the brain even after enormous effort ? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Wed May 1 17:59:02 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 13:59:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: References: <5E69A8EB-619E-423B-B845-EDC24032843A@gmail.com> <517D3CEC.5030307@canonizer.com> <39CCF149-55A5-4BB8-A617-4C519C48E767@gmail.com> <517D5B94.7030105@canonizer.com> <01cf01ce4479$6735e540$35a1afc0$@rainier66.com> <20130429062515.GF8102@leitl.org> <20130430074217.GN5257@leitl.org> <1367312336.68615.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 1:33 PM, John Clark wrote: > If experimental scientists are skilled enough to measure a thing as subtle > as a neutrino or dark matter or as profound as the mass of a star a billion > light years away or the expansion and acceleration of the very universe > itself why in hell are they unable to measure even a hint of a hint of > mysterious new physics going on in the brain even after enormous effort ? They just need more Unicorns and Pixie dust... just wait... you'll see. From sparge at gmail.com Wed May 1 18:01:23 2013 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 14:01:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] EU bans neonicotinoids Message-ID: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/victory-for-bees-as-european-union-bans-neonicotinoid-pesticides-blamed-for-destroying-bee-population-8595408.html Environmentalists hailed a "victory for bees" today after the European Union voted for a ban on the nerve-agent pesticides blamed for the dramatic decline global bee populations. Despite fierce lobbying by the chemicals industry and opposition by countries including Britain, 15 of the 27 member states voted for a two-year restriction on neonicotinoid insecticides. That gave the European Commission the support it needed to push through an EU-wide ban on using three neonicotinoids on crops attractive to bees. Tonio Borg, the EC's top health official, said they planned to implement the landmark ban from December. "I pledge to do my utmost to ensure that our bees, which are so vital to our ecosystem and contribute over ?22bn annually to European agriculture, are protected," he said. Britain was among eight nations which voted against the motion, despite a petition signed by 300,000 people presented to Downing Street last week by fashion designers Vivienne Westwood and Katharine Hamnett. The Independent has also campaigned to save Britain's bee population. Four nations abstained from the moratorium, which will restrict the use of imidacloprid and clothianidin, made by Germany's Bayer, and thiamethoxam, made by the Swiss company, Syngenta. The ban on use on flowering crops will remain in place throughout the EU for two years unless compelling scientific evidence to the contrary becomes available. More than 30 separate scientific studies have found a link between the neonicotinoids, which attack insects' nerve systems, and falling bee numbers. The proposal by European Commission - the EU's legislative body - to ban the insecticides was based on a study by the European Food Safety Authority, which found in January that the pesticides did pose a risk to bees' health. ... -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 1 18:33:12 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 11:33:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Quoting previous posts In-Reply-To: <001301ce467c$190b40e0$4b21c2a0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> References: <002901ce45d9$e10a4710$a31ed530$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <010e01ce45ea$8fd72af0$af8580d0$@rainier66.com> <5180C9A5.9020301@aleph.se> <001301ce467c$190b40e0$4b21c2a0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: <01f001ce469a$56d96a00$048c3e00$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Harvey Newstrom Subject: Re: [ExI] Quoting previous posts Spike wrote: > NO > dammit! limit. ... > more Harvey! > readable back > thanks. Welcome > spike Indeed! :etorw srednA >...Spiral posting only sets a time limit if it doesn't mutate into fractal posting. >...That could take forever. (And has too much repetitive quoting.) _______________________________________________ Harvey, see why I still hang out here after all these years? You guys are a gift in my life. For chess fans, the Armenian Aronian just won the Alekhine Memorial, wooohooo! I was sitting here and a fire truck came howling in: my neighbor left a pan of eggs to boil, apparently left, house full of stinky smoke, oy vey. spike From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Wed May 1 20:07:00 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 14:07:00 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: References: <1366603687.3168.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130424064540.GP15179@leitl.org> <1366787228.97128.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130424081616.GS15179@leitl.org> <5177E4B5.20401@aleph.se> <20130424145021.GV15179@leitl.org> <517C2F04.5010800@canonizer.com> <5E69A8EB-619E-423B-B845-EDC24032843A@gmail.com> <517D3CEC.5030307@canonizer.com> <39CCF149-55A5-4BB8-A617-4C519C48E767@gmail.com> <517D5B94.7030105@canonizer.com> Message-ID: Hi James Thanks for this educational response, and for pointing out the typo. I was really troubling over understanding that, till I started thinking it might be a typo, and finally saw your post that it was a typo. Some of this was surprising, and it's frustrating that you work so hard to try escape from the theoretical cage I'm trying to box you in with, in order to show there is no hard problem here. It seems that instead of trying to understand what I'm saying, you just try to find some way (sometimes mistaken ways, as I'll attempt to show) to squeeze out of some not yet rigorously defined term, or something, and thereby attempt to justify your theory or assertion that there is a hard problem here. >From what you've said, we still obviously need to further simplify, and more rigorously define, what we/I mean by this "binding neuron". I tried to point out that it was likely much more than just one neuron, but this seemed to be completely missed, so how about we call it a "binding system", instead of "binding neuron"? What I'm trying to illustrate is that leaving out the entire binding systems in this substitution experiment is thinking about it at the wrong level, and what makes this thought experiment a fallacy. You fail to see the forest, but only the trees. So let's just limit this binding systems mechanistic functionality to be indicating whether the reference knowledge is qualitatively the same as the sample knowledge. An additional requirement is that it make this determination only when the knowledge being compared both have qualitative properties AND that the qualitative properties (or causal or informational properties of the qualities) are the same. If something doesn't meet these requirements, it is not what is important, by definition. You said: <<<< Let me see if I can break this down for you. Here are the neurons you have: >>>> Then you started out great, but as soon as you got to the important part, you jumped to the fading quale case, presenting a "1" or a "0" to the abstracted or simulated version of the binding system. Then, as if it mattered, you correctly concluded: <<<< Now, if we assume MPD is true, then we have a problem, because this new system should have no real qualia, but it CLAIMS that it is experiencing real qualia the entire time, as its neurons were slowly replaced with simulations. And the result is a theory where the qualia is epiphenomenal. >>>> I fully admit, and agree with you, that once the entire binding system is replaced with an abstracted version that it can be thought of as acting like the "1" is real glutamate, and the redness quality. But the conclusion you are drawing from this is entirely missing the point of what I'm talking about. By definition, a "1", and a "0", do not have qualities (Why I didn't color them red and green like you did). By definition, they are not glutamate, nor are they any kind of "functional isomorphs" or any other theoretical thing that anyone may propose could theoretically have the quality we are trying to test for. So, by definition, the virtualized replacement of the binding system, is not doing what we want it to do, and is only being thought of as doing it. All it is, is some configuration of some arbitrary matter, which, by design, doesn't matter if it has qualities or not, but is only being thought of, whatever arbitrary thing it is, as being a comparator of a "1" and "0", which by definition do not have a redness or greenness quality. You could invert or replace the abstract machinery, in an infinitely many different ways that can be thought of as behaving the same way, which were all very different, and regardless of what you were using, and regardless of how inverted the fundamental stuff was, as long as you thought of its current particular arbitrary configuration, as a comparator between a "1" and a "0", that is all it would be, is something you are thinking of as if it were something qualitatively, very different from what it really is. In other words, the fallacy in the substitution argument is, when you, in one single step, replace the very thing that is dong the detection, binding, and comparison of the phenomenal qualities; (i.e. the binding system) with something that by definition and design has nothing to do with qualities, even though you can think of the resulting abstracted behavior as the behavior you want, you are completely bypassing and ignoring what is important. Also, as you've pointed out, it might be possible for some religious person to theorize about the state of things, once you are way passed any of the fading/dancing quale partially replaced states, and the entire binding system has been replaced with something that has none of that and is only being thought of as having it. It might then be possible to theorize that a qualitative experience is still occurring. The problem is, as you correctly point out, this could never be validated, or proven, since there is, by definition, no causal evidence for any such 'epiphenomena'. Your conclusion is true, but only about this kind of non causal epiphenomena, and has nothing to do with what this theory is predicting. This theory is predicting that real glutamate (or some real functionally active pattern, or whatever) which, if it is demonstrated to be what has a redness quality, that will be reliably qualitatively demonstrable to all such real "binding systems" in all brains in various never failing week and strong causal ways. In other words, if the demonstrable science performs qualitatively and causally, as is being predicted here, the fallacy making people think there is an epiphenomena hard problem can be demonstrably exposed, and it can be reliably demonstrated that qualities really do have detectable causality which can be objectively shared, in various week and strong ways that aren't so hard after all. Brent Allsop On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 12:29 PM, James Carroll wrote: > On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 11:37 AM, Brent Allsop > wrote: > >> But Stathis and James are still providing no evidence that they are >> getting it at all. >> > > Obviously, I think that it is clearly you who aren't getting it at all. > > > ...For you guys that still aren?t getting it, let?s make this so >> elementary it is impossible to miss. Let?s make an even more simplified >> theoretical model, and hand hold you through every single step of the >> transmigration process, including a final resulting simulated system that >> can behave the same. >> > > Which is funny, since you clearly didn't get it, even in this simplified > handheld case. > > > >> All of these millions of voxel neurons are sending their color >> neurotransmitters to the single large ?binding? neuron. This single >> large binding neuron is a very complicated system, as it enables all these >> isolated color voxel elements to be bound together into one unified >> phenomenal experience. In other words, it is doing lots more than just >> sending the signal that this red thing is the one we want. It is also >> aware >> > > HOW is it "aware" of anything. It is just one neuron. How does it > "represent" this awareness internally? Yes it GETs one transmitter or > another as input, but how does it INTERNALLY represent all these things > that you claim that this one neuron is "aware" of? > > >> of the qualitative nature of this knowledge and all of their differences >> and qualitative diversity, and enables the system to talk about and think >> about all this phenomenal diversity. >> > > > How does it experience phenomenal anything, when its internal state is > ONLY impacted by the CAUSAL properties of glutamate or dopamine? > > > >> So, the first neuron we want to transmigrate is of course the sample >> pixel neuron. Obviously, since the binding neuron is like a high >> fidelity *glutamate* detector, nothing but real *glutamate* will make it >> say, ?yes that is qualitatively the same as the reference pixel?, because >> of the fact that it has the causal properties of redness. >> >> > > With you so far.... > > > >> The dancing quale case is quite simple, because we want to replace a >> pixel neuron firing with *glutamate*, with one that is firing with * >> dopamine*. Or, if you are a functionalist, you will be replacing the >> ?functional isomorph? or ?functionally active patter? that has the causal >> properties of redness with a ?functional isomorph? that has the causal >> properties of a greenness quality. >> >> >> >> The transmigration process describes providing a transducer, which when >> it detects something with a greenness property, sends real *glutamate*to the binding neuron, so the binding neuron can say: yes that has a >> redness quality. >> > > > Yes. Again, with you so far. You now have a neuron with dopamine, that > causes your binding neuron to think it is seeing glutamate, through a > translation (intperpretation) layer, that replaces the dopamine with > glutamate for the binding neuron... excellent. > > > But where you fail to take the leap, is when you replace the proposed > binding neuron itself. Then, the middleware translation layer > can disappear, and you can invert the outputs of the binding neuron itself > instead. That is where your example falls down. You don't think carefully > enough about what happens when you replace your theoretical "binding" > neuron itself with a simulation, or with an inverted system. If you do > that, then you have a binding neuron, that is experiencing dopamine, but > that causes you to ACT as if the original binding neuron had seen > glutamate. > > > > >> In the fading quale case, we are going to use a binary ?1? to represent >> *glutamate*, and a ?0? to represent *dopamine*. Functionalists tend to >> miss a particular fact that they must pay close attention to here. You >> must be very clear about the fact that this ?1? which is representing >> something that is a ?functional isomorph? by definition does not have the >> same quality the ?functional isomorh? has. The ?1? is only something >> being interpreted as abstracted information, which in turn can be >> interpreted as representing the *glutamate*, or the functionally >> isomorphic pattern or whatever it is that actually has the redness quality. >> Obviously, the transduction layer in this case, must be something for >> which no matter what it is that is representing the one as input, when it >> sees this ?1? it produces real glutamate, so the binding neuron will give >> the signal: ?yes that has a redness quality?. >> > > > Again, correct when you simulate (and appropriately translate) the > behavior of the sample neuron. You do this part right. > > > > >> OK, so now that the sample neuron has been replaced, and we can switch >> back and forth between them with no change, we can now move on to the >> binding neuron. But keep in mind that this one sample neuron could be >> expanded to include millions of 3D voxel elements. All of them are >> firing with diverse sets of neurotransmitters which can be mapped to every >> possible color we can experience. And keep in mind the big job this >> binding neuron has to do, to bind all this, so it call all be experienced, >> qualitatively, at the same time. >> >> >> >> In the dancing quale case, we now have to provide the transduction >> between the reference neuron, which is still firing with *glutamate*, >> with something that converts this to *dopamine*. So, when the system >> sees *dopamine* on both sample, and the reference, it is going to >> finally say: ?Yes, these are qualitatively the same? and it should finally >> be blatantly obvious to everyone, how different this system is when we >> switch them back and forth, and even though some naive person may be >> tempted to believe both of the ?yes they are the same?, before and after >> the switch, are talking about ?red? knowledge. >> > > > No Brent, it's not obvious at all, and this is where you make your most > obvious mistake. > > Let me see if I can break this down for you. Here are the neurons you have: > > Sample > Reference > Binding > Downsream (where downstream refers to the neurons that the binding neuron > talks to, and tells about its experiences). > > The connections between these neurons are as follows: > > S:B sample to binding > R:B reference to binding > B:D binding to downstream... > > Ok, so, you started inverting things, and you inverted the sample. You had > to then translate between S:B, obviously, so that B still got glutamate > instead of dopamine. The pattern here, is that you must translate between > every inverted neuron, and every neuron it talks to. > > Next, you propose inverting the binding neuron. But what you seem to have > missed is that when you do that, you have to translate between the inverted > parts, and the non inverted parts. > > Sample (inverted) > Reference (inverted) > Binding > Downsream (where downstream refers to the neurons that the binding neuron > talks to, and tells about its experiences). > > S:B sample to binding (must be translated) > R:B reference to binding (can be left alone) > B:D binding to downstream... (must be translated) > > NOW, it's not at ALL obvious that the individual actually experiences > anything different, after all, because of the translation between the > binding neuron and the downstream neurons, the person SAYS that their > experiences haven't changed at all. But you are proposing that their > experiences really HAVE changed... thus, you are proposing a theory that > results in epiphenomenal qualia, whether you know it or not. > > >> The fading quale case is similar. There is a ?1? present on both the >> sample and now on the reference, thanks to a new transduction layer between >> the pixel producing real glutamate, which enables the virtual neuron to >> send a signal that can be thought of as ?these are qualitatively the same? >> even though everyone should be clear that this is just a lie, or at best an >> incorrect interpretation of what the signal really qualitatively means. >> > > Ummm, no... let's let blue = natural, and black = simulated/translated. > > Step 1, no simulation: > > Sample > Reference > Binding > Downsream > > S:B sample to binding > R:B reference to binding > B:D binding to downstream... > > Step 2, simulate sample neuron: > > Sample (simulated) > Reference > Binding > Downsream > > S:B (translated) > R:B > B:D > > The translation at this point is simple, when the S sends a 1, the > translation sends glutamate to B, when S sends a 0, the translation layer > sends dopamine to B. So far so good, right? B behaves JUST as it did > before, because it is unaware of the simulation happening downstream, so it > sends all the same signals upstream... with me so far? > > Ok, so,now, let's simulate S and B, ok? > > Step 3, simulate Sample and Binding Neurons. > > Sample (simulated) > Reference > Binding > Downsream > > S:B (un translated, but simulated) > R:B (translated) > B:D (translated) > > Now, notice, that the S:B link is no longer translated, it is just > simulated such that the simulation of B does the right thing depending on > what S was. But the R:B link must be translated. This translation goes much > like the S:B link did when we simulated S. But now the natural neuron is on > the other side of the translation, so it simply goes the other direction. > When the R neuron sends glutamate to B, a detector detects the glutamate, > and sends a 1 to the simulated B, which then behaves (in simulation) just > as it would if it had seen real glutamate. When the R neuron tries to > send dopamine to B, a detector picks up the dopamine, and sends a 0 to > the simulated B, which then behaves (in simulation) exactly like the > natural B would have if it had seen real dopamine coming from R. All that > is left is to describe the B:D simulation layer, which is hard to do since > you didn't describe how B talks downstream, but however it does it, you > simulate what it does, and then translate, so all the downstream neurons > see the same real neurotransmitters that they saw before. > > Now, if you simulated R too, you end up with a system with no glutamate or > dopamine in this part of the system, but that CLAIMS to still be > experiencing qualia, and why? Because the downstream neurons all behave > exactly as they did before the swap. > > Now, if we assume MPD is true, then we have a problem, because this new > system should have no real qualia, but it CLAIMS that it is experiencing > real qualia the entire time, as its neurons were slowly replaced with > simulations. And the result is a theory where the qualia is epiphenomenal. > > Thus, MPD is dead. > > > So, please return and report, and let me know if I can fall to my knees >> and weep yet? >> > > > I sincerely hope so. I hope that you have finally got it. > > James > > -- > Web: http://james.jlcarroll.net > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 1 20:15:11 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 13:15:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] dopers vs coffee drinkers quale contest, was: RE: Time crystals? In-Reply-To: References: <01ca01ce467f$07c78430$17568c90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <025801ce46a8$96254cc0$c26fe640$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty Sent: Wednesday, May 01, 2013 10:08 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] dopers vs coffee drinkers quale contest, was: RE: Time crystals? On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 11:17 AM, spike wrote: >>... Every time I look at this, the wheels seem to be turning to the left... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_Dancer >...If you know that there are some who see the alternate rotation you can look for it. (you're really looking into / debugging your own mind's interpretation of your vision)... Mike OK cool thanks Mike, I got her to spin either direction. Now if I can just get the lights to turn on, that would be even better. She looks smoking hot. Ahem. What we have done here with the original illusion http://www.anopticalillusion.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Optical_Illusion _by_cybernation.jpg and the proposal to write a script which would slowly rotate it to the right is to give an example of a quale that can be quantized. We could view this illusion rotating at various rates to the right and measure at what rate it appears to not rotate for each individual prole. That gives a number, so this quale can be quantized. Cool! spike From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 1 20:10:27 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 13:10:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Quoting previous posts In-Reply-To: References: <002901ce45d9$e10a4710$a31ed530$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <010e01ce45ea$8fd72af0$af8580d0$@rainier66.com> <5180C9A5.9020301@aleph.se> <001301ce467c$190b40e0$4b21c2a0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: <025701ce46a7$ecb746c0$c625d440$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty Subject: Re: [ExI] Quoting previous posts On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > >>>>>... :etorw srednA > >>>... Spiral posting only sets a time limit if it doesn't mutate into > fractal posting. > >> That could take forever. (And has too much repetitive quoting.) > >...I feel like I've seen this comment before at another scale... _______________________________________________ Ja. This site is a strange attractor. spike From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 1 20:27:26 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 13:27:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] EU bans neonicotinoids In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <025f01ce46aa$4c1a26d0$e44e7470$@rainier66.com> >. On Behalf Of Dave Sill Subject: [ExI] EU bans neonicotinoids http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/victory-for-bees-as-european -union-bans-neonicotinoid-pesticides-blamed-for-destroying-bee-population-85 95408.html >.Environmentalists hailed a "victory for bees" today after the European Union voted for a ban on the nerve-agent pesticides blamed for the dramatic decline global bee populations. . -Dave Thanks Dave. Whether or not neonics are the bad guy, this is a valuable and informative test. We will be able to compare loss and recovery rates between Europe and the US, two countries with a similar enough climate to make comparison meaningful and yes I know Europe is a continent not a country. But the bees don't know the difference, especially if neonics are causing them to be stupid. Let the tests begin! spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rahmans at me.com Wed May 1 22:24:58 2013 From: rahmans at me.com (Omar Rahman) Date: Thu, 02 May 2013 00:24:58 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 2013-05-01, at 10:07 PM, extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org wrote: > >> ... On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty > Subject: Re: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . > > On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 11:24 PM, spike wrote: >> Rather, I had only one quante, but now I have a bunch of quantia. >> >>> ... As in many soft sciences, as soon as we can get some kind of hard >> numbers, the credibility of the field and my own confidence in it goes >> up dramatically. I am more a numbers guy than a words guy. > >> ... We need to be able to measure a planck-scale-quale... [which everyone > would intrinsically 'mind' because of the old adage] > >> ...here's some familiar numbers for you: > 5.39121e-44 s > 2.17645e-8 kg > 1.616252e-35 m > 6.0221413e+23 > >> ..."planck-scale-quale" hehe > > _______________________________________________ > > > My confidence in the quale notion is already increasing by several > kiloqualia. > > spike Now that we can measure qualia I don't understand all the fuss I was making. My confidence has made a quantum quale leap! Omar From painlord2k at libero.it Wed May 1 22:31:37 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 02 May 2013 00:31:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin In-Reply-To: <1367363307.90731.YahooMailNeo@web121205.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> Message-ID: <518197C9.3060100@libero.it> Il 01/05/2013 01:08, Gordon ha scritto: > Mirco, > >> if you group "by price" the list you can have a more concise view of the >> market. > > Yes, I noticed that. One can in effect know everything there is know > about the depth of the bitcoin market, at least at Mt.Gox. That is > pretty extraordinary. > > Have you tried to use this information to your advantage? I'm not a trader, I'm more a saver. So I'm diversifying in Bitcoin after saving in physical gold and silver. I just watched a video with Mike Maloney talking a bit about Bitcoin. Apparently he is not pro but he is not against. With a lot of others libertarians, gold/silver bugs he is (in my opinion) starting to understanding how BTC work and how it can be useful. This should bring a lot of investments not only in savings converted in BTC but in capital invested in using Bitcoin to deliver goods and services and in new goods and services. Mirco From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 1 23:26:45 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 16:26:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] world's smallest movie Message-ID: <02a601ce46c3$5af70bf0$10e523d0$@rainier66.com> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/worlds-smallest-movie-ibm-uses-ind ividual-atoms-to-make-recordbreaking-short-film-of-boy-kicking-football-8599 132.html spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Thu May 2 01:26:53 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Wed, 01 May 2013 19:26:53 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: References: <1366603687.3168.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <517C2F04.5010800@canonizer.com> <5E69A8EB-619E-423B-B845-EDC24032843A@gmail.com> <517D3CEC.5030307@canonizer.com> <39CCF149-55A5-4BB8-A617-4C519C48E767@gmail.com> <517D5B94.7030105@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <5181C0DD.1070601@canonizer.com> Hi James, This is just amazing. Let me try putting it yet another way. Can you at least try, for a minute, and think that there may be some other way to think about it, than the way you are? You seem to be unable or unwilling to think in any way, other than a redness quality must arise from some function, and that it is the function that is prior to the quality. But just for a second, try to imaging that there could be a different theoretical possibility, where it is the quale, that is prior, and that things are behaving or functioning the way they are, because of the phenomenal qualities. Instead of trying to find some way to impose your view on what I'm saying. Try to find some other way, in what I'm saying that has what is fundamental, inverted from the way you are used to demanding it must be. For a moment, have some hope that there could be a real solution to the 'hard problem' you are so instantiate exists. On multiple occasions, you accused me of "assuming [my] conclusion", and I understand what you are saying, but all I'm doing is defining (not assuming) a theoretical possibility that is making testable predictions that could possibly be demonstrated, or falsified by science. And that if science behaves as the theory predicts, it wall falsify the definitions, or assumptions you are making, which are required before your so called 'proof' that there is a hard problem. It seems to me, you are assuming, or defining, that it isn't possible for anything which has causal properties, to have qualitative properties responsible for those qualities, and it can't be behaving the way it is, because of these qualities, by definition. Can you tell me what the causal properties of a redness quality are? And if those causal properties of redness, whatever they are, are reflecting white light, and you thereby 'interpret' them as if they have a whiteness quality (or worse assume the causal properties have nothing to do with the redness quality explaining them) are you not just miss interpreting what the white light is detecting? <<<< How do you demonstrate that? How do you KNOW that it is not JUST the causal properties of glutamate that has the redness quality? >>>> I see a very clear answer to this How question, and this entire conversation has been an attempt to answer exactly this. The fact that you are asking this is proving you have no understanding about anything I've been saying. To me, it is you who are assuming your conclusion, and basically saying no causal properties can be behaving the way they are, because of a redness quality. You think it isn't possible, because you assume the transmigration argument is valid, when it is swapping out the binding system and not understanding it's effing capabilities to detect not just causal properties, but the qualitative reason for why they are behaving the way they do, and you don't understand what you are giving up, when you swap this out for something that is very different. Again, all this is assuming your conclusion, which can be demonstrated to be false, if reality behaves differently than you are assuming/predicting. As I've said many times, when we have something with a redness quality, in the right hemisphere of our brain, and something with greenness qualities in our left hemisphere, there necessarily is some kind of 'binding system' that enables us to be aware of the qualitative nature responsible for whatever the correlated causal properties of each are. And when we swap out this binding system, for something inverted like white light, reflecting off of whatever it is that is behaving the way it is, because of it's redness quality, and then if we thereby assume that this thing with a redness quality, is behaving the way it is, because of it's whitness qualities, or worse, think of it in a fading way (because of some thought experiement that leaves out the very mechanism that can compare something and the way it is behaving, because of it's phenomenal qualities) and there by insist that those redness qualities, can't be behaving the way they are, because of any qualitative property - you are just describing a model, and making a bunch of predictions that predict there is a 'hard problem' that could all be blown out of the water by real effing demonstrably science that proves the problem isn't that hard after all. Brent Allsop On 5/1/2013 4:13 PM, James Carroll wrote: > On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 2:07 PM, Brent Allsop > > wrote: > > I tried to point out that it was likely much more than just one > neuron, but this seemed to be completely missed, so how about we > call it a "binding system", instead of "binding neuron"? > > > > > Fine, but it makes no difference whatsoever. So long as the > "interpretation" layer is placed between those neurons that are > simulated, and those that are not, you can work your way across these > many neurons of the binding system, and you have the same problem. In > fact, things are worse for your case if there are more than one neuron > in the binding layer, because now I can slowly FADE my way across > these many neurons. And any qualia that actually fades is > epiphenomenal. Since MPD predicts that something will fade, MPD > predicts epiphenomenal qualia, even though you swear that it does not. > > QED. It's that simple Brent. You are making it harder than it needs to > be, and missing this rather obvious conclusion. > > So let's just limit this binding systems mechanistic functionality > to be indicating whether the reference knowledge is qualitatively > the same as the sample knowledge. An additional requirement is > that it make this determination only when the knowledge being > compared both have qualitative properties AND that the qualitative > properties (or causal or informational properties of the > qualities) are the same. > > > What do you mean by "have qualitative properties"? Do you mean "have > phenomenal properties", and if so, how do you detect that, since ALL > you can detect are the causal properties. > > I fully admit, and agree with you, that once the entire binding > system is replaced with an abstracted version that it can be > thought of as acting like the "1" is real glutamate, and the > redness quality. But the conclusion you are drawing from this is > entirely missing the point of what I'm talking about. > > > is it, or are YOU entirely missing the point of what I am talking > about Brent? > > By definition, a "1", and a "0", do not have qualities (Why I > didn't color them red and green like you did). > > > > You are assuming your conclusion here. That is the very question that > is in dispute here. I don't think that an isolated 1 or a 0 has > phenomenal qualities either, but they do when they are embedded within > a functional pattern that produces behavior... as illustrated by this > thought experiment. You can't just assume your conclusion in order to > make your point. Part of the problem here is that you appear to think > that phenomenal qualities happen in individual neurons, interacting > with certain chemicals, in some magical way. While I think that > phenomenal qualities happen over larger systems of interacting > functional patterns. So, naturally, when I use your few neurons > example, I end up with something mind numbingly simply, like a 1 or a > 0. But that is a function of your messed up initial setup of a > reference neuron, and a sample neuron, and a single binding > system/neuron. But if you expand the binding system to multiple > neurons, you end up with a complex and large functional pattern of 1's > and 0's floating around in the binding system. That would be closer to > how I think that qualia happen. > > By definition, they are not glutamate, nor are they any kind of > "functional isomorphs" or any other theoretical thing that anyone > may propose could theoretically have the quality we are trying to > test for. > > > > True, but we take one side of the causal chain, convert it to a 1 or a > 0 that represents whether or not glutamate was detected in the > synapse, and then we have a simulation of the binding neuron that does > the right complex thing with this 1 or 0, namely, a simulation of what > the binding neuron (or system) would do if it were to come in contact > with real glutamate, thus INTERPRETING the 1 or 0 as glutamate, as > part of its simulation. > > So, by definition, the virtualized replacement of the binding > system, is not doing what we want it to do, > > > > Again, you are assuming your conclusion here. I think that it IS doing > what we want it to do, as evidenced by the fact that it produces the > right BEHAVIOR (the system claims to have real qualia), and if any > qualia faded during our replacement with the simulation, those qualia > that faded MUST be epiphenomenal. > > and is only being thought of as doing it. > > > > No, it is not just being THOUGHT of as doing it... it is DOING it, as > evidenced by the behavior of the system when it claims to have real > qualia. Any abstraction in the information inside of it, is > interpreted by the translation layers that rap around the inputs and > the outputs of the system. > > All it is, is some configuration of some arbitrary matter, which, > by design, doesn't matter if it has qualities or not, but is only > being thought of, whatever arbitrary thing it is, as being a > comparator of a "1" and "0", which by definition do not have a > redness or greenness quality. > > > > Only by YOUR definition. Again, you are assuming your conclusion to > prove your conclusion. Because *I* think that it DOES have a redness > or a greenness quality, and that is the HEART of our disagreement! > > You could invert or replace the abstract machinery, in an > infinitely many different ways that can be thought of as behaving > the same way, which were all very different, and regardless of > what you were using, and regardless of how inverted the > fundamental stuff was, as long as you thought of its current > particular arbitrary configuration, as a comparator between a "1" > and a "0", that is all it would be, is something you are thinking > of as if it were something qualitatively, very different from what > it really is. > > > > > Any internal inversion in the simulated section would have to be met > by an equivalent inversion in the translation layer that would undo > the inversion in order for the system to maintain the same behavior, > and thus, in order to maintain the same functional pattern. In fact, > what you are claiming here is EXACTLY what those of us who believe in > functional equivalence believe, namely, that you can change HOW you do > the calculation all you want, and, so long as it produces the same > results, it has the same qualia. > > All your internal changing of how it works, all your inversions, is > met with an equivalent change in the translation layer, providing the > same behavior, and THUS, the same qualia. Otherwise you believe in > dancing qualia, where your qualia change from red to green, but you > still say "I see red" the entire time... aka. if you don't believe > this, you believe in a property of qualia that leads to qualia being > epiphenomenal. > > > > In other words, the fallacy in the substitution argument is, when > you, in one single step, replace the very thing that is dong the > detection, binding, and comparison of the phenomenal qualities; > (i.e. the binding system) with something that by definition and > design has nothing to do with qualities, > > > > You assumed the conclusion again. I think that it DOES have to do with > qualities, when properly interpreted by the translation layer. > > > even though you can think of the resulting abstracted behavior as > the behavior you want, you are completely bypassing and ignoring > what is important. > > > > IF there is something "important" in there that I am ignoring, I can > PROVE that this "important" thing is epiphenomenal, by the fading and > dancing qualia thought experiment. > > > > Also, as you've pointed out, it might be possible for some > religious person to theorize about the state of things, once you > are way passed any of the fading/dancing quale partially replaced > states, and the entire binding system has been replaced with > something that has none of that and is only being thought of as > having it. It might then be possible to theorize that a > qualitative experience is still occurring. The problem is, as you > correctly point out, this could never be validated, or proven, > since there is, by definition, no causal evidence for any such > 'epiphenomena'. Your conclusion is true, but only about this kind > of non causal epiphenomena, and has nothing to do with what this > theory is predicting. > > > > True. But, as I already pointed out, your theory is predicting > non-epiphenomenal qualia together with some beliefs that REQUIRE > epiphenomenal qualia, as can be shown with the fading and dancing > qualia thought experiments. Thus, your theory contains an internal > contradiction. > > > > This theory is predicting that real glutamate (or some real > functionally active pattern, or whatever) which, if it is > demonstrated to be what has a redness quality, > > > > How do you demonstrate that? How do you KNOW that it is not JUST the > causal properties of glutamate that has the redness quality? Because > if it is JUST the causal properties of glutamate, then I can simulate > those properties, and my simulation will have qualia without the real > glutamate. Furthermore, I can show that if there is anything ELSE in > there, that this extra thing is epiphenomenal.... which you don't > believe in... therefore, you need to accept the principle of > functional equivalence. It is the only way to escape believing in > epiphenomenal qualia. > > James > > > > On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 12:29 PM, James Carroll > >wrote: > > On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 11:37 AM, Brent Allsop > > wrote: > > But Stathis and James are still providing no evidence that > they are getting it at all. > > > Obviously, I think that it is clearly you who aren't getting > it at all. > > > ...For you guys that still aren?t getting it, let?s make > this so elementary it is impossible to miss.Let?s make an > even more simplified theoretical model, and hand hold you > through every single step of the transmigration process, > including a final resulting simulated system that can > behave the same. > > > Which is funny, since you clearly didn't get it, even in this > simplified handheld case. > > All of these millions of voxel neurons are sending their > color neurotransmitters to the single large ?binding? > neuron.This single large binding neuron is a very > complicated system, as it enables all these isolated color > voxel elements to be bound together into one unified > phenomenal experience.In other words, it is doing lots > more than just sending the signal that this red thing is > the one we want.It is also aware > > > HOW is it "aware" of anything. It is just one neuron. How does > it "represent" this awareness internally? Yes it GETs one > transmitter or another as input, but how does it INTERNALLY > represent all these things that you claim that this one neuron > is "aware" of? > > of the qualitative nature of this knowledge and all of > their differences and qualitative diversity, and enables > the system to talk about and think about all this > phenomenal diversity. > > > > How does it experience phenomenal anything, when its internal > state is ONLY impacted by the CAUSAL properties of glutamate > or dopamine? > > So, the first neuron we want to transmigrate is of course > the sample pixel neuron.Obviously, since the binding > neuron is like a high fidelity *glutamate*detector, > nothing but real *glutamate*will make it say, ?yes that is > qualitatively the same as the reference pixel?, because of > the fact that it has the causal properties of redness. > > > > With you so far.... > > The dancing quale case is quite simple, because we want to > replace a pixel neuron firing with *glutamate*, with one > that is firing with *dopamine*. Or, if you are a > functionalist, you will be replacing the ?functional > isomorph? or ?functionally active patter? that has the > causal properties of redness with a ?functional isomorph? > that has the causal properties of a greenness quality. > > The transmigration process describes providing a > transducer, which when it detects something with a > greenness property, sends real *glutamate* to the binding > neuron, so the binding neuron can say: yes that has a > redness quality. > > > > Yes. Again, with you so far. You now have a neuron with > dopamine, that causes your binding neuron to think it is > seeing glutamate, through a translation (intperpretation) > layer, that replaces the dopamine with glutamate for the > binding neuron... excellent. > > > But where you fail to take the leap, is when you replace the > proposed binding neuron itself. Then, the middleware > translation layer can disappear, and you can invert the > outputs of the binding neuron itself instead. That is where > your example falls down. You don't think carefully enough > about what happens when you replace your theoretical "binding" > neuron itself with a simulation, or with an inverted system. > If you do that, then you have a binding neuron, that is > experiencing dopamine, but that causes you to ACT as if the > original binding neuron had seen glutamate. > > > In the fading quale case, we are going to use a binary > ?1? to represent *glutamate*, and a ?0? to represent > *dopamine*.Functionalists tend to miss a particular fact > that they must pay close attention to here.You must be > very clear about the fact that this ?1? which is > representing something that is a ?functional isomorph? by > definition does not have the same quality the ?functional > isomorh? has.The ?1? is only something being interpreted > as abstracted information, which in turn can be > interpreted as representing the *glutamate*, or the > functionally isomorphic pattern or whatever it is that > actually has the redness quality.Obviously, the > transduction layer in this case, must be something for > which no matter what it is that is representing the one as > input, when it sees this ?1? it produces real glutamate, > so the binding neuron will give the signal: ?yes that has > a redness quality?. > > > > Again, correct when you simulate (and appropriately translate) > the behavior of the sample neuron. You do this part right. > > > OK, so now that the sample neuron has been replaced, and > we can switch back and forth between them with no change, > we can now move on to the binding neuron.But keep in mind > that this one sample neuron could be expanded to include > millions of 3D voxel elements.All of them are firing with > diverse sets of neurotransmitters which can be mapped to > every possible color we can experience.And keep in mind > the big job this binding neuron has to do, to bind all > this, so it call all be experienced, qualitatively, at the > same time. > > In the dancing quale case, we now have to provide the > transduction between the reference neuron, which is still > firing with *glutamate*, with something that converts this > to *dopamine*.So, when the system sees *dopamine* on both > sample, and the reference, it is going to finally say: > ?Yes, these are qualitatively the same? and it should > finally be blatantly obvious to everyone, how different > this system is when we switch them back and forth, and > even though some naive person may be tempted to believe > both of the ?yes they are the same?, before and after the > switch, are talking about ?red? knowledge. > > > > No Brent, it's not obvious at all, and this is where you make > your most obvious mistake. > > Let me see if I can break this down for you. Here are the > neurons you have: > > Sample > Reference > Binding > Downsream (where downstream refers to the neurons that the > binding neuron talks to, and tells about its experiences). > > The connections between these neurons are as follows: > > S:B sample to binding > R:B reference to binding > B:D binding to downstream... > > Ok, so, you started inverting things, and you inverted the > sample. You had to then translate between S:B, obviously, so > that B still got glutamate instead of dopamine. The pattern > here, is that you must translate between every inverted > neuron, and every neuron it talks to. > > Next, you propose inverting the binding neuron. But what you > seem to have missed is that when you do that, you have to > translate between the inverted parts, and the non inverted parts. > > Sample (inverted) > Reference (inverted) > Binding > Downsream (where downstream refers to the neurons that the > binding neuron talks to, and tells about its experiences). > > S:B sample to binding (must be translated) > R:B reference to binding (can be left alone) > B:D binding to downstream... (must be translated) > > NOW, it's not at ALL obvious that the individual actually > experiences anything different, after all, because of the > translation between the binding neuron and the downstream > neurons, the person SAYS that their experiences haven't > changed at all. But you are proposing that their experiences > really HAVE changed... thus, you are proposing a theory that > results in epiphenomenal qualia, whether you know it or not. > > The fading quale case is similar.There is a ?1? present on > both the sample and now on the reference, thanks to a new > transduction layer between the pixel producing real > glutamate, which enables the virtual neuron to send a > signal that can be thought of as ?these are qualitatively > the same? even though everyone should be clear that this > is just a lie, or at best an incorrect interpretation of > what the signal really qualitatively means. > > > Ummm, no... let's let blue = natural, and black = > simulated/translated. > > Step 1, no simulation: > > Sample > Reference > Binding > Downsream > > S:B sample to binding > R:B reference to binding > B:D binding to downstream... > > Step 2, simulate sample neuron: > > Sample (simulated) > Reference > Binding > Downsream > > S:B (translated) > R:B > B:D > > The translation at this point is simple, when the S sends a 1, > the translation sends glutamate to B, when S sends a 0, the > translation layer sends dopamine to B. So far so good, right? > B behaves JUST as it did before, because it is unaware of the > simulation happening downstream, so it sends all the same > signals upstream... with me so far? > > Ok, so,now, let's simulate S and B, ok? > > Step 3, simulate Sample and Binding Neurons. > > Sample (simulated) > Reference > Binding > Downsream > > S:B (un translated, but simulated) > R:B (translated) > B:D (translated) > > Now, notice, that the S:B link is no longer translated, it is > just simulated such that the simulation of B does the right > thing depending on what S was. But the R:B link must be > translated. This translation goes much like the S:B link did > when we simulated S. But now the natural neuron is on the > other side of the translation, so it simply goes the other > direction. When the R neuron sends glutamate to B, a detector > detects the glutamate, and sends a 1 to the simulated B, which > then behaves (in simulation) just as it would if it had seen > real glutamate. When the R neuron tries to send dopamine to B, > a detector picks up the dopamine, and sends a 0 to the > simulated B, which then behaves (in simulation) exactly like > the natural B would have if it had seen real dopamine coming > from R. All that is left is to describe the B:D simulation > layer, which is hard to do since you didn't describe how B > talks downstream, but however it does it, you simulate what it > does, and then translate, so all the downstream neurons see > the same real neurotransmitters that they saw before. > > Now, if you simulated R too, you end up with a system with no > glutamate or dopamine in this part of the system, but that > CLAIMS to still be experiencing qualia, and why? Because the > downstream neurons all behave exactly as they did before the > swap. > > Now, if we assume MPD is true, then we have a problem, because > this new system should have no real qualia, but it CLAIMS that > it is experiencing real qualia the entire time, as its neurons > were slowly replaced with simulations. And the result is a > theory where the qualia is epiphenomenal. > > Thus, MPD is dead. > > > So, please return and report, and let me know if I can > fall to my knees and weep yet? > > > > I sincerely hope so. I hope that you have finally got it. > > James > > -- > Web: http://james.jlcarroll.net > > > > > > -- > Web: http://james.jlcarroll.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 2 05:27:00 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 23:27:00 -0600 Subject: [ExI] world's smallest movie In-Reply-To: <02a601ce46c3$5af70bf0$10e523d0$@rainier66.com> References: <02a601ce46c3$5af70bf0$10e523d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 5:26 PM, spike wrote: > ** ** > > ** ** > > > http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/worlds-smallest-movie-ibm-uses-individual-atoms-to-make-recordbreaking-short-film-of-boy-kicking-football-8599132.html > **** > > ** ** > > ** > Thanks. That is very cool stuff. 260 degrees C below zero... 12 atoms per bit of storage essentially. Nice. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 2 05:59:53 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 23:59:53 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: <1367229066.20691.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <517C2F04.5010800@canonizer.com> <5E69A8EB-619E-423B-B845-EDC24032843A@gmail.com> <517D3CEC.5030307@canonizer.com> <39CCF149-55A5-4BB8-A617-4C519C48E767@gmail.com> <517D5B94.7030105@canonizer.com> <01cf01ce4479$6735e540$35a1afc0$@rainier66.com> <20130429062515.GF8102@leitl.org> <1367229066.20691.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 3:51 AM, Gordon wrote: > We need to understand the brain before we can hope to duplicate one. It's > pretty naive, I think, to suppose that we can create one even before we > know how they work. > Agreed. Have you read Kurzweil's most recent book? What do you think of it? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 2 05:57:48 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 23:57:48 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: <1367212130.15877.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51738052.5030801@verizon.net> <517444B7.3090609@canonizer.com> <1366603687.3168.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <001201ce405f$1719ca40$454d5ec0$@rainier66.com> <1366782060.18718.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <004901ce4116$96630200$c3290600$@rainier66.com> <5178C0C5.9040400@verizon.net> <517997AB.4030900@verizon.net> <5179BCF8.9080001@aleph.se> <5179CFE6.8010201@verizon.net> <1366943744.64327.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367212130.15877.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Apr 28, 2013 at 11:08 PM, Gordon wrote: > > Kelly Anderson wrote: > > I think computer architectures will need to evolve a great deal to achieve > what organic brains can do. They won't be recognizable as digital > computers. They won't be digital software/hardware platforms. > I think I agree with you on this. Until the hardware configuration IS the software, computers won't ever be very much like brains unless the hardware is also simulated. The hardware of the brain, where the connections are, and the thresholds of various neurons, and maybe many other things are what give a particular connectome it's power. Glad I could find something to agree with you about. :-) -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 2 06:10:24 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 00:10:24 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: References: <1366603687.3168.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130424064540.GP15179@leitl.org> <1366787228.97128.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130424081616.GS15179@leitl.org> <5177E4B5.20401@aleph.se> <20130424145021.GV15179@leitl.org> <517C2F04.5010800@canonizer.com> <5E69A8EB-619E-423B-B845-EDC24032843A@gmail.com> <517D3CEC.5030307@canonizer.com> <39CCF149-55A5-4BB8-A617-4C519C48E767@gmail.com> <517D5B94.7030105@canonizer.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 11:50 AM, Brent Allsop wrote: > If a single neuron is what our brain uses to detect glutamate (or whatever > it is that is the neural correlate of redness), then you can see the > obvious fallacy in the transmigration thought experiment. And it is also > theoretically possible, that it is more than just a single neuron that is > involved in the process of detecting the causal properties of glutamate, so > that this system only says ?That is my redness?, only if it is real > glutamate (or whatever it is that really is responsible for a redness > quality). And not until you replace the entire binding system, which is > the complex process of detecting real glutamate, with an abstracted version > which can interpret a specific set of ones and zeros, as if it were the > same as glutamate, will it finally start behaving the same. And of course, > there will be lots of fading quale, as lots of single neurons are placed in > between these two states. Additionally, unlike the real thing, you will > never be able to ?eff? to know if the abstracted stuff, which is something > very different than redness, only being interpreted as redness, really has > a redness experience ? unlike the real thing. > > That?s at least how I think about it. Does this help you guys at all? > Nope. I think the problem may be that you are talking about a chemical thing, whereas I think of the brain as primarily driven electrically. True, there are chemicals involved, but those chemicals are primarily involved in creating electricity, and passing electrical signals on to the next neuron. So, if you don't have chemicals in an artificial neuron, but you still process the electrical inputs in such a way as to produce the same electrical outputs, then you have replaced it without losing anything. So perhaps the confusion is that I think qualia are the result of patterns of electrical activity, while you think they are somehow stored in a chemical fashion. Or maybe I've passed you in the night again without dancing. :-) -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 2 05:54:01 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 23:54:01 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: <517DF23C.1030103@verizon.net> References: <51738052.5030801@verizon.net> <517444B7.3090609@canonizer.com> <1366603687.3168.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <001201ce405f$1719ca40$454d5ec0$@rainier66.com> <1366782060.18718.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <004901ce4116$96630200$c3290600$@rainier66.com> <5178C0C5.9040400@verizon.net> <517997AB.4030900@verizon.net> <517DF23C.1030103@verizon.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Apr 28, 2013 at 10:08 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: > Kelly Anderson wrote: > > >> Because I change every day. That would just be one more such change. If I >> learn Chinese, do I stop being myself? >> >> -Kelly >> > > Don't try to confuse the issue. We are not talking about learning X, with > it's attendant synaptic changes, we are talking about making arbitrary > changes to a mindfile while simultaneously claiming that the integrity of > the mindfile is the basis of identity. > Sorry, wasn't trying to confuse the issue, but rather clarify my personal goals in uploading. If I am muddling with some special definition of something or other I apologize, that was not my intent. This is only about what I want out of the experience. My goals for uploading are, 1) Losing the downsides of having a body without sacrificing any of the upsides. That is, I want to be able to inhabit any body shape/size that fits my purposes today, without pain, illness, aging and the like. I still want to have pleasure such as orgasms. 2) To be able to make multiple copies of "me", have them participate in parallel experiences, then remerge those experiences into the main thread. That is, I want to remember thousands of "yesterdays" (as many as I can afford to compute) every new morning. 3) learning and remembering more and better than I can with my current brain. 4) thinking faster, not just in parallel, but faster in serial as well. 5) experiencing true virtual reality as a virtual tenant (not just embodied, but also disembodied experience.) 6) being comfortable enough about my conscious experience to argue with others that I am still conscious in a convincing fashion. 7) Interacting more naturally with digital computers, and at a much higher rate. 8) Probably a bunch of other things, if I thought about it longer. I'm hopeful that computational bandwidth availability is a meritocracy, not a rich win everything. For example, I would love to be able to hire my brain out as a companion robot driver, so that many people could enjoy my company, and if they enjoyed it enough, I would be rented again as a friend. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu May 2 07:00:08 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 02 May 2013 08:00:08 +0100 Subject: [ExI] world's smallest movie In-Reply-To: References: <02a601ce46c3$5af70bf0$10e523d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51820EF8.3050104@aleph.se> On 02/05/2013 06:27, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > Thanks. That is very cool stuff. 260 degrees C below zero... 12 atoms > per bit of storage essentially. Nice. > I personally think one can store one bit per atom: carbon 12 or 13 per diamond lattice site. But reading and writing is tricky. I wonder if the film can get a nanooscar? -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Thu May 2 07:11:23 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 02 May 2013 08:11:23 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: References: <51738052.5030801@verizon.net> <517444B7.3090609@canonizer.com> <1366603687.3168.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <001201ce405f$1719ca40$454d5ec0$@rainier66.com> <1366782060.18718.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <004901ce4116$96630200$c3290600$@rainier66.com> <5178C0C5.9040400@verizon.net> <517997AB.4030900@verizon.net> <517DF23C.1030103@verizon.net> Message-ID: <5182119B.5060901@aleph.se> On 02/05/2013 06:54, Kelly Anderson wrote: > I'm hopeful that computational bandwidth availability is a > meritocracy, not a rich win everything. Meritocracies do have some nasty sides (remember that the word was originally used in a dystopian novel) - in a non-meritocracy your social position is often due to factors that are not your fault. In a meritocracy you only have yourself to blame for where you end up. Stressful. The diversity of minds in an uploading society will depend as I earlier pointed out on the cheapness of scanning (the entry point) and whether it is possible to train-tweak minds into doing almost all tasks. I suspect the later is not really true: I would be a lousy organiser even with fairly extensive tweaks, but I do know I am a great researcher in a lot of different domains without any tweaking. So unless scanning remains very expensive for a very long time I would bet on a fairly diverse set of minds. The winner take all issue might be more about overall wealth distribution. If nothing changes, then we should the post-uploading rich to own a sizeable fraction of the total astonishing wealth. I have seen arguments for why this fraction might go up (there are a few portal techs you might invest in, and very rapid growth of invested capital) and why it might go down (much larger economy, harder for individual to dominate). But I'd rather be a peon in a super-wealthy posthuman civilization than a well-off medieval burgher: the personal possibilities are likely to be so much better. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Thu May 2 07:16:14 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 02 May 2013 08:16:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Kurzweil's latest In-Reply-To: References: <517C2F04.5010800@canonizer.com> <5E69A8EB-619E-423B-B845-EDC24032843A@gmail.com> <517D3CEC.5030307@canonizer.com> <39CCF149-55A5-4BB8-A617-4C519C48E767@gmail.com> <517D5B94.7030105@canonizer.com> <01cf01ce4479$6735e540$35a1afc0$@rainier66.com> <20130429062515.GF8102@leitl.org> <1367229066.20691.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <518212BE.8020906@aleph.se> On 02/05/2013 06:59, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 3:51 AM, Gordon > wrote: > > We need to understand the brain before we can hope to duplicate > one. It's pretty naive, I think, to suppose that we can create one > even before we know how they work. > > > Agreed. Have you read Kurzweil's most recent book? What do you think > of it? I read it. I think it is surprisingly mainstream: many neuroscientists (computational or not) believe roughly in something similar. What many do not believe in, and I think Ray does, is that the system is as clean as described. In particular, he is a "cortical chauvinist", believing that the cortex is mostly what matters - but the subcortical systems is what sets our goals, style of learning and evaluations. His philosophy of mind chapter is light - the recent email discussions has, despite much heat, delved into many issues he just saunters past. I was also dismayed by his very simplistic take on how to set AI motivations. All in all, my view is that it is a readable popular introduction to connectionist style models of the brain. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 2 07:27:48 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 01:27:48 -0600 Subject: [ExI] world's smallest movie In-Reply-To: <51820EF8.3050104@aleph.se> References: <02a601ce46c3$5af70bf0$10e523d0$@rainier66.com> <51820EF8.3050104@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 1:00 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 02/05/2013 06:27, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> >> Thanks. That is very cool stuff. 260 degrees C below zero... 12 atoms per >> bit of storage essentially. Nice. >> >> I personally think one can store one bit per atom: carbon 12 or 13 per > diamond lattice site. But reading and writing is tricky. > Eventually, yes, but according to the IBM 'behind the scenes' video, that's what they actually used. I assume that they needed the extra to build the "platform" that they rearrange the atoms on top of??? I wonder if the film can get a nanooscar? LOL, perhaps. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Thu May 2 08:45:25 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 01:45:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin In-Reply-To: <518197C9.3060100@libero.it> 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> Message-ID: <1367484325.81919.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Mirco Romanato wrote: > I just watched a video with Mike Maloney talking a bit about Bitcoin. > Apparently he is not pro but he is not against. It is an exciting market. I have invested enough that I will feel some pain if it turns out to be a boodoggle, but also enough that I could make a small fortune if it works out. I still have about 1/3 of my allotted funds to spend if the price drops enough. I used to be in the investment business. I would never have advised my clients to do anything this. But that only makes it more fun. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Thu May 2 08:55:01 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 01:55:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1367484901.54592.YahooMailClassic@web165006.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Gordon wrote: > Brent is one of those people speculating about it. While I haven't had time to study his posts in detail, I find myself in general agreement with the thrust of his argument. He is trying to understand how brain matter becomes mindful. Does glutamate play a role? Maybe, maybe not, but I think these are the right kinds of questions. It's funny, because I think that these are exactly the wrong kinds of questions. Rather than asking how "brain matter becomes mindful", we should be asking how brains are organised so that they produce minds. We don't ask what it is about carbon that makes it leaf-like, do we? That's the wrong question. The right (i.e. useful) question is: How is carbon organised so as to give rise to leaves? Ben Zaiboc From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 2 14:11:33 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 16:11:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: <517DF23C.1030103@verizon.net> References: <001201ce405f$1719ca40$454d5ec0$@rainier66.com> <1366782060.18718.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <004901ce4116$96630200$c3290600$@rainier66.com> <5178C0C5.9040400@verizon.net> <517997AB.4030900@verizon.net> <517DF23C.1030103@verizon.net> Message-ID: <20130502141133.GN26408@leitl.org> On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 12:08:28AM -0400, Alan Grimes wrote: > >Because I change every day. That would just be one more such > >change. If I learn Chinese, do I stop being myself? > > > >-Kelly > > Don't try to confuse the issue. We are not talking about learning X, Alan, the only one confused is really you. > with it's attendant synaptic changes, we are talking about making When you drink coffee, you change, too. > arbitrary changes to a mindfile while simultaneously claiming that > the integrity of the mindfile is the basis of identity. I don't know what a mindfile is. Do you? From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 2 13:57:54 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 06:57:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: References: <517C2F04.5010800@canonizer.com> <5E69A8EB-619E-423B-B845-EDC24032843A@gmail.com> <517D3CEC.5030307@canonizer.com> <39CCF149-55A5-4BB8-A617-4C519C48E767@gmail.com> <517D5B94.7030105@canonizer.com> <01cf01ce4479$6735e540$35a1afc0$@rainier66.com> <20130429062515.GF8102@leitl.org> <1367229066.20691.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <005401ce473d$0c243640$246ca2c0$@rainier66.com> >. On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson Subject: Re: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 3:51 AM, Gordon wrote: >>.We need to understand the brain before we can hope to duplicate one. It's pretty naive, I think, to suppose that we can create one even before we know how they work. >.Agreed. Have you read Kurzweil's most recent book? What do you think of it? -Kelly Kurzweil's latest book is a total mind blower. My CPU has so many qualia flying at it from all directions from reading that, I consider it the best book I have read in years. I am currently coding up an idea he mentions in there about cellular automata. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 2 14:20:06 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 16:20:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: <005401ce473d$0c243640$246ca2c0$@rainier66.com> References: <517D3CEC.5030307@canonizer.com> <39CCF149-55A5-4BB8-A617-4C519C48E767@gmail.com> <517D5B94.7030105@canonizer.com> <01cf01ce4479$6735e540$35a1afc0$@rainier66.com> <20130429062515.GF8102@leitl.org> <1367229066.20691.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <005401ce473d$0c243640$246ca2c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130502142006.GQ26408@leitl.org> On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 06:57:54AM -0700, spike wrote: > Kurzweil's latest book is a total mind blower. My CPU has so many qualia > flying at it from all directions from reading that, I consider it the best > book I have read in years. I am currently coding up an idea he mentions in > there about cellular automata. What's the beef with CAs in that context? From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 2 14:07:35 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 07:07:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] world's smallest movie In-Reply-To: References: <02a601ce46c3$5af70bf0$10e523d0$@rainier66.com> <51820EF8.3050104@aleph.se> Message-ID: <005901ce473e$6857ebe0$3907c3a0$@rainier66.com> . Subject: Re: [ExI] world's smallest movie On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 1:00 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: >.I wonder if the film can get a nanooscar? - Anders The kid with the football at least deserves the award for Smallest Supporting Actor. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Thu May 2 14:41:27 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 07:41:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1367505687.50221.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: >>> In this idealized theoretical world, it is glutamate that >>> has a redness quality. And this glutamate behaves >>> the way it does, because of this redness quality. ... >>> That?s at least how I think about it. Does this help >>> you guys at all? >>Yes, it helps enormously. >(Ben, thanks for this. I literally feel to my knees, and cried, when I read this.) Oh, dear, I think you rather missed the point. What was important was what I wrote directly underneath that. I'm trying to point out that saying something like "glutamate has a redness quality" /makes no sense at all/ (you don't actually think that a particular cog in a clock is the one that knows the time, do you?). "Redness" is not a quality that a thing possesses, it's a conceptual category that our minds create after many experiences involving visual inputs. You could say that it's something we invent. Just like we invent other useful categories to group together the Oxford English Dictionary, Ringworld Engineers, The God Delusion, The Collected Works of Shakespeare, German for Dummies, Freakonomics, Mind Children, etc., or Beef, Chicken, Lamb, Ostrich, Venison, and so on. We make up huge numbers of these categories throughout our lives, and the interesting question is not "does my 'bus' category feel the same as yours, when we both see a bus?", but: "How do we do it?". Once we know that, we can build other systems that do it too, and they will then create their own categories, and thereby know what books are. And what red is. >>.Thankfully, it looks like lots of people are starting to get it. Spike is clearly getting it. Spike wrote: > Damn, I'm slow. It took me at least a dozen years to figure out what this concept is about. Spike, don't feel bad. Many people still don't get Phlogiston, or the Aether. In my opinion, Qualia, as actual 'things that exist', come under the category of "not even wrong". I'm not saying that the word doesn't mean anything, because obviously it means what each person using it wants it to mean, but that's part of the problem. It can't be properly defined, so it means far too many things. What it means to me is worlds away from what it appears to mean to Brent, for example. When trying to figure out how minds work, they are simply Not Useful. Ben Zaiboc From bbenzai at yahoo.com Thu May 2 14:45:56 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 07:45:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1367505956.46063.YahooMailClassic@web165002.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Gordon wrote: > I believe thoughts are material things - I am not a dualist of any kind. I also believe the brain is not inherently like a digital computer. I can argue both those points. I think we'd probably all agree on those points. > If one accepts the conclusions of those two arguments, it follows that thoughts are intrinsic to the biology of the brain This doesn't follow at all! Those two points may, or may not, be related. Remember: Correlation Is Not Causation. (This, of course, is independent of the fact that many non-digital things can be reproduced by a digital computer, so the observation that the brain isn't one /simply doesn't matter/. No-one objects that computers can't create highly accurate models of bridges because bridges aren't inherently like digital computers. This point has been repeated ad nauseam on here, without any sensible refutation, and without it seeming to make any dent in your apparent conviction that it can't be so). Ben Zaiboc From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 2 15:13:47 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 08:13:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] commie space junk nearly spoils our day Message-ID: <007f01ce4747$a5e15060$f1a3f120$@rainier66.com> Oy vey. If these two satellites had had their own private cold war up there, it would mean far more than a tragic loss of the Fermi GST. If two biggies like this collide, we could have that long-dreaded LEO chain-reaction meltdown: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/05/02/russian-space-junk-almost-destroys -nasa-telescope/?intcmp=features Russian space junk almost destroys NASA telescope By Miriam Kramer Published May 02, 2013 A high-tech NASA telescope in orbit escaped a potentially disastrous collision with a Soviet-era Russian spy satellite last year in a close call that highlights the growing threat of orbital debris around Earth. NASA's $690 million Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope - which studies the most powerful explosions in the universe - narrowly avoided a direct hit with the defunct 1.5-ton Russian reconnaissance satellite Cosmos 1805 on April 3, 2012, space agency officials announced Tuesday, April 30. The potential space collision was avoided when engineers commanded Fermi to fire its thrusters in a critical dodging maneuver to move out of harm's way. Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/05/02/russian-space-junk-almost-destroys -nasa-telescope/?intcmp=features#ixzz2S9G2KDqr spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 2 15:52:06 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 08:52:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: <20130502142006.GQ26408@leitl.org> References: <517D3CEC.5030307@canonizer.com> <39CCF149-55A5-4BB8-A617-4C519C48E767@gmail.com> <517D5B94.7030105@canonizer.com> <01cf01ce4479$6735e540$35a1afc0$@rainier66.com> <20130429062515.GF8102@leitl.org> <1367229066.20691.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <005401ce473d$0c243640$246ca2c0$@rainier66.com> <20130502142006.GQ26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <008d01ce474d$0055f410$0101dc30$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Subject: Re: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 06:57:54AM -0700, spike wrote: >>... Kurzweil's latest book is a total mind blower. My CPU has so many > qualia flying at it from all directions from reading that, I consider > it the best book I have read in years. I am currently coding up an > idea he mentions in there about cellular automata. spike >...What's the beef with CAs in that context? Eugen _______________________________________________ OK granted it isn't deep or profound. But I liked his explanation of how there are patterns in seeming chaos that the human mind can easily recognize, but cannot be derived any other way than to go thru stepwise every stage in series. Consider the passage about Wolfram's 255 rules game, which is about 2/3 thru the book (I don't have a page number and the book is in my car.) There is no way to calculate line 70 of that pattern without calculating every previous line, and once we do, order emerges from chaos. This whole notion ties in with our qualia discussion, sorta. I think of Kurzweil/Wolframs CA as a chain reaction of sorts. Consider a chain reaction of qualia that takes place in the brain. For instance a familiar old song that plenty of people here know or have heard assuming you are old enough. I can give you just a few words, and it creates a chain reaction: No New Year's Day... to celebrate... No chocolate covered candy hearts to give away... That's all I need to create a cascade of pseudo-audio thoughts that reminds one of a breezy tune from Stevie Wonder with a chorus of: I just called... to say... etc. For the younger set: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1jnlv_stevie-wonder-i-just-called-to-say_m usic Did it work? Is that tune now stuck in your head? OK good, then that makes my point. When we know a song, we can't just pull out the 70th word or even just take up anywhere in a song, even though we know the song well. It is stored somehow as a neuronal chain reaction. Our thoughts are chain reactions, that take place in some nearly inexplicable and (the religionistas might say) miraculous neuronal chain reaction, one in which we struggle to understand at the most basic level: a neuron has a bunch of inputs and one branching output. Under certain conditions a neuron fires, that fires certain others and so on, until a thought happens, or a song. Get enough random connections and somehow order emerges from chaos. (Totally KEWALLL! Ain't it fun to be human? I am really enjoying myself in here in this bony orb with all those neuronal chain reactions.) That Wolfram 0-255 passage causes me to think this connectome project might somehow result in something like emergent order from a bunch of completely deterministic individually-understandable component reactions. All that being said, I read back over what I just wrote and recognize that it is chaotic and nearly incomprehensible, so let me summarize thus: Kurzweil's brief mention of Wolfram's rather simple idea has caused a cascade of subsequent ideas in my mind, just as my mentioning the first couple lines of the tune above caused it to get stuck in your ear, and now you are probably humming that right now and can't stop, ja? spike From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 2 16:06:11 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 09:06:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367505687.50221.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1367505687.50221.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <008e01ce474e$f925fa80$eb71ef80$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Ben Zaiboc Spike wrote: >>>... Damn, I'm slow. It took me at least a dozen years to figure out what > this concept is about. >>...Spike, don't feel bad. Many people still don't get Phlogiston, or the Aether. >...In my opinion, Qualia, as actual 'things that exist', come under the category of "not even wrong". I'm not saying that the word doesn't mean anything, because obviously it means what each person using it wants it to mean, but that's part of the problem... Ben Zaiboc _______________________________________________ OK let me try an alternate description then. My idea of the meaning of qualia may well be different from Brent's, but I think I have extracted from the discussion something useful, as follows: You and I, Brent, everyone here, sees a flash of coherent 700 nm light. The light is completely quantized, unambiguous, we know the momentum of each photon exactly, the event is completely mathematically described. We all have retinas which react every one differently, each of which cause some kind of electrochemical reaction to occur on our optical nerves, which carry the signals to a glob of neurons which somehow causes a chain reaction, neuronal pathways absolutely different in each person, chaotic branching dendrites going to synapses every which way along completely different paths in each person, so we all feel something a little different, and yet we all say in perfect unison "red." As I am using (or misusing) the term, I take qualia to be an attempted description of what happens immediately after those 700 nm photons hit a retina. This concept is absolutely necessary to really understanding what is a thought and what is going on in a connectome, ja? spike From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 2 16:44:39 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 18:44:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] world's smallest movie In-Reply-To: References: <02a601ce46c3$5af70bf0$10e523d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130502164439.GU26408@leitl.org> On Wed, May 01, 2013 at 11:27:00PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Thanks. That is very cool stuff. 260 degrees C below zero... 12 atoms per > bit of storage essentially. Nice. This is carbon monoxide on copper, and if you count in everything then unfortunately your bit density/volume is really lousy. Compare that to http://what-if.xkcd.com/31/ I doubt you can squeeze more than 1 bit/nm^3 in a 3d lattice of addressable sites. That gives you around 10^21 bits/cm^3. That's the kind of density you need for Avogardo scale computing (somewhere between 1 mole bits/liter or at least 1 m^3, or about one 19" rack, if one still thinks in ancient units). From msd001 at gmail.com Thu May 2 22:28:51 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 18:28:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] world's smallest movie In-Reply-To: <20130502164439.GU26408@leitl.org> References: <02a601ce46c3$5af70bf0$10e523d0$@rainier66.com> <20130502164439.GU26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 12:44 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > This is carbon monoxide on copper, and if you count in everything then > unfortunately your bit density/volume is really lousy. > Compare that to http://what-if.xkcd.com/31/ > > I doubt you can squeeze more than 1 bit/nm^3 in a 3d > lattice of addressable sites. That gives you around 10^21 bits/cm^3. > That's the kind of density you need for Avogardo scale computing > (somewhere between 1 mole bits/liter or at least 1 m^3, > or about one 19" rack, if one still thinks in ancient units). I wonder if/when this kind of transfer becomes ancient too. Have you seen the commercials of the phone-to-phone momentary transfer of what seems to be an entire movie? While it's a great marketing tactic, I assume the way that works is that your content has already been uploaded over whatever comparatively slow link you have - and the nearly instantaneous transfer is actually just an authorization token. There continues to be a single version "in the cloud" but now two devices have been authenticated to consume it. If/when we start measuring our individual wealth by how much restricted/non-public bits of content we can access, the instant delivery of authentication tokens will easily outpace the actual transfer of data over wires - even virtual wires. "Click" I just purchased the entirety of the Encyclopedia Galactica. I don't need to download the whole thing to prove that I own it because I have random access on-demand; what do you want to know? Maybe we're not thinking of access this way yet... but it's a possibility. From hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu Fri May 3 00:49:27 2013 From: hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu (Henry Rivera) Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 20:49:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness Message-ID: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >> Does euglena "experience" the perception of light during phototaxis? > >I suspect at some level yes, otherwise there would have to be some >special consciousness spark entering at some evolutionary point >between euglena and humans, and that seems implausible. I hypothesize this is exactly what happened, but I wouldn't call it a spark. At some point in the evolution of higher-level animals, we developed some structure or process in our brain that allows us to jack into what I call the universal consciousness that is all around us that contains/produces qualia (perhaps interfacing at the plank scale). This is currently being discussed on the Journal of Consciousness Studies list due to recent articles on the topic. These brain structures or processes could be microtubules, as Hammeroff suggests, EM fields interacting with voltage-gated ion channels as Johnjoe McFadden suggests, Na+ channels as Alfredo Pereira suggests, Ca++ ions as Chris Nunn suggests, or maybe something we haven't discovered yet. Here's a recent paper on McFadden's CEMI from the JCS: http://machineslikeus.com/sites/default/files/mcfadden_JCS_2013%28a%29.pdf I recognize that until there is more evidence supporting such unpopular ideas, Occam's razor will lead most to dismiss them. I'm happy to modify my views as evidence comes in. -Henry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 3 01:28:36 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 11:28:36 +1000 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 10:49 AM, Henry Rivera wrote: > Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >>> Does euglena "experience" the perception of light during phototaxis? >> >>I suspect at some level yes, otherwise there would have to be some >>special consciousness spark entering at some evolutionary point >>between euglena and humans, and that seems implausible. > > > I hypothesize this is exactly what happened, but I wouldn't call it a spark. > At some point in the evolution of higher-level animals, we developed some > structure or process in our brain that allows us to jack into what I call > the universal consciousness that is all around us that contains/produces > qualia (perhaps interfacing at the plank scale). This is currently being > discussed on the Journal of Consciousness Studies list due to recent > articles on the topic. These brain structures or processes could be > microtubules, as Hammeroff suggests, EM fields interacting with > voltage-gated ion channels as Johnjoe McFadden suggests, Na+ channels as > Alfredo Pereira suggests, Ca++ ions as Chris Nunn suggests, or maybe > something we haven't discovered yet. Here's a recent paper on McFadden's > CEMI from the JCS: > http://machineslikeus.com/sites/default/files/mcfadden_JCS_2013%28a%29.pdf > I recognize that until there is more evidence supporting such unpopular > ideas, Occam's razor will lead most to dismiss them. I'm happy to modify my > views as evidence comes in. Apart from the scientific problem, the philosophical problem with these theories is that they make consciousness substrate dependent, as Brent and Gordon have been arguing, and that leads to absurdity. It would mean that if the microtubules in your visual cortex could be replaced with functional equivalents you would be blind but you would not notice you were blind and you would behave as if you had normal vision. -- Stathis Papaioannou From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri May 3 05:16:08 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 22:16:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > Apart from the scientific problem, the philosophical problem with > these theories is that they make consciousness substrate dependent, as > Brent and Gordon have been arguing, and that leads to absurdity. It > would mean that if the microtubules in your visual cortex could be > replaced with functional equivalents you would be blind but you would > not notice you were blind and you would behave as if you had normal > vision. If you are saying here that consciousness cannot be substrate dependent then that leads to the absurdity of multiple realizability. As one philosopher observed, we could in principle train a massive group of pigeons to peck in a manner?analogous?to how the brain supposedly acts like a digital computer. We could say a peck = 1, and a non-peck = 0. Would that group of pigeons really be a mind? Multiple-realizability is a sort of unspoken doctrine here on ExI with respect to matters of the mind, at least among many of us here. I have problems with it. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/multiple-realizability/ Gordon? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 3 05:44:22 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 15:44:22 +1000 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 3:16 PM, Gordon wrote: > Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >> Apart from the scientific problem, the philosophical problem with >> these theories is that they make consciousness substrate dependent, as >> Brent and Gordon have been arguing, and that leads to absurdity. It >> would mean that if the microtubules in your visual cortex could be >> replaced with functional equivalents you would be blind but you would >> not notice you were blind and you would behave as if you had normal >> vision. > > If you are saying here that consciousness cannot be substrate dependent then > that leads to the absurdity of multiple realizability. As one philosopher > observed, we could in principle train a massive group of pigeons to peck in > a manner analogous to how the brain supposedly acts like a digital computer. > We could say a peck = 1, and a non-peck = 0. Would that group of pigeons > really be a mind? Why do you think a bunch of dumb atoms being a mind is more plausible than the pigeons? > Multiple-realizability is a sort of unspoken doctrine here on ExI with > respect to matters of the mind, at least among many of us here. I have > problems with it. > > http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/multiple-realizability/ > > Gordon -- Stathis Papaioannou From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri May 3 06:11:52 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 23:11:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >?Why do you think a bunch of dumb atoms being a mind is more plausible > than the pigeons? I think so because the pigeons are acting only according to syntactical rules, rules which I believe are not intrinsic to real minds. If the brain were really like a digital computer then sure, we could create brains on digital computers. We could even make them out of pecking pigeons. Anything comparable to on/off switches would work. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 3 06:30:52 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 16:30:52 +1000 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 4:11 PM, Gordon wrote: > Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >> Why do you think a bunch of dumb atoms being a mind is more plausible >> than the pigeons? > > I think so because the pigeons are acting only according to syntactical > rules, rules which I believe are not intrinsic to real minds. > > If the brain were really like a digital computer then sure, we could create > brains on digital computers. We could even make them out of pecking pigeons. > Anything comparable to on/off switches would work. And the atoms which give rise to real minds do not follow syntactic rules? All of physics is about syntactic rules. So is chemistry, biology and neuroscience. Are they all wrong? Do the semantic rules appear magically at some point? If so, why can't they appear magically from the interaction of semiconductor circuits or pigeons? -- Stathis Papaioannou From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri May 3 07:02:09 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 00:02:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >> If the brain were really like a digital computer then sure, we could create >> brains on digital computers. We could even make them out of pecking pigeons. >> Anything comparable to on/off switches would work. > And the atoms which give rise to real minds do not follow syntactic > rules? We want to think they do, but we are assigning that to the physics. Computational states are not actually discovered within the?physics of the brain.?We assign them to the physics. > All of physics is about syntactic rules.? So we want to think.? > So is chemistry,biology and neuroscience. Are they all wrong?? Not wrong, just incomplete.? Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 3 07:29:22 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 17:29:22 +1000 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Gordon wrote: > Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >>> If the brain were really like a digital computer then sure, we could >>> create >>> brains on digital computers. We could even make them out of pecking >>> pigeons. >>> Anything comparable to on/off switches would work. > >> And the atoms which give rise to real minds do not follow syntactic >> rules? > > We want to think they do, but we are assigning that to the physics. > Computational states are not actually discovered within the physics of the > brain. We assign them to the physics. The matter in the brain follows rigid, mechanistic rules. The same rules that the matter in computers follows. You claim that mind comes out of the matter in the brain, but it is impossible for mind to come out of the matter in a computer. How can you be so sure about this? What is the special spark in the brain that is lacking in other collections of matter? How can we add this special spark to a television or a tree, say, to give it a mind? Would it be easier with an old fashioned analogue TV than with the newer digital ones? -- Stathis Papaioannou From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 3 07:45:40 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 08:45:40 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 8:29 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > The matter in the brain follows rigid, mechanistic rules. The same > rules that the matter in computers follows. You claim that mind comes > out of the matter in the brain, but it is impossible for mind to come > out of the matter in a computer. How can you be so sure about this? > What is the special spark in the brain that is lacking in other > collections of matter? How can we add this special spark to a > television or a tree, say, to give it a mind? Would it be easier with > an old fashioned analogue TV than with the newer digital ones? > You need to answer the question 'What is life'? What makes a cell 'alive' as opposed to dead matter? Once that is answered, then we can set about making our computers 'alive'. BillK From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri May 3 07:58:24 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 00:58:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> ________________________________ Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > The matter in the brain follows rigid, mechanistic rules.? So many believe. This question is more about the arguments for and against free will. > The same?rules that the matter in computers follows. You claim that mind comes > out of the matter in the brain, but it is impossible for mind to come > out of the matter in a computer. How can you be so sure about this? I've mentioned at least a couple of my reasons: 1) Semantics is not intrinsic to syntax. There is no?conceivable?way that a digital computer running software could know the meanings of the symbols it manipulates. 2) Even if 1) is false; that is, even if the human brain/mind could be modeled as a digital computer that manipulates symbols in such a way it has conscious experience (semantics), there is no real syntax in the brain. We assign it to the physics. We're only imagining it. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 3 08:19:39 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 10:19:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130503081939.GY26408@leitl.org> On Fri, May 03, 2013 at 12:58:24AM -0700, Gordon wrote: > > The matter in the brain follows rigid, mechanistic rules.? > > So many believe. This question is more about the arguments for and against free will. The difference between free will and no free will is exactly PRNG vs RNG, and it's exactly none from the user's point of view. > > The same?rules that the matter in computers follows. You claim that mind comes > > out of the matter in the brain, but it is impossible for mind to come > > out of the matter in a computer. How can you be so sure about this? > > I've mentioned at least a couple of my reasons: > > 1) Semantics is not intrinsic to syntax. There is no?conceivable?way that a digital computer running software could know the meanings of the symbols it manipulates. Where are the symbols located in the space between your ears? What is the meaning of that particular spike train (you did see it, right? Sorry, it's gone now) down that particular axon? > > 2) Even if 1) is false; that is, even if the human brain/mind could be modeled as a digital computer that manipulates symbols in such a way it has conscious experience (semantics), there is no real syntax in the brain. We assign it to the physics. We're only imagining it. And off to la-la land we go. From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 3 08:20:58 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 10:20:58 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130503082058.GZ26408@leitl.org> On Fri, May 03, 2013 at 04:30:52PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > And the atoms which give rise to real minds do not follow syntactic > rules? All of physics is about syntactic rules. So is chemistry, > biology and neuroscience. Are they all wrong? Do the semantic rules > appear magically at some point? If so, why can't they appear magically > from the interaction of semiconductor circuits or pigeons? When an argument devolves into semantics, and redefining the meaning of words you know what to do with it. From bbenzai at yahoo.com Fri May 3 09:30:14 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 02:30:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Ben wrote: > >...In my opinion, Qualia, as actual 'things that exist', come under the > category of "not even wrong". I'm not saying that the word doesn't mean > anything, because obviously it means what each person using it wants it to > mean, but that's part of the problem... Ben Zaiboc > "spike" wrote: > > OK let me try an alternate description then. My idea of the meaning of > qualia may well be different from Brent's, but I think I have extracted from > the discussion something useful, as follows: > > You and I, Brent, everyone here, sees a flash of coherent 700 nm light. The > light is completely quantized, unambiguous, we know the momentum of each > photon exactly, the event is completely mathematically described. We all > have retinas which react every one differently, each of which cause some > kind of electrochemical reaction to occur on our optical nerves, which carry > the signals to a glob of neurons which somehow causes a chain reaction, > neuronal pathways absolutely different in each person, chaotic branching > dendrites going to synapses every which way along completely different paths > in each person, so we all feel something a little different, and yet we all > say in perfect unison "red." > > As I am using (or misusing) the term, I take qualia to be an attempted > description of what happens immediately after those 700 nm photons hit a > retina. This concept is absolutely necessary to really understanding what > is a thought and what is going on in a connectome, ja? Ja, indeed. That kind of makes my point for me. Your description of a process, slightly different in each unique nervous system, but resulting in a common word being used to describe it (at least in any one language, among any single group of people. I can imagine that among some tribe living in a tropical rainforest, their word for Red actually encompasses a slightly different set of perceptions than the equivalent word among people living in Greenland, for instance), can be called a quale. If you want. Notice that this is not the same thing as "the 'feel' of seeing red" (whatever that means), which is what seems to be the most common use of the word. Or the name for whatever it is that represents the 'symbol' Red in our minds, that gets used whenever we need something to mean that category. If this is what actually happens. So already I've got 3 different meanings for the word, without even trying. Perhaps we shouldn't use the word on its own, but a variant to indicate what we mean. Spikequalia (Spiqualia? Spikualia?) are your version, indicating a neural process. Benqualia are mine, indicating a mental learned category. Brentqualia are those peculiar things that somehow 'are' the property that they represent (I think). Gordonqualia are those things that exist in organic brains, but can't be reproduced in a digital computer, etc. The fact that it's possible to say "invisible pink unicorn" pretty much guarantees that the word qualia, without additional qualification (in which case we might as well use a different, less ambiguous word), remains useless. Ben Zaiboc From bbenzai at yahoo.com Fri May 3 10:27:48 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 03:27:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1367576868.92376.YahooMailClassic@web165005.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Gordon wrote: > ... the absurdity of multiple realizability. As one philosopher observed, we could in principle train a massive group of pigeons to peck in a manner?analogous?to how the brain supposedly acts like a digital computer. We could say a peck = 1, and a non-peck = 0. Would that group of pigeons really be a mind? The brain does not act like a digital computer, and I don't think anyone seriously claims that. The idea is that a computer can act like a brain. Completely different thing. Forget digital vs non-digital, that's a red herring. But in principle, yes, a pigeon-peck machine could implement a mind, just as an ion-current one can. > > Multiple-realizability is a sort of unspoken doctrine here on ExI with respect to matters of the mind, at least among many of us here. I have problems with it. > > http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/multiple-realizability/ Wow. That was the most long-winded expression of carbon chauvinism I've ever seen. But I see now. You think that 'multiple realisability' is absurd. You don't accept the beer-cans-and-string mind. You don't accept that minds exist within the bounds of physics. The reason multiple-realisability of minds is an 'unspoken doctrine' is that it naturally follows from the principles on which the world works. It's not a dogma that you first accept, then find rationalisations for, it's a conclusion that you reach once you understand enough about physics, chemistry and biology. And yes, it might fly in the face of instinct, and feel wrong, but that's what science is like. It cares nothing for our prejudices and preconceptions (unless you're talking about Bayesian stuff!), it simply works, whether you agree with it or not. Everything we know about physics, chemistry and biology points to the conclusion that minds are made of information. Not static information, but dynamic patterns of it. Patterns of information can, just like music, be implemented in many different ways. If you think that minds are not made of information, you need to explain what they are made of. Science tells us they can't be made of anything else, so your explanation will fall outside of known science. Either stand ready to receive your Nobel Prize (after revolutionising the whole of science), or accept that nobody who has a rational mind and the habit of using it, will take you serously. Ben Zaiboc From msd001 at gmail.com Fri May 3 11:57:24 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 07:57:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367576868.92376.YahooMailClassic@web165005.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1367576868.92376.YahooMailClassic@web165005.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 6:27 AM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Forget digital vs non-digital, that's a red herring. But in principle, yes, a pigeon-peck machine could implement a mind, just as an ion-current one can. 770nm photons, invisible pink unicorn, red herring... I'm beginning to understand why qualia is always described by the "redness of red" :) I still think it's more approachable as "cheesiness of cheese" From bbenzai at yahoo.com Fri May 3 13:16:39 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 06:16:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1367586999.54335.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Ben Zaiboc wrote: bla bla... > ... or accept that nobody who has a rational mind and > the habit of using it, will take you serously. Oops, I didn't actually mean "serously". I expect only a vampire would want to 'take you serously', and that would be serously bad for you. Ben Zaiboc From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 3 14:40:56 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 07:40:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <005101ce480c$38f1a110$aad4e330$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou >...How can we add this special spark to a television or a tree, say, to give it a mind? Would it be easier with an old fashioned analogue TV than with the newer digital ones? -- Stathis Papaioannou _______________________________________________ Any analog circuit or any mechanical system can be simulated to arbitrary precision digitally. Get some kid who is hot with his Simulink and Matlab to demonstrate if you don't believe it. As soon as they do, you will realize your entire engineering education was a waste of time. You could have gone straight to software, skipped all that differential equation nightmare, study Matlab and Simulink for a couple years, be able to do everything a good mechanical engineer can do and more, cheaper, faster, better. It looks to me like a brain is a mechanical system filled with analog circuits. It is wildly complicated of course, but it is an analog circuit. Once we know enough about it, we can simulate it, on something like a ramped-up version of Simulink and Matlab, ja? I have been pondering that for over 15 yrs, and have never found the flaw in that line of reasoning. Looks to me like the connectome project is the first baby step in that direction. spike From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 3 14:48:50 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 15:48:50 +0100 Subject: [ExI] EU bans neonicotinoids In-Reply-To: <025f01ce46aa$4c1a26d0$e44e7470$@rainier66.com> References: <025f01ce46aa$4c1a26d0$e44e7470$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 9:27 PM, spike wrote: > Thanks Dave. Whether or not neonics are the bad guy, this is a valuable and > informative test. We will be able to compare loss and recovery rates > between Europe and the US, two countries with a similar enough climate to > make comparison meaningful and yes I know Europe is a continent not a > country. But the bees don?t know the difference, especially if neonics are > causing them to be stupid. Let the tests begin! > Subsidised patches to wean bees off neonicotinoids Following a Europe-wide ban on neonicotinoids, bees are to be offered patches to help them cope with withdrawal. The patches are part of the ?Bee Strong? campaign targeting worker bees through hard-hitting adverts and hive support groups. A telephone helpline will be advertised with the slogan ?Give us a buzz?. An EU spokesman said ?We?ll be drawing on our experience of producing road safety and smoking cessation campaigns in the human sphere. Adverts will probably feature a dead bee. Possibly several.? Though applauded by the Confederation of Queen Bees, the prohibition is not expected to be welcomed across the bee world. One worker bee said: ?It?s the only pleasure I?ve left in life. Never did me no harm. Show me the way to go home!?? Other objections have been raised, notably by the farming equipment industry, who have complained that other devices, such as placebo crop-sprayers, were not considered for the EU subsidies. Ecologists have spoken of nightmare scenarios around an emergent black market in neonicotinoids and gangster bees armed with sting-guns and wearing very small fedoras. Neonicotinoids have been widely blamed for falling bee productivity, but were the drug of choice amongst sections of the bee community and said to be notable for an excellent buzz. ------------------ BillK From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri May 3 14:50:03 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 10:50:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 3, 2013 Gordon wrote: > we could in principle train a massive group of pigeons to peck in a > manner analogous to how the brain supposedly acts like a digital computer. > We could say a peck = 1, and a non-peck = 0. Would that group of pigeons > really be a mind? > Logic provides a unambiguous answer to that question, yes. And if that is counter to our intuition then that's just tough because there is no reason to expect us to have the inherent ability to just see what the answer must be without even thinking about it, in the way we can just know how to move our hands to catch a baseball. The difference is that those who had good hand eye coordination had more descendants than those who lacked that skill, but the ability to just intuit the correct answer to philosophical problems of this sort would have conveyed no Evolutionary advantage to our ancestors and thus today we have inherited no skill in this area. So being unable to trust our ability to just intuit the correct answer to the question we have no choice but to use logic to painfully work through it step by step, and when we do that the answer is a unequivocal yes. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri May 3 14:58:54 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 10:58:54 -0400 Subject: [ExI] engineered insects Message-ID: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22380287 using these as artificial pollinators sounds expensive, but perhaps less expensive than the losses incurred from no-pollinators. as nodes in a self-configuring/ad-hoc p2p network maybe a few thousand of these things will be dumped by drone over an area we want to examine/monitor... Perhaps the countermeasure for these will be frog-like robots? From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri May 3 15:53:34 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 11:53:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 3:58 AM, Gordon wrote: > 1) Semantics is not intrinsic to syntax. There is no conceivable way that > a digital computer running software could know the meanings of the symbols > it manipulates. > In the context of a digital computer running a operating system a 0 could mean "copy the data in hard disk sector X to buffer memory Y". And In the context of a digital computer running a operating system and also a word processing program the contents of buffer memory Y could mean a word in the English language. And in the same way in the context of a bacteria (or a human cell) the meaning of 3 guanine nucleotides molecules in a row means "stick a glycine amino acid molecule at the end of that huge protein you're building in that ribosome ". > there is no real syntax in the brain. That is equivalent to saying there is no organization in the brain, and that can't be right. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 3 15:52:11 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 08:52:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] quantia game Message-ID: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> OK so we have been grinding away on describing a concept called qualia to a bunch of guys, many of whom think mathematically. Many if not most of us here are engineering/science/math/technology geeks. OK so we can deal, an engineer sees a problem, solves a problem, ja? It's our nature. That's how we got to be geeks. I propose a game, a challenge to those of us guys who have to work at it to distinguish between colors that our female counterparts can easily see. Open an excel spreadsheet, click in any cell, then go up under that paint bucket icon, upper leftish, left click on the black triangle, go to the bottom of that menu and select "more colors." OK now you have a hexagon filled with various colored hexagons, 127 of them (black is missing, which is why the painfully non-symmetric ugly 127 instead of the beautiful soul-calming 128.) This is your box of crayons. Start out with the easy one. Pick the one which is the most red. OK no problem, most of even us lads can find that one. It looks to me nearly indistinguishable from the hexes to the right and left of red, so I choose the one in the middle. OK guys, left click once on that hex, now go under the tab above called "custom" just to the right of the "standard" tab, left click once to drop that menu. There it shows you how much red, how much blue, how much green is the hex you chose. If you hit it right on the first try, 255 red, 0 blue, 0 green, then you are gay. Kidding, bygones. OK that one was easy. Red is a good descriptor for qualia, since we pretty much all define red the same way. Repeat experiment, harder this time. Pick the hex you think is purple, defined as 0 green, 255 red, 255 blue. Did you hit that one on the first try? OK try orange then. Third test, harder still: yellow. Recall the emissive spectrum is a little different than the absorptive: when you play with crayons and watercolors, your primary colors are red, blue and yellow, and mixing colors makes them darker, heading towards black. In the emissive spectrum it is the dual of that: primary colors are blue, red and green, and mixing colors makes them lighter, heading towards white. I would be surprised if anyone here hits yellow exactly right on the first try. If you do, then come on out of the closet, you are among friends here, we won't tell. {8^D Kidding bygones. We can imagine creating a continuous spectrum in which we vary the cell color continuously, then have the geeks pick the most red, the most orange, the most yellow etc. Cool! spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 3 15:52:20 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 08:52:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Ben Zaiboc ... "spike" wrote: > > >... neuronal pathways > absolutely different in each person, chaotic branching dendrites going > to synapses every which way along completely different paths in each > person, so we all feel something a little different, and yet we all say in perfect unison "red."... As I am using (or misusing) the term, I take qualia to be an attempted > description of what happens immediately after those 700 nm photons hit > a retina. This concept is absolutely necessary to really > understanding what is a thought and what is going on in a connectome, ja? spike >...That kind of makes my point for me... slightly different set of perceptions than the equivalent word among people living in Greenland, for instance), can be called a quale. If you want... I realized the way I am using the term, it is reduced to a more specific form of the term "thought." >...Notice that this is not the same thing as "the 'feel' of seeing red" (whatever that means), which is what seems to be the most common use of the word... Ja. I am almost back to where I started. >... Gordonqualia are those things that exist in organic brains, but can't be reproduced in a digital computer, etc. OK, I see but I am not ready to concede that point. My contention is that if we go down deep enough, we can eventually sim everything that is going on in an organic brain, everything no exceptions full stop. If that principle is false or there is some fundamental reason why it cannot be, then all our hopes and dreams of cryonic reanimation are nothing but a fart in a hurricane. But I think any mechanical system can be simulated to arbitrary precision, and that there are insights available from doing that which we can never get to using the physical system. Gordon has made several excellent points recently and opened my mind to a branch of AI I hadn't sufficiently pondered. I just disagree with the notion that a brain cannot be simulated, if that is what he is arguing. >...Or the name for whatever it is that represents the 'symbol' Red in our minds, that gets used whenever we need something to mean that category. If this is what actually happens. Ben Zaiboc _______________________________________________ I just thought of a qualia game, which quantizes qualia. I will post it in a separate thread, to avoid hijacking this thread, which I will call the quantia game. Please stand by. spike From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 3 16:05:31 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 02:05:31 +1000 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 03/05/2013, at 5:58 PM, Gordon wrote: > > > Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > The matter in the brain follows rigid, mechanistic rules. > > So many believe. This question is more about the arguments for and against free will. Even if the rules are probabilistic they are rigid and mechanistic. For example, radioactive decay is truly random but is described by simple and completely rigid equations. > > The same rules that the matter in computers follows. You claim that mind comes > > out of the matter in the brain, but it is impossible for mind to come > > out of the matter in a computer. How can you be so sure about this? > > I've mentioned at least a couple of my reasons: > > 1) Semantics is not intrinsic to syntax. There is no conceivable way that a digital computer running software could know the meanings of the symbols it manipulates. > > > 2) Even if 1) is false; that is, even if the human brain/mind could be modeled as a digital computer that manipulates symbols in such a way it has conscious experience (semantics), there is no real syntax in the brain. We assign it to the physics. We're only imagining it. You haven't answered the question. Where does the semantics in the brain come from, and why is the matter in the brain specially privileged? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 3 16:11:14 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 02:11:14 +1000 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <005101ce480c$38f1a110$aad4e330$@rainier66.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <005101ce480c$38f1a110$aad4e330$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <9BDB3487-6920-4F5E-ADFF-8D84B744B979@gmail.com> On 04/05/2013, at 12:40 AM, "spike" wrote: > >> ... On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou > >> ...How can we add this special spark to a television or a tree, say, to > give it a mind? Would it be easier with an old fashioned analogue TV than > with the newer digital ones? -- Stathis Papaioannou > _______________________________________________ > > Any analog circuit or any mechanical system can be simulated to arbitrary > precision digitally. Get some kid who is hot with his Simulink and Matlab > to demonstrate if you don't believe it. As soon as they do, you will > realize your entire engineering education was a waste of time. You could > have gone straight to software, skipped all that differential equation > nightmare, study Matlab and Simulink for a couple years, be able to do > everything a good mechanical engineer can do and more, cheaper, faster, > better. > > It looks to me like a brain is a mechanical system filled with analog > circuits. It is wildly complicated of course, but it is an analog circuit. > Once we know enough about it, we can simulate it, on something like a > ramped-up version of Simulink and Matlab, ja? > > I have been pondering that for over 15 yrs, and have never found the flaw in > that line of reasoning. Looks to me like the connectome project is the > first baby step in that direction. There's no flaw in this line of reasoning unless there is something fundamentally non-computable in the brain, which is what Roger Pentose has claimed. However, there is no evidence for this. From atymes at gmail.com Fri May 3 16:28:14 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 09:28:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] quantia game In-Reply-To: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 8:52 AM, spike wrote: > We can imagine creating a continuous spectrum in which we vary the cell > color continuously, then have the geeks pick the most red, the most orange, > the most yellow etc. Cool! > I cheat: computer-generated colors have been a part of my life for a while, so I've been essentially trained on what exactly is max red, max yellow, and so on. I even riffed a bit on fantasy element associations, some years ago - kind of a color-theory explanation for why they keep coming up: http://www.wingedcat.org/elements/elementtable.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 3 17:03:25 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 19:03:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] quantia game In-Reply-To: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130503170325.GM26408@leitl.org> On Fri, May 03, 2013 at 08:52:11AM -0700, spike wrote: > Open an excel spreadsheet, click in any cell, then go up under that paint > bucket icon, upper leftish, left click on the black triangle, go to the > bottom of that menu and select "more colors." OK now you have a hexagon > filled with various colored hexagons, 127 of them (black is missing, which > is why the painfully non-symmetric ugly 127 instead of the beautiful > soul-calming 128.) This is your box of crayons. There's a huge problem with this approach: it is limited by the color space capability of your display. The cheaper panels only use 6 bit/color, which gives you quantization, but the width of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamut and color distribution will be limited by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_space Notice that the elusive tetrachromat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy goes beyond that: http://www.klab.caltech.edu/cns186/papers/Jameson01.pdf -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 836 bytes Desc: Digital signature URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 3 18:07:28 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 11:07:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] quantia game In-Reply-To: <20130503170325.GM26408@leitl.org> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <20130503170325.GM26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1367604448.30832.YahooMailNeo@web126205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Since Eugen mention tetrachromacy -- almost typed "tetrachromancy" :) -- did anyone see that report on mantis shrimp: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/343056/description/Mantis_shrimp_flub_color_vision_test Strange that they have some of the hardware, but don't seem to be using it in the expected way. I also wonder, given that color opponent theory, if there's any processing going on at higher levels. (I might be wrong here, gotten mixed up on what I've read about this, but I presume opponents happen at a higher level of processing than color discrimination. Am I wrong? Maybe I also missed something...) ? 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 johnkclark at gmail.com Fri May 3 19:54:10 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 15:54:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 3, 2013 Gordon wrote: >> The matter in the brain follows rigid, mechanistic rules. >> > > > So many believe > And they believe it because nobody has ever found even the ghost of a hint that matter in the brain follows rules of physics that matter outside the brain does not. > This question is more about the arguments for and against free will. > There are no arguments for it and no arguments against it because "free will" is just a noise that some members of the species Homo sapiens like to make with their mouth. Cows say "moo" and ducks say "quack" and humans say "free will". It would be like arguments for and against a burp. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri May 3 19:47:38 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 03 May 2013 20:47:38 +0100 Subject: [ExI] quantia game In-Reply-To: <1367604448.30832.YahooMailNeo@web126205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <20130503170325.GM26408@leitl.org> <1367604448.30832.YahooMailNeo@web126205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5184145A.4020103@aleph.se> On 03/05/2013 19:07, Dan wrote: > Since Eugen mention tetrachromacy -- almost typed "tetrachromancy" :) > -- did anyone see that report on mantis shrimp: > > http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/343056/description/Mantis_shrimp_flub_color_vision_test > > Strange that they have some of the hardware, but don't seem to be > using it in the expected way. It is hard to test animals on vision. In S?nke Johnsen's excellent "The Optics of Life" he points out that in many domains we are very bad at figuring out what makes sense to animals, and this makes our experiments less able to tell us much. Mantis shrimp are *weird*. (they show up in almost every chapter as an extreme case) > I also wonder, given that color opponent theory, if there's any > processing going on at higher levels. (I might be wrong here, gotten > mixed up on what I've read about this, but I presume opponents happen > at a higher level of processing than color discrimination. Am I wrong? > Maybe I also missed something...) It is likely the retinal bipolar cells that create the opponent signals, which are then transmitted via the optic nerve to the brain. So the color discrimination actually works on opponent colors (differences between red-green and yellow-blue, plus brightness) rather than the "raw" red, green and blue signals. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 3 20:13:07 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 13:13:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] wyoming has lithium Message-ID: <00ed01ce483a$a113de60$e33b9b20$@rainier66.com> Is it not astonishing that this world's elements are not more uniformly distributed? I never did see why it is that 200 km from here all that rich gold ore was discovered but my own backyard is just dirt. Why did all this lithium decide to live in Wyoming of all places? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/02/co2-sequestration-research-stumbles-on to-something-useful-a-big-lithium-strike-in-wyoming/ And why is it that when durn near any rich ore for anything is found, it is waaaay the heck out where no one lives and no one wants to go? This isn't a bad thing at all, just puzzling. We never strike gold in Seattle, or find a huge silver mine in Miami. But they find huge reserves of natural gas in South Dakota, and lithium in Wyoming. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Fri May 3 22:13:44 2013 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 18:13:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] wyoming has lithium In-Reply-To: <00ed01ce483a$a113de60$e33b9b20$@rainier66.com> References: <00ed01ce483a$a113de60$e33b9b20$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <006601ce484b$7a387330$6ea95990$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Spike wrote, > Why did all this lithium decide to live in Wyoming of all places? > > http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/02/co2-sequestration-research-stumbles-on to-something-useful-a-big-lithium-strike-in-wyoming/ I knew Wyoming was an artificial structure. No natural state would evolve into a perfect rectangle like that. I think the whole thing is just one big battery. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP CISSP-ISSAP CISSP-ISSMP CSSLP CISA CISM CRISC CGEIT IAM -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eric at m056832107.syzygy.com Fri May 3 22:20:06 2013 From: eric at m056832107.syzygy.com (Eric Messick) Date: 3 May 2013 22:20:06 -0000 Subject: [ExI] wyoming has lithium In-Reply-To: <00ed01ce483a$a113de60$e33b9b20$@rainier66.com> References: <00ed01ce483a$a113de60$e33b9b20$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130503222006.3080.qmail@syzygy.com> spike wrote: >Is it not astonishing that this world's elements are not more uniformly >distributed? I never did see why it is that 200 km from here all that rich >gold ore was discovered but my own backyard is just dirt. Fascinating indeed! I spent a good deal of time during a recent road trip through Utah pondering similar thoughts. In that case, the entire Colorado plateau consists basically of rusted sedimentary rock. All the cool colors of the rocks come from iron oxides. The question I kept asking myself was: how did all that iron come to be floating on the surface of the planet, rather than at the core with the rest of the iron? There are processes which concentrate and purify materials, and other processes which dilute and distribute them. In thinking about the geologic processes which concentrate materials, I realized that most (if not all) of them have analogs in the chemistry laboratory. This isn't an accident, as these lab methods were probably inspired by watching similar processes in nature. It seems to me that most of the heavy elements accessible near the surface must have arrived after the crust solidified, otherwise they would have sunk to the core like most of the iron. So the Colorado plateau iron must have arrived as one or more meteorites at some point, then was eroded, oxidized, and distributed by water, but confined to an inland sea whose sediments eventually became the plateau. The original iron meteors are largely solid chunks of metal. We know that the iron was created in stars, from which it would be widely distributed by supernovae, yet it has since come to be concentrated and pure. I see two successive processes doing this, both stratifying material by density. First, the balance between the sun's gravity pulling inward, and light pressure and solar wind pushing out, which would tend to sort material by orbital distance (hence rocky inner planets versus the outer gas giants). Second, any bodies large enough to be molten from the energy of their constituents falling together during their formation would stratify materials within them before cooling. So, the universe has processes on various scales which concentrate and distribute materials, and we live on an interesting planet where these processes continue, with the balance shifting one way or the other for various materials at various places and times. A cool, chaotic place to be! -eric From atymes at gmail.com Fri May 3 22:56:33 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 15:56:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] wyoming has lithium In-Reply-To: <00ed01ce483a$a113de60$e33b9b20$@rainier66.com> References: <00ed01ce483a$a113de60$e33b9b20$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 1:13 PM, spike wrote: > And why is it that when durn near any rich ore for anything is found, it > is waaaay the heck out where no one lives and no one wants to go? This > isn?t a bad thing at all, just puzzling. We never strike gold in Seattle, > or find a huge silver mine in Miami. But they find huge reserves of > natural gas in South Dakota, and lithium in Wyoming. > Because people do soil samples of where they happen to be, and nearby, all the time. The lithium's always been in Wyoming, it's just that no one surveyed for it there before. OTOH, you can be quite certain that the soil of any town of any significance in California has been surveyed for gold by now. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri May 3 23:10:09 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 19:10:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 11:52 AM, spike wrote: > > OK, I see but I am not ready to concede that point. My contention is that > if we go down deep enough, we can eventually sim everything that is going on > in an organic brain, everything no exceptions full stop. > > If that principle is false or there is some fundamental reason why it cannot > be, then all our hopes and dreams of cryonic reanimation are nothing but a > fart in a hurricane. ### You seem to be saying that cryonics works if and only if "non-computable properties of brain" corresponds to an empty set. I would say you would need to differentiate between "non-computable and relevant" and "non-computable and irrelevant". All we need for cryonics to work in principle is the former to be an empty set. Rafal From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri May 3 23:04:51 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 16:04:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Stathis, > Where does the semantics in the brain come from, and why is the matter in the brain specially privileged? Neuroscience has not yet answered those questions. This is what I meant when I said it is incomplete.?Perhaps the answers will look something like Brent's theory. I don't pretend to know. Neuroscience is still in its infancy, but one day we will understand the biological processes that cause consciousness. With that information, we will perhaps be in a position to synthesize a brain.? Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Fri May 3 23:29:44 2013 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 19:29:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] quantia game In-Reply-To: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> spike wrote, > [blah blah blah] qualia [blah blah blah] colors [blah blah blah] excel [blah blah blah] you are gay. Wow. RGB Red=255 Green=0 Blue=0. It works. But that was too easy. Red was easy to find, right there next to burgundy, cardinal, carmine, coquelicot, crimson, magenta, maroon, rose, ruby, scarlet, and vermillion. :) -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP CISSP-ISSAP CISSP-ISSMP CSSLP CISA CISM CRISC CGEIT IAM -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 3 23:44:49 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 09:44:49 +1000 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> On 04/05/2013, at 9:04 AM, Gordon wrote: > Stathis, > > > Where does the semantics in the brain come from, and why is the matter in the brain specially privileged? > > Neuroscience has not yet answered those questions. This is what I meant when I said it is incomplete. Perhaps the answers will look something like Brent's theory. I don't pretend to know. > > Neuroscience is still in its infancy, but one day we will understand the biological processes that cause consciousness. With that information, we will perhaps be in a position to synthesize a brain. You don't know and yet you do know, with certainty, that computers can't be conscious. That's the problem. The brain contains atoms, the atoms follow the same laws of physics as atoms do everywhere else in the universe, and it is just that the atoms in the brain are in a particular arrangement that results in consciousness. There is nothing in these observations that precludes computer consciousness, but you think there is. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Sat May 4 00:02:04 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 20:02:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 7:44 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > You don't know and yet you do know, with certainty, that computers can't be > conscious. That's the problem. The brain contains atoms, the atoms follow > the same laws of physics as atoms do everywhere else in the universe, and it > is just that the atoms in the brain are in a particular arrangement that > results in consciousness. There is nothing in these observations that > precludes computer consciousness, but you think there is. For the sake of completeness, I'd like to propose that humans don't _really_ think either. In fact, I suspect the rare occasions that can be pointed to as evidence of intelligence are merely random coincidence that occur far below the statistical noise floor of observable data. Think about that... Oh right.. you can't. :) From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sat May 4 01:25:39 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 18:25:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> Message-ID: <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Stathis, > You don't know and yet you do know, with certainty, that computers can't be conscious.? Yes. I don't know how the brain becomes conscious (nobody does) but I've ruled out the possibility that a digital computer can do it. If and when we ever create a brain, that object will a lot more like a brain than a computer.? > The brain contains atoms, the atoms follow the same laws of physics as atoms do everywhere else in the universe, and it is just that the? > atoms in the brain are in a particular arrangement that results in consciousness.? Sure, I agree with that. We'll need to arrange a pile of atoms into a configuration that is exactly or at least approximately identical to the way nature has configured them.? Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sat May 4 02:34:56 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 19:34:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> spike wrote: >?Gordon has made several excellent points recently and opened my mind to a > branch of AI I hadn't sufficiently pondered.? I just disagree with the > notion that a brain cannot be simulated, if that is what he is arguing. Thanks. But that is not what I am arguing.? The basic problem as I see it, and as Anders pointed out and with which I agree, is that consciousness does not translate through the levels.? Someone here (Ben?) argued that we can simulate non-digital things like bridges on computers and that nobody finds that a problem. Well, the problem is that we cannot drive our cars over those simulated bridges. And the simulated people in those Sim Cities cannot drive their simulated cars over our real bridges, either. "Bridgeness" does not translate through the levels. We might find it possible to create the appearance of consciousness on a digital computer, but it will still only be simulated consciousness. Simulations are, after all, only simulations. They are not the thing simulated, except in the special case of real things that are already digital, e.g., software and digital photographs. In those special cases, we don't call them simulations. We rightly call them copies. If you believe the world itself is intrinsically digital, (and not merely describable in digital terms), then I think you have good reason to believe in strong AI and uploading. ?As for me, I see no reason to believe the world is intrinsically digital.?With respect to this part of the world that we call the brain, we do not discover computational states within the physics. We assign them to the physics. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 4 02:50:25 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 12:50:25 +1000 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 11:25 AM, Gordon wrote: > Stathis, > >> You don't know and yet you do know, with certainty, that computers can't >> be conscious. > > Yes. I don't know how the brain becomes conscious (nobody does) but I've > ruled out the possibility that a digital computer can do it. If and when we > ever create a brain, that object will a lot more like a brain than a > computer. > >> The brain contains atoms, the atoms follow the same laws of physics as >> atoms do everywhere else in the universe, and it is just that the >> atoms in the brain are in a particular arrangement that results in >> consciousness. > > Sure, I agree with that. We'll need to arrange a pile of atoms into a > configuration that is exactly or at least approximately identical to the way > nature has configured them. But this is an unreasonable claim. Even if it turns out to be true it is an unreasonable claim, because you make it with the certainty of an a priori proof. The form of your argument is like claiming that only winged things can fly, not because you have done an analysis of the physics of flying but because it is self-evident and to suggest otherwise is absurd. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 4 02:59:51 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 12:59:51 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 12:34 PM, Gordon wrote: > spike wrote: > >> Gordon has made several excellent points recently and opened my mind to a >> branch of AI I hadn't sufficiently pondered. I just disagree with the >> notion that a brain cannot be simulated, if that is what he is arguing. > > Thanks. But that is not what I am arguing. > > The basic problem as I see it, and as Anders pointed out and with which I > agree, is that consciousness does not translate through the levels. > > Someone here (Ben?) argued that we can simulate non-digital things like > bridges on computers and that nobody finds that a problem. Well, the problem > is that we cannot drive our cars over those simulated bridges. And the > simulated people in those Sim Cities cannot drive their simulated cars over > our real bridges, either. "Bridgeness" does not translate through the > levels. But the simulated people can drive cars over the real bridges if they control physical robots as our brain controls our body. It is a technical problem to simulate the brain and a further technical problem to interface the simulated brain with artificial muscles and sensors, but once you solve the problem you would have fully functional androids, which I guess you would claim are zombies. But it can be shown that if it is possible to replicate the behaviour of the brain then it is also possible (in fact, it follows necessarily) to replicate the consciousness. > We might find it possible to create the appearance of consciousness on a > digital computer, but it will still only be simulated consciousness. > Simulations are, after all, only simulations. They are not the thing > simulated, except in the special case of real things that are already > digital, e.g., software and digital photographs. In those special cases, we > don't call them simulations. We rightly call them copies. And simulated consciousness is just as good as real consciousness, otherwise we would be able to replace brain components with artificial parts and end up with partial zombies. > If you believe the world itself is intrinsically digital, (and not merely > describable in digital terms), then I think you have good reason to believe > in strong AI and uploading. As for me, I see no reason to believe the world > is intrinsically digital. With respect to this part of the world that we > call the brain, we do not discover computational states within the physics. > We assign them to the physics. And who assigns the meaning to our own physically based brains? -- Stathis Papaioannou From spike at rainier66.com Sat May 4 03:15:47 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 20:15:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] quantia game In-Reply-To: <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Harvey Newstrom Sent: Friday, May 03, 2013 4:30 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: Re: [ExI] quantia game spike wrote, > [blah blah blah] qualia [blah blah blah] colors [blah blah blah] excel [blah blah blah] you are gay. Wow. RGB Red=255 Green=0 Blue=0. It works. But that was too easy. Red was easy to find, right there next to burgundy, cardinal, carmine, coquelicot, crimson, magenta, maroon, rose, ruby, scarlet, and vermillion. J -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP CISSP-ISSAP CISSP-ISSMP CSSLP CISA CISM CRISC CGEIT IAM {8^D Harvey are you going to make us look up all those words? {8^D Glad you haven't lost your sense of humor bud. {8-] We had a guy at work, out of the closet but quietly gay, nobody ever gave him any bother over it as far as I know. He was giving a pitch once and pointed to the cells in green, the cells in yellow, the cells in magenta. So we all started going on, Hey Carl, what is that color you say? Magennnnnta? What's the heck is magennnta, haaarrrharharrr etc. Fortunately he has a sense of humor too. So at least I know that one color outside the usual ten. Or at least the name of it. I couldn't pick it out of the lineup, but I have heard the name. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sat May 4 03:47:24 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 20:47:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367639244.49330.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >?But this is an unreasonable claim. Even if it turns out to be true it > is an unreasonable claim, because you make it with the certainty of an > a priori proof.? I don't claim absolute certainty about anything, but I do have an idea what consciousness is even if I don't understand the biological mechanisms that produce it. I also understand the?architecture?of digital computers well enough to look at them and see that whatever makes this thing I call consciousness, it sure does not look like a digital computer can do it.? (I'm careful to almost always preface "computer" with adjective "digital" ?because I do believe the brain can be understood as a type of computer. Just not a digital one.)? More broadly, my arguments should be seen as a refutation of a certain theory in the philosophy of mind, namely the computational model. Lots of people think the way I do on these subjects. You just won't find many of them on ExI.? Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sat May 4 04:37:10 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 21:37:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367642230.21036.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > But it?can be shown that if it is possible to replicate the behaviour of the > brain then it is also possible (in fact, it follows necessarily) to > replicate the consciousness.? If you think?consciousness?follows necessarily from brain-like behavior then I suppose you must think some computers are already at least semi-conscious. I was joking the other day about how I would like sometimes to shoot my stand-alone chess computer, as it seems there is a cunning person inside it and he sometimes makes me angry. It certainly *behaves* as if it is conscious of me, of itself, and the game. Do you think it is actually dimly aware of its own existence? If not, at what point in the development conscious-like behavior do we decide suddenly to grant that an AI has real consciousness? How is it not arbitrary? >> If you believe the world itself is intrinsically digital, (and not merely >> describable in digital terms), then I think you have good reason to believe >> in strong AI and uploading.? As for me, I see no reason to believe the world >> is intrinsically digital. With respect to this part of the world that we >> call the brain, we do not discover computational states within the physics. >> We assign them to the physics. >And who assigns the meaning to our own physically based brains? I don't understand your question, but this in an important point that I'm trying to make here. Who assigns the meaning of what? The brain? As a word, I think "brain" has meaning and that we assign it that meaning. Does that answer your question? As for my point, syntax and computational states are not actually intrinsic to the physics of the brain. It would seem that people who follow the computational theory of mind are merely assigning computational states to the physics in a manner not unlike how we assign meanings to words. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Sat May 4 04:51:21 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 21:51:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] quantia game In-Reply-To: <5184145A.4020103@aleph.se> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <20130503170325.GM26408@leitl.org> <1367604448.30832.YahooMailNeo@web126205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5184145A.4020103@aleph.se> Message-ID: <1367643081.55473.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Friday, May 3, 2013 3:47 PM?Anders Sandberg wrote: >?On 03/05/2013 19:07, Dan wrote: >>?Since Eugen mention tetrachromacy -- almost typed "tetrachromancy" :) -- did anyone see that report on mantis shrimp: >> >>?http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/343056/description/Mantis_shrimp_flub_color_vision_test >> >> Strange that they have some of the hardware, but don't seem to be using it in the expected way. >? > It is hard to test animals on vision. And many other things, no? > In S?nke Johnsen's excellent?"The Optics of Life" he points out that in many > domains we are very?bad at figuring out what makes sense to animals, and > this makes our?experiments less able to tell us much. Mantis shrimp are > *weird*.?(they show up in almost every chapter as an extreme case) I'll have to find and read Johnsen's essay. Thanks for mentioning it. I imagine with testing animals, one has to have a model in mind and then try to find other ways to corroborate the model. It seems the mantis shrimp didn't live up to the expected model, which seems to tell us something. >> I also wonder, given that color opponent theory, if there's any processing going on at >> higher levels. (I might be wrong here, gotten mixed up on what I've read about this, >> but I presume opponents happen at a higher level of processing than color discrimination. >> Am I wrong? Maybe I also missed something...) >? >?It is likely the retinal bipolar cells that create the opponent > signals, which are then transmitted via the optic nerve to the > brain. So the color discrimination actually works on opponent colors >?(differences between red-green and yellow-blue, plus brightness) > rather than the "raw" red, green and blue signals. Actually, that does make sense, since, as far as I know, there aren't human examples of people with messed up opponents, such as red-yellow but still having full color (for humans) vision from, say, a neurological condition. Or are there? 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 From dan_ust at yahoo.com Sat May 4 05:03:17 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 22:03:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367643797.30089.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Just to cut in here, let's say it's all computable. That's fine, but there's still the daunting problem of actually getting it all right. Ever finer grain approaches might tend toward the limit of realizing this, but at any specific point in the progress something might be left out -- something, to use Rafal's apt term, very relevant. That's a problem that needs to be addressed as well (if you haven't already discussed it). ? 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 anders at aleph.se Sat May 4 07:02:32 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 04 May 2013 08:02:32 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5184B288.4010901@aleph.se> On 04/05/2013 03:34, Gordon wrote: > > The basic problem as I see it, and as Anders pointed out and with > which I agree, is that consciousness does not translate through the > levels. Just to clarify: I am sceptical about whether consciousness translates between levels, but I am also a functionalist who thinks you can get consciousness in simulations. So it would be real but private consciousness. It is the privacy of consciousness that makes the level argument less powerful about it than the corresponding argument about intelligence. > > If you believe the world itself is intrinsically digital, (and not > merely describable in digital terms), then I think you have good > reason to believe in strong AI and uploading. I think this is a good point. The more I learn about computation theory and physics, the more it looks like the world is intrinsically computational. It might or might not be digital, and quantum information theory adds some weird quirks, but it certainly looks computational to me. But that is just an impression, not an argument. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sat May 4 07:25:40 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 04 May 2013 08:25:40 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Colours In-Reply-To: <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> On 04/05/2013 04:15, spike wrote: > > We had a guy at work, out of the closet but quietly gay, nobody ever > gave him any bother over it as far as I know. He was giving a pitch > once and pointed to the cells in green, the cells in yellow, the cells > in magenta. So we all started going on, Hey Carl, what is that color > you say? Magennnnnta? What's the heck is magennnta, haaarrrharharrr > etc. Fortunately he has a sense of humor too. > When I came out, I noticed that people started to ask for clothes advice - but then it mostly stopped, since I do have a pretty boring style (a yellow tie is wild by my standards). In fact, even my boyfriend (who is in *law*) thinks I need more colour. But it was hilarious while it lasted. However, the right solution for learning exotic colour names is naming schemes. At KTH, each of the computer rooms had a colour name. At first it was easy... then cerise showed up, followed by magenta, vermilion, turquoise and all the others. That way the engineering students can learn them without any embarrassment (besides the fact that the student overall of the computer students is a particularly eye-searing cerise... https://medicinskaforeningen.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/61.jpg ) > So at least I know that one color outside the usual ten. Or at least > the name of it. I couldn't pick it out of the lineup, but I have > heard the name. > This reminds me of XKCDs color naming survey http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ The real challenge is of course spelling fuchsia. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sat May 4 07:47:34 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 00:47:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <5184B288.4010901@aleph.se> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5184B288.4010901@aleph.se> Message-ID: <1367653654.47413.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Anders Sandberg wrote: On 04/05/2013 03:34, Gordon wrote >>The basic problem as I see it, and as Anders pointed out and with which I agree, is that consciousness does not translate through the levels.? > Just to clarify: I am sceptical about whether consciousness translates between levels, but I am also a functionalist who thinks you can get consciousness in simulations.?So it would be real but private consciousness. I think I understand your point of view, Anders, but maybe not. The difference between you and me might be that I stand here with my feet firmly planted in what I consider to be a non-simulated world. I don't see how I could regard digitally simulated?consciousness as anything more than simulated.? I consider it a great leap of faith, religious in nature, to say that?digitally?simulated consciousness is somehow real but private. ?>>?If you believe the world itself is intrinsically digital, (and not merely describable in digital terms), then I think you have good reason to believe in strong AI and uploading. ? > I think this is a good point.? I'm glad you think so, good sir. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Sat May 4 11:05:17 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 04:05:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1367665517.92560.YahooMailClassic@web165002.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Gordon, I have a question for you. Do you agree or deny that a digital computer could, in principle, run a simulation that imitated, in every way, a human mind, including referring to itself, reporting that it has internal states like emotions, and displaying all the intelligence of a human mind? Never mind issues like "would it really be conscious", I'm just talking about behaviour, both responses to outside stimuli and self-generated behaviour. Don't worry either about how it would be done. It could be a giant lookup table, or some fiendishly clever C++ programming, or a multi-level simulator, with virtual machines within virtual machines. Doesn't matter in the slightest. Just focus on its behaviour. What's your opinion? Such a system is possible, or not? Ben Zaiboc From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sat May 4 11:05:35 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 04:05:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367653654.47413.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5184B288.4010901@aleph.se> <1367653654.47413.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367665535.66874.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Back in about the 60s and 70s, the world became fascinated by the possibilities?of digital computers. Philosophers?of mind were not immune. A lot of them thought "Hey, maybe the brain is like a computer! Wouldn't that be cool? Let's build a philosophy of mind around this idea!" An entire new philosophy of mind was born. Extropian-minded people understandably liked the idea.? It was just a fad, in my opinion. Brains are not like digital computers. Brains are biological?organs, not fundamentally different from livers or kidneys. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 4 11:46:10 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 21:46:10 +1000 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367639244.49330.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367639244.49330.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 1:47 PM, Gordon wrote: > Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >> But this is an unreasonable claim. Even if it turns out to be true it >> is an unreasonable claim, because you make it with the certainty of an >> a priori proof. > > I don't claim absolute certainty about anything, but I do have an idea what > consciousness is even if I don't understand the biological mechanisms that > produce it. I also understand the architecture of digital computers well > enough to look at them and see that whatever makes this thing I call > consciousness, it sure does not look like a digital computer can do it. But this is just an empty claim. I could equally well say that I understand chemistry well enough to look at it and see that it cannot possibly produce consciousness - and yet it does. > (I'm careful to almost always preface "computer" with adjective "digital" > because I do believe the brain can be understood as a type of computer. Just > not a digital one.) > > More broadly, my arguments should be seen as a refutation of a certain > theory in the philosophy of mind, namely the computational model. Lots of > people think the way I do on these subjects. You just won't find many of > them on ExI. It's not really an argument though, it's just an expression of hunches and prejudices. I've presented an argument which shows that consciousness will be reproduced if brain behaviour is reproduced, but you have not addressed it. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 4 11:54:03 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 21:54:03 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367642230.21036.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367642230.21036.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 2:37 PM, Gordon wrote: > Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >> But it can be shown that if it is possible to replicate the behaviour of >> the >> brain then it is also possible (in fact, it follows necessarily) to >> replicate the consciousness. > > If you think consciousness follows necessarily from brain-like behavior then > I suppose you must think some computers are already at least semi-conscious. > I was joking the other day about how I would like sometimes to shoot my > stand-alone chess computer, as it seems there is a cunning person inside it > and he sometimes makes me angry. It certainly *behaves* as if it is > conscious of me, of itself, and the game. Do you think it is actually dimly > aware of its own existence? > > If not, at what point in the development conscious-like behavior do we > decide suddenly to grant that an AI has real consciousness? How is it not > arbitrary? You have the same problem with biological systems. Do you think a dog is conscious? A cockroach? A bacterium? A water molecule? >>And who assigns the meaning to our own physically based brains? > > I don't understand your question, but this in an important point that I'm > trying to make here. Who assigns the meaning of what? The brain? As a word, > I think "brain" has meaning and that we assign it that meaning. Does that > answer your question? > > As for my point, syntax and computational states are not actually intrinsic > to the physics of the brain. It would seem that people who follow the > computational theory of mind are merely assigning computational states to > the physics in a manner not unlike how we assign meanings to words. The point I was trying to make is that you seem to have a problem deriving semantics from syntax, but that is no less a problem for a brain than a computer. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 4 11:55:26 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 21:55:26 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367665535.66874.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5184B288.4010901@aleph.se> <1367653654.47413.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367665535.66874.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 9:05 PM, Gordon wrote: > Back in about the 60s and 70s, the world became fascinated by the > possibilities of digital computers. Philosophers of mind were not immune. A > lot of them thought "Hey, maybe the brain is like a computer! Wouldn't that > be cool? Let's build a philosophy of mind around this idea!" An entire new > philosophy of mind was born. Extropian-minded people understandably liked > the idea. > > It was just a fad, in my opinion. Brains are not like digital computers. > Brains are biological organs, not fundamentally different from livers or > kidneys. You misunderstand the analogy. Of course brains are not digital computers. -- Stathis Papaioannou From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sat May 4 12:20:54 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 05:20:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5184B288.4010901@aleph.se> <1367653654.47413.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367665535.66874.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367670054.56398.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Stathis Papaioannou wrote; >> It was just a fad, in my opinion. Brains are not like digital computers. >> Brains are biological organs, not fundamentally different from livers or >> kidneys. >You misunderstand the analogy. Of course brains are not digital computers. You need to understand the computational model of mind. Computationalists believe the brain is best understood, even if only figuratively, as a digital computer that runs thoughts over the hardware of the brain in a manner?analogous?to how digital computers run software over hardware. That is the point of it. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sat May 4 12:50:27 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 05:50:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367665517.92560.YahooMailClassic@web165002.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1367665517.92560.YahooMailClassic@web165002.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367671827.14904.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Ben Zaiboc wrote: >?Gordon, I have a question for you. > Do you agree or deny that a digital computer could, in principle, run a simulation that imitated,? > in every way, a human mind, including referring to itself, reporting that it has internal states? > like emotions, and displaying all the intelligence of a human mind? I'm inclined to agree, Ben. Some clever programmer will one day write a program that passes the Turing test. I might be fooled into thinking it is actually conscious.? Gordon? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sat May 4 12:37:15 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 05:37:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367642230.21036.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367671035.52687.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Stathis Papaioannou ? >> If you think consciousness follows necessarily from brain-like behavior then >> I suppose you must think some computers are already at least semi-conscious. >> I was joking the other day about how I would like sometimes to shoot my >> stand-alone chess computer, as it seems there is a cunning person inside it >> and he sometimes makes me angry. It certainly *behaves* as if it is >> conscious of me, of itself, and the game. Do you think it is actually dimly >> aware of its own existence? >> If not, at what point in the development conscious-like behavior do we >> decide suddenly to grant that an AI has real consciousness? How is it not >> arbitrary? >You have the same problem with biological systems. Do you think a dog >is conscious? A cockroach? A bacterium? A water molecule? I don't consider it a problem. I am happy to suppose that?consciousness?is a matter of degree in biological systems. I think dogs are conscious, but not as conscious as humans. As we consider less complex organisms (non-mammals in particular), the level of consciousness begins to approach zero and probably reaches zero way before the level of the bacterium. Are you willing to say the same about computers? Is my chess computer at least semi-conscious? It sure behaves like it is, and you say behavior is the indicator of consciousness. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Sat May 4 13:00:15 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 09:00:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367665535.66874.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5184B288.4010901@aleph.se> <1367653654.47413.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367665535.66874.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 7:05 AM, Gordon wrote: > It was just a fad, in my opinion. Brains are not like digital computers. > Brains are biological organs, not fundamentally different from livers or > kidneys. Ok. Does a cardboard oil filter in your car do the same job as kidneys do for your body? Does activated charcoal do the same job in your water filter? Obviously a kidney can't be replaced by a cardboard filter or a lump of charcoal. I feel like your recent shift to "if we ever have thinking machines, they'll be more like brains than computers" is admitting that there might be non-brain thinking machines but you've _defined_ computers as non-thinking machines. Perhaps that definition isn't disagreeable as your original premise that _only_ natural brains will ever produce consciousness. From anders at aleph.se Sat May 4 13:56:08 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 04 May 2013 14:56:08 +0100 Subject: [ExI] quantia game In-Reply-To: <1367643081.55473.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <20130503170325.GM26408@leitl.org> <1367604448.30832.YahooMailNeo@web126205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5184145A.4020103@aleph.se> <1367643081.55473.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51851378.7070106@aleph.se> On 04/05/2013 05:51, Dan wrote: > Actually, that does make sense, since, as far as I know, there aren't > human examples of people with messed up opponents, such as red-yellow > but still having full color (for humans) vision from, say, a > neurological condition. Or are there? Not that I know of. People with cerebral achromatoptsia seem to be living in a world that is "drab" or shades of grey, including loss of memory of how the colors ever looked (see Sacs and Wasserman, "The Case of the Colorblind Painter", http://www.csh.rit.edu/~oguns/school/psychology/Articles/colorblindpainter.pdf ) Likely this is because the different complements are not physically separated much in the brain, so damage affects them all (unlike the P and M channel separation, which allows damage to motion and color to be separate, http://bob.kentridge.info/PDFs/2003/HeywoodKentridge2003.pdf ). However, this paper suggests a hue-dependent failure: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8247229 There is plenty of weird things going on. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Sat May 4 14:04:55 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 04 May 2013 15:04:55 +0100 Subject: [ExI] wyoming has lithium In-Reply-To: <20130503222006.3080.qmail@syzygy.com> References: <00ed01ce483a$a113de60$e33b9b20$@rainier66.com> <20130503222006.3080.qmail@syzygy.com> Message-ID: <51851587.2050102@aleph.se> On 03/05/2013 23:20, Eric Messick wrote: > So, the universe has processes on various scales which concentrate and > distribute materials, and we live on an interesting planet where these > processes continue, with the balance shifting one way or the other for > various materials at various places and times. A cool, chaotic place > to be! Exactly! A lot of elements get concentrated by non-equilibrium processes. Diffusion and thermal equilibrium do not mean everything ends up evenly mixed, while rapid convection (despite forming complex patterns) do. So it is not the non-equlibrium aspect that matters. Magma rising upwards will drag with it heavier components, but as temperature and pressure changes different solubilities of different components will cause separation. Sedimentation will concentrate heavier elements below lighter, but they might be dragged up though folding processes. Thermal vents will circulate water to dissolve certain elements and move them upward, and so on. And biology loves picking up certain elements and moving them to other places, often enriched (just consider the love affair we have with calcium and phosphorous). -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From spike at rainier66.com Sat May 4 14:31:18 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 07:31:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Colours In-Reply-To: <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> Message-ID: <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: [ExI] Colours On 04/05/2013 04:15, spike wrote: >>.We had a guy at work, out of the closet but quietly gay, nobody ever gave him any bother over it as far as I know. He was giving a pitch once and pointed to the cells in green, the cells in yellow, the cells in magenta. So we all started going on, Hey Carl, what is that color you say? Magennnnnta? What's the heck is magennnta, haaarrrharharrr etc. Fortunately he has a sense of humor too. >.When I came out, I noticed that people started to ask for clothes advice - but then it mostly stopped, since I do have a pretty boring style (a yellow tie is wild by my standards). In fact, even my boyfriend (who is in *law*) thinks I need more colour. But it was hilarious while it lasted. . -- Anders Sandberg Note the original meaning of the term gay is colorful and cheerful. Regarding why gay men should be able to distinguish more colors, I will be absolutely damned, which I suppose would be symbolized as spike = |damned|, if I can figure out any explanation for why those two things should be correlated. Gay men still have the short Y chromosome, same as I do, which I have long suspected as being the root of my non-hiptitude. Or perhaps it is just an illusion. There was a hilarious show on TV called "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." Of the (I think) five gay male consultants, only one was a fashion guru. One was a hairdresser, one was an interior decorator, only one was really queeny acting. So I don't know, perhaps if you took a bunch of straight guys, you might get 20%-ish who grok the incomprehensible subtleties of fashion, I don't know. In fashion as in qualia, if I can't write a system of equations to model it, I don't understand it. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Sat May 4 14:49:41 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 10:49:41 -0400 Subject: [ExI] wyoming has lithium In-Reply-To: <00ed01ce483a$a113de60$e33b9b20$@rainier66.com> References: <00ed01ce483a$a113de60$e33b9b20$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 4:13 PM, spike wrote: > And why is it that when durn near any rich ore for anything is found, it is > waaaay the heck out where no one lives and no one wants to go? This isn?t a > bad thing at all, just puzzling. We never strike gold in Seattle, or find a > huge silver mine in Miami. But they find huge reserves of natural gas in > South Dakota, and lithium in Wyoming. That an interesting question. A lot of these comments are about the physics, chemistry, and geology of distributing matter. My first thought was about the patterns of people moving around the planet in search of resources. There's probably a correlation between the waterways that make travel easier diluting the accumulation of metals so early works had to be made of mud/clay. We needed to discover better materials to enable better technology. Unless you have an economic system that prizes the stuff or some way to make electronics, chunks of gold are just pretty rocks. Also, that premise isn't entirely accurate. Consider Marcellus Shale. It's great we have resources in the ground. It's not-great that our water (et al) is at risk due to the process of retrieving the natural gas. From msd001 at gmail.com Sat May 4 14:51:37 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 10:51:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Colours In-Reply-To: <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 10:31 AM, spike wrote: > In fashion as in qualia, if I can?t write a system of equations to model it, > I don?t understand it. Really? No fashion modelling for spike? From spike at rainier66.com Sat May 4 14:51:58 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 07:51:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Colours In-Reply-To: <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> Message-ID: <007d01ce48d6$edf32820$c9d97860$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg . This reminds me of XKCDs color naming survey http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ The real challenge is of course spelling fuchsia. -- Anders Sandberg Whoever writes xkcd seems like a really smart hip funny person. Anyone here buddies with him or her? Do feel free to invite your buddy to hang out here. They could likely find a lot of material on which to riff. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat May 4 16:38:20 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 09:38:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Colours In-Reply-To: <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> On 04/05/2013 04:15, spike wrote: >.I will be absolutely damned, which I suppose would be symbolized as spike = |damned|, if I can figure out any explanation for why . >.In fashion as in qualia, if I can't write a system of equations to model it, I don't understand it. spike HEY that gives me an idea. Perhaps we CAN mathematize fashion, at least to some limited extent. Simple proof: take any pile of fashion photos, digitize same, this converts every conceivable fashion into a series of pixels, each of which consists of some color, which is a frequency, which is a number. These digitized images can be made into any standard size, say a 1 MB file, 1k by 1k, so this can be a matrix with each cell a frequency on some standard background. Anything wrong with any step in my reasoning so far? If every conceivable fashion can be reduced to a 1 MB 2D matrix, then we can start to work with our mathematical bag of tricks. We bring in our fashion gurus, such as that guy from Queer Eye and Yves St. Lauren for instance, to separate the matrices into hip and non-hip fashions. Once we have that, then we can do all kinds of cool tricks: finding mathematical correlations, perhaps use all our advanced digital filtering tools in Matlab and so forth. Then we should be able to extrapolate a hip fashion from the known existing ones. Then totally square L7 tiny microscopic SPIKE can become the WORLD FASHION DICTATOR! I will have discovered the mysterious KEY to something which has puzzled me endlessly. I will RULE the FASHION WORLD, with an IRON FIST, Muuwaaaaahahahahahhahaaaaaaa. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat May 4 16:39:55 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 12:39:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 9:25 PM, Gordon wrote: > Sure, I agree with that. We'll need to arrange a pile of atoms into a > configuration that is exactly or at least approximately identical to the way > nature has configured them. ### Let me ask you this: Blind persons with cortical vision implants claim to see things, despite their eyes being certifiably non-functional. Large portions of their visual systems are bypassed as well, yet, a camera and a complex digital signal processing computer that generates highly specific patterns of digital electric impulses on the surface of the visual cortex are sufficient to reproduce visual qualia. These persons also pass various tests of vision, showing the ability to understand images, just as intact humans, although the resolution of their vision is still poor. The interesting thing is that the digital processor is both necessary and sufficient for replacement of large chunks of biological analog/digital wetware. You cannot feed some sort of signal dump straight from the camera to the visual cortex - the image quality suffers enormously (necessity). But with the right and very non-random choice of processing options, guided by the knowledge of the computational biology of subcortical vision centers, you can achieve greatly improved vision, approaching in some respects natural vision (sufficiency). This directly demonstrates that even with our, as you claim, poor knowledge of neuroscience, we can dispense with parts of the biological process that produces qualia and achieve equivalent results using digital computers. Let me repeat this: There is empirically demonstrated equivalency between neural and digital methods of producing qualia in large parts of the visual system. Now, knowing these facts, how do you update on your contention that to produce qualia we have to arrange piles of atoms nearly identical to the way nature has configured them in brains? Would you perhaps claim that the seat of qualia is the cortex, not the primitive subcortical nuclei substituted by digital signal processing? But, what if in a few years some researchers produce implants capable of correcting cortical blindness, caused by damage to the occipital cortex? Will the claimed province of true qualia shrink further, towards the parietal cortices? Beware, faith in the god of the gaps makes for increasingly cramped living quarters. Rafal Rafal From bbenzai at yahoo.com Sat May 4 16:36:38 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 09:36:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1367685398.15369.YahooMailClassic@web165001.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Gordon wrote: >Back in about the 60s and 70s, the world became fascinated by the possibilities?of digital computers. Philosophers?of mind were not immune. A lot of them thought "Hey, maybe the brain is like a computer! Wouldn't that be cool? Let's build a philosophy of mind around this idea!" An entire new philosophy of mind was born. Extropian-minded people understandably liked the idea.? > >It was just a fad, in my opinion. Brains are not like digital computers. Brains are biological?organs, not fundamentally different from livers or kidneys. How any times, Gordon?! It doesn't matter that brains are not like digital computers! The point is that digital computers can be like brains, not the other way round. Do you really not see the difference? Your argument that digital computers cannot implement brains because brains are not like digital computers makes as much sense as saying that clay cannot take the shape of boots because boots are not made of clay. Implementing a mind on a digital computer is independent of the computational theory of mind. The theory could be false, it wouldn't invalidate the possiblity of having a computer run a mind. Ben Zaiboc From spike at rainier66.com Sat May 4 16:55:23 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 09:55:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Colours In-Reply-To: References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00b101ce48e8$2c0dfd90$8429f8b0$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty Subject: Re: [ExI] Colours On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 10:31 AM, spike wrote: >>... In fashion as in qualia, if I can't write a system of equations to > model it, I don't understand it. >...Really? No fashion modelling for spike? _______________________________________________ Nope, can't do it Mike. A persistent problem for fashion models was their developing anorexia nervosa. This moved the fashion industry to mandate that fashion models may not work if their BMI falls below 18. I am mid 17s on a good day. That means I am too skinny to be a fashion model. Oy freaking vey. spike From eugen at leitl.org Sat May 4 17:43:33 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 19:43:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] wyoming has lithium In-Reply-To: References: <00ed01ce483a$a113de60$e33b9b20$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130504174333.GY26408@leitl.org> On Sat, May 04, 2013 at 10:49:41AM -0400, Mike Dougherty wrote: > Also, that premise isn't entirely accurate. Consider Marcellus Shale. > It's great we have resources in the ground. It's not-great that our The typical decay rate of an unconventional gas/liquid well is 40% per *year*. The resources you think are in the ground and attempt to recover by an unsustainably frantic drilling rate are unfortunately a mirage. Beware of mirages, unwary thirsty traveler. That is not really a large body of liquid you're seeing. > water (et al) is at risk due to the process of retrieving the natural > gas. From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sat May 4 17:55:50 2013 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 13:55:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Rafal writes: > Blind persons with cortical vision implants claim to see > things, > despite their eyes being certifiably non-functional. Large > portions of > their visual systems are bypassed as well, yet, a camera > and a complex > digital signal processing computer that generates highly > specific > patterns of digital electric impulses on the surface of > the visual > cortex are sufficient to reproduce visual qualia. These > persons also > pass various tests of vision, showing the ability to > understand > images, just as intact humans, although the resolution of > their vision > is still poor. (snip) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130501193208.htm Printable Functional 'Bionic' Ear Melds Electronics and Biology May 1, 2013 - Scientists at Princeton University used off-the-shelf printing tools to create a functional ear that can "hear" radio frequencies far beyond the range of normal human capability. The researchers' primary purpose was to explore an efficient and versatile means to merge electronics with tissue. The scientists used 3D printing of cells and nanoparticles followed by cell culture to combine a small coil antenna with cartilage, creating what they term a bionic ear. "In general, there are mechanical and thermal challenges with interfacing electronic materials with biological materials," said Michael McAlpine, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton and the lead researcher. "Previously, researchers have suggested some strategies to tailor the electronics so that this merger is less awkward. That typically happens between a 2D sheet of electronics and a surface of the tissue. However, our work suggests a new approach -- to build and grow the biology up with the electronics synergistically and in a 3D interwoven format." (snip) From atymes at gmail.com Sat May 4 18:57:36 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 11:57:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Colours In-Reply-To: <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 9:38 AM, spike wrote: > > HEY that gives me an idea. Perhaps we CAN mathematize fashion, at least > to some limited extent. Simple proof: take any pile of fashion photos, > digitize same, this converts every conceivable fashion into a series of > pixels, each of which consists of some color, which is a frequency, which > is a number. These digitized images can be made into any standard size, > say a 1 MB file, 1k by 1k, so this can be a matrix with each cell a > frequency on some standard background. Anything wrong with any step in my > reasoning so far? > > > > If every conceivable fashion can be reduced to a 1 MB 2D matrix, then we can start to work with our mathematical bag of tricks. We bring in our fashion gurus, such as that guy from Queer Eye and Yves St. Lauren for instance, to separate the matrices into hip and non-hip fashions. Once we have that, then we can do all kinds of cool tricks: finding mathematical correlations, perhaps use all our advanced digital filtering tools in Matlab and so forth. Then we should be able to extrapolate a hip fashion from the known existing ones. Then totally square L7 tiny microscopic SPIKE can become the WORLD FASHION DICTATOR! I will have discovered the mysterious KEY to something which has puzzled me endlessly. I will RULE the FASHION WORLD, with an IRON FIST, Muuwaaaaahahahahahhahaaaaaaa? > > You assume there are such correlations to be found. To start with, to be pictures that can be compared, the fashions must be pictured on the same model from the same angle under the same lighting conditions - which is a tougher job that it seems. It's theoretically possible, but it will take a lot of time. Also, you'll need negative data - stuff that is not fashionable. And you'll need this over time. Such data is imprecise to say the least: error rates over 10%. My hunch is, you'd find the noise drowns out any signal from this approach. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sat May 4 21:13:34 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 04 May 2013 22:13:34 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fashion In-Reply-To: References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <518579FE.3050202@aleph.se> OK, I might be totally lost every time I enter a clothes store or look at my wardrobe, but at least theoretical fashion design sounds like fun. Fashion is defined as ?the cultural construction of the embodied identity? by the journal Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture; it is not just about high fashion worn by models but just as much what Linux t-shirts to wear at hacker parties. In this thread I guess we are looking at prevailing styles of dress, and especially how they change. It turns out that there are plenty of theories of how this actually happens and why (trickle down, sideways and up, status expression, cultural signals, markets etc.) A simple model is just that the current dominant style emerges somehow, gets copied by more and more people, and then either disappears because it is getting too common (not a good status symbol any more), market push (designers want to sell more stuff) or just because it gets stale (people like new things). I have actually done models that act like that in my neural networks: consider a network of features where the current state of activation represents the current fashion. Connection weights represent what goes well together (based on visual contrast, bigger cultural values etc). A state of fashion is an attractor state that self-stabilizes. But as time goes on it weakens: in my network I subtracted a second weight from the connection weights, updating this second weight by slow learning. So after a while the fashion state jumps to a new attractor - often rather different, but influenced by the previous state (since that was where it started and by being significantly different). The result is a pretty complex dynamics that jumps chaotically between attractors. This seems to be generic: http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.0576 describes a model of fashions in names that has the same properties. http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0212267v1 has another model which is agent based, and shows self-organized criticality: big and small trends mix randomly. Now these considerations suggests to me that predicting fashions automatically is not going to work, simply because the transitions are chaotic and noisy, and might even contain anti-learning: if they are predictable, people will shy away from them and do something else. But I don't see any problem with using methods like this to generate new potential fashions: train your software on past fashions (I would not use bitmaps, but rather some sort of feature description language), and then set it loose to suggest new possibilities that are "fresh". To make this more transhumanist: here Ian Pearson is talking the future of fashion: http://www.podkolinski.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/fashion2.pdf -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 4 21:39:57 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 07:39:57 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367671035.52687.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367642230.21036.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367671035.52687.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <01503BDC-80DD-4FB2-8222-03FF2F722519@gmail.com> On 04/05/2013, at 10:37 PM, Gordon wrote: > Stathis Papaioannou > > > >> If you think consciousness follows necessarily from brain-like behavior then > >> I suppose you must think some computers are already at least semi-conscious. > >> I was joking the other day about how I would like sometimes to shoot my > >> stand-alone chess computer, as it seems there is a cunning person inside it > >> and he sometimes makes me angry. It certainly *behaves* as if it is > >> conscious of me, of itself, and the game. Do you think it is actually dimly > >> aware of its own existence? > > >> If not, at what point in the development conscious-like behavior do we > >> decide suddenly to grant that an AI has real consciousness? How is it not > >> arbitrary? > > >You have the same problem with biological systems. Do you think a dog > >is conscious? A cockroach? A bacterium? A water molecule? > > I don't consider it a problem. I am happy to suppose that consciousness is a matter of degree in biological systems. I think dogs are conscious, but not as conscious as humans. As we consider less complex organisms (non-mammals in particular), the level of consciousness begins to approach zero and probably reaches zero way before the level of the bacterium. > > Are you willing to say the same about computers? Is my chess computer at least semi-conscious? It sure behaves like it is, and you say behavior is the indicator of consciousness. It's the same principle with computers, although I would say the chess computer is closer to the bacterium than the human. If behaviour is not an indicator of consciousness how do you know that anything other than yourself is conscious? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat May 4 21:41:16 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 14:41:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fashion In-Reply-To: <518579FE.3050202@aleph.se> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> <518579FE.3050202@aleph.se> Message-ID: <00d701ce4910$1c3765a0$54a630e0$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: [ExI] Fashion >...OK, I might be totally lost every time I enter a clothes store or look at my wardrobe, but at least theoretical fashion design sounds like fun... Brilliant analysis of fashion trends in terms of chaos theory Anders! {8-] >...Fashion is defined as "the cultural construction of the embodied identity" by the journal Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture; it is not just about high fashion worn by models but just as much what Linux t-shirts to wear at hacker parties... -- Anders Sandberg, _______________________________________________ All of these, ja. The way fashion trends are currently identified is that society somehow rather arbitrarily chooses individuals as fashion leaders, often rock stars or Hollywood movie personalities. But what I want to know is how we can ever actually prove, in the mathematical sense, that the chosen ones really are "cool." How can we know? I want a formula for coolness. Regarding hacker parties and in general every gathering of geeks, it doesn' t matter. Animals, proles and geeks are free. We never need to ponder what to wear at any social occasion. In fact, society has developed to the point where geeks are highly esteemed, a reversal from my own youth in which we were disdained. So now, ordinary people sometimes intentionally dress in a clumsy fashion in order to appear to be a geek. It has gotten so that now, if I show up at some geek gathering wearing some geek-wannabe outfit, I risk having the genuine geeks point and shout "PHONY!" spike From anders at aleph.se Sat May 4 22:02:19 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 04 May 2013 23:02:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Colours In-Reply-To: <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <5185856B.1080103@aleph.se> On 04/05/2013 15:31, spike wrote: > > > Note the original meaning of the term gay is colorful and cheerful. > Regarding why gay men should be able to distinguish more colors, I > will be absolutely damned, which I suppose would be symbolized as > spike = |damned|, if I can figure out any explanation for why those > two things should be correlated. Gay men still have the short Y > chromosome, same as I do, which I have long suspected as being the > root of my non-hiptitude. > > Or perhaps it is just an illusion. ... So I don't know, perhaps if you took a bunch of straight guys, you might get 20%-ish who grok the incomprehensible subtleties of fashion, I don't know. I think it is largely an illusion, or perhaps, a trained phenomenon. While there seem to be some biological reasons why women on average are a bit better than men at color (some women with terachromacy, more men with colorblindness) - see http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2005/09/27/do-women-perceive-color-differ/ - I think there is also plenty of training from culturally imposed games and tasks that rewards girls more than boys for being good with colors. And I think this is definitely true for fashion or mere clothing skills. So we get trained early on to be good at certain things... or that it is slightly "off" to be good at something your gender is not supposed to specialize in. However, when leafing through the Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion for my post on fashion dynamics I found a rather extensive entry on Fashion and Homosexuality. One thing that struck me was that for a long time homosexuals relied on codes or signifiers to signal to each other - a green carnation, a red necktie, suede shoes, etc. Good for staying hidden but also requiring a sharp eye to detect these often small details (which also changed over time, since they might become too well known among outsiders). This might have acted as a reason to stay on top of clothing. While this makes for a satifying theory, I doubt it is a complete explanation. In looking at this I also came across the article "Human preference for individual colors" by Stephen E. Palmer ; Karen B. Schloss, Proc. SPIE 7527, Human Vision and Electronic Imaging XV, 752718 (February 17, 2010); doi:10.1117/12.849110 They found some gender differences in what colors people like, with men preferring more saturated colors and women preferring more muted colors. This leads to the following interesting hypothesis: > Some readers may wonder at the seeming conflict between these > preferences and male versus female dress > patterns, given that males tend to wear more muted colors and females > more saturated colors. The data make perfect sense, however, once one > realizes that most people dress to attract members of the opposite > sex. If the color preferences of gay men and lesbians are similar to > those of straight men and women, respectively, then it would be > consistent with our interpretation of the relation between dressing > patterns and color preferences if gay men tend to wear more saturated > colors (because they are dressing to attract other men) and lesbians > tend to wear more muted colors (because they are dressing to attract > other women). We know of no data on this subject, but it is consistent > with cultural stereotypes about how gay men and lesbians tend to dress. I don't know if this actually works, but it is a cute idea. And this might actually give some reason for listening to fashion advice from same-gender people with different preferences. At the time of writing this I am wearing a tan shirt, dark olive pants, and a grey herringbone jacket... I am so going to lose my gayness certificate :-) -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sat May 4 22:22:22 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 04 May 2013 23:22:22 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fashion In-Reply-To: <00d701ce4910$1c3765a0$54a630e0$@rainier66.com> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> <518579FE.3050202@aleph.se> <00d701ce4910$1c3765a0$54a630e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51858A1E.6090408@aleph.se> On 04/05/2013 22:41, spike wrote: > I want a formula for coolness. You are not alone. The fashion industry would love it too: http://smartdatacollective.com/timoelliott/50152/fashion-analytics-social-perfect-ensemble http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article.cfm?articleid=4659 Looks like the industry is already trying the data mining approach. The problem with coolness is that it is likely one of those things like "good taste" or "creativity" that cannot be pinned down. It is slippery in a social and subjective way: plenty of people have different coolness standards, and one of the best ways of being cool is pulling off something that shouldn't work but yet does it (case in point I have been studying: the exotic tie knots of the Merovingean in the Matrix sequels). > Regarding hacker parties and in general every gathering of geeks, it doesn' > t matter. Animals, proles and geeks are free. We never need to ponder what > to wear at any social occasion. In fact, society has developed to the point > where geeks are highly esteemed, a reversal from my own youth in which we > were disdained. So now, ordinary people sometimes intentionally dress in a > clumsy fashion in order to appear to be a geek. It has gotten so that now, > if I show up at some geek gathering wearing some geek-wannabe outfit, I risk > having the genuine geeks point and shout "PHONY!" Exactly. "Dress for Success", the classic style guide for the businessman, has a hilarious section about dressing for interaction with engineers and hacker types. It points out that trying to imitate their style will fail, so it is better to just tone things down from the strict business style rather than showing up with a Microsoft t-shirt. (It also has the invaluable advice that the real businessman buys his clothes at sales). -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sat May 4 22:44:45 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 15:44:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <01503BDC-80DD-4FB2-8222-03FF2F722519@gmail.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367642230.21036.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367671035.52687.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <01503BDC-80DD-4FB2-8222-03FF2F722519@gmail.com> Message-ID: <1367707485.65005.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >?If behaviour is not an indicator of consciousness how do you know that anything other than yourself is conscious? I can only infer it, but I think I'm on pretty solid ground when I notice that dogs, for example, have nervous systems very similar to mine. And I agree that behavior is an indicator of it. But I disagree that it necessarily follows as you have stated. Gordon? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 4 23:14:36 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 09:14:36 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367707485.65005.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367642230.21036.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367671035.52687.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <01503BDC-80DD-4FB2-8222-03FF2F722519@gmail.com> <1367707485.65005.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <19DB3A8C-5F47-4221-879A-E4AAD577DDC6@gmail.com> On 05/05/2013, at 8:44 AM, Gordon wrote: > Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > If behaviour is not an indicator of consciousness how do you know that anything other than yourself is conscious? > > I can only infer it, but I think I'm on pretty solid ground when I notice that dogs, for example, have nervous systems very similar to mine. And I agree that behavior is an indicator of it. But I disagree that it necessarily follows as you have stated. Consciousness does not necessarily follow from conscious-like behaviour, but it does necessarily follow from reproducing the functional behaviour of a system that we know to be conscious. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sat May 4 23:25:37 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 16:25:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <19DB3A8C-5F47-4221-879A-E4AAD577DDC6@gmail.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367642230.21036.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367671035.52687.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <01503BDC-80DD-4FB2-8222-03FF2F722519@gmail.com> <1367707485.65005.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <19DB3A8C-5F47-4221-879A-E4AAD577DDC6@gmail.com> Message-ID: <1367709937.72974.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >?Consciousness does not necessarily follow from conscious-like behaviour, but it does necessarily follow from reproducing the functional behaviour of a system that we know to be conscious. That looks like a contradiction to me. How is the reproduction of conscious-like behavior different from the reproduction of the functional behavior of a system that we know to be conscious?? Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sun May 5 00:53:06 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 17:53:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: ### Let me ask you this: > Blind persons with cortical vision implants claim to see things..? > Would you perhaps claim that the seat of qualia is the cortex, not the > primitive subcortical nuclei substituted by digital signal processing? That seems reasonable to me. Some neuroscientists are working on identifying the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) and I believe they involve a large swath of neurons in the cortex.? > But, what if in a few years some researchers produce implants capable > of correcting cortical blindness, caused by damage to the occipital > cortex?? Digital implants can certainly stimulate the experience of qualia in the NCC, but so too can electrical shocks or any other external stimulus.?I do not believe such implants can themselves have or embody conscious experience of qualia.? Gordon? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Sun May 5 02:46:39 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 04 May 2013 20:46:39 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Redness comes from Context? Was Re: Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367505687.50221.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1367505687.50221.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5185C80F.6010803@canonizer.com> Hi Ben, I apologize for being like Sheldon, and so sarcastically challenged with this. But thanks for clearing this up, so I can understand what you were saying. And I also now understand what you meant by which cog knows what time it is. In my opinion, you are using a mistaken analogy with the cog knows what time it is, at least as far as understanding one possible theory, and it's predictions. But let me come back to that latter. First I think I have a realization that has significantly helped me to understand how You, James, Mike Perry, and so many others think. So let me see if I can describe this, and hopefully you guys can let me know if I have it about right, from your POV yet, or not. Make Perry (I CC:ed him to pull him into this conversation) indicated qualities have a "context". In other words, he indicate a set of bits fully describing the brain, while it was experiencing 'redness' was written down in a book, from our perspective, reading the static book, would not have a redness quality. But, from the perspective of the world described, in the book, or from this different 'context', it would have a redness quality. Also, James has described what I came to think of as a "Functionally Active Pattern", which has a redness quality. I at least got him to admit that an abstracted single binary bit, representing a "1", could fully represent a redness quality, but not without knowing how to map the "1", back to the "Functionally Active Pattern" that did have the redness quality. In other words, he agreed that there was no redness quality to the abstracted data. But in this conversation, in my opinion, he backtracked on this idea when I hand held everyone through what MPD is predicting will happen when you attempt transmigration. From what I understood, he was saying that an abstracted one could have a redness quality to it, from the context, which seems to me to be the same thing Mike Perry is saying. In other words, it seems to me that you guys all think that a redness quality is all about context. If something, no matter what it is, is in the right context, it then has, or at least a redness quality will emerge from it. Stathis, I haven't seen you say anything that leads me to think you think this way, but do you? Would you think that any old abstracted "1", no matter what media was representing it, in the right context, a redness quality could emerge? So, if I have all that right, let me walk through a certain perception scenario, and tell me if I'm still on the right track. Let's say we want to perceive 2 'red' objects. A strawberry, and a pool ball, painted with lead based 'red' paint. Now, for experimental purposes, we can't see the light reflected off these guys, directly. We have to camera/TV systems that invert red and green signals. The first one, can see the two object, and produces "green objects" on it's screen, converting the 650 NM light int 700 NM light. Then a second system can 'see' this inverted image on that first screen, and re invert the red green signal, producing a properly colored image of a strawberry, and a pool ball, reflecting 650 or red light. It is our eyes that see this second correctly colored screen. Resulting in our brain producing something with a redness quality, as it's knowledge of the two 'red' items - the final result of the entire perception process. So, it seems to me that, from the 'context', both the strawberry, and the pool ball are 'red'. Also the 650NM light reflecting off both of them also, from the context, is 'red'. And also, the inverted green or 700NM light, after the first inverter, because of the context, is also now 'red', and the same is true for every representation all the way to the final knowledge of such, produced in our brain. So, finally, do you guys see the terrible mistake I think you guys are making by thinking qualia can 'arise' from anything, as long as it has the right 'context'? Other than the final result of the perception process, the only thing that really has any redness quality, is our knowledge. And all of the other red and green light, only is 'red' because we think of them as having such a quality. Obviously, the red light, the green light, nor does anything else have a redness quality to it. In other words, you guys are just trying to hide where you think the redness is located, in some complex hard to think about place that doesn't really have it. Now, back to what Ben was talking about. It seems to me that Ben is pulling a similar trick, claiming qualitative properties come from complexities. But if this is the case, then you should be able to tell me the nature of these complexities, and what or how is it that a simple elemental redness quality can come from such. And if you did see such, in someone's brain, how would you know that it had an elemental redness quality, and not an elemental greenness quality, and so on. Ben, I think you were right when you started saying we need more clarification on the type of 'quale' we are talking about. I am certainly failing to comunicate what I mean by the word, so from know on I'm going to use the term 'elemental quale'. Because most people, when they experience 'redness' bind a huge amount of memories, emotions, us perceiving it, and other stuff in with 'redness'. And I agree with your assertion about what this kind of combined with everything else quale is. But this isn't what I'm talking about, when I talk about an 'elemental quale'. I'm predicting there are elemental qualities, like redness, that our brain can use to bind or 'paint' 'complex qualeties' that we experience. These elemental qualities are what I'm talking about. And there must be something that has these elemental qualities, whether there is any context or not. And that it is these real qualities, when we can then use to think about lots of things, in our eyes, and causally upstream from there, as having the same quality, due to it's context. So, did I get what you guys are thinking right? Or am I still missing something? James, do you are any of you still think that something can have a redness quality, or a redness quality can 'arise' from something, no matter what it is, if it has the correct 'context'? Brent Allsop On 5/2/2013 8:41 AM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Brent Allsop wrote: > >>>> In this idealized theoretical world, it is glutamate that >>>> has a redness quality. And this glutamate behaves >>>> the way it does, because of this redness quality. ... >>>> That?s at least how I think about it. Does this help >>>> you guys at all? >>> Yes, it helps enormously. >> (Ben, thanks for this. I literally feel to my knees, and cried, when I > read this.) > > > Oh, dear, I think you rather missed the point. > What was important was what I wrote directly underneath that. I'm trying to point out that saying something like "glutamate has a redness quality" /makes no sense at all/ (you don't actually think that a particular cog in a clock is the one that knows the time, do you?). > > "Redness" is not a quality that a thing possesses, it's a conceptual category that our minds create after many experiences involving visual inputs. You could say that it's something we invent. Just like we invent other useful categories to group together the Oxford English Dictionary, Ringworld Engineers, The God Delusion, The Collected Works of Shakespeare, German for Dummies, Freakonomics, Mind Children, etc., or Beef, Chicken, Lamb, Ostrich, Venison, and so on. We make up huge numbers of these categories throughout our lives, and the interesting question is not "does my 'bus' category feel the same as yours, when we both see a bus?", but: "How do we do it?". Once we know that, we can build other systems that do it too, and they will then create their own categories, and thereby know what books are. And what red is. > > >>> .Thankfully, it looks like lots of people are starting to get it. Spike is > clearly getting it. > > Spike wrote: >> Damn, I'm slow. It took me at least a dozen years to figure out what this > concept is about. > > > Spike, don't feel bad. Many people still don't get Phlogiston, or the Aether. > > In my opinion, Qualia, as actual 'things that exist', come under the category of "not even wrong". I'm not saying that the word doesn't mean anything, because obviously it means what each person using it wants it to mean, but that's part of the problem. It can't be properly defined, so it means far too many things. What it means to me is worlds away from what it appears to mean to Brent, for example. When trying to figure out how minds work, they are simply Not Useful. > > Ben Zaiboc > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 5 03:19:31 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 13:19:31 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367709937.72974.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367642230.21036.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367671035.52687.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <01503BDC-80DD-4FB2-8222-03FF2F722519@gmail.com> <1367707485.65005.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <19DB3A8C-5F47-4221-879A-E4AAD577DDC6@gmail.com> <1367709937.72974.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Gordon wrote: > Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >> Consciousness does not necessarily follow from conscious-like behaviour, >> but it does necessarily follow from reproducing the functional behaviour of >> a system that we know to be conscious. > > That looks like a contradiction to me. How is the reproduction of > conscious-like behavior different from the reproduction of the functional > behavior of a system that we know to be conscious? If we make a computer that behaves intelligently we cannot be sure that it is conscious. However, if we make computer that replicates the function of a human brain, replacing neurons with artificial neurons that respond to inputs in the same way and produce similar outputs, then we can be sure that the resulting hybrid has the same consciousness as the original all biological brain. Note that this does not depend on any theory of conscious, knowledge of whether the brain is conscious, or even definition of consciousness. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 5 03:21:02 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 13:21:02 +1000 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 10:53 AM, Gordon wrote: > Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > ### Let me ask you this: > >> Blind persons with cortical vision implants claim to see things.. > > >> Would you perhaps claim that the seat of qualia is the cortex, not the >> primitive subcortical nuclei substituted by digital signal processing? > > That seems reasonable to me. Some neuroscientists are working on identifying > the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) and I believe they involve a > large swath of neurons in the cortex. > >> But, what if in a few years some researchers produce implants capable >> of correcting cortical blindness, caused by damage to the occipital >> cortex? > > Digital implants can certainly stimulate the experience of qualia in the > NCC, but so too can electrical shocks or any other external stimulus. I do > not believe such implants can themselves have or embody conscious experience > of qualia. But if the implants are in the supposed NCC and the subject behaves just the same, what would that tell you? -- Stathis Papaioannou From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Sun May 5 03:57:30 2013 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 23:57:30 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Colours In-Reply-To: <5185856B.1080103@aleph.se> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <5185856B.1080103@aleph.se> Message-ID: <005b01ce4944$aab5fba0$0021f2e0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Anders Sandberg wrote, > "Human preference for individual colors" by Stephen E. Palmer ; Karen B. Schloss, Proc. SPIE 7527, Human Vision and Electronic Imaging XV, 752718 (February 17, 2010); doi:10.1117/12.849110 wrote, >> The data make perfect sense,[.] if gay men tend to wear more saturated colors (because they are dressing to attract other men) and lesbians tend to wear more muted colors (because they are dressing to attract other women). Makes sense to me. People would remember compliments or complaints from their target audience. The only feedback they would hear or pay attention to would be those. They may not even realize that different targets could have different color preferences. They may be merely going with what "everybody" seems to tell them about colors. If they never hear the non-target audience feedback, they may not really be making choices at all. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP CISSP-ISSAP CISSP-ISSMP CSSLP CISA CISM CRISC CGEIT IAM -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andymck35 at gmail.com Sun May 5 04:13:09 2013 From: andymck35 at gmail.com (Andrew Mckee) Date: Sun, 05 May 2013 16:13:09 +1200 Subject: [ExI] Colours In-Reply-To: <5185856B.1080103@aleph.se> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <5185856B.1080103@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sun, 05 May 2013 10:02:19 +1200, Anders Sandberg wrote: > In looking at this I also came across the article "Human preference for > individual colors" by Stephen E. Palmer ; Karen B. Schloss, Proc. SPIE > 7527, Human Vision and Electronic Imaging XV, 752718 (February 17, > 2010); doi:10.1117/12.849110 They found some gender differences in what > colors people like, with men preferring more saturated colors and women > preferring more muted colors. This leads to the following interesting > hypothesis: > >> Some readers may wonder at the seeming conflict between these >> preferences and male versus female dress >> patterns, given that males tend to wear more muted colors and females >> more saturated colors. The data make perfect sense, however, once one >> realizes that most people dress to attract members of the opposite >> sex. If the color preferences of gay men and lesbians are similar to >> those of straight men and women, respectively, then it would be >> consistent with our interpretation of the relation between dressing >> patterns and color preferences if gay men tend to wear more saturated >> colors (because they are dressing to attract other men) and lesbians >> tend to wear more muted colors (because they are dressing to attract >> other women). We know of no data on this subject, but it is consistent >> with cultural stereotypes about how gay men and lesbians tend to dress. > I don't know if this actually works, but it is a cute idea. And this > might actually give some reason for listening to fashion advice from > same-gender people with different preferences. It might be a cute idea, but I tend to follow the medical research suggesting gay, lesbian and trans-gender people really do have a brain that is gender opposite to the rest of their body. Following the correct dress sense for a woman trapped in a male body trying to attract a straight man or another female brain trapped in a mans body, gives me a headache. :-) In fact, makes me glad I really don't give a toss what I wear, so long as it's some form of jeans and a t-shirt, and if the jeans are faded and have holes in the knees, I still don't care, metro-sexual I am not! :-o From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sun May 5 04:30:28 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 21:30:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367642230.21036.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367671035.52687.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <01503BDC-80DD-4FB2-8222-03FF2F722519@gmail.com> <1367707485.65005.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <19DB3A8C-5F47-4221-879A-E4AAD577DDC6@gmail.com> <1367709937.72974.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367728228.48930.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Gordon wrote: >> That looks like a contradiction to me. How is the reproduction of >> conscious-like behavior different from the reproduction of the functional >> behavior of a system that we know to be conscious? >If we make a computer that behaves intelligently we cannot be sure >that it is conscious. However, if we make computer that replicates the >function of a human brain, replacing neurons with artificial neurons >that respond to inputs in the same way and produce similar outputs, > then we can be sure that the resulting hybrid has the same > consciousness as the original all biological brain.? I think where functionalism is concerned, it applies to any level. An artificial brain that functions like an organic brain is as good as an assembly of artificial neurons that functions like an assembly of organic neurons. You probably cannot have one without the other. Gordon? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sun May 5 05:32:11 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 22:32:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Stathis Papaioannou wrote; >> Digital implants can certainly stimulate the experience of qualia in the >> NCC, but so too can electrical shocks or any other external stimulus. I do >> not believe such implants can themselves have or embody conscious experience >> of qualia. >But if the implants are in the supposed NCC and the subject behaves >just the same, what would that tell you? I believe that if we replaced all the neurons in the NCC with digital implants, the victim of our evil experiment would become comatose. I think something is happening in those parts of the brain that correlate to consciousness that is not equivalent to digital processing. It's a biological process, perhaps electro-chemical in nature, and although we might be able to describe it digitally, and build digital implants using that description as a blueprint, the implants themselves would fail as they are different sort of thing than the biological processes they describe. Just as a digital simulation of a house is not a house in which you can actually live, a digital simulation of the NCC is not the NCC. The map is not the territory when the map is?intrinsically?digital and the territory is not. However, in answer to your question: if the subject were to behave just the same, that would tell me that I was wrong, that humans are digital computers, and that I should reconsider my philosophy. :) Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Sun May 5 06:03:19 2013 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 08:03:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367665535.66874.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5184B288.4010901@aleph.se> <1367653654.47413.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367665535.66874.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 1:05 PM, Gordon wrote: > Brains are not like digital computers. > Brains are biological organs, not fundamentally different from livers or > kidneys. Livers and kidneys are computers: they are physical systems that evolve in time and interact with their environment according to well known physical laws and stored programs. In fact, there are already artificial livers and kidneys, built from scratch in the lab to perform exactly the same functions of livers and kidneys in biological organisms. Same for brains. A valid caveat is that, according to minority opinions in the neuroscience community, e.g. quantum consciousness and stuff), explaining the brain/mind system may require exotic physics not yet fully understood. But even in this case, the physics will be understood someday (my non-negotiable point is that nothing is beyond the grasp of science in principle), and the knowledge will be used to create artificial brains. From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun May 5 06:54:27 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 02:54:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 8:53 PM, Gordon wrote: > Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> But, what if in a few years some researchers produce implants capable >> of correcting cortical blindness, caused by damage to the occipital >> cortex? > > Digital implants can certainly stimulate the experience of qualia in the > NCC, but so too can electrical shocks or any other external stimulus. I do > not believe such implants can themselves have or embody conscious experience > of qualia. ### Let me repeat the question again: Where would you place the neural substrate of color qualia in the human whose cortical blindness were to be corrected by a digital signal processing implant reprising the information processing that normally occurs in the subcortical and cortical vision centers? Just to make things interesting, the implant substitues for calcarine cortex, as well as parts of the fusiform, lingual, temporal and some parietal gyri. Please be explicit; merely saying that an implant does not embody qualia is not enough here. You might consider reading the following: http://www.frontiersin.org/Human_Neuroscience/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00051/full Note following quote: "Numerous psychophysical and physiological evidence indicates that neural representations are not restricted to circumscribed brain regions but involve almost the entire cortex. A clear border between sensory and perceptual processing is thus difficult to find and may depend on experimental and stimulus details." This means that the substrate of qualia involves all of the cortex (including about 20% of V1 neurons in Logothetis' monkey experiments). Therefore an implant that substitutes for any part of the cortex while maintaing unchanged behavioral and neurophysiological properties of the remaining cortex must by necessity substitute functionally for a part of the qualia substrate. In other words, it embodies whatever computations are needed and sufficient for the existence of qualia. So, in case you were tempted to repeat that a digital implant as described does not embody qualia but the remaining cortex does, you would have to explain how the richness of qualia reported by the patient with implant is not diminished despite the absence of most of the sensory processing circuitry that normally is indispensable for qualia. How can a conscious human being claim to see normally, pass all the vision tests that other humans do, indicating the same amount of qualia, and yet have much less of the wetware you claim to be indispensable for qualia? Riddle me this: If the qualia reported by the patient are not embodied in the implant (as you say) and they are not embodied in the patient's brain (because parts of it are gone), where are they? Rafal From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sun May 5 06:59:19 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 23:59:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5184B288.4010901@aleph.se> <1367653654.47413.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367665535.66874.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367737159.6440.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Giulio Prisco wrote: >> Brains are not like digital computers. >> Brains are biological organs, not fundamentally different from livers or >> kidneys. > Livers and kidneys are computers: they are physical systems? > that?evolve in time and interact with their environment according to? > well?known physical laws and stored programs.? If livers and kidneys are computers then we might as well say that just about everything is a computer. It's warm here tonight and so I have a fan operating in my home office.?It's oscillating back and forth, as if according to a program. I suppose I could think of it as a computer. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun May 5 07:37:42 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 03:37:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I didn't notice this post when I wrote my previous one but this already what I asked for, so here is my analysis: On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 1:32 AM, Gordon wrote: > > I believe that if we replaced all the neurons in the NCC with digital > implants, the victim of our evil experiment would become comatose. I think > something is happening in those parts of the brain that correlate to > consciousness that is not equivalent to digital processing. It's a > biological process, perhaps electro-chemical in nature, and although we > might be able to describe it digitally, and build digital implants using > that description as a blueprint, the implants themselves would fail as they > are different sort of thing than the biological processes they describe. ### This is a prediction based on your ideas about the functioning of our mind. Excellent! A hallmark of scientific ideas is that they make specific predictions about observed outcomes that are unlikely unless the idea is true, and said predictions are logically derived from the idea. This is exactly the case with your prediction. Now we need to watch reports from the world of prosthetic science and look for any unexpected major difficulties with prostheses that go beyond retinal or LGN substitution. Since the progress of these technologies is reasonably rapid, we might within the next 10 years have experimental confirmation or refutation of your prediction. --------------------- > Just as a digital simulation of a house is not a house in which you can > actually live, a digital simulation of the NCC is not the NCC. The map is > not the territory when the map is intrinsically digital and the territory is > not. ### These are not appropriate analogies. A simulation of a house does not provide the relevant physical properties of the house (e.g. the ability to repel water). A neural prosthesis does provide the relevant physical properties of the tissue it substitutes for (i.e. the properly structured trains of electrical impulses). The simulation is a map, but the prosthesis is a copy. ------------------ > However, in answer to your question: if the subject were to behave just the > same, that would tell me that I was wrong, that humans are digital > computers, and that I should reconsider my philosophy. :) ### Again, this is the right spirit: You made a falsifiable, logical prediction and you are willing to update your beliefs if the prediction is falsified. Now we just need for the data to come in. Rafal From giulio at gmail.com Sun May 5 07:42:34 2013 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 09:42:34 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367737159.6440.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5184B288.4010901@aleph.se> <1367653654.47413.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367665535.66874.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367737159.6440.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 8:59 AM, Gordon wrote: > Giulio Prisco wrote: > >>> Brains are not like digital computers. >>> Brains are biological organs, not fundamentally different from livers or >>> kidneys. > >> Livers and kidneys are computers: they are physical systems >> that evolve in time and interact with their environment according to >> well known physical laws and stored programs. > > If livers and kidneys are computers then we might as well say that just > about everything is a computer. It's warm here tonight and so I have a fan > operating in my home office. It's oscillating back and forth, as if > according to a program. I suppose I could think of it as a computer. > > Gordon > No "as if" needed: the fan is oscillating back and forth according to a program. The fan is a very simple computer. Livers and kidneys are more complex computers. The brain is a much more complex computer. I am using "computer" in the general sense of physical systems that evolve in time and interact with their environment according to physical laws and stored programs. In this sense, yes, considering everything as a computer is a useful framework. From giulio at gmail.com Sun May 5 07:50:47 2013 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 09:50:47 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fashion In-Reply-To: <51858A1E.6090408@aleph.se> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> <518579FE.3050202@aleph.se> <00d701ce4910$1c3765a0$54a630e0$@rainier66.com> <51858A1E.6090408@aleph.se> Message-ID: My own coolness standard is simple: I don't think about coolness at all. I tend to buy cheap but solid clothes that may last for decades, with simple colors without labels and decorations. When I wake up, I wear the first clean things that I find. The message that I try to give is "there is no message here." On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 12:22 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 04/05/2013 22:41, spike wrote: >> >> I want a formula for coolness. > > > You are not alone. The fashion industry would love it too: > http://smartdatacollective.com/timoelliott/50152/fashion-analytics-social-perfect-ensemble > http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article.cfm?articleid=4659 > Looks like the industry is already trying the data mining approach. > > The problem with coolness is that it is likely one of those things like > "good taste" or "creativity" that cannot be pinned down. It is slippery in a > social and subjective way: plenty of people have different coolness > standards, and one of the best ways of being cool is pulling off something > that shouldn't work but yet does it (case in point I have been studying: the > exotic tie knots of the Merovingean in the Matrix sequels). > > >> Regarding hacker parties and in general every gathering of geeks, it >> doesn' >> t matter. Animals, proles and geeks are free. We never need to ponder >> what >> to wear at any social occasion. In fact, society has developed to the >> point >> where geeks are highly esteemed, a reversal from my own youth in which we >> were disdained. So now, ordinary people sometimes intentionally dress in >> a >> clumsy fashion in order to appear to be a geek. It has gotten so that >> now, >> if I show up at some geek gathering wearing some geek-wannabe outfit, I >> risk >> having the genuine geeks point and shout "PHONY!" > > > Exactly. "Dress for Success", the classic style guide for the businessman, > has a hilarious section about dressing for interaction with engineers and > hacker types. It points out that trying to imitate their style will fail, so > it is better to just tone things down from the strict business style rather > than showing up with a Microsoft t-shirt. (It also has the invaluable advice > that the real businessman buys his clothes at sales). > > > -- > Anders Sandberg, > Future of Humanity Institute > Oxford Martin School > Faculty of Philosophy > Oxford University > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sun May 5 08:08:44 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 01:08:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5184B288.4010901@aleph.se> <1367653654.47413.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367665535.66874.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367737159.6440.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367741324.85463.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Giulio Prisco wrote; >?I am using "computer" in the general sense of physical systems? that > evolve in time and interact with their environment according to > physical laws and stored programs.? I understand that. > In this sense, yes, considering?everything as a computer is a useful framework. Do you believe the world is *intrinsically* digital, Giulio? By this I mean: do you believe the world is not only describable in digital terms, but also actually?intrinsically?digital in itself before we assign that digital description of it? Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 5 07:57:29 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 17:57:29 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367728228.48930.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367642230.21036.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367671035.52687.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <01503BDC-80DD-4FB2-8222-03FF2F722519@gmail.com> <1367707485.65005.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <19DB3A8C-5F47-4221-879A-E4AAD577DDC6@gmail.com> <1367709937.72974.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367728228.48930.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 05/05/2013, at 2:30 PM, Gordon wrote: > > On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Gordon wrote: > > >> That looks like a contradiction to me. How is the reproduction of > >> conscious-like behavior different from the reproduction of the functional > >> behavior of a system that we know to be conscious? > > >If we make a computer that behaves intelligently we cannot be sure > >that it is conscious. However, if we make computer that replicates the > >function of a human brain, replacing neurons with artificial neurons > >that respond to inputs in the same way and produce similar outputs, > > then we can be sure that the resulting hybrid has the same > > consciousness as the original all biological brain. > > I think where functionalism is concerned, it applies to any level. An artificial brain that functions like an organic brain is as good as an assembly of artificial neurons that functions like an assembly of organic neurons. You probably cannot have one without the other. Yes, if the artificial brain is based on the architecture of the biological brain you can be sure it will have the consciousness of the original brain: for example, that red will look to it as red did with the original brain. But with a radically different AI you can't be sure of this. After all, you can't be sure of the nature of the consciousness, if any, of non-human life forms. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Sun May 5 08:46:22 2013 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 10:46:22 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367741324.85463.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5184B288.4010901@aleph.se> <1367653654.47413.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367665535.66874.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367737159.6440.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367741324.85463.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 10:08 AM, Gordon wrote: > Giulio Prisco wrote; > >> I am using "computer" in the general sense of physical systems that >> evolve in time and interact with their environment according to >> physical laws and stored programs. > > I understand that. > >> In this sense, yes, considering everything as a computer is a useful >> framework. > > Do you believe the world is *intrinsically* digital, Giulio? By this I mean: > do you believe the world is not only describable in digital terms, but also > actually intrinsically digital in itself before we assign that digital > description of it? Well, as an unrepentant positivist, I prefer to avoid speculations on what the world intrinsically IS. Science is not about unveiling "ultimate reality," whatever that means, but about developing more and more useful models of reality. Models are useful when they permit to predict experimental results better than previous models, and build better machines. Not that I am not interested in speculations on ultimate reality. I find metaphysics _extremely_ interesting and I spend a lot of time thinking about it, but I also think science doesn't really need it. So I prefer to reword the question as: do you think digital models of the world may be more useful than non-digital models? My answer is, let experiment decide. If a digital model of the world permits to predict experimental results better than non-digital models, and build better machines, then yes, the world "is" digital for all practical purposes that we _need_ to be concerned with. For example, sentient software on a digital computer (AI or human upload, or a combination of both) would provide clear, experimental proof that digital sentience can be computationally generated. Based on my understanding of the models of reality that I find more useful, I am confident that this proof may be achieved in this century. I am using "digital model" and "digital computer" in a very wide sense. I am open to the possibility that intelligence, consciousness and subjective experience may turn out to depend critically on quantum effects and the irreducible randomness of quantum reality. Whether a qubit is a digital bit or not is a matter of interpretation, but in practice, if we will find out that mind is quantum, then we will be able to replicate it on quantum computers. From anders at aleph.se Sun May 5 08:40:52 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 05 May 2013 09:40:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fashion In-Reply-To: References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> <518579FE.3050202@aleph.se> <00d701ce4910$1c3765a0$54a630e0$@rainier66.com> <51858A1E.6090408@aleph.se> Message-ID: <51861B14.80808@aleph.se> On 05/05/2013 08:50, Giulio Prisco wrote: > My own coolness standard is simple: I don't think about coolness at > all. I tend to buy cheap but solid clothes that may last for decades, > with simple colors without labels and decorations. When I wake up, I > wear the first clean things that I find. The message that I try to > give is "there is no message here." Which typically is very cool. Note that one element of coolness is that you are not supposed to look like you are trying to be cool. One could make some evo psych argument that insofar coolness is about signalling fitness, making sure the coolness signal looks like an honest signal rather than something one deliberately works on is a way of amplifying it. But there is also the peace of mind and timesaving argument: caring too much about being cool wastes enormous amounts of effort, money and time (just witness teenagers as a kind of caricature of this tendency). In fact, XKCDs excellent table of how much time it is worth to optimize one's habits ( https://xkcd.com/1205/ ) suggests that it is probably worthwhile to spend several hours (for example by shopping smart) now to shave off 30 seconds of indecision at the wardrobe each day. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sun May 5 09:00:18 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 02:00:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367744418.9892.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ## Again, this is the right spirit: You made a falsifiable, logical > prediction and you are willing to update your beliefs if the > prediction is falsified. Now we just need for the data to come in. Exactly. Thanks, Rafal. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sun May 5 09:29:53 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 05 May 2013 10:29:53 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Colours In-Reply-To: <005b01ce4944$aab5fba0$0021f2e0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <5185856B.1080103@aleph.se> <005b01ce4944$aab5fba0$0021f2e0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: <51862691.70308@aleph.se> On 05/05/2013 04:57, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > Makes sense to me. People would remember compliments or complaints > from their target audience. The only feedback they would hear or pay > attention to would be those. They may not even realize that different > targets could have different color preferences. They may be merely > going with what "everybody" seems to tell them about colors. If they > never hear the non-target audience feedback, they may not really be > making choices at all. This probably also explains a lot of non-sexual clothing selection like dressing to fit with a workplace. You pay attention to signals from the boss or social trendsetter since their approval is important. Which incidentally fits in with a piece of advice in Dress for Success that notes that businessmen should not let their wives or mothers select their clothes: if the goal is to send signals to work-mates (and the wife does not work in the same environment) then her advice is likely to be slightly off-target. Of course, workplace clothing is often utilitarian and more about signalling conformism. I felt like a dangerous outsider in my pinstripe *grey* suit last week when I was exploring the insurance district of London: everybody could tell I was not one of them. (Seeing a horde of identically dressed insurance underwriters emerge from Lloyds at exactly one o'clock and making their way to the nearest sushi take-away is one of the great natural wonders of the world.) On 05/05/2013 05:13, Andrew Mckee wrote: > It might be a cute idea, but I tend to follow the medical research > suggesting gay, lesbian and trans-gender people really do have a brain > that is gender opposite to the rest of their body. Following the > correct dress sense for a woman trapped in a male body trying to > attract a straight man or another female brain trapped in a mans body, > gives me a headache. :-) Well, the evidence is mildly complicated. It seems that some hypothalamic systems of gay men and straight women are somewhat similar in the hypothalamus region, limbic functional connectivity and brain asymmetry ( http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/06/13/0801566105.abstract ) but various studies (especially olfactory and pharmacological ones, http://www.pnas.org/content/103/21/8269.abstract ) seem to suggest that lesbian women do not have exactly male brains. I think it is likely that there are basic developmental differences at the bottom, but then these get expressed in a highly learning-specific way. Things are not terribly deterministic, and one should not be overly essentialist about sexual orientation. It is more about what people tend to do and feel than a particular well-defined state. So my first order guess is that if you want to figure out what group X likes, you should try asking group X (or watch revealed preferences in their behaviour). If you cannot or dare not, asking group Y that has somewhat similar preferences might work, but introduces noise. If you go to group Z that is also trying to impress group X, they might have figured out tricks you do not know. Of course, it might be that they are actually trying to impress an actually different group (like gay men being mostly concerned with gay men), so there is some reason to be sceptical there. So my second order approach would be to listen to advice or information from all these groups and combine it: there are probably robust patterns that would be true despite the filtering effects, and these are strong enough to care about. Combined expert sets typically outperform individuals on messy pattern matching. Inter-individual differences in what people like are anyway pretty big, so trying to exactly match advice or what some example person likes is bound to be biasing (except if you have a particular person in mind you want to impress, of course). -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 5 09:46:51 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 10:46:51 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Colours In-Reply-To: <51862691.70308@aleph.se> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <5185856B.1080103@aleph.se> <005b01ce4944$aab5fba0$0021f2e0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <51862691.70308@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 10:29 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > So my first order guess is that if you want to figure out what group X > likes, you should try asking group X (or watch revealed preferences in their > behaviour). If you cannot or dare not, asking group Y that has somewhat > similar preferences might work, but introduces noise. If you go to group Z > that is also trying to impress group X, they might have figured out tricks > you do not know. Of course, it might be that they are actually trying to > impress an actually different group (like gay men being mostly concerned > with gay men), so there is some reason to be sceptical there. So my second > order approach would be to listen to advice or information from all these > groups and combine it: there are probably robust patterns that would be true > despite the filtering effects, and these are strong enough to care about. > Combined expert sets typically outperform individuals on messy pattern > matching. Inter-individual differences in what people like are anyway pretty > big, so trying to exactly match advice or what some example person likes is > bound to be biasing (except if you have a particular person in mind you want > to impress, of course). > This sounds too academic to me. Rather like the neat efficient market theory. It assumes that people know what they are doing! :) Immediate fail! The efficient market doesn't work because of all the human illogical emotional reactions, herd instinct, etc. Similarly, fashion victims are trying to dress in the latest fashions, not particularly to impress any group. As you say, it also depends on fitting in to the environment you are going to. People like to 'join in' and be one of the crowd. (herd instinct, again). BillK From bbenzai at yahoo.com Sun May 5 10:12:23 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 03:12:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1367748743.11384.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Gordon wrote: >Ben Zaiboc wrote: > >>Gordon, I have a question for you. > > >> Do you agree or deny that a digital computer could, in principle, run a simulation that imitated, >> in every way, a human mind, including referring to itself, reporting that it has internal states >> like emotions, and displaying all the intelligence of a human mind? >I'm inclined to agree, Ben. Some clever programmer will one day write a program that passes the Turing test. I might be fooled into thinking it is actually conscious. Excellent. That's good enough for me. It goes way beyond the formal Turing Test of course, but the principle is the same. If an information-processing system is good enough to fool other people into thinking that it's a conscious mind, then it can probably fool itself too. That's really all we can ask. After all, we do it ourselves all the time, and nobody can truly answer the question "are other people really conscious?". I don't suppose non-organic-machine minds that act exactly as though they were conscious will be any better at answering this question than we are. Let's leave the metaphysics to the theologians. I don't actually care if we have souls or not. It makes no practical difference one way or the other. Ben Zaiboc From bbenzai at yahoo.com Sun May 5 10:20:06 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 03:20:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Subject: Re: Colours In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1367749206.72701.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Anders Sandberg wrote: >At the time of writing this I am wearing a tan shirt, dark olive pants, >and a grey herringbone jacket... I am so going to lose my gayness >certificate :-) I doubt that, Anders. (I presume you mean a brown shirt and green pants?! :>> ) Ben Zaiboc From anders at aleph.se Sun May 5 10:36:41 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 05 May 2013 11:36:41 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Colours In-Reply-To: References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <5185856B.1080103@aleph.se> <005b01ce4944$aab5fba0$0021f2e0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <51862691.70308@aleph.se> Message-ID: <51863639.70806@aleph.se> On 05/05/2013 10:46, BillK wrote: > This sounds too academic to me. Rather like the neat efficient market > theory. It assumes that people know what they are doing! :) Immediate > fail! Well, this is where critical thinking comes in. Note my "revealed preferences" bit: just because the ladies tell you they like something doesn't mean they actually like it: it is often better to do little experiments to see if they actually are willing do a little effort to get that something. And they might be too polite to tell you that your garish plaid suit is over the top. In more theoretical terms (I am in academia, after all): peoples real preferences are some kind of probability distriution. When asked, they will reveal a different one, with varying levels of mutual information to the real one. If you watch their (sometimes irrational) behavior they will reveal a third one. Asking other people and so on will also give you information, mixed with bias and noise. Using this data you can infer their original one to some degree. Hmm... I will have to do the math on this, but it seems that one could make a mutual information theory of inference on advice... > Similarly, fashion victims are trying to dress in the latest fashions, > not particularly to impress any group. As you say, it also depends on > fitting in to the environment you are going to. People like to 'join > in' and be one of the crowd. (herd instinct, again). Would fashion victims alone on desert islands dress in new fashions every season, even though there is nobody there to see them? -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sun May 5 10:55:28 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 03:55:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367748743.11384.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1367748743.11384.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367751328.45068.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Ben Zaiboc wrote: >?If an information-processing system is good enough to fool other people into thinking that it's a conscious mind, then it can probably fool itself too.? That's really all we can ask.?? That is an interesting idea! Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 5 12:14:55 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 22:14:55 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 3:32 PM, Gordon wrote: > Stathis Papaioannou wrote; > >>> Digital implants can certainly stimulate the experience of qualia in the >>> NCC, but so too can electrical shocks or any other external stimulus. I >>> do >>> not believe such implants can themselves have or embody conscious >>> experience >>> of qualia. > >>But if the implants are in the supposed NCC and the subject behaves >>just the same, what would that tell you? > > I believe that if we replaced all the neurons in the NCC with digital > implants, the victim of our evil experiment would become comatose. I think > something is happening in those parts of the brain that correlate to > consciousness that is not equivalent to digital processing. It's a > biological process, perhaps electro-chemical in nature, and although we > might be able to describe it digitally, and build digital implants using > that description as a blueprint, the implants themselves would fail as they > are different sort of thing than the biological processes they describe. > Just as a digital simulation of a house is not a house in which you can > actually live, a digital simulation of the NCC is not the NCC. The map is > not the territory when the map is intrinsically digital and the territory is > not. Could you clarify what exactly you think we can and can't do in attempts at simulating neurons in the NCC? It seems you allow that we could, in principle, make computerised neurons that are not involved in consciousness directly, but may perform a relay role passing information to the NCC. Is that right? So if we use this technology to replace neurons in the NCC do you agree that these artificial neurons would at least reproduce the I/O behaviour of the biological neurons? If not, you are claiming that to calculate the timing of the action potentials output by the NCC neuron involves a non-computable function. This is contrary to scientific evidence, but in any case, would you accept that the NCC would work properly provided only that the appropriate calculations could be done by some means? > However, in answer to your question: if the subject were to behave just the > same, that would tell me that I was wrong, that humans are digital > computers, and that I should reconsider my philosophy. :) Good, but I suspect you don't realise that you are proposing there is physics in the brain which obeys non-computable rules and you don't realise that this is still compatible with functionalism, if not computationalism, which is a subset of functionalism. -- Stathis Papaioannou From bbenzai at yahoo.com Sun May 5 12:42:34 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 05:42:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Redness comes from Context? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1367757754.21366.YahooMailClassic@web165005.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: > I'm predicting there are elemental qualities, like redness This is the heart of the matter. You think there are such things as 'qualities', which exist independently of anything else. I don't. I'm saying that the experience of a 'quality' like redness arises from combining many things together in the mind. These are not mysterious abstract things, they are the patterns of information-processing out of which experience is built. Note, I'm not saying "a huge amount of memories, emotions, us perceiving it, and other stuff /in with 'redness'/", I'm saying "a huge amount of memories, emotions, us perceiving it, and other stuff IS 'redness'". Are you familiar with binaural beats, or moire patterns? How about fluid vortices? Or the patterns in a wheatfield when the wind blows? These things all exist, but there is no way they could be described as 'elemental qualities'. Or elemental anything. Redness is like this, in my opinion. *All* of our experiences are like this. >It seems to me that Ben is >pulling a similar trick, claiming qualitative properties come from >complexities. But if this is the case, then you should be able to tell >me the nature of these complexities, and what or how is it that a simple >elemental redness quality can come from such This paragraph illustrates that you didn't understand what I meant. Forget "a simple elemental redness quality", there is no such thing. I know it /feels/ like there is, but that's no guide. Einstein's special theory of relativity feels wrong, too. So does quantum theory. It's tough that our instincts have evolved to cope with living on the savannah, chasing antelopes and avoiding lions. We have to rely on logic to guide us on these more recent concerns. Ben Zaiboc From bbenzai at yahoo.com Sun May 5 13:01:55 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 06:01:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1367758915.47624.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Gordon wrote: >Stathis Papaioannou wrote; >>But if the implants are in the supposed NCC and the subject behaves >>just the same, what would that tell you? > >I believe that if we replaced all the neurons in the NCC with digital implants, the victim of our evil experiment would become comatose. I think something is happening in those parts of the brain that correlate to consciousness that is not equivalent to digital processing. It's a biological process, perhaps electro-chemical in nature, and although we might be able to describe it digitally, and build digital implants using that description as a blueprint, the implants themselves would fail as they are different sort of thing than the biological processes they describe. Just as a digital simulation of a house is not a house in which you can actually live, a digital simulation of the NCC is not the NCC. The map is not the territory when the map is?intrinsically?digital and the territory is not. > >However, in answer to your question: if the subject were to behave just the same, that would tell me that I was wrong, that humans are digital computers, and that I should reconsider my philosophy. :) It might tell you you were wrong, but it /wouldn't/ tell you that humans are digital computers. As I keep saying (and you keep ignoring), something doesn't have to be digital for a digital computer to compute it. Why do you think it does? Is it just an article of faith, or do you have some kind of proof? There is ample evidence that digital computers can and do compute non-digital processes. Is this wrong? If you have good evidence that this is wrong, I'm sure we'd all love to know. We all NEED to know. All scientists and engineers the world over need to know. Everyone needs to know. Come on, Gordon don't keep this to yourself, that would be mean. Ben Zaiboc From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 5 14:32:16 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 07:32:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Colours In-Reply-To: <51863639.70806@aleph.se> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <5185856B.1080103@aleph.se> <005b01ce4944$aab5fba0$0021f2e0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <51862691.70308@aleph.se> <51863639.70806@aleph.se> Message-ID: <013501ce499d$582620f0$087262d0$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: [ExI] Colours On 05/05/2013 10:46, BillK wrote: >>... This sounds too academic to me. Rather like the neat efficient market > theory. It assumes that people know what they are doing! :) Immediate > fail! >...Well, this is where critical thinking comes in. Note my "revealed preferences" bit: just because the ladies tell you they like something doesn't mean they actually like it: it is often better to do little experiments to see if they actually are willing do a little effort to get that something. And they might be too polite to tell you that your garish plaid suit is over the top.>... -- Anders Sandberg Hmmm, OK I risk displaying my ignorance. I know the usual line of reasoning, but I see a flaw. If a woman is interested in *that* kind of activity, she would be taking my clothing off of me anyway. So it would be irrelevant what I am wearing. If she intends to eventually become my one and only, then she would know that I deplore shopping of any kind, avoiding the shopping mall like the plague, so she would be choosing and purchasing my clothing anyway. It played out exactly that way in real life. So again it makes no difference how I dress, both when I was single and now that I am 29 yrs married, ja? Alternatively, perhaps a spouse who is highly territorial could choose clothing for her perfectly fashion-indifferent partner which is intentionally non-attractive to rivals. If this happened to me, I would never know, for I do not know the formula for fashion hipness, nor do I know anyone who does. But it fits with my understanding of evolutionary psychology. It would be an understated and gender-reversed western version of middle-eastern men wrapping their brides head to toe in black canvas when it is brutally hot. Of course I may be missing something fundamental here. That does happen. spike From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 5 15:19:53 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 17:19:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: <1366787228.97128.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51738052.5030801@verizon.net> <517444B7.3090609@canonizer.com> <1366603687.3168.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <001201ce405f$1719ca40$454d5ec0$@rainier66.com> <1366782060.18718.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130424061022.GM15179@leitl.org> <1366785084.62600.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130424064540.GP15179@leitl.org> <1366787228.97128.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 24 April 2013 09:07, Gordon wrote: > Eugen, > You certainly know you have intentionality. You know it as surely as you > can see these words. You're justified in thinking that other beings like > you also have it. As we go down the food chain, things are not so clear. I > happen to think that most mammals have it, but probably not some less > complex organisms. But that is irrelevant. > Is it really? I do not see any clear reason to see intentionality or consciousness as anything other than a "spandrel", an evolutionary artifact with no real underlying existence. Now, we also know that simple and complex organisms do exist, so they are possible, so they in principle can be "built" through some process or other giving place to the emergence of all related properties. . Such a project may well be intractable, or even just unpractical, but you have to admit that in principle it is possible by definition. There is also no obvious quantum leap in terms of intrinsic complexity, beyond that of Wolfram's "universal computation", so emulating a human brain is just many orders of magnitude more complicate and resource-demanding than emulating the very limited cognitive range of a fruitfly. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 5 15:24:47 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 17:24:47 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: References: <51738052.5030801@verizon.net> <517444B7.3090609@canonizer.com> <1366603687.3168.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <001201ce405f$1719ca40$454d5ec0$@rainier66.com> <1366782060.18718.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130424084735.GV15179@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 24 April 2013 11:15, BillK wrote: > Hmmmm. It seems to me that by relying on empirical observation you > are forced to reject much of human creation. > For example, pretty much all of philosophy, schools of thought and > belief systems. Political theory, ethics and ideologies all have to be > dismissed as unquantifiable. I beg to differ. Political theory, ethics and ideologies are well within the camp of empirical observation. So are religions, arts, superstitions, social norms, languages and so forth. To study the cultural appreciation of the Monna Lisa or the belief in the Invisible Pink Unicorn or the effect of marxism in European history you need not assess any especially ineffable qualities thereof. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Sun May 5 15:37:41 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 05 May 2013 09:37:41 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Redness comes from Context? In-Reply-To: <1367757754.21366.YahooMailClassic@web165005.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1367757754.21366.YahooMailClassic@web165005.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51867CC5.5090902@canonizer.com> Ben, You're clearly still missing much. First off, you said: "I know it /feels/ like there is, but that's no guide." Surely you must believe that if you know ANYTHING, whether mistaken or not, there must be something that is that knowledge or that is the seeming /feels/. If you don't agree with that, then you're not talking about any kind of intelligence with knowledge that is physically real. This entire conversation is about what it /feels/ like. This conversation is about how it /feels/ to me, and how is this could be different than what it /feels/ like to you. Whether such /feelings/ are mistaken or "not a guide", has nothing to do with what this conversation is about. You also said: "Forget 'a simple elemental redness quality', there is no such thing." for which there is lots and lots of scientific evidence that falsifies this, so don't expect me to believe such completely violates known science assertions. For example, when people take certain psychedelic drugs, all these bound together pieces of information "disassociate" and become consciously clearly separated - having nothing to do with each other. If you're interested, I can point you to a book where Steven Lehar scientifically documents having such experiences. To say nothing of brain defects like 'blind sight' where all the cognitive information remains 'bound' together, and only the qualitative information is missing. People can still catch the red strawberry, but they can't 'see' any redness quality to what they just caught. The opposite is also true with "associative agnosia" where people can experience a redness qaulity, but there is nothing else bound to the redness. There is nothing like warmth with it, they don't know that what they are perceiving is a strawberry, and so on. Just that there is a redness qualitative experience, and nothing more. Again, this conversation is only about the redness quality that can exist all alone. It is not about all the other coganative informaiton that can also be 'bound' to it. We are talking about the necessary and sufficient causal properties corelated with just that redness quality, and how are these causal properties different from the ones you represent the strawberry with. All the other same cognitive things, like the abstract word 'red' we both bind to this possibly very qualitatively different (either because it is a natural accident or via neurally inverted architected and manipulated binding system) is irrelevant to what this conversation is about. This conversation is about whether those causal properties can be the same in two brains, as long as there is only the correct 'functional isomorph' or must there be something material, for another to /feel/ the same is I /feel/. The necessary and sufficient causal causal properties responsible for what it 'feels' like to me, is only what this conversation is about. You seem to be talking about something different entirely, and ignoring/missing, what the rest of us are attempting to talk about, and what all of us know, absolutely, exists. (unless of course, you are a my redness zombie - which of course would explain a lot of things, and make what both of us are saying, correct, about only our own minds - in which case boy are you in for a big surprise, when science finally enables me to first 'eff' to you what my redness qualitatively /feels/ like.) Brent Allsop On 5/5/2013 6:42 AM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Brent Allsop wrote: > >> I'm predicting there are elemental qualities, like redness > This is the heart of the matter. > > You think there are such things as 'qualities', which exist independently of anything else. I don't. I'm saying that the experience of a 'quality' like redness arises from combining many things together in the mind. These are not mysterious abstract things, they are the patterns of information-processing out of which experience is built. > > Note, I'm not saying "a huge amount of memories, emotions, us perceiving it, and other stuff /in with 'redness'/", I'm saying "a huge amount of memories, emotions, us perceiving it, and other stuff IS 'redness'". > > Are you familiar with binaural beats, or moire patterns? How about fluid vortices? Or the patterns in a wheatfield when the wind blows? These things all exist, but there is no way they could be described as 'elemental qualities'. Or elemental anything. Redness is like this, in my opinion. *All* of our experiences are like this. > >> It seems to me that Ben is >> pulling a similar trick, claiming qualitative properties come from >> complexities. But if this is the case, then you should be able to tell >> me the nature of these complexities, and what or how is it that a simple >> elemental redness quality can come from such > > This paragraph illustrates that you didn't understand what I meant. Forget "a simple elemental redness quality", there is no such thing. I know it /feels/ like there is, but that's no guide. Einstein's special theory of relativity feels wrong, too. So does quantum theory. It's tough that our instincts have evolved to cope with living on the savannah, chasing antelopes and avoiding lions. We have to rely on logic to guide us on these more recent concerns. > > Ben Zaiboc > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 5 15:43:46 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 16:43:46 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: References: <51738052.5030801@verizon.net> <517444B7.3090609@canonizer.com> <1366603687.3168.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <001201ce405f$1719ca40$454d5ec0$@rainier66.com> <1366782060.18718.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130424084735.GV15179@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 4:24 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > Political theory, ethics and ideologies are well within the camp of > empirical observation. So are religions, arts, superstitions, social norms, > languages and so forth. > > To study the cultural appreciation of the Monna Lisa or the belief in the > Invisible Pink Unicorn or the effect of marxism in European history you need > not assess any especially ineffable qualities thereof. > > Cultural appreciation or studying beliefs was not what I understood Eugen to be referring to. I took empirical observation to mean using the results of scientific experiments to justify some statements or laws. Religions, ethics, politics, etc, are not 'laws' in the sense of being based on science research. BillK From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Sun May 5 16:16:11 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 05 May 2013 10:16:11 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367748743.11384.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1367748743.11384.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <518685CB.7000102@canonizer.com> Hi Ben, I predict that within the next 25 years the following will be discovered and demonstrated, via science to all of us. They will demonstrate that something in my right hemisphere is reliably responsible for my redness experience, which I represent strawberries with, and also something responsible for my greenness experience, which enables me to qualitatively distinguish my knowledge of the leaves from the strawberries with. And they will discover that the same will be true for my other hemisphere. They will discover what this binding system is, and how it works, which will explain why I am able to know, absolutely, more than I know anything, what my redness and greenness /feel/ like, in both hemispheres, and that they are qualitatively and reliably correlated with the same underlying physics. I predict that Ben is a my redness zombie, and has never experienced my redness before. They will achieve the ability to duplicate this binding process which the corpus callosum does between my hemispheres, between Ben's and my brains, so that Ben will be able to experience, for the first time, what my redness is like - just as reliably as my two hemesphers knows that each have the same redness. This will reliably prove to him, and to me, that everything he was saying about consciousness, was completely true, that Ben does not have a redness quality to his knowledge, but that this is only true for his brain. And he he'll be saying something like: "Oh my God, I have never experienced anything like that in my life! Now I am no longer a Brent's redness zombie!" So, those are all very falsifiable predictions, which could prove me wrong if they do not come to pass, as predicted. So, Ben, can you make an equally compelling prediction, which if demonstrated by science, will force me to admit that my current working hypotheses about consciousness are falsified, the way this will surely force you into my camp? Non of this is theological or philosophical. It is all theoretical science, making very real predictions about reality and the kinds of experiments that need to be done to force us all into the same camp. And soon, depending on the quality and progress of our theoretical work, science will force us all, evidently some of us naively kicking and screening, into accepting the one true theory that science will prove effingly works. The goal with Canonizer.com, is to rigorously measure this, as what could arguably become the greatest discover in physics - ever: The discovery of the reliable relationship between ineffable qualitative properties or /feelings/, and their underlying physics. I believe we are already way beyond the neural scientific understanding required to achieve such a demonstrable science, the only remaining problem standing in our way, is an effing communication problem. We simply need to find some way to comunicate to everyone that there is something we (or at least some of us) know absolutely to be important, which we should be looking for: Qualitative properties, or what things /feel/ like. We need to know where to look for these: Not on the surface of the strawberry, not in the light, the retina... and not thinking that when we see something like glutamate reflecting 'white' light, that it has a whiteness quality to it, or worse, that there can't be any qualitative properties correlated to it's causality, at all. And finally, how do we demonstrably, reliably, and objectively detect and share these things: By simply getting around the quale interpretation problem, by correctly grounding the qualitative meaning in the abstracted information our detectors are detecting, and thereby finally effing the ineffable. Brent Allsop On 5/5/2013 4:12 AM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Gordon wrote: > >> Ben Zaiboc wrote: >> >>> Gordon, I have a question for you. >> >>> Do you agree or deny that a digital computer could, in principle, run a simulation that imitated, >>> in every way, a human mind, including referring to itself, reporting that it has internal states >>> like emotions, and displaying all the intelligence of a human mind? > >> I'm inclined to agree, Ben. Some clever programmer will one day write a program that passes the Turing test. I might be fooled into thinking it is actually conscious. > > Excellent. That's good enough for me. It goes way beyond the formal Turing Test of course, but the principle is the same. > > If an information-processing system is good enough to fool other people into thinking that it's a conscious mind, then it can probably fool itself too. That's really all we can ask. After all, we do it ourselves all the time, and nobody can truly answer the question "are other people really conscious?". I don't suppose non-organic-machine minds that act exactly as though they were conscious will be any better at answering this question than we are. > > Let's leave the metaphysics to the theologians. I don't actually care if we have souls or not. It makes no practical difference one way or the other. > > > Ben Zaiboc > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 5 16:51:14 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 17:51:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Colours In-Reply-To: <013501ce499d$582620f0$087262d0$@rainier66.com> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <5185856B.1080103@aleph.se> <005b01ce4944$aab5fba0$0021f2e0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <51862691.70308@aleph.se> <51863639.70806@aleph.se> <013501ce499d$582620f0$087262d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 3:32 PM, spike wrote: > Alternatively, perhaps a spouse who is highly territorial could choose > clothing for her perfectly fashion-indifferent partner which is > intentionally non-attractive to rivals. If this happened to me, I would > never know, for I do not know the formula for fashion hipness, nor do I know > anyone who does. But it fits with my understanding of evolutionary > psychology. It would be an understated and gender-reversed western version > of middle-eastern men wrapping their brides head to toe in black canvas when > it is brutally hot. > > Of course I may be missing something fundamental here. That does happen. > > The famous remark springs to mind........ 'Men think about sex the same way that women think about shoes'. BillK From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun May 5 16:34:15 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 12:34:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367751328.45068.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367748743.11384.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <1367751328.45068.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Gordon Swobe sent COPIES of his writing to this list, please remember they are only copies: > we cannot drive our cars over those simulated bridges. I know, I'm the one who pointed that out. > "Bridgeness" does not translate through the levels. > A brick bridge does not translate through levels but the abstract concept of bridgeness translates beautifully. We also know for a fact that arithmetic translates through the levels and the exact same thing is true for all of mathematics, and literature, and music, and the digital genetic code, and intelligent behavior. > consciousness does not translate through the levels. > Thus I can only conclude that you believe consciousness is more like a brick than a symphony. I don't. > We might find it possible to create the appearance of consciousness on a > digital computer, > Just like a calculator might find it possible to create the appearance that 2+2=4, but that is just a simulated answer using simulated arithmetic; if you want a real answer you can't use a calculator you must work it out yourself using real arithmetic, only then will you know how much 2+2 is. > but it will still only be simulated consciousness. > Tell me Gordon, when you read the Extropian list on your digital computer are you reading a simulated message, or are you simulating the reading of a message, or are you just reading a damn message? > Simulations are, after all, only simulations. > Yes I can't argue with that, simulations are simulations. > They are not the thing simulated, except in the special case of real > things that are already digital, e.g., software and digital photographs. > All literature every written in any language is also digital, every single word, so is arithmetic, so is music both in it's written form and on your iPod, movies too . The genetic code that makes you the man you are today is also digital. > In those special cases, we don't call them simulations. We rightly call > them copies. > Have I just been reading copies of your E-mail messages all this time?! If so that may be why you have failed to convince me, please send me your ORIGINAL E-mail message! > I also understand the architecture of digital computers well enough to > look at them and see that whatever makes this thing I call consciousness, > it sure does not look like a digital computer can do it. > And what in hell would a thing that COULD produce consciousness look like? We both know the answer to that and mind architecture be damned; I have read enough copies of your messages to understand that you don't think digital computers can be conscious for one reason and one reason only, they are not soft and squishy. If you have a more profound reason than that you have never mentioned it. > I'm careful to almost always preface "computer" with adjective "digital" > because I do believe the brain can be understood as a type of computer. > Just not a digital one. > Back in 1995 Marvin Minsky was on this list, he invented the confocal microscope and many consider him to be the father of AI; Isaac Asimov, a man not noted for his modesty, said that in his entire life he only met 2 people more intelligent than he was, one was Carl Sagan and the other was Marvin Minsky. Anyway, in 1995 Minsky expressed contempt for: "people who happily assume that analog computers bring some mysterious sort of infinite precision that cannot be simulated by a mere 64-bit computer working with double precision floating point. I used to use analog computers, [...] If you were real careful, even at Room Temperature, you could sometimes get close to 10-bit performance for brief periods." > If you think consciousness follows necessarily from brain-like behavior > then I suppose you must think some computers are already at least > semi-conscious. > That would be a reasonable assumption if you thought that intelligence is a much much richer problem than consciousness, and that is exactly what I believe; I don't see how else you can explain the fact that half the people on this list have some tin pot General Theory of Consciousness, but not one has even a bad General Theory of Intelligence. > Brains are not like digital computers. > I know, brains are squishy but digital computers are not. > Brains are biological organs, not fundamentally different from livers or > kidneys. > Yes, all those organs have one thing in common, squishiness. > Some clever programmer will one day write a program that passes the > Turing test. I might be fooled into thinking it is actually conscious. > This question should have been settled to everybody's satisfaction in 1859 and why people keep blabbing about it is a great mystery to me. It's a fact, if the Turing Test doesn't work for consciousness because intelligent behavior and consciousness are not related then Charles Darwin was dead wrong. I do not think Charles Darwin was dead wrong. > those parts of the brain that correlate to consciousness [...] > If there are parts of the brain that correlate to consciousness and nothing else, if there really is something that Robert Ettinger called a "consciousness circuit" then Charles Darwin was dead wrong. I do not think Charles Darwin was dead wrong. > Do you believe the world is *intrinsically* digital > If time and space are quantized then the world is 100% digital, there are good reasons to think that they are but we don't know that for certain. But we do know for certain that the things we care about the most ARE digital, like literature and music and movies and our genetic inheritance. And even you admitted that a digital computer might behave so intelligently that you could be "fooled" into thinking it was conscious, so intelligent behavior is digital too. And so unless Charles Darwin was dead wrong consciousness is also digital. I do not think Charles Darwin was dead wrong. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Sun May 5 17:22:15 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 13:22:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367741324.85463.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5184B288.4010901@aleph.se> <1367653654.47413.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367665535.66874.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367737159.6440.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367741324.85463.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 4:08 AM, Gordon wrote: > Do you believe the world is *intrinsically* digital, Giulio? By this I mean: > do you believe the world is not only describable in digital terms, but also > actually intrinsically digital in itself before we assign that digital > description of it? At what level of concern? You may discern an analog nature of a color wheel. When you start probing wavelengths of light, you'll find discreteness all the way to quanta of energy related to the working theory of electrons. Beyond that you return to probability distribution of where/how an electron will exist. So is the world *intrinsically* any particular way? I don't think we can answer that without first defining a lot of parameters that eventually forces the answer to depend on those parameters. From mike at alcor.org Sun May 5 22:05:13 2013 From: mike at alcor.org (Mike Perry) Date: Sun, 05 May 2013 15:05:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Redness comes from Context? Was Re: Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <5185C80F.6010803@canonizer.com> References: <1367505687.50221.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <5185C80F.6010803@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <201305052232.r45MW1f1022816@andromeda.ziaspace.com> At 19:46 2013-05-04, Brent Allsop wrote: >[...] >Mike Perry (I CC:ed him to pull him into this conversation) >indicated qualities have a "context". In other words, he indicated >that a set of bits fully describing the brain, while it was >experiencing 'redness' was written down in a book, from our >perspective, reading the static book, would not have a redness >quality. But, from the perspective of the world described, in the >book, or from this different 'context', it would have a redness quality. "A set of bits fully describing the brain" in effect *is* the brain, *from the "context" (I like to call it a "frame of reference") in which it is embedded. This set of bits could describe state changes in that brain over time. In effect this "brain" (just a static record to us) can be thought of as being a conscious system *relative to its own frame of reference*. Relative to that it might indeed be perceiving red. But this frame of reference in effect is modeling the passage of time as well as the perceptions in the brain over this time interval. (And I assume this modeling can occur at the quantum level, a "black box" level that should be fully capable of representing consciousness whatever that may be. A simulation of consciousness at the quantum level, if done in our space-time frame of reference, would necessarily in my view embody true consciousness or at least no one could prove otherwise. A "simulation" done by way of a static record that just recorded all the state changes would not embody consciousness from our perspective, that is to say, from our frame of reference or "context," but would do so from the frame of reference defined by the record. The record could in fact record state changes over a volume of spacetime that included but was not limited to just the brain by itself, etc.) >[...]it seems to me that you [...] think that a redness quality is >all about context. If something, no matter what it is, is in the >right context, it then has [a redness quality], or at least a >redness quality will emerge from it. For me the "context" just means you have a representation of a brain that is experiencing redness. I don't see that there is a problem with that. >[...] >So, if I have all that right, let me walk through a certain >perception scenario, and tell me if I'm still on the right track. >Let's say we want to perceive 2 'red' objects. A strawberry, and a >pool ball, painted with lead based 'red' paint. Now, for >experimental purposes, we can't see the light reflected off these >guys, directly. We have t[w]o camera/TV systems that invert red and >green signals. The first one, can see the two object[s], and >produces "green objects" on it's screen, converting the 650 NM light >int 700 NM light. Then a second system can 'see' this inverted >image on that first screen, and re invert the red green signal, >producing a properly colored image of a strawberry, and a pool ball, >reflecting 650 or red light. It is our eyes that see this second >correctly colored screen. Resulting in our brain producing >something with a redness quality, as it's knowledge of the two 'red' >items - the final result of the entire perception process. > >So, it seems to me that, from the 'context', both the strawberry, >and the pool ball are 'red'. I don't think this follows. The "context" you talk about doesn't seem to contain a brain that perceives. If you include that (and the brain that perceives exhibits certain state changes etc.) then it can be said that red is perceived. > Also the 650NM light reflecting off both of them also, from the > context, is 'red'. Again, you've left out any brain that perceives. That is where "red" is perceived, not somewhere else. > And also, the inverted green or 700NM light, after the first > inverter, because of the context, is also now 'red', and the same > is true for every representation all the way to the final knowledge > of such, produced in our brain. > >So, finally, do you guys see the terrible mistake I think you guys >are making by thinking qualia can 'arise' from anything, as long as >it has the right 'context'? Again, you misunderstand my notion of "context" which again I call a "frame of reference." Only brains perceive red so the frame of reference must include a representation of a brain that perceives red within it or it cannot be said that "perception of red" is embodied or embedded within the system. However, overall, "perception of red" *can* be embodied (in my view) in a pile of bits irrespective of how one may "interpret" them, so long as there exists a way to reasonably interpret them as a brain that perceives red. (Are all such "ways of interpreting" completely arbitrary and thus meaningless? NO! Because arbitrary interpretations would completely ignore the complexity issue. Thus there are preferred ways of interpreting and it does make sense to call some ways of interpreting reasonable and others not. A movie if reasonably encoded would more reasonably be interpreted as a movie than being no different than just a random string of high-complexity gibberish, or being some other, totally diffferent movie. A longer discussion of this point is called for but I will move on in the interest of brevity.) >Other than the final result of the perception process, the only >thing that really has any redness quality, is our knowledge. And >all of the other red and green light, only is 'red' because we think >of them as having such a quality. Obviously, the red light, the >green light, nor does anything else have a redness quality to it. I would say, *not quite!*, if I understand you correctly. When you say "our knowledge", it sounds like you are saying that the pile of bits cannot have any intrinsic "redness" in it but that quality has to be supplied somehow from the outside by again, "our knowledge." No, I disagree. But your system has avoided including anything but yourself that does the perceiving. Put in the right type of brain and, when it sees the 650NM light (more like 510NM for green, 650NM for red) it perceives red just as surely as you do with the other wavelength. If I have a pile of bits describing the reactions of this brain to the green light I can say that by reasonable interpretation red is being perceived in that particular frame of reference. This has nothing to do, initially, with any "state of knowledge" that I may have. I approach this pile of bits with no preconceived notion of what it "means." But, assuming it has the right stuff expressed in a low-complexity way, I finally emerge with the conviction that it describes a brain that is perceiving red, even though it may happen that the actual wavelength of light that (it describes that) elicits this response is something that if I were to see it would appear to me as green. Mike From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sun May 5 22:40:21 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 15:40:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5184B288.4010901@aleph.se> <1367653654.47413.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367665535.66874.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367737159.6440.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367741324.85463.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367793621.44186.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Mike Dougherty ?wrote: >> Do you believe the world is *intrinsically* digital, Giulio?? > At what level of concern?? You may discern an analog nature? > of a color?wheel.? When you start probing wavelengths of light,? > you'll find?discreteness all the way to quanta of energy? > related to the working?theory of electrons.? Beyond that you? > return to probability?distribution of where/how an electron will exist. Those probability waves are thought to propagate?continuously, so it is not really clear that quantum mechanics tells us that the world is discrete. It only appears discrete when we're measuring it. In any case, the question of discreteness is not exactly what I mean by the question of intrinsic digital-ness, and quantum mechanics makes my brain hurt. > So is the world *intrinsically* any particular way?? I don't think we > can answer that without first defining a lot of parameters that > eventually forces the answer to depend on those parameters. If the world is intrinsically digital then at its most basic level it is made out of something comparable to on/off switches. I don't believe that to be the case, but if it were so then it might be fair to say that everything including the brain is a digital computer. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sun May 5 23:58:57 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 16:58:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367758915.47624.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1367758915.47624.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367798337.160.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Ben Zaiboc wrote: >?As I keep saying (and you keep ignoring), something doesn't have to be digital for a?digital computer to compute it.? I'm not ignoring you, Ben. I just think that the answer is yes, it is trivially true that?there is some description of the brain such that we could do a digital simulation of it. ?Church's thesis applies to brains; their operations are in principle computable. We can also create digital simulations of rain storms. This too is trivial. Nobody actually gets wet from those digital rain drops. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Mon May 6 00:08:52 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 06 May 2013 01:08:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Subject: Re: Colours In-Reply-To: <1367749206.72701.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1367749206.72701.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5186F494.6010305@aleph.se> On 05/05/2013 11:20, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Anders Sandberg wrote: > >> At the time of writing this I am wearing a tan shirt, dark olive pants, >> and a grey herringbone jacket... I am so going to lose my gayness >> certificate :-) > I doubt that, Anders. > (I presume you mean a brown shirt and green pants?! :>> ) Whoops, I completely undermined my own argument that way! And I did not even notice it, which suggests that I do fulfill my stereotype quota. I have less problem with my European intellectual stereotype quota: I actually used 'baudrillardesque' seriously when talking about Iron Man III tonight. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Mon May 6 00:26:05 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 06 May 2013 01:26:05 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367751328.45068.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367748743.11384.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <1367751328.45068.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5186F89D.5010407@aleph.se> On 05/05/2013 11:55, Gordon wrote: > > Ben Zaiboc wrote: > > >If an information-processing system is good enough to fool other > people into thinking that it's a conscious mind, then it can probably > fool itself too. That's really all we can ask. > > That is an interesting idea! It would be interesting to investigate under what conditions a part of the brain can convince the rest that you are conscious about something. You can be deluded about lack of consciousness, like the Anton-Babinski syndrome where people confabulate their way about their cortical blindness. You can also be deluded about your own existence; I can imagine somebody with Cotard delusions claiming to be a philosophical zombie, but what that proves is anybody's guess. In fact, brains with totally inconsistent states seems entirely plausible. I guess the challenge is to figure out how they get into *consistent* states. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Mon May 6 00:44:39 2013 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 20:44:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Colours In-Reply-To: <013501ce499d$582620f0$087262d0$@rainier66.com> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <5185856B.1080103@aleph.se> <005b01ce4944$aab5fba0$0021f2e0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <51862691.70308@aleph.se> <51863639.70806@aleph.se> <013501ce499d$582620f0$087262d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <000a01ce49f2$e4447cd0$accd7670$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Spike wrote, > If a woman is interested in *that* kind of activity, she would be taking my > clothing off of me anyway. So it would be irrelevant what I am wearing. Eurika! That's the answer to the mystery that has confounded men for millennia! Maybe our fantasy mates have been seriously attracted to us all this time. But they just can't bring themselves to touch these horrid clothes. Not even enough to undress us. That explains everything! -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP CISSP-ISSAP CISSP-ISSMP CSSLP CISA CISM CRISC CGEIT IAM From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Mon May 6 02:23:47 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 05 May 2013 20:23:47 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Redness comes from Context? Was Re: Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <201305052205.r45M5F7J016130@ra.pacificwebworks.com> References: <1367505687.50221.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <5185C80F.6010803@canonizer.com> <201305052205.r45M5F7J016130@ra.pacificwebworks.com> Message-ID: <51871433.2080802@canonizer.com> Hi Mike, Thanks for the clarifications. You say we won't be able to tell, from our frame of reference, what the redness in some other frame, like a static book description, is like. So, could I imply from this, that we will be able to eff the ineffable, between brains? In other words, just like I can know what redness in my right hemisphere is like, and how it is different than greenness in my left hemisphere, might we some day know as sure, how another person's elemental redness quale is or isn't like our own? Brent On 5/5/2013 4:05 PM, Mike Perry wrote: > At 19:46 2013-05-04, Brent Allsop wrote: >> [...] >> Mike Perry (I CC:ed him to pull him into this conversation) indicated >> qualities have a "context". In other words, he indicated that a set >> of bits fully describing the brain, while it was experiencing >> 'redness' was written down in a book, from our perspective, reading >> the static book, would not have a redness quality. But, from the >> perspective of the world described, in the book, or from this >> different 'context', it would have a redness quality. > > "A set of bits fully describing the brain" in effect *is* the brain, > *from the "context" (I like to call it a "frame of reference") in > which it is embedded. This set of bits could describe state changes in > that brain over time. In effect this "brain" (just a static record to > us) can be thought of as being a conscious system *relative to its own > frame of reference*. Relative to that it might indeed be perceiving > red. But this frame of reference in effect is modeling the passage of > time as well as the perceptions in the brain over this time interval. > (And I assume this modeling can occur at the quantum level, a "black > box" level that should be fully capable of representing consciousness > whatever that may be. A simulation of consciousness at the quantum > level, if done in our space-time frame of reference, would necessarily > in my view embody true consciousness or at least no one could prove > otherwise. A "simulation" done by way of a static record that just > recorded all the state changes would not embody consciousness from our > perspective, that is to say, from our frame of reference or "context," > but would do so from the frame of reference defined by the record. The > record could in fact record state changes over a volume of spacetime > that included but was not limited to just the brain by itself, etc.) > >> [...]it seems to me that you [...] think that a redness quality is >> all about context. If something, no matter what it is, is in the >> right context, it then has [a redness quality], or at least a redness >> quality will emerge from it. > > For me the "context" just means you have a representation of a brain > that is experiencing redness. I don't see that there is a problem with > that. > >> [...] >> So, if I have all that right, let me walk through a certain >> perception scenario, and tell me if I'm still on the right track. >> Let's say we want to perceive 2 'red' objects. A strawberry, and a >> pool ball, painted with lead based 'red' paint. Now, for >> experimental purposes, we can't see the light reflected off these >> guys, directly. We have t[w]o camera/TV systems that invert red and >> green signals. The first one, can see the two object[s], and >> produces "green objects" on it's screen, converting the 650 NM light >> int 700 NM light. Then a second system can 'see' this inverted image >> on that first screen, and re invert the red green signal, producing a >> properly colored image of a strawberry, and a pool ball, reflecting >> 650 or red light. It is our eyes that see this second correctly >> colored screen. Resulting in our brain producing something with a >> redness quality, as it's knowledge of the two 'red' items - the final >> result of the entire perception process. >> >> So, it seems to me that, from the 'context', both the strawberry, and >> the pool ball are 'red'. > > I don't think this follows. The "context" you talk about doesn't seem > to contain a brain that perceives. If you include that (and the brain > that perceives exhibits certain state changes etc.) then it can be > said that red is perceived. > >> Also the 650NM light reflecting off both of them also, from the >> context, is 'red'. > > Again, you've left out any brain that perceives. That is where "red" > is perceived, not somewhere else. > >> And also, the inverted green or 700NM light, after the first >> inverter, because of the context, is also now 'red', and the same is >> true for every representation all the way to the final knowledge of >> such, produced in our brain. >> >> So, finally, do you guys see the terrible mistake I think you guys >> are making by thinking qualia can 'arise' from anything, as long as >> it has the right 'context'? > > Again, you misunderstand my notion of "context" which again I call a > "frame of reference." Only brains perceive red so the frame of > reference must include a representation of a brain that perceives red > within it or it cannot be said that "perception of red" is embodied or > embedded within the system. However, overall, "perception of red" > *can* be embodied (in my view) in a pile of bits irrespective of how > one may "interpret" them, so long as there exists a way to reasonably > interpret them as a brain that perceives red. (Are all such "ways of > interpreting" completely arbitrary and thus meaningless? NO! Because > arbitrary interpretations would completely ignore the complexity > issue. Thus there are preferred ways of interpreting and it does make > sense to call some ways of interpreting reasonable and others not. A > movie if reasonably encoded would more reasonably be interpreted as a > movie than being no different than just a random string of > high-complexity gibberish, or being some other, totally diffferent > movie. A longer discussion of this point is called for but I will move > on in the interest of brevity.) > >> Other than the final result of the perception process, the only thing >> that really has any redness quality, is our knowledge. And all of >> the other red and green light, only is 'red' because we think of them >> as having such a quality. Obviously, the red light, the green light, >> nor does anything else have a redness quality to it. > > I would say, *not quite!*, if I understand you correctly. When you say > "our knowledge", it sounds like you are saying that the pile of bits > cannot have any intrinsic "redness" in it but that quality has to be > supplied somehow from the outside by again, "our knowledge." No, I > disagree. But your system has avoided including anything but yourself > that does the perceiving. Put in the right type of brain and, when it > sees the 650NM light (more like 510NM for green, 650NM for red) it > perceives red just as surely as you do with the other wavelength. If I > have a pile of bits describing the reactions of this brain to the > green light I can say that by reasonable interpretation red is being > perceived in that particular frame of reference. This has nothing to > do, initially, with any "state of knowledge" that I may have. I > approach this pile of bits with no preconceived notion of what it > "means." But, assuming it has the right stuff expressed in a > low-complexity way, I finally emerge with the conviction that it > describes a brain that is perceiving red, even though it may happen > that the actual wavelength of light that (it describes that) elicits > this response is something that if I were to see it would appear to me > as green. > > Mike > From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Mon May 6 02:27:05 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 19:27:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367807225.79075.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >> I believe that if we replaced all the neurons in the NCC with digital >> implants, the victim of our evil experiment would become comatose. I think >> something is happening in those parts of the brain that correlate to >> consciousness that is not equivalent to digital processing. It's a >> biological process, perhaps electro-chemical in nature, and although we >> might be able to describe it digitally, and build digital implants using >> that description as a blueprint, the implants themselves would fail as they >> are a different sort of thing than the biological processes they describe. > Could you clarify what exactly you think we can and can't do in > attempts at simulating neurons in the NCC? It seems you allow that we > could, in principle, make computerised neurons that are not involved > in consciousness directly, but may perform a relay role passing > information to the NCC. Is that right?? Yes, that is right.?I can cause you to experience qualia by opening your cranium and stimulating the surface of your cortex with electricity. I consider digital implants similar in principle to whatever tool I would use in such a procedure. The tool itself is certainly not conscious. ? > If not, you are claiming that to calculate the timing of the action > potentials output by the NCC neuron involves a non-computable > function.? As I wrote to Ben, I believe the brain is computable. There is some level of description under which we could write a program that simulated the operations of the brain. But I don't believe the resulting digital computation would have consciousness. It is merely a computer program -- an algorithm designed to mimic the observable operations of a brain ?-- not an actual brain.? I am myself a programmer, by the way (C++). I can make computers do interesting things that appear conscious, but I don't suppose I could ever write a program that would make a computer actually conscious. That would require magic, like the magic that made Pinocchio come alive. What would the code look like? How do I write a "become conscious" function? It really comes down to the question of substrate dependency. I believe things are happening in the NCC that might be?synthesized in the laboratory, but there is a difference between synthesis and digital simulation. [I was about to write a criticism of functionalism and multiple realizability here, but I'll have to do it later, perhaps later tonight. No time.] > would you accept that the NCC would work properly provided only that > the appropriate calculations could be done by some means? It would be by means of biology/chemistry/physics, transplanted or synthesized, but I'm reluctant to call those processes "calculations". That idea is only something we want to assign to the physics of the brain. I think the brain itself is not?intrinsically?a calculator, and that a calculator is not?intrinsically?a brain. It does not follow that because I can do simple math in my head that my head is actually a digital calculator. ? As an aside, I was wondering yesterday if we might someday be able to transplant NCC tissue to repair the brains of comatose people. If Joe just died from a heart attack and Frank is in what appears to be a permanent coma, perhaps we can transplant some brain tissue from Joe to Frank without changing Frank's identity. And/or perhaps we find a way to synthesize or grow that needed tissue in the laboratory.? Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 6 04:09:30 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 14:09:30 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367807225.79075.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367807225.79075.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 12:27 PM, Gordon wrote: > Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >>> I believe that if we replaced all the neurons in the NCC with digital >>> implants, the victim of our evil experiment would become comatose. I >>> think >>> something is happening in those parts of the brain that correlate to >>> consciousness that is not equivalent to digital processing. It's a >>> biological process, perhaps electro-chemical in nature, and although we >>> might be able to describe it digitally, and build digital implants using >>> that description as a blueprint, the implants themselves would fail as >>> they >>> are a different sort of thing than the biological processes they >>> describe. > > >> Could you clarify what exactly you think we can and can't do in >> attempts at simulating neurons in the NCC? It seems you allow that we >> could, in principle, make computerised neurons that are not involved >> in consciousness directly, but may perform a relay role passing >> information to the NCC. Is that right? > > Yes, that is right. I can cause you to experience qualia by opening your > cranium and stimulating the surface of your cortex with electricity. I > consider digital implants similar in principle to whatever tool I would use > in such a procedure. The tool itself is certainly not conscious. > >> If not, you are claiming that to calculate the timing of the action >> potentials output by the NCC neuron involves a non-computable >> function. > > As I wrote to Ben, I believe the brain is computable. There is some level of > description under which we could write a program that simulated the > operations of the brain. But I don't believe the resulting digital > computation would have consciousness. It is merely a computer program -- an > algorithm designed to mimic the observable operations of a brain -- not an > actual brain. > > I am myself a programmer, by the way (C++). I can make computers do > interesting things that appear conscious, but I don't suppose I could ever > write a program that would make a computer actually conscious. That would > require magic, like the magic that made Pinocchio come alive. What would the > code look like? How do I write a "become conscious" function? > > It really comes down to the question of substrate dependency. I believe > things are happening in the NCC that might be synthesized in the laboratory, > but there is a difference between synthesis and digital simulation. > > [I was about to write a criticism of functionalism and multiple > realizability here, but I'll have to do it later, perhaps later tonight. No > time.] > >> would you accept that the NCC would work properly provided only that >> the appropriate calculations could be done by some means? > > It would be by means of biology/chemistry/physics, transplanted or > synthesized, but I'm reluctant to call those processes "calculations". That > idea is only something we want to assign to the physics of the brain. I > think the brain itself is not intrinsically a calculator, and that a > calculator is not intrinsically a brain. It does not follow that because I > can do simple math in my head that my head is actually a digital calculator. If an artificial NCC can replicate the I/O behaviour of the biological NCC then the person must behave normally, since all the impulses to the muscles will occur normally. Do you see how this must be so? Do you see any problem with the idea that a person behaves normally while a part of his conscious mind (namely, that part due to the NCC replaced with artificial components) is missing? -- Stathis Papaioannou From mike at alcor.org Mon May 6 05:04:17 2013 From: mike at alcor.org (Mike Perry) Date: Sun, 05 May 2013 22:04:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Redness comes from Context? Was Re: Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <51871433.2080802@canonizer.com> References: <1367505687.50221.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <5185C80F.6010803@canonizer.com> <201305052205.r45M5F7J016130@ra.pacificwebworks.com> <51871433.2080802@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <201305060531.r465V6Fs016066@andromeda.ziaspace.com> At 19:23 2013-05-05, Brent Allsop wrote: >Hi Mike, > >Thanks for the clarifications. > >You say we won't be able to tell, from our frame of reference, what >the redness in some other frame, like a static book description, is like. I guess you could look at it that way, but I don't normally think that way myself. I think we could know what it's like for *a brain to be perceiving redness*, in the static book description. And *ditto for in our world too*. I don't think there is just "redness"--either in our world or somewhere else--apart from a brain that perceives redness. (Indeed, I think it's been established that colors can be perceived with unusual wavelengths of light if some of the more usual wavelengths associated with these colors are missing.) The perception is a mental phenomenon. It may be that a certain wavelength of light evokes this, so you call it "red" but the actual "redness" is in your perceptions. (To me this does not challenge a computational model of consciousness or perceptions.) >So, could I imply from this, that we will be able to eff the >ineffable, between brains? In other words, just like I can know >what redness in my right hemisphere is like, and how it is different >than greenness in my left hemisphere, might we some day know as >sure, how another person's elemental redness quale is or isn't like our own? To me it seems reasonable that someday we will know (if we can advance indefinitely) all about what the perception of redness in another person's mind is like, at least for beings that are not too advanced relative to the level we've reached ourselves. Mike [...] From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Mon May 6 05:55:19 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 22:55:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367807225.79075.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367819719.9900.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >?If an artificial NCC can replicate the I/O behaviour of the biological > NCC then the person must behave normally, since all the impulses to > the muscles will occur normally. Do you see how this must be so? Do > you see any problem with the idea that a person behaves normally while > a part of his conscious mind (namely, that part due to the NCC > replaced with artificial components) is missing? I'm not even sure what "replicate the I/O behavior" means when we're discussing NCC neurons and qualia. Are qualia inputs? Or are they outputs? When someone shines a light in my eye, it seems like an input. On the other hand, I seem to be representing that light to myself, in which case the quale is more like an output. Perhaps qualia are not inputs or outputs, but something else entirely. I don't know. So, if our purpose here is to investigate whether digital neurons can replace organic neurons in the NCC and create conscious experience, which I think plays a role in driving behavior, I would not know how to begin to answer your question as I don't know how to interpret your first sentence. Do you? Here is my more general issue with functionalism and multiple realizability as they relate to strong AI on digital computers: I have a ceiling fan in my home. The blades are made of wood. I've seen other ceiling fans with metal blades, and still others with stained-glass blades. They all function as fans, and so along with functionalists I'm happy to call them all fans. I've also seen hammers made of iron and others made of steel. Again, both hammers. Fans are realizable in wood, metal and glass; hammers are realizable in iron and steel.?Only the functions are important. The substrates make no difference.?All well and good.? But things get muddled when we begin to talk about the supposed multiple realizability of brains in both organic materials and software/hardware platforms. A digital computer is not in the same class of things as fans and hammers. With fans and hammers, we are looking purely at the direct physical effects of one substrate on another. Fans are defined as those physical things that directly circulate physical air, hammers are defined as those physical things that directly drive physical nails. A computer program, by contrast, is defined by functionalists as anything that admits of abstract 1's and 0's (or ons and offs, however you want to think of it) and the brain (like everything else in the world) does admit to such an interpretation. This is why they say brains are multiply realized on computers. But those syntactical abstractions are not actually *intrinsic* to the physics of the organic brain. Functionalists and computationalists merely assign them to the physics. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 6 06:36:00 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 16:36:00 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367819719.9900.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367807225.79075.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367819719.9900.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 3:55 PM, Gordon wrote: > Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >> If an artificial NCC can replicate the I/O behaviour of the biological >> NCC then the person must behave normally, since all the impulses to >> the muscles will occur normally. Do you see how this must be so? Do >> you see any problem with the idea that a person behaves normally while >> a part of his conscious mind (namely, that part due to the NCC >> replaced with artificial components) is missing? > > I'm not even sure what "replicate the I/O behavior" means when we're > discussing NCC neurons and qualia. Are qualia inputs? Or are they outputs? > When someone shines a light in my eye, it seems like an input. On the other > hand, I seem to be representing that light to myself, in which case the > quale is more like an output. Perhaps qualia are not inputs or outputs, but > something else entirely. I don't know. So, if our purpose here is to > investigate whether digital neurons can replace organic neurons in the NCC > and create conscious experience, which I think plays a role in driving > behavior, I would not know how to begin to answer your question as I don't > know how to interpret your first sentence. Do you? The inputs and outputs I'm talking about are action potentials which trigger neurotransmitter release at synapses. The neurons in the NCC receive inputs from other neurons that connect with them and send output to other neurons via their axon. In the process, qualia may somehow be produced, but qualia are neither inputs nor outputs so are excluded from this part of the analysis. If the artificial NCC neuron reproduces the outputs given certain inputs, then all the downstream neurons to which it connects behave normally. This is irrespective of any qualia it may or may not have, since as you admitted qualia are not outputs. So the person with the artificial NCC neurons will behave exactly the same as a normal person - by definition, since the artificial neurons reproduce the I/O behaviour perfectly. Do you agree with this? > Here is my more general issue with functionalism and multiple realizability > as they relate to strong AI on digital computers: > > I have a ceiling fan in my home. The blades are made of wood. I've seen > other ceiling fans with metal blades, and still others with stained-glass > blades. They all function as fans, and so along with functionalists I'm > happy to call them all fans. I've also seen hammers made of iron and others > made of steel. Again, both hammers. Fans are realizable in wood, metal and > glass; hammers are realizable in iron and steel. Only the functions are > important. The substrates make no difference. All well and good. > > But things get muddled when we begin to talk about the supposed multiple > realizability of brains in both organic materials and software/hardware > platforms. A digital computer is not in the same class of things as fans and > hammers. With fans and hammers, we are looking purely at the direct physical > effects of one substrate on another. Fans are defined as those physical > things that directly circulate physical air, hammers are defined as those > physical things that directly drive physical nails. A computer program, by > contrast, is defined by functionalists as anything that admits of abstract > 1's and 0's (or ons and offs, however you want to think of it) and the brain > (like everything else in the world) does admit to such an interpretation. > This is why they say brains are multiply realized on computers. But those > syntactical abstractions are not actually *intrinsic* to the physics of the > organic brain. Functionalists and computationalists merely assign them to > the physics. > > Gordon > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Stathis Papaioannou From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Mon May 6 07:41:50 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 00:41:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367807225.79075.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367819719.9900.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367826110.73951.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >The inputs and outputs I'm talking about are action potentials which >trigger neurotransmitter release at synapses. The neurons in the NCC >receive inputs from other neurons that connect with them and send >output to other neurons via their axon.? Just third-person descriptions in the language of physics. > In the process, qualia may?somehow be produced, but qualia are neither inputs nor outputs so are > excluded from this part of the analysis.? Yes, qualia "may somehow be produced." Actually, I think are produced. lol. How does that happen? Consider for a moment that the world might not be fully understandable in the third-person language of physics. Perhaps there is something that we might call first-person ontology. As science-minded people, we want to describe everything in the world in the objective language of physics. But perhaps the world is both subjective and objective. Toothaches are not the same thing as the physics that describe them. They really hurt!? > If the artificial NCC neuron?reproduces the outputs given certain inputs, then all? > the downstream?neurons to which it connects behave normally. This is irrespective of > any qualia it may or may not have, since as you admitted qualia are > not outputs.? No, I wrote that qualia might be inputs or outputs, or something else entirely. I notice that you did not respond to my criticism of?functionalism and multiple realizability, which I consider very important. You quoted it below but did not answer. >> Here is my more general issue with functionalism and multiple realizability >>.as they relate to strong AI on digital computers: >> >> I have a ceiling fan in my home. The blades are made of wood. I've seen >> other ceiling fans with metal blades, and still others with stained-glass >> blades. They all function as fans, and so along with functionalists I'm >> happy to call them all fans. I've also seen hammers made of iron and others >> made of steel. Again, both hammers. Fans are realizable in wood, metal and >> glass; hammers are realizable in iron and steel. Only the functions are >> important. The substrates make no difference. All well and good. > >> But things get muddled when we begin to talk about the supposed multiple >> realizability of brains in both organic materials and software/hardware >> platforms. A digital computer is not in the same class of things as fans and >> hammers. With fans and hammers, we are looking purely at the direct physical >> effects of one substrate on another. Fans are defined as those physical >> things that directly circulate physical air, hammers are defined as those >> physical things that directly drive physical nails. A computer program, by >> contrast, is defined by functionalists as anything that admits of abstract >> 1's and 0's (or ons and offs, however you want to think of it) and the brain >> (like everything else in the world) does admit to such an interpretation. >> This is why they say brains are multiply realized on computers. But those >> syntactical abstractions are not actually *intrinsic* to the physics of the >> organic brain. Functionalists and computationalists merely assign them to >> the physics. >> >> Gordon Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Mon May 6 09:52:36 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 02:52:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1367833956.78917.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Gordon wrote: >Ben Zaiboc wrote: > >>?As I keep saying (and you keep ignoring), something doesn't have to be digital for a digital computer to compute it. > >I'm not ignoring you, Ben. I just think that the answer is yes, it is trivially true that there is some description of the brain such that we could do a digital simulation of it. Church's thesis applies to brains; their operations are in principle computable. We can also create digital simulations of rain storms. This too is trivial. Nobody actually gets wet from those digital rain drops. So what? This observation, while true, is also trivial, and irrelevant to the issue. If we're talking about a system being aware of itself, why does it matter which 'level' that awareness is on? It will still be aware. If you think about it, we are simulations, carried out by our brains. We interact with simulations (or 'models') of things outside our brains, like what we fondly call the 'real world', as well as simulations of non-real things, and simulations of simulations. Think of the Theory of Mind: I think that you think that I think, etc. All simulations. All carried out on a different level to the outside world. A thought (e.g. I'm thinking right now about raindrops) is not the same thing as the real thing being thought about (guess what? My thought is not wet! Do you think it must be missing something?). And don't say "Ah, yes, but they're not digital simulations, because our brains are not digital computers!", because that brings us right back to my point: The fact that, contrary to your claim, a digital process can reproduce, to an arbitrary level of fidelity, a non-digital one. This is what you appear to be ignoring, because no matter how many times people say it, and how many examples you're given, you continue as though your claim was valid. It's not. Just to be crystal clear: The fact that the brain is not a digital computer does /not/ mean that a digital computer can't model a brain, down to any level of detail you like. Do you disagree? If so, please let us know why, because /so many/ real-world applications depend on the factual truth of digital processes being able to model non-digital ones, in as much detail as needed. If this principle is wrong (despite all appearances), we really need to know! There is the possibility, of course, that your argument is not what it appears. Maybe it's not that you don't think a brain can be fully realised on a digital computer, but you think that such a brain would be missing some mysterious quality that imparts consciousness. Something that lies outside of the physical world of matter, energy, time, space and information. I suppose if you believed that consciousness is a special, separate 'something' like this, rather than the operation of a certain set of complex information processes, there would be no use using logical arguments. You would be a Vitalist. Ben Zaiboc From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 6 10:38:34 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 12:38:34 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367826110.73951.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367807225.79075.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367819719.9900.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367826110.73951.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130506103834.GE26408@leitl.org> On Mon, May 06, 2013 at 12:41:50AM -0700, Gordon wrote: > Toothaches are not the same thing as the physics that describe them. They really hurt!? Yes, you believe in magic. We get that. But we don't. As there is zero evidence for any progress on your part I suggest to end the conversation. From bbenzai at yahoo.com Mon May 6 11:44:28 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 04:44:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Redness comes from Context? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1367840668.25623.YahooMailClassic@web165002.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: >Ben, > >You're clearly still missing much. First off, you said: > > "I know it /feels/ like there is, but that's no guide." >> >Surely you must believe that if you know ANYTHING, whether mistaken or >not, there must be something that is that knowledge or that is the >seeming /feels/. If you don't agree with that, then you're not talking >about any kind of intelligence with knowledge that is physically real. Sorry, not with you here. What is "knowledge that is physically real"? Is there "knowledge that is not physically real"? Afaik, there is just knowledge. Adding "physically real" on to the end makes as much sense to me as saying "inquisitiveness that is spherical". Anyway, you seem to be saying that feelings are things that have an existence independent of the system that has them. Like a vortex having an existence independent of any fluid, or a wave having an existence independent of a hand. The 'something' that is a feeling is a /process/ generated by a system, is what I'm saying. It has no existence outside that system. > >You also said: > >"Forget 'a simple elemental redness quality', there is no such thing." > >for which there is lots and lots of scientific evidence that falsifies >this, so don't expect me to believe such completely violates known >science assertions. For example, when people take certain psychedelic >drugs, all these bound together pieces of information "disassociate" and >become consciously clearly separated - having nothing to do with each >other. If you're interested, I can point you to a book where Steven >Lehar scientifically documents having such experiences. I think you're confusing reported experiences with scientific evidence. Reported experience *on drugs*. Drugs that disrupt the normal processes of cognition. Here's a question: Let's suppose for a second that there was such a thing as an 'elemental redness quality', what kind of thing could it be? I know that the world is made up of five fundamental things: Space/Time, Matter/Energy and Information. There is nothing else. Everything we know to be real is composed of some combination of those five things. Some configuration of matter and energy, organised in space and time according to some information. I know of nothing that doesn't conform to this recipe. The relative amounts of the ingredients may vary (empty space in an cosmic void probably doesn't have much information, a quark doesn't have much space, etc.), but the recipe is always there. This applies to our mental states just as much as it does to a volcano. We have a couple of pounds of neurons that are specialised for dealing with information, lots of it. They throw energy and matter around in complex, changing patterns. We call many of these information patterns our 'thoughts', or 'mental states'. So: What is this fundamental redness quality? What's it made of? I see no room for any such thing. All I see is that it must be one of those 'thoughts', in other words, a pattern of information created in a brain. Not 'fundamental' at all, but an information process. If you don't like this conclusion, if it feels wrong, there's not much I can do except point out that this feeling of 'wrongness' is just another information pattern in your brain, likely a result of our evolved psychology from long ago. Thinking about these things is not what we're good at, philosophers tend to get eaten or starve in the kind of environment we're adapted for. Our instincts on these matters are likely to be wrong, so we need help. We have to use logic, ruthlessly question our assumptions, and apply the scientific method no matter how 'wrong' it feels, otherwise we're just cavemen worshipping the thunder god. Ben Zaiboc From bbenzai at yahoo.com Mon May 6 12:01:50 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 05:01:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1367841710.27714.YahooMailClassic@web165005.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: >Hi Ben, > >I predict that within the next 25 years the following will be discovered >and demonstrated, via science to all of us. > >So, Ben, can you make >an equally compelling prediction, which if demonstrated by science, will >force me to admit that my current working hypotheses about consciousness >are falsified I predict that you will one day realise that what you are describing is just another form of communication, and that there is no way to tell whether or not someone else is experiencing the same thing as you, because an experience is the sum total of all the processes going on in your mind at the time, and it would be impossible to recreate them all in another individual (otherwise they wouldn't /be/ another individual, they'd be you). But I don't really have a lot of confidence in this particular prediction. Ben Zaiboc From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 6 12:50:51 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 14:50:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367798337.160.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367758915.47624.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <1367798337.160.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130506125051.GG26408@leitl.org> On Sun, May 05, 2013 at 04:58:57PM -0700, Gordon wrote: > >?As I keep saying (and you keep ignoring), something doesn't have to be digital for a?digital computer to compute it.? > > I'm not ignoring you, Ben. I just think that the answer is yes, it is trivially true that?there is some description of the brain such that we could do a digital simulation of it. ?Church's thesis applies to brains; their operations are in principle computable. We can also create digital simulations of rain storms. This too is trivial. Nobody actually gets wet from those digital rain drops. This is not for Gordon, but for people who get confused about such things: Water isn't wet. Wetness is strictly a property of reality synthesized in the hardware between people's ears, using data from sensors. You can simulate the sensation in absence of any reality behind it by direct stimulation of sensors. In case of artificial reality the organism itself is embedded in the simulation. It will experience wetness there, and a appropriately detailed simulation of a nuclear fireball will result in nice skin burns and destruction of unreal estate (fortunately, easily restorable from a shapshot). Apropos of virtual reality http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/05/living-in-the-matrix-requires-le.html?ref=hp Living in The Matrix Requires Less Brain Power by Lizzie Wade on 2 May 2013, 3:30 PM | 2 Comments Where am I? In virtual reality, rats use half as many neurons to navigate their environment. Credit: UCLA Neurology If you were a rat living in a completely virtual world like in the movie The Matrix, could you tell? Maybe not, but scientists studying your brain might be able to. Today, researchers report that certain cells in rat brains work differently when the animals are in virtual reality than when they are in the real world. The neurons in question are known as place cells, which fire in response to specific physical locations in the outside world and reside in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for spatial navigation and memory. As you walk out of your house every day, the same place cell fires each time you reach the shrub that's two steps away from your door. It fires again when you reach the same place on your way back home, even though you are traveling in the opposite direction. Scientists have long suspected that these place cells help the brain generate a map of the world around us. But how do the place cells know when to fire in the first place? Previous research showed that the cells rely on three different kinds of information. First, they analyze "visual cues," or what you see when you look around. Then, there are what researchers call "self-motion cues." These cues come from how your body moves in space and are the reason you can still find your way around a room with the lights out. The final type of information is the "proximal cues," which encompass everything else about the environment you're in. The smell of a bakery on your way to work, the sounds of a street jammed with traffic, and the springy texture of grass in a park are all proximal cues. In the real world, it's extremely difficult to tease out the influence of each kind of cue. But in a virtual reality environment, scientists are able to control the kinds of information available. In this latest experiment, rats anchored to the top of a ball ran in place as movielike images around them changed, creating the impression that they were running along a track. Their sense of place relied on visual cues from the projections and their self-motion cues, but they had to do without proximal cues like sound and smell. When Mayank Mehta, a neurophysicist at the University of California (UC), Los Angeles, compared the activity of place cells in rats running along a real, linear track with place cell activity in the rats running in virtual reality, he saw some surprising differences. In the real world, about 45% of the rats' place cells fired at some point along the track. In virtual reality, only 22% did. "Half of the neurons just shut up," he says. What's more, the place cells seemed to have a very different relationship to space in virtual reality than in the real world. Remember that place cell that fires when you've taken two steps away from your door on your way out of your house? On a real track, the rat's version of that neuron would fire when it had taken two steps away from the start, and then again when the animal reached the same spot on its return trip. But in virtual reality, something odd happened. Rather than firing a second time when the rat reached the same place on its return trip, the cells fired when the rat was two steps away from the opposite end of the track, the authors report online today in Science. That's like the same place cell in your brain firing when you've taken two steps away from your door and then when you've taken two steps away from your car. Instead of encoding a position in absolute space, the place cell seems to be keeping track of the rat's relative distance along the (virtual) track. Mehta calls this the "disto-code" and says, "This never happens in the real world." Mehta suspects that these differences in place cell activity are related to virtual reality's lack of proximal cues. Perhaps, he posits, the neurons that shut off in virtual reality are the ones responsible for taking smells, sounds, and textures and turning them into information about where the rat is in space. And considering that when those cues disappear, the rat's cognitive map appears to change from one based on absolute space to one based on relative distance, proximal cues might be the key component to how those mental maps work in the real world. "As soon as proximal cues are present, they have veto power," Mehta explains. "They don't let the disto-code come about." Loren Frank, a UC San Francisco neuroscientist who wasn't involved in the research, is impressed with Mehta's experiment and what it implies about the flexibility of the hippocampus's mapping system. But he cautions that the influence of proximal cues versus visual cues may be very different in rats and humans. "We have a tendency to assume that other organisms process the world in the same way that we do," he says. But unlike humans, "rats don't see terribly well." Instead, they rely heavily on smell and touch. So taking away proximal cues might affect them more dramatically than it would humans. Daniel Dombeck, a neurobiologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who was not involved with the research, agrees that the new study is "suggestive" that the lack of proximal cues are responsible for many of the differences in rats' brains in virtual reality. "But I do think there's going to be debate about that. Future work is going to have to pin down exactly what the differences are [between virtual reality and the real world]." As a fellow virtual reality researcher (he designs Matrix-like worlds for mice), Dombeck is particularly excited about what Mehta's work shows about how to improve such simulations. "It's a really welcome addition to the growing field of rodent virtual reality." -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 836 bytes Desc: Digital signature URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon May 6 13:11:55 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 14:11:55 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <20130506125051.GG26408@leitl.org> References: <1367758915.47624.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <1367798337.160.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130506125051.GG26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 1:50 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Water isn't wet. Wetness is strictly a property of reality > synthesized in the hardware between people's ears, using data > from sensors. > > You can simulate the sensation in absence of any reality behind it by > direct stimulation of sensors. > > How many places can you go where people say things like 'Water isn't wet'? :) ?Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one? Albert Einstein ?Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.? Philip K. Dick BillK From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 6 13:55:29 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 15:55:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367737159.6440.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5184B288.4010901@aleph.se> <1367653654.47413.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367665535.66874.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367737159.6440.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130506135529.GS26408@leitl.org> On Sat, May 04, 2013 at 11:59:19PM -0700, Gordon wrote: > Giulio Prisco wrote: > > > >> Brains are not like digital computers. > > >> Brains are biological organs, not fundamentally different from livers or > >> kidneys. > > > Livers and kidneys are computers: they are physical systems? > > that?evolve in time and interact with their environment according to? > > well?known physical laws and stored programs.? > > If livers and kidneys are computers then we might as well say that just about everything is a computer. It's warm here tonight and so I have a fan operating in my home office.?It's oscillating back and forth, as if according to a program. I suppose I could think of it as a computer. Giulio is incorrect in the sense that livers and kindneys are computers. (But not in the sense that their function is not computable, it certainly is). However, the CNS and specifically the brain tissue is the result of billions of years of darwinian optimization for the explicit purpose of information processing. As such it has several unique features, from the metabolism, the genome, and the different levels of organisation. So the brain is very much different from the liver or the kidney. Human designers had also to solve a very similiar set of problems, when they invented communication networks, specifically packet-switched networks and large scale clusters (which are mostly about networking, and less about computation). Human information technology is still in its infancy, so nobody should assume the familiar features of today are going to persist for advanced computers, which will be constrained by physics of computation and not any particular design history. Maybe when the computers don't look anything like today's electronics, and are called differently the whole irrational objection is going to go away quite naturally. From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Mon May 6 14:41:37 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 08:41:37 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Redness comes from Context? In-Reply-To: <1367840668.25623.YahooMailClassic@web165002.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1367840668.25623.YahooMailClassic@web165002.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hi Ben, This is all about Shannon?s information theory. You can?t store a megabyte of information in some physical device that is only capable of holding one byte. If you know something, there must be something physical which you can point to, which is representing that information. If something ?seems? some way, there must be something that is this seeming. You talked about a ?vortex?, which is a good example. In that case, if a vortex exists, there is a real liquid, in a real ?vortex? state, which can be described. The physical stuff, along with the state description, are the necessary and sufficient set of causal properties that are the real ?vortex?. If something /feels/ some way, the same thing is true, there must be something physically real, and some physical state, which is responsible for that feeling. There must be some necessary and sufficient set of causal properties that are the redness experience. Obviously, something that /feels/ like redness is very different than something that /feels/ like greenness. The qualitative natures of these, and their differences, and whatever is responsible for it, is what I?m talking about, nothing more. Also, as far as ?elemental redness? goes. We both agree that when we experience redness, we usually have bound to that our knowledge of the word ?red?, our knowledge of us perceiving redness, a sensation that redness is a ?warm? color and a bunch of stuff like that. While it is true that all of these things can be bound together in one person?s brain, would you also agree that it is possible to reduce these things down, and isolate them all. So that it is possible for a brain to have just a qualitative redness experience, with none of the other cognitive information bound up with it? Brent Allsop On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 5:44 AM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Brent Allsop wrote: > > >Ben, > > > >You're clearly still missing much. First off, you said: > > > > "I know it /feels/ like there is, but that's no guide." > >> > >Surely you must believe that if you know ANYTHING, whether mistaken or > >not, there must be something that is that knowledge or that is the > >seeming /feels/. If you don't agree with that, then you're not talking > >about any kind of intelligence with knowledge that is physically real. > > Sorry, not with you here. What is "knowledge that is physically real"? > Is there "knowledge that is not physically real"? Afaik, there is just > knowledge. Adding "physically real" on to the end makes as much sense to > me as saying "inquisitiveness that is spherical". > > Anyway, you seem to be saying that feelings are things that have an > existence independent of the system that has them. Like a vortex having an > existence independent of any fluid, or a wave having an existence > independent of a hand. > > The 'something' that is a feeling is a /process/ generated by a system, is > what I'm saying. It has no existence outside that system. > > > > >You also said: > > > >"Forget 'a simple elemental redness quality', there is no such thing." > > > >for which there is lots and lots of scientific evidence that falsifies > >this, so don't expect me to believe such completely violates known > >science assertions. For example, when people take certain psychedelic > >drugs, all these bound together pieces of information "disassociate" and > >become consciously clearly separated - having nothing to do with each > >other. If you're interested, I can point you to a book where Steven > >Lehar scientifically documents having such experiences. > > > I think you're confusing reported experiences with scientific evidence. > Reported experience *on drugs*. Drugs that disrupt the normal processes > of cognition. > > Here's a question: Let's suppose for a second that there was such a thing > as an 'elemental redness quality', what kind of thing could it be? I know > that the world is made up of five fundamental things: Space/Time, > Matter/Energy and Information. There is nothing else. Everything we know > to be real is composed of some combination of those five things. Some > configuration of matter and energy, organised in space and time according > to some information. I know of nothing that doesn't conform to this > recipe. The relative amounts of the ingredients may vary (empty space in > an cosmic void probably doesn't have much information, a quark doesn't have > much space, etc.), but the recipe is always there. > > This applies to our mental states just as much as it does to a volcano. > We have a couple of pounds of neurons that are specialised for dealing > with information, lots of it. They throw energy and matter around in > complex, changing patterns. We call many of these information patterns our > 'thoughts', or 'mental states'. > > So: What is this fundamental redness quality? What's it made of? I see > no room for any such thing. All I see is that it must be one of those > 'thoughts', in other words, a pattern of information created in a brain. > Not 'fundamental' at all, but an information process. > > If you don't like this conclusion, if it feels wrong, there's not much I > can do except point out that this feeling of 'wrongness' is just another > information pattern in your brain, likely a result of our evolved > psychology from long ago. Thinking about these things is not what we're > good at, philosophers tend to get eaten or starve in the kind of > environment we're adapted for. Our instincts on these matters are likely > to be wrong, so we need help. We have to use logic, ruthlessly question > our assumptions, and apply the scientific method no matter how 'wrong' it > feels, otherwise we're just cavemen worshipping the thunder god. > > > Ben Zaiboc > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 6 16:15:19 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 18:15:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kurzweil's latest In-Reply-To: <518212BE.8020906@aleph.se> References: <517C2F04.5010800@canonizer.com> <5E69A8EB-619E-423B-B845-EDC24032843A@gmail.com> <517D3CEC.5030307@canonizer.com> <39CCF149-55A5-4BB8-A617-4C519C48E767@gmail.com> <517D5B94.7030105@canonizer.com> <01cf01ce4479$6735e540$35a1afc0$@rainier66.com> <20130429062515.GF8102@leitl.org> <1367229066.20691.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518212BE.8020906@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 2 May 2013 09:16, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > On 02/05/2013 06:59, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 3:51 AM, Gordon wrote: > >> We need to understand the brain before we can hope to duplicate one. >> It's pretty naive, I think, to suppose that we can create one even before >> we know how they work. >> > > Agreed. Have you read Kurzweil's most recent book? What do you think of > it? > > > I read it. I think it is surprisingly mainstream: many neuroscientists > (computational or not) believe roughly in something similar. What many do > not believe in, and I think Ray does, is that the system is as clean as > described. In particular, he is a "cortical chauvinist", believing that the > cortex is mostly what matters - but the subcortical systems is what sets > our goals, style of learning and evaluations. > We have good reasons to investigate the internal organisation of biological brains. They do exist and work, they do not make us wait their output for cosmological aeons, and they do that with a trivial consumption of space and energy. OTOH, there is no reason *in principle* why a black-box approach should not feasible as well. Organic brains are finite systems with a finite, albeit astronomical, number of states. As soon as you reach the level where the brain's output can be predicted with sufficient accuracy for your purposes (eg, social recognition of the system as a generic, or specific, biological organism), voil?, for anybody other than those believing in ineffable qualities and noumena you have an "AGI" or an "upload", and you need not any especial effort to hallucinate your internal, subjective states on it any more than you have with fellow humans or animals. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Mon May 6 16:34:00 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 09:34:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1367858040.56479.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> From: Gordon wrote: >I am myself a programmer, by the way (C++). I can make computers do interesting things that appear conscious, but I don't suppose I could ever write a program that would make a computer actually conscious. That would require magic, like the magic that made Pinocchio come alive. What would the code look like? How do I write a "become conscious" function? Aha, a question about something real and useful! (rare in these kinds of discussion). It seems likely that consciousness and self-awareness are tied in with the various models we make of the world, and of agents that act in the world. We have at least one (probably several) models that represent ourselves, so I suspect that if you could write some classes that implement such models, and make them interact with each other and with inputs from other areas of the brain - sensory maps of all kinds, memories, associations, language areas, attention-directing networks, etc. - you might be on the right track. I expect that taking an incremental approach, using comparative evolutionary neuroanatomy as a guide, would be a good idea. Pick a simple reactive creature with a nervous system to model, see what comes next in the evolution of complex nervous systems, figure out how that works, etc., bearing in mind how brains seem to evolve - duplicating functional modules, then specialising them - and the fitness environment they evolved in (what kind of problems drove the development of the next level of complexity?). I wouldn't be surprised if at about the level where social interactions start to become crucially important, some kind of self-awareness starts to emerge. I doubt if any system without some way of creating internal models of agents can be said to be conscious in any sense, but once the models start, then interesting things happen, and when the models start to include self-models, then it gets /really/ interesting. Ben Zaiboc From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon May 6 16:59:32 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 12:59:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367793621.44186.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5184B288.4010901@aleph.se> <1367653654.47413.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367665535.66874.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367737159.6440.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367741324.85463.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367793621.44186.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 5, 2013 Gordon wrote: > Those probability waves are thought to propagate continuously > No, there is no such thing as probability waves. You're thinking of the Schrodinger Wave Equation (SWE) and yes it is continuous and deterministic, but that function is an unobservable abstraction, a calculating device no more real than lines of longitude and latitude. To get something real that you can see you must square the amplitude of the SWE of a particle at a point and that will give you the probability you will observe the particle at that point, and probability, unlike the SWE, is something that you can observe and measure. But Schrodinger's equation has an "i" (the square root of -1) in it and that means very different quantum wave functions can give the exact same probability distribution when you square it; remember with i you get weird stuff like i^2=i^6 =-1 and i^4=i^100=1. And in the non quantum world if the probability of X happening is 1/2 and the probability of unrelated event Y happening is 1/2 then the probability of X and Y happening is 1/4, but in Quantum Mechanics that's not necessarily true because now you must deal with i and complex numbers. I think you could say that mathematically it's the existence of that damn i in the SWE that makes Quantum Mechanics so weird. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon May 6 17:11:45 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 13:11:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367807225.79075.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367807225.79075.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 10:27 PM, Gordon wrote: > I can make computers do interesting things that appear conscious, but I > don't suppose I could ever write a program that would make a computer > actually conscious. > How could you tell if you succeeded or failed? > How do I write a "become conscious" function? > That would be easy, just write a "become intelligent" function. > I think the brain itself is not intrinsically a calculator > And a computer is not a calculator either unless it is running a calculator program. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 6 17:16:38 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 19:16:38 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Redness comes from Context? Was Re: Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <201305052232.r45MW1f1022816@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <1367505687.50221.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <5185C80F.6010803@canonizer.com> <201305052232.r45MW1f1022816@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On 6 May 2013 00:05, Mike Perry wrote: > "A set of bits fully describing the brain" in effect *is* the brain, *from > the "context" (I like to call it a "frame of reference") in which it is > embedded. This set of bits could describe state changes in that brain over > time. In effect this "brain" (just a static record to us) can be thought of > as being a conscious system *relative to its own frame of reference*. > Relative to that it might indeed be perceiving red. It is really hard for me to understand how "perceiving red" can be considered as the subject of a meaningful discussion unless in the terms of deciding whether something is able to point to something and say "red" in agreement with a number of other entities sharing the same label. I think that dualism, where "consciousness" would be something distinct from the behaviours it gives place to, is a cultural artifact which we could finally dispose of even in the west without any obvious practical or theoretical inconvenient. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon May 6 17:37:47 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 13:37:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367819719.9900.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367807225.79075.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367819719.9900.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 6, 2013 Gordon wrote: > I'm not even sure what "replicate the I/O behavior" means when > I would think its self explanatory, same input sense data producing the same output behavior. > we're discussing NCC neurons and qualia. > Yes we are but the discussion is difficult when you don't seem able to grasp that if those "neural correlates of consciousness" don't also correlate with something that Evolution can see, like intelligent behavior, then Charles Darwin was dead wrong; and these days only a fool thinks Darwin was wrong. This question was answered in 1859 and the fact that it's still being argued about even by people on this list who should know better is a depressing mystery to me! Perhaps it's the result of the Jesus freaks keeping Evolution out of the schools. > Are qualia inputs? Or are they outputs? > They are neither and that is exactly why we can only infer and not observe the existence of qualia in other people or in other computers. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Mon May 6 18:41:13 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 12:41:13 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367807225.79075.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367819719.9900.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 11:37 AM, John Clark wrote: > On Mon, May 6, 2013 Gordon wrote: > > > Are qualia inputs? Or are they outputs? >> > > They are neither and that is exactly why we can only infer and not observe > the existence of qualia in other people or in other computers. > > > A better way to think about things, than thinking of things as "inputs or outputs" is whether you have to interpret, whatever is representing or communicating (input or output) the information. We say we experience 'red', but of course, that is an abstract symbol that must be interpreted. We detect 650 NM light reflecting off of the strawberry, and we "interpret" that by representing it with something that has a redness quality to it. Regardless of whether this redness quality is an input or an output, it can be interpreted as a ripe strawberry, it can be interpreted as the word 'red' and so on. However, a redness quality itself, is something that can represent other things, like the word 'red', but the quality itself, is just it, no interpretation required. Other qualities can be like it, other qualities, like greenness can be different, so you can compare things to it, but any interpretation of a redness quality, get's you something other than what it really qualitatively is. And Clark claimed: "we can only infer and not observe the existence of quala". the currently leading consensus theories at Canonizer.com are predicting this is a soon to be falsified claim. In other words, John, you forgot the "YET". There are various 'strong' and "week" ways you can know if another intelligence is having the same elemental redness quality of an experience you are having, just as reliably as you know that redness in your right hemesphere is absolutely qualitatively different than greenness in your left. (see: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/28 ). Brent Allsop -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 6 18:48:42 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 04:48:42 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367826110.73951.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367807225.79075.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367819719.9900.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367826110.73951.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 5:41 PM, Gordon > wrote: > Stathis Papaioannou > wrote: > >>The inputs and outputs I'm talking about are action potentials which >>trigger neurotransmitter release at synapses. The neurons in the NCC >>receive inputs from other neurons that connect with them and send >>output to other neurons via their axon. > > Just third-person descriptions in the language of physics. > >> In the process, qualia may somehow be produced, but qualia are neither >> inputs nor outputs so are >> excluded from this part of the analysis. > > Yes, qualia "may somehow be produced." Actually, I think are produced. lol. > How does that happen? > > Consider for a moment that the world might not be fully understandable in > the third-person language of physics. Perhaps there is something that we > might call first-person ontology. As science-minded people, we want to > describe everything in the world in the objective language of physics. But > perhaps the world is both subjective and objective. > > Toothaches are not the same thing as the physics that describe them. They > really hurt! A motor neuron controlling your vocal cords will only fire if the neurons connected to it fire, and those neurons will in turn only fire if the upstream neurons fire. There is to be sure a very complex network of neurons between the sensory organ and the motor neuron, but each component of the network follows a relatively simple set of rules. The neurons of the NCC also follow these rules, and it is the timing and amplitude of their output (action potential propagating down the axon) which determines if the downstream neurons fire. So if these NCC neurons are replaced with artificial neurons that replicate their pattern of firing in response to upstream stimuli, the downstream neurons must respond in the same way and the subject must behave in the same way as with the original brain. Is there any part if this that you don't agree with? >> If the artificial NCC neuron reproduces the outputs given certain inputs, >> then all >> the downstream neurons to which it connects behave normally. This is >> irrespective of >> any qualia it may or may not have, since as you admitted qualia are >> not outputs. > > No, I wrote that qualia might be inputs or outputs, or something else > entirely. > > I notice that you did not respond to my criticism of functionalism and > multiple realizability, which I consider very important. You quoted it below > but did not answer. > >>> Here is my more general issue with functionalism and multiple >>> realizability >>>.as they relate to strong AI on digital computers: > >>> >>> I have a ceiling fan in my home. The blades are made of wood. I've seen >>> other ceiling fans with metal blades, and still others with stained-glass >>> blades. They all function as fans, and so along with functionalists I'm >>> happy to call them all fans. I've also seen hammers made of iron and >>> others >>> made of steel. Again, both hammers. Fans are realizable in wood, metal >>> and >>> glass; hammers are realizable in iron and steel. Only the functions are >>> important. The substrates make no difference. All well and good. >> >>> But things get muddled when we begin to talk about the supposed multiple >>> realizability of brains in both organic materials and software/hardware >>> platforms. A digital computer is not in the same class of things as fans >>> and >>> hammers. With fans and hammers, we are looking purely at the direct >>> physical >>> effects of one substrate on another. Fans are defined as those physical >>> things that directly circulate physical air, hammers are defined as those >>> physical things that directly drive physical nails. A computer program, >>> by >>> contrast, is defined by functionalists as anything that admits of >>> abstract >>> 1's and 0's (or ons and offs, however you want to think of it) and the >>> brain >>> (like everything else in the world) does admit to such an interpretation. >>> This is why they say brains are multiply realized on computers. But those >>> syntactical abstractions are not actually *intrinsic* to the physics of >>> the >>> organic brain. Functionalists and computationalists merely assign them to >>> the physics. My conviction that functionalism is correct does not come from considerations like yours. I agree that it is not immediately obvious that a computer could be conscious. But if a device (computer or otherwise) could reproduce the observable behaviour of a neuron without the consciousness that would lead to absurdity, as I have explained repeatedly, and this leads to the conclusion that it is impossible to make such a device. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Mon May 6 19:05:00 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 13:05:00 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367807225.79075.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367819719.9900.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367826110.73951.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hi Stathis, I hear you saying that you have proven, at least in your mind, that there is a hard problem with no solution. Is this necessity not the most absurd and faithless necessity in your model? It?s just a chunk of grey matter, and we can quite reliably produce a redness experience and a greenness experience and so on. Why is it that you hold on to such questionable rational so tightly, thinking it has been proven, and all that. Yet have no qualm at all at accepting that there is such a ?hard problem? and that ?it is impossible to make such a device? and so on? If your logic is proving that something is impossible, which we know more than anything ? that it is not impossible, wouldn?t it be better to assume you have a problem, somewhere else in your logic, than thinking there is such a hard problem with regular old consciousness? Brent Allsop On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 12:48 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 5:41 PM, Gordon wrote: > > Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > >>The inputs and outputs I'm talking about are action potentials which > >>trigger neurotransmitter release at synapses. The neurons in the NCC > >>receive inputs from other neurons that connect with them and send > >>output to other neurons via their axon. > > > > Just third-person descriptions in the language of physics. > > > >> In the process, qualia may somehow be produced, but qualia are neither > >> inputs nor outputs so are > >> excluded from this part of the analysis. > > > > Yes, qualia "may somehow be produced." Actually, I think are produced. > lol. > > How does that happen? > > > > Consider for a moment that the world might not be fully understandable in > > the third-person language of physics. Perhaps there is something that we > > might call first-person ontology. As science-minded people, we want to > > describe everything in the world in the objective language of physics. > But > > perhaps the world is both subjective and objective. > > > > Toothaches are not the same thing as the physics that describe them. They > > really hurt! > > A motor neuron controlling your vocal cords will only fire if the neurons > connected to it fire, and those neurons will in turn only fire if the > upstream neurons fire. There is to be sure a very complex network of > neurons between the sensory organ and the motor neuron, but each > component of the network follows a relatively simple set of rules. The > neurons of the NCC also follow these rules, and it is the timing and > amplitude of their output (action potential propagating down the axon) > which determines if the downstream neurons fire. So if these NCC neurons > are replaced with artificial neurons that replicate their pattern of firing > in response to upstream stimuli, the downstream neurons must respond in the > same way and the subject must behave in the same way as with the original > brain. Is there any part if this that you don't agree with? > > >> If the artificial NCC neuron reproduces the outputs given certain > inputs, > >> then all > >> the downstream neurons to which it connects behave normally. This is > >> irrespective of > >> any qualia it may or may not have, since as you admitted qualia are > >> not outputs. > > > > No, I wrote that qualia might be inputs or outputs, or something else > > entirely. > > > > I notice that you did not respond to my criticism of functionalism and > > multiple realizability, which I consider very important. You quoted it > below > > but did not answer. > > > >>> Here is my more general issue with functionalism and multiple > >>> realizability > >>>.as they relate to strong AI on digital computers: > > > >>> > >>> I have a ceiling fan in my home. The blades are made of wood. I've seen > >>> other ceiling fans with metal blades, and still others with > stained-glass > >>> blades. They all function as fans, and so along with functionalists I'm > >>> happy to call them all fans. I've also seen hammers made of iron and > >>> others > >>> made of steel. Again, both hammers. Fans are realizable in wood, metal > >>> and > >>> glass; hammers are realizable in iron and steel. Only the functions are > >>> important. The substrates make no difference. All well and good. > >> > >>> But things get muddled when we begin to talk about the supposed > multiple > >>> realizability of brains in both organic materials and software/hardware > >>> platforms. A digital computer is not in the same class of things as > fans > >>> and > >>> hammers. With fans and hammers, we are looking purely at the direct > >>> physical > >>> effects of one substrate on another. Fans are defined as those physical > >>> things that directly circulate physical air, hammers are defined as > those > >>> physical things that directly drive physical nails. A computer program, > >>> by > >>> contrast, is defined by functionalists as anything that admits of > >>> abstract > >>> 1's and 0's (or ons and offs, however you want to think of it) and the > >>> brain > >>> (like everything else in the world) does admit to such an > interpretation. > >>> This is why they say brains are multiply realized on computers. But > those > >>> syntactical abstractions are not actually *intrinsic* to the physics of > >>> the > >>> organic brain. Functionalists and computationalists merely assign them > to > >>> the physics. > > My conviction that functionalism is correct does not come from > considerations like yours. I agree that it is not immediately obvious that > a computer could be conscious. But if a device (computer or > otherwise) could reproduce the observable behaviour of a neuron without > the consciousness that would lead to absurdity, as I have explained > repeatedly, and this leads to the conclusion that it is impossible to make > such a device. > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 6 19:46:13 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 05:46:13 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367807225.79075.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367819719.9900.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367826110.73951.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tuesday, May 7, 2013, Brent Allsop wrote: > > > Hi Stathis, > > > > I hear you saying that you have proven, at least in your mind, that there > is a hard problem with no solution. Is this necessity not the most > absurd and faithless necessity in your model? It?s just a chunk of grey > matter, and we can quite reliably produce a redness experience and a > greenness experience and so on. Why is it that you hold on to such > questionable rational so tightly, thinking it has been proven, and all that. > Yet have no qualm at all at accepting that there is such a ?hard problem? > and that ?it is impossible to make such a device? and so on? > > I said nothing about the hard problem. I said that it is impossible to make a device that replicates the behaviour of a brain component, as a spare part in any machine would replicate the behaviour of the original part, but doesn't replicate the consciousness. In other words, if you made such a part, it would necessarily replicate the consciousness. This means that consciousness cannot be substrate dependent. > If your logic is proving that something is impossible, which we know more > than anything ? that it is not impossible, wouldn?t it be better to assume > you have a problem, somewhere else in your logic, than thinking there is > such a hard problem with regular old consciousness? > > Again, I say nothing about the hard problem. I start with the assumption that consciousness is substrate dependent and show that this leads to absurdity; therefore, it can't be right. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon May 6 19:55:57 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 15:55:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367826110.73951.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367807225.79075.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367819719.9900.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367826110.73951.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 6, 2013 Gordon wrote: > Toothaches are not the same thing as the physics that describe them. They > really hurt! > Interesting theory, and I'm sure that Gordon Swobe's toothache really hurts, but I'm completely baffled as to why he believes that anybody else's toothache really hurts. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon May 6 20:25:09 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 16:25:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367807225.79075.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367819719.9900.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 6, 2013 Brent Allsop wrote: > A better way to think about things, than thinking of things as "inputs or > outputs" is whether you have to interpret, whatever is representing or > communicating (input or output) the information. > Such as when we input through our eyes light that has bounced off a man with tears running down his cheeks to mean that the man is experiencing sadness; or when we hear a child laughing we interpret that to mean the child is happy. > > Clark claimed: "we can only infer and not observe the existence of > quala". > Yes. > the currently leading consensus theories at Canonizer.com are [...] > I am not impressed. > John, you forgot the "YET". > If you claimed to have objectively detected qualia in a third party how could you convince me that you have done what you have claimed you have done? But all this is really irrelevant because even without such a test all of us, every single one of us, believes that other people are conscious when they are not sleeping or under anesthesia or dead, and they believe this for one reason and for one reason only, they behave intelligently when they are not sleeping or under anesthesia or dead. And I'll be damned if I understand why we're supposed to change the rules of the game if the thing in question is a computer and not another human. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Mon May 6 22:45:12 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 15:45:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Redness comes from Context? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1367880312.47424.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: >Hi Ben, > >This is all about Shannon?s information theory. You can?t store a megabyte >of information in some physical device that is only capable of holding one >byte. Not sure what Shannon has to do with this, but never mind.. >If you know something, there must be something physical which you >can point to, which is representing that information. Yes. My brain. >If something ?seems? >some way, there must be something that is this seeming. You talked about a >?vortex?, which is a good example. In that case, if a vortex exists, there >is a real liquid, in a real ?vortex? state, which can be described. The >physical stuff, along with the state description, are the necessary and >sufficient set of causal properties that are the real ?vortex?. If >something /feels/ some way, the same thing is true, there must be something >physically real, and some physical state, which is responsible for that >feeling. Yes. My brain, processing particular information in a particular way. I'm not sure about this business of calling it a 'causal property'. That seems to be confusing things. It's a process rather than a property. My brain /does/ something, which I describe as 'feeling a certain way'. This makes more sense than saying my brain /has/ something which 'is a certain feeling', because that leads you to think that the feeling is an independent thing, which is obviously untrue, because when my brain stops working, the feeling ceases to exist. >There must be some necessary and sufficient set of causal >properties that are the redness experience. Obviously, something that >/feels/ like redness is very different than something that /feels/ like >greenness. The qualitative natures of these, and their differences, and >whatever is responsible for it, is what I?m talking about, nothing more. OK, so you're talking about the same thing as me: The processes performed by the brain that we call 'seeing green' or red, or feeling hungry, etc. >Also, as far as ?elemental redness? goes. We both agree that when we >experience redness, we usually have bound to that our knowledge of the word >?red?, our knowledge of us perceiving redness, a sensation that redness is >a ?warm? color and a bunch of stuff like that. While it is true that all >of these things can be bound together in one person?s brain, would you also >agree that it is possible to reduce these things down, and isolate them all. >So that it is possible for a brain to have just a qualitative redness >experience, with none of the other cognitive information bound up with it? No, of course not. Do you think that it's possible to just have a song, with none of the chords, harmonies, rhythms and lyrics that are 'bound up' with it? Is there such a thing as the 'elemental "Bridge over Troubled Water"' that can be separated from the words and music? If you separate out the constituent parts of the 'redness' experience, it goes away. As in, doesn't exist anymore. You seem to be dismantling the clock in an effort to find its tick. The tick is real, it definitely exists, so it must /be/ something, right? So why can't you find it when the clock is in bits? Also, please could you avoid top-posting? It makes things difficult to follow. Thanks. Ben Zaiboc From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 6 23:11:34 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 17:11:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Redness comes from Context? In-Reply-To: <1367757754.21366.YahooMailClassic@web165005.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1367757754.21366.YahooMailClassic@web165005.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > > > Note, I'm not saying "a huge amount of memories, emotions, us perceiving > it, and other stuff /in with 'redness'/", I'm saying "a huge amount of > memories, emotions, us perceiving it, and other stuff IS 'redness'". > > Are you familiar with binaural beats, or moire patterns? How about fluid > vortices? Or the patterns in a wheatfield when the wind blows? These > things all exist, but there is no way they could be described as 'elemental > qualities'. Or elemental anything. Redness is like this, in my opinion. > *All* of our experiences are like this. > I'm with Ben here. Whatever the mental landscape is, it's ALL pretty much the same sort of thing, and thinking of elemental qualia built up like LEGO into beautiful thought patterns doesn't work for me because it has to be the same ALL THE WAY DOWN. > This paragraph illustrates that you didn't understand what I meant. > Forget "a simple elemental redness quality", there is no such thing. I > know it /feels/ like there is, but that's no guide. Einstein's special > theory of relativity feels wrong, too. So does quantum theory. It's tough > that our instincts have evolved to cope with living on the savannah, > chasing antelopes and avoiding lions. We have to rely on logic to guide us > on these more recent concerns. > Go Ben! We don't have the ability to understand (currently) the complexity of what's going on in the brain to a very high degree of accuracy, but we do see similar structures repeated over and over and over again. We see these similar structures being repurposed in people with injuries or blindness. Like the guy who learned to echo locate. Cool that the brain is that plastic. Must mean there is simplicity buried inside the complexity all the way down. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 6 23:23:58 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 17:23:58 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Redness comes from Context? In-Reply-To: References: <1367840668.25623.YahooMailClassic@web165002.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 8:41 AM, Brent Allsop wrote: > > > Hi Ben, > > > > This is all about Shannon?s information theory. You can?t store a > megabyte of information in some physical device that is only capable of > holding one byte. If you know something, there must be something > physical which you can point to, which is representing that information. > Hi Brent, Are you familiar with the way a hologram works? The information is not stored in any one particular place, it's distributed all over the thing. All of the information is stored everywhere, and it degrades gracefully as pieces of the original are removed. That is how I see memory and qualia in the brain. It is a pattern that is triggered when the right information flows through it, just as light flows through a hologram. > If something ?seems? some way, there must be something that is this > seeming. > Seeming is intuition. Ben has done a good job of telling us why intuition is unsuited to this endeavor. If all you needed was intuition, the ancient Greeks would have figured all this stuff out. > You talked about a ?vortex?, which is a good example. In that case, if a > vortex exists, there is a real liquid, in a real ?vortex? state, which can > be described. The physical stuff, along with the state description, are > the necessary and sufficient set of causal properties that are the real > ?vortex?. > But the concept of a vortex doesn't exist in one spot in your brain. It's distributed all over the brain. Studies of people with various forms of brain damage by and large show this, though specific kinds of thinking are localized for sure as Oliver Sacks' books and studies demonstrate. (By the way, Oliver Sacks' books are true horror, Steven King is a schlep.) > If something /feels/ some way, the same thing is true, there must be > something physically real, and some physical state, which is responsible > for that feeling. > Clearly, but it's all over, not a glucose level in a single cell or anything remotely like that. > There must be some necessary and sufficient set of causal properties that > are the redness experience. Obviously, something that /feels/ like > redness is very different than something that /feels/ like greenness. The > qualitative natures of these, and their differences, and whatever is > responsible for it, is what I?m talking about, nothing more. > Then talk about it that way. I have no problem with this. > Also, as far as ?elemental redness? goes. We both agree that when we > experience redness, we usually have bound to that our knowledge of the word > ?red?, our knowledge of us perceiving redness, a sensation that redness is > a ?warm? color and a bunch of stuff like that. While it is true that all > of these things can be bound together in one person?s brain, would you also > agree that it is possible to reduce these things down, and isolate them all. > So that it is possible for a brain to have just a qualitative redness > experience, with none of the other cognitive information bound up with it? > No. I don't think it is possible. You can't teach an infant to understand and know "redness" and nothing else. It is ludicrous. I challenge you to raise a lab rat in an environment where all it learns about is redness, and nothing else. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 6 23:30:53 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 17:30:53 -0600 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 1:58 AM, Gordon wrote: > So many believe. This question is more about the arguments for and against > free will. > Is your whole position based upon the fact that you want to hold onto free will? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 6 23:35:57 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 17:35:57 -0600 Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 5:04 PM, Gordon wrote: > Stathis, > > > Where does the semantics in the brain come from, and why is the matter > in the brain specially privileged? > > Neuroscience has not yet answered those questions. This is what I meant > when I said it is incomplete. Perhaps the answers will look something > like Brent's theory. I don't pretend to know. > > Neuroscience is still in its infancy, but one day we will understand the > biological processes that cause consciousness. With that information, we > will perhaps be in a position to synthesize a brain. > Why the big argument then? That is all anyone else here has said. Isn't it? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 6 23:53:29 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 17:53:29 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367741324.85463.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367573414.54234.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <007e01ce4816$3276f420$9764dc60$@rainier66.com> <1367634896.25006.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5184B288.4010901@aleph.se> <1367653654.47413.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367665535.66874.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367737159.6440.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367741324.85463.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 2:08 AM, Gordon wrote: > Giulio Prisco wrote; > > Do you believe the world is *intrinsically* digital, Giulio? By this I > mean: do you believe the world is not only describable in digital terms, > but also actually intrinsically digital in itself before we assign that > digital description of it? > I can't speak for Giulio, but I think there is a reasonably good chance that reality is digital or at least can be viewed as being digital. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 6 23:59:19 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 17:59:19 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367807225.79075.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <68CA8B52-8541-4782-B454-F1AEB90698CF@gmail.com> <1367630739.2193.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367715186.4546.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367731931.31440.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367807225.79075.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 8:27 PM, Gordon wrote: > As I wrote to Ben, I believe the brain is computable. > I think that's all anyone else is wanting from you, but it SEEMS like you go back and forth on this. If it is computable then a "computer" can compute it. If it has simulated consciousness, that is just consciousness on a different level. > There is some level of description under which we could write a program > that simulated the operations of the brain. But I don't believe the > resulting digital computation would have consciousness. It is merely a > computer program -- an algorithm designed to mimic the observable > operations of a brain -- not an actual brain. > > I am myself a programmer, by the way (C++). I can make computers do > interesting things that appear conscious, but I don't suppose I could ever > write a program that would make a computer actually conscious. That would > require magic, like the magic that made Pinocchio come alive. What would > the code look like? How do I write a "become conscious" function? > Ok, perhaps we're getting to something useful here. I don't think you can write a C++ program that is conscious. However, I do think you could write a C++ program that stored and managed a huge amount of data that would simulate consciousness. The difference between real and simulated is just a function of which simulation we live in... ;-) -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rtomek at ceti.pl Tue May 7 00:45:18 2013 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 02:45:18 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <1367396785.42832.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <014001ce4455$74a67ce0$5df376a0$@comcast.net> <20130429051806.GB8102@leitl.org> <000501ce44d5$0e901710$2bb04530$@comcast.net> <20130430074418.GO5257@leitl.org> <1367396785.42832.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 1 May 2013, Gordon wrote: > On Aug 20, 2012, at 4:17 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > FUCK YOU VERY MUCH, John. This is the only kind of response you'll be > > getting from me henceforth for a couple years: FUCK YOU. > > I hate to see this kind of language, but I can't say that I disagree > with the sentiment. > > Gordon I might sometimes think such language, but on second thought, this is like example of ambivalence to be written down somewhere in wikipedia: you don't like somebody but you wish him to have quite a good time. This requires levels of sophistication barely comprehensible by me :-). As of peak oil, it seems we are going to hit the wall one way or another, if nothing in our ways changes. There are some limitations based not only on resource availability but also on factors such as time available for consumption or even as esoteric as satisfaction not growing up after crossing some point of goods at ones disposal. I cannot give any kind of direct proof, but judging from some news, it is quite possible we have had peak already. For example, comparing annual oil production per capita in 1987 (pop. 5bln, prod 56Mbbl/d) and 2012 (pop 7bln, prod. 84Mbbl/d) gives: [18]> (format t "~%annual bbl/capita~% 1987: ~A~% 2012: ~A~%" (/ (* 365 56.51275L6) 5L9) (/ (* 365 84.820L6) 7L9)) annual bbl/capita ;; i.e. barrel per capita 1987: 4.12543075L0 2012: 4.422757142857142857L0 (yes, apparently just 4 and some) So we have a +7% increase, but on the other hand, inflation adjusted prices tripled, roughly ($40 -> $100-$110-$120-...). Clearly, someone could have pumped more, much more and still make gazillions even if prices went down to 80. Yet this is not happening. Also: "OPEC had vowed in 2000 to maintain a production level sufficient to keep oil prices between $22???28 per barrel, but did not prove possible. In its 2007 annual report, OPEC projected that it could maintain a production level that would stabilize the price of oil at around $50???60 per barrel until 2030.[109] On 18 November 2007, with oil above $98 a barrel, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, a long-time advocate of stabilized oil prices, announced that his country would not increase production to lower prices.[110] Saudi Arabia's inability, as the world's largest supplier, to stabilize prices through increased production during that period suggests that no nation or organization had the spare production capacity to lower oil prices. The implication is that those major suppliers who had not yet peaked were operating at or near full capacity.[58" [6] So, Mr Clark (if I am right) postulated there was increase in production, hence there was no peak. I would say to this, real life systems are not flip-flops. When I turn radio off, it still sounds for a short while. When I turn engine off, it still rotates for a while, even gives impression of momentarily increased speed. Actually, even real life flip flops do not behave like ideal flip flops, if one looks carefully. Oil production is real life system (even with many parties meddling and adjusting it). I guess, as prices increased so much, there are simply more wells profitable enough to pump. And given all the riots few years ago, possibly caused by failed (and apparently abandoned now) attempt to pump more biofuels (and increase food prices), I guess governments will do just about anything to maintain oil production at some nice level (including switching to coal and synfuels). We can still go back to 1987 levels, but this will make developing countries very unhappy (or everybody somewhat unhappy, in an unrealistically optimistic scenario). Perhaps this "maintaining" will allow to buy some more time (again, optimistic, assumes decision making people act before catastrophes). BTW, it is obvious (to me at least) that any reasonable alternative (nukes, solar) is not going to do the job alone. Unless some new tech emerges - so I am holding my breath - well, ok, I'm just pretending, not really holding it. You guys dispute this, and it's more like "we can't build 30TW of nukes overnight" vs "we can't build 30TW of solar overnight". Can't you just f*king build a bit of each? Especially that there is still enough steam to try few alternatives at the same time. Afterall, I think there is a bigger problem to solve than getting "Mr f*ing 100% right" prize. Certainly "a bit" would not solve the whole problem, still it would have been "a bit" better than nothing. And BTW, I am not afraid neither of nukes nor of solar. I will be happy to have thorium in my basement and solar on the roof, please. And a computing cluster in between, of course. But I don't want coal plant nearby, and I don't want to live under wind turbine (one such turbine recently broke in England under heavy wind). [9][10] And, BTW2, all of this could in retrospect become just a very high level marketing campaign, so I refuse to go emotional about the subject. Sources: [1] http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx?product=oil&graph=production [2] http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=petroleum-price-index&months=360 [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#Historical_oil_prices (esp. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oil_Prices_1861_2007.svg ) [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Milestones_by_the_billions [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#Oil_field_decline [7] http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/2012/06/25/how-much-oil-does-the-world-produce/ [8] http://www.peakoil.net/node/855/print [9] http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jpMtgT7CGvLuCpyHee7rNHMmq0Ow [10] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2116877/Is-future-Britains-wind-rush.html Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Tue May 7 01:13:58 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 18:13:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] observer dependent vs. observer independent Message-ID: <1367889238.8143.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Some philosophers find it useful to identify two ways in which things can be considered real.? Observer dependent things exist only relative to some observer or observers. An example is paper fiat currency. A $100 bill is worth a certain amount of goods and services only because observers assign that value to it. Aside from those observers, it is an essentially worthless piece of paper. Another example would be the score of a baseball game. The score is seen as something real and meaningful only because observers have assigned rules and meaning to the game.? Observer independent things exist regardless of an observer. Most people would agree that such things as mountains and planets are real, independent of any observer. What of brains and digital computers? Computers are observer dependent. A computer exists *as such* only relative to some observer who regards it as a tool for doing computations. The observer/operator assigns that meaning to it. Unlike computers, it seems the human brain/mind is observer independent. You would consider yourself real even if all observers of you were to vanish. One might claim this is due only to self-observation, but that idea seems to lead to the old problem of infinite regress and the homunculous fallacy. (Who is observing yourself observing yourself, and so on?)? So then we have two different kinds of things here to consider: observer independent brains and observer dependent computers. I think computationalists in the philosophy mind err when they try to equate the brain to a computer, and this in one way in which they do it. They are merely observers assigning syntax and computational states to the physics of the brain, making it seem observer dependent when it is not. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Tue May 7 01:28:03 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 18:28:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367558168.3101.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367561512.16477.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367564529.35981.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367567904.29800.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367622291.76201.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367890083.38047.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> > Kelly, >>Neuroscience is still in its infancy, but one day we will understand the biological processes that cause consciousness. With that information, we will perhaps be in a position to synthesize a brain.? >Why the big argument then? That is all anyone else here has said. Isn't it? The debate concerns the possibilities of digitally simulated brains, not the possibilities of synthetic brains. I don't know exactly what synthetic brains will look like, but I feel pretty certain that they won't look much like what we currently call digital computers. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Tue May 7 08:00:12 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 01:00:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: References: <1367758915.47624.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <1367798337.160.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130506125051.GG26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1367913612.82793.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> BillK wrote: >?How many places can you go where people say things like 'Water isn't wet'?? :) lol, Bill! As far as I know, and I've been wide and far online since the 80s, even before there was a public net, you will only see such things on ExI. That is one reason I like it. :) If only a few people here were not so rude and condescending, I would spent all my online time here. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 7 08:20:05 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 10:20:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367858040.56479.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1367858040.56479.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130507082005.GC26408@leitl.org> On Mon, May 06, 2013 at 09:34:00AM -0700, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > From: Gordon wrote: > > >I am myself a programmer, by the way (C++). I can make computers do interesting things that appear conscious, but I don't suppose I could ever write a program that would make a computer actually conscious. That would require magic, like the magic that made Pinocchio come alive. What would the code look like? How do I write a "become conscious" function? This is an argument from ignorance: I can't do this, hence nobody else can. Here's the code: http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/download/getstd Here's the demo data to feed it: http://cns.iaf.cnrs-gif.fr/alain_demos.html > Aha, a question about something real and useful! (rare in these kinds of discussion). From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Tue May 7 09:52:44 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 02:52:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <20130507082005.GC26408@leitl.org> References: <1367858040.56479.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <20130507082005.GC26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1367920364.89403.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Eugen Leitl wrote: >>I am myself a programmer, by the way (C++). I can make computers do interesting things that appear conscious, but I don't suppose I could ever write a program that would make a computer actually >> conscious. That would require magic, like the magic that made Pinocchio come alive. What would the code look like? How do I write a "become conscious" function? > This is an argument from ignorance: I can't do this, hence nobody else can. > Here's the code: http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/download/getstd How wonderful. Someone wrote some code that simulated a neuron. I've actually already done something like that (I just a few hours ago wrote about it to a fellow extrope in private email). I don't pretend that my code actually caused my computer to have conscious experience. My digital computer is just an ordinary mechanical machine, not fundamentally different from my watch. My watch tells me the time, but I think it has no idea what time it is. Do you think it does? Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 7 10:20:52 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 12:20:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367920364.89403.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367858040.56479.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <20130507082005.GC26408@leitl.org> <1367920364.89403.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130507102052.GO26408@leitl.org> On Tue, May 07, 2013 at 02:52:44AM -0700, Gordon wrote: > Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > >>I am myself a programmer, by the way (C++). I can make computers do interesting things that appear conscious, but I don't suppose I could ever write a program that would make a computer actually >> conscious. That would require magic, like the magic that made Pinocchio come alive. What would the code look like? How do I write a "become conscious" function? > > > > This is an argument from ignorance: I can't do this, hence nobody else can. > > Here's the code: http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/download/getstd > > > How wonderful. Someone wrote some code that simulated a neuron. I've actually already done something like that (I just a few hours ago wrote about it to a fellow extrope in private email). > > I don't pretend that my code actually caused my computer to have conscious experience. I don't know what a conscious experience is, but I do expect that a successful emulation of an organism + environment does reproduce everything relevant about that system. > My digital computer is just an ordinary mechanical machine, not fundamentally different from my watch. My watch tells me the time, but I think it has no idea what time it is. Do you think it does? Do you think a mechanical simulation of a tourbillon watch can't tell time? Of course it does. And I suspect that https://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6111/1202.full could actually tell time. From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Tue May 7 10:49:22 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 03:49:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <20130507102052.GO26408@leitl.org> References: <1367858040.56479.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <20130507082005.GC26408@leitl.org> <1367920364.89403.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130507102052.GO26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1367923762.10804.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Eugen Leitl wrote: >?I don't know what a conscious experience is I don't know how to respond when people say such things, except to say that barring any kind of after-life, consciousness is that thing that goes away when you die. > Do you think a mechanical simulation of a tourbillon watch can't tell time? > Of course it does. Telling (indicating) the time and knowing the time are, I think, different things. A compass indicates which way is north, but I doubt that it actually knows which way is north. My compass is only an instrument. Instruments like watches and compasses help us know things, but they do not themselves know anything. In any event, it is late here and time for bed. Until tomorrow, friend. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 7 12:40:24 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 08:40:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367923762.10804.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367858040.56479.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <20130507082005.GC26408@leitl.org> <1367920364.89403.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130507102052.GO26408@leitl.org> <1367923762.10804.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 6:49 AM, Gordon wrote: Instruments like > watches and compasses help us know things, but they do not themselves know > anything. ### Watches, of course, know what time it is. Bacteria know how to metabolize glucose. Spiders know how to spin webs. Knowing is easy to see. Rafal From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 7 13:22:07 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 15:22:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] putting the qual into qualia Message-ID: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> (beware of VOMIT, tho) http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1204471 An fMRI-Based Neurologic Signature of Physical Pain Tor D. Wager, Ph.D., Lauren Y. Atlas, Ph.D., Martin A. Lindquist, Ph.D., Mathieu Roy, Ph.D., Choong-Wan Woo, M.A., and Ethan Kross, Ph.D. N Engl J Med 2013; 368:1388-1397April 11, 2013DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1204471 BACKGROUND Persistent pain is measured by means of self-report, the sole reliance on which hampers diagnosis and treatment. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) holds promise for identifying objective measures of pain, but brain measures that are sensitive and specific to physical pain have not yet been identified. METHODS In four studies involving a total of 114 participants, we developed an fMRI-based measure that predicts pain intensity at the level of the individual person. In study 1, we used machine-learning analyses to identify a pattern of fMRI activity across brain regions ? a neurologic signature ? that was associated with heat-induced pain. The pattern included the thalamus, the posterior and anterior insulae, the secondary somatosensory cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, the periaqueductal gray matter, and other regions. In study 2, we tested the sensitivity and specificity of the signature to pain versus warmth in a new sample. In study 3, we assessed specificity relative to social pain, which activates many of the same brain regions as physical pain. In study 4, we assessed the responsiveness of the measure to the analgesic agent remifentanil. RESULTS In study 1, the neurologic signature showed sensitivity and specificity of 94% or more (95% confidence interval [CI], 89 to 98) in discriminating painful heat from nonpainful warmth, pain anticipation, and pain recall. In study 2, the signature discriminated between painful heat and nonpainful warmth with 93% sensitivity and specificity (95% CI, 84 to 100). In study 3, it discriminated between physical pain and social pain with 85% sensitivity (95% CI, 76 to 94) and 73% specificity (95% CI, 61 to 84) and with 95% sensitivity and specificity in a forced-choice test of which of two conditions was more painful. In study 4, the strength of the signature response was substantially reduced when remifentanil was administered. CONCLUSIONS It is possible to use fMRI to assess pain elicited by noxious heat in healthy persons. Future studies are needed to assess whether the signature predicts clinical pain. (Funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and others.) From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue May 7 14:57:47 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 10:57:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <014001ce4455$74a67ce0$5df376a0$@comcast.net> <20130429051806.GB8102@leitl.org> <000501ce44d5$0e901710$2bb04530$@comcast.net> <20130430074418.GO5257@leitl.org> <1367396785.42832.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 6, 2013 Tomasz Rola wrote: > > As of peak oil, it seems we are going to hit the wall one way or > another, if nothing in our ways changes. Obviously the amount of oil on this planet is not infinite so sooner or later we will run out, but the question is whether it is a existential danger that requires drastic action right now or we'll all be dead or living in a Mad Max style post apocalyptic hellscape by 2020. And besides, 10 years ago environmentalists were saying that if we don't stop our evil energy profligate ways within 5 years then we're doomed; well we didn't stop so I guess we're as doomed as doomed can be and so now the logical thing for environmentalists to do is let us enjoy the short time we have left before judgement day and just shut the hell up. > > So, Mr Clark (if I am right) postulated there was increase in > production, hence there was no peak. It seems to me that is a very valid postulate and not just for oil. If something, anything, keeps going up after point X is reached then point X is not a peak. > I guess, as prices increased so much, there are simply more wells > profitable enough to pump. Exactly. > > it is obvious (to me at least) that any reasonable alternative (nukes, > solar) is not going to do the job alone. You can never be certain how a new idea will turn out but it is not obvious to me that Thorium reactors couldn't get the job done. > > Unless some new tech emerges But it IS obvious to me that new technology will be absolutely useless if environmentalists get their way because they never met a energy source they didn't hate. Wind farms are ugly, disrupt wind patterns are noisy and kill birdies. Geothermal smells bad and causes earthquakes. Hydroelectric floods the land and new dams may also cause earthquakes. Bio-fuel diverts needed food production to fuel. Solar energy is so dilute that vast tracks of land are needed and that will endanger a desert lizard you never heard of. And of course there is the "N" word, the energy source so hated that tree huggers dare not speak its name. I however sometimes take the heretical view that the environmentalist's preferred solution to this problem, freezing to death in the dark, may not be ideal. > And BTW, I am not afraid neither of nukes nor of solar. I will be happy > to have thorium in my basement and solar on the roof, please. And a > computing cluster in between, of course. But I don't want coal plant > nearby, and I don't want to live under wind turbine Agreed. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Tue May 7 15:19:39 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 09:19:39 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness . In-Reply-To: References: <1366603687.3168.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5E69A8EB-619E-423B-B845-EDC24032843A@gmail.com> <517D3CEC.5030307@canonizer.com> <39CCF149-55A5-4BB8-A617-4C519C48E767@gmail.com> <517D5B94.7030105@canonizer.com> <51814A49.3010504@canonizer.com> <518629E6.9040207@canonizer.com> <983C206C-D23A-44FA-BDB2-DF297FC452F3@gmail.com> <5186CFBB.4090405@canonizer.com> Message-ID: Hi Stathis, OK, perhaps we have a problem where we are not on the same page with our assumptions, or at least my attempt to work with the same assumptions as you. So let?s see how close I am. Let me know if you disagree with any of the following 1. There is some physical neural correlated responsible for a redness experience, including the possibility that this correlate may be purely functional, or any ?functional isomorph?. In other words, you are predicting it doesn?t matter what hardware is used, but there must be some hardware that is the ?functional isomorph? responsible for the redness quale functionality. 2. The ?functional isomorph? for redness, will be at least functionally different than greenness, in a way that you will be able to observe the necessary and sufficient causal properties of the physical matter which this ?functional isomorph? is implemented on. In other words, you will be able to build a system that can reliably determine if someone is experiencing a redness quale, and not greenness, and so on. Given this you will be able to build a ?comparitor? or binding neuron or system that tells you a redness functional isomorph has been detected. 3. The detection system has an abstracted output. It will produce a ?1? if it is detecting a redness functional isomorph and it will output a ?0? if it detects a greenness isomorph. 4. By definition, this abstracted ?1? output, is just an abstract representation of the redness functional isomorph being detected. This abstracted ?1? can be anything, like maybe the abstract word 'red' with any amount of complexity, it just, by definition, can't be a functional ismorph of redness. The important part here, is you don?t know what the abstracted output ?1? signal is representing, unless you know to ground the meaning by looking this up in a dictionary, and get back the a real red functional isomorph. The "1", or whatever is representing it, is by definition, not a redness functional isomorph, and its relationship to a redness functional isomorph is completely arbitrary and only defined in a map or dictionary. 5. Now, our goal with the neural substitution, is to replace everything one piece at a time, including the real functional isomorphs of redness, and replace them with the abstracted ?1?, which by definition, is not a redness functional isomorph. Are we on the same page with all that being theoretically possible? Brent Allsop On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 8:21 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > On Tuesday, May 7, 2013, Brent Allsop wrote: > >> >> >> Hi Stathis, >> >> >> >> You said: >> >> >> >> ?the binding system [behaves] in the same way if it receives the same >> input.? >> >> >> >> And this is exactly the problem. An Input, by definition, is some >> arbitrary medium, with a hardware translation layer, to transducer the >> ?intput? to be whatever abstracted info you want to think of it as (like a >> ?1? or a ?0?). If you have two abstracted inputs, there is some simple >> logic, like the following which will indicate if it is the same: >> >> >> >> I R I = R >> >> 0 0 1 >> >> 0 1 0 >> >> 1 0 0 >> >> 1 1 1 >> >> >> >> Whatever arbitrary stuff you are using to achieve this arbitrary logic, >> will produce the results. But this is radically different than what I?m >> talking about and what consciousness is doing and why it is saying it has >> detected redness. >> >> >> >> We select redness, not because of any old random logic, that doesn?t >> matter what it is implemented on. We select redness because of what it >> is qualitatively like. >> >> >> >> If you think about what it must be, objectively, it must include some >> kind of difference detection system that detects a real set of causal >> properties(say those of glutamate) and that this system will only say it is >> real glutamate, if and only if it is real glutamate. The reason it is >> saying it is real glutamate, is because of the real causal properties it is >> detecting, not because of some arbitrarily set of hardware configured to do >> the abstracted logic. >> >> >> >> The binding neuron does know about the qualitative nature of redness and >> greenness, and it is only saying it is redness, because of it?s qualitative >> property. And of course, if you look at it objectively, because of the >> quale interpretation problem, it will just look like some system that is >> indicated it has detected redness, because it has detected whatever the >> causal (or even functional, if you must) properties. >> >> >> >> Anyway, this is still all crude ways of saying it, so I doulbt you?ll be >> able to get with just this, but thanks so much for your continued help with >> me trying to find the best way to describe what I?m trying to talking about. >> >> Unfortunately I don't see the problem you see. We could imagine replacing > a whole person with a zombie double who slots into society unnoticed > despite lacking qualia, so how could there be an issue with a neuron doing > the same among fellow neurons? > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue May 7 16:05:22 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 09:05:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <014001ce4455$74a67ce0$5df376a0$@comcast.net> <20130429051806.GB8102@leitl.org> <000501ce44d5$0e901710$2bb04530$@comcast.net> <20130430074418.GO5257@leitl.org> <1367396785.42832.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <025e01ce4b3c$aebf80f0$0c3e82d0$@rainier66.com> On Mon, May 6, 2013 Tomasz Rola wrote: >. > And BTW, I am not afraid neither of nukes nor of solar. I will be happy to have thorium in my basement and solar on the roof, please. And a computing cluster in between, of course. But I don't want coal plant nearby, and I don't want to live under wind turbine. We box ourselves in with our traditional notions, such as a wind turbine with huge electric cables carrying power to population centers. Long cables waste power and use resources to manufacture. Wind power is capricious, and it is noisy and ugly. Solution: put the wind turbines out in Wyoming where there is not much of anything but coal, lots of coal. Build factories that convert coal to liquid fuels powered by wind. Use the wind power to create fertilizer, which can be used to promote plant life which will help sequester the excess carbon produced by processing the coal. I don't want to live under a wind turbine either, but we don't need to. I want to live under rooftop solar. Nuke plants are safe, if we locate them out away from the shoreline. The hardcore environmentalists will not like any of this, but the fact is we need low-cost energy or we die. There is no point in denying the obvious: we already have population densities that require cheap energy in enormous quantities. We can't give up plentiful low-cost energy. People should take a driving vacation out in America's desert western states. You can rent a hot car and drive as fast as you want for hour after hour and see nothing but land so desolate even the lizards don't want to live out there. And yet there is coal available, low grade coal, but perfectly adequate for conversion to liquid fuels. Go out there, see it: eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, most of eastern California, Nevada, Utah, southern Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico. Drive, see it for yourself, or failing that, open Google maps, go into satellite view and just look at all that: vast tracts of open undeveloped land, plenty of sunshine, coal is available, water is scarce but available in the necessary quantities, oh my, the possibilities, all of it currently just sitting still and quiet, lonely, waiting, waiting, waiting, for us to get with the program. There are cubic buttloads of money to be made out in that desert. If we get on with it, we can transition from oil to multiple alternatives and do so without a Mad Max apocalypse. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Tue May 7 16:19:40 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 18:19:40 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <014001ce4455$74a67ce0$5df376a0$@comcast.net> <20130429051806.GB8102@leitl.org> <000501ce44d5$0e901710$2bb04530$@comcast.net> <20130430074418.GO5257@leitl.org> <1367396785.42832.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Above every square centimeter f the Earth surface we have about 200 grams of oxygen. And we have up to 10 (maybe more) grams of hydrocarbonates beneath every square centimeters of the Earth surface. We would be stupid, not to use that free enthalpy. On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 4:57 PM, John Clark wrote: > On Mon, May 6, 2013 Tomasz Rola wrote: > > >> > As of peak oil, it seems we are going to hit the wall one way or >> another, if nothing in our ways changes. > > > Obviously the amount of oil on this planet is not infinite so sooner or > later we will run out, but the question is whether it is a existential > danger that requires drastic action right now or we'll all be dead or > living in a Mad Max style post apocalyptic hellscape by 2020. And besides, > 10 years ago environmentalists were saying that if we don't stop our evil > energy profligate ways within 5 years then we're doomed; well we didn't > stop so I guess we're as doomed as doomed can be and so now the logical > thing for environmentalists to do is let us enjoy the short time we have > left before judgement day and just shut the hell up. > > >> > So, Mr Clark (if I am right) postulated there was increase in >> production, hence there was no peak. > > > It seems to me that is a very valid postulate and not just for oil. If > something, anything, keeps going up after point X is reached then point X > is not a peak. > > > I guess, as prices increased so much, there are simply more wells >> profitable enough to pump. > > > Exactly. > > >> > it is obvious (to me at least) that any reasonable alternative (nukes, >> solar) is not going to do the job alone. > > > You can never be certain how a new idea will turn out but it is not > obvious to me that Thorium reactors couldn't get the job done. > > >> > Unless some new tech emerges > > > But it IS obvious to me that new technology will be absolutely useless if > environmentalists get their way because they never met a energy source they > didn't hate. Wind farms are ugly, disrupt wind patterns are noisy and kill > birdies. Geothermal smells bad and causes earthquakes. Hydroelectric floods > the land and new dams may also cause earthquakes. Bio-fuel diverts needed > food production to fuel. Solar energy is so dilute that vast tracks of land > are needed and that will endanger a desert lizard you never heard of. And > of course there is the "N" word, the energy source so hated that tree > huggers dare not speak its name. I however sometimes take the heretical > view that the environmentalist's preferred solution to this problem, > freezing to death in the dark, may not be ideal. > > > And BTW, I am not afraid neither of nukes nor of solar. I will be happy >> to have thorium in my basement and solar on the roof, please. And a >> computing cluster in between, of course. But I don't want coal plant >> nearby, and I don't want to live under wind turbine > > > Agreed. > > John K Clark > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 johnkclark at gmail.com Tue May 7 17:14:45 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 13:14:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367920364.89403.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367858040.56479.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <20130507082005.GC26408@leitl.org> <1367920364.89403.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 7, 2013 , Gordon wrote: > How wonderful. Someone wrote some code that simulated a neuron. > Yes, I would say that is very wonderful indeed. > I've actually already done something like that > And I can write code that causes a computer to experience pain, it tries to avoid having a certain number in one of its registers regardless of what sort of input the machine receives, and if that number does show up in that register then the machine will stop whatever its doing and immediately change it to another number. Emotion is easy but intelligence is hard. > My digital computer is just an ordinary mechanical machine, not > fundamentally different from my watch. > Gordon, perhaps you believe that if you repeat something often enough it becomes true, but you do have a annoying habit of just stating what you're attempting to prove. > My watch tells me the time, but I think it has no idea what time it is. > Do you think it does? > Who the hell knows, how could I tell if it did? For that matter how can I tell if Gordon Swobe knows what time it is? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue May 7 17:19:29 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 13:19:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Digital Consciousness In-Reply-To: <1367923762.10804.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367858040.56479.YahooMailClassic@web165004.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <20130507082005.GC26408@leitl.org> <1367920364.89403.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130507102052.GO26408@leitl.org> <1367923762.10804.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 6:49 AM, Gordon wrote: > A compass indicates which way is north, but I doubt that it actually > knows which way is north. > How could you tell if it did? What additional behavior would it need to display? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rtomek at ceti.pl Tue May 7 18:04:22 2013 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 20:04:22 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <014001ce4455$74a67ce0$5df376a0$@comcast.net> <20130429051806.GB8102@leitl.org> <000501ce44d5$0e901710$2bb04530$@comcast.net> <20130430074418.GO5257@leitl.org> <1367396785.42832.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 7 May 2013, John Clark wrote: > On Mon, May 6, 2013 Tomasz Rola wrote: > > > > > As of peak oil, it seems we are going to hit the wall one way or > > another, if nothing in our ways changes. > > > Obviously the amount of oil on this planet is not infinite so sooner or > later we will run out, but the question is whether it is a existential > danger that requires drastic action right now or we'll all be dead or Perhaps this is some new kind of millenarianism. Or maybe there is existential risk. Problem is, I don't think we can be absolutely sure of numbers we've got. We are living in artificial domain, made of education, advertisement and possibly some disinformation. Which is why it is good to have alternative feed, like resource prices (those can be skewed, too). > living in a Mad Max style post apocalyptic hellscape by 2020. And besides, > 10 years ago environmentalists were saying that if we don't stop our evil > energy profligate ways within 5 years then we're doomed; well we didn't > stop so I guess we're as doomed as doomed can be and so now the logical > thing for environmentalists to do is let us enjoy the short time we have > left before judgement day and just shut the hell up. Ouch. I must confess. Back when I was young(er) and naive(r), I was kind of greenist. Never an active supporter of the movement, but still, close to it. But I am no longer, I have gradually moved out. It's not that I would like to cover everything with asphalt and pour sulphur acid into every river. I don't like mindless destruction of environment, which can be seen here and there (and is mostly driven by lust for the money, probably). And I am far from judging Greens as a whole (whenever I remember to not judge a group by some of its members). I am sure there are reasonable but not very loud folks - a reason is neither loud nor does it sell well, AFAIK. But some members of this group are plain, encyclopedic example of idiots. I have recently learned there is idea of reviving megafauna - wow, how cool it will be to have your children eaten on their way from school by sabretooth tiger. But I am also a huge fan of free will. If some guys want to live in the woods or knee deep in the mud, if this is what makes their lives meaningful, be my guest. I, however, require a computer, an internet, an electric power, a car - and those are things that enable me to live a good life, without feeling like useless piece of crap. So I would have become very unhappy if some woohoos tried to take my good life from me. Likewise, if someone wants velociraptor or cave bear revived, be my guest as long as you keep them in _your_ backyard (whatever enters mine is my game). And if this cave bear eats children, better make sure they are yours, not mine. Also, I have heard that up to hundred years ago, if one went into the woods it wasn't all that obvious he would go out of there. So maybe I know better than some other people that environment and humans do not mix all that well, because environment has real teeth and nails and humans are mere meat in this equation. Madmaxian scenarios are pure magick to me - nobody tends for the roads, nobody repairs the cars, there is nowhere to buy lubricants for engines, and years after years those guys are driving through half desert landscapes (dust! it enters everywhere, but not in this film). I want a car that can do this stuff and burn nitro whenever I turn a knob. Because I don't think they were bought in a shop. Or built from used parts. > > > So, Mr Clark (if I am right) postulated there was increase in > > production, hence there was no peak. > > > It seems to me that is a very valid postulate and not just for oil. If > something, anything, keeps going up after point X is reached then point X > is not a peak. I will remain open to suggestions, both pro and cons. I think I am still lacking enough information to make any kind of judgement. But it seems something about oil have changed during previous decade. And I am not sure what. Did I say my numbers are untrustworthy? Yeah, I did. > > > it is obvious (to me at least) that any reasonable alternative (nukes, > > solar) is not going to do the job alone. > > > You can never be certain how a new idea will turn out but it is not obvious > to me that Thorium reactors couldn't get the job done. It would have been easier to agree with you if we had certain number of working Th-reactors. AFAIK, we don't. We (humans) had some, few, maybe two or five, all of them decomissioned before 198x - I have read a little about this, but don't remember exact numbers. I understand it will take at least a decade to revive Th-based energy production. And it will take some more time to build new or retrofit existing reactors for using Th. It may be technically possible to do all this in five years, but what is doable is not always being done. Whenever there is human factor, I would rather assume stupidity will play major role, with reason being called for help when some important ass starts frying on open fire. Answering the question if such Th-reactor would actually work well enough is beyond me. I am no nuke engineer. We may have about two decades. Three to five, maybe, sounds plausible. Or maybe we have a thousand decades. But maybe we shouldn't wait this long. Anyway, if the shit hits the fan, I expect survival to be random process. I guess majority of readers will be old and tired by the time. In case you survive, expect to be old, tired and surrounded by folks who are not interested in whatever you would like to tell them (unless you have something they want and they are unwilling to beat it out of you, which is, again, random). So survival may be not so pinky option, after all. Your world, dreams and future dead, simply told. I have read some about people with similar experiences and there is nothing exciting in surviving one's world, dreams or future (and because of this, there will never be a film about such thing, so the concept will not enter a public mind, instead, everybody will imagine himself as M-Max or L-Skywalker). The best scenario would be to make the shit not hit the fan. > > > Unless some new tech emerges > > But it IS obvious to me that new technology will be absolutely useless if > environmentalists get their way because they never met a energy source they > didn't hate. Wind farms are ugly, disrupt wind patterns are noisy and kill You know, I wrote it above. Some of those guys must be reasonable. A hysteric mob is not a big problem if it can be fended off for the first few minutes/hours/weeks. Fanatics are problem, however. But, if they don't understand my explanation of free will concept, certainly there is a way to teach them. Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From spike at rainier66.com Tue May 7 17:55:43 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 10:55:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <025e01ce4b3c$aebf80f0$0c3e82d0$@rainier66.com> References: <014001ce4455$74a67ce0$5df376a0$@comcast.net> <20130429051806.GB8102@leitl.org> <000501ce44d5$0e901710$2bb04530$@comcast.net> <20130430074418.GO5257@leitl.org> <1367396785.42832.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <025e01ce4b3c$aebf80f0$0c3e82d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <029501ce4b4c$19d17c40$4d7474c0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike >.Build factories that convert coal to liquid fuels powered by wind. Use the wind power to create fertilizer, which can be used to promote plant life which will help sequester the excess carbon produced by processing the coal. I don't want to live under a wind turbine either, but we don't need to.spike I might have posted this before, don't recall. Check it outwardly: http://hint.fm/wind/ There is plenty of energy in the wind. Ja it is noisy and ugly, but we can have it without having to look at it or hear it. Ja it does swat the occasional bird out of the ballpark, but think of all the rabbits and ground squirrels that go undevoured for every raptor which is smacked into the next life, and all the bugs and beasts that feast on the remains of the raptor which suffered a close encounter of the turbine kind. Wind and ground-based solar, cohabitating out where there isn't much of anything, with the occasional nuke, all of it making power to synthesize fertilizer and convert coal to liquid fuels, that is the way. Check out that nifty wind map linked above. Is there something like this map for Europe and Asia? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue May 7 17:56:35 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 13:56:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] observer dependent vs. observer independent In-Reply-To: <1367889238.8143.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1367889238.8143.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 9:13 PM, Gordon wrote: > Computers are observer dependent. A computer exists *as such* only > relative to some observer who regards it as a tool for doing computations. > The observer/operator assigns that meaning to it. > To a human it may mean nothing but a computer can and does assign meaning to a string of hexadecimal numbers, such as meaning the place in its solid state memory it should move the information in sector X of its hard drive to. Gordon, whatever lame scheme you come up with attempting to "prove" that computers can never be conscious you can use that exact same scheme without any modification whatsoever to "prove" that your fellow human beings are not conscious either. > Unlike computers, it seems the human brain/mind is observer independent. > You would consider yourself real even if all observers of you were to > vanish. > And you just state that without proof or even argument. You want to prove that people and computers are fundamentally different so you just state that people can "consider themselves" but computers can not, and then you somehow have convince yourself that by stating it you have proven it. It doesn't work that way. > I think computationalists in the philosophy mind err when they try to > equate the brain to a computer > OK, and so if you are logically consistent then you would also believe that Darwin made a error when he wrote his book in 1859; but nobody has accused you of being logically consistent. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rtomek at ceti.pl Tue May 7 19:01:00 2013 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 21:01:00 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? Message-ID: (resending, bad unsubscribed sender in prev mail) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 20:59:23 +0200 (CEST) From: Tomasz Rola To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? On Tue, 7 May 2013, spike wrote: [...] > the occasional bird out of the ballpark, but think of all the rabbits > and ground squirrels that go undevoured for every raptor which is > smacked into the next life, and all the bugs and beasts that feast on > the remains of the raptor which suffered a close encounter of the > turbine kind. Wind and ground-based solar, cohabitating out where there > isn't much of anything, with the occasional nuke, all of it making power > to synthesize fertilizer and convert coal to liquid fuels, that is the > way. Spike, I wrote what I wrote about my options, because all other factors being equal, I would choose nukes and solar first. On the grounds they are cleaner, mostly. And longer lasting. And not so capricious. But if there is no other way, I may have coal plant in my basement and turbine stuffed on my head. Anything like this and some more, may be acceptable if I don't have to give up computing. > Check out that nifty wind map linked above. Is there something like > this map for Europe and Asia? Something like this? http://www.meteoblue.com/en_GB/weather/map/wind/europe I liked your map but mine draws vector field :-) Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Tue May 7 19:53:16 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 12:53:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] putting the qual into qualia In-Reply-To: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> I find this study below interesting, Eugen.?Thanks for posting it. This is the kind of work that I think will eventually lead to an understanding of the neurological processes associated with conscious experience (the NCC). Study 4, in which the signature response was substantially reduced after the administration of an analgesic, seems to confirm that they have identified the neural correlates of this sort of pain.? Study 3, in which they looked at the relationship between physical and social pain, reminds me of an abstract I read recently about a study that found that the administration of?acetaminophen (Tylenol) changes one's social outlook. Though not a?barbiturate, Tylenol seems to cause people to have a more relaxed attitude about life. I would not be surprised to learn that other ordinary analgesics have similar effects. ?Gordon ---------------------------- http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1204471 An fMRI-Based Neurologic Signature of Physical Pain Tor D. Wager, Ph.D., Lauren Y. Atlas, Ph.D., Martin A. Lindquist, Ph.D., Mathieu Roy, Ph.D., Choong-Wan Woo, M.A., and Ethan Kross, Ph.D. N Engl J Med 2013; 368:1388-1397April 11, 2013DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1204471 BACKGROUND Persistent pain is measured by means of self-report, the sole reliance on which hampers diagnosis and treatment. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) holds promise for identifying objective measures of pain, but brain measures that are sensitive and specific to physical pain have not yet been identified. METHODS In four studies involving a total of 114 participants, we developed an fMRI-based measure that predicts pain intensity at the level of the individual person. In study 1, we used machine-learning analyses to identify a pattern of fMRI activity across brain regions ? a neurologic signature ? that was associated with heat-induced pain. The pattern included the thalamus, the posterior and anterior insulae, the secondary somatosensory cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, the periaqueductal gray matter, and other regions. In study 2, we tested the sensitivity and specificity of the signature to pain versus warmth in a new sample. In study 3, we assessed specificity relative to social pain, which activates many of the same brain regions as physical pain. In study 4, we assessed the responsiveness of the measure to the analgesic agent remifentanil. RESULTS In study 1, the neurologic signature showed sensitivity and specificity of 94% or more (95% confidence interval [CI], 89 to 98) in discriminating painful heat from nonpainful warmth, pain anticipation, and pain recall. In study 2, the signature discriminated between painful heat and nonpainful warmth with 93% sensitivity and specificity (95% CI, 84 to 100). In study 3, it discriminated between physical pain and social pain with 85% sensitivity (95% CI, 76 to 94) and 73% specificity (95% CI, 61 to 84) and with 95% sensitivity and specificity in a forced-choice test of which of two conditions was more painful. In study 4, the strength of the signature response was substantially reduced when remifentanil was administered. CONCLUSIONS It is possible to use fMRI to assess pain elicited by noxious heat in healthy persons. Future studies are needed to assess whether the signature predicts clinical pain. (Funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and others.) _______________________________________________ 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 johnkclark at gmail.com Tue May 7 20:25:09 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 16:25:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] putting the qual into qualia In-Reply-To: <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 3:53 PM, Gordon wrote: > This is the kind of work that I think will eventually lead to an > understanding of the neurological processes associated with conscious > experience > Gordon, suppose the fMRI said that you were in great pain, absolute agony, but you felt just fine, very happy and healthy; who are you going to believe, the machine or your own direct experience? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue May 7 20:33:55 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 13:33:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Tomasz Rola ... On Tue, 7 May 2013, spike wrote: [...] >> ... Wind and ground-based solar, cohabitating out where > there isn't much of anything, with the occasional nuke, all of it > making power to synthesize fertilizer and convert coal to liquid > fuels, that is the way... >...Spike, I wrote what I wrote about my options, because all other factors being equal, I would choose nukes and solar first... Me too! All three: ground based solar, nukes and wind. My contribution is that we should park all of them way the hell out of the way, then use the power to convert coal or biomass to liquids and synthesize ammonium nitrate, rather than send the power to the cities by cable. >>... Check out that nifty wind map linked above. Is there something like > this map for Europe and Asia? >...Something like this? >...http://www.meteoblue.com/en_GB/weather/map/wind/europe >...I liked your map but mine draws vector field :-) Regards, Tomasz Rola Cool thanks Tomasz. I want one of those vector maps for the states. {8-] Question please, for Europe hipsters. Do you guys have some big open areas where there just isn't much of anything, analogous to the US desert southwest, somewhere in Europe? If not, how about buying up some land in the Sahara and using that abundant solar and wind power down there? That land would hafta be cheaper than sand down there, a few Euros per hectare, ja? I know Asia has big stretches of nothing in some places. spike From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Tue May 7 20:41:14 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 13:41:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] putting the qual into qualia In-Reply-To: References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> John Clark wrote: > On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 3:53 PM, Gordon wrote: >> This is the kind of work that I think will eventually lead to an understanding of the neurological processes associated with conscious experience ? > Gordon, suppose the fMRI said that you were in great pain, absolute agony, but you felt just fine, very happy and healthy; ?who are you going to believe, the machine or your own direct experience? ? I would believe my direct experience. If it happened in a statistically significant number of people, I would conclude that we've got the science wrong.? Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rtomek at ceti.pl Tue May 7 21:48:32 2013 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 23:48:32 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 7 May 2013, spike wrote: [...] > >...http://www.meteoblue.com/en_GB/weather/map/wind/europe > > >...I liked your map but mine draws vector field :-) Regards, Tomasz Rola > > Cool thanks Tomasz. I want one of those vector maps for the states. {8-] Ugh. But you know you can choose other part of the world by clicking on it, top of the page? :-P > Question please, for Europe hipsters. Do you guys have some big open > areas where there just isn't much of anything, analogous to the US > desert southwest, somewhere in Europe? If not, how about buying up some > land in the Sahara and using that abundant solar and wind power down > there? That land would hafta be cheaper than sand down there, a few > Euros per hectare, ja? I know Asia has big stretches of nothing in some > places. In Europe... I think the weather is going to change quite a bit. In Poland, we had few, maybe ten tornadoes during previous century. This gradually increased, nowadays I expect about ten-twenty every year. You know, those vast flat areas, they act like magnets for tornadoes. Few days ago, surprise surprise, tornado in Italy. WTF?! I guess this will call for very sturdy installations of everything, and maybe some design changes to shut down turbine/solpanel when situation gets scary. Fortunately, we still make houses of (reinforced) concrete and bricks, not gypsum and gypsum. So a roof may fly away but at least walls and floor will stay. As of Sahara, I guess there's a lot of movement there. Just not the kind that creates good climate for building anything. Myself, I would rather not spend a dime there as long as situation is not clear (perhaps it is clear but I'm just not sure at the moment). Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Tue May 7 21:49:55 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 14:49:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] putting the qual into qualia In-Reply-To: <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367963395.56469.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Social pain is a quale, though we don't normally consider it when discussing qualia. I should probably take a Tylenol each time someone on ExI gives me grief. ---- Acetaminophen Reduces Social Pain Behavioral and Neural Evidence Abstract Pain, whether caused by physical injury or social rejection, is an inevitable part of life. These two types of pain?physical and social?may rely on some of the same behavioral and neural mechanisms that register pain-related affect. To the extent that these pain processes overlap, acetaminophen, a physical pain suppressant that acts through central (rather than peripheral) neural mechanisms, may also reduce behavioral and neural responses to social rejection. In two experiments, participants took acetaminophen or placebo daily for 3 weeks. Doses of acetaminophen reduced reports of social pain on a daily basis (Experiment 1). We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure participants? brain activity (Experiment 2), and found that acetaminophen reduced neural responses to social rejection in brain regions previously associated with distress caused by social pain and the affective component of physical pain (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula). Thus, acetaminophen reduces behavioral and neural responses associated with the pain of social rejection, demonstrating substantial overlap between social and physical pain. http://pss.sagepub.com/content/21/7/931 Gordon From msd001 at gmail.com Tue May 7 22:38:52 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 18:38:52 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <025e01ce4b3c$aebf80f0$0c3e82d0$@rainier66.com> References: <014001ce4455$74a67ce0$5df376a0$@comcast.net> <20130429051806.GB8102@leitl.org> <000501ce44d5$0e901710$2bb04530$@comcast.net> <20130430074418.GO5257@leitl.org> <1367396785.42832.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <025e01ce4b3c$aebf80f0$0c3e82d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 12:05 PM, spike wrote: > We box ourselves in with our traditional notions, such as a wind turbine > with huge electric cables carrying power to population centers. Long cables > waste power and use resources to manufacture. Wind power is capricious, and > it is noisy and ugly. Solution: put the wind turbines out in Wyoming where > there is not much of anything but coal, lots of coal. Build factories that I really thought you were going to suggest eliminate cables by using wind turbines to receive wind... but when there is no wind, you'd use coal to power turbines that send wind. Yeah, i know that's silly... but it's an amusing picture of wasted effort. From atymes at gmail.com Tue May 7 23:46:58 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 16:46:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 1:33 PM, spike wrote: > Me too! All three: ground based solar, nukes and wind. My contribution is > that we should park all of them way the hell out of the way, then use the > power to convert coal or biomass to liquids and synthesize ammonium > nitrate, rather than send the power to the cities by cable. > Or simply synthesize gasoline. It's a form that gets used (a lot), and less conversions = less energy lost to conversion. There are places in the US, such as east-central Washington, where the cost of a given KWh content of electricity is much less than the same KWh in gasoline form - although in most of the US, it is the other way around, sometimes substantially so. Could one set up a gasoline synthesis factory there, to nail down (via R&D) the non-electricity costs of making gasoline, then establish other plants elsewhere w/privately owned wind/solar/etc.? > Question please, for Europe hipsters. Do you guys have some big open areas > where there just isn't much of anything, analogous to the US desert > southwest, somewhere in Europe? If not, how about buying up some land in > the Sahara and using that abundant solar and wind power down there? That > land would hafta be cheaper than sand down there, a few Euros per hectare, > ja? I know Asia has big stretches of nothing in some places. > A quick scan of Google Maps shows quite a few places - mostly hilly or mountainous, where traditional European agriculture was not of much use. For instance, see the land around Fort William in Scotland. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 8 01:07:55 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 18:07:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <006a01ce4b88$7a04e660$6e0eb320$@rainier66.com> . On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Subject: Re: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 1:33 PM, spike wrote: >>. use the power to convert coal or biomass to liquids and synthesize ammonium nitrate, rather than send the power to the cities by cable. >.Or simply synthesize gasoline. It's a form that gets used (a lot), and less conversions = less energy lost to conversion. Ja, we know how to do it, it has been done for over 100 years (coal to octane), it takes advantage of the existing octane burning infrastructure. Of all the schemes I have seen for carrying energy around, nothing matches good old octane and Diesel (mostly C12H26.) So if we propose alternatives, we need to think of the energy needed to convert the world's existing transportation and food-production infrastructure, which is enormous. So at least for the short run (next 20 yrs) the whole GB solar, wind and nuke powered coal and biomass to octane conversion looks compelling. I like space based solar and hope we get that, but I am thinking what we do in the increasingly likely event that doesn't work out for us. Wiki claims wind power has an EROEI of about 18, which is quite good. It cohabitates nicely with ground based solar and nuclear, so it uses the same ground twice in a sense. Wind power has the problems of being ugly, noisy, intermittent and it slays birds. If we put the turbines way out and away to heck and gone, then use the power where it is generated for coal to octane and coal to Diesel conversion, we solve three of the four big problems with wind power. The fourth, well, bye bye birdie, sorry. I really like birds. But we aren't going to let our civilization starve for the feathery bastards. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed May 8 04:59:25 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 00:59:25 -0400 Subject: [ExI] putting the qual into qualia In-Reply-To: <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 7, 2013 Gordon wrote: >> Gordon, suppose the fMRI said that you were in great pain, absolute >> agony, but you felt just fine, very happy and healthy; who are you going >> to believe, the machine or your own direct experience? >> > > > I would believe my direct experience. > Smart move, therefore we can never be as certain of the qualia experienced by other people or by other computers as we are of ourselves because we only have direct experiance to our own qualia; Raymond Smullyan made that clear in his 1982 dialog "An Epistemological Nightmare". By the way, Smullyan is something of a mystic and before I started reading his wonderful and beautiful books I thought all mystics were fools, but now I just think that most mystics are fools: An Epistemological Nightmare Scene 1 Frank is in the office of an eye doctor. The doctor holds up a book and asks "What color is it?" Frank answers, "Red." The doctor says, "Aha, just as I thought! Your whole color mechanism has gone out of kilter. But fortunately your condition is curable, and I will have you in perfect shape in a couple of weeks." Scene 2 (A few weeks later.) Frank is in a laboratory in the home of an experimental epistemologist. (You will soon find out what that means!) The epistemologist holds up a book and also asks, "What color is this book?" Now, Frank has been earlier dismissed by the eye doctor as "cured." However, he is now of a very analytical and cautious temperament, and will not make any statement that can possibly be refuted. So Frank answers, "It seems red to me." *Epistemologist:* Wrong! *Frank:* I don't think you heard what I said. I merely said that it seems red to me. *Epistemologist:* I heard you, and you were wrong. *Frank:* Let me get this clear; did you mean that I was wrong that this book is red, or that I was wrong that it seems red to me? *Epistemologist:* I obviously couldn't have meant that you were wrong in that it is red, since you did not say that it is red. All you said was that it seems red to you, and it is this statement which is wrong. *Frank:* But you can't say that the statement "It seems red to me" is wrong. *Epistemologist:* If I can't say it, how come I did? *Frank:* I mean you can't mean it. *Epistemologist:* Why not? *Frank:* But surely I know what color the book seems to me! *Epistemologist:* Again you are wrong. *Frank:* But nobody knows better than I how things seem to me. *Epistemologist:* I am sorry, but again you are wrong. *Frank:* But who knows better than I? *Epistemologist:* I do. *Frank:* But how could you have access to my private mental states? *Epistemologist:* Private mental states! Metaphysical hogwash! Look, I am a practical epistemologist. Metaphysical problems about "mind" versus "matter" arise only from epistemological confusions. Epistemology is the true foundation of philosophy. But the trouble with all past epistemologists is that they have been using wholly theoretical methods, and much of their discussion degenerates into mere word games. While other epistemologists have been solemnly arguing such questions as whether a man can be wrong when he asserts that he believes such and such, I have discovered how to settle such questions experimentally. *Frank:* How could you possibly decide such things empirically? *Epistemologist:* By reading a person's thoughts directly. *Frank:* You mean you are telepathic? *Epistemologist:* Of course not. I simply did the one obvious thing which should be done, viz. I have constructed a brain-reading machine--known technically as a cerebroscope--that is operative right now in this room and is scanning every nerve cell in your brain. I thus can read your every sensation and thought, and it is a simple objective truth that this book does not seem red to you. *Frank (thoroughly subdued):* Goodness gracious, I really could have sworn that the book seemed red to me; it sure seems that it seems read to me! *Epistemologist:* I'm sorry, but you are wrong again. *Frank:* Really? It doesn't even seem that it seems red to me? It sure seems like it seems like it seems red to me! *Epistemologist:* Wrong again! And no matter how many times you reiterate the phrase "it seems like" and follow it by "the book is red" you will be wrong. *Frank:* This is fantastic! Suppose instead of the phrase "it seems like" I would say "I believe that." So let us start again at ground level. I retract the statement "It seems red to me" and instead I assert "I believe that this book is red." Is this statement true or false? *Epistemologist:* Just a moment while I scan the dials of the brain-reading machine--no, the statement is false. *Frank:* And what about "I believe that I believe that the book is red"? *Epistemologist (consulting his dials):* Also false. And again, no matter how many times you iterate "I believe," all these belief sentences are false. *Frank:* Well, this has been a most enlightening experience. However, you must admit that it is a little hard on me to realize that I am entertaining infinitely many erroneous beliefs! *Epistemologist:* Why do you say that your beliefs are erroneous? *Frank:* But you have been telling me this all the while! *Epistemologist:* I most certainly have not! *Frank:* Good God, I was prepared to admit all my errors, and now you tell me that my beliefs are not errors; what are you trying to do, drive me crazy? *Epistemologist:* Hey, take it easy! Please try to recall: When did I say or imply that any of your beliefs are erroneous? *Frank:* Just simply recall the infinite sequence of sentences: (1) I believe this book is red; (2) I believe that I believe this book is red; and so forth. You told me that every one of those statements is false. *Epistemologist:* True. *Frank:* Then how can you consistently maintain that my beliefs in all these false statements are not erroneous? *Epistemologist:* Because, as I told you, you don't believe any of them. *Frank:* I think I see, yet I am not absolutely sure. *Epistemologist:* Look, let me put it another way. Don't you see that the very falsity of each of the statements that you assert saves you from an erroneous belief in the preceding one? The first statement is, as I told you, false. Very well! Now the second statement is simply to the effect that you believe the first statement. If the second statement were true, then you would believe the first statement, and hence your belief about the first statement would indeed be in error. But fortunately the second statement is false, hence you don't really believe the first statement, so your belief in the first statement is not in error. Thus the falsity of the second statement implies you do not have an erroneous belief about the first; the falsity of the third likewise saves you from an erroneous belief about the second, etc. *Frank:* Now I see perfectly! So none of my beliefs were erroneous, only the statements were erroneous. *Epistemologist:* Exactly. *Frank:* Most remarkable! Incidentally, what color is the book really? *Epistemologist:* It is red. *Frank:* What! *Epistemologist:* Exactly! Of course the book is red. What's the matter with you, don't you have eyes? *Frank:* But didn't I in effect keep saying that the book is red all along? *Epistemologist:* Of course not! You kept saying it seems red to you, it seems like it seems red to you, you believe it is red, you believe that you believe it is red, and so forth. Not once did you say that it is red. When I originally asked you "What color is the book?" if you had simply answered "red," this whole painful discussion would have been avoided. Scene 3 Frank comes back several months later to the home of the epistemologist. *Epistemologist:* How delightful to see you! Please sit down. *Frank (seated):* I have been thinking of our last discussion, and there is much I wish to clear up. To begin with, I discovered an inconsistency in some of the things you said. *Epistemologist:* Delightful! I love inconsistencies. Pray tell! *Frank:* Well, you claimed that although my belief sentences were false, I did not have any actual beliefs that are false. If you had not admitted that the book actually is red, you would have been consistent. But your very admission that the book is red, leads to an inconsistency. *Epistemologist:* How so? *Frank:* Look, as you correctly pointed out, in each of my belief sentences "I believe it is red," "I believe that I believe it is red," the falsity of each one other than the first saves me from an erroneous belief in the proceeding one. However, you neglected to take into consideration the first sentence itself. The falsity of the first sentence "I believe it is red," in conjunction with the fact that it is red, does imply that I do have a false belief. *Epistemologist:* I don't see why. *Frank:* It is obvious! Since the sentence "I believe it is red" is false, then I in fact believe it is not red, and since it really is red, then I do have a false belief. So there! *Epistemologist (disappointed):* I am sorry, but your proof obviously fails. Of course the falsity of the fact that you believe it is red implies that you don't believe it is red. But this does not mean that you believe it is not red! *Frank:* But obviously I know that it either is red or it isn't, so if I don't believe it is, then I must believe that it isn't. *Epistemologist:* Not at all. I believe that either Jupiter has life or it doesn't. But I neither believe that it does, nor do I believe that it doesn't. I have no evidence one way or the other. *Frank:* Oh well, I guess you are right. But let us come to more important matters. I honestly find it impossible that I can be in error concerning my own beliefs. *Epistemologist:* Must we go through this again? I have already patiently explained to you that you (in the sense of your beliefs, not your statements) are not in error. *Frank:* Oh, all right then, I simply do not believe that even the statements are in error. Yes, according to the machine they are in error, but why should I trust the machine? *Epistemologist:* Whoever said you should trust the machine? *Frank:* Well, should I trust the machine? *Epistemologist:* That question involving the word "should" is out of my domain. However, if you like, I can refer you to a colleague who is an excellent moralist--he may be able to answer this for you. *Frank:* Oh come on now, I obviously didn't mean "should" in a moralistic sense. I simply meant "Do I have any evidence that this machine is reliable?" *Epistemologist:* Well, do you? *Frank:* Don't ask me! What I mean is should you trust the machine? *Epistemologist:* Should I trust it? I have no idea, and I couldn't care less what I should do. *Frank:* Oh, your moralistic hangup again. I mean, do you have evidence that the machine is reliable? *Epistemologist:* Well of course! *Frank:* Then let's get down to brass tacks. What is your evidence? *Epistemologist:* You hardly can expect that I can answer this for you in an hour, a day, or a week. If you wish to study this machine with me, we can do so, but I assure you this is a matter of several years. At the end of that time, however, you would certainly not have the slightest doubts about the reliability of the machine. *Frank:* Well, possibly I could believe that it is reliable in the sense that its measurements are accurate, but then I would doubt that what it actually measures is very significant. It seems that all it measures is one's physiological states and activities. *Epistemologist:* But of course, what else would you expect it to measure? *Frank:* I doubt that it measures my psychological states, my actual beliefs. *Epistemologist:* Are we back to that again? The machine does measure those physiological states and processes that you call psychological states, beliefs, sensations, and so forth. *Frank:* At this point I am becoming convinced that our entire difference is purely semantical. All right, I will grant that your machine does correctly measure beliefs in your sense of the word "belief," but I don't believe that it has any possibility of measuring beliefs in my sense of the word "believe." In other words I claim that our entire deadlock is simply due to the fact that you and I mean different things by the word "belief." *Epistemologist:* Fortunately, the correctness of your claim can be decided experimentally. It so happens that I now have two brain-reading machines in my office, so I now direct one to your brain to find out what you mean by "believe" and now I direct the other to my own brain to find out what I mean by "believe," and now I shall compare the two readings. Nope, I'm sorry, but it turns out that we mean exactly the same thing by the word "believe." *Frank:* Oh, hang your machine! Do you believe we mean the same thing by the word "believe"? *Epistemologist:* Do I believe it? Just a moment while I check with the machine. Yes, it turns out I do believe it. *Frank:* My goodness, do you mean to say that you can't even tell me what you believe without consulting the machine? *Epistemologist:* Of course not. *Frank:* But most people when asked what they believe simply tell you. Why do you, in order to find out your beliefs, go through the fantastically roundabout process of directing a thought-reading machine to your own brain and then finding out what you believe on the basis of the machine readings? *Epistemologist:* What other scientific, objective way is there of finding out what I believe? *Frank:* Oh, come now, why don't you just ask yourself? *Epistemologist (sadly):* It doesn't work. Whenever I ask myself what I believe, I never get any answer! *Frank:* Well, why don't you just state what you believe? *Epistemologist:* How can I state what I believe before I know what I believe? *Frank:* Oh, to hell with your knowledge of what you believe; surely you have some idea or belief as to what you believe, don't you? *Epistemologist:* Of course I have such a belief. But how do I find out what this belief is? *Frank:* I am afraid we are getting into another infinite regress. Look, at this point I am honestly beginning to wonder whether you may be going crazy. *Epistemologist:* Let me consult the machine. Yes, it turns out that I may be going crazy. *Frank:* Good God, man, doesn't this frighten you? *Epistemologist:* Let me check! Yes, it turns out that it does frighten me. *Frank:* Oh please, can't you forget this damned machine and just tell me whether you are frightened or not? *Epistemologist:* I just told you that I am. However, I only learned of this from the machine. *Frank:* I can see that it is utterly hopeless to wean you away from the machine. Very well, then, let us play along with the machine some more. Why don't you ask the machine whether your sanity can be saved? *Epistemologist:* Good idea! Yes, it turns out that it can be saved. *Frank:* And how can it be saved? *Epistemologist:* I don't know, I haven't asked the machine. *Frank:* Well, for God's sake, ask it! *Epistemologist:* Good idea. It turns out that... *Frank:* It turns out what? *Epistemologist:* It turns out that... *Frank:* Come on now, it turns out what? *Epistemologist:* This is the most fantastic thing I have ever come across! According to the machine the best thing I can do is to cease to trust the machine! *Frank:* Good! What will you do about it? *Epistemologist:* How do I know what I will do about it, I can't read the future? *Frank:* I mean, what do you presently intend to do about it? *Epistemologist:* Good question, let me consult the machine. According to the machine, my current intentions are in complete conflict. And I can see why! I am caught in a terrible paradox! If the machine is trustworthy, then I had better accept its suggestion to distrust it. But if I distrust it, then I also distrust its suggestion to distrust it, so I am really in a total quandary. *Frank:* Look, I know of someone who I think might be really of help in this problem. I'll leave you for a while to consult him. Au revoir! Scene 4. (Later in the day at a psychiatrist's office.) *Frank:* Doctor, I am terribly worried about a friend of mine. He calls himself an "experimental epistemologist." *Doctor:* Oh, the experimental epistemologist. There is only one in the world. I know him well! *Frank:* That is a relief. But do you realize that he has constructed a mind-reading device that he now directs to his own brain, and whenever one asks him what he thinks, believes, feels, is afraid of, and so on, he has to consult the machine first before answering? Don't you think this is pretty serious? *Doctor:* Not as serious as it might seem. My prognosis for him is actually quite good. *Frank:* Well, if you are a friend of his, couldn't you sort of keep an eye on him? *Doctor:* I do see him quite frequently, and I do observe him much. However, I don't think he can be helped by so-called "psychiatric treatment." His problem is an unusual one, the sort that has to work itself out. And I believe it will. *Frank:* Well, I hope your optimism is justified. At any rate I sure think I need some help at this point! *Doctor:* How so? *Frank:* My experiences with the epistemologist have been thoroughly unnerving! At this point I wonder if I may be going crazy; I can't even have confidence in how things appear to me. I think maybe you could be helpful here. *Doctor:* I would be happy to but cannot for a while. For the next three months I am unbelievably overloaded with work. After that, unfortunately, I must go on a three-month vacation. So in six months come back and we can talk this over. Scene 5. (Same office, six months later.) *Doctor:* Before we go into your problems, you will be happy to hear that your friend the epistemologist is now completely recovered. *Frank:* Marvelous, how did it happen? *Doctor:* Almost, as it were, by a stroke of fate--and yet his very mental activities were, so to speak, part of the "fate." What happened was this: For months after you last saw him, he went around worrying "should I trust the machine, shouldn't I trust the machine, should I, shouldn't I, should I, shouldn't I." (He decided to use the word "should" in your empirical sense.) He got nowhere! So he then decided to "formalize" the whole argument. He reviewed his study of symbolic logic, took the axioms of first-order logic, and added as nonlogical axioms certain relevant facts about the machine. Of course the resulting system was inconsistent--he formally proved that he should trust the machine if and only if he shouldn't, and hence that he both should and should not trust the machine. Now, as you may know, in a system based on classical logic (which is the logic he used), if one can prove so much as a single contradictory proposition, then one can prove any proposition, hence the whole system breaks down. So he decided to use a logic weaker than classical logic--a logic close to what is known as "minimal logic"--in which the proof of one contradiction does not necessarily entail the proof of every proposition. However, this system turned out too weak to decide the question of whether or not he should trust the machine. Then he had the following bright idea. Why not use classical logic in his system even though the resulting system is inconsistent? Is an inconsistent system necessarily useless? Not at all! Even though given any proposition, there exists a proof that it is true and another proof that it is false, it may be the case that for any such pair of proofs, one of them is simply more psychologically convincing than the other, so simply pick the proof you actually believe! Theoretically the idea turned out very well--the actual system he obtained really did have the property that given any such pair of proofs, one of them was always psychologically far more convincing than the other. Better yet, given any pair of contradictory propositions, all proofs of one were more convincing than any proof of the other. Indeed, anyone except the epistemologist could have used the system to decide whether the machine could be trusted. But with the epistemologist, what happened was this: He obtained one proof that he should trust the machine and another proof that he should not. Which proof was more convincing to him, which proof did he really "believe"? The only way he could find out was to consult the machine! But he realized that this would be begging the question, since his consulting the machine would be a tacit admission that he did in fact trust the machine. So he still remained in a quandary. *Frank:* So how did he get out of it? *Doctor:* Well, here is where fate kindly interceded. Due to his absolute absorption in the theory of this problem, which consumed about his every waking hour, he became for the first time in his life experimentally negligent. As a result, quite unknown to him, a few minor units of his machine blew out! Then, for the first time, the machine started giving contradictory information--not merely subtle paradoxes, but blatant contradictions. In particular, the machine one day claimed that the epistemologist believed a certain proposition and a few days later claimed he did not believe that proposition. And to add insult to injury, the machine claimed that he had not changed his belief in the last few days. This was enough to simply make him totally distrust the machine. Now he is fit as a fiddle. *Frank:* This is certainly the most amazing thing I have ever heard! I guess the machine was really dangerous and unreliable all along. *Doctor:* Oh, not at all; the machine used to be excellent before the epistemologist's experimental carelessness put it out of whack. *Frank:* Well, surely when I knew it, it couldn't have been very reliable. *Doctor:* Not so, Frank, and this brings us to your problem. I know about your entire conversation with the epistemologist--it was all tape-recorded. *Frank:* Then surely you realize the machine could not have been right when it denied that I believed the book was red. *Doctor:* Why not? *Frank:* Good God, do I have to go through all this nightmare again? I can understand that a person can be wrong if he claims that a certain physical object has a certain property, but have you ever known a single case when a person can be mistaken when he claims to have or not have a certain sensation? *Doctor:* Why, certainly! I once knew a Christian Scientist who had a raging toothache; he was frantically groaning and moaning all over the place. When asked whether a dentist might not cure him, he replied that there was nothing to be cured. Then he was asked, "But do you not feel pain?" He replied, "No, I do not feel pain; nobody feels pain, there is no such thing as pain, pain is only an illusion." So here is a case of a man who claimed not to feel pain, yet everyone present knew perfectly well that he did feel pain. I certainly don't believe he was lying, he was just simply mistaken. *Frank:* Well, all right, in a case like that. But how can one be mistaken if one asserts his belief about the color of a book? *Doctor:* I can assure you that without access to any machine, if I asked someone what color is this book, and he answered, "I believe it is red," I would be very doubtful that he really believed it. It seems to me that if he really believed it, he would answer, "It is red" and not "I believe it is red" or "It seems red to me." The very timidity of his response would be indicative of his doubts. *Frank:* But why on earth should I have doubted that it was red? *Doctor:* You should know that better than I. Let us see now, have you ever in the past had reason to doubt the accuracy of your sense perception? *Frank:* Why, yes. A few weeks before visiting the epistemologist, I suffered from an eye disease, which did make me see colors falsely. But I was cured before my visit. *Doctor:* Oh, so no wonder you doubted it was red! True enough, your eyes perceived the correct color of the book, but your earlier experience lingered in your mind and made it impossible for you to really believe it was red. So the machine was right! *Frank:* Well, all right, but then why did I doubt that I believed it was true? *Doctor:* Because you didn't believe it was true, and unconsciously you were smart enough to realize the fact. Besides, when one starts doubting one's own sense perceptions, the doubt spreads like an infection to higher and higher levels of abstraction until finally the whole belief system becomes one doubting mass of insecurity. I bet that if you went to the epistemologist's office now, and if the machine were repaired, and you now claimed that you believe the book is red, the machine would concur. No, Frank, the machine is--or, rather, was--a good one. The epistemologist learned much from it, but misused it when he applied it to his own brain. He really should have known better than to create such an unstable situation. The combination of his brain and the machine each scrutinizing and influencing the behavior of the other led to serious problems in feedback. Finally the whole system went into a cybernetic wobble. Something was bound to give sooner or later. Fortunately, it was the machine. *Frank:* I see. One last question, though. How could the machine be trustworthy when it claimed to be untrustworthy? *Doctor:* The machine never claimed to be untrustworthy, it only claimed that the epistemologist would be better off not trusting it. And the machine was right. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed May 8 05:20:17 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 22:20:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Kripke resigns as report alleges he faked results of thought experiments http://fauxphilnews.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/kripke-resigns-after-allegations-of-academic-fraud/ Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 8 06:36:41 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 08:36:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <014001ce4455$74a67ce0$5df376a0$@comcast.net> <20130429051806.GB8102@leitl.org> <000501ce44d5$0e901710$2bb04530$@comcast.net> <20130430074418.GO5257@leitl.org> <1367396785.42832.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130508063641.GQ26408@leitl.org> On Tue, May 07, 2013 at 08:04:22PM +0200, Tomasz Rola wrote: > Perhaps this is some new kind of millenarianism. Or maybe there is > existential risk. Problem is, I don't think we can be absolutely sure of > numbers we've got. We are living in artificial domain, made of education, I've been reading http://theoildrum.com/ for many years now, and their numbers and forecasts held up a lot better than official ones (to the point of official forecasts being running jokes, but of the unfunny variety). I should say it surprises me that in 2013 most people have no clue what Peak Fossil means, but unfortunately it doesn't surprise me. History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Good luck. We all are going to need it. > advertisement and possibly some disinformation. Which is why it is good to > have alternative feed, like resource prices (those can be skewed, too). From protokol2020 at gmail.com Wed May 8 07:16:08 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 09:16:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <20130508063641.GQ26408@leitl.org> References: <014001ce4455$74a67ce0$5df376a0$@comcast.net> <20130429051806.GB8102@leitl.org> <000501ce44d5$0e901710$2bb04530$@comcast.net> <20130430074418.GO5257@leitl.org> <1367396785.42832.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130508063641.GQ26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: > I should say it surprises me that in 2013 most people have no clue what Peak Fossil means Yes, indeed! After 7 or so years after the peek oil, they still don't get it! Even those oil diggers, instead of realizing it they just pump it ever more and more. On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 8:36 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Tue, May 07, 2013 at 08:04:22PM +0200, Tomasz Rola wrote: > > > Perhaps this is some new kind of millenarianism. Or maybe there is > > existential risk. Problem is, I don't think we can be absolutely sure of > > numbers we've got. We are living in artificial domain, made of education, > > I've been reading http://theoildrum.com/ for many years now, and > their numbers and forecasts held up a lot better than official ones > (to the point of official forecasts being running jokes, but > of the unfunny variety). > > I should say it surprises me that in 2013 most people have no > clue what Peak Fossil means, but unfortunately it doesn't > surprise me. History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. > > Good luck. We all are going to need it. > > > advertisement and possibly some disinformation. Which is why it is good > to > > have alternative feed, like resource prices (those can be skewed, too). > _______________________________________________ > 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 May 8 08:04:05 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 10:04:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <20130429051806.GB8102@leitl.org> <000501ce44d5$0e901710$2bb04530$@comcast.net> <20130430074418.GO5257@leitl.org> <1367396785.42832.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130508063641.GQ26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130508080405.GT26408@leitl.org> On Wed, May 08, 2013 at 09:16:08AM +0200, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > > I should say it surprises me that in 2013 most people have no clue what > Peak Fossil means > > Yes, indeed! After 7 or so years after the peek oil, they still don't get > it! Even those oil diggers, instead of realizing it they just pump it ever > more and more. Yeah, they drill like the demented and get less and less per well and effort spent, and energy invested. So not more and more, it's a Red Queen situation. It should tell a sane person something (net energy cliff, ahem) but people are pretty insane that way. As a whole the humanity seems to subscribe to the Alfred E. Neumann school of thinking. I'm getting pretty tired of the resident Cassandra job, so I'm keeping this down to a dull roar. The numbers are out there for your consumption; make of them what you will (most don't bother to look). From protokol2020 at gmail.com Wed May 8 08:37:16 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 10:37:16 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <20130508080405.GT26408@leitl.org> References: <20130429051806.GB8102@leitl.org> <000501ce44d5$0e901710$2bb04530$@comcast.net> <20130430074418.GO5257@leitl.org> <1367396785.42832.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130508063641.GQ26408@leitl.org> <20130508080405.GT26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: > Yeah, they drill like the demented and get less and less per well and effort spent, and energy invested. Where this newly needed energy to extract the oil comes from? I guess from the oil pumped out. So where is the problem? You don't imply that they use the solar and wind for it? (It would be good also, if you ask me. But there is no economically viable wind to help pumping the oil. So they use the oil itself.) 1 Gt of oil may stay under the ground, or we may use 1 Mt of it to pump 999 Mt of this oil to the market. Even if it was 500 for 500 Mt, does not matter. Better 500 than 0. On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 10:04 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Wed, May 08, 2013 at 09:16:08AM +0200, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > > > I should say it surprises me that in 2013 most people have no clue what > > Peak Fossil means > > > > Yes, indeed! After 7 or so years after the peek oil, they still don't get > > it! Even those oil diggers, instead of realizing it they just pump it > ever > > more and more. > > Yeah, they drill like the demented and get less and less per well and > effort spent, and energy invested. So not more and more, it's a Red > Queen situation. It should tell a sane person something > (net energy cliff, ahem) but people are pretty insane that way. > > As a whole the humanity seems to subscribe to the Alfred E. Neumann > school of thinking. > > I'm getting pretty tired of the resident Cassandra job, so I'm keeping > this down to a dull roar. The numbers are out there for your consumption; > make of them what you will (most don't bother to look). > _______________________________________________ > 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 May 8 08:51:28 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 10:51:28 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <20130430074418.GO5257@leitl.org> <1367396785.42832.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130508063641.GQ26408@leitl.org> <20130508080405.GT26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130508085128.GY26408@leitl.org> On Wed, May 08, 2013 at 10:37:16AM +0200, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > > Yeah, they drill like the demented and get less and less per well and > effort spent, and energy invested. > > Where this newly needed energy to extract the oil comes from? I guess from > the oil pumped out. So where is the problem? The problem that intially EROEI (energy return on energy invested, or net energy) was 100:1. Unconventional gases and liquids have a low and *decreasing* EROEI (because the sweet spots are drilled first). > You don't imply that they use the solar and wind for it? (It would be good > also, if you ask me. But there is no economically viable wind to help If you buy chinese photovoltaics, it's made with dirty coal. That's the best use of dirty coal, assuming you won't leave it in the ground. > pumping the oil. So they use the oil itself.) > > 1 Gt of oil may stay under the ground, or we may use 1 Mt of it to pump 999 > Mt of this oil to the market. Even if it was 500 for 500 Mt, does not > matter. Better 500 than 0. No, it matters a lot: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8625 The cutoff is somewhere at 8:1 to 5:1. We're either already there or below. From protokol2020 at gmail.com Wed May 8 08:52:59 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 10:52:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <20130508080405.GT26408@leitl.org> References: <20130429051806.GB8102@leitl.org> <000501ce44d5$0e901710$2bb04530$@comcast.net> <20130430074418.GO5257@leitl.org> <1367396785.42832.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130508063641.GQ26408@leitl.org> <20130508080405.GT26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: > Yeah, they drill like the demented and get less and less per well and effort spent, and energy invested. Where this newly needed energy to extract the oil comes from? I guess from the oil pumped out. So where is the problem? You don't imply that they use the solar and wind for it? (It would be good also, if you ask me. But there is no economically viable wind to help pumping the oil. So they use the oil itself.) 1 Gt of oil may stay under the ground, or we may use 1 Mt of it to pump 999 Mt of this oil to the market. In fact, the oil pumping efficiency goes up with always better technologies. On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 10:04 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Wed, May 08, 2013 at 09:16:08AM +0200, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > > > I should say it surprises me that in 2013 most people have no clue what > > Peak Fossil means > > > > Yes, indeed! After 7 or so years after the peek oil, they still don't get > > it! Even those oil diggers, instead of realizing it they just pump it > ever > > more and more. > > Yeah, they drill like the demented and get less and less per well and > effort spent, and energy invested. So not more and more, it's a Red > Queen situation. It should tell a sane person something > (net energy cliff, ahem) but people are pretty insane that way. > > As a whole the humanity seems to subscribe to the Alfred E. Neumann > school of thinking. > > I'm getting pretty tired of the resident Cassandra job, so I'm keeping > this down to a dull roar. The numbers are out there for your consumption; > make of them what you will (most don't bother to look). > _______________________________________________ > 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 May 8 11:19:12 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 13:19:12 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130508111912.GC26408@leitl.org> On Tue, May 07, 2013 at 01:33:55PM -0700, spike wrote: > Question please, for Europe hipsters. Do you guys have some big open areas > where there just isn't much of anything, analogous to the US desert In Germany you've got the hot spots on the coast (North Sea) and the mountains (mostly Alps). The current capacity in wind and solar for 2012 has been summarized in http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/downloads-englisch/pdf-files-englisch/news/electricity-production-from-solar-and-wind-in-germany-in-2012.pdf There is enough on-shore wind potential to produce 100+% of electricity from wind, but already the current capacity peaks tends to overwhelm the grid, so there need to be considerable investments into the grid (north-south axis, especially HVDC) and dumping peak into wind gas (hydrogen and methane). > southwest, somewhere in Europe? If not, how about buying up some land in > the Sahara and using that abundant solar and wind power down there? That There is the Desertec product which is idiotic. The advantage of decentral power is that it is produced close to where it is consumed, and does not make you extortable. > land would hafta be cheaper than sand down there, a few Euros per hectare, > ja? I know Asia has big stretches of nothing in some places. China will be building a lot of PV in the west deserts. From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 8 12:07:53 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 14:07:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> On Tue, May 07, 2013 at 04:46:58PM -0700, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Or simply synthesize gasoline. It's a form that gets used (a lot), and One does not simply synthesize gasoline Particularly, if you want to fill a large gap almost overnight. Look into costs and time and material and energy input for a plant, then multiply by the number required. This is what takes 30-40 years for a conversion process. So by the time there's a need you're a few decades too late. > less conversions = less energy lost to conversion. There are places > in the US, such as east-central Washington, where the cost of > a given KWh content of electricity is much less than the same KWh > in gasoline form - although in most of the US, it is the other way > around, sometimes substantially so. From rtomek at ceti.pl Wed May 8 14:07:38 2013 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 16:07:38 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <20130508063641.GQ26408@leitl.org> References: <014001ce4455$74a67ce0$5df376a0$@comcast.net> <20130429051806.GB8102@leitl.org> <000501ce44d5$0e901710$2bb04530$@comcast.net> <20130430074418.GO5257@leitl.org> <1367396785.42832.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130508063641.GQ26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, 8 May 2013, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Tue, May 07, 2013 at 08:04:22PM +0200, Tomasz Rola wrote: > > > Perhaps this is some new kind of millenarianism. Or maybe there is > > existential risk. Problem is, I don't think we can be absolutely sure > > of numbers we've got. We are living in artificial domain, made of > > education, > > I've been reading http://theoildrum.com/ for many years now, and their > numbers and forecasts held up a lot better than official ones (to the > point of official forecasts being running jokes, but of the unfunny > variety). Well, I've been reading them for some/few years now (with breaks) and I really appreciate their work. But I, being raised in propaganda, appreciate the value of double checking information and am somewhat paranoid about it (not only it, actually, but that's irrelevant). Besides, it is fun to dig some numbers and make one's own back of the Lisp interpreter calculations. > I should say it surprises me that in 2013 most people have no clue what > Peak Fossil means, but unfortunately it doesn't surprise me. History may > not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. The so called people don't have a clue because most of the time (most of lifetime) we are going on autopilot, i.e. we are actually automatons switching from one state to another, the switch triggered by chemical substances (in majority if not all cases) - adrenaline here, endorphines there. This is called conservation of energy - brain remains in a standby. You can talk to them, but their logical circuits bounce the words away. I know, I was in this department already (albeit I was talking about M_soft, not oil, but the lesson has been learnt). BTW, Eugen, did your folks display "glass eyes" when you talked to them? Just curious. Mine did. I may be pervert but I learned to find it funny (I am zodiacal Ram, heh, so I may be pervert and make fun of strange things all at the same time). I wonder if this phenomena is widespread or if it was just me. > Good luck. We all are going to need it. Yeah. Take a seat, get a popcorn. Or if you like doing some particular something, like experimenting with software, then do. As of luck etc, I assume the future humanity will be even more dwarfs than today (not physically, actually medical dwarfs are great guys, just as everybody who overcomes his limitations, or at least tries in a convincing manner - so "normal humans" en masse do not qualify for greatness, it's just a bloody blob). I may live to see this, but that is not so much important, at least in my current mood (I am actually quite optimistic right now, just in case anybody wants to know if I have depression or worse - I don't think so). Just MHO. Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From atymes at gmail.com Wed May 8 14:48:40 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 07:48:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 5:07 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > One does not simply synthesize gasoline Particularly, > if you want to fill a large gap almost overnight. > > Look into costs and time and material and energy input > for a plant, then multiply by the number required. > Would you happen to have a convenient source for said costs and time? A quick search didn't find any, but I may have used the wrong terms. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Wed May 8 14:53:33 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 08 May 2013 15:53:33 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> On 08/05/2013 06:20, Gordon wrote: > > > Kripke resigns as report alleges he faked results of thought > experiments > > http://fauxphilnews.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/kripke-resigns-after-allegations-of-academic-fraud/ > Hehehe... I am reminded of this good heuristic by Dennett for spotting weak arguments: look for the word "surely". https://medium.com/editors-picks/83dacb1fe14c An opponent in a debate once pointed out to me and the audience that I was clearly a bioethicist since I was using the word "we" (as in "should we enhance ourselves?") - bioethicists always do that, dragging everyone into their universalistic grouping. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 8 15:02:59 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 17:02:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> On Wed, May 08, 2013 at 07:48:40AM -0700, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 5:07 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > One does not simply synthesize gasoline Particularly, > > if you want to fill a large gap almost overnight. > > > > Look into costs and time and material and energy input > > for a plant, then multiply by the number required. > > > > Would you happen to have a convenient source for said costs > and time? A quick search didn't find any, but I may have used > the wrong terms. It can be tricky to find. Here's an article with a few numbers: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/business/energy-environment/sasol-betting-big-on-gas-to-liquid-plant-in-us.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 From anders at aleph.se Wed May 8 15:05:02 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 08 May 2013 16:05:02 +0100 Subject: [ExI] putting the qual into qualia In-Reply-To: <1367963395.56469.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367963395.56469.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <518A699E.9080807@aleph.se> On 07/05/2013 22:49, Gordon wrote: > Social pain is a quale, though we don't normally consider it when discussing qualia. I should probably take a Tylenol each time someone on ExI gives me grief. > ---- > Acetaminophen Reduces Social Pain It also seems to reduce existential and surreal anguish. http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/04/11/0956797612464786.full (One of the more amusing uses of David Lynch movies in science) The nice thing about this is that it actually helps us track down the NCC - watching surreal movies doesn't (I assume) activate somatosensory cortex, but probably (guessing here, based on past neuroscience, but I would be surprised if it didn't happen) activates parts of the anterior cingulate cortex. Neuroimaging can only give us so much, so we still have to figure out the finer structure, but it seems that the ACC is among the key parts of the neural substrate of suffering itself, regardless of whether the cause is pain, social exclusion or existential dread. And we know people with certain ACC damage experience pain (presumably the quale of pain sensation) but do not suffer (no quale of suffering) - they report they have the pain but it does not bother them. It would be interesting to see if this is true for other sources of suffering. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed May 8 15:25:16 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 11:25:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <014001ce4455$74a67ce0$5df376a0$@comcast.net> <20130429051806.GB8102@leitl.org> <000501ce44d5$0e901710$2bb04530$@comcast.net> <20130430074418.GO5257@leitl.org> <1367396785.42832.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130508063641.GQ26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, May 8, 2013 Tomaz Kristan wrote: > Yes, indeed! After 7 or so years after the peek oil, they still don't get > it! Even those oil diggers > It's not just the oil diggers that don't get it, I don't get it either, I don't get how something can peak 7 years ago and yet be larger now than it was then. There is one thing that oil diggers do get, at least the oil diggers in the USA, and that is modern fracking is changing the world. > instead of realizing it they just pump it ever more and more. > Exactly, they keep pumping more and more oil, at least they do in the USA the country that pioneered the technology of modern hydrological fracturing; in 2012 the USA saw the largest yearly increase in oil production since oil drilling started in 1859. Most OPEC countries have been slow to embrace fracking, perhaps because it wasn't invented there, perhaps because they didn't feel the urgency to increase production that the USA felt, but sooner or later OPEC will start to use fracking in a big way and when they do I see no reason why they won't be equally successful at dramatically increasing their production. Obviously environmentalists hate fracking with a passion, they have no choice in the matter, they are duty bound to hate any new energy source. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 8 15:29:59 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 08:29:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <012301ce4c00$e7a56410$b6f02c30$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Subject: Re: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 5:07 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: >>.One does not simply synthesize gasoline Particularly, if you want to fill a large gap almost overnight. Eugen >.Look into costs and time and material and energy input for a plant, then multiply by the number required. >.Would you happen to have a convenient source for said costs and time? A quick search didn't find any, but I may have used the wrong terms. Adrian I found this paper from the journal Hydrocarbon Processing. It is a bit scattershot and surface-y, but has some interesting cost data in there: http://www.kbr.com/Newsroom/Publications/Articles/Consider-Coal-Gasification -for-Liquid-Fuels-Production.pdf I am watching a football stadium being built a couple miles from my yurt for the 49ers. If we can build a structure of that magnitude in a couple years (the stadium, not my yurt), then we can build Fischer-Tropsch plants in a similar timespan. Yes I know that line of reasoning is as loose as a bucket of bolts, but I do fail to understand why anything like this would necessarily take a long time to do, assuming we get the hell on it now, when conventional energy is cheap and abundant. I will buy into part of Eugen's reasoning, the part that would wipe the Alfred E Newman grin off of even my own optimistic face: if we wait too long to start, then there isn't enough energy to build the energy conversion facilities. The results will be horrifying. But I would suggest we do a lot of stuff that is extravagantly wasteful now, such as football stadiums. Then as energy becomes more scarce, we let those go first. This calls attention to shortages, perhaps far enough ahead of the crisis to avert catastrophe. For instance, in a coming age of shortage, the audience for football becomes small enough that the enterprise fails to break even. Then we have the stadium as a source of raw materials: we can take it apart and recycle the steel rather than mine iron ore for instance. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed May 8 15:45:33 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 08:45:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 8:02 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Wed, May 08, 2013 at 07:48:40AM -0700, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 5:07 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > One does not simply synthesize gasoline Particularly, > > > if you want to fill a large gap almost overnight. > > > > > > Look into costs and time and material and energy input > > > for a plant, then multiply by the number required. > > > > > > > Would you happen to have a convenient source for said costs > > and time? A quick search didn't find any, but I may have used > > the wrong terms. > > It can be tricky to find. Here's an article with a few > numbers: > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/business/energy-environment/sasol-betting-big-on-gas-to-liquid-plant-in-us.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 > Not quite the numbers I was looking for - but it does suggest the technology is not well developed enough yet that the numbers are understood. Thanks. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 8 15:54:53 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 17:54:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <012301ce4c00$e7a56410$b6f02c30$@rainier66.com> References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> <012301ce4c00$e7a56410$b6f02c30$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130508155453.GB26408@leitl.org> On Wed, May 08, 2013 at 08:29:59AM -0700, spike wrote: > I am watching a football stadium being built a couple miles from my yurt for > the 49ers. If we can build a structure of that magnitude in a couple years > (the stadium, not my yurt), then we can build Fischer-Tropsch plants in a > similar timespan. Yes I know that line of reasoning is as loose as a bucket If you have friends who are chemical engineers, then they will likely tell you where the 10-20 GUSD price ticket for a city-sized industrial installation comes from. I personally prefer something much smaller, which is water electrolysis, Sabatier, and methanol (electro)synthesis under mild conditions. They can keep their diesel. I'd rather have hydrogen and methanol economy instead. > of bolts, but I do fail to understand why anything like this would > necessarily take a long time to do, assuming we get the hell on it now, when > conventional energy is cheap and abundant. Unfortunately, the conventional energy is no longer cheap or abundant. For some reason people don't understand how unconventional oil is different from conventional oil. They don't understand that net energy, not volume is relevant. Etc. > > > I will buy into part of Eugen's reasoning, the part that would wipe the > Alfred E Newman grin off of even my own optimistic face: if we wait too long > to start, then there isn't enough energy to build the energy conversion This is known as falling off the net energy cliff. That cliff should have started growing in 2012, so peak (or plateau) is not telling you the whole story. > facilities. The results will be horrifying. But I would suggest we do a > lot of stuff that is extravagantly wasteful now, such as football stadiums. > Then as energy becomes more scarce, we let those go first. This calls > attention to shortages, perhaps far enough ahead of the crisis to avert > catastrophe. For instance, in a coming age of shortage, the audience for > football becomes small enough that the enterprise fails to break even. Then > we have the stadium as a source of raw materials: we can take it apart and > recycle the steel rather than mine iron ore for instance. Completely different design space. Does not apply. Once you're fucked, getting unfucked again takes a huge effort. From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 8 15:47:36 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 08:47:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <012801ce4c03$5deb7d10$19c27730$@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 . > >>... Would you happen to have a convenient source for said costs and time? > A quick search didn't find any, but I may have used the wrong terms. It can be tricky to find. Here's an article with a few numbers: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/business/energy-environment/sasol-betting- big-on-gas-to-liquid-plant-in-us.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Eugen _______________________________________________ Thanks Eugen, that is a good article. Quote: >...For decades, South Africa defended its system of apartheid from international oil embargoes by producing synthetic oil from its rich coal resources. Nazi Germany did the same to fuel its military machine in World War II... Imagine that things play out the way I vaguely envision it: industrialists everywhere recognize that in the long run, the Red Queen model is compelling, and that the person situated to make the biggest buttloads of money will be the one who can use wind, nuclear and GB solar power to convert coal, natural gas and biomass to liquid fuels as Arab oil wells are drying up ever more quickly. The big winner is the one who foresaw this in time and invested her money accordingly in viable alternatives. Then we could have a period of expensive but attainable energy, humanity's attention and intellectual energy would be focused away from football and on energy production, then we make out OK after a hungry but survivable decade or two. Then the history books would trace this slender thread of survival all the way back to 1920s Germany. The technology that averted planet-wide catastrophe will have been developed by Nazis with dreams of brutally controlling the planet and South Africans hoping to maintain their apartheid form of government. The future history books will need to explain that the bad guys are still bad, but they accidentally saved our collective asses. spike From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed May 8 17:02:12 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 10:02:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> Message-ID: <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Anders Sandberg wrote: >Hehehe... >I am reminded of this good heuristic by Dennett for spotting weak arguments: look for the word "surely". >https://medium.com/editors-picks/83dacb1fe14c >An opponent in a debate once pointed out to me and the audience that I was clearly a bioethicist since I was using the word "we" (as in "should we enhance ourselves?") - bioethicists always do that, dragging everyone into >their universalistic grouping.? Interesting. Dennett's observation about "surely" in turn reminds me of some sage advice given me by a retired English professor and personal friend of mine. In his view, all sentence adverbs should be avoided. "Surely" is often used as a sentence adverb, modifying an entire clause or sentence, as in "Surely, the sun will rise."? Most grammarians are aware of the controversy surrounding the sentence adverb "Hopefully," as in "Hopefully, I will win the lottery." It has become common usage such that the AP style guide, as of a few months ago, permits it. Other style guides still advise against it. The AP's approval of "Hopefully" irritates my friend as he always instructed his students to avoid not only "Hopefully," but all sentence adverbs. "Fortunately, I won the lottery" should be written "I am fortunate to have won the lottery." The author Stephen King takes it a step further, advising his fellow writers to avoid not only sentence adverbs, but all adverbs. In his view, similar to Dennett's observation about "surely," adverbs are almost always evidence of laziness in thinking and writing. Sentences like this: "The stone fell quickly to the ground" can be improved by removing the adverb and replacing it with a more powerful expression, for example, "The stone plummeted to the ground." I am not disciplined enough to follow King's advice, but I do try to follow my friend's advice about sentence adverbs.? Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rtomek at ceti.pl Wed May 8 17:49:28 2013 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 19:49:28 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] (tt) (RawStory) Nearly a third of honey bee colonies died in U.S. last winter (fwd) Message-ID: (So, perhaps we don't really need to worry about oil or polar bears - TR) [ http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/07/nearly-a-third-of-honey-bee-colonies-died-in-u-s-last-winter/ ] (... links deleted ...) Nearly a third of honey bee colonies died in U.S. last winter IFRAME: [32]http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://www.rawstory. com/rs/2013/05/07/nearly-a-third-of-honey-bee-colonies-died-in-u-s-las t-winter/&send=false&layout=standard&width=450&show_faces=false&action =recommend&colorscheme=light&font=arial&height=35 By Agence France-Presse Tuesday, May 7, 2013 16:36 EDT Honey bees walk on a moveable comb hive at the Bee Research Laboratory, in Beltsville, Maryland, August 22, 2007. (AFP) Topics: [33]honey bees cD- [34]us department of agriculture * * [35]Tweet * * * * [36]Print Friendly and PDF * [37]Email this page * * [38]Tweet * * * * * Nearly a third of the honey bee colonies in the United States died this past winter, sharply higher proportion than a year ago, according to an official report released Tuesday. The US population of managed honey bee colonies fell by 31.1 percent in the October 2012-April 2013 period, said the preliminary report by the US Department of Agriculture in collaboration with the Apiary Inspectors of America and The Bee Informed Partnership. Bees are vital pollinators in fruit and vegetable production and have been dying in significant numbers in recent years, some stricken by Colony Collapse Disorder, the sudden loss of all bees in a colony. The cause remains unknown. The just-ended winter's losses were 42 percent higher than in the prior winter, when 21.9 percent of the bee colonies died, but were in line with the average loss of 30.5 percent over the past six years. The latest findings were based on responses of more than 6,000 US beekeepers which represent almost 23 percent of the nation's total estimated 2.62 million colonies. The beekeepers said that a loss rate of 15 percent was "acceptable" but 70 percent of them had heavier losses than that, the report said. There were more colonies that dwindled away, rather than suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder, which was not reported as a major cause of colony loss for the second straight year. One key difference stood out in this year's survey, the researchers said. Beekeepers who took honey bees to California to pollinate almonds reported higher losses than beekeepers who did not take their bees to pollinate almonds. Almost 20 percent of the beekeepers who pollinated almonds lost at least 50 percent of their colonies, the report said. IFRAME: [39]http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/themes/blognewsv131/ads/RawS tory_JS_RightRail_TextOnly.html The US Department of Agriculture, in a report last week, said an investigation into the decline in honey bee health has found multiple factors, "including parasites and disease, genetics, poor nutrition and pesticide exposure." The USDA called for further research to determine risks from pesticides. "Acute and sublethal effects of pesticides on honey bees have been increasingly documented, and are a concern but it is not clear, based on current research, whether a pesticide exposure is a major factor associated with US honey bee health declines," it said. In a lawsuit in March several beekeepers and environmental groups accused the US Environmental Protection Agency of failing to protect pollinators and challenging practices that speed to market about two-thirds of all pesticides. The suit seeks to suspend the EPA registrations of pesticides that have been identified as toxic to bees. Last week the European Commission said it would impose the world's first continent-wide ban on three pesticides which environmentalists say are killing the bees that pollinate Europe's crops. The insecticides -- imidacloprid and clothianidin produced by Bayer, and thiamethoxam by Syngenta -- are used to treat seeds, and are applied to the soil or sprayed on bee-attractive plants and cereals. (... links deleted ...) References Visible links 32. http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/07/nearly-a-third-of-honey-bee-colonies-died-in-u-s-last-winter/&send=false&layout=standard&width=450&show_faces=false&action=recommend&colorscheme=light&font=arial&height=35 33. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/tag/honey-bees/ 34. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/tag/us-department-of-agriculture/ 35. http://twitter.com/share 36. http://www.printfriendly.com/ 37. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/07/nearly-a-third-of-honey-bee-colonies-died-in-u-s-last-winter/ 38. http://twitter.com/share 39. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/themes/blognewsv131/ads/RawStory_JS_RightRail_TextOnly.html From pharos at gmail.com Wed May 8 17:52:14 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 18:52:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 6:02 PM, Gordon wrote: > Most grammarians are aware of the controversy surrounding the sentence > adverb "Hopefully," as in "Hopefully, I will win the lottery." It has become > common usage such that the AP style guide, as of a few months ago, permits > it. Other style guides still advise against it. The AP's approval of > "Hopefully" irritates my friend as he always instructed his students to > avoid not only "Hopefully," but all sentence adverbs. "Fortunately, I won > the lottery" should be written "I am fortunate to have won the lottery." > > Apparently "Hopefully" has been in common usage for over 30 years with everybody except the grammar Nazis using it. AP style guide has just accepted that the language has changed and taken it off their list of things to tell people not to do. My grammar Nazi checklist doesn't even mention adverbs. Note: NSFW BillK From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed May 8 18:23:59 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 11:23:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1368037439.34421.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> BillK wrote: > Apparently [<-- sentence adverb] "Hopefully" has been in common usage for over 30 years with everybody except the grammar Nazis using it.? In fact I am a member of a discussion group called "Grammar Nazis Anonymous" where we debate these sorts of issues until we're blue in the face. :)? Some of us are prescriptivists, believing that English should follow certain rules. Others of us are descriptivists, believing that English should be whatever is common usage. Most of us are somewhere in between, depending on the issue at hand.? Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Wed May 8 21:08:35 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 08 May 2013 22:08:35 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <518ABED3.3010507@aleph.se> On 08/05/2013 18:02, Gordon wrote: > Interesting. Dennett's observation about "surely" in turn reminds me > of some sage advice given me by a retired English professor and > personal friend of mine. In his view, all sentence adverbs should be > avoided. ... > The author Stephen King takes it a step further, advising his fellow > writers to avoid not only sentence adverbs, but all adverbs. In his > view, similar to Dennett's observation about "surely," adverbs are > almost always evidence of laziness in thinking and writing. They have a point. It is surprising how much better text reads when you avoid overexplaining things. If you need extra words to get your point across, maybe your core words are not the right ones. In fact, it is a great exercise to try to even avoid adjectives - think of Lovecraft: his adjectives rarely explain anything. You will feel like Hemingway when you get it right. One useful piece of advice I got in an undergrad writing course was to search for 'quite' once you have finished the text. Then just delete them. Ob transhumanism: training oneself in using language well seems to be one of those everyday skills that really improves one's life chances. It is not just about being suitably grammatical or writing good prose, but also things like being able to churn out text as needed - getting used to writing things seems to be a core skill for not just authors but most professions... including professional influencers. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 8 21:33:31 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 23:33:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> On Wed, May 08, 2013 at 08:45:33AM -0700, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/business/energy-environment/sasol-betting-big-on-gas-to-liquid-plant-in-us.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 > > > > Not quite the numbers I was looking for - but it does suggest the > technology is not well developed enough yet that the numbers > are understood. Thanks. I'm sorry you dislike the numbers, or the conclusion one has to draw from them. But I can assure you that the core technology is almost a century old, and you will not be able to make it jump through hoops by throwing money at it (which you don't have) overnight. Anything much beyond that time frame isn't relevant, anyway. Anything based on gasified coal is dead-ended, anyway, so only methane-derived technology (gas to oil in oldspeak) are interesting. I will again point everybody towards http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Oil-Gas-Methanol-Economy/dp/3527324224/ which has a good story (minus nuke). From atymes at gmail.com Thu May 9 00:10:31 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 17:10:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 2:33 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Wed, May 08, 2013 at 08:45:33AM -0700, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > Not quite the numbers I was looking for - but it does suggest the > > technology is not well developed enough yet that the numbers > > are understood. Thanks. > > I'm sorry you dislike the numbers, or the conclusion one has to > draw from them. > > But I can assure you that the core technology is almost a > century old, and you will not be able to make it jump through > hoops by throwing money at it (which you don't have) overnight. > Just because a technology's been around for a while, does not necessarily mean there's no way to make it substantially better. Among the examples: * Electric cars. They existed before internal combustion, but there wasn't sufficient energy density for them to be more than a novelty back then. Internal combustion delivered far more useful energy densities, such that that's what people remember as introducing cars to the world. Nowadays, batteries are starting to have useful enough energy densities that electric cars are once again viable. * Gunpowder. Famously invented by the Chinese, centuries before being married to European metallurgy to make guns. At first it was merely another tool in warfare (if even that), but by the mid 19th century, it was the dominant weapon of war. * Aluminum. More precious and cherished than gold, until cheap electricity and new methods made it economically practical for many industrial uses. Our modern era seems defined by, if any one thing, a significant increase in the rate at which such technological developments are being realized. (Kind of like what one would see in the decades leading up to a Singularity.) This is not to say there necessarily is a way to improve synthetic fuels, merely that "it's an old technology" is not sufficient proof by itself. Separately, the impression I got from the article is of an industry where all the corners have not been explored, where there aren't years-old, let alone decades-old, templates that haven't been substantially improved on since, and otherwise that there's probably much room for improvement - at least evolutionarily, if not revolutionarily, but even small little increments can drive something from "not profitable" to "sometimes profitable", and thence to "reliably profitable". -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu May 9 04:35:25 2013 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 21:35:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Chinese solution was peak oil by 2020? Message-ID: I think the Chinese may surprise the rest of the world by going with power satellites as a solution to their carbon and energy problems. Power satellites are one of a very small number of solutions that scale large enough. And done with propulsion lasers to get the cost down, power satellites can provide energy cheap enough to make dollar a gallon synthetic transportation fuel. If you google for china india power satellites, you can see where they announce their intent last Nov. And in the last month Steve Nixon came up with an approach that cuts the cost to set up the transportation infrastructure by about 2/3rds. Keith From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 9 04:42:53 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 22:42:53 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Greenhouse Gas Message-ID: Could someone please comment on this analysis? It seems to make sense to me, and that kind of worries me. I keep thinking this is settled to some extent in my head.... I want to believe science is not totally screwed over by politics, I want to believe... >>>>>>>>>>>> The misnamed ?greenhouse? effect of greenhouse gasses like CO2 is based on the fact that they are not truly colorless. They have a ?tint,? though we can?t see it, because it?s in a part of the light spectrum that our eyes don?t detect. GHGs are transparent in the visible part of the light spectrum, but they absorb (block) parts of the IR spectrum. Adding such gasses to the atmosphere has a warming effect on the lower atmosphere, because the light arriving at the earth from the sun is much ?bluer? (shorter average wavelength) than the light emitted from the earth. Because the earth is relatively cool, the light emitted from the earth is mostly IR. So anything in the atmosphere that blocks IR but is transparent to visible and UV will have a warming effect, because it lets in most of the arriving solar radiation (that warms the earth), but blocks a much larger percentage of the departing radiation (that cools the earth). Even though CO2 levels are measured in parts-per-million, there?s nevertheless already so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it blocks nearly all of the IR that it can possibly block. So adding more CO2 doesn?t have much effect on temperature. For CO2?s main absorption bands, we?re way, way past the CO2 levels at which the IR is all absorbed. Only for very narrow ranges of wavelengths at the fringes of those absorption bands, where CO2 is a very weak absorber, can adding more CO2 appreciably increase the amount of IR blocked. However, adding even a small amount of a different GHG (such as one of the CFCs or HCFCs) can have a much larger warming effect, by blocking a part of the IR spectrum for which the atmosphere would otherwise be transparent. That?s why you may read that CFCs like Freon-12 are thousands of times more potent as GHGs than CO2. It?s not that there?s anything fundamentally special about Freon-12, it?s just that there?s so few Freon-12 molecules in the atmosphere that some of their absorption bands aren?t already blocked. Here?s an analogy. Consider moth-eaten blankets to be like GHGs, and different positions one the blankets correspond to different parts of the IR spectrum. The blankets have big holes in some places, but nice, dense wool fabric in others. Different patterns of holes in the blankets are like different GHGs. They pass some parts of the IR spectrum, and block others. So ?CO2? blankets have one pattern of holes, ?CH4? blankets have a different pattern of holes, ?CFC-12? blankets have yet another pattern of holes, etc. Now, envision an obsessively compulsive neat-freak piling on moth-eaten blankets to try to keep warm in a chilly night. He exactly straightens and lines up each blanket on the bed. If he piles on a dozen identical ?CO2? blankets, with the holes all lining up exactly, he won?t be much warmer than if he had only one or two ?CO2? blankets. But if he adds a ?CH4? blanket, with many of its moth-holes in different places, then he?ll be a lot warmer, because some of the CO2 blanket?s holes will be blocked by the CH4 blanket, and vice-versa. And if he adds a ?CFC-12? blanket, with some of its holes in different places than the holes in the CO2 and CH4 blankets, he?ll be warmer yet. Right now, we?ve got about 10 or 20 CO2 blankets piled on. Adding another 5 or 10 or 20 CO2 blankets will keep us a tiny bit warmer at the frayed edges of the holes, but it won?t make near as much difference as adding some other kind of blanket. <<<<<<<<<<< Thanks! -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu May 9 04:53:38 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 21:53:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Greenhouse Gas In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The total amount of heat coming in & going out dwarfs the total amount blocked by CO2. In the blanket analogy, imagine if each blanket was incredibly thin, say 1/100th or less of an ordinary blanket. Doubling the blankets, moth eaten or not, will make a substantial difference. Further, the bed underneath slightly changes color in places in response to the temperature. E.g., white ice melts into darker, more absorptive things. Feedback effects like this, especially when energy normally distributed across the entire Earth gets localized (such as into a tornado), account for much of the problem. On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 9:42 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Could someone please comment on this analysis? It seems to make sense to > me, and that kind of worries me. I keep thinking this is settled to some > extent in my head.... I want to believe science is not totally screwed over > by politics, I want to believe... > > >>>>>>>>>>>> > > The misnamed ?greenhouse? effect of greenhouse gasses like CO2 is based on > the fact that they are not truly colorless. They have a ?tint,? though we > can?t see it, because it?s in a part of the light spectrum that our eyes > don?t detect. GHGs are transparent in the visible part of the light > spectrum, but they absorb (block) parts of the IR spectrum. > > Adding such gasses to the atmosphere has a warming effect on the lower > atmosphere, because the light arriving at the earth from the sun is much > ?bluer? (shorter average wavelength) than the light emitted from the earth. > Because the earth is relatively cool, the light emitted from the earth is > mostly IR. So anything in the atmosphere that blocks IR but is transparent > to visible and UV will have a warming effect, because it lets in most of > the arriving solar radiation (that warms the earth), but blocks a much > larger percentage of the departing radiation (that cools the earth). > > Even though CO2 levels are measured in parts-per-million, there?s > nevertheless already so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it blocks nearly > all of the IR that it can possibly block. So adding more CO2 doesn?t have > much effect on temperature. For CO2?s main absorption bands, we?re way, way > past the CO2 levels at which the IR is all absorbed. Only for very narrow > ranges of wavelengths at the fringes of those absorption bands, where CO2 > is a very weak absorber, can adding more CO2 appreciably increase the > amount of IR blocked. > > However, adding even a small amount of a different GHG (such as one of the > CFCs or HCFCs) can have a much larger warming effect, by blocking a part of > the IR spectrum for which the atmosphere would otherwise be transparent. > That?s why you may read that CFCs like Freon-12 are thousands of times more > potent as GHGs than CO2. It?s not that there?s anything fundamentally > special about Freon-12, it?s just that there?s so few Freon-12 molecules in > the atmosphere that some of their absorption bands aren?t already blocked. > > > Here?s an analogy. Consider moth-eaten blankets to be like GHGs, and > different positions one the blankets correspond to different parts of the > IR spectrum. The blankets have big holes in some places, but nice, dense > wool fabric in others. > > Different patterns of holes in the blankets are like different GHGs. They > pass some parts of the IR spectrum, and block others. So ?CO2? blankets > have one pattern of holes, ?CH4? blankets have a different pattern of > holes, ?CFC-12? blankets have yet another pattern of holes, etc. > > Now, envision an obsessively compulsive neat-freak piling on moth-eaten > blankets to try to keep warm in a chilly night. He exactly straightens and > lines up each blanket on the bed. > > If he piles on a dozen identical ?CO2? blankets, with the holes all lining > up exactly, he won?t be much warmer than if he had only one or two ?CO2? > blankets. But if he adds a ?CH4? blanket, with many of its moth-holes in > different places, then he?ll be a lot warmer, because some of the CO2 > blanket?s holes will be blocked by the CH4 blanket, and vice-versa. And if > he adds a ?CFC-12? blanket, with some of its holes in different places than > the holes in the CO2 and CH4 blankets, he?ll be warmer yet. > > Right now, we?ve got about 10 or 20 CO2 blankets piled on. Adding another > 5 or 10 or 20 CO2 blankets will keep us a tiny bit warmer at the frayed > edges of the holes, but it won?t make near as much difference as adding > some other kind of blanket. > > <<<<<<<<<<< > > Thanks! > > -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 protokol2020 at gmail.com Thu May 9 06:16:07 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Thu, 9 May 2013 08:16:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Chinese solution was peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: There is nothing like "carbon problem". You can pollute with sulfur oxides for example, but you can't with CO2. Plants are hungry always when not thirsty. Give them H2O and CO2, if you want a green world! Coal and oil are our blessing we should cherish more! On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 6:35 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > I think the Chinese may surprise the rest of the world by going with > power satellites as a solution to their carbon and energy problems. > > Power satellites are one of a very small number of solutions that > scale large enough. And done with propulsion lasers to get the cost > down, power satellites can provide energy cheap enough to make dollar > a gallon synthetic transportation fuel. > > If you google for china india power satellites, you can see where they > announce their intent last Nov. > > And in the last month Steve Nixon came up with an approach that cuts > the cost to set up the transportation infrastructure by about 2/3rds. > > Keith > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Thu May 9 06:26:29 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Thu, 9 May 2013 08:26:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Greenhouse Gas In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Had been a CO2 measurable greenhouse effect, the mornings in Riyadh and other dry places, where water vapor does not interfere too much ... those morning should be warmer than they used to be. But they aren't, At least nobody reports that. Or in the Death Valley. Where the sole GHG is CO2, there should be warmer mornings nowdays. A good ground for new temperature records, which are all old. Science isn't settled. ;) On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 6:53 AM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > The total amount of heat coming in & going out > dwarfs the total amount blocked by CO2. In the > blanket analogy, imagine if each blanket was > incredibly thin, say 1/100th or less of an > ordinary blanket. Doubling the blankets, moth > eaten or not, will make a substantial difference. > > Further, the bed underneath slightly changes > color in places in response to the temperature. > E.g., white ice melts into darker, more > absorptive things. Feedback effects like this, > especially when energy normally distributed > across the entire Earth gets localized (such > as into a tornado), account for much of the > problem. > > > On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 9:42 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> Could someone please comment on this analysis? It seems to make sense to >> me, and that kind of worries me. I keep thinking this is settled to some >> extent in my head.... I want to believe science is not totally screwed over >> by politics, I want to believe... >> >> >>>>>>>>>>>> >> >> The misnamed ?greenhouse? effect of greenhouse gasses like CO2 is based >> on the fact that they are not truly colorless. They have a ?tint,? though >> we can?t see it, because it?s in a part of the light spectrum that our eyes >> don?t detect. GHGs are transparent in the visible part of the light >> spectrum, but they absorb (block) parts of the IR spectrum. >> >> Adding such gasses to the atmosphere has a warming effect on the lower >> atmosphere, because the light arriving at the earth from the sun is much >> ?bluer? (shorter average wavelength) than the light emitted from the earth. >> Because the earth is relatively cool, the light emitted from the earth is >> mostly IR. So anything in the atmosphere that blocks IR but is transparent >> to visible and UV will have a warming effect, because it lets in most of >> the arriving solar radiation (that warms the earth), but blocks a much >> larger percentage of the departing radiation (that cools the earth). >> >> Even though CO2 levels are measured in parts-per-million, there?s >> nevertheless already so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it blocks nearly >> all of the IR that it can possibly block. So adding more CO2 doesn?t have >> much effect on temperature. For CO2?s main absorption bands, we?re way, way >> past the CO2 levels at which the IR is all absorbed. Only for very narrow >> ranges of wavelengths at the fringes of those absorption bands, where CO2 >> is a very weak absorber, can adding more CO2 appreciably increase the >> amount of IR blocked. >> >> However, adding even a small amount of a different GHG (such as one of >> the CFCs or HCFCs) can have a much larger warming effect, by blocking a >> part of the IR spectrum for which the atmosphere would otherwise be >> transparent. That?s why you may read that CFCs like Freon-12 are thousands >> of times more potent as GHGs than CO2. It?s not that there?s anything >> fundamentally special about Freon-12, it?s just that there?s so few >> Freon-12 molecules in the atmosphere that some of their absorption bands >> aren?t already blocked. >> >> >> Here?s an analogy. Consider moth-eaten blankets to be like GHGs, and >> different positions one the blankets correspond to different parts of the >> IR spectrum. The blankets have big holes in some places, but nice, dense >> wool fabric in others. >> >> Different patterns of holes in the blankets are like different GHGs. They >> pass some parts of the IR spectrum, and block others. So ?CO2? blankets >> have one pattern of holes, ?CH4? blankets have a different pattern of >> holes, ?CFC-12? blankets have yet another pattern of holes, etc. >> >> Now, envision an obsessively compulsive neat-freak piling on moth-eaten >> blankets to try to keep warm in a chilly night. He exactly straightens and >> lines up each blanket on the bed. >> >> If he piles on a dozen identical ?CO2? blankets, with the holes all >> lining up exactly, he won?t be much warmer than if he had only one or two >> ?CO2? blankets. But if he adds a ?CH4? blanket, with many of its moth-holes >> in different places, then he?ll be a lot warmer, because some of the CO2 >> blanket?s holes will be blocked by the CH4 blanket, and vice-versa. And if >> he adds a ?CFC-12? blanket, with some of its holes in different places than >> the holes in the CO2 and CH4 blankets, he?ll be warmer yet. >> >> Right now, we?ve got about 10 or 20 CO2 blankets piled on. Adding another >> 5 or 10 or 20 CO2 blankets will keep us a tiny bit warmer at the frayed >> edges of the holes, but it won?t make near as much difference as adding >> some other kind of blanket. >> >> <<<<<<<<<<< >> >> Thanks! >> >> -Kelly >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 9 07:18:55 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 9 May 2013 09:18:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130509071854.GM26408@leitl.org> On Wed, May 08, 2013 at 05:10:31PM -0700, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 2:33 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > I'm sorry you dislike the numbers, or the conclusion one has to > > draw from them. > > > > But I can assure you that the core technology is almost a > > century old, and you will not be able to make it jump through > > hoops by throwing money at it (which you don't have) overnight. > > > > Just because a technology's been around for a while, does not > necessarily mean there's no way to make it substantially better. The operative word here is 'overnight'. Which means a few decades. > Among the examples: > > Our modern era seems defined by, if any one thing, a > significant increase in the rate at which such technological > developments are being realized. (Kind of like what one That doesn't apply to basic science progress and infrastructure. Shifts in infrastructure take 30-40 years and take giant input in terms of money and manpower as well as raw materials and energy. Frankly, the money is not there, the energy is hardly there, and we don't have the science muscle anymore. The specific areas are catalysts, electrochemistry, and chemistry. I genuinely hope that basic research there is still going on in Asia. > would see in the decades leading up to a Singularity.) > > This is not to say there necessarily is a way to improve > synthetic fuels, merely that "it's an old technology" is not > sufficient proof by itself. I've delivered an argument. It's not my task to make you understand it. > Separately, the impression I got from the article is of an > industry where all the corners have not been explored, > where there aren't years-old, let alone decades-old, > templates that haven't been substantially improved on > since, and otherwise that there's probably much room for > improvement - at least evolutionarily, if not revolutionarily, > but even small little increments can drive something from > "not profitable" to "sometimes profitable", and thence to > "reliably profitable". Profitability doesn't matter, the energy input and cost and construction of infrastructure does. Notice that this is all still driven by fossil, well past peak there's no coal or methane to drive it, so all process energy and input must come from renewable sources. That doesn't exactly sound cheap. My suggestion is got to hydrogen and methane/methanol (C1 feedstock) economy, which gives you fuel gases and liquids at much milder conditions and smaller scale. From rahmans at me.com Thu May 9 09:22:33 2013 From: rahmans at me.com (Omar Rahman) Date: Thu, 09 May 2013 11:22:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] putting the qual into qualia In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > Date: Wed, 08 May 2013 16:05:02 +0100 > From: Anders Sandberg > > > On 07/05/2013 22:49, Gordon wrote: >> Social pain is a quale, though we don't normally consider it when discussing qualia. I should probably take a Tylenol each time someone on ExI gives me grief. >> ---- >> Acetaminophen Reduces Social Pain > > It also seems to reduce existential and surreal anguish. > http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/04/11/0956797612464786.full > (One of the more amusing uses of David Lynch movies in science) > > The nice thing about this is that it actually helps us track down the > NCC - watching surreal movies doesn't (I assume) activate somatosensory > cortex, but probably (guessing here, based on past neuroscience, but I > would be surprised if it didn't happen) activates parts of the anterior > cingulate cortex. Neuroimaging can only give us so much, so we still > have to figure out the finer structure, but it seems that the ACC is > among the key parts of the neural substrate of suffering itself, > regardless of whether the cause is pain, social exclusion or existential > dread. And we know people with certain ACC damage experience pain > (presumably the quale of pain sensation) but do not suffer (no quale of > suffering) - they report they have the pain but it does not bother them. > It would be interesting to see if this is true for other sources of > suffering. > > -- > Anders Sandberg, > Future of Humanity Institute > Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University Anders, Let me preface this by saying that I really do like reading your posts. Can you explain to me the loss in meaning in the following sentence, if any, compared to your sentence above. "And we know people with certain ACC damage experience pain but do not suffer - they report they have the pain but it does not bother them." After removing reference to qualia this sentence does very well with the verbs 'experience', 'suffer', and 'bother' without positing some ill-defined noun 'quale'. And, if a noun is required why not something like 'neural state' or 'neural pattern'? The phrases, "presumably the neural state of pain sensation" and "no neural pattern of suffering" seem understandable and require no special entity like a 'quale'. Quale as a term comes loaded with strong dualist connotation which I think implies some sort of 'magic'. Could sentences with 'quale' in them be read just as well by substituting 'magic'; "presumably the magic of pain sensation". So Mr. Anders Sandberg, are you some sort of dualist? Does dualism require some 'magic' or is everything accessible to the scientific knowledge we have at present? And, if such a smart guy as yourself is a dualist, can you persuade me that I should be too? Best regards, Omar Rahman -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu May 9 14:41:05 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 9 May 2013 16:41:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fashion In-Reply-To: References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> <518579FE.3050202@aleph.se> <00d701ce4910$1c3765a0$54a630e0$@rainier66.com> <51858A1E.6090408@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 5 May 2013 09:50, Giulio Prisco wrote: > My own coolness standard is simple: I don't think about coolness at > all. I tend to buy cheap but solid clothes that may last for decades, > with simple colors without labels and decorations. When I wake up, I > wear the first clean things that I find. The message that I try to > give is "there is no message here." Hey, I spend more than a little time every day deciding what to wear, how to put things together in original ways, what else I may need and how much I do not care about the embarrassment of being unconventionally overdressed for the occasion. :-) But let me say that I have a soft spot for the simplicity of tails with a white tie. .-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mlatorra at gmail.com Thu May 9 15:25:45 2013 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Thu, 9 May 2013 09:25:45 -0600 Subject: [ExI] putting the qual into qualia In-Reply-To: References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Thank you, John Clark, for posting Smullyan's piece "An Epistemological Nightmare." I've treasured his writings ever since I first encountered his volume titled "What Is the Name of this Book?" Smullyan is indeed as mystic, self-described. But there is nothing woolly-headed about his mysticism. For anyone interested in further investigating this claim, I refer you to Smullyan's book "The Tao Is Silent." Best, Michael LaTorra On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 10:59 PM, John Clark wrote: > On Tue, May 7, 2013 Gordon wrote: > > >> Gordon, suppose the fMRI said that you were in great pain, absolute >>> agony, but you felt just fine, very happy and healthy; who are you going >>> to believe, the machine or your own direct experience? >>> >> >> > I would believe my direct experience. >> > > Smart move, therefore we can never be as certain of the qualia experienced > by other people or by other computers as we are of ourselves because we > only have direct experiance to our own qualia; Raymond Smullyan made that > clear in his 1982 dialog "An Epistemological Nightmare". By the way, > Smullyan is something of a mystic and before I started reading his > wonderful and beautiful books I thought all mystics were fools, but now I > just think that most mystics are fools: > > An Epistemological Nightmare > > > Scene 1 > > Frank is in the office of an eye doctor. The doctor holds up a book and > asks "What color is it?" Frank answers, "Red." The doctor says, "Aha, just > as I thought! Your whole color mechanism has gone out of kilter. But > fortunately your condition is curable, and I will have you in perfect shape > in a couple of weeks." > Scene 2 > > (A few weeks later.) Frank is in a laboratory in the home of an > experimental epistemologist. (You will soon find out what that means!) The > epistemologist holds up a book and also asks, "What color is this book?" > Now, Frank has been earlier dismissed by the eye doctor as "cured." > However, he is now of a very analytical and cautious temperament, and will > not make any statement that can possibly be refuted. So Frank answers, "It > seems red to me." > > *Epistemologist:* > Wrong! > > *Frank:* > I don't think you heard what I said. I merely said that it seems red > to me. > > *Epistemologist:* > I heard you, and you were wrong. > > *Frank:* > Let me get this clear; did you mean that I was wrong that this book is > red, or that I was wrong that it seems red to me? > > *Epistemologist:* > I obviously couldn't have meant that you were wrong in that it is red, > since you did not say that it is red. All you said was that it seems red to > you, and it is this statement which is wrong. > > *Frank:* > But you can't say that the statement "It seems red to me" is wrong. > > *Epistemologist:* > If I can't say it, how come I did? > > *Frank:* > I mean you can't mean it. > > *Epistemologist:* > Why not? > > *Frank:* > But surely I know what color the book seems to me! > > *Epistemologist:* > Again you are wrong. > > *Frank:* > But nobody knows better than I how things seem to me. > > *Epistemologist:* > I am sorry, but again you are wrong. > > *Frank:* > But who knows better than I? > > *Epistemologist:* > I do. > > *Frank:* > But how could you have access to my private mental states? > > *Epistemologist:* > Private mental states! Metaphysical hogwash! Look, I am a practical > epistemologist. Metaphysical problems about "mind" versus "matter" arise > only from epistemological confusions. Epistemology is the true foundation > of philosophy. But the trouble with all past epistemologists is that they > have been using wholly theoretical methods, and much of their discussion > degenerates into mere word games. While other epistemologists have been > solemnly arguing such questions as whether a man can be wrong when he > asserts that he believes such and such, I have discovered how to settle > such questions experimentally. > > *Frank:* > How could you possibly decide such things empirically? > > *Epistemologist:* > By reading a person's thoughts directly. > > *Frank:* > You mean you are telepathic? > > *Epistemologist:* > Of course not. I simply did the one obvious thing which should be > done, viz. I have constructed a brain-reading machine--known technically as > a cerebroscope--that is operative right now in this room and is scanning > every nerve cell in your brain. I thus can read your every sensation and > thought, and it is a simple objective truth that this book does not seem > red to you. > > *Frank (thoroughly subdued):* > Goodness gracious, I really could have sworn that the book seemed red > to me; it sure seems that it seems read to me! > > *Epistemologist:* > I'm sorry, but you are wrong again. > > *Frank:* > Really? It doesn't even seem that it seems red to me? It sure seems > like it seems like it seems red to me! > > *Epistemologist:* > Wrong again! And no matter how many times you reiterate the phrase "it > seems like" and follow it by "the book is red" you will be wrong. > > *Frank:* > This is fantastic! Suppose instead of the phrase "it seems like" I > would say "I believe that." So let us start again at ground level. I > retract the statement "It seems red to me" and instead I assert "I believe > that this book is red." Is this statement true or false? > > *Epistemologist:* > Just a moment while I scan the dials of the brain-reading machine--no, > the statement is false. > > *Frank:* > And what about "I believe that I believe that the book is red"? > > *Epistemologist (consulting his dials):* > Also false. And again, no matter how many times you iterate "I > believe," all these belief sentences are false. > > *Frank:* > Well, this has been a most enlightening experience. However, you must > admit that it is a little hard on me to realize that I am entertaining > infinitely many erroneous beliefs! > > *Epistemologist:* > Why do you say that your beliefs are erroneous? > > *Frank:* > But you have been telling me this all the while! > > *Epistemologist:* > I most certainly have not! > > *Frank:* > Good God, I was prepared to admit all my errors, and now you tell me > that my beliefs are not errors; what are you trying to do, drive me crazy? > > *Epistemologist:* > Hey, take it easy! Please try to recall: When did I say or imply that > any of your beliefs are erroneous? > > *Frank:* > Just simply recall the infinite sequence of sentences: (1) I believe > this book is red; (2) I believe that I believe this book is red; and so > forth. You told me that every one of those statements is false. > > *Epistemologist:* > True. > > *Frank:* > Then how can you consistently maintain that my beliefs in all these > false statements are not erroneous? > > *Epistemologist:* > Because, as I told you, you don't believe any of them. > > *Frank:* > I think I see, yet I am not absolutely sure. > > *Epistemologist:* > Look, let me put it another way. Don't you see that the very falsity > of each of the statements that you assert saves you from an erroneous > belief in the preceding one? The first statement is, as I told you, false. > Very well! Now the second statement is simply to the effect that you > believe the first statement. If the second statement were true, then you > would believe the first statement, and hence your belief about the first > statement would indeed be in error. But fortunately the second statement is > false, hence you don't really believe the first statement, so your belief > in the first statement is not in error. Thus the falsity of the second > statement implies you do not have an erroneous belief about the first; the > falsity of the third likewise saves you from an erroneous belief about the > second, etc. > > *Frank:* > Now I see perfectly! So none of my beliefs were erroneous, only the > statements were erroneous. > > *Epistemologist:* > Exactly. > > *Frank:* > Most remarkable! Incidentally, what color is the book really? > > *Epistemologist:* > It is red. > > *Frank:* > What! > > *Epistemologist:* > Exactly! Of course the book is red. What's the matter with you, don't > you have eyes? > > *Frank:* > But didn't I in effect keep saying that the book is red all along? > > *Epistemologist:* > Of course not! You kept saying it seems red to you, it seems like it > seems red to you, you believe it is red, you believe that you believe it is > red, and so forth. Not once did you say that it is red. When I originally > asked you "What color is the book?" if you had simply answered "red," this > whole painful discussion would have been avoided. > Scene 3 > > Frank comes back several months later to the home of the epistemologist. > > *Epistemologist:* > How delightful to see you! Please sit down. > > *Frank (seated):* > I have been thinking of our last discussion, and there is much I wish > to clear up. To begin with, I discovered an inconsistency in some of the > things you said. > > *Epistemologist:* > Delightful! I love inconsistencies. Pray tell! > > *Frank:* > Well, you claimed that although my belief sentences were false, I did > not have any actual beliefs that are false. If you had not admitted that > the book actually is red, you would have been consistent. But your very > admission that the book is red, leads to an inconsistency. > > *Epistemologist:* > How so? > > *Frank:* > Look, as you correctly pointed out, in each of my belief sentences "I > believe it is red," "I believe that I believe it is red," the falsity of > each one other than the first saves me from an erroneous belief in the > proceeding one. However, you neglected to take into consideration the first > sentence itself. The falsity of the first sentence "I believe it is red," > in conjunction with the fact that it is red, does imply that I do have a > false belief. > > *Epistemologist:* > I don't see why. > > *Frank:* > It is obvious! Since the sentence "I believe it is red" is false, then > I in fact believe it is not red, and since it really is red, then I do have > a false belief. So there! > > *Epistemologist (disappointed):* > I am sorry, but your proof obviously fails. Of course the falsity of > the fact that you believe it is red implies that you don't believe it is > red. But this does not mean that you believe it is not red! > > *Frank:* > But obviously I know that it either is red or it isn't, so if I don't > believe it is, then I must believe that it isn't. > > *Epistemologist:* > Not at all. I believe that either Jupiter has life or it doesn't. But > I neither believe that it does, nor do I believe that it doesn't. I have no > evidence one way or the other. > > *Frank:* > Oh well, I guess you are right. But let us come to more important > matters. I honestly find it impossible that I can be in error concerning my > own beliefs. > > *Epistemologist:* > Must we go through this again? I have already patiently explained to > you that you (in the sense of your beliefs, not your statements) are not in > error. > > *Frank:* > Oh, all right then, I simply do not believe that even the statements > are in error. Yes, according to the machine they are in error, but why > should I trust the machine? > > *Epistemologist:* > Whoever said you should trust the machine? > > *Frank:* > Well, should I trust the machine? > > *Epistemologist:* > That question involving the word "should" is out of my domain. > However, if you like, I can refer you to a colleague who is an excellent > moralist--he may be able to answer this for you. > > *Frank:* > Oh come on now, I obviously didn't mean "should" in a moralistic > sense. I simply meant "Do I have any evidence that this machine is > reliable?" > > *Epistemologist:* > Well, do you? > > *Frank:* > Don't ask me! What I mean is should you trust the machine? > > *Epistemologist:* > Should I trust it? I have no idea, and I couldn't care less what I > should do. > > *Frank:* > Oh, your moralistic hangup again. I mean, do you have evidence that > the machine is reliable? > > *Epistemologist:* > Well of course! > > *Frank:* > Then let's get down to brass tacks. What is your evidence? > > *Epistemologist:* > You hardly can expect that I can answer this for you in an hour, a > day, or a week. If you wish to study this machine with me, we can do so, > but I assure you this is a matter of several years. At the end of that > time, however, you would certainly not have the slightest doubts about the > reliability of the machine. > > *Frank:* > Well, possibly I could believe that it is reliable in the sense that > its measurements are accurate, but then I would doubt that what it actually > measures is very significant. It seems that all it measures is one's > physiological states and activities. > > *Epistemologist:* > But of course, what else would you expect it to measure? > > *Frank:* > I doubt that it measures my psychological states, my actual beliefs. > > *Epistemologist:* > Are we back to that again? The machine does measure those > physiological states and processes that you call psychological states, > beliefs, sensations, and so forth. > > *Frank:* > At this point I am becoming convinced that our entire difference is > purely semantical. All right, I will grant that your machine does correctly > measure beliefs in your sense of the word "belief," but I don't believe > that it has any possibility of measuring beliefs in my sense of the word > "believe." In other words I claim that our entire deadlock is simply due to > the fact that you and I mean different things by the word "belief." > > *Epistemologist:* > Fortunately, the correctness of your claim can be decided > experimentally. It so happens that I now have two brain-reading machines in > my office, so I now direct one to your brain to find out what you mean by > "believe" and now I direct the other to my own brain to find out what I > mean by "believe," and now I shall compare the two readings. Nope, I'm > sorry, but it turns out that we mean exactly the same thing by the word > "believe." > > *Frank:* > Oh, hang your machine! Do you believe we mean the same thing by the > word "believe"? > > *Epistemologist:* > Do I believe it? Just a moment while I check with the machine. Yes, it > turns out I do believe it. > > *Frank:* > My goodness, do you mean to say that you can't even tell me what you > believe without consulting the machine? > > *Epistemologist:* > Of course not. > > *Frank:* > But most people when asked what they believe simply tell you. Why do > you, in order to find out your beliefs, go through the fantastically > roundabout process of directing a thought-reading machine to your own brain > and then finding out what you believe on the basis of the machine readings? > > *Epistemologist:* > What other scientific, objective way is there of finding out what I > believe? > > *Frank:* > Oh, come now, why don't you just ask yourself? > > *Epistemologist (sadly):* > It doesn't work. Whenever I ask myself what I believe, I never get any > answer! > > *Frank:* > Well, why don't you just state what you believe? > > *Epistemologist:* > How can I state what I believe before I know what I believe? > > *Frank:* > Oh, to hell with your knowledge of what you believe; surely you have > some idea or belief as to what you believe, don't you? > > *Epistemologist:* > Of course I have such a belief. But how do I find out what this belief > is? > > *Frank:* > I am afraid we are getting into another infinite regress. Look, at > this point I am honestly beginning to wonder whether you may be going > crazy. > > *Epistemologist:* > Let me consult the machine. Yes, it turns out that I may be going > crazy. > > *Frank:* > Good God, man, doesn't this frighten you? > > *Epistemologist:* > Let me check! Yes, it turns out that it does frighten me. > > *Frank:* > Oh please, can't you forget this damned machine and just tell me > whether you are frightened or not? > > *Epistemologist:* > I just told you that I am. However, I only learned of this from the > machine. > > *Frank:* > I can see that it is utterly hopeless to wean you away from the > machine. Very well, then, let us play along with the machine some more. Why > don't you ask the machine whether your sanity can be saved? > > *Epistemologist:* > Good idea! Yes, it turns out that it can be saved. > > *Frank:* > And how can it be saved? > > *Epistemologist:* > I don't know, I haven't asked the machine. > > *Frank:* > Well, for God's sake, ask it! > > *Epistemologist:* > Good idea. It turns out that... > > *Frank:* > It turns out what? > > *Epistemologist:* > It turns out that... > > *Frank:* > Come on now, it turns out what? > > *Epistemologist:* > This is the most fantastic thing I have ever come across! According to > the machine the best thing I can do is to cease to trust the machine! > > *Frank:* > Good! What will you do about it? > > *Epistemologist:* > How do I know what I will do about it, I can't read the future? > > *Frank:* > I mean, what do you presently intend to do about it? > > *Epistemologist:* > Good question, let me consult the machine. According to the machine, > my current intentions are in complete conflict. And I can see why! I am > caught in a terrible paradox! If the machine is trustworthy, then I had > better accept its suggestion to distrust it. But if I distrust it, then I > also distrust its suggestion to distrust it, so I am really in a total > quandary. > > *Frank:* > Look, I know of someone who I think might be really of help in this > problem. I'll leave you for a while to consult him. Au revoir! > Scene 4. > > (Later in the day at a psychiatrist's office.) > > *Frank:* > Doctor, I am terribly worried about a friend of mine. He calls himself > an "experimental epistemologist." > > *Doctor:* > Oh, the experimental epistemologist. There is only one in the world. I > know him well! > > *Frank:* > That is a relief. But do you realize that he has constructed a > mind-reading device that he now directs to his own brain, and whenever one > asks him what he thinks, believes, feels, is afraid of, and so on, he has > to consult the machine first before answering? Don't you think this is > pretty serious? > > *Doctor:* > Not as serious as it might seem. My prognosis for him is actually > quite good. > > *Frank:* > Well, if you are a friend of his, couldn't you sort of keep an eye on > him? > > *Doctor:* > I do see him quite frequently, and I do observe him much. However, I > don't think he can be helped by so-called "psychiatric treatment." His > problem is an unusual one, the sort that has to work itself out. And I > believe it will. > > *Frank:* > Well, I hope your optimism is justified. At any rate I sure think I > need some help at this point! > > *Doctor:* > How so? > > *Frank:* > My experiences with the epistemologist have been thoroughly unnerving! > At this point I wonder if I may be going crazy; I can't even have > confidence in how things appear to me. I think maybe you could be helpful > here. > > *Doctor:* > I would be happy to but cannot for a while. For the next three months > I am unbelievably overloaded with work. After that, unfortunately, I must > go on a three-month vacation. So in six months come back and we can talk > this over. > Scene 5. > > (Same office, six months later.) > > *Doctor:* > Before we go into your problems, you will be happy to hear that your > friend the epistemologist is now completely recovered. > > *Frank:* > Marvelous, how did it happen? > > *Doctor:* > Almost, as it were, by a stroke of fate--and yet his very mental > activities were, so to speak, part of the "fate." What happened was this: > For months after you last saw him, he went around worrying "should I trust > the machine, shouldn't I trust the machine, should I, shouldn't I, should > I, shouldn't I." (He decided to use the word "should" in your empirical > sense.) He got nowhere! So he then decided to "formalize" the whole > argument. He reviewed his study of symbolic logic, took the axioms of > first-order logic, and added as nonlogical axioms certain relevant facts > about the machine. Of course the resulting system was inconsistent--he > formally proved that he should trust the machine if and only if he > shouldn't, and hence that he both should and should not trust the machine. > Now, as you may know, in a system based on classical logic (which is the > logic he used), if one can prove so much as a single contradictory > proposition, then one can prove any proposition, hence the whole system > breaks down. So he decided to use a logic weaker than classical logic--a > logic close to what is known as "minimal logic"--in which the proof of one > contradiction does not necessarily entail the proof of every proposition. > However, this system turned out too weak to decide the question of whether > or not he should trust the machine. Then he had the following bright idea. > Why not use classical logic in his system even though the resulting system > is inconsistent? Is an inconsistent system necessarily useless? Not at all! > Even though given any proposition, there exists a proof that it is true and > another proof that it is false, it may be the case that for any such pair > of proofs, one of them is simply more psychologically convincing than the > other, so simply pick the proof you actually believe! Theoretically the > idea turned out very well--the actual system he obtained really did have > the property that given any such pair of proofs, one of them was always > psychologically far more convincing than the other. Better yet, given any > pair of contradictory propositions, all proofs of one were more convincing > than any proof of the other. Indeed, anyone except the epistemologist could > have used the system to decide whether the machine could be trusted. But > with the epistemologist, what happened was this: He obtained one proof that > he should trust the machine and another proof that he should not. Which > proof was more convincing to him, which proof did he really "believe"? The > only way he could find out was to consult the machine! But he realized that > this would be begging the question, since his consulting the machine would > be a tacit admission that he did in fact trust the machine. So he still > remained in a quandary. > > *Frank:* > So how did he get out of it? > > *Doctor:* > Well, here is where fate kindly interceded. Due to his absolute > absorption in the theory of this problem, which consumed about his every > waking hour, he became for the first time in his life experimentally > negligent. As a result, quite unknown to him, a few minor units of his > machine blew out! Then, for the first time, the machine started giving > contradictory information--not merely subtle paradoxes, but blatant > contradictions. In particular, the machine one day claimed that the > epistemologist believed a certain proposition and a few days later claimed > he did not believe that proposition. And to add insult to injury, the > machine claimed that he had not changed his belief in the last few days. > This was enough to simply make him totally distrust the machine. Now he is > fit as a fiddle. > > *Frank:* > This is certainly the most amazing thing I have ever heard! I guess > the machine was really dangerous and unreliable all along. > > *Doctor:* > Oh, not at all; the machine used to be excellent before the > epistemologist's experimental carelessness put it out of whack. > > *Frank:* > Well, surely when I knew it, it couldn't have been very reliable. > > *Doctor:* > Not so, Frank, and this brings us to your problem. I know about your > entire conversation with the epistemologist--it was all tape-recorded. > > *Frank:* > Then surely you realize the machine could not have been right when it > denied that I believed the book was red. > > *Doctor:* > Why not? > > *Frank:* > Good God, do I have to go through all this nightmare again? I can > understand that a person can be wrong if he claims that a certain physical > object has a certain property, but have you ever known a single case when a > person can be mistaken when he claims to have or not have a certain > sensation? > > *Doctor:* > Why, certainly! I once knew a Christian Scientist who had a raging > toothache; he was frantically groaning and moaning all over the place. When > asked whether a dentist might not cure him, he replied that there was > nothing to be cured. Then he was asked, "But do you not feel pain?" He > replied, "No, I do not feel pain; nobody feels pain, there is no such thing > as pain, pain is only an illusion." So here is a case of a man who claimed > not to feel pain, yet everyone present knew perfectly well that he did feel > pain. I certainly don't believe he was lying, he was just simply mistaken. > > *Frank:* > Well, all right, in a case like that. But how can one be mistaken if > one asserts his belief about the color of a book? > > *Doctor:* > I can assure you that without access to any machine, if I asked > someone what color is this book, and he answered, "I believe it is red," I > would be very doubtful that he really believed it. It seems to me that if > he really believed it, he would answer, "It is red" and not "I believe it > is red" or "It seems red to me." The very timidity of his response would be > indicative of his doubts. > > *Frank:* > But why on earth should I have doubted that it was red? > > *Doctor:* > You should know that better than I. Let us see now, have you ever in > the past had reason to doubt the accuracy of your sense perception? > > *Frank:* > Why, yes. A few weeks before visiting the epistemologist, I suffered > from an eye disease, which did make me see colors falsely. But I was cured > before my visit. > > *Doctor:* > Oh, so no wonder you doubted it was red! True enough, your eyes > perceived the correct color of the book, but your earlier experience > lingered in your mind and made it impossible for you to really believe it > was red. So the machine was right! > > *Frank:* > Well, all right, but then why did I doubt that I believed it was true? > > *Doctor:* > Because you didn't believe it was true, and unconsciously you were > smart enough to realize the fact. Besides, when one starts doubting one's > own sense perceptions, the doubt spreads like an infection to higher and > higher levels of abstraction until finally the whole belief system becomes > one doubting mass of insecurity. I bet that if you went to the > epistemologist's office now, and if the machine were repaired, and you now > claimed that you believe the book is red, the machine would concur. > > No, Frank, the machine is--or, rather, was--a good one. The epistemologist > learned much from it, but misused it when he applied it to his own brain. > He really should have known better than to create such an unstable > situation. The combination of his brain and the machine each scrutinizing > and influencing the behavior of the other led to serious problems in > feedback. Finally the whole system went into a cybernetic wobble. Something > was bound to give sooner or later. Fortunately, it was the machine. > > *Frank:* > I see. One last question, though. How could the machine be trustworthy > when it claimed to be untrustworthy? > > *Doctor:* > The machine never claimed to be untrustworthy, it only claimed that > the epistemologist would be better off not trusting it. And the machine was > right. > > > John K Clark > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 May 9 15:33:09 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Thu, 9 May 2013 11:33:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Transhumanists Map Message-ID: I recently came across a similar map for a group I was interested in, and thought this was something that we could really use for Transhumanists. Please add your location, with identifying info, to this: http://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=562692 Thanks, James James Clement -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gsantostasi at gmail.com Thu May 9 20:46:35 2013 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Thu, 9 May 2013 15:46:35 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Transhumanists Map In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Done. On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 10:33 AM, James Clement wrote: > I recently came across a similar map for a group I was interested in, and > thought this was something that we could really use for Transhumanists. > Please add your location, with identifying info, to this: > http://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=562692 > > Thanks, > > James > > James Clement > > _______________________________________________ > 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 May 9 21:44:43 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Thu, 9 May 2013 17:44:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Transhumanists Map In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 4:46 PM, Giovanni Santostasi wrote: > Done. > > > > On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 10:33 AM, James Clement wrote: > >> I recently came across a similar map for a group I was interested in, and >> thought this was something that we could really use for Transhumanists. >> Please add your location, with identifying info, to this: >> http://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=562692 >> >> Thanks, >> >> James >> >> James Clement >> >> >> Awesome Giovanni. Thanks! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kgh1kgh2 at gmail.com Thu May 9 21:27:02 2013 From: kgh1kgh2 at gmail.com (Kevin G Haskell) Date: Thu, 9 May 2013 17:27:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] WSJ Article: "In Defense of CO2" Message-ID: "In Defense of Carbon Dioxide" - WSJ "By HARRISON H. SCHMITT AND WILLIAM HAPPER Of all of the world's chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That's simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity. The cessation of observed global warming for the past decade or so has shown how exaggerated NASA's and most other computer predictions of human-caused warming have been?and how little correlation warming has with concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As many scientists have pointed out, variations in global temperature correlate much better with solar activity and with complicated cycles of the oceans and atmosphere. There isn't the slightest evidence that more carbon dioxide has caused more extreme weather. The current levels of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere, approaching 400 parts per million, are low by the standards of geological and plant evolutionary history. Levels were 3,000 ppm, or more, until the Paleogene period (beginning about 65 million years ago). For most plants, and for the animals and humans that use them, more carbon dioxide, far from being a "pollutant" in need of reduction, would be a benefit. This is already widely recognized by operators of commercial greenhouses, who artificially increase the carbon dioxide levels to 1,000 ppm or more to improve the growth and quality of their plants. Using energy from sunlight?together with the catalytic action of an ancient enzyme called rubisco, the most abundant protein on earth?plants convert carbon dioxide from the air into carbohydrates and other useful molecules. Rubisco catalyzes the attachment of a carbon-dioxide molecule to another five-carbon molecule to make two three-carbon molecules, which are subsequently converted into carbohydrates. (Since the useful product from the carbon dioxide capture consists of three-carbon molecules, plants that use this simple process are called C3 plants.) C3 plants, such as wheat, rice, soybeans, cotton and many forage crops, evolved when there was much more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than today. So these agricultural staples are actually undernourished in carbon dioxide relative to their original design. At the current low levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, rubisco in C3 plants can be fooled into substituting oxygen molecules for carbon-dioxide molecules. But this substitution reduces the efficiency of photosynthesis, especially at high temperatures. To get around the problem, a small number of plants have evolved a way to enrich the carbon-dioxide concentration around the rubisco enzyme, and to suppress the oxygen concentration. Called C4 plants because they utilize a molecule with four carbons, plants that use this evolutionary trick include sugar cane, corn and other tropical plants. Although C4 plants evolved to cope with low levels of carbon dioxide, the workaround comes at a price, since it takes additional chemical energy. With high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, C4 plants are not as productive as C3 plants, which do not have the overhead costs of the carbon-dioxide enrichment system. That's hardly all that goes into making the case for the benefits of carbon dioxide. Right now, at our current low levels of carbon dioxide, plants are paying a heavy price in water usage. Whether plants are C3 or C4, the way they get carbon dioxide from the air is the same: The plant leaves have little holes, or stomata, through which carbon dioxide molecules can diffuse into the moist interior for use in the plant's photosynthetic cycles. The density of water molecules within the leaf is typically 60 times greater than the density of carbon dioxide in the air, and the diffusion rate of the water molecule is greater than that of the carbon-dioxide molecule. So depending on the relative humidity and temperature, 100 or more water molecules diffuse out of the leaf for every molecule of carbon dioxide that diffuses in. And not every carbon-dioxide molecule that diffuses into a leaf gets incorporated into a carbohydrate. As a result, plants require many hundreds of grams of water to produce one gram of plant biomass, largely carbohydrate. Driven by the need to conserve water, plants produce fewer stomata openings in their leaves when there is more carbon dioxide in the air. This decreases the amount of water that the plant is forced to transpire and allows the plant to withstand dry conditions better. Crop yields in recent dry years were less affected by drought than crops of the dust-bowl droughts of the 1930s, when there was less carbon dioxide. Nowadays, in an age of rising population and scarcities of food and water in some regions, it's a wonder that humanitarians aren't clamoring for more atmospheric carbon dioxide. Instead, some are denouncing it. We know that carbon dioxide has been a much larger fraction of the earth's atmosphere than it is today, and the geological record shows that life flourished on land and in the oceans during those times. The incredible list of supposed horrors that increasing carbon dioxide will bring the world is pure belief disguised as science. Mr. Schmitt, an adjunct professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was an Apollo 17 astronaut and a former U.S. senator from New Mexico. Mr. Happer is a professor of physics at Princeton University and a former director of the office of energy research at the U.S. Department of Energy. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323528404578452 483656067190.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop -- * Tweet me on Twitter! - @*KevinGHaskell -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 9 21:57:57 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 9 May 2013 14:57:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Transhumanists Map In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00b701ce4d00$44dcc1a0$ce9644e0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of James Clement Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2013 2:45 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Transhumanists Map On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 4:46 PM, Giovanni Santostasi wrote: Done. On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 10:33 AM, James Clement wrote: I recently came across a similar map for a group I was interested in, and thought this was something that we could really use for Transhumanists. Please add your location, with identifying info, to this: http://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=562692 Thanks, James James Clement Awesome Giovanni. Thanks! James if there is less than an overwhelming response to the map, it is likely intentional, a result of a vague uneasiness with telling the whole world where we live. I have successfully used zeemaps in other forums, such as motorcycle groups and mathematics groups, places where we really don't share our innermost thoughts and feelings, as are often seen on ExI-chat. Nothing against you at all, and we think the world of you pal. I will gladly tell you, James Clement, where I live if you contact me offlist, and I hope we can go to lunch somewhere locally. I probably won't put a pin on the map for the rest of the world to see. Alternate suggestion: start a map with this group and the question 'Where are you from?' Then the person interprets it however they like: where they were born, or where they misspent their childhood, or even where they would like to have been from or want to go, etc. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gsantostasi at gmail.com Thu May 9 22:48:41 2013 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Thu, 9 May 2013 17:48:41 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Transhumanists Map In-Reply-To: <00b701ce4d00$44dcc1a0$ce9644e0$@rainier66.com> References: <00b701ce4d00$44dcc1a0$ce9644e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: At the same time we should come out of the closet. We need to make transhumanism more main stream and be proudly declaring you are one to the world is one way to do it. Giovanni On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 4:57 PM, spike wrote: > ** ** > > ** ** > > *From:* extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto: > extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On Behalf Of *James Clement > *Sent:* Thursday, May 09, 2013 2:45 PM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Transhumanists Map**** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 4:46 PM, Giovanni Santostasi > wrote:**** > > Done. **** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 10:33 AM, James Clement > wrote:**** > > I recently came across a similar map for a group I was interested in, and > thought this was something that we could really use for Transhumanists. > Please add your location, with identifying info, to this: > http://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=562692**** > > ** ** > > Thanks,**** > > > James**** > > > **** > > James Clement**** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > Awesome Giovanni. Thanks! **** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > James if there is less than an overwhelming response to the map, it is > likely intentional, a result of a vague uneasiness with telling the whole > world where we live. I have successfully used zeemaps in other forums, > such as motorcycle groups and mathematics groups, places where we really > don?t share our innermost thoughts and feelings, as are often seen on > ExI-chat. Nothing against you at all, and we think the world of you pal. > I will gladly tell you, James Clement, where I live if you contact me > offlist, and I hope we can go to lunch somewhere locally. I probably won?t > put a pin on the map for the rest of the world to see.**** > > ** ** > > Alternate suggestion: start a map with this group and the question ?Where > are you from?? Then the person interprets it however they like: where they > were born, or where they misspent their childhood, or even where they would > like to have been from or want to go, etc.**** > > ** ** > > 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 May 9 23:58:37 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Thu, 9 May 2013 19:58:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Transhumanists Map In-Reply-To: <00b701ce4d00$44dcc1a0$ce9644e0$@rainier66.com> References: <00b701ce4d00$44dcc1a0$ce9644e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 5:57 PM, spike wrote: > > > James if there is less than an overwhelming response to the map, it is > likely intentional, a result of a vague uneasiness with telling the whole > world where we live. I have successfully used zeemaps in other forums, > such as motorcycle groups and mathematics groups, places where we really > don?t share our innermost thoughts and feelings, as are often seen on > ExI-chat. Nothing against you at all, and we think the world of you pal. > I will gladly tell you, James Clement, where I live if you contact me > offlist, and I hope we can go to lunch somewhere locally. I probably won?t > put a pin on the map for the rest of the world to see.**** > > ** ** > > Alternate suggestion: start a map with this group and the question ?Where > are you from?? Then the person interprets it however they like: where they > were born, or where they misspent their childhood, or even where they would > like to have been from or want to go, etc.**** > > ** ** > > spike**** > > ** ** > > Spike, There are more and more people who not only self-identify that they are Transhumanists, but actually work in the field (generally as speakers and authors). I think general transparency is good, and have gone so far as to "out" myself on PGP (I'm participant hu82E689). Letting others know that there are like-minded people out there - people they can go talk to and have a beer with on occasions - is going to help us grow our numbers, IMHO, which is why I started a Meetup back in Silicon Valley (I believe you attended some of those), and created h+ magazine. Anything we can do to bring positive awareness of our group's existence to others is a good thing. Thanks, James -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 10 00:14:23 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 9 May 2013 17:14:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Transhumanists Map In-Reply-To: References: <00b701ce4d00$44dcc1a0$ce9644e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00f501ce4d13$53f58600$fbe09200$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Giovanni Santostasi Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2013 3:49 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Transhumanists Map >.At the same time we should come out of the closet. We need to make transhumanism more main stream and be proudly declaring you are one to the world is one way to do it. Giovanni Ja, by all means. To clarify: I am definitely out of the closet on being a transhumanist, that I have no desire to hide from anyone. I just don't want every yahoo knowing where I live. I will give them Santa Clara County, California, that's a big place, AKA Silicon Valley. Regarding openness, I have gone thru about 20 pi radians on that over the years. Early on, I was a hard core openness advocate. Now that I have a family, and with the dramatic rise of identity theft, it isn't so clear to me that I should be so open about every detail. I am proud of being a transhumanist, I think it is really cool to carry that label and have others think of me as that, perhaps to ask questions about it. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Fri May 10 07:19:19 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 09:19:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] WSJ Article: "In Defense of CO2" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Yes! Knowing that more CO2 in the atmosphere means less water need for plants - is just essential. CO2 IS a blessing, in fact! On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 11:27 PM, Kevin G Haskell wrote: > "In Defense of Carbon Dioxide" - WSJ > > "By HARRISON H. SCHMITT AND WILLIAM HAPPER > > Of all of the world's chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than > carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural > and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy > production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a > dangerous pollutant. That's simply not the case. Contrary to what some > would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will > benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural > productivity. > > The cessation of observed global warming for the past decade or so has > shown how exaggerated NASA's and most other computer predictions of > human-caused warming have been?and how little correlation warming has with > concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As many scientists have > pointed out, variations in global temperature correlate much better with > solar activity and with complicated cycles of the oceans and atmosphere. > There isn't the slightest evidence that more carbon dioxide has caused more > extreme weather. > > The current levels of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere, > approaching 400 parts per million, are low by the standards of geological > and plant evolutionary history. Levels were 3,000 ppm, or more, until the > Paleogene period (beginning about 65 million years ago). For most plants, > and for the animals and humans that use them, more carbon dioxide, far from > being a "pollutant" in need of reduction, would be a benefit. This is > already widely recognized by operators of commercial greenhouses, who > artificially increase the carbon dioxide levels to 1,000 ppm or more to > improve the growth and quality of their plants. > > Using energy from sunlight?together with the catalytic action of an > ancient enzyme called rubisco, the most abundant protein on earth?plants > convert carbon dioxide from the air into carbohydrates and other useful > molecules. Rubisco catalyzes the attachment of a carbon-dioxide molecule to > another five-carbon molecule to make two three-carbon molecules, which are > subsequently converted into carbohydrates. (Since the useful product from > the carbon dioxide capture consists of three-carbon molecules, plants that > use this simple process are called C3 plants.) C3 plants, such as wheat, > rice, soybeans, cotton and many forage crops, evolved when there was much > more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than today. So these agricultural > staples are actually undernourished in carbon dioxide relative to their > original design. > > At the current low levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, rubisco in C3 > plants can be fooled into substituting oxygen molecules for carbon-dioxide > molecules. But this substitution reduces the efficiency of photosynthesis, > especially at high temperatures. To get around the problem, a small number > of plants have evolved a way to enrich the carbon-dioxide concentration > around the rubisco enzyme, and to suppress the oxygen concentration. Called > C4 plants because they utilize a molecule with four carbons, plants that > use this evolutionary trick include sugar cane, corn and other tropical > plants. > > Although C4 plants evolved to cope with low levels of carbon dioxide, the > workaround comes at a price, since it takes additional chemical energy. > With high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, C4 plants are not as > productive as C3 plants, which do not have the overhead costs of the > carbon-dioxide enrichment system. > > That's hardly all that goes into making the case for the benefits of > carbon dioxide. Right now, at our current low levels of carbon dioxide, > plants are paying a heavy price in water usage. Whether plants are C3 or > C4, the way they get carbon dioxide from the air is the same: The plant > leaves have little holes, or stomata, through which carbon dioxide > molecules can diffuse into the moist interior for use in the plant's > photosynthetic cycles. > > The density of water molecules within the leaf is typically 60 times > greater than the density of carbon dioxide in the air, and the diffusion > rate of the water molecule is greater than that of the carbon-dioxide > molecule. > > So depending on the relative humidity and temperature, 100 or more water > molecules diffuse out of the leaf for every molecule of carbon dioxide that > diffuses in. And not every carbon-dioxide molecule that diffuses into a > leaf gets incorporated into a carbohydrate. As a result, plants require > many hundreds of grams of water to produce one gram of plant biomass, > largely carbohydrate. > > Driven by the need to conserve water, plants produce fewer stomata > openings in their leaves when there is more carbon dioxide in the air. This > decreases the amount of water that the plant is forced to transpire and > allows the plant to withstand dry conditions better. > > Crop yields in recent dry years were less affected by drought than crops > of the dust-bowl droughts of the 1930s, when there was less carbon dioxide. > Nowadays, in an age of rising population and scarcities of food and water > in some regions, it's a wonder that humanitarians aren't clamoring for more > atmospheric carbon dioxide. Instead, some are denouncing it. > > We know that carbon dioxide has been a much larger fraction of the earth's > atmosphere than it is today, and the geological record shows that life > flourished on land and in the oceans during those times. The incredible > list of supposed horrors that increasing carbon dioxide will bring the > world is pure belief disguised as science. > > Mr. Schmitt, an adjunct professor of engineering at the University of > Wisconsin-Madison, was an Apollo 17 astronaut and a former U.S. senator > from New Mexico. Mr. Happer is a professor of physics at Princeton > University and a former director of the office of energy research at the > U.S. Department of Energy. > > http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323528404578452 > 483656067190.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop > > -- > * Tweet me on Twitter! - @*KevinGHaskell > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Fri May 10 10:18:15 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 11:18:15 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fashion In-Reply-To: References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> <518579FE.3050202@aleph.se> <00d701ce4910$1c3765a0$54a630e0$@rainier66.com> <51858A1E.6090408@aleph.se> Message-ID: <518CC967.7050803@aleph.se> On 2013-05-09 15:41, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 5 May 2013 09:50, Giulio Prisco > wrote: > > My own coolness standard is simple: I don't think about coolness at > all. I tend to buy cheap but solid clothes that may last for decades, > with simple colors without labels and decorations. When I wake up, I > wear the first clean things that I find. The message that I try to > give is "there is no message here." > > > Hey, I spend more than a little time every day deciding what to wear, > how to put things together in original ways, what else I may need and > how much I do not care about the embarrassment of being > unconventionally overdressed for the occasion. :-) Yes, but you do live in Milano and you do have great taste. And a mutual friend mentioned an amazing shirt collection... A mathematical model of dressing: suppose you have probability p of selecting something that looks good, and probability q of noticing when you have a bad combination. So after the first try you have a nice combination with probability p, leave with something ugly with probability (1-p)(1-q), and do a new try with probability (1-p)q. Then the total probability of ending up with something nice will be P = p + (1-p)q( p + (1-p)q ( p + ... )))). The series S=1+x(1+x(1+...)))) must fulfill S=1+x(S), or S=1/(1-x) (it is a geometric series after all), so P = p/(1-q(1-p)). For example, if p=0.5 and q=0.25, P=0.5/(1-.125)=0.57. If you have a sharper eye, q=0.5, and now P=0.66. But, how long does it take? The number of steps is distributed as a geometric random variable with parameter (1-p)q. So you should expect to do 1/(1-(1-p)q) trials before you finish. In the above p=q=0.5 case you would hence on average try 1.33 times. What is the most efficient level of critical scrutiny? We could model the utility as the probability of dressing nicely divided by the number of steps it takes: U=p[ (1+(1-p)q) / (1-q(1-p)) ] Obviously the utility goes up as p increases. It is a bit less harder to see, but the bracketed expression is also monotonically increasing: higher q means better utility. Hence one should be as critical as one can. Another utility model says that nice appearance has value N and sloppy appearance has zero value, and lost time has value -1 per step. In that case the total utility will be U=N(p/(1-q(1-p))) - 1/(1-q(1-p)) = (Np - 1)/(1-q(1-p)) So the utility goes up for higher q if N>1/p. If the value of looking neat across the day is better than losing a few minutes in the morning (how many minutes lost depends on your sense of style p) you should hence be a critical dresser. If if isn't, just throw on anything that fits and is clean enough. However, the wisdom of XKCD strikes again: by thinking through these considerations now, you can optimize your dressing for the foreseeable future. And you can save a lot of time by increasing p, especially if it is really low (it is both likely easy to increase, and it reduces the time spent iterating). But rationally, in situations where variation doesn't matter, it might be best to use memoization: just spend enough time to find a really perfect combination (or a set of combinations) and store them for later. That way dressing can be solved in O(1) time for everyday use. (Currently going for a spring look with a tan suit and slate-blue shirt that I think complements my cryonics necklace nicely.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 10 12:28:16 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 13:28:16 +0100 Subject: [ExI] WSJ Article: "In Defense of CO2" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 8:19 AM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > Yes! Knowing that more CO2 in the atmosphere means less water need for > plants - is just essential. CO2 IS a blessing, in fact! > > Phil Plait opposes the WSJ article. Main point is that apart from some happy plants, the article ignores all the other horrendous effects of global warming via pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. BillK From protokol2020 at gmail.com Fri May 10 13:50:44 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 15:50:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] WSJ Article: "In Defense of CO2" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > all the other horrendous effects of global warming via pumping CO2 I've failed to see any "horrendous effects" of those, I am very sorry. Show me just one! On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 2:28 PM, BillK wrote: > On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 8:19 AM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > > Yes! Knowing that more CO2 in the atmosphere means less water need for > > plants - is just essential. CO2 IS a blessing, in fact! > > > > > > < > http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/05/10/carbon_dioxide_and_global_warming_more_is_not_better.html > > > > Phil Plait opposes the WSJ article. > > Main point is that apart from some happy plants, the article ignores > all the other horrendous effects of global warming via pumping CO2 > into the atmosphere. > > > 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 spike at rainier66.com Fri May 10 13:39:05 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 06:39:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] FW: [tt] [x-risk] The frozen calm of normalcy bias In-Reply-To: <3631A119EB15854B832730C5CA624B2423C4781B@exmb3.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu> References: <3631A119EB15854B832730C5CA624B2423C4781B@exmb3.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu> Message-ID: <003601ce4d83$be2bf750$3a83e5f0$@rainier66.com> Thanks James, this is an excellent article. My take on it is that I have seen it firsthand. Understatement, I did it. In 30 years of misspent adulthood in California, I have experienced 5 notable earthquakes, one big one in 1989. In two of those I was with other people. Both of those times, I was surprised at how many people either did nothing or did the wrong thing, such as sit still and make brilliant comments such as "WHAT the HELL was THAT?!" when it should have been obvious within a second or two it is an EARTHQUAKE, ya silly goof, TAKE COVER, there might be more coming! In the 89 quake, at the first jolt, I walked over from my desk and peered out a huge picture window, a stunning example of profound stupidity. Another take on it: in our current world we are so accustomed to being overprotected, we seldom see any emergency, and even if we do, it is someone's job to handle it. We have all these firemen and EMTs and everything, our minds just immediately default to CALL 911 at the first sight of blood. But even then, accidents have become rare. Everyone is carrying a phone now, so we seldom come upon a fire or an accident where someone isn't already there taking care of it and doing it right, as opposed to you and me, who would do something wrong and get sued. Evidence: think right now back to the last time you were there at any emergency, such as any person needing an ambulance, a fire, an injury accident, where you were there before the public emergency professionals, and you needed to take some kind of action, anything? Examples would be getting your own fire extinguisher out of the trunk and using it, giving CPR, pulling anyone out of a wrecked vehicle, stopping any crime with your own firearm, take any action to deal with any kind of emergency other than just call for help on the phone. Emergencies have become extremely rare. This is good, but we are growing helpless as kittens. Check out the article: From: tt-bounces at postbiota.org [mailto:tt-bounces at postbiota.org] On Behalf Of Hughes, James J. http://io9.com/the-frozen-calm-of-normalcy-bias-486764924 The frozen calm of normalcy bias When disaster strikes, some people lose their heads, some people become cool and effective, but by far most people act as if they've suddenly forgotten the disaster. They behave in surprisingly mundane ways, right up until it's too late. Around the world, researchers are wondering how to combat normalcy bias. If you spend the beginning of your flights staring in disbelief at the cabin crew gesturing towards the emergency exits and asking you to look at them and think about walking to them in an emergency, you may be surprised that doing exactly that has saved one person. When two planes collided just above a runway in Tenerife in 1977, a man was stuck, with his wife, in a plane that was slowly being engulfed in flames. He remembered making a special note of the exits, grabbed his wife's hand, and ran towards one of them. As it happened, he didn't need to use it, since a portion of the plane had been sheared away. He jumped out, along with his wife and the few people who survived. Many more people should have made it out. Fleeing survivors ran past living, uninjured people who sat in seats literally watching for the minute it took for the flames to reach them. This isn't unique behavior, although plane crashes provide the most dramatic examples. People seeking shelter during tornadoes and cyclones are often called back, or delayed, by people doing normal activities, who refuse to believe the emergency is happening. These people are displaying what's known as normalcy bias. About 70% of people in a disaster do it. Although movies show crowds screaming and panicking, most people move dazedly through normal activities in a crisis. This can be a good thing; researchers find that people who are in this state are docile and can be directed without chaos. They even tend to quiet and calm the 10-15% of people who freak out. The downside of the bias is the fact that they tend to retard the progress of the 10-15% of people who act appropriately. The main source of delay masquerades as the need to get more data. Scientists call this "milling." People will usually get about four opinions on what's going on and what they should do before taking any action - even in an obvious crisis. People in emergency situations report calling out to others, asking, "What's going on?" When someone tells them to evacuate, or to take shelter, they fail to comply and move on, asking other people the same question. This isn't entirely loopy behavior. If something minor seems wrong, in your neighborhood, office, or home, it's hardly inappropriate to ask the people around what's happening. And how many of us have heard a suspicious noise nearby, paused for a moment, and then thought, "I'm sure it's nothing," and gone back to what we were doing? The problem comes when, even when it is obviously something, people stay in denial. There are a lot of theories for why this occurs. There's the shock itself, and the time it takes to process it. Even people who are well-trained and well-informed lose some of their knowledge and physical acumen under extreme pressure. Some researchers blame instincts. Animals that don't struggle during an attack by an overwhelmingly large predator are sometimes left alone. The passivity indicates sickness or poison, and puts off the predator. Faced with a threat that's overwhelmingly enormous, people may instinctively become passive as well. Other researchers believe those with normalcy bias are playing the odds. People step onto dangerous-looking roller coasters every day and scare themselves half to death, trusting that, no, the situation their instincts are screaming about couldn't possibly really be happening. Rounding out the theories about normalcy bias is the idea that people need information in order to act. If people don't know how to deal with a situation, they can't begin to deal with it, so they don't begin to deal with it. Nothing can be done about sudden shocks and natural instincts, so most researchers try to deal in increased information. This is why we're given countless safety lectures. Look at the exits and plan your exit route. In the event of an earthquake, a fire, a flood, do this. Drills and practices, even if only done in a person't imagination, at least give them the basic tools that they need when dealing with an emergency. More complicated, from a policy standpoint, is the need to personalize the risk. This information - that the present disaster will harm you, yes you, so take action - is the hardest to accurately disseminate. People mill, asking for opinions, because they want to be told that everything is fine. They will keep asking, and delaying, until they get the answer they want. In a completely alien emergency situation - such as a downed, flaming plane - people think of the likelihood that they're mistaken about the nature of the emergency, and the consequences for screwing up if they take personal action. Although early warning systems, alarms, and alerts proliferate, very few things manage to get through to specific people that they are in personal danger, that they are on their own, and that they need to take steps to save themselves. Via Geojournal, American Journal of Community Psychology, Natural Risk and Civil Protection, Time. _______________________________________________ existential mailing list existential at ieet.org https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/existential _______________________________________________ tt mailing list tt at postbiota.org http://postbiota.org/mailman/listinfo/tt From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 10 13:59:10 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 06:59:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fashion In-Reply-To: <518CC967.7050803@aleph.se> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> <518579FE.3050202@aleph.se> <00d701ce4910$1c3765a0$54a630e0$@rainier66.com> <51858A1E.6090408@aleph.se> <518CC967.7050803@aleph.se> Message-ID: <004301ce4d86$8cfc1450$a6f43cf0$@rainier66.com> On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: [ExI] Fashion On 2013-05-09 15:41, Stefano Vaj wrote: . >>.Hey, I spend more than a little time every day deciding what to wear, how to put things together in original ways, what else I may need and how much I do not care about the embarrassment of being unconventionally overdressed for the occasion. :-) >.Yes, but you do live in Milano and you do have great taste. And a mutual friend mentioned an amazing shirt collection... EXCELLENT Anders me lad! Finally! Someone writes about fashion in a language I can understand! This is ground-breaking work sir. If fashion magazines would have articles with this kind of material, I might actually read them, and perhaps put together some spreadsheets. If the models work right, I could lose my geek status, by becoming a snappy dresser! Of course it would be done by formula rather than by the traditional means, so that might actually strengthen my status. It isn't clear how it would work. spike Anders posted the following fascinating analysis: >.A mathematical model of dressing: suppose you have probability p of selecting something that looks good, and probability q of noticing when you have a bad combination. So after the first try you have a nice combination with probability p, leave with something ugly with probability (1-p)(1-q), and do a new try with probability (1-p)q. Then the total probability of ending up with something nice will be P = p + (1-p)q( p + (1-p)q ( p + ... )))). The series S=1+x(1+x(1+...)))) must fulfill S=1+x(S), or S=1/(1-x) (it is a geometric series after all), so P = p/(1-q(1-p)). For example, if p=0.5 and q=0.25, P=0.5/(1-.125)=0.57. If you have a sharper eye, q=0.5, and now P=0.66. But, how long does it take? The number of steps is distributed as a geometric random variable with parameter (1-p)q. So you should expect to do 1/(1-(1-p)q) trials before you finish. In the above p=q=0.5 case you would hence on average try 1.33 times. What is the most efficient level of critical scrutiny? We could model the utility as the probability of dressing nicely divided by the number of steps it takes: U=p[ (1+(1-p)q) / (1-q(1-p)) ] Obviously the utility goes up as p increases. It is a bit less harder to see, but the bracketed expression is also monotonically increasing: higher q means better utility. Hence one should be as critical as one can. Another utility model says that nice appearance has value N and sloppy appearance has zero value, and lost time has value -1 per step. In that case the total utility will be U=N(p/(1-q(1-p))) - 1/(1-q(1-p)) = (Np - 1)/(1-q(1-p)) So the utility goes up for higher q if N>1/p. If the value of looking neat across the day is better than losing a few minutes in the morning (how many minutes lost depends on your sense of style p) you should hence be a critical dresser. If if isn't, just throw on anything that fits and is clean enough. However, the wisdom of XKCD strikes again: by thinking through these considerations now, you can optimize your dressing for the foreseeable future. And you can save a lot of time by increasing p, especially if it is really low (it is both likely easy to increase, and it reduces the time spent iterating). But rationally, in situations where variation doesn't matter, it might be best to use memoization: just spend enough time to find a really perfect combination (or a set of combinations) and store them for later. That way dressing can be solved in O(1) time for everyday use. (Currently going for a spring look with a tan suit and slate-blue shirt that I think complements my cryonics necklace nicely.) Anders -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 10 14:02:15 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 15:02:15 +0100 Subject: [ExI] WSJ Article: "In Defense of CO2" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 2:50 PM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > I've failed to see any "horrendous effects" of those, I am very sorry. Show > me just one! > Sorry, but I'm not getting into a 'he said' v 'she said' global warming argument. There is plenty to read if you want to. The referenced article is a good start. BillK From protokol2020 at gmail.com Fri May 10 14:59:20 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 16:59:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] WSJ Article: "In Defense of CO2" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > There is plenty to read if you want to. I know. It is even more elsewhere. But I am picky and I don't read just everything. Especially not various cult literature. But I would read, if you could paste from somewhere or link why the WSJ article is wrong about CO2 - H20 relation at photosynthesis. (Poor dying black/white bear does not interest me in this context.) On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 4:02 PM, BillK wrote: > On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 2:50 PM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > > I've failed to see any "horrendous effects" of those, I am very sorry. > Show > > me just one! > > > > > Sorry, but I'm not getting into a 'he said' v 'she said' global > warming argument. > There is plenty to read if you want to. > > The referenced article is a good start. > < > http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/05/10/carbon_dioxide_and_global_warming_more_is_not_better.html > > > > > 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 rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri May 10 18:02:07 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 14:02:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 5:33 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Anything based on gasified coal is dead-ended, anyway ### Why? (only technical/economic issues, no eco-freak-caused legal/political obstacles, please) Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri May 10 18:37:03 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 14:37:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Extensive vs. intensive causes of energy demand Message-ID: On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 11:29 AM, spike wrote: > I will buy into part of Eugen?s reasoning, the part that would wipe the > Alfred E Newman grin off of even my own optimistic face: if we wait too long > to start, then there isn?t enough energy to build the energy conversion > facilities. The results will be horrifying. ### The only plausible situation where energy supply becomes a problem would be a breakdown of the normal feedback effects between energy demand and energy supply. In a functioning economy an increase in the difficulty of producing energy increases energy prices stimulating both more effort at energy production and reducing demand. If the economy is disrupted, for example by a war, a sudden physical disaster (e.g. supervolcano eruption or something similarly dramatic), or by a madness of crowds (communism, environmentalism, religious fervor), the responses to challenges may be delayed or perverse. Otherwise, as long as the markets are there to direct resources and inventiveness to satisfy our needs, the slow increases in energy demand due to growing populations are easily met by increased energy production. One issue that frequently gets glossed over by doom-freaks is that a large part of the recent increase in energy demand is not due to extensive factors such as population growth but due to intensive factors, that is an increase in wealth among the heretofore poor nations, such as China, and many others. From a humanitarian standpoint this is a very important distinction: The former could mean decreased energy per capita, while the latter could not. Decreased energy per capita is, after a point, indeed horrifying. Increased wealth among the poor is a reason to rejoice. But, from a strictly technical standpoint, the whole energy discussion is just silly - we are swimming in abundant and diverse sources of energy that can be economically used assuring cheap and plentiful supplies to take care of any plausible increases in human population, at least for hundreds of years (excluding singularity upload scenarios). So, we have no need to worry or rather, we might worry about human stupidity, not technical issues. Rafal From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 10 19:56:04 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 12:56:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] old video Message-ID: <009f01ce4db8$687851c0$3968f540$@rainier66.com> When my bride and her two brothers were all preschool age, her grandmother gave her parents one of those new portable movie cameras. Then suddenly, half a century went by. My bride's mother is in elder care, and her father is not far behind. We have been pulling out these old family movies and converting them to digital format, which is a very expensive procedure, but the content is very valuable to us. Yesterday we got some of those back and learned that they took the camera with them on a family vacation to the coast. Having grown up far inland, the young parents had really never seen anything like the teeny weeny bikinis that had become so popular by the mid 60s on California beaches. My father-in-law, being mid-twenties with three young children took plenty of footage of the local girls, being completely astonished at the scenery. Needless to say, I was most annoyed to find one of those expensive videos being more bikini than pictures of my bride and brothers in law in their early childhood. I was an unhappy pappy. But hey, I will cut him some slack; I remember testosterone. Vaguely. Now anyone can download all the bikini video you want, free from the internet, so its value is exactly zero. Understatement: you can get any video of any stage of undress, doing anything you can imagine and anything you cannot imagine, all free. Then an idea occurred to me. That fifty year old video would be extremely valuable to some people: the women in bikinis. They are now flabby old grandmas, mostly in their late 60s and 70s. Perhaps they have few or no photographs of themselves in that stage of undress at that age, and likely exactly no video. Photography was expensive in those days, and we didn't use cameras as toys generally. It is too bad I have no known way of identifying any of the women in those old videos, or any way to collect old beach video in some central location to invite people who might have been strutting beaches in the early 60s to come in and try to find themselves and their friends. That might be a hoot. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 10 20:27:39 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 13:27:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] old video Message-ID: <00b201ce4dbc$d22259a0$76670ce0$@rainier66.com> From: spike [mailto:spike at rainier66.com] Subject: old video >. It is too bad I have no known way of identifying any of the women in those old videos, or any way to collect old beach video in some central location to invite people who might have been strutting beaches in the early 60s to come in and try to find themselves and their friends. That might be a hoot. spike Oh my, I am getting that tingly feeling I often get when an idea comes along and I know someone somewhere is going to make a toooonnnnnn of money if they are the first one to work it out. I got that feeling in 1993 when I heard someone describe this new thing that was coming, the World Wide Web. I had it again when I heard of PayPal. Here's what is giving me the tingly feeling: Imagine a website where anyone could submit photos of themselves from any particular year, say 1964 and 1971 for instance. The state of the art in digital image recognition is either already there or will soon be to the point where it could search digital video files looking for a particular person from their still photograph. Image recognition hipsters, do help me here. So if we had an old video archive where anyone could submit their still photos and have the software dig around looking in the crowd scenes in the archived video, we might be able to pick up some hits. We could email back a tantalizing description to the prole: "We found about 17 seconds of video of you walking on the beach in a yellow polka dot bikini in 1963, and oh my what a young beauty. Three stills from that file enclosed. We will send you the entire digital file, 344 frames, only $3.99, such a deal. PS the staff loves your walk." We could even collect old film video from devices often no longer serviceable, in exchange for returning a complete digital file. That's what we have: the old film is in remarkably good shape, but the projector is worn out, the nylon cogs are worn and irreplaceable, and it is hard to find the old bulbs and so on. The projector still works but not well. So the challenge is to write software which can somehow take a still image and find that person in a digitized old home movie scene. Hipsters how close are we to that? Oh my, just thinking of the potential profit makes my butt hurt. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Fri May 10 20:45:59 2013 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 16:45:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] old video In-Reply-To: <00b201ce4dbc$d22259a0$76670ce0$@rainier66.com> References: <00b201ce4dbc$d22259a0$76670ce0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Google, with YouTube and Google+ has the infrastructure in place to do this today. Facebook did a facial recognition thing, but that didn't go over well. Don't remember the details, though. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri May 10 22:58:10 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 18:58:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] old video In-Reply-To: References: <00b201ce4dbc$d22259a0$76670ce0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 4:45 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > Google, with YouTube and Google+ has the infrastructure in place to do this > today. > > Facebook did a facial recognition thing, but that didn't go over well. Don't > remember the details, though. Your best hope would be to work out the algorithm then pretend you want to make this company work yourself. When you get enough success to seriously have business, sell to google/facebook/etc. There is no way you could compete with their scale. Of course they're also too large to think/do anything truly innovative anymore, so they just buy stuff. From eugen at leitl.org Sat May 11 10:32:58 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 12:32:58 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130511103258.GL26408@leitl.org> On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 02:02:07PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 5:33 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > Anything based on gasified coal is dead-ended, anyway > > ### Why? > > (only technical/economic issues, no eco-freak-caused legal/political > obstacles, please) It is funny you make that stipulation to me in particular. The reasons are simple enough -- peak total fossil is somewhen 2020..2030 (the exact decade doesn't matter), so everything needs to be driven from renewable only. At this point your source of carbon can be abitrary, including direct CO2 capture from air, or scrubbing flue gas. See http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Oil-Gas-Methanol-Economy/dp/3527324224/ From eugen at leitl.org Sat May 11 10:43:16 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 12:43:16 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Extensive vs. intensive causes of energy demand In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20130511104316.GM26408@leitl.org> On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 02:37:03PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > One issue that frequently gets glossed over by doom-freaks is that a > large part of the recent increase in energy demand is not due to > extensive factors such as population growth but due to intensive > factors, that is an increase in wealth among the heretofore poor > nations, such as China, and many others. From a humanitarian This is precisely the reason why old forecasts are so far off. > standpoint this is a very important distinction: The former could mean > decreased energy per capita, while the latter could not. Decreased > energy per capita is, after a point, indeed horrifying. Increased > wealth among the poor is a reason to rejoice. You seem to think that agriculture and industry needs no energy input. > But, from a strictly technical standpoint, the whole energy discussion > is just silly - we are swimming in abundant and diverse sources of Abundant yes, but not exactly diverse: the Sun is the only one to fit the ticket (4 MT/s energy flux). > energy that can be economically used assuring cheap and plentiful Yes, it can be economically used. To the tune of TUSD/year, for the next 40 years to assure 1 TW/year conversion rate. In absence of that, you'll get starvation and war. > supplies to take care of any plausible increases in human population, > at least for hundreds of years (excluding singularity upload > scenarios). Let's revisit the discussion in 2030. Then we'll see how the hundreds of years will be faring. From protokol2020 at gmail.com Sat May 11 12:00:26 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 14:00:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <20130511103258.GL26408@leitl.org> References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130511103258.GL26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: > so everything needs to be driven from renewable only There is nothing like renewable. If you are talking about the Sun (wind), there is no greater energy spending around, than this of our star. Like every star it burning mostly in vain. (Putting down star fires is a must.) A postmodernist friend said to me the other day. Can you imagine the energy inefficiency going with the BMW for a bucket of parsley to the supermarket? I told him, that in the whole energy chain needed for this parsley, the Mother Nature did it at least 1000 times worse than this BMW driver to the mole and back. On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 12:32 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 02:02:07PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 5:33 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > > > Anything based on gasified coal is dead-ended, anyway > > > > ### Why? > > > > (only technical/economic issues, no eco-freak-caused legal/political > > obstacles, please) > > It is funny you make that stipulation to me in particular. > > The reasons are simple enough -- peak total fossil is somewhen 2020..2030 > (the exact decade doesn't matter), so everything needs to be driven > from renewable only. At this point your source of carbon can be abitrary, > including direct CO2 capture from air, or scrubbing flue gas. > > See http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Oil-Gas-Methanol-Economy/dp/3527324224/ > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sat May 11 15:37:32 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 17:37:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130511103258.GL26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130511153732.GP26408@leitl.org> On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 02:00:26PM +0200, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > > so everything needs to be driven from renewable only > > There is nothing like renewable. If you are talking about the Sun (wind), Renewable on a scale distinctly shorter than well-fermented dead dinos. > there is no greater energy spending around, than this of our star. Like 4 MT/s total flux, 2 kg/s (2 Hz of Tsar bombas) just what Earth intecepts. A factor of 10^4 in excess of our current needs. > every star it burning mostly in vain. > > (Putting down star fires is a must.) > > A postmodernist friend said to me the other day. Can you imagine the energy > inefficiency going with the BMW for a bucket of parsley to the supermarket? Nevermind that in the US, you're putting 10 buckets of dead dino for each bucket of parsley, without even having fired up your BMW. > I told him, that in the whole energy chain needed for this parsley, the > Mother Nature did it at least 1000 times worse than this BMW driver to the > mole and back. Even today's biofuels have an abysmal photosynthetic energy efficiency. > > On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 12:32 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 02:02:07PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > > On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 5:33 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > > > > > Anything based on gasified coal is dead-ended, anyway > > > > > > ### Why? > > > > > > (only technical/economic issues, no eco-freak-caused legal/political > > > obstacles, please) > > > > It is funny you make that stipulation to me in particular. > > > > The reasons are simple enough -- peak total fossil is somewhen 2020..2030 > > (the exact decade doesn't matter), so everything needs to be driven > > from renewable only. At this point your source of carbon can be abitrary, > > including direct CO2 capture from air, or scrubbing flue gas. > > > > See http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Oil-Gas-Methanol-Economy/dp/3527324224/ > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 -- 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 lubkin at unreasonable.com Sat May 11 15:53:45 2013 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 11:53:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Tsiolkovsky Message-ID: <201305111627.r4BGQkYP025598@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Does anyone have any idea how Tsiolkovsky's famous line in a 1911 letter ("A planet is the cradle of mind, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.") got from Russian to Western sf writers and space enthusiasts? Goddard might have read it but I can't see him quoting it. Arthur Clarke wrote that Tsiolkovsky wasn't widely known outside the USSR until the Thirties. Perhaps through Hermann Oberth or Willy Ley? The earliest quotations I have in my library are from 1968 but surely he was quoted long before that. The best-known early pro-space groups were all founded circa the Thirties ? Verein f?r Raumschiffahrt (1927), American Interplanetary Society (1930), and the British Interplanetary Society (1933). -- David. From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat May 11 17:28:32 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 13:28:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Extensive vs. intensive causes of energy demand In-Reply-To: <20130511104316.GM26408@leitl.org> References: <20130511104316.GM26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 6:43 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: >> standpoint this is a very important distinction: The former could mean >> decreased energy per capita, while the latter could not. Decreased >> energy per capita is, after a point, indeed horrifying. Increased >> wealth among the poor is a reason to rejoice. > > You seem to think that agriculture and industry needs no energy > input. ### Look at it this way: If you have population growth, this comes with increased demand for absolute necessities (food, shelter, sanitation) which means that fluctuations in energy supply may cut into these necessities, producing starvation, unrest, war, possibly a vicious cycle of damage to energy production, triggering further starvation, etc. But a stable or slowly growing population that increases its energy demand due to industrialization and increasing affluence does not put itself at increased risk of starvation due to fluctuating energy supply. If there is a problem with slower than expected energy supply growth, well, some luxuries get trimmed off the list, to much gnashing of teeth, but nobody starves among this population. This is Maslow's hierarchy of needs in action, not a belief in energy-independent agriculture and industry. --------------- > Yes, it can be economically used. To the tune of TUSD/year, for > the next 40 years to assure 1 TW/year conversion rate. ### A TUSD is just 2% of the global economy, or something thereabouts. Peanuts. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat May 11 17:43:18 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 13:43:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <20130511103258.GL26408@leitl.org> References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130511103258.GL26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 6:32 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > The reasons are simple enough -- peak total fossil is somewhen 2020..2030 > (the exact decade doesn't matter), so everything needs to be driven > from renewable only. ### Absolutely no reason for peak total fossil at least for a hundred years, if not more. Proven reserves alone are sufficient for that long, even without counting methane clathrates. Try wikipedia. And absolutely no need to be restricted to renewables. Existing technologies alone (nuclear, deep geothermal) are sufficient to keep us running at current levels for thousands of years. Again, try wikipedia. Rafal From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sat May 11 18:46:55 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 12:46:55 -0600 Subject: [ExI] old video In-Reply-To: References: <00b201ce4dbc$d22259a0$76670ce0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 2:45 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > Google, with YouTube and Google+ has the infrastructure in place to do > this today. > > Facebook did a facial recognition thing, but that didn't go over well. > Don't remember the details, though. > As I recall, it was the privacy wonks who messed up this approach. Your idea would run into the same problems, so I don't think the privacy wonks would allow your idea to be implemented on the level of Facebook or Google. However, all is not lost, as there is this wonderful sight called ancestry.com and I'd bet all my cookies that they will be doing exactly this sort of thing in a few years. Funny how when you call it genealogy, you can get away with violating privacy rights. Oh well, when you are dead what need have you of privacy any more? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sat May 11 18:40:08 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 12:40:08 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Coal Gasification and CO2 (was Re: Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?) Message-ID: On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 10:05 AM, spike wrote: > *Wind power is capricious, and it is noisy and ugly. Solution: put the > wind turbines out in Wyoming where there is not much of anything but coal, > lots of coal. Build factories that convert coal to liquid fuels powered by > wind. * > I don't know where you stand on the whole CO2 global warming thing Spike, but you might be interested in knowing that one of the largest single points of human CO2 production in the world is the Sasol coal gasification plant in South Africa. http://www.sasol.com/sasol_internet/downloads/CTL_Brochure_1125921891488.pdf This is one of my favorite little known examples of unintended consequences. 66.8 Megatons of CO2 were produced in 2004 from this ONE plant. http://m.everythingscience.co.za/grade-12/05-the-chemical-industry/05-the-chemical-industry-02.cnxmlplus The reason that the plant is there? The world's condemnation of apartheid stopped oil from being imported into South Africa. So the liberals (in the sense of wanting to force the change on others) meddling with the internal affairs of South Africa's racist government led directly to the construction of one of the largest point productions of CO2 in the world. I wonder how many of these meddlers would prefer not to have the coal gasification plant at the cost of letting apartheid fall apart under its own weight, which it would have eventually no doubt done. Note that the numbers above are just for the Production of the liquid fuel, and that further CO2 is released when that fuel is burned (at least if I understand what the number means). My brother works for Sasol in Louisiana, and brought this to my attention, or I would never have known about any of it. The anti-greenhouse gas people aren't really about green house gasses, or this would be a bigger story, imho. The ignorance of the Sasol plant's CO2 emissions reveals (to me, anyway) the true nature of the greens. They are anti-capitalists first, and true environmentalists second. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat May 11 22:36:13 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 15:36:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Coal Gasification and CO2 (was Re: Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00c801ce4e97$f20846e0$d618d4a0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson Sent: Saturday, May 11, 2013 11:40 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] Coal Gasification and CO2 (was Re: Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?) On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 10:05 AM, spike wrote: Wind power is capricious, and it is noisy and ugly. Solution: put the wind turbines out in Wyoming where there is not much of anything but coal, lots of coal. Build factories that convert coal to liquid fuels powered by wind. I don't know where you stand on the whole CO2 global warming thing Spike, but you might be interested in knowing that one of the largest single points of human CO2 production in the world is the Sasol coal gasification plant in South Africa. http://www.sasol.com/sasol_internet/downloads/CTL_Brochure_1125921891488.pdf . -Kelly Ja, what I meant was use wind and ground based solar as an energy input to convert coal to Diesel and octane. The plant you cite burns coal to make the power to convert coal to liquids. This is a huge waste of coal. When you have solar and wind power available, use that power to drive the coal conversion. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sat May 11 23:56:09 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 17:56:09 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Coal Gasification and CO2 (was Re: Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?) In-Reply-To: <00c801ce4e97$f20846e0$d618d4a0$@rainier66.com> References: <00c801ce4e97$f20846e0$d618d4a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: > Ja, what I meant was use wind and ground based solar as an energy input to > convert coal to Diesel and octane. The plant you cite burns coal to make > the power to convert coal to liquids. This is a huge waste of coal. When > you have solar and wind power available, use that power to drive the coal > conversion. > I'm not a great chemist, and the chemical composition of coal is very complex, but my understanding of it is that to convert the carbon chains in the coal to octane, you have to release carbon dioxide. This isn't from the burning of the coal itself, but as a side effect of the conversion. I could be wrong, but no matter the energy source, using the Fischer?Tropsch process or similar, you would always release large amounts of CO2. I would love to be wrong about this. Any chemistry gurus out there? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 12 00:26:22 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 17:26:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Coal Gasification and CO2 (was Re: Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?) In-Reply-To: References: <00c801ce4e97$f20846e0$d618d4a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00eb01ce4ea7$554a7110$ffdf5330$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson Sent: Saturday, May 11, 2013 4:56 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Coal Gasification and CO2 (was Re: Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?) Ja, what I meant was use wind and ground based solar as an energy input to convert coal to Diesel and octane. The plant you cite burns coal to make the power to convert coal to liquids. This is a huge waste of coal. When you have solar and wind power available, use that power to drive the coal conversion. >.I'm not a great chemist, and the chemical composition of coal is very complex, but my understanding of it is that to convert the carbon chains in the coal to octane, you have to release carbon dioxide. This isn't from the burning of the coal itself, but as a side effect of the conversion. I could be wrong, but no matter the energy source, using the Fischer-Tropsch process or similar, you would always release large amounts of CO2. I would love to be wrong about this. Any chemistry gurus out there? -Kelly Kelly, the easy way to do this kind of analysis is to look at the energy content of 96 grams of carbon (from coal) vs 116 grams of octane, which is how much octane could theoretically be synthesized with the 96 grams of carbon. Then you must make up the energy difference by some means, and you need to supply the hydrogen by splitting water molecules. Thought experiment: imagine you have an unlimited supply of cheap electrical power that you can't really use, and a pile of coal, and that you need to make octane from the coal. The answer is to use the Fischer Tropsch process. The South African plant burns coal to make the power the traditional way with a coal fired Rankine cycle, then uses the power to convert coal to liquid fuels. This uses a lot of coal to make just a little Diesel and octane. If you had a lot of wind and solar power, and you were using the FT process primarily as a load leveler and as a means of energy storage, you get something like the thought experiment I proposed: when you are making more energy than you can use or ship elsewhere, that energy becomes practically free. I have seen the Columbia Gorge when the wind was howling, the wind turbines practically spinning off their axles, the transmission cables smoking, and just no way to use all the excess power. If we take some of the energy now, when it is plentiful and cheap, use it to build ground based (and possibly space based) solar, nukes, and plenty of wind turbines, then we will have enough later as oil gradually diminishes to convert natural gas from fracking, coal and biomass into liquid fuels. What this does is makes the FT process a means of load leveling rather than an energy source. The problem with a lot of the renewables is in load leveling, since the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. If we use it while the wind is howling to make Diesel, then we have the option to crank up Diesel generators quickly when it is needed. If we use wind and GB solar to convert coal to Diesel, the factory will have inputs of water, coal and electric energy, and have outputs of octane and oxygen. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rtomek at ceti.pl Sun May 12 01:08:40 2013 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 03:08:40 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] (EIA.gov) Costs of Crude Oil and Natural Gas Wells Drilled Message-ID: (So, the cost of drilling has tripled in years 2002-2007, plus minus. Which is probably caused by growing depths of drilling and/or other factors related to accessibility? There may be plenty of oil in reserves, but it doesn't mean plenty of cheap oil. The page doesn't state this and I couldn't find elsewhere but I assume this is about US-based wells - TR) [ http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_wellcost_s1_a.htm ] This page uses JavaScipt * Please use Internet Explorer 3+ or Netscape Navigator 3+ * Make sure that JavaScript is enabled in your browser Costs of Crude Oil and Natural Gas Wells Drilled Period: Annual [1]Download Series History [2]Download Series History [3]Definitions, Sources & Notes [4]Definitions, Sources & Notes 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 View History Thousand Dollars per Well All (Real*) 1,011.9 1,127.4 1,528.5 1,522.3 1,801.3 3,481.8 [5]1960-2007 All (Nominal) 1,054.2 1,199.5 1,673.1 1,720.7 2,101.7 4,171.7 [6]1960-2007 Crude Oil (Nominal) 882.8 1,037.3 1,441.8 1,920.4 2,238.6 4,000.4 [7]1960-2007 Natural Gas (Nominal) 991.9 1,106.0 1,716.4 1,497.6 1,936.2 3,906.9 [8]1960-2007 Dry Holes (Nominal) 1,673.4 2,065.1 1,977.3 2,392.9 2,664.6 6,131.2 [9]1960-2007 Dollars per Foot All (Real*) 187.46 203.25 267.28 271.16 324.00 574.46 [10]1960-2007 All (Nominal) 195.31 216.27 292.57 306.50 378.03 688.30 [11]1960-2007 Crude Oil (Nominal) 194.55 221.13 298.45 314.36 402.45 717.13 [12]1960-2007 Natural Gas (Nominal) 175.78 189.95 284.78 280.03 348.36 604.06 [13]1960-2007 Dry Holes (Nominal) 284.17 345.94 327.91 429.92 479.33 1,132.09 [14]1960-2007 - = No Data Reported; -- = Not Applicable; NA = Not Available; W = Withheld to avoid disclosure of individual company data. Notes: *In chained (2000) dollars, calculated by using [15]gross domestic product price deflators. See Definitions, Sources, and Notes link above for more information on this table. Release Date: 9/7/2012 Next Release Date: 10/5/2012 References 1. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/xls/PET_CRD_WELLCOST_S1_A.xls 2. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/xls/PET_CRD_WELLCOST_S1_A.xls 3. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/TblDefs/pet_crd_wellcost_tbldef2.asp 4. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/TblDefs/pet_crd_wellcost_tbldef2.asp 5. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=E_ERTW0_XWWR_NUS_MDW&f=A 6. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=E_ERTW0_XWWN_NUS_MDW&f=A 7. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=E_ERTWO_XWWN_NUS_MDW&f=A 8. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=E_ERTWG_XWWN_NUS_MDW&f=A 9. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=E_ERTWD_XWWN_NUS_MDW&f=A 10. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=E_ERTW0_XWPR_NUS_DF&f=A 11. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=E_ERTW0_XWPN_NUS_DF&f=A 12. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=E_ERTWO_XWPN_NUS_DF&f=A 13. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=E_ERTWG_XWPN_NUS_DF&f=A 14. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=E_ERTWD_XWPN_NUS_DF&f=A 15. http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/append_d.html From rtomek at ceti.pl Sun May 12 01:43:57 2013 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 03:43:57 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] (tt) (Star Tribune 2013-03) Bakken drilling costs dropping, Northern Oil and Gas says (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 03:43:20 +0200 (CEST) From: Tomasz Rola To: Transhuman Tech Cc: Tomasz Rola Subject: (Star Tribune 2013-03) Bakken drilling costs dropping, Northern Oil and Gas says (Optimism! According to this page, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/03/us-bakkenoil-costs-idUSBRE89216D20121003 previous cost of Bakken drilling was some 9-11 mln per well. So, we can now be so happy because the cost is down to ~=8.5, who would whine about costs being 2-3 times lower some not very long time ago - TR) [ http://www.startribune.com/printarticle/?id=194405301 ] [1][Print_up.png] [logo1.gif] IFRAME: [2]http://www.startribune.com/adiniframe?adSize=300x250&type=print ADVERTISEMENT Bakken Oil Fields of North Dakota Jeff Wheeler, Star Tribune Bakken drilling costs dropping, Northern Oil and Gas says * Article by: David Shaffer * Star Tribune * March 1, 2013 - 7:30 PM The cost of drilling new oil and gas wells in the Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana is dropping and the work is going faster, allowing crude oil to reach the market sooner, a Minnesota-based oil company said Friday. Northern Oil and Gas of Wayzata added the equivalent of 48 Bakken wells in 2012, and expects to complete almost that many in 2013. In a major shift, multiple wells are being drilled in different directions from a single location, avoiding the need to move equipment as often. "It is very simple math; if you are drilling four wells on one pad, you are going to get those wells drilled more efficiently," CEO Mike Reger said on a conference call with analysts as the company beat Wall Street estimates with $19.5 million in net income for the quarter ending in December. The company, which buys oil leases and finances drilling but relies on other companies to do the work, reported net production of 3.7 million barrels of petroleum products last year, and projected growth of 1 million or more barrels this year. Reger and other executives said drilling times also are dropping -- to about 90 days from when the bit first hits the ground to initial oil and gas production. In early 2012, it took twice as much time because oil field services such as hydraulic fracturing teams were in short supply. One well now can be drilled for $8.4 million to $8.8 million, and company officials see that dropping to $8 million on average by the end of the year. Some wells in Montana, because of the drilling circumstances, have cost under $5 million, the company said. Other wells, including some the company decided not to invest in, have cost $10 million or more. Northern Oil, which also reported full-year results, said revenues more than doubled in 2012 to $311 million and net income climbed 78 percent to $72 million. Its proven reserves rose 44 percent last year to 67.6 million barrels. The company owns a share in 1,227 wells, which is equivalent to 106 net wells. Northern Oil said it expects to add 44 net wells in 2013, spending up to $390 million to drill and complete them. Northern Oil's shares closed Friday at $14.13, up 42 cents, or 3 percent. David Shaffer o 612-673-7090 o @ShafferStrib ? 2013 Star Tribune References 1. http://www.startribune.com/printarticle/?id=194405301 2. http://www.startribune.com/adiniframe?adSize=300x250&type=print From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 12 01:51:29 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 18:51:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Coal Gasification and CO2 (was Re: Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?) In-Reply-To: <00eb01ce4ea7$554a7110$ffdf5330$@rainier66.com> References: <00c801ce4e97$f20846e0$d618d4a0$@rainier66.com> <00eb01ce4ea7$554a7110$ffdf5330$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00f901ce4eb3$39a7e4e0$acf7aea0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike . >.Kelly, the easy way to do this kind of analysis is to look at the energy content of 96 grams of carbon (from coal) vs 116 grams of octane, which is how much octane could theoretically be synthesized with the 96 grams of carbon.spike Doh! I meant 114 grams of octane of course, not 116. Damn, how embarraskin'. {8-[ spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 12 02:51:45 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 19:51:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Coal Gasification and CO2 (was Re: Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?) In-Reply-To: <00f901ce4eb3$39a7e4e0$acf7aea0$@rainier66.com> References: <00c801ce4e97$f20846e0$d618d4a0$@rainier66.com> <00eb01ce4ea7$554a7110$ffdf5330$@rainier66.com> <00f901ce4eb3$39a7e4e0$acf7aea0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <011301ce4ebb$a4a9b7c0$edfd2740$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Saturday, May 11, 2013 6:51 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: Re: [ExI] Coal Gasification and CO2 (was Re: Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?) From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike . >>.Kelly, the easy way to do this kind of analysis is to look at the energy content of 96 grams of carbon (from coal) vs 116 grams of octane, which is how much octane could theoretically be synthesized with the 96 grams of carbon.spike >.Doh! I meant 114 grams of octane of course, not 116. Damn, how embarraskin'. {8-[ spike Wait, perhaps I can salvage a shred of dignity, by noting that a couple of deuteriums snuck in there and caused the octane to come up to 116, or one of those sneaky carbon 14s that give the creationists such headaches. Are deuteriums in the plural called deuteria? Kelly when you are doing energy balances, be sure to account for your 162 grams of water you will need to crack to get the hydrogen. Better yet, just get actual data from that South African conversion plant. They might publish the energy input requirements and the liquid fuel output for their operation. That will give you the process losses. Recall that when you have a big plant running these reactions, you have big hot tanks of this and that, intermediate processes, big hot machines everywhere, waste stacks burning off low grade gas etc. All that heat is loss that must be made up from the input. So actual data is very helpful. Kelly perhaps your brother knows where to get this kind of data? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sun May 12 11:44:10 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 04:44:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] living philosphers of import Message-ID: <1368359050.54453.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Someone online just a moment ago asserted that most people in that forum could probably not name an any important living?philosophers. I know of several and named them.? I thought it would be interesting to ask this same question of my friends here on ExI. Who are the most important living philosophers? And why? Gordon? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 12 13:39:05 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 15:39:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 8 May 2013 19:02, Gordon wrote: > Most grammarians are aware of the controversy surrounding the sentence > adverb "Hopefully," as in "Hopefully, I will win the lottery." It has > become common usage such that the AP style guide, as of a few months ago, > permits it. Other style guides still advise against it. The AP's approval > of "Hopefully" irritates my friend as he always instructed his students to > avoid not only "Hopefully," but all sentence adverbs. "Fortunately, I won > the lottery" should be written "I am fortunate to have won the lottery." > Hoffentlich o auspicabilmente refer to what my hopes are, but hopefully literally refers to my quality of being full of hope, and thus it is pretty clear why it should be avoided in this sense, and limited to sentence such as "they were awaiting hopefully a rescue attempt". But what's wrong with sentence adverbrs, let alone adverbs tout court? > Their usage is perfectly consistent with the shared intuition of what is > correct by native speakers of most European languages, and part of a > time-honoured tradition that includes most relevant authors. > -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 12 14:37:11 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 16:37:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fashion In-Reply-To: <518CC967.7050803@aleph.se> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> <518579FE.3050202@aleph.se> <00d701ce4910$1c3765a0$54a630e0$@rainier66.com> <51858A1E.6090408@aleph.se> <518CC967.7050803@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 10 May 2013 12:18, Anders Sandberg wrote: > What is the most efficient level of critical scrutiny? We could model the > utility as the probability of dressing nicely divided by the number of > steps it takes: > U=p[ (1+(1-p)q) / (1-q(1-p)) ] > Obviously the utility goes up as p increases. It is a bit less harder to > see, but the bracketed expression is also monotonically increasing: higher > q means better utility. Hence one should be as critical as one can. > Hey, *now* I have some practical, formalised guidance on what to do with regard to day-by day tie-picking... :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun May 12 15:42:19 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 11:42:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] living philosphers of import In-Reply-To: <1368359050.54453.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1368359050.54453.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 12, 2013 Gordon wrote: > Someone online just a moment ago asserted that most people in that forum > could probably not name an any important living philosophers. I know of > several and named them. I thought it would be interesting to ask this > same question of my friends here on ExI. Who are the most important living > philosophers? And why? > I like Daniel Dennett's books but if you're asking for living philosophers who have made original and important philosophical discoveries I can't think of a single one. However I can think of lots of living non-philosophers who have made original and important philosophical discoveries; James Watson, Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt, Adam Riess, Vera Rubin and Gregory Chaitin come immediately to mind. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rtomek at ceti.pl Sun May 12 16:29:24 2013 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 18:29:24 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] living philosphers of import In-Reply-To: <1368359050.54453.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1368359050.54453.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 12 May 2013, Gordon wrote: > Someone online just a moment ago asserted that most people in that forum > could probably not name an any important living?philosophers. I know of > several and named them.? > > I thought it would be interesting to ask this same question of my > friends here on ExI. Who are the most important living philosophers? And > why? Few years ago I would have said Stanislaw Lem. Because he explored interactions between humans, science and technology, as well as few other aspects of our existence not so often touched by other philosophers - as far as I can tell, of course. Nowadays, I really don't know. Is there someone else who, for example, wrote about a guy come to one Saturnian moon and driving a bot to another base, being stunned by miraculous landscape built by nature, in absence of man, never seen before, never intended to be seen by anyone, created by just a random process - hinting there was universe of such miracles, never to be explored to the end, at least not by this particular human or his contemporaries. Lem might have not always been right (nobody is) but it seems the empty place he left is not so easily filled. However, philosophy is hardly my interest, I admit it. Other than some practical kind of it, which blends with doing things instead of speculating about me sitting in a cave or me being some monad or something like this (well, who cares, really, as long as the stuff is not done). So I guess this makes me a member of School of Pragmatism :-). Indeed, C.S. Peirce, from what they write in wiki about him, I could pin this guy on my wall - scientist-philosopher, this is cool. Not alive, however. And not a great idol for modern students, since he didn't make money (he died destitute and for long while before he couldn't afford to heat a house even in winter). So, if we exclude the guys who research some strange ideas, some "interpretation of the world" or "structure of experience", it would not be surprising if we were left with Santa Claus and Mickey Mouse. Thanks God I am not great philosophy admirer, this makes my critique less credible :-). Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 12 16:48:37 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 09:48:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] living philosphers of import In-Reply-To: References: <1368359050.54453.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <004501ce4f30$8d1c7500$a7555f00$@rainier66.com> On Sun, May 12, 2013 Gordon wrote: > Someone online just a moment ago asserted that most people in that forum could probably not name an any important living philosophers. I know of several and named them. I thought it would be interesting to ask this same question of my friends here on ExI. Who are the most important living philosophers? And why? The closest I can come is John Nash. It isn't entirely clear to me if his work was philosophy or traditional mathematics, two originally-separate disciplines which are gradually merging. Philosophy is one of those things where dying is almost a requirement for recognition. We refrain from naming buildings after living people, for otherwise there is a constant risk of the honoree going off and doing some silly thing. Our philosophers are our modern society's RSPs (Royal Smart Persons.) We look collectively silly when our RSPs go off the track. Note that in general Nobel Prize winners have plenty of life left and plenty of time for human foibles after the award has been presented. You can likely think of good examples of post-Nobel foibliness. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun May 12 17:27:34 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 13:27:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Quantum Computer beats conventional computer for the first time Message-ID: A quantum computer was found to be 3600 times as fast as a high end PC for a certain class on problems. The following article was just published today in New Scientist magazine and it could be huge: ========== For the first time, a commercially available quantum computer has been pitted against an ordinary PC ? and the quantum device left the regular machine in the dust. D-Wave, a company based in Burnaby, Canada, has been selling quantum computers since 2011, although critics expressed doubt that their chips were actually harnessing the spooky action of quantum mechanics. That's because they use a non-mainstream method called adiabatic quantum computing. Unlike classical bits, quantum bits, or qubits, can take the values 0 and 1 at the same time, theoretically offering much faster computing speed. To be truly quantum, the qubits must be linked via the quantum property of entanglement. That's impossible to measure while the device is operating. But in March, two separate tests of the D-Wave device showed indirect evidence for entanglement. Now Catherine McGeoch of Amherst College, Massachusetts, a consultant to D-Wave, has put their computer through its paces and shown that it can beat regular machines. The D-Wave hardware is designed to solve a particular kind of optimisation problem: minimising the solution of a complicated equation by choosing the values of certain variables. It sounds esoteric, but the problem crops up in many practical applications, such as image recognition and machine learning. McGeoch and her colleague Cong Wang of Simon Fraser University, in Burnaby, ran the problem on a D-Wave Two computer, which has 439 qubits formed from superconducting niobium loops. They also tried to solve the problem using three leading algorithms running on a high-end desktop computer. The D-Wave machine turned out to be around 3600 times faster than the best conventional algorithm. McGeoch gave each system roughly half a second to find the best solution to a version of the optimisation problem, and repeated the trial with 100 different versions. She then did the experiment for problems involving even more variables and a more complicated equation. The D-Wave computer found the best solution every time within half a second. The three regular algorithms struggled to keep up for problems with more than 100 or so variables. The best of the three, CPLEX, had to run for half an hour to match D-Wave's performance on the largest problems. McGeoch also looked at how the devices tackled two other problems. The D-Wave computer can't solve these directly so employs an extra piece of software to convert them into a form it can handle. D-wave's device had a smaller edge in these cases but still matched or exceeded the capabilities of the algorithms on regular computers. McGeoch will present the results next week at the ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers in Ischia, Italy. The number-crunching face-off suggests that the benefits of quantum computers may be harnessed sooner than we imagined. "It's becoming increasingly compelling," says Jeremy O'Brien of the University of Bristol, UK. "If you are a forward-looking business, then you might be that much more compelled to really understand how to use these devices." It is still possible that D-Wave's device has a strange but highly optimised way of calculating that does not rely on entanglement. Teams will have to repeat the experiments to confirm the quantum effect. he speed tests are also not quite fair, because generic computers will always perform less well than a device dedicated to solving a specific problem, says McGeoch. "A next step would be to build a conventional processor optimised for this task, for a fairer comparison," says O'Brien. D-Wave's Colin Williams is more certain, pointing out that the company's device finds the best solution in a very different way to regular algorithms. In a classical system, the solutions are poor to begin with but rapidly improve, and then they slowly converge on the best answer. D-Wave's computer reaches the best solution almost instantly. "I've never seen anything like that in a classical algorithm before." What really matters to the D-Wave team now is convincing customers it has a new kind of device that can help them solve problems more efficiently. "Rather than spending all our time on this academic benchmarking, we would prefer to spend our time on developing real-world applications at this point," says Williams. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sun May 12 17:47:31 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 18:47:31 +0100 Subject: [ExI] living philosphers of import In-Reply-To: <1368359050.54453.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1368359050.54453.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <518FD5B3.7060206@aleph.se> On 12/05/2013 12:44, Gordon wrote: > Someone online just a moment ago asserted that most people in that > forum could probably not name an any important living philosophers. I > know of several and named them. > > I thought it would be interesting to ask this same question of my > friends here on ExI. Who are the most important living philosophers? > And why? Hmm, take my comments with a grain of salt, since I am actually embedded in the field and know them (bias galore). Plus, to some extent, this will of course be philosophers I like: Derek Parfit - I am not too up to date with his recent moral philosophy work, but I think he has been seminal for a more relaxed concept of personal identity. He also made important contributions to thinking about rationality, existential risk and the value of the future. David Chalmers - I can honestly not say much about his actual philosophical contributions, but I do think he is crucial sociologically. He turned consciousness studies into a subject of interdisciplinary scientific study, and currently is turning singularity studies into something regarded as worthy of proper consideration - even the people who think it is bunk now have to try to respond to his arguments with reason. Nick Bostrom - Important because he has been the first widely recognized philosopher to explain and argue in favour of transhumanism, because he really showed the moral priority of existential risk, and because of him partially starting the school of crucial consideration-focused scientifically informed philosophy (and not just because he is my boss ;-) Peter Singer - Most famous for his animal rights work, but generally the big consequentialist today. His work on poverty and our moral obligations is very influential. The efficient altruism community owes much to him (and to some extent Nick). Julian Savulescu - Important because of his position in the core of the network of pro-enhancement bioethicists. Can't make up my mind about his moral enhancement work, but as we learn more about the neurobiology of decision-making and social cognition it is going to be really important. Eliezer Yudkowsky - Yes, I regard him as a proper philosopher despite lacking any formal academic standing (the famous greek beards also started out as opionated people who talked with their followers; they built academies in the end, not at the start). Maybe most important because he was the first to dig into the AI risk problem, state the friendly AI problem, and show that it was *hard*. Also, by starting the rationality community he might have set off a very important social/intellectual movement. Some other people who come to mind: David Deutsch (quantum computing, maybe constructor theory), John Broome, Gregory Chaitin (he is at least listed on Wikipedia as a 21st century philosopher), Peter Sloterdijk, Thomas Pogge, Toby Ord, Allen Buchanan... -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Sun May 12 18:55:45 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 14:55:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] living philosphers of import In-Reply-To: <518FD5B3.7060206@aleph.se> References: <1368359050.54453.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518FD5B3.7060206@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 1:47 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > Hmm, take my comments with a grain of salt, since I am actually embedded in > the field and know them (bias galore). Plus, to some extent, this will of > course be philosophers I like: > I was going to say "Anders Sandberg" but wasn't sure if he considers himself a philosopher or something more practical. :) From bbenzai at yahoo.com Sun May 12 19:58:40 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 12:58:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] living philosphers of import In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1368388720.84902.YahooMailClassic@web165001.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Gordon wrote: > Someone online just a moment ago asserted that most people > in that forum could probably not name any important > living philosophers. I know of several and named them. > > I thought it would be interesting to ask this same question > of my friends here on ExI. Who are the most important living > philosophers? And why? By what criteria can a philosopher be considered to be important anyway? Especially a living one? We can say that certain ancient philosophers are 'important' because we know they influenced later developments, but surely only posterity can decide which philosophers alive today turned out to be 'important'? I think that the most you can say is "I think this philosopher to be important". And I rather doubt that you disagree with any of these important living philosophers, do you? That should be a clue. If you are in a position to decide who is an important philosopher, then you must be at least as good a philosopher (and presumably as 'important') as they are. So the only possible answer you can give to the question is: "Me"! Ben Zaiboc (not a philosopher) From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 12 20:23:16 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 13:23:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] living philosphers of import In-Reply-To: References: <1368359050.54453.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518FD5B3.7060206@aleph.se> Message-ID: <008c01ce4f4e$89d5d9e0$9d818da0$@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 Sent: Sunday, May 12, 2013 11:56 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] living philosphers of import On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 1:47 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > >>... Hmm, take my comments with a grain of salt, since I am actually > embedded in the field and know them (bias galore). Plus, to some > extent, this will of course be philosophers I like: > >...I was going to say "Anders Sandberg" but wasn't sure if he considers himself a philosopher or something more practical. :) _______________________________________________ Me too Mike. I would say with certainty that Anders is a living philosopher of importance to me personally. I would include Max More in that too, even though he is currently a CEO rather than a philosopher. Perhaps we need to define the term philosopher. spike From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Sun May 12 19:44:28 2013 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 15:44:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: <1368037439.34421.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1368037439.34421.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <037201ce4f49$2039aa20$60acfe60$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Gordon wrote on Wednesday, May 08, 2013 2:24 PM, > Some of us are prescriptivists, believing that English should follow certain rules. Others of us are descriptivists, believing that English should be whatever is common usage. Most of us are somewhere in between, depending on the issue at hand. I believe that language needs to evolve and change with usage. Otherwise, Shakespearean wouldst yet be bespoken anon. But when I say "usage", I of course mean *my* usage. If I don't know about some obscure word usage parameters, then I tend to interpret them as being nitpicky and pedantic. And while I concede that "pedantic" may be correct, it is the most annoying kind of correct! On the other hand, where I happen to use words correctly, I expect other people to use the same words correctly. It seems ludicrous for me to have to relearn a word usage that I have been using correctly, just because most people use the same word incorrectly. Otherwise, I would have to say that my head would "literally" explode, even though I know that it wouldn't. On the other other hand, it seems dishonest to stubbornly use a word "correctly" while simultaneously knowing that 99% of your audience will misinterpret what you are saying. That seems to be deliberately sabotaging the conversation towards some goal other than successful communication. So there is no good answer I can see. All communications will soon be impossible. Death of the Internet is predicted. Grammarggedon is upon us! -- Harvey Newstrom CISSP CISSP-ISSAP CISSP-ISSMP CSSLP CISA CISM CRISC CGEIT IAM -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Sun May 12 19:46:14 2013 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 15:46:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: <518ABED3.3010507@aleph.se> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518ABED3.3010507@aleph.se> Message-ID: <037701ce4f49$5f9a55c0$1ecf0140$@HarveyNewstrom.com> On 08/05/2013 18:02, Gordon wrote: > The author Stephen King takes it a step further, advising his > fellow writers to avoid not only sentence adverbs, but all adverbs. Indeed. Steven King says to *show* how a person is behaving by choosing the best descriptive action verb that actually depicts the action. No adverb is necessary unless the chosen verb fails to depict the action such that an adverb needs to be added after the fact to describe the action even further. Instead of "He closed the door forcefully," King would prefer "He slammed the door." -- Harvey Newstrom CISSP CISSP-ISSAP CISSP-ISSMP CSSLP CISA CISM CRISC CGEIT IAM -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sun May 12 20:51:31 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 21:51:31 +0100 Subject: [ExI] living philosphers of import In-Reply-To: References: <1368359050.54453.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518FD5B3.7060206@aleph.se> Message-ID: <519000D3.8080406@aleph.se> On 12/05/2013 19:55, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 1:47 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: >> Hmm, take my comments with a grain of salt, since I am actually embedded in >> the field and know them (bias galore). Plus, to some extent, this will of >> course be philosophers I like: >> > I was going to say "Anders Sandberg" but wasn't sure if he considers > himself a philosopher or something more practical. :) > I honestly don't know. My usual answer is "I just work here" :-) A real answer would be that I am a generalist, and calling me a philosopher is fairly close to the traditional role of a philosopher as somebody who investigates the borders of the knowable - the role philosophers had before the natural philosophers got their own department and were called scientists. (the same with the historians, economists, psychologists, sociologists and whatnot). But honestly, I am hardly a philosopher of import. (Besides being imported to the UK) -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Sun May 12 20:31:53 2013 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 16:31:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: <518ABED3.3010507@aleph.se> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518ABED3.3010507@aleph.se> Message-ID: <037c01ce4f4f$bed19520$3c74bf60$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Anders Sandberg wrote on Wednesday, May 08, 2013 5:09 PM: > think of Lovecraft: his adjectives rarely explain anything. I have my own pet theory about Lovecraft's ability to instill fear without detailing his monstrous creations very much. I have analyzed Lovecraft's writings, and I believe I have determined his method for doing this more effectively. Most people claim that Lovecraft is vague in his descriptions, such that the reader has to fill in their own ideas. And the general hypothesis that I have heard is that readers fill in their own personalized ideas of what would be fearful. But I don't think this is true. Lovecraft has very detailed descriptions in his writings. He just doesn't describe his monsters in very much detail. Instead, I think Lovecraft was more direct and insidious than that. Lovecraft bypasses all but the briefest descriptions of the fearful triggers. Instead, he jumps directly into describing what fear itself feels like to the protagonist. He spends more time directly describing what the protagonist is feeling in response to the fear than describing what is triggering that fear. I believe that this is a more direct communication to the reader, telling the reader exactly what to feel and how to feel, than the indirect communication used by other authors to try to trigger those feelings in the reader. I believe this is what makes Lovecraft a true genius of the genre. I have never heard this theory expressed anywhere else. I would love to hear what other people think of my hypothesis. -- Harvey Newstrom CISSP CISSP-ISSAP CISSP-ISSMP CSSLP CISA CISM CRISC CGEIT IAM -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Sun May 12 21:46:27 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 23:46:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] living philosphers of import In-Reply-To: <519000D3.8080406@aleph.se> References: <1368359050.54453.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518FD5B3.7060206@aleph.se> <519000D3.8080406@aleph.se> Message-ID: Vernor Vinge. Raymond Kurzweil. Richard Dawkins - minus his annoying militant atheism - (not that I am lesser atheist than him.). What philosophy of the past can be nearly as important as VV with his "Shortly after, human era will be over"? Or as RK with his "then we go with the speed of light in all directions"? None if they are right. Maybe it's not philosophy, but I don't care. On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 10:51 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 12/05/2013 19:55, Mike Dougherty wrote: > >> On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 1:47 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: >> >>> Hmm, take my comments with a grain of salt, since I am actually embedded >>> in >>> the field and know them (bias galore). Plus, to some extent, this will of >>> course be philosophers I like: >>> >>> I was going to say "Anders Sandberg" but wasn't sure if he considers >> himself a philosopher or something more practical. :) >> >> > I honestly don't know. My usual answer is "I just work here" :-) > > A real answer would be that I am a generalist, and calling me a > philosopher is fairly close to the traditional role of a philosopher as > somebody who investigates the borders of the knowable - the role > philosophers had before the natural philosophers got their own department > and were called scientists. (the same with the historians, economists, > psychologists, sociologists and whatnot). > > But honestly, I am hardly a philosopher of import. (Besides being imported > to the UK) > > > -- > Anders Sandberg, > Future of Humanity Institute > Oxford Martin School > Faculty of Philosophy > 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 spike at rainier66.com Sun May 12 21:39:26 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 14:39:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] voice activated elevator {8^D Message-ID: <009c01ce4f59$2dcac470$89604d50$@rainier66.com> Nothing profound here, move along, just a little techno-fun and games: http://dotsub.com/view/6c5d7514-5656-476a-9504-07dd4e2f6509 {8^D I can imagine the Brits among us will have a chuckle or two. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Mon May 13 07:16:42 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 00:16:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: <037201ce4f49$2039aa20$60acfe60$@HarveyNewstrom.com> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1368037439.34421.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <037201ce4f49$2039aa20$60acfe60$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: <1368429402.53813.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Harvey Newstrom wrote: > So there is no good answer I can see. ?All communications will soon be impossible. ?Death of the Internet is predicted. ?Grammarggedon is upon us! Ha! :) The Google Ngram Viewer is a useful tool for understanding when and to what extent a word or phrase became common usage. Here for example is the history of "Hopefully" in the written English language: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Hopefully&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share= The word was seldom used before about 1960. To my taste, anyway, this word is not old enough to be considered proper. It makes sense only in rare sentences like "He reached hopefully for his gun in the darkness." "Hopefully, he'll find his gun" is I think still not proper. But this really is a matter of taste. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Mon May 13 07:42:41 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 08:42:41 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: <037c01ce4f4f$bed19520$3c74bf60$@HarveyNewstrom.com> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518ABED3.3010507@aleph.se> <037c01ce4f4f$bed19520$3c74bf60$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: <51909971.6090401@aleph.se> On 12/05/2013 21:31, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > Instead, I think Lovecraft was more direct and insidious than that. > Lovecraft bypasses all but the briefest descriptions of the fearful > triggers. Instead, he jumps directly into describing what fear itself > feels like to the protagonist. He spends more time directly describing > what the protagonist is feeling in response to the fear than > describing what is triggering that fear. I believe that this is a > more direct communication to the reader, telling the reader exactly > what to feel and how to feel, than the indirect communication used by > other authors to try to trigger those feelings in the reader. I > believe this is what makes Lovecraft a true genius of the genre. Triggering mirror neurons and other sympathy systems, no doubt. I think this is true, especially for simple core emotions - fear, lust, anger and so on - where it would be enough to produce enough of a similar state. More complicated emotions that involve particular content (hate at some character, religious feeling, appetite for rice, etc.) require far more footwork of the author, who now needs to both provide the content and descriptions of how the character experiences the emotion. If the reader can identify well with the character and their context this might be easier since they will help doing the work, but again this requires earlier good writing. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Mon May 13 08:38:18 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 01:38:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] living philosphers of import In-Reply-To: <518FD5B3.7060206@aleph.se> References: <1368359050.54453.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518FD5B3.7060206@aleph.se> Message-ID: <1368434298.25119.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Thanks for all the input here in answer to my question!? If I didn't miss any posts then?noticeably?absent from the list are the likes of Jerry Fodor and John Searle. As for Daniel Dennett, there is no question in my mind that he is a philosopher of import. But if you think his nemesis Searle is not also important then I think you don't understand what is going on in the philosophy of mind. It is an important battle.? Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Mon May 13 09:21:25 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 10:21:25 +0100 Subject: [ExI] living philosphers of import In-Reply-To: <1368434298.25119.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1368359050.54453.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518FD5B3.7060206@aleph.se> <1368434298.25119.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5190B095.8010709@aleph.se> On 2013-05-13 09:38, Gordon wrote: > Thanks for all the input here in answer to my question! > > If I didn't miss any posts then noticeably absent from the list are > the likes of Jerry Fodor and John Searle. I can't speak about Fodor (he seems to have gone onto some formalist track that might make good philosophy papers but doesn't contribute much to the important questions), but Searle remains a big name. We might mainly see him here as anti-AI, but he is more primarily a big name in philosophy of language and mind, where he seems to have made useful distinctions. Whether they are useful outside philosophy remains to be seen. Conversely, Francis Fukuyama is a good international public intellectual to whom we should be grateful that he attacked transhumanism: while his arguments are not very good, it actually made transhumanism and enhancement a popular topic in academia (and, since he was aligned with GWB, a lot of people automatically decided to take the opposite stance from him). Michael Sandel might be better at arguing, although his argument doesn't seem to lead very far. And Leon Kass... well, he made arguing for transhumanism against him *fun* given his somewhat pompous style. Hmm, maybe the guy formerly known as pope Benedict should be counted as a pretty heavyweight anti-transhumanist philosopher of import. His arguments are pretty sharp as long as one buys a pretty speculative (but reputedly popular) package of assumptions. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Mon May 13 09:26:36 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 10:26:36 +0100 Subject: [ExI] voice activated elevator {8^D In-Reply-To: <009c01ce4f59$2dcac470$89604d50$@rainier66.com> References: <009c01ce4f59$2dcac470$89604d50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <5190B1CC.8060603@aleph.se> On 2013-05-12 22:39, spike wrote: > > Nothing profound here, move along, just a little techno-fun and games: > > http://dotsub.com/view/6c5d7514-5656-476a-9504-07dd4e2f6509 > > {8^D > > I can imagine the Brits among us will have a chuckle or two. > > Indeed, dear chap! My brother and me spent a hilarious journey trying to use his fancy new voice-controlled handsfree phone system in his car to call home. The noisy road environment and Swedish accents did not work well with it. I do wonder about how to get "natural language" interfaces to work properly. I find Wolfram Alpha tremendously frustrating since it wants me to phrase queries as questions rather than straightforward commands ("Plot the Gini coefficient of different countries against their GDP per capita") - it has the data and plotting ability, it just gets confused about interpreting my question. Here a command language would make much more sense. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 13 11:15:07 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 13:15:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Tsiolkovsky In-Reply-To: <201305111627.r4BGQkYP025598@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <201305111627.r4BGQkYP025598@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <20130513111507.GH26408@leitl.org> On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 11:53:45AM -0400, David Lubkin wrote: > Does anyone have any idea how Tsiolkovsky's famous line in a 1911 > letter ("A planet is the cradle of mind, but one cannot live in a cradle > forever.") got from Russian to Western sf writers and space enthusiasts? > Goddard might have read it but I can't see him quoting it. Arthur Clarke > wrote that Tsiolkovsky wasn't widely known outside the USSR until the In the USSR 1920s. > Thirties. Perhaps through Hermann Oberth or Willy Ley? I would suspect by way of Korolev, but I have no proof. I've spent a few minutes digging, but it would be hard to trace, given it's way pre-web. You have to drill down into academic papers using the full quote. > The earliest quotations I have in my library are from 1968 but surely he > was quoted long before that. The best-known early pro-space groups > were all founded circa the Thirties ? Verein f?r Raumschiffahrt (1927), > American Interplanetary Society (1930), and the British Interplanetary > Society (1933). From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 13 11:54:10 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 13:54:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Extensive vs. intensive causes of energy demand In-Reply-To: References: <20130511104316.GM26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130513115410.GJ26408@leitl.org> On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 01:28:32PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > Yes, it can be economically used. To the tune of TUSD/year, for > > the next 40 years to assure 1 TW/year conversion rate. > > ### A TUSD is just 2% of the global economy, or something thereabouts. > > Peanuts. It's something like 3 TUSD, and thus 6% of world GDP (or any national GDP) which is unprecedented. This is war-scale spending, involving not only money, but skilled workers, resources, and energy. We don't have the money, the skills, the resources (most are peaking) and energy is rapidly running out. And of course it had to be actually spent, of which there is no evidence. Meanwhile, the TW/year net energy debt is racking up, year after year. From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 13 11:58:45 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 13:58:45 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130511103258.GL26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130513115845.GK26408@leitl.org> On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 01:43:18PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 6:32 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > > > The reasons are simple enough -- peak total fossil is somewhen 2020..2030 > > (the exact decade doesn't matter), so everything needs to be driven > > from renewable only. > > ### Absolutely no reason for peak total fossil at least for a hundred > years, if not more. Proven reserves alone are sufficient for that > long, even without counting methane clathrates. Try wikipedia. The facts you're claiming are unfortunately not true. > And absolutely no need to be restricted to renewables. Existing > technologies alone (nuclear, deep geothermal) are sufficient to keep > us running at current levels for thousands of years. Again, try > wikipedia. The facts you're claiming are unfortunately not true. I have absolutely no further interest in this thread. The facts are out there, make of them what you will. If you don't feel you need facts for that, I'm fine with that, too. You pays your money, and you takes your chances. From protokol2020 at gmail.com Mon May 13 12:35:37 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 14:35:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <20130513115845.GK26408@leitl.org> References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130511103258.GL26408@leitl.org> <20130513115845.GK26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: > I have absolutely no further interest in this thread. I guess, you have been cornered, that's why. On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 1:58 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 01:43:18PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 6:32 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > > > > > > The reasons are simple enough -- peak total fossil is somewhen > 2020..2030 > > > (the exact decade doesn't matter), so everything needs to be driven > > > from renewable only. > > > > ### Absolutely no reason for peak total fossil at least for a hundred > > years, if not more. Proven reserves alone are sufficient for that > > long, even without counting methane clathrates. Try wikipedia. > > The facts you're claiming are unfortunately not true. > > > And absolutely no need to be restricted to renewables. Existing > > technologies alone (nuclear, deep geothermal) are sufficient to keep > > us running at current levels for thousands of years. Again, try > > wikipedia. > > The facts you're claiming are unfortunately not true. > > I have absolutely no further interest in this thread. > The facts are out there, make of them what you will. > If you don't feel you need facts for that, I'm fine with that, too. > You pays your money, and you takes your chances. > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mon May 13 12:44:13 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 13:44:13 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Extensive vs. intensive causes of energy demand In-Reply-To: <20130513115410.GJ26408@leitl.org> References: <20130511104316.GM26408@leitl.org> <20130513115410.GJ26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 12:54 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > It's something like 3 TUSD, and thus 6% of world GDP (or any > national GDP) which is unprecedented. This is war-scale > spending, involving not only money, but skilled workers, > resources, and energy. We don't have the money, the skills, > the resources (most are peaking) and energy is rapidly > running out. > > And of course it had to be actually spent, of which there is > no evidence. Meanwhile, the TW/year net energy debt is racking > up, year after year. > _______________________________________________ > In the Rogers Commission Report into the Challenger Crash (1986), Richard Feynman wrote: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled". BillK From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 13 13:31:24 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 15:31:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130511103258.GL26408@leitl.org> <20130513115845.GK26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130513133124.GS26408@leitl.org> On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 02:35:37PM +0200, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > > I have absolutely no further interest in this thread. > > I guess, you have been cornered, that's why. 1) there is a very good reason we're in that situation 2) endless exercise in futility is not my idea of fun If the Wikipedia says we're okay, I'm sure it is so. Have a nice day. From protokol2020 at gmail.com Mon May 13 14:10:23 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 16:10:23 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <20130513133124.GS26408@leitl.org> References: <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130511103258.GL26408@leitl.org> <20130513115845.GK26408@leitl.org> <20130513133124.GS26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: We have a problem here. Is there or isn't enough affordable oil in the ground, to drive our civilization? The latest data shows us more and more, that probably is. Very likely. You, among many, just don't want this solution to be true. You want renewables - like solar and wind. The question is, which one is more viable. (Shale) oil/gas or sun/wind. A pure technical question. Now, can we discuss it in an objective manner or not? On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 3:31 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 02:35:37PM +0200, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > > > I have absolutely no further interest in this thread. > > > > I guess, you have been cornered, that's why. > > 1) there is a very good reason we're in that situation > > 2) endless exercise in futility is not my idea of fun > > If the Wikipedia says we're okay, I'm sure it is so. > Have a nice day. > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mon May 13 14:30:09 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 07:30:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] voice activated elevator {8^D In-Reply-To: <5190B1CC.8060603@aleph.se> References: <009c01ce4f59$2dcac470$89604d50$@rainier66.com> <5190B1CC.8060603@aleph.se> Message-ID: <01d501ce4fe6$5fd833c0$1f889b40$@rainier66.com> >. On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg >.Subject: Re: [ExI] voice activated elevator {8^D On 2013-05-12 22:39, spike wrote: >>.Nothing profound here, move along, just a little techno-fun and games: http://dotsub.com/view/6c5d7514-5656-476a-9504-07dd4e2f6509 {8^D I can imagine the Brits among us will have a chuckle or two. >.Indeed, dear chap! >.My brother and me spent a hilarious journey trying to use his fancy new voice-controlled handsfree phone system in his car to call home. The noisy road environment and Swedish accents did not work well with it.Anders The part that had me howling was when the one feller suggests trying the command with an American accent. A bunch of years ago, we were at an ExI schmooze and Damien Broderick was there. Somebody got him started trying to do American accents. The sounds that came out of him were so funny we couldn't even eat our food. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon May 13 14:44:52 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 07:44:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Tsiolkovsky In-Reply-To: <20130513111507.GH26408@leitl.org> References: <201305111627.r4BGQkYP025598@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <20130513111507.GH26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <01da01ce4fe8$6e4892e0$4ad9b8a0$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl >...I've spent a few minutes digging, but it would be hard to trace, given it's way pre-web. You have to drill down into academic papers using the full quote... _______________________________________________ We are in the process of becoming ever more comfortable with the notion of lumping everything pre-web as prehistory. We could even imagine college majors in that, somewhere in the history department. A few years ago at the office, we were retiring file cabinets. I had two cram-full filing cabinets scanned, but never used any of the scanned materials because I had no way to index any of it. What we need is some way to read through all that material, some of which was hand-written, and create searchable files. If all those scientific papers written before about mid 90s are not somehow ASCII archived, they are gone forever. Everything anyone did before about mid 1990s will sink into irrelevance, waiting for some later person to rediscover it all. Some of it, such as the space stuff, can never be reproduced, for we have not the launch capability now that we had then, nor the motive to recreate it. spike From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 13 14:47:31 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 16:47:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130511103258.GL26408@leitl.org> <20130513115845.GK26408@leitl.org> <20130513133124.GS26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130513144731.GX26408@leitl.org> On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 04:10:23PM +0200, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > We have a problem here. Is there or isn't enough affordable oil in the > ground, to drive our civilization? Did you read the world EROEI data? The answer is spelled out pretty clearly. At this point we'll be hurting plenty, whatever we do. It no longer matters what exactly we do, people are going to die. The question is just about how many exactly. It will be quite easy to ignore, because poor people die conveniently remote from where you are reading this message. It's not your fault that they can't afford food, after all. > The latest data shows us more and more, that probably is. Very likely. I suspect if you want to read very selectivity you can cherrypick something matching your preconclusion. The less effort you spent (say, just reading the newspapers), the easier it gets. Most people think there is no problem at all. Which is the main reason why we're in this situation, and why this situation will not start deviating from the pessimum until everybody gets the message, close and personal. This is not something I can do, so the education will have to be postponed. > You, among many, just don't want this solution to be true. You > want renewables - like solar and wind. It's not a question of what we want. The question is what we can have a reasonable chance of clawing from the unwilling universe, while the tools and the time to do so are slipping from our fingers. > The question is, which one is more viable. (Shale) oil/gas or sun/wind. A Globally, unconventional sources have zero (look at the graphs) contribution. Locally, in the US, unconventional sources give you a temporary (few years) respite at continuously increasing (some plays already below being worthwhile) inputs. This is a pretty good set-up for desaster, because you think everything is going swimmingly, until (apparently) suddenly it doesn't. Nobody could saw that coming, possibly. > pure technical question. > > Now, can we discuss it in an objective manner or not? I don't see why. This list has demonstrated an inexhaustible capability to not even ignore the evidence. You yourself said that 400 ppm CO2 is a great boon for this planet, so 600 ppm can only be better. I think I'd rather go back reading that wacky LENR list. From atymes at gmail.com Mon May 13 14:51:59 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 07:51:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Tsiolkovsky In-Reply-To: <01da01ce4fe8$6e4892e0$4ad9b8a0$@rainier66.com> References: <201305111627.r4BGQkYP025598@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <20130513111507.GH26408@leitl.org> <01da01ce4fe8$6e4892e0$4ad9b8a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 7:44 AM, spike wrote: > I had two cram-full filing cabinets scanned, but never used any of the > scanned materials because I had no way to index any of it. What we need is > some way to read through all that material, some of which was hand-written, > and create searchable files. > The phrase you want to search on is "optical character recognition", or just "OCR". There are many solutions out there, some of them free, some of them pretty high quality. There are probably some that are both. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 13 14:57:23 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kellycoinguy) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 08:57:23 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? Message-ID: Sorry for top posting... Stupid phone... The problem here is that there are two sets of facts and no good way to establish which are correct. The fact is that oil will get scarcer at some point (unless we make more from shale, coal, natural gas our something) and at that point it will get more expensive. We will probably reach peak affordable oil before peak oil. The problem with unaffordable oil is that it puts a tax on everything we do. It will be an economic disaster before it will be an ecological disaster imho... Ymmv. Since the Neo pagans will lie to protect the earth goddess... And the oil companies and others will lie to protect the bottom line and the status quo... We are left the unfortunate consumers of competing lies. I personally think Eugen is too alarmed about all this, but that does not imply there is no problem at all... Just that his buddies at the oil drum are drumming for mother earth, not for the fatherland. I think energy is a problem with a solution. actually multiple solutions. I'm pretty sure global warming can't be solved by the current generation of proposed solutions. all the solar and wind in the world won't help if it is just extra energy. Sequestration of CO2 is the only viable option, ?imho. Again, ymmv. If we have extra capacity, we will use it. It is human nature. The whales will be hunted until it is not profitable to hunt whales. Same with oil. -Kelly Sent fimhorKellyom my Samsung EpiKellyc? 4G TouchEugen Leitl wrote:On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 01:43:18PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 6:32 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > > >? > > ### Absolutely no reason for peak total fossil at least for a hundred > years, if not more. Proven reserves alone are sufficient for that > long, even without counting methane clathrates. Try wikipedia. The facts you're claiming are unfortunately not true. > And absolutely no need to be restricted to renewables. Existing > technologies alone (nuclear, deep geothermal) are sufficient to keep > us running at current levels for thousands of years. Again, try > wikipedia. The facts you're claiming are unfortunately not true. I have absolutely no further interest in this thread. The facts are out there, make of them what you will. If you don't feel you need facts for that, I'm fine with that, too. You pays your money, and you takes your chances. _______________________________________________ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon May 13 15:08:54 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 08:08:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Tsiolkovsky In-Reply-To: References: <201305111627.r4BGQkYP025598@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <20130513111507.GH26408@leitl.org> <01da01ce4fe8$6e4892e0$4ad9b8a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <020401ce4feb$cb0849f0$6118ddd0$@rainier66.com> >. On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Subject: Re: [ExI] Tsiolkovsky On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 7:44 AM, spike wrote: >>.I had two cram-full filing cabinets scanned, but never used any of the scanned materials because I had no way to index any of it. What we need is some way to read through all that material, some of which was hand-written, and create searchable files. >. The phrase you want to search on is "optical character recognition", or just "OCR". There are many solutions out there, some of them free, some of them pretty high quality. There are probably some that are both. We OCRed all of it. The results were better than nothing, not great. A lot of what I had left in my filing cabinet were hand-written notes from meetings. In the form they existed, they were not accessible anyway, so I guess it was no real loss. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 13 15:23:53 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 17:23:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Coal Gasification and CO2 (was Re: Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?) In-Reply-To: References: <00c801ce4e97$f20846e0$d618d4a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130513152352.GY26408@leitl.org> On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 05:56:09PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > I'm not a great chemist, and the chemical composition of coal is very > complex, but my understanding of it is that to convert the carbon chains in > the coal to octane, you have to release carbon dioxide. This isn't from the > burning of the coal itself, but as a side effect of the conversion. I could > be wrong, but no matter the energy source, using the Fischer?Tropsch > process or similar, you would always release large amounts of CO2. I would > love to be wrong about this. Any chemistry gurus out there? The reason for CO2 release is that the entire process is driven from energy that is supplied from coal. There is no reason why you cannot supply e.g. hydrogen from water electrolysis from renewable surplus during peak, and also build up pressure and temperature via electric input -- other than the cost of energy, particularly high-grade energy like electricity. There is a potential niche usage of nuclear power for process heat and steam (making shale kerogen fly and gasify coal underground) which is safer and remote and not Carnot-limited. This is probably going to happen because we're going to burn any source of carbon we can liberate, and devil take the hindmost. From atymes at gmail.com Mon May 13 15:41:55 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 08:41:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Tsiolkovsky In-Reply-To: <020401ce4feb$cb0849f0$6118ddd0$@rainier66.com> References: <201305111627.r4BGQkYP025598@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <20130513111507.GH26408@leitl.org> <01da01ce4fe8$6e4892e0$4ad9b8a0$@rainier66.com> <020401ce4feb$cb0849f0$6118ddd0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On May 13, 2013 8:24 AM, "spike" wrote: > >? On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes > On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 7:44 AM, spike wrote: > > >>?I had two cram-full filing cabinets scanned, but never used any of the scanned materials because I had no way to index any of it. What we need is some way to read through all that material, some of which was hand-written, and create searchable files. > > >? The phrase you want to search on is "optical character > recognition", or just "OCR". There are many solutions > out there, some of them free, some of them pretty high > quality. There are probably some that are both. > > We OCRed all of it. The results were better than nothing, not great. A lot of what I had left in my filing cabinet were hand-written notes from meetings. In the form they existed, they were not accessible anyway, so I guess it was no real loss. That's what I mean about quality. Try some other OCR. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 13 16:08:57 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 10:08:57 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Tsiolkovsky In-Reply-To: <01da01ce4fe8$6e4892e0$4ad9b8a0$@rainier66.com> References: <201305111627.r4BGQkYP025598@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <20130513111507.GH26408@leitl.org> <01da01ce4fe8$6e4892e0$4ad9b8a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 8:44 AM, spike wrote: > >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl > > >...I've spent a few minutes digging, but it would be hard to trace, given > it's way pre-web. You have to drill down into academic papers using the > full quote... > _______________________________________________ > > We are in the process of becoming ever more comfortable with the notion of > lumping everything pre-web as prehistory. We could even imagine college > majors in that, somewhere in the history department. > > A few years ago at the office, we were retiring file cabinets. I had two > cram-full filing cabinets scanned, but never used any of the scanned > materials because I had no way to index any of it. What we need is some > way to read through all that material, some of which was hand-written, and > create searchable files. If all those scientific papers written before > about mid 90s are not somehow ASCII archived, they are gone forever. > Everything anyone did before about mid 1990s will sink into irrelevance, > waiting for some later person to rediscover it all. Some of it, such as > the space stuff, can never be reproduced, for we have not the launch > capability now that we had then, nor the motive to recreate it. > If this is something you deeply care about, I would recommend that you get both Omnipage and Paperport professional from www.nuance.com the industry leader in OCR. OCR is near and dear to my heart as it was the topic of my incomplete Master's Thesis. Nobody has yet developed the software I envisioned then. Too bad. I'm sure it will happen sometime though, but even if what I wanted to do wasn't implemented (it had to do with forms processing) what you want to do is more than adequately covered by the above products. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 13 16:17:00 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 10:17:00 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Coal Gasification and CO2 (was Re: Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?) In-Reply-To: <00eb01ce4ea7$554a7110$ffdf5330$@rainier66.com> References: <00c801ce4e97$f20846e0$d618d4a0$@rainier66.com> <00eb01ce4ea7$554a7110$ffdf5330$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 6:26 PM, spike wrote: > > > *From:* extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto: > extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On Behalf Of *Kelly Anderson > *Sent:* Saturday, May 11, 2013 4:56 PM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Coal Gasification and CO2 (was Re: Whatever happened > to peak oil by 2020?)**** > > ** ** > > Ja, what I meant was use wind and ground based solar as an energy input to > convert coal to Diesel and octane. The plant you cite burns coal to make > the power to convert coal to liquids. This is a huge waste of coal. When > you have solar and wind power available, use that power to drive the coal > conversion.**** > > ** ** > > >?I'm not a great chemist, and the chemical composition of coal is very > complex, but my understanding of it is that to convert the carbon chains in > the coal to octane, you have to release carbon dioxide. This isn't from the > burning of the coal itself, but as a side effect of the conversion. I could > be wrong, but no matter the energy source, using the Fischer?Tropsch > process or similar, you would always release large amounts of CO2. I would > love to be wrong about this. Any chemistry gurus out there? -Kelly**** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > Kelly, the easy way to do this kind of analysis is to look at the energy > content of 96 grams of carbon (from coal) vs 116 grams of octane, which is > how much octane could theoretically be synthesized with the 96 grams of > carbon. Then you must make up the energy difference by some means, and you > need to supply the hydrogen by splitting water molecules. **** > > ** ** > > Thought experiment: imagine you have an unlimited supply of cheap > electrical power that you can?t really use, and a pile of coal, and that > you need to make octane from the coal. The answer is to use the Fischer > Tropsch process. The South African plant burns coal to make the power the > traditional way with a coal fired Rankine cycle, then uses the power to > convert coal to liquid fuels. This uses a lot of coal to make just a > little Diesel and octane. If you had a lot of wind and solar power, and > you were using the FT process primarily as a load leveler and as a means of > energy storage, you get something like the thought experiment I proposed: > when you are making more energy than you can use or ship elsewhere, that > energy becomes practically free. > Ok, I think I'm following along... but if all you need is energy and raw materials, why start with Coal? Why not start with CO2 sucked from the atmosphere (should make the greens happy) and H2O (for the hydrogen) also sucked from the atmosphere? Yes, you have more latent energy in the coal, but if the energy is really free, then why not just create it from the atmosphere and bag the whole disagreeable matter of mining coal in the first place? You might even be able to produce liquid Oxygen as a nice side benefit. **** > > If we use wind and GB solar to convert coal to Diesel, the factory will > have inputs of water, coal and electric energy, and have outputs of octane > and oxygen. > > ** > I know that the chemistry works. I suspect though that what I'm proposing has astronomical energy costs associated with it that are not borne by the FT process. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 13 16:20:46 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 10:20:46 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Coal Gasification and CO2 (was Re: Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?) In-Reply-To: <20130513152352.GY26408@leitl.org> References: <00c801ce4e97$f20846e0$d618d4a0$@rainier66.com> <20130513152352.GY26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 9:23 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > love to be wrong about this. Any chemistry gurus out there? > > The reason for CO2 release is that the entire process is driven from energy > that is supplied from coal. > I thought there was also something from the chemistry... but perhaps I was wrong about that. > This is probably going to happen because we're going to burn any source of > carbon we can liberate, and devil take the hindmost. > Now you've got the spirit Eugen!!! That is the attitude that is carry us through the perceived energy crisis. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 13 16:21:53 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 18:21:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Tsiolkovsky In-Reply-To: References: <201305111627.r4BGQkYP025598@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <20130513111507.GH26408@leitl.org> <01da01ce4fe8$6e4892e0$4ad9b8a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130513162153.GZ26408@leitl.org> On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 10:08:57AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > If this is something you deeply care about, I would recommend that you get > both Omnipage and Paperport professional from www.nuance.com the industry > leader in OCR. > > OCR is near and dear to my heart as it was the topic of my incomplete > Master's Thesis. Nobody has yet developed the software I envisioned then. > Too bad. I'm sure it will happen sometime though, but even if what I wanted > to do wasn't implemented (it had to do with forms processing) what you want > to do is more than adequately covered by the above products. At my dayjob, among other things we machine-process millions of documents (try e.g. Chemisches Zentralblatt, anno 1871). The recognition rate is still not quantitative after combining the input from three independant packages. In case of chemical structure input, the task is Turing-complete. Unfortunately, there is no information to flag failed input, in order to have them processed by a human analyst. From lubkin at unreasonable.com Mon May 13 16:28:27 2013 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 12:28:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Tsiolkovsky Message-ID: <201305131629.r4DGSiwk007648@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Eugen Leitl wrote: >I would suspect by way of Korolev, but I have no proof. >I've spent a few minutes digging, but it would be hard to >trace, given it's way pre-web. You have to drill down >into academic papers using the full quote. I've asked the archivist of the BIS to check. Thinking about who had access to what and when, my guess is that Tsiolkovsky's work and the quote came to English speakers via German authors like Oberth or Ley, rather than directly from the Russian. The Journal of the British Interplanetary Society started in 1934, and was read in America by enthusiasts and sf writers. Heinlein quoted that line often enough himself for it to be misattributed to him. I assume Sir Arthur is a reliable source that Tsiolkovsky became widely known in the West in the Thirties. But I doubt that he, personally, is responsible for it. In the Thirties, he was 13 to 23, had only written for fanzines, and was working as a pensions auditor. -- David. From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon May 13 16:32:04 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 12:32:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <20130513115845.GK26408@leitl.org> References: <003301ce4b62$3307f200$9917d600$@rainier66.com> <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130511103258.GL26408@leitl.org> <20130513115845.GK26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 7:58 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > I have absolutely no further interest in this thread. ### I must say that my degree of enthusiasm also diminished after reading your claims that "we *must* use only renewables" (emphasis mine) to deal with "peak fossil in 2020" (only 7 years away), or that the EROEI is the defining parameter of our future, all this against a background of falling energy prices, slowing population growth, and multiple sources describing hundred- or thousand-year reserves of various non-renewable energy sources. I always assume that officials, companies and governments lie and exaggerate but rarely by thousand-percent margins. It doesn't happen often but, yeah, in this case I trust the US government more than I trust your judgment. Rafal From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 13 16:49:46 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 18:49:46 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130511103258.GL26408@leitl.org> <20130513115845.GK26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130513164946.GA26408@leitl.org> On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 12:32:04PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > I always assume that officials, companies and governments lie and > exaggerate but rarely by thousand-percent margins. It doesn't happen > often but, yeah, in this case I trust the US government more than I > trust your judgment. See, you've made up your mind already. As have many others. See why I said the conversation was futile? Neither me nor you decide policy, and collectively the policy has already been decided upon, by hook or by crook. We can save the argumentative noises (not really an argument) and just lean back and see how this thing is going to play out itself. From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon May 13 17:21:12 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 13:21:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] living philosphers of import In-Reply-To: <518FD5B3.7060206@aleph.se> References: <1368359050.54453.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518FD5B3.7060206@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sun, May 12, 2013 Anders Sandberg wrote: > Some other people who come to mind: David Deutsch (quantum computing, > maybe constructor theory), > Deutsch is an important physicist and his ideas about computation and Many Worlds could very well turn out to be correct, but some of his other philosophical ideas strike me as just silly, in particular he claims that induction does not exist. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon May 13 16:57:52 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 12:57:52 -0400 Subject: [ExI] living philosphers of import In-Reply-To: <1368434298.25119.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1368359050.54453.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518FD5B3.7060206@aleph.se> <1368434298.25119.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 4:38 AM, Gordon wrote: > As for Daniel Dennett, there is no question in my mind that he is a > philosopher of import. But if you think his nemesis Searle is not also > important then I think you don't understand what is going on in the > philosophy of mind. > After Searle's Chinese Room fiasco, which as far as I know he defends to this very day, I don't see how he could be called an important anything. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon May 13 17:24:15 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 13:24:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] living philosphers of import Message-ID: On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 4:38 AM, Gordon wrote: > As for Daniel Dennett, there is no question in my mind that he is a > philosopher of import. But if you think his nemesis Searle is not also > important then I think you don't understand what is going on in the > philosophy of mind. > After Searle's Chinese Room fiasco, which as far as I know he defends to this very day, I don't see how he could be called an important anything. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon May 13 17:29:57 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 13:29:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <20130513164946.GA26408@leitl.org> References: <20130508120753.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130511103258.GL26408@leitl.org> <20130513115845.GK26408@leitl.org> <20130513164946.GA26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 12:49 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > See why I said the conversation was futile? Neither me nor > you decide policy, and collectively the policy has already > been decided upon, by hook or by crook. We can save the > argumentative noises (not really an argument) and just lean > back and see how this thing is going to play out itself. ### Here I agree completely. On the other hand, I had recently installed at my home a tank with 500 gallons of propane, tanks for storing 4500 gallons of water, I made some other purchases, I have talked to friends what we could do together in case of disturbances of public order which may or may not be related to energy prices, so I am not just leaning back. Those high-temp propane cell fuel generators are nice, if I feel rich in the next few years I might buy one. If I feel insane rich I might even buy some solar cells. Rafal From spike at rainier66.com Mon May 13 18:07:48 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 11:07:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Coal Gasification and CO2 (was Re: Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?) In-Reply-To: References: <00c801ce4e97$f20846e0$d618d4a0$@rainier66.com> <00eb01ce4ea7$554a7110$ffdf5330$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <027301ce5004$c79f4c00$56dde400$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson . >.Ok, I think I'm following along... but if all you need is energy and raw materials, why start with Coal? You don't have to use coal, but that is likely the cheapest carbon source and the one most likely to be economically viable with a wind and GB solar driven carbon to liquids process. >. Why not start with CO2 sucked from the atmosphere (should make the greens happy). Wrong-o. Nothing will make the greens happy. But I digress. The reason you wouldn't take CO2 out of the air is that it takes too much energy. There is a possibility of using natural gas from fracking operations as a carbon source. This one is possibly more viable than coal. Another possibility is biomass, but this takes more energy than coal conversions. Biomass does pull down CO2 and brings in the hydrogen as well, so in that sense it might help get some political and investor support. A combination biomass and coal conversion plant is a possibility. Regarding greens, unfortunately politics gets all mixed up in there, and politics will destroy anything it touches. >. Yes, you have more latent energy in the coal, but if the energy is really free, then why not just create it from the atmosphere and bag the whole disagreeable matter of mining coal in the first place? You might even be able to produce liquid Oxygen as a nice side benefit.-Kelly The energy isn't free except in the thought experiment. Here's how we unify the notions of the EROI and energy cliff. We can do the math and realize the concept of EROI is telling us something important, and the energy cliff is real. But my notion is that we can be OK in it if we see it coming and invest in energy infrastructure now while we have abundant cheap energy. If we do that enough, then when the red queen effect becomes perfectly obvious to the casual observer, we will already have enough wind and solar powered coal to liquids infrastructure to power more wind and solar powered coal to liquids infrastructure. Then we should be OK. My question: are we doing the preliminary installation fast enough? My intuition and BOTECs tell me we are not. What worries me is that free markets may not be sufficient to anticipate and proact. We already know that governments cannot and will not. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Mon May 13 16:17:48 2013 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 09:17:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] GLOBAL FUTURES 2045 INTERNTIONAL CONGRESS Message-ID: <00b501ce4ff5$6927a230$3b76e690$@natasha.cc> Humanity+ Advisors and Officers who are invited speakers include: Martine Rothblatt, Randal Koene, Natasha Vita-More, Ben Goertzel. There is 10% discount for Humanity+ members. To take advantage of these offers, use our Humanity+ code GF2045HPLUS and Register here! Dates: June 15-16. Location: New York City's Lincoln Center. 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 anders at aleph.se Mon May 13 22:20:07 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 23:20:07 +0100 Subject: [ExI] GLOBAL FUTURES 2045 INTERNTIONAL CONGRESS In-Reply-To: <00b501ce4ff5$6927a230$3b76e690$@natasha.cc> References: <00b501ce4ff5$6927a230$3b76e690$@natasha.cc> Message-ID: <51916717.7010003@aleph.se> That conference is going to be dense with The Usual Suspects, plus some unsuspecting researchers finding themselves dragged into our circle :-) See you there! -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 13 23:23:20 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 17:23:20 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Coal Gasification and CO2 (was Re: Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?) In-Reply-To: <027301ce5004$c79f4c00$56dde400$@rainier66.com> References: <00c801ce4e97$f20846e0$d618d4a0$@rainier66.com> <00eb01ce4ea7$554a7110$ffdf5330$@rainier66.com> <027301ce5004$c79f4c00$56dde400$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 12:07 PM, spike wrote: > > > *From:* extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto: > extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On Behalf Of *Kelly Anderson > *?***** > > ** ** > > >?Ok, I think I'm following along... but if all you need is energy and > raw materials, why start with Coal?**** > > ** ** > > You don?t have to use coal, but that is likely the cheapest carbon source > and the one most likely to be economically viable with a wind and GB solar > driven carbon to liquids process. > Ok, reading... > **** > > >? Why not start with CO2 sucked from the atmosphere (should make the > greens happy)? > > ** ** > > Wrong-o. Nothing will make the greens happy. > True that. The extinction of mankind would at least get rid of the last unhappy green. ;-P > But I digress. The reason you wouldn?t take CO2 out of the air is that it > takes too much energy. > So it is just an energy issue, as I suspected, not a chemistry issue. > There is a possibility of using natural gas from fracking operations as a > carbon source. This one is possibly more viable than coal. Another > possibility is biomass, but this takes more energy than coal conversions. > Biomass does pull down CO2 and brings in the hydrogen as well, so in that > sense it might help get some political and investor support. A combination > biomass and coal conversion plant is a possibility. > Yes, plants are good at pulling carbon out of the air already... > **** > > Regarding greens, unfortunately politics gets all mixed up in there, and > politics will destroy anything it touches. > And since government seems to be on an exponential growth curve, we're probably all screwed anyway. > >? Yes, you have more latent energy in the coal, but if the energy is > really free, then why not just create it from the atmosphere and bag the > whole disagreeable matter of mining coal in the first place? You might even > be able to produce liquid Oxygen as a nice side benefit?-Kelly > > ** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > The energy isn?t free except in the thought experiment. > Sure. That makes total sense. ** > > Here?s how we unify the notions of the EROI and energy cliff. We can do > the math and realize the concept of EROI is telling us something important, > and the energy cliff is real. But my notion is that we can be OK in it if > we see it coming and invest in energy infrastructure now while we have > abundant cheap energy. If we do that enough, then when the red queen > effect becomes perfectly obvious to the casual observer, we will already > have enough wind and solar powered coal to liquids infrastructure to power > more wind and solar powered coal to liquids infrastructure. Then we should > be OK. > I understand EROI in principle. If I use N barrels of oil to build M solar panels, and the energy output of M solar panels over their 20 year life span is not greater than that which would have been extracted directly from N barrels of oil, then you should not do that except in the case where the solar panels are so far off the grid that getting oil to the location would add additional energy and money expenses. Whether we're anywhere near close to that... I haven't a good idea because ALL of the data is tainted by someone or other. > My question: are we doing the preliminary installation fast enough? My > intuition and BOTECs tell me we are not. What worries me is that free > markets may not be sufficient to anticipate and proact. We already know > that governments cannot and will not. > Hasn't the government of Germany done a lot of this? I have been lead to believe that one major problem with the economy of Spain is that they did too much of this sort of thing. Ok, so let me outline the problem as I see it. If I have the choice of an ROI of 5 years for a new oil well, vs. 15 years for a solar installation, then the simple economic decision is to drill baby drill. But if then I don't have enough power to actually build solar panels after that, we're all screwed. Makes sense, but it discounts human ingenuity a WHOLE lot, doesn't it? Yes, we could all be living on Easter Island, and perhaps we are... but why isn't it more obvious if that is the case? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Mon May 13 23:25:11 2013 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 00:25:11 +0100 (BST) Subject: [ExI] Tsiolkovsky (Eugen Leitl) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1368487511.92476.YahooMailClassic@web171905.mail.ir2.yahoo.com> Asking the archivist of the BIS is a good step. Thinking about it, I've seen Yakov Perelman's name come up as "a great populariser of Tsiolkovsky's ideas" and a prolific author of popular science works in Russian - maybe one of his books was translated into English and inspired people? http://www.russianspaceweb.com/chronology_XX.html gives a Russia-centred view of spaceflight history, and says that the head of the RNII visited Tsiolkovsky at home in 1934, right around the time Korolev starts his work. The earliest quote of Tsiolkovsky I've seen in English is from 1958 - I found a copy of "Soviet Space Science" by Ari Shternfeld (English translation) sold off by a local air force base, and it includes the appendix detailing the flight path of Sputnik One which proved some of the conjectures in the book true. Tom From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 14 03:59:20 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 21:59:20 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again Message-ID: I've been trying to do an estimate of what I might expect to make if I bought a bitcoin miner from Butterfly Labs, and I thought I'd share my calculations in case any of you found it interesting (and to double check my math... LOL) Ok, So according to http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/ The network's current power is 82.77 TeraHashes/Second (I'm making the assumption that there are zero butterfly labs machines out there at this point, which may not be entirely correct) The network is automatically adjusted to target the creation of 7200 bitcoins per day (though it varies both up and down, this is the average that the math attempts to maintain). So, you currently need to do 41.385 TeraHashes to create a bitcoin, on average. This makes sense since 7200 is about twice the number of seconds in a day... So far, I think my math is about right. So the vapor hardware 50 GH/s Bitcoin Miner at $2,499 (that's right, not yet available) would create a bitcoin, on average every 827 seconds, or every 13.7 minutes. (Of course, they are really created 50 at a time...) So now the interesting question is what happens when there are thousands of these machines actually out there... What happens is the difficulty goes up. Some of the serial numbers on ebay suggest that they have presold as many as 53,000 of the 50 GH/s Miners, though that is a guess based merely on serial numbers beginning with 1 and going up by 1, which is probably a reasonable guess. So that gives 50 GH/s * 53000, which ups the network capacity by 2650 THashes/second, meaning that the entire network will be 1587 TH/Sec, making the difficulty roughly 31 times more difficult (and making all the old bitmining hardware pretty worthless). And that is just the big boxes, doesn't count all their smaller units, and those of their competitors... Is my math messed up here? So if the guy on Ebay is right that one of the 60GH/s machines will make $336/day (I didn't check his math). Then once these are out there, you could expect to make about $10 a day off an investment of $2500, which is a return of $3650 on an investment of $2500 if nothing better comes out during the year... for a profit of $1150 minus the cost of electricity. That seems like a lot of risk. I found another article where the guy said he thought the difficulty was rising about 5% per week. If a bunch of these new machines ship quickly, that will be a fond memory of the past, for a little while anyway. Another interesting article on how the bitcoin network compares to supercomputers. http://www.kurzweilai.net/bitcoin-network-speed-8-times-faster-than-top-500-supercomputers-combined So, I can only assume that it is going to get worse, as this chart seems to show. http://bitcoindifficulty.com/ Bottom line... If you can get an ASICS machine in the VERY short term, it's probably not too horrible... but if you get one in six months, it will take a long time to earn a return, if you ever do. But damn, that's some number crunching for the ages folks! -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 14 04:07:48 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 22:07:48 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Tsiolkovsky In-Reply-To: <020401ce4feb$cb0849f0$6118ddd0$@rainier66.com> References: <201305111627.r4BGQkYP025598@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <20130513111507.GH26408@leitl.org> <01da01ce4fe8$6e4892e0$4ad9b8a0$@rainier66.com> <020401ce4feb$cb0849f0$6118ddd0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 9:08 AM, spike wrote: > ** ** > > ** ** > > *>?* *On Behalf Of *Adrian Tymes > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Tsiolkovsky**** > > ** ** > > On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 7:44 AM, spike wrote:**** > > >>?I had two cram-full filing cabinets scanned, but never used any of the > scanned materials because I had no way to index any of it. What we need is > some way to read through all that material, some of which was hand-written, > and create searchable files.**** > > ** ** > > >? The phrase you want to search on is "optical character > recognition", or just "OCR". There are many solutions > out there, some of them free, some of them pretty high > quality. There are probably some that are both.**** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > We OCRed all of it. The results were better than nothing, not great. A > lot of what I had left in my filing cabinet were hand-written notes from > meetings. In the form they existed, they were not accessible anyway, so I > guess it was no real loss.**** > > ** > Was it hand written stuff, or printed stuff? When did you last try OCR with the best available package? Was a partial index better than nothing? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 14 04:14:30 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 22:14:30 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Extensive vs. intensive causes of energy demand In-Reply-To: References: <20130511104316.GM26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 11:28 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > > ### Look at it this way: > > If you have population growth, this comes with increased demand for > absolute necessities (food, shelter, sanitation) which means that > fluctuations in energy supply may cut into these necessities, > producing starvation, unrest, war, possibly a vicious cycle of damage > to energy production, triggering further starvation, etc. > > But a stable or slowly growing population that increases its energy > demand due to industrialization and increasing affluence does not put > itself at increased risk of starvation due to fluctuating energy > supply. If there is a problem with slower than expected energy supply > growth, well, some luxuries get trimmed off the list, to much gnashing > of teeth, but nobody starves among this population. This is Maslow's > hierarchy of needs in action, not a belief in energy-independent > agriculture and industry. > Rafal, I usually argue with you, but I see a bit of a hole in your logic here. If a billion enriched Chinese have increasing affluence, that seems like it could still result in a lot of starving Africans.... How do you address the geographical differences in these scenarios? I'm not saying you are wrong, but I'm asking you to think about it. Are there scenarios where Americans, Europeans and Chinese do belt tightening, while Africans and South Americans go down the shitter? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue May 14 04:41:44 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 21:41:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Tsiolkovsky In-Reply-To: References: <201305111627.r4BGQkYP025598@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <20130513111507.GH26408@leitl.org> <01da01ce4fe8$6e4892e0$4ad9b8a0$@rainier66.com> <020401ce4feb$cb0849f0$6118ddd0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <007801ce505d$57559450$0600bcf0$@rainier66.com> We OCRed all of it. The results were better than nothing, not great. A lot of what I had left in my filing cabinet were hand-written notes from meetings. In the form they existed, they were not accessible anyway, so I guess it was no real loss. >.Was it hand written stuff, or printed stuff? When did you last try OCR with the best available package? Was a partial index better than nothing? -Kelly It was a mix of handwritten and printed stuff. The OCR produced a mixed bag of results, some of it surprising. We had cases where the OCR failed in printed material that scanned well. So we ended up keeping PDFs of the stuff and doing our best with the indexing. I don't suppose it really matters anyway: it is clear enough to me that the knowledge needed for building a satellite is being ever more encoded in specialty software packages. We don't really need to maintain human knowledge of the physics and chemistry behind it all if our software knows it well enough. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brian at posthuman.com Tue May 14 05:27:03 2013 From: brian at posthuman.com (Brian Atkins) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 00:27:03 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5191CB27.8010206@posthuman.com> If you want some ASIC based mining hardware immediately (as in ship this week), you can buy the blades from ASICMINER: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=204030.0 they have already previously sold a bunch of these via auctions, and have run them in their own farm since around Jan/Feb. They are currently the most legit ASIC hardware supplier. Also coming soon, the small USB powered version: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195004.0 ASICMINER themselves are in midst of scaling up their mining farm to 200TH/s. The other major ASIC developer, Avalon, has begun selling their chips in batches of 10,000. So, yeah, GPU bitcoin mining days will be gone soon. Switch those to litecoin or something else. From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 14 06:46:40 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 08:46:40 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: References: <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130511103258.GL26408@leitl.org> <20130513115845.GK26408@leitl.org> <20130513164946.GA26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130514064640.GC26408@leitl.org> On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 01:29:57PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### Here I agree completely. > > On the other hand, I had recently installed at my home a tank with 500 > gallons of propane, tanks for storing 4500 gallons of water, I made > some other purchases, I have talked to friends what we could do > together in case of disturbances of public order which may or may not > be related to energy prices, so I am not just leaning back. Then you're doing the right things. > Those high-temp propane cell fuel generators are nice, if I feel rich > in the next few years I might buy one. If I feel insane rich I might > even buy some solar cells. Panels themselves are dirt cheap, it's the inverters and installation that isn't falling as quickly. I would have put up quite a few kWp if not for old growth trees and wrong roof inclination. From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 14 07:07:50 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 09:07:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Coal Gasification and CO2 (was Re: Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?) In-Reply-To: <027301ce5004$c79f4c00$56dde400$@rainier66.com> References: <00c801ce4e97$f20846e0$d618d4a0$@rainier66.com> <00eb01ce4ea7$554a7110$ffdf5330$@rainier66.com> <027301ce5004$c79f4c00$56dde400$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130514070750.GH26408@leitl.org> On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 11:07:48AM -0700, spike wrote: > My question: are we doing the preliminary installation fast enough? My > intuition and BOTECs tell me we are not. What worries me is that free We need about 1 TW effective (3 TWp in terms of solar PV) per year. We're falling a factor of 100 short. Energy deployment debt is cumulative. > markets may not be sufficient to anticipate and proact. We already know > that governments cannot and will not. I predict nothing will be done until everybody will be hurting plenty. From painlord2k at libero.it Tue May 14 12:45:59 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 14:45:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> Il 14/05/2013 05:59, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > I've been trying to do an estimate of what I might expect to make if I > bought a bitcoin miner from Butterfly Labs, and I thought I'd share my > calculations in case any of you found it interesting (and to double > check my math... LOL) > > Ok, So according to http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/ > The network's current power is 82.77 TeraHashes/Second (I'm making the > assumption that there are zero butterfly labs machines out there at this > point, which may not be entirely correct) > > The network is automatically adjusted to target the creation of 7200 > bitcoins per day (though it varies both up and down, this is the average > that the math attempts to maintain). The network create around 144 blocks of 25 bitcoin, now and for the next. So, they are not 7200 BTC/day but 3600 BTC/day Mirco From clementlawyer at gmail.com Tue May 14 13:36:18 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 09:36:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Journalism fellowship on aging open Message-ID: ANYONE? Journalism fellowship on aging open Deadline: 7/1/13 Journalists who cover issues surrounding aging can apply for a fellowship. The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) and New America Media (NAM) are accepting applications from journalists who cover issues in aging and/or who work for ethnic media outlets serving U.S. communities for the MetLife Foundation Journalism Fellowship on Aging. The program will select reporters from both ethnic media organizations in the U.S. and generations-beat reporters from the general-interest media, based on their proposals for in-depth projects on aging. Chosen journalists will receive a stipend of US$1,500 to attend GSA?s 2013 Annual Scientific Meeting , which is taking place in New Orleans November 20-24. Apply by July 1. For more information, click here . http://ijnet.org/opportunities/journalism-fellowship-aging-open James -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Tue May 14 13:39:20 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 06:39:20 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> Message-ID: <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Kelly Anderson wrote: > I've been trying to do an estimate of what I might expect to make if I > bought a bitcoin miner from Butterfly Labs, and I thought I'd share my > calculations in case any of you found it interesting (and to double > check my math... LOL) Here is a live stream of an inexpensive Butterfly ASIC in operation: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/05/butterfly_live/ Pooled, it is mining about 2 BTC per 10 days. That is a fantastic ROI at current prices, but I suspect you cannot buy one anytime soon at the list price. As I understand it, it is backlogged into the thousands. There is no telling what the economics will look like by the time your order is filled, if it is ever filled. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue May 14 14:10:40 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 07:10:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <20130514064640.GC26408@leitl.org> References: <20130508150259.GW26408@leitl.org> <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130511103258.GL26408@leitl.org> <20130513115845.GK26408@leitl.org> <20130513164946.GA26408@leitl.org> <20130514064640.GC26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <005001ce50ac$d17ab540$74701fc0$@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 ... >...Panels themselves are dirt cheap, it's the inverters and installation that isn't falling as quickly... _______________________________________________ I am interested in how the inverter cost scales. My friend with the Oregon ranch has an application which was mostly immune from the load leveling problem: he was using his power to lift water to irrigate corn. That task needs to be done most when the skies are clear and the sun is hot. In the rare case when solar power is insufficient, he has Diesel backup. His operation is a few hundred kWp. I would think there is some economy of scale as you go up, with respect to power conditioning. In this particular special case, the power does not need to be particularly clean. If the power to the house is completely separate and the PVs are only running massive electric motors, I would think there should be some way to take advantage of the huge inductance of all those motors to help stabilize the PV power. Failing that, perhaps he could use DC motors to run the pumps? Those things should be more forgiving and perhaps result in lower power-conditioning losses. spike From painlord2k at libero.it Tue May 14 14:30:55 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 16:30:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> Il 14/05/2013 15:39, Gordon ha scritto: > Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> I've been trying to do an estimate of what I might expect to make if I >> bought a bitcoin miner from Butterfly Labs, and I thought I'd share my >> calculations in case any of you found it interesting (and to double >> check my math... LOL) > > Here is a live stream of an inexpensive Butterfly ASIC in operation: > > http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/05/butterfly_live/ > > Pooled, it is mining about 2 BTC per 10 days. That is a fantastic ROI at > current prices, but I suspect you cannot buy one anytime soon at the > list price. As I understand it, it is backlogged into the thousands. > There is no telling what the economics will look like by the time your > order is filled, if it is ever filled. Currently the difficulty of mining went up five times from January. If it keep this, by the end of September it will be up other ten times from January. The raising appear to be linear, so it is proportional to the ASIC production (or it appear so to me). Mirco From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 14 14:44:51 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 15:44:51 +0100 Subject: [ExI] More Fermi Paradox Message-ID: George Dvorsky has posted 11 of the Weirdest Solutions to the Fermi Paradox Quote: Most people take it for granted that we have yet to make contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. Trouble is, the numbers don?t add up. Our Galaxy is so old that every corner of it should have been visited many, many times over by now. No theory to date has satisfactorily explained away this Great Silence, so it?s time to think outside the box. Here are eleven of the weirdest solutions to the Fermi Paradox. There's no shortage of solutions to the Fermi Paradox. The standard ones are fairly well known, and we?re not going to examine them here, but they include the Rare Earth Hypothesis (the suggestion that life is exceptionally rare), the notion that space travel is too difficult, or the distances too vast, the Great Filter Hypothesis (the idea that all sufficiently advanced civilizations destroy themselves before going intergalactic), or that we?re simply not interesting enough. ----------------- His No.7 - All Aliens Are Homebodies is the retreat into virtual worlds suggestion that I rather fancy at present. "Massive supercomputers would be able to simulate universes within universes, and lifetimes within lifetimes ? and at speeds and variations far removed from what?s exhibited in the tired old analog world." He mentions one thing I hadn't heard before. - Sandberg probes (from you know who). The suggestion here is that when a civ gets to the stage that it can create self-replicating probes to go out and spam the universe, another thought occurs..... What if another civ has already done this? So to ensure that nobody bothers them, advanced ETIs could set up a perimeter of Sandberg probes (self-replicating policing probes) to make sure that nobody gets in. Neat idea. BillK From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 14 14:47:33 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 16:47:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020? In-Reply-To: <005001ce50ac$d17ab540$74701fc0$@rainier66.com> References: <20130508213331.GI26408@leitl.org> <20130511103258.GL26408@leitl.org> <20130513115845.GK26408@leitl.org> <20130513164946.GA26408@leitl.org> <20130514064640.GC26408@leitl.org> <005001ce50ac$d17ab540$74701fc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130514144733.GM26408@leitl.org> On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 07:10:40AM -0700, spike wrote: > His operation is a few hundred kWp. I would think there is some economy of > scale as you go up, with respect to power conditioning. In this particular > special case, the power does not need to be particularly clean. If the > power to the house is completely separate and the PVs are only running > massive electric motors, I would think there should be some way to take > advantage of the huge inductance of all those motors to help stabilize the > PV power. Failing that, perhaps he could use DC motors to run the pumps? > Those things should be more forgiving and perhaps result in lower > power-conditioning losses. I think this requirement profile and size (several 100 kWp is pretty big for a single private installation) does ask for a custom design. There's no grid, so going DC all the way appears useful. I would consider using capacitor banks to provide current for motor startup. In general starting and stopping large motors is a different design space, so I would consult a specialist. From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 14 14:55:00 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 16:55:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] More Fermi Paradox In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20130514145500.GN26408@leitl.org> On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 03:44:51PM +0100, BillK wrote: > His No.7 - All Aliens Are Homebodies If you play a million rounds of Russian roulette, would you expect to survive? > is the retreat into virtual worlds suggestion that I rather fancy at present. > "Massive supercomputers would be able to simulate universes within That's not how it works, do the math. > universes, and lifetimes within lifetimes ? and at speeds and > variations far removed from what?s exhibited in the tired old analog > world." But the massive supercomputers are called that because they are... massive. Massive enough to turn whole stellar systems into FIR blackbodies. > > He mentions one thing I hadn't heard before. - Sandberg probes (from > you know who). > The suggestion here is that when a civ gets to the stage that it can > create self-replicating probes to go out and spam the universe, > another thought occurs..... What if another civ has already done this? > So to ensure that nobody bothers them, advanced ETIs could set up a > perimeter of Sandberg probes (self-replicating policing probes) to No perimeter, you have to snow-shoe spam the universe and drop a big nuke on any other would-be spammer. So why haven't we been nuked yet? > make sure that nobody gets in. From spike at rainier66.com Tue May 14 14:52:46 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 07:52:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Coal Gasification and CO2 (was Re: Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?) In-Reply-To: <027301ce5004$c79f4c00$56dde400$@rainier66.com> References: <00c801ce4e97$f20846e0$d618d4a0$@rainier66.com> <00eb01ce4ea7$554a7110$ffdf5330$@rainier66.com> <027301ce5004$c79f4c00$56dde400$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <005701ce50b2$b2f1b9b0$18d52d10$@rainier66.com> The most interesting comment is the last sentence in this article: "Clearly, there was a bias to wind energy in their favor because they are a renewable source of energy, and justifiably so," said Rob Manes, who runs the Kansas office for The Nature Conservancy and who served on the committee. "We need renewable energy in this country." They have a Nature Conservancy guy recognize that wind power is given a pass on bird deaths, but in the end he, and plenty of others including me, realize that there is no free energy; it all comes with a price. Wind power kills birds, but we need it anyway. Ground based solar is bad for the desert tortoise, but we need that too. We need green energy, we need blue energy, black, brown, red, purple, charteuse, mauve and taupe energy, we need it all, and yes we know, energy all comes with a price. spike Check this: Obama administration gives wind farms a pass on eagle deaths, prosecutes oil companies Published May 14, 2013 Associated Press * A wind farm in Colorado is shown here. (AP Photo) CONVERSE COUNTY, Wyo. - The Obama administration has never fined or prosecuted a wind farm for killing eagles and other protected bird species, shielding the industry from liability and helping keep the scope of the deaths secret, an Associated Press investigation has found. More than 573,000 birds are killed by the country's wind farms each year, including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles, according to an estimate published in March in the peer-reviewed Wildlife Society Bulletin. Each death is federal crime, a charge that the Obama administration has used to prosecute oil companies when birds drown in their waste pits, and power companies when birds are electrocuted by their power lines. No wind energy company has been prosecuted, even those that repeatedly flout the law. Wind power, a pollution-free energy intended to ease global warming, is a cornerstone of President Barack Obama's energy plan. His administration has championed a $1 billion-a-year tax break to the industry that has nearly doubled the amount of wind power in his first term. The large death toll at wind farms shows how the renewable energy rush comes with its own environmental consequences, trade-offs the Obama administration is willing to make in the name of cleaner energy. "It is the rationale that we have to get off of carbon, we have to get off of fossil fuels, that allows them to justify this," said Tom Dougherty, a long-time environmentalist who worked for nearly 20 years for the National Wildlife Federation in the West, until his retirement in 2008. "But at what cost? In this case, the cost is too high." Documents and emails obtained by The Associated Press offer glimpses of the problem: 14 deaths at seven facilities in California, five each in New Mexico and Oregon, one in Washington state and another in Nevada, where an eagle was found with a hole in its neck, exposing the bone. One of the deadliest places in the country for golden eagles is Wyoming, where federal officials said wind farms had killed more than four dozen golden eagles since 2009, predominantly in the southeastern part of the state. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the figures. Getting precise figures is impossible because many companies aren't required to disclose how many birds they kill. And when they do, experts say, the data can be unreliable. When companies voluntarily report deaths, the Obama administration in many cases refuses to make the information public, saying it belongs to the energy companies or that revealing it would expose trade secrets or implicate ongoing enforcement investigations. Nearly all the birds being killed are protected under federal environmental laws, which prosecutors have used to generate tens of millions of dollars in fines and settlements from businesses, including oil and gas companies, over the past five years. "What it boils down to is this: If you electrocute an eagle, that is bad, but if you chop it to pieces, that is OK," said Tim Eicher, a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service enforcement agent based in Cody, Wyo. The Fish and Wildlife Service says it is investigating 18 bird-death cases involving wind-power facilities and seven have been referred to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to discuss the status of those cases. In its defense, the wind-energy industry points out that more eagles are killed each year by cars, electrocutions and poisoning than by turbines. Dan Ashe, the Fish and Wildlife Service's director, said in an interview Monday with the AP said that his agency always has made clear to wind companies that if they kill birds they would still be liable. "We are not allowing them to do it. They do it," he said of the bird deaths. "And we will successfully prosecute wind companies if they are in significant noncompliance." But by not enforcing the law so far, the administration provides little incentive for companies to build wind farms where there are fewer birds. And while companies already operating turbines are supposed to do all they can to avoid killing birds, in reality there's little they can do once the windmills are spinning. Wind farms are clusters of turbines as tall as 30-story buildings, with spinning rotors the size of jetliners. Flying eagles behave like drivers texting on their cell phones -- they don't look up. As they scan for food, they don't notice the industrial turbine blades until it's too late. Former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, in an interview with the AP before his departure, denied any preferential treatment for wind. Interior Department officials said that criminal prosecution, regardless of the industry, is always a "last resort." "There's still additional work to be done with eagles and other avian species, but we are working on it very hard," Salazar said. "We will get to the right balance." Meanwhile, the Obama administration has proposed a rule that would give wind-energy companies potentially decades of shelter from prosecution for killing eagles. The regulation is currently under review at the White House. The proposal, made at the urging of the wind-energy industry, would allow companies to apply for 30-year permits to kill a set number of bald or golden eagles. Previously, companies were only eligible for five-year permits. "It's basically guaranteeing a black box for 30 years, and they're saying `trust us for oversight'. This is not the path forward," said Katie Umekubo, a renewable energy attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, who argued in private meetings with the industry and government leaders that the 30-year permit needed an in-depth environmental review. But the eagle rule is not the first time the administration has made concessions for the wind-energy industry. Last year, over objections from some of its own wildlife investigators and biologists, the Interior Department updated its guidelines and provided more cover for wind companies that violate the law. Under both the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, the death of a single bird without a permit is illegal. But under the Obama administration's new guidelines, wind-energy companies don't face additional scrutiny until they have a "significant adverse impact" on wildlife or habitat. That rare exception for one industry substantially weakened the government's ability to enforce the law and ignited controversy inside the Interior Department. "U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service does not do this for the electric utility industry or other industries," Kevin Kritz, a government wildlife biologist in the Rocky Mountain region wrote in internal agency comments in September 2011. "Other industries will want to be judged on a similar standard." The Obama administration, however, repeatedly overruled its own experts. In the end, the wind-energy industry, which was part of the committee that drafted and edited the guidelines, got almost everything it wanted. "Clearly, there was a bias to wind energy in their favor because they are a renewable source of energy, and justifiably so," said Rob Manes, who runs the Kansas office for The Nature Conservancy and who served on the committee. "We need renewable energy in this country." Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/14/obama-administration-gives-wind-f arms-pass-on-eagle-deaths-prosecutes-oil/?test=latestnews#ixzz2THKMwo3P -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 14 15:19:23 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 16:19:23 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Coal Gasification and CO2 (was Re: Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?) In-Reply-To: <005701ce50b2$b2f1b9b0$18d52d10$@rainier66.com> References: <00c801ce4e97$f20846e0$d618d4a0$@rainier66.com> <00eb01ce4ea7$554a7110$ffdf5330$@rainier66.com> <027301ce5004$c79f4c00$56dde400$@rainier66.com> <005701ce50b2$b2f1b9b0$18d52d10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 3:52 PM, spike wrote: > They have a Nature Conservancy guy recognize that wind power is given a pass > on bird deaths, but in the end he, and plenty of others including me, > realize that there is no free energy; it all comes with a price. Wind power > kills birds, but we need it anyway. Ground based solar is bad for the > desert tortoise, but we need that too. We need green energy, we need blue > energy, black, brown, red, purple, charteuse, mauve and taupe energy, we > need it all, and yes we know, energy all comes with a price. > > See: Sheerwind funnel system claims to produce 6 times more energy than conventional wind and costs competitive with natural gas and hydro power. They claim costs as low as $10 MWH makes SheerWind a true game-changer in electric power generation that is competitive with natural gas and hydroelectricity. * No moving parts: INVELOX has little to no impact on wildlife, including bird migration. ----------------- BillK From clementlawyer at gmail.com Tue May 14 15:39:36 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 11:39:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> Message-ID: Kelly Anderson wrote: I've been trying to do an estimate of what I might expect to make if I bought a bitcoin miner from Butterfly Labs, and I thought I'd share my calculations in case any of you found it interesting (and to double check my math... LOL) Here is a live stream of an inexpensive Butterfly ASIC in operation: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/05/butterfly_live/ Pooled, it is mining about 2 BTC per 10 days. That is a fantastic ROI at current prices, but I suspect you cannot buy one anytime soon at the list price. As I understand it, it is backlogged into the thousands. There is no telling what the economics will look like by the time your order is filled, if it is ever filled. As the advice "in a gold rush, sell the shovels," goes, it sounds like the way to make money here is to quickly create a new device, like Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner, which will anticipate the processing needs six to 12 months from now, put it up on Indiegogo or Kickstarter, and try to keep up with your sales! James -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Tue May 14 16:06:10 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 09:06:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> Message-ID: <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Mirco Romanato wrote: >?Il 14/05/2013 15:39, Gordon ha scritto: >> Here is a live stream of an inexpensive Butterfly ASIC in operation: >> >> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/05/butterfly_live/ >> >> Pooled, it is mining about 2 BTC per 10 days. That is a fantastic ROI at >> current prices, but I suspect you cannot buy one anytime soon at the >> list price. As I understand it, it is backlogged into the thousands. >> There is no telling what the economics will look like by the time your >> order is filled, if it is ever filled. >Currently the difficulty of mining went up five times from January. >If it keep this, by the end of September it will be up other ten times >from January. The raising appear to be linear, so it is proportional to >the ASIC production (or it appear so to me). Given the uncertainty about delivery dates on these Butterfly ASIC miners, my thought for the moment is that anyone fundamentally bullish on the outlook for BTC over the next year or so should invest in BTC rather than commit those same funds to a miner order. Would you agree, Mirco? Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue May 14 16:27:01 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 09:27:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] More Fermi Paradox In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <009201ce50bf$dd95f110$98c1d330$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK Quote: >... Here are eleven of the weirdest solutions to the Fermi Paradox. >...BillK _______________________________________________ BillK, I made a suggestion, which I can translate here into verbal pseudocode: Create a list of the 11 weirdest solutions, order them from least weird to most weird, then study carefully number 11 until you understand it and it seems less weird. Now you need to move it up on the list to the appropriate spot. If former number 10 = the new number 11, then goto : {8-] spike From clementlawyer at gmail.com Tue May 14 16:41:34 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 12:41:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: >From Wired Magazine: http://www.wired.com/business/2013/05/350000-in-real-money-for-bitcoin-startups/ Bitcoin took another step toward the mainstream Tuesday with the announcement of at least $350,000 available for Bitcoin-focused startups participating in the next class of Silicon Valley-based acceleratorBoost VC . If first generation companies were focused on the infrastructure aspects of the crypto-currency (generating or mining actual Bitcoin currency and providing an exchange for it), the next wave will be about making the math-based money simple for non-hackers to use, says Boost VC founder Adam Draper. ?We are especially interested in startups that make it easier to actually spend Bitcoin currency,? Draper says. ?Security is another big opportunity. If Bitcoin is to succeed as a global currency and really start being used for transactions, everyone needs to trust it.? Trust in Bitcoin has been hard to come by lately. Straight-up theft of Bitcoin has been a regular occurrence at the electronic exchanges and from the electronic wallets where Bitcoin currency is ?stored.? There is also the generally outlaw nature of those who prefer it, using the anonymous, untraceable Bitcoin to buy drugs and other illegal items. And finally, there is the volatility in the currency itself, which has soared and crashed in value at least five times since the network launched in 2009. Still, for all the larceny, black market trades, and general difficulty in acquiring and using Bitcoin, Draper and the folks backing the Boost VC accelerator believe that Bitcoin or some other math-based money will become a global currency. ?In the long-term, what is going to drive the value of Bitcoin is the use of Bitcoin for transactions, and the ability to take transaction costs to zero,? says Jeremy Liew, a partner with Lightspeed Venture Partners, the venture capital firm anchoring Boost?s Bitcoin fund. If the decentralized Bitcoin gets rid of the percentage fees charged by banks, credit card companies and payment services (or reduces them dramatically), it makes profitable all kinds of new micro-transactions in online media, in gaming and in charities and donations. And would grocery stores take an extra percentage point or two on their already tissue-thin margins? Absolutely. ?Radical libertarians love the idea of no central bank, and some portion of the people don?t want other people to know what they are doing because they are breaking the law, but once my transaction costs go to zero, that is transformative,? Liew says. ?You are seeing this sea change in the (Bitcoin) user base, what they care about is zero transaction costs because their interests are purely financial. And there a whole lot more of those people out there than the criminals or radical libertarians ? that is what is going to carry Bitcoin into the mainstream.? Boost VC has already accepted two Bitcoin startups into its latest class, and there is room (and money) for at least five more, Draper says. Boost VC provides housing, mentoring and about $50,000 to its participantsz. The application deadline is June 1, and the program starts June 24th. So all of you with Bitcoin dreams, get on it . James -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 14 16:45:05 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 12:45:05 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Extensive vs. intensive causes of energy demand In-Reply-To: References: <20130511104316.GM26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 12:14 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 11:28 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki > wrote: >> >> >> ### Look at it this way: >> >> If you have population growth, this comes with increased demand for >> absolute necessities (food, shelter, sanitation) which means that >> fluctuations in energy supply may cut into these necessities, >> producing starvation, unrest, war, possibly a vicious cycle of damage >> to energy production, triggering further starvation, etc. >> >> But a stable or slowly growing population that increases its energy >> demand due to industrialization and increasing affluence does not put >> itself at increased risk of starvation due to fluctuating energy >> supply. If there is a problem with slower than expected energy supply >> growth, well, some luxuries get trimmed off the list, to much gnashing >> of teeth, but nobody starves among this population. This is Maslow's >> hierarchy of needs in action, not a belief in energy-independent >> agriculture and industry. > > > Rafal, I usually argue with you, but I see a bit of a hole in your logic > here. If a billion enriched Chinese have increasing affluence, that seems > like it could still result in a lot of starving Africans.... How do you > address the geographical differences in these scenarios? I'm not saying you > are wrong, but I'm asking you to think about it. Are there scenarios where > Americans, Europeans and Chinese do belt tightening, while Africans and > South Americans go down the shitter? ### I knew this was coming :) You notice how I wrote "nobody starves among this population" and "population.... does not put itself at increased risk" (emphasis on "this" and "itself"). Yes, you are correct, increased competition for energy between the old rich, newly rich and the still poor can be bad for the still poor - but note that this does not invalidate what I wrote about low risk of societal breakdown in the intensive energy demand scenario. Rafal From msd001 at gmail.com Tue May 14 21:55:52 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 17:55:52 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 11:59 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > The network is automatically adjusted to target the creation of 7200 > bitcoins per day (though it varies both up and down, this is the average > that the math attempts to maintain). > > So, you currently need to do 41.385 TeraHashes to create a bitcoin, on > average. This makes sense since 7200 is about twice the number of seconds in > a day... So far, I think my math is about right. 7200 is not "about" - it IS twice the number of seconds in an HOUR. 60s * 60m * 24h = 86400s per day / 7200 bitcoins per day = 12 seconds per bitcoin if that's at 82.77TH/s then 993.24TH = 1BTC I wonder what else humanity might be doing with such resources if not competing for shares of the future? Or if ultimately that's what we're doing no matter what we use to measure the shares... hmm. From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Tue May 14 22:41:38 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 16:41:38 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hi Gordon, Wouldn't it be great to know, concisely and quantitatively, just what all the transhumanist Bitcoin experts believed about this? Just how bullish are you/they? And I bet tracking this real time, over lots of experts, all communicating concisely and quantitatively about why they believe, what they believe, would provide the most intelligent possible predictions about both the near and long term future of Bitcoins, and any effect they may have on the world economy, and so on. I, like you, Gordon, am very bullish. I think it would be much better to invest in the coins, at this point, and am heavily investing in them, rather than mining hardware. James, are you investing in mining hardware or Bitcoins? Is anyone else? I consider you a good expert, and would like to know which way you really lean, why, and if you are actually investing either way? Wouldn't it be great to know, concisely and quantitatively, what all possible risks the experts believe, and their odds, and all that? If bit coins turn out to be catastrophic in any way, for either holders or the economy, it'd be great to know, sooner, rather than later, and a crowd of experts, amplifying their wisdom, concisely and quantitatively, about potential risks, would be way beyond any other intelligent system. It does take a lot of work (one person can't do it) for everyone to build consensus, and to communicate concisely and quantitatively, so you know who does and does not agree, and why, but, as can now be shown on the consciousness survey project, the intelligence of everyone working on such blows anything else (like the primitive ivory tower, and their worthless 20 thousand "peer reviewed" documents) or any other individual "talking head pundit" away on any moral issue such as this. Brent Allsop Brent Allsop On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 10:06 AM, Gordon wrote: > Mirco Romanato wrote: > > *> *Il 14/05/2013 15:39, Gordon ha scritto: > > >> Here is a live stream of an inexpensive Butterfly ASIC in operation: > >> > >> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/05/butterfly_live/ > >> > >> Pooled, it is mining about 2 BTC per 10 days. That is a fantastic ROI at > >> current prices, but I suspect you cannot buy one anytime soon at the > >> list price. As I understand it, it is backlogged into the thousands. > >> There is no telling what the economics will look like by the time your > >> order is filled, if it is ever filled. > > >Currently the difficulty of mining went up five times from January. > >If it keep this, by the end of September it will be up other ten times > >from January. The raising appear to be linear, so it is proportional to > >the ASIC production (or it appear so to me). > > Given the uncertainty about delivery dates on these Butterfly ASIC miners, > my thought for the moment is that anyone fundamentally bullish on the > outlook for BTC over the next year or so should invest in BTC rather than > commit those same funds to a miner order. Would you agree, Mirco? > > 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 brent.allsop at canonizer.com Wed May 15 02:59:42 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 20:59:42 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Redness comes from Context? In-Reply-To: <1367880312.47424.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1367880312.47424.YahooMailClassic@web165003.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5192FA1E.1090708@canonizer.com> Hi Ben, I think you've got a great (or at least still popular?) idea about conscoiusness that hasn't yet be canonized, along the lines that asking what consciousness is, is like asking what part of the clock knows what time it is. I believe my buddy Marvin Minsky first described this general idea as 'boxyness' as in which of the 6 sides is the 'boxyness' of a box? Would you be willing to help get this idea integrated into the survey to help get an idea of how many other people agree, if any still do (Marvin is getting quite old)? All that is required is a quick and easy draft of a camp statement and a camp name, off the top of your head for other future supporters to help improve. And when are the rest of you going to help out and get your current thinking canonized. Or are you afraid you're about to be proved wrong by real effing science, totally decimating your reputation for all to see, as I think is fair to assume? If the world needs to know, don't just add to the bleating noise of the heard - get your thinking Canonized so we can finally ratchet things up and drive everyone's wisdom on this surely shortly to no longer be just theoretical issue. Oh, and Ben, since it seems that your theory predicts we will never solve the 'problem of other minds', or be able to 'eff' the ineffable, obviously science demonstrating such, at least for 'elemental qualities', so I can know, qualitatively, as surely as I know the difference between my elemental redness and greenness, whether your redness is more like my redness, my greeness, or something else far less phenomenal and zombieish, this would falsify your current thinking, and finally force you to at least adopt one of the other emerging consensus camps right? Brent Allsop On 5/6/2013 4:45 PM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Brent Allsop wrote: > >> Hi Ben, >> >> This is all about Shannon?s information theory. You can?t store a megabyte >> of information in some physical device that is only capable of holding one >> byte. > Not sure what Shannon has to do with this, but never mind.. > > >> If you know something, there must be something physical which you >> can point to, which is representing that information. > > Yes. My brain. > > >> If something ?seems? >> some way, there must be something that is this seeming. You talked about a >> ?vortex?, which is a good example. In that case, if a vortex exists, there >> is a real liquid, in a real ?vortex? state, which can be described. The >> physical stuff, along with the state description, are the necessary and >> sufficient set of causal properties that are the real ?vortex?. If >> something /feels/ some way, the same thing is true, there must be something >> physically real, and some physical state, which is responsible for that >> feeling. > > Yes. My brain, processing particular information in a particular way. > > I'm not sure about this business of calling it a 'causal property'. That seems to be confusing things. It's a process rather than a property. My brain /does/ something, which I describe as 'feeling a certain way'. This makes more sense than saying my brain /has/ something which 'is a certain feeling', because that leads you to think that the feeling is an independent thing, which is obviously untrue, because when my brain stops working, the feeling ceases to exist. > >> There must be some necessary and sufficient set of causal >> properties that are the redness experience. Obviously, something that >> /feels/ like redness is very different than something that /feels/ like >> greenness. The qualitative natures of these, and their differences, and >> whatever is responsible for it, is what I?m talking about, nothing more. > OK, so you're talking about the same thing as me: The processes performed by the brain that we call 'seeing green' or red, or feeling hungry, etc. > > >> Also, as far as ?elemental redness? goes. We both agree that when we >> experience redness, we usually have bound to that our knowledge of the word >> ?red?, our knowledge of us perceiving redness, a sensation that redness is >> a ?warm? color and a bunch of stuff like that. While it is true that all >> of these things can be bound together in one person?s brain, would you also >> agree that it is possible to reduce these things down, and isolate them all. >> So that it is possible for a brain to have just a qualitative redness >> experience, with none of the other cognitive information bound up with it? > > No, of course not. Do you think that it's possible to just have a song, with none of the chords, harmonies, rhythms and lyrics that are 'bound up' with it? Is there such a thing as the 'elemental "Bridge over Troubled Water"' that can be separated from the words and music? If you separate out the constituent parts of the 'redness' experience, it goes away. As in, doesn't exist anymore. > > You seem to be dismantling the clock in an effort to find its tick. The tick is real, it definitely exists, so it must /be/ something, right? So why can't you find it when the clock is in bits? > > Also, please could you avoid top-posting? It makes things difficult to follow. Thanks. > > > Ben Zaiboc > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From andymck35 at gmail.com Wed May 15 06:18:09 2013 From: andymck35 at gmail.com (Andrew Mckee) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 18:18:09 +1200 Subject: [ExI] More Fermi Paradox In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, 15 May 2013 02:44:51 +1200, BillK wrote: > He mentions one thing I hadn't heard before. - Sandberg probes (from > you know who). > The suggestion here is that when a civ gets to the stage that it can > create self-replicating probes to go out and spam the universe, > another thought occurs..... What if another civ has already done this? David Brin's novel - 'Existence' kinda takes this idea and runs with it, definitely worth a read IMO. From protokol2020 at gmail.com Wed May 15 06:54:04 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 08:54:04 +0200 Subject: [ExI] More Fermi Paradox In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > What if another civ has already done this? Then you are lucky. Others have done the job, otherwise you should. Still, if their try is not good enough, you have to overwrite their probes front. As best as you can. But proceed as nobody has done anything of that kind yet. Do it right and fast. On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 8:18 AM, Andrew Mckee wrote: > On Wed, 15 May 2013 02:44:51 +1200, BillK wrote: > > > He mentions one thing I hadn't heard before. - Sandberg probes (from >> you know who). >> The suggestion here is that when a civ gets to the stage that it can >> create self-replicating probes to go out and spam the universe, >> another thought occurs..... What if another civ has already done this? >> > > David Brin's novel - 'Existence' kinda takes this idea and runs with it, > definitely worth a read IMO. > > ______________________________**_________________ > 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 May 15 08:16:38 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 10:16:38 +0200 Subject: [ExI] More Fermi Paradox In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20130515081638.GA26408@leitl.org> On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 08:54:04AM +0200, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > > What if another civ has already done this? > > Then you are lucky. Others have done the job, otherwise you should. This doesn't compute, if you want to maximize computation before universe winds itself down. So you'd go for a hard relativistic expansion as early as possible, in order to get hold of as much spacetime as possible before inflation makes most of it inaccessible. You'd then maximize the computation utilization in order to render as many experience-moments as possible, until the final curtain. Aiming for anything less guarantees a half-assed job. > Still, if their try is not good enough, you have to overwrite their probes > front. As best as you can. In case of omega-grade substrate there is no difference between the expansion front, regardless of the point of origin. It's a collaborative effort, not a fight. After conversion, there's slow, random diffusion across volume, with sufficient spatial diversity variation that the point if origin is also irrelevant. So no extra incentive to fight, either, just regular Darwin in motion. > But proceed as nobody has done anything of that kind yet. Do it right and > fast. > > > On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 8:18 AM, Andrew Mckee wrote: > > > On Wed, 15 May 2013 02:44:51 +1200, BillK wrote: > > > > > > He mentions one thing I hadn't heard before. - Sandberg probes (from > >> you know who). > >> The suggestion here is that when a civ gets to the stage that it can > >> create self-replicating probes to go out and spam the universe, > >> another thought occurs..... What if another civ has already done this? > >> > > > > David Brin's novel - 'Existence' kinda takes this idea and runs with it, > > definitely worth a read IMO. > > > > ______________________________**_________________ > > 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 -- 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 gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed May 15 08:23:40 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 01:23:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1368606220.80804.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> This is not good. I'm guessing the investigation pertains to someone using Dwolla and Bitcoin for illicit purposes. Details are not clear. Department of Homeland Security Shuts Down Dwolla Payments to and From Mt. Gox http://betabeat.com/2013/05/department-of-homeland-security-shuts-down-dwolla-payments-to-and-from-mt-gox/ ________________________________ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Wed May 15 08:41:05 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 10:41:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] More Fermi Paradox In-Reply-To: <20130515081638.GA26408@leitl.org> References: <20130515081638.GA26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: > It's a collaborative effort, not a fight. That depends. May be both. You have some constrains inside which you have to operate, to avoid an unnecessary conflict. OTOH, you have to do, what you have to do. If something evil is on the horizon, you ought to fight it. On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 10:16 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 08:54:04AM +0200, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > > > What if another civ has already done this? > > > > Then you are lucky. Others have done the job, otherwise you should. > > This doesn't compute, if you want to maximize computation before > universe winds itself down. So you'd go for a hard relativistic > expansion as early as possible, in order to get hold of as > much spacetime as possible before inflation makes most of it > inaccessible. You'd then maximize the computation utilization > in order to render as many experience-moments as possible, until > the final curtain. > > Aiming for anything less guarantees a half-assed job. > > > Still, if their try is not good enough, you have to overwrite their > probes > > front. As best as you can. > > In case of omega-grade substrate there is no difference between > the expansion front, regardless of the point of origin. > It's a collaborative effort, not a fight. After conversion, > there's slow, random diffusion across volume, with sufficient > spatial diversity variation that the point if origin is also > irrelevant. So no extra incentive to fight, either, just regular > Darwin in motion. > > > But proceed as nobody has done anything of that kind yet. Do it right and > > fast. > > > > > > On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 8:18 AM, Andrew Mckee > wrote: > > > > > On Wed, 15 May 2013 02:44:51 +1200, BillK wrote: > > > > > > > > > He mentions one thing I hadn't heard before. - Sandberg probes (from > > >> you know who). > > >> The suggestion here is that when a civ gets to the stage that it can > > >> create self-replicating probes to go out and spam the universe, > > >> another thought occurs..... What if another civ has already done this? > > >> > > > > > > David Brin's novel - 'Existence' kinda takes this idea and runs with > it, > > > definitely worth a read IMO. > > > > > > ______________________________**_________________ > > > extropy-chat mailing list > > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > http://lists.extropy.org/**mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-**chat< > 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 > > -- > 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 anders at aleph.se Wed May 15 09:12:36 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 10:12:36 +0100 Subject: [ExI] More Fermi Paradox In-Reply-To: <20130515081638.GA26408@leitl.org> References: <20130515081638.GA26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <51935184.8010708@aleph.se> On 15/05/2013 09:16, Eugen Leitl wrote: > This doesn't compute, if you want to maximize computation before > universe winds itself down. So you'd go for a hard relativistic > expansion as early as possible, in order to get hold of as much > spacetime as possible before inflation makes most of it inaccessible. It looks like the primary thing is being born early: then you can grab a lot more, since the expansion was slower in the past and things were closer together. Old civs have a huge advantage. In the present era, speed beats starting time: in our calculations we found that getting an increment in speed was worth delaying starting for. If I remember right, going from 90% to 99% was worth a million year delay - in the end, that is a very small delay compared to the travel time. > You'd then maximize the computation utilization in order to render as > many experience-moments as possible, until the final curtain. Aiming > for anything less guarantees a half-assed job. It all depends on what the ultimate goal is. If it is experience-moments or pleasure, then spread far and wide and convert everything to computronium or hedonium. If the goal requires a cohesive big mind for a long time, then you only need a supercluster - the other stuff will become causally disconnected and cannot be part of your big mind. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From protokol2020 at gmail.com Wed May 15 09:18:11 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 11:18:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] More Fermi Paradox In-Reply-To: <51935184.8010708@aleph.se> References: <20130515081638.GA26408@leitl.org> <51935184.8010708@aleph.se> Message-ID: Perhaps, if we start now, we can converge some space inflating dark energy to energy. Using long ropes of a kind. Maybe, we should/could do just that. Stop the spatial inflation of the Universe. On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 11:12 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 15/05/2013 09:16, Eugen Leitl wrote: > >> This doesn't compute, if you want to maximize computation before universe >> winds itself down. So you'd go for a hard relativistic expansion as early >> as possible, in order to get hold of as much spacetime as possible before >> inflation makes most of it inaccessible. >> > > It looks like the primary thing is being born early: then you can grab a > lot more, since the expansion was slower in the past and things were closer > together. Old civs have a huge advantage. In the present era, speed beats > starting time: in our calculations we found that getting an increment in > speed was worth delaying starting for. If I remember right, going from 90% > to 99% was worth a million year delay - in the end, that is a very small > delay compared to the travel time. > > > You'd then maximize the computation utilization in order to render as >> many experience-moments as possible, until the final curtain. Aiming for >> anything less guarantees a half-assed job. >> > > It all depends on what the ultimate goal is. If it is experience-moments > or pleasure, then spread far and wide and convert everything to > computronium or hedonium. If the goal requires a cohesive big mind for a > long time, then you only need a supercluster - the other stuff will become > causally disconnected and cannot be part of your big mind. > > > -- > Anders Sandberg, > Future of Humanity Institute > Oxford Martin School > Faculty of Philosophy > 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 Wed May 15 09:19:14 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 11:19:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] More Fermi Paradox In-Reply-To: <51935184.8010708@aleph.se> References: <20130515081638.GA26408@leitl.org> <51935184.8010708@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20130515091914.GG26408@leitl.org> On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 10:12:36AM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote: > It all depends on what the ultimate goal is. If it is > experience-moments or pleasure, then spread far and wide and convert > everything to computronium or hedonium. If the goal requires a > cohesive big mind for a long time, then you only need a supercluster I don't see why you can't have GYr scale coherent plans with ~ps..~fs local refresh rates. > - the other stuff will become causally disconnected and cannot be > part of your big mind. Speaking about clusters: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B83UyWf1s-CdZnFoS2RiU2lJbEU/edit?usp=drive_web Pony: not yours. At least not by 2020. Little novelty there for anyone who's been paying attention, but this is mainstream now. From painlord2k at libero.it Wed May 15 09:29:19 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 11:29:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5193556F.7020602@libero.it> Il 14/05/2013 18:06, Gordon ha scritto: > Given the uncertainty about delivery dates on these Butterfly ASIC > miners, my thought for the moment is that anyone fundamentally bullish > on the outlook for BTC over the next year or so should invest in BTC > rather than commit those same funds to a miner order. Would you agree, > Mirco? Yes. Current mean appreciation of BTC is around 0.80-0.85%/day compound over 900 days. I would say difficulty follow the price, not the reverse. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Wed May 15 09:54:26 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 11:54:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: <1368606220.80804.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1368606220.80804.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51935B52.8050104@libero.it> Il 15/05/2013 10:23, Gordon ha scritto: > This is not good. I'm guessing the investigation pertains to someone > using Dwolla and Bitcoin for illicit purposes. Details are not clear. Anyway, I do not believe the Chinese user are shacking in their boots. Or the Argentinians. Mirco From pharos at gmail.com Wed May 15 10:05:14 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 11:05:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] More Fermi Paradox In-Reply-To: <20130515091914.GG26408@leitl.org> References: <20130515081638.GA26408@leitl.org> <51935184.8010708@aleph.se> <20130515091914.GG26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 10:19 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Speaking about clusters: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B83UyWf1s-CdZnFoS2RiU2lJbEU/edit?usp=drive_web > Pony: not yours. At least not by 2020. > > Little novelty there for anyone who's been paying attention, > but this is mainstream now. > The report says 'assuming no new technology'. For the next seven years? Quantum computing, photonic chips, spintronics, etc. might change things. And even if new tech doesn't arrive, you wouldn't grumble about a 75% exascale computing cluster! (Or perhaps you would - hard to break a habit!). :) If we are going to do uploading and create AIs floating in space, then new tech is definitely required. A big space mind won't be made of silicon chips. BillK From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed May 15 10:11:16 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 03:11:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: <51935B52.8050104@libero.it> References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1368606220.80804.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51935B52.8050104@libero.it> Message-ID: <1368612676.9515.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Mirco Romanato wrote: >Il 15/05/2013 10:23, Gordon ha scritto: >> This is not good. I'm guessing the investigation pertains to someone >> using Dwolla and Bitcoin for illicit purposes. Details are not clear. >Anyway, I do not believe the Chinese user are shacking in their boots. >Or the Argentinians. That is certainly true. But if the US Department of Homeland Security is cracking down on Bitcoin in general then that spells trouble. I hope and assume that this is only a special case involving illegal activity, perhaps trafficking in guns or drugs. I funded my Mt. Gox account via Dwolla. For all I know, I'm now on some list at DHS. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 15 10:32:21 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 12:32:21 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20130515103221.GI26408@leitl.org> On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 05:55:52PM -0400, Mike Dougherty wrote: > I wonder what else humanity might be doing with such resources if not Brute-forcing cryptohashes is not all-purpose, and hence not particularly exciting. At least you can accelerate other things with GPGPU, but ASICs are a lot less flexible (brute-forcing passwords, maybe, but here you're competing with rainbow tables, unless hashes are salted). > competing for shares of the future? Or if ultimately that's what > we're doing no matter what we use to measure the shares... hmm. From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 15 10:36:51 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 12:36:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: <1368612676.9515.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1368606220.80804.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51935B52.8050104@libero.it> <1368612676.9515.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130515103651.GJ26408@leitl.org> On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 03:11:16AM -0700, Gordon wrote: > Mirco Romanato wrote: > > > >Il 15/05/2013 10:23, Gordon ha scritto: > > >> This is not good. I'm guessing the investigation pertains to someone > >> using Dwolla and Bitcoin for illicit purposes. Details are not clear. > > >Anyway, I do not believe the Chinese user are shacking in their boots. > >Or the Argentinians. > > That is certainly true. But if the US Department of Homeland Security Not my department, says Wernher von Braun. > is cracking down on Bitcoin in general then that spells trouble. They can as well try cracking down on TCP/IP. Just because you nuke the big exchanges doesn't mean mining or direct transfers are affected. > I hope and assume that this is only a special case involving illegal activity, perhaps trafficking in guns or drugs. What does 'illegal' mean, please? Almost all things are illegal, somewhen and somewhere. The Internet is a global network, it can't cater to the lowest denomitator, orelse we just could as well shut the whole thing down and go back to Morse code or smoke signals. > I funded my Mt. Gox account via Dwolla. For all I know, I'm now on some list at DHS. Everybody is on some list, somewhere. If you think you're aren't, you haven't done your due diligence. From anders at aleph.se Wed May 15 10:52:28 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 11:52:28 +0100 Subject: [ExI] More Fermi Paradox In-Reply-To: <20130515091914.GG26408@leitl.org> References: <20130515081638.GA26408@leitl.org> <51935184.8010708@aleph.se> <20130515091914.GG26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <519368EC.1050900@aleph.se> On 2013-05-15 10:19, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 10:12:36AM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote: > >> It all depends on what the ultimate goal is. If it is >> experience-moments or pleasure, then spread far and wide and convert >> everything to computronium or hedonium. If the goal requires a >> cohesive big mind for a long time, then you only need a supercluster > I don't see why you can't have GYr scale coherent plans with > ~ps..~fs local refresh rates. You misunderstood me. I was just talking about the total amount of stuff to colonize and whether it could form cohesive computational structures, not the refresh rate. Either of the above approaches benefit from high refresh rates, although the vast mind will likely have at least some serial components causing an Amdahl's law slowdown. On the big scales the constraints are (1) if you can accept parts of your domain losing contact forever (due to accelerating expansion moving non-bound systems beyond the horizon), (2) how much stuff you can reach (depends on speed and start time), (3) your trade-off between update speed, memory storage and energy usage. If you have M units of mass divided into memory cells of mass m, the minimal energy dissipation per second due to error correction scales as kTln(2)(M/m)exp(-qm), where q is some constant linked to the tunneling/error probability. For fast dissipation getting rid of the heat is a big problem and likely limiting things; using Wei Dai-style black hole cooling or radiating it towards the cosmological horizon has a limited thermal emission ability. For slow dissipation your overall mass M will decline as an exponential with constant kTln(2)exp(-qm)/mc^2 - big m allows you to last long, but you get few bits. T also declines towards an asymptote due to horizon radiation, so waiting is rational only up to some time. Note that this assumes all computations to be reversible. I recently checked quantum computation and error correction, and it is pretty awesome... but you still need to erase ancilla bits once they have become error tainted. Using quantum computation allows you to get a lot of computation done in few steps, but m will be very low so you will have to pay a lot for it. In a universe where little but your activities are going on external time does not matter much. So running things slowly is OK if you get more ops. But before that a spoiler civilization might want to do their short-term projects that use "hot" low-m, high T very wasteful computation; there is some interesting game theory here about how different goals might try to pre-empt each other. > Speaking about clusters: > https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B83UyWf1s-CdZnFoS2RiU2lJbEU/edit?usp=drive_web > Pony: not yours. At least not by 2020. Little novelty there for anyone > who's been paying attention, but this is mainstream now. In fact, for being a pessimistic lecture it is pretty optimistic. Maybe we won't get ponies, but cats. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Wed May 15 10:58:55 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 11:58:55 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: <20130515103651.GJ26408@leitl.org> References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1368606220.80804.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51935B52.8050104@libero.it> <1368612676.9515.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130515103651.GJ26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <51936A6F.8040808@aleph.se> On 2013-05-15 11:36, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 03:11:16AM -0700, Gordon wrote: >> >> That is certainly true. But if the US Department of Homeland Security > Not my department, says Wernher von Braun. This is a very important observation. If governments were rational, cohesive actors they would implement policies to safeguard their interests and would avoid policies that threaten them. But the actual evidence shows that they are all over the place: the US is simulatenously supporting Tor (help freedom movements in the world!) and fighting it (pedophiles and terrorists are using it!), the different branches of the US military had to be forced by law to cooperate, the EU loves open source software and drafts laws that make it problematic... The Federal Reserve, Secret Service and DHS do not have a history of working together to safeguard monetary policy, and it is pretty unlikely they are going to develop one quickly. (And this assumes everybody is rational, does not care about administrative turf and so on) >> I funded my Mt. Gox account via Dwolla. For all I know, I'm now on some list at DHS. > Everybody is on some list, somewhere. If you think you're aren't, > you haven't done your due diligence. Or somebody else has not done their job properly. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 15 11:11:44 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 13:11:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] More Fermi Paradox In-Reply-To: <519368EC.1050900@aleph.se> References: <20130515081638.GA26408@leitl.org> <51935184.8010708@aleph.se> <20130515091914.GG26408@leitl.org> <519368EC.1050900@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20130515111144.GM26408@leitl.org> On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 11:52:28AM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote: > You misunderstood me. I was just talking about the total amount of > stuff to colonize and whether it could form cohesive computational The total colonizable area is limited by how soon you start and how hard you travel. For us that would be something like 16+ GYrs, which is not too bad. > structures, not the refresh rate. Either of the above approaches Cohesiveness would be relativistically limited, and not contraining the underlying processes. So you'd have a hierarchy, which can be arbitrarily (within pingpong latencies across the traversable universe) slow at the top, and as fast as it's possible at the bottom. (i.e. these theoretical 100 PHz refresh rates for classical computers). > benefit from high refresh rates, although the vast mind will likely > have at least some serial components causing an Amdahl's law > slowdown. I disagree. There are no serial sections in biology, everything is asynchronous at the bottom. The top processes may appear serial (just as we're communicatinig now by a serial stream of ASCII), but that does not translate down weell. > On the big scales the constraints are (1) if you can accept parts of > your domain losing contact forever (due to accelerating expansion You're shedding skin cells, and not noticing it much, so I don't see how shedding periphery (which is very slow initially, and only picks up in earnest in the last years and months of the universe) is going to be a problem. > moving non-bound systems beyond the horizon), (2) how much stuff you > can reach (depends on speed and start time), (3) your trade-off > between update speed, memory storage and energy usage. Yep. > If you have M units of mass divided into memory cells of mass m, the > minimal energy dissipation per second due to error correction scales > as kTln(2)(M/m)exp(-qm), where q is some constant linked to the > tunneling/error probability. For fast dissipation getting rid of the > heat is a big problem and likely limiting things; using Wei Yeah, these 100 PHz refresh rate are indeed quite far removed from what you could operate in a classical computation. I also don't have the impression that spintronics is particularly fast, rather the opposite. > Dai-style black hole cooling or radiating it towards the > cosmological horizon has a limited thermal emission ability. For > slow dissipation your overall mass M will decline as an exponential > with constant kTln(2)exp(-qm)/mc^2 - big m allows you to last long, > but you get few bits. T also declines towards an asymptote due to > horizon radiation, so waiting is rational only up to some time. > > Note that this assumes all computations to be reversible. I recently Reversible computation should be slow, and might be too slow for practical purposes. > checked quantum computation and error correction, and it is pretty > awesome... but you still need to erase ancilla bits once they have > become error tainted. Using quantum computation allows you to get a > lot of computation done in few steps, but m will be very low so you > will have to pay a lot for it. I'm not counting on nonclassical computation. I expect there won't be a free lunch anywhere. > In a universe where little but your activities are going on external > time does not matter much. So running things slowly is OK if you get > more ops. But before that a spoiler civilization might want to do > their short-term projects that use "hot" low-m, high T very wasteful > computation; there is some interesting game theory here about how > different goals might try to pre-empt each other. > > >Speaking about clusters: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B83UyWf1s-CdZnFoS2RiU2lJbEU/edit?usp=drive_web > >Pony: not yours. At least not by 2020. Little novelty there for > >anyone who's been paying attention, but this is mainstream now. > > In fact, for being a pessimistic lecture it is pretty optimistic. > Maybe we won't get ponies, but cats. I wonder where the 4 PByte @ >EPflops realtime human equivalent is coming from. I expect some severe number creep there. From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed May 15 11:26:29 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 04:26:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1368617189.46653.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Hi Brent, > Wouldn't it be great to know, concisely and quantitatively, just what all the transhumanist Bitcoin experts believed about this?? Just how bullish are you/they? I think it would be great to have an indicator of the sentiment of all bitcoin investors and traders, including but not limited to transhumanists. Such measures can have value as contrary indicators. When most everyone thinks the price of an asset is going one way or the other, it is often wise to bet against the consensus. I once wrote a program to analyze the P/C ratio (the ratio of the volume of put options [bearish bets] to call options [bullish bets]) on the S&P 100. I found a statistically significant relationship between high P/C ratios and market rallies. I used my model successfully with my clients for several years. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 15 14:37:43 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 07:37:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: <20130515103651.GJ26408@leitl.org> References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1368606220.80804.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51935B52.8050104@libero.it> <1368612676.9515.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130515103651.GJ26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <01cf01ce5179$c3bfe970$4b3fbc50$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl ... >>... I funded my Mt. Gox account via Dwolla. For all I know, I'm now on some list at DHS. >...Everybody is on some list, somewhere. If you think you're aren't, you haven't done your due diligence. _______________________________________________ It is dawning on America now that the list that really matters is the IRS enemies list. The 16th amendment carries absolutely no limits to power that I can see. We have the IRS targeting libertarians, and now both parties are flapping about, saying what an abuse of power is this. But no one can show me in the constitution where it says the IRS is not allowed to audit anyone anytime for any reason. The 16th amendment functionally overpowers the bill of rights, assuming you actually earn anything. Using bitcoin will likely put you on the IRS's radar, and they have constitutionally unlimited powers. spike From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 15 15:08:33 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 17:08:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: <01cf01ce5179$c3bfe970$4b3fbc50$@rainier66.com> References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1368606220.80804.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51935B52.8050104@libero.it> <1368612676.9515.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130515103651.GJ26408@leitl.org> <01cf01ce5179$c3bfe970$4b3fbc50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130515150833.GI26408@leitl.org> On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 07:37:43AM -0700, spike wrote: > It is dawning on America now that the list that really matters is the IRS > enemies list. The 16th amendment carries absolutely no limits to power that > I can see. We have the IRS targeting libertarians, and now both parties are > flapping about, saying what an abuse of power is this. But no one can show > me in the constitution where it says the IRS is not allowed to audit anyone > anytime for any reason. The 16th amendment functionally overpowers the bill > of rights, assuming you actually earn anything. Using bitcoin will likely > put you on the IRS's radar, and they have constitutionally unlimited powers. Bitcoin isn't money (neither is gold, according to Bernanke), so as long as you don't cash out I don't see how IRS can be interested in virtual pet rocks. And of course just because somebody decides to confiscate your computer (hardware is cheap, if your data is in your own cloud you can travel with a clean slate) it doesn't mean that they can access your data. Sure, in UK they can lock you up just because you can't prove that something is not encrypted and not just a dump from /dev/urandom and you can't prove that you don't have a key. From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed May 15 16:13:49 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 09:13:49 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: <20130515150833.GI26408@leitl.org> References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1368606220.80804.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51935B52.8050104@libero.it> <1368612676.9515.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130515103651.GJ26408@leitl.org> <01cf01ce5179$c3bfe970$4b3fbc50$@rainier66.com> <20130515150833.GI26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1368634429.66279.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 07:37:43AM -0700, spike wrote: >?Using bitcoin will likely?put you on the IRS's radar, and they have constitutionally unlimited powers. I think we're a long way from the IRS having any real powers here. Brokerage firms are required to report the cost basis of many investments, making tax evasion on capital gains difficult, but bitcoin exchanges have no such requirement so far. Regarding this action by the Department of Homeland Security that I reported last night: the market apparently took it as a shock, though not a terribly severe one. BTC dropped from about $120 to about $103 in a matter of an hour or two. This was a marked sell-off given the stability of the market over the last couple of weeks. The price is now recovering, one would hope, with the current market at about $113. It is true that governments have little or no power to directly hurt Bitcoin, but I think they could in principle strangle the exchanges and make things difficult. In this case, DHS has apparently blocked a popular funding mechanism in Dwolla. Still not sure what is the legal justification. I hope (and believe) that it is not a general attempt by DHS to hurt the market for bitcoins. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed May 15 17:51:23 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 11:51:23 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> Message-ID: On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 6:45 AM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > > The network create around 144 blocks of 25 bitcoin, now and for the > next. So, they are not 7200 BTC/day but 3600 BTC/day > Thanks Mirco, takes some digging to see that. Appreciate the correction. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 15 22:19:29 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 15:19:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: <1368634429.66279.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1368606220.80804.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51935B52.8050104@libero.it> <1368612676.9515.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130515103651.GJ26408@leitl.org> <01cf01ce5179$c3bfe970$4b3fbc50$@rainier66.com> <20130515150833.GI26408@leitl.org> <1368634429.66279.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <009401ce51ba$4589f8c0$d09dea40$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Gordon Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 9:14 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Bitcoins Again On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 07:37:43AM -0700, spike wrote: >>. Using bitcoin will likely put you on the IRS's radar, and they have constitutionally unlimited powers. >.I think we're a long way from the IRS having any real powers here.Gordon I respectfully disagree sir. But we will see in the next few weeks. There is all this flap about how the IRS has gone after any organization which has Tea Party or anything that identifies it as a conservative or libertarian group, while giving a pass to any group which calls itself progressive. OK then we hear that the IRS should be held accountable bla bla and yakkity yak, but please show me anything in the constitution which says the IRS may not flag anyone for any reason and audit their brains out. What this has done is demonstrate that the 16th amendment effectively sweeps away the bill of rights, for it is so open ended, there is no effective check on unlimited power. Recall that the gangster Al Capone was so good at hiding evidence he could do anything he wanted. They finally brought him down on tax evasion charges. We now have Capone's legacy and revenge stated in my theorem as follows: Any law established by good people to go after bad people will eventually be used by bad people to go after good people. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed May 15 23:07:36 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 16:07:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: <009401ce51ba$4589f8c0$d09dea40$@rainier66.com> References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1368606220.80804.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51935B52.8050104@libero.it> <1368612676.9515.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130515103651.GJ26408@leitl.org> <01cf01ce5179$c3bfe970$4b3fbc50$@rainier66.com> <20130515150833.GI26408@leitl.org> <1368634429.66279.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <009401ce51ba$4589f8c0$d09dea40$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1368659256.18348.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 07:37:43AM -0700, spike wrote: >>>? Using bitcoin will likely put you on the IRS's radar, and they have constitutionally unlimited powers. >>?I think we're a long way from the IRS having any real powers here?Gordon ? >I respectfully disagree sir. ?But we will see in the next few weeks. ? As I see it, the problem for the IRS is that there is currently no reporting. Trading in bitcoins is something like trading in baseball cards. It's almost untraceable. If you buy a BTC at $100 and sell it at $200, the tax code says you should pay tax on the $100 gain, (and you should), but the IRS would be hard-pressed to prove that you ever made that gain or even to know that you owned bitcoins in the first place. Nobody reports your purchase or your sale to the IRS. That may change down the road, but for now it looks to me like Bitcoin is mostly flying under the radar. They are looking at regulating it, however. That is for sure. As it turns out, this Mt.Gox account at Dwolla that I mentioned was frozen because a subsidiary of Mt. Gox had failed to register an associated bank account as part of a money transfer system. My guess is that it was merely an oversight on the part of the owner of Mt.Gox, but I do wonder why the DHS thought it was worthy to pursue. They even had a "confidental informant". Warrant Reveals Homeland Security Seized Mt. Gox?s Dwolla Account for ?Unlicensed Money Transmitting? http://betabeat.com/2013/05/warrant-reveals-department-of-homeland-security-seized-mt-goxs-dwolla-account-for-unlicensed-money-transmitting/ Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Wed May 15 23:47:37 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 01:47:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: <1368612676.9515.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1368606220.80804.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51935B52.8050104@libero.it> <1368612676.9515.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51941E99.9040402@libero.it> Il 15/05/2013 12:11, Gordon ha scritto: > Mirco Romanato wrote: > I funded my Mt. Gox account via Dwolla. For all I know, I'm now on some > list at DHS. Who is not? Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Wed May 15 23:55:07 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 01:55:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins Again In-Reply-To: <009401ce51ba$4589f8c0$d09dea40$@rainier66.com> References: <51923207.6040207@libero.it> <1368538760.73582.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51924A9F.7000006@libero.it> <1368547570.9998.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1368606220.80804.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <51935B52.8050104@libero.it> <1368612676.9515.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130515103651.GJ26408@leitl.org> <01cf01ce5179$c3bfe970$4b3fbc50$@rainier66.com> <20130515150833.GI26408@leitl.org> <1368634429.66279.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <009401ce51ba$4589f8c0$d09dea40$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <5194205B.6030101@libero.it> Il 16/05/2013 00:19, spike ha scritto: > Any law established by good people to go after bad people will > eventually be used by bad people to go after good people. Well, I remember The Second is there for some reasons. Probably to keep some tree healthy. Mirco From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu May 16 03:13:01 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 20:13:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Kepler's planet finding days might be over Message-ID: <1368673981.15004.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-telescopes-planet-hunting-days-may-over-202309584.html Kind of related to the Fermi Paradox discussion. Well, at least, planet finders give us some baseline for the Drake equation -- some values to plug-in (those with the other unknowns, what does this matter?) -- and an idea of what's out there in terms of planets. And, of course, other missions like COROT and terrestrial efforts still continue. ? 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 Thu May 16 04:19:17 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 21:19:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kepler's planet finding days might be over References: <1368673981.15004.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <001d01ce51ec$8928d790$9b7a86b0$@rainier66.com> Ooops I see it has lost a second wheel. Damn. spike From: spike [mailto:spike at rainier66.com] Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 9:18 PM To: 'Dan'; 'ExI chat list' Subject: RE: [ExI] Kepler's planet finding days might be over . Behalf Of Dan Subject: [ExI] Kepler's planet finding days might be over http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-telescopes-planet-hunting-days-may-over-202309584 .html Kind of related to the Fermi Paradox discussion. Well, at least, planet finders give us some baseline for the Drake equation -- some values to plug-in (those with the other unknowns, what does this matter?) -- and an idea of what's out there in terms of planets. And, of course, other missions like COROT and terrestrial efforts still continue. Regards, Dan Dan don't count out Kepler. It has four completely independent reaction wheels and it only needs three. One reaction wheel failed and the spacecraft went into safe mode, which is what it automatically does when anything goes wrong with the hardware. It powers down everything besides the control system and sunbathes the solar panels until the ground controllers can study the telemetry, figure out what happened and what to do. The forces on reaction wheels are very small, so there is no reason to think the remaining three cannot go on for years, and if we are very lucky, decades. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 16 04:17:40 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 21:17:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kepler's planet finding days might be over In-Reply-To: <1368673981.15004.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1368673981.15004.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <001801ce51ec$4f115230$ed33f690$@rainier66.com> . Behalf Of Dan Subject: [ExI] Kepler's planet finding days might be over http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-telescopes-planet-hunting-days-may-over-202309584 .html Kind of related to the Fermi Paradox discussion. Well, at least, planet finders give us some baseline for the Drake equation -- some values to plug-in (those with the other unknowns, what does this matter?) -- and an idea of what's out there in terms of planets. And, of course, other missions like COROT and terrestrial efforts still continue. Regards, Dan Dan don't count out Kepler. It has four completely independent reaction wheels and it only needs three. One reaction wheel failed and the spacecraft went into safe mode, which is what it automatically does when anything goes wrong with the hardware. It powers down everything besides the control system and sunbathes the solar panels until the ground controllers can study the telemetry, figure out what happened and what to do. The forces on reaction wheels are very small, so there is no reason to think the remaining three cannot go on for years, and if we are very lucky, decades. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu May 16 04:57:17 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 21:57:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Kepler's planet finding days might be over In-Reply-To: <001801ce51ec$4f115230$ed33f690$@rainier66.com> References: <1368673981.15004.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <001801ce51ec$4f115230$ed33f690$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1368680237.91977.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Thursday, May 16, 2013 12:17 AM spike wrote: >> http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-telescopes-planet-hunting-days-may-over-202309584.html >>? >> Kind of related to the Fermi Paradox discussion. Well, at least, >> planet finders give us some baseline for the Drake equation -- some >> values to plug-in (those with the other unknowns, what does this >> matter?) -- and an idea of what's out there in terms of planets. >> And, of course, other missions like COROT and terrestrial efforts >> still continue. >? > Dan don?t count out Kepler. ?It has four completely independent > reaction wheels and it only needs three. ?One reaction wheel failed > and the spacecraft went into safe mode, which is what it automatically > does when anything goes wrong with the hardware. ?It powers down > everything besides the control system and sunbathes the solar panels > until the ground controllers can study the telemetry, figure out what > happened and what to do. > > The forces on reaction wheels are very small, so there is no reason > to think the remaining three cannot go on for years, and if we are > very lucky, decades. The story states two reaction wheels are now inoperable. So, the problem is finding a way to work with the remaining two (and hoping they continue to work) or get one of the two non-working ones back into service. 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 Thu May 16 05:00:23 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 22:00:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Kepler's planet finding days might be over In-Reply-To: <001d01ce51ec$8928d790$9b7a86b0$@rainier66.com> References: <1368673981.15004.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <001d01ce51ec$8928d790$9b7a86b0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1368680423.74985.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Yeah, I should've read you second post before responding to your first. The incident reported now is one wheel is not working, but this was already after losing another. (The first one went bad last July.) Dan ? From: spike To: 'Dan' ; 'ExI chat list' Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2013 12:19 AM Subject: RE: [ExI] Kepler's planet finding days might be over Ooops I see it has lost a second wheel.? Damn. ? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 16 13:40:40 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 06:40:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kepler's planet finding days might be over In-Reply-To: <1368680423.74985.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1368673981.15004.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <001d01ce51ec$8928d790$9b7a86b0$@rainier66.com> <1368680423.74985.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00a801ce523a$f59f9460$e0debd20$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dan Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 10:00 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: Re: [ExI] Kepler's planet finding days might be over Yeah, I should've read you second post before responding to your first. The incident reported now is one wheel is not working, but this was already after losing another. (The first one went bad last July.) Dan Ja I should have read the article before I commented. I had heard they went into safe mode but I hadn't heard it was the second wheel. Momentum wheels shouldn't fail. Ball Aerospace is going to take a big hit over this, Goodrich is going to take a bigger hit for it, sheesh damn. spike From: spike To: 'Dan' ; 'ExI chat list' Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2013 12:19 AM Subject: RE: [ExI] Kepler's planet finding days might be over Ooops I see it has lost a second wheel. Damn. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Thu May 16 14:05:31 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 16:05:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kepler's planet finding days might be over In-Reply-To: <00a801ce523a$f59f9460$e0debd20$@rainier66.com> References: <1368673981.15004.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <001d01ce51ec$8928d790$9b7a86b0$@rainier66.com> <1368680423.74985.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <00a801ce523a$f59f9460$e0debd20$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Has the Kepler found an Earth like planet? AFAIK it has not. The marketing was, that it will be able to find the oxygen absorption lines and therefore planets with the molecular oxygen in the atmosphere and therefore planet with likely life. Besides, it will be able to scan hundred of thousands of stars at once, so the chances are superb, to find life. That was the marketing at the beginning of the mission. (Very much like robotic searching the fossils on Mars, which eventually failed to find a single drop of water there.) I am glad, the life is rare. On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 3:40 PM, spike wrote: > ** ** > > *From:* extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto: > extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On Behalf Of *Dan > *Sent:* Wednesday, May 15, 2013 10:00 PM > *To:* 'ExI chat list' > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Kepler's planet finding days might be over**** > > ** ** > > Yeah, I should've read you second post before responding to your first. > The incident reported now is one wheel is not working, but this was already > after losing another. (The first one went bad last July.)**** > > ** ** > > Dan**** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > Ja I should have read the article before I commented. I had heard they > went into safe mode but I hadn?t heard it was the second wheel. Momentum > wheels shouldn?t fail. Ball Aerospace is going to take a big hit over > this, Goodrich is going to take a bigger hit for it, sheesh damn.**** > > ** ** > > spike**** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > **** > > *From:* spike > *To:* 'Dan' ; 'ExI chat list' < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > *Sent:* Thursday, May 16, 2013 12:19 AM > *Subject:* RE: [ExI] Kepler's planet finding days might be over**** > > ** ** > > Ooops I see it has lost a second wheel. Damn.**** > > **** > > 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 stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu May 16 16:38:44 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 18:38:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: <037701ce4f49$5f9a55c0$1ecf0140$@HarveyNewstrom.com> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518ABED3.3010507@aleph.se> <037701ce4f49$5f9a55c0$1ecf0140$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: On 12 May 2013 21:46, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > Indeed. Steven King says to **show** how a person is behaving by > choosing the best descriptive action verb that actually depicts the > action. No adverb is necessary unless the chosen verb fails to depict the > action such that an adverb needs to be added after the fact to describe the > action even further. Instead of ?He closed the door forcefully,? King > would prefer ?He slammed the door.? > In Italian or German, there is indeed an even stronger tendence, especially in the written language of cultivated people or of authors with literary ambitions, to express shades by adopting specialised synonims and alterations rather than by qualifying the the most usual and generic lexicon. But: i) beyond a point, this risks to sound pretentious, and more difficult to understand for people with a poorer vocabulary (why don't you use "thou", thus avoiding any ambiguity as to the number of people you are addressing?). ii) the beauty of the toolbox that any given language offers us is its richness; to deprive ourselves as a matter of principles of at least some of the options (eg. adverb, passive forms, interjections, neologisms...) that plausibly correct usage puts in our hand may be a stylistic exercise, but inevitably limits the wealth and diversity of one's linguistic inventory of tricks. Same as composing musing on in C-major and without semitones. Adverbs exist for a reason. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu May 16 16:44:04 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 18:44:04 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: <037c01ce4f4f$bed19520$3c74bf60$@HarveyNewstrom.com> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518ABED3.3010507@aleph.se> <037c01ce4f4f$bed19520$3c74bf60$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: On 12 May 2013 22:31, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > I have never heard this theory expressed anywhere else. I would love to > hear what other people think of my hypothesis. > Thia actually corresponds pretty much to the one I formed myself when I read it. Even though I must confess that while I have a general liking of Lovecraft, > the habit of resorting to expressions such as "ineffable, impossible to > describe, unbelievably nightmarish, heinously horrid, beyond anything > imaginable, etc.", when I was wondering how many legs the monster actually > had, became quickly tedious. > -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu May 16 16:46:42 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 18:46:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: <1368429402.53813.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1368037439.34421.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <037201ce4f49$2039aa20$60acfe60$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <1368429402.53813.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 13 May 2013 09:16, Gordon wrote: > It makes sense only in rare sentences like "He reached hopefully for his > gun in the darkness." > Exactly. This is the only meaning I was aware of when I started studying English. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu May 16 17:16:37 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 19:16:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] living philosphers of import In-Reply-To: <518FD5B3.7060206@aleph.se> References: <1368359050.54453.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518FD5B3.7060206@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 12 May 2013 19:47, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Hmm, take my comments with a grain of salt, since I am actually embedded > in the field and know them (bias galore). > You *do* sound biased, but mainly in the sense that you seem to take into consideration only Anglosaxon or Anglosaxon style and concept of philosophy - Peter Sloterdijk being a very interesting exception, but, hey, he is a closet transhumanist, after all... :-) But there are plenty of other philosophers around in continental Europe. While in France "philosophe" is since the Enlightenment often just a synonim with "intellectual and polemist", we have Habermas, Cacciari, Deleuze, Cotta, ?i?ek, Glucksmann, Severino, Lyotard, Vattimo, and many others who are always in print and are well known also to the general public. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu May 16 19:02:41 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 12:02:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Kepler's planet finding days might be over In-Reply-To: <00a801ce523a$f59f9460$e0debd20$@rainier66.com> References: <1368673981.15004.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <001d01ce51ec$8928d790$9b7a86b0$@rainier66.com> <1368680423.74985.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <00a801ce523a$f59f9460$e0debd20$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1368730961.8611.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Thursday, May 16, 2013 9:40 AM spike wrote: >> Yeah, I should've read you second post before responding to your >> first. The incident reported now is one wheel is not working, >> but this was already after losing another. (The first one went >> bad last July.) > > Ja I should have read the article before I commented. ?I had > heard they went into safe mode but I hadn?t heard it was the second > wheel. ?Momentum wheels shouldn?t fail. Who should report those wheels to for failing? :) Kidding aside, though, they had an extra one because, no doubt, the expected failure. They just didn't expect this level of failure (but see my final paragraph below). > Ball Aerospace is going to > take a big hit over this, Goodrich is going to take a bigger hit for > it, sheesh damn. It might be too early to tell, but Ball's stock doesn't appear to be taking much of a hit. (How could one be sure, if their stock plummeted, that this was behind it?) And didn't UT buy up Goodrich? I believe, too, the probe was in its extended mission phase. Anyhow, maybe they'll fix the problem or find a workaround. I wonder how good the data are without the level of precision from three wheels. Anyhow, more planet-hunting missions on the way. Heck, if launch costs drop a lot (because of SpaceX and Orbital Sciences hacking away at big aerospace), maybe it'll be a golden age for space science. ? 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 Thu May 16 19:36:51 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 12:36:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Kepler's planet finding days might be over In-Reply-To: References: <1368673981.15004.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <001d01ce51ec$8928d790$9b7a86b0$@rainier66.com> <1368680423.74985.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <00a801ce523a$f59f9460$e0debd20$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1368733011.63501.YahooMailNeo@web126203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Thursday, May 16, 2013 10:05 AM Tomaz Kristan wrote: > Has the Kepler found an Earth like planet? AFAIK it has not. I thought it found a few candidates. I don't follow this closely, but have all the data been vetted at this point? And what about Kepler-22b: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-22b > The marketing was, that it will be able to find the oxygen absorption > lines and therefore planets with the molecular oxygen in the atmosphere > and therefore planet with likely life. Besides, it will be able to scan > hundred of thousands of stars at once, so the chances are superb, to > find life. > > That was the marketing at the beginning of the mission. I don't recall that being the mission. I thought the mission was and is to find Earth-like planets via parent star transits -- specifically, by detecting variations in a candidate star's brightness. > (Very much like robotic searching the fossils on Mars, which eventually > failed to find a single drop of water there.) Were robots on Mars ever searching for fossils? I thought they were looking to find indirect evidence of past or extant life. It'd be interesting to have actual fossil hunting robots, but if fossils on Mars are anything like on Earth they're going to be very difficult to find and require a much more exhaustive search. So far, the amount of ground covered on Mars is tiny. Think if the same probes landed, say, in the Atacama Desert and drove around for a few kilometers. They would totally miss the Burgess Shale fossils. 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 lubkin at unreasonable.com Thu May 16 20:07:22 2013 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 16:07:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] My mother Message-ID: <201305162056.r4GKuNnx017556@andromeda.ziaspace.com> On Mother's Day, many of my friends posted cool pictures of theirs on Facebook. I posted a link to one of her from early in her career at Physics Today: It was taken in the control room of the 76 GeV proton synchrotron (then the most powerful in the world) at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, an hour south of Moscow. It was shot in 1968 by eminent physicist Nick Christofilos, who I best remember from a sm?rg?sbord he took us to at Bear Mountain. Here's what the control room looked like in 2001. It's interesting to see what of the original equipment was still in use, decades later: If you're curious about the facility, she wrote about it in the October 1968 issue. Unfortunately, it's behind a paywall. Oh, and today's her birthday. -- David. From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Fri May 17 02:39:10 2013 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 22:39:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518ABED3.3010507@aleph.se> <037701ce4f49$5f9a55c0$1ecf0140$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: <00a101ce52a7$b63202f0$229608d0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> On Thursday, May 16, 2013 12:39 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote, > Adverbs exist for a reason. Good point. It does sound excessive to avoid an entire class of words forever. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP CISSP-ISSAP CISSP-ISSMP CSSLP CISA CISM CRISC CGEIT IAM -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Fri May 17 02:36:58 2013 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 22:36:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518ABED3.3010507@aleph.se> <037701ce4f49$5f9a55c0$1ecf0140$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: <009c01ce52a7$67a49b20$36edd160$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Stefano Vaj wrote on Thursday, May 16, 2013 12:39 PM, On 12 May 2013 21:46, Harvey Newstrom > wrote: Indeed. Steven King says to *show* how a person is behaving by choosing the best descriptive action verb that actually depicts the action. No adverb is necessary unless the chosen verb fails to depict the action such that an adverb needs to be added after the fact to describe the action even further. Instead of "He closed the door forcefully," King would prefer "He slammed the door." > > (why don't you use "thou", thus avoiding any ambiguity as to the number of people you are addressing?). Good point. Even less ambiguous would be a complete set of ordinal pronouns. Thone, Thou, Thee, Thour, Thive, Thix, Theven, Theight, Thine, Then, Theleven, Thwelve, etc.. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP CISSP-ISSAP CISSP-ISSMP CSSLP CISA CISM CRISC CGEIT IAM -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 17 04:43:23 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 21:43:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: <00a101ce52a7$b63202f0$229608d0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518ABED3.3010507@aleph.se> <037701ce4f49$5f9a55c0$1ecf0140$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <00a101ce52a7$b63202f0$229608d0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: <018b01ce52b9$112b2270$33816750$@rainier66.com> >. On Behalf Of Harvey Newstrom Subject: Re: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! On Thursday, May 16, 2013 12:39 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote, >>. Adverbs exist for a reason. >.Good point. It does sound excessive to avoid an entire class of words forever. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP CISSP-ISSAP CISSP-ISSMP CSSLP CISA CISM CRISC CGEIT IAM I agree. Some of my best friends are adverbs. Good words, all of them. They never give me any bother for being a pronoun. Of course adverbs are always lying, but adverbs can't help it, they are just spelled that way. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri May 17 05:01:53 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 22:01:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: <00a101ce52a7$b63202f0$229608d0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518ABED3.3010507@aleph.se> <037701ce4f49$5f9a55c0$1ecf0140$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <00a101ce52a7$b63202f0$229608d0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: <1368766913.22544.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Harvey Newstrom wrote: >On Thursday, May 16, 2013 12:39 PM, ?Stefano Vaj wrote, >> Adverbs exist for a reason. > Good point. ?It does sound excessive to avoid an entire class of words forever. Adverbs exist to modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs. I agree with my retired English professor friend that they were never intended to modify entire clauses or sentences.? Unfortunately, [<-- sentence adverb] this misuse of adverbs has become pretty common. I try my best to avoid them. Embarrassingly, I sometimes slip. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 17 10:01:08 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 12:01:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: <1368766913.22544.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518ABED3.3010507@aleph.se> <037701ce4f49$5f9a55c0$1ecf0140$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <00a101ce52a7$b63202f0$229608d0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <1368766913.22544.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 17 May 2013 07:01, Gordon wrote: > Embarrassingly, I sometimes slip. > :-) As far as grammar/language Nazis go, this makes me think of the often weird or at least very "free" positioning of words in the English sentences. "I only have eyes for you" in Italian would mean "I do not have anything else for you" (as opposed to "I have eyes only for you"). -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri May 17 11:07:39 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 12:07:39 +0100 Subject: [ExI] More Fermi Paradox In-Reply-To: <20130515111144.GM26408@leitl.org> References: <20130515081638.GA26408@leitl.org> <51935184.8010708@aleph.se> <20130515091914.GG26408@leitl.org> <519368EC.1050900@aleph.se> <20130515111144.GM26408@leitl.org> Message-ID: <51960F7B.8080209@aleph.se> On 2013-05-15 12:11, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 11:52:28AM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote: > >> You misunderstood me. I was just talking about the total amount of >> stuff to colonize and whether it could form cohesive computational > The total colonizable area is limited by how soon you start and > how hard you travel. For us that would be something like > 16+ GYrs, which is not too bad. And it is the speed of travel that has the biggest effect. If you travel at v+w but start t units of time later than something travelling at v, you will catch up (in co-moving coordinate space) when (v+w)(T-t)=vT, or T=(1+v/w)t. Since travel times to remote galaxies are in gigayears, even a fairly small w increment means you will sweep past the slower travellers long before the destination. >> benefit from high refresh rates, although the vast mind will likely >> have at least some serial components causing an Amdahl's law >> slowdown. > I disagree. There are no serial sections in biology, everything > is asynchronous at the bottom. The top processes may appear > serial (just as we're communicatinig now by a serial stream > of ASCII), but that does not translate down weell. No guarantee that there are no serial elements to the thought processes of the Highest Possible Level of Development intelligences. I think the main problem is dependencies. M-brain A needs some data from M-brain B a lightyear away to continue its calculation, so it needs to delay for two years while waiting for it. Sure, the structure of the big computation has been optimized as far as possible, but it seems that many big problems have a messy structure that might preclude perfect optimization (since you do not yet know the path the calculation will take) and performing re-adjustments of what is stored where is costly. >> On the big scales the constraints are (1) if you can accept parts of >> your domain losing contact forever (due to accelerating expansion > You're shedding skin cells, and not noticing it much, so > I don't see how shedding periphery (which is very slow initially, > and only picks up in earnest in the last years and months > of the universe) is going to be a problem. I am basing this on the standard model based on WMAP data, which is essentially approaching a de Sitter spacetime. No "last months" but rather exponentially growing separation of superclusters into islands with no causal contact. > >> Dai-style black hole cooling or radiating it towards the >> cosmological horizon has a limited thermal emission ability. For >> slow dissipation your overall mass M will decline as an exponential >> with constant kTln(2)exp(-qm)/mc^2 - big m allows you to last long, >> but you get few bits. T also declines towards an asymptote due to >> horizon radiation, so waiting is rational only up to some time. >> >> Note that this assumes all computations to be reversible. I recently > Reversible computation should be slow, and might be too slow for > practical purposes. Only on this list can you hear somebody say that reversible computing might be impractical, while not remarking on cooling using inverse Dyson shells around black holes :-) > >> checked quantum computation and error correction, and it is pretty >> awesome... but you still need to erase ancilla bits once they have >> become error tainted. Using quantum computation allows you to get a >> lot of computation done in few steps, but m will be very low so you >> will have to pay a lot for it. > I'm not counting on nonclassical computation. I expect there won't > be a free lunch anywhere. Nah, quantum computation seems to be better than classical for a bunch of problems. It might not be better at all problems (the low m issue, as well as the lack of cloning), but I would suspect it would be a component of a sufficiently advanced infrastructure. Grover-style O(sqrt(N)) search is pretty nifty - you can really reduce the number of function evaluations a lot. If you have data in a sorted list, sure, O(log(N)) beats it. But in many cases your data might be implicit, such as looking for roots of arbitrary equations or satisfiability. There is even a very cool quantum algorithm based on scattering for finding winning game strategies in O(sqrt(N)) time ( http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=207 - Moore and Mertens' "The Nature of Computation" ends with a very lucid description of the method). So I think HPLDs might have reason to make use of quantum computation. And of course, to simulate quantum stuff quantum computing is very effective. The fact that at late eras the universe is cold, quiet and tame doesn't mean one should use slow algorithms: the energy clock is still ticking due to error correction losses. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Fri May 17 11:26:12 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 12:26:12 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fashion In-Reply-To: <004301ce4d86$8cfc1450$a6f43cf0$@rainier66.com> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> <518579FE.3050202@aleph.se> <00d701ce4910$1c3765a0$54a630e0$@rainier66.com> <51858A1E.6090408@aleph.se> <518CC967.7050803@aleph.se> <004301ce4d86$8cfc1450$a6f43cf0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <519613D4.6090703@aleph.se> On 2013-05-10 14:59, spike wrote: > > EXCELLENT Anders me lad! Finally! Someone writes about fashion in a > language I can understand! > Thanks! I have put up a slightly improved version on my blog: http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2013/05/a_mathematical_model_of_dressing.html > This is ground-breaking work sir. If fashion magazines would have > articles with this kind of material, I might actually read them, and > perhaps put together some spreadsheets. If the models work right, I > could lose my geek status, by becoming a snappy dresser! Of course it > would be done by formula rather than by the traditional means, so that > might actually strengthen my status. It isn't clear how it would work. > I think one could capture a lot of simple rules as a kind of satisfiability problem. For example, you want your colors to match. Matching is not just everything having the same color, but a game where colors are supposed to contrast or complement each other. There is a fairly well developed theory for harmonious color schemes that can be automated (I have seen at least one SIGGRAPH paper about it), so you could automate calculation of that. There are similar, but more subtle rules about pattern and texture. So combining these rules into an evaluation function would allow your wardrobe software to find the optimal combination of clothes. The problem has complexity ~N^4 if you have N each of socks, pants, shirts and jackets - since a typical N is << 100 a full evaluation seems entirely possible, especially since heuristics can quickly prune parts of the search space. It might also tell you how many high value combinations are enabled by a new piece of clothing you are considering to buy. I think that kind of software is entirely feasible, would produce decent results, yet would be somewhat unsatisfactory. First, entering the relevant data would be a chore (if you need the software, how good would you be at characterizing the texture of your shirt?) - maybe image recognition software and webcam, or some RFID-linked product specification data could automate it. Also, we would want to have the system recognize what parts of your wardrobe is in the wash basket right now. Second, a lot of real style is about sending rather individual signals. Of course, you might have the option to add extra rules ("Not too strong stripes" in my case, for example), but often it is tricky to tell what you actually want if you are not versed in the lingo. I still think such software would likely be a pretty helpful starting point. Just wish I had the time to tinker with it. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 17 12:34:50 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 05:34:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518ABED3.3010507@aleph.se> <037701ce4f49$5f9a55c0$1ecf0140$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <00a101ce52a7$b63202f0$229608d0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <1368766913.22544.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <004701ce52fa$edd90ed0$c98b2c70$@rainier66.com> >. On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj >."I only have eyes for you" in Italian would mean "I do not have anything else for you" (as opposed to "I have eyes only for you").-- Stefano Vaj Stefano, two things please, first: the song gets all messed up with the alternative (and clearer) sentence you suggest. But perhaps more importantly, the song actually does express the sentiment more precisely for many of us married guys in its original form. We see a pretty girl, oh my, we certainly have eyes for her, eyes all over that as we scan that image at high rez. But that's all we have for her, no money for her, no sweet words, no paws on her, nothing else down there obviously for her; I only have eyes for you, nothing else, sorry babe, the rest of me is owned by someone else. That puts a whole new spin on that song, does it not? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 17 12:51:04 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 05:51:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fashion In-Reply-To: <519613D4.6090703@aleph.se> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> <518579FE.3050202@aleph.se> <00d701ce4910$1c3765a0$54a630e0$@rainier66.com> <51858A1E.6090408@aleph.se> <518CC967.7050803@aleph.se> <004301ce4d86$8cfc1450$a6f43cf0$@rainier66.com> <519613D4.6090703@aleph.se> Message-ID: <004c01ce52fd$32073620$9615a260$@rainier66.com> >. On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg >.I think one could capture a lot of simple rules as a kind of satisfiability problem. For example, you want your colors to match. Matching is not just everything having the same color, but a game where colors are supposed to contrast or complement each other.- Dr Anders Sandberg There is a scientist at Lockheed who wrote a PhD thesis at Stanford in about the late 60s which led eventually to the control system for THAAD and indirectly to all body-to-body contact anti-missile technology. So if missiles are ever fired in anger, good chance that technology could knock it down, save cities, countless lives, and no one will know this one guy who invented it was sailing uncharted waters alone, way back when computers filled a room. Of course he is considered a God with a capital G around that place for all controls types. This guy is still around, I think semi-retired now, but he is easy to spot: most of the time he comes to work in white shirt, white pants, white shoes, and on cold days, white coat. Of course no one else will dress like that; it would be considered arrogance, pretending to be God. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 17 13:24:12 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 14:24:12 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: <004701ce52fa$edd90ed0$c98b2c70$@rainier66.com> References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518ABED3.3010507@aleph.se> <037701ce4f49$5f9a55c0$1ecf0140$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <00a101ce52a7$b63202f0$229608d0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <1368766913.22544.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <004701ce52fa$edd90ed0$c98b2c70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 1:34 PM, spike wrote: >>? On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj >>?"I only have eyes for you" in Italian would mean "I do not have anything >> else for you" (as opposed to "I have eyes only for you")? > > Stefano, two things please, first: the song gets all messed up with the > alternative (and clearer) sentence you suggest. But perhaps more > importantly, the song actually does express the sentiment more precisely for > many of us married guys in its original form. We see a pretty girl, oh my, > we certainly have eyes for her, eyes all over that as we scan that image at > high rez. But that?s all we have for her, no money for her, no sweet words, > no paws on her, nothing else down there obviously for her; I only have eyes > for you, nothing else, sorry babe, the rest of me is owned by someone else. > > That puts a whole new spin on that song, does it not? > Context, context, context! "I have eyes only for you" is exactly what the song means, if you read the rest of the words. BillK From pjmanney at gmail.com Fri May 17 14:45:14 2013 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 07:45:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] My mother In-Reply-To: <201305162056.r4GKuNnx017556@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <201305162056.r4GKuNnx017556@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: David, that's a wonderful photo of your mother! And a most Happy Birthday to her. She must have been quite an inspiration. Take care, PJ On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 1:07 PM, David Lubkin wrote: > On Mother's Day, many of my friends posted cool pictures of theirs on > Facebook. I posted a link to one of her from early in her career at Physics > Today: > > > > > > It was taken in the control room of the 76 GeV proton synchrotron (then > the most powerful in the world) at the Institute for High Energy Physics in > Protvino, an hour south of Moscow. It was shot in 1968 by eminent physicist > Nick Christofilos, who I best remember from a sm?rg?sbord he took us to at > Bear Mountain. > > Here's what the control room looked like in 2001. It's interesting to see > what of the original equipment was still in use, decades later: > > archive_105514_U-70_atom_**smasher_control_panel.jpg > > > > If you're curious about the facility, she wrote about it in the October > 1968 issue. Unfortunately, it's behind a paywall. > > s1?isAuthorized=no > > > > Oh, and today's her birthday. > > > -- David. > > > ______________________________**_________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/**mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-**chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mbb386 at main.nc.us Fri May 17 15:46:41 2013 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 11:46:41 -0400 Subject: [ExI] My mother In-Reply-To: References: <201305162056.r4GKuNnx017556@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <4aedb30cf0519f2100964893ecc71286.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> I wish I had pictures of my brothers from the 1960s when they were working with IBMs and Univacs. You are fortunate to have that great shot of your mom. Regards, MB From msd001 at gmail.com Fri May 17 17:52:24 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 13:52:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518ABED3.3010507@aleph.se> <037701ce4f49$5f9a55c0$1ecf0140$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <00a101ce52a7$b63202f0$229608d0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <1368766913.22544.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <004701ce52fa$edd90ed0$c98b2c70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: "LTE not available everywhere" Does anyone else have a problem with this caveat of cell phone marketing? LTE (not available) everywhere: forget it pal, there is no place in the universe your phone gets LTE. LTE not (available everywhere): there exists some places where LTE is not available. Does my sentence-parse difficulty come from the expectation that NOT should immediately precede the condition it negates? Is it even a valid sentence to say: "LTE available not everywhere" ? is "available not everywhere" equivalent to "unavailable somewhere" ? if p then q <-- by observation at concert events, this is much more likely for women than for men, yeah? :) From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri May 17 17:25:50 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 13:25:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer Message-ID: At last there is a report of a Quantum Computer solving a more interesting problem than finding the factors of 15: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/business/quantum-study.pdf D-Wave's chip is not a general purpose Quantum Computer like a machine with quantum logic gates would be, but it can still do neat stuff. It was tested on 3 different classes of problems to see how it compared against a very high end PC using the best conventional algorithms known. All 3 different classes of problems are NP hard: 1) W2SAT problem, Weighted maximum 2-Satisfiability problem, it figures out if the Boolean variables (variables that can have only 2 values, true or false for example) of a pure Boolean formula can be assigned in such a way as to make the entire formula be true. For example, suppose you had a densely populated map of n cities and could put a label identifying the city either just above or just below the city, how could you arrange things so that the labels overlap the least? Even a small increase in the number of cities makes this problem vastly more difficult, and if the number of choices you have for places to put labels is greater than 2 the problem is not only NP hard but known to be NP complete hard; in fact it was the very first NP complete problem found. 2) QAP problem, Quadratic Assignment Problem. The Traveling Salesman Problem is a special case of QAP. 3) QUBO problem, Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization problem, it concerns the minimization of quadratic polynomials. QUBO is a NP hard problem and is a pattern matching and image recognition technique used in machine learning. The enormously important protein folding problem is also QUBO as is anything where you have a lot of different things that can attract or repel each other and you want to arrange things in such a way that the entire system has the lowest possible energy. This is how D-wave's chip did in the competition with a very high end PC running the best algorithms known: 1) W2SAT problem: The D-wave chip did as well as the conventional computer but no better. 2) QAP problem: D-wave did better than the PC but not dramatically better. 3) QUBO problem: This is where things really got interesting, on average it took the high powered PC half a hour to find a solution that only took the D-wave chip half a second to solve; it was 3600 times faster. In fact, although not a general purpose computer, if you just restrict yourself to QUBO problems the D-Wave chip would be the 10'th fastest supercomputer on Earth equal in performance with IBM/DARPS Trial Subset, a conventional machine with 63,360 64-bit cores. Not bad for a thumbnail sized chip even if you do need to carefully shield it and cool it down to just .02 degrees above absolute zero. D-Wave made the chip used in the competition in September of 2012 and it had 439 qubits, it's a 512 qubit chip but due to manufacturing defects only 439 worked. The qubits in the chip consist of Niobium loops that according to the weird laws of Quantum Mechanics can have a electric current flowing around them clockwise (+1) counterclockwise (-1) or both (+1 and -1). The behavior of one loop influences the behavior of nearby loops and input and output is achieved by a structure of Josephson junctions. In December 2012 D-wave made a chip with 503 working qubits, preliminary indications are that it is about 5 times as fast as the chip used in the contest, if so then it would be the 5'th fastest supercomputer on the QUBO problem. D-wave says that during the last decade the number of qubits in its chips has doubled every year, and that is better than Moore's law. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 17 18:21:39 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 19:21:39 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518ABED3.3010507@aleph.se> <037701ce4f49$5f9a55c0$1ecf0140$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <00a101ce52a7$b63202f0$229608d0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <1368766913.22544.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <004701ce52fa$edd90ed0$c98b2c70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 6:52 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > "LTE not available everywhere" > Does anyone else have a problem with this caveat of cell phone marketing? > > LTE (not available) everywhere: forget it pal, there is no place in > the universe your phone gets LTE. > LTE not (available everywhere): there exists some places where LTE is > not available. > > Does my sentence-parse difficulty come from the expectation that NOT > should immediately precede the condition it negates? > Is it even a valid sentence to say: "LTE available not everywhere" ? > I doubt if there is a general problem. I understood it fine. In the context of LTE being a coast-to-coast system, as with all mobile phones, there are bound to be places where no signal is available. Think of 'available everywhere' as a compound noun. Then LTE is either 'available everywhere' or NOT 'available everywhere'. BillK From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri May 17 21:24:05 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 14:24:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Kripke is in trouble! In-Reply-To: References: <20130507132207.GW26408@leitl.org> <1367956396.34215.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367959274.86611.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1367990417.49495.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518A66ED.5010005@aleph.se> <1368032532.71158.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <518ABED3.3010507@aleph.se> <037701ce4f49$5f9a55c0$1ecf0140$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <00a101ce52a7$b63202f0$229608d0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <1368766913.22544.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <004701ce52fa$edd90ed0$c98b2c70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1368825845.97439.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Mike Dougherty wrote: >"LTE not available everywhere" > Does anyone else have a problem with this caveat of cell phone marketing? I see nothing wrong with it, but we're all entitled to our pet peeves.? Here is one of mine: I refuse to use the idiom "as well" in place of "too". What is "as well" supposed to mean? And why not instead use the simple and straightforward "too"? This dialogue makes sense to me: "I like ice cream." "I like ice cream, too." "Great! Let's go get some ice cream." But using "as well" instead, I see this happening: "I like ice cream." "I like ice cream, as well." "As well as what? Do you like it as well as you like pie?" "No. But I like pie, as well." "AS WELL AS WHAT?" Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sat May 18 10:24:56 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 18 May 2013 11:24:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fashion In-Reply-To: <519613D4.6090703@aleph.se> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> <518579FE.3050202@aleph.se> <00d701ce4910$1c3765a0$54a630e0$@rainier66.com> <51858A1E.6090408@aleph.se> <518CC967.7050803@aleph.se> <004301ce4d86$8cfc1450$a6f43cf0$@rainier66.com> <519613D4.6090703@aleph.se> Message-ID: <519756F8.5070603@aleph.se> On 17/05/2013 12:26, Anders Sandberg wrote: > I think one could capture a lot of simple rules as a kind of > satisfiability problem. For example, you want your colors to match. ... Here is a simple example, a list of rules of thumb: http://lifehacker.com/this-cheat-sheet-teaches-you-how-to-match-shirt-and-tie-507540764 The rules stated would be: "Dominant shirt colour must be present in tie pattern" "Bonus/penalty if tie is darker/lighter than shirt" "Correlation length of shirt pattern should be dissimilar to correlation length of tie pattern" "Width of tie should be within X% of shirt collar and jacket lapel" I'm pretty certain I could program these into a constraint satisfaction system fairly easily, assuming the data was given. (the tie dimple and length advice are essentially instructions for how to tie the tie, and equate to a choice of knot and, based on that, a starting position along the tie. The resulting tie length is mainly due to the knot type and can be precalculated. There is a whole nano-subfield of knot theory about tie knots, where I hope to get a publication later this year...) Of course, this is all about fairly standard business wear. It doesn't tell you when to wear your sarong (although no doubt there are Indonesian fashion experts who could add those rules). And context matters: when giving a television interview, avoid high frequency stripes (less of a problem now, but once tended to cause major flicker). -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat May 18 13:57:15 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 18 May 2013 06:57:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fashion In-Reply-To: <519756F8.5070603@aleph.se> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> <518579FE.3050202@aleph.se> <00d701ce4910$1c3765a0$54a630e0$@rainier66.com> <51858A1E.6090408@aleph.se> <518CC967.7050803@aleph.se> <004301ce4d86$8cfc1450$a6f43cf0$@rainier66.com> <519613D4.6090703@aleph.se> <519756F8.5070603@aleph.se> Message-ID: <010d01ce53cf$9b68dec0$d23a9c40$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg >. >.Here is a simple example, a list of rules of thumb: http://lifehacker.com/this-cheat-sheet-teaches-you-how-to-match-shirt-and-ti e-507540764 The rules stated would be: Excellent Anders, thanks! This site is really helpful. A few questions only: >."Dominant shirt colour must be present in tie pattern" It doesn't actually define the term dominant shirt. Extrapolating from the definition of dominant term in a polynomial, they mean your largest shirt. OK so I know what color that one is, but I don't wear it often because it doesn't fit well. I would think they would restrict their interest to whatever shirt or shirts one is wearing at the time, perhaps the outermost shirt, even if that one isn't actually the largest. >."Bonus/penalty if tie is darker/lighter than shirt" Excellent suggestion. I never thought about it, but my bride apparently has, for she is the one who buys my ties. I do tend to grab one at random. >."Correlation length of shirt pattern should be dissimilar to correlation length of tie pattern" This suggestion needs further explanation in terms of correlation coefficient.s >."Width of tie should be within X% of shirt collar and jacket lapel" Anders Sandberg We would need to define where to measure the width. I would assume maximum width of all given parameters without further information. Our computers and phones have cameras in them now. It seems like we should be able to stand in front of it and have it use some set of criteria, then tell us 'good to go' or 'lose that revolting charteuse tie,' etc. We could show it all our clothing and let it make suggestions depending on the occasion, which it knows too, since the occasion is written in the calendar app. It would be Silicon Eye for the Straight Guy. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat May 18 15:13:02 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 18 May 2013 11:13:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 1:25 PM, John Clark wrote: > > 3) QUBO problem, Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization problem, it > concerns the minimization of quadratic polynomials. QUBO is a NP hard > problem and is a pattern matching and image recognition technique used in > machine learning. The enormously important protein folding problem is also > QUBO as is anything where you have a lot of different things that can > attract or repel each other and you want to arrange things in such a way > that the entire system has the lowest possible energy. ### Patterns of input and output neural spikes can be observed using cortical microelectrodes. Arrays of such electrodes collect data from neighboring cortical columns, and each one detects only a vanishingly small subset of the neural traffic. Obviously, the patterns must be correlated to some extent, since the neighboring columns exchange data all the time. One of the features of biological neural networks is minimization of path length and the use of various mechanisms (e.g. synaptic pruning) to control the amount of traffic resulting from a given input. It does seem to me there is at least a faint analogy between this process and the minimization of potential energy inherent in protein folding. Does it mean that D-wave chip could be used to adiabatically calculate the lowest-complexity pattern of synapses capable of generating the neural traffic observed by a microelectrode array? Think about it this way - a protein sequence puts constraints on the 3D structures that can be realized from it, and the key is to find the 3D structure (or a set of them) that are most stable (i.e. have the lowest potential energy). A microelectrode pattern puts constraints on the networks capable of generating the pattern, and the key is to find the simplest network reliably tracking with the microelectrode pattern over time. In the first problem you move a molecular bond by a tiny bit and calculate the potential energy impact on the rest of the structure. In the second problem you change a single synaptic strength (which could be 0, i.e. creating or removing a synapse) and see if the resulting network better matches a time-ordered series of spikes in the microelectrode recording. In both cases you use a bit of noise to get you over local minima and makes the simulation more realistic. How would an algorithm designer call the computation of network structure from network traffic? Is it similar to QUBO? If yes, then adiabatic computing might greatly reduce the amount of data needed to upload a person. Rafal From anders at aleph.se Sat May 18 15:16:49 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 18 May 2013 16:16:49 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fashion In-Reply-To: <010d01ce53cf$9b68dec0$d23a9c40$@rainier66.com> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> <518579FE.3050202@aleph.se> <00d701ce4910$1c3765a0$54a630e0$@rainier66.com> <51858A1E.6090408@aleph.se> <518CC967.7050803@aleph.se> <004301ce4d86$8cfc1450$a6f43cf0$@rainier66.com> <519613D4.6090703@aleph.se> <519756F8.5070603@aleph.se> <010d01ce53cf$9b68dec0$d23a9c40$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51979B61.1070406@aleph.se> On 18/05/2013 14:57, spike wrote: > > >..."Dominant shirt colour must be present in tie pattern" > > It doesn't actually define the term dominant shirt. Extrapolating from > the definition of dominant term in a polynomial, they mean your > largest shirt. OK so I know what color that one is, but I don't wear > it often because it doesn't fit well. I would think they would > restrict their interest to whatever shirt or shirts one is wearing at > the time, perhaps the outermost shirt, even if that one isn't actually > the largest. > Hehe. Operationalizing "dominant shirt color" is also tricky: it could be the color found on the largest area, but some patterns have several similar colors that add together. And "be present" clearly has a degree of fuzziness. Presumably one could handle this by doing clustering in a suitable color-space for shirt and tie, select the shirt color cluster with the most weight, and then ensure that the overlap with one of the tie clusters is above some threshold. > >..."Bonus/penalty if tie is darker/lighter than shirt" > > Excellent suggestion. I never thought about it, but my bride > apparently has, for she is the one who buys my ties. I do tend to > grab one at random. > Note that "darker" is also a slightly tricky concept, since it is based on human subjective perception. The way to automate this is to use a spectrocolorimeter to measure tristimulus values and then multiply by the human sensitivity function - blue light appears darker than the same intensity of yellow light. Normal cameras likely can do the same job with slightly less reliability. > > >..."Correlation length of shirt pattern should be dissimilar to > correlation length of tie pattern" > > This suggestion needs further explanation in terms of correlation > coefficient.s > You calculate the autocorrelation function (how much the pattern correlates with itself when translated by a certain distance) and then look for the characteristic length - either the decay constant if the pattern is random, or the distance to the first peak for a repeated pattern. This is a standard operation in signal processing and computer vision, and can be done quickly in Fourier space. See http://www.ijcte.org/show-46-593-1.html for an example of how to use this on fabrics. > > >..."Width of tie should be within X% of shirt collar and jacket lapel" > Anders Sandberg > > We would need to define where to measure the width. I would assume > maximum width of all given parameters without further information. > Yes, and during different periods ties have had different divergence angles. Still, most of these measurements are very loose - 10% errors are likely quite acceptable. It is not rocket science :-) > Our computers and phones have cameras in them now. It seems like we > should be able to stand in front of it and have it use some set of > criteria, then tell us 'good to go' or 'lose that revolting charteuse > tie,' etc. We could show it all our clothing and let it make > suggestions depending on the occasion, which it knows too, since the > occasion is written in the calendar app. It would be Silicon Eye for > the Straight Guy. > Love that name. Given current research, it might not be entirely impossible to make. Segmenting clothing from pictures seems very doable: http://cs229.stanford.edu/proj2009/McDanielsWorsley.pdf And this paper suggests where to buy similar clothing as a person wears in a photo: http://labs.yahoo.com/publication/getting-the-look-automatic-clothing-suggestions-for-everyday-photos/ ( paper at http://tinyurl.com/d67mj5n ). If you use this system on a collection of pictures certified to be of well-dressed people, presumably it would suggest what to get. Ooh! Just found this paper: "Hi, Magic Closet, Tell Me What to Wear!" http://www.lv-nus.org/papers/2012/magic_closet-MM12.pdf Wow. It seems to do almost all you wish for. I especially like that they use latent variable mining of example clothes: those formal rules we started with are just the tip of the style iceberg, and this way the system can in principle learn implicit and unwritten rules, even rules no style guru has ever articulated. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Sat May 18 15:35:00 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 18 May 2013 11:35:00 -0400 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, May 18, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > How would an algorithm designer call the computation of network > structure from network traffic? Is it similar to QUBO? > > If yes, then adiabatic computing might greatly reduce the amount of > data needed to upload a person. How many qubits will you need to model the neural network of a person? From anders at aleph.se Sat May 18 15:59:05 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 18 May 2013 16:59:05 +0100 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5197A548.8020603@aleph.se> On 18/05/2013 16:35, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Sat, May 18, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki > wrote: >> How would an algorithm designer call the computation of network >> structure from network traffic? Is it similar to QUBO? Good question. I have a suspicion that there might be useful speedups, but it might be that the problem is similar to the ones that normal stochastic algorithms do just as well. >> >> If yes, then adiabatic computing might greatly reduce the amount of >> data needed to upload a person. > How many qubits will you need to model the neural network of a person? That depends on what algorithm is used. Right now we do not have any quantum algorithm for running neural networks - there are some quantum neural network papers, but they are ANNs that do not correspond to real neural networks. It might simply be that Hodgin-Huxley compartment models lack quantum speedups if we are unlucky. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From msd001 at gmail.com Sat May 18 15:01:41 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 18 May 2013 11:01:41 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fashion In-Reply-To: <010d01ce53cf$9b68dec0$d23a9c40$@rainier66.com> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> <518579FE.3050202@aleph.se> <00d701ce4910$1c3765a0$54a630e0$@rainier66.com> <51858A1E.6090408@aleph.se> <518CC967.7050803@aleph.se> <004301ce4d86$8cfc1450$a6f43cf0$@rainier66.com> <519613D4.6090703@aleph.se> <519756F8.5070603@aleph.se> <010d01ce53cf$9b68dec0$d23a9c40$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 18, 2013 at 9:57 AM, spike wrote: > Our computers and phones have cameras in them now. It seems like we should > be able to stand in front of it and have it use some set of criteria, then > tell us ?good to go? or ?lose that revolting charteuse tie,? etc. We could > show it all our clothing and let it make suggestions depending on the > occasion, which it knows too, since the occasion is written in the calendar > app. It would be Silicon Eye for the Straight Guy. I have been thinking this thread is the genesis of an app. The data acquisition/encoding and algorithm would be considerable work to give away for free (or $0.99/etc). If you are going so far as to integrate the current wardrobe with your events calendar to make suggestions then you might as well allow clothing retails to compete for your outfit: you could swipe your way through a price-list or a minimal-purchase sort. The intelligence in the app would be able to assess proposed items for compatibility with a particular outfit as well as the rest of what you already own. ex: this is your 100% perfect-match tie for today's occasion, but only 12% likely to be reused among your existing clothes. It might be worth selecting the 93% match for today with a 22% reuse probability. Now this app has left the realm of "fashion checker" to become a shopping application. There a many more ways to monetize that. The candidate audience has probably doubled or tripled also. From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat May 18 16:59:04 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 18 May 2013 12:59:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, May 18, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > It does seem to me there is at least a faint analogy between this > process and the minimization of potential energy inherent in protein > folding. Does it mean that D-wave chip could be used to adiabatically > calculate the lowest-complexity pattern of synapses capable of > generating the neural traffic observed by a microelectrode array? > That is a excellent question. For a excellent answer I will quote Mark Twain: "Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing." John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat May 18 21:30:58 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 18 May 2013 14:30:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fashion In-Reply-To: <51979B61.1070406@aleph.se> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> <518579FE.3050202@aleph.se> <00d701ce4910$1c3765a0$54a630e0$@rainier66.com> <51858A1E.6090408@aleph.se> <518CC967.7050803@aleph.se> <004301ce4d86$8cfc1450$a6f43cf0$@rainier66.com> <519613D4.6090703@aleph.se> <519756F8.5070603@aleph.se> <010d01ce53cf$9b68dec0$d23a9c40$@rainier66.com> <51979B61.1070406@aleph.se> Message-ID: <017101ce540e$fda38330$f8ea8990$@rainier66.com> >. On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg . >>.Our computers and phones have cameras in them now. It seems like we should be able to stand in front of it and have it use some set of criteria, then tell us 'good to go' or 'lose that revolting charteuse tie,' etc. We could show it all our clothing and let it make suggestions depending on the occasion, which it knows too, since the occasion is written in the calendar app. It would be Silicon Eye for the Straight Guy. >.Love that name. >.Ooh! Just found this paper: "Hi, Magic Closet, Tell Me What to Wear!" http://www.lv-nus.org/papers/2012/magic_closet-MM12.pdf Wow. It seems to do almost all you wish for. I especially like that they use latent variable mining of example clothes: those formal rules we started with are just the tip of the style iceberg, and this way the system can in principle learn implicit and unwritten rules, even rules no style guru has ever articulated.-- Anders Sandberg, Anders at some time decades in the future, some post-singularity normal person will discover this thread, post it to the world as an example of how geeks discuss fashion. You and I will be the poster children. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sun May 19 08:28:08 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 02:28:08 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Fashion In-Reply-To: <017101ce540e$fda38330$f8ea8990$@rainier66.com> References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> <518579FE.3050202@aleph.se> <00d701ce4910$1c3765a0$54a630e0$@rainier66.com> <51858A1E.6090408@aleph.se> <518CC967.7050803@aleph.se> <004301ce4d86$8cfc1450$a6f43cf0$@rainier66.com> <519613D4.6090703@aleph.se> <519756F8.5070603@aleph.se> <010d01ce53cf$9b68dec0$d23a9c40$@rainier66.com> <51979B61.1070406@aleph.se> <017101ce540e$fda38330$f8ea8990$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I worked with a company called fashiongenome that came up with a genetic algorithm that allowed you to find clothing similar to styles that you had decided previously that you liked. I don't think they are actively doing business now, but it was an interesting concept. You could also pick movie stars and such to follow, and your tastes were mixed with theirs. A kind of Pandora for clothing. The really nice thing is that once you measured yourself, it only showed you clothing available in your size, all guaranteed to fit (including shipping). The difficult thing for them was creating a searchable descriptor (the "DNA" of the genetic algorithm) of features that allowed the algorithm to work. I suppose that getting all of that clothing described in the level of detail they needed might have been the nail in the coffin, but they were also in one of these "fail fast" incubator settings, so they may have just given up prematurely. I am pretty sure we did with the company I was with in that setting. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Sun May 19 14:44:22 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 10:44:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fashion In-Reply-To: References: <007901ce4816$2d9da6b0$88d8f410$@rainier66.com> <007c01ce4856$180d8690$482893b0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <007601ce4875$acfc6a40$06f53ec0$@rainier66.com> <5184B7F4.4020104@aleph.se> <007201ce48d4$0d02b170$27081450$@rainier66.com> <00ab01ce48e5$ca7ea090$5f7be1b0$@rainier66.com> <518579FE.3050202@aleph.se> <00d701ce4910$1c3765a0$54a630e0$@rainier66.com> <51858A1E.6090408@aleph.se> <518CC967.7050803@aleph.se> <004301ce4d86$8cfc1450$a6f43cf0$@rainier66.com> <519613D4.6090703@aleph.se> <519756F8.5070603@aleph.se> <010d01ce53cf$9b68dec0$d23a9c40$@rainier66.com> <51979B61.1070406@aleph.se> <017101ce540e$fda38330$f8ea8990$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 4:28 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > The really nice thing is that once you measured yourself, it only showed you > clothing available in your size, all guaranteed to fit (including shipping). > The difficult thing for them was creating a searchable descriptor (the "DNA" > of the genetic algorithm) of features that allowed the algorithm to work. I > suppose that getting all of that clothing described in the level of detail > they needed might have been the nail in the coffin, but they were also in > one of these "fail fast" incubator settings, so they may have just given up > prematurely. I am pretty sure we did with the company I was with in that > setting. If there was a standard content descriptor that you could shoot a QR tag (or similar) with your phone then clothing manufacturers would be under pressure to provide this data voluntarily. Perhaps the demographic of "tech nerds for fashion" isn't large enough to provide sufficient pressure? It's not like easy-access clothing taxonomy hasn't been tried before (1975): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXceQWHxcpo For some reason though, I remember that to "match" the animals you were supposed to choose one predator and one prey animal; lions & gazelles for example - but I guess that's a difference concept. From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 19 14:42:42 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 07:42:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] bees again Message-ID: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> OK so we have now an ongoing experiment where Europe has banned neonics to see if that can stop the decline of honeybees. We can now compare Europe with America to get some actual data, cool. I have been working on an idea; perhaps you can help. Please skip to the last paragraph if you are in a hurry. I have seen way more dying bees this year than any before. Even ignoring the presumably anomalous event on 1 January where I saw hundreds of dying bees in one place at one time, I have seen perhaps three to four times more dying bees this year than the typical 15 to 20. My notion has been that we are seeing a combination of factors, one of which might be the neonicotinoids. The neonic theory explains the anomalous event but not the other observations, where I often see bees clearly distressed but not perished, out on a nice bee-day, no apparent explanation, no varroa mites on them. I have a notion that part of the problem, or a contributing factor, might be household pesticides, largely aimed at cockroaches. This gave me an idea. Bees are beauty queens of the bug world. Without reading the article, look at this picture at the top of this article and really look at a bee. Isn't she gorgeous? http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/05/13/183704091/what-is-it-about-bees -and-hexagons?ft=3 &f=111787346&sc=nl&cc=es-20130519 The transparent wings, the yellow and black transverse striping, the sexy hourglass shape, it's just a pretty bug. Contrast the reviled American cockroach: http://www.google.com/search?q=american+cockroach+palmetto+bug &hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=Ft2YUcaxOujUiwKosIGADg&ved=0CEgQsA Q&biw=984&bih=754 I have looked carefully at these, even dissected them, I have watched people's reaction to them, everything from revulsion to terror to uncontrolled panic at seeing these perfectly harmless insects. They don't bite, they don't sting, they don't give you any dreaded disease, but they are so hated that we intentionally introduce known toxins into our own homes, chemicals with both known and unknown harmful effects to humans, pets, birds and beneficial insects, to try to slay the bastards, and yet they survive with a vengeance. I have a theory that household pesticides may be one factor contributing to the decline of honeybees. I have seen proles use half a can of Raid, indoors, after seeing just one roach. This cannot be good. Even I, the oddball who really likes bugs, will admit that the cockroach is an ugly bug. My idea is to try to use genetic engineering to make the cockroach more attractive. We do the gene sequencing, see if we can figure out what makes a bee's wings transparent and what makes for those yellow and black stripes, then see if we can gene-splice those sequences and create a cockroach that looks like a huge bee. Or failing that, see if we can get them to at least have colorful wings like a butterfly, something other than that ugly shit-brown they now have. Then perhaps we can get people to grudgingly accept them and stop using so much pesticide, which would reduce costs and perhaps remove a possible factor in honeybee decline. If we can make sheep that glow in the dark, we should be able to make prettier cockroaches. Have we any gene-splicing hipsters who can suggest a way to do this? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Sun May 19 15:51:26 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 11:51:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> References: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 10:42 AM, spike wrote: > My idea is to try to use genetic engineering to make the cockroach more > attractive. We do the gene sequencing, see if we can figure out what makes > a bee?s wings transparent and what makes for those yellow and black stripes, > then see if we can gene-splice those sequences and create a cockroach that > looks like a huge bee. Or failing that, see if we can get them to at least > have colorful wings like a butterfly, something other than that ugly > shit-brown they now have. Then perhaps we can get people to grudgingly > accept them and stop using so much pesticide, which would reduce costs and > perhaps remove a possible factor in honeybee decline. If we can make sheep > that glow in the dark, we should be able to make prettier cockroaches. > > Have we any gene-splicing hipsters who can suggest a way to do this? You know that revulsion reaction that makes proles reach for the poison? What reaction do you think they'll have in your direction when you mix an already ugly bug with one of the top 5 offenders of science upon proles understanding of their world: genetic engineering? I'm already seeing the facebook pictures being reshared of spike's genetically engineered cockroaches big as chihuahuas and hiding under your car. Sorry spike, I won't be throwing any $ into this kickstarter :) From anders at aleph.se Sun May 19 15:53:15 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 16:53:15 +0100 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> References: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <5198F56B.9080604@aleph.se> On 19/05/2013 15:42, spike wrote: > > My idea is to try to use genetic engineering to make the cockroach > more attractive. We do the gene sequencing, see if we can figure out > what makes a bee's wings transparent and what makes for those yellow > and black stripes, then see if we can gene-splice those sequences and > create a cockroach that looks like a huge bee. Or failing that, see > if we can get them to at least have colorful wings like a butterfly, > something other than that ugly shit-brown they now have. Then perhaps > we can get people to grudgingly accept them and stop using so much > pesticide, which would reduce costs and perhaps remove a possible > factor in honeybee decline. If we can make sheep that glow in the > dark, we should be able to make prettier cockroaches. > > Have we any gene-splicing hipsters who can suggest a way to do this? > Some people are trying using ordinary breeding: http://www.roachforum.com/index.php?showtopic=4329 and enthusiasts are of course happy to point out all the existing patterns: http://www.angelfire.com/oh2/Roaches/ But I agree we can do much better! As far a glance at the web suggests, there has not been a deep study of color or patterning genetics, but there is plenty about their fairly complex metabolism (they make use of symbiotic bacteria to act as an extra, rapidly evolving, liver). But insects are insects, so we should be able to move some genetic networks and see what happens. The simplest is of course just colorant genes like green fluorescent protein or pigments like carotenids, pterins . I think genes for these have been characterised. The real trick would be to transfer structural color: the right patterning of chitin layers can produce the amazing iridiscent colors found in beetles, bugs and butterflies. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0064082 Unfortunately nobody seems to have characterized the genes controlling this yet. Once we get them, I suspect they can be copied. One area where we do have genes is beetle horns. Maybe giving the cockroaches some impressive horns might improve their charisma? Since at least Madagascar hissing cockroaches got pronotal horns we should be able to transfer the scarab beetle horn control http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1525-142X.2010.00422.x/abstract;jsessionid=E34B2351A3B991F74EC9143CE2C67757.d03t04 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wdev.81/abstract Beyond that, butterfly wing scale colour is of course the holy grail: http://euplotes.biology.uiowa.edu/web/IBS593/week2/Beldade-butterfly.pdf It is a bit tricky to control development well, but cockroaches are likely perfect candidates. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 19 16:19:01 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 17:19:01 +0100 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> References: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 3:42 PM, spike wrote: > OK so we have now an ongoing experiment where Europe has banned neonics to > see if that can stop the decline of honeybees. We can now compare Europe > with America to get some actual data, cool. > > There are some ifs and buts, though...... The ban is not yet in force. They say 'sometime before the end of 2013'. They have only banned the three most common neonics, imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam. And the ban is only on crops which are ?attractive to bees' and on cereals planted in the summer which cause dust clouds of toxic chemicals to be released. Neonicotinoids can still be used on winter crops, when bees are dormant, and in greenhouses. The ban will be reviewed after two years, and may be extended or stopped. The remaining two neonics, acetamiprid and thiacloprid are relatively less potent than the other three, but their toxicity can be increased when combined with other chemicals such as certain fungicides. Acetamiprid and thiacloprid are used less frequently on crops, but the problem is that they might be used to replace the main three once the ban in force, removing any benefits that the ban would have. > > I have a theory that household pesticides may be one factor contributing to > the decline of honeybees. I have seen proles use half a can of Raid, > indoors, after seeing just one roach. This cannot be good. Even I, the > oddball who really likes bugs, will admit that the cockroach is an ugly bug. > > Haven't you heard the saying 'There's never just one cockroach!' :) BillK From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 19 17:00:32 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 10:00:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: <5198F56B.9080604@aleph.se> References: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> <5198F56B.9080604@aleph.se> Message-ID: <006001ce54b2$60adae30$22090a90$@rainier66.com> On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: [ExI] bees again On 19/05/2013 15:42, spike wrote: >.My idea is to try to use genetic engineering to make the cockroach more attractive.If we can make sheep that glow in the dark, we should be able to make prettier cockroaches. spike Anders wrote Some people are trying using ordinary breeding: http://www.roachforum.com/index.php?showtopic=4329 and enthusiasts are of course happy to point out all the existing patterns: http://www.angelfire.com/oh2/Roaches/ -- Anders Sandberg Thanks Anders! These are waaay cool sites! They reinforce a notion I have held for some time. No matter how crazy and weird is one's particular obsession, there are others out there who are more crazy and weird. The internet helps these people find each other and reinforce our weird obsessions. A pet cockroach site, cool! I had an idea regarding cockroaches, that Keith might want to comment on, considering he is our local evolutionary psychology hipster. Although a few insects are carnivorous or have stings, are nearly all are stingless vegetarians, completely harmless to humans. Arachnids on the other hand are almost universally carnivorous and most can deliver a painful mechanical bite, even if it is not venomous. A mechanical bite would produce the instant negative feedback that results in a nearly universal human revulsion for arachnid, which could have evolved in this way: humans who had the anti-spider genetic content were less likely to play with them, and thus less likely to get a bite from the few seriously venomous spiders such as the black widow and the brown recluse. Result: slight differential survival rates of generalized anti-arachnid genetic code. Theory: cockroaches have the prominent legs and oversized antennae, which may resemble two additional legs, which when combined with the drab universal brown coloring, causes the unfortunate cockroach to vaguely resemble a spider. Common American cockroach: http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTPZmde3IOkhgD-r2CpdjmKpzk0J58bFNWAZ yeET0LYd51g7oo Venomous brown recluse: Brown Recluse Spider Picture -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: application/octet-stream Size: 10502 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.jpg Type: application/octet-stream Size: 5096 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 19 17:15:05 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 10:15:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: References: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <006601ce54b4$68d7e970$3a87bc50$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] bees again On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 3:42 PM, spike wrote: >>... OK so we have now an ongoing experiment where Europe has banned > neonics to see if that can stop the decline of honeybees. We can now > compare Europe with America to get some actual data, cool. >...The ban is not yet in force. They say 'sometime before the end of 2013'. >...They have only banned the three most common neonics, imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam... What would have possibly been even better if Europe had gotten together and worked a deal such that each country banned a different subset of neonics: one ban everything, one ban nothing, each of the others banning some combination of imidacloprid, clothianidin, thiamethoxam, acetamiprid and thiacloprid. Then we get a bunch of volunteer proles interested in this sort of thing, European counterparts of me, and have them use their eyes. A pattern would likely emerge. >...And the ban is only on crops which are 'attractive to bees' ... We could likewise create a checkerboard pattern from which a signal might arise, given sufficient observation data. It might even be done without an actual ban, but rather with selective voluntary incentives to use one kind of pesticide or another. For instance, Europe hipsters, do you guys have something analogous to our Walmart? Some super discount store which might carry pesticide? If so, we can work with this. Farmers work on remarkably narrow profit margins, so they will be incentivized to save even a few euros. We get the pesticide Walmart equivalent to sell imidacloprid cheaper in southwestern France, acetamiprid cheaper in eastern Poland, etc. Get the competitors to do likewise. Track what chemicals are sold, when and where. Data emerges. >... Haven't you heard the saying 'There's never just one cockroach!' :) BillK _______________________________________________ I wouldn't want the ugly bastard to be lonely. spike From dan_ust at yahoo.com Sun May 19 21:42:21 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 14:42:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> References: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1368999741.993.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Sunday, May 19, 2013 10:42 AM spike wrote: > Bees are beauty queens of the bug world. ?Without > reading the article, look at this picture at the > top of this article and really look at a bee.? > Isn?t she gorgeous? ? And what are butterflies? Chopped liver? :) ? Regards, Dan ?My science fiction short story "Residue" is now at: 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 stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 19 22:53:38 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 20 May 2013 00:53:38 +0200 Subject: [ExI] My mother In-Reply-To: <201305162056.r4GKuNnx017556@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <201305162056.r4GKuNnx017556@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On 16 May 2013 22:07, David Lubkin wrote: > On Mother's Day, many of my friends posted cool pictures of theirs on > Facebook. I posted a link to one of her from early in her career at Physics > Today: > > > > > > It was taken in the control room of the 76 GeV proton synchrotron (then > the most powerful in the world) at the Institute for High Energy Physics in > Protvino, an hour south of Moscow. It was shot in 1968 by eminent physicist > Nick Christofilos, who I best remember from a sm?rg?sbord he took us to at > Bear Mountain. Hey, what could be any cooler than this? -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 19 22:50:57 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 15:50:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: <1368999741.993.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> <1368999741.993.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00ba01ce54e3$547312a0$fd5937e0$@rainier66.com> >?] On Behalf Of Dan Subject: Re: [ExI] bees again On Sunday, May 19, 2013 10:42 AM spike wrote: >>? Bees are beauty queens of the bug world. Without > reading the article, look at this picture at the > top of this article and really look at a bee. > Isn?t she gorgeous? >?And what are butterflies? Chopped liver? :) Regards, Dan OK sure, butterflies are beautiful too. They look good, but they don?t really do much of anything except flap around. They cross pollinate a little, which is better than nothing I suppose. But honeybees do so many cool things: the colonies, the honey, the cross pollination, royal jelly, the swarms, the dances that tell the other bees where the blossoms can be found, the teamwork, the perfect hexagonal honeycombs, the whole notion of taking care of their larvae until they are ready to hatch and become workers almost immediately, it is all just soooo cool! How could you not love those girls? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon May 20 00:25:29 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 17:25:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: References: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00da01ce54f0$892b8ce0$9b82a6a0$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK >...They have only banned the three most common neonics, imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam. >...And the ban is only on crops which are 'attractive to bees' and on cereals planted in the summer which cause dust clouds of toxic chemicals to be released. Neonicotinoids can still be used on winter crops, when bees are dormant, and in greenhouses...BillK _______________________________________________ BillK, your post gave me a thought which has me worried. Fruit and nut crops are bee-dependent, but corn and grains are not. So if there is a general failure of all insect-dependent crops, the price of grain goes up. The people who produce those crops produce it in astonishing quantities, such as the Oregon friend with the solar panels. The profit margin on grain tends to be small. If the price of grain goes up just a little, those guys make a ton of money. So potato growers and cereal producers could benefit from bee destruction, because it would raise the price of grain. I don't know this for sure, but I think the US produces more cereal grain than does Europe. The US west coast and California's central valley has all those nut orchards and fruit groves. So if there is a general failure of the bee culture, California may be ruined but US agriculture may actually benefit, which may compel the non-California US farmers to influence the legislature to not ban bee-harmful substances. Oy. spike From anders at aleph.se Mon May 20 01:00:44 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 20 May 2013 02:00:44 +0100 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: <00da01ce54f0$892b8ce0$9b82a6a0$@rainier66.com> References: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> <00da01ce54f0$892b8ce0$9b82a6a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <519975BC.80302@aleph.se> On 2013-05-20 01:25, spike wrote: > BillK, your post gave me a thought which has me worried. Fruit and nut > crops are bee-dependent, but corn and grains are not. So if there is a > general failure of all insect-dependent crops, the price of grain goes up. > The people who produce those crops produce it in astonishing quantities, > such as the Oregon friend with the solar panels. The profit margin on grain > tends to be small. If the price of grain goes up just a little, those guys > make a ton of money. So potato growers and cereal producers could benefit > from bee destruction, because it would raise the price of grain. Substitutes and complements, Spike. Cereals are not a replacement for fruit: they are quite different niches. If all fruits and nuts disappeared it would not mean much higher cereal sales (perhaps even lower, as people now did not make pop-tarts or pies). Now, if neonicotinoids are really good for cereal farmers they might not want them banned, but that is because they do not care much about the fruit people, not because they make more if they fail. From a business perspective things that affect fuel prices are likely a far bigger influence on the profitability of their crops. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From gsantostasi at gmail.com Mon May 20 01:32:11 2013 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 20:32:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> References: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Some species of roaches are considered pests for a reason: http://en.allexperts.com/q/Pests-730/2009/5/roaches.htm Giovanni On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 9:42 AM, spike wrote: > ** ** > > ** ** > > OK so we have now an ongoing experiment where Europe has banned neonics to > see if that can stop the decline of honeybees. We can now compare Europe > with America to get some actual data, cool.**** > > ** ** > > I have been working on an idea; perhaps you can help. Please skip to the > last paragraph if you are in a hurry. **** > > ** ** > > I have seen way more dying bees this year than any before. Even ignoring > the presumably anomalous event on 1 January where I saw hundreds of dying > bees in one place at one time, I have seen perhaps three to four times more > dying bees this year than the typical 15 to 20. My notion has been that we > are seeing a combination of factors, one of which might be the > neonicotinoids. The neonic theory explains the anomalous event but not the > other observations, where I often see bees clearly distressed but not > perished, out on a nice bee-day, no apparent explanation, no varroa mites > on them. I have a notion that part of the problem, or a contributing > factor, might be household pesticides, largely aimed at cockroaches. This > gave me an idea.**** > > ** ** > > Bees are beauty queens of the bug world. Without reading the article, > look at this picture at the top of this article and really look at a bee. > Isn?t she gorgeous?**** > > ** ** > > > http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/05/13/183704091/what-is-it-about-bees-and-hexagons?ft=3&f=111787346&sc=nl&cc=es-20130519 > **** > > ** ** > > The transparent wings, the yellow and black transverse striping, the sexy > hourglass shape, it?s just a pretty bug.**** > > ** ** > > Contrast the reviled American cockroach:**** > > ** ** > > > http://www.google.com/search?q=american+cockroach+palmetto+bug&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=Ft2YUcaxOujUiwKosIGADg&ved=0CEgQsAQ&biw=984&bih=754 > **** > > I have looked carefully at these, even dissected them, I have watched > people?s reaction to them, everything from revulsion to terror to > uncontrolled panic at seeing these perfectly harmless insects. They don?t > bite, they don?t sting, they don?t give you any dreaded disease, but they > are so hated that we intentionally introduce known toxins into our own > homes, chemicals with both known and unknown harmful effects to humans, > pets, birds and beneficial insects, to try to slay the bastards, and yet > they survive with a vengeance.**** > > ** ** > > I have a theory that household pesticides may be one factor contributing > to the decline of honeybees. I have seen proles use half a can of Raid, > indoors, after seeing just one roach. This cannot be good. Even I, the > oddball who really likes bugs, will admit that the cockroach is an ugly > bug. **** > > ** ** > > My idea is to try to use genetic engineering to make the cockroach more > attractive. We do the gene sequencing, see if we can figure out what makes > a bee?s wings transparent and what makes for those yellow and black > stripes, then see if we can gene-splice those sequences and create a > cockroach that looks like a huge bee. Or failing that, see if we can get > them to at least have colorful wings like a butterfly, something other than > that ugly shit-brown they now have. Then perhaps we can get people to > grudgingly accept them and stop using so much pesticide, which would reduce > costs and perhaps remove a possible factor in honeybee decline. If we can > make sheep that glow in the dark, we should be able to make prettier > cockroaches.**** > > ** ** > > Have we any gene-splicing hipsters who can suggest a way to do this?**** > > ** ** > > 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 davekrieger at pobox.com Mon May 20 02:21:24 2013 From: davekrieger at pobox.com (Dave Krieger) Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 19:21:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] bees again Message-ID: Spike -- Aren't the following more likely reasons for why people like bees more than cockroaches? 1) Bees, one of the earliest species domesticated (not to be confused with "tamed") by humans, make honey and beeswax, and are therefore economically useful. Cockroaches do not. If bees, with their swarming, stinging behavior, did not possess this usefulness, we wouldn't give a shit for their impending extinction, beautiful or no. (We've wiped out plenty of beautiful species without even noticing.) 2) Bees, because of their distinctive lifestyle, of necessity must live outdoors, for the most part. Cockroaches invade our homes. Even though bees earn their keep, so to speak, by producing economically... if they tried to share our living space, do you think we'd tolerate them? The thought of waking up with an insect walking on your face, or seeing one walking around your stored food looking for vulnerabilities, is no more pleasant when the insect is a bee than when it is a cockroach...perhaps even less so since, as you point out, cockroaches don't sting. So my suggestions for reducing the human propensity to poison our own living space in an effort not to share it with roaches are two: 1) Intensive research to discover some economically valuable by-product of the cockroach... preferably one that is edible and delicious. I don't hold out much hope for this one ("Do earwigs make chutney? Do spiders make gravy?"), so we move on to: 2) Intensive research to develop a means of keeping roaches out of the home that is cheaper and more effective than insecticides... preferably one that the roaches won't adapt to tolerate within a few generations. From kgh1kgh2 at gmail.com Mon May 20 02:32:28 2013 From: kgh1kgh2 at gmail.com (Kevin G Haskell) Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 22:32:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Bees? We should be talking about the glorious evolotion and expansion of life throughout the universe, via humans and the technologies we create, and all you can discuss are bee populations? Vision, people. Vision! Message-ID: @KevinGHaskell -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Mon May 20 03:11:53 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 23:11:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Bees? We should be talking about the glorious evolotion and expansion of life throughout the universe, via humans and the technologies we create, and all you can discuss are bee populations? Vision, people. Vision! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Also my own meta-comment serves no purpose to start a new thread either (just sayin) 2013/5/19 Kevin G Haskell : > @KevinGHaskell > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From spike at rainier66.com Mon May 20 04:04:49 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 21:04:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00f301ce550f$2d167540$87435fc0$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Dave Krieger Subject: [ExI] bees again Spike -- Aren't the following more likely reasons for why people like bees more than cockroaches? 1) ... 2) ... Dave _____________________________________________ Thanks Dave, this is related to where I was going, but I can be more specific. I grew up in Florida where we have huge cockroaches. We used to call the Palmetto bugs, but they were everywhere, not just in the palmetto bushes. They can fly, sort of. They usually don't but I knew they can: I experimented with it as a child by hurling them into the air and watched them. Clumsy beasts are these. Years went by. I was at my tenth high school reunion, at a party at the local park, a fine example of a warm sultry Florida evening. There were about a dozen of us sitting around talking and having a fine time when this big something with a remarkably loud and low pitched buzz came hovering towards us. It was impossible to tell what it was. I knew, but the others didn't, and recall these were all kids who grew up in Florida. So there we sat, curiously watching this unidentified flying object, as it hovered in and blapped against the wall. It folded its wings, at which time we instantly saw it was a big cockroach. Several of the ladies shrieked in terror and fled. Everyone else evacuated, leaving me sitting there wondering why the hell there was this terror response. So sure, we don't like them in our homes. But there is a definite terror response to the cockroach that isn't seen for beetles which can be nearly as big and ugly, isn't seen for butterflies which are actually bigger but just as harmless as the cockroach. My theory is that their antennae are large enough to make them resemble a big brown spider. But that really doesn't explain why even dogs give cockroaches plenty of space. That one has me puzzled. But many humans are terrified of the lowly beasts, even when not particularly bothered by other insects. Horseflies for instance, are carnivorous and will put a hell of a bite on you to suck your blood. Yet people routinely slap them with their hands, no particular revulsion. But the same person who slaps at a horsefly will flee in terror from a cockroach? And wouldn't dream of picking up a roach in their hands? Why? Humans are weird. spike From anders at aleph.se Mon May 20 07:45:04 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 20 May 2013 08:45:04 +0100 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: <00f301ce550f$2d167540$87435fc0$@rainier66.com> References: <00f301ce550f$2d167540$87435fc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <5199D480.1010008@aleph.se> On 20/05/2013 03:21, Dave Krieger wrote: > 2) Intensive research to develop a means of keeping roaches out of the > home that is cheaper and more effective than insecticides... > preferably one that the roaches won't adapt to tolerate within a few > generations. I think the main solution here would be to have a biological defence force for the house, able to adapt to the roaches and other pests. A bit like my relationship to spiders: I love having them around, since they will catch the insects I do not want in my house. On 20/05/2013 05:04, spike wrote: > So sure, we don't like them in our homes. But there is a definite > terror response to the cockroach that isn't seen for beetles which can > be nearly as big and ugly, isn't seen for butterflies which are > actually bigger but just as harmless as the cockroach. All societies have rankings of animals as "clean" and "unclean", whether anchored in religion, tradition or just free-floating memes. Cockroaches in our culture are symbols of uncleanliness, butterflies symbols of evanescent beauty. The fact that at least tropical butterflies like to drink from available faeces and blood (it is the potassium they want) doesn't matter: people do not care too much about those boring scientific details. I think most of these responses are learned and arbitrary. There is no profound reason for people to love butterflies and hate cockroaches, and if somebody told me about a culture with the opposite view I would not be surprised. It is very similar with what kind of meat to eat. There is no society that eats all available forms of meat in their ecosystem. Typically the acceptable list is much shorter, and many entirely edible kinds are excluded because of religion (pig, cow, horse, bat, all meat), cultural affinity (dog, horse, guinea pig), purity (shellfish, insects, pidgeons, carrion eaters), health concerns (rabbit), the meat being seen as famine/poverty food and so on. As all the other societies show, you can eat things that you think are taboo with no problems. But try getting most people to do it! There is also a strain of biophobia in modern western culture. Our cleanliness idea involves a lack of uncontrolled organisms in our environment. The fact that this is nearly impossible doesn't stop people, and they do often use unnecessarily strong means in the futile battle. I think this is partially tied to a long strain of cleanliness-hygiene-sterility ideas in the modernist tradition. We should go for ribofunk as quickly as possible. Ah, time to put up my new bugs on the wall. (Yes, I said bugs: these two boxes are full of hemiptera, not coleoptera) -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Mon May 20 08:26:13 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 20 May 2013 09:26:13 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Vision, people. Vision! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5199DE25.80003@aleph.se> OK, shifting again from Mikes descriptive but overly long meta-subject. I have been thinking about mid-term strategic goals for a while now. Back in the day, we tended to think that if we promoted various technologies as possible, and the transhumanist idea that they were worthwhile eventually sensible people would get it, and we would roar towards a transhumanist future. But what has actually become clear is that things are a fair bit more complex in real life: acceptance of technological possibilities does not mean acceptance of transhumanist ideals, many new technologies have troubling risks, and achieving transhumanist aims requires getting involved in what can only be called politics. Transhumanism has gained a whole bundle of respectable allies and enemies, but in many ways it is a complex and fragmentary situation. And many of the grandiose ideas we spun in the 90s are today fairly mainstream - they percolated out through science fiction into the memetic landscape, and are no longer that shocking or radical. One approach might of course be to try for coming up with new, even more radical ideas. Stuff that really blows people's minds. The problem is that many of the truly mindblowing things are rather hard to convey - quantum computation, acausal trade, and a world of ubiqitious identity technology are hard to explain, even if they would really change our future. And blowing people's minds is not the primary goal: we want a great future, so mere life extension, smarter governance structures and atomically precise manufacturing are more important than wowing people (unless that wowing somehow gets them to do useful things). Blowing minds attracts the swarmers and seekers, while repelling the doers and mainstream. Another approach is to focus. The SENS foundation, FHI and MIRI are quite successful in what they do because they focus on a few things, find funding, and become good at them. General movements and networks will rarely achieve this, since they are too diffuse in their aims and typically lack administrative cohesion. 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. Yes, there have been rebrandings and all sorts of wonderful expressions of transhumanism as art, movements and proclamations. But most have lacked that cohesive vision that gives you a fire in your belly. It is not enough to write a grand manifesto, it has to hang together logically and probably appear at the right time and place. That last part is important: current transhumanism emerged during the liminal period in the early 90s where the old Cold War order of the world was breaking up and a new one formed - such periods are great opportunities for new memes to become part of the Zeitgeist. We missed the 911 transformation, which was probably just as well. But where is the next liminal appearing? We want to be there and seed it. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From mbb386 at main.nc.us Mon May 20 10:34:54 2013 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Mon, 20 May 2013 06:34:54 -0400 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: <00f301ce550f$2d167540$87435fc0$@rainier66.com> References: <00f301ce550f$2d167540$87435fc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <5d390629a481a75c493424c7f747da37.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > So there we > sat, curiously watching this unidentified flying object, > as it hovered in > and blapped against the wall. It folded its wings, at > which time we > instantly saw it was a big cockroach. Several of the > ladies shrieked in > terror and fled. Everyone else evacuated, leaving me > sitting there > wondering why the hell there was this terror response. > Palmetto Bugs - It's all those legs, and they run so fast, *and* fly. So flat, they can fit through most any crack or crevice. :( Who knows where they've been before, as they walk over your lunch supplies. What sewer might they have climbed out of? I lived in Charleston, SC. One got caught in my hair when I was a kid, freaked me out. I've watched them walking up the window screens. Snap Crackle Pop on the sidewalks. At university it was "fun" to put them *in* unsuspecting people's beds. Better than short-sheeting. And where there's one there's a million. Those little German Roaches are no better, but they are not so big. Regards, MB From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon May 20 17:42:12 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 20 May 2013 13:42:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> References: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 10:42 AM, spike wrote: > My idea is to try to use genetic engineering to make the cockroach more > attractive. > I'll work on that, but I have another idea, splice the 7 genes that rose plants use to make proteins that smell nice into E coli bacteria which is ubiquitous in the human gut; then if you were to fart in a elevator you'd be doing the other passengers a favor as they are invigorated by the gentile fragrance of rose petals. Even better I would not be bragging or condescending but simply stating a objective fact when I say "My shit don't stink". Another idea that is actually being worked on is to make bio-luminescent plants. It's been estimated that if just 0.02 percent of the energy a plant obtains from photosynthesis were used to make Luciferase, the protein that fireflys use, a medium sized tree would be as bright as a streetlamp John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Tue May 21 14:25:47 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 21 May 2013 15:25:47 +0100 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: References: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <519B83EB.7000407@aleph.se> On 20/05/2013 18:42, John Clark wrote: > > I'll work on that, but I have another idea, splice the 7 genes that > rose plants use to make proteins that smell nice into E coli bacteria > which is ubiquitous in the human gut; then if you were to fart in a > elevator you'd be doing the other passengers a favor as they are > invigorated by the gentile fragrance of rose petals. Actually, the first part has been done, for a wintergreen or banana smell: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90014997 http://openwetware.org/wiki/IGEM:MIT/2006/Blurb And rose smell is getting characterized, even using E. coli to test the functions of some enzymes (but I suspect they did not smell much): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12368489 However, E. coli is apparently not as common in the gut as we tend to think; just 0.1% of gut flora. Apparently other groups of bacteria like Firmicutes and Bacteroidetesare more common and should be targeted. > Another idea that is actually being worked on is to make > bio-luminescent plants. It's been estimated that if just 0.02 percent > of the energy a plant obtains from photosynthesis were used to make > Luciferase, the protein that fireflys use, a medium sized tree would > be as bright as a streetlamp Hmm. Plants convert sunlight with 3-6% efficiency. So a few hundred Watts per square meter x 0.03 x 0.0002 = about 0.01 Watts per square meter - I doubt you could see anything except in very deep darkness. OK, maybe 0.02 percent was a typo and it is 2% - then we get somewhere around 0.24 Watts per square meter. That you can definitely see, but it is not terribly bright: a 10x10 meter tree will have a total output in your direction of 24 Watts. The weakest street-lights reach about 18 Watts (a typical low pressure sodium streetlight is more like 80 Watts), but that light is also very directional. (a lot hinges on the wavelength profile and solid angle distribution, of course, but I am not great with telling candelas from lumens from lux). Bioluminescent trees are a neat idea, but hardly a reliable replacement for street lamps. Especially in winter. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue May 21 14:45:46 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 21 May 2013 10:45:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: <519B83EB.7000407@aleph.se> References: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> <519B83EB.7000407@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 10:25 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: >> Another idea that is actually being worked on is to make bio-luminescent >> plants. It's been estimated that if just 0.02 percent of the energy a plant >> obtains from photosynthesis were used to make Luciferase, the protein that >> fireflys use, a medium sized tree would be as bright as a streetlamp >> > > > Hmm. Plants convert sunlight with 3-6% efficiency. So a few hundred > Watts per square meter x 0.03 x 0.0002 = about 0.01 Watts per square meter > - I doubt you could see anything except in very deep darkness. OK, maybe > 0.02 percent was a typo and it is 2% - then we get somewhere around 0.24 > Watts per square meter. That you can definitely see, but it is not terribly > bright: a 10x10 meter tree will have a total output in your direction of 24 > Watts. The weakest street-lights reach about 18 Watts You're right! I got that .02 percent figure from a New Scientist article but, as you point out, if you think about it a little it's obvious that it can't be even close to being correct. Sorry. Street lights are out, maybe decorative mood lighting? John k Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue May 21 19:41:26 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 21 May 2013 12:41:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: References: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> <519B83EB.7000407@aleph.se> Message-ID: <008001ce565b$2f7d3330$8e779990$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2013 7:46 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] bees again On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 10:25 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: >> Another idea that is actually being worked on is to make bio-luminescent plants.a medium sized tree would be as bright as a streetlamp >. Hmm. . a 10x10 meter tree will have a total output in your direction of 24 Watts. The weakest street-lights reach about 18 Watts. Anders >.You're right! I got that .02 percent figure from a New Scientist article but, as you point out, if you think about it a little it's obvious that it can't be even close to being correct. Sorry. Street lights are out, maybe decorative mood lighting? John k Clark Sure, but the idea isn't totally busted. Consider that there are more trees than street lights, and furthermore we should really look at why we illuminate streets with the absurd levels of light that we currently use. I can think of two reasons: crime prevention and because we can. Taken in reverse order, it isn't clear to me that we will always be able to spray energy in all directions all night. We can now, but let us anticipate a future in which a larger portion of our energy needs will be met by ground based solar panels. Currently nighttime electric power is cheap because demand goes down faster than the supply can be ramped down. But if we have more of the load carried by PVs, night time power will be more expensive than daytime power. If we ease off on nighttime demand, we enable ground based solar. Crime prevention: we have better ways to do that now. I have infrared detector cameras on my house. They can make pictures in total darkness, reflections from infrared LEDs, but the resolution is lousy. We could alternately have those systems emit a short high intensity flash when some prole comes to your door at night, or is anywhere near your Detroit for instance. These cameras are cheap, and the image storage is instant and safe on the internet, so stealing or covering the camera will not help the sleazy perp. We could use those at a fraction the cost of street lamps, which are not particularly effective in reducing crime anyway. Better than nothing I suppose, but not as good as something else. Increased use of flashing digital cameras would reduce crime, cost less and most important of all: It would make the night skies easier to observe for the local astronomy fans. Conclusion: if we could create trees that emit 20 watts, that might be just the ticket. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue May 21 19:59:05 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 21 May 2013 12:59:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: <519B83EB.7000407@aleph.se> References: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> <519B83EB.7000407@aleph.se> Message-ID: <008a01ce565d$a69c4710$f3d4d530$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg >...a 10x10 meter tree will have a total output in your direction of 24 Watts... >...Bioluminescent trees are a neat idea, but hardly a reliable replacement for street lamps. Especially in winter. -- Anders Sandberg, _______________________________________________ Oh, ja, I did forget about that. Winter nights can be long in Sweden. How about street lamps that only turn on when they detect the presence of humans? That might actually be a better crime deterrent than being on always. spike From anders at aleph.se Tue May 21 22:28:43 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 21 May 2013 23:28:43 +0100 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: <008001ce565b$2f7d3330$8e779990$@rainier66.com> References: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> <519B83EB.7000407@aleph.se> <008001ce565b$2f7d3330$8e779990$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <519BF51B.6080502@aleph.se> I'm all in favour of luminescent mood lightening. Worked on Pandora. But there is a practical problem with trees: they are so slow to install. Outside my window I have a smallish tree that is ~30 years old. Along my street many of the big trees are at least 60 years old or more. So replacing the street-lights would take many decades. Maybe we should go for bioluminescent ivy or wines. Crime prevention: light doesn't really deter crimes, human visibility does. Being alone on a well-lit street with empty offices is no real comfort. But people tend to feel better about well-lit areas, so from a comfort standpoint it matters. This is also why person-sensitive lamps don't really help: you do not see where you are going, and this is unsettling. It is worth remembering that many people need light when walking at night (or morning/afternoon in the case of Sweden). I am sure that to an American it sounds downright strange that a sizeable fraction of people here get to their jobs/homes by walking, including many with rather bad eyesight. Or, as the case might be, drunk. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From mbb386 at main.nc.us Tue May 21 23:23:18 2013 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Tue, 21 May 2013 19:23:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoins again In-Reply-To: <519B83EB.7000407@aleph.se> References: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> <519B83EB.7000407@aleph.se> Message-ID: <41413fbaf5545ae24684ea7420f82e93.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> from EFF newsletter, this afternoon: We're happy to announce that we will now accept Bitcoin donations through our website. You can use them to make one-time donations, set up monthly donations, or get an EFF membership. Bitcoin, while innovative, has a number of limitations and weaknesses in its design, and might yet turn out to be just the first draft for future crypto-currencies. But as an organization that supports cryptographic experimentation, we believe the best answer to Bitcoin's potential shortcomings is for others to come along and offer superior alternatives. Read more: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/eff-will-accept-bitcoins-support-digital-liberty Regards, MB From ALONZOTG at verizon.net Wed May 22 08:36:19 2013 From: ALONZOTG at verizon.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Wed, 22 May 2013 04:36:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] progress on latest story Message-ID: <519C8383.2080006@verizon.net> om I just finished the first manuscript of my latest story. It weighs in at 37,000 misspelled werds, or about two hundred ten thousand keystrokes. I promised that I'd finish part two before releasing it, however if you beg I'll send it to the first few. The story pretty much abandons all best practices in terms of writing style, plot and character and everything, rather it's more of a scenario building where I present the awesomeist possible future, with lots of kinkiness and far too much self-revealing honesty. The point of the writing is to explore new ideas, present my own vision, and to raise issues that might deserve more examination. As such, the narrative is a secondary concern and I omitted lots of the glue and other verbage that better authors use... I hope that the framework might be useful for other people who have ideas but aren't quite at the point where they can spew out dozens of pages of semi-coherent text. Part one, the one I wrote, is mostly an "everything turns out awesome" future, where part two will be an "uploaders trash everything, here are the gory details" future. That said, I want to be as precisely accurate as possible and if anyone has some materials that they think I should be familiar with before proceeding, please share. The main writing effort will probably begin within a week. -- NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE Powers are not rights. From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed May 22 17:00:35 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 22 May 2013 13:00:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: <008001ce565b$2f7d3330$8e779990$@rainier66.com> References: <003801ce549f$1f6132c0$5e239840$@rainier66.com> <519B83EB.7000407@aleph.se> <008001ce565b$2f7d3330$8e779990$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 21, 2013 a spike wrote: >> You're right! I got that .02 percent figure from a New Scientist article >> but, as you point out, if you think about it a little it's obvious that it >> can't be even close to being correct. Sorry. Street lights are out, maybe >> decorative mood lighting? >> > > Sure, but the idea isn?t totally busted. > Hmm, now that I think about it maybe not. It occurs to me that a 18 watt streetlamp does not produce anywhere near 18 watts of light, at best a incandescent light bulb is only about 10% efficient in converting electrical energy to visible light and even a LED is only about 20%, but a protein like Luciferase is about 85% efficient in converting chemical energy into visible light. Also the human eye is much more sensitive to green photons than other colors, if a bio-luminescent tree restricted its light output to just the green it would look at least 5 times as bright as a red or blue or white tree with equal light energy output. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 22 17:55:20 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 22 May 2013 10:55:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] glowing plants, was: RE: bees again Message-ID: <004201ce5715$877e8ab0$967ba010$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] Subject: Re: [ExI] bees again On Tue, May 21, 2013 a spike wrote: >> >. Sorry. Street lights are out, maybe decorative mood lighting? >>. Sure, but the idea isn't totally busted. >.Hmm, now that I think about it maybe not. It occurs to me that a 18 watt streetlamp does not produce anywhere near 18 watts of light, at best a incandescent light bulb is only about 10% efficient in converting electrical energy to visible light and even a LED is only about 20%, but a protein like Luciferase is about 85% efficient in converting chemical energy into visible light. John K Clark Ja, good point. In my misspent childhood I was on a campout with the scouts. We caught a bunch of fireflies in a glass jar. Each one created intermittent light, but with enough of them, the jar of fireflies as a light source was better than nothing. Regarding Anders' point about it taking 30 years to grow a streetlamp replacement, I have a couple of notions. In the citrus industry, one can graft a tree onto an existing rootstock and get some marvelous growth rates. Apparently tree growth is limited by the growth rates of the roots rather than the growth rate of the trunk and branches. Botany hipsters, do feel free to comment if this is wrong, it isn't my area of expertise. Secondly, we have options such as starting with a plant parasite. Many of us have seen mistletoe in a tree. We should be able to get a nice sturdy tree, clone some bioluminescent mistletoe or Spanish moss, get that started in a tree. Then we give the tree extra fertilizer and water to keep it healthy with the glowing parasites. There is another variation as well: put the bioluminescent genes into something that grows really quickly, such as a watermelon vine. Once a watermelon gets going, the vine itself can be moved anywhere, such as along walkways, hang it in trees and so forth. Perhaps the genetic gurus persuade the vine to just grow, and not produce watermelons. I would be reluctant to eat anything that glows in the dark. Since we are talking about fast growing stuff, perhaps we could make glowing kudzu? If the glowing plant-parasite idea is not already patented, I cheerfully donate it into the public domain with this post. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Wed May 22 20:45:33 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 22 May 2013 21:45:33 +0100 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <519D2E6D.6050907@aleph.se> Scott Aaronson, the official chief D-Wave Skeptic and all-around smart guy, has a nice post where he tears into the issue: (starts below the two updates at the top) http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1400 He thinks we are *finally* seeing evidence for quantum behaviour, but has arguments why there was no real speed advantage over classical simulated annealing, and points out that if the hype cycle continues like it has, soon we will end up with a "quantum winter" where the entire field will be regarded as a hopeless chimera. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed May 22 21:22:13 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 22 May 2013 15:22:13 -0600 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: <519D2E6D.6050907@aleph.se> References: <519D2E6D.6050907@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 2:45 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Scott Aaronson, the official chief D-Wave Skeptic and all-around smart > guy, has a nice post where he tears into the issue: (starts below the two > updates at the top) > http://www.scottaaronson.com/**blog/?p=1400 > > He thinks we are *finally* seeing evidence for quantum behaviour, but has > arguments why there was no real speed advantage over classical simulated > annealing, and points out that if the hype cycle continues like it has, > soon we will end up with a "quantum winter" where the entire field will be > regarded as a hopeless chimera. Even in the most optimistic scenarios, are quantum computers general purpose computing machines? Or are they simply machines that are capable of solving a certain class of problem extremely rapidly? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joshjob42 at gmail.com Wed May 22 22:12:37 2013 From: joshjob42 at gmail.com (Joshua Job) Date: Wed, 22 May 2013 15:12:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: References: <519D2E6D.6050907@aleph.se> Message-ID: They are general purpose, in principle. But speed improvements will likely only come from special problems, and their fragility and likely low average clock speed will mean they will likely never be anything more than a special purpose chip component, sort of like a GPU or arithmetic module. -Joshua Job. (I'm a grad student in the field) On May 22, 2013 2:23 PM, "Kelly Anderson" wrote: > On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 2:45 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > >> Scott Aaronson, the official chief D-Wave Skeptic and all-around smart >> guy, has a nice post where he tears into the issue: (starts below the two >> updates at the top) >> http://www.scottaaronson.com/**blog/?p=1400 >> >> He thinks we are *finally* seeing evidence for quantum behaviour, but has >> arguments why there was no real speed advantage over classical simulated >> annealing, and points out that if the hype cycle continues like it has, >> soon we will end up with a "quantum winter" where the entire field will be >> regarded as a hopeless chimera. > > > Even in the most optimistic scenarios, are quantum computers general > purpose computing machines? Or are they simply machines that are capable of > solving a certain class of problem extremely rapidly? > > -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 brent.allsop at canonizer.com Thu May 23 00:14:14 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Wed, 22 May 2013 18:14:14 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? Message-ID: <519D5F56.8000708@canonizer.com> Expert Theoreticians about the future, It seems to me there is a high probability that the Bitcoin network could, in the long term, become a mathematical catastrophe. It could become the Mother of all Ponzi schemes. If you project the current growth rates at all, it seems very likely that a single Bitcoin could be worth over a $ million within 5 years. And a good possibility that that will be just the start. Perhaps this was the motivation of the brilliant original crypto nerd creators, and why they remain anonymous. Most of the early mined coins remain out of circulation. They are probably already living very comfortable lives selling very few of their total hoard. If the bleating heard of humanity gets in their heads some kind of "Law of the Bitcoin", that you are guaranteed to get a 5 times return (as history is already showing), every year, for any investment in Bitcoins, no matter how 'black' a market any government may try to make investing in Bitcoins, will anyone be able to resist such a mathematical certainty temptation? Bitcoins could soon start draining capital from anything with value, such as all fiat currencies, the stock market, gold.... And if there is another recession, this could really accelerate the growth of the value of Bitcoins. If the governments fired up the currency printing presses, everything they print could quickly evaporate into Bitcoins. Sure, they could make currencies inflate faster than everything else of value, but it seems to me there is a good chance that nobody could stop the soon to be mathematical certainty of rapidly deflating Bitcoins. What do all you experts think of this and anything else to do with Bitcoins. Is there any kind of expert consensus about the future of Bitcoins, both near and long term? I've canonized a first draft of my thoughts about Bitcoins, and their future in a "Currency Expert Survey Project" See: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/155 I'd love to find out, concisely and quantitatively, what all you experts do or don't agree with. How many of you own bitcoins? Anyone Mining bitcoins? and what do all of you think the value of a Bitcoin will be in one year?: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154 Does anyone disagree with my working hypotheses? Am I making any other mistakes in any of this reasoning? I know all of you are very intelligent Bitcoin experts, and even better future visionaries. Let's get together and amplify all of our collective wisdom on this, build an expert consensus about what is important, any possible eventualities, and rigorously measure it all. Alone, my opnion surely isn't worth any more than any of the other clueless beetling pundits out there. But if we all work together, we could develop a very concise, quantitative, amplified expert visionary description of the future. Let's do this so we can both possibly make a LOT of money, while together collaboratively avoiding any potential risks, (i.e. when will the bubble really pop and how?) and maybe even eventually save the world from a mathematical catastrophe via prophetic moral warning? Upwards, Brent Allsop From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Thu May 23 01:41:39 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Wed, 22 May 2013 18:41:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: <519D5F56.8000708@canonizer.com> References: <519D5F56.8000708@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <1369273299.95185.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: > It could?become the Mother of all Ponzi schemes.? Ponzi schemes, normally understood, involve early investors being paid with the investments of late investors. That is not happening with bitcoin. > If you project the current?growth rates at all, it seems very likely that a single Bitcoin?could be?worth over? a $ million within 5 years.? And a good possibility that that?will be just the start.< I hope you're right! > I've canonized a first draft of my?thoughts about Bitcoins, and their future in a "Currency Expert Survey?Project"?See: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/155< Interesting project. I might contribute if I find the time. > How many of you own bitcoins?? Anyone Mining bitcoins?? and what do all of you think the value of a Bitcoin will be in one year?:< I followed Bitcoin casually from its inception, but (regrettably) did not take it seriously until only recently, when the total capitalization broke above 1 billion USD. I invested on three separate occasions after the market corrected. I'm happy with my average price, which is below the current market.? The longer term charts would seem to indicate that the price is currently completing a consolidation pattern with the price fairly stable around $122 +/- $5 or so. If the price breaks higher here, to about $130-$135, especially on high volume, I would guess then that it might rise again in the next year to something near its all time high of about $260. If it instead breaks to do the downside then I would be concerned about the next year or so. Of course this is all predicated on the validity the science (art?) of technical analysis of price trends, which might be akin to reading tea leaves. If anyone has developed a model for doing fundamental analysis of bitcoin prices then I would be interested in hearing about it. > I know all of you are very intelligent Bitcoin experts I do not consider myself an expert in Bitcoin, but I do have a lot of experience trading and investing in other markets. I spent many years as an investment adviser. I happen also be something of a geek, and so here I am with a position in bitcoins. :) Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu May 23 03:26:57 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan Ust) Date: Wed, 22 May 2013 23:26:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper Message-ID: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> See http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1305/1305.3913.pdf 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 brent.allsop at canonizer.com Thu May 23 04:07:25 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Wed, 22 May 2013 22:07:25 -0600 Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: <1369273299.95185.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <519D5F56.8000708@canonizer.com> <1369273299.95185.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <519D95FD.3060206@canonizer.com> Hi Gordon, Thanks for the reply! On 5/22/2013 7:41 PM, Gordon wrote: > Brent Allsop wrote: > > > It could become the Mother of all Ponzi schemes. > > Ponzi schemes, normally understood, involve early investors being paid > with the investments of late investors. That is not happening with > bitcoin. If you really think this, you should canonize it. I bet nobody would agree with you. But I could be very mistaken. You haven't convinced me with just this. Sure, talking short term, what you are saying may be true. But long term, after Bitcoins have sucked every cent of capital out of the stock market, all real estate, and everything of any value, all of the people that had been living high on the hog for so long, off of the profits of the last investors, and there is finally nothing of value left in society to invest in Bitcoins, what happens then? It's obviosly not like any Ponzi scheme to date, but I believe your missing the possible bigger picture. Again, canonizer.com can help filter mistakes like this, if they are mistakes, from all of our thinking, while the good ideas can rise above this kind of noise by building an expert consensus. > > > If you project the current growth rates at all, it seems very likely that a single > Bitcoin could be worth over > a $ million within 5 years. And a good possibility that that will be > just the start.< > > I hope you're right! Again, short term, I, and I'm sure the entire herd is obviously very tempted to think the same. But, are you being completely morally blind to the long term fundamental possibilities? > > > I've canonized a first draft of my thoughts about Bitcoins, and their > future in a "Currency Expert Survey Project" See: > http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/155< > > Interesting project. I might contribute if I find the time. > > > How many of you own bitcoins? Anyone Mining bitcoins? and what do > all of you think the value of a Bitcoin will be in one year?:< > > I followed Bitcoin casually from its inception, but (regrettably) did > not take it seriously until only recently, when the total > capitalization broke above 1 billion USD. I invested on three separate > occasions after the market corrected. I'm happy with my average price, > which is below the current market. > > The longer term charts would seem to indicate that the price is > currently completing a consolidation pattern with the price fairly > stable around $122 +/- $5 or so. If the price breaks higher here, to > about $130-$135, especially on high volume, I would guess then that it > might rise again in the next year to something near its all time high > of about $260. If it instead breaks to do the downside then I would be > concerned about the next year or so. Of course this is all predicated > on the validity the science (art?) of technical analysis of price > trends, which might be akin to reading tea leaves. If anyone has > developed a model for doing fundamental analysis of bitcoin prices > then I would be interested in hearing about it. Again, to me, this is all short term meaningless tea leaves that have nothing to do with any true long term mathematical fundamentals that really matter. You can't predict how fast the current holders of Bitcoins are going to temporarily cash in, and even if you could, what good is that compared to any long term mathematical fundamentals. As is typical of the herd, so many pundits are focusing on this kind of short term BS, and completely missing what is really important. > > > I know all of you are very intelligent Bitcoin experts > > I do not consider myself an expert in Bitcoin, but I do have a lot of > experience trading and investing in other markets. I spent many years > as an investment adviser. I happen also be something of a geek, and so > here I am with a position in bitcoins. :) > You're at least as good as an expert as I, and probably 90% of the world's experts. Let's get a "Currency Expert" camp started for you. As a peer, I'd surely rate you near the top of My list of experts. There are quite a few experts out there I know I'd rank highly. Who do you all think we would all rank as the worlds best currency expert? http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/151. Would all of you trust the consensus of such a list of peer ranked experts as much as I would or should? The question is, how much expert consensus is there about either of our positions? That is what will surely be the "expert consensus", any such expert consensus that arises will be way more intelligent than any of us as blind and biased individuals could come up with. What do you currently think the value of Bitcoins will be in one year? Is there any possibility it will be around 5 times it's value today, as is being predicted by the "Law of Bitcoins" camp? http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/2 If so, it takes less than a minut to join that camp. If not, it only takes a minute or two to start a new camp providing any different POV - so we can see which way the emerging expert consensus is leaning. Far less time than it took you to waste your time replying to this post. Or do you just prefer lazy half baked, possibly mostly mistaken thinking, and have no interest in finding out if anyone agrees with you, or not, and why? Here's another question for all you way better than me experts, especially Giulio who I've CCed. Is there any way the Bitcoin network could be altered to allow for more than currently allotted 21 million Bitcoins? Even if 90% of the holders wanted to do this to try to stop a terrible hyper deflation? It doesn't seem possible to me, since even if 90% of the exchanges did agree to 'fork' the block chain, if 5% kept the old only 21 million chain operating, everyone would quickly abandon the 90% fork and switch over to purchase the still hyper deflating chain, making the problem explosively worse. Am I just a clueless, mistaken, Bitcoin non expert, or has anyone else wondered such things? If I'm mistaken, what is the expert consensus, and what will make it pop, or not - and when? Gordon, another question for you. What do you think is the best wallet, and which wallet are you using? Are you in the Coinbase camp, or is there something better and safer? http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/127 . And what do you think of any other currency, in comparison, like the Ripple? http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/150/4 ? Are you investing in any other currency? Which ones are you most focusing on? Do you have any interest in how your current thinking may compare with other experts? Anyone else? Same questions! Would you not value knowing what the experts think is the current best and safest wallet to use? If the one you are currently using, become risky, or inferior compared to another, wouldn't you want to know, before everyone else? Brent Allsop -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu May 23 06:07:52 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 07:07:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <519DB238.1090608@aleph.se> On 2013-05-23 04:26, Dan Ust wrote: > See http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1305/1305.3913.pdf > > Comments? Vestigia terrent. They are claiming something three orders of magnitude more powerful than existing energy storage (using two useless illustrations as illustrations of this!) They are unwilling to show anybody how it works even under NDA, yet constantly claim they are very close to produce things commercially. They have a choir of supporters who love the idea because it would be so good if it was true. In short, it looks like BlackLight Power. Or Josef Papp's engine. Or Perrigo's, Keely's, Redheffer's or any of the others. If I came up with a technology that was potentially world-changing I would make sure to make it and its launch as different as possible from past frauds. Sure, I might want to make loads of money, but that is what patents, NDAs and good lawyers are for - secret ingredients do not work well. -- 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 Thu May 23 06:17:58 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 07:17:58 +0100 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: References: <519D2E6D.6050907@aleph.se> Message-ID: <519DB496.2070807@aleph.se> On 2013-05-22 22:22, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Even in the most optimistic scenarios, are quantum computers general > purpose computing machines? Or are they simply machines that are > capable of solving a certain class of problem extremely rapidly? As far as I understand, they can be general purpose. You just use gates that implement universal reversible operations. I don't think they would be amazingly effective, but they could do it. Incidentally, since we are talking quantum computation. I have been trying to track down a proper source on minimum energy dissipation for it. As far as I get it, by virtue of reversibility QCs can run with no dissipation - they do not erase bits, so the Landauer limit doesn't apply. But error correction will be necessary, and error correction schemes involve dirtying ancilla bits - these bits will have to be erased, at a thermodynamic cost. Does anybody know a paper placing bounds on how many ancillas are necessary? I know there are theorems stating that if the error probability per gate is under a certain constant in-the-large fault-tolerant computation is possible, but most of these constructions seem to have huge numbers of gates (literally millions per bit). Does anybody know a paper that instead minimizes the number of expected erasures? Oh, and while still quantum: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/05/physicists-create-quantum-link-b.html?ref=hp Entanglement between particles separated in time. Unsurprising, yet totally rad. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From giulio at gmail.com Thu May 23 07:11:02 2013 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 09:11:02 +0200 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: <519DB496.2070807@aleph.se> References: <519D2E6D.6050907@aleph.se> <519DB496.2070807@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 8:17 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-05-22 22:22, Kelly Anderson wrote: > As far as I understand, they can be general purpose. You just use gates that > implement universal reversible operations. I don't think they would be > amazingly effective, but they could do it. > > Incidentally, since we are talking quantum computation. I have been trying > to track down a proper source on minimum energy dissipation for it. As far > as I get it, by virtue of reversibility QCs can run with no dissipation - > they do not erase bits, so the Landauer limit doesn't apply. But error > correction will be necessary, and error correction schemes involve dirtying > ancilla bits - these bits will have to be erased, at a thermodynamic cost. Can't the extra bits be just stored? BTW what do you guys think of this? It seems sort of plausible that the universe may be optimally energy-efficient. So it should be a reversible computer. But apparently it isn't because information is irreversibly erased in wavefunction collapse. But if the information is just stored away instead of destroyed, the universe can still be a reversible computer. Assuming the MWI interpretation, the lost information is, indeed, still available. So the MWI follows from Landauer theorem with some plausible assumptions. I am sure somebody must have written about this in much more details. > Does anybody know a paper placing bounds on how many ancillas are necessary? > I know there are theorems stating that if the error probability per gate is > under a certain constant in-the-large fault-tolerant computation is > possible, but most of these constructions seem to have huge numbers of gates > (literally millions per bit). Does anybody know a paper that instead > minimizes the number of expected erasures? > > Oh, and while still quantum: > http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/05/physicists-create-quantum-link-b.html?ref=hp > Entanglement between particles separated in time. Unsurprising, yet totally > rad. > > -- > 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 From protokol2020 at gmail.com Thu May 23 07:19:26 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 09:19:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: References: <519D2E6D.6050907@aleph.se> <519DB496.2070807@aleph.se> Message-ID: Don't ask me about MWI. I think it's just a religion like Global Warming. Not be cause it is too weird, be cause it is too ilogical. But since you've asked. The real question here is, do we have a quantum computer now? Even if we have, it is nothing more than an analog computer of a sort. I've always admired them. On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 9:11 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 8:17 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > On 2013-05-22 22:22, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > > As far as I understand, they can be general purpose. You just use gates > that > > implement universal reversible operations. I don't think they would be > > amazingly effective, but they could do it. > > > > Incidentally, since we are talking quantum computation. I have been > trying > > to track down a proper source on minimum energy dissipation for it. As > far > > as I get it, by virtue of reversibility QCs can run with no dissipation - > > they do not erase bits, so the Landauer limit doesn't apply. But error > > correction will be necessary, and error correction schemes involve > dirtying > > ancilla bits - these bits will have to be erased, at a thermodynamic > cost. > > Can't the extra bits be just stored? > > BTW what do you guys think of this? > It seems sort of plausible that the universe may be optimally > energy-efficient. So it should be a reversible computer. But > apparently it isn't because information is irreversibly erased in > wavefunction collapse. But if the information is just stored away > instead of destroyed, the universe can still be a reversible computer. > Assuming the MWI interpretation, the lost information is, indeed, > still available. So the MWI follows from Landauer theorem with some > plausible assumptions. > > I am sure somebody must have written about this in much more details. > > > Does anybody know a paper placing bounds on how many ancillas are > necessary? > > I know there are theorems stating that if the error probability per gate > is > > under a certain constant in-the-large fault-tolerant computation is > > possible, but most of these constructions seem to have huge numbers of > gates > > (literally millions per bit). Does anybody know a paper that instead > > minimizes the number of expected erasures? > > > > Oh, and while still quantum: > > > http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/05/physicists-create-quantum-link-b.html?ref=hp > > Entanglement between particles separated in time. Unsurprising, yet > totally > > rad. > > > > -- > > 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 > _______________________________________________ > 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 May 23 09:14:46 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 11:14:46 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 11:26:57PM -0400, Dan Ust wrote: > See http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1305/1305.3913.pdf > > Comments? Not merely bad science, fraud. From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 23 09:24:30 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 11:24:30 +0200 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: References: <519D2E6D.6050907@aleph.se> <519DB496.2070807@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20130523092430.GU2380@leitl.org> On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 09:19:26AM +0200, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > Don't ask me about MWI. I think it's just a religion like Global Warming. > Not be cause it is too weird, be cause it is too ilogical. > > But since you've asked. > > The real question here is, do we have a quantum computer now? Even if we > have, it is nothing more than an analog computer of a sort. I've always > admired them. QC isn't analog computation. But I agree with using analog devices to accelerate neural computation in hybrid setups (using digital system for long-distance communication between nodes, packets on a mesh/torus being analogs of spikes). From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 23 09:30:54 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 11:30:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: <519DB496.2070807@aleph.se> References: <519D2E6D.6050907@aleph.se> <519DB496.2070807@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20130523093054.GV2380@leitl.org> On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 07:17:58AM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-05-22 22:22, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >Even in the most optimistic scenarios, are quantum computers > >general purpose computing machines? Or are they simply machines > >that are capable of solving a certain class of problem extremely > >rapidly? > > As far as I understand, they can be general purpose. You just use There is a curious lack of quantum algorithms, and they all seem to make use of quantum parallelism (evaluating multiple branches simultaneously, until entanglement collapses when you make your measurement to obtain your results). Even if QC is really all-purpose, it seems to have curious strengths and weaknesses, and makes VHDL look like a cakewalk. > gates that implement universal reversible operations. I don't think > they would be amazingly effective, but they could do it. My opinion hasn't changed so far: if QC really works (in the sense of more bang for a given budget of atoms and Joules vs. classical computation, including nanoelectronics, whic I don't think is true) it's not really practical. There might be a mixed domain with spintronics, if you can combine spin-polarized currents, spin valves and qubits in solid state close to room temperature. If it works, the size of qubit registers will be likely small (as you you said about error correction, and associated power budget), so no computers the size of a galaxy on top of your palm. From protokol2020 at gmail.com Thu May 23 09:58:11 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 11:58:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: <20130523093054.GV2380@leitl.org> References: <519D2E6D.6050907@aleph.se> <519DB496.2070807@aleph.se> <20130523093054.GV2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: > There is a curious lack of quantum algorithms Yes. But maybe not that curious. The physical universe may not permit them to be too super-duper. http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/The_Limits_of_Quantum_Computers.pdf I agree with this article. On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 11:30 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 07:17:58AM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > On 2013-05-22 22:22, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > >Even in the most optimistic scenarios, are quantum computers > > >general purpose computing machines? Or are they simply machines > > >that are capable of solving a certain class of problem extremely > > >rapidly? > > > > As far as I understand, they can be general purpose. You just use > > There is a curious lack of quantum algorithms, and they all > seem to make use of quantum parallelism (evaluating multiple > branches simultaneously, until entanglement collapses when > you make your measurement to obtain your results). > > Even if QC is really all-purpose, it seems to have curious > strengths and weaknesses, and makes VHDL look like a cakewalk. > > > gates that implement universal reversible operations. I don't think > > they would be amazingly effective, but they could do it. > > My opinion hasn't changed so far: if QC really works (in > the sense of more bang for a given budget of atoms and Joules > vs. classical computation, including nanoelectronics, whic > I don't think is true) it's not really practical. > > There might be a mixed domain with spintronics, if you can > combine spin-polarized currents, spin valves and qubits in > solid state close to room temperature. If it works, the > size of qubit registers will be likely small (as you > you said about error correction, and associated power > budget), so no computers the size of a galaxy on top of your palm. > _______________________________________________ > 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 Thu May 23 12:53:29 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 13:53:29 +0100 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: References: <519D2E6D.6050907@aleph.se> <519DB496.2070807@aleph.se> Message-ID: <519E1149.7010907@aleph.se> On 2013-05-23 08:11, Giulio Prisco wrote: > On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 8:17 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: >> Incidentally, since we are talking quantum computation. I have been trying >> to track down a proper source on minimum energy dissipation for it. As far >> as I get it, by virtue of reversibility QCs can run with no dissipation - >> they do not erase bits, so the Landauer limit doesn't apply. But error >> correction will be necessary, and error correction schemes involve dirtying >> ancilla bits - these bits will have to be erased, at a thermodynamic cost. > Can't the extra bits be just stored? It gets rather expensive to have to build more and more memory. In fact, creating a new bit in a fixed state is *at least* as expensive as erasing a bit, since it involves erasing the unknown "bit" existing in the original matter. The problem with dirty ancilla bits is that they cannot be undone by running the computation backwards, which is how you otherwise deal with garbage in reversible computation. > BTW what do you guys think of this? > It seems sort of plausible that the universe may be optimally > energy-efficient. So it should be a reversible computer. But > apparently it isn't because information is irreversibly erased in > wavefunction collapse. But if the information is just stored away > instead of destroyed, the universe can still be a reversible computer. > Assuming the MWI interpretation, the lost information is, indeed, > still available. So the MWI follows from Landauer theorem with some > plausible assumptions. Well, if you view wavefunction collapse as decoherence, then all the information is still there. It just gets embedded in the background, like how the energy of a sound becomes thermal vibrations. I don't think this the idea is true. You could have a non-MWI universe running on a computer which would not be energy-efficient even if the universe internally was perfectly reversible. Landauer's inequality is also not really a theorem (most, if not all derivations are flawed), although it looks like a real law of physics. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu May 23 19:41:50 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 15:41:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: <519D2E6D.6050907@aleph.se> References: <519D2E6D.6050907@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 4:45 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Scott Aaronson, the official chief D-Wave Skeptic and all-around smart > guy, has a nice post where he tears into the issue: (starts below the two > updates at the top) > http://www.scottaaronson.com/**blog/?p=1400 > > He thinks we are *finally* seeing evidence for quantum behaviour, but has > arguments why there was no real speed advantage over classical simulated > annealing It seems to me that one way or the other this matter will be settled soon. D-wave says the number of qbits in it's chips has been doubling every year, if that rate continues then by this time next year they should have a 1000 qbit chip, and if its really working by quantum annealing and not the classical sort then is should be able to solve QUBO type problems much much faster than the largest supercomputer running any known classical algorithm; and if it can't then D-wave could go the way of Bigfoot and cold fusion. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu May 23 19:48:28 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 15:48:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: References: <519D2E6D.6050907@aleph.se> <519DB496.2070807@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 3:19 AM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > Don't ask me about MWI. I think it's just a religion like Global Warming. > Not be cause it is too weird, > Smart move because of one thing you can be certain, whatever the correct interpretation of Quantum Mechanics turns out to be its going to be WEIRD. > be cause it is too ilogical. What law of logic does MWI violate? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 23 19:50:16 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 13:50:16 -0600 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: References: <519D2E6D.6050907@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 1:41 PM, John Clark wrote: > >> It seems to me that one way or the other this matter will be settled >> soon. D-wave says the number of qbits in it's chips has been doubling every >> year, if that rate continues then by this time next year they should have a >> 1000 qbit chip, and if its really working by quantum annealing and not the >> classical sort then is should be able to solve QUBO type problems much >> much faster than the largest supercomputer running any known classical >> algorithm; and if it can't then D-wave could go the way of Bigfoot and cold >> fusion. > > So the answer to my original question appears to be that you can use it for general purpose computing, but you probably shouldn't. Just like a Connection Machine, it is good for some things, and not so hot for word processing. Does that about sum it up? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu May 23 20:19:55 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 16:19:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: References: <519D2E6D.6050907@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 3:50 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > So the answer to my original question appears to be that you can use it > for general purpose computing, > In theory you could construct a general purpose quantum computer by having a bunch of entangled quantum logic gates, but that approach is very hard to do and so far it's only been done for a few qbits, and the biggest problem it has solved is finding out that the factors of 15 are 3 and 5. The D-wave computer is not a general purpose computer and D-wave never claimed it was, but if it can solve QUBO problems dramatically faster than conventional computers as they say then that will change the world because protein folding is a QUBO problem and solving that would not only revolutionize medicine but also be a huge stepping stone toward full scale Drexler style Nanotechnology. On the other hand D-wave could turn out to be another cold fusion type fiasco, we should know the truth in a year or less. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu May 23 20:35:41 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 16:35:41 -0400 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: References: <519D2E6D.6050907@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 3:50 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > So the answer to my original question appears to be that you can use it for > general purpose computing, but you probably shouldn't. Just like a > Connection Machine, it is good for some things, and not so hot for word > processing. Does that about sum it up? It'll be great for word processing - you just think about what you want to say and from the nearly infinite permutations of the ways in which you can say it, the ideal document will emerge. Actually, I think the thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters would probably be faster. From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 23 21:21:42 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 15:21:42 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: <519D5F56.8000708@canonizer.com> References: <519D5F56.8000708@canonizer.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 6:14 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: I think that the most intriguing thing about BitCoin is that it is independent of any and all governments, which makes it a hedge against central banks funny business. If you believe quantitative easing is a bad thing, then buy BitCoins. If I had two cents to rub together, I would. At the moment, I'm not sure how I'll pay rent at the end of the month... :-( As to mining Bitcoins, I think that the current situation is that if you mine them to sell immediately, you won't make much, if any, money. But if you mine them to hold, there could be a significant potential upside. What is the group consensus on the central banks issue? Will the central banks continue their bad habits of printing unprecedented amounts of money for the foreseeable future? >From Wikipedia... *Gresham's law* is an economic principle that states: "When a government overvalues one type of money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation." It is commonly stated as: "Bad money drives out good". If Bitcoin is "Good" or "better" than dollars, etc. then it will be hoarded, and only occasionally spent. However, the unique nature of Bitcoin and the things you can do with it that you can't easily do with other money forms (money laundering, a degree of anonymity, etc.) may help keep some Bitcoins circulating no matter how valuable it appears that they may become some day. There will always be some profit takers who think they see the top of a bubble. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu May 23 22:25:17 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 15:25:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] D-Wave's Quantum Computer In-Reply-To: References: <519D2E6D.6050907@aleph.se> Message-ID: On May 23, 2013 1:44 PM, "Mike Dougherty" wrote: > It'll be great for word processing - you just think about what you > want to say and from the nearly infinite permutations of the ways in > which you can say it, the ideal document will emerge. The challenge is to come up with fully automatic ways of detecting the ideal document, that does not rely on human input once begun. That may be a harder problem than writing it. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Thu May 23 23:17:33 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 16:17:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: <519D95FD.3060206@canonizer.com> References: <519D5F56.8000708@canonizer.com> <1369273299.95185.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <519D95FD.3060206@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <1369351053.38249.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: >>> It could become the Mother of all Ponzi schemes.? >>Ponzi schemes, normally understood, involve early investors being paid with the investments of late investors. That is not happening with bitcoin. >If you really think this, you should canonize it. ?I bet nobody would agree with you. ?But I could be very mistaken. ?You haven't convinced me with just this.? "Definition of 'Ponzi Scheme' A fraudulent investing scam promising high rates of return with little risk to investors. The Ponzi scheme generates returns for older investors by acquiring new investors. This scam actually yields the promised returns to earlier investors, as long as there are more new investors. These schemes usually collapse on themselves when the new investments stop." ?http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/ponzischeme.asp Bitcoin might turn out to be a boondoggle, but it is not a Ponzi scheme so defined.? Bernie Madoff ran a true Ponzi scheme. He paid his early investors with the money he received from his later investors. He was a fraud. This is why he is spending life in prison. If bitcoin collapses, who will go to prison, and why? The answer is that nobody will go to prison. Bitcoin is speculative, but not fraudulent. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 24 00:55:43 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 02:55:43 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: <519D95FD.3060206@canonizer.com> References: <519D5F56.8000708@canonizer.com> <1369273299.95185.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <519D95FD.3060206@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <519EBA8F.8040204@libero.it> Il 23/05/2013 06:07, Brent Allsop ha scritto: > Hi Gordon, >> > It could become the Mother of all Ponzi schemes. >> Ponzi schemes, normally understood, involve early investors being paid >> with the investments of late investors. That is not happening with >> bitcoin. > If you really think this, you should canonize it. I bet nobody would > agree with you. I agree with him. Ponzi Schemes or Pyramid Schemes are more like Social Security. > But I could be very mistaken. You haven't convinced me > with just this. Sure, talking short term, what you are saying may be > true. But long term, after Bitcoins have sucked every cent of capital > out of the stock market, all real estate, and everything of any value, > all of the people that had been living high on the hog for so long, off > of the profits of the last investors, and there is finally nothing of > value left in society to invest in Bitcoins, what happens then? Then, Bitcoin will be a global currency independent from government, not inflatable. It is designed to be used as a currency. Not consumed. Just used. I can transfer the ownership of my Bitcoins to everyone I choose, if I know his Bitcoin Address. And no one can take my Bitcoin, if he do not know the secret key(s) of my addresses. It will just suck out the value of fiat currencies. Not of stocks (maybe the stocks of Western Union, PayPal and so on will not fare well, but this is another problem, the "horse and buggy builder problem). > It's > obviosly not like any Ponzi scheme to date, but I believe your missing > the possible bigger picture. Again, canonizer.com can help filter > mistakes like this, if they are mistakes, from all of our thinking, > while the good ideas can rise above this kind of noise by building an > expert consensus. Austrian School people argued for maybe two-three years about Bitcoin and The Regression Theorem of Mises. Now, their consensus is Bitcoin satisfy Mises' Regression Theorem. We know when, for the first time, Bitcoin were used to buy something (pizza). The contention is if Bitcoin is money or just a mean of indirect exchange. But this is just a question of "who is the bigger" >> > If you project the current growth rates at all, it seems very likely that a single >> Bitcoin could be worth over >> a $ million within 5 years. And a good possibility that that will be >> just the start.< >> I hope you're right! > Again, short term, I, and I'm sure the entire herd is obviously very > tempted to think the same. But, are you being completely morally blind > to the long term fundamental possibilities? The last statement is like a divide by zero. I did an investment, I hope it is right and reap a lot of profit. And, by the way, the long term possibilities are better than the status quo. With Bitcoin there are no TBTF institutions. Good institutions live, bad institutions die and do not stick the bill to people. >> > I've canonized a first draft of my thoughts about Bitcoins, and their >> future in a "Currency Expert Survey Project" See: >> http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/155< >> >> Interesting project. I might contribute if I find the time. I just noted an error. Mt.Gox and CoinBase are not wallets. They are exchanges that allow to have accounts to send and receive BTC (and some other currencies) Blockchain.info have wallets, Multibit, BitcoinQT, Armory, are clients able to manage a wallet. But a wallet can just be a piece of paper with the address and the secret key to manage it. >> > How many of you own bitcoins? Anyone Mining bitcoins? and what do >> all of you think the value of a Bitcoin will be in one year?:< >> I followed Bitcoin casually from its inception, but (regrettably) did >> not take it seriously until only recently, when the total >> capitalization broke above 1 billion USD. I invested on three separate >> occasions after the market corrected. I'm happy with my average price, >> which is below the current market. Me too. > Again, to me, this is all short term meaningless tea leaves that have > nothing to do with any true long term mathematical fundamentals that > really matter. If you want mathematical fundamentals, I have just one. Bitcoin payments cost around 1% to common merchants, where PayPal/Visa/Debit card cost >3% to them. This is, at best, 2% difference for the merchant. Add the "no charge-back possible" difference. And $ in their accounts the day after. So it allow the people using bitcoin to have, at least, 2% saving compared to credit card users. This allow the economy using Bitcoin an internal growth around the same. Take away the repayment of investment and likes, this is around 1% for day in growth. I computed the mean growth rate of BTC price during the last 900 days (MTgox exchanges rates with US$). It is around 0.8% / day, compound. > You can't predict how fast the current holders of > Bitcoins are going to temporarily cash in, and even if you could, what > good is that compared to any long term mathematical fundamentals. As is > typical of the herd, so many pundits are focusing on this kind of short > term BS, and completely missing what is really important. BTC holders do not want "cash in", unless the "cash" is used immediately to buy something. They want hold and use their US$ or ? or whatever (get rid of bad money - reduce their balance at the bank - etc.), because the value of the US$ is falling but the value of BTC is increasing (short and long term). They will start using their BTC when the value of their US$ will become insignificant compared to the value of their BTC. > You're at least as good as an expert as I, and probably 90% of the > world's experts. Let's get a "Currency Expert" camp started for you. > As a peer, I'd surely rate you near the top of My list of experts. > There are quite a few experts out there I know I'd rank highly. Who do > you all think we would all rank as the worlds best currency expert? > http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/151. Would all of you trust the > consensus of such a list of peer ranked experts as much as I would or > should? > The question is, how much expert consensus is there about either of our > positions? That is what will surely be the "expert consensus", any such > expert consensus that arises will be way more intelligent than any of us > as blind and biased individuals could come up with. > What do you currently think the value of Bitcoins will be in one year? Between 200 and 1.000 US$, maybe more. > Is there any possibility it will be around 5 times it's value today, as > is being predicted by the "Law of Bitcoins" camp? Yes. It is entirely possible. I would not be surprised if, by this time, next year, it could be around 4.000. > http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/2 If so, it takes less than a minut > to join that camp. If not, it only takes a minute or two to start a new > camp providing any different POV - so we can see which way the emerging > expert consensus is leaning. Far less time than it took you to waste > your time replying to this post. Or do you just prefer lazy half baked, > possibly mostly mistaken thinking, and have no interest in finding out > if anyone agrees with you, or not, and why? > Here's another question for all you way better than me experts, > especially Giulio who I've CCed. Is there any way the Bitcoin network > could be altered to allow for more than currently allotted 21 million > Bitcoins? Even if 90% of the holders wanted to do this to try to stop a > terrible hyper deflation? It doesn't seem possible to me, since even if > 90% of the exchanges did agree to 'fork' the block chain, if 5% kept the > old only 21 million chain operating, everyone would quickly abandon the > 90% fork and switch over to purchase the still hyper deflating chain, > making the problem explosively worse. Am I just a clueless, mistaken, > Bitcoin non expert, or has anyone else wondered such things? If I'm > mistaken, what is the expert consensus, and what will make it pop, or > not - and when? When deflation is horrible? Just after the government inflated bubble pop. Deflation reward prudent people, savers, inflation reward imprudent and indebted people. > Gordon, another question for you. What do you think is the best wallet, > and which wallet are you using? Are you in the Coinbase camp, or is > there something better and safer? http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/127 . > And what do you think of any other currency, in comparison, like the > Ripple? http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/150/4 ? Are you investing in > any other currency? Which ones are you most focusing on? Do you have > any interest in how your current thinking may compare with other > experts? Anyone else? Same questions! Would you not value knowing > what the experts think is the current best and safest wallet to use? If > the one you are currently using, become risky, or inferior compared to > another, wouldn't you want to know, before everyone else? Ripple is very different from Bitcoin or other crypto. MIrco From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri May 24 01:19:50 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 18:19:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: <519D95FD.3060206@canonizer.com> References: <519D5F56.8000708@canonizer.com> <1369273299.95185.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <519D95FD.3060206@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <1369358390.40578.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: >Here's another question for all you way better than me experts, especially Giulio who I've CCed.? Is there any way the Bitcoin network could be altered to allow for more than currently allotted 21 million Bitcoins?< No. That is one of the beauties of Bitcoin. Scarcity is built into the system. Think of it as a precious metal in this respect. There is only so much gold in the world. In a similar way, will be only so much Bitcoin in the world. However, as I have mentioned here, I do have some concerns about the proliferation of alternative digital currencies. There is no limit to the number of such currencies. If they can all exist together, and if more can be created without limit, then there is no limit to the digital money supply. Digital currencies in that case become inflationary instead of deflationary.? But I've set those concerns aside for now. Bitcoin is the clear leader in digital currencies. I prefer to think that in the long run, most or all those alt currencies will fade away. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri May 24 01:19:50 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 18:19:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: <519D95FD.3060206@canonizer.com> References: <519D5F56.8000708@canonizer.com> <1369273299.95185.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <519D95FD.3060206@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <1369358390.40578.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: >Here's another question for all you way better than me experts, especially Giulio who I've CCed.? Is there any way the Bitcoin network could be altered to allow for more than currently allotted 21 million Bitcoins?< No. That is one of the beauties of Bitcoin. Scarcity is built into the system. Think of it as a precious metal in this respect. There is only so much gold in the world. In a similar way, will be only so much Bitcoin in the world. However, as I have mentioned here, I do have some concerns about the proliferation of alternative digital currencies. There is no limit to the number of such currencies. If they can all exist together, and if more can be created without limit, then there is no limit to the digital money supply. Digital currencies in that case become inflationary instead of deflationary.? But I've set those concerns aside for now. Bitcoin is the clear leader in digital currencies. I prefer to think that in the long run, most or all those alt currencies will fade away. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 24 02:03:52 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 19:03:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] tyranny by 16th amendment: was: RE: [mta] Re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? Message-ID: <012c01ce5822$f0f51910$d2df4b30$@rainier66.com> Brent Allsop wrote: >>. Is there any way the Bitcoin network could be altered to allow for more than currently allotted 21 million Bitcoins?< >.No. That is one of the beauties of Bitcoin. Scarcity is built into the system. Think of it as a precious metal in this respect. There is only so much gold in the world. In a similar way, will be only so much Bitcoin in the world.Gordon This is a post primarily for Americans, apologies Europeans. We still love you guys, but this one is our problem, and does involve bitcoins even if indirectly. Fellow Americans, if you are watching and listening at all, you know that we are seeing a rather terrifying development. The former director of the IRS has been caught targeting political enemies, and has been allowed to skate for two reasons: there are apparently no laws against using the threat of an IRS audit to target political enemies, and even if anyone objects, the director merely invokes her fifth amendment rights. So she can audit your brains out, she can essentially destroy you invoking the 16th amendment, all while invoking the fifth. If you get called in for an audit, you cannot invoke the fifth. If you will try, they will remind you that 16 is bigger than 5, and you are toast. So now we know how the hell they figured anyone would buy health insurance. ObamaCare requires that everyone must buy health insurance, or pay a penalty, which is about 10% the price of the insurance. Obviously the young-and-healthies will just pay the penalty, wait until they get sick to buy health insurance. The Supreme Court declared it not a penalty, but rather a tax. So, the enforcement quite logically goes to the IRS. So now you can buy insurance, or you can choose to pay the penalty *and get an IRS audit* your choice, do you feel lucky? We have an IRS which is completely protected in doing whatever the hell it wants, in forcing you to do whatever it wants, and oh by the way, you still have first and second amendment rights, in theory smirk. Of course if you actually USE either, you risk an IRS audit. So if I use bitcoins, am I not inviting an IRS audit? Since I mention first amendment rights, what about this news reporter who is being investigated by the Justice Department under the Espionage Act? Since this is wartime (Afghanistan) then anyone convicted under that act could theoretically face a firing squad. Anyone who is on the call list of that reporter is also at risk, as are his parents. Even if he doesn't end up facing a firing squad, it looks like he has an even greater risk of facing the IRS, and if so the firing squad would be a blessed relief from his problems. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri May 24 03:38:35 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 20:38:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] tyranny by 16th amendment: was: RE: [mta] Re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: <012c01ce5822$f0f51910$d2df4b30$@rainier66.com> References: <012c01ce5822$f0f51910$d2df4b30$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1369366715.99738.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> spike wrote: >So if I use bitcoins, am I not inviting an IRS audit? ? You posed this question once before, to which I replied that trading in bitcoins is about as untraceable as trading in baseball cards. Unlike stocks and bonds, for example, the IRS currently has no way to know that you bought or sold bitcoins. (With stocks and bonds, your broker must report your cost basis when you sell. Not so with bitcoins, currently. Bitcoin investors are on the honor system.) However, if by "if I use bitcoins" you mean that you are a business that accepts bitcoins in exchange for the goods or services you provide, and you advertise this fact, then yes I suppose that could invite an audit. But this is I think no different from any other sort of barter. If you're a barber who accepts pork-chops in exchange for haircuts, those transactions are also subject to tax at the fair market value of both. That is my understanding, anyway. Gordon? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 24 04:08:09 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 21:08:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] bexarotene is a bust Message-ID: <015701ce5834$4e626ce0$eb2746a0$@rainier66.com> The buzz on the internet AD community concluded this by about April of 2012. It gave us hope for a few weeks, some people tried it, some even reported positive results online, but in every positive case reported, I read carefully what they wrote and concluded it was either wishful thinking, sloppy thinking or inconclusive based on the observations they reported. I never did go as far as trying the stuff on my relative. Good thing we didn't: http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/23/18451554-alzheimers-drug-was-too- good-to-be-true-studies-find?lite It sounded too good to be true and unfortunately it was. Three research studies out Thursday severely diminish the hope that a cancer drug already on the market could be an Alzheimer's treatment. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri May 24 04:04:51 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 22:04:51 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Gold Message-ID: One of the things Brent's cannonizer position said was that if Nasa (or SpaceX?) found and brought back a large quantity of gold from outer space that it would devalue gold. While basic supply/demand clearly demands that the price of gold would go down, I personally don't think it would go down all that much because it is such a useful element on its own. I read an article in an old National Geographic where the author had a frying pan created out of solid gold, about 3 pounds worth. He said it made the best fried eggs he had ever experienced, and of course it was non-stick (probably before there was teflon, but I don't remember the date of the article) and easy to clean because gold doesn't react to anything. If gold came down in price, I think it would just get used for more things because of its unique properties... and that makes some kind of floor. It will always be relatively rare compared to the abundance of the other elements. So, I kind of disagree about large amounts of gold causing a severe devaluation... What do you all think? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 24 04:04:02 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 21:04:02 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] tyranny by 16th amendment In-Reply-To: <012c01ce5822$f0f51910$d2df4b30$@rainier66.com> References: <012c01ce5822$f0f51910$d2df4b30$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1369368242.24868.YahooMailNeo@web126205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Thursday, May 23, 2013 10:03 PM spike wrote: > Since I mention first amendment rights, what about this news > reporter who is being investigated by the Justice Department > under the Espionage Act? ?Since this is wartime (Afghanistan) > then anyone convicted under that act could theoretically face > a firing squad. ?Anyone who is on the call list of that reporter > is also at risk, as are his parents. ?Even if he doesn?t end up > facing a firing squad, it looks like he has an even greater risk > of facing the IRS, and if so the firing squad would be a blessed > relief from his problems. Kidding aside, I'm no fan of taxation or the IRS, but I reckon since almost all people choose the audit over going to jail or shooting it out with the feds, that almost all people tend to think an audit is better than facing a firing squad. Also, the US is not legally at war, is it? No war has been declared. In fact, the US has not declared a war, so not been legally at war, since the 1940s, no? I think Espionage Act could still face further court review. (Not that this matters to me. I'm not a constitutionalist and think those who worship the document are basically fooling themselves.) By the way, all the "terrifying developments" have happened before. There's a tradition of presidents using the IRS against adversaries. What's more amazing is that people see this as a new thing and almost never call for getting rid of either the IRS or the presidency and their powers. Instead, usually there's just a call for changing the personnel and not the powers. What I expect will happen here is a few changes of personnel -- with maybe an undeclared war against Syria to distract most people (and most people are not interested anyhow or not for very long) -- and then the scandal will die down. If we're really, really lucky, there might be some cosmetic rules changes -- maybe adding a little bureaucratic review here and there, but nothing that will remove any of the actual powers. 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 May 24 04:13:56 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 21:13:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] tyranny by 16th amendment In-Reply-To: <1369366715.99738.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <012c01ce5822$f0f51910$d2df4b30$@rainier66.com> <1369366715.99738.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1369368836.1985.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Thursday, May 23, 2013 11:38 PM Gordon wrote: >> So if I use bitcoins, am I not inviting an IRS audit? >? > You posed this question once before, to which I replied that > trading in bitcoins is about as untraceable as trading in > baseball cards. Unlike stocks and bonds, for example, the IRS > currently has no way to know that you bought or sold bitcoins. > (With stocks and bonds, your broker must report your cost basis > when you sell. Not so with bitcoins, currently. Bitcoin investors > are on the honor system.) My guess would be that they'd look at the dollar side of the transaction. The initial input of dollars (or other government currencies) would be traceable, no? Also, any withdrawals into government currencies would also be traceable, no? Or, on that side, they might simply audit you. Right now, I believe the US and many other nations, too, have laws and policies regarding tracing funds -- many stuff that was created to track drug and terrorist money, but, as expected, (by anyone who knows history) there's been "mission creep." I don't see why, if Bitcoin becomes a big deal with the feds or the IRS (or HMRC or whatever tax authorities exist), governments wouldn't simply apply these to tax Bitcoin users. And governments could simply pass more laws or put into effect policies that cover Bitcoin -- maybe calling for records to be kept lest stiff fines be levied and jail sentences imposed. I'm very enthusiastic about Bitcoin, but recall the failure of the Liberty Dollar. I think too many people have a very benign view of government or an overly romantic view of what their alternatives might do. (I think there's often a one-step approach in considering these things: people just consider the first step and not how others, including the authorities, might react. It's kind of like playing chess just thinking of your master plan to get to checkmate without consider your opponents varying reactions.) 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 kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri May 24 04:12:07 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 22:12:07 -0600 Subject: [ExI] tyranny by 16th amendment: was: RE: [mta] Re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: <012c01ce5822$f0f51910$d2df4b30$@rainier66.com> References: <012c01ce5822$f0f51910$d2df4b30$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Spike, One advantage of mining Bitcoins, as opposed to buying them on an exchange, is that the government never has to know you have them (under the current rules). So the IRS has no interest in them until converted to dollars or another currency. As to the rest of your rant, I could not agree more. However, I would have to add that the other "secret" court system, the Juvenile Court system that deals with DCFS, Foster Care and non-criminal child abuse and neglect is just as corrupt if not more than the IRS, as frightening as that is. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri May 24 04:28:34 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 21:28:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1369369714.84508.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Kelly Anderson wrote: >One of the things Brent's cannonizer position said was that if Nasa (or SpaceX?) found and brought back a large quantity of gold from outer space that it would devalue gold. While basic supply/demand clearly demands that the price of gold would go down, I personally don't think it would go down all that much because it is such a useful element on its own.< Roughly 75-80% of the global demand for gold has nothing to do with its uses in industry or jewelry. Most of the gold in the world is sitting in safes, doing nothing useful aside from acting as a store of value. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 24 04:30:40 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 21:30:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1369369840.88288.YahooMailNeo@web126203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> You're right to point to supply and demand factoring in the price of gold. To keep a severe price drop from happening, though, would require that the demand increase to meet the new supply. (By the way, not to diss you or anyone else, but I made a similar argument in the last decade regarding platinum from asteroids. I mean the price will likely drop, but who knows where demand will be? In other words, one can't simply predict: more supply, lower price -- unless one knows that demand will either remain the same or drop.) While gold is useful for a variety of things, I do believe the price will drop and drop a lot. I don't have a clue how low it will go. (And, of course, expectations will play a big role here. If investors in gold expect the price to drop, they might start to change their investments factoring that in. They do not, of course, individually and collectively, have perfect foresight (no one does, so attempts to out-predict are likely to fail too), so they might overshoot or undershoot.) I don't see this happening right away though. Think of nanotech. I first read about it in the 1990s. By now, I thought we'd have already had either a nanotech singularity or at least nanotech in many everyday items. I'm sure it's going to take off, but when? It might be more like a logistics curve here too and where still in the flat portion, trying to figure out when it's going to ramp up (and then when the ramping up is going to flatten out again). ? 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 May 24 04:39:05 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 21:39:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] tyranny by 16th amendment: was: RE: [mta] Re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: <1369366715.99738.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <012c01ce5822$f0f51910$d2df4b30$@rainier66.com> <1369366715.99738.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <017701ce5838$a0fe3430$e2fa9c90$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Gordon Subject: Re: [ExI] tyranny by 16th amendment: was: RE: [mta] Re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? spike wrote: >>.So if I use bitcoins, am I not inviting an IRS audit? >.You posed this question once before, to which I replied that trading in bitcoins is about as untraceable as trading in baseball cards. .Gordon Ja, thanks Gordon. I and perhaps plenty of other Americans are looking at these kinds of questions in a different light with the revelations by the top IRS officials this week. Is it not extraordinary that the former director of the IRS, under whose leadership the agency targeted the Tea Party and conservative groups, testified that she had done nothing wrong, nothing illegal, then invoked the fifth amendment. Is not that self-contradictory? If so, can we not assume the IRS, which has arbitrary and unchecked powers under the 16th amendment, is itself simultaneously criminal and is declaring itself above the law? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 24 05:32:46 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 22:32:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] tyranny by 16th amendment In-Reply-To: <017701ce5838$a0fe3430$e2fa9c90$@rainier66.com> References: <012c01ce5822$f0f51910$d2df4b30$@rainier66.com> <1369366715.99738.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <017701ce5838$a0fe3430$e2fa9c90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1369373566.21452.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Friday, May 24, 2013 12:39 AM spike wrote: > Ja, thanks Gordon. ?I and perhaps plenty of other Americans are I would think this applies outside of US-Americans. > looking at these kinds of questions in a different light with the > revelations by the top IRS officials this week. As I've pointed out in another post, all of this has happened before: the IRS targetting groups for seemingly political reasons. That said, it's good that some people are waking up to this. It's a sad thing, though, that many of these are partisans who merely see this as reflecting the current ruler and not any of his predecessors. Nor that do many of them -- probably most of them -- see a problem with the overall system, but just merely who's filling the seats of power. In other words, they have little problem with there being such power in the first place... > Is it not extraordinary that the former director of the IRS, under > whose leadership the agency targeted the Tea Party and conservative > groups, testified that she had done nothing wrong, nothing illegal, > then invoked the fifth amendment. No, it's not. Government bureaucrats, both in the IRS and in general (and around the world and throughout history), see themselves as basically good people doing their jobs and they rarely are given to admitting an abuse of power is just that. Why is this extraordinary? This should come as no surprise. The shocking thing is when someone actually owns up to wrongdoing. (And when that happens I bet it's often more just trying to avoid worse consequences rather than from any true remorse.*) > Is not that self-contradictory? ?If so, can we not assume the IRS, > which has arbitrary and unchecked powers under the 16th amendment, > is itself simultaneously criminal and is declaring itself above the law? The IRS, like most tax bureaucracies (in the US and the rest of the world) has extensive powers that shield it from oversight and limits. (You generally get tried, too, in IRS courts! So much for separation of powers!) This is nothing new. The strange thing to me is that when people see this that they believe so radical change has happened -- that a few years ago the whole setup was different and we lived in Camelot or some strange utopia where government bureaucrats had haloes over their head and never ever did anything wrong. It's a mythical view too many people have, IMO. This is like how many schoolmates of mine were taught that the lawmakers debate like they were in Plato's Academy, aiming at the Good and nothing but that. It's a happy fantasy, along with that of Santa Claus. :) The truth is government is and always has been a stationary bandit. Yeah, there are rules it draws up and it doesn't go too far in abuse. After all, a stationary bandit has to sheer not skin the sheep -- it operates by having them there for another day. But all of this is based on abuse, on criminality, on being a bandit. The pretense is that a piece of paper and some rules matter. If you want a good metaphor for it, think of the Mafia. Yeah, they have rules, but who enforces and interprets those rules? The mafia itself -- not the people it extorts or does business with. Governments everywhere are like that. (That doesn't mean there's no variation. I'd prefer a modern Western liberal democracy over the governments of Saudi Arabia or North Korea. But this is like arguing that you'd rather be savagely beaten rather than killed.) ? 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 * George H. Smith related the following anecdote, which is merely an example of bureaucratic stupidity: "By all accounts H.T. Buckle was an entertaining conversationalist. One of his favorite stories was about a trip to Italy that involved passing through Austria. At the Austrian border Buckle?s baggage was searched by a customs officer. A fanatical bibliophile who eventually amassed 20,000 volumes in his personal library, Buckle always carried books on his many travels, and in this instance he had a copy of the seminal work by Copernicus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. After the customs officer said that he was under orders to confiscate any book with revolutionary tendencies, Buckle explained that this book was about the revolutions of planets. The customs officer replied that it didn?t matter where the revolutions took place; all revolutionary books were banned in Austria. Thus did Buckle forfeit his copy of Copernicus to bureaucratic stupidity." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 24 05:42:35 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 22:42:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] tyranny by 16th amendmen In-Reply-To: References: <012c01ce5822$f0f51910$d2df4b30$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1369374155.17602.YahooMailNeo@web126205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Friday, May 24, 2013 12:12 AM Kelly Anderson wrote: > One advantage of mining Bitcoins, as opposed to buying them on an > exchange, is that the government never has to know you have them > (under the current rules). So the IRS has no interest in them until > converted to dollars or another currency.? That's true, but your parenthetic comment is very important here. (And the rules will differ in other countries. Let's not just think about the US. Bitcoin is, after all, not confined to the US.) Changing the rules here would be relatively easy and I can imagine the IRS simply seeing this as applying their mandate here -- unless and until there's a legal challenge to that, in which case, then the Congress will just pass legislation allowing this to be taxed is my guess. (Under what auspices? Well, that criminals -- including tax evaders -- might use Bitcoin.) Also, mining them would almost certainly eventually end in trading them for something else. At that point, the transaction would likely fall under current rules. > As to the rest of your rant, I could not agree more. However, I would > have to add that the other "secret" court system, the Juvenile Court > system that deals with DCFS, Foster Care and non-criminal child > abuse and neglect is just as corrupt if not more than the IRS, as > frightening as that is. Governments are frightening in general. The sad commentary here is that it takes a ridiculous scandal like this to make people aware that something might be wrong -- and even then almost all misdiagnose it as something new and extraordinary instead of something old, routine, and in the nature of the beast -- as something one should expect. (Again, give people power, and expect them to use and abuse it. I would say the surprising thing is the power isn't more abused, but then I that's more because I'm just not aware of all the abuse.) 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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 24 09:04:53 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 11:04:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] tyranny by 16th amendment: was: RE: [mta] Re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: References: <012c01ce5822$f0f51910$d2df4b30$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130524090453.GJ2380@leitl.org> On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 10:12:07PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > One advantage of mining Bitcoins, as opposed to buying them on an exchange, The disadvantage of mining Bitcoins is that you don't buy an airliner if you want to take a vacation. > is that the government never has to know you have them (under the current > rules). So the IRS has no interest in them until converted to dollars or > another currency. > > As to the rest of your rant, I could not agree more. However, I would have > to add that the other "secret" court system, the Juvenile Court system that > deals with DCFS, Foster Care and non-criminal child abuse and neglect is > just as corrupt if not more than the IRS, as frightening as that is. From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 24 09:18:26 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 11:18:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 10:04:51PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > One of the things Brent's cannonizer position said was that if Nasa (or > SpaceX?) found and brought back a large quantity of gold from outer space Space is expensive. Space is really, really expensive. It costs about 0.4 MUSD/kg of payload to Moon and back, 0.5 MUSD/kg for Mars. If you can mine resources in space, they will be used in situ. Earth would be a backwater, a nature park. High to middle Earth orbit is an excellent place for energy production, communication, computation, and storage. Photons travel very lightly, and information can be very valuable (since it can encode persons). > that it would devalue gold. While basic supply/demand clearly demands that > the price of gold would go down, I personally don't think it would go down > all that much because it is such a useful element on its own. > > I read an article in an old National Geographic where the author had a > frying pan created out of solid gold, about 3 pounds worth. He said it made > the best fried eggs he had ever experienced, and of course it was non-stick > (probably before there was teflon, but I don't remember the date of the > article) and easy to clean because gold doesn't react to anything. > > If gold came down in price, I think it would just get used for more things > because of its unique properties... and that makes some kind of floor. It > will always be relatively rare compared to the abundance of the other > elements. > > So, I kind of disagree about large amounts of gold causing a severe > devaluation... What do you all think? I think there will be never large amounts of anything travelling in the local system. It's stupid. It makes no sense. From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 24 16:21:40 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 18:21:40 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: <1369358390.40578.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <519D5F56.8000708@canonizer.com> <1369273299.95185.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <519D95FD.3060206@canonizer.com> <1369358390.40578.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <519F9394.3020100@libero.it> Il 24/05/2013 03:19, Gordon ha scritto: > Brent Allsop wrote: > >>Here's another question for all you way better than me experts, especially Giulio who I've CCed. Is there any way the Bitcoin network > could be altered to allow for more than currently allotted 21 million > Bitcoins?< > > No. That is one of the beauties of Bitcoin. Scarcity is built into the > system. Think of it as a precious metal in this respect. There is only > so much gold in the world. In a similar way, will be only so much > Bitcoin in the world. > > However, as I have mentioned here, I do have some concerns about the > proliferation of alternative digital currencies. There is no limit to > the number of such currencies. If they can all exist together, and if > more can be created without limit, then there is no limit to the digital > money supply. Digital currencies in that case become inflationary > instead of deflationary. > > But I've set those concerns aside for now. Bitcoin is the clear leader > in digital currencies. I prefer to think that in the long run, most or > all those alt currencies will fade away. A lot of these cryptocurrencies are there just for the sake of wild speculation on the wave of the success of Bitcoin. They do not solve any problem it was not solved already by Bitcoin, for users, there is no reason to prefer them to BTC. Usually miners just mine them and dump them for Bitcoin. If and when a new cryptocurrency will be designed to solve some problem not solved by Bitcoin, then it could gain some market share. For example, a cryptocurrency designed solely to solve the problem of ownership of shares of companies, contracts, etc. could be useful (instead of using "colored coins" over Bitcoin). Mirco From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Fri May 24 17:10:50 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 11:10:50 -0600 Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: <519F9394.3020100@libero.it> References: <519D5F56.8000708@canonizer.com> <1369273299.95185.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <519D95FD.3060206@canonizer.com> <1369358390.40578.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <519F9394.3020100@libero.it> Message-ID: All virtual currencies will always be abandoned and sold for the one that is deflating the most rapidly. The fact that Bitcoin is so restricted is it's biggest (and only?) problem, and what will make it impossible for a 'better' one to replace it. Brent Allsop On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 10:21 AM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 24/05/2013 03:19, Gordon ha scritto: > > Brent Allsop wrote: > > > >>Here's another question for all you way better than me experts, > especially Giulio who I've CCed. Is there any way the Bitcoin network > > could be altered to allow for more than currently allotted 21 million > > Bitcoins?< > > > > No. That is one of the beauties of Bitcoin. Scarcity is built into the > > system. Think of it as a precious metal in this respect. There is only > > so much gold in the world. In a similar way, will be only so much > > Bitcoin in the world. > > > > However, as I have mentioned here, I do have some concerns about the > > proliferation of alternative digital currencies. There is no limit to > > the number of such currencies. If they can all exist together, and if > > more can be created without limit, then there is no limit to the digital > > money supply. Digital currencies in that case become inflationary > > instead of deflationary. > > > > But I've set those concerns aside for now. Bitcoin is the clear leader > > in digital currencies. I prefer to think that in the long run, most or > > all those alt currencies will fade away. > > A lot of these cryptocurrencies are there just for the sake of wild > speculation on the wave of the success of Bitcoin. > > They do not solve any problem it was not solved already by Bitcoin, for > users, there is no reason to prefer them to BTC. Usually miners just > mine them and dump them for Bitcoin. > > If and when a new cryptocurrency will be designed to solve some problem > not solved by Bitcoin, then it could gain some market share. > > For example, a cryptocurrency designed solely to solve the problem of > ownership of shares of companies, contracts, etc. could be useful > (instead of using "colored coins" over Bitcoin). > > Mirco > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Fri May 24 17:12:14 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 10:12:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: <519F9394.3020100@libero.it> References: <519D5F56.8000708@canonizer.com> <1369273299.95185.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <519D95FD.3060206@canonizer.com> <1369358390.40578.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <519F9394.3020100@libero.it> Message-ID: <1369415534.57703.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Mirco Romanato wrote: >For example, a cryptocurrency designed solely to solve the problem of >ownership of shares of companies, contracts, etc. could be useful >(instead of using "colored coins" over Bitcoin). Good point.? However, I've seen bitcoin compared to TCP/IP, as the underlying protocol of all potential uses of cryptocurrencies. I suppose this is what you mean by colored coins. I like the TCP/IP analogy. I'd rather see everything built over bitcoin. As I type this, BTC is rallying up to and above $130 on decent volume. BTC was in a "pennant" consolidation pattern, but it looks now to be breaking out to the upside. I'm liking it. As I wrote in a previous post, if the price holds in this range on strong volume then I think it will bode well for the next 6-12 months. This is just my general sense of the price chart, looking at it from the point of view of a technical analyst.? Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri May 24 17:29:10 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 13:29:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, May 24, 2013 Kelly Anderson wrote: > One of the things Brent's cannonizer position said was that if Nasa (or > SpaceX?) found and brought back a large quantity of gold from outer space > that it would devalue gold. While basic supply/demand clearly demands that > the price of gold would go down, I personally don't think it would go down > all that much because it is such a useful element on its own. I read an > article in an old National Geographic where the author had a frying pan > created out of solid gold, about 3 pounds worth. He said it made the best > fried eggs he had ever experienced, > Gold is about 60% denser than lead and a gold frying pan would weigh about 5 times as much as a aluminum one and would be so soft you could bend the pan with your hands, so I don't think it would be a big market even if the metal was cheap. I can only think of a few properties of gold that make it interesting technologically, it's the most non corrosive metal after iridium, you can hammer it into thinner sheets than any other metal, it makes good connecters because it is the third best electrical conductor after silver and copper and it doesn't form a thin oxidized layer on its surface which can interfere with electrical current at the low voltages used modern electronics, and it's the best reflector of infrared light so it is used in IR reflecting telescopes instead of aluminum or silver which reflects visible light best. I don't think any of these uses will ever develop into huge markets and if gold was cheap people would stop using it in jewelry. I've heard it said that a martian would think it odd that with great effort humans extract gold from the ground but most of it they put it right back into the ground in deep bank vaults and do nothing else with it. John K Clark > and of course it was non-stick (probably before there was teflon, but I > don't remember the date of the article) and easy to clean because gold > doesn't react to anything. > > If gold came down in price, I think it would just get used for more things > because of its unique properties... and that makes some kind of floor. It > will always be relatively rare compared to the abundance of the other > elements. > > So, I kind of disagree about large amounts of gold causing a severe > devaluation... What do you all think? > > -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 msd001 at gmail.com Fri May 24 18:00:06 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 14:00:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: <1369415534.57703.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <519D5F56.8000708@canonizer.com> <1369273299.95185.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <519D95FD.3060206@canonizer.com> <1369358390.40578.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <519F9394.3020100@libero.it> <1369415534.57703.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 1:12 PM, Gordon wrote: > Mirco Romanato wrote: > >>For example, a cryptocurrency designed solely to solve the problem of >>ownership of shares of companies, contracts, etc. could be useful >>(instead of using "colored coins" over Bitcoin). > > Good point. > > However, I've seen bitcoin compared to TCP/IP, as the underlying protocol of > all potential uses of cryptocurrencies. I suppose this is what you mean by > colored coins. I like the TCP/IP analogy. I'd rather see everything built > over bitcoin. colored coin =?= gold, silver, copper, etc. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 24 19:00:45 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 12:00:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Friday, May 24, 2013 5:18 AM Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 10:04:51PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> One of the things Brent's cannonizer position said was that >> if Nasa (or SpaceX?) found and brought back a large quantity >> of gold from outer space > > Space is expensive. Space is really, really expensive. > It costs about 0.4 MUSD/kg of payload to Moon and? > back, 0.5 MUSD/kg for Mars. That's for now. With the SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, etc. entering the launch market -- actually, with trimming back space agency involvement -- that might change. There's nothing inherent in space transport that means it must forever be high-priced or a boutique industry. (One might think that someone in the 1950s might have talked about computing power the same way -- or a better analogy, airline travel, since the rates were set by the government and it was only when deregulation took hold that the affordable air travel regime we have today came into play.) > If you can mine resources in space, they will be used in > situ. Earth would be a backwater, a nature park. That's probably true, though what gets sent back to Earth might also be determined by what prices it will fetch on the "backwater." :) It's also true that the prices of commodities on Earth will likely be impacted by being able to economically extract them in space -- even if none actually are sent to Earth. This is simply because the potential is always there and, eventually, if the terrestrial economy simply becomes part of larger solar system economy, local prices will be affected by system-wide prices -- in the same way that the price of gold in Morisville, Vermont is not wildly different than the London spot price even though I've never heard of anyone lugging around huge quantities of gold through Morisville. (At least, not while I lived there.:) > I think there will be never large amounts of anything > travelling in the local system. It's stupid. It makes > no sense. Maybe so, but maybe not. And it need not be huge quantities to have a huge impact. The expectations alone of even small quantities can change things a lot, altering prices in a big way. If anything, the availability of gold, platinum, oxygen, water, etc. on orbit or wherever will likely mean that space enterprises and space settlers won't be bidding up the prices of these from Earth, which does impact the Earth price, all else being equal. 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 May 24 19:16:30 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 12:16:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1369422990.89063.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Friday, May 24, 2013 1:29 PM John Clark wrote: > On Fri, May 24, 2013 ?Kelly Anderson wrote: >> One of the things Brent's cannonizer position said was that if Nasa >> (or SpaceX?) found and brought back a large quantity of gold from >> outer space that it would devalue gold. While basic supply/demand >> clearly demands that the price of gold would go down, I personally >> don't think it would go down all that much because it is such a useful >> element on its own. I read an article in an old National Geographic >> where the author had a frying pan created out of solid gold, about >> 3 pounds worth. He said it made the best fried eggs he had ever experienced, > > Gold is about 60% denser than lead and a gold frying pan would weigh > about 5 times as much as a aluminum one I don't think the weight concern would matter all that much here, especially if this were being used in restaurants. People already use cast iron and ceramic pans that are quite heavy. Yeah, not everyone does, but if those eggs taste really good and the price is not all that great, one can easily imagine the gold frying pan becoming something many people have, but they only lug it out when they want to make a special meal as is done now with special cookware. > and would be so soft you could bend the pan with your hands, so I > don't think it would be a big market even if the metal was cheap. Well, gold can be alloy with other metals to make it less pliable. Also, I don't know about the heating properties of the frying pan Kelly mentioned, but might it not need a solid gold pan, but just a partly gold one? If so, then one might make a lighter pan overall that just has gold where it needs to be. > I can only think of a few properties of gold that make it interesting > technologically, it's the most non corrosive metal after iridium, you > can hammer it into thinner sheets than any other metal, it makes good > connecters because it is the third best electrical conductor after > silver and copper and it doesn't form a thin oxidized layer on its > surface which can interfere with electrical current at the low voltages > used modern electronics, and it's the best reflector of infrared light > so it is used in IR reflecting telescopes instead of aluminum or silver > which reflects visible light best. You just named a few properties that make it very useful and might make it more widely used! Imagine if silicon were now the price of gold... > I don't think any of these uses will ever develop into huge markets > and if gold was cheap people would stop using it in jewelry. They might, and I do think the price of gold will drop if people even expect some to come back from space (or if Earth's commodities markets become integrated into wider solar system commodities markets). But it might also lead to people just using gold instead of costume jewelry. Hard to predict fashion here. I do think you're right in respect to it being a prestige item, but it might still have some demand. The shift, though, might be from something being made of high quality gold to specific designs. (In a way, this might mirror how coin collectors are interested in more than metal content.) > I've heard it said that a martian would think it odd that with great > effort humans extract gold from the ground ?but most of it they put > it right back into the ground in deep bank vaults and do nothing else > with it. The people who made that argument on Earth favored fiat currency. I'd rather we'd have stayed with the old folly than embraced the "new" one. (Actually, paper currencies weren't new. Think of the phrase "not worth a Continental." That arose because of American Revolutionary paper money that quickly inflated. And other methods of fiddling with money were around long before paper currency, such as coin clipping, sweating, and plain old devaluation.) ? 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 May 24 20:14:29 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 13:14:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <1369422990.89063.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1369422990.89063.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <001f01ce58bb$4cf64660$e6e2d320$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dan . >>.I don't think the weight concern would matter all that much here, especially if this were being used in restaurants. People already use cast iron and ceramic pans that are quite heavy. Yeah, not everyone does, but if those eggs taste really good and the price is not all that great, one can easily imagine the gold frying pan becoming something many people have, but they only lug it out when they want to make a special meal as is done now with special cookware. >. and would be so soft you could bend the pan with your hands, so I don't think it would be a big market even if the metal was cheap. . If you wanted to make a pan, you would use copper, with a flash coating of nickel to the copper, nickel-chromium to the nickel, gold flashed to the nichrome. The total amount of gold isn't all that much, and copper is a great heat conductor, so you would get the advantages of even heating and material strength of copper, and low stick surface of the gold. I haven't ever seen anything like that on the market, so perhaps that stack I suggested would fail under heat cycling. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 24 20:24:17 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 13:24:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <001f01ce58bb$4cf64660$e6e2d320$@rainier66.com> References: <1369422990.89063.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <001f01ce58bb$4cf64660$e6e2d320$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1369427057.5617.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Spike, please note that I didn't make the statement below. John Clark did. In fact, I responded to him with: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2013-May/077523.html If gold became cheap enough, I could see it being used in cookware and other places where it would normally be considered extravagant. ? 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 ________________________________ From: spike To: 'Dan' ; 'ExI chat list' Sent: Friday, May 24, 2013 4:14 PM Subject: RE: [ExI] Gold ? From:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dan ? ? >>?I don't think the weight concern would matter all that much here, especially if this were being used in restaurants. People already use cast iron and ceramic pans that are quite heavy. Yeah, not everyone does, but if those eggs taste really good and the price is not all that great, one can easily imagine the gold frying pan becoming something many people have, but they only lug it out when they want to make a special meal as is done now with special cookware. ? >?and would be so soft you could bend the pan with your hands, so I don't think it would be a big market even if the metal was cheap. ? ? ? If you wanted to make a pan, you would use copper, with a flash coating of nickel to the copper, nickel-chromium to the nickel, gold flashed to the nichrome.? The total amount of gold isn?t all that much, and copper is a great heat conductor, so you would get the advantages of even heating and material strength of copper, and low stick surface of the gold.? I haven?t ever seen anything like that on the market, so perhaps that stack I suggested would fail under heat cycling. ? spike? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 24 20:30:30 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 13:30:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <1369427057.5617.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1369422990.89063.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <001f01ce58bb$4cf64660$e6e2d320$@rainier66.com> <1369427057.5617.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <002a01ce58bd$89b2e930$9d18bb90$@rainier66.com> Spike, please note that I didn't make the statement below. John Clark did. In fact, I responded to him with? Ooops sorry Dan. Good thing the misattribution was over the material used in cookware, a topic normally about which people would not be too spun upwardly. {8-] {8^D I would think gold would be great for cookware, if we could get it to stick to something a little more sturdy and lot expensive. spike From: Dan [mailto:dan_ust at yahoo.com] Sent: Friday, May 24, 2013 1:24 PM To: spike; 'ExI chat list' Subject: Re: [ExI] Gold Spike, please note that I didn't make the statement below. John Clark did. In fact, I responded to him with: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2013-May/077523.html If gold became cheap enough, I could see it being used in cookware and other places where it would normally be considered extravagant. 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 _____ From: spike To: 'Dan' ; 'ExI chat list' Sent: Friday, May 24, 2013 4:14 PM Subject: RE: [ExI] Gold From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dan ? >>?I don't think the weight concern would matter all that much here, especially if this were being used in restaurants. People already use cast iron and ceramic pans that are quite heavy. Yeah, not everyone does, but if those eggs taste really good and the price is not all that great, one can easily imagine the gold frying pan becoming something many people have, but they only lug it out when they want to make a special meal as is done now with special cookware. >? and would be so soft you could bend the pan with your hands, so I don't think it would be a big market even if the metal was cheap. ? If you wanted to make a pan, you would use copper, with a flash coating of nickel to the copper, nickel-chromium to the nickel, gold flashed to the nichrome. The total amount of gold isn?t all that much, and copper is a great heat conductor, so you would get the advantages of even heating and material strength of copper, and low stick surface of the gold. I haven?t ever seen anything like that on the market, so perhaps that stack I suggested would fail under heat cycling. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Fri May 24 22:06:01 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 16:06:01 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi Kelly, OK, then replace that asteroid example with one of an infinite number of other possibilities, such as discovering some fairly easy way to synthesize gold or convert lead into gold, or discovering very rich deposits of Gold say 1000 feet underground, or whatever. To say nothing of the fact that we will soon have robots mining gold for us, for near free, or as much of it as we want, to continue the exponential production of Gold that has existed for all history. And others have expressed the insane desire of using gold, rather than "paper" or fiat currency. All economies grow at an exponential rate. So the only good currency is one capable of being fairly close to that growth rate. Another critical component, is being flexible. In other words, when bubbles pop, and we head into a recession, we need the money supply to grow to help offset this contraction, and the reverse when bubble start forming. Using anything completely arbitrary like gold, usually will work in exactly the opposite, making depressions dramatically worse, than if you had some flexibility. And the most important part of all this, if you have a currency that can't grow at all, like Bitcoins, it would be catastrophic, since it would soon start to even suck money away form the stock market. You wouldn't get anyone willing to invest in any start up anywhere. Why do that, or why invest in any other currency, when you have a guaranteed 10 times in 2 year return, with Bitcoins, as the history is now showing and the current consensus "Law of Bitcoins" camp is predicting (see: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/2 ) will continue. Brent Allsop On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 10:04 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > One of the things Brent's cannonizer position said was that if Nasa (or > SpaceX?) found and brought back a large quantity of gold from outer space > that it would devalue gold. While basic supply/demand clearly demands that > the price of gold would go down, I personally don't think it would go down > all that much because it is such a useful element on its own. > > I read an article in an old National Geographic where the author had a > frying pan created out of solid gold, about 3 pounds worth. He said it made > the best fried eggs he had ever experienced, and of course it was non-stick > (probably before there was teflon, but I don't remember the date of the > article) and easy to clean because gold doesn't react to anything. > > If gold came down in price, I think it would just get used for more things > because of its unique properties... and that makes some kind of floor. It > will always be relatively rare compared to the abundance of the other > elements. > > So, I kind of disagree about large amounts of gold causing a severe > devaluation... What do you all think? > > -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 gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sat May 25 00:29:11 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 17:29:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1369441751.84609.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: >?And the most important part of all this, if you have a currency that can't grow at all, like Bitcoins, it would be catastrophic,?since it would soon start to even suck ?money away form the stock market. ? Perhaps I'm missing something, Brent, but your Armageddon scenario makes no sense to me. One could buy stocks with bitcoins. And people who made millions in bitcoins could buy even more stock. Bitcoin is just another commodity, similar in many ways to gold or silver or oil or even dollars (yes, all currencies are commodities). This commodity is currency-like in that it lends itself to commercial transactions. It is gold-like in that it is intrinsically scarce. > You wouldn't get anyone willing to invest in any start up anywhere.?? > Why do that, or why invest in any other currency, when you have a guaranteed 10 times in ?2 year return, with Bitcoins,? Show me how anyone is guaranteed to make anything in bitcoins. Who/what stands behind that guarantee? The so-called Law of Bitcoins (or whatever you call it) is merely a theory. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 25 01:08:58 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 03:08:58 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: Long Term Bitcoin Catastrophe? In-Reply-To: References: <519D5F56.8000708@canonizer.com> <1369273299.95185.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <519D95FD.3060206@canonizer.com> <1369358390.40578.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <519F9394.3020100@libero.it> Message-ID: <51A00F2A.1050004@libero.it> Il 24/05/2013 19:10, Brent Allsop ha scritto: > All virtual currencies will always be abandoned and sold for the one > that is deflating the most rapidly. The fact that Bitcoin is so > restricted is it's biggest (and only?) problem, and what will make it > impossible for a 'better' one to replace it. Wrong. Bitcoin is not deflating. Bitcoin is inflating around 12% yearly (now). The inflation will just slow down with the time until it will reach zero. The point is the inflation is known and unchangeable and slowly decreasing. How could be desirable a currency with a deflation coded in? You have some money and the system reduce the quantity of money you have of a fixed % every year? The same % for everyone? No one want the quantity of HIS money reduced. The only deflation possible in Bitcoin is when coins are lost because they are sent to wrong addresses without an owner or the owner lose the passwords to access his coins. If I lose my paper euro (because they burn) the loss is only mine. Others just gain from the reduction of the money supply. My loss is their gain. I do not understand the "better". Better for who? Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 25 01:27:18 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 03:27:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> Il 23/05/2013 11:14, Eugen Leitl ha scritto: > On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 11:26:57PM -0400, Dan Ust wrote: >> See http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1305/1305.3913.pdf >> >> Comments? > > Not merely bad science, fraud. http://ecatnews.com/?p=2510 Well, Rossi must be the God of Scam if it is able to scam, after so much time, the representatives of Elforsk (that financed the test). http://www.elforsk.se/Aktuellt/Svenska-forskare-har-testat-Rossis-energikatalysator--E-cat/ Eugen, you probably didn't read the paper. Just jumped directly on the "SCAM!!!!" without thinking. For me the best part of the paper is at the start, when they write the first trial was a failure because the reactor went out of control and just melted the steel tube container. I would say a very interesting failure. And another interesting part is when they write they will do another test this summer, long around 100 days. I just think some one is too much invested in PV panels to conceive the idea that, just maybe, there could be something true and maybe someone could have discovered something new (not very new - just very overlooked). Mirco From spike at rainier66.com Sat May 25 02:08:47 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 19:08:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> Message-ID: <00c901ce58ec$cba9ebc0$62fdc340$@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 ... >...For me the best part of the paper is at the start, when they write the first trial was a failure because the reactor went out of control and just melted the steel tube container... That result in itself points to fraud actually. They went on about how the temperature kept mysteriously fluctuating. So if it is so mysterious, how is it they are controlling it? Why are the details on the controls so sketchy? Why did it go so high as to melt the steel tube? That sounds reeeeaaally far fetched to me. >...And another interesting part is when they write they will do another test this summer, long around 100 days... Again suspicious. If any of us had observed anything like this, we would be dropping eeeeverything else in our lives and laboring over this 24/7 to the limits of our physical endurance. The next test would be not this summer, not next week, we would be racing for the next test NOW dammit NOW get going, recruit your friends and colleagues, lets GO this is the most exciting thing since you discovered SEX lets GO, etc. >I just think some one is too much invested in PV panels to conceive the idea that, just maybe, there could be something true and maybe someone could have discovered something new (not very new - just very overlooked). Mirco _______________________________________________ Mirco, it isn't that really. I just have never figured any vaguely plausible way for nuclear particles to be seriously influenced by electrons, even taking into account quantum weirdness and all the stuff I just don't understand about that. The nuclear particles are way in there doing what they do, and the electrons, which is all of chemistry, just fluff around out where they do their thing. The two just don't play together much. If a wild exception is found, I am confident it would show up in our equations long before anyone stumbled across it in the lab. spike From spike at rainier66.com Sat May 25 03:56:54 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 20:56:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis Message-ID: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> A local Mandarin speaker made a comment yesterday that really got the wheels spinning. The topic was the tonal aspect of Chinese languages. She commented that the tonal aspects to pronunciation makes Chinese easier to understand in some ways than English, because the pitch and transition conveys meaning about the word, helping differentiate it from other similar sounding words. Then a thought occurred to me. We can do real-time Fourier analyses, so a computer hearing Chinese speech could pick up the tonal inflection perhaps better than the untrained western ear. For that reason, I can imagine Chinese speech recognition and synthesis might in some ways be easier than English. Do we have any Chinese speech recognition hipsters who could comment? There is a reason why I am asking: I want to teach my son a language, but I think Mandarin would require too much time and effort investment when it is easy to imagine in ten years a computer could do it better than humans can anyway. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat May 25 04:16:05 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 00:16:05 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 11:26 PM, Dan Ust wrote: > See http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1305/1305.3913.pdf > > Comments? > Elvis sightings. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Sat May 25 08:27:39 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 10:27:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <001f01ce58bb$4cf64660$e6e2d320$@rainier66.com> References: <1369422990.89063.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <001f01ce58bb$4cf64660$e6e2d320$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130525082739.GQ2380@leitl.org> On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 01:14:29PM -0700, spike wrote: > If you wanted to make a pan, you would use copper, with a flash coating of > nickel to the copper, nickel-chromium to the nickel, gold flashed to the > nichrome. The total amount of gold isn't all that much, and copper is a > great heat conductor, so you would get the advantages of even heating and > material strength of copper, and low stick surface of the gold. I haven't Not sure Au surface would be non-stick. It has a pretty high affinity to sulfur. What's wrong with a well-seasoned pig iron pan? > ever seen anything like that on the market, so perhaps that stack I > suggested would fail under heat cycling. From pharos at gmail.com Sat May 25 09:07:36 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 10:07:36 +0100 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 4:56 AM, spike wrote: > There is a reason why I am asking: I want to teach my son a language, but I > think Mandarin would require too much time and effort investment when it is > easy to imagine in ten years a computer could do it better than humans can > anyway. > Children should learn their second language before the age of ten, after which their brain begins to set in the adult format. Ideally from when they are learning to talk, about age 1 to 2. It seems that once they know two languages, it becomes easier to learn more, even with an adult brain. So I would teach your son Spanish, which is immediately useful in your area and can be practiced. He will then find it easier to learn more languages, if required. BillK From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 25 15:24:34 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 17:24:34 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: <00c901ce58ec$cba9ebc0$62fdc340$@rainier66.com> References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> <00c901ce58ec$cba9ebc0$62fdc340$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51A0D7B2.1000109@libero.it> Il 25/05/2013 04:08, spike ha scritto: > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato > ... >> ...For me the best part of the paper is at the start, when they write the > first trial was a failure because the reactor went out of control and just > melted the steel tube container... > That result in itself points to fraud actually. So an exploding steam engine would point to fraud in the XVIII-XIX century? > They went on about how the temperature kept mysteriously fluctuating. How do you control the reaction inside a solid state rocket? Or a campfire? You drop a log every time the fire start to go too much down. You do not drop all the logs on the fire and regulate the O2. Dafkalion have devices working in the same way in a much more limited way. Probably because they, also, are unable to totally control the reaction and must design reactors unable to runaway. > So if it is so mysterious, how > is it they are controlling it? Why are the details on the controls so > sketchy? Why did it go so high as to melt the steel tube? That sounds > reeeeaaally far fetched to me. The researchers were not there to "control the reaction" just to made measures to see if the device energy output is greater than input and how much. Basically, from my understanding, Rossi made the reactor available, switched it on, and left the room and was outside for all the time but available in case of need. And the HT e-cat was just developed last summer. No surprise someone didn't work as expected. >> ...And another interesting part is when they write they will do another > test this summer, long around 100 days... > > Again suspicious. If any of us had observed anything like this, we would be > dropping eeeeverything else in our lives and laboring over this 24/7 to the > limits of our physical endurance. Why? Do you must continue to work earn your paycheck, children need food and shoes and wife must be kept happy. You have no clue how Rossi did it or just not enough to be able to progress independently. Probably you do not have the resources to compete. So, you make sure to be up to date and available when the chance happen to participate. > The next test would be not this summer, > not next week, we would be racing for the next test NOW dammit NOW get > going, recruit your friends and colleagues, lets GO this is the most > exciting thing since you discovered SEX lets GO, etc. Well, this is what you (and me) would LIKE to do. But Rossi have other priorities. And your friend would think you are nut and gullible. > Mirco, it isn't that really. I just have never figured any vaguely > plausible way for nuclear particles to be seriously influenced by electrons, If I talked you about rounds of zinc copper and paper soacked with brine in the 1800 and told you it could change the alignment of a compass you would had called me nut. And they would not, if not properly assembled. If a was able to enrich uranium in the XIX century, I would be able to give you a yellow sand that is hot but not burn. And you would call me a fraud because it was impossible. > even taking into account quantum weirdness and all the stuff I just don't > understand about that. Well, I believe Rossi do not completely understand it also. Just as Volta didn't fully understand the voltaic pile. > The nuclear particles are way in there doing what > they do, and the electrons, which is all of chemistry, just fluff around out > where they do their thing. The two just don't play together much. If a > wild exception is found, I am confident it would show up in our equations > long before anyone stumbled across it in the lab. But your equations are a description of the world (a simplified description of the world), they are not the world. When Rossi went to Focardi to ask advices (because he was not obtaining results), he asked if his theory was wrong. Focardi told him "there is nothing wrong in it, continue to try". And Rossi, as he recount, found a way. I was a little difference of temperature at first. And he continued to refine the process until it become a large difference of temperature. I'm pretty convinced that, if we were in the XIX century, we would had some e-cat around to play now. But the current environment is different. Rossi can not sell me an e-cat, even if I'm willing to risk to use a prototype. The first cars were too insecure for modern standard. Wall Mart, or Home Depot will not sell anything without security certification and a lot of cover from lawsuits. And certificators will not certificate anything without months of continuous use under the belt. But, in the end, who cares what we think? Elforsk has allocated around 230,000 euros each year, for the next three years for further investigations according to ECW. http://www.e-catworld.com/2013/05/swedish-rd-company-elforsk-ab-comments-positively-on-e-cat-report/ So they have found something interesting in it. Mirco From spike at rainier66.com Sat May 25 15:26:27 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 08:26:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] chinese synthesis On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 4:56 AM, spike wrote: >>... There is a reason why I am asking: I want to teach my son a language, > but I think Mandarin would require too much time and effort investment > when it is easy to imagine in ten years a computer could do it better > than humans can anyway. >...Children should learn their second language before the age of ten...So I would teach your son Spanish, which is immediately useful in your area and can be practiced... BillK That one is likely, since I can help him to a very limited extent with my own muy poco Espaniol. However it comes with its own problems. Hispanic girls blossom early and gloriously, and they do loooove blondies. And we love them, it is definitely a two-way street. Knowing Espaniol makes one extremely popular with native Spanish speakers. Do take my word for it on that, even if you don't buy my argument. The other day, my son repeated a phrase little Maria, his first grade classmate, taught him: usted es la mujer mas hermosa en el mundo, y le amo con todo mi corason! I am not an expert, but I think he said 'You are the most beautiful woman in the world, and I love you with all of my heart.' If that isn't what he said, it sure sounded like that. Spanish is really good for sounding sexy. My fear is that if my son learns Spanish and goes around the high school making comments like that one, he will spend his high school years copulating rather than studying. My notion currently is to have him (and me) learn German. It is becoming clearer that eventually Germany will own Europe, so it is a language with a bright future. spike From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat May 25 16:01:25 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 12:01:25 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> Message-ID: On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 9:27 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote: " For me the best part of the paper is at the start, when they write the > first trial was a failure because the reactor went out of control and just > melted the steel tube container." > We've all been down this road before, many many many many times. Some Bozo you never heard of typed a ASCII sequence onto a website and everybody is all impressed, but I'll be damned if I know why because after all, I know how to type too. Your Bullshit detector is badly in need of repair. By the way, your message reminded me of a message about cold fusion sent to this list on Oct 19 2010, and that message reminded me of one sent even earlier, this is what I said in 2010: "By the way, your message reminded me of one you sent on June 6 2008, that one involved some professor of welding (!) nobody ever heard of who claimed he had proven that cold fusion was true. At the time I said: "So, esteemed professor Homer J Bumblefuck joins the long list of similar nonentities that have reported cold fusion over the last nineteen years, every single one of which has fallen into a well deserved black hole of oblivion." Time has proven me absolutely correct, Mr. Bumblefuck did indeed fall into a black hole of oblivion" Nothing has changed and today I have little doubt that Giuseppe Levi is at this very moment passing the event horizon and entering the pit of oblivion. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sat May 25 16:09:16 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 17:09:16 +0100 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 4:26 PM, spike wrote: > That one is likely, since I can help him to a very limited extent with my > own muy poco Espaniol. However it comes with its own problems. Hispanic > girls blossom early and gloriously, and they do loooove blondies. And we > love them, it is definitely a two-way street. Knowing Espaniol makes one > extremely popular with native Spanish speakers. Do take my word for it on > that, even if you don't buy my argument. > > My notion currently is to have him (and me) learn German. It is becoming > clearer that eventually Germany will own Europe, so it is a language with a > bright future. > > German is also a rather different language. Spanish leads easily into learning Italian, Portuguese, French, etc. up to about 25 Latin based languages. Another point about learning a new language is the motto 'Use it or lose it!' Learning is much easier if you can speak it every day with a native speaker. Book learning isn't much good on its own. (By the time your son gets old enough you will be able to provide a robot sex doll for him). BillK From anders at aleph.se Sat May 25 16:52:10 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 17:52:10 +0100 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51A0EC3A.6010804@aleph.se> On 25/05/2013 16:26, spike wrote: > My notion currently is to have him (and me) learn German. It is > becoming clearer that eventually Germany will own Europe, so it is a > language with a bright future. Maybe. The problem is that the Germans are getting good at English, so it might be almost as useless as learning Swedish - the locals just switch to international mode and respond in English. Even the younger French are getting sensible. Still, learning languages can be so fun. You learn much more than just words: they do embody cultures and ways of thinking, and they are beautiful stylistic instruments. (Of course, around here the hardcore language fans think that sola lingua bona est lingua mortua.) -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Sat May 25 16:38:35 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 17:38:35 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: <51A0D7B2.1000109@libero.it> References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> <00c901ce58ec$cba9ebc0$62fdc340$@rainier66.com> <51A0D7B2.1000109@libero.it> Message-ID: <51A0E90B.3060609@aleph.se> On 25/05/2013 16:24, Mirco Romanato wrote: > If I talked you about rounds of zinc copper and paper soacked with brine > in the 1800 and told you it could change the alignment of a compass you > would had called me nut. Then you would have demonstrated it, right? And given Spike a simple diagram of how to put the setup together so he could independently replicate it. This is why the magnetic induction unit is named after ?rsted. And not after Romagnosi. One can certainly demonstrate effects that are outside the predictions of all existing theory, just think of Michelson and Morley, or Becquerel and the image of the key on the photographic plate. But in order to convince people that you have some actual discovery you need to describe what you have done so others can replicate it. (Even Romagnosi did give a decent account of his experiment, he just published it in an obscure newspaper.) Rossi's problem is that he is not describing what he is doing. So smart people have no real reason to think he actually has discovered anything - especially in the light of a long tradition of demonstrated frauds who behave almost exactly like he does. Even his past disaster in making oil from garbage followed almost exactly the same lines - and that was based on a real chemical possibility. > I'm pretty convinced that, if we were in the XIX century, we would had > some e-cat around to play now. But the current environment is > different. Rossi can not sell me an e-cat, even if I'm willing to risk > to use a prototype. The first cars were too insecure for modern > standard. Wall Mart, or Home Depot will not sell anything without > security certification and a lot of cover from lawsuits. If demonstrating safety was the only problem he would have no trouble at all. Just build a lot of e-cat and test them in different conditions (including actually checking for radioactivity - if cold fusion actually turns out to be real it might be an environmental disaster to have a lot of little reactors making isotopes). No, what is holding him back is that he cannot get money from sensible investors since they will demand to look inside the box and their contracts will be hard to get away from if he is a fraud. So he has to deal with the investor undergrowth. In the XIX century he would probably have found more people buying into it, and I expect he would have absconded much earlier. > Elforsk has allocated around 230,000 euros each year, for the next > three years for further investigations according to ECW. > http://www.e-catworld.com/2013/05/swedish-rd-company-elforsk-ab-comments-positively-on-e-cat-report/ No, they budgeted 23,000 Euro according to that page. Which is peanuts. Their total research budget is around 28 million euros, and their corporate remit (they are owned by various Swedish energy companies) is to fund and research various projects linked to energy. They are not for profit and can easily afford looking at weird longshots, especially if there is a local champion who pushes for it (and apparently the research was only partially funded by them). Their comments are also rather sceptical, essentially boiling down to that exactly what is going on cannot be determined until they are allowed to look inside. They did their testing, that's it. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 25 17:35:14 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 19:35:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <51A0F652.8020305@libero.it> Il 25/05/2013 00:06, Brent Allsop ha scritto: > And others have expressed the insane desire of using gold, rather than > "paper" or fiat currency. > All economies grow at an exponential rate. So the only good currency is > one capable of being fairly close to that growth rate. This is an opinion, but with no support. A good currency is something that can not be manipulated, so people can trust in its long term value. > Another critical > component, is being flexible. In other words, when bubbles pop, and we > head into a recession, we need the money supply to grow to help offset > this contraction, and the reverse when bubble start forming. In a recession, the value of the entire stock of money increase relative to the value of the entire stock of good and services. People prefer savings to consumption and investment because they discover they have not enough savings and too much consumption and investment. More they save, less they gain from saving and less they consume or invest more they lose from not doing so. At some time, in the future, there will be enough savings and add to them will not be worth enough to defer consumption or investment. > Using anything completely arbitrary like gold, usually will work in > exactly the opposite, making depressions dramatically worse, than if you > had some flexibility. In fact, we can see that QE did a splendid job in creating jobs and increasing the purchasing power of people. > And the most important part of all this, if you have a currency that > can't grow at all, like Bitcoins, it would be catastrophic, since it > would soon start to even suck money away form the stock market. The stock market is like a big casino with QE to infinity and beyond. If and when BTC will suck the US$ and ? (and any other fiat currency) dry, the increase of value will align to the increase of the economy (the real economy, not the paper stuff). So, if car become 3% cheaper to produce, you would be able to buy them for 3% less BTC than before. > You > wouldn't get anyone willing to invest in any start up anywhere. Why do > that, or why invest in any other currency, when you have a guaranteed 10 > times in 2 year return, with Bitcoins, as the history is now showing and > the current consensus "Law of Bitcoins" camp is predicting (see: > http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/2 ) will continue. As Gordon wrote: Who guarantee the return? NO ONE. As I said, the purchasing power increase will reflect the increase of economic output. If the economy do not increase, there will be no increase in purchasing power. No investment, no return. So, people will be interest in investing some (not all) their bitcoins in startups and new productions, if the promised or possible return is enticing enough. Do you want a loan to buy a home? 10% interest year, no more than half of the price/value of the home. You know what is the other side of the equation? people will be willing to sell their stuff to you at a discount (compared to fiat stuff), to obtain a hard, inflexible currency. This is the experience of people using it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4tgNi5gle0 Mirco From eugen at leitl.org Sat May 25 17:37:10 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 19:37:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 12:00:45PM -0700, Dan wrote: > On Friday, May 24, 2013 5:18 AM Eugen Leitl wrote: > > On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 10:04:51PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> One of the things Brent's cannonizer position said was that > >> if Nasa (or SpaceX?) found and brought back a large quantity > >> of gold from outer space > > > > Space is expensive. Space is really, really expensive. > > It costs about 0.4 MUSD/kg of payload to Moon and? > > back, 0.5 MUSD/kg for Mars. > > That's for now. With the SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, etc. entering the launch market In terms of launch costs, an order of magnitude improvement would be challenging. In terms of mass transfer between high delta-v points, you'll need to burn at least half for reaction mass even for advanced (electric) propulsion. In absence of real breakthroughs like fusion rockets no hauling kilotons and megatons around, sorry. Your next bet is linear motor launch with minimal rocket burn for Earth-Moon. There you can actually have a lot of matter transport, and could even deliver some by aerobraking. > -- actually, with trimming back space agency involvement -- that > might change. There's nothing inherent in space transport that > means it must forever be high-priced or a boutique industry. Oh, the physics makes it an inherently expensive proposition. > (One might think that someone in the 1950s might have talked > about computing power the same way -- or a better analogy, There's certainly nothing inviting exponential improvement in the rocket equation. > airline travel, since the rates were set by the government > and it was only when deregulation took hold that the affordable > air travel regime we have today came into play.) Space travel is nothing like air travel. > > If you can mine resources in space, they will be used in > > situ. Earth would be a backwater, a nature park. > > That's probably true, though what gets sent back to Earth might also be determined by what prices it will fetch on the "backwater." :) It's also true that the prices of commodities on Earth will likely be impacted by being able to economically extract them in space -- even if none actually are sent to Earth. This is simply because the potential is always there and, eventually, if the terrestrial economy simply becomes part of larger solar system economy, local prices will be affected by system-wide prices -- in the same way that the price of gold in Morisville, Vermont is not wildly different than the London spot price even though I've never heard of anyone lugging around huge quantities of gold through Morisville. (At least, not while I lived there.:) Assuming we don't collapse and manage to bootstrap a space fabrication (not at all obvious we can manage it) Earth becomes rapidly insignificant for reasons of scale but also because it's a gravity well shrouded in volatiles. > > I think there will be never large amounts of anything > > travelling in the local system. It's stupid. It makes > > no sense. > > Maybe so, but maybe not. And it need not be huge quantities to have a huge impact. If you could mine and refine a megaton of platinum or iridum (from what exactly? iron-nickel? by which methods?) , why sending it to a remote backwater at a great expense they cannot possibly pay, due to their tiny, insignificant economy? > The expectations alone of even small quantities can change > things a lot, altering prices in a big way. If anything, Nothing can be "a lot" or "big way" if you're talking of a single planet. > the availability of gold, platinum, oxygen, water, etc. on orbit Right now volaties in LEO are a lot more important than so-called precious metals. > or wherever will likely mean that space enterprises and space settlers There won't be any space settlers. All the settling and processing will be done by solid state. > won't be bidding up the prices of these from Earth, which does impact > the Earth price, all else being equal. From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 25 17:52:03 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 19:52:03 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: <51A0E90B.3060609@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> Message-ID: <51A0FA43.5010401@libero.it> Il 25/05/2013 18:38, Anders Sandberg ha scritto: > On 25/05/2013 16:24, Mirco Romanato wrote: >> If I talked you about rounds of zinc copper and paper soacked with brine >> in the 1800 and told you it could change the alignment of a compass you >> would had called me nut. > Then you would have demonstrated it, right? And given Spike a simple > diagram of how to put the setup together so he could independently > replicate it. I think not, if I had the possibility to sell the invention for the equivalent of tons of gold and doing so would jeopardize my possibilities. > No, what is holding him back is that he cannot get money from sensible > investors since they will demand to look inside the box and their > contracts will be hard to get away from if he is a fraud. So he has to > deal with the investor undergrowth. In the XIX century he would probably > have found more people buying into it, and I expect he would have > absconded much earlier. So, basically, you are telling that Levi and the professor from Uppsala are just gullible fools? or accomplices? >> Elforsk has allocated around 230,000 euros each year, for the next >> three years for further investigations according to ECW. >> http://www.e-catworld.com/2013/05/swedish-rd-company-elforsk-ab-comments-positively-on-e-cat-report/ > No, they budgeted 23,000 Euro according to that page. Which is peanuts. Travel expenses for some experts. > Their comments are also rather > sceptical, essentially boiling down to that exactly what is going on > cannot be determined until they are allowed to look inside. They did > their testing, that's it. And come out without noticing any sign of fraud? Without any criticism to the way the measurements were done? They are the experts, so they should be able to catch a scammer or, at least, say the methodology used in not accurate enough to validate the results. They didn't. So for them the question is open. And for me also. Mirco PS DO you think Celani and his constantan wire are a scam also? From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 25 18:25:08 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 20:25:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] tyranny by 16th amendment In-Reply-To: <1369368836.1985.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <012c01ce5822$f0f51910$d2df4b30$@rainier66.com> <1369366715.99738.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1369368836.1985.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51A10204.3000306@libero.it> Il 24/05/2013 06:13, Dan ha scritto: > My guess would be that they'd look at the dollar side of the > transaction. The initial input of dollars (or other government > currencies) would be traceable, no? Not always. Not easily. People could accept Bitcoin in exchange of goods and services. > Also, any withdrawals into > government currencies would also be traceable, no? Not always, not easily. If I work with cash, or other currencies-like stuff, you can not detect me directly. > Or, on that side, they might simply audit you. They could audit you and see if your life style in compatible with your declared income. But, with Bitcoin, they have a big problem. First, you could have just a life style little over your income, not enough to trigger their sensors. Second, you have a lot of people doing transactions all the time, off the records, with different addresses. How they audit all of them? They can threat an audit to so many people before: 1) It become an empty threat 2) They start bleeding resources to really audit people 3) They lose revenues jailing people 4) People start reacting badly when they ask for an audit. There is, already, a list of taxpayers deemed too dangerous to approach alone by the IRS officials. If the IRS start to escalate, the list will increase a lot. Then an actual audit will become very costly. Think about Joe Stack. > Right now, I believe the US and many other > nations, too, have laws and policies regarding tracing funds -- many > stuff that was created to track drug and terrorist money, but, as > expected, (by anyone who knows history) there's been "mission creep." I > don't see why, if Bitcoin becomes a big deal with the feds or the IRS > (or HMRC or whatever tax authorities exist), governments wouldn't simply > apply these to tax Bitcoin users. The side effect of this, making every taxpayer a criminal by default, is to make much more cheaper for the same taxpayer to act criminally against the government agents. > And governments could simply pass more laws or put into effect policies > that cover Bitcoin -- maybe calling for records to be kept lest stiff > fines be levied and jail sentences imposed. It didn't worked so well with filesharing. And people didn't have a so compelling reason to share files. Where money talks. Having destroyed centralized enemies of the government in the matter of alternative currencies, the government is left with decentralized enemies. It is all about costs. If the costs to going after one it too high and the risk to be caught too small, the government can jast draw down the battle but can not win it. Mirco From anders at aleph.se Sat May 25 18:51:55 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 19:51:55 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: <51A0FA43.5010401@libero.it> 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> Message-ID: <51A1084B.9020700@aleph.se> On 2013-05-25 18:52, Mirco Romanato wrote: >> Then you would have demonstrated it, right? And given Spike a simple >> diagram of how to put the setup together so he could independently >> replicate it. > I think not, if I had the possibility to sell the invention for the > equivalent of tons of gold and doing so would jeopardize my possibilities. That is the reasoning people always use. And they forget that plenty of people get rich simply by patenting stuff. Disclosure doesn't mean you lose your opportunity. >> Their comments are also rather >> sceptical, essentially boiling down to that exactly what is going on >> cannot be determined until they are allowed to look inside. They did >> their testing, that's it. > And come out without noticing any sign of fraud? I think it was Randi who pointed out that scientists and engineers are *really bad* at detecting fraud. They normally deal with systems where there is no intention to fool the viewer, so they fall for the most trivial tricks. This is why Randi, a magician, easily uncovered many cases of fakery that left invited experts dumbfounded. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From atymes at gmail.com Sat May 25 22:58:57 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 15:58:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: On May 25, 2013 10:38 AM, "Eugen Leitl" wrote: > In terms of launch costs, an order of magnitude improvement would be > challenging. Launch costs have a lot more to do with operations than physics at the moment. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ALONZOTG at verizon.net Sat May 25 21:54:43 2013 From: ALONZOTG at verizon.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 17:54:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> Eugen Leitl wrote: >> or wherever will likely mean that space enterprises and space settlers > There won't be any space settlers. All the settling and processing > will be done by solid state. I find that statement profoundly offensive. It implies that some agency will exterminate all other forms of life and modes of existence. If you don't see what I'm getting at, swap out "solid state" with "the Aryan race". -- NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE Powers are not rights. From msd001 at gmail.com Sun May 26 02:38:58 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 22:38:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> Message-ID: On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 5:54 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: > Eugen Leitl wrote: >>> >>> or wherever will likely mean that space enterprises and space settlers >> >> There won't be any space settlers. All the settling and processing >> will be done by solid state. > > > I find that statement profoundly offensive. It implies that some agency will > exterminate all other forms of life and modes of existence. If you don't see > what I'm getting at, swap out "solid state" with "the Aryan race". You are just looking for that old ax to grind. The point is that monkeys are harder to ship to the asteroids and to other planets than "solid state" It would be the same kind of obvious to say "farming of the seas will be done by fish" whatever, I just remembered that I am unlikely to convince you. From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun May 26 02:58:14 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 22:58:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: <51A0EC3A.6010804@aleph.se> References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> <51A0EC3A.6010804@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > > Maybe. The problem is that the Germans are getting good at English, so it > might be almost as useless as learning Swedish - the locals just switch to > international mode and respond in English. Even the younger French are > getting sensible. ### I noticed this with younger folks from Poland as well - there is a larger fraction who learn English as a real means of communication, compared to the geezers of my generation who learned Russian at school as a mandatory subject but never cared to actually get proficient. Does it mean that the EU experiment might eventually bring a real, linguistic unification of Europe? On the other hand, the pressures that Anglicize Germans, Swedes and Poles could be much weakened in the very near future by the introduction of real time high quality machine translation. I expect the first Google Glass generation to be the last one affected by the unfortunate events at Babel. Rafal From ALONZOTG at verizon.net Sun May 26 03:30:09 2013 From: ALONZOTG at verizon.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 23:30:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> Message-ID: <51A181C1.6020401@verizon.net> Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 5:54 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: >> Eugen Leitl wrote: >> >> > There won't be any space settlers. All the settling and processing >> > will be done by solid state. >> I find that statement profoundly offensive. It implies that some agency will >> exterminate all other forms of life and modes of existence. If you don't see >> what I'm getting at, swap out "solid state" with "the Aryan race". > You are just looking for that old ax to grind. Nope, this is serious. =| > The point is that monkeys are harder to ship to the asteroids and to > other planets than "solid state" > It would be the same kind of obvious to say "farming of the seas will be done by fish" Are you familiar with quantification theory and categorical reasoning? To say, as he just did, that "ALL" the settling and processing will be done with programs running on 6502 chips, is equivalent to say that NO settling will be done by things that AREN't 6502 chips. Furthermore, it is perfectly clear that the future of life on Earth will someday end, then everyone who is not doing settling will die. Therefore, because I'm not an upload, and because I will not, as he says, be doing settling, then I will die. I do not want to die, therefore he's a dick. The bottom line is that I need a transhumanist community that is just as enthusiastic about solving the problem of how to put a million tons of iron and equipment in a warp bubble as it is about encasing Sol in a Dyson shell. =| Sometimes I wish I was capable of his level of cold disdain, but I'm not. I'm enthusiastic about the future. I wish people were actually sincere about morphological freedom and didn't put up with shit like this. -- NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE Powers are not rights. From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 26 04:57:29 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 21:57:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> <51A0EC3A.6010804@aleph.se> Message-ID: <002001ce59cd$87a30a60$96e91f20$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki ... ### ...Does it mean that the EU experiment might eventually bring a real, linguistic unification of Europe? >... introduction of real time high quality machine translation...the unfortunate events at Babel. Rafal _______________________________________________ Rafal, your comment made me think of a good name for a real-time high quality machine translator that would reverse those unfortunate events: Lebab. {8^D Hey, cutesy names sell products. On the other hand, perhaps we moderns are such flaming heatherns, few will get the joke. spike From msd001 at gmail.com Sun May 26 06:00:10 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 02:00:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: <002001ce59cd$87a30a60$96e91f20$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> <51A0EC3A.6010804@aleph.se> <002001ce59cd$87a30a60$96e91f20$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 12:57 AM, spike wrote: > Rafal, your comment made me think of a good name for a real-time high > quality machine translator that would reverse those unfortunate events: > Lebab. > > {8^D > > Hey, cutesy names sell products. Then I'd have gone for the slightly more modern BabL (see: Flickr) > > On the other hand, perhaps we moderns are such flaming heatherns, few will > get the joke. > I'd also be tempted to combine "BabL" with "ghoti" in an obscure homage to Douglas Adams. From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 26 06:21:29 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 23:21:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: <002001ce59cd$87a30a60$96e91f20$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> <51A0EC3A.6010804@aleph.se> <002001ce59cd$87a30a60$96e91f20$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <002501ce59d9$433a90d0$c9afb270$@rainier66.com> _______________________________________________ >...Rafal, your comment made me think of a good name for a real-time high quality machine translator that would reverse those unfortunate events: Lebab... spike _____________________________________________ It occurred to me that we have all the elements in place to make a Lebab. We have sufficiently powerful computers we carry with us, our phones. We have speech recognition that isn't perfect but it is very good. We have online translations, which aren't really good but are better than fair. We have speech synthesis, which is very good. We have a system that can do speech synthesis with one's own voice. So we could theoretically do this now: create a portable system that would translate our words into another language and utter them with our own voice. Of course languages have all that cultural stuff which we don't know how to do, expressions and so forth. That would be lost; we would get only very literal translations. A few years ago we had a Japanese guy who knows no English try to join an online discussion group for British motorcycles (BSAs.) We really never did get that to work very well. He took it a lot more seriously than we did. Apparently he kept thinking he had accidentally insulted us. His literally-translated replies were hilarious. For instance he would struggle to apologize, and someone would post "No problem dude, get over that, man." So when that went to Japanese, it must have come across as "Negative malfunction urban tourist who dresses as cowboy, acquire a position which is concentric to but with higher elevation than object in question, male adult." This must have been extremely confusing. So he would post stuff that would transliterate back to comments such as "So repentant am I for causing the severe offense of my co-conspirators in motorcycle! My face is cast down in severe self-recrimination and desire for forgive! My wish may plead your to pardon in sorrow of me, upon my shame!" So all that subtle cultural stuff would be lost. But in the case with the Japanese motorcycle mechanic, if we stayed right on the technical stuff and didn't try to chat, it kinda worked. A Lebab might work to some extent, if we didn't try to get too poetic with it. spike From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 26 06:52:04 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 07:52:04 +0100 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: <002501ce59d9$433a90d0$c9afb270$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> <51A0EC3A.6010804@aleph.se> <002001ce59cd$87a30a60$96e91f20$@rainier66.com> <002501ce59d9$433a90d0$c9afb270$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 7:21 AM, spike wrote: > Of course languages have all that cultural stuff which we don't know how to > do, expressions and so forth. That would be lost; we would get only very > literal translations. > So all that subtle cultural stuff would be lost. But in the case with the > Japanese motorcycle mechanic, if we stayed right on the technical stuff and > didn't try to chat, it kinda worked. A Lebab might work to some extent, if > we didn't try to get too poetic with it. > > Yes, initially we would have to use one of the Basic English variants that are around. e.g. Voice of America radio. Small vocabulary, no colloquialisms. If you ever get into emails with a foreigner you soon pick up the basic style required. Translating your email into their language and back again, gives a good guide as to where you are getting too complicated. BillK From giulio at gmail.com Sun May 26 07:08:59 2013 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 09:08:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: <51A0EC3A.6010804@aleph.se> References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> <51A0EC3A.6010804@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 6:52 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > the locals just switch to > international mode and respond in English Without understanding that this can be perceived as very rude and offensive by foreigners trying to practice a language. Last time this happened to me I replied with an extremely rude variant of "fuck you asshole" in a third language foreign to the locals. From eugen at leitl.org Sun May 26 10:00:08 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 12:00:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> Message-ID: <20130526100008.GD2380@leitl.org> On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 05:54:43PM -0400, Alan Grimes wrote: > Eugen Leitl wrote: > >>or wherever will likely mean that space enterprises and space settlers > >There won't be any space settlers. All the settling and processing > >will be done by solid state. > > I find that statement profoundly offensive. It implies that some > agency will exterminate all other forms of life and modes of I'm quite gotten used to such slander from Alan, but for the benefit of others: absolutely not. It's a simple consequence of physics of space travel. Which is why space probes have left the solar system, while suited primates just barely visited the very next gravity well. So no "A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies! A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!'. > existence. If you don't see what I'm getting at, swap out "solid > state" with "the Aryan race". From eugen at leitl.org Sun May 26 11:31:04 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 13:31:04 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> Message-ID: <20130526113104.GE2380@leitl.org> On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 03:27:18AM +0200, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 23/05/2013 11:14, Eugen Leitl ha scritto: > > On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 11:26:57PM -0400, Dan Ust wrote: > >> See http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1305/1305.3913.pdf > >> > >> Comments? > > > > Not merely bad science, fraud. > > http://ecatnews.com/?p=2510 > > Well, Rossi must be the God of Scam if it is able to scam, after so much Yes, Rossi has been quite good at running scams in the last few decades. As anyone who couldn't help but run into without even looking. > time, the representatives of Elforsk (that financed the test). > > http://www.elforsk.se/Aktuellt/Svenska-forskare-har-testat-Rossis-energikatalysator--E-cat/ > > Eugen, you probably didn't read the paper. > Just jumped directly on the "SCAM!!!!" without thinking. Thanks for the baseless allegations, but no http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/05/21/the-e-cat-is-back-and-people-are-still-falling-for-it/ > For me the best part of the paper is at the start, when they write the > first trial was a failure because the reactor went out of control and > just melted the steel tube container. > > I would say a very interesting failure. > > And another interesting part is when they write they will do another > test this summer, long around 100 days. Critical thinking failure 101. > I just think some one is too much invested in PV panels to conceive the > idea that, just maybe, there could be something true and maybe someone > could have discovered something new (not very new - just very overlooked). As a skeptic, I know a lot more about Andrea Rossi and LENR than you apparently do. Because, unlike you, I'm doing my due diligence before dismissing something. From protokol2020 at gmail.com Sun May 26 12:03:47 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 14:03:47 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: <20130526113104.GE2380@leitl.org> References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> <20130526113104.GE2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: The only real question is, whether there is a combination of any (non-radioactive) metal and hydrogen (or some other light stuff) which yields to some significant nuclear reactions under "normal, room" conditions? Very likely that there isn't. But maybe it is. The current affair is not productive, on the contrary. On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 1:31 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 03:27:18AM +0200, Mirco Romanato wrote: > > Il 23/05/2013 11:14, Eugen Leitl ha scritto: > > > On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 11:26:57PM -0400, Dan Ust wrote: > > >> See http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1305/1305.3913.pdf > > >> > > >> Comments? > > > > > > Not merely bad science, fraud. > > > > http://ecatnews.com/?p=2510 > > > > Well, Rossi must be the God of Scam if it is able to scam, after so much > > Yes, Rossi has been quite good at running scams in the last few decades. > As anyone who couldn't help but run into without even looking. > > > time, the representatives of Elforsk (that financed the test). > > > > > http://www.elforsk.se/Aktuellt/Svenska-forskare-har-testat-Rossis-energikatalysator--E-cat/ > > > > Eugen, you probably didn't read the paper. > > Just jumped directly on the "SCAM!!!!" without thinking. > > Thanks for the baseless allegations, but no > > > http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/05/21/the-e-cat-is-back-and-people-are-still-falling-for-it/ > > > For me the best part of the paper is at the start, when they write the > > first trial was a failure because the reactor went out of control and > > just melted the steel tube container. > > > > I would say a very interesting failure. > > > > And another interesting part is when they write they will do another > > test this summer, long around 100 days. > > Critical thinking failure 101. > > > I just think some one is too much invested in PV panels to conceive the > > idea that, just maybe, there could be something true and maybe someone > > could have discovered something new (not very new - just very > overlooked). > > As a skeptic, I know a lot more about Andrea Rossi and LENR than you > apparently do. Because, unlike you, I'm doing my due diligence before > dismissing something. > _______________________________________________ > 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 May 26 14:25:53 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 07:25:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> <51A0EC3A.6010804@aleph.se> Message-ID: <005901ce5a1c$ee8a53b0$cb9efb10$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco Subject: Re: [ExI] chinese synthesis On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 6:52 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: >>... the locals just switch to international mode and respond in English >...Without understanding that this can be perceived as very rude and offensive by foreigners trying to practice a language. Last time this happened to me I replied with an extremely rude variant of "fuck you asshole" in a third language foreign to the locals. _______________________________________________ Ja, but note that the cultural divide I mentioned with the Japanese motorcycle mechanic shows that the notion of rudeness does not match between cultures. I can assure you he never intentionally made a comment on that forum that was insulting or rude, and no one made one back to him, but he kept thinking he had offended us, and was always falling all over himself apologizing. He seemed like such a sincere, nice young man, the Japanese counterpart of Anders except with grease all over him instead of ideas. So part of what I am suggesting is that we come up with a simplified variant of whatever is our native language that transliterates into any other simplified variant of other native languages. It has very little cultural stuff in it, no deities, few or no political terms, the terms for sexual or bodily functions would sound like a surgeon straight out of medical school, lots of engineering and technical stuff, plenty of already-international terms such as the fields of mathematics have in such profusion. spike From test at ssec.wisc.edu Sun May 26 15:03:20 2013 From: test at ssec.wisc.edu (Bill Hibbard) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 10:03:20 -0500 (CDT) Subject: [ExI] new singularity fiction Message-ID: http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/mcnrsch.html This is part 5 of http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/mcnrs.html From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 26 15:02:30 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 08:02:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> <20130526113104.GE2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: <005a01ce5a22$0bee2f30$23ca8d90$@rainier66.com> >. On Behalf Of Tomaz Kristan Subject: Re: [ExI] Cold fusion paper >.The only real question is, whether there is a combination of any (non-radioactive) metal and hydrogen (or some other light stuff) which yields to some significant nuclear reactions under "normal, room" conditions? Chemical reactions are very well understood. We know the chemical energies contained in the bonds, we understand the ground state chemicals, we know for sure there is not some mysterious form of energy lurking somewhere that does not require converting mass to energy. Any vast untapped energy source will need to involve nuclei. That's where the mass is. >.Very likely that there isn't. But maybe it is. Nuclear reactions have a signature because of the quantities we know are conserved: mass can become energy (that's the goal), spin is conserved since that is angular momentum at the subatomic level, charge is conserved, momentum is conserved, strangeness is not conserved for some unknown reason which led to that characteristic being called strangeness, parity is conserved and there are others (but I need to review my textbooks on that.) The conserved quantities provide us a general map to what reactions will release energy. I know the classic argument: the theories could be wrong, being just maps rather than the territory. But the notion of cold fusion as has been promoted would be an error of the magnitude of a city the size of Calcutta existing somewhere in Wyoming, having been overlooked or omitted by all the mapmakers everywhere everywhen. If it existed out there, one would expect occasional anomalous observations to signal a problem with the maps. It's bogus Tomaz, phony as a three dollar bill. Don't invest in it. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sun May 26 15:44:31 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 16:44:31 +0100 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: <005901ce5a1c$ee8a53b0$cb9efb10$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> <51A0EC3A.6010804@aleph.se> <005901ce5a1c$ee8a53b0$cb9efb10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51A22DDF.7020204@aleph.se> On 2013-05-26 15:25, spike wrote: > So part of what I am suggesting is that we come up with a simplified variant > of whatever is our native language that transliterates into any other > simplified variant of other native languages. A bit like http://xkcd.com/1133/ http://tenhundredwordsofscience.tumblr.com/ http://splasho.com/upgoer5/ ? -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Sun May 26 16:06:00 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 17:06:00 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> <20130526113104.GE2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: <51A232E8.1090707@aleph.se> On 2013-05-26 13:03, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > The only real question is, whether there is a combination of any > (non-radioactive) metal and hydrogen (or some other light stuff) which > yields to some significant nuclear reactions under "normal, room" > conditions? Check out the physics on http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.co.uk/pdf/0-19-856264-0.pdf and http://www.kayelaby.npl.co.uk/atomic_and_nuclear_physics/4_7/4_7_4.html This would apply to cold fusion too. You need to get up to tens of keV of energy to get any fusion reactions, compress stuff to 10^9 g/cm^3, or add muons. It looks like there are no ordinary elements that gives you nuclear reactions at normal temperatures or densities. Deuterium is the most fusable element you can get - a decent cross section, large energy gain, and reacts at low energies. Unfortunately the darn thing is pretty stable under room conditions. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 26 16:30:18 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 09:30:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: <51A22DDF.7020204@aleph.se> References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> <51A0EC3A.6010804@aleph.se> <005901ce5a1c$ee8a53b0$cb9efb10$@rainier66.com> <51A22DDF.7020204@aleph.se> Message-ID: <008001ce5a2e$50943a10$f1bcae30$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: [ExI] chinese synthesis On 2013-05-26 15:25, spike wrote: >>... So part of what I am suggesting is that we come up with a simplified > variant of whatever is our native language that transliterates into > any other simplified variant of other native languages. A bit like http://xkcd.com/1133/ http://tenhundredwordsofscience.tumblr.com/ http://splasho.com/upgoer5/ ? -- >...Dr Anders Sandberg Anders, the ten-hundred words of science explanation of quantum tunneling is as good or better than any description I have seen using the traditional vocabulary. {8^D spike "A little part of everything is really in every place at once, especially very little light things. If a wall is not very thick at all and some thing can be on either side of it and the thing gets close to the wall, sometimes that thing just shows up on the other side of the wall from where it started. Tiny things like that have stuff on them that makes forces on other things. They take some of that stuff through the wall with them. We study how little things go through walls and how to make the tiny walls that more tiny things can go through and so that they can take more stuff with them when they go. If the tiny things can take more stuff through, we can use that to make better computers some day." - Enrique Cobas. My attempt at describing quantum tunneling. From ALONZOTG at verizon.net Sun May 26 15:53:07 2013 From: ALONZOTG at verizon.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 11:53:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <20130526100008.GD2380@leitl.org> References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> <20130526100008.GD2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: <51A22FE3.2080601@verizon.net> Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 05:54:43PM -0400, Alan Grimes wrote: >> Eugen Leitl wrote: >>>> or wherever will likely mean that space enterprises and space settlers >>> There won't be any space settlers. All the settling and processing >>> will be done by solid state. >> I find that statement profoundly offensive. It implies that some >> agency will exterminate all other forms of life and modes of > I'm quite gotten used to such slander from Alan, but for the > benefit of others: absolutely not. It's a simple consequence > of physics of space travel. No it's not. > Which is why space probes have left the solar system, while > suited primates just barely visited the very next gravity well. That's politics, not physics. > So no "A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies! > A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!'. Blade Runner is nothing but green fields and sunshine next to what you're proposing. =( The only thing absolutely required for off-world colonies is the will to do it. Do you have any idea what this looks like to the outside world? Every day, recently, Alex Jones gets on the air and tells an audience of ten million people scattered around the world that the elite will, as advocated by Ray Kurzweil will "merge with machines" and kill the rest of the population. What am I supposed to say to that? "You're exactly right, man."? It is your attitude that is jeopardizing transhumanism and reducing the chances that we will actually get anything better than a somewhat effective life-extension treatment. -- NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE Powers are not rights. From atymes at gmail.com Sun May 26 16:59:58 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 09:59:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <51A22FE3.2080601@verizon.net> References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> <20130526100008.GD2380@leitl.org> <51A22FE3.2080601@verizon.net> Message-ID: On May 26, 2013 9:33 AM, "Alan Grimes" wrote: > It is your attitude that is jeopardizing transhumanism and reducing the chances that we will actually get anything better than a somewhat effective life-extension treatment. To be fair, it is his misinformation, not his attitude. He thinks that space travel is anywhere near technologically developed, such that physics can prevent dramatic price reductions in the manner it can for, say, automobiles. He fails to appreciate that a good analogy would be an ancient Greek saying that Hero's steam engine was proof that motorized transportation could never be feasible. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Sun May 26 17:32:35 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 19:32:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> <20130526100008.GD2380@leitl.org> <51A22FE3.2080601@verizon.net> Message-ID: <20130526173235.GG2380@leitl.org> On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 09:59:58AM -0700, Adrian Tymes wrote: > To be fair, it is his misinformation, not his attitude. > He thinks that space travel is anywhere near > technologically developed, such that physics can Au contraire, I'm arguing physics, not specific technology. I'm however is not an educator; the information is easy enough to find -- assuming one cares about such old-fashioned things like knowledge. > prevent dramatic price reductions in the manner > it can for, say, automobiles. He fails to appreciate > that a good analogy would be an ancient Greek I do not claim that our understanding of physics is complete. But there is no magic. See the difference? > saying that Hero's steam engine was proof that > motorized transportation could never be feasible. The question is not about feasibility but economics. So you've managed to misundestand me in three places. Good job. From protokol2020 at gmail.com Sun May 26 17:28:36 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 19:28:36 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: <51A232E8.1090707@aleph.se> References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> <20130526113104.GE2380@leitl.org> <51A232E8.1090707@aleph.se> Message-ID: > Unfortunately the darn thing is pretty stable under room conditions. Or fortunately. Otherwise to much would have fused long ago? OTOH I can't be 100% certain, that there is no "loophole" somewhere. To many real life fusors ARE working. That they use more energy than they produce, might be only a coincidence. With some clever improvement this might change. Had been no fusors, I wouldn't say a thing on this matter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 6:06 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-05-26 13:03, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > >> The only real question is, whether there is a combination of any >> (non-radioactive) metal and hydrogen (or some other light stuff) which >> yields to some significant nuclear reactions under "normal, room" >> conditions? >> > > Check out the physics on > http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.co.**uk/pdf/0-19-856264-0.pdfand > http://www.kayelaby.npl.co.uk/**atomic_and_nuclear_physics/4_** > 7/4_7_4.html > This would apply to cold fusion too. You need to get up to tens of keV of > energy to get any fusion reactions, compress stuff to 10^9 g/cm^3, or add > muons. It looks like there are no ordinary elements that gives you nuclear > reactions at normal temperatures or densities. Deuterium is the most > fusable element you can get - a decent cross section, large energy gain, > and reacts at low energies. Unfortunately the darn thing is pretty stable > under room conditions. > > > -- > 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 atymes at gmail.com Sun May 26 20:43:35 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 13:43:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <20130526173235.GG2380@leitl.org> References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> <20130526100008.GD2380@leitl.org> <51A22FE3.2080601@verizon.net> <20130526173235.GG2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: On May 26, 2013 10:34 AM, "Eugen Leitl" wrote: > I'm arguing physics, not specific > technology. > The question is not about feasibility but economics. Physics informs feasibility. Technology informs economics. Space travel can get a lot cheaper than it is now. Using current prices to argue economics is invalid. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon May 27 04:30:34 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 21:30:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1369629034.60339.YahooMailNeo@web126201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Saturday, May 25, 2013 1:37 PM Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 12:00:45PM -0700, Dan wrote: >>> Space is expensive. Space is really, really expensive. >>> It costs about 0.4 MUSD/kg of payload to Moon and? >>> back, 0.5 MUSD/kg for Mars. >>? >> That's for now. With the SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, etc. entering the launch market > > In terms of launch costs, an order of magnitude improvement > would be challenging. SpaceX seems to have lowered the cost with the smaller payload to LEO. I guess we'll have to wait and see on the Falcon Heavy if it comes in at the, IIRC, $860/lb to LEO. That would be about an order of magnitude drop in the large payload area. (I don't know recent prices to LEO for launchers across the board, such as the Zenit.) > In terms of mass transfer between high delta-v points, > you'll need to burn at least half for reaction mass > even for advanced (electric) propulsion. In absence > of real breakthroughs like fusion rockets no hauling > kilotons and megatons around, sorry. I think part of the cost here comes not so much from the form of propulsion as from having a labor intensive industry with few units produced. I think there'd be a big reduction in costs here if the industry were less labor intensive and produced more units (bigger ROI). I'm not sure though how this would play out and I'd be speculating if I said it would result in a one or two orders of magnitude drop in price to orbit. (I think the labor intensive part is not due to people in aerospace being idiots, but because of cost plus contracts in the US and the public-private model in Europe and Russia. That tends to make big aerospace firms not look for cost-cutting measures and there also does seem to be a "jobs program" approach to these industries.) > Your next bet is linear motor launch with minimal rocket > burn for Earth-Moon. There you can actually have a lot > of matter transport, and could even deliver some by > aerobraking. I'm still waiting for that technology to leave the lab when it comes to space transport. If I were running the show here, I'd probably just say "Use big dumb boosters to put stuff on orbit and wait and see on the rest of this junk." :) >> -- actually, with trimming back space agency involvement -- that? >> might change. There's nothing inherent in space transport that? >> means it must forever be high-priced or a boutique industry.? > > Oh, the physics makes it an inherently expensive proposition. I disagree here. After Apollo -- even during Apollo -- the main model here was of huge government investment. In every field where that model is used, the general outcome is prices tend to rise much faster than inflation. We see this in higher education and healthcare, where government has been heavily involved for decades or more. And when the economic data is looked at closely prices tend to jump when there's a shift to heavier government involvement. (In the US, e.g., the Medicare and Medicaid programs implemented in the mid-1960s illustrate this.) This isn't to say economics is physics-free, but the economics of getting to things to orbit is not driven purely by physics. It does matter how efficiently resources are used and most launch programs have been massive boondoogles rather than models of economic efficiency. This tends to drive prices up. >> (One might think that someone in the 1950s might have talked? >> about computing power the same way -- or a better analogy,? > > There's certainly nothing inviting exponential improvement > in the rocket equation. You might as well say the quantum physics hasn't changed all that much in terms of electronics applications (not exactly so), but the engineering side has. And those changes there happened more, in mind, not because electronics just, on their own, improve. It happened because electronics and computation were very profitable industries with lots of competition. It wasn't an Apollo program followed by a Shuttle program followed by an ISS program. (This isn't to say there was no government involvement, but it didn't follow the same path -- else we might have a few big firms selling boards, not chips, to the government computing agency.:) >> airline travel, since the rates were set by the government? >> and it was only when deregulation took hold that the affordable? >> air travel regime we have today came into play.) > > Space travel is nothing like air travel. I feel you're missing the point of the analogy: huge government involvement usually equals higher prices and less development. >>> If you can mine resources in space, they will be used in >>> situ. Earth would be a backwater, a nature park. >>? >> That's probably true, though what gets sent back to Earth >> might also be determined by what prices it will fetch on >> the "backwater." :) It's also true that the prices of >> commodities on Earth will likely be impacted by being >> able to economically extract them in space -- even if >> none actually are sent to Earth. This is simply because >> the potential is always there and, eventually, if the >> terrestrial economy simply becomes part of larger solar >> system economy, local prices will be affected by system- >> wide prices -- in the same way that the price of gold >> in Morisville, Vermont is not wildly different than the >> London spot price even though I've never heard of anyone >> lugging around huge quantities of gold through Morisville. >> (At least, not while I lived there.:) > > Assuming we don't collapse If we collapse, then all bets are off. That's like saying assuming a huge interstellar comet doesn't collide with the Earth tomorrow and wipe all macrobial life out. :) > and manage to bootstrap a space fabrication (not at all > obvious we can manage it) Earth becomes rapidly insignificant > for reasons of scale but also because it's a gravity well > shrouded in volatiles. We were talking about Earth prices, no? So, even if Earth becomes a backwater... Just as Morisville, VT is not a hub for global economic activity, it's still affected by the global economy. Do you think if gold or whatever that's rare on Earth becomes plentiful in a wider solar system economy that this will have no impact on Earth prices? The only way I see that happening is not if Earth is merely a backwater, but if Earth is completely cut off from those commodities. >>> I think there will be never large amounts of anything >>> travelling in the local system. It's stupid. It makes >>> no sense. >>? >> Maybe so, but maybe not. And it need not be huge quantities to have a huge impact.? > > If you could mine and refine a megaton of platinum or > iridum (from what exactly? iron-nickel? by which methods?) > , why sending it to a remote backwater at a great expense > they cannot possibly pay, due to their tiny, insignificant > economy?? I doubt the cost of dropping stuff down to Earth would ever be all that high. For the near future, it's more likely the Earth economy will be the biggest part of the total solar system economy. It'll likely be Earth running and own off world extraction operations, so it'll be a matter of people on Earth paying for the stuff, some of which they might want back here. Even if they only bring back crumbs, this might impact prices. And it doesn't seem bonkers to think if you were running a mining firm today and actually started mining platinum off Earth in five years, you might want to sell some of it back on Earth to add to your revenue. (Of course, I agree, much of it will probably be earmarked for off world use.) >> The expectations alone of even small quantities can change? >> things a lot, altering prices in a big way. If anything,? > > Nothing can be "a lot" or "big way" if you're talking > of a single planet. Yes it can because people only use the quantities they use. They don't use the whole planet's quantity of anything at this time. >> the availability of gold, platinum, oxygen, water, etc. on orbit? > > Right now volaties in LEO are a lot more important than so-called > precious metals. That's true, though I think Kelly's question was aimed at gold because it's expensive on Earth now. But you ignored the tail end of this sentence: >> won't be bidding up the prices of these from Earth, which does impact? >> the Earth price, all else being equal. Why? >> or wherever will likely mean that space enterprises and space settlers? > > There won't be any space settlers. All the settling and > processing will be done by solid state. That's the speculation here. We'll see how it plays out over the next few years I hope. I recall some here saying the Pluto New Horizons' mission was a waste because we'd have faster craft already outpacing it by the time it got there. I don't recall if this was because the Singularity was going to hit or something else... Well, New Horizons should to flyby Pluto in a little over two years. I don't see any craft originating from Earth beating it there now. :) ? 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 Mon May 27 04:35:11 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 21:35:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1369629311.11447.YahooMailNeo@web126205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Saturday, May 25, 2013 6:58 PM Adrian Tymes wrote >On May 25, 2013 10:38 AM, "Eugen Leitl" wrote: >> In terms of launch costs, an order of magnitude improvement would be >> challenging. > > Launch costs have a lot more to do with operations > than physics at the moment. Yes. I think the launch industry is not near it's economic optimum (if that concept makes sense) in such a way that the driver is what are the physical limits of current technology. Rather, it's very from any economic optimum. 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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon May 27 04:38:23 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 21:38:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> Message-ID: <1369629503.77310.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Saturday, May 25, 2013 5:54 PM Alan Grimes wrote: > Eugen Leitl wrote: >>> or wherever will likely mean that space enterprises and space settlers >> >> There won't be any space settlers. All the settling and processing >> will be done by solid state. > > I find that statement profoundly offensive. It implies that some > agency will exterminate all other forms of life and modes of > existence. If you don't see what I'm getting at, swap out "solid > state" with "the Aryan race". I don't find it offensive, though it's merely speculative. It might happen that way, but no one here has a working crystal ball. ? Regards, Dan ?See my SF short story "Residue" at: http://www.amazon.com/Residue-ebook/dp/B00BS3T0RM/ -- US -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon May 27 04:41:56 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 21:41:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Space settlement/was Re: Gold In-Reply-To: References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> Message-ID: <1369629716.90728.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Saturday, May 25, 2013 10:38 PM Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 5:54 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: >>> Eugen Leitl wrote: >>> There won't be any space settlers. All the settling and processing >>> will be done by solid state. >> >> >> I find that statement profoundly offensive. It implies that some agency will >> exterminate all other forms of life and modes of existence. If you don't see >> what I'm getting at, swap out "solid state" with "the Aryan race". > > You are just looking for that old ax to grind. > > The point is that monkeys are harder to ship to the asteroids and to > other planets than "solid state" > > It would be the same kind of obvious to say "farming of the seas will > be done by fish" But we were talking about settlers -- not processing stuff. In other words, yes, it might be that asteroid mining happens via solid state only -- not humans (and no felids either). But do you if no humans will ever settle off world permanently? ? 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 Mon May 27 04:59:02 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 21:59:02 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: <51A1084B.9020700@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> Message-ID: <1369630742.94925.YahooMailNeo@web126201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Saturday, May 25, 2013 2:51 PM Anders Sandberg wrote: On 2013-05-25 18:52, Mirco Romanato wrote: >>> Their comments are also rather >>> sceptical, essentially boiling down to that exactly what is going on >>> cannot be determined until they are allowed to look inside. They did >>> their testing, that's it. >> >> And come out without noticing any sign of fraud? > > I think it was Randi who pointed out that scientists and engineers > are ?*really bad* at detecting fraud. They normally deal with > systems where there is no intention to fool the viewer, so they > fall for the most trivial tricks. This is why Randi, a magician, > easily uncovered many cases of fakery that left invited experts > dumbfounded. That's an important point. I think detecting fraud is a skill in itself and requires honing and experience. Randi was good at this because his being a magician in a way involves fooling people (in a benign way, since they want to be fooled as a form of entertainment:). ? Regards, Dan ?See my SF short story "Residue" at: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B00BS3T0RM -- Italy http://www.amazon.com/Residue-ebook/dp/B00BS3T0RM/ -- US -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon May 27 05:29:04 2013 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 22:29:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Gold Message-ID: On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 5:00 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Space is expensive. Space is really, really expensive. > It costs about 0.4 MUSD/kg of payload to Moon and > back, 0.5 MUSD/kg for Mars. There is reason for travel into space to always be expensive, but nothing like it is now. The energy cost for going to GEO on a moving cable space elevator is 14.75 kWh/kg. At ten cents a kWh, that's $1.475 per kg, at two cents it's 30 cents a kg. I can make a case with a Skylon derived vehicle and laser propulsion to get the cost to GEO well under $100/kg. That's low enough that power satellites can be used to make power at 2 cents per kWh using materials from earth. In such an environment the power satellites will eventually be using 1-10 million tons per year. I have my doubts that that more than a few million tons per year can be lifted off earth, even with propulsion lasers, without having nasty environmental consequences. That will drive the use of ETR, asteroids or lunar materials or both. In the long run it becomes possible to mine asteroids for gold and platinum group metals. I ran very rough analysis of how to do it here: http://www.htyp.org/Mining_Asteroids Keith From protokol2020 at gmail.com Mon May 27 07:55:25 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Mon, 27 May 2013 09:55:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: <1369630742.94925.YahooMailNeo@web126201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> <00c901ce58ec$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> Message-ID: We should be (soon if not already) able to calculate, the optimal fusor mix and configuration. It is quite very possible that the optimal is an energy sink. Likewise, we should be soon able to simulate any device inside a supercomputer, before building that device for real. Some would name this a Singularity and they would be right. On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 6:59 AM, Dan wrote: > On Saturday, May 25, 2013 2:51 PM Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-05-25 18:52, Mirco Romanato wrote: > >>> Their comments are also rather > >>> sceptical, essentially boiling down to that exactly what is going on > >>> cannot be determined until they are allowed to look inside. They did > >>> their testing, that's it. > >> > >> And come out without noticing any sign of fraud? > > > > I think it was Randi who pointed out that scientists and engineers > > are *really bad* at detecting fraud. They normally deal with > > systems where there is no intention to fool the viewer, so they > > fall for the most trivial tricks. This is why Randi, a magician, > > easily uncovered many cases of fakery that left invited experts > > dumbfounded. > > That's an important point. I think detecting fraud is a skill in itself > and requires honing and experience. Randi was good at this because his > being a magician in a way involves fooling people (in a benign way, since > they want to be fooled as a form of entertainment:). > > Regards, > > Dan > See my SF short story "Residue" at: > https://www.amazon.it/dp/B00BS3T0RM -- Italy > http://www.amazon.com/Residue-ebook/dp/B00BS3T0RM/ -- US > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 giogavir at yahoo.it Mon May 27 09:02:01 2013 From: giogavir at yahoo.it (giorgio gaviraghi) Date: Mon, 27 May 2013 10:02:01 +0100 (BST) Subject: [ExI] Planetary resources In-Reply-To: <1369629716.90728.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> <1369629716.90728.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1369645321.72840.YahooMailNeo@web171606.mail.ir2.yahoo.com> FYI Here is an official media item you can share (PDF download) ________________________________ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon May 27 14:25:32 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Mon, 27 May 2013 07:25:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper 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> Message-ID: <002d01ce5ae6$0c504c50$24f0e4f0$@rainier66.com> >. On Behalf Of Tomaz Kristan >. >.Likewise, we should be soon able to simulate any device inside a supercomputer, before building that device for real. Ja we can do that now. The nuclear testing treaties of the late 80s and early 90s were driven by the development of software which models a nuclear warhead with sufficient accuracy that it became unnecessary to actually build and test the designs. Good chance the commies figured out how to do the same, so pretty soon there was a handshake and we haven't needed to test nukes since then. These guys who are doing those tests now are doing actual physical device nuke tests now do that just to get attention. It works: they get a lot of attention that way. >.Some would name this a Singularity and they would be right. Hmmm, not so you would notice. We can model every aspect of nuclear particles and interactions, but not yet a human brain. The singularity occurs when we can make a sim of a brain, one that is smart enough to design a smarter version of itself. If we manage to sim human level intelligence, even if specifically in the area of software design only, that still isn't good enough: we have over 7 billion human brains on this planet with perhaps 10 to 20 million of them occupied with software development, and none of them are smart enough to write that sim, not even if they work together in big smart groups. One possibility is that such software can theoretically exist but that humans are just not quite smart enough to write it. This is something that I have been pondering a lot lately, and thinking about what we need to do if that is the case. We need some kind of sustainability for the long run, perhaps a few hundred to a few thousand years. Look at us; how long have we been debating the singularity right here? Twenty years now? We aren't any closer than we were then, other than computers are faster and better connected. It is possible that humans are just slightly too dumb to discover how to cause a singularity. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Mon May 27 14:39:55 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 27 May 2013 10:39:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Space settlement/was Re: Gold In-Reply-To: <1369629716.90728.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> <1369629716.90728.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 12:41 AM, Dan wrote: > But we were talking about settlers -- not processing stuff. In other words, > yes, it might be that asteroid mining happens via solid state only -- not > humans (and no felids either). But do you if no humans will ever settle off > world permanently? Oh... in that case, I cite US history that settlement will be done by the poor and criminals. Actually, at what point in history has anything been done by anyone other than the poor? :p From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon May 27 14:53:11 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 27 May 2013 07:53:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Space settlement In-Reply-To: References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> <1369629716.90728.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1369666391.45108.YahooMailNeo@web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Monday, May 27, 2013 10:39 AM Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 12:41 AM, Dan wrote: >> But we were talking about settlers -- not processing stuff. In other >> words, yes, it might be that asteroid mining happens via solid state >> only -- not humans (and no felids either). But do you if no humans >> will ever settle off world permanently? By the way, that should have been: "But do you believe no humans will ever settle off world permanently?" > Oh... in that case, I cite US history that settlement will be done > by the poor and criminals. And? > Actually, at what point in history has anything been done by anyone > other than the poor? ?:p I'm not sure that's so, but so? ? 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 Mon May 27 14:59:30 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 27 May 2013 07:59:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper 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> Message-ID: <1369666770.82803.YahooMailNeo@web126203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Monday, May 27, 2013 3:55 AM Tomaz Kristan wrote: > We should be (soon if not already) able to calculate, the optimal > fusor mix and configuration. It is quite very possible that the > optimal is an energy sink. Mayhap. > Likewise, we should be soon able to simulate any device inside a > supercomputer, before building that device for real. There might always exist, though, some gap between such simulations and the non-simulated device. > Some would name this a Singularity and they would be right. See above. I do think a singularity can happen without perfection in simulation. I think it merely requires the positive feedback loop between technological inputs and outputs. Simply having good enough simulations would, in my mind, do this. ? 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 anders at aleph.se Mon May 27 16:45:46 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 27 May 2013 17:45:46 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Are we too stupid? (Was: Cold fusion) In-Reply-To: <002d01ce5ae6$0c504c50$24f0e4f0$@rainier66.com> 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> Message-ID: <51A38DBA.2030408@aleph.se> On 2013-05-27 15:25, spike wrote: > > Look at us; how long have we been debating the singularity right > here? Twenty years now? We aren't any closer than we were then, > other than computers are faster and better connected. It is possible > that humans are just slightly too dumb to discover how to cause a > singularity. > > This is actually a really good question. How smart do you have to be in order to trigger a singularity? Toby Ord pointed out that there is a curious coincidence in much of our thinking. We (handwavy use of us in the community who think that intelligence explosions are real possibilities) tend to think there is some limit - dogs will not invent singularity tech no matter how much time [*] we give them, yet many of us think there is some takeoff point near current human mental and technical capacities. This limit is presumably set by the laws of nature (in particular, the laws of computational complexity). Yet our current state is totally contingent - it is happening right now, and was not around in the past nor will it be in the future unless we manage to stagnate. So why are we assuming the takeoff point is near this tiny little window of capacity we are having right now? One could imagine Greek philosophers talking about Aristotle's "talking tools" and the progress over in Alexandria coming up with an intelligence explosion concept, yet clearly being far away from any takeoff points. Some possible answers might be that (1) the takeoff point is either far below or above us (see footnote below). (2) The question is badly posed, or the concepts used are verbiage. (3) there is an anthropic factor were beings who talk around singularities tend to be found just before them. (4) there is no such thing as a takeoff point. (5) we are living in an unusual era. [*] Give simple animal enough time to evolve in the right environment, and they may of course become intelligent, develop tech, and have a singularity. So framing the question right turns out to be really hard: how do we distinguish between waiting for natural evolution plus individual efforts as a result of it, having some resources and intelligence and using those, and other methods like making random trial-and-error? One possible answer to the question might simply be that it is wrongly posed: give enough hydrogen some time, and it will turn into singularity creatures. I suspect re-framing the question so it becomes well posed will be rather useful for improving our thinking about the topic. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon May 27 17:22:11 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 27 May 2013 13:22:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> <20130526100008.GD2380@leitl.org> <51A22FE3.2080601@verizon.net> <20130526173235.GG2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 4:43 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Physics informs feasibility. Technology informs > economics. > > Space travel can get a lot cheaper than it is now. > Using current prices to argue economics is invalid. ### This is irrelevant. Whatever technology reduces the cost of human space travel, the same technology also reduces the cost of solid state creature travel by the same factor, or even higher. Solid state/non biological beings will always have an economic advantage over humans in space, an advantage so massive as to preclude meaningful competition against non-biologicals in terms of the ability to settle space. Just as Eugen says, it will be upload, or stay home. At best. Rafal From protokol2020 at gmail.com Mon May 27 18:16:09 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Mon, 27 May 2013 20:16:09 +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: Here is my reply to spike as well. I think, we are closer to the techno Singularity than almost anybody thinks. We have this one tool, (super)computer simulations. Except for the chaotic processes they are already quite good at - and are better every day. In not so distant future, Apple will be able to afford simulating 1000 slightly changed version of its top product. Together with the production lines or parts of the above two. Somehow I don't think it will be Apple who will lead. It will be thousands of firms which will have to go for this high speed rat race of computerized re-innovations on monthly, weekly and then daily basis. We will not need to wait to a next car model for months anymore. The metamorphosis of the artifacts we know will be dramatically accelerated. This goes for chairs, phones, planes, 3D printers, blocks of code ... This is the way, the Singularity is quite near. Maybe not a Singularity we've expected so long, but something what will swiftly become "the real Singularity". http://www.worldtribune.com/2013/05/27/woe-is-not-us-from-one-new-energy-revolution-shale-gas-to-another-fire-ice/ (This link contains the essence. One revolution (shale oil) just surprised us, the next is on the horizon. ) On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 6:45 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-05-27 15:25, spike wrote: > > ** ** Look at us; how long have we been debating the singularity right > here? Twenty years now? We aren?t any closer than we were then, other > than computers are faster and better connected. It is possible that humans > are just slightly too dumb to discover how to cause a singularity.**** > > > This is actually a really good question. How smart do you have to be in > order to trigger a singularity? > > Toby Ord pointed out that there is a curious coincidence in much of our > thinking. We (handwavy use of us in the community who think that > intelligence explosions are real possibilities) tend to think there is some > limit - dogs will not invent singularity tech no matter how much time [*] > we give them, yet many of us think there is some takeoff point near current > human mental and technical capacities. This limit is presumably set by the > laws of nature (in particular, the laws of computational complexity). Yet > our current state is totally contingent - it is happening right now, and > was not around in the past nor will it be in the future unless we manage to > stagnate. So why are we assuming the takeoff point is near this tiny little > window of capacity we are having right now? One could imagine Greek > philosophers talking about Aristotle's "talking tools" and the progress > over in Alexandria coming up with an intelligence explosion concept, yet > clearly being far away from any takeoff points. > > Some possible answers might be that (1) the takeoff point is either far > below or above us (see footnote below). (2) The question is badly posed, or > the concepts used are verbiage. (3) there is an anthropic factor were > beings who talk around singularities tend to be found just before them. (4) > there is no such thing as a takeoff point. (5) we are living in an unusual > era. > > > [*] Give simple animal enough time to evolve in the right environment, and > they may of course become intelligent, develop tech, and have a > singularity. So framing the question right turns out to be really hard: how > do we distinguish between waiting for natural evolution plus individual > efforts as a result of it, having some resources and intelligence and using > those, and other methods like making random trial-and-error? One possible > answer to the question might simply be that it is wrongly posed: give > enough hydrogen some time, and it will turn into singularity creatures. I > suspect re-framing the question so it becomes well posed will be rather > useful for improving our thinking about the topic. > > > -- > 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 painlord2k at libero.it Mon May 27 19:45:48 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Mon, 27 May 2013 21:45:48 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: <005a01ce5a22$0bee2f30$23ca8d90$@rainier66.com> References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> <20130526113104.GE2380@leitl.org> <005a01ce5a22$0bee2f30$23ca8d90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <51A3B7EC.6010004@libero.it> Il 26/05/2013 17:02, spike ha scritto: > I know the classic argument: the theories could be wrong, being just > maps rather than the territory. But the notion of cold fusion as has > been promoted would be an error of the magnitude of a city the size of > Calcutta existing somewhere in Wyoming, having been overlooked or > omitted by all the mapmakers everywhere everywhen. Maybe the current notion of cold fusion is wrong and ether is some other phenomenon not easily produced naturally. If I remember correctly, the first time the idea of LASER was proposed to the founders of quantum mechanics by a young students/resercher they laugh at him and told him he didn't understand how quantum mechanics worked. > If it existed out > there, one would expect occasional anomalous observations to signal a > problem with the maps. And apparently there are, but if the bias is to ignore them or explain them as experimental errors, random incidents, etc. you will not find anything new. When Fleming found mold over his petri dishes, he didn't throw out the dishes, he put them under the microscope. If he trowed out the dishes, there would not be antibiotics. > It?s bogus Tomaz, phony as a three dollar bill. Don?t invest in it. In scientific literature there are a lot of strange episodes, in the last century, involving metals and hydrogen. But until no one put the dots together, avoid the hubris to know what is happening (F&P big mistake) and running around before having the ability to replicate the experiment, things do not progress. Now, apart for Rossi, we have this: http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/06/mit-lenr-device-publicly-running-for-6.html A scam this also? Mirco From spike at rainier66.com Tue May 28 01:29:38 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Mon, 27 May 2013 18:29:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] memorial day Message-ID: <00d401ce5b42$d3176ce0$794646a0$@rainier66.com> RIP Mr. Brown Today is Memorial Day in the US, when we honor our deceased, with special attention to those who served in uniform. As I was walking past the local cemetery, people were milling about, so I went in and began looking at the various headstones. I found one grave that had apparently no visitors for some time. The headstone read "Joseph Brown, courageous soldier, faithful husband, loving father." His dates indicated he served in World War 2, survived and lived a long life afterwards. I was moved to do something I have never done: I went to the sidewalk vendor and bought a modest spray of flowers and placed them on that grave, snapped a sharp salute, then wandered on. I was standing nearby a few minutes later when a car drove up and an elderly woman got out with a younger man. They walked up to the grave where I had just placed the flowers. The woman saw them and dabbed her eyes with a tissue. She exclcaimed, "I'll bet those came from my so-called FRIEND, the sleazy BITCH! Sure as hell, she was cheating with your lying bastard father!" . . . . . . . . The true part of the story: today is Memorial Day and I really was out for a walk past the local cemetery. The rest of it, I was just having a little fun. Someone somewhere has to make up the jokes. I thought of sending it to Readers Digest, but thought it might be a little edgy for their publication. Let's try an experiment: send this around to your mailing list friends, see if we can make it go viral. {8^D spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 29 03:08:58 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 28 May 2013 23:08:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <51A3B9B0.1050301@verizon.net> References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> <20130526100008.GD2380@leitl.org> <51A22FE3.2080601@verizon.net> <20130526173235.GG2380@leitl.org> <51A3B9B0.1050301@verizon.net> Message-ID: On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 3:53 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: > Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> >> ### This is irrelevant. Whatever technology reduces the cost of human >> space travel, the same technology also reduces the cost of solid state >> creature travel by the same factor, or even higher. Solid state/non >> biological beings will always have an economic advantage over humans >> in space, an advantage so massive as to preclude meaningful >> competition against non-biologicals in terms of the ability to settle >> space. > > >> Just as Eugen says, it will be upload, or stay home. At best. > > > So what? > > Because uploading renders everything meaningless, my only available option > is to explore space as a regular being. So therefore all questions of > economics are moot because the decision is DO IT! regardless of how much it > costs. Indeed, the only relevant question is which star to travel to. =P > > Are you going to try to stop me, punk? ### Laws of economics will stop beings like you. You won't have the money to pay for the tickets, or to rent, much less buy real estate up there. Beings that can move and think a thousand times faster than you will settle everywhere, and there won't be any unclaimed matter for you to use, outside of legacy jurisdictions left for flesher use. Rafal > > -- > NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE > > Powers are not rights. > -- Rafal Smigrodzki, MD-PhD Senior Scientist, Gencia Corporation 706 B Forest St. Charlottesville, VA 22903 tel: (434) 295-4800 fax: (434) 295-4951 This electronic message transmission contains information from the biotechnology firm of Gencia Corporation which may be confidential or privileged. The information is intended to be for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, be aware that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information is prohibited. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please notify us by telephone (434-295-4800) or by electronic mail (fportell at genciabiotech.com) immediately. From ALONZOTG at verizon.net Wed May 29 03:40:05 2013 From: ALONZOTG at verizon.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Tue, 28 May 2013 23:40:05 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> <20130526100008.GD2380@leitl.org> <51A22FE3.2080601@verizon.net> <20130526173235.GG2380@leitl.org> <51A3B9B0.1050301@verizon.net> Message-ID: <51A57895.9090803@verizon.net> Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 3:53 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: >> So what? >> >> Because uploading renders everything meaningless, my only available option >> is to explore space as a regular being. So therefore all questions of >> economics are moot because the decision is DO IT! regardless of how much it >> costs. Indeed, the only relevant question is which star to travel to. =P >> >> Are you going to try to stop me, punk? > ### Laws of economics will stop beings like you. You won't have the > money to pay for the tickets, or to rent, much less buy real estate up > there. Beings that can move and think a thousand times faster than you > will settle everywhere, and there won't be any unclaimed matter for > you to use, outside of legacy jurisdictions left for flesher use. That does not compute. Are you really telling me that out of one hundred billion star systems in the Milky Way galaxy that the UPLOADERS can't begrudge anyone else a single measly planet even when it is essential to survival? Why is it that you seem to expect me to do nothing while the future you describe comes to pass? With talk like that I should not have any trouble at all recruiting every sentient non-uploader on the planet to stop you by any means available. -- NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE Powers are not rights. From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed May 29 15:54:46 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 11:54:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The smallest story ever told Message-ID: IBM has made the world's smallest movie made from single atoms called "A Boy And His Atom":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSCX78-8-q0 John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed May 29 20:07:23 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 13:07:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> <20130526100008.GD2380@leitl.org> <51A22FE3.2080601@verizon.net> <20130526173235.GG2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: On May 27, 2013 10:23 AM, "Rafal Smigrodzki" wrote: > On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 4:43 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > Physics informs feasibility. Technology informs > > economics. > > > > Space travel can get a lot cheaper than it is now. > > Using current prices to argue economics is invalid. > > ### This is irrelevant. Whatever technology reduces the cost of human > space travel, the same technology also reduces the cost of solid state > creature travel by the same factor, or even higher. Solid state/non > biological beings will always have an economic advantage over humans > in space, an advantage so massive as to preclude meaningful > competition against non-biologicals in terms of the ability to settle > space. Not necessarily. They may have a large ratio, but let us say it costs $10,000 to lift a human and tools to do a job, but only $1 to lift a robot and tools. That's a 10,000:1 difference - massive indeed - but if designing and building that robot costs $20,000 - quite plausible in some cases - while the human already has the necessary tools, the human is cheaper. There is also the problem that settling space, by definition, requires biologicals (or sentient AIs, which don't exist yet), to be in space. A mine, a factory...these things are not settlements. Ultimately the resources are consumed for the benefit of the biologicals (or AIs)...and if they're all still down the gravity well, a lot of mass is going to be dropped down it. Getting them into space might be worthwhile just to eliminate that. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Wed May 29 20:47:38 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 22:47:38 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> <20130526100008.GD2380@leitl.org> <51A22FE3.2080601@verizon.net> <20130526173235.GG2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: <51A6696A.6050403@libero.it> Il 29/05/2013 22:07, Adrian Tymes ha scritto: > Not necessarily. They may have a large ratio, but > let us say it costs $10,000 to lift a human and tools > to do a job, but only $1 to lift a robot and tools. > That's a 10,000:1 difference - massive indeed - but > if designing and building that robot costs $20,000 > - quite plausible in some cases - while the human > already has the necessary tools, the human is > cheaper. Or just the cost become negligible compared to the the wealth available. Mirco From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 29 20:49:55 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 16:49:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <51A57895.9090803@verizon.net> References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> <20130526100008.GD2380@leitl.org> <51A22FE3.2080601@verizon.net> <20130526173235.GG2380@leitl.org> <51A3B9B0.1050301@verizon.net> <51A57895.9090803@verizon.net> Message-ID: On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 11:40 PM, Alan Grimes wrote: > Are you really telling me that out of one hundred billion star systems in > the Milky Way galaxy that the UPLOADERS can't begrudge anyone else a single > measly planet even when it is essential to survival? ### I cannot predict the motivations of uploaded human-like intelligences evolving at 1000 times our speed. If they carve out a reservation for fleshers, travel there would be still on their sufferance which is probably not the boldly-going adventure you may have in mind. ------------------- > > Why is it that you seem to expect me to do nothing while the future you > describe comes to pass? With talk like that I should not have any trouble at > all recruiting every sentient non-uploader on the planet to stop you by any > means available. ### Coordination is difficult. I doubt that fleshers will be able to stave off the coming transition. It would take unprecedented levels of long-term planet-wide cooperation to keep the AI genie in the bottle, not just today but for all eternity. AI or uploads, one way or another the human era will draw to a close, if not this time round, then in 100 or in 1000 years. Rafal From atymes at gmail.com Wed May 29 21:29:48 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 14:29:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <51A6696A.6050403@libero.it> References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> <20130526100008.GD2380@leitl.org> <51A22FE3.2080601@verizon.net> <20130526173235.GG2380@leitl.org> <51A6696A.6050403@libero.it> Message-ID: On May 29, 2013 1:49 PM, "Mirco Romanato" wrote: > Il 29/05/2013 22:07, Adrian Tymes ha scritto: > > Not necessarily. They may have a large ratio, but > > let us say it costs $10,000 to lift a human and tools > > to do a job, but only $1 to lift a robot and tools. > > That's a 10,000:1 difference - massive indeed - but > > if designing and building that robot costs $20,000 > > - quite plausible in some cases - while the human > > already has the necessary tools, the human is > > cheaper. > > Or just the cost become negligible compared to the the wealth available. Exactly. :) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 29 21:30:00 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 14:30:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> <20130526100008.GD2380@leitl.org> <51A22FE3.2080601@verizon.net> <20130526173235.GG2380@leitl.org> Message-ID: <008201ce5cb3$ad49f650$07dde2f0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes . > On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 4:43 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: . >..Not necessarily. They may have a large ratio, but let us say it costs $10,000 to lift a human and tools to do a job, but only $1 to lift a robot and tools. I don't think the ratio is 1000 to 1, but it is big. Any time you build a payload for a non-man-rated launcher, you only need to be as careful as the value of the payload and rocket. If you design anything that is going into the bay of a space shuttle, it is a paaaainnn in the aaaaaasssss. All the hoops you need to jump thru, all the safety reviews, oy, not worth it. Control systems are getting sophisticated enough now that manned space flight doesn't make much sense anymore. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed May 29 22:04:46 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan Ust) Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 18:04:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Arkyd Message-ID: <76455FDE-564E-4BF3-8367-869099EB70B3@yahoo.com> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1458134548/arkyd-a-space-telescope-for-everyone-0/description Comments? Regards, Dan See my SF short story "Residue" at: http://www.amazon.com/Residue-ebook/dp/B00BS3T0RM/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed May 29 22:24:14 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 15:24:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <008201ce5cb3$ad49f650$07dde2f0$@rainier66.com> References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> <20130526100008.GD2380@leitl.org> <51A22FE3.2080601@verizon.net> <20130526173235.GG2380@leitl.org> <008201ce5cb3$ad49f650$07dde2f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On May 29, 2013 2:43 PM, "spike" wrote: > Control systems are getting sophisticated enough now that manned space flight doesn?t make much sense anymore. Agreed. At most, it might make sense to transport humans to fixed installations (such as colonies) where they might be cheaper/better for certain functions over the long run than robots...if only we had any. (The ISS doesn't qualify.) On anything that needs to worry about delta-v much, they're cargo. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu May 30 01:39:40 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 18:39:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: <008201ce5cb3$ad49f650$07dde2f0$@rainier66.com> References: <20130524091826.GK2380@leitl.org> <1369422045.18488.YahooMailNeo@web126202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <20130525173710.GT2380@leitl.org> <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> <20130526100008.GD2380@leitl.org> <51A22FE3.2080601@verizon.net> <20130526173235.GG2380@leitl.org> <008201ce5cb3$ad49f650$07dde2f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1369877980.67207.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Wednesday, May 29, 2013 5:30 PM spike wrote: > On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 4:43 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: >>?.Not necessarily. ?They may have a large ratio, but >> let us say it costs $10,000 to lift a human and tools >> to do a job, but only $1 to lift a robot and tools? > > I don?t think the ratio is 1000 to 1, but it is big. ?Any > time you build a payload for a non-man-rated launcher, > you only need to be as careful as the value of the payload > and rocket. ?If you design anything that is going into the > bay of a space shuttle, it is a paaaainnn in the aaaaaasssss. > ?All the hoops you need to jump thru, all the safety reviews, > oy, not worth it. ?Control systems are getting sophisticated > enough now that manned space flight doesn?t make much sense > anymore. There's manned or peopled spaceflight for tourism and settlement. Those are different balls of wax. Also, one thing that has happened here, especially with the demise of the ridic Shuttle, is separating, for the most part, people and cargo on missions. Then, even let's say there's law of nature that prevents human spaceflight from ever coming down in price ever, this might mean that cargo can still keep coming down in price, which makes it fair easier to put stuff on orbit or, more generally, in space for humans to use when they fly up in the more expensive boosters. By more robustly separating humans and cargo, this can happen, depending on what it is. (Also, by getting resources from off Earth and putting some or all of the fabrication there too, the same result: it means it gets cheaper to build silly things like space habitats for those overpriced humans to use -- even if the lion's share of the effort is devoted to other things, such as building a Dyson thingy.:) ? 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 atymes at gmail.com Thu May 30 05:38:11 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 22:38:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Arkyd In-Reply-To: <76455FDE-564E-4BF3-8367-869099EB70B3@yahoo.com> References: <76455FDE-564E-4BF3-8367-869099EB70B3@yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 3:04 PM, Dan Ust wrote: > > http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1458134548/arkyd-a-space-telescope-for-everyone-0/description > > Comments? > It's about time. And hey, not even 1 day and they've already broken 25% of their goal. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kanzure at gmail.com Thu May 30 05:52:16 2013 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Thu, 30 May 2013 00:52:16 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Arkyd In-Reply-To: References: <76455FDE-564E-4BF3-8367-869099EB70B3@yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 12:38 AM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > It's about time. And hey, not even 1 day and they've already > broken 25% of their goal. > It's a common tactic on kickstarter to dump in your own money to pass that threshold. I wouldn't read anything into that. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 30 12:36:20 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 30 May 2013 14:36:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Gold In-Reply-To: References: <51A13323.3040806@verizon.net> <20130526100008.GD2380@leitl.org> <51A22FE3.2080601@verizon.net> <20130526173235.GG2380@leitl.org> <008201ce5cb3$ad49f650$07dde2f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130530123620.GF2380@leitl.org> On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 03:24:14PM -0700, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On May 29, 2013 2:43 PM, "spike" wrote: > > Control systems are getting sophisticated enough now that manned space > flight doesn?t make much sense anymore. > > Agreed. At most, it might make sense to transport > humans to fixed installations (such as colonies) > where they might be cheaper/better for certain > functions over the long run than robots...if only we On the short run eliminating relativistic latency to teleoperated hardware might make sense (though not for the Moon). On the long run, robots will execute plans much better, so less and less guidance is needed. > had any. (The ISS doesn't qualify.) On anything > that needs to worry about delta-v much, they're Need for life support and high delta v don't mix. Long-duration microgravity high-rad and monkeys don't mix. Large temperature operation regime doesn't mix. Lack of volatiles don't mix. If you want to travel, convert to solid state. > cargo. From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 30 14:27:34 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 30 May 2013 07:27:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] double plus good article by dan geer: the internet is no place for critical infrastructure Message-ID: <00b501ce5d41$d490a630$7db1f290$@rainier66.com> WOW what a GREAT article! http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2479677 Do check out the summary: SUMMING UP Risk is a consequence of dependence. Because of shared dependence, aggregate societal dependence on the Internet is not estimable. If dependencies are not estimable, then they will be underestimated. If they are underestimated, then they will not be made secure over the long run, only over the short. As the risks become increasingly unlikely to appear, the interval between events will grow longer. As the latency between events grows, the assumption that safety has been achieved will also grow, fueling increased dependence in what is now a positive feedback loop. Spike comment: Any phenomenon described in terms of feedback loops will resonate with all controls engineers everywhere. {8-] What Geer is describing sure as heck looks to me like simultaneously suppressing negative feedback and creating positive feedback, a sure path to eventual instability and catastrophic failure. Check out the rest of the summary: .If the critical infrastructures are those physical and cyber-based systems essential to the minimum operations of the economy and government, and if leading cyber-security operational management says risk is growing steadily, then do we divert more of our collective power to forcing security improvements that will be sharply diseconomic, or do we preserve fallbacks of various sorts in anticipation of events that seem more likely to happen as time passes? Does "use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without" have any meaning for us? Is centralizing authority the answer, or is avoiding further dependence the better strategy? Can we imagine starting over in any real sense, or is balkanization not just for nations but for critical sectors as well? Is the creative destruction that is free enterprise now to be focused on remaking what are normally the steadying flywheels of American society, by which I mean government and other capital-intensive industries? Do we celebrate the individual who still prefers to fix things he or she already has, or are those individuals to be herded into national health information networks, Smart Grids, and cars that drive themselves? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu May 30 15:58:03 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 30 May 2013 08:58:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] double plus good article by dan geer: the internet is no place for critical infrastructure In-Reply-To: <00b501ce5d41$d490a630$7db1f290$@rainier66.com> References: <00b501ce5d41$d490a630$7db1f290$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 7:27 AM, spike wrote: > WOW what a GREAT article!**** > > ** ** > > http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2479677**** > > ** ** > > Do check out the summary:**** > > ** ** > > *SUMMING UP* > > Risk is a consequence of dependence. Because of shared dependence, > aggregate societal dependence on the Internet is not estimable. If > dependencies are not estimable, then they will be underestimated. If they > are underestimated, then they will not be made secure over the long run, > only over the short. As the risks become increasingly unlikely to appear, > the interval between events will grow longer. As the latency between events > grows, the assumption that safety has been achieved will also grow, fueling > increased dependence in what is now a positive feedback loop?**** > > ** ** > > Spike comment: Any phenomenon described in terms of feedback loops will > resonate with all controls engineers everywhere. {8-] What Geer is > describing sure as heck looks to me like simultaneously suppressing > negative feedback and creating positive feedback, a sure path to eventual > instability and catastrophic failure. > Unfortunately, the logic does not hold. For "the Internet", you could substitute "the weather", "gravity", "physical security of the US" (9-11 was a classic case of such an event, when the risk was underestimated), or any of a long list of things where safety is mostly assumed. Note that the above logic dismisses any possibility of an analysis proving things secure, and instead assumes that if we depend on it, it's insecure, with logic that does not care which "it" it applies to. Seriously. How do we "know" the sky won't be blanketed with ash by a supervolcano tomorrow? Because there has been a long latency since the last such event. According to the above analysis, no other factor is relevant. Is centralizing authority the answer, or is avoiding further dependence the > better strategy? > No. That is to say, the optimal strategy is neither of the above. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu May 30 17:55:24 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 30 May 2013 13:55:24 -0400 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 2013-05-27 15:25, spike wrote: > Look at us; how long have we been debating the singularity right here? > Twenty years now? We aren?t any closer than we were then, > On a geological timescale 20 years, or even 200,000 is considered instantaneous. And I don't know when the singularity will happen but I think its safe to say that we're 20 years closer to it now than we were 20 years ago. It is in the very nature of a singularity that there is little evidence for a dramatic increase in some quantity or quality until just before it happens, so whenever the singularity happens it will come as a great surprise even to those who know that a singularity can only come as a great surprise, otherwise it wouldn't be a singularity. > other than computers are faster and better connected. > Other than that Mrs. Lincoln how did you like the play? > It is possible that humans are just slightly too dumb to discover how to > cause a singularity. > We probably are too stupid to cause a singularity, but our machines won't be. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ilia.stambler at gmail.com Thu May 30 17:42:07 2013 From: ilia.stambler at gmail.com (Ilia Stambler) Date: Thu, 30 May 2013 20:42:07 +0300 Subject: [ExI] HELP DR. COLES! Message-ID: *HELP DR. COLES!** * **** Please alert your friends ? Help Dr. Steve Coles, head of Gerontology Research Group at UCLA, who is fighting his cancer! ? Our own continued health and longevity may depend on Steve continuing his work.*** Click here to help: *http://youcaring.com/SteveColesAdvancedTreatment * Since founding the Los Angeles Gerontology Research Group in 1990, Dr. L. Stephen Coles M.D., Ph.D., has worked tirelessly to develop new ways to slow and ultimately reverse human aging.* *BRIEF summary of his work:* *L. Stephen Coles, M.D. Ph.D* * ? Cited in more than 250 scientific articles* * ? Profiled as notable person in Wikipedia* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Stephen_Coles * ? Featured in Wired Magazine Nov. 2012* * ? Many other contributions to aging research and advancing long, healthy life* * Steve Coles was diagnosed with Adenocarcinoma (Pancreatic Cancer) at the head of the pancreas on Christmas Eve of last year. Pancreatic cancer is particularly insidious. He underwent a Whipple (Surgical) Procedure on January 3rd that produced a beneficial result. * * ** We now have the opportunity to carry out a personalized chemo treatment regimen created by a start-up company called Champions Oncology in Baltimore, MD, USA, affiliated with the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (*http://www.championsoncology.com/).* Champions is a world class organization that will analyze the tissue sample that has already been sent to them. **Then, a custom treatment program will be prescribed for Steve based on a mouse model, since each tumor is unique and pure test tube trials have not been shown to be effective**.* * Thanks to a joint international effort, a 60 percent reduction in cost was successfully negotiated, and currently $10,000 are needed for Dr. Coles to undergo the personalized testing and treatment procedure by Champions Oncology.* *NOW, YOU CAN HELP IN TWO WAYS:* * * *(1) CONTRIBUTE TO THIS FUND * *To pay the cost of Dr. Coles? treatment* http://youcaring.com/SteveColesAdvancedTreatment * * * Time is of the essence. The good people at Champions Oncology have agreed to begin the analysis immediately.* * Steve Coles needs your support.* *It may make THE difference. Please dig deep and support him by contributing to the fund.* *(2) SEND REFERRALS TO CHAMPIONS ONCOLOGY* * * * As a part of the reimbursement process, assist Champions Oncology in their outreach. Please think of any oncologists who may refer patients to Champions Oncology, then contact any of the individuals listed below so we may get life-saving information about Champions into their hands. Champions is particularly well set up to accommodate physicians and patients in the Eastern U.S., Germany, France, Brazil, and Japan.* *Contacts:* *1. Edouard Debonneuil* *edebonneuil at yahoo.fr* * France Skype ID: edebonneuil* *2. Daniel Wuttke* *D.A.Wuttke at liverpool.ac.uk* * Germany Skype: admiral_atlan* *3. Ilia Stambler* *ilia.stambler at gmail.com* * Israel Skype: iliastam* *4. John M. (Johnny) Adams* *JAdams at AgingInterventionFoundation.org* *U.S.** (949) 922-9786 Skype: agingintervention* * ***** Help Dr. Steve Coles! Our own continued health and longevity may depend on Steve continuing his work.**** *Forward this message to your friends!* *http://longevityalliance.org/help-dr-coles/ * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 31 11:15:29 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 31 May 2013 13:15:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On 25 May 2013 05:56, spike wrote: > A local Mandarin speaker made a comment yesterday that really got the > wheels spinning. The topic was the tonal aspect of Chinese languages. She > commented that the tonal aspects to pronunciation makes Chinese easier to > understand in some ways than English, because the pitch and transition > conveys meaning about the word, helping differentiate it from other similar > sounding words. > What if you are tone-deaf? This is the prob with Chinese words in Japanese (when "On" pronounced). There are no tones in Japanese, so you end up with innumerable homophones. Spoken English, btw, used to be a nightmare for me even when I already had a good command of passive written English, Shakespeare or Chaucer included. Even today, background noise, poor audio res, accents and slurry speaking make me wish for undertitles. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 31 11:17:25 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 31 May 2013 13:17:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On 25 May 2013 11:07, BillK wrote: > after which their brain begins to set in the adult format. Ideally > from when they are learning to talk, about age 1 to 2. It seems that > once they know two languages, it becomes easier to learn more, even > with an adult brain. Yup, I can confirm that out of direct experimental evidence with my son. Yet, you may suffer of a slightly smaller vocabulary and articulatedness in either language than you would have otherwise. After all, there are just so many words you can learn by unit of time... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 31 12:54:46 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 31 May 2013 14:54:46 +0200 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On 25 May 2013 18:09, BillK wrote: > German is also a rather different language. > A cool strategy, IMHO, for those who would like to speak European - something which is not an unattainable goal, and was rather common in the Belle Epoque - is to be Italian mother tongue and be raised bilingual with German - Latin and Ancient Greek going without saying in your high school programmes. 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. Another point about learning a new language is the motto 'Use it or lose > it!' > Learning is much easier if you can speak it every day with a native > speaker. > Book learning isn't much good on its own. Depends. I cannot really speak or write Spanish - it is plagued with odd pairs and false friends with Italian, and the similarity of the languages is highly confusing, in that while they share a large part of their vocabulary they are idiomatically very different -, but am very happy that I need not resort to translation and dubbing when reading or watching things in the language, so that I can appreciate the original writing style, acting, etc. This I mainly derived from going on reading books, novels and documents in the language even though at the beginning my understanding was limited and uncertain. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 31 13:03:20 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 31 May 2013 15:03:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: <51A0EC3A.6010804@aleph.se> References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> <51A0EC3A.6010804@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 25 May 2013 18:52, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Still, learning languages can be so fun. You learn much more than just > words: they do embody cultures and ways of thinking, and they are beautiful > stylistic instruments. Absolutely. And getting back on-topic, what about technology? Technology has been a powerfuk driver towards monoglottism in innumerable fashions, but once real-time human-level translation becomes ubiquitous, what is really the point of drafting a paper in English rather than in Milanese dialect once Mongolian readers can appreciate it in their native language anyway? -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 31 13:15:44 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 31 May 2013 15:15:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: <002501ce59d9$433a90d0$c9afb270$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> <51A0EC3A.6010804@aleph.se> <002001ce59cd$87a30a60$96e91f20$@rainier66.com> <002501ce59d9$433a90d0$c9afb270$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On 26 May 2013 08:21, spike wrote: > Of course languages have all that cultural stuff which we don't know how to > do, expressions and so forth. That would be lost; we would get only very > literal translations. Any translation is a betrayal, and provided that it matters (say, with poetry) can at best suggest the style or aesthetic value or music of the original, but we are already suffering from that, and machine translation need not be especially more literal than human-made ones... Besides the "semantic" AI angle, we can already vastly improve the quality of machine translation by resorting to brute force, namely to an ever increasing dictionary not just of words and of their flexions, but of entire locutions and sentences the likely meaning of which can also be weighed in view of the possible context after a very large library of hand-made translations. It is my understanding that much of all that is already being investigated and developed. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 31 13:16:32 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 31 May 2013 15:16:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> <51A0EC3A.6010804@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 26 May 2013 09:08, Giulio Prisco wrote: > Without understanding that this can be perceived as very rude and > offensive by foreigners trying to practice a language. Last time this > happened to me I replied with an extremely rude variant of "fuck you > asshole" in a third language foreign to the locals. Indeed. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Fri May 31 14:06:12 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Fri, 31 May 2013 07:06:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Space Gnats (Was: Re: Gold) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1370009172.67064.YahooMailNeo@web165002.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Eugen Leitl commented: > If you want to travel, convert to solid state. Indeed, and one of the best things about it is, once you're solid-state, and once the infrastructure is in place, you can literally travel at the speed of light. That will be an interesting and strange scenario:? Matter being s-l-o-w-l-y shifted around the solar system, like elephants hauling felled logs, while minds can flit between them like gnats.? Space gnats. Is this feasible?? Or have I been reading too much Greg Egan?? (would the power and other requirements be too high to make beaming minds around the place, encoded on lasers, a practical thing?) Ben Zaiboc From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Fri May 31 19:30:27 2013 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 31 May 2013 12:30:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> <51A0EC3A.6010804@aleph.se> Message-ID: I remember being at the Missionary Training Center for the LDS Church in Provo, Utah, and discussing with the other trainees, about what languages they were learning, and which were the most challenging. Korean seemed to top the list, due to pronunciation and tonal inflections. I have a pilot friend who spent two years as a church volunteer in Korea, and he told me that new missionaries could quite easily accidentally say something very embarrassing, to the delight of the Korean church members. Spike, if you want your son to *really* be proficient in a language, have him convert! LOL Spike wrote: If that isn't what he said, it sure sounded like that. Spanish is really good for sounding sexy. My fear is that if my son learns Spanish and goes around the high school making comments like that one, he will spend his high school years copulating rather than studying. >> A goodhearted nerd having a Don Juan for a son! The horrors!!! I can just imagine you tearing through his room, with your wife chasing after you, demanding to know if you are looking for drugs or porn, "No, Shelly!" "I am looking for RosettaStone Spanish language learning dvd's or software!" ; ) And when I hear your son is headed to community college on a full scholarship, I will think, "poor Spike, he failed, and so because of his boy's relatively low 3.5 gpa, due to never studying, and also from getting several girl's pregnant (the babies adopted by MIT alumni, who could not have children of their own), the kid has ruined his future!" He will go on to only become a Silicon Valley billionaire in the single digits, but oh, so much lost potential, due to chasing skirts! lol You will go to your grave/dewar thinking about what could have been, if only you could have kept him away from the carnal temptations, which come from learning the accursed language of seducers, Spanish! It just occurred to me, I should start studying Spanish... John ; ) P.S. In Mormon singles circles, guys who speak Spanish are a dime a dozen, due to the missionary program, but if a man can speak French, the women just melt... All my pals who served French missions did very well when it came to finding a very "easy on the eyes" wife. Spike, add French to your list of contraband languages, which your son must not learn! lol But I will say this, if an alpha male gringo in a Mormon singles group (and these are big groups) speaks Spanish, and there is a very beautiful/wonderful Mexican/Latin-American gal there, they do tend to gravitate to each other. And this sort of thing does create some controversy among parents (and even peers), when they want their children to marry within their culture/race. But 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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 31 22:54:51 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 31 May 2013 15:54:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] chinese synthesis In-Reply-To: References: <00de01ce58fb$e5d39f50$b17addf0$@rainier66.com> <015901ce595c$3a544e70$aefceb50$@rainier66.com> <51A0EC3A.6010804@aleph.se> Message-ID: <1370040891.95020.YahooMailNeo@web126204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> I haven't followed this thread closely, but with children I've heard exposure to sounds from other languages at an early age helps them to be able to produce sounds in that language. (As a native English speaker with limited fluency in German and Norwegian, I've come across problems being able to discern and reproduce sounds that aren't typical of my idiolect or of the dialects I'm most familiar with. Madarin is a good example of this, where I've taken pains to pick up a few words and phrases and both discerning and producing the sounds. This involves much attention. I never pursued it for long because of the effort -- versus, say, the effort of trying to become more fluent in French or Italian.) This would only help, of course, with sound perception and not with vocabulary and grammar. Wasn't there a company that did the sort of "Baby Mozart" thing for this (different sounds)? Please forgive me if all of you have covered this. ? 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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: