From anders at aleph.se Fri Nov 1 00:33:01 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 00:33:01 +0000 Subject: [ExI] How to build a happier brain In-Reply-To: <016a01ced651$496cdf90$dc469eb0$@att.net> References: <0eb6f01259fc7bbf12d9ee77ea761976@sics.se> <016a01ced651$496cdf90$dc469eb0$@att.net> Message-ID: <5272F6BD.7040206@aleph.se> On 2013-10-31 15:53, spike wrote: > An Aspie might be more likely to be home studying on a typical college > Saturday night than to be out at a frat party, where few scientific > insights are derived. Or at least remembered the day after. Lack of social life, or at least a lack of time consuming social life, seems to be an effective way of focusing. It does not improve productivity (work per time): parents seem to be far better in that domain than people with too plentiful time. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From rahmans at me.com Fri Nov 1 08:46:47 2013 From: rahmans at me.com (Omar Rahman) Date: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 09:46:47 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2F599AB3-C87D-41F6-9046-BBF3BD290213@me.com> Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 15:51:43 -0700 From: "spike" > The > government should somehow farm out the task of surveillance to private > companies and industries, for none of the above list are likely to be > military adversaries. Theoretically we can imagine a private solution to every public need but that doesn't mean we should suggest or implement them. If we pause for even a moment to consider a private corporation, by which I assume you mean a publicly traded profit making entity, that is empowered to meet the nation's surveillance needs it seems ludicrous. 1.) Shareholder's rights - shouldn't shareholder have the right to review the operation and the 'product' 2.) What if your (Spike's) dreaded 'Mormons' bought it? 3.) What if, maybe, just maybe, industrial espionage was a part intelligence efforts? . . . [to an arbitrarily large number].) Capitalism rewards profit making above all else, so as our privacy was strip-mined we might reach a point of 'environmental collapse' where our privacy resources were completely depleted. I guess at that point we might actually need government intervention to 'recapitalise the privacy market'. Spike, this notion is almost as bad as suggesting that private corporations placed in charge of our health care would do anything other that extort us as soon as we became seriously ill. No one would be gullible enough to believe that corporations care for anything other than their profits. Oh wait..... Hmmmmm, maybe if the states did it we could have 50 competing systems and we could could change our residence every time our health situation changes (or our surveillance needs.) I'm sure that, for example, crossing the Rocky Mountains wouldn't constitute a barrier for a Californian to enter the health care and surveillance markets of Nevada and vice versa. We have 'single payer' military, spies, etc. If you and others say that it is not constitutional for the Federal Government to implement a single payer system that doesn't prove anything to me other than that we should immediately implement a constitutional amendment to give them that power. As a direct consequence of a single payer system you get the power to control costs. THAT'S what this is all about. It IS a huge expansion of government. We want it to do that precisely because of capitalistic principles of 'supply and demand'. When you are bleeding or you have some other serious condition guess what: YOUR DEMAND GOES FROM ZERO TO 100% INSTANTLY. Your supply goes from 'maybe x, or maybe y, or maybe nothing' to 'which one is closest, step on the gas I'm bleeding'. Privatised medicine and insurance are under this law of supply and demand. We as a society recognise imbalances in markets and we (sometimes) break up monopolies, and (sometimes) regulate banks. To put it in mathematical terms the supply and demand curve for medical services (excluding optional/elective procedures) is discontinuous and this is indicative of an inherently unfair marketplace. Spike, elsewhere you have stated that it's not in the "track team's" interest to sign up for healthcare because they are healthy. This is not true because: 1) sooner or later the 'track team' will turn into the 'zombies' you talk of 2) they will need a functioning health care system to take care of them which can only be built and maintained through constant effort 3) I was on the track team (literally) and we're not (all) short sighted jocks, we generally 'grow up' and hopefully grow (very) old and live responsible lives Regards, Omar Rahman -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 1 16:01:55 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2013 09:01:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <2F599AB3-C87D-41F6-9046-BBF3BD290213@me.com> References: <2F599AB3-C87D-41F6-9046-BBF3BD290213@me.com> Message-ID: <00fb01ced71b$b0e2b760$12a82620$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Omar Rahman . >.Spike, elsewhere you have stated that it's not in the "track team's" interest to sign up for healthcare because they are healthy. This is not true because: >.1) sooner or later the 'track team' will turn into the 'zombies' you talk of >.2) they will need a functioning health care system to take care of them which can only be built and maintained through constant effort >.3) I was on the track team (literally) and we're not (all) short sighted jocks, we generally 'grow up' and hopefully grow (very) old and live responsible lives >.Regards, >.Omar Rahman Hi Omar, agree to all. I was on the literal cross country team, which is vaguely related to track I suppose, in that both involve running. We used to say the track guys were either immune to boredom or were addicted to having their groupies along the track cheering them on, for their sport really offered little on the way of variety of scenery, while ours offered us nothing for people cheering along the course. There were very few even at the end. Oh well. Regarding your contention that the track team will eventually turn into zombies, you are absolutely correct. What I see wrong with our current proposed system is that it overcharges the track team, meaning they will not come. They will wait until they do turn into zombies before they opt in. This has two distinct disadvantages: they will become accustomed to living without health insurance, for it is unclear when they make the transition from track star to zombie; probably whenever the opt-out cost exceeds the insurance bill, or first time they get some serious illness. Secondly it will cause them to lose their fear of the IRS, since that is the once-respected organization placed in charge of collecting the opt-out fees. The problem is, the law was declared a tax after the fact, against the explicit declaration of the president who claimed it was not a tax. The language of the law is not easily adaptable to a tax; it isn't adaptable at all. It doesn't explicitly give the IRS the same authority to collect as it has for other taxes. As if to make matters worse, the language of the ACA makes it inherently difficult to modify, by design. When we start from scratch or begin actual health care reform, I suggest we call on the insurance companies to set the price structure, rather than dictate it to them. They know what it really costs; we do not. If we want the track team to come, in their best interest as well as ours, we must first ditch the absurdity of setting price structures. This is an example of a government which presumes to have the expertise to set pricing of risk categories better than the CEO of a health insurance company, when they haven't even demonstrated expertise in designing a website. We end up with absurdities such as a factor of three maximum between the lowest cost category and the highest. Three? Ask any insurance company CEO, they will likely say that number needs to be at least 10. Three is a joke. There is no possible way those in the lowest cost category will pay that. The system cannot even deal with the very biggest known health risk: smoking. The 65 year old smoker pays thrice the rate of the 25 year old non-smoker, when their risk cost differs by a factor of nearly 9. The 25 year old track star is not going to willingly pay triple so that the puffing 65 yr old zombie can pay a third of his risk cost. We cannot make them: the tax penalty is meaningless if the IRS cannot collect it. But now we have a new problem: the IRS has two different levels of authority. To collect income taxes, their authority is iron-fisted totalitarian absolute authority without accountability. To collect opt-out taxes, their authority is to wheedle, cajole and beg. A prole can be imprisoned for failing to pay income taxes, but not for failing to buy health insurance, according to the Supreme Court decision. A private business cannot be padlocked for failure to pay opt-out penalties. Conclusion: the track team will not come; the system will collapse without them. The zombies will come; the system will collapse with them. Meanwhile, insurance policy cancellation notices are flying like the leaves of autumn. We have taken a broken system and broke it worse than it was before. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 1 19:55:35 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2013 20:55:35 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The Actual Visionary of the Future In-Reply-To: References: <20131025133031.GL10405@leitl.org> <20131025195114.GU10405@leitl.org> <20131028103712.GC10405@leitl.org> <090a01ced3f7$24a57890$6df069b0$@att.net> Message-ID: <20131101195535.GX10405@leitl.org> On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 01:56:14PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > The unemployed can supply lower cost labor > > than they were before when more people were employed. > > > > Unless there is an unreasonably high minimum wage. Then more will just be > automated. You can't automate construction work on top your roof. Fields, yes, roofs, no. > > > I can see myself doing something like that; we > > could have some fun with it. Yes it will cost money. If we have a > > believable plan that pencils out, investors will come. > > > > But solar isn't yet economically viable for most applications. You have to It is actually, if you count all collateral costs in. > have government subsidies to get it going at this point most of the time. I > know you don't want that Spike. > > > > Sheesh they are doing this in GERMANY! > > > The government over there is doing it. Or rather paying for it. Subsidies for fossil and nuclear are 3x of renewable. So, yes, by all means let's end *all* subsidies, and level the playing field. > > > We yanks have more rooftop area per > > capita and way more sun than they do, and they can supply a cost model. > > They have the PV factories, so we hire the kraut engineers over here to > > help > > build our PV factories using our cheap labor. > > > > We can go from a discontented idler society to one in which most people are > > cheerfully working their asses off most of the time. > > > > This is what we mean by Practical Optimism. > > > I think a better plan is to open up more areas for energy exploration. Just The world shall look like Alberta. > a thought. It's working in North Dakota and parts of Texas. It's not really working, if you look at the numbers. From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 1 22:05:45 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2013 15:05:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Actual Visionary of the Future In-Reply-To: <20131101195535.GX10405@leitl.org> References: <20131025133031.GL10405@leitl.org> <20131025195114.GU10405@leitl.org> <20131028103712.GC10405@leitl.org> <090a01ced3f7$24a57890$6df069b0$@att.net> <20131101195535.GX10405@leitl.org> Message-ID: <034101ced74e$848e6af0$8dab40d0$@att.net> ... > >>... But solar isn't yet economically viable for most applications... >...It is actually, if you count all collateral costs in... One of the practical applications is rooftop solar, which is ideal in several ways. It is almost free real estate, the support structure is already in place, the power need not be cleaned up on site, so you don't need on-site energy storage or stand-alone power conditioning, the cable to carry away the power is already in place, there is reduced risk from blowing debris damage, there are no beasts to be harmed, no desert tortoises displaced etc, so you don't have land-use disputes with the green crowd, a central facility cleans up the power and levels the load. It isn't stand-alone off-grid living, I realize that, so it isn't for everyone, but I can imagine plenty of people would go for it. I can envision 10 or more percent of power eventually being generated that way, just from rooftop PVs alone, which shouldn't be all that costly to install, 10k to 20k per household average. I can see payback times on that in the 15 yr neighborhood, 4 to 5 percent-ish, which makes it better than most currently-available investments. There is a local company offering to install rooftop PV, which they continue to own but they give you a small utilities subsidy for use of your house; no up-front cost to the homeowner, no proportional payback (only the subsidy) and only if your house qualifies (sturdy south-facing roof, no trees hanging over, etc.) It must be economically viable, or nearly so, because all subsidies I know of have expired. spike From spike66 at att.net Sat Nov 2 06:39:06 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2013 23:39:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] enders game Message-ID: <04a501ced796$3af230a0$b0d691e0$@att.net> Cool, I went to a screening of Enders Game this evening. They did something I thought was proven impossible: make a movie from a good book without screwing up the book. They followed it closely and even managed to get the point across. They even fixed that problem Card had in the arena scene: in that the movie is actually an improvement over an excellent book. Well done, Gavin Hood! spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Sat Nov 2 11:24:34 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 05:24:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin Survey. Message-ID: <5274E0F2.6090207@canonizer.com> Folks, For those interested, Laura Etudes is doing an interesting survey of Bitcoiners: https://www.facebook.com/groups/256406324441664/permalink/538789936203300/ Brent Allsop From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Nov 2 13:57:07 2013 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2013 05:57:07 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Awesome disaster Message-ID: I only recently became aware of this, some you might have known about it for years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sayano%E2%80%93Shushenskaya_power_station_accident#! Wow. A 900 ton spinning generator rotor flying out of the floor. Keith From rahmans at me.com Sat Nov 2 14:42:16 2013 From: rahmans at me.com (Omar Rahman) Date: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 15:42:16 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <63E929A5-85CD-4C48-A513-A741793B05D3@me.com> > Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2013 09:01:55 -0700 > From: "spike" > To: "'ExI chat list'" > Subject: Re: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks > Republicans are "asinine" > > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Omar Rahman > . > >> .Spike, elsewhere you have stated that it's not in the "track team's" > interest to sign up for healthcare because they are healthy. This is not > true because: > > > >> .1) sooner or later the 'track team' will turn into the 'zombies' you talk > of > >> .2) they will need a functioning health care system to take care of them > which can only be built and maintained through constant effort > >> .3) I was on the track team (literally) and we're not (all) short sighted > jocks, we generally 'grow up' and hopefully grow (very) old and live > responsible lives > >> .Regards, >> .Omar Rahman > > > > Hi Omar, agree to all. I was on the literal cross country team, which is > vaguely related to track I suppose, in that both involve running. We used > to say the track guys were either immune to boredom or were addicted to > having their groupies along the track cheering them on, for their sport > really offered little on the way of variety of scenery, while ours offered > us nothing for people cheering along the course. There were very few even > at the end. Oh well. > > > > Regarding your contention that the track team will eventually turn into > zombies, you are absolutely correct. What I see wrong with our current > proposed system is that it overcharges the track team, meaning they will not > come. They will wait until they do turn into zombies before they opt in. > This has two distinct disadvantages: they will become accustomed to living > without health insurance, for it is unclear when they make the transition > from track star to zombie; probably whenever the opt-out cost exceeds the > insurance bill, or first time they get some serious illness. > The ACA is a classic case of 'slippery slope' actually. You see the generation that is under 26 right now IS GOING TO HAVE HEALTH CARE from their parents unless those parents are either irresponsible jerks or rabid ideologues. Once a person is 26, they are probably going to be mature enough to understand that, like it or not, 'something bad is going to happen to them sometime' and pony up for health care. For them it isn't going to be about 'getting' health care, they will be thinking of the context of 'losing' the health care they had until age 26. Once that shift takes place in the general population it's game over. > > > Secondly it will cause them to lose their fear of the IRS, since that is the > once-respected organization placed in charge of collecting the opt-out fees. > The problem is, the law was declared a tax after the fact, against the > explicit declaration of the president who claimed it was not a tax. The > language of the law is not easily adaptable to a tax; it isn't adaptable at > all. It doesn't explicitly give the IRS the same authority to collect as it > has for other taxes. As if to make matters worse, the language of the ACA > makes it inherently difficult to modify, by design. > If the Supreme court has declared it a tax then it's a tax and therefore the IRS can collect it. Where is the problem? > > When we start from scratch or begin actual health care reform, I suggest we > call on the insurance companies to set the price structure, rather than > dictate it to them. They know what it really costs; we do not. > Asking private insurance companies to set the prices is a bit like asking the wolves what the acceptable loss of sheep is for the shepherd. The solution is simple: single payer. It addresses the broken supply and demand curve that I mentioned in my post. > > If we want the track team to come, in their best interest as well as ours, > we must first ditch the absurdity of setting price structures. I would avoid the 'pricing of risk categories' altogether. Everyone pays the same tax, everyone gets the same care. If you want to smoke $100/pack cigarettes that's your choice. A pack of cigarettes needs to reflect it's true societal cost. Generally do what you want, but we're going to tax it enough so that we can clean up the mess later. No free riders! > This is an > example of a government which presumes to have the expertise to set pricing > of risk categories better than the CEO of a health insurance company, when > they haven't even demonstrated expertise in designing a website. Spike, you were (are?) an aerospace engineer? And you worked on some contracts for the government? When did you notice your competence rising and falling? Did it happen the instant the government contract was signed and/or completed? If so, we have solved the problem of FTL signalling! Now we just need a pairs of government employees in every home and stacks of contract for them to sign and breach/fulfil. I didn't realise you were so pro-big government Spike but the logic is irrefutable! ;) > We end up > with absurdities such as a factor of three maximum between the lowest cost > category and the highest. Three? Ask any insurance company CEO, they will > likely say that number needs to be at least 10. Three is a joke. There is > no possible way those in the lowest cost category will pay that. > I wouldn't even start to play that game. Quite simply I would make the opt-out-tax $100 more than the insurance fee you would pay and involve 20 more pages of paperwork to file. > > The system cannot even deal with the very biggest known health risk: > smoking. The 65 year old smoker pays thrice the rate of the 25 year old > non-smoker, when their risk cost differs by a factor of nearly 9. The 25 > year old track star is not going to willingly pay triple so that the puffing > 65 yr old zombie can pay a third of his risk cost. We cannot make them: the > tax penalty is meaningless if the IRS cannot collect it. > True, it would be meaningless. Do you honestly think the IRS will tolerate a direct challenge to its core mission? > > But now we have a new problem: the IRS has two different levels of > authority. To collect income taxes, their authority is iron-fisted > totalitarian absolute authority without accountability. To collect opt-out > taxes, their authority is to wheedle, cajole and beg. A prole can be > imprisoned for failing to pay income taxes, but not for failing to buy > health insurance, according to the Supreme Court decision. A private > business cannot be padlocked for failure to pay opt-out penalties. > Conclusion: the track team will not come; the system will collapse without > them. The zombies will come; the system will collapse with them. > Meanwhile, insurance policy cancellation notices are flying like the leaves > of autumn. We have taken a broken system and broke it worse than it was > before. > > > > spike If the IRS isn't able to collect these opt-out-taxes (fees?) I will be VERY surprised. We'll see soon enough if people can get away with not paying it. If they can't threaten prison sentences then I guess they'll have to just use debt collectors. Hurray, we will have privatised a portion of government and I'm sure everything will be better once we have more private debt collectors roaming the land. No potential for abuse of authority in the private debt collection industry. UK's Scariest Debt Collector (Full Length) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUzlmWWdjEQ Many people had health care until they got seriously sick and got dumped by the insurance corporations. Many of these people are the walking dead 'zombies' you speak of; people who now require palliative care or will require therapy for the rest of their lives. Reintegrating them into the system will be a cost and the insurance companies with their superior data analysis tools have priced this in already. Or did you miss the ramp up in premiums over the last few years? > We have taken a broken system and broke it worse than it was > before. There wasn't a system it was just a mess. It was exploitative and it still is because there isn't a non-profit insurance option as far as I know. I'm pretty sure for the 50 million people without insurance, many of whom wanted/needed health care, it couldn't really get much worse. Regards, Omar Rahman -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Nov 2 17:21:18 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2013 13:21:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Our Demon-Haunted World Message-ID: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is considered by many to be a intellectual, in fact the leading intellectual on the Supreme Court, and yet we get the following exchange between Jennifer Senior of New York Magazine and Scalia that happened just 2 weeks ago but could have come straight out of the middle ages and vividly illustrated what Carl Sagan called "The Demon-Haunted World?. Incidentally Scalia has said that he disagrees with the idea that religious belief is a private matter that can be put in a airtight box and has no effect on public life. Senior: You believe in heaven and hell? Scalia: Oh, of course I do. Don?t you believe in heaven and hell? Senior: No. Scalia: Oh, my. Senior: Does that mean I?m not going? Scalia: [Laughing.] Unfortunately not! Senior: Wait, to heaven or hell? Scalia: It doesn?t mean you?re not going to hell, just because you don?t believe in it. That?s Catholic doctrine! Everyone is going one place or the other. Senior: But you don?t have to be a Catholic to get into heaven? Or believe in it? Scalia: Of course not! Senior: Oh. So you don?t know where I?m going. Thank God. Scalia: I don?t know where you?re going. I don?t even know whether Judas Iscariot is in hell. I mean, that?s what the pope meant when he said, ?Who am I to judge?? He may have recanted and had severe penance just before he died. Who knows? Senior: Can we talk about your drafting process ? Scalia: [Leans in, stage-whispers.] I even believe in the devil. Senior: You do? Scalia: Of course! Yeah, he?s a real person. Hey, c?mon, that?s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that. Senior: Every Catholic believes this? There?s a wide variety of Catholics out there ? Scalia: If you are faithful to Catholic dogma, that is certainly a large part of it. Senior: Have you seen evidence of the devil lately? Scalia: You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the devil is doing all sorts of things. He?s making pigs run off cliffs, he?s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn?t happen very much anymore. Senior: No. Scalia: It?s because he?s smart. Senior: So what?s he doing now? Scalia: What he?s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He?s much more successful that way. Senior: That has really painful implications for atheists. Are you sure that?s the ? devil?s work? Scalia: I didn?t say atheists are the devil?s work. Senior: Well, you?re saying the devil is persuading people to not believe in God. Couldn?t there be other reasons to not believe? Scalia: Well, there certainly can be other reasons. But it certainly favors the devil?s desires. I mean, c?mon, that?s the explanation for why there?s not demonic possession all over the place. That always puzzled me. What happened to the devil, you know? He used to be all over the place. He used to be all over the New Testament. Senior: Right. Scalia: What happened to him? Senior: He just got wilier. Scalia: He got wilier. Senior: Isn?t it terribly frightening to believe in the devil? Scalia: You?re looking at me as though I?m weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the devil! It?s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the devil! Most of mankind has believed in the devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the devil. Senior: I hope you weren?t sensing contempt from me. It wasn?t your belief that surprised me so much as how boldly you expressed it. Scalia: I was offended by that. I really was. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Nov 2 17:26:10 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2013 13:26:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] enders game In-Reply-To: <04a501ced796$3af230a0$b0d691e0$@att.net> References: <04a501ced796$3af230a0$b0d691e0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 2:39 AM, spike wrote: > Cool, I went to a screening of Enders Game this evening. They did > something I thought was proven impossible: make a movie from a good book > without screwing up the book. They followed it closely and even managed to > get the point across. They even fixed that problem Card had in the arena > scene: in that the movie is actually an improvement over an excellent book. > Well done, Gavin Hood! > I too saw Ender's Game yesterday, I almost didn't go because I thought I wouldn't like it much but I was wrong, it was excellent. And I haven't even read the book but now I think I should. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From veronese at uab.edu Sat Nov 2 17:27:58 2013 From: veronese at uab.edu (Keith Veronese) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2013 12:27:58 -0500 Subject: [ExI] enders game In-Reply-To: References: <04a501ced796$3af230a0$b0d691e0$@att.net> Message-ID: The movie is fantastic. Well paced, with quality dialogue, something sadly lacking from most sci-fi fare. - Keith Veronese On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 12:26 PM, John Clark wrote: > > > > On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 2:39 AM, spike wrote: > > > Cool, I went to a screening of Enders Game this evening. They did >> something I thought was proven impossible: make a movie from a good book >> without screwing up the book. They followed it closely and even managed to >> get the point across. They even fixed that problem Card had in the arena >> scene: in that the movie is actually an improvement over an excellent book. >> Well done, Gavin Hood! >> > > I too saw Ender's Game yesterday, I almost didn't go because I thought I > wouldn't like it much but I was wrong, it was excellent. And I haven't even > read the book but now I think I should. > > 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 spike66 at att.net Sat Nov 2 18:41:32 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2013 11:41:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] enders game In-Reply-To: References: <04a501ced796$3af230a0$b0d691e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <066201ced7fb$2778bbb0$766a3310$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of John Clark Subject: Re: [ExI] enders game On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 2:39 AM, spike wrote: >>. Cool, I went to a screening of Enders Game this evening. They did something I thought was proven impossible: make a movie from a good book without screwing up the book. They followed it closely and even managed to get the point across. They even fixed that problem Card had in the arena scene: in that the movie is actually an improvement over an excellent book. Well done, Gavin Hood! >.I too saw Ender's Game yesterday, I almost didn't go because I thought I wouldn't like it much but I was wrong, it was excellent. And I haven't even read the book but now I think I should. John K Clark Ja, I thought the book was excellent, most worthwhile, for it does something I don't see often in SciFi: real character development. (Damien Broderick gets this and does a good job with it too; Damien is a writer who took up SciFi as opposed to a scientist who took up writing.) Card really gets it; the entire Enders series has excellent pathos and ethos. John I almost didn't go too, because I was worried Hollywood would screw up the story by overemphasizing the fighting aspect, the kind of stuff that sells movies to the movie crowd. Ender gets into two fights in the book, actually kills both of his opponents. They downplay that in the movie, which I think is probably a slight improvement, and make the second case a legitimate accident, where Ender's intention was unclear in the book. (Ender readers, did he intend to slay the bastard in the second case?) The final battle scene graphics are excellent, better than Star Wars quality. Hood was appropriately modest: he didn't try to rewrite the story, he stayed close to the original, recognized what was the point of the book, the whole reluctant warrior leader aspect of it all. He recognizes that any yahoo can write a space cowboys vs Indians battle story, but Card's Ender is special. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Nov 2 19:47:53 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 20:47:53 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> <099f01ced3fd$7e167270$7a435750$@att.net> <035601ced675$60a273e0$21e75ba0$@att.net> Message-ID: <527556E9.7070804@libero.it> Il 31/10/2013 21:39, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 2:11 PM, spike > wrote: > > As automation accumulates, the price of manufactured goods does > decline. It doesn?t wreck an economy if prices decline. > I am not an economist, This is obvious... > but if prices decline, you are better off holding > onto cash, rather than investing it. It depend. I never read something about you complaining about the descending prices of computers and electronics appliances and likes. Or complaining against the reduction in price of Lasik surgery or likes. Or complaining about the reduction in price of oil, gold, platinum, food, etc. Your utility measure could vary a lot. > That is a recipe for disaster > because investment would stop, and the markets would lose their > liquidity. That would be a bad thing. Basic necessities would be sold and bought anyway. Many other prices would consistently fall (and this is not a bug, it is a feature). It is not a bug when homes are affordable by younger generations with a normal job in few years of SAVINGS instead of being forced in 30 years of servitude by the banks to buy an overvalued house at, formerly, cheap interest rates, then being evicted because they are no more able to pay their mortgages and the homes left smoldering. Do you understand a lot of current high prices are totally dependent on money printing and easy credit? > The price of technology going down isn't a problem because we always buy > the new stuff and the old stuff obsolesces fast. If we get off Moore > significantly, then old stuff is just about as good, and then we have a > problem because deflation means something even in the tech world then. This sentence of yours is so wrong I really have no idea where to start to address it. Mirco From spike66 at att.net Sat Nov 2 20:47:18 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2013 13:47:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <63E929A5-85CD-4C48-A513-A741793B05D3@me.com> References: <63E929A5-85CD-4C48-A513-A741793B05D3@me.com> Message-ID: <06de01ced80c$b92463a0$2b6d2ae0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Omar Rahman >.The ACA is a classic case of 'slippery slope' actually. You see the generation that is under 26 right now IS GOING TO HAVE HEALTH CARE from their parents unless those parents are either irresponsible jerks or rabid ideologues. .Or they can't afford these prices either, ja. If the parents have those good corporation-supplied health plans, agreed, the 26-and-under crowd can likely get on that. But plenty of parents are being moved to 30 hour weeks, which means they lose their insurance and a chunk of their paychecks, so Junior is on his own, 26 or otherwise. They can be neither irresponsible nor ideological; they designed their lives for 40 hrs pay, now they have 30 and a pile of new bills. Health insurance is the first thing to go overboard, since a lot of the rest of it is unyielding: car payments, house payments, food, etc. >. Once a person is 26, they are probably going to be mature enough to understand that, like it or not, 'something bad is going to happen to them sometime' and pony up for health care. OK well you are more optimistic than I am. I conjecture that plenty of them will look at the deal and just decide to wait until something bad happens, then buy the insurance, after being told they couldn't be turned away for pre-existing conditions. >. For them it isn't going to be about 'getting' health care, they will be thinking of the context of 'losing' the health care they had until age 26. Once that shift takes place in the general population it's game over. You are more optimistic than I am regarding human nature. My guess is that it might work on a few of them, but in general, these considerations will be insufficient to keep them digging out the old checkbook and sending in payments regularly. I predict failure. >.If the Supreme court has declared it a tax then it's a tax and therefore the IRS can collect it. Where is the problem? Not really. It was declared a tax after the fact. The law itself doesn't have the usual legal infrastructure needed for taxation. The ACA is inherently impossible to modify. >.Asking private insurance companies to set the prices is a bit like asking the wolves what the acceptable loss of sheep is for the shepherd. Omar, they aren't going to lose money. This I can assure you. >.The solution is simple: single payer. It addresses the broken supply and demand curve that I mentioned in my post. You already know what that requires: a constitutional amendment. After the rollout.gov debacle and the way the Republicans and Tea Partiers were treated, good luck with that, see ya. >.I would avoid the 'pricing of risk categories' altogether. You would, they won't. >. Everyone pays the same tax, everyone gets the same care. If you want to smoke $100/pack cigarettes that's your choice. A pack of cigarettes needs to reflect it's true societal cost. Generally do what you want, but we're going to tax it enough so that we can clean up the mess later. No free riders!... Ja, and the young and healthy will sign on for that? I think not sir. >.Spike, you were (are?) an aerospace engineer? And you worked on some contracts for the government? When did you notice your competence rising and falling? Did it happen the instant the government contract was signed and/or completed? If so, we have solved the problem of FTL signalling! Now we just need a pairs of government employees in every home and stacks of contract for them to sign and breach/fulfil. I didn't realise you were so pro-big government Spike but the logic is irrefutable! ;) Dealing with government customers is always a special challenge. Screwing up the specifications is a common problem. More later, spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sun Nov 3 02:37:15 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 22:37:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Awesome disaster In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5275B6DB.5030207@aleph.se> On 2013-11-02 09:57, Keith Henson wrote: > Wow. A 900 ton spinning generator rotor flying out of the floor. Only goes to show: moving parts are bad news! Solid state for the win! :-) (Unfortunately, I doubt a Lorentz-effect magnetohydroelectric plant is a good idea - I suspect the losses are too big.) -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Sun Nov 3 02:41:47 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 22:41:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] enders game In-Reply-To: <066201ced7fb$2778bbb0$766a3310$@att.net> References: <04a501ced796$3af230a0$b0d691e0$@att.net> <066201ced7fb$2778bbb0$766a3310$@att.net> Message-ID: <5275B7EB.8010202@aleph.se> On 2013-11-02 14:41, spike wrote: > > They downplay that in the movie, which I think is probably a slight > improvement, and make the second case a legitimate accident, where > Ender's intention was unclear in the book. (Ender readers, did he > intend to slay the bastard in the second case?) > As far as I remember, yes. Maybe not consciously, but he always did what it took to win *permanently*. I seem to recall that these scenes were also a reason the movie was delayed for so long - several writers struggled with how to handle the touchy subject. It couldn't be excised, yet could easily wreck the viewer relation to the protagonist. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 3 06:38:30 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2013 23:38:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Awesome disaster In-Reply-To: <5275B6DB.5030207@aleph.se> References: <5275B6DB.5030207@aleph.se> Message-ID: <083a01ced85f$4fd58890$ef8099b0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: [ExI] Awesome disaster On 2013-11-02 09:57, Keith Henson wrote: > Wow. A 900 ton spinning generator rotor flying out of the floor. Only goes to show: moving parts are bad news! Solid state for the win! :-) (Unfortunately, I doubt a Lorentz-effect magnetohydroelectric plant is a good idea - I suspect the losses are too big.) -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University _______________________________________________ Ja. The efficiency of MHD is a small fraction of a percent for fresh water. Salt water is better, but there is not much flowing salt water. I am searching my memory from 1989 about a project where we calculated one digit BOTECs on how much power could be extracted from the Columbia River. Turned out it was almost worth doing, but not quite. We calculated that wind turbines along the Columbia would be worth doing. I note that both calcs were right: today nearly a quarter of a century later, there are no MHD plants and lots of wind turbines up there along the gorge. spike From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 3 07:00:12 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2013 00:00:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] enders game In-Reply-To: <5275B7EB.8010202@aleph.se> References: <04a501ced796$3af230a0$b0d691e0$@att.net> <066201ced7fb$2778bbb0$766a3310$@att.net> <5275B7EB.8010202@aleph.se> Message-ID: <083b01ced862$57f435a0$07dca0e0$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: [ExI] enders game On 2013-11-02 14:41, spike wrote: They downplay that in the movie, which I think is probably a slight improvement, and make the second case a legitimate accident, where Ender's intention was unclear in the book. (Ender readers, did he intend to slay the bastard in the second case?) >.As far as I remember, yes. Maybe not consciously, but he always did what it took to win *permanently*. >.I seem to recall that these scenes were also a reason the movie was delayed for so long - several writers struggled with how to handle the touchy subject. It couldn't be excised, yet could easily wreck the viewer relation to the protagonist. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Ender was a complicated character: he had to be really smart, have killer instinct, and be empathetic. Valentine had the smarts and the empathy, but not the killer instinct. Peter lacked empathy. Ender had all three traits. That shower scene had a special impact on me because of a tragic memory from high school, a freak accident. Four guys wanted to make a cross-town dash for Burger King at lunch time, which was only 35 minutes. They piled into a car, but one of the four was standing with the back door open, yelling to someone. His buddy in the back seat grabbed him by the belt and pulled him into the car, but on his way in, the guy hit his head right at the base of the skull against the car roof, and within a day he was dead. Note in Ender's shower fight, how Bonzo lands. That scene reminded me of the tragedy from over 30 yrs ago, oy vey. I get the feeling that Gavin Hood must have collected a bunch of Ender geeks into a Reddit group or something, and gave them a question: If you were to make a movie of Ender's Game, what would you change from the book? Surely a chorus would arise: fix that mess Card made in describing the arena maneuvers, and conserver angular momentum this time. That seems important to me, considering what they were doing in there. The movie fixes that delightfully. Make Ender about 15 instead of 7, and allow at least some sexual tension between Ender and Petra. The movie fixed that without ruining it by avoiding making the attraction into a distraction. But please don't touch anything in the last 20 pages of that book. Try to make it as close to the book as you can for that last part. Hood's movie did that ending exactly right; he didn't try to improve on Card where Card didn't need any help, but did so where Card did need help, and did it successfully. Bravo! spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sun Nov 3 15:31:57 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 16:31:57 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: References: <98403CF1-5A40-46A2-9DE8-3661B39FC7BF@me.com> <5267B995.3020906@libero.it> Message-ID: <52766C6D.8060901@libero.it> Il 28/10/2013 22:28, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 5:57 AM, Mirco Romanato > wrote: > > The problem in this reasoning is to impute to the POTUSes the > responsibility of deficit spending. > Is the legislative branch totally innocent? > Though you wouldn't know it from recent media reports, the House of > Representatives has the constitutional power of the purse in the United > States. Whenever they responsibly execute that constitutional privilege, > they are jumped on by EVERYONE. If they are there and are not able to say "NO" to people asking for free money, what is their job? > And the Judiciary Branch? > Almost zero power over the money. Though they did find Obamacare to be > constitutional. I don't follow how they managed that, but whatever, it's > done. IIRC correctly, many judicial ruling have caused enormous expenditures by the federal and local governments and indirectly to all individuals and private enterprises. For example, when a judge mandate school busing and forced integration the cost fall on the local government and the local people Desegregation busing in the United States (also known as forced busing or simply busing) is the practice of assigning and transporting students to schools in such a manner as to redress prior racial segregation of schools, or to overcome the effects of residential segregation on local school demographics. > In between, Bitcoin hit 210$ today. > Nice. Wish I had some. XBT (Bitcoin) are, now, in my opinion, at least a 10 bagger in a year a an hundred bagger in two three years. If you have patience, it could be a 10.000 bagger by 2020. It is not too late to enter and profit doing the right thing. Better to do it now on your free will or be "forced" to do it later by the market. > It will do democracy a lot less interesting, also. > Because if you can not vote to rob you neighbors, where is the fun? > In keeping what you earn. That's fun enough, isn't it? It is a lot fun keeping what you earn with your work. Mirco From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Nov 3 15:45:43 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2013 10:45:43 -0500 Subject: [ExI] How to build a happier brain In-Reply-To: References: <526EE5F2.1010207@aleph.se> <058f01ced511$dbee9750$93cbc5f0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 12:01 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > I would submit that John F Kennedy was more conservative than anyone in > government today. Including the Tea Party "fanatics" and the Libertarians. > In my opinion John F Kennedy was the greatest president the USA ever had, and I would still say that even if he'd been a total fuckup every day of his presidency except for the 13 days between October 14 and 28 1962, because those were the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest the human race has come to extinction since the eruption of Mt. Toba in Indonesia 75,000 years ago. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 3 17:01:36 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2013 09:01:36 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <52766C6D.8060901@libero.it> References: <98403CF1-5A40-46A2-9DE8-3661B39FC7BF@me.com> <5267B995.3020906@libero.it> <52766C6D.8060901@libero.it> Message-ID: <090301ced8b6$5bae7350$130b59f0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato Subject: Re: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" Il 28/10/2013 22:28, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: ... >>... And the Judiciary Branch? > ...Almost zero power over the money. Though they did find Obamacare to be > constitutional. I don't follow how they managed that, but whatever, > it's done... Kelly keep reminding yourself: the Supreme Court declared the individual mandate unconstitutional as a mandate. But they declared the opt-out fee a tax, which is legal under the 16th amendment. The Federal government may charge you a tax based on a behavior, even if that behavior is passive (not doing something.) This will have enormous consequences as soon as they get to the SCOTUS with the argument that this oddball tax does not give the employer the authority to withhold funds from the paycheck (in all those pages of the ACA, that wasn't in there) and the IRS has no authority to collect the tax, as they do with income tax. Reasoning: as written, the tax applies to those who do not make enough money to require a tax return. So now what does the IRS do? What happens when we see burn-your-W2 rally, a modern echo of the 1960s burn-your-draft-card rally and the burn-your-feminine-undergarment rally? Does the IRS raid the place and arrest everyone? And what does the SCOTUS do as soon as someone shows up for an IRS audit claiming US constitution, Article 1, section 7 clause 1? That clause very clearly says a tax must originate in the house. But the ACA originated in the senate, the law can stand, the penalty for opt-out cannot. The opt-out tax is unconstitutional. That isn't just a technicality, it's the highest law in the land. That SCOTUS decision that made the ACA opt-out fee a tax will have enormous consequences. If the opt-out tax is struck down because of non-compliance with USC1.7.1, there are cross references to it all over the ACA and no isolation clauses, these having been intentionally and carefully omitted or removed, by the insurance companies exactly for this reason: they figured all this out back in 2009, and didn't want to be left with a mandate to insure zombies while the track team goes free. Do stand by, this will be interesting. >...IIRC correctly, many judicial ruling have caused enormous expenditures by the federal and local governments and indirectly to all individuals and private enterprises. For example, when a judge mandate school busing and forced integration the cost fall on the local government and the local people... Mirco Ja, well sort of. Judges do not legislate. Legislatures legislate. (In real life, judges do legislate, bad ones do, but they are not legally entitled to that power.) In the case you cited, the state legislature mandated busing, it was immediately challenged in court, a judge had to make a decision not on whether it was a good law (it wasn't), but rather if it was within the state's authority to do it (it was.) The judge read that state's constitution (Alabama) and decided the state had the authority to do it. So the judge didn't mandate busing, the state legislature of Alabama did that. States can do things like that. Their constitutions are easier to modify. We had a wave of Alabama expatriates to Florida in the early 60s as a result of that ruling. We also had busing, and I was part of it, but Florida dealt with it more effectively and sanely than did Alabama. That case demonstrates why I have always thought health care reform must be done at the state level rather than the Fed. The states have more power in those kinds of matters. The states have more space to experiment and change things if they fail. Otherwise, I would suggest step one in health care reform is to get a constitutional amendment to empower the Fed to do it. That would cause an immediate change of attitude in congress, for the two major parties need to work together to get an amendment. spike From pharos at gmail.com Sun Nov 3 18:21:01 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2013 18:21:01 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Science confirms: Politics wrecks your ability to do math Message-ID: Everybody knows that our political views can sometimes get in the way of thinking clearly. But perhaps we don?t realize how bad the problem actually is. According to a new psychology paper, our political passions can even undermine our very basic reasoning skills. More specifically, the study finds that people who are otherwise very good at math may totally flunk a problem that they would otherwise probably be able to solve, simply because giving the right answer goes against their political beliefs. For study author Kahan, these results are a fairly strong refutation of what is called the ?deficit model? in the field of science and technology studies ? the idea that if people just had more knowledge, or more reasoning ability, then they would be better able to come to consensus with scientists and experts on issues like climate change, evolution, the safety of vaccines, and pretty much anything else involving science or data (for instance, whether concealed weapons bans work). Kahan?s data suggest the opposite ? that political biases skew our reasoning abilities, and this problem seems to be worse for people with advanced capacities like scientific literacy and numeracy. ?If the people who have the greatest capacities are the ones most prone to this, that?s reason to believe that the problem isn?t some kind of deficit in comprehension,? Kahan explained in an interview. ---------- That's why politics and religion are verboten in conversation. When fundamental beliefs enter, logical reasoning exits stage left. BillK From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Sun Nov 3 19:35:06 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 12:35:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] enders game In-Reply-To: <083b01ced862$57f435a0$07dca0e0$@att.net> References: <04a501ced796$3af230a0$b0d691e0$@att.net> <066201ced7fb$2778bbb0$766a3310$@att.net> <5275B7EB.8010202@aleph.se> <083b01ced862$57f435a0$07dca0e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <5276A56A.9030602@canonizer.com> Thanks, all, for these recommendations. I'm glad I went to see it last night. And the music is by Steve Jablonsky! You can't not like a movie with that. I just got the soundtrack and listening to it now. I just wish that someday there could be some science fiction with less very hard problems solved, as if they are easy, and easy problems still not solved. For example, they are doing inter stellar travel. Yet they have not improved the human body at all! Surely, long before we are doing inter stellar travel, we'll have the ability to back ourselves up, and restore them. We'll be transporting ourselves, and so on. And we won't be dependent on any one body... And what's up with everyone but Ender thinking: "They can't talk they don't even have vocal chords"? I did enjoy the general idea being presented that "winning" by destroying your enemy isn't really winning. And it was fun to see them doing this by twisting the alien destroyer theme into us being the destroyers. As I've always believed, meeting up with another alien species will necessarily be either our or their salvation. And there is no way both species are going to be at near the same level like in this movie. All parties must be significantly improved by co-operation. I don't get how people can't see such logical necessities, and how everyone just projects our primitive animalistic survival of the fittest history, into advanced futures where such makes absolutely no sense. Yet another example of easy to overcome primitive destroyer attitudes still not solved, but hard to do giant space stations are easy. At least that's how I feel about such. Brent Allsop From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 3 19:36:35 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2013 11:36:35 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Science confirms: Politics wrecks your ability to do math In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <094c01ced8cc$02b11210$08133630$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: [ExI] Science confirms: Politics wrecks your ability to do math >...Everybody knows that our political views can sometimes get in the way of thinking clearly. But perhaps we don't realize how bad the problem actually is. According to a new psychology paper, our political passions can even undermine our very basic reasoning skills. More specifically, the study finds that people who are otherwise very good at math may totally flunk a problem that they would otherwise probably be able to solve, simply because giving the right answer goes against their political beliefs. ... >...BillK ---------- Thanks BillK. If anything, the study grossly understates its case. We are witnessing a stunning case of massive failure on the part of American voters to perform the very most basic form of linear extrapolation. spike From anders at aleph.se Sun Nov 3 20:57:26 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 15:57:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Science confirms: Politics wrecks your ability to do math In-Reply-To: <094c01ced8cc$02b11210$08133630$@att.net> References: <094c01ced8cc$02b11210$08133630$@att.net> Message-ID: <5276B8B6.6040809@aleph.se> It is an interesting study. Since I am right now diving into applied cognitive bias thinking, it is particularly relevant. The deficit theory of public understanding of science (or anything) has been dead for several years, but like a kitchy Halloween monster it keeps popping up since it is easy. Worse, we are pretty numerate on this list. What horrific biases might we harbour about things? (Looks worried at the energy quarrel and takes cover) -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From atymes at gmail.com Sun Nov 3 21:03:34 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2013 13:03:34 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Science confirms: Politics wrecks your ability to do math In-Reply-To: <5276B8B6.6040809@aleph.se> References: <094c01ced8cc$02b11210$08133630$@att.net> <5276B8B6.6040809@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 12:57 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Worse, we are pretty numerate on this list. What horrific biases might we > harbour about things? (Looks worried at the energy quarrel and takes cover) > Indeed. It is one's intellectual responsibility, to honesty, to recognize such biases within oneself and accept when the data might prove that one's own cherished opinions are wrong. Perhaps we can not fix this in most of humanity. But each and every one of us can fix this within ourselves, so that at least we avoid making the problem worse...and perhaps inspire others to rise with us, that we can all find agreement based on what actually is, regardless of what we wish would be. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sun Nov 3 21:44:11 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2013 21:44:11 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Science confirms: Politics wrecks your ability to do math In-Reply-To: References: <094c01ced8cc$02b11210$08133630$@att.net> <5276B8B6.6040809@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 9:03 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Perhaps we can not fix this in most of humanity. But each and every one of > us can fix this within ourselves, so that at least we avoid making the > problem worse...and perhaps inspire others to rise with us, that we can all > find agreement based on what actually is, regardless of what we wish would > be. > > A noble thought....... But it makes me think, be careful what you wish for. Humans are emotion driven creatures. There are floods of constantly changing chemicals coursing through our bodies and brains. If you lose the emotions, you lose a lot of what makes you human. Perhaps the benefit of increased rationality might have rather large unforeseen consequences. Kirk: At times you seem quite human. Spock: Captain, I don't think that insults are within your prerogative as my commanding officer. BillK From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 3 22:03:54 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2013 14:03:54 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Awesome disaster In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0a3101ced8e0$971eb8d0$c55c2a70$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Keith Henson Subject: [ExI] Awesome disaster >...I only recently became aware of this, some you might have known about it for years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sayano%E2%80%93Shushenskaya_power_station _accident#! They didn't talk about it much at the time. I have some power plant buddies from college who sent around text accounts and a few photos. The Russians didn't even let out any news of it for several weeks after the fact. Commies are that way you know, secretive, even when we don't hold any really serious hard feelings over the whole cold war thing. >...Wow. A 900 ton spinning generator rotor flying out of the floor. Keith _______________________________________________ Oooh boy, that musta really been something to see. From a very safe distance of course. They didn't want to admit that most of the eighty 11.5cm bolts holding the rotor cover were fatigue cracked from vibration. The rotor's design life was 30 yrs. At the time of the accident it was 29 yrs 10 months. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sayano%E2%80%93Shushenskaya_power_station_ accident spike From anders at aleph.se Sun Nov 3 22:07:06 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 17:07:06 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Science confirms: Politics wrecks your ability to do math In-Reply-To: References: <094c01ced8cc$02b11210$08133630$@att.net> <5276B8B6.6040809@aleph.se> Message-ID: <5276C90A.6000506@aleph.se> On 2013-11-03 16:44, BillK wrote: > Humans are emotion driven creatures. There are floods of constantly > changing chemicals coursing through our bodies and brains. If you lose > the emotions, you lose a lot of what makes you human. Perhaps the > benefit of increased rationality might have rather large unforeseen > consequences. Something like this, said on a transhumanist mailing list?! What is the world coming to? Soon you will claim there might be downsides to radical life extension or being a cyborg! :-) Note however that Adrian did not say we should get rid of emotions. He said that we should aspire to become more rational. *Very* different. Unfortunately we have a culture that somehow imagines emotions to be the opposite or counterpart to rationality, rather than part of the way the whole system works. I think it would be a great thing to be disgusted by bad arguments or feel delight when uncertainty is reduced in a Bayesian way. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From atymes at gmail.com Sun Nov 3 22:31:49 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2013 14:31:49 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Science confirms: Politics wrecks your ability to do math In-Reply-To: <5276C90A.6000506@aleph.se> References: <094c01ced8cc$02b11210$08133630$@att.net> <5276B8B6.6040809@aleph.se> <5276C90A.6000506@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 2:07 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > I think it would be a great thing to be disgusted by bad arguments or feel > delight when uncertainty is reduced in a Bayesian way. > "Ever feel that twinge of disgust when some fool keeps trying to 'prove' something you've seen thoroughly debunked, and you have the data to prove it but this is the tenth moron in a row who can't be bothered with the facts? Yeah. THAT is one part of our human nature we transhumanists are trying to save and promote." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 3 22:34:01 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2013 14:34:01 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Science confirms: Politics wrecks your ability to do math In-Reply-To: References: <094c01ced8cc$02b11210$08133630$@att.net> <5276B8B6.6040809@aleph.se> Message-ID: <0a3801ced8e4$cc417cb0$64c47610$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Subject: Re: [ExI] Science confirms: Politics wrecks your ability to do math On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 12:57 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: >>.Worse, we are pretty numerate on this list. What horrific biases might we harbour about things? (Looks worried at the energy quarrel and takes cover) >.Indeed. It is one's intellectual responsibility, to honesty, to recognize such biases within oneself and accept when the data might prove that one's own cherished opinions are wrong. Ja. It isn't even necessarily cherished opinions, but rather differing initial assumptions. Let us consider an example peculiar to the point of view of many of us here; the inevitability of the singularity. Even that can fall into differing categories. For normal people, there is no expectation of the singularity; it just happens like the Spanish Inquisition. For those of us aware of the notion, we have those who think the singularity must happen, within the near term, the next fifty years or so. There are those who say such a thing might happen that soon, but it might not: there might be some still unknown something that makes the whole concept impossible with current technology. There are those who think we have reached peak intelligence and we just didn't quite make it to the singularity. Look now at those three assumptions: no singularity, near term certainty of singularity, and the maybes. Can you see how different one's outlook is deeply impacted by which of those three categories one belongs? Which are you? I put myself in the third category: I can't convince myself the singularity is a near term certainty, but it sure might happen. >.Perhaps we can not fix this in most of humanity. But each and every one of us can fix this within ourselves, so that at least we avoid making the problem worse...and perhaps inspire others to rise with us, that we can all find agreement based on what actually is, regardless of what we wish would be. Ja. We can explain much of the current political struggle on differences in assumptions regarding government debt. There are those who believe governments must eventually balance their books, and those who believe they do not. As a possible third category, we could imagine even if governments do not ever balance their books, they must at least demonstrate they are trying. I put myself in the first category. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Nov 4 02:34:17 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2013 19:34:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Science confirms: Politics wrecks your ability to do math In-Reply-To: <0a3801ced8e4$cc417cb0$64c47610$@att.net> References: <094c01ced8cc$02b11210$08133630$@att.net> <5276B8B6.6040809@aleph.se> <0a3801ced8e4$cc417cb0$64c47610$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 3:34 PM, spike wrote: > > Ja. We can explain much of the current political struggle on differences > in assumptions regarding government debt. There are those who believe > governments must eventually balance their books, and those who believe they > do not. As a possible third category, we could imagine even if governments > do not ever balance their books, they must at least demonstrate they are > trying. I put myself in the first category. > The government can accept a small amount of continuing debt that will erode to a smaller amount with the force of inflation over time. The question is whether the current amount of debt is too large for inflation to ever erode to a manageable level. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Nov 4 08:52:27 2013 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 01:52:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to Damien Broderick? Message-ID: Damien was one of my favorite extro-list friends, but he has not posted to my knowledge, for quite some time. Has anyone seen/communicated with him lately? I miss our very bright Aussie writer friend, who married Barbara Lamar, an American gal, and moved to Texas.... John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 4 09:38:24 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 10:38:24 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to Damien Broderick? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20131104093824.GP10405@leitl.org> On Mon, Nov 04, 2013 at 01:52:27AM -0700, John Grigg wrote: > Damien was one of my favorite extro-list friends, but he has not posted to > my knowledge, for quite some time. Has anyone seen/communicated with him > lately? I miss our very bright Aussie writer friend, who married Barbara > Lamar, an American gal, and moved to Texas.... He is still occasionally posting to the GRG list. From anders at aleph.se Mon Nov 4 11:12:54 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 06:12:54 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to Damien Broderick? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <52778136.8020105@aleph.se> On 2013-11-04 03:52, John Grigg wrote: > Damien was one of my favorite extro-list friends, but he has not > posted to my knowledge, for quite some time. Has anyone > seen/communicated with him lately? Yes, he is around. He is editing a book where I have submitted a chapter. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From stathisp at gmail.com Mon Nov 4 11:55:52 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 22:55:52 +1100 Subject: [ExI] Awesome disaster In-Reply-To: <0a3101ced8e0$971eb8d0$c55c2a70$@att.net> References: <0a3101ced8e0$971eb8d0$c55c2a70$@att.net> Message-ID: On Monday, 4 November 2013, spike wrote: > >... On Behalf Of Keith Henson > Subject: [ExI] Awesome disaster > > >...I only recently became aware of this, some you might have known about > it > for years. > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sayano%E2%80%93Shushenskaya_power_station > _accident#! > > They didn't talk about it much at the time. I have some power plant > buddies > from college who sent around text accounts and a few photos. The Russians > didn't even let out any news of it for several weeks after the fact. > Commies are that way you know, secretive, even when we don't hold any > really > serious hard feelings over the whole cold war thing. > Are they still commies? > >...Wow. A 900 ton spinning generator rotor flying out of the floor. > > Keith > _______________________________________________ > > > Oooh boy, that musta really been something to see. From a very safe > distance of course. They didn't want to admit that most of the eighty > 11.5cm bolts holding the rotor cover were fatigue cracked from vibration. > The rotor's design life was 30 yrs. At the time of the accident it was 29 > yrs 10 months. > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sayano%E2%80%93Shushenskaya_power_station_ > accident > > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Nov 4 14:11:43 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 06:11:43 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Whatever happened to Damien Broderick? In-Reply-To: <52778136.8020105@aleph.se> References: <52778136.8020105@aleph.se> Message-ID: <0c1a01ced967$ca920870$5fb61950$@att.net> On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: [ExI] Whatever happened to Damien Broderick? On 2013-11-04 03:52, John Grigg wrote: >>... Damien was one of my favorite extro-list friends, but he has not > posted to my knowledge, for quite some time. Has anyone > seen/communicated with him lately? >...Yes, he is around. He is editing a book where I have submitted a chapter. -- Dr Anders Sandberg As of four weeks ago, he was rushing to meet a deadline on that book, which was this past Friday. spike From spike66 at att.net Mon Nov 4 14:58:14 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 06:58:14 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" References: <63E929A5-85CD-4C48-A513-A741793B05D3@me.com> Message-ID: <0c3501ced96e$4a53f810$defbe830$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Omar Rahman >.If the Supreme court has declared it a tax then it's a tax and therefore the IRS can collect it. Where is the problem? The problem is on page 231 of the PDF of the ACA: (3) LIMITATIONS ON LIENS AND LEVIES.-The Secretary (or, if applicable, the Attorney General of the United States) shall not- (A) file notice of lien with respect to any property of a person by reason of any failure to pay the penalty imposed by this subsection; or (B) levy on any such property with respect to such failure. Then later on page 249: ''(g) ADMINISTRATION AND PROCEDURE.- ''(1) IN GENERAL.-The penalty provided by this section shall be paid upon notice and demand by the Secretary, and except as provided in paragraph (2), shall be assessed and collected in the same manner as an assessable penalty under subchapter B of chapter 68. ''(2) SPECIAL RULES.-Notwithstanding any other provision of law- ''(A) WAIVER OF CRIMINAL PENALTIES.-In the case of any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure. ''(B) LIMITATIONS ON LIENS AND LEVIES.-The Secretary shall not- ''(i) file notice of lien with respect to any property of a taxpayer by reason of any failure to pay the penalty imposed by this section, or ''(ii) levy on any such property with respect to such failure.''. So the ACA was designed to make the standard of constitutionality under the Welfare clause in the preamble, which empowers the government to "promote the general welfare." Putting liens against a prole's property or threatening to imprison her for refusing to pay for Sandra Flock's birth control pills can scarcely make the grade for promoting the general welfare, as the Supreme Court agreed. That subchapter B of chapter 68 allows the IRS Secretary to issue notice and demand payment. The special rules below that provision specify they IRS may not do anything about it if the taxpayer opts to not pay. The IRS may withhold funds from the tax refund however. Of course that is easy to fix: arrange to not have a refund coming by not over-withholding. The SCOTUS (rightly in my opinion) offered a way out, just by observing that the 16th amendment can cover a passive act (not doing something) as a taxable event. I read the 16th amendment; it looks to me like it can be applied to anything the government wants. They could solve homelessness by using the IRS to force everyone to buy a home, merely by requiring penalties for those who don't have one, for instance. Then we could heap more pressure on the stubbornly homeless by calling them irresponsible jerks, problem solved. We could empty mental health institutes by having the IRS command the patients to get sane. Conclusion: by Supreme Court decree, the IRS could replace the FBI, the ATF, all domestic law enforcement agencies and completely wipe away crime and all other social ills. Or not. However, even with all its miraculous healing power, the IRS still cannot make people buy health insurance, because the ACA law specifically forbids the IRS from issuing criminal penalties for non-payment, and from any liens or levies on property. Also note there are no provisions for modification of the ACA by careful design. If the IRS cannot collect the opt-out tax for the ACA with legal force, this means the opt-out tax becomes a donation. The government is certainly a non-profit (it is a massively negative profit) and donations to NPOs are tax deductible, so one might argue the opt-out tax is itself tax deductible. By that reasoning, the opt-out tax cancels itself. The taxpayer could just write the opt-out tax check to herself and be done with it. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Nov 4 15:42:14 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 07:42:14 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Awesome disaster In-Reply-To: References: <0a3101ced8e0$971eb8d0$c55c2a70$@att.net> Message-ID: <0c5301ced974$70291f60$507b5e20$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou >>?Commies are that way you know, secretive? >?Are they still commies? Stathis Papaioannou Not that you can tell. The real question: is America still capitalist? Not that you can tell. Debatable. I can?t easily tell the difference between us and the commies anymore. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Mon Nov 4 16:08:01 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 11:08:01 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Awesome disaster In-Reply-To: <0c5301ced974$70291f60$507b5e20$@att.net> References: <0a3101ced8e0$971eb8d0$c55c2a70$@att.net> <0c5301ced974$70291f60$507b5e20$@att.net> Message-ID: <5277C661.8080407@aleph.se> On 2013-11-04 10:42, spike wrote: > > >>...Commies are that way you know, secretive... > > >...Are they still commies? Stathis Papaioannou > > Not that you can tell. The real question: is America still > capitalist? Not that you can tell. Debatable. I can't easily tell > the difference between us and the commies anymore. > > You might want to check http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking US has rank 10, Russia rank 139 out of 177. Of course, some might argue that the whole list has been moving towards the North Korea end, but I think that is doubtful. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Nov 4 18:35:14 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 13:35:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin flaw Message-ID: http://mashable.com/2013/11/04/bitcoin-cornell-researchers/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Nov 4 23:31:32 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 16:31:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin flaw In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 11:35 AM, John Clark wrote: > http://mashable.com/2013/11/04/bitcoin-cornell-researchers/ > Basic story is that if you or your group controls a large enough collection of the bitcoining hardware, you can benefit by NOT publishing found blocks early. That is a very interesting "hole" but one that would be quite difficult to exploit, in that you would have to have control of a VERY significant set of computation. They also have a pretty easy fix, which should be straightforward to implement. I don't see this exploit as being damaging to the long term perception of Bitcoins. It is interesting that the natural curve has caught up to the last bubble... though the curve does look just a little steepish at the moment. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Nov 5 00:52:55 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 17:52:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Awesome disaster In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 7:57 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > I only recently became aware of this, some you might have known about > it for years. > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sayano%E2%80%93Shushenskaya_power_station_accident# > ! > > Wow. A 900 ton spinning generator rotor flying out of the floor. > This is the first time I've heard of this as well. That's quite a mess they made there. My question is, If this were a nuclear power plant, do you think this would be the first time you would have heard about it? 70 people killed makes hydroelectric more dangerous than nuclear power, wouldn't you think? Why aren't people down picketing Hoover Dam to make them stop producing power in such a dangerous way? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Nov 5 01:37:28 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 18:37:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <63E929A5-85CD-4C48-A513-A741793B05D3@me.com> References: <63E929A5-85CD-4C48-A513-A741793B05D3@me.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 8:42 AM, Omar Rahman wrote: > > The solution is simple: single payer. It addresses the broken supply and > demand curve that I mentioned in my post. > See, I told you that's where the left would take this. It is inevitable. > There wasn't a system it was just a mess. It was exploitative and it still > is because there isn't a non-profit insurance option as far as I know. I'm > pretty sure for the 50 million people without insurance, many of whom > wanted/needed health care, it couldn't really get much worse. > Which is why every rich sick person from every corner of the earth came to the United States when they were really sick. Of course, those days are fast going. As one of the millions of people without health insurance, I want to thank father Obama that I still don't have insurance. As to Spike's idea of privatizing the CIA. I couldn't agree less. While there needs to be a certain level of transparency in collecting secrets, I don't think going private is the answer. The need for ONE single payer defense system is the only thing that keeps me from going full on anarchist. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Nov 5 03:24:26 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 20:24:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> References: <2C17352F-6BCF-4DF9-BFF0-6333CC83FDA1@me.com> <080201ced3a0$48ed1c50$dac754f0$@att.net> <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 4:51 PM, spike wrote: > > > >?I see NOTHING wrong with the NSA spying on Angela Merkel. The only > thing they did wrong was allowing themselves to get caught? > > > > Ja, I do see something wrong with the NSA spying on me however. If I were > Merkel, I suppose I would feel likewise. > The constitution only protects the privacy of US citizens, and possibly visitors to the USA. Ms. Merkel is a foreign national who is not protected by the constitution. > A problem I have had with the current bunch is they don?t seem to know the > difference between our friends and our enemies. They alienate exactly the > kinds who we should be working hard to strengthen alliances, the Brits, the > French, the commies, the Italians, DEFINITELY the krauts, all our natural > allies as the world realigns after retiring the old capitalism/communism > divide, these having merged into one nearly indistinguishable mass. The > government should somehow farm out the task of surveillance to private > companies and industries, for none of the above list are likely to be > military adversaries. But our companies will compete against each other, > and it looks like China will be home to the most of the strongest of those > companies. > Which is why they shouldn't have gotten caught. Don't we have the obligation to make sure our "friends" are really our friends, even behind closed doors? > We see the current bunch are saying the Tea Party patriots are terrorists > and coming very close to identifying them as national enemies. OK then > what happens if they get a bunch of seats in congress next fall, more than > they already have? > History is not with them on gaining seats during the second term of a lame duck president. > >?I thought of something else. All this time and oxygen spent on > Obamacare guarantees that we aren't doing anything to reform Social > Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Since those are the REAL problem areas > in the federal budget, Obamacare is like the magician making us look away > from where the real action is. I can't believe I didn't see the trick > before now! Even talk radio is ignoring that stuff for the moment. ?Kelly > > > > I have heard a closely related theory, is that this O-care is a > sacrificial lamb, an intentional failure intended to distract us from > immigration reform or a path to single payer. > Oh, I totally believe we're on the path to single payer. O-care is just the first step down a long road. As for immigration reform, I don't think the house is going to let that happen. > The reason I don?t find the theory compelling is that health care reform > is the cornerstone of liberal thought, a huge expansion of government > power, and something liberals have really wanted for a really long time. > Sorry, I didn't say it was intentional. It is just a happy side effect for the socialists in government that O-care is taking all the lead. If it weren't there on the front line though, maybe we could have some kind of reform of Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. Just saying. But Obamacare failing is exactly what will lead to a single payer system. It's too big to fail, remember? > To fail this badly would need to call into question the whole notion of > big government being trusted with anything, never mind our entire > healthcare system, along with our medical records. I can?t imagine Obama > and his people wanting to decrease the power of central government. > They can't help but fail. It is the government we're talking about. They never really succeed at anything really important. Yes, they occasionally build a bridge to somewhere. Yes, they did defend us against Hitler. But generally speaking if you want something screwed up badly enough you give it to the government and you are assured it will be. > I can imagine a younger generation coming up which is scarcely > recognizable as a younger generation. They may wake up and see that the > government came up with all these healthcare reforms and then sent them the > bill. Then it will be the sixties all over again with many of the roles > reversed in a sense. Instead of burning draft cards, that generation might > burn their W2 forms. Then we have a whole new set of headaches. > I would love to see the youth of America revolt against this. It is them who are getting the biggest shaft from O-care. Paying for insurance that THEY DON'T NEED. It is redistribution of health. Only it is from the poorest youth of America who can't get a job coming out of college, to the richest, the older folk in America, who are the most well off demographic. I thought socialism was supposed to help the poor. > > I'll opt out unless I have an employer providing insurance by then? > Kelly > > > > Me too. In any election the guy with the simplest shortest bumper > sticker gets a big advantage. This was known even before there were > bumpers, back in 1840 with Tippecanoe and Tyler too, which could be even > further shortened to Tip and Ty. Later, it was: I Like Ike. > > > > In the coming election I can imagine the bumper stickers: > > > > Obama Lied, HealthCare Died > Obama lied, grandma died > Hillary Failed to Answer the 3am Call > While Obama slept through it. > HealthCare.gov is why the Republicans Just Said No > LOL > > My favorite I have thought of so far: > > > > Tune In, Turn On, Opt Out > LOL. That will work for a few years, until the penalties are so large that you have to pay attention to them. > I can imagine a counterpart to that, perhaps a T-shirt worn by drunken > cheerleaders at a frat party, emblazoned with the words: > > > > OPT IN! or no pussy for YOU! > > > > Or a related meme, also appropriate on a young attractive female body: > > > > Opt in, shell out or fuck off. > > > > Or > > > > You no opt in, I no put out. > > > > {8^D Kelly we could make a ton of money selling those shirts. > I have already failed at selling T-Shirts, remember Caucasians for Mitt Romney? Of course, I haven't learned my lesson, I'm now working on a T-Shirt deal for http://www.itanimulli.com (Note that is illuminati.com spelled backwards. You should see what happens when you type that into a web browser. > Inviting creative minds in ExI-chat for T-shirt or bumper sticker > suggestions, with no particular political view preferred. I am far more > interested in making money than spreading any particular meme. > I've always liked: You can keep the Change, but I want my Hope back. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From me at michaeldevault.com Tue Nov 5 03:19:47 2013 From: me at michaeldevault.com (Michael DeVault) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 21:19:47 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Awesome disaster In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: You raise a good point, Kelly. My grandfather was head of energy management for Walmart and oversaw development of their centralized management system. Given that Walmart is pretty much the largest consumer of Yes, it is no wonder the power companies kept tabs on Walmart. Big Daddy even appeared on the cover of a trade magazine or two. One of the frequent refrains the power companies stressed was that, by 2020, the power grid would be unable to support the demand placed, unless the nation began moving rapidly toward nuclear power. The companies even tried to pressure the NRC to follow the French model. "You want to build a station? Thank you for your permitting fee. Here are your plans and the list of approved sites for construction. Next?" We see how that went. md Sent from my iPhone > On Nov 4, 2013, at 6:52 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 7:57 AM, Keith Henson wrote: >> I only recently became aware of this, some you might have known about >> it for years. >> >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sayano%E2%80%93Shushenskaya_power_station_accident#! >> >> Wow. A 900 ton spinning generator rotor flying out of the floor. > > This is the first time I've heard of this as well. That's quite a mess they made there. > > My question is, If this were a nuclear power plant, do you think this would be the first time you would have heard about it? 70 people killed makes hydroelectric more dangerous than nuclear power, wouldn't you think? Why aren't people down picketing Hoover Dam to make them stop producing power in such a dangerous way? > > -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 kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Nov 5 03:42:01 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 20:42:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <090301ced8b6$5bae7350$130b59f0$@att.net> References: <98403CF1-5A40-46A2-9DE8-3661B39FC7BF@me.com> <5267B995.3020906@libero.it> <52766C6D.8060901@libero.it> <090301ced8b6$5bae7350$130b59f0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 10:01 AM, spike wrote: > > and the IRS has no authority to > collect the tax, as they do with income tax. Reasoning: as written, the > tax > applies to those who do not make enough money to require a tax return. > I'm not sure of that. Those who do not make enough to pay are thrown into the Medicare Medicaid pile. > So now what does the IRS do? What happens when we see burn-your-W2 rally, > a > modern echo of the 1960s burn-your-draft-card rally and the > burn-your-feminine-undergarment rally? I think Ayn Rand wrote a book about that... too bad it's all just a wet dream. > Do stand by, this will be interesting. > Sort of like a train wreck is interesting, yes. > That case demonstrates why I have always thought health care reform must be > done at the state level rather than the Fed. The states have more power in > those kinds of matters. The states have more space to experiment and > change > things if they fail. Romneycare, as big a mess as it is for those in Massachusetts, is not as big a mess as Obamacare will be. The US is simply bigger than Mass. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Nov 5 04:06:10 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 21:06:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] How to build a happier brain In-Reply-To: References: <526EE5F2.1010207@aleph.se> <058f01ced511$dbee9750$93cbc5f0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 8:45 AM, John Clark wrote: > > On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 12:01 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > > I would submit that John F Kennedy was more conservative than anyone in >> government today. Including the Tea Party "fanatics" and the Libertarians. >> > > In my opinion John F Kennedy was the greatest president the USA ever had, > and I would still say that even if he'd been a total fuckup every day of > his presidency except for the 13 days between October 14 and 28 1962, > because those were the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest the > human race has come to extinction since the eruption of Mt. Toba in > Indonesia 75,000 years ago. > A reasonable argument. Then there's also that little thing about sending men to the moon. It was Camelot for science. Science has suffered a lot at the hands of the Creationist political right since that time. Too bad. Science shouldn't be political. Case in point, one rather big piece of news for those who wonder if global warming is really all that big a deal today... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2485772/Global-warming-pause-20-years-Arctic-sea-ice-started-recover.html Now before you all go forgetting how to do math because of your politics, remember this paper was peer-reviewed for the journal Climate Dynamics. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Tue Nov 5 04:48:56 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 21:48:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin flaw In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <527878B8.6030001@canonizer.com> On 11/4/2013 4:31 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > It is interesting that the natural curve has caught up to the last > bubble... though the curve does look just a little steepish at the moment. > > -Kelly > > It doesn't look "steepish" to me. It's nothing compared to the first 5 order of magnitude price increases that each only took 6 months. This is exactly the shape the expert consensus camp (which says it will reach $1000/BTC in 2014) has been predicting. http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/2 Brent Allsop From spike66 at att.net Tue Nov 5 05:38:41 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 21:38:41 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: References: <2C17352F-6BCF-4DF9-BFF0-6333CC83FDA1@me.com> <080201ced3a0$48ed1c50$dac754f0$@att.net> <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> Message-ID: <00df01ced9e9$4a40ef60$dec2ce20$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson >.The constitution only protects the privacy of US citizens, and possibly visitors to the USA. Ah EXCELLENT! Finally someone who has found where in the constitution it says anything about US citizens having the inalienable right to privacy. I have been searching for that since I don't know how long. Kelly, where did you find that? >.Ms. Merkel is a foreign national who is not protected by the constitution. I agree. Now where in the constitution does it say anything about privacy? My heartburn with it is not that it is illegal but rather that it would piss off the one who should be our strongest ally. One day soon we will wake up and discover that China, Japan and Germany are the only three countries in the world capable of loaning money in the kinds of absurd quantities we USians demand of other countries, and I am not so sure about Japan. >.Which is why they shouldn't have gotten caught. Don't we have the obligation to make sure our "friends" are really our friends, even behind closed doors? They aren't really friends Kelly. There are no friends. Only potential bankers. We see the current bunch are saying the Tea Party patriots are terrorists and coming very close to identifying them as national enemies. OK then what happens if they get a bunch of seats in congress next fall, more than they already have? >.History is not with them on gaining seats during the second term of a lame duck president. The midterms a year from today will be a referendum on ObamaCare. One year from now, very little else will matter. If this thing crashes as hard as I think it will, the Democrat party will lose a bunch of seats, the Republicans will break even or lose a few and the Tea Party will be a force to be with reckoned. If O-care succeeds, just the opposite. Nothing else will matter much. >.But Obamacare failing is exactly what will lead to a single payer system. It's too big to fail, remember? That isn't clear to me. It sure appears to be set up for failure, but it isn't at all clear the next step is single payer. I would go for that if done at a state level, or if we get a national balanced budget amendment to go with it. Or we destroy our credit rating, so no sane party will loan us money. >.They can't help but fail. It is the government we're talking about. They never really succeed at anything really important. Yes, they occasionally build a bridge to somewhere. Yes, they did defend us against Hitler. But generally speaking if you want something screwed up badly enough you give it to the government and you are assured it will be. Agreed, so why do you think this current misadventure is a step toward single payer? >.I would love to see the youth of America revolt against this. It is them who are getting the biggest shaft from O-care. Paying for insurance that THEY DON'T NEED. It is redistribution of health. Only it is from the poorest youth of America who can't get a job coming out of college, to the richest, the older folk in America, who are the most well off demographic. I thought socialism was supposed to help the poor. Don't worry Kelly, the young will revolt bigtime. It will be like the old burn the draft card days, but this one may have some damn serious consequences. That business about setting the IRS to where they can demand payment but not place any criminal sanctions for non-payment nor issue liens against property or bank accounts for non-payment will hurt us. It will send a message to a generation that they do not need to pay their taxes. The whole scheme dilutes the power of the IRS, which could have catastrophic consequences. >.Obama lied, grandma died. Oooh that's cold. {8^D My favorite I have thought of so far: Tune In, Turn On, Opt Out >.LOL. That will work for a few years, until the penalties are so large that you have to pay attention to them. No sir. Even if you pay attention to them, the IRS still has no means of collecting the opt-out fees. I notice a lot of the articles on the topic say things like "The ACA didn't include any provisions for the IRS to enforce collection of the penalties." This kinda misses the point by understatement: the ACA clearly specifically forbids the IRS from enforcing the penalties. They are free to DEMAND payment, they can even send a bill. They just can't do anything if the taxpayer just says no. Next, note that the ACA is designed to be difficult or impossible to modify without nullifying the whole thing. That is why they specifically removed the isolation clauses. They didn't forget them, they carefully extracted them, so the insurance companies wouldn't be left holding the bag. The section which explicitly forbids the IRS from collecting the opt-out tax is cross linked to the section on the insurance companies requirement to sell to any zombie who staggers thru the door. If they kill the prohibition for the IRS to collect, they kill the requirement for the insurance company to sell to zombies. If those two things go out, the only thing that is left of O-care is a pile of wood pulp, granted a tall one. That linking of those two things was intentional and carefully designed by those who wrote this bill behind closed doors in Senate private chambers, with one party and a collection of insurance company reps with plenty of campaign donations to hand out freely. Kelly, is this all making sense now? >.I have already failed at selling T-Shirts, remember Caucasians for Mitt Romney? {8^D >.Of course, I haven't learned my lesson, I'm now working on a T-Shirt deal for http://www.itanimulli.com (Note that is illuminati.com spelled backwards. You should see what happens when you type that into a web browser. Haaaaahahahahahhaaaaa! Excellent gag, me lad. The New World Order crowd just keeps falling for the same gag, over and over and over. It seems they just cannot learn. They were falling for that back when I was in high school, they still are. That crowd doesn't seem to get it: the New World Order isn't some big secret evil conspiracy; that isn't necessary. We create the New World Order by borrowing two million dollars per second with no credible means of repaying it, then identify as enemies of the state anyone who points out that this madness is madness. I've always liked: You can keep the Change, but I want my Hope back. -Kelly We will not be keeping the change. We already saw the 1 November fix date blow by, the HealthCare.gov site isn't fixed. We are already seeing what looks to me like pre-emptive apologies for not making the 1 December date with a report I heard just today: the site never even attempted to encrypt any of the information they were collecting. Didn't even try! I know it takes more than four weeks to tack on after the fact some kind of encryption that could scale to millions of applicants, considering how complicated that site is and how many leaky contractors are involved. That whole task should never have involved the Fed, it should have been done by the insurance companies. They would each have smaller, more manageable systems in place and would have incentive to keep their own customer's data private. But back to the most interesting claim you made right at first Kelly: where did you find in the constitution anything about US citizens being entitled to privacy? I know the legal system has laws and that "reasonable expectation of privacy" phrase that determines the legality of snooping, but where is it in the constitution? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Nov 5 06:06:44 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 22:06:44 -0800 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets Message-ID: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> OK now I am more puzzled than ever. NASA says there are about 8.8 billion Goldilocks planets in the Milky Way alone: http://news.yahoo.com/study-8-8-billion-earth-size-just-planets-212232920.ht ml I had always assumed it about 4 orders of magnitude below that number. Now get one of the NASA deep space imagines, and imagine all those smudges of light each containing more such planets than there are people on this Goldilocks planet. I must reluctantly conclude that we are missing something fundamental, so much so that it calls into question nearly everything we thought was true. I just can't get my head around the notion that we are the only ones here with all those habitable planets all over the place. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue Nov 5 07:12:58 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 18:12:58 +1100 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: References: <63E929A5-85CD-4C48-A513-A741793B05D3@me.com> Message-ID: On 5 November 2013 12:37, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 8:42 AM, Omar Rahman wrote: >> >> >> The solution is simple: single payer. It addresses the broken supply and >> demand curve that I mentioned in my post. > > > See, I told you that's where the left would take this. It is inevitable. > >> >> There wasn't a system it was just a mess. It was exploitative and it still >> is because there isn't a non-profit insurance option as far as I know. I'm >> pretty sure for the 50 million people without insurance, many of whom >> wanted/needed health care, it couldn't really get much worse. > > > Which is why every rich sick person from every corner of the earth came to > the United States when they were really sick. Of course, those days are fast > going. > > As one of the millions of people without health insurance, I want to thank > father Obama that I still don't have insurance. > > As to Spike's idea of privatizing the CIA. I couldn't agree less. While > there needs to be a certain level of transparency in collecting secrets, I > don't think going private is the answer. The need for ONE single payer > defense system is the only thing that keeps me from going full on anarchist. The problem with the US health care system is not just access, it is that it is incredibly expensive for equivalent procedures, far more expensive than in any other country. This is all the more striking since apart from health care, goods and services in the US are the same price or cheaper than the equivalent in similarly wealthy countries. Where does this extra cash go? http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/26/21-graphs-that-show-americas-health-care-prices-are-ludicrous/ -- Stathis Papaioannou From deimtee at optusnet.com.au Tue Nov 5 10:40:17 2013 From: deimtee at optusnet.com.au (david) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 21:40:17 +1100 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <00df01ced9e9$4a40ef60$dec2ce20$@att.net> References: <2C17352F-6BCF-4DF9-BFF0-6333CC83FDA1@me.com> <080201ced3a0$48ed1c50$dac754f0$@att.net> <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> <00df01ced9e9$4a40ef60$dec2ce20$@att.net> Message-ID: <20131105214017.40eb03a4@jarrah> On Mon, 4 Nov 2013 21:38:41 -0800 "spike" wrote: > No sir. Even if you pay attention to them, the IRS still has no > means of collecting the opt-out fees. I notice a lot of the > articles on the topic say things like "The ACA didn't include any > provisions for the IRS to enforce collection of the penalties." > This kinda misses the point by understatement: the ACA clearly > specifically forbids the IRS from enforcing the penalties. They are > free to DEMAND payment, they can even send a bill. They just can't do > anything if the taxpayer just says no. > > > Next, note that the ACA is designed to be difficult or impossible to > modify without nullifying the whole thing. That is why they > specifically removed the isolation clauses. They didn't forget > them, they carefully extracted them, so the insurance companies > wouldn't be left holding the bag. > The section which explicitly forbids the IRS from collecting the > opt-out tax is cross linked to the section on the insurance > companies requirement to sell to any zombie who staggers thru the > door. If they kill the prohibition for the IRS to collect, they > kill the requirement for the insurance company to sell to zombies. > If those two things go out, the only thing that is left of O-care is > a pile of wood pulp, granted a tall one. That linking of those two > things was intentional and carefully designed by those who wrote this > bill behind closed doors in Senate private chambers, with one party > and a collection of insurance company reps with plenty of campaign > donations to hand out freely. Kelly, is this all making sense > now? > > spike Is there anything to stop the IRS simply applying whatever taxes or with-holding that you have paid, to the opt-out tax first, then coming after you boots and all for the "unpaid" income tax? -David From anders at aleph.se Tue Nov 5 11:40:38 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 06:40:38 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: References: <2C17352F-6BCF-4DF9-BFF0-6333CC83FDA1@me.com> <080201ced3a0$48ed1c50$dac754f0$@att.net> <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> Message-ID: <5278D936.1060607@aleph.se> On 2013-11-04 22:24, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 4:51 PM, spike > wrote: > > >...I see NOTHING wrong with the NSA spying on Angela Merkel. The only > thing they did wrong was allowing themselves to get caught... > > Ja, I do see something wrong with the NSA spying on me however. > If I were Merkel, I suppose I would feel likewise. > > > The constitution only protects the privacy of US citizens, and > possibly visitors to the USA. Ms. Merkel is a foreign national who is > not protected by the constitution. Actually, visitors to the US (and US citizens returning home from abroad) pass through a zone where they have very few constitutional protections: https://www.eff.org/press/releases/protect-yourself-intrusive-laptop-and-phone-searches-us-border Meanwhile the Swedish constitution protects Swedish citizens. The law also allows the FRA (the military intelligence agency) to monitor communications crossing Swedish borders (remember that there are some internet backbone trunks crossing the border). Isn't it lovely that the 9 million Swedes who stay at home are safe from eavesdropping? Sure, there are 7.113 billion foreigners (and Swedes abroad) who are fair game. No wonder Sweden is part of the "14 eyes" collaboration - the smaller the country, the more of the world it is constitutionally allowed to see... and then share. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/01/gchq-europe-spy-agencies-mass-surveillance-snowden And as foreign minister Bildt responded, blanket surveillance doesn't have chilling effects as long as it is performed discreetly. I wonder how much China (or Saudi Arabia, the Mafia, or EvilCorp) would be willing to pay for one small country in the collaboration to turn double agent? Obama's blackberry was certified by the NSA... which might be a bad thing in this case. (Nej, k?ra FRA, jag implicerar naturligtvis ingenting om er. Jag ?r en lojal medborgare och litar helt p? er - den svenska konspirationen i Oxford fortg?r precis som planerat. Men jag undrar om vi kan lita p? norrm?nnen...) -- 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 Tue Nov 5 12:35:07 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 07:35:07 -0500 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> On 2013-11-05 01:06, spike wrote: > > OK now I am more puzzled than ever. > I share in the puzzlement. And remember, this is just earth-like planets - if life can function in Europa-like oceans, ammonia, methane, liquid nitrogen, sulphuric acid, or supercritical carbon dioxide solvents the number of potential life-bearing worlds pushes up enormously. Say we assign only 1% chance to Europa-like reducing water biospheres being possible, and given that Europa-like places look slightly more common in the solar system than earthlike places, we should expect a distribution with 99% probability of 8.8 potential biospheres and 1% probability with up to 20 billion potential biospheres. Now we can repeat for the other biospheres (with weighting for the ranges of liquidity). The end result is that our prior distribution of the number of potential biospheres likely should look like an exponential distribution, with a mean significantly higher than just 8.8 billion worlds. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andymck35 at gmail.com Tue Nov 5 12:42:42 2013 From: andymck35 at gmail.com (Andrew Mckee) Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 01:42:42 +1300 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 05 Nov 2013 19:06:44 +1300, spike wrote: > I must reluctantly conclude that we are missing something fundamental, so > much so that it calls into question nearly everything we thought was > true. > I just can't get my head around the notion that we are the only ones here > with all those habitable planets all over the place. By an odd coincidence, I think I know almost but not quite how you feel. I just finished reading a book titled 'The Electric Sky', if the electric plasma universe model is in fact correct then it would seem that a lot of current cosmology is just flat out wrong, the implications of which kind drive me into a dark tea time of the soul mode. It probably doesn't help much, but I take it under the electric universe model the reason why we seem to be alone is simpler, we just happen to be living in one of the oldest parts of the universe. Anyone on this list happen to read that and/or related papers/books, and have an intelligent argument on why the electric plasma theory is invalid? From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 5 13:20:53 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 14:20:53 +0100 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: <20131105132052.GQ8041@leitl.org> On Wed, Nov 06, 2013 at 01:42:42AM +1300, Andrew Mckee wrote: > On Tue, 05 Nov 2013 19:06:44 +1300, spike wrote: > > Anyone on this list happen to read that and/or related papers/books, > and have an intelligent argument on why the electric plasma theory > is invalid? These one-star reviews is probably all the argument this book deserves.... http://www.amazon.com/The-Electric-Sky-Donald-Scott/product-reviews/0977285111/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_1?filterBy=addOneStar From anders at aleph.se Tue Nov 5 14:11:11 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 09:11:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: <5278FC7F.3040305@aleph.se> On 2013-11-05 07:42, Andrew Mckee wrote: > Anyone on this list happen to read that and/or related papers/books, > and have an intelligent argument on why the electric plasma theory is > invalid? The Zeeman effect allow you to measure magnetic field strengths remotely, and they are quite weak. http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March03/Vallee/Vallee_contents.html http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1302/1302.5663.pdf -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From spike66 at att.net Tue Nov 5 15:04:20 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 07:04:20 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <20131105214017.40eb03a4@jarrah> References: <2C17352F-6BCF-4DF9-BFF0-6333CC83FDA1@me.com> <080201ced3a0$48ed1c50$dac754f0$@att.net> <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> <00df01ced9e9$4a40ef60$dec2ce20$@att.net> <20131105214017.40eb03a4@jarrah> Message-ID: <021001ceda38$4ec54d20$ec4fe760$@att.net> -----Original Message----- >... On Behalf Of david "spike" wrote: >> ... the ACA clearly specifically forbids the IRS from enforcing the penalties. They are > free to DEMAND payment, they can even send a bill. They just can't do > anything if the taxpayer just says no... spike >...Is there anything to stop the IRS simply applying whatever taxes or with-holding that you have paid, to the opt-out tax first, then coming after you boots and all for the "unpaid" income tax? -David _______________________________________________ Sure, they can keep the refund you would have gotten. But if you do your withholdings right, you shouldn't have a refund coming anyway. Or if so, it should be very small. Here's the text: ''(A) WAIVER OF CRIMINAL PENALTIES.-In the case of any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure. ''(B) LIMITATIONS ON LIENS AND LEVIES.-The Secretary shall not- ''(i) file notice of lien with respect to any property of a taxpayer by reason of any failure to pay the penalty imposed by this section, or ''(ii) levy on any such property with respect to such failure.''. So here's the interesting part. Do they differentiate the normal income tax bill from that which is levied for not having health insurance? I would think they would need to keep those two bills separate, since the IRS has the authority to collect ordinary taxes, but does not have the authority to assess penalties for refusing this one. So if they mix the two into one bill, it might add the threat of criminal sanction for not paying the opt-out tax (specifically prohibited by law) or it might cause the IRS to lose its power over collecting the income tax (which has some enormous consequences in itself.) There are a number of waivers available for the opt-out tax: one of the major religions often found in places such as Saudi Arabia is exempt, since insurance is gambling. Presumably anyone who converts to that religion now is as exempt as the others. Native Americans are exempt even though you can buy a membership into some Native American tribes without the actual relationship, or just claim it, as in the case of Elizabeth Warren. You can be a union or a big corporation, with the term "big" defined by how "big" is the campaign donation you offer. You can be sure the IRS can and will keep your refund if you have one coming, but if you do, that is a bookkeeping error on your part. To answer your question, can they come boots and all. Yes to boots, not to all. Boots but not criminal sanctions, boots but not liens against your property or levies against your bank accounts. OK so what happens when the mighty much-feared IRS shows up boots and that's all? The taxpayers now tweak them with "I invoke the fifth amendment" or say "Hey nice boots. Boots are made for walking. Now hit the road." The IRS cannot do its job without a serious threat behind it. That waiver removed the fist from the glove. spike From atymes at gmail.com Tue Nov 5 15:40:06 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 07:40:06 -0800 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 4:35 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > I share in the puzzlement. > [snip] > Say we assign only 1% chance to > That's the source of your confusion: the illusion of convenient numbers. The actual percentages are probably unwieldy small fractions of a single percent. Nature doesn't care that we decimalize things. Consider the exact fraction you would need, for Earth to be the only one. The reason it feels wrong is because it's an inconvenient fraction. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 5 16:18:28 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 17:18:28 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Master of many trades Message-ID: <20131105161828.GX8041@leitl.org> http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-views/anyone-can-learn-to-be-a-polymath/ Master of many trades Our age reveres the narrow specialist but humans are natural polymaths, at our best when we turn our minds to many things by Robert Twigger 2,400 words Renaissance man: Portrait of a Young Gentleman in His Studio by Lorenzo Lotto, c. 1530. Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice. Photo by Corbis Robert Twigger is a British poet, writer and explorer. He lives in Cairo, Egypt. I travelled with Bedouin in the Western Desert of Egypt. When we got a puncture, they used tape and an old inner tube to suck air from three tyres to inflate a fourth. It was the cook who suggested the idea; maybe he was used to making food designed for a few go further. Far from expressing shame at having no pump, they told me that carrying too many tools is the sign of a weak man; it makes him lazy. The real master has no tools at all, only a limitless capacity to improvise with what is to hand. The more fields of knowledge you cover, the greater your resources for improvisation. We hear the descriptive words psychopath and sociopath all the time, but here?s a new one: monopath. It means a person with a narrow mind, a one-track brain, a bore, a super-specialist, an expert with no other interests ? in other words, the role-model of choice in the Western world. You think I jest? In June, I was invited on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 to say a few words on the river Nile, because I had a new book about it. The producer called me ?Dr Twigger? several times. I was flattered, but I also felt a sense of panic. I have never sought or held a PhD. After the third ?Dr?, I gently put the producer right. And of course, it was fine ? he didn?t especially want me to be a doctor. The culture did. My Nile book was necessarily the work of a generalist. But the radio needs credible guests. It needs an expert ? otherwise why would anyone listen? The monopathic model derives some of its credibility from its success in business. In the late 18th century, Adam Smith (himself an early polymath who wrote not only on economics but also philosophy, astronomy, literature and law) noted that the division of labour was the engine of capitalism. His famous example was the way in which pin-making could be broken down into its component parts, greatly increasing the overall efficiency of the production process. But Smith also observed that ?mental mutilation? followed the too-strict division of labour. Or as Alexis de Tocqueville wrote: ?Nothing tends to materialise man, and to deprive his work of the faintest trace of mind, more than extreme division of labour.? Ever since the beginning of the industrial era, we have known both the benefits and the drawbacks of dividing jobs into ever smaller and more tedious ones. Riches must be balanced against boredom and misery. But as long as a boring job retains an element of physicality, one can find a rhythm, entering a ?flow? state wherein time passes easily and the hard labour is followed by a sense of accomplishment. In Jack Kerouac?s novel Big Sur (1962) there is a marvellous description of Neal Cassady working like a demon, changing tyres in a tyre shop and finding himself uplifted rather than diminished by the work. Industrialism tends toward monopathy because of the growth of divided labour, but it is only when the physical element is removed that the real problems begin. When the body remains still and the mind is forced to do something repetitive, the human inside us rebels. The average job now is done by someone who is stationary in front of some kind of screen. Someone who has just one overriding interest is tunnel-visioned, a bore, but also a specialist, an expert. Welcome to the monopathic world, a place where only the single-minded can thrive. Of course, the rest of us are very adept at pretending to be specialists. We doctor our CVs to make it look as if all we ever wanted to do was sell mobile homes or Nespresso machines. It?s common sense, isn?t it, to try to create the impression that we are entirely focused on the job we want? And wasn?t it ever thus? In fact, it wasn?t. Classically, a polymath was someone who ?had learnt much?, conquering many different subject areas. As the 15th-century polymath Leon Battista Alberti ? an architect, painter, horseman, archer and inventor ? wrote: ?a man can do all things if he will?. During the Renaissance, polymathy became part of the idea of the ?perfected man?, the manifold master of intellectual, artistic and physical pursuits. Leonardo da Vinci was said to be as proud of his ability to bend iron bars with his hands as he was of the Mona Lisa. Polymaths such as Da Vinci, Goethe and Benjamin Franklin were such high achievers that we might feel a bit reluctant to use the word ?polymath? to describe our own humble attempts to become multi-talented. We can?t all be geniuses. But we do all still indulge in polymathic activity; it?s part of what makes us human. So, say that we all have at least the potential to become polymaths. Once we have a word, we can see the world more clearly. And that?s when we notice a huge cognitive dissonance at the centre of Western culture: a huge confusion about how new ideas, new discoveries, and new art actually come about. Science, for example, likes to project itself as clean, logical, rational and unemotional. In fact, it?s pretty haphazard, driven by funding and ego, reliant on inspired intuition by its top-flight practitioners. Above all it is polymathic. New ideas frequently come from the cross-fertilisation of two separate fields. Francis Crick, who intuited the structure of DNA, was originally a physicist; he claimed this background gave him the confidence to solve problems that biologists thought were insoluble. Richard Feynman came up with his Nobel Prize-winning ideas about quantum electrodynamics by reflecting on a peculiar hobby of his ? spinning a plate on his finger (he also played the bongos and was an expert safe-cracker). Percy Spencer, a radar expert, noticed that the radiation produced by microwaves melted a chocolate bar in his pocket and developed microwave ovens. And Hiram Maxim, the inventor of the modern machine gun, was inspired by a self-cocking mousetrap he had made in his teens. I thought you were either a ?natural? or nothing. Then I saw natural athletes fall behind when they didn?t practice enough. This, shamefully, was a great morale booster Despite all this, there remains the melancholy joke about the scientist who outlines a whole new area of study only to dismiss it out of hand because it trespasses across too many field boundaries and would never get funding. Somehow, this is just as believable as any number of amazing breakthroughs inspired by the cross-fertilisation of disciplines. One could tell similar stories about breakthroughs in art ? cubism crossed the simplicity of African carving with a growing non-representational trend in European painting. Jean-Michel Basquiat and Banksy took street graffiti and made it acceptable to galleries. In business, cross-fertilisation is the source of all kinds of innovations: fibres inspired by spider webs have become a source of bulletproof fabric; practically every mobile phone also seems to be a computer, a camera and a GPS tracker. To come up with such ideas, you need to know things outside your field. What?s more, the further afield your knowledge extends, the greater potential you have for innovation. Invention fights specialisation at every turn. Human nature and human progress are polymathic at root. And life itself is various ? you need many skills to be able to live it. In traditional cultures, everyone can do a little of everything. Though one man might be the best hunter or archer or trapper, he doesn?t do only that. The benefits of polymathic endeavour in innovation are not so hard to see. What is less obvious is how we ever allowed ourselves to lose sight of them. The problem, I believe, is some mistaken assumptions about learning. We come to believe that we can only learn when we are young, and that only ?naturals? can acquire certain skills. We imagine that we have a limited budget for learning, and that different skills absorb all the effort we plough into them, without giving us anything to spend on other pursuits. Our hunch that it?s easier to learn when you?re young isn?t completely wrong, or at least it has a real basis in neurology. However, the pessimistic assumption that learning somehow ?stops? when you leave school or university or hit thirty is at odds with the evidence. It appears that a great deal depends on the nucleus basalis, located in the basal forebrain. Among other things, this bit of the brain produces significant amounts of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that regulates the rate at which new connections are made between brain cells. This in turn dictates how readily we form memories of various kinds, and how strongly we retain them. When the nucleus basalisis ?switched on?, acetylcholine flows and new connections occur. When it is switched off, we make far fewer new connections. Between birth and the age of ten or eleven, the nucleus basalisis is permanently ?switched on?. It contains an abundance of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, and this means new connections are being made all the time. Typically this means that a child will be learning almost all the time ? if they see or hear something once they remember it. But as we progress towards the later teenage years the brain becomes more selective. From research into the way stroke victims recover lost skills it has been observed that the nucleus basalis only switches on when one of three conditions occur: a novel situation, a shock, or intense focus, maintained through repetition or continuous application. Over-specialisation, eventually retreats into defending what one has learnt rather than making new connections I know from my own experience of studying martial arts in Japan that intense study brings rewards that are impossible to achieve by casual application. For a year I studied an hour a day three days a week and made minimal progress. For a further year I switched to an intensive course of five hours a day five days a week. The gains were dramatic and permanent, resulting in a black belt and an instructor certificate. Deep down I was pessimistic that I could actually learn a martial art. I thought you were either a ?natural? or nothing. Then I saw natural athletes fall behind when they didn?t practice enough. This, shamefully, was a great morale booster. The fact that I succeeded where others were failing also gave me an important key to the secret of learning. There was nothing special about me, but I worked at it and I got it. One reason many people shy away from polymathic activity is that they think they can?t learn new skills. I believe we all can ? and at any age too ? but only if we keep learning. ?Use it or lose it? is the watchword of brain plasticity. People as old as 90 who actively acquire new interests that involve learning retain their ability to learn. But if we stop taxing the nucleus basalis, it begins to dry up. In some older people it has been shown to contain no acetylcholine ? they have been ?switched off? for so long the organ no longer functions. In extreme cases this is considered to be one factor in Alzheimers and other forms of dementia ? treated, effectively at first, by artificially raising acetylcholine levels. But simply attempting new things seems to offer health benefits to people who aren?t suffering from Alzheimers. After only short periods of trying, the ability to make new connections develops. And it isn?t just about doing puzzles and crosswords; you really have to try and learn something new. Monopathy, or over-specialisation, eventually retreats into defending what one has learnt rather than making new connections. The initial spurt of learning gives out, and the expert is left, like an animal, merely defending his territory. One sees this in the academic arena, where ancient professors vie with each other to expel intruders from their hard-won patches. Just look at the bitter arguments over how far the sciences should be allowed to encroach on the humanities. But the polymath, whatever his or her ?level? or societal status, is not constrained to defend their own turf. The polymath?s identity and value comes from multiple mastery. Besides, it may be that the humanities have less to worry about than it seems. An intriguing study funded by the Dana foundation and summarised by Dr Michael Gazzaniga of the University of California, Santa Barbara, suggests that studying the performing arts ? dance, music and acting ? actually improves one's ability to learn anything else. Collating several studies, the researchers found that performing arts generated much higher levels of motivation than other subjects. These enhanced levels of motivation made students aware of their own ability to focus and concentrate on improvement. Later, even if they gave up the arts, they could apply their new-found talent for concentration to learning anything new. I find this very suggestive. The old Renaissance idea of mastering physical as well as intellectual skills appears to have real grounding in improving our general ability to learn new things. It is having the confidence that one can learn something new that opens the gates to polymathic activity. There is, I think, a case to be made for a new area of study to counter the monopathic drift of the modern world. Call it polymathics. Any such field would have to include physical, artistic and scientific elements to be truly rounded. It isn?t just that mastering physical skills aids general learning. The fact is, if we exclude the physicality of existence and reduce everything worth knowing down to book-learning, we miss out on a huge chunk of what makes us human. Remember, Feynman had to be physically competent enough to spin a plate to get his new idea. Polymathics might focus on rapid methods of learning that allow you to master multiple fields. It might also work to develop transferable learning methods. A large part of it would naturally be concerned with creativity ? crossing unrelated things to invent something new. But polymathics would not just be another name for innovation. It would, I believe, help build better judgment in all areas. There is often something rather obvious about people with narrow interests ? they are bores, and bores always lack a sense of humour. They just don?t see that it?s absurd to devote your life to a tiny area of study and have no other outside interests. I suspect that the converse is true: by being more polymathic, you develop a better sense of proportion and balance ? which gives you a better sense of humour. And that can?t be a bad thing. Published on 4 November 2013 Article topics: Education, Knowledge, Society From anders at aleph.se Tue Nov 5 17:37:27 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 12:37:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> Message-ID: <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> On 2013-11-05 10:40, Adrian Tymes wrote: > That's the source of your confusion: the illusion of convenient > numbers. The actual percentages are probably unwieldy small fractions > of a single percent. Nature doesn't care that we decimalize things. Bah. See below. > Consider the exact fraction you would need, for Earth to be the only > one. The reason it feels wrong is because it's an inconvenient fraction. I have exactly one cup of coffee in front of me. What probability need I assume for coffee cups to make it the only one? Clearly, if nobody else has a coffee cup, it needs to be way less than one in 7 billion! Wow, what a rare coffee cup I have! Sorry, this is not how it works. Let's do it right then: http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/ma218/bayes2.pdf http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~fliang/STAT605/lect01.pdf http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jordan/courses/260-spring10/lectures/lecture7.pdf We observe ourselves to be on Earth. What does that do to the probability of biospheres being *possible* on exactly Earth-like planets? Obviously it sets it to 1. What does it do to the probability p of life on similar planets? This is equivalent to doing a Bernouilli trial and getting one success. If you start with a uniform prior, then the resulting posterior probabability distribution for the real probability is now f(p)=2p - a triangular distribution with maximum at p=1. If we instead use an uninformative Jeffrey prior for a Bernouilli trial, P(p) = 1/[pi sqrt(p(1-p))] - a lot of the mass is really close to 0 or 1, quite inconvenient. In this case the posterior is proportional to p/sqrt(p(1-p)). Again most of the probability mass is close to p=1. If we enlarge the class to planets in or near the life zone, we have one success and two failures in the solar system. In this case we get a beta distribution as posterior, P(p)=p(1-p)^2/B(2,3) for the uniform prior - a softer bulge peaking at p=1/3. Multiplying with a Jeffreys prior shifts the peak down a little bit, but not by much. Now repeat the process with the other planet classes. We do not have any known examples, so it will just be priors going into the estimate. The expected number of biospheres will be E(sum_i p_i N_i)=sum_i E(p_i N_i) where p_i is the probability for class i, N_i the number of planets in class i. The expectation for both uniform or Jeffries priors is N/2 - far, far more than 1% (since each category has mean p=1/2). So the rational thing is to expect *lots* of biospheres. Which is of course not good news, since that makes a future Great Filter more likely. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Nov 5 17:51:21 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 17:51:21 +0000 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 5:37 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > So the rational thing is to expect *lots* of biospheres. Which is of course > not good news, since that makes a future Great Filter more likely. > > Not necessarily bad news, though. If the Great Filter is Heaven on Earth, who are we to complain? The Filter just stops species thrashing around in the physical universe. Good idea if it is because they all find something much, much better to do. :) BillK From protokol2020 at gmail.com Tue Nov 5 18:02:49 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 19:02:49 +0100 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> Message-ID: If NASA says, that they are Earth-like, it doesn't mean that they are *enough* Earth-like for a nontrivial biology. Mars was a sure thing, a decade ago, that it contains at least some bacterial life. I was watching a poor turtle in a lab, crawling around in Mars-like environment. SEE!? those enthusiastic scientist were screaming. Now we see, there isn't a drop of water to be found on Mars. NASA needs a budget for another Kepler, that's all. On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 6:51 PM, BillK wrote: > On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 5:37 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > > So the rational thing is to expect *lots* of biospheres. Which is of > course > > not good news, since that makes a future Great Filter more likely. > > > > > > Not necessarily bad news, though. If the Great Filter is Heaven on > Earth, who are we to complain? > > The Filter just stops species thrashing around in the physical > universe. Good idea if it is because they all find something much, > much better to do. :) > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Tue Nov 5 18:09:19 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 19:09:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin flaw In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5279344F.1020202@libero.it> Il 05/11/2013 00:31, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 11:35 AM, John Clark > wrote: > > http://mashable.com/2013/11/04/bitcoin-cornell-researchers/ > > > Basic story is that if you or your group controls a large enough > collection of the bitcoining hardware, you can benefit by NOT publishing > found blocks early. That is a very interesting "hole" but one that would > be quite difficult to exploit, in that you would have to have control of > a VERY significant set of computation. They also have a pretty easy fix, > which should be straightforward to implement. > > I don't see this exploit as being damaging to the long term perception > of Bitcoins. > > It is interesting that the natural curve has caught up to the last > bubble... though the curve does look just a little steepish at the moment. It is steepish only if you look at it with a linear chart. http://www.bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zcvzl The problem is the wide oscillation band is pretty large (now I would roughly say 100-1000 now), so it is easy to be confounded. The chart, IMHO, point to a 300-500$/BTC by year end with no major catastrophes. Any Cyprus, Lehman and likes and it could easily shot to the higher side of the band in days. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Tue Nov 5 18:54:03 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 19:54:03 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: References: <2C17352F-6BCF-4DF9-BFF0-6333CC83FDA1@me.com> <080201ced3a0$48ed1c50$dac754f0$@att.net> <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> Message-ID: <52793ECB.2090608@libero.it> Il 05/11/2013 04:24, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > LOL. That will work for a few years, until the penalties are so large > that you have to pay attention to them. The problem with the penalties large enough is, after a threshold, they become irrelevant. If they transform the penalty in a criminal matter, they are threatening all and any citizen and resident in the US (a part the people with a waiver). Is it possible to give waivers to avoid the sanction of a criminal law? But fundamentally, you are talking to morph the IRS in the Sheriff of Nottingham and his Soldiers. Boots at the door, kick, enter, take stuff, arrest people, etc. We know how ended in England, I do not think it would end very well in the US given the 3-500 hundred millions guns in civilian hands. What criminal sanction would be applicable if the IRS could apply it? How many years of jail people would receive for refusing to pay the "tax"? How many of them would fight against being arrested? Maybe not the first time, but the following. Mirco From rtomek at ceti.pl Tue Nov 5 19:52:30 2013 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:52:30 +0100 (CET) Subject: [ExI] Master of many trades In-Reply-To: <20131105161828.GX8041@leitl.org> References: <20131105161828.GX8041@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, 5 Nov 2013, Eugen Leitl wrote: > http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-views/anyone-can-learn-to-be-a-polymath/ > Master of many trades > Our age reveres the narrow specialist but humans are natural polymaths, > at our best when we turn our minds to many things "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." Robert Heinlein, Hoooly fork, I am almost a human being. Now I have a motivation. Will improve. That's a nice goal to have. 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 deimtee at optusnet.com.au Tue Nov 5 21:22:01 2013 From: deimtee at optusnet.com.au (david) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 08:22:01 +1100 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <021001ceda38$4ec54d20$ec4fe760$@att.net> References: <2C17352F-6BCF-4DF9-BFF0-6333CC83FDA1@me.com> <080201ced3a0$48ed1c50$dac754f0$@att.net> <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> <00df01ced9e9$4a40ef60$dec2ce20$@att.net> <20131105214017.40eb03a4@jarrah> <021001ceda38$4ec54d20$ec4fe760$@att.net> Message-ID: <20131106082201.586e8b6c@jarrah> On Tue, 5 Nov 2013 07:04:20 -0800 "spike" wrote: > -----Original Message----- > >... On Behalf Of david > > "spike" wrote: > > >> ... the ACA clearly specifically forbids the IRS from enforcing the > penalties. They are > > free to DEMAND payment, they can even send a bill. They just can't do > > anything if the taxpayer just says no... spike > > >...Is there anything to stop the IRS simply applying whatever taxes or > with-holding that you have paid, to the opt-out tax first, then coming after > you boots and all for the "unpaid" income tax? > > -David > _______________________________________________ > > Sure, they can keep the refund you would have gotten. But if you do your > withholdings right, you shouldn't have a refund coming anyway. Or if so, it > should be very small. Here's the text: > > ''(A) WAIVER OF CRIMINAL PENALTIES.-In the case of > any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed > by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any > criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure. > ''(B) LIMITATIONS ON LIENS AND LEVIES.-The Secretary > shall not- > ''(i) file notice of lien with respect to any property > of a taxpayer by reason of any failure to pay the > penalty imposed by this section, or > ''(ii) levy on any such property with respect to > such failure.''. > > So here's the interesting part. Do they differentiate the normal income tax > bill from that which is levied for not having health insurance? I would > think they would need to keep those two bills separate, since the IRS has > the authority to collect ordinary taxes, but does not have the authority to > assess penalties for refusing this one. So if they mix the two into one > bill, it might add the threat of criminal sanction for not paying the > opt-out tax (specifically prohibited by law) or it might cause the IRS to > lose its power over collecting the income tax (which has some enormous > consequences in itself.) > > There are a number of waivers available for the opt-out tax: one of the > major religions often found in places such as Saudi Arabia is exempt, since > insurance is gambling. Presumably anyone who converts to that religion now > is as exempt as the others. Native Americans are exempt even though you can > buy a membership into some Native American tribes without the actual > relationship, or just claim it, as in the case of Elizabeth Warren. You can > be a union or a big corporation, with the term "big" defined by how "big" is > the campaign donation you offer. > > You can be sure the IRS can and will keep your refund if you have one > coming, but if you do, that is a bookkeeping error on your part. To answer > your question, can they come boots and all. Yes to boots, not to all. > Boots but not criminal sanctions, boots but not liens against your property > or levies against your bank accounts. OK so what happens when the mighty > much-feared IRS shows up boots and that's all? The taxpayers now tweak them > with "I invoke the fifth amendment" or say "Hey nice boots. Boots are made > for walking. Now hit the road." > > The IRS cannot do its job without a serious threat behind it. That waiver > removed the fist from the glove. > > spike > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat Yes to "they will keep your refund", but that's not exactly what I meant. If you have any tax liability at all they can collect. For example assume your income tax should be $1000 and your opt out tax $500. You adjust your with-holding to be exactly $1000. The IRS says "You have paid your $500 opt out tax and $500 of your income tax. Now pay the other $500 under threat of income tax collection penalties." The only people immune to this are those who have absolutely no other tax liability than the opt-out tax. -David. From spike66 at att.net Tue Nov 5 23:58:05 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 15:58:05 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <52793ECB.2090608@libero.it> References: <2C17352F-6BCF-4DF9-BFF0-6333CC83FDA1@me.com> <080201ced3a0$48ed1c50$dac754f0$@att.net> <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> <52793ECB.2090608@libero.it> Message-ID: <040201ceda82$dfc38720$9f4a9560$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato >...Subject: Re: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" Il 05/11/2013 04:24, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: >>... LOL. That will work for a few years, until the penalties are so large that you have to pay attention to them. >...The problem with the penalties large enough is, after a threshold, they become irrelevant. Mirco, they are irrelevant already, if there is no legal way to collect them. >...If they transform the penalty in a criminal matter, they are threatening all and any citizen and resident in the US... Ja, which is why the law is written as it is, specifically forbidding criminal sanctions. This is an interesting subtlety for you legal eagles. When O-care was written, they already knew it was breaking new legal ground in several ways: if it is considered a tax, it is a unique example of a flat tax levied at the federal level (the minimum tax next year is 285 bucks minimum for a family next year, 2085 per family by 2016.) It has a minimum, regardless of earnings, so that is the only flat tax at the federal level I have ever of-heard. Second: When the law was written they knew they would need to defend it before the Supreme Court. But the government's argument wasn't based on declaring O-care a tax; they didn't want to go that route. Reason: it places control over the law in the hands of the house of representatives. We have one party who voted unanimously against the law, and has continued to vote against it ever since. That party now controls the house. For the current house minority party to prevent defunding of the law, they had to go to extraordinary, and extreme measures, such as threatening to default on our loans. This time, they managed to blame the house majority party, but how many times will that work? And how do they expect the majority party to cooperate when they continue to insult, rather than doing everything to patch up the divide? Consider the how the press has treated the house majority party. Consider the subject line of this thread. Is that the way to treat your own boss? The majority party in the house is the boss over O-care. >...Is it possible to give waivers to avoid the sanction of a criminal law?... We all have a waiver of avoiding criminal sanction already. >...But fundamentally, you are talking to morph the IRS in the Sheriff of Nottingham and his Soldiers... Ja, and it looks to me like this gets you around all those inconveniences for the government found in the first ten amendments to the constitution. The IRS does not need to read you your rights (because once they are on your case, you don't have any.) They don't need to convince a judge of anything. If we allow this to go forward, we just took a giant leap down Hayek's road to serfdom. >...Boots at the door, kick, enter, take stuff, arrest people, etc. We know how ended in England, I do not think it would end very well in the US given the 3-500 hundred millions guns in civilian hands... The IRS was specifically forbidden this power in order to prevent exactly this scenario. >...What criminal sanction would be applicable if the IRS could apply it?... None. >...How many years of jail people would receive for refusing to pay the "tax"? None. >...How many of them would fight against being arrested? Maybe not the first time, but the following. Mirco _______________________________________________ There was a good reason why that no-criminal sanction clause was added. When the law was written it was never envisioned as a tax. The government knew it would need to defend the legality of the law, so they designed a strange hybrid: the opt-out fees are collected by the IRS, but the justification for the fee was never part of the government's defense. It was justified as legal under the welfare clause of the constitution: the government is allowed to "...promote the general welfare..." OK then. If you are threatening the opt-outs with liens against property, levies against bank accounts or prison, it becomes rather difficult to argue this scheme in any way promotes the general welfare. So they had to write that clause in there. Now of course it is unlikely to be modified, since the House controls the law, and they haven't been treated well. So one can scarcely expect them to refrain from telling the minority party in the house to go to hell. All this completely ignores the fact that O-care is intentionally designed to be difficult to modify anyway. spike From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 6 00:59:19 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 16:59:19 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <20131106082201.586e8b6c@jarrah> References: <2C17352F-6BCF-4DF9-BFF0-6333CC83FDA1@me.com> <080201ced3a0$48ed1c50$dac754f0$@att.net> <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> <00df01ced9e9$4a40ef60$dec2ce20$@att.net> <20131105214017.40eb03a4@jarrah> <021001ceda38$4ec54d20$ec4fe760$@att.net> <20131106082201.586e8b6c@jarrah> Message-ID: <044401ceda8b$6d3a9c30$47afd490$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of david > _______________________________________________ >... >...Yes to "they will keep your refund", but that's not exactly what I meant. If you have any tax liability at all they can collect. >...For example assume your income tax should be $1000 and your opt out tax $500. >...You adjust your with-holding to be exactly $1000. >...The IRS says "You have paid your $500 opt out tax and $500 of your income tax. Now pay the other $500 under threat of income tax collection penalties." >...The only people immune to this are those who have absolutely no other tax liability than the opt-out tax.-David. _______________________________________________ Ja, I see. I would think they will carefully differentiate those two, for the IRS doesn't want to risk losing the authority they have maintained and built all these years, by mixing a tax they do have the authority to collect with another tax they do not have the authority to collect. That being said, considering the revelations of the last few days, good chance the IRS will be very cautious about doing anything with the opt-out tax. We found out the president flat out lied to get the ACA to pass. The comment, repeated at least a couple dozen times is "If you like your current plan, you can keep your current plan. Period. End of story." Now we find out the rules for what constitutes adequate coverage would cause many of the current plans to not qualify. So the people who had those plans have lost their insurance, even if they liked their plans. If a person had a plan which failed to cover Sandra Fluke's birth control pills and abortion services for instance, even if they liked that plan, they now don't like that plan. One of Obama's predecessors commented "It depends on what your definition of is is." Now we see redefinement of the terms Period and End of story. With regard to the comment "If you like your current plan, you can keep your current plan. Period. End of story," period now means comma or asterisk. End of story now means "The government now gets to tell you if you like your current policy." The 'period, end of story' comment was not true. The revelation today is the government knew at the time that it wasn't true. So now, do we think the IRS will stake its authority trying to collect a tax which it is specifically forbidden to collect by force, on a tax which was levied based on a lie? spike From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 01:40:26 2013 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 18:40:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Master of many trades In-Reply-To: References: <20131105161828.GX8041@leitl.org> Message-ID: "WWAS?" What would Anders say? John ; ) On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Tomasz Rola wrote: > On Tue, 5 Nov 2013, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > > http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-views/anyone-can-learn-to-be-a-polymath/ > > > Master of many trades > > > Our age reveres the narrow specialist but humans are natural polymaths, > > at our best when we turn our minds to many things > > "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, > butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance > accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give > orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, > pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, > die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." > Robert Heinlein, > > Hoooly fork, I am almost a human being. Now I have a motivation. Will > improve. That's a nice goal to have. > > 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 ** > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 6 02:17:13 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 18:17:13 -0800 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> Message-ID: <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets On 2013-11-05 10:40, Adrian Tymes wrote: That's the source of your confusion: the illusion of convenient numbers. The actual percentages are probably unwieldy small fractions of a single percent. Nature doesn't care that we decimalize things. >.Bah. See below. snip{...lots of waaaay cool mathematical reasoning} >. So the rational thing is to expect *lots* of biospheres. Which is of course not good news, since that makes a future Great Filter more likely. -- Dr Anders Sandberg OK so this makes me think it is very possible that there is something very fundamentally wrong with both models. In the first case, we explain the silence everywhere by recognizing the probability of what happened here must be on the order of 1E-20. That compels me to just say something must be wrong with it. Anders suggested the Great Filter model is more likely, but even then, it just feels to me (ja, I recognize the universe doesn't care how I feel) that occasionally some detectible signal would leak past the Great Filter. I do sincerely propose we keep thinking, hard, keep pondering and proposing solutions, even if outlandish. Both the above solutions (crazy coincidence and Great Filter) just feel so wrong, even after correcting by F sub a, the factor which compensates for human intuition vs the apathy of the universe towards our human intuition. Even after dividing through by Fa, it still feels like the right answer isn't yet on our list of theories. The latest Kepler estimate reinforces that notion; if there really are ten billion goldilocks planets per galaxy, the total silence is an anomalous observation in both theories, a still unresolved puzzle. Think! Keep thinking! spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andymck35 at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 09:39:54 2013 From: andymck35 at gmail.com (Andrew Mckee) Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 22:39:54 +1300 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <5278FC7F.3040305@aleph.se> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278FC7F.3040305@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Wed, 06 Nov 2013 03:11:11 +1300, Anders Sandberg wrote: > The Zeeman effect allow you to measure magnetic field strengths > remotely, and they are quite weak. > > http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March03/Vallee/Vallee_contents.html > http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1302/1302.5663.pdf Thanks, I'll add it to the reading list. But fields of 10^3 to 10^12 Gauss are weak?, so what do you consider a strong magnetic field then?, and how does one avoid ever meeting one in a dark alley? ;-) From andymck35 at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 09:42:30 2013 From: andymck35 at gmail.com (Andrew Mckee) Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 22:42:30 +1300 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <20131105132052.GQ8041@leitl.org> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <20131105132052.GQ8041@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, 06 Nov 2013 02:20:53 +1300, Eugen Leitl wrote: > These one-star reviews is probably all the argument this book > deserves.... > > http://www.amazon.com/The-Electric-Sky-Donald-Scott/product-reviews/0977285111/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_1?filterBy=addOneStar You're hilarious. Your future as a stand up comodian is assured. From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed Nov 6 09:32:36 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 01:32:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin flaw In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1383730356.7392.YahooMailNeo@web121201.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Kelly Anderson wrote: > I don't see this exploit as being damaging to the long term perception of Bitcoins. Nor do I. The market would have responded negatively to news of any serious flaw. Instead, it ignored the supposed bad news and continued on to make a new all time high today. In related good news, (not that there is any scarcity of it), an Australian car manufacturer announced today that it will accept Bitcoin. This I think is an important first. Tomcar Australia is world's first car manufacturer to accept Bitcoin http://prwire.com.au/pr/40127/tomcar-australia-is-world-s-first-car-manufacturer-to-accept-bitcoin Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed Nov 6 09:47:52 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 10:47:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <20131105132052.GQ8041@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20131106094752.GG5661@leitl.org> On Wed, Nov 06, 2013 at 10:42:30PM +1300, Andrew Mckee wrote: > On Wed, 06 Nov 2013 02:20:53 +1300, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > >These one-star reviews is probably all the argument this book > >deserves.... > > > >http://www.amazon.com/The-Electric-Sky-Donald-Scott/product-reviews/0977285111/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_1?filterBy=addOneStar > > You're hilarious. > > Your future as a stand up comodian is assured. I'm happy you find me as funny as I the electric universe kooks. From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 09:55:34 2013 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 02:55:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "If this isn't terrifying, I don't know what is..." -Dr. David Suzuki Message-ID: Can the situation in Japan really be this potentially nightmarish?!!! Doctor David Suzuki declares... "I have seen a paper which says that if in fact the fourth plant goes under in an earthquake and those rods are exposed, it's bye bye Japan and everybody on the west coast of North America should evacuate," http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/11/04/david-suzuki-fukushima-warning_n_4213061.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 10:08:30 2013 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 03:08:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Orion's Arm Message-ID: I just wanted to make sure that everyone on the list was aware of this incredible "shared sandbox" of astounding creativity, which envisions the far future. Orion's Arm is very dear to my heart... http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/52780bfa04d76 John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 10:12:18 2013 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 11:12:18 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Orion's Arm In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Orion's Arm is very, very dear to my heart too. A coherent and vast future universe, and a background rich enough for thousands of great science fiction stories. On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 11:08 AM, John Grigg wrote: > I just wanted to make sure that everyone on the list was aware of this > incredible "shared sandbox" of astounding creativity, which envisions the > far future. Orion's Arm is very dear to my heart... > > > http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/52780bfa04d76 > > > John : ) > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 10:16:14 2013 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 03:16:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "Is it time for a transhumanist Olympics?" Message-ID: "Some might call scientifically enhanced athletes mutants. Many futurists, scientists, and technologists, however, would call them inspirational heroes, leading the way forward to discover how far the human body can be made to perform. Instead of developing a culture of paranoia at athletes using illegal technologies and performance enhancing drugs, why not develop a culture where athleticism can be combined with the most advanced science on the planet? Let coaches get advanced degrees in biology, chemistry, and medicine. Let entire new industries emerge which are dedicated to improving athletic performance via the latest tech. Let a whole new genre of sporting events develop. Let a new category of athletes become the very best in their sports that they can become." -Zoltan Istvan, Author of "The Transhumanist Wager." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zoltan-istvan/is-it-time-for-a-transhum_b_4077194.html John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 10:30:24 2013 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 03:30:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Multi-millionaire funds gene sequencing to find genes for mathematical genius Message-ID: "Jonathan Rothberg founded two genetic-sequencing companies and sold them for hundreds of millions of dollars.He helped to sequence the genomes of a Neanderthal man and James Watson, who co-discovered DNA?s double helix. Now, entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg has set his sights on another milestone: finding the genes that underlie mathematical genius." http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/10/multi-millionaire-funds-gene-sequencing.html John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu Wed Nov 6 11:53:13 2013 From: hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu (Henry Rivera) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 06:53:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: References: <98403CF1-5A40-46A2-9DE8-3661B39FC7BF@me.com> <5267B995.3020906@libero.it> <52766C6D.8060901@libero.it> <090301ced8b6$5bae7350$130b59f0$@att.net> Message-ID: <15F43A6C-139E-4380-83D8-9C10AB02065B@alumni.Virginia.edu> > On Nov 4, 2013, at 22:42, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 10:01 AM, spike wrote: >> >> and the IRS has no authority to >> collect the tax, as they do with income tax. Reasoning: as written, the tax >> applies to those who do not make enough money to require a tax return. > > I'm not sure of that. Those who do not make enough to pay are thrown into the Medicare Medicaid pile. > >> So now what does the IRS do? What happens when we see burn-your-W2 rally, a >> modern echo of the 1960s burn-your-draft-card rally and the >> burn-your-feminine-undergarment rally? > > I think Ayn Rand wrote a book about that... too bad it's all just a wet dream. > >> Do stand by, this will be interesting. > > Sort of like a train wreck is interesting, yes. > >> That case demonstrates why I have always thought health care reform must be >> done at the state level rather than the Fed. The states have more power in >> those kinds of matters. The states have more space to experiment and change >> things if they fail. > > Romneycare, as big a mess as it is for those in Massachusetts, is not as big a mess as Obamacare will be. The US is simply bigger than Mass. As a Massachusetts resident and a healthcare provider, I can tell you Romneycare is not a big mess here. -Henry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Wed Nov 6 13:55:59 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 13:55:59 +0000 Subject: [ExI] "If this isn't terrifying, I don't know what is..." -Dr. David Suzuki In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <527A4A6F.9080406@aleph.se> On 06/11/2013 09:55, John Grigg wrote: > Can the situation in Japan really be this potentially nightmarish?!!! > Doctor David Suzuki declares... > > > "I have seen a paper which says that if in fact the fourth > plant goes under in an earthquake and those rods are > exposed, it's bye bye Japan and everybody on the west coast > of North America should evacuate," > Sounds like he is not applying much critical thinking here. Compare to Chernobyl, which was about as bad as it can possibly get: yes, measurable contamination over vast areas, but actual harms still very debatable, and an exclusion zone that is pretty tiny. The problem with exaggerating in order to get people to take an important problem seriously is that it both breeds fatalism (consider nuclear armageddon), and when you are found out you undermine taking the problem seriously because now claims the risks were exaggerated have a good factual basis. -- 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 Wed Nov 6 14:02:25 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 14:02:25 +0000 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> Message-ID: <527A4BF1.6050808@aleph.se> On 06/11/2013 02:17, spike wrote: > > > OK so this makes me think it is very possible that there is something > very fundamentally wrong with both models. In the first case, we > explain the silence everywhere by recognizing the probability of what > happened here must be on the order of 1E-20. That compels me to just > say something must be wrong with it. Anders suggested the Great > Filter model is more likely, but even then, it just feels to me (ja, I > recognize the universe doesn't care how I feel) that occasionally some > detectible signal would leak past the Great Filter. > Note that crazy coincidence is also a Great Filter argument, it just claims that the probability of a habitable planet times the probability of life times the probability of intelligence is super-small. But yes, something important is still missing. -- 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 Wed Nov 6 14:03:53 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 14:03:53 +0000 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278FC7F.3040305@aleph.se> Message-ID: <527A4C49.2060307@aleph.se> On 06/11/2013 09:39, Andrew Mckee wrote: > > But fields of 10^3 to 10^12 Gauss are weak?, so what do you consider a > strong magnetic field then?, and how does one avoid ever meeting one > in a dark alley? ;-) Where do you see those fields, besides near neutron stars? Note that the Caltech paper typically reports fields in the range of 1-1000 *micro* Gauss. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Wed Nov 6 14:04:13 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 14:04:13 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Master of many trades In-Reply-To: References: <20131105161828.GX8041@leitl.org> Message-ID: <527A4C5D.1010605@aleph.se> On 06/11/2013 01:40, John Grigg wrote: > "WWAS?" > > > What would Anders say? > I say what the fox says. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From eugen at leitl.org Wed Nov 6 14:30:17 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 15:30:17 +0100 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20131106143017.GU5661@leitl.org> On Tue, Nov 05, 2013 at 05:51:21PM +0000, BillK wrote: > On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 5:37 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > > So the rational thing is to expect *lots* of biospheres. Which is of course > > not good news, since that makes a future Great Filter more likely. There is absolutely no data to postulate a future filter. You being able to read this message is not a source of data for statistical reasoning (lottery winners don't have a good grasp of overall winning probability). As long as we don't have causally unentangled data about higher life nevermind life capable of intelligent observer status nobody has a case. > > > > > > Not necessarily bad news, though. If the Great Filter is Heaven on > Earth, who are we to complain? Heavens need giant entropy sinks, and glow brighter than Satan's asshole. > The Filter just stops species thrashing around in the physical > universe. Good idea if it is because they all find something much, > much better to do. :) From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 6 15:53:13 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 07:53:13 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <15F43A6C-139E-4380-83D8-9C10AB02065B@alumni.Virginia.edu> References: <98403CF1-5A40-46A2-9DE8-3661B39FC7BF@me.com> <5267B995.3020906@libero.it> <52766C6D.8060901@libero.it> <090301ced8b6$5bae7350$130b59f0$@att.net> <15F43A6C-139E-4380-83D8-9C10AB02065B@alumni.Virginia.edu> Message-ID: <01e401cedb08$4e03b450$ea0b1cf0$@att.net> >? On Behalf Of Henry Rivera >>?That case demonstrates why I have always thought health care reform must be done at the state level rather than the Fed. The states have more power in those kinds of matters. The states have more space to experiment and change things if they fail? spike >?Romneycare, as big a mess as it is for those in Massachusetts, is not as big a mess as Obamacare will be. The US is simply bigger than Mass? Kelly >?As a Massachusetts resident and a healthcare provider, I can tell you Romneycare is not a big mess here. -Henry EXCELLENT, thanks Henry. This strengthens my contention that health care reform must be done at the state level. The Fed doesn?t have the authority to do this and does not have a balanced budget requirement. States do, in both cases. I would go along with health care at the federal level, if the US does two things: pass a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget and pass a constitutional amendment giving it the authority to run health care. It?s unlikely either of those two things will happen soon. Until then, state governments period end of story, assuming the original definition of period end of story. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 16:12:31 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 11:12:31 -0500 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 1:06 AM, spike wrote: > OK now I am more puzzled than ever. NASA says there are about 8.8 > billion Goldilocks planets in the Milky Way alone: > http://news.yahoo.com/study-8-8-billion-earth-size-just-planets-212232920.html > > Well, 8.8*10^9 is a big number but that alone doesn't tell you anything, the real question is if chemistry and biology can generate numbers as big or bigger that can counteract astronomy's numbers. A chain of 20 amino acids is too short to be considered a protein, but there are 20 different types of amino acids in earthly life so there are 1.05*10^26 different ways to make such a little chain. So already we have a number ten million billion times larger than 8.8*10^9. And even bacteria are "astronomically" more complex than such a simple 20 element peptide chain. And we aren?t just talking about any old type of life, we're talking about life that can make advanced technology, and so we must add yet another layer of big numbers and "astronomical" complexity. > I must reluctantly conclude that we are missing something fundamental, > I think one of the fundamental things we don't understand very well is how life originated. In fact as far as we know right now, even the entire observable universe is FAR too small to have made the existence of the simplest known bacteria likely. And natural selection couldn't reduce the odds until heredity was invented, only then do Darwin's ideas come into play. So life simply can't exist, and yet it does, so we're missing something. Graham Cairns-Smith and his clay hypothesis have some very interesting ideas and could be the first step toward explaining it, maybe, but we need a lot more evidence. But maybe I'm wrong, maybe it will turn out that biology's big numbers can't equal astronomy's and life is common, then another mystery arises, how likely is the Evolution of intelligence? Technology only started about 10,000 years ago, and for over 85% of life's 3.8 billion year existence on Earth it was satisfied with nothing but one celled organisms. Why the sudden change? Or maybe the reason we don't see ET is that some principle puts a lid on how smart something can be and how much cosmic engineering that can be done by it, my best guess on why that could be is that having access to your emotional control panel might lead to positive feedback and mental instability. I hope that's not the answer, I hope the answer is just that the numbers from biology are bigger than the numbers from astronomy. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 6 16:48:32 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 08:48:32 -0800 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: <028401cedb10$0826e710$1874b530$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of John Clark Subject: Re: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 1:06 AM, spike wrote: > OK now I am more puzzled than ever. NASA says there are about 8.8 billion Goldilocks planets in the Milky Way alone: http://news.yahoo.com/study-8-8-billion-earth-size-just-planets-212232920.ht ml >.Well, 8.8*10^9 is a big number but that alone doesn't tell you anything, the real question is if chemistry and biology can generate numbers as big or bigger that can counteract astronomy's numbers. A chain of 20 amino acids is too short to be considered a protein, but there are 20 different types of amino acids in earthly life so there are 1.05*10^26 different ways to make such a little chain. So already we have a number ten million billion times larger than 8.8*10^9. Ja, but when we see these kinds of comparisons, we immediately recognize that the 8.8 e9 is this galaxy alone, so tack on about 10 more OOMs, then recognize something even more important: the use of a planet as a unit of measure is irrelevant. The radius of the earth is about 6E6 meters, so surface area is about 1e14 m^2 or about 1e20 mm^2 or 1e26 square microns, so we must ask ourselves how much real estate the first organism needed to evolve. We don't know. My intuition is screaming there is something wrong with our whole picture here, even after I divide thru by Fa and set Fa arbitrarily large. We are still missing something. This feels to me like an investigation in the rocket science biz 15 yrs ago where we had where we listed 20 scenarios and tested them all. We still didn't have the right answer up there, but I watched as one guy after another picked a favorite theory and defended it like it was his own cub from any and all counter-evidence or anomalous observations. We kept thinking, eventually found the right answer. >. And even bacteria are "astronomically" more complex than such a simple 20 element peptide chain. John keep in mind that this argument ignores the possibility that the simplest possible life form is as complex as the simplest lifeform currently on earth. The simplest car on the road today is vastly more complex than the model T. There might be some model T equivalent in the biological world, but we have never seen it because it is long since extinct and left not a trace. >.Or maybe the reason we don't see ET is that some principle puts a lid on how smart something can be and how much cosmic engineering that can be done by it, my best guess on why that could be is that having access to your emotional control panel might lead to positive feedback and mental instability. I hope that's not the answer, I hope the answer is just that the numbers from biology are bigger than the numbers from astronomy. .John K Clark This one sounds more plausible to me, and it does cause worry. I tend to see everything thru the lens of controls engineering (we control freaks are like that.) Just like everything else, there are positive and negative feedback loops on intelligence. It is possible that at some point, the negative feedback loops dominate. Singularity theory is dependent on the notion of positive feedback loops crush every negative loop, or as we controls guys like to say, there are poles in the right half plane. I hope that is true, but it might be wrong. If evolution can somehow kickstart life and result in something as awesome as this, then I have high hopes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPTO3L2rSjI But if negative feedback loops eventually dominate our intelligence model, then all we are is dust in the wind. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed Nov 6 17:45:37 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 18:45:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [liberationtech] How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand? Message-ID: <20131106174537.GL5661@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from Yosem Companys ----- Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 09:31:24 -0800 From: Yosem Companys To: Liberation Technologies Subject: [liberationtech] How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand? Message-ID: Reply-To: liberationtech http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/surveillance-vs-democracy.html How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand? by Richard Stallman A version of this article was first published in Wired in October 2013. The current level of general surveillance in society is incompatible with human rights. To recover our freedom and restore democracy, we must reduce surveillance to the point where it is possible for whistleblowers of all kinds to talk with journalists without being spotted. To do this reliably, we must reduce the surveillance capacity of the systems we use. Using free/libre software, as I've advocated for 30 years, is the first step in taking control of our digital lives. We can't trust nonfree software; the NSA uses and even createssecurity weaknesses in nonfree software to invade our own computers and routers. Free software gives us control of our own computers, but that won't protect our privacy once we set foot on the Internet. Bipartisan legislation to ?curtail the domestic surveillance powers? in the U.S. is being drawn up, but it relies on limiting the government's use of our virtual dossiers. That won't suffice to protect whistleblowers if ?catching the whistleblower? is grounds for access sufficient to identify him or her. We need to go further. Thanks to Edward Snowden's disclosures, we know that the current level of general surveillance in society is incompatible with human rights. The repeated harassment and prosecution of dissidents, sources, and journalists provides confirmation. We need to reduce the level of general surveillance, but how far? Where exactly is the maximum tolerable level of surveillance, beyond which it becomes oppressive? That happens when surveillance interferes with the functioning of democracy: when whistleblowers (such as Snowden) are likely to be caught. The Upper Limit on Surveillance in a Democracy If whistleblowers don't dare reveal crimes and lies, we lose the last shred of effective control over our government and institutions. That's why surveillance that enables the state to find out who has talked with a reporter is too much surveillance?too much for democracy to endure. An unnamed U.S. government official ominously told journalists in 2011 that the U.S. would not subpoena reporters because ?We know who you're talking to.? Sometimesjournalists' phone call records are subpoenaed to find this out, but Snowden has shown us that in effect they subpoena all the phone call records of everyone in the U.S., all the time. Opposition and dissident activities need to keep secrets from states that are willing to play dirty tricks on them. The ACLU has demonstrated the U.S. government's systematic practice of infiltrating peaceful dissident groups on the pretext that there might be terrorists among them. The point at which surveillance is too much is the point at which the state can find who spoke to a known journalist or a known dissident. Information, Once Collected, Will Be Misused When people recognize that the level of general surveillance is too high, the first response is to propose limits on access to the accumulated data. That sounds nice, but it won't fix the problem, not even slightly, even supposing that the government obeys the rules. (The NSA has misled the FISA court, which said it was unable to effectively hold the NSA accountable.) Suspicion of a crime will be grounds for access, so once a whistleblower is accused of ?espionage,? finding the ?spy? will provide an excuse to access the accumulated material. The state's surveillance staff will misuse the data for personal reasons too. Some NSA agents used U.S. surveillance systems to track their lovers?past, present, or wished-for?in a practice called ?LOVEINT.? The NSA says it has caught and punished this a few times; we don't know how many other times it wasn't caught. But these events shouldn't surprise us, because police have long used their access to driver's license records to track down someone attractive, a practice known as ?running a plate for a date.? Surveillance data will always be used for other purposes, even if this is prohibited. Once the data has been accumulated and the state has the possibility of access to it, it canmisuse that data in dreadful ways. Total surveillance plus vague law provides an opening for a massive fishing expedition against any desired target. To make journalism and democracy safe, we must limit the accumulation of data that is easily accessible to the state. Robust Protection for Privacy Must Be Technical The Electronic Frontier Foundation and other organizations propose a set of legal principles designed to prevent the abuses of massive surveillance. These principles include, crucially, explicit legal protection for whistleblowers; as a consequence, they would be adequate for protecting democratic freedoms?if adopted completely and enforced without exception forever. However, such legal protections are precarious: as recent history shows, they can be repealed (as in the FISA Amendments Act), suspended, or ignored. Meanwhile, demagogues will cite the usual excuses as grounds for total surveillance; any terrorist attack, even one that kills just a handful of people, will give them an opportunity. If limits on access to the data are set aside, it will be as if they had never existed: years worth of dossiers would suddenly become available for misuse by the state and its agents and, if collected by companies, for their private misuse as well. If, however, we stop the collection of dossiers on everyone, those dossiers won't exist, and there will be no way to compile them retroactively. A new illiberal regime would have to implement surveillance afresh, and it would only collect data starting at that date. As for suspending or momentarily ignoring this law, the idea would hardly make sense. We Must Design Every System for Privacy If we don't want a total surveillance society, we must consider surveillance a kind of social pollution, and limit the surveillance impact of each new digital system just as we limit the environmental impact of physical construction. For example: ?Smart? meters for electricity are touted for sending the power company moment-by-moment data about each customer's electric usage, including how usage compares with users in general. This is implemented based on general surveillance, but does not require any surveillance. It would be easy for the power company to calculate the average usage in a residential neighborhood by dividing the total usage by the number of subscribers, and send that to the meters. Each customer's meter could compare her usage, over any desired period of time, with the average usage pattern for that period. The same benefit, with no surveillance! We need to design such privacy into all our digital systems. Remedy for Collecting Data: Leaving It Dispersed One way to make monitoring safe for privacy is to keep the data dispersed and inconvenient to access. Old-fashioned security cameras were no threat to privacy. The recording was stored on the premises, and kept for a few weeks at most. Because of the inconvenience of accessing these recordings, it was never done massively; they were accessed only in the places where someone reported a crime. It would not be feasible to physically collect millions of tapes every day and watch them or copy them. Nowadays, security cameras have become surveillance cameras: they are connected to the Internet so recordings can be collected in a data center and saved forever. This is already dangerous, but it is going to get worse. Advances in face recognition may bring the day when suspected journalists can be tracked on the street all the time to see who they talk with. Internet-connected cameras often have lousy digital security themselves, so anyone could watch what the camera sees. To restore privacy, we should ban the use of Internet-connected cameras aimed where and when the public is admitted, except when carried by people. Everyone must be free to post photos and video recordings occasionally, but the systematic accumulation of such data on the Internet must be limited. Remedy for Internet Commerce Surveillance Most data collection comes from people's own digital activities. Usually the data is collected first by companies. But when it comes to the threat to privacy and democracy, it makes no difference whether surveillance is done directly by the state or farmed out to a business, because the data that the companies collect is systematically available to the state. The NSA, through PRISM, has gotten into the databases of many large Internet corporations. AT&T has saved all its phone call records since 1987 and makes them available to the DEA to search on request. Strictly speaking, the U.S. government does not possess that data, but in practical terms it may as well possess it. The goal of making journalism and democracy safe therefore requires that we reduce the data collected about people by any organization, not just by the state. We must redesign digital systems so that they do not accumulate data about their users. If they need digital data about our transactions, they should not be allowed to keep them more than a short time beyond what is inherently necessary for their dealings with us. One of the motives for the current level of surveillance of the Internet is that sites are financed through advertising based on tracking users' activities and propensities. This converts a mere annoyance?advertising that we can learn to ignore?into a surveillance system that harms us whether we know it or not. Purchases over the Internet also track their users. And we are all aware that ?privacy policies? are more excuses to violate privacy than commitments to uphold it. We could correct both problems by adopting a system of anonymous payments?anonymous for the payer, that is. (We don't want the payee to dodge taxes.) Bitcoin is not anonymous, but technology for digital cash was first developed 25 years ago; we need only suitable business arrangements, and for the state not to obstruct them. A further threat from sites' collection of personal data is that security breakers might get in, take it, and misuse it. This includes customers' credit card details. An anonymous payment system would end this danger: a security hole in the site can't hurt you if the site knows nothing about you. Remedy for Travel Surveillance We must convert digital toll collection to anonymous payment (using digital cash, for instance). License-plate recognition systems recognize all license plates, and the data can be kept indefinitely; they should be required by law to notice and record only those license numbers that are on a list of cars sought by court orders. A less secure alternative would record all cars locally but only for a few days, and not make the full data available over the Internet; access to the data should be limited to searching for a list of court-ordered license-numbers. The U.S. ?no-fly? list must be abolished because it is punishment without trial. It is acceptable to have a list of people whose person and luggage will be searched with extra care, and anonymous passengers on domestic flights could be treated as if they were on this list. It is also acceptable to bar non-citizens, if they are not permitted to enter the country at all, from boarding flights to the country. This ought to be enough for all legitimate purposes. Many mass transit systems use some kind of smart cards or RFIDs for payment. These systems accumulate personal data: if you once make the mistake of paying with anything but cash, they associate the card permanently with your name. Furthermore, they record all travel associated with each card. Together they amount to massive surveillance. This data collection must be reduced. Navigation services do surveillance: the user's computer tells the map service the user's location and where the user wants to go; then the server determines the route and sends it back to the user's computer, which displays it. Nowadays, the server probably records the user's locations, since there is nothing to prevent it. This surveillance is not inherently necessary, and redesign could avoid it: free/libre software in the user's computer could download map data for the pertinent regions (if not downloaded previously), compute the route, and display it, without ever telling anyone where the user is or wants to go. Systems for borrowing bicycles, etc., can be designed so that the borrower's identity is known only inside the station where the item was borrowed. Borrowing would inform all stations that the item is ?out,? so when the user returns it at any station (in general, a different one), that station will know where and when that item was borrowed. It will inform the other station that the item is no longer ?out.? It will also calculate the user's bill, and send it (after waiting some random number of minutes) to headquarters along a ring of stations, so that headquarters would not find out which station the bill came from. Once this is done, the return station would forget all about the transaction. If an item remains ?out? for too long, the station where it was borrowed can inform headquarters; in that case, it could send the borrower's identity immediately. Remedy for Communications Dossiers Internet service providers and telephone companies keep extensive data on their users' contacts (browsing, phone calls, etc). With mobile phones, they also record the user's physical location. They keep these dossiers for a long time: over 30 years, in the case of AT&T. Soon they will even record the user's body activities. It appears that the NSA collects cell phone location data in bulk. Unmonitored communication is impossible where systems create such dossiers. So it should be illegal to create or keep them. ISPs and phone companies must not be allowed to keep this information for very long, in the absence of a court order to surveil a certain party. This solution is not entirely satisfactory, because it won't physically stop the government from collecting all the information immediately as it is generated?which is what theU.S. does with some or all phone companies. We would have to rely on prohibiting that by law. However, that would be better than the current situation, where the relevant law (the PATRIOT Act) does not clearly prohibit the practice. In addition, if the government did resume this sort of surveillance, it would not get data about everyone's phone calls made prior to that time. But Some Surveillance Is Necessary For the state to find criminals, it needs to be able to investigate specific crimes, or specific suspected planned crimes, under a court order. With the Internet, the power to tap phone conversations would naturally extend to the power to tap Internet connections. This power is easy to abuse for political reasons, but it is also necessary. Fortunately, this won't make it possible to find whistleblowers after the fact. Individuals with special state-granted power, such as police, forfeit their right to privacy and must be monitored. (In fact, police have their own jargon term for perjury, ?testilying,? since they do it so frequently, particularly about protesters and photographers.) One city in California that required police to wear video cameras all the time found their use of force fell by 60%. The ACLU is in favor of this. Corporations are not people, and not entitled to human rights. It is legitimate to require businesses to publish the details of processes that might cause chemical, biological, nuclear, fiscal, computational (e.g., DRM) or political (e.g., lobbying) hazards to society, to whatever level is needed for public well-being. The danger of these operations (consider the BP oil spill, the Fukushima meltdowns, and the 2008 fiscal crisis) dwarfs that of terrorism. However, journalism must be protected from surveillance even when it is carried out as part of a business. ________________________________ Digital technology has brought about a tremendous increase in the level of surveillance of our movements, actions, and communications. It is far more than we experienced in the 1990s, and far more than people behind the Iron Curtain experienced in the 1980s, and would still be far more even with additional legal limits on state use of the accumulated data. Unless we believe that our free countries previously suffered from a grave surveillance deficit, and ought to be surveilled more than the Soviet Union and East Germany were, we must reverse this increase. That requires stopping the accumulation of big data about people. Copyright 2013 Richard Stallman Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License -- Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys at stanford.edu. ----- End forwarded message ----- From pharos at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 18:06:53 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 18:06:53 +0000 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <028401cedb10$0826e710$1874b530$@att.net> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <028401cedb10$0826e710$1874b530$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 4:48 PM, spike wrote: > But if negative feedback loops eventually dominate our intelligence model, > then all we are is dust in the wind. > > If what we see in the universe is real, then nothing we see is rearranging nature. Perhaps it is the light speed time delay. Suddenly next year the light will reach us and the universe will burst into life. But due to differing development times throughout our galaxy and the universe, I think this is unlikely. But it is possible! If life is not space-faring then it must have a good reason to stay home. Intelligence fails, self-destruction, nirvana, or we are the first or only. I find it difficult to consider us as the peak of universe intelligence. :) BillK From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 18:51:26 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 13:51:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <028401cedb10$0826e710$1874b530$@att.net> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <028401cedb10$0826e710$1874b530$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 11:48 AM, spike wrote: >> ? And even bacteria are "astronomically" more complex than such a simple >> 20 element peptide chain > > > > John keep in mind that this argument ignores the possibility that the > simplest possible life form is as complex as the simplest lifeform > currently on earth. > Yes, the first lifeform was probably simpler than anything we see today, but it can't be too simple because it must not only have the ability to reproduce itself it must have heredity. Fire can reproduce itself but it has no heredity. And if it were really simple we would have already figured out what it must have been, and we haven't. > I tend to see everything thru the lens of controls engineering (we > control freaks are like that.) > If you like control you should like a little negative feedback, without it Watt's steam engine wouldn't work properly and amplifiers tend to go crazy. The worst positive audio feedback I ever heard was when I was young and went to a lecture by the physicist Paul Dirac. Everybody wanted to hear the great man so they held it in the largest lecture hall. He had a rather soft voice so somebody had the bright idea of handing him a microphone, Dirac opened his mouth to start the lecture and the loudest most painful most godawful howling screech I have ever heard filled the hall. It sounded like the tortures of the damned and people, including me, were putting their hands over their ears. Surprisingly Dirac remained perfectly serene and calmly watched as embarrassed high ranking university officials ran around in circles trying to fix the problem. Eventually it was decided to just pull the plug and ditch the microphone, and Dirac then restarted his lecture as if nothing had happened. > if negative feedback loops eventually dominate our intelligence model, > then all we are is dust in the wind. > It's positive feedback loops that I worry about, not of intelligence but of emotions; look at all the problems that drugs have caused the human race in the last few decades, and they only provide rudimentary access to the emotional control panel, imagine if it was the real deal. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 19:04:55 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 14:04:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "If this isn't terrifying, I don't know what is..." -Dr. David Suzuki In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 11/6/13, John Grigg wrote: > Can the situation in Japan really be this potentially nightmarish?!!! > Doctor David Suzuki declares... > > "I have seen a paper which says that if in fact the fourth plant goes under > in an earthquake and those rods are exposed, it's bye bye Japan and > everybody on the west coast of North America should evacuate," > > http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/11/04/david-suzuki-fukushima-warning_n_4213061.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false > ### David Suzuki is a professional, major league enviro-leftoid propagandist and hypocrite, best known in Canada. He is as likely to say something reasonable on energy production as Obama is likely to condemn Obamacare. See a takedown here: http://video.thewhig.com/search/all/source/niagara-falls-review/the-fallen-saint/2809834489001/page/10 Rafal From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 20:23:43 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 13:23:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "If this isn't terrifying, I don't know what is..." -Dr. David Suzuki In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The damage from evacuating Japan and the west coast would be terrible, see this TED talk about Chernobyl to see how the old ladies living there are content and happy: http://www.ted.com/talks/holly_morris_why_stay_in_chernobyl_because_it_s_home.html That's not to downplay the risks of radiation, but the risks of dislocation are even higher. David Suzuki is a nut case of the first caliber. I've heard his rants on PBS before, and he is NOT a scientist. He is a left wing environmentalist nut job who would be happy if all us people would JUST DIE and let the earth go back to the natural way of doing things. -Kelly On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 2:55 AM, John Grigg wrote: > Can the situation in Japan really be this potentially nightmarish?!!! > Doctor David Suzuki declares... > > "I have seen a paper which says that if in fact the fourth plant goes > under in an earthquake and those rods are exposed, it's bye bye Japan and > everybody on the west coast of North America should evacuate," > > > http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/11/04/david-suzuki-fukushima-warning_n_4213061.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false > > > John > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 20:33:28 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 12:33:28 -0800 Subject: [ExI] "Is it time for a transhumanist Olympics?" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Nov 6, 2013 2:17 AM, "John Grigg" wrote: > http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zoltan-istvan/is-it-time-for-a-transhum_b_4077194.html Wrong tone. If this is to be done, one must get lots of people to watch. Browbeating the morality of those choosing to watch or not watch will not accomplish this. Instead, play up how this would enhance those things that sports fans tune in to watch in the first place. Unfortunately, it is difficult to portray base drama and get average viewers to relate, when the subject matter is far beyond what most viewers think they might personally experience...and transhuman sports are pretty much that by definition. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 20:46:47 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 12:46:47 -0800 Subject: [ExI] [liberationtech] How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand? In-Reply-To: <20131106174537.GL5661@leitl.org> References: <20131106174537.GL5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: Now, how do we get this read on the floor of the US Senate? (Easier to do it there than at the House, I suspect.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 20:51:22 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 13:51:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Problem with Drugs (was Re: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 11:51 AM, John Clark wrote: > It's positive feedback loops that I worry about, not of intelligence but > of emotions; look at all the problems that drugs have caused the human race > in the last few decades, and they only provide rudimentary access to the > emotional control panel, imagine if it was the real deal. > I don't recall discussing drugs on the list, at least for a while. It is clearly an extropian issue, as drugs tend to increase entropy in the human brain. Also, some kinds of drugs are clearly putting some of us into the realm of posthuman. My girlfriend, for example, isn't herself when not on anti-anxiety medication. She is a post human, because as her natural self she drives herself and those in her life just a little nuts. Now, I know John was referring to illegal drugs, and I believe most illegal drugs are create a huge detriment to those who use them and to the children of those who use them to excess. That being said, the problems with the war on drugs are worse than the original problems of drugs themselves. Prior to Richard Nixon creating the War on Drugs, and the Reagans expanding it, there were how many deaths from drug use in America? Well, it wasn't zero. Here are a couple of references. http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/cu/cu12.htm http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Causes_of_Death#sthash.zEVnBrwe.dpbs Bottom line seems to be that there are around 17000 deaths per year in the USA attributable to bad use of illicit drugs. How many of those deaths would be prevented if there were a safe and legal place to go to use drugs? I'm guessing most of them. In the past 8 years or so, there have been 80,000 deaths in the drug wars just in Mexico. Of the 16,000 or so homicides yearly in the United States, how many are casualties of drug violence? 20%? 30%? Prior to the war on drugs, drug use was lower (not that there is a causal relationship) and you had almost no drug deaths in Mexico (other than the occasional addict one could assume). So is the "cure" worse than the problem? Is there a "military-industrial complex" that feeds off of the war on drugs? Is that why no politician will talk about getting rid of the damn thing? We lose more people (21,329 vs. ~17,000) to misuse of legal drugs than to misuse of illicit drugs. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 20:52:29 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 13:52:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [liberationtech] How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand? In-Reply-To: References: <20131106174537.GL5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 1:46 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Now, how do we get this read on the floor of the US Senate? (Easier to do > it there than at the House, I suspect.) > All you would have to do to get this read on the floor of the house is contact Jason Chaffetz. Done deal. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Wed Nov 6 21:50:36 2013 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 14:50:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "Is it time for a transhumanist Olympics?" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 1:33 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Nov 6, 2013 2:17 AM, "John Grigg" wrote: > > > http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zoltan-istvan/is-it-time-for-a-transhum_b_4077194.html > > Wrong tone. If this is to be done, one must get lots of people to watch. > Browbeating the morality of those choosing to watch or not watch will not > accomplish this. Instead, play up how this would enhance those things that > sports fans tune in to watch in the first place. > > Unfortunately, it is difficult to portray base drama and get average > viewers to relate, when the subject matter is far beyond what most viewers > think they might personally experience > If so, how do you explain the tremendous popularity of superhero movies? Or science fiction? Or all the dramatic fiction involving things far beyond what most viewers expect to experiences personally? --Max -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 6 22:38:54 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 14:38:54 -0800 Subject: [ExI] The Problem with Drugs (was Re: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <042d01cedb40$f9fed360$edfc7a20$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson >. How many of those deaths would be prevented if there were a safe and legal place to go to use drugs? I'm guessing most of them. Kelly we have been given reason for optimism. We can at least imagine using those big see-thru office spaces for a place to go get stoned, sort of like a bar, only crazier. We could even combine recreational drugs with various simulated realities, isolate the stoners from the paying spectators, let them do their thing. The optimism comes in technology handing us a means for the stoners to get home after their time in the arena is up, without their getting behind the wheel and introducing a risk to me. If we get a facility like that and a means for their cars to take the stoners home safely afterwards, we can end this absurd war on drugs. >.In the past 8 years or so, there have been 80,000 deaths in the drug wars just in Mexico.So is the "cure" worse than the problem? Ja, sure is. >.We lose more people (21,329 vs. ~17,000) to misuse of legal drugs than to misuse of illicit drugs. -Kelly Ja, alcohol being the big one. It was grandfathered in. It is clear enough to me we need to just let it go as in trying to control recreational drugs. I notice no one has yet suggested turning over drug enforcement to the IRS. As a parting shot on that last comment, it occurred to me that the IRS has been used as a law enforcement agency in the past. Al Capone was really good a understanding law: he knew how to control evidence so it would be inherently difficult to prosecute him. So the feds finally prosecuted him on tax evasion. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 23:19:53 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 16:19:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Problem with Drugs (was Re: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <042d01cedb40$f9fed360$edfc7a20$@att.net> References: <042d01cedb40$f9fed360$edfc7a20$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 3:38 PM, spike wrote: > is the "cure" worse than the problem? > > > > Ja, sure is. > > > > >?We lose more people (21,329 vs. ~17,000) to misuse of legal drugs than > to misuse of illicit drugs. ?Kelly > > > > Ja, alcohol being the big one. > This number doesn't include deaths from alcohol, it's only for things like mistakes at hospitals, or overdoses of Oxycodone and the like. > It was grandfathered in. It is clear enough to me we need to just let it > go as in trying to control recreational drugs. I notice no one has yet > suggested turning over drug enforcement to the IRS. > E gad! > As a parting shot on that last comment, it occurred to me that the IRS has > been used as a law enforcement agency in the past. Al Capone was really > good a understanding law: he knew how to control evidence so it would be > inherently difficult to prosecute him. So the feds finally prosecuted him > on tax evasion. > If the IRS wants you, the IRS gets you. As to driving stoned and autonomous vehicles saving us from the war on drugs... I think that's only one part of it. There is also the drive that many have to impose their morality upon others. They've lost the sex wars and the rock and roll wars, and they don't want to lose the drug war too... That would be the tripartite loss of morality in the land of the free and the home of the brave! -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Wed Nov 6 23:27:26 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 23:27:26 +0000 Subject: [ExI] "Is it time for a transhumanist Olympics?" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <527AD05E.40901@aleph.se> On 2013-11-06 10:16, John Grigg wrote: > "Let a new category of athletes become the very best in their sports > that they can become." It sounds a bit similar to a talk we had a while ago here in Oxford: http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2013/10/neither-god-nor-nature-could-the-doping-sinner-be-an-exemplar-of-humanist-dignity/ Pieter argued on existentialist grounds that the doping regimen limits sports and athletes, forcing them into a narrow and traditional concept of the "good", "pure" and "human". He suggests instead ?virtuous exploration of bodily virtuosity? ? a playful existence where we responsibly explore biology as an open system using sport. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Wed Nov 6 23:34:00 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 23:34:00 +0000 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <20131106143017.GU5661@leitl.org> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <20131106143017.GU5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: <527AD1E8.1090300@aleph.se> On 2013-11-06 14:30, Eugen Leitl wrote: > There is absolutely no data to postulate a future filter. You being > able to read this message is not a source of data for statistical > reasoning Actually, it is. It is just a single data point, but it can skew things surprisingly strongly: http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/anthropicshadow.pdf > (lottery winners don't have a good grasp of overall winning probability). Actually, they know the probability is nonzero. That is in itself a lot of information. And depending on which branch of anthropics you buy into (BTW: advert: http://www.philosophy-of-cosmology.ox.ac.uk/events/fourth-oxford-miniseries-anthropics-selection-effects-and-fine-tuning-in-cosmology/ - course and workshop in December) they might get other weak information. > As long as we don't have causally unentangled data about higher life > nevermind life capable of intelligent observer status nobody has a case. Well, data can be of different kinds. The evolutionary history of Earth has a bias due to one species becoming observers, but there is information in it (does it look hard to ramp up or down encephalization or behavioral complexity?) -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 23:57:21 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 16:57:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <00df01ced9e9$4a40ef60$dec2ce20$@att.net> References: <2C17352F-6BCF-4DF9-BFF0-6333CC83FDA1@me.com> <080201ced3a0$48ed1c50$dac754f0$@att.net> <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> <00df01ced9e9$4a40ef60$dec2ce20$@att.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 10:38 PM, spike wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto: > extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On Behalf Of *Kelly Anderson > > > > >?The constitution only protects the privacy of US citizens, and possibly > visitors to the USA? > > > > Ah EXCELLENT! Finally someone who has found where in the constitution it > says anything about US citizens having the inalienable right to privacy. I > have been searching for that since I don?t know how long. Kelly, where did > you find that? > Ammendment 4 Search and Seizure The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. > >?Ms. Merkel is a foreign national who is not protected by the > constitution? > > > > I agree. Now where in the constitution does it say anything about privacy? > 4th Ammendment > > My heartburn with it is not that it is illegal but rather that it would > piss off the one who should be our strongest ally. > Thus the need to NOT GET CAUGHT. Just as the Germans have not YET been caught spying on us. Now with wikileaks out there, the Germans may have smartened up and STOPPED spying on us, but I can assure you that they have in the past, even without specific proof of the same. We KNOW the Chinese spy on us all the time, and the Russians. Why not the Germans? And the Mormons! > One day soon we will wake up and discover that China, Japan and Germany > are the only three countries in the world capable of loaning money in the > kinds of absurd quantities we USians demand of other countries, and I am > not so sure about Japan. > Japan is off the table for the moment. They went through their little 20 year deflationary period. Very painful that. > >?Which is why they shouldn't have gotten caught. Don't we have the > obligation to make sure our "friends" are really our friends, even behind > closed doors? > > > > They aren?t really friends Kelly. There are no friends. Only potential > bankers. > We would never know if we didn't spy on them. > > > We see the current bunch are saying the Tea Party patriots are terrorists > and coming very close to identifying them as national enemies. OK then > what happens if they get a bunch of seats in congress next fall, more than > they already have? > > >?History is not with them on gaining seats during the second term of a > lame duck president? > > > > The midterms a year from today will be a referendum on ObamaCare. One > year from now, very little else will matter. If this thing crashes as hard > as I think it will, the Democrat party will lose a bunch of seats, the > Republicans will break even or lose a few and the Tea Party will be a force > to be with reckoned. If O-care succeeds, just the opposite. Nothing else > will matter much. > I tend to agree with you. Obama's approval rating just dipped into the 30s for the first time, btw. I'm sure that has nothing to do with healthcare.gov... oh no no... > > > >?But Obamacare failing is exactly what will lead to a single payer > system. It's too big to fail, remember? > > > > That isn?t clear to me. It sure appears to be set up for failure, but it > isn?t at all clear the next step is single payer. I would go for that if > done at a state level, or if we get a national balanced budget amendment to > go with it. Or we destroy our credit rating, so no sane party will loan us > money. > If we lose our liquidity, we are indeed screwed. Even with a Libertarian president, and both houses of congress, we would be screwed if we lost our liquidity. It took us a 100 years to get into this mess, and we can't get out of it over night. > > >?They can't help but fail. It is the government we're talking about. > They never really succeed at anything really important. Yes, they > occasionally build a bridge to somewhere. Yes, they did defend us against > Hitler. But generally speaking if you want something screwed up badly > enough you give it to the government and you are assured it will be? > > > > Agreed, so why do you think this current misadventure is a step toward > single payer? > Because they have made sure we can't go back to what we had before. The only way forward, the only way to fix the problem is to make a bigger problem. That's the way the government usually operates, isn't it? > >?I would love to see the youth of America revolt against this. It is > them who are getting the biggest shaft from O-care. Paying for insurance > that THEY DON'T NEED. It is redistribution of health. Only it is from the > poorest youth of America who can't get a job coming out of college, to the > richest, the older folk in America, who are the most well off demographic. > I thought socialism was supposed to help the poor? > > Don?t worry Kelly, the young will revolt bigtime. It will be like the old > burn the draft card days, but this one may have some damn serious > consequences. That business about setting the IRS to where they can demand > payment but not place any criminal sanctions for non-payment nor issue > liens against property or bank accounts for non-payment will hurt us. It > will send a message to a generation that they do not need to pay their > taxes. The whole scheme dilutes the power of the IRS, which could have > catastrophic consequences. > The young put Obama into office. They get what they deserve for not paying attention. > > > >?Obama lied, grandma died? > > > > Oooh that?s cold. {8^D > Well, they are the ones that made the commercial wheeling grandma over the cliff in a wheelchair. They deserve what they have coming. And I tell you, it is coming. Mike Lee got an 8 minute long standing ovation here in Utah Saturday. I don't think he's going anywhere soon, despite an attempt to change the system in Utah from a caucus to something that will favor establishment Republicans more. With the words "Mike Lee" coming off of the lips of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity ten times a day as the example of what little is being done right in Washington today, I assure you that he will not lose his seat. So long as he doesn't make child porn, denounce Islam or something incredibly stupid. > > My favorite I have thought of so far: > > > > Tune In, Turn On, Opt Out > > > > >?LOL. That will work for a few years, until the penalties are so large > that you have to pay attention to them? > > > > No sir. Even if you pay attention to them, the IRS still has no means of > collecting the opt-out fees. I notice a lot of the articles on the topic > say things like ?The ACA didn?t include any provisions for the IRS to > enforce collection of the penalties.? This kinda misses the point by > understatement: the ACA clearly specifically forbids the IRS from enforcing > the penalties. They are free to DEMAND payment, they can even send a > bill. They just can?t do anything if the taxpayer just says no. > Most people overpay their taxes anyway, so the IRS will just give them a smaller refund. Not really a problem, is it? They aren't giving the money back once they have it and have the right under the law to keep it. > Next, note that the ACA is designed to be difficult or impossible to > modify without nullifying the whole thing. That is why they specifically > removed the isolation clauses. They didn?t forget them, they carefully > extracted them, so the insurance companies wouldn?t be left holding the bag. > Oh, you can be sure that the insurance companies will be blamed when the time comes. It's part of the progression towards single payer. The Democrats demonize whoever they need to in order to stay in power, and the insurance companies are part of the "usual suspects" according to the left. If I were the president of an insurance company these days, I'd be looking for a new job. The proles will stay on as government employees. > > The section which explicitly forbids the IRS from collecting the opt-out > tax is cross linked to the section on the insurance companies requirement > to sell to any zombie who staggers thru the door. If they kill the > prohibition for the IRS to collect, they kill the requirement for the > insurance company to sell to zombies. If those two things go out, the only > thing that is left of O-care is a pile of wood pulp, granted a tall one. > That linking of those two things was intentional and carefully designed by > those who wrote this bill behind closed doors in Senate private chambers, > with one party and a collection of insurance company reps with plenty of > campaign donations to hand out freely. Kelly, is this all making sense now? > > Woah, woah, woah, you think that Obamacare was written behind Senate doors? What are you smoking Spike? Max Baucus was the senator that put forth the monstrosity, but he never read it. http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/max-baucus-author-of-obamacare-admits-he-never-read-his-own-bill/Content?oid=2161708 I would not that the San Francisco Examiner is hardly a right wing paper. ?I don?t think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the health care bill. You know why? It?s statutory language,? Baucus said. ?We hire experts.? Oh, another goodie hidden in Obamacare. I hadn't heard about this one... "I?m awaiting a further statement from Baucus? staff as to whether or not the senator was aware of a provision of the health care law (unpopular even among liberals) which mandates that businesses send out 1099 tax forms to any individual or corporation from which they purchase goods or services worth more than $600." Obamacare was partially written by the Center for American Progress. See this admission on Bill Mayer's show by the President of the CfAP. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/06/02/center_for_american_progress_president_shares_part_in_obamacare_i_helped_write_the_bill.html I've heard they wrote a LOT of the actual text that made it into the bill. Now, if you don't know who the Center for American Progress is, then I encourage you to look into it, as they are behind a LOT of the shenanigans of late. > > > > >?I have already failed at selling T-Shirts, remember Caucasians for Mitt > Romney? > > > > {8^D > > > > >?Of course, I haven't learned my lesson, I'm now working on a T-Shirt > deal for http://www.itanimulli.com (Note that is illuminati.com spelled > backwards. You should see what happens when you type that into a web browser > ? > > > > Haaaaahahahahahhaaaaa! Excellent gag, me lad. The New World Order crowd > just keeps falling for the same gag, over and over and over. It seems they > just cannot learn. They were falling for that back when I was in high > school, they still are. That crowd doesn?t seem to get it: the New World > Order isn?t some big secret evil conspiracy; that isn?t necessary. We > create the New World Order by borrowing two million dollars per second with > no credible means of repaying it, then identify as enemies of the state > anyone who points out that this madness is madness. > Yup. Exactly. But maybe I'll sell a T-shirt or two this time. We'll see. > > I've always liked: > > You can keep the Change, but I want my Hope back. > > > > -Kelly > > > > We will not be keeping the change. > We will keep Obamacare, sadly. And that is the change we were promised. There will be no free pocket change. Period. > We already saw the 1 November fix date blow by, the HealthCare.gov site > isn?t fixed. > Duh. Software is hard, even when done right. And this mess wasn't even close to done right. It is the software architecture from hell, driven by a bureaucracy that is constantly changing the rules. I wouldn't sign up to program on this beasty for all the pop tarts in Nicaragua. > We are already seeing what looks to me like pre-emptive apologies for not > making the 1 December date with a report I heard just today: the site never > even attempted to encrypt any of the information they were collecting. > Didn?t even try! > Lord. And that is one of the easiest parts. Just do the https thing, no big deal. Of course that doesn't matter if they just mail your paperwork to someone else in another state. Duh. I know it takes more than four weeks to tack on after the fact some kind > of encryption that could scale to millions of applicants, considering how > complicated that site is and how many leaky contractors are involved. > You could not easily encrypt all of the web services, but you could the main web site fairly easily. > That whole task should never have involved the Fed, it should have been > done by the insurance companies. They would each have smaller, more > manageable systems in place and would have incentive to keep their own > customer?s data private. > Yeah, well insurance companies aren't exactly known for their stellar software either. Else how could Dentrix charge a dollar per insurance form submitted just to make sure that the insurance company wouldn't reject it. The insurance company should have been able to do that. (Not that Dentrix is exactly the high tech leader, having worked there. They just slog away until it mostly works.) > > But back to the most interesting claim you made right at first Kelly: > where did you find in the constitution anything about US citizens being > entitled to privacy? I know the legal system has laws and that ?reasonable > expectation of privacy? phrase that determines the legality of snooping, > but where is it in the constitution? > > > 4th Amendment. And other places. If you really want to know more about it, try here: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/rightofprivacy.html -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 00:01:11 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 17:01:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <021001ceda38$4ec54d20$ec4fe760$@att.net> References: <2C17352F-6BCF-4DF9-BFF0-6333CC83FDA1@me.com> <080201ced3a0$48ed1c50$dac754f0$@att.net> <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> <00df01ced9e9$4a40ef60$dec2ce20$@att.net> <20131105214017.40eb03a4@jarrah> <021001ceda38$4ec54d20$ec4fe760$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 8:04 AM, spike wrote: > -----Original Message----- > >... On Behalf Of david > > "spike" wrote: > > Sure, they can keep the refund you would have gotten. But if you do your > withholdings right, you shouldn't have a refund coming anyway. Or if so, > it > should be very small. They often make it at least inconvenient to withhold less than you need to. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 00:03:52 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 16:03:52 -0800 Subject: [ExI] "Is it time for a transhumanist Olympics?" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 1:50 PM, Max More wrote: > On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 1:33 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > >> Wrong tone. If this is to be done, one must get lots of people to >> watch. Browbeating the morality of those choosing to watch or not watch >> will not accomplish this. Instead, play up how this would enhance those >> things that sports fans tune in to watch in the first place. >> >> Unfortunately, it is difficult to portray base drama and get average >> viewers to relate, when the subject matter is far beyond what most viewers >> think they might personally experience >> > If so, how do you explain the tremendous popularity of superhero movies? > Or science fiction? Or all the dramatic fiction involving things far beyond > what most viewers expect to experiences personally? > Different audience. They might overlap somewhat, but in fiction there's no premise that this is really happening, which can induce the audience to engage in willing suspension of disbelief. They can think, "Okay, I know this didn't actually happen, but if I were in this situation I might feel thusly". With sports, the audience might imagine themselves athletes, or to relate to the athlete as a representative of wherever they happen to live. It is harder for most of them to imagine themselves transhuman athletes, or to accept them as representatives. Consider your average, mundane American citizen. Ask them which one they think best represents America at war: a foot soldier, a tank, or a UAV. I suspect the first answer would get the most votes. (Conversely, ask an average citizen of the Middle East, and the UAV might be most commonly selected.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 00:05:42 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 17:05:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <52793ECB.2090608@libero.it> References: <2C17352F-6BCF-4DF9-BFF0-6333CC83FDA1@me.com> <080201ced3a0$48ed1c50$dac754f0$@att.net> <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> <52793ECB.2090608@libero.it> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 11:54 AM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 05/11/2013 04:24, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > > But fundamentally, you are talking to morph the IRS in the Sheriff of > Nottingham and his Soldiers. > Boots at the door, kick, enter, take stuff, arrest people, etc. > We know how ended in England, I do not think it would end very well in > the US given the 3-500 hundred millions guns in civilian hands. > Mirco! Bless you! That is EXACTLY WHY the founding fathers put the right to bear arms into the constitution! Why a limited right to bear arms has survived 230 years of tyrannical creep since then is anybody's guess. > What criminal sanction would be applicable if the IRS could apply it? > How many years of jail people would receive for refusing to pay the "tax"? > How many of them would fight against being arrested? Maybe not the first > time, but the following. > There are a lot of tax cheats in jail. I can't find how many, but I have known at least one personally. Two if you count his innocent wife. Ah yes, three if you count his accountant, who also did time. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 00:15:10 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 17:15:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <15F43A6C-139E-4380-83D8-9C10AB02065B@alumni.Virginia.edu> References: <98403CF1-5A40-46A2-9DE8-3661B39FC7BF@me.com> <5267B995.3020906@libero.it> <52766C6D.8060901@libero.it> <090301ced8b6$5bae7350$130b59f0$@att.net> <15F43A6C-139E-4380-83D8-9C10AB02065B@alumni.Virginia.edu> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 4:53 AM, Henry Rivera wrote: > > On Nov 4, 2013, at 22:42, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > As a Massachusetts resident and a healthcare provider, I can tell you > Romneycare is not a big mess here. > I remember a number of stories when it first came out... For example, only 123 people were able to sign up for Romneycare the first month it was available. And there are continuing nightmares for some people: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/08/01/560833/-MassHealth-the-nightmare-continues Of course, you can always find anecdotal evidence for anything. If you say it's not a mess, then I take you at your word. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 00:20:41 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 17:20:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Master of many trades In-Reply-To: <20131105161828.GX8041@leitl.org> References: <20131105161828.GX8041@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 9:18 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-views/anyone-can-learn-to-be-a-polymath/ > > Master of many trades > > Our age reveres the narrow specialist but humans are natural polymaths, at > our best when we turn our minds to many things > Tell that to SOMEONE, ANYONE hiring in Utah! Please! -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 00:23:14 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 17:23:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Master of many trades In-Reply-To: References: <20131105161828.GX8041@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Tomasz Rola wrote: > On Tue, 5 Nov 2013, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, > butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance > accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give > orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, > pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, > die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." > I count 16/21 for me. And I also plan to die gallantly when the time is right... -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 00:23:14 2013 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 17:23:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Multi-millionaire funds gene sequencing to find genes for mathematical genius In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: No comments? I find this absolutely fascinating, even if it takes years to really bear fruit. "Summon my mentat!" John : ) On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 3:30 AM, John Grigg wrote: > "Jonathan Rothberg founded two genetic-sequencing companies and sold them > for hundreds of millions of dollars.He helped to sequence the genomes of a Neanderthal man and James Watson, > who co-discovered DNA?s double helix. Now, entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg > has set his sights on another milestone: finding the genes that underlie > mathematical genius." > > > > http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/10/multi-millionaire-funds-gene-sequencing.html > > > John > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Nov 7 00:29:06 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 00:29:06 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Multi-millionaire funds gene sequencing to find genes for mathematical genius In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <527ADED2.6030903@aleph.se> On 07/11/2013 00:23, John Grigg wrote: > No comments? I find this absolutely fascinating, even if it takes > years to really bear fruit. "Summon my mentat!" My comment is this: http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2013/10/breaking-the-mould-genetics-and-education/ Great research, worth doing - but might not in itself be useful for selecting or boosting ability. What it can do is to validate other tests developed by looking at the normal range. And maybe hint about where to start looking in the genome and brain. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 7 00:40:26 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 16:40:26 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: References: <2C17352F-6BCF-4DF9-BFF0-6333CC83FDA1@me.com> <080201ced3a0$48ed1c50$dac754f0$@att.net> <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> <00df01ced9e9$4a40ef60$dec2ce20$@att.net> Message-ID: <05a501cedb51$f439b6a0$dcad23e0$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson Ah EXCELLENT! Finally someone who has found where in the constitution it says anything about US citizens having the inalienable right to privacy. I have been searching for that since I don't know how long. Kelly, where did you find that? >.Ammendment 4 Search and Seizure >.4th Amendment. And other places.-Kelly Ja, the usual answer. The argument is that if anything is done or said in the public domain where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, the interception of that information, and even its subsequent misuse, constitutes neither search nor seizure. By that reasoning, the 4th amendment is not applicable, if the terms and conditions of a website specify you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. I am not sure what to do with the HealthCare.gov site which has that 'no reasonable expectation of privacy' crack in the source code but not in the terms and conditions. I am sure what to guess regarding what happens if the data leaks: the government will find itself not guilty, since this is the internet, where you can never have any reasonable expectation of privacy. Certainly not anymore. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Nov 7 00:47:18 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 01:47:18 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: References: <2C17352F-6BCF-4DF9-BFF0-6333CC83FDA1@me.com> <080201ced3a0$48ed1c50$dac754f0$@att.net> <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> <52793ECB.2090608@libero.it> Message-ID: <527AE316.7010109@libero.it> Il 07/11/2013 01:05, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > There are a lot of tax cheats in jail. I can't find how many, but I have > known at least one personally. Two if you count his innocent wife. Ah > yes, three if you count his accountant, who also did time. Usually, the taxman stay away from the prole and look for high rewarding targets (like high middle class and more). For example, they legislate so the employer pay the taxes for the employees or they make the prole tax exempt. But any individual mandate is an individual mandate, it is not a employer mandate. The prole must pay the check and write the check. To enforce an individual mandate the government must have enforcers to stalk individual people. Already the IRS have a list of dangerous to contact people, I suppose the list will be a lot more populated in the future. The majority of these people will do nothing, a limited number will react in the heat of the moment, but if just a few start acting like Joe Stack ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Austin_suicide_attack ) it could rapidly get out of control. When there is a lot of dry hay a single spark can do a lot of damage. Mirco From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 7 00:47:21 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 16:47:21 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: References: <2C17352F-6BCF-4DF9-BFF0-6333CC83FDA1@me.com> <080201ced3a0$48ed1c50$dac754f0$@att.net> <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> <52793ECB.2090608@libero.it> Message-ID: <05aa01cedb52$ebd996f0$c38cc4d0$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson . >.There are a lot of tax cheats in jail. I can't find how many -Kelly I am waiting for someone in government to explicitly say that failure to pay or refusal to pay the opt-out penalty is tax cheating. As soon as someone somewhere does that, you will hear a roaring chorus saying THAT ISN'T TAX CHEATING! Actually I look forward to that debate. I want someone to say the opt-out tax is the same as the income tax, and refusing to pay it is the same as refusing to pay income tax. Come on, some O-care government guy, say it. Let's go, say it. They will soon find they have created a huge mess by setting the IRS as the collection agency for all this, a HUGE mistake. They have created two different kinds of tax, one which has the force of law behind it and the other which does not. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Nov 7 01:25:33 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 02:25:33 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <05aa01cedb52$ebd996f0$c38cc4d0$@att.net> References: <2C17352F-6BCF-4DF9-BFF0-6333CC83FDA1@me.com> <080201ced3a0$48ed1c50$dac754f0$@att.net> <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> <52793ECB.2090608@libero.it> <05aa01cedb52$ebd996f0$c38cc4d0$@att.net> Message-ID: <527AEC0D.4060802@libero.it> Il 07/11/2013 01:47, spike ha scritto: > *>?**On Behalf Of *Kelly Anderson > *?* >>?There are a lot of tax cheats in jail. I can't find how many -Kelly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentially_dangerous_taxpayer 2008 960 163 615 601 2009 989 136 706 695 2010 1,154 151 774 747 2011 1531 158 993 967 2012* 691 117 492 473 2012 is only thru July of 2012 Is it me or I see some increase with the time? > I am waiting for someone in government to explicitly say that failure to > pay or refusal to pay the opt-out penalty is tax cheating. As soon as > someone somewhere does that, you will hear a roaring chorus saying THAT > ISN?T TAX CHEATING! > They will soon find they have created a huge mess by setting the IRS as > the collection agency for all this, a HUGE mistake. They have created > two different kinds of tax, one which has the force of law behind it and > the other which does not. There is this Dune quote coming up so often in the last few years: There exists a limit to the force even the most powerful may apply without destroying themselves. Judging this limit is the true artistry of government. Misuse of power is the fatal sin. The law cannot be a tool of vengeance, never a hostage, nor a fortification against the martyrs it has created. You cannot threaten any individual and escape the consequences. Muad'Dib on Law The Stilgar Commentary Mirco From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 7 02:11:36 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 18:11:36 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <527AE316.7010109@libero.it> References: <2C17352F-6BCF-4DF9-BFF0-6333CC83FDA1@me.com> <080201ced3a0$48ed1c50$dac754f0$@att.net> <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> <52793ECB.2090608@libero.it> <527AE316.7010109@libero.it> Message-ID: <062f01cedb5e$b12fc630$138f5290$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato >...But any individual mandate is an individual mandate, it is not a employer mandate. The prole must pay the check and write the check... Mirco, do you see why I said the ACA creates two different kinds of tax? For one, the IRS is specifically forbidden from attaching wages, placing liens against bank accounts or property, or from issuing criminal sanctions against the prole. The other taxes, they can and will do all these things. This to me represents two fundamentally different kinds of tax. I would really like to hear what the IRS employees are saying about this, in the privacy of their own offices. This must be most puzzling to them, how the government expects them to collect what must look to them like a voluntary tax. I can imagine what will happen as soon as some ballsy libertarian with a perfectly simple earnings statement goes in for an audit with a recording device and flat out refuses to pay the ACA opt-out tax. She puts the recording on YouTube, instantly a jillion hits. That sends the message that the IRS has diluted their authority in a failed attempt at overreach. Then what? >... To enforce an individual mandate the government must have enforcers to stalk individual people. Mirco ____________________________________________ Sure, they can stalk. But then what? Their actual enforcement mechanisms have been specifically taken from them. They are free to demand, but if the taxpayer refuses to pay what amounts to a donation, I see no recourse other than a pointlessly repeated demand. What is a poor IRS agent to do? Call her an irresponsible jerk? spike From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Thu Nov 7 05:12:12 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 22:12:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? Message-ID: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> Transhumanist economists, As most of you know, in 2010, some guy purchased about $25 worth of Bitcoin, which is now worth over $800K. My working hypothesis is that this will continue and that before 2020, Bitcoin will be worth a million bucks. It's so funny to tell people that, and see them look at you with that "Your CRAZY" look in their eyes, as they say "A Bitcoin isn't going to be worth a million bucks!" Have you checked the price of Gold, lately? It's been crashing, dramatically, for 2 years now. Why do you think? The so called gold experts, are saying things like: "The bear market in gold has been going on for two years. It seems to fly in the face of fundamentals, as central banks print enough currency to paper the world." Once you factor in the fact that there is a new competitor in town, and that people are starting to sell Gold to buy Bitcoin, that explains what otherwise doesn't make sense to these traditional gold "experts" that have made lots of money up till two years ago. In other words, All the money that is in the pockets of holders of Gold, is now flowing into the pockets of holders of Bitcoins, at a very rapid rate. And My belief is that this Gold casualty that is just getting started, is just the first casualty. It will soon spread to stocks, bonds, real estate, and anything with value that can be sold. All the money in the pockets of the people holding them, will be quickly draining into the pockets of Bitcoiners at an increasing accelerating rate. Bitcoin, as many experts are starting to say: "is simply the best investment out there, bar none." So what would you expect? Money flows to where it is treated the best, just like water flows downhill. And if you have a Bitcoin in your pocket, that is looking increasingly tempting. As the cost of money and interest rates starts to skyrocket, as all sources of capital continue to flow into Bitcoin what will happen? I think at least the following will happen: 1. People will be selling anything they can liquidate, so they can buy Bitcoin. Even at a loss, since that loss will soon be made up for, once it is in Bitcoin. (Do you think a tax penalty of 10%, will stop people from liquidating their IRAs?) 2. People will be borrowing money, mortgaging things, like their house, to buy Bitcoins, because no interest rate will come close to the rate at which Bitcoin will continue to go up. 3. The price of stocks will decline. The PE ratio of stocks has historically been at around 20. This will drop by half or more, as nobody will want to buy stocks, unless it is a very good value. The greatly reduced PE, will become "the new normal" and it will be much harder to make money by going public. 4. Interest rates will go up significantly, because of the demand for money, to buy Bitcoins. 5. The economy will convert from a consumer economy with lots of debt to everyone will only want to only buy something when they absolutely need it. As it will be far better to spend it on something that will be worth 10 times its value in a year or so. It will convert to a bit time saving economy. Will this stabilize the boom and bust cycle? 6. The Winklevoss twins will be laughing at Facebook, and Zukkerberg, as Facebook stock price continues to decline and fails to keep pace with their 1% of all bitcoins. When we head into a recession, the fed lowers the interest rate to Zero to provide 'liquidity' and in hopes people will borrow money to invest in the economy. But this doesn't work very well as there is nothing that is making money, to make it worth borrowing during a recession. But Bitcoin will change this dramatically. Everyone will want to borrow money even more in a recession, as recession will cause Bitcoins to go up even faster than they are now. People will have even less motivation to invest in the economy. So there will be two market forces. Bitcoins driving up interest rates, and the federal reserve printing money and trying to lower interest rates. People will be borrowing this printed money, purchasing Bitcions. WIll that cause rapid inflation of fiat currency? Who will win such an epic battle between Bitcoin trying to increasa interest rates, and the Fed trying to lower them? What will the effect be, when Bitcoin starts rapidly approaching one million $$ ? My minds seems to get all scrambled when I try to analyze such. Can you guys help provide some additional rational to my attempt to get my head around what could happen? Could everyone brainstorm some of the long term possibilities, here? I've tried to browse some of the Bitcoins forums for some intelligent information on this, but all of them are idiots that can only think linearly, and they haven't got a clue. While Transhumanists are good at thinking exponentially. So, what are some of the more extreme possibilities you guys see? One thing I feel for sure. Everyone should have at last one Bitcoin. And people only say there is no such thing as a "Get Rich Quick Scheme", because they don't know how close the singularity is. Brent Allsop From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 06:12:45 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 01:12:45 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "Is it time for a transhumanist Olympics?" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 4:50 PM, Max More wrote: > On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 1:33 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: >> >> Unfortunately, it is difficult to portray base drama and get average >> viewers to relate, when the subject matter is far beyond what most viewers >> think they might personally experience > > If so, how do you explain the tremendous popularity of superhero movies? Or > science fiction? Or all the dramatic fiction involving things far beyond > what most viewers expect to experiences personally? > ### Reportedly, Freestyle chess is quite unpopular with human audiences, even though the games played are the highest quality chess ever, distinctly superhuman. At the same time, old style chess played by humans, at a much lower absolute level of competence, still attracts a fair amount of interest. I never watch sports, and I find it difficult to relate to those who do but it looks like for many paying viewers participation may be driven by a need for affiliation, rather than interest in what actually is going on. No-holds barred enhanced sport would have to cater to this need if it is to attract an audience and advertiser support. My intuition is that it could, as long as the enhancement part was narrated as a struggle, similar to training. In this story, the sportsman, one of us, through perseverance and skill, with the help of trainers, surgeons, pharmacists and genetic engineers, reaches new heights of power, and steamrolls the opposition - maybe it could sell. But then, my intuition in these human affiliative matters is rather tenuous, so YMMV. Rafal From max at maxmore.com Thu Nov 7 06:10:15 2013 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 23:10:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> Message-ID: Brent: You say that "Everyone should have at least one Bitcoin". I don't pretend to have a good understanding of bitcoins, despite having read (lightly) many posts here and some articles (such as the helpful one by Keegan Macintosh in the November issue of *Cryonics*), but I do have the strong feeling that I really ought to have a few of these peculiar things. However, my impression is that it's now too late -- that you can only generate new bitcoins if you have some fairly serious computing power. Is this right? If so, are there any reasonably non-speculative ways to acquire bitcoins? My question is not just from a personal perspective. Several people would like to pay for their some part of their cryopreservation (or gift Alcor) using Bitcoins, so I would like to understand the situation better. --Max On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 10:12 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: > > Transhumanist economists, > > As most of you know, in 2010, some guy purchased about $25 worth of > Bitcoin, which is now worth over $800K. My working hypothesis is that this > will continue and that before 2020, Bitcoin will be worth a million bucks. > It's so funny to tell people that, and see them look at you with that > "Your CRAZY" look in their eyes, as they say "A Bitcoin isn't going to be > worth a million bucks!" > > Have you checked the price of Gold, lately? It's been crashing, > dramatically, for 2 years now. Why do you think? The so called gold > experts, are saying things like: > > "The bear market in gold has been going on for two years. It seems to fly > in the face of fundamentals, as central banks print enough currency to > paper the world." > > Once you factor in the fact that there is a new competitor in town, and > that people are starting to sell Gold to buy Bitcoin, that explains what > otherwise doesn't make sense to these traditional gold "experts" that have > made lots of money up till two years ago. In other words, All the money > that is in the pockets of holders of Gold, is now flowing into the pockets > of holders of Bitcoins, at a very rapid rate. > > And My belief is that this Gold casualty that is just getting started, is > just the first casualty. It will soon spread to stocks, bonds, real > estate, and anything with value that can be sold. All the money in the > pockets of the people holding them, will be quickly draining into the > pockets of Bitcoiners at an increasing accelerating rate. > > Bitcoin, as many experts are starting to say: "is simply the best > investment out there, bar none." So what would you expect? Money flows to > where it is treated the best, just like water flows downhill. And if you > have a Bitcoin in your pocket, that is looking increasingly tempting. > > As the cost of money and interest rates starts to skyrocket, as all > sources of capital continue to flow into Bitcoin what will happen? I think > at least the following will happen: > > 1. People will be selling anything they can liquidate, so they can buy > Bitcoin. Even at a loss, since that loss will soon be made up for, once it > is in Bitcoin. (Do you think a tax penalty of 10%, will stop people from > liquidating their IRAs?) > 2. People will be borrowing money, mortgaging things, like their house, > to buy Bitcoins, because no interest rate will come close to the rate at > which Bitcoin will continue to go up. > 3. The price of stocks will decline. The PE ratio of stocks has > historically been at around 20. This will drop by half or more, as nobody > will want to buy stocks, unless it is a very good value. The greatly > reduced PE, will become "the new normal" and it will be much harder to make > money by going public. > 4. Interest rates will go up significantly, because of the demand for > money, to buy Bitcoins. > 5. The economy will convert from a consumer economy with lots of debt > to everyone will only want to only buy something when they absolutely need > it. As it will be far better to spend it on something that will be worth > 10 times its value in a year or so. It will convert to a bit time saving > economy. Will this stabilize the boom and bust cycle? > 6. The Winklevoss twins will be laughing at Facebook, and Zukkerberg, > as Facebook stock price continues to decline and fails to keep pace with > their 1% of all bitcoins. > > When we head into a recession, the fed lowers the interest rate to Zero to > provide 'liquidity' and in hopes people will borrow money to invest in the > economy. But this doesn't work very well as there is nothing that is > making money, to make it worth borrowing during a recession. > > But Bitcoin will change this dramatically. Everyone will want to borrow > money even more in a recession, as recession will cause Bitcoins to go up > even faster than they are now. People will have even less motivation to > invest in the economy. So there will be two market forces. Bitcoins > driving up interest rates, and the federal reserve printing money and > trying to lower interest rates. People will be borrowing this printed > money, purchasing Bitcions. WIll that cause rapid inflation of fiat > currency? > > Who will win such an epic battle between Bitcoin trying to increasa > interest rates, and the Fed trying to lower them? What will the effect be, > when Bitcoin starts rapidly approaching one million $$ ? > > My minds seems to get all scrambled when I try to analyze such. Can you > guys help provide some additional rational to my attempt to get my head > around what could happen? Could everyone brainstorm some of the long term > possibilities, here? > > I've tried to browse some of the Bitcoins forums for some intelligent > information on this, but all of them are idiots that can only think > linearly, and they haven't got a clue. While Transhumanists are good at > thinking exponentially. So, what are some of the more extreme > possibilities you guys see? > > One thing I feel for sure. Everyone should have at last one Bitcoin. And > people only say there is no such thing as a "Get Rich Quick Scheme", > because they don't know how close the singularity is. > > Brent Allsop > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 06:34:35 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 01:34:35 -0500 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 9:17 PM, spike wrote: > > OK so this makes me think it is very possible that there is something very > fundamentally wrong with both models. In the first case, we explain the > silence everywhere by recognizing the probability of what happened here must > be on the order of 1E-20. That compels me to just say something must be > wrong with it. Anders suggested the Great Filter model is more likely, but > even then, it just feels to me (ja, I recognize the universe doesn?t care > how I feel) that occasionally some detectible signal would leak past the > Great Filter. ### Paradoxically, these extremely large numbers make me much more sanguine about the Great Filter in our future. As long as the predicted filter is supposed to claim 90 - 99 % of our futures, it's worrisome, because it's realistic, even when vague on the physical details - but once the prediction claims a 99.9999999 % likelihood of our imminent destruction, I know I can relax. I cannot imagine any physical process, known or plausible, that would with 99.9999999 likelihood eliminate civilizations like us, just on the cusp of starting a wave of interstellar expansion. Can anybody give plausible candidates for the actual physical implementation of this extremely high efficiency Great Filter? Rafal From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 7 06:56:20 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 22:56:20 -0800 Subject: [ExI] "Is it time for a transhumanist Olympics?" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <077c01cedb86$77d9b4e0$678d1ea0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki >...My intuition is that it could, as long as the enhancement part was narrated as a struggle, similar to training. In this story, the sportsman, one of us, through perseverance and skill, with the help of trainers, surgeons, pharmacists and genetic engineers, reaches new heights of power, and steamrolls the opposition - maybe it could sell. But then, my intuition in these human affiliative matters is rather tenuous, so YMMV. Rafal _______________________________________________ Ja. We pay these top athletes all this money, then we throw away the real contribution they could make to humanity by disallowing their chemical enhancements, which results in their recipes being covered up and lost forever. We could be learning so much. Professional sports stars are easy to track well into their old age, since those records are kept faithfully. I met one: Ted Williams, before he was Max's client. We have an opportunity here. If we let all pro athletes use anything they want, so long as they promise to faithfully record it and reveal everything at the end of their sports careers, we could follow them until they perish, note long term consequences of all these steroids and performance enhancers, figure out which ones work and which ones do not, which ones cause damage later and which ones are safe. Instead we throw away all that potentially life-saving data. Oy. spike From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 7 07:06:53 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 23:06:53 -0800 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> Message-ID: <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki Subject: Re: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 9:17 PM, spike wrote: > > >... that occasionally some detectible signal would leak past the Great Filter. ### Paradoxically, these extremely large numbers make me much more sanguine about the Great Filter in our future... Me too, in a way. We think of the Great Filter notion as something that always slays tech-enabled societies, but there is another way: a Great Filter could be something positive. If for instance, we figure out how to upload, it is easy enough to imagine that the only compelling task remaining for that species is to gather all the locally available metals and convert it all to computronium. There is no point in sending out signals to another star, for a post computronium planetary system has nothing to gain by signaling others in the galaxy. >...Can anybody give plausible candidates for the actual physical implementation of this extremely high efficiency Great Filter? Rafal ____________________________________________ Rafal, every scenario I can think of points to an MBrain, yet we see no evidence anywhere that those exist. For any intelligent tech-enabled species, thinking and inventing are fun. So eventually they invent thinking machines. That leads to the desire to convert all available metals to thinking matter. So why don't we see MBrains everywhere? I am still thinking, and still no closer to a solution. spike From rahmans at me.com Thu Nov 7 08:09:10 2013 From: rahmans at me.com (Omar Rahman) Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 09:09:10 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <68595A07-DC6D-400E-AEED-1E92B7FEDC81@me.com> > From: Max More > To: Brent Allsop , ExI chat list > > Subject: Re: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? > > > Brent: You say that "Everyone should have at least one Bitcoin". I don't > pretend to have a good understanding of bitcoins, despite having read > (lightly) many posts here and some articles (such as the helpful one by > Keegan Macintosh in the November issue of *Cryonics*), but I do have the > strong feeling that I really ought to have a few of these peculiar things. > However, my impression is that it's now too late -- that you can only > generate new bitcoins if you have some fairly serious computing power. > > Is this right? If so, are there any reasonably non-speculative ways to > acquire bitcoins? > > My question is not just from a personal perspective. Several people would > like to pay for their some part of their cryopreservation (or gift Alcor) > using Bitcoins, so I would like to understand the situation better. > > --Max > > Max, The main problem with bitcoin is precisely this: it is impossible for everyone to have a bitcoin. The system was designed with an upper limit of 21 million coins available. The anonymous people behind bitcoin have designed this as a 'boutique' currency for test purposes I think. The 21 million upper limit automatically places it out of contention to be a general means of exchange. Hmm....unless we want to get into 'virtual' bitcoins. ;) Of course 'real' currencies only exist in finite amounts which are only a small fraction of the total assets in a country but we have 'trusted' banks to magnify these currencies through fractional reserve banking. And, of course, as we see in 'quantitative easing' you can print more and add zeroes to the numbers. May I offer to pay for cryopreservation in Dutch Tulips Max? Or cowrie shells? Etc. etc. etc. All sorts of things have been used for money. If I had enough money to pay for cryopreservation I would want to pay you in a currency which is future-proof and had some stability. And I would want your organisation to be very financially savvy so that you protect my assets so that when/if I wake up I have some scratch to get started with again. The longer someone has to be cryopreserved the more complex it will be for them to emerge as anything other than a pauper. I would much rather give payment in the form of Berkshire Hathaway stock if I had it. Hopefully if they manage their transition from Warren Buffet to whoever's next they will have a corporation that will generate profits reliably for a few generations at least. > > On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 10:12 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: > >> >> Transhumanist economists, >> >> As most of you know, in 2010, some guy purchased about $25 worth of >> Bitcoin, which is now worth over $800K. My working hypothesis is that this >> will continue and that before 2020, Bitcoin will be worth a million bucks. >> It's so funny to tell people that, and see them look at you with that >> "Your CRAZY" look in their eyes, as they say "A Bitcoin isn't going to be >> worth a million bucks!" >> >> Have you checked the price of Gold, lately? It's been crashing, >> dramatically, for 2 years now. Why do you think? The so called gold >> experts, are saying things like: >> >> "The bear market in gold has been going on for two years. It seems to fly >> in the face of fundamentals, as central banks print enough currency to >> paper the world." >> >> Once you factor in the fact that there is a new competitor in town, and >> that people are starting to sell Gold to buy Bitcoin, that explains what >> otherwise doesn't make sense to these traditional gold "experts" that have >> made lots of money up till two years ago. In other words, All the money >> that is in the pockets of holders of Gold, is now flowing into the pockets >> of holders of Bitcoins, at a very rapid rate. >> >> And My belief is that this Gold casualty that is just getting started, is >> just the first casualty. It will soon spread to stocks, bonds, real >> estate, and anything with value that can be sold. All the money in the >> pockets of the people holding them, will be quickly draining into the >> pockets of Bitcoiners at an increasing accelerating rate. >> >> Bitcoin, as many experts are starting to say: "is simply the best >> investment out there, bar none." So what would you expect? Money flows to >> where it is treated the best, just like water flows downhill. And if you >> have a Bitcoin in your pocket, that is looking increasingly tempting. >> >> As the cost of money and interest rates starts to skyrocket, as all >> sources of capital continue to flow into Bitcoin what will happen? I think >> at least the following will happen: >> >> 1. People will be selling anything they can liquidate, so they can buy >> Bitcoin. Even at a loss, since that loss will soon be made up for, once it >> is in Bitcoin. (Do you think a tax penalty of 10%, will stop people from >> liquidating their IRAs?) >> 2. People will be borrowing money, mortgaging things, like their house, >> to buy Bitcoins, because no interest rate will come close to the rate at >> which Bitcoin will continue to go up. >> 3. The price of stocks will decline. The PE ratio of stocks has >> historically been at around 20. This will drop by half or more, as nobody >> will want to buy stocks, unless it is a very good value. The greatly >> reduced PE, will become "the new normal" and it will be much harder to make >> money by going public. >> 4. Interest rates will go up significantly, because of the demand for >> money, to buy Bitcoins. >> 5. The economy will convert from a consumer economy with lots of debt >> to everyone will only want to only buy something when they absolutely need >> it. As it will be far better to spend it on something that will be worth >> 10 times its value in a year or so. It will convert to a bit time saving >> economy. Will this stabilize the boom and bust cycle? >> 6. The Winklevoss twins will be laughing at Facebook, and Zukkerberg, >> as Facebook stock price continues to decline and fails to keep pace with >> their 1% of all bitcoins. >> >> When we head into a recession, the fed lowers the interest rate to Zero to >> provide 'liquidity' and in hopes people will borrow money to invest in the >> economy. But this doesn't work very well as there is nothing that is >> making money, to make it worth borrowing during a recession. >> >> But Bitcoin will change this dramatically. Everyone will want to borrow >> money even more in a recession, as recession will cause Bitcoins to go up >> even faster than they are now. People will have even less motivation to >> invest in the economy. So there will be two market forces. Bitcoins >> driving up interest rates, and the federal reserve printing money and >> trying to lower interest rates. People will be borrowing this printed >> money, purchasing Bitcions. WIll that cause rapid inflation of fiat >> currency? >> >> Who will win such an epic battle between Bitcoin trying to increasa >> interest rates, and the Fed trying to lower them? What will the effect be, >> when Bitcoin starts rapidly approaching one million $$ ? >> >> My minds seems to get all scrambled when I try to analyze such. Can you >> guys help provide some additional rational to my attempt to get my head >> around what could happen? Could everyone brainstorm some of the long term >> possibilities, here? >> >> I've tried to browse some of the Bitcoins forums for some intelligent >> information on this, but all of them are idiots that can only think >> linearly, and they haven't got a clue. While Transhumanists are good at >> thinking exponentially. So, what are some of the more extreme >> possibilities you guys see? >> >> One thing I feel for sure. Everyone should have at last one Bitcoin. And >> people only say there is no such thing as a "Get Rich Quick Scheme", >> because they don't know how close the singularity is. >> >> Brent Allsop >> >> > -- > Max More, PhD > Strategic Philosopher Generally I am in favour of a digital currency, because I believe it will act to reduce economic disparity around the world. The days of currency fluctuations on the latest 'news' would be gone. Think about it, something happens and your currency drops by 5% (or possibly much more). Does anyone REALLY believe that a nation and it's entire accumulated assets have been destroyed by 5% because Prime Minister X put his penis in Woman Z instead of the usual Woman Y and therefore his government is going to collapse? (Please feel free to read that with whatever gender roles you prefer.) A real digital currency is going to need to be open source, available to all, and it is going to need some 'mathematical backup' so that if/when someone breaks the encryption you can switch fairly painlessly to a different encryption standard. It will also need to be issued by a globally trusted source. So, Hello One World Government! Of course there will be multiple digital currencies for all the usual reasons, not least of which is that those in the currency speculation/ currency manipulation/ currency exchange business won't want to see their 'industry' be destroyed by technological innovation. So, Goodbye One World Government! Regards, Omar Rahman -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 7 09:56:49 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 10:56:49 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <20131107095648.GP5661@leitl.org> On Wed, Nov 06, 2013 at 11:10:15PM -0700, Max More wrote: > Brent: You say that "Everyone should have at least one Bitcoin". I don't > pretend to have a good understanding of bitcoins, despite having read > (lightly) many posts here and some articles (such as the helpful one by > Keegan Macintosh in the November issue of *Cryonics*), but I do have the > strong feeling that I really ought to have a few of these peculiar things. > However, my impression is that it's now too late -- that you can only > generate new bitcoins if you have some fairly serious computing power. The most cost-effective way to get Bitcoins is to purchase them. The mining was only very profitable in the early beginnings. > Is this right? If so, are there any reasonably non-speculative ways to > acquire bitcoins? > > My question is not just from a personal perspective. Several people would > like to pay for their some part of their cryopreservation (or gift Alcor) > using Bitcoins, so I would like to understand the situation better. I'm not sure Bitcoins are a good store of value. They will be either worth a lot or nothing at all. As such you should probalby figure out which fraction to cash out and which to retain, speculating on future rise of value. From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 7 09:58:06 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 10:58:06 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Monkeys Use Minds to Control Avatar Arms Message-ID: <20131107095806.GQ5661@leitl.org> http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2013/11/monkeys-use-minds-control-avatar-arms Monkeys Use Minds to Control Avatar Arms 6 November 2013 2:30 pm Two monkeys learned to move avatar arms toward shifting targets (see animation below), simply by putting their minds to it. Nicolelis Lab/Duke Center for Neuroengineering Monkey mind. Two monkeys learned to move avatar arms toward shifting targets (see animation below), simply by putting their minds to it. MONKEYS USE MINDS TO CONTROL AVATAR ARMS Most of us don?t think twice when we extend our arms to hug a friend or push a shopping cart?our limbs work together seamlessly to follow our mental commands. For researchers designing brain-controlled prosthetic limbs for people, however, this coordinated arm movement is a daunting technical challenge. A new study showing that monkeys can move two virtual limbs with only their brain activity is a major step toward achieving that goal, scientists say. The brain controls movement by sending electrical signals to our muscles through nerve cells. When limb-connecting nerve cells are damaged or a limb is amputated, the brain is still able to produce those motion-inducing signals, but the limb can't receive them or simply doesn?t exist. In recent years, scientists have worked to create devices called brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) that can pick up these interrupted electrical signals and control the movements of a computer cursor or a real or virtual prosthetic. So far, the success of BMIs in humans has been largely limited to moving single body parts, such as a hand or an arm. Last year, for example, a woman paralyzed from the neck down for 10 years commanded a robotic arm to pick up and lift a piece of chocolate to her mouth just by thinking about it. But, "no device will ever work for people unless it restores bimanual behaviors,? says neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, senior author of the paper. "You need to use both arms and hands for the simplest tasks.? In 2011, Nicolelis made waves by announcing on The Daily Show that he is developing a robotic, thought-controlled "exoskeleton" that will allow paralyzed people to walk again. Further raising the stakes, he pledged that the robotic body suit will enable a paralyzed person to kick a soccer ball during the opening ceremony of the 2014 Brazil World Cup. (Nicolelis is Brazilian and his research is partly funded by the nation?s government.) That feat will require decoding the complex neural signals that coordinate two legs as they walk together and keep a person upright. Now, by successfully training two monkeys to control virtual arms using only their minds, Nicolelis?s team has moved closer to that goal. The new experiment involved two monkeys, a male and a female. Before it began, each monkey had electrodes implanted into its right and left brain hemisphere, which recorded the activity of up to 500 neurons acting together?the highest number of neurons yet used in such an experiment, Nicolelis says. The animal?s task was to control the movement of two avatar arms on a computer monitor: To get a fruit juice reward, it had to place both hands over two circles and hold them there for 100 milliseconds, as demonstrated in the video above. A computer algorithm processed the monkey?s brain activity, homing in on patterns of neurons firing as it learned to do the task. The female monkey, called monkey C, first learned how to get the juice by moving joysticks with her real arms and hands?as she manipulated the joysticks, the right and left avatar arms did what she wished. After practicing this during regular 20- to 40-minute sessions over the course of a year, she was strapped into a padded chair so that she couldn?t move her own arms or hands, and trained to control the avatar arms just by thinking. After weeks of practice, she was able to complete the task more than 75% of the time, the scientists report today in Science Translational Medicine. Because a paralyzed person or amputee can't necessarily practice a task using joysticks, the next step was to determine whether observation alone could teach the BMI. Monkey M, a male, wasn't allowed to use the joysticks or move his arms at any point in the experiment?he simply observed the task being performed. It took longer for him to learn, but monkey M also learned to control the virtual arms using only his thoughts. Both animals? performances improved over time, and the researchers noticed that their neuronal firing patterns changed as this happened, suggesting that their brains were adapting to the BMI devices. This could be because the monkeys came to consider the virtual arms as part of their own bodies, Nicolelis suggests. ?The animals literally incorporate the avatar as if the avatar was them.? The basic technology that Nicolelis and colleagues used to extract instructions for movement from the mishmash of monkey brain signals isn't new, says Jose Contreras-Vidal, a biomedical engineer at the University of Houston in Texas. The real advance of the study, he says, is that the team was able to figure out which neurons they needed to record to control two arms working together. Although one might assume that it would be possible to simply combine neural activity from two arms acting independently, the study shows that cells act differently when they are coordinating the movements of two limbs than they do when separately instructing one limb or the other, he says. This is the first study to extract and use that complex information to coordinate arm movements in real time, Contreras-Vidal says. Although he agrees that the new study is strong, Andrew Schwartz, a neurobiologist at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, thinks scientists can do better. Even though the monkeys? task was quite simple, they had only about a 45% success rate overall, he notes. ?I?m looking forward to higher performance and success rates and more realistic natural movements.? Nicolelis may have shown that the monkeys can learn to use these avatar arms to complete a one simple task, but it's not clear that the same type of training will work for the more complex activities that humans need to perform, Contreras-Vidal cautions. "This is a first step." From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 7 11:23:30 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 12:23:30 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The Problem with Drugs (was Re: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20131107112329.GR5661@leitl.org> On Wed, Nov 06, 2013 at 01:51:22PM -0700, Kelly Anderson wrote: > I don't recall discussing drugs on the list, at least for a while. It is > clearly an extropian issue, as drugs tend to increase entropy in the human Interesting claim. How do you measure that? > brain. Also, some kinds of drugs are clearly putting some of us into the > realm of posthuman. My girlfriend, for example, isn't herself when not on Posthuman is a very big word. I would reserve its use for entities that are actually qualified. Unless your girlfriend is actually a Power, in which case: carry on. > anti-anxiety medication. She is a post human, because as her natural self > she drives herself and those in her life just a little nuts. > > Now, I know John was referring to illegal drugs, and I believe most illegal Illegal, when and where? Such things tend to not be fixed across time and space. > drugs are create a huge detriment to those who use them and to the children And your evidence for that claim would be??? Let's look at good, old psychoactives like cannabis, MDMA/MDA, LSD, diverse Psilocybe, and such. I would like to see some evidence that most of that use more harmful than those drugs which are legal in Western societies. > of those who use them to excess. That being said, the problems with the war > on drugs are worse than the original problems of drugs themselves. No disagreement with that. > Prior to Richard Nixon creating the War on Drugs, and the Reagans expanding > it, there were how many deaths from drug use in America? > > Well, it wasn't zero. Here are a couple of references. > http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/cu/cu12.htm > http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Causes_of_Death#sthash.zEVnBrwe.dpbs > > Bottom line seems to be that there are around 17000 deaths per year in the > USA attributable to bad use of illicit drugs. How many of those deaths > would be prevented if there were a safe and legal place to go to use drugs? > I'm guessing most of them. > > In the past 8 years or so, there have been 80,000 deaths in the drug wars > just in Mexico. Of the 16,000 or so homicides yearly in the United States, > how many are casualties of drug violence? 20%? 30%? > > Prior to the war on drugs, drug use was lower (not that there is a causal > relationship) and you had almost no drug deaths in Mexico (other than the > occasional addict one could assume). > > So is the "cure" worse than the problem? > > Is there a "military-industrial complex" that feeds off of the war on There is definitely a prison industry in the US. The incarceration rate is higher than in Stalin's USSR, or North Korea. > drugs? Is that why no politician will talk about getting rid of the damn > thing? > > We lose more people (21,329 vs. ~17,000) to misuse of legal drugs than to > misuse of illicit drugs. Which is why the proper name of that is The War on (Some) Drugs. From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Nov 7 13:10:14 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 14:10:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <062f01cedb5e$b12fc630$138f5290$@att.net> References: <2C17352F-6BCF-4DF9-BFF0-6333CC83FDA1@me.com> <080201ced3a0$48ed1c50$dac754f0$@att.net> <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> <52793ECB.2090608@libero.it> <527AE316.7010109@libero.it> <062f01cedb5e$b12fc630$138f5290$@att.net> Message-ID: <527B9136.7020300@libero.it> Il 07/11/2013 03:11, spike ha scritto: >> ... On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato >> ...But any individual mandate is an individual mandate, it is not a > employer mandate. The prole must pay the check and write the check... > Mirco, do you see why I said the ACA creates two different kinds of tax? > For one, the IRS is specifically forbidden from attaching wages, placing > liens against bank accounts or property, or from issuing criminal sanctions > against the prole. The other taxes, they can and will do all these things. > This to me represents two fundamentally different kinds of tax. I would > really like to hear what the IRS employees are saying about this, in the > privacy of their own offices. This must be most puzzling to them, how the > government expects them to collect what must look to them like a voluntary > tax. I suppose it is not about what they employees of the IRS say, it is about what their bosses say to them and what to do and how to do. In my experience these bosses (the bosses in any bureaucratic law enforcement structure in the world) are not all well adjusted, so they will do incredibly stupid things thinking themselves smart and outside the reach of law. And they could be outside the reach of law. But the consequences of their actions can not be legislated away and will not be ignored. Must I remember the "Fast & Furious" operation of the ATF? In Italy we have a number of suicides between the small business owners / self employed because the tax burden is unsustainable. Many of them found themselves unable to pay the taxes, the employees and their suppliers. Initially there were only suicides on the newspapers. Then we had a few episodes of violence against the government employees (like an armed man entering and shooting two women and not at random). And this type of violence here is very rare, very very rare. People, here, usually kill themselves and sometimes their wife if they are broken by taxes or delayed/missing payments. > I can imagine what will happen as soon as some ballsy libertarian with a > perfectly simple earnings statement goes in for an audit with a recording > device and flat out refuses to pay the ACA opt-out tax. She puts the > recording on YouTube, instantly a jillion hits. That sends the message that > the IRS has diluted their authority in a failed attempt at overreach. Then > what? It would be interesting to hear how they will try to threat him/her outside the boundary of the law (audit their wife, brothers, parents, employer, and so on). >> ... To enforce an individual mandate the government must have enforcers to > stalk individual people. Mirco > ____________________________________________ > > Sure, they can stalk. But then what? Their actual enforcement mechanisms > have been specifically taken from them. They are free to demand, but if the > taxpayer refuses to pay what amounts to a donation, I see no recourse other > than a pointlessly repeated demand. What is a poor IRS agent to do? Call > her an irresponsible jerk? Spike, you underestimate the wickedness of a government employee. Higher is their position, lower is their humanity. They would find any and all justification to do what they must and want. Like an abusive wife will find any and all justification to beat his hubby and claim he is abusive. Mirco From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 13:15:15 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 08:15:15 -0500 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 2:06 AM, spike wrote: > > For any intelligent tech-enabled species, thinking and inventing are fun. > So eventually they invent thinking machines. That leads to the desire to > convert all available metals to thinking matter. So why don't we see > MBrains everywhere? > > I am still thinking, and still no closer to a solution. > > Just throwing this out as food for thought: Why are there no teenagers in kindergarten? Perhaps civilizations with the power to overcome interstellar distances and lightspeed delays simply move out of this neighborhood. Maybe 8.8e9 earthlike planets is just an incubator and we've just about hatched? Sorry no, I don't have any cosmology evidence to support this idea. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Nov 7 13:46:36 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 14:46:36 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <527B99BC.20201@libero.it> Il 07/11/2013 07:10, Max More ha scritto: > Brent: You say that "Everyone should have at least one Bitcoin". I don't > pretend to have a good understanding of bitcoins, despite having read > (lightly) many posts here and some articles (such as the helpful one by > Keegan Macintosh in the November issue of /Cryonics/), but I do have the > strong feeling that I really ought to have a few of these peculiar > things. However, my impression is that it's now too late -- that you can > only generate new bitcoins if you have some fairly serious computing power. Max generating bitcoin to own them or spend them is like mining gold to own gold or spend gold coin. It is not for all of us, just for a specialized few able to be very efficient at it (and it is not the most efficient and cheap way to procure bitcoin). What matter is not the price now, but the price in the future. If, in any reasonable outcome, the price is a lot higher than now, some funds should be stored in Bitcoin and Bitcoin accepted as payment/gift. > Is this right? If so, are there any reasonably non-speculative ways to > acquire bitcoins? The same as any other form of money, like selling goods and services. > My question is not just from a personal perspective. Several people > would like to pay for their some part of their cryopreservation (or gift > Alcor) using Bitcoins, so I would like to understand the situation better. Alcor could simply accept Bitcoin using Bitpay and having the desired % of bitcoin (from 0 to 100%) converted immediately in cash ($). Bitpay service cost 1% of the transaction (max) or could be a flat fee of 30-3000 $ (depend on service) per month. IMHO 30$/month would be perfect for Alcor needs if you have more than 3000$ in revenues every month in bitcoin. What is more important is to secure the cold wallet(s) where to store the coins. In the last few days, we had Silk Road 2.0 (and a new Dread Pirate Roberts), 7.000 restaurants/takeaway in Europe added Bitcoin as a payment method, the price spike to >300$. IMHO, Alcor should have assets stored in many very conservative ways, as to be able to save purchasing power for the foreseeable future and be safe against government debasing the currency and banks stealing the funds (in legal ways, of course). Mirco From veronesepk at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 14:09:09 2013 From: veronesepk at gmail.com (Keith Veronese) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 08:09:09 -0600 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <0F6487F4-6BEA-4F9A-8738-87EA192DBE62@gmail.com> The bitcoin spoke over the past few days has certainly been interesting and fun to watch. I've been buying litecoins (just a small amount) for fun, something to make me keep an eye on the market. The lower cost per whole unit versus bitcoin might make litecoins a little more attractive and useful for retail transactions (at least at current USD/LTC and USD/BTC values). - Keith Veronese > On Nov 7, 2013, at 12:10 AM, Max More wrote: > > Brent: You say that "Everyone should have at least one Bitcoin". I don't pretend to have a good understanding of bitcoins, despite having read (lightly) many posts here and some articles (such as the helpful one by Keegan Macintosh in the November issue of Cryonics), but I do have the strong feeling that I really ought to have a few of these peculiar things. However, my impression is that it's now too late -- that you can only generate new bitcoins if you have some fairly serious computing power. > > Is this right? If so, are there any reasonably non-speculative ways to acquire bitcoins? > > My question is not just from a personal perspective. Several people would like to pay for their some part of their cryopreservation (or gift Alcor) using Bitcoins, so I would like to understand the situation better. > > --Max > > > >> On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 10:12 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: >> >> Transhumanist economists, >> >> As most of you know, in 2010, some guy purchased about $25 worth of Bitcoin, which is now worth over $800K. My working hypothesis is that this will continue and that before 2020, Bitcoin will be worth a million bucks. It's so funny to tell people that, and see them look at you with that "Your CRAZY" look in their eyes, as they say "A Bitcoin isn't going to be worth a million bucks!" >> >> Have you checked the price of Gold, lately? It's been crashing, dramatically, for 2 years now. Why do you think? The so called gold experts, are saying things like: >> >> "The bear market in gold has been going on for two years. It seems to fly in the face of fundamentals, as central banks print enough currency to paper the world." >> >> Once you factor in the fact that there is a new competitor in town, and that people are starting to sell Gold to buy Bitcoin, that explains what otherwise doesn't make sense to these traditional gold "experts" that have made lots of money up till two years ago. In other words, All the money that is in the pockets of holders of Gold, is now flowing into the pockets of holders of Bitcoins, at a very rapid rate. >> >> And My belief is that this Gold casualty that is just getting started, is just the first casualty. It will soon spread to stocks, bonds, real estate, and anything with value that can be sold. All the money in the pockets of the people holding them, will be quickly draining into the pockets of Bitcoiners at an increasing accelerating rate. >> >> Bitcoin, as many experts are starting to say: "is simply the best investment out there, bar none." So what would you expect? Money flows to where it is treated the best, just like water flows downhill. And if you have a Bitcoin in your pocket, that is looking increasingly tempting. >> >> As the cost of money and interest rates starts to skyrocket, as all sources of capital continue to flow into Bitcoin what will happen? I think at least the following will happen: >> >> 1. People will be selling anything they can liquidate, so they can buy Bitcoin. Even at a loss, since that loss will soon be made up for, once it is in Bitcoin. (Do you think a tax penalty of 10%, will stop people from liquidating their IRAs?) >> 2. People will be borrowing money, mortgaging things, like their house, to buy Bitcoins, because no interest rate will come close to the rate at which Bitcoin will continue to go up. >> 3. The price of stocks will decline. The PE ratio of stocks has historically been at around 20. This will drop by half or more, as nobody will want to buy stocks, unless it is a very good value. The greatly reduced PE, will become "the new normal" and it will be much harder to make money by going public. >> 4. Interest rates will go up significantly, because of the demand for money, to buy Bitcoins. >> 5. The economy will convert from a consumer economy with lots of debt to everyone will only want to only buy something when they absolutely need it. As it will be far better to spend it on something that will be worth 10 times its value in a year or so. It will convert to a bit time saving economy. Will this stabilize the boom and bust cycle? >> 6. The Winklevoss twins will be laughing at Facebook, and Zukkerberg, as Facebook stock price continues to decline and fails to keep pace with their 1% of all bitcoins. >> >> When we head into a recession, the fed lowers the interest rate to Zero to provide 'liquidity' and in hopes people will borrow money to invest in the economy. But this doesn't work very well as there is nothing that is making money, to make it worth borrowing during a recession. >> >> But Bitcoin will change this dramatically. Everyone will want to borrow money even more in a recession, as recession will cause Bitcoins to go up even faster than they are now. People will have even less motivation to invest in the economy. So there will be two market forces. Bitcoins driving up interest rates, and the federal reserve printing money and trying to lower interest rates. People will be borrowing this printed money, purchasing Bitcions. WIll that cause rapid inflation of fiat currency? >> >> Who will win such an epic battle between Bitcoin trying to increasa interest rates, and the Fed trying to lower them? What will the effect be, when Bitcoin starts rapidly approaching one million $$ ? >> >> My minds seems to get all scrambled when I try to analyze such. Can you guys help provide some additional rational to my attempt to get my head around what could happen? Could everyone brainstorm some of the long term possibilities, here? >> >> I've tried to browse some of the Bitcoins forums for some intelligent information on this, but all of them are idiots that can only think linearly, and they haven't got a clue. While Transhumanists are good at thinking exponentially. So, what are some of the more extreme possibilities you guys see? >> >> One thing I feel for sure. Everyone should have at last one Bitcoin. And people only say there is no such thing as a "Get Rich Quick Scheme", because they don't know how close the singularity is. >> >> Brent Allsop >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > -- > Max More, PhD > Strategic Philosopher > Co-editor, The Transhumanist Reader > http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader > President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation > _______________________________________________ > 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 Nov 7 14:28:21 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 15:28:21 +0100 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> Message-ID: <20131107142821.GD5661@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 07, 2013 at 08:15:15AM -0500, Mike Dougherty wrote: > Just throwing this out as food for thought: Why are there no teenagers in > kindergarten? > > Perhaps civilizations with the power to overcome interstellar distances and > lightspeed delays simply move out of this neighborhood. Maybe 8.8e9 They cannot move out of this universe, so they're subject to the laws of thermodynamics. > earthlike planets is just an incubator and we've just about hatched? > > Sorry no, I don't have any cosmology evidence to support this idea. There is plenty of evidence against that idea: you can see the stars. You can read this message. Ergo, we're in nobody's smart light cone. QED. From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 14:38:58 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 09:38:58 -0500 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <68595A07-DC6D-400E-AEED-1E92B7FEDC81@me.com> References: <68595A07-DC6D-400E-AEED-1E92B7FEDC81@me.com> Message-ID: On 11/7/13, Omar Rahman wrote: > The main problem with bitcoin is precisely this: it is impossible for > everyone to have a bitcoin. The system was designed with an upper limit of > 21 million coins available. The anonymous people behind bitcoin have > designed this as a 'boutique' currency for test purposes I think. The 21 > million upper limit automatically places it out of contention to be a > general means of exchange. Hmm....unless we want to get into 'virtual' > bitcoins. ;) ### Omar, you think the limit on the number of bitcoins puts it "out of contention to be a general means of exchange"? Lol. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 14:47:52 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 09:47:52 -0500 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 11/7/13, spike wrote: > > Me too, in a way. We think of the Great Filter notion as something that > always slays tech-enabled societies, but there is another way: a Great > Filter could be something positive. If for instance, we figure out how to > upload, it is easy enough to imagine that the only compelling task remaining > for that species is to gather all the locally available metals and convert > it all to computronium. There is no point in sending out signals to another > star, for a post computronium planetary system has nothing to gain by > signaling others in the galaxy. ### Even this is kinda hard to believe as a Great Filter - 10e20 potential civilizations, and not a single one strays from the narrow path? Also, if a civ thinks it makes sense to eat your own solar system and make it into a brain, why not eat the neighboring one too, and then next one and the next one? Rafal From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 7 14:55:50 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 15:55:50 +0100 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> Message-ID: <20131107145550.GI5661@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 07, 2013 at 09:47:52AM -0500, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### Even this is kinda hard to believe as a Great Filter - 10e20 > potential civilizations, and not a single one strays from the narrow Nobody has any probability for civilization nucleation density, until there's at least one sample not causally correlated with us. > path? Also, if a civ thinks it makes sense to eat your own solar > system and make it into a brain, why not eat the neighboring one too, > and then next one and the next one? Precisely. There's never a single star turning ~AU FIR blackbody, nor even a single galaxy. There would be spherical voids impossible to miss -- except the expansion is relativistic, so you don't see them until you're suddenly From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 7 14:58:02 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 15:58:02 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <68595A07-DC6D-400E-AEED-1E92B7FEDC81@me.com> Message-ID: <20131107145802.GJ5661@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 07, 2013 at 09:38:58AM -0500, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On 11/7/13, Omar Rahman wrote: > > > The main problem with bitcoin is precisely this: it is impossible for > > everyone to have a bitcoin. The system was designed with an upper limit of > > 21 million coins available. The anonymous people behind bitcoin have > > designed this as a 'boutique' currency for test purposes I think. The 21 > > million upper limit automatically places it out of contention to be a > > general means of exchange. Hmm....unless we want to get into 'virtual' > > bitcoins. ;) > > ### Omar, you think the limit on the number of bitcoins puts it "out > of contention to be a general means of exchange"? Lol. Psst. Nobody tell him that the current limit (1/100000000) is a satoshi, and it's not a fundamental limit. From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 7 15:15:35 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 07:15:35 -0800 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <68595A07-DC6D-400E-AEED-1E92B7FEDC81@me.com> References: <68595A07-DC6D-400E-AEED-1E92B7FEDC81@me.com> Message-ID: <012901cedbcc$362dddf0$a28999d0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Omar Rahman Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2013 12:09 AM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: Re: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? From: Max More < max at maxmore.com> To: Brent Allsop < brent.allsop at canonizer.com>, ExI chat list < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> Subject: Re: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? Brent: You say that "Everyone should have at least one Bitcoin". .--Max >.The main problem with bitcoin is precisely this: it is impossible for everyone to have a bitcoin. The system was designed with an upper limit of 21 million coins available...unless we want to get into 'virtual' bitcoins. ;) .Regards, Omar Rahman Can you buy shares in a bitcoin? Why can't we have fractional bitcoins? Can someone with a bitcoin issue currency representing a fraction of that bitcoin? If I had a bitcoin and I could create a table with a limited and fixed subdivisions, such as the letters A thru Z, then each bitcoin with that number and an alpha would be 1/26 of that coin. Then if someone owned all 26 suffix letters, she could retire that and create a new closed-ended set of subdivisions, such as cents, so that there are 100 divisions of that coin. I might plunk down a few bucks for a centi-bitcoin. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 7 15:53:17 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 07:53:17 -0800 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> Message-ID: <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty Subject: Re: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 2:06 AM, spike wrote: >>.For any intelligent tech-enabled species, thinking and inventing are fun. >. Why are there no teenagers in kindergarten? Mike clearly you have not visited your local high school for a while. >.Perhaps civilizations with the power to overcome interstellar distances and lightspeed delays simply move out of this neighborhood. Ja, or moved into their own nieghborhood: they turned inward. If a civilization figures out how to super-organize matter, as our own species has done more and more in just the past few centuries, then mastery of that could cause that species to forget other stars as far away and irrelevant. The problem I find with that theory is what I call the Shakespeare anomaly. To high schoolers, Shakespeare is far away and irrelevant. But a few of them find his stuff very cool and interesting. I know, I was one of those oddballs. So a Shakespeare species would be an odd one which discovers nanotech and turns inward (inloads) but still thinks there is something worthwhile in listening to, and perhaps transmitting to, species in transition, such as modern humans. So let us assume the transition time from interstellar EM signaling capability to nanotech is generally short, a century or two. If tech-transitioned species are rare, then Shakespeare oddballs are even more rare, so it shouldn't surprise us that we haven't seen one yet. >. Maybe 8.8e9 earthlike planets is just an incubator and we've just about hatched? Ja, we would be in that short transition period. Problem: the NASA findings increased by four orders of magnitude the number of expected Shakespeare species. So that news is evidence against the whole notion. >.Sorry no, I don't have any cosmology evidence to support this idea. Don't worry too much about evidence yet; we are back to the brainstorming phase. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Thu Nov 7 16:07:53 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 09:07:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <012901cedbcc$362dddf0$a28999d0$@att.net> References: <68595A07-DC6D-400E-AEED-1E92B7FEDC81@me.com> <012901cedbcc$362dddf0$a28999d0$@att.net> Message-ID: Hi Max, Currently the best thing for someone in the US to do is open an account with Coinbase.com. Then you need to go through some optional "Know Your Customer" (KYC) information providing and such to increase your trustworthiness and limits. You can, and should, set up the optional two factor authorization, using the "google authenticator" app on your phone. (And it's a good idea to have someone else's phone linked in as a backup.) That way, if a virus get's on your computer, and get's your password, they won't be able to spend your money without your phone. Then you need to link your bank checking account up, which is like setting up an auto payment on a credit card. All this takes about a week or so. Then you just enter one Bitcoin in the purchase form, and say buy. It will instantly purchase the coin, at the current price, and start the process to auto deduct that amount of $$ (including the %1 fee), from your checking account. If you hurry, you might be able to get a coin at below $1000/BTC. This might be the last opportunity for anyone to do this. And right now, coinbase.com is offering a referal bonus. $5 worth of bitcoin to you, and $5 worth of bitcoin to me, if you register using this link, and purchase at last one Bitcoin. https://coinbase.com/?r=51709be3194e3316cd000057&utm_campaign=user- And once you do this, if you give me your new bitcoin address, I'll pay this $5 of Bitcoin back to you, so you can see how easy it is to receive Bitcoin from Coinbase, and from me. I'll probably also do this for anyone else, if there aren't too many of you. Oh, and for all those that think Bitcoin is nothing more than Tulip bulbs, and such, you should try to canonize that view, to see if there are any other experts that agree with you, in this surprising historical open survey asking experts what they predict the future value of Bitcoin will be: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/2 But good luck finding any experts that don't see the obvious difference between tulip bulbs and Bitcoin. Brent Allsop On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 8:15 AM, spike wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto: > extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On Behalf Of *Omar Rahman > *Sent:* Thursday, November 07, 2013 12:09 AM > *To:* extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? > > > > > > From: Max More > To: Brent Allsop , ExI chat list > > > > Subject: Re: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? > > > Brent: You say that "Everyone should have at least one Bitcoin". ?--Max > > > >?The main problem with bitcoin is precisely this: it is impossible for > everyone to have a bitcoin. The system was designed with an upper limit of > 21 million coins available...unless we want to get into 'virtual' > bitcoins. ;) > > ?Regards, Omar Rahman > > > > > > Can you buy shares in a bitcoin? Why can?t we have fractional bitcoins? > Can someone with a bitcoin issue currency representing a fraction of that > bitcoin? If I had a bitcoin and I could create a table with a limited and > fixed subdivisions, such as the letters A thru Z, then each bitcoin with > that number and an alpha would be 1/26 of that coin. Then if someone owned > all 26 suffix letters, she could retire that and create a new closed-ended > set of subdivisions, such as cents, so that there are 100 divisions of that > coin. I might plunk down a few bucks for a centi-bitcoin. > > > > 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 painlord2k at libero.it Thu Nov 7 16:13:26 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 17:13:26 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <527BBC26.701@libero.it> Il 07/11/2013 06:12, Brent Allsop ha scritto: > > Transhumanist economists, > > As most of you know, in 2010, some guy purchased about $25 worth of > Bitcoin, which is now worth over $800K. My working hypothesis is that > this will continue and that before 2020, Bitcoin will be worth a million > bucks. It's so funny to tell people that, and see them look at you with > that "Your CRAZY" look in their eyes, as they say "A Bitcoin isn't going > to be worth a million bucks!" Yes, appearing an idiot to a bunch of stupid people have its own appeal. Then we will see in a few years who was an idiot and who was not. > Have you checked the price of Gold, lately? It's been crashing, > dramatically, for 2 years now. Why do you think? The so called gold > experts, are saying things like: > "The bear market in gold has been going on for two years. It seems to > fly in the face of fundamentals, as central banks print enough currency > to paper the world." The problem with gold is simply the future market drive the physical market, so paper claims on gold drive the price of actual gold. But backwardation of gold (negative GOFO rates) signal there is a severe scarcity of physical gold to be delivered. The governments papering the world with their worthless paper are driving the market crash with injections of physical gold. They are dis-hoarding their gold (or someone else gold) in a stealth manner (if they did openly it would defeat their goal). Why they are doing this? Because the price of gold is the canary in the mine. The price of gold is like a canary with its own oxygen reservoir in a sealed cage. There could be gas outside, but the canary will not signal it. But the fact the canary have a sealed cage with its own oxygen is a signal of something very dangerous is occurring. > Once you factor in the fact that there is a new competitor in town, and > that people are starting to sell Gold to buy Bitcoin, that explains what > otherwise doesn't make sense to these traditional gold "experts" that > have made lots of money up till two years ago. In other words, All the > money that is in the pockets of holders of Gold, is now flowing into the > pockets of holders of Bitcoins, at a very rapid rate. No. The money flowing in and out bitcoin is, for now, too smallish to modify the price trend of gold (even if it come only from gold). Gold is, now, around 1% of the value of investment assets. Bitcoin is, at the current market cap, no more than 0.5% of the market cap of gold. Currently the Fed print just the entire market cap of Bitcoin in just 30 hours. it was 15 hours a month ago. > And My belief is that this Gold casualty that is just getting started, > is just the first casualty. It will soon spread to stocks, bonds, real > estate, and anything with value that can be sold. All the money in the > pockets of the people holding them, will be quickly draining into the > pockets of Bitcoiners at an increasing accelerating rate. Gold is just a coiled spring. TPTB are just able to push down the price, but can not prevent people from buying physical gold and silver and take delivery. This is draining the COMEX, the GLD and, probably, the SLV. Or they call force majeur and settle people in cash (and rumors say they are already doing it with small players). > Bitcoin, as many experts are starting to say: "is simply the best > investment out there, bar none." So what would you expect? Money flows > to where it is treated the best, just like water flows downhill. And if > you have a Bitcoin in your pocket, that is looking increasingly tempting. I do not think is the best investment out there, just because investments are a personal thing. What is good for me is not good for you or for a major enterprise like Amazon. We have different needs, outlook, preferences. > As the cost of money and interest rates starts to skyrocket, as all > sources of capital continue to flow into Bitcoin what will happen? I > think at least the following will happen: > 1. People will be selling anything they can liquidate, so they can > buy Bitcoin. Even at a loss, since that loss will soon be made up for, > once it is in Bitcoin. (Do you think a tax penalty of 10%, will stop > people from liquidating their IRAs?) This will happen later on, when a real mania phase will start and the crowd will tumult to enter bitcoin. Usually is when the smart money start to move for the exits. This if they are allowed to liquidate their IRAs. > 2. People will be borrowing money, mortgaging things, like their > house, to buy Bitcoins, because no interest rate will come close to the > rate at which Bitcoin will continue to go up. This could be a smart move or a very stupid move, because leveraging is very dangerous but allow large gains. > 3. The price of stocks will decline. The PE ratio of stocks has > historically been at around 20. This will drop by half or more, as > nobody will want to buy stocks, unless it is a very good value. The > greatly reduced PE, will become "the new normal" and it will be much > harder to make money by going public. Usually stocks are a pass-through (in the end) of inflation: Their price adjust to their value. But PE of 20 is pretty low (thanks Fed low interest rate policy). As the Fed QE policy start to fail (it will) interest rates will raise a lot (and the government will directly monetize the debt or default on it). A PE of 10 is more sustainable in the long term, but many stocks could collapse or go bankrupt in the meantime. > 4. Interest rates will go up significantly, because of the demand for > money, to buy Bitcoins. Or they could go up because people foresee a devaluation of the currency ($) and ask an interest rate high enough to compensate the devaluation. Many people will just try to sell stuff for Bitcoin, reducing the demand for fiat currency (and discounting the prices to offer bargains to bitcoin holders). > 5. Yhe economy will convert from a consumer economy with lots of debt > to everyone will only want to only buy something when they absolutely > need it. As it will be far better to spend it on something that will be > worth 10 times its value in a year or so. It will convert to a bit time > saving economy. Will this stabilize the boom and bust cycle? It is not buying only what you need. it is buying only what you can afford to pay in cash. Or, if you go in debt, buying only what will make you a lot more money than you pay for interests. > 6. The Winklevoss twins will be laughing at Facebook, and Zukkerberg, > as Facebook stock price continues to decline and fails to keep pace > with their 1% of all bitcoins. Zuckember could, if he want, enter the Bitcoin market and buy a lot of Bitcoin (driving the prices nut). The statements of the Winlevoss make me think they were behind the spike of price in August 2011. > When we head into a recession, the fed lowers the interest rate to Zero > to provide 'liquidity' and in hopes people will borrow money to invest > in the economy. But this doesn't work very well as there is nothing > that is making money, to make it worth borrowing during a recession. The problem is you do not fix a blood loss with water. Not if it is severe and continuous. Because blood is make of water and other stuff. > But Bitcoin will change this dramatically. Everyone will want to borrow > money even more in a recession, as recession will cause Bitcoins to go > up even faster than they are now. The problem is, in a recession, even with QE, credit is cheap but difficult to get at cheap rates. > People will have even less motivation to invest in the economy. Every thing is "the economy". But people usually try to invest in something with the best return in purchasing power. > So there will be two market forces. Bitcoins > driving up interest rates, and the federal reserve printing money and > trying to lower interest rates. People will be borrowing this printed > money, purchasing Bitcions. WIll that cause rapid inflation of fiat > currency? In the end, the interest rate is decided at the margin: the interest rate of bitcoin will be somewhere the interest rate of the US$ plus devaluation of the US$ against the bitcoin. Currently only a madman would take loans in Bitcoin for more than a few hours or days if they have any other option. > Who will win such an epic battle between Bitcoin trying to increasa > interest rates, and the Fed trying to lower them? What will the effect > be, when Bitcoin starts rapidly approaching one million $$ ? The market will win. It always do, in the end. The market will inflate the value of not inflationable assets like gold, silver, land, whatever, and deflate the value of inflationable (and inflated) assets like fiat currency and assets denominated in fiat currencies. > One thing I feel for sure. Everyone should have at last one Bitcoin. > And people only say there is no such thing as a "Get Rich Quick Scheme", > because they don't know how close the singularity is. It is not as a "Get rich Quick scheme" as a "redistribute the wealth quick scheme". It do not work alway, just when the "planets" are in the right alignment. And like in the "V" movie, all dominoes are set and we are seeing the fall Parity watch https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=154954.0;all http://coinometrics.com/bitcoin/bmix 107 Costa Rica 3,871 (Billions US$) 108 Bitcoin 3,791 109 Senegal 3,577 Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Nov 7 16:20:23 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 17:20:23 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <012901cedbcc$362dddf0$a28999d0$@att.net> References: <68595A07-DC6D-400E-AEED-1E92B7FEDC81@me.com> <012901cedbcc$362dddf0$a28999d0$@att.net> Message-ID: <527BBDC7.8070305@libero.it> Il 07/11/2013 16:15, spike ha scritto: > Can you buy shares in a bitcoin? You can buy any part of a bitcoin and it is your. > Why can?t we have fractional bitcoins? Yes, You can. Currently the smaller part you can buy is limited by the exchanges (it must be worth at least 1$ or 0.1$ or something) > Can someone with a bitcoin issue currency representing a > fraction of that bitcoin? Obviously. 1 Satoshi is 1/10.000.000 of a Bitcoin and you can get one, if you ask. The transaction fee will be 500 time larger (1 or 2 cent) but.... > If I had a bitcoin and I could create a table > with a limited and fixed subdivisions, such as the letters A thru Z, > then each bitcoin with that number and an alpha would be 1/26 of that > coin. Then if someone owned all 26 suffix letters, she could retire > that and create a new closed-ended set of subdivisions, such as cents, > so that there are 100 divisions of that coin. I might plunk down a few > bucks for a centi-bitcoin. You can do it now. Just buy 10 milliBitcoin (3$). Mirco From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 7 16:22:38 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 08:22:38 -0800 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <012901cedbcc$362dddf0$a28999d0$@att.net> References: <68595A07-DC6D-400E-AEED-1E92B7FEDC81@me.com> <012901cedbcc$362dddf0$a28999d0$@att.net> Message-ID: <018a01cedbd5$9446d4b0$bcd47e10$@att.net> >>...unless we want to get into 'virtual' bitcoins. ;) Regards, Omar Rahman >.Can you buy shares in a bitcoin? . I might plunk down a few bucks for a centi-bitcoin. Spike There was something vaguely analogous to a proto-bitcoin, if you don't push the analogy too hard. Prime95 was an early internet organized search in nature for something: Mersenne primes, started in 1995. Each time one is discovered, it becomes the largest known prime number, so the discoverer is for a time a world record holder. For some people, being on that short list means exactly nothing to them; they might not even know anything about prime numbers at all. They might not even realize the computer used to find that number is worth tens of thousands as a museum piece. A newly discovered Mersenne prime is worth at least tens of thousands to the right buyer, but unlike bitcoin, they cannot be sold multiple times: once it goes into the record books, it is there forever. So I would argue that running Prime95 is analogous in many ways to bitcoin mining, except far more difficult to find one and with much higher potential rewards. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Thu Nov 7 16:42:24 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 09:42:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <68595A07-DC6D-400E-AEED-1E92B7FEDC81@me.com> <012901cedbcc$362dddf0$a28999d0$@att.net> Message-ID: Oops, I didn't notice that the coinbase.com referral link wrapped to a second line, so I failed to get the entire link, which is here: https://coinbase.com/?r=51709be3194e3316cd000057&utm_campaign=user-referral&src=referral-link On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 9:07 AM, Brent Allsop wrote: > > Hi Max, > > Currently the best thing for someone in the US to do is open an account > with Coinbase.com. Then you need to go through some optional "Know Your > Customer" (KYC) information providing and such to increase your > trustworthiness and limits. You can, and should, set up the optional two > factor authorization, using the "google authenticator" app on your phone. > (And it's a good idea to have someone else's phone linked in as a backup.) > That way, if a virus get's on your computer, and get's your password, they > won't be able to spend your money without your phone. > > Then you need to link your bank checking account up, which is like setting > up an auto payment on a credit card. All this takes about a week or so. > Then you just enter one Bitcoin in the purchase form, and say buy. It will > instantly purchase the coin, at the current price, and start the process to > auto deduct that amount of $$ (including the %1 fee), from your checking > account. If you hurry, you might be able to get a coin at below > $1000/BTC. This might be the last opportunity for anyone to do this. > > And right now, coinbase.com is offering a referal bonus. $5 worth of > bitcoin to you, and $5 worth of bitcoin to me, if you register using this > link, and purchase at last one Bitcoin. > > https://coinbase.com/?r=51709be3194e3316cd000057&utm_campaign=user- > > And once you do this, if you give me your new bitcoin address, I'll pay > this $5 of Bitcoin back to you, so you can see how easy it is to receive > Bitcoin from Coinbase, and from me. I'll probably also do this for anyone > else, if there aren't too many of you. > > > Oh, and for all those that think Bitcoin is nothing more than Tulip bulbs, > and such, you should try to canonize that view, to see if there are any > other experts that agree with you, in this surprising historical open > survey asking experts what they predict the future value of Bitcoin will be: > > http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/2 > > But good luck finding any experts that don't see the obvious difference > between tulip bulbs and Bitcoin. > > Brent Allsop > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 8:15 AM, spike wrote: > >> >> >> >> >> *From:* extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto: >> extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On Behalf Of *Omar Rahman >> *Sent:* Thursday, November 07, 2013 12:09 AM >> *To:* extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> >> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? >> >> >> >> >> >> From: Max More >> To: Brent Allsop , ExI chat list >> > > >> >> Subject: Re: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? >> >> >> Brent: You say that "Everyone should have at least one Bitcoin". ?--Max >> >> >> >?The main problem with bitcoin is precisely this: it is impossible for >> everyone to have a bitcoin. The system was designed with an upper limit of >> 21 million coins available...unless we want to get into 'virtual' >> bitcoins. ;) >> >> ?Regards, Omar Rahman >> >> >> >> >> >> Can you buy shares in a bitcoin? Why can?t we have fractional bitcoins? >> Can someone with a bitcoin issue currency representing a fraction of that >> bitcoin? If I had a bitcoin and I could create a table with a limited and >> fixed subdivisions, such as the letters A thru Z, then each bitcoin with >> that number and an alpha would be 1/26 of that coin. Then if someone owned >> all 26 suffix letters, she could retire that and create a new closed-ended >> set of subdivisions, such as cents, so that there are 100 divisions of that >> coin. I might plunk down a few bucks for a centi-bitcoin. >> >> >> >> spike >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 7 16:40:27 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 08:40:27 -0800 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <527BBDC7.8070305@libero.it> References: <68595A07-DC6D-400E-AEED-1E92B7FEDC81@me.com> <012901cedbcc$362dddf0$a28999d0$@att.net> <527BBDC7.8070305@libero.it> Message-ID: <01bc01cedbd8$11400430$33c00c90$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato Subject: Re: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? Il 07/11/2013 16:15, spike ha scritto: >>... Can you buy shares in a bitcoin?... I might plunk down a few bucks for a centi-bitcoin. >...You can do it now. Just buy 10 milliBitcoin (3$). Mirco _______________________________________________ Oy vey, I am so not hip. Just as Americans show their innumeracy by not really appreciating the 3 orders of magnitude difference in their illions (many voters became far more panicky about our current 670 billion deficit than they were about our one trillion deficit) someone could likely profit by innumeracy in prefixes. They could trade ten nano-BCs for a micro-BC. The proles might fall for that. spike From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 17:03:18 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 12:03:18 -0500 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 10:53 AM, spike wrote: > > > Don?t worry too much about evidence yet; we are back to the brainstorming > phase. > > > Eugen's comment about obeying laws of thermodynamics and also not able to 'leave this universe' makes me ask: (and perhaps sharing my ignorance in the process, smarties please forgive) In Edwin Abbot Abbot's "Flatland" Square is sure of the order and nature of existence. Sphere overcomes Square's certainty when he introduces the concept of a 3rd dimension. Of course we always ignore Time as a dimension for the sake of progressing through a story, but we'll handwave that away too. Anyway, if Flatland is mapped in Spaceland at { x, y, 0 } and the rules of Flatland have "universal law" that hold true for every point {x,y} then it is with the special exception that those rules are valid in Spaceland when the z dimension is exactly 0. The "even-more universal law" of Spaceland has a freak anomaly at z==0 that is a life-sustaining plane. If the life equation in Spaceland has a divisor by z, then that special condition (mathematical singularity?) is "interesting" So if (as did Square) we looked at Spaceland to see if it contains this "interesting" feature, the "even-more universal law" might be a special case of a higher-dimensional land. What can we say about the capabilities of the inhabitants of that state of being? I feel it's hubris to make predictions of post-singularity existence (pretty much by definition, eh?) While I appreciate Eugen's priestly devotion to the Science of Knowing ["stuff"] I also wonder if Circles fail to dream of their higher dimensional selves. (admittedly, there's plenty to do in the here & now that is pretty important; energy starvation, et al ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 7 17:32:56 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 09:32:56 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" References: <98403CF1-5A40-46A2-9DE8-3661B39FC7BF@me.com> <5267B995.3020906@libero.it> <52766C6D.8060901@libero.it> <090301ced8b6$5bae7350$130b59f0$@att.net> <15F43A6C-139E-4380-83D8-9C10AB02065B@alumni.Virginia.edu> Message-ID: <024001cedbdf$668c8c40$33a5a4c0$@att.net> As of 0930 on 7 November 2013, the following comment is STILL on the official Whitehouse dot gov site: ?For Americans with insurance coverage who like what they have, they can keep it. Nothing in this act or anywhere in the bill forces anyone to change the insurance they have, period.? http://www.whitehouse.gov/health-care-meeting/proposal/titlei Last two sentences, first paragraph. Can you imagine, they didn?t take this down, after millions are having their insurance cancelled. Which word of those two sentences am I failing to understand? Is this one of those Orwellian Newspeak comments? That comment is still there, right on the official site, in all its refulgent wretchedness. Someone offer some kind of explanation please? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Nov 7 18:15:08 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 19:15:08 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <024001cedbdf$668c8c40$33a5a4c0$@att.net> References: <98403CF1-5A40-46A2-9DE8-3661B39FC7BF@me.com> <5267B995.3020906@libero.it> <52766C6D.8060901@libero.it> <090301ced8b6$5bae7350$130b59f0$@att.net> <15F43A6C-139E-4380-83D8-9C10AB02065B@alumni.Virginia.edu> <024001cedbdf$668c8c40$33a5a4c0$@att.net> Message-ID: <527BD8AC.6080800@libero.it> Il 07/11/2013 18:32, spike ha scritto: > As of 0930 on 7 November 2013, the following comment is STILL on the > official Whitehouse dot gov site: > ?For Americans with insurance coverage who like what they have, they can > keep it. Nothing in this act or anywhere in the bill forces anyone to > change the insurance they have, period.? > > http://www.whitehouse.gov/health-care-meeting/proposal/titlei > Last two sentences, first paragraph. Can you imagine, they didn?t take > this down, after millions are having their insurance cancelled. Which > word of those two sentences am I failing to understand? Is this one of > those Orwellian Newspeak comments? That comment is still there, right > on the official site, in all its refulgent wretchedness. > Someone offer some kind of explanation please? Nothing in the act force the buyer to change his/her plan. In fact, no one is changing her health care plan or is forced to do so by the government. The insurers dropped the plans and the employers dropped the coverage, because they were forced to do so to stay in business. I was watching the last Conan movie last night (the only character interesting was the Evil-Witch-Daughter-of-the-Evil-Warlord.) There Conan promised to not kill one evil minion of the Warlord in exchange for informations. In fact he didn't kill him. He just showed a key in his mouth and forced him to swallow it. Then put the evil minion disarmed and helpless in the middle of his slaves and told the slaves the key to open their chain was in the miniong gut. Technically Conan didn't kill him, but the result was the same. Mirco From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 18:26:14 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 13:26:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Problem with Drugs (was Re: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 3:51 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Now, I know John was referring to illegal drugs > Actually I was referring to something much more general than chemicals, legal or illegal. I'd like to know if it is in the very nature of intelligent minds that if they have complete access to their emotional control panel they won't be motivated to do anything except move the happiness, pleasure, and pride in a job well done knob to a higher setting. If Einstein could have felt just as good as he did on the day he discovered General Relativity just by turning a knob would he have bothered to spend eleven grueling years to actually discover it? It's this sort of positive feedback that worries me. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 18:35:51 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 11:35:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <527AE316.7010109@libero.it> References: <2C17352F-6BCF-4DF9-BFF0-6333CC83FDA1@me.com> <080201ced3a0$48ed1c50$dac754f0$@att.net> <047d01ced68b$c5fa0c60$51ee2520$@att.net> <52793ECB.2090608@libero.it> <527AE316.7010109@libero.it> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 5:47 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 07/11/2013 01:05, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > > > There are a lot of tax cheats in jail. I can't find how many, but I have > > known at least one personally. Two if you count his innocent wife. Ah > > yes, three if you count his accountant, who also did time. > > Usually, the taxman stay away from the prole and look for high rewarding > targets (like high middle class and more). > Yes, my friends that went to jail were quite wealthy, although their creative accountant likely was not. > But any individual mandate is an individual mandate, it is not a > employer mandate. The prole must pay the check and write the check. > To enforce an individual mandate the government must have enforcers to > stalk individual people. > It will be interesting to see if they slip around the sides of the text Spike has pointed out regarding enforcement. > Already the IRS have a list of dangerous to contact people, I suppose > the list will be a lot more populated in the future. > I don't understand this statement. Who are dangerous, to whom, and why? > The majority of these people will do nothing, a limited number will > react in the heat of the moment, but if just a few start acting like Joe > Stack ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Austin_suicide_attack ) it > could rapidly get out of control. When there is a lot of dry hay a > single spark can do a lot of damage. According to the article, he worked as an embedded software consultant. That would be enough by itself to drive many people to suicide. Trouble with the IRS would just push you over the edge. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 18:48:19 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 10:48:19 -0800 Subject: [ExI] "Is it time for a transhumanist Olympics?" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Nov 6, 2013 10:16 PM, "Rafal Smigrodzki" wrote: > I never watch sports, and I find it difficult to relate to those who > do but it looks like for many paying viewers participation may be > driven by a need for affiliation, rather than interest in what > actually is going on. No-holds barred enhanced sport would have to > cater to this need if it is to attract an audience and advertiser > support. > > My intuition is that it could, as long as the enhancement part was > narrated as a struggle, similar to training. In this story, the > sportsman, one of us, through perseverance and skill, with the help of > trainers, surgeons, pharmacists and genetic engineers, reaches new > heights of power, and steamrolls the opposition - maybe it could sell. > But then, my intuition in these human affiliative matters is rather > tenuous, so YMMV. I suspect it would be easier to sell if the enhancements were clearly not part of the athletes. For instance, I suspect the sci-fi visions of mecha might be more easily realized as a form of motorized sport and entertainment before seeing much use on actual battlefields. This might also be a path to more quickly get personal-scale enhancements, in powered armor that could (in some cases) translate to implanted systems, into general public use. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 19:32:05 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 19:32:05 +0000 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 3:53 PM, spike wrote: > Ja, we would be in that short transition period. Problem: the NASA findings > increased by four orders of magnitude the number of expected Shakespeare > species. So that news is evidence against the whole notion. > > Don?t worry too much about evidence yet; we are back to the brainstorming > phase. > You've even got Bloomberg worrying about it now! Quote: Fermi?s question remains unanswered. But it only grows more compelling, and more perplexing, with each new discovery. BillK From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 19:32:55 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 12:32:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Problem with Drugs (was Re: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 11:26 AM, John Clark wrote: > On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 3:51 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > > Now, I know John was referring to illegal drugs >> > > Actually I was referring to something much more general than chemicals, > legal or illegal. > Sorry if I mischaracterized what you were saying, thanks for the clarification. > I'd like to know if it is in the very nature of intelligent minds that if > they have complete access to their emotional control panel they won't be > motivated to do anything except move the happiness, pleasure, and pride in > a job well done knob to a higher setting. If Einstein could have felt just > as good as he did on the day he discovered General Relativity just by > turning a knob would he have bothered to spend eleven grueling years to > actually discover it? It's this sort of positive feedback that worries me. > There are a number of studies of mammals out there that indicate that if they have direct access to their pleasure centers, that they indeed forego eating, sleeping, etc. to poke their pleasure centers again. While no official human studies of this nature exist to my knowledge (and there would be reason to believe they would not be for ethical reasons), there are the unofficial studies we call addiction. So my answer is that no, Einstein would NOT have discovered General Relativity if he were addicted to immediate pleasure. The ability to have delayed gratification, and suffer for greater gratification later is one of the key predictors of human success. Here is a great talk on this subject. http://www.ted.com/talks/joachim_de_posada_says_don_t_eat_the_marshmallow_yet.html Apologies in advance to the videophobes. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Nov 7 19:32:55 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 20:32:55 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Multi-millionaire funds gene sequencing to find genes for mathematical genius In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <527BEAE7.8080409@libero.it> Il 06/11/2013 11:30, John Grigg ha scritto: > "Jonathan Rothberg founded two genetic-sequencing companies and sold > them for hundreds of millions of dollars. > He > helped to sequence the genomes of a Neanderthal man and James Watson, > who co-discovered DNA?s double helix. Now, entrepreneur Jonathan > Rothberg has set his sights on another milestone: finding the genes that > underlie mathematical genius." > > > http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/10/multi-millionaire-funds-gene-sequencing.html > Howard's Families anyone? Mirco From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 19:58:41 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 12:58:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 10:12 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: > > Transhumanist economists, > > As most of you know, in 2010, some guy purchased about $25 worth of > Bitcoin, which is now worth over $800K. My working hypothesis is that this > will continue and that before 2020, Bitcoin will be worth a million bucks. > It's so funny to tell people that, and see them look at you with that > "Your CRAZY" look in their eyes, as they say "A Bitcoin isn't going to be > worth a million bucks!" > It did briefly shoot above $300 for a moment this morning. Crazier things have happened. My dad is typical of the "it's a Ponzi scheme" crowd. I don't know exactly how to explain why it is not a Ponzi scheme, but it is my belief that it is not. In looking at the graph, it seems we're in a third bubble at the moment. It is just going up too steep. The $20 of bitcoin I bought Tuesday are now at $25. Crazy stuff. > Have you checked the price of Gold, lately? It's been crashing, > dramatically, for 2 years now. Why do you think? The so called gold > experts, are saying things like: > > "The bear market in gold has been going on for two years. It seems to fly > in the face of fundamentals, as central banks print enough currency to > paper the world." > It is hard to believe that gold isn't flying upwards given the state of the world. Guess there are more optimists than pessimists. Which overall may be good, or bad... depending on who's right about that sort of thing. > Once you factor in the fact that there is a new competitor in town, and > that people are starting to sell Gold to buy Bitcoin, that explains what > otherwise doesn't make sense to these traditional gold "experts" that have > made lots of money up till two years ago. In other words, All the money > that is in the pockets of holders of Gold, is now flowing into the pockets > of holders of Bitcoins, at a very rapid rate. > I think it is incredibly premature to say "All the money" is doing ANYTHING. All the Bitcoins in the world are worth around $3.5 billion dollars at present. (It was $2.5 billion last week, so who knows where it will be next week) http://blockchain.info/charts/market-cap Accordign to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold The total gold mined to 2012 was estimated to be 5.6 billion troy ounces Current spot is $1305.40, so that's $7,310,240,000,000 if I did my math right. Not quite half of the US national debt. That means all the gold in the world is worth 2089 times what all the Bitcoins in the world are currently worth (even in the current little bubble). Do you honestly think the price of Bitcoins could effect the price of gold all that much given that ratio? And My belief is that this Gold casualty that is just getting started, is > just the first casualty. It will soon spread to stocks, bonds, real > estate, and anything with value that can be sold. All the money in the > pockets of the people holding them, will be quickly draining into the > pockets of Bitcoiners at an increasing accelerating rate. > We'll see. I'm a huge fan of Bitcoins. I think they will keep going up (although they might go down a little before they continue up). But someone explained to me last night that if you valued everything on the planet, and divided it by the number of Sitoshi you would get about 50 cents. (They used this to prove that the rapper 50 cent is Sitoshi, an interesting speculation at best.) > Bitcoin, as many experts are starting to say: "is simply the best > investment out there, bar none." So what would you expect? Money flows to > where it is treated the best, just like water flows downhill. And if you > have a Bitcoin in your pocket, that is looking increasingly tempting. > Scary that people look at it as an investment, rather than as a means to an end. > As the cost of money and interest rates starts to skyrocket, as all > sources of capital continue to flow into Bitcoin what will happen? I think > at least the following will happen: > > 1. People will be selling anything they can liquidate, so they can buy > Bitcoin. Even at a loss, since that loss will soon be made up for, once it > is in Bitcoin. (Do you think a tax penalty of 10%, will stop people from > liquidating their IRAs?) > That kind of "gold fever" is not sustainable, and this kind of thinking does turn Bitcoin into a kind of Ponzi scheme. > 2. People will be borrowing money, mortgaging things, like their house, > to buy Bitcoins, because no interest rate will come close to the rate at > which Bitcoin will continue to go up. > I hope people don't do that. > 3. The price of stocks will decline. The PE ratio of stocks has > historically been at around 20. This will drop by half or more, as nobody > will want to buy stocks, unless it is a very good value. The greatly > reduced PE, will become "the new normal" and it will be much harder to make > money by going public. > It would take a mass hysteria for that to happen. > 4. Interest rates will go up significantly, because of the demand for > money, to buy Bitcoins. > 5. The economy will convert from a consumer economy with lots of debt > to everyone will only want to only buy something when they absolutely need > it. As it will be far better to spend it on something that will be worth > 10 times its value in a year or so. It will convert to a bit time saving > economy. Will this stabilize the boom and bust cycle? > This all assumes that Bitcoin is going to catch on like wildfire. If people don't use it like money, it won't succeed, and then it is just a Ponzi scheme. > 6. The Winklevoss twins will be laughing at Facebook, and Zukkerberg, > as Facebook stock price continues to decline and fails to keep pace with > their 1% of all bitcoins. > That could happen. > When we head into a recession, the fed lowers the interest rate to Zero to > provide 'liquidity' and in hopes people will borrow money to invest in the > economy. But this doesn't work very well as there is nothing that is > making money, to make it worth borrowing during a recession. > > But Bitcoin will change this dramatically. Everyone will want to borrow > money even more in a recession, as recession will cause Bitcoins to go up > even faster than they are now. People will have even less motivation to > invest in the economy. So there will be two market forces. Bitcoins > driving up interest rates, and the federal reserve printing money and > trying to lower interest rates. People will be borrowing this printed > money, purchasing Bitcions. WIll that cause rapid inflation of fiat > currency? > > Who will win such an epic battle between Bitcoin trying to increasa > interest rates, and the Fed trying to lower them? What will the effect be, > when Bitcoin starts rapidly approaching one million $$ ? > > My minds seems to get all scrambled when I try to analyze such. Can you > guys help provide some additional rational to my attempt to get my head > around what could happen? Could everyone brainstorm some of the long term > possibilities, here? > What COULD happen is anything. I think that some sanity will eventually grip the market, and that Bitcoin will settle back into a slower growth mode. How far in the future that is depends on whether it can be made into real money, or just the biggest mess in the history of ever. > I've tried to browse some of the Bitcoins forums for some intelligent > information on this, but all of them are idiots that can only think > linearly, and they haven't got a clue. While Transhumanists are good at > thinking exponentially. So, what are some of the more extreme > possibilities you guys see? > > One thing I feel for sure. Everyone should have at last one Bitcoin. And > people only say there is no such thing as a "Get Rich Quick Scheme", > because they don't know how close the singularity is. > How do you see the Singularity as being tied to Bitcoin? (Real question, not rhetorical.) I just bought my first bitcoins the other day. I will buy more soon if I can. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 20:04:26 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 13:04:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <68595A07-DC6D-400E-AEED-1E92B7FEDC81@me.com> References: <68595A07-DC6D-400E-AEED-1E92B7FEDC81@me.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 1:09 AM, Omar Rahman wrote: > > My question is not just from a personal perspective. Several people would > like to pay for their some part of their cryopreservation (or gift Alcor) > using Bitcoins, so I would like to understand the situation better. > > If someone wants to gift Alcor Bitcoins, take them Max! If they want to bet their future resurrection on the price of Bitcoins, that's a trickier proposition. The "we'll thaw you out if the price of Bitcoin goes below X" is a big bet for a cryonaut to take. Of course you could sell some of them for whatever the price of cryo is if they ever go above that rate of dollars. In the same sense though, you can't tell what the value of the dollars in cryonaut's accounts will be worth in 50 years either. So it is a bit of a crap shoot no matter how you slice it. The main problem with bitcoin is precisely this: it is impossible for > everyone to have a bitcoin. The system was designed with an upper limit of > 21 million coins available. The anonymous people behind bitcoin have > designed this as a 'boutique' currency for test purposes I think. The 21 > million upper limit automatically places it out of contention to be a > general means of exchange. Hmm....unless we want to get into 'virtual' > bitcoins. ;) > Bitcoins are divisible into infinitesimally small parts. Everyone can have bitcoins, but not a whole bitcoin. > Of course 'real' currencies only exist in finite amounts which are only a > small fraction of the total assets in a country but we have 'trusted' banks > to magnify these currencies through fractional reserve banking. And, of > course, as we see in 'quantitative easing' you can print more and add > zeroes to the numbers. > Yeah, that's comforting. Not. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 20:07:34 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 13:07:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <527B99BC.20201@libero.it> References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527B99BC.20201@libero.it> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 6:46 AM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > In the last few days, we had Silk Road 2.0 (and a new Dread Pirate > Roberts), 7.000 restaurants/takeaway in Europe added Bitcoin as a > payment method, the price spike to >300$. > Brilliant Mirco! I've been trying to figure out what was going on all day. Thanks!!! Brilliant that the Dread Pirate Roberts in the movie kept becoming a new person, and exactly that same thing is happening now... absolutely amazing how life and art are intersecting on that bit. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 20:12:48 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 13:12:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <012901cedbcc$362dddf0$a28999d0$@att.net> References: <68595A07-DC6D-400E-AEED-1E92B7FEDC81@me.com> <012901cedbcc$362dddf0$a28999d0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 8:15 AM, spike wrote: > Can you buy shares in a bitcoin? Why can?t we have fractional bitcoins? > It's already designed into the system. I own 0.009 bitcoins. Worth $20 on Tuesday, and $25 today. I would recommend buying $100 worth of Bitcoins and just holding on to them NO MATTER WHAT happens. Worst thing is you lose $100. On the upside... well, that would be a nice upside. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From veronese at uab.edu Thu Nov 7 20:22:52 2013 From: veronese at uab.edu (Keith Veronese) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 14:22:52 -0600 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <68595A07-DC6D-400E-AEED-1E92B7FEDC81@me.com> <012901cedbcc$362dddf0$a28999d0$@att.net> Message-ID: I'm with Kelly's idea. Put a small amount of money into bitcoins (or other cryptocurrencies) for fun. You'll learn a lot and pay more attention since "you're in the game", and the upside beats the heck out of the downside. - Keith V On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 2:12 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 8:15 AM, spike wrote: > >> Can you buy shares in a bitcoin? Why can?t we have fractional bitcoins? >> > > It's already designed into the system. I own 0.009 bitcoins. Worth $20 on > Tuesday, and $25 today. > > I would recommend buying $100 worth of Bitcoins and just holding on to > them NO MATTER WHAT happens. Worst thing is you lose $100. On the upside... > well, that would be a nice upside. > > -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 kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 20:40:14 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 13:40:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Multi-millionaire funds gene sequencing to find genes for mathematical genius In-Reply-To: <527ADED2.6030903@aleph.se> References: <527ADED2.6030903@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 5:29 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 07/11/2013 00:23, John Grigg wrote: > >> No comments? I find this absolutely fascinating, even if it takes years >> to really bear fruit. "Summon my mentat!" >> > My comment is this: http://blog.practicalethics. > ox.ac.uk/2013/10/breaking-the-mould-genetics-and-education/ > > Great research, worth doing - but might not in itself be useful for > selecting or boosting ability. What it can do is to validate other tests > developed by looking at the normal range. And maybe hint about where to > start looking in the genome and brain. If all it did was provide a DNA screening test for potential mathematical geniuses (no small feat) it would be very useful in helping to find students to focus special attention on. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 20:47:07 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 15:47:07 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Problem with Drugs (was Re: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 2:32 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > So my answer is that no, Einstein would NOT have discovered General > Relativity if he were addicted to immediate pleasure. > So my next question is could any mind avoid becoming addicted if it had complete unrestricted access to its own emotional control panel? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 20:57:46 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 12:57:46 -0800 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527B99BC.20201@libero.it> Message-ID: On Nov 7, 2013 12:08 PM, "Kelly Anderson" wrote: > Brilliant that the Dread Pirate Roberts in the movie kept becoming a new person, and exactly that same thing is happening now... absolutely amazing how life and art are intersecting on that bit. It's an ancient practice; the movie just cited it. What's important is the mask (or office), not the person who wears (or holds) it, even if it has a person-type name like "Dread Pirate Roberts". -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rebelwithaclue at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 21:04:17 2013 From: rebelwithaclue at gmail.com (rwac) Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2013 02:34:17 +0530 Subject: [ExI] The Problem with Drugs (was Re: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > > > So my answer is that no, Einstein would NOT have discovered General >> Relativity if he were addicted to immediate pleasure. >> > > So my next question is could any mind avoid becoming addicted if it had > complete unrestricted access to its own emotional control panel? > Well, opiates are the closest thing to the emotional control panel we have. And the Rat Park experiment showed that "addicted" rats will de-addict themselves given adequate stimulation in the environment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park "Alexander built Rat Park, an 8.8 m2 (95 sq ft) housing colony, 200 times the floor area of a standard laboratory cage. There were 16?20 rats of both sexes in residence, an abundance of food, balls and wheels for play, and enough space for mating and raising litters.[3]:166 The results of the experiment appeared to support his hypothesis. Rats who had been forced to consume morphine hydrochloride for 57 consecutive days were brought to Rat Park and given a choice between plain tap water and water laced with morphine. For the most part, they chose the plain water. "Nothing that we tried," Alexander wrote, "... produced anything that looked like addiction in rats that were housed in a reasonably normal environment."[1] Control groups of rats isolated in small cages consumed much more morphine in this and several subsequent experiments." Kiran -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Nov 7 21:10:24 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 21:10:24 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Multi-millionaire funds gene sequencing to find genes for mathematical genius In-Reply-To: References: <527ADED2.6030903@aleph.se> Message-ID: <527C01C0.3030208@aleph.se> On 2013-11-07 20:40, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 5:29 PM, Anders Sandberg > wrote: > > On 07/11/2013 00:23, John Grigg wrote: > > No comments? I find this absolutely fascinating, even if it > takes years to really bear fruit. "Summon my mentat!" > > My comment is this: > http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2013/10/breaking-the-mould-genetics-and-education/ > > Great research, worth doing - but might not in itself be useful > for selecting or boosting ability. What it can do is to validate > other tests developed by looking at the normal range. And maybe > hint about where to start looking in the genome and brain. > > > If all it did was provide a DNA screening test for potential > mathematical geniuses (no small feat) it would be very useful in > helping to find students to focus special attention on. Statistics doesn't work that way. Hypothetical example: if *everybody* in the genius group reliably shows a certain signal it might still be useless in practice, if 50% of the population has the signal. Yes, if you lack the signal you will not be a genius, but if you have it the probability is just a tiny fraction higher. Since the genius group will be small it will not be possible to determine genomic signals very firmly - simply too few data points. -- 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 Thu Nov 7 21:17:50 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:17:50 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Problem with Drugs (was Re: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 11/7/13, John Clark wrote: > So my next question is could any mind avoid becoming addicted if it had > complete unrestricted access to its own emotional control panel? ### Yes, of course. Any person interested in achieving any goal, aside from bliss, would modify its emotions to optimize the likelihood of achieving said goals. This might even involve removing the abilty to experience addiction. Indeed, a part of growing up is acquiring the ability to disregard some internal states and desires in order to respond to others. This usually means developing a consistent, general idea of self, including a hierarchy of goals, and frequently classifying some existing goals as dissonant with the general goal structure, therefore in need of being suppressed, which in turn depends on your frontal lobe's functionality. Having direct access to your mind's emotional structure would be like having the option of growing up at the turn of a knob, the very opposite of the childishness that is drug addiction or wireheading. Rafal From rahmans at me.com Thu Nov 7 21:26:54 2013 From: rahmans at me.com (Omar Rahman) Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 22:26:54 +0100 Subject: [ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 122, Issue 15 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 15:58:02 +0100 > From: Eugen Leitl > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Subject: Re: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? > Message-ID: <20131107145802.GJ5661 at leitl.org> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > On Thu, Nov 07, 2013 at 09:38:58AM -0500, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> On 11/7/13, Omar Rahman wrote: >> >>> The main problem with bitcoin is precisely this: it is impossible for >>> everyone to have a bitcoin. The system was designed with an upper limit of >>> 21 million coins available. The anonymous people behind bitcoin have >>> designed this as a 'boutique' currency for test purposes I think. The 21 >>> million upper limit automatically places it out of contention to be a >>> general means of exchange. Hmm....unless we want to get into 'virtual' >>> bitcoins. ;) >> >> ### Omar, you think the limit on the number of bitcoins puts it "out >> of contention to be a general means of exchange"? Lol. > > Psst. Nobody tell him that the current limit (1/100000000) is a satoshi, and it's > not a fundamental limit. I guess the 21 million thing is sort of 'old fashioned' of me. It doesn't technically matter if I can or can't have a whole bitcoin but it 'feels' wrong to me that each person on the planet on average can only have about 1/300 of a bitcoin. So, I actually do think that the upper limit of bitcoins is a problem unless the value of a single coin goes right through the roof. I guess that's what you're all hoping for and good luck to you. If all 21 million coins were available right now you would have a currency worth something like $6 000 000 000 or so, yes? On the other hand, if you have a bitcoin you might have 1/21 000 000 of the future money supply. What, if any, do you think the weaknesses of bitcoin are? The potential for forking in the block chain, the continuing assault on public-private key encryption, and adopting changes to the hashing function seem like serious concerns for bitcoin. Well to be fair any weakness of public-private key encryption is a more general problem. The most obvious weakness I saw for bitcoin was the possibility for a DDOS attack with many micro-transactions but they have eliminated this with 'transaction fees'. It seems to me that the limits one places on processing a transaction through these fees represent some sort of limit on the effective divisibility of the coin. As the number of bitcions produced goes down towards zero as we approach the 21 million limit these fees are envisioned as the incentive for people to continue processing blocks. At some point won't that actually commoditise bitcoins into a function of the cost of processing power? What do you do if someone steals your bitcoins? Can't they just transfer them to some other address and they are gone. Isn't your ability to recover them nil? Even if someone is forced by some court to make reparations in real world goods or a traditional currency could they be compelled to accept some exchange rate? For many libertarians bitcoin is probably a dream come true. However, world politics could force the issue if a major government or group of governments declared that contracts in bitcoins are not enforceable. This seems an obvious move if a government felt threatened by bitcoins. And of course if they can't tax it and revenues fall they will feel threatened. As a digital currency which relies on it's users and community to confirm the transactions and use the same hash function it is profoundly democratic and I like that. But it is also therefore open to the possibility of a split if enough people could choose to fork the block chain. This might even be a good thing, but it is something that should be considered. As I said later in my post I think a digital currency is a good idea, I'm just not sure bitcoin is the right implementation. Regards, Omar Rahman -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 7 21:17:04 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 13:17:04 -0800 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> Message-ID: <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 3:53 PM, spike wrote: >>... Problem: the NASA findings increased by four orders of magnitude the number of expected... >...You've even got Bloomberg worrying about it now! BillK, not I have got. NASA's got. I didn't do the study or write the report. Quote: >...Fermi's question remains unanswered. But it only grows more compelling, and more perplexing, with each new discovery. BillK _______________________________________________ So before this NASA study came out, did you have an estimate of the number of Goldilocks planets? I did: my ROM estimated was about a million or so, just by saying perhaps there is some reason why a Goldie needs a main sequence population 1 yellow dwarf with spectral type G2, old enough to have planets congealed out of a dust lane. Then I estimated a typical Goldilocks band and came up with about a million such Goldies in the galaxy. So those who remember, did you have numbers in that OOM? Who had one greater than ten billion? What was your reasoning? Who had one more than an order below a million? Reasoning? In retrospect, I may have been letting Fermi influence my estimate downward, because I may have unconsciously been trying for an explanation of the silence based on the (probably absurd) notion that there just weren't enough decent planets out there. spike From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 7 21:35:18 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 14:35:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527B99BC.20201@libero.it> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 1:57 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Nov 7, 2013 12:08 PM, "Kelly Anderson" wrote: > > Brilliant that the Dread Pirate Roberts in the movie kept becoming a new > person, and exactly that same thing is happening now... absolutely amazing > how life and art are intersecting on that bit. > > It's an ancient practice; the movie just cited it. What's important is > the mask (or office), not the person who wears (or holds) it, even if it > has a person-type name like "Dread Pirate Roberts". > Thought the current DPR might not have been aware of that without the movie... :-) Another thing that might be moving the value of bitcoins north is the crypto virus. This evil piece of shit is talked about here: http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/11/how-to-avoid-cryptolocker-ransomware/ And a fix is free here: http://bit.ly/1aunHSC Basic bottom line is that if these bastards get into your computer, you may have to pay $300 IN BITCOIN only to get your files decrypted. That is one of the nastiest viruses I've ever heard of. I installed the above fix, hopefully it will help some. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Nov 7 21:36:47 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 22:36:47 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> Il 07/11/2013 20:58, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > How do you see the Singularity as being tied to Bitcoin? (Real question, > not rhetorical.) I just bought my first bitcoins the other day. I will > buy more soon if I can. Autonomous Corporations first and AI (and Augmented Humans) later need a way to cooperate. Or this is done in a way we are not able to understand now or it will be based on something we understand: money. Bitcoin allow unlimited payment to unlimited number of entities. Any AI doing something useful will be rewarded using bitcoin where any AI doing something harmful will be not. Just like humans are. So we have a way to select for useful AI: we pay them for doing something useful. And they pay us back if w do something useful to them. And if we are useful to them, they will not think about recycling us as Grey Goo. Mirco From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Nov 8 00:44:39 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 17:44:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 2:36 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 07/11/2013 20:58, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > > > How do you see the Singularity as being tied to Bitcoin? (Real question, > > not rhetorical.) I just bought my first bitcoins the other day. I will > > buy more soon if I can. > > Autonomous Corporations first and AI (and Augmented Humans) later need a > way to cooperate. Or this is done in a way we are not able to understand > now or it will be based on something we understand: money. > > Bitcoin allow unlimited payment to unlimited number of entities. > Any AI doing something useful will be rewarded using bitcoin where any > AI doing something harmful will be not. Just like humans are. > So we have a way to select for useful AI: we pay them for doing > something useful. And they pay us back if w do something useful to them. > And if we are useful to them, they will not think about recycling us as > Grey Goo. > Mirco, I can see the possibility for money surviving the Singularity. It may not be 100% necessary, but it may be helpful. I can't see the future of money past the Singularity, so I really can't say. That being said, what does Bitcoin specifically (or cryptocurrency in general) add to the scenario that isn't provided by government backed currencies? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Nov 8 00:52:39 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 17:52:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 2:17 PM, spike wrote: > >... On Behalf Of BillK > Subject: Re: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets > > On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 3:53 PM, spike wrote: > > >>... Problem: the NASA findings increased by four orders of magnitude > the > number of expected... > > >...You've even got Bloomberg worrying about it now! > > BillK, not I have got. NASA's got. I didn't do the study or write the > report. > > < > http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-06/don-t-believe-in-aliens-maybe-you- > re-the-crazy-one.html> > Quote: > >...Fermi's question remains unanswered. But it only grows more compelling, > and more perplexing, with each new discovery. BillK > > _______________________________________________ > > So before this NASA study came out, did you have an estimate of the number > of Goldilocks planets? I did: my ROM estimated was about a million or so, > just by saying perhaps there is some reason why a Goldie needs a main > sequence population 1 yellow dwarf with spectral type G2, old enough to > have > planets congealed out of a dust lane. Then I estimated a typical > Goldilocks > band and came up with about a million such Goldies in the galaxy. > > So those who remember, did you have numbers in that OOM? Who had one > greater than ten billion? What was your reasoning? Who had one more than > an order below a million? Reasoning? > > In retrospect, I may have been letting Fermi influence my estimate > downward, > because I may have unconsciously been trying for an explanation of the > silence based on the (probably absurd) notion that there just weren't > enough > decent planets out there. > The "earth like" definition used by the scientists that wrote the paper include approximately three variables. Rare Earth proposes around 12 such variables if I remember correctly. For example, we need a molten core and plate tectonics in order to get the right metals to the surface, provide both land and ocean (for the evolution of land animals, since hands evolving on a fish seems like a bit of a long shot) and other reasons. Then there is Jupiter and Saturn filtering out the comets. Very useful that. If you refigure all of the Rare Earth variables in with NASA's numbers, I'm guessing you would end up with a MUCH smaller number. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 8 02:55:34 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 18:55:34 -0800 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> Message-ID: <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson The "earth like" definition used by the scientists that wrote the paper include approximately three variables. Rare Earth proposes around 12 such variables if I remember correctly. Ja, but the three variable case makes more sense for reasons I will give. >.For example, we need a molten core and plate tectonics in order to get the right metals to the surface. A molten core follows directly in most rocky core planets. They have an enormous amount of heat from potential energy conversion as the rocky dust congeals. >.provide both land and ocean (for the evolution of land animals, since hands evolving on a fish seems like a bit of a long shot) and other reasons. Perhaps. But I haven't been able to convince myself that intelligence could never evolve in the sea. >.Then there is Jupiter and Saturn filtering out the comets. Very useful that. Useful but not necessarily critical. If you had a Goldie with oceans 50km deep, a good sized comet or other hunk of space debris could strike the planet without wiping out all the biota. An ocean planet could still reasonably have ice caps, or for that matter be ice everywhere, with liquid oceans below. Then it is conceivable that life could be air breathing on a planet with no rocky surface anywhere. >.If you refigure all of the Rare Earth variables in with NASA's numbers, I'm guessing you would end up with a MUCH smaller number. -Kelly Ja. I found Ward's Rare Earth a bit too narrow minded on what kind of life forms could become tech enabled. He might be right. But it just felt like he was over reaching just a bit. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andymck35 at gmail.com Fri Nov 8 04:45:52 2013 From: andymck35 at gmail.com (Andrew Mckee) Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 17:45:52 +1300 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <527A4C49.2060307@aleph.se> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278FC7F.3040305@aleph.se> <527A4C49.2060307@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Thu, 07 Nov 2013 03:03:53 +1300, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Where do you see those fields, besides near neutron stars? Note that the In the introductory page of that Caltech site you just linked to. ;-) > Caltech paper typically reports fields in the range of 1-1000 *micro* > Gauss. In interstellar space(?), where plasma densities are the lowest you will ever find, thats to be expected and entirely consistent with the EU model I would have thought. But strengths of fields aside, the fact that there are remotely observable magnetic fields throughout the universe at all is surely a smoking gun in the EU models favor, not a refutation of it. The argument would seem to be over what exactly is generating all those magnetic fields, I think you already know what the EU crowd and most electrical engineers are going to say. The trick it would seem to be is gathering the necessary data to either confirm or deny their theories. Good thing we have a star burning brightly in our own backyard. WE CAN DO SCIENCE TO IT! From andymck35 at gmail.com Fri Nov 8 04:45:59 2013 From: andymck35 at gmail.com (Andrew Mckee) Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 17:45:59 +1300 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <20131106094752.GG5661@leitl.org> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <20131105132052.GQ8041@leitl.org> <20131106094752.GG5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, 06 Nov 2013 22:47:52 +1300, Eugen Leitl wrote: >> You're hilarious. >> >> Your future as a stand up comodian is assured. > I'm happy you find me as funny as I the electric universe kooks. Possibly you're missing the sarcasm. A comedian is typically quite funny, a comodian on the other hand, is not. And I'm entirely okay with being considered a kook, for it is a small price to pay for giving due consideration to a heretical scientific theory that may very well be closer to the truth than many people like you would give it credit for. On the other hand if you consider known Wikipedia sockpuppets, writing up factually incorrect reviews of books they clearly haven't read, to be your form of gospel truth, then I dare say it is not you, in the fullness of time, whom shall be enjoying the last laugh. From andymck35 at gmail.com Fri Nov 8 04:46:01 2013 From: andymck35 at gmail.com (Andrew Mckee) Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 17:46:01 +1300 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, 07 Nov 2013 05:12:31 +1300, John Clark wrote: >> I must reluctantly conclude that we are missing something fundamental, >> > > I think one of the fundamental things we don't understand very well is > how > life originated. In fact as far as we know right now, even the entire > observable universe is FAR too small to have made the existence of the > simplest known bacteria likely. And natural selection couldn't reduce the > odds until heredity was invented, only then do Darwin's ideas come into > play. So life simply can't exist, and yet it does, so we're missing > something. Not to be seen flogging a 'kooky' horse, but it would seem to me prudent to look at all the arguments being put forth, especially if current scientific theories seem to be falling short of a completely satisfying explanation of how life could arise on earth like planets. For instance, if (yes, big IF I know) the EU crowd are right and electric plasma fusion of the elements is occurring in the suns photosphere, and thanks to sunspots and solar flares, is being regularly flung outwards into electrically confined plasma streams where they can mix and mingle and fuse into simple organic molecules, before being deposited onto the surfaces of earth like planets by the cubic boatload. Then surely that would be a major game changer to the balance of probabilities of life self assembling from a thick, frequently mutating bio-molecular soup. And even better, it's a hypothesis we can actually test for isn't it?, surely a far better thing to muse over than a bunch of untestable numbers that just don't seem to add up. YMMV. From max at maxmore.com Fri Nov 8 05:33:22 2013 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 22:33:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] NOVA web special on Alcor and cryonics Message-ID: We didn't make it into the "Making Things Colder" show that was broadcast a few days ago, but they did use some footage for this web video: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/cryonics.html -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri Nov 8 08:45:24 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 08:45:24 +0000 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: <527CA4A4.9000009@aleph.se> On 2013-11-08 04:46, Andrew Mckee wrote: > For instance, if (yes, big IF I know) the EU crowd are right and > electric plasma fusion of the elements is occurring in the suns > photosphere, and thanks to sunspots and solar flares, is being > regularly flung outwards into electrically confined plasma streams > where they can mix and mingle and fuse into simple organic molecules, > before being deposited onto the surfaces of earth like planets by the > cubic boatload. > > Then surely that would be a major game changer to the balance of > probabilities of life self assembling from a thick, frequently > mutating bio-molecular soup. Yes, but more importantly, it would *completely* change the behavior of stellar models. This is an area where a *huge* amount of theoretical and empirical work has been done, producing models that agree with observation very well (check any intro astrophysics book), yet would behave very differently if you add fusion in the photosphere. Astrophysics is full of testable predictions. And anything that affects metallicity and temperature of star photospheres is very easy to check. Of course, maybe a century of astrophysicists have all barked up the wrong tree. But in that case they managed to build a self-consistent false family of models that accurately reproduce most features of the H-Z diagram and empirical data from nearly every star. This is so non-trivial that I hold it to be much less likely than alternate theories require extraordinary proof (like running a star code with the new assumptions and reconstructing the empirical data). -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From painlord2k at libero.it Fri Nov 8 09:35:22 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 10:35:22 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> Message-ID: <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> Il 08/11/2013 01:44, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > Bitcoin allow unlimited payment to unlimited number of entities. > Any AI doing something useful will be rewarded using bitcoin where any > AI doing something harmful will be not. Just like humans are. > So we have a way to select for useful AI: we pay them for doing > something useful. And they pay us back if w do something useful to them. > And if we are useful to them, they will not think about recycling us as > Grey Goo. > I can see the possibility for money surviving the Singularity. It may > not be 100% necessary, but it may be helpful. I can't see the future of > money past the Singularity, so I really can't say. > That being said, what does Bitcoin specifically (or cryptocurrency in > general) add to the scenario that isn't provided by government backed > currencies? Bitcoin add trust because it is trustless. Fiat currency (but also gold and silver) can not add trust because they can be debased, payment reversed, fund seized at the source bank, in transit and at the receiving bank and from the hand of the payer and the payed. Governments or sociopathic AIs could and would exploit the weakness of the system like sociopathic speculators and politics exploit the system now. Given their time preferences and limited resources they could not even understand the scope of the damage they are doing to others and themselves in the present and future. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Fri Nov 8 09:40:14 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 10:40:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Multi-millionaire funds gene sequencing to find genes for mathematical genius In-Reply-To: <527C01C0.3030208@aleph.se> References: <527ADED2.6030903@aleph.se> <527C01C0.3030208@aleph.se> Message-ID: <527CB17E.4010608@libero.it> Il 07/11/2013 22:10, Anders Sandberg ha scritto: > On 2013-11-07 20:40, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> If all it did was provide a DNA screening test for potential >> mathematical geniuses (no small feat) it would be very useful in >> helping to find students to focus special attention on. > Statistics doesn't work that way. Hypothetical example: if *everybody* > in the genius group reliably shows a certain signal it might still be > useless in practice, if 50% of the population has the signal. Yes, if > you lack the signal you will not be a genius, but if you have it the > probability is just a tiny fraction higher. > Since the genius group will be small it will not be possible to > determine genomic signals very firmly - simply too few data points. But maybe the best strategy to increase the mathematical genius in the population is to select against the lack of the gene and not in favor of the presence. This until we have better understanding of the functions and interactions of the other genes. Mirco From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 8 12:13:44 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2013 13:13:44 +0100 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> Message-ID: <20131108121344.GN5661@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 07, 2013 at 12:03:18PM -0500, Mike Dougherty wrote: > While I appreciate Eugen's priestly devotion to the Science of Knowing > ["stuff"] I also wonder if Circles fail to dream of their higher There is an effective infinity of things which could be, so the only way to stay functional is to limit yourself to what is currently known. Everything else is a self denial of service, if people would be borderline consistent. The problem with new physics is that this assumes that from a potentially large population every single one must transcend tracelessly, and recall every single instance of already expansive yet subtrascendent tech that is already expanding (you'll notice we already have probes which have left our stellar system, the next generations of such probes will have considerable onboard fabrication capacities). Every single instance that escapes will punch giant FIR blackbody holes into the cosmos which are detectable across GLyrs. There are no such holes, hence invisible pink unicorns don't exist. QED. > dimensional selves. (admittedly, there's plenty to do in the here & now > that is pretty important; energy starvation, et al ) From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 8 15:17:56 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2013 07:17:56 -0800 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <527CA4A4.9000009@aleph.se> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <527CA4A4.9000009@aleph.se> Message-ID: <00d601cedc95$b4995ab0$1dcc1010$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg >...Of course, maybe a century of astrophysicists have all barked up the wrong tree. But in that case they managed to build a self-consistent false family of models that accurately reproduce most features of the H-Z diagram and empirical data from nearly every star... -- Dr Anders Sandberg _______________________________________________ Can you imagine what it must have felt like to be Russell and Hertzsprung when they started plotting magnitude against spectrum and discovered that relationship? What must it have been like to go to a conference with that paper in your briefcase? How about when you are next up? They would be sitting there with some silly goof droning on while the other astronomers dozed, knowing that your data is about to knock their socks off. Oh that would be cool. Now it is a century later, and the H-Z diagram still blows my mind. Regarding an earlier comment by Kelly, hands evolving in sea creatures, and the implied prerequisite of hands for tech-enabled life, that really has my wheels spinning. Reason: of all those Goldilocks planets, I have having a far easier time imagining a Goldie completely covered in ocean, probably deep. That shouldn't be so hard for us to imagine: this planet is almost deluged. If you go that route, it is easy to picture ice caps, so the sea creatures could have access to the atmosphere, and if the ice goes down to bedrock, it would be theoretically possible for lifeforms to dig thru the ice and reach the rock, so that metals could be brought to the surface. Of course actual dry land is a good thing for growing smarts. spike From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Nov 8 16:37:12 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2013 11:37:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <00d601cedc95$b4995ab0$1dcc1010$@att.net> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <527CA4A4.9000009@aleph.se> <00d601cedc95$b4995ab0$1dcc1010$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 10:17 AM, spike wrote: > deluged. If you go that route, it is easy to picture ice caps, so the sea > creatures could have access to the atmosphere, and if the ice goes down to > bedrock, it would be theoretically possible for lifeforms to dig thru the > ice and reach the rock, so that metals could be brought to the surface. Of > course actual dry land is a good thing for growing smarts. > Why is dry land [inherently] better for smarts than ocean? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri Nov 8 17:05:16 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2013 17:05:16 +0000 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <527CA4A4.9000009@aleph.se> <00d601cedc95$b4995ab0$1dcc1010$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 4:37 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > Why is dry land [inherently] better for smarts than ocean? > > Because on dry land you are forced to invent umbrellas. As opposed to just swimming around and occasionally opening your mouth to eat something. BillK From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Nov 8 17:39:24 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2013 12:39:24 -0500 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <527CA4A4.9000009@aleph.se> <00d601cedc95$b4995ab0$1dcc1010$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 12:05 PM, BillK wrote: > On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 4:37 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > > Why is dry land [inherently] better for smarts than ocean? > > Because on dry land you are forced to invent umbrellas. > > As opposed to just swimming around and occasionally opening your mouth > to eat something. > Our oceans may mean abundance for the life that started there, but that isn't necessarily a feature of all oceans. Another case might be superabundance of resource provides an equally superdangerous environment - which could drive innovation/clever to afford a survival advantage. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 8 18:33:41 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2013 10:33:41 -0800 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <527CA4A4.9000009@aleph.se> <00d601cedc95$b4995ab0$1dcc1010$@att.net> Message-ID: <024001cedcb1$0d064580$2712d080$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty Sent: Friday, November 08, 2013 8:37 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 10:17 AM, spike wrote: deluged. If you go that route, it is easy to picture ice caps, so the sea creatures could have access to the atmosphere, and if the ice goes down to bedrock, it would be theoretically possible for lifeforms to dig thru the ice and reach the rock, so that metals could be brought to the surface. Of course actual dry land is a good thing for growing smarts. Why is dry land [inherently] better for smarts than ocean? To be tech enabled, you definitely need to get dry somehow. You can concentrate elements, do jillions of experiments that can never be done without dryness. Kelly's notion of hands I am still pondering, but I was thinking of how limited is the range of experiments without dry land of some sort, and the materials limitations. There are smart beasts in the sea. But the smartest ones we know of apparently evolved brains on land, then went back to the sea. Check this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPge_0lea3o spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Nov 8 21:11:12 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2013 16:11:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 11:46 PM, Andrew Mckee wrote: > For instance, if (yes, big IF I know) the EU crowd are right and electric > plasma fusion of the elements is occurring in the suns photosphere, That seems pretty unlikely, the suns photosphere is icy cold, about 6000K, and as for the sun's corona the density is too low and the temperature is only about 2 million degrees Kelvin, far too low for significant fusion to occur. Fusion is really hard to do, even the center of the sun is lousy at it, per pound the sun produces less power than the human body does, and it will take 10 billion years to fuse 90% of the hydrogen in the sun. In fact we know of only two things in the entire universe that are really really good at fusion, supernovas and H-bombs. > and thanks to sunspots and solar flares, is being regularly flung > outwards into electrically confined plasma streams where they can mix and > mingle and fuse into simple organic molecules, before being deposited onto > the surfaces of earth like planets by the cubic boatload. Then surely that > would be a major game changer to the balance of probabilities of life self > assembling from a thick, frequently mutating bio-molecular soup. That's not the problem, the problem is that the gap between simple organic molecules and the simplest one celled organism known is astronomical. And it is entirely possible that the word " astronomical" is far too weak a word to describe that gap, if so then you need to look no further to explain why the universe doesn't look like it's been engineered. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 8 21:15:49 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2013 13:15:49 -0800 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: <00b201cedcc7$b35444d0$19fcce70$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of John Clark Subject: Re: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 11:46 PM, Andrew Mckee wrote: >> For instance, if (yes, big IF I know) the EU crowd are right and electric plasma fusion of the elements is occurring in the suns photosphere, >.That seems pretty unlikely, the suns photosphere is icy cold, about 6000K, and as for the sun's corona the density is too low and the temperature is only about 2 million degrees Kelvin, far too low for significant fusion to occur. John K Clark Ja. Fusion in the photosphere would have a clear detectable signature. A nova is fusion on the photosphere, and we know exactly what that looks like. Keep looking, me lads. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 8 21:20:03 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2013 13:20:03 -0800 Subject: [ExI] quiet season in the altantic Message-ID: <00b701cedcc8$4a86a0f0$df93e2d0$@att.net> Just when the headlines are filled with this monster typhoon in the Pacific, we see something that is unusual this time of year: no cyclones in the Altantic. It has been a record quiet year, with two storms that managed to make it to category 1, even if briefly in both cases. Here's the map I use: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ I don't know if they needed to cancel the storms on account of a lack of government funding or what is the deal, but this has been a really slow year. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri Nov 8 23:07:43 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 23:07:43 +0000 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <00d601cedc95$b4995ab0$1dcc1010$@att.net> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <527CA4A4.9000009@aleph.se> <00d601cedc95$b4995ab0$1dcc1010$@att.net> Message-ID: <527D6EBF.1050205@aleph.se> On 2013-11-08 15:17, spike wrote: > Reason: of all those Goldilocks planets, I have having a far easier > time imagining a Goldie completely covered in ocean, probably deep. > That shouldn't be so hard for us to imagine: this planet is almost > deluged. In fact, the models of waterworld exoplanets I have found in the astronomical literature have *really* deep oceans. Earth is mildly odd in that it has just so much water it would cover the entire surface to a few kilometres: most of these have hundreds of kilometres of water. That means a few interesting things. The ocean floor will be covered by a mantle of high-pressure ice, likely with veins of mineral erupted from the rocky core (a planet has volume ~R^3 and area ~R^2, so the heat flux grows as ~R - big worlds will tend to be much more volcanic and plate-tectonic than Earth). The latest results on metallic ices suggest that they will not occur, since they require 5 TPa, and that moves us into gas giant territory - but non-metallic warm ice is still odd. The atmosphere may have plenty of water vapour as a greenhouse gas. The surface temperature distribution depends on the rotation rate; if it is fast winds will be more zonal and the poles will be cooler (possibly with ice), while a slower rotation produces an even temperature. If it is warm enough you can get some amazing hurricanes or hypercanes. Most of the ocean will be totally dark, heated only by a geothermal gradient or volcano-induced currents - surface heating only penetrates down to a thermocline a few hundred meters down, and the lack of undersea mountains reduces mixing. (See Charles Stross' "Neptunes' brood" for a fictional world that gets close to this - although he admitted he choose some parameters for simplicity, and I have my doubts about his awesome blue smokers.) I don't know if general technology could emerge here. Sure, it looks near-impossible to build a lab underwater. But that might just be our limited imagination. Many compounds are volatile in air and dissolve, yet we have found ways of managing them. It might be that a waterworlder would have an equally hard time imaging how a dry lab could work. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From eugen at leitl.org Sat Nov 9 11:24:08 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2013 12:24:08 +0100 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <527AD1E8.1090300@aleph.se> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <20131106143017.GU5661@leitl.org> <527AD1E8.1090300@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20131109112408.GQ5661@leitl.org> On Wed, Nov 06, 2013 at 11:34:00PM +0000, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-11-06 14:30, Eugen Leitl wrote: > >There is absolutely no data to postulate a future filter. You > >being able to read this message is not a source of data for > >statistical reasoning > > Actually, it is. It is just a single data point, but it can skew > things surprisingly strongly: > http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/anthropicshadow.pdf Why are you using probability in a perfectly biased case of one sample? It isn't applicable. The first sample only gives you the information that it's possible. Only the second unbiased sample gives you a lot of information. The first sample is almost pefectly useless. > >(lottery winners don't have a good grasp of overall winning > >probability). > > Actually, they know the probability is nonzero. That is in itself a Cogito, ergo sum is a trivial result. We know we exist, we care to know how many of others like us are there. > lot of information. And depending on which branch of anthropics you > buy into (BTW: advert: http://www.philosophy-of-cosmology.ox.ac.uk/events/fourth-oxford-miniseries-anthropics-selection-effects-and-fine-tuning-in-cosmology/ > - course and workshop in December) they might get other weak > information. I need to read your paper at leisure. > >As long as we don't have causally unentangled data about higher > >life nevermind life capable of intelligent observer status nobody > >has a case. > > Well, data can be of different kinds. The evolutionary history of > Earth has a bias due to one species becoming observers, but there is > information in it (does it look hard to ramp up or down > encephalization or behavioral complexity?) You still have no idea how special or common that pattern is. Even if you get a different sample of a nontrivial ecosystem in this solar system but which is causually entangled with local emergence events it's tainted. From anders at aleph.se Sat Nov 9 12:24:38 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 09 Nov 2013 12:24:38 +0000 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <20131109112408.GQ5661@leitl.org> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <20131106143017.GU5661@leitl.org> <527AD1E8.1090300@aleph.se> <20131109112408.GQ5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: <527E2986.80903@aleph.se> On 2013-11-09 11:24, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Wed, Nov 06, 2013 at 11:34:00PM +0000, Anders Sandberg wrote: >> Actually, it is. It is just a single data point, but it can skew >> things surprisingly strongly: >> http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/anthropicshadow.pdf > Why are you using probability in a perfectly biased case > of one sample? It isn't applicable. The first sample only > gives you the information that it's possible. Only the > second unbiased sample gives you a lot of information. > > The first sample is almost pefectly useless. The "almost" is the relevant thing here. What is the probability of an existential threat wiping out humanity this century? It makes sense to talk about this probability, yet there is *no* data point for it. (And if there were ever one data point, there would never be another one - frequentism fails. ) One can reason under conditions of high uncertainty, and that does include having no or one data points. Sure, the dispersion of your probability estimates is going to be huge, but one can still apply rigorous thinking. If I flip a coin and get heads, I have very little evidence for how biased the coin is. I know the probability of heads cannot be 0, but it could be that it actually is 10^-100 and I was lucky. What I can do is estimate a posterior probability distribution (in this case it ends up a triangular beta distribution) and use that as my best guess. Obviously getting more data will quickly improve the estimate, but that is not always possible. Saying "I don't know" and refusing to reason about anything dependent on the probability might not be on the table, nor rational - I actually do know a little. >> Actually, they know the probability is nonzero. That is in itself a > Cogito, ergo sum is a trivial result. We know we exist, we care > to know how many of others like us are there. Depending on whether you buy the self-sampling assumption or the self-indication assumption you get some weak evidence for this (or not). Reasoning under extreme uncertainty is very different from reasoning under normal uncertainty. Normal uncertainty can afford to shy away from tainted data; extreme uncertainty has to squeeze every drop of rational evidence out of even the (non)existence of data. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sat Nov 9 12:58:56 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2013 05:58:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 122, Issue 15 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 2:26 PM, Omar Rahman wrote: > > > I guess the 21 million thing is sort of 'old fashioned' of me. It doesn't > technically matter if I can or can't have a whole bitcoin but it 'feels' > wrong to me that each person on the planet on average can only have about > 1/300 of a bitcoin. So, I actually do think that the upper limit of > bitcoins is a problem unless the value of a single coin goes right through > the roof. I guess that's what you're all hoping for and good luck to you. > If all 21 million coins were available right now you would have a currency > worth something like $6 000 000 000 or so, yes? On the other hand, if you > have a bitcoin you might have 1/21 000 000 of the future money supply. > Earlier today the market cap of bitcoins was 3.1 billion dollars. Kind of exciting to be able to have that much money. But I don't personally see Bitcoin displacing ALL OTHER currencies. It's never worked that way, except by firm governmental control. Given a choice, people will choose other things sometimes. Like my space gold backed Bitcoin idea... some people might really like that more. > What, if any, do you think the weaknesses of bitcoin are? > Technically, I know of no significant weaknesses. In practice, it doesn't provide the kind of privacy some people expect of it, but that doesn't reduce it's usefulness as money, just its usefulness at things like money laundering and buying illegal stuff. One of the weaknesses of bitcoin that is most often pointed out is it's volatility. Of course, it is volatility on the way to the stratosphere, so not all bad. > The potential for forking in the block chain, the continuing assault on > public-private key encryption, and adopting changes to the hashing function > seem like serious concerns for bitcoin. Well to be fair any weakness of > public-private key encryption is a more general problem. > I think there is some good math behind bitcoin that keeps it fairly safe. > The most obvious weakness I saw for bitcoin was the possibility for a DDOS > attack with many micro-transactions but they have eliminated this with > 'transaction fees'. It seems to me that the limits one places on processing > a transaction through these fees represent some sort of limit on the > effective divisibility of the coin. > The fees should go down over time, as the coins become more valuable. > As the number of bitcions produced goes down towards zero as we approach > the 21 million limit these fees are envisioned as the incentive for people > to continue processing blocks. At some point won't that actually > commoditise bitcoins into a function of the cost of processing power? > Not really, as the difficulty keeps increasing, and the overall number is limited. > What do you do if someone steals your bitcoins? > What do you do if someone steals the money from your wallet. You have to take precautions. You don't carry your retirement portfolio around in your wallet, do you? > Can't they just transfer them to some other address and they are gone. > Isn't your ability to recover them nil? > Yes. > Even if someone is forced by some court to make reparations in real world > goods or a traditional currency could they be compelled to accept some > exchange rate? > > For many libertarians bitcoin is probably a dream come true. > The libertarian and the technologist in me loves bitcoin. Micropayments is a dream come true. Bitcoin's libertarian bent just makes it all the better. > However, world politics could force the issue if a major government or > group of governments declared that contracts in bitcoins are not > enforceable. This seems an obvious move if a government felt threatened by > bitcoins. And of course if they can't tax it and revenues fall they will > feel threatened. > In theory, bitcoin transactions are taxable, just like giving the neighborhood boy 50 tomatoes to mow your lawn. In practice, it's just like giving the neighborhood boy 50 tomatoes to mow your lawn, at least at this time. You pay these sorts of taxes if your reputation as a tax payer is important to you for some reason. > As a digital currency which relies on it's users and community to confirm > the transactions and use the same hash function it is profoundly democratic > and I like that. But it is also therefore open to the possibility of a > split if enough people could choose to fork the block chain. This might > even be a good thing, but it is something that should be considered. > > As I said later in my post I think a digital currency is a good idea, I'm > just not sure bitcoin is the right implementation. > When you get it right, let us know so we can buy in on day one... :-) -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sat Nov 9 13:03:48 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2013 06:03:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 7:55 PM, spike wrote: > > > *From:* extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto: > extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On Behalf Of *Kelly Anderson > > The "earth like" definition used by the scientists that wrote the paper > include approximately three variables. Rare Earth proposes around 12 such > variables if I remember correctly? > > > > Ja, but the three variable case makes more sense for reasons I will give. > > > > >?For example, we need a molten core and plate tectonics in order to get > the right metals to the surface? > > > > A molten core follows directly in most rocky core planets. They have an > enormous amount of heat from potential energy conversion as the rocky dust > congeals. > And yet mars currently lacks a molten core. It also lacks the magnetosphere that would protect martians from radiation. Would mars count as one of the planets counted by NASA in this survey? > >?provide both land and ocean (for the evolution of land animals, since > hands evolving on a fish seems like a bit of a long shot) and other reasons > ? > > > > Perhaps. But I haven?t been able to convince myself that intelligence > could never evolve in the sea. > I think there are reasons that it is unlikely. One piece of evidence is that the most intelligent sea animals are land animals that have returned to the sea. > > >?Then there is Jupiter and Saturn filtering out the comets. Very useful > that? > > > > Useful but not necessarily critical. If you had a Goldie with oceans 50km > deep, a good sized comet or other hunk of space debris could strike the > planet without wiping out all the biota. An ocean planet could still > reasonably have ice caps, or for that matter be ice everywhere, with liquid > oceans below. Then it is conceivable that life could be air breathing on a > planet with no rocky surface anywhere. > Sure. > > >?If you refigure all of the Rare Earth variables in with NASA's numbers, > I'm guessing you would end up with a MUCH smaller number. ?Kelly > > > > Ja. I found Ward?s Rare Earth a bit too narrow minded on what kind of > life forms could become tech enabled. He might be right. But it just felt > like he was over reaching just a bit. > > > Probably. Rare earth is loved by creationists, which also makes it a little suspect. I haven't read the book myself, so I dare not comment further on the book itself. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sat Nov 9 13:11:58 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2013 06:11:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 9:12 AM, John Clark wrote: > On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 1:06 AM, spike wrote: > > > OK now I am more puzzled than ever. NASA says there are about 8.8 >> billion Goldilocks planets in the Milky Way alone: >> http://news.yahoo.com/study-8-8-billion-earth-size-just-planets-212232920.html >> >> > > Well, 8.8*10^9 is a big number but that alone doesn't tell you anything, > the real question is if chemistry and biology can generate numbers as big > or bigger that can counteract astronomy's numbers. A chain of 20 amino > acids is too short to be considered a protein, but there are 20 different > types of amino acids in earthly life so there are 1.05*10^26 different ways > to make such a little chain. So already we have a number ten million > billion times larger than 8.8*10^9. And even bacteria are "astronomically" > more complex than such a simple 20 element peptide chain. And we aren?t > just talking about any old type of life, we're talking about life that can > make advanced technology, and so we must add yet another layer of big > numbers and "astronomical" complexity. > > > I must reluctantly conclude that we are missing something fundamental, >> > > I think one of the fundamental things we don't understand very well is how > life originated. In fact as far as we know right now, even the entire > observable universe is FAR too small to have made the existence of the > simplest known bacteria likely. And natural selection couldn't reduce the > odds until heredity was invented, only then do Darwin's ideas come into > play. So life simply can't exist, and yet it does, so we're missing > something. Graham Cairns-Smith and his clay hypothesis have some very > interesting ideas and could be the first step toward explaining it, maybe, > but we need a lot more evidence. > I recommend reading "Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origins" by Robert Hazen for an overview of the clay model and a half dozen other similar models. But maybe I'm wrong, maybe it will turn out that biology's big numbers > can't equal astronomy's and life is common, then another mystery arises, > how likely is the Evolution of intelligence? Technology only started about > 10,000 years ago, and for over 85% of life's 3.8 billion year existence on > Earth it was satisfied with nothing but one celled organisms. Why the > sudden change? > The truth is that without knowing the simplest non DNA heredity available, we just don't know how difficult it is for life to evolve. The basic building blocks of amino acids are readily available. But there are a few orders of magnitude of increase in complexity between those and bacteria. Something had to happen in between. And maybe it happened on mars. Who knows? > Or maybe the reason we don't see ET is that some principle puts a lid on > how smart something can be and how much cosmic engineering that can be done > by it, my best guess on why that could be is that having access to your > emotional control panel might lead to positive feedback and mental > instability. I hope that's not the answer, I hope the answer is just that > the numbers from biology are bigger than the numbers from astronomy. > Me too. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sat Nov 9 14:12:25 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2013 14:12:25 +0000 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 9, 2013 at 1:03 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > And yet mars currently lacks a molten core. It also lacks the magnetosphere > that would protect martians from radiation. Would mars count as one of the > planets counted by NASA in this survey? > I think there is still debate about Mars. Quote: Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., analyzing three years of radio tracking data from the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, concluded that Mars has not cooled to a completely solid iron core, rather its interior is made up of either a completely liquid iron core or a liquid outer core with a solid inner core. Their results are published in the March 7, 2003 online issue of the journal Science. ------- Quote: UCLA scientist discovers plate tectonics on Mars August 09, 2012 For years, many scientists had thought that plate tectonics existed nowhere in our solar system but on Earth. Now, a UCLA scientist has discovered that the geological phenomenon, which involves the movement of huge crustal plates beneath a planet's surface, also exists on Mars. ----------- BillK From spike66 at att.net Sat Nov 9 14:33:41 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2013 06:33:41 -0800 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> Message-ID: <03c301cedd58$b0680270$11380750$@att.net> .... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets On Sat, Nov 9, 2013 at 1:03 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > And yet mars currently lacks a molten core. It also lacks the > magnetosphere that would protect martians from radiation. Would mars > count as one of the planets counted by NASA in this survey? > I think there is still debate about Mars. Quote: >...Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., analyzing three years of radio tracking data from the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, concluded that Mars has not cooled to a completely solid iron core, rather its interior is made up of either a completely liquid iron core or a liquid outer core with a solid inner core. Their results are published in the March 7, 2003 online issue of the journal Science... -----------BillK _______________________________________________ Ja. The six elements known to be common to all lifeforms are CHONSP, roughly in that order by mass. All six of those are found on the surface of Mars. At one time it had water and a reducing atmosphere. I don't know for sure if it qualifies as a Goldilocks planet. To make that criterion water must exist in all three phases in equilibrium, as it does here on a frosty foggy morning, or on a misty forest pond. Actually I don't know if the definition requires ice, (probably not, there is no natural ice in the tropical rain forest.) Water and vapor is all you would need. spike From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Nov 9 17:03:27 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2013 12:03:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Problem with Drugs (was Re: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> So my next question is could any mind avoid becoming addicted if it had >> complete unrestricted access to its own emotional control panel? >> > > > of course. Any person interested in achieving any goal, aside from > bliss, But the emotional control panel would have more knobs in it than just one for bliss. If you want to experience a feeling of awe and mystery at the majesty of the universe just turn a knob. If you want to feel the beauty inherent in nature turn a knob. If you like to laugh but don't find The Three Stooges funny turn a knob. If all this knob turning makes you uneasy just turn yet another knob, now you feel that nothing is more noble than knob turning. > would modify its emotions to optimize the likelihood of achieving said > goals. We strive to achieve goals because it feels great when we are successful, but the trouble is achieving goals is almost always hard and sometimes downright impossible. The obvious solution is to create a much easier goal with the same emotional payoff. Any physicists alive would feel great on the day he was awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering a quantum theory of gravity, but he may not have felt better that a eight year old who won his third grade science fair by showing that a mixture of vinegar and baking soda makes a lot of bubbles. So forget quantum gravity, it's too hard, just make bubbles. > > This might even involve removing the abilty to experience addiction. > I don't see how that could be done without removing the ability to be happy or experience pleasure, and then there would be no motivation to do anything at all. You could invert all the switches in your emotional control panel, but all that would mean is that pleasure and pain would swap positions; and if sickness and physical injury were pleasurable it could lead to other obvious problems. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Nov 9 18:55:42 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2013 13:55:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 12:12 AM, Brent Allsop wrote: > As most of you know, in 2010, some guy purchased about $25 worth of > Bitcoin, which is now worth over $800K. My working hypothesis is that this > will continue and that before 2020, Bitcoin will be worth a million bucks. > Maybe, but if simple extrapolation always worked predicting the future would be easy. It isn't. > Have you checked the price of Gold, lately? It's been crashing, > dramatically, for 2 years now. Yes. > Why do you think? There can only be one reason, the consensus in the free market is that inflation will not be a serious problem in the immediate future and that the greater problem right now is the exact opposite, deflation. Of course the free market is not infallible and can be wrong, but it's probably more likely to be right than you or me > The so called gold experts, are saying things like: "The bear market in > gold has been going on for two years. It seems to fly in the face of > fundamentals, as central banks print enough currency to paper the world." > Therefore the free market must have decided that factors other than the speed of government printing presses are more important in predicting the future, like the low percentage of factory utilization, high unemployment, and the dramatic increase in the availability of fossil fuels due to new technologies like fracking. > Once you factor in the fact that there is a new competitor in town, and > that people are starting to sell Gold to buy Bitcoin, that explains what > otherwise doesn't make sense That's ridiculous, most gold traders have probably never even heard of bitcoin and it's below microscopic compared with the gold market. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andymck35 at gmail.com Sun Nov 10 03:54:33 2013 From: andymck35 at gmail.com (Andrew Mckee) Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 16:54:33 +1300 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, 09 Nov 2013 10:11:12 +1300, John Clark wrote: > That seems pretty unlikely, the suns photosphere is icy cold, about > 6000K, > and as for the sun's corona the density is too low and the temperature is > only about 2 million degrees Kelvin, far too low for significant fusion > to > occur. Fusion is really hard to do, even the center of the sun is lousy > at it, Ah, perhaps it would have been better if I'd just said somewhere near the suns surface and left it at that, I could very well be mis-representing where exactly the author wrote it was happening. Although perhaps I should add that it's a bit complicated, there was mention of plasma streams forming double layers which induce nearby streams into forming tightly bound spirals, in the center of which something called Z-pinching occurs, which I presume is where plasma densities are increased and intense electric currents do their thing. But it's really a subject matter someone with a big brain should be looking at, I couldn't even pretend to know how plasma physics works in a neon sign, let alone parrot intelligently on how they claim a star works. > That's not the problem, the problem is that the gap between simple > organic > molecules and the simplest one celled organism known is astronomical. And > it is entirely possible that the word " astronomical" is far too weak a > word to describe that gap, if so then you need to look no further to > explain why the universe doesn't look like it's been engineered. Well I could be wrong, but seems to me biology has only recently got its second wind, so along with the synthetic bio-tech industry maybe in a decade or two they will have made more than a few discoveries that reveal a lot about some of the nifty shortcuts nature used in the beginning to get the job done. Well that, and maybe the critics are right and the current estimate of the age of the universe is off, or indeed a great big red herring in the first place. Maybe it really is just that our lucky numbers came up ahead of anybody else in the observable universe. A scary thought to be sure, but what are the alternative explanations we can live with?, at least till humans (or trans- or post-humans) start launching star-ships out into the universe and actively start looking for the answers. From andymck35 at gmail.com Sun Nov 10 03:54:39 2013 From: andymck35 at gmail.com (Andrew Mckee) Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 16:54:39 +1300 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <527CA4A4.9000009@aleph.se> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <527CA4A4.9000009@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Fri, 08 Nov 2013 21:45:24 +1300, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Yes, but more importantly, it would *completely* change the behavior of > stellar models. This is an area where a *huge* amount of theoretical and > empirical work has been done, producing models that agree with > observation very well (check any intro astrophysics book), yet would > behave very differently if you add fusion in the photosphere. Yeah sorry, scratch photosphere, I might very well be getting the labels wrong. But if I got the gist of it correctly, it's not 'adding' fusion at the surface, more likely 'instead of' fusion at the sun's core. And I should add, the fusion is merely a by-product, it's not what is actually powering the sun, their claim is that the sun is powered externally by vast electric plasma streams sitting/flowing around galaxies and the universe. So yeah, 'completely change' is probably an understatement. But hey, on the bright side, their arguments are claimed to be based entirely on the known laws of physics and states of matter, so in theory they are eminently testable. Anyone up for designing and building a ceramic probe that could be shot into a sunspot? The data returned could go on to settle a lot of arguments, possibly even upend the universe as we know it. :-) > Of course, maybe a century of astrophysicists have all barked up the > wrong tree. But in that case they managed to build a self-consistent > false family of models that accurately reproduce most features of the > H-Z diagram Well that is somewhat like what the author is claiming, although I'd say he states it a bit more gently. Scientists were and still are faced with the problem of not being able to put an instrument package on an interstellar probe and physically verify that the forces measured are in agreement with remote observation and the models that got developed. > and empirical data from nearly every star. Well thats one of the sticking points isn't it, if an astronomer or two can write a book cataloging images of stellar objects that the standard model indicates shouldn't physically exist, then that to me would be a sign that maybe the standard universe model isn't quite the done deal that many say it is. YMMV. > This is so non-trivial that I hold it to be much less likely than > alternate theories require extraordinary proof (like running a star code > with the new assumptions and reconstructing the empirical data). Not sure what a 'star code' is, but I'd note that some in the EU crowd have been running super computer simulations of star clusters (galaxies maybe?) running a plasma physics model, and the produced results that do indeed seem tally up closely with actual images of real stellar objects. The book has glossy images of the results to look at, amongst the other pretty and somewhat puzzling astronomical images (possibly also on a website somewhere I presume). From stathisp at gmail.com Sun Nov 10 06:06:50 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 17:06:50 +1100 Subject: [ExI] The Problem with Drugs (was Re: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 8 November 2013 05:26, John Clark wrote: > On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 3:51 PM, Kelly Anderson > wrote: > >> > Now, I know John was referring to illegal drugs > > > Actually I was referring to something much more general than chemicals, > legal or illegal. I'd like to know if it is in the very nature of > intelligent minds that if they have complete access to their emotional > control panel they won't be motivated to do anything except move the > happiness, pleasure, and pride in a job well done knob to a higher setting. > If Einstein could have felt just as good as he did on the day he discovered > General Relativity just by turning a knob would he have bothered to spend > eleven grueling years to actually discover it? It's this sort of positive > feedback that worries me. Here's what Einstein would have done if he had direct access to his brain's control panel: he would have adjusted things so that his drive to do theoretical physics was even greater, the process more rewarding, and the dejection from going down a wrong pathway much less so as to minimise the risk that he would give up. Equivalently, if you were a heroin addict and could adjust your brain so you get the same reinforcement from something that you considered intrinsically worthwhile but normally found too difficult, why would you continue using heroin? -- Stathis Papaioannou From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 10 15:56:24 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 07:56:24 -0800 Subject: [ExI] google maps creates enders game moment Message-ID: <080701cede2d$68f60010$3ae20030$@att.net> OK, so I went into Google maps, I was looking around when the idea struck me to check what information the commies have glastnosted to the world by now. I was astonished that they have Google maps working in street view. What a mind blower! I could wander the streets of Moscow without fear the commies would grab me. So I did, and I came to an intersection they would only identify as this: ???????? ?????, Moscow, Russia Address is approximate But they didn't actually tell me what that approximate address was. There was a young blonde woman walking along the street. She looks so nice! I wish I could meet her. Of course she is a godless commie and I am not, but at least we have the godless part in common. It's a phenomenon. So now I am obsessed with figuring out where this place is, so I might try to find that sweet looking blondie. Well not really. But it is really cool in any case to see what Google maps has done. I did have a real question for anyone who knows from Russia. Where are all the houses? Does everyone in and around Moscow live in those big apartment buildings? Do they not have anything analogous to American suburbs? Where are they? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sun Nov 10 16:41:23 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 16:41:23 +0000 Subject: [ExI] google maps creates enders game moment In-Reply-To: <080701cede2d$68f60010$3ae20030$@att.net> References: <080701cede2d$68f60010$3ae20030$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 3:56 PM, spike wrote: > I did have a real question for anyone who knows from Russia. Where are all > the houses? Does everyone in and around Moscow live in those big apartment > buildings? Do they not have anything analogous to American suburbs? Where > are they? > > You are talking like an American that has never visited European cities. Ooops - That's what you are! :) Those are city centre apartment blocks. Very common throughout Europe. Try street view in London, Paris or Milan. The million dollar apartments in London are much the same, but better furnished inside. You pay for the area, the company of other millionaires. I suspect the suburbs are out of town. :) BillK From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Nov 10 16:52:05 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 11:52:05 -0500 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 9, 2013 at 10:54 PM, Andrew Mckee wrote: > Although perhaps I should add that it's a bit complicated, there was > mention of plasma streams forming double layers which induce nearby > streams into forming tightly bound spirals, in the center of which > something called Z-pinching occurs, which I presume is where plasma > densities are increased and intense electric currents do their thing. > Even if significant fusion does occur in the sun's corona, which seems extremely unlikely, I don't see what that would have to do with the origin on life on Earth. >> That's not the problem, the problem is that the gap between simple >> organic >> molecules and the simplest one celled organism known is astronomical. And >> it is entirely possible that the word " astronomical" is far too weak a >> word to describe that gap, if so then you need to look no further to >> explain why the universe doesn't look like it's been engineered. >> > > > Well I could be wrong, but seems to me biology has only recently got its > second wind, so along with the synthetic bio-tech industry maybe in a > decade or two they will have made more than a few discoveries that reveal a > lot about some of the nifty shortcuts nature used in the beginning to get > the job done. > The observable universe is FAR too small and has existed for FAR too short a time for a living cell to have been created randomly anywhere, so there must be physical processes currently unknown that brings those odds way way way down. That much is clear, what is not clear is if the odds are brought down to the astronomical level, in which case it would be reasonable to expect that life happened once in the universe, or if the odds are brought down so low that life is common. Equally unknown is the likelihood that life will advance to the multicellular organism stage or the likelihood that one of those organisms will develop technology. > Maybe it really is just that our lucky numbers came up ahead of anybody > else in the observable universe. A scary thought to be sure, but what are > the alternative explanations we can live with? at least till humans (or > trans- or post-humans) start launching star-ships out into the universe and > actively start looking for the answers. If there were a billion or even a million year old technological civilization in the galaxy that had not descended into navel gazing and lotus eating I don't think you'd need a star-ship to find it because it would be immediately obvious to anyone who looked at the night sky. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 10 16:44:42 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 08:44:42 -0800 Subject: [ExI] google maps creates enders game moment In-Reply-To: References: <080701cede2d$68f60010$3ae20030$@att.net> Message-ID: <083b01cede34$28908a70$79b19f50$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] google maps creates enders game moment On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 3:56 PM, spike wrote: >>... I did have a real question for anyone who knows from Russia. Where > are all the houses? Does everyone in and around Moscow live in those > big apartment buildings? Do they not have anything analogous to > American suburbs? Where are they? >...You are talking like an American that has never visited European cities. Ooops - That's what you are! :) BillK _______________________________________________ BillK, if I had enough money to travel in Europe, I would use it to buy health insurance instead. spike {8-] From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Nov 10 17:22:03 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 12:22:03 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Problem with Drugs (was Re: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 1:06 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > Here's what Einstein would have done if he had direct access to his > brain's control panel: he would have adjusted things so that his drive > to do theoretical physics was even greater, the process more > rewarding, and the dejection from going down a wrong pathway much less > so as to minimise the risk that he would give up. I hope something like that could be made to work but I see problems. It's OK if he enjoys doing physics but to advance he must receive much more pleasure from doing NEW physics, but the trouble is that's very hard to do and happens rarely; it took Einstein over a decade to receive his reward in the pleasure of finding General Relativity. If you wanted to maximize your happiness it seems to me it would be better to reset the switches in your emotional control panel so that you received happiness not from finding new physics but from something much easier to accomplish and therefore happens a lot more often, like blowing bubbles. I hope I'm wrong about this. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sun Nov 10 22:22:50 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 22:22:50 +0000 Subject: [ExI] google maps creates enders game moment In-Reply-To: <080701cede2d$68f60010$3ae20030$@att.net> References: <080701cede2d$68f60010$3ae20030$@att.net> Message-ID: <5280073A.6060200@aleph.se> On 2013-11-10 15:56, spike wrote: > > So I did, and I came to an intersection they would only identify as this: > > ???????? ?????, Moscow, Russia > > Address is approximate > Googling it leads me to https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9B%D1%8F%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BD_%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%83%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%BA, which google translate turns into "Lialin lane". Seems to be a nice street. > > Well not really. But it is really cool in any case to see what Google > maps has done. > It is pretty amazing. I use it in my roleplaying games to get realistic descriptions of the surroundings ("Across Ben Yehuda from your cafe there is a burger bar/thai/Subway building with a flat roof. Suddenly you see the telltale glint from a sniper scope on the second floor balcony... what do you do?") > I did have a real question for anyone who knows from Russia. Where > are all the houses? Does everyone in and around Moscow live in those > big apartment buildings? Do they not have anything analogous to > American suburbs? Where are they? > Look at https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=moscow&hl=en&ll=55.908148,37.482841&spn=0.003404,0.010568&sll=32.077577,34.768397&sspn=0.001295,0.002642&gl=uk&hnear=Moscow,+gorod+Moskva,+Russia&t=h&z=17 - yes, there are suburbs with villas. But most suburbs are of the big apartment type. It is actually quite telling how few villa-suburbs there are in Russian cities. Looking at Helsinki over in Finland you find lots of them, like https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=moscow&hl=en&ll=60.244949,24.933985&spn=0.012055,0.042272&sll=32.077577,34.768397&sspn=0.001295,0.002642&gl=uk&hnear=Moscow,+gorod+Moskva,+Russia&t=h&z=15&layer=c&cbll=60.244949,24.933985&panoid=_xWZ5d6hqfcgf6WZ9a-1SQ&cbp=12,0,,0,0 - a lot of big apartment suburbs too, of course. A sign of the amount of central planning of the economy, and how much individual wealth/self-control there was. In fact, to me it is hard to tell Helsinki and Stockholm apart if just shown a random location in the suburbs. Of course, some places are dear to my heart like the street of my childhood: https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Hagalundsgatan+11,+Solna,+Sweden&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=59.362816,18.008855&spn=0.000774,0.002642&sll=60.24503,24.934373&sspn=0.012055,0.042272&oq=hagalundsgatan+11,+sol&t=h&gl=uk&hnear=Hagalundsgatan+11,+169+65+Solna,+Stockholms+l%C3%A4n,+Sweden&z=19&layer=c&cbll=59.362816,18.008855&panoid=nWiZTJBEpKmqngHhNSzHSw&cbp=12,87.85,,0,-11.7 (much nicer than it looks, I promise) -- 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 Sun Nov 10 22:28:12 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 17:28:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] google maps creates enders game moment In-Reply-To: <5280073A.6060200@aleph.se> References: <080701cede2d$68f60010$3ae20030$@att.net> <5280073A.6060200@aleph.se> Message-ID: Talking about childhood places captured by google: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=dlugosza+110&ie=UTF-8&ei=4AeAUoyDJtG0kQeF4IGADg&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAg I grew up in this house, and it just so happens that the guy photographed by the roving google van is my father. From pharos at gmail.com Sun Nov 10 22:41:54 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 22:41:54 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter Message-ID: I thought that I understood that dark matter was the invisible 'glue' holding galaxies together. i.e. Observation shows that the rotational speed of galaxies is such that there must be invisible dark matter present that stops the galaxy flying apart. But a casual comment in a documentary I have just watched used the phrase 'web of dark matter'. So I checked, and it appears that there are filaments of dark matter that link galaxies together. Quote: She added: ?Our standard picture of cosmology tells us that filaments of invisible matter thread through the universe, and this bridge of dark matter connecting two clusters is exactly what we would expect.? The research confirms that galaxy clusters form at the intersections of these vast filaments of dark matter. Quote: Simulations of the Universe on the largest scales show an unexpected resemblance to nerve cells in the human brain, with galaxy clusters playing the role of the cell body and thinner filaments of matter linking them like axons. These observations lend strong support to the theory that the Universe is built on a web of dark matter that has drawn in visible structures like galaxies and clusters. The large-scale structure (LSS) of the Universe that's predicted by the most widely accepted cosmological model involves long filaments of dark matter. Where these filaments intersect, large dark matter halos grow, and these provide the gravity for ordinary matter to collect. The largest halos become galaxy clusters, the biggest objects in the Universe held together by their own gravity. Surveys of galaxies show that the distribution of clusters corresponds to the predictions of LSS theory, providing strong indirect evidence for the existence of dark matter. ----------- I find the scale of these structures a bit mind boggling. So I think I'll sit quiet for a while until the boggle factor returns to normal. BillK From pharos at gmail.com Sun Nov 10 23:02:25 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 23:02:25 +0000 Subject: [ExI] google maps creates enders game moment In-Reply-To: References: <080701cede2d$68f60010$3ae20030$@att.net> <5280073A.6060200@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 10:28 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > Talking about childhood places captured by google: > > https://maps.google.com/maps?q=dlugosza+110&ie=UTF-8&ei=4AeAUoyDJtG0kQeF4IGADg&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAg > > I grew up in this house, and it just so happens that the guy > photographed by the roving google van is my father. > The link gives me a list of many D?ugosza 110 in Poland. It must be a popular name. Do you mean D?ugosza 110, Nowa S?l, nowosolski, lubuskie, Poland? That was the first one I found with a man in the picture. BillK From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon Nov 11 04:19:51 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 23:19:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] google maps creates enders game moment In-Reply-To: References: <080701cede2d$68f60010$3ae20030$@att.net> <5280073A.6060200@aleph.se> Message-ID: Ok, this one should work right: https://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF-8&layer=c&z=17&iwloc=A&sll=50.365255,18.986047&cbp=13,160.7,0,0,0&cbll=50.365334,18.986003&q=dlugosza+110+piekary+slaskie&ei=WFqAUuv_HaKq2wW7vYGQBQ&ved=0CC8QxB0wAA On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 6:02 PM, BillK wrote: > On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 10:28 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> Talking about childhood places captured by google: >> >> https://maps.google.com/maps?q=dlugosza+110&ie=UTF-8&ei=4AeAUoyDJtG0kQeF4IGADg&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAg >> >> I grew up in this house, and it just so happens that the guy >> photographed by the roving google van is my father. >> > > The link gives me a list of many D?ugosza 110 in Poland. It must be a > popular name. > Do you mean D?ugosza 110, Nowa S?l, nowosolski, lubuskie, Poland? > > That was the first one I found with a man in the picture. > > > BillK > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -- 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 kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Nov 11 05:41:35 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 22:41:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 3:41 PM, BillK wrote: > I find the scale of these structures a bit mind boggling. > So I think I'll sit quiet for a while until the boggle factor returns to > normal. > It might boggle your mind a little less to understand that these large scale structures likely formed VERY early in the life of the universe and have simply been expanding to their ungodly current size over the last 13.7 billion years. Yes, the scales of anything beyond our little planet strain our African-made and optimized primate brains. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Mon Nov 11 08:00:33 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 08:00:33 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> On 2013-11-11 05:41, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 3:41 PM, BillK > wrote: > > I find the scale of these structures a bit mind boggling. > So I think I'll sit quiet for a while until the boggle factor > returns to normal. > > > It might boggle your mind a little less to understand that these large > scale structures likely formed VERY early in the life of the universe > and have simply been expanding to their ungodly current size over the > last 13.7 billion years. Yes, the scales of anything beyond our little > planet strain our African-made and optimized primate brains. In fact, we cannot even handle planetary scales. I cannot intuitively think about the distance from Oxford to Stockholm or even London. I can compare it to known distances, I can play around with imagined maps, I can remember what the trip is like, but I don't *feel* it like I feel the distances within the towns where I have walked. I suspect the reason is that in order to go between these places I have to take a vehicle rather than wander. In between these target places there is an awful lot of places that would feel big to me if I were in them, but since I have never been to Ipswich I do not have any feel for it. It is just a point on my mental map (with a sticky note saying it was used in a Monty Python joke). The large scale structure is pretty awesome. This video looks at the local motions of galactic clusters (starts slow, gets awesome): http://vimeo.com/66641648 -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andymck35 at gmail.com Mon Nov 11 11:07:09 2013 From: andymck35 at gmail.com (Andrew Mckee) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 00:07:09 +1300 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 05:52:05 +1300, John Clark wrote: > Even if significant fusion does occur in the sun's corona, which seems > extremely unlikely, I don't see what that would have to do with the > origin > on life on Earth. Merely speculating that two different sun models might have very different emission profiles, assuming of course anything essential for life does or can escape the suns gravity well. > If there were a billion or even a million year old technological > civilization in the galaxy that had not descended into navel gazing and > lotus eating I don't think you'd need a star-ship to find it because it > would be immediately obvious to anyone who looked at the night sky. Maybe. But do all technology trees necessarily result in civilizations broadcasting their existence out to the universe? What about species evolved to be extremely fearful of doing anything that might call attention to themselves? What if broadcasting your existence is really stupid because some stealthy Borg like race like nothing more than assimilating tech capable civilizations, blink at your telescope and you miss their rise and downfall. From protokol2020 at gmail.com Mon Nov 11 11:25:32 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 12:25:32 +0100 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: > Maybe. Those who might be there for a long time already and aren't capable/willing of colonizing space, are as useless as rocks on Mars. Now we know, those rocks are stone dead. Something "we didn't know" not that long ago. BTW, as I can recall, Kepler was supposed to be able to detect free oxygen on those far away planets. Or it was just a NASA's marketing, like these 10^10 Goldilocks planets now. On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 12:07 PM, Andrew Mckee wrote: > On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 05:52:05 +1300, John Clark > wrote: > > Even if significant fusion does occur in the sun's corona, which seems >> extremely unlikely, I don't see what that would have to do with the origin >> on life on Earth. >> > > Merely speculating that two different sun models might have very different > emission profiles, assuming of course anything essential for life does or > can escape the suns gravity well. > > > > If there were a billion or even a million year old technological >> civilization in the galaxy that had not descended into navel gazing and >> lotus eating I don't think you'd need a star-ship to find it because it >> would be immediately obvious to anyone who looked at the night sky. >> > > Maybe. > > But do all technology trees necessarily result in civilizations > broadcasting their existence out to the universe? > > What about species evolved to be extremely fearful of doing anything that > might call attention to themselves? > > What if broadcasting your existence is really stupid because some stealthy > Borg like race like nothing more than assimilating tech capable > civilizations, blink at your telescope and you miss their rise and downfall. > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 11 11:42:03 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 12:42:03 +0100 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: <20131111114203.GI5661@leitl.org> On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 12:07:09AM +1300, Andrew Mckee wrote: > Merely speculating that two different sun models might have very > different emission profiles, assuming of course anything essential > for life does or can escape the suns gravity well. When cooking dogs, do not exceed the recommended cooking time for canines. > > >If there were a billion or even a million year old technological > >civilization in the galaxy that had not descended into navel gazing and > >lotus eating I don't think you'd need a star-ship to find it because it > >would be immediately obvious to anyone who looked at the night sky. > > Maybe. > > But do all technology trees necessarily result in civilizations > broadcasting their existence out to the universe? Yes. Because the laws of thermdynamics are not optional. And they're not civilizations. They're diverse postecosystems. There is a very large difference between these two. > What about species evolved to be extremely fearful of doing anything > that might call attention to themselves? Out of a trillion species one or two will actually do that, and never matter. All the other ones go forth and multiply. > What if broadcasting your existence is really stupid because some Breathing is really stupid. Ever tried not to? > stealthy Borg like race like nothing more than assimilating tech You only need atoms and Joules. > capable civilizations, blink at your telescope and you miss their > rise and downfall. You might miss one or two FIR blacbodies. But not whole superclusters of them. You will only miss them if you're dead. From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 11 11:57:54 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 12:57:54 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20131111115754.GL5661@leitl.org> On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 08:00:33AM +0000, Anders Sandberg wrote: > In fact, we cannot even handle planetary scales. I cannot > intuitively think about the distance from Oxford to Stockholm or > even London. I can compare it to known distances, I can play around > with imagined maps, I can remember what the trip is like, but I > don't *feel* it like I feel the distances within the towns where I > have walked. I suspect the reason is that in order to go between > these places I have to take a vehicle rather than wander. In between > these target places there is an awful lot of places that would feel > big to me if I were in them, but since I have never been to Ipswich > I do not have any feel for it. It is just a point on my mental map > (with a sticky note saying it was used in a Monty Python joke). I think the failure is due to absence of evolutionary pressures to evolve e.g. place cell representations for large scale landscapes. When navigating there, you string along landmarks -- probably a different representation (linear memory sequence) from place cells. From alfio.puglisi at gmail.com Mon Nov 11 12:47:00 2013 From: alfio.puglisi at gmail.com (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 13:47:00 +0100 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > BTW, as I can recall, Kepler was supposed to be able to detect free oxygen on those far away planets. Or it was just a NASA's marketing, like these 10^10 Goldilocks planets now. Actually, no it cannot do that. Kepler only detect brightness changes, when a planet partly eclipses its star relative to us. In order to detect oxygen, you'll need observations with telescopes capable of taking spectra. While most ground-based telescope are equipped for that, I don't know if any of them are sensitive enough - those planets are extremely faint. Alfio -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 11 13:03:35 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 14:03:35 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Computer chips inspired by human neurons can do more with less power. Message-ID: <20131111130335.GM5661@leitl.org> http://www.nature.com/news/neuroelectronics-smart-connections-1.14089 Neuroelectronics: Smart connections Computer chips inspired by human neurons can do more with less power. M. Mitchell Waldrop 06 November 2013 Kwabena Boahen holds a 'neuromorphic' circuit board from his Neurogrid device. RAMIN RAHIMIAN Kwabena Boahen got his first computer in 1982, when he was a teenager living in Accra. ?It was a really cool device,? he recalls. He just had to connect up a cassette player for storage and a television set for a monitor, and he could start writing programs. But Boahen wasn't so impressed when he found out how the guts of his computer worked. ?I learned how the central processing unit is constantly shuffling data back and forth. And I thought to myself, 'Man! It really has to work like crazy!'? He instinctively felt that computers needed a little more 'Africa' in their design, ?something more distributed, more fluid and less rigid?. Today, as a bioengineer at Stanford University in California, Boahen is among a small band of researchers trying to create this kind of computing by reverse-engineering the brain. The brain is remarkably energy efficient and can carry out computations that challenge the world's largest supercomputers, even though it relies on decidedly imperfect components: neurons that are a slow, variable, organic mess. Comprehending language, conducting abstract reasoning, controlling movement ? the brain does all this and more in a package that is smaller than a shoebox, consumes less power than a household light bulb, and contains nothing remotely like a central processor. To achieve similar feats in silicon, researchers are building systems of non-digital chips that function as much as possible like networks of real neurons. Just a few years ago, Boahen completed a device called Neurogrid that emulates a million neurons ? about as many as there are in a honeybee's brain. And now, after a quarter-century of development, applications for 'neuromorphic technology' are finally in sight. The technique holds promise for anything that needs to be small and run on low power, from smartphones and robots to artificial eyes and ears. That prospect has attracted many investigators to the field during the past five years, along with hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding from agencies in both the United States and Europe. Neuromorphic devices are also providing neuroscientists with a powerful research tool, says Giacomo Indiveri at the Institute of Neuroinformatics (INI) in Zurich, Switzerland. By seeing which models of neural function do or do not work as expected in real physical systems, he says, ?you get insight into why the brain is built the way it is?. Nature special: New angles on the brain And, says Boahen, the neuromorphic approach should help to circumvent a looming limitation to Moore's law ? the longstanding trend of computer-chip manufacturers managing to double the number of transistors they can fit into a given space every two years or so. This relentless shrinkage will soon lead to the creation of silicon circuits so small and tightly packed that they no longer generate clean signals: electrons will leak through the components, making them as messy as neurons. Some researchers are aiming to solve this problem with software fixes, for example by using statistical error-correction techniques similar to those that help the Internet to run smoothly. But ultimately, argues Boahen, the most effective solution is the same one the brain arrived at millions of years ago. ?My goal is a new computing paradigm,? Boahen says, ?something that will compute even when the components are too small to be reliable.? Silicon cells The neuromorphic idea goes back to the 1980s and Carver Mead: a world-renowned pioneer in microchip design at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He coined the term and was one of the first to emphasize the brain's huge energy-efficiency advantage. ?That's been the fascination for me,? he says, ?how in the heck can the brain do what it does?? Mead's strategy for answering that question was to mimic the brain's low-power processing with 'sub-threshold' silicon: circuitry that operates at voltages too small to flip a standard computer bit from a 0 to a 1. At those voltages, there is still a tiny, irregular trickle of electrons running through the transistors ? a spontaneous ebb and flow of current that is remarkably similar in size and variability to that carried by ions flowing through a channel in a neuron. With the addition of microscopic capacitors, resistors and other components to control these currents, Mead reasoned, it should be possible to make tiny circuits that exhibit the same electrical behaviour as real neurons. They could be linked up in decentralized networks that function much like real neural circuits in the brain, with communication lines running between components rather than through a central processor1, 2. Expand By the 1990s, Mead and his colleagues had shown it was possible to build a realistic silicon neuron3 (see 'Biological inspiration'). That device could accept outside electrical input through junctions that performed the role of synapses, the tiny structures through which nerve impulses jump from one neuron to the next. It allowed the incoming signals to build up voltage in the circuit's interior, much as they do in real neurons. And if the accumulating voltage passed a certain threshold, the silicon neuron 'fired', producing a series of voltage spikes that travelled along a wire playing the part of an axon, the neuron's communication cable. Although the spikes were 'digital' in the sense that they were either on or off, the body of the silicon neuron operated ? like real neurons ? in a non-digital way, meaning that the voltages and currents weren't restricted to a few discrete values as they are in conventional chips. That behaviour mimics one key to the brain's low-power usage: just like their biological counterparts, the silicon neurons simply integrated inputs, using very little energy, until they fired. By contrast, a conventional computer needs a constant flow of energy to run an internal clock, whether or not the chips are computing anything. Mead's group also demonstrated decentralized neural circuits ? most notably in a silicon version of the eye's retina. That device captured light using a 50-by-50 grid of detectors. When their activity was displayed on a computer screen, these silicon cells showed much the same response as their real counterparts to light, shadow and motion4. Like the brain, this device saves energy by sending only the data that matters: most of the cells in the retina don't fire until the light level changes. This has the effect of highlighting the edges of moving objects, while minimizing the amount of data that has to be transmitted and processed. Coding challenge In those early days, researchers had their hands full mastering single-chip devices such as the silicon retina, says Boahen, who joined Mead's lab in 1990. But by the end of the 1990s, he says, ?we wanted to build a brain, and for that we needed large-scale communication?. That was a huge challenge: the standard coding algorithms for chip-to-chip communication had been devised for precisely coordinated digital signals, and wouldn't work for the more-random spikes created by neuromorphic systems. Only in the 2000s did Boahen and others devise circuitry and algorithms that would work in this messier system, opening the way for a flurry of development in large-scale neuromorphic systems. Among the first applications were large-scale emulators to give neuroscientists an easy way to test models of brain function. In September 2006, for example, Boahen launched the Neurogrid project: an effort to emulate a million neurons. That is only a tiny chunk of the 86 billion neurons in the human brain, but enough to model several of the densely interconnected columns of neurons thought to form the computational units of the human cortex. Neuroscientists can program Neurogrid to emulate almost any model of the cortex, says Boahen. They can then watch their model run at the same speed as the brain ? hundreds to thousands of times faster than a conventional digital simulation. Graduate students and researchers have used it to test theoretical models of neural function for processes such as working memory, decision-making and visual attention. ?In terms of real efficiency, in terms of fidelity to the brain's neuronal networks, Kwabena's Neurogrid is well in advance of other large-scale neuromorphic systems,? says Rodney Douglas, co-founder of the INI and co-developer of the silicon neuron. But no system is perfect, as Boahen himself is quick to point out. One of Neurogrid's biggest shortcomings is that its synapses ? of which there is an average of 5,000 per neuron ? are simplified connections that cannot be modified individually. This means that the system cannot be used to model learning, which occurs in the brain when synapses are modified by experience. Given the limited space available on the chip, squeezing in the complex circuitry needed to make each synapse behave in a more realistic manner would require circuit elements about a thousand times smaller in area than they are at present ? in the realm of nanotechnology. This is currently impossible, although a newly developed class of nanometre-scale memory devices called 'memristors' could someday solve the problem. ?We envision building fully autonomous robots that interact with their environments in a meaningful way.? Another issue stems from inevitable variations in the fabrication process, which mean that every neuromorphic chip performs slightly differently. ?The variability is still much less than what is observed in the brain,? says Boahen ? but it does mean that programs for Neurogrid have to allow for substantial variations in the silicon neurons' firing rates. This issue has led some researchers to abandon Mead's original idea of using sub-threshold chips. Instead, they are using more conventional digital systems that are still neuromorphic in the sense that they mimic the electrical behaviour of individual neurons, but are more predictable and much easier to program ? at the cost of using more power. A leading example is the SpiNNaker Project, led since 2005 by computer engineer Steve Furber at the University of Manchester, UK. This system uses a version of the very-low-power digital chips ? which Furber helped to develop ? that are found in many smartphones. SpiNNaker can currently emulate up to 5 million neurons. These neurons are simpler than those in Neurogrid and burn more power, says Furber, but the system's purpose is similar: ?running large-scale brain models in biological real time?. Another effort sticks with neuron-like chips, but boosts their speed. Neurogrid's neurons operate at exactly the same rate as real ones. But the European BrainScaleS project, headed by former accelerator-physicist Karlheinz Meier at Heidelberg University in Germany, is developing a neuromorphic system that currently emulates 400,000 neurons running up to 10,000 times faster than real time. This means it consumes about 10,000 times more energy than equivalent processes in the brain. But the speed is a boon for some neuroscience researchers. ?We can simulate a day of neural activity in 10 seconds,? Meier says. Furber and Meier now have the money to push for bigger and better. Together they constitute the neuromorphic arm of the European Union's ten-year, ?1-billion (US$1.3-billion) Human Brain Project, which was officially launched last month. The roughly ?100 million devoted to neuromorphic research will allow Furber's group to scale up his system to 500 million digital neurons; Meier's group, meanwhile, is aiming for 4 million. The success of these research-oriented projects has helped to stoke interest in the idea of using neuromorphic hardware for practical, ultra-low-power applications in devices from phones to robots. Until recently, that hadn't been a priority in the computer industry. Chip designers could usually minimize energy consumption by simplifying circuit design, or splitting computations over multiple processor 'cores' that can run in parallel or shut down when they are not needed. But these approaches can only achieve so much. Since 2008, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has spent more than $100 million on its SyNAPSE project to develop compact, low-power neuromorphic technology. One of the project's main contractors, the cognitive computing group at IBM's research centre in Almaden, California, has used its share of the money to develop digital, 256-neuron chips that can be used as building blocks for larger-scale systems. Brain power Boahen is pursuing his own approach to practical applications ? most notably in an as-yet-unnamed initiative he started in April. The project is based on Spaun: a design for a computer model of the brain that includes the parts responsible for vision, movement and decision-making. Spaun relies on a programming language for neural circuitry developed a decade ago by Chris Eliasmith, a theoretical neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. A user just has to specify a desired neural function ? the generation of instructions to move an arm, for example ? and Eliasmith's system will automatically design a network of spiking neurons to carry out that function. To see if it would work, Eliasmith and his colleagues simulated Spaun on a conventional computer. They showed that, with 2.5 million simulated neurons plus a simulated retina and hand, it could copy handwritten digits, recall the items in a list, work out the next number in a given sequence and carry out several other cognitive tasks5. That's an unprecedented range of abilities by neural simulation standards, says Boahen. But the Spaun simulation ran about 9,000 times slower than real time, taking 2.5 hours to simulate 1 second of behaviour. Boahen contacted Eliasmith with the obvious proposition: build a physical version of Spaun using real-time neuromorphic hardware. ?I got very excited,? says Eliasmith, for whom the match seemed perfect. ?You've got the peanut butter, we've got the chocolate!? With funding from the US Office of Naval Research, Boahen and Eliasmith have put together a team that plans to build a small-scale prototype in three years and a full-scale system in five. For sensory input they will use neuromorphic retinas and cochleas developed at the INI, says Boahen. For output, they have a robotic arm. But the cognitive hardware will be built from scratch. ?This is not a new Neurogrid, but a whole new architecture,? he says. It will trade a certain amount of realism for practicality, relying on ?very simple, very efficient neurons so that we can scale to the millions?. The system is explicitly designed for real-world applications. On a five-year timescale, says Boahen, ?we envision building fully autonomous robots that interact with their environments in a meaningful way, and operate in real-time while [their brains] consume as much electricity as a cell phone?. Such devices would be much more flexible and adaptive than today's autonomous robots, and would consume considerably less power. In the longer term, Boahen adds, the project could pave the way for compact, low-power processors in any computer system, not just robotics. If researchers really have managed to capture the essential ingredients that make the brain so efficient, compact and robust, then it could be the salvation of an industry about to run into a wall as chips get ever smaller. ?But we won't know for sure,? Boahen says, ?until we try.? Nature 503, 22?24 (07 November 2013) doi:10.1038/503022a References Mead, C. Analog VLSI and Neural Systems (Addison-Wesley, 1989). ?They could be linked up in decentralized networks that function much like real neural circuits in the brain, with communication lines running between components rather than through a central processor1, 2? in article Mead, C. Proc. IEEE 78, 1629?1636 (1990). ?They could be linked up in decentralized networks that function much like real neural circuits in the brain, with communication lines running between components rather than through a central processor1, 2? in article Mahowald, M. & Douglas, R. Nature 354, 515?518 (1991). By the 1990s, Mead and his colleagues had shown it was possible to build a realistic silicon neuron3 (see 'Biological inspiration')? in article Mahowald, M. A. & Mead, C. Sci. Am. 264, 76?82 (May 1991). ?When their activity was displayed on a computer screen, these silicon cells showed much the same response as their real counterparts to light, shadow and motion4? in article Eliasmith, C. et al. Science 338, 1202?1205 (2012). ?5 million simulated neurons plus a simulated retina and hand, it could copy handwritten digits, recall the items in a list, work out the next number in a given sequence and carry out several other cognitive tasks5? in article From protokol2020 at gmail.com Mon Nov 11 14:14:50 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 15:14:50 +0100 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: > Actually, no it cannot do that. I can. Now NASA wants TESS mission to do the spectroscopy and oxygen search. I don't know when it was postponed to the next mission. But originally was advertised for Kepler. On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 1:47 PM, Alfio Puglisi wrote: > > > > On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > > > BTW, as I can recall, Kepler was supposed to be able to detect free > oxygen on those far away planets. Or it was just a NASA's marketing, like > these 10^10 Goldilocks planets now. > > Actually, no it cannot do that. Kepler only detect brightness changes, > when a planet partly eclipses its star relative to us. In order to detect > oxygen, you'll need observations with telescopes capable of taking spectra. > While most ground-based telescope are equipped for that, I don't know if > any of them are sensitive enough - those planets are extremely faint. > > Alfio > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alfio.puglisi at gmail.com Mon Nov 11 14:49:17 2013 From: alfio.puglisi at gmail.com (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 15:49:17 +0100 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 3:14 PM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > > Actually, no it cannot do that. > > I can. Now NASA wants TESS mission to do the spectroscopy and oxygen > search. I don't know when it was postponed to the next mission. But > originally was advertised for Kepler. > You mean that there were plans to have a spectrometer on Kepler in addition to ordinary focal plane detectors? That's news to me, but I would be interested in some links if you have them Alfio -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Nov 11 14:43:50 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 06:43:50 -0800 Subject: [ExI] ny and md limits on 23andMe Message-ID: <044d01cedeec$70c91ec0$525b5c40$@att.net> Perfect example of why we empower states: http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2012/12/23/ny-and-md-limits-on-23andme/ NY and NJ are free to be DNA Nazis if they want. The fed gets paid twice, since the citizens of those states must mail their sample to a friend in another state, who then unwraps the package within and sends it on. Alternative, the fed doesn't get paid at all, since the sender goes to FedEx or UPS. spike From protokol2020 at gmail.com Mon Nov 11 16:09:31 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 17:09:31 +0100 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: I can't find any direct reference to this now. Currently everybody agrees that Kepler is unfortunately unable to find free oxygen, but the next mission will be able to. Still I remember it. 100 000 stars will be scanned they said and we can "hope for a free oxygen footprint". Something like that. Now, wait for TESS! On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 3:49 PM, Alfio Puglisi wrote: > > > On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 3:14 PM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > >> > Actually, no it cannot do that. >> >> I can. Now NASA wants TESS mission to do the spectroscopy and oxygen >> search. I don't know when it was postponed to the next mission. But >> originally was advertised for Kepler. >> > > > You mean that there were plans to have a spectrometer on Kepler in > addition to ordinary focal plane detectors? That's news to me, but I would > be interested in some links if you have them > > Alfio > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Nov 11 17:23:47 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 09:23:47 -0800 Subject: [ExI] next stop, whoville, was: RE: Dark Matter Message-ID: <063e01cedf02$c8ab20f0$5a0162d0$@att.net> On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Subject: Re: [ExI] Dark Matter On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 08:00:33AM +0000, Anders Sandberg wrote: >>... In fact, we cannot even handle planetary scales... >...I think the failure is due to absence of evolutionary pressures to evolve e.g. place cell representations for large scale landscapes... _______________________________________________ We have a pretty good feel for the fact that human population is already at or beyond the long term environmental carrying capacity of the earth. But we don't necessarily need to solve that by reducing our numbers, which is difficult or impossible to do gracefully. But we have an evolutionary path open to us which will likely become very important. We humans in our current form are very disorganized at the atomic level. If we manage to upload to a smaller more organized substrate, we can get to more human minds using less matter, less land mass, less energy. Even before we get to true uploading, if we can tweak our own internal emotional operating system, we could perhaps figure out a way to adjust our male sexual ideal from the 6 ft tall 200 pound to a 4 ft 100 pound male for instance. We could perhaps get there just with ordinary embryo selection using only current technology. With carry-everywhere internet connection, we have the first step toward outloading and wearing our human knowledge base. In the last few centuries with the industrial revolution, we have freed ourselves from the need to fight alpha predators, and largely freed ourselves from having to fight each other at the individual human scale. With those developments, we have opened the door to evolving downward in physical size. From their point of view during the evolving downsize process, for the first time in history, the physical size of the planet actually increases from their perspective. All we now need is a way to influence female mate selection instincts to choose downward in physical size; we should be able to do that somehow. We can imagine a civilization of small, numerous, well fed prosperous super interconnected inter-evolving humans, who pity those left behind in the sparsely populated areas of the planet where the hungry, violent ignorant biggies live in wretched poverty, still battling the brutal elements and the wild beasts. Next stop Whoville. spike From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Nov 11 21:32:38 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan Ust) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 13:32:38 -0800 Subject: [ExI] ny and md limits on 23andMe In-Reply-To: <044d01cedeec$70c91ec0$525b5c40$@att.net> References: <044d01cedeec$70c91ec0$525b5c40$@att.net> Message-ID: <7EF6F25B-F9D0-486E-9271-53A84864760F@yahoo.com> On Nov 11, 2013, at 6:43 AM, "spike" wrote: > Perfect example of why we empower states: But "we" don't "empower" states. They didn't you or me, "Hey, guys, would you allow us to place several layers of despotism over you? No? How about this: we pretend these levels compete with each and this makes you more free than, say, if each of you decided these issues without our meddling in everyone's lives? Isn't that a delusion that will satisfy the easily distracted?" Regards, Dan A thriller by me set in the far south seas: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GHX2M1O -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Mon Nov 11 23:22:12 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 18:22:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] next stop, whoville, was: RE: Dark Matter In-Reply-To: <063e01cedf02$c8ab20f0$5a0162d0$@att.net> References: <063e01cedf02$c8ab20f0$5a0162d0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 12:23 PM, spike wrote: > We can imagine a civilization of small, numerous, well fed prosperous super > interconnected inter-evolving humans, who pity those left behind in the > sparsely populated areas of the planet where the hungry, violent ignorant > biggies live in wretched poverty, still battling the brutal elements and > the > wild beasts. > > Next stop Whoville. > Is this morlocks vs eloi, where the eloi are tiny smarties and the morlocks are big dumb brutes? Just checking because it sounded familiar even with the characteristics reversed. :) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Nov 12 01:37:25 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan Ust) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 17:37:25 -0800 Subject: [ExI] next stop, whoville In-Reply-To: References: <063e01cedf02$c8ab20f0$5a0162d0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Nov 11, 2013, at 3:22 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: >> On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 12:23 PM, spike wrote: >> We can imagine a civilization of small, numerous, well fed prosperous super >> interconnected inter-evolving humans, who pity those left behind in the >> sparsely populated areas of the planet where the hungry, violent ignorant biggies live in wretched poverty, still battling the brutal elements and the wild beasts. >> >> Next stop Whoville. > > Is this morlocks vs eloi, where the eloi are tiny smarties and the morlocks are big dumb brutes? > > Just checking because it sounded familiar even with the characteristics reversed. :) Morlocks were brutish, but I don't think they were stupid. The Eloi were gentle but they were definitely not smart. The former used the latter as cattle. Regards, Dan My latest story, a thriller set in the far south seas: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GHX2M1O -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Nov 12 01:41:07 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan Ust) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 17:41:07 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Nov 10, 2013, at 9:41 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > It might boggle your mind a little less to understand that these large scale structures likely formed VERY early in the life of the universe and have simply been expanding to their ungodly current size over the last 13.7 billion years. Yes, the scales of anything beyond our little planet strain our African-made and optimized primate brains. I don't primate brain evolution began and stopped in Africa. Regards, Dan A thriller by me set in the far south seas: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GHX2M1O -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Tue Nov 12 07:32:55 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 08:32:55 +0100 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: But if you don't have a spectrometer, you have some RGB images and you can do this: http://www.cabrillo.edu/~dbrown/tracker/AAPT_spectroscopy_poster.pdf There is no excuse of not having a spectrometer on Kepler. If you really want to find free oxygen on a distant planet, you can do it with the above technique. In fact, traces of O2 have been found on some giants like Kepler 22b. Tiny amounts. So, it should be easy to spot 20% of free oxygen in an atmosphere, even far away. On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 5:09 PM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > I can't find any direct reference to this now. Currently everybody agrees > that Kepler is unfortunately unable to find free oxygen, but the next > mission will be able to. > > Still I remember it. 100 000 stars will be scanned they said and we can > "hope for a free oxygen footprint". Something like that. > > Now, wait for TESS! > > > On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 3:49 PM, Alfio Puglisi wrote: > >> >> >> On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 3:14 PM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: >> >>> > Actually, no it cannot do that. >>> >>> I can. Now NASA wants TESS mission to do the spectroscopy and oxygen >>> search. I don't know when it was postponed to the next mission. But >>> originally was advertised for Kepler. >>> >> >> >> You mean that there were plans to have a spectrometer on Kepler in >> addition to ordinary focal plane detectors? That's news to me, but I would >> be interested in some links if you have them >> >> Alfio >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> > > > -- > https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 12 07:32:53 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 08:32:53 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Coursera Nanotechnology has begun Message-ID: <20131112073253.GW5661@leitl.org> https://www.coursera.org/course/nanotech From anders at aleph.se Tue Nov 12 08:22:24 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 08:22:24 +0000 Subject: [ExI] next stop, whoville In-Reply-To: References: <063e01cedf02$c8ab20f0$5a0162d0$@att.net> Message-ID: <5281E540.4080600@aleph.se> Well, I have the paper about the ethics. http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/human-engineering-climate-change.pdf http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/how-engineering-the-human-body-could-combat-climate-change/253981/ As some of you might remember, it was mildly controversial. When trolling, finding a group that has two hot buttons and pressing them simultaneously works very well: there were a lot of bioconservative climate denialists out there. I think size change is unlikely to matter if we just do it biologically - we ought to go fully virtual. It is the green thing: http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2009/03/a_really_green_and_sustainable_humanity.html -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Tue Nov 12 08:24:40 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 08:24:40 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: <20131111115754.GL5661@leitl.org> References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <20131111115754.GL5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: <5281E5C8.6040209@aleph.se> On 2013-11-11 11:57, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 08:00:33AM +0000, Anders Sandberg wrote: > >> In between >> these target places there is an awful lot of places that would feel >> big to me if I were in them, but since I have never been to Ipswich >> I do not have any feel for it. It is just a point on my mental map >> (with a sticky note saying it was used in a Monty Python joke). > I think the failure is due to absence of evolutionary pressures > to evolve e.g. place cell representations for large scale landscapes. > When navigating there, you string along landmarks -- probably a > different representation (linear memory sequence) from place > cells. > Yup. Distance is experienced in terms of passed landmarks and/or perceived movement in a space. This is why travel by subway makes a city's geography very warped. Enhanced place and grid cells would be awesome. Imagine a google map interface for the hippocampus. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Nov 12 18:03:32 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan Ust) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 10:03:32 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Review of Antifragile Message-ID: http://www.mises.org/emails/QJAE/QJAE_16_3_Howden.html Regards, Dan A thriller by me set in the far south seas: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GHX2M1O -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Nov 12 18:45:28 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 13:45:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 2:32 AM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > There is no excuse of not having a spectrometer on Kepler. > I can think of a pretty good excuse, the telescope on Kepler was nowhere near big enough even to produce a single pixel image of a earth-like planet, let alone produce enough light to feed into a spectroscope. All Kepler could do is record the small dinning of the host star when a planet occluded it. If NASA had 10 or 20 extra billion to spend on a much much larger telescope then a spectroscope might have been appropriate. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Nov 12 18:56:06 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 18:56:06 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Review of Antifragile In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 6:03 PM, Dan Ust wrote: > http://www.mises.org/emails/QJAE/QJAE_16_3_Howden.html > > The trouble with getting an Austrian economist to review the book is that he criticizes it whenever it doesn't fit in with Austrian economics theory and reckons that it would be greatly improved by adding Austrian propaganda. For a more balanced (and enthusiastic) review: Quote: Every once in a while, a book comes out with ideas that are like fireworks. Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book "Antifragile" is a explosion of life changing ideas. Even thinking that things are predictable makes us more fragile for we invest in that vision of the future and optimize for that single future. "Life is lived forward, but remembered backward." We as humans are prone to single path thinking. Our human minds make up narratives to fit circumstances retroactively. Even a false narrative will make us feel better. Predictions are based on normal variations and the recent past which ignores a Hurricane Sandy. The author describes Hurricane Sandy events as Black Swan events. These are events that are so rare that no one anticipates them. A very-smart corporate turkey is being fed for a thousand days by a butcher. A staff of analysts say that butchers love turkeys and the future looks brighter and hopeful with each passing day. The positive outlook has a greater statistical significance each day. The turkey assumes from the past that since there was no harm so far that there will be no harm in the future. Then butchering day comes! So then how can we win as turkeys in this world, when we cannot know who is the butcher and when butchering day happens? Here is where Taleb's book shines with practical suggestions. ----------- BillK From max at maxmore.com Tue Nov 12 19:06:22 2013 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 12:06:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party Message-ID: A bit of balance: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/the-republican-party-isnt-really-the-anti-science-party/281219/ -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clementlawyer at gmail.com Tue Nov 12 19:45:49 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 14:45:49 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Well, with quotes like this: "Numerically speaking, according to Gallup, only a marginally higher percentage of Republicans *reject evolution completely*than do Democrats. Yes, an embarrassing *half of Republicans* believe the earth is only 10,000 years old?but so do more than *a third of Democrats*. And a slightly higher percentage of Democrats believe God was the guiding factor in evolution than Republicans," who cares whether one's talking about Democrats or Republicans, they both have far too many religious idiots! On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Max More wrote: > A bit of balance: > > > http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/the-republican-party-isnt-really-the-anti-science-party/281219/ > > -- > Max More, PhD > Strategic Philosopher > Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* > > http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader > President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Tue Nov 12 20:12:50 2013 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 21:12:50 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <33DBAF17-9765-4266-A4E3-B9CFDFC5CE6B@gmail.com> Good article, balanced indeed. > On 12 Nov 2013, at 08:06 pm, Max More wrote: > > A bit of balance: > > http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/the-republican-party-isnt-really-the-anti-science-party/281219/ > > -- > Max More, PhD > Strategic Philosopher > Co-editor, The Transhumanist Reader > http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader > President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Tue Nov 12 21:00:45 2013 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 14:00:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 12:45 PM, James Clement wrote: > Well, with quotes like this: "Numerically speaking, according to Gallup, only > a marginally higher percentage of Republicans *reject evolution > completely* than do Democrats. Yes, an embarrassing *half of Republicans*believe the earth is only 10,000 years old?but so do more than *a > third of Democrats*. And a slightly higher percentage of Democrats > believe God was the guiding factor in evolution than Republicans," who > cares whether one's talking about Democrats or Republicans, they both have > far too many religious idiots! > Completely agreed, of course. But note that the article was not titled "The Republics Aren't Really Anti-Science". Instead the title and article helped correct the idea that all the problem lies in that party. Even some people on this list seem to have bought into that claim. Yes, it's appalling how scientifically ignorant (willfully or not) the majority of people in both major parties are. --Max > > > On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Max More wrote: > >> A bit of balance: >> >> >> http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/the-republican-party-isnt-really-the-anti-science-party/281219/ >> >> -- >> Max More, PhD >> Strategic Philosopher >> Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* >> >> http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader >> President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 > > -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Nov 12 21:01:02 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 13:01:02 -0800 Subject: [ExI] stuxnet hits commie nuke plant, space station Message-ID: <038101cedfea$4c6a2890$e53e79b0$@att.net> Local internet security hipsters, does this sound believable to you? That nuke plant strains my imagination, but the Space Station? Every line of code to any spacecraft is reviewed and tested. Kaspersky is supposed to be credible, but I have a hard time believing this story: Subject: [tt] (Times of Israel) Stuxnet, gone rogue, hit Russian nuke plant, space station http://www.timesofisrael.com/stuxnet-gone-rogue-hit-russian-nuke-plant-space -station/ (... links deleted all the way down ...) * Tuesday, November 12, 2013 * Kislev 9, 5774 * 12:43 am IST * Site updated 2 minutes ago Stuxnet, gone rogue, hit Russian nuke plant, space station A cyber-security expert says several ostensibly secure facilities became victims of the virus that struck Iran's nuclear program By [30]David Shamah November 11, 2013, 4:21 pm [36]Eugene Kaspersky (Photo credit: Courtesy Tel Aviv University) Eugene Kaspersky (Photo credit: Courtesy Tel Aviv University) A Russian nuclear power plant was reportedly "badly infected" by the rogue Stuxnet virus, the same malware that reportedly disrupted Iran's nuclear program several years ago. The virus then spread to the International Space Station via a Stuxnet-infected USB stick transported by Russian cosmonauts. Speaking to journalists in Canberra, Australia, last week, Eugene Kaspersky, head of the anti-virus and cyber protection firm that bears his name, said he had been tipped off about the damage by a friend who works at the Russian plant. Kaspersky did not say when the attacks took place, but implied that they occurred around the same time the Iranian infection was reported. He also did not comment on the impact of the infections on either the nuclear plant or the space station, but did say that the latter facility had been attacked several times. The revelation came during a question-and-answer period after a presentation on cyber-security. The point, Kaspersky told reporters at Australia's National Press Club last week, was that not being connected to the Internet -- the public web cannot be accessed at either the nuclear plant or on the ISS -- is a guarantee that systems will remain safe. The identity of the entity that released Stuxnet into the "wild" is still unknown (although media speculation insists it was developed by Israel and the United States), but those who think they can control a released virus are mistaken, Kaspersky warned. "What goes around comes around," Kaspersky said. "Everything you do will boomerang." The Stuxnet virus came to light in 2010, having attacked Iranian nuclear facilities by hitting the programmable logic control automation systems that control them. The PLC system, manufactured by German conglomerate Siemens, runs the centrifuges used to enrich uranium at Iran's Natanz facility. Variants of Stuxnet have affected the facility's centrifuges in various ways, mostly by changing the activity of valves controlled by the PLC software that feed the uranium to centrifuges at a specific rate required for enrichment, Kaspersky said in several presentations last year. It's not known when Stuxnet began its activities, but researchers at anti-virus company Symantec said that they had gathered evidence that earlier versions of the code were already seen "in the wild" in 2005, although it wasn't yet operational as a virus. Stuxnet, said Symantec, was the first virus known to attack national infrastructure projects, and according to the company, the groups behind Stuxnet were already seeking to compromise Iran's nuclear program in 2007 -- the year Iran's Natanz nuclear facility, where much of the country's uranium enrichment is taking place, went online. Now that the plague has been unleashed, said Kaspersky, no one is immune -- and that includes its originators, who are no longer in control of it. "There are no borders" in cyberspace, and no one should be surprised at any reports of a virus attack, no matter how ostensibly secure the facility, he said. (... links deleted ...) ? 2013 The Times of Israel, All rights reserved. Concept, design & development by [188]RGB Media Powered by [189]Salamandra Quantcast References (... all deleted, ouch ...) From anders at aleph.se Tue Nov 12 21:35:36 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 21:35:36 +0000 Subject: [ExI] stuxnet hits commie nuke plant, space station In-Reply-To: <038101cedfea$4c6a2890$e53e79b0$@att.net> References: <038101cedfea$4c6a2890$e53e79b0$@att.net> Message-ID: <52829F28.4070203@aleph.se> On 12/11/2013 21:01, spike wrote: > Local internet security hipsters, does this sound believable to you? That > nuke plant strains my imagination, but the Space Station? Every line of > code to any spacecraft is reviewed and tested. Code tested, yes, but what about hardware? SCADA systems are in a lot of places and have fundamental vulnerabilities. And the station is sending and receiving data at least indirectly to the internet. One USB key or malicious tweet link clicked, and a virus could get in. Also, Nasa no doubt looks carefully at code for reliability. That is not the same thing as security. Consider the vulnerabilities found in pacemakers and other implants - medical-grade software, but no firewall. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From pharos at gmail.com Tue Nov 12 22:05:51 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 22:05:51 +0000 Subject: [ExI] stuxnet hits commie nuke plant, space station In-Reply-To: <038101cedfea$4c6a2890$e53e79b0$@att.net> References: <038101cedfea$4c6a2890$e53e79b0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 9:01 PM, spike wrote: > Local internet security hipsters, does this sound believable to you? That > nuke plant strains my imagination, but the Space Station? Every line of > code to any spacecraft is reviewed and tested. Kaspersky is supposed to be > credible, but I have a hard time believing this story: > Kaspersky was misquoted. He said that Russian astronauts had several times infected the ISS with viruses from USB memory sticks and he knew of a Russian nuclear power station that Stuxnet had infected via a USB stick. He didn't say that Stuxnet had got into the ISS, just some other viruses. So it is down to the Russians for not scanning all USB sticks thoroughly. Though virus writers are always trying to evade scanners, so some might have got through testing. Remember that virus writers test all their creations against the latest virus scanning packages. It is a common technique to spread viruses. Just drop some USB sticks in the car park. People, being people, think "Oh goody - a free memory stick", and take it in to their workplace and plug it in to see what's on it. Bingo - Infected pc. And if it is on the company network, the whole network is soon infected. BillK From spike66 at att.net Tue Nov 12 22:32:15 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 14:32:15 -0800 Subject: [ExI] stuxnet hits commie nuke plant, space station In-Reply-To: References: <038101cedfea$4c6a2890$e53e79b0$@att.net> Message-ID: <003601cedff7$0ac21210$20463630$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2013 2:06 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] stuxnet hits commie nuke plant, space station On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 9:01 PM, spike wrote: >>... Local internet security hipsters, does this sound believable to you? >...Kaspersky was misquoted. >...He said that Russian astronauts had several times infected the ISS with viruses from USB memory sticks and he knew of a Russian nuclear power station that Stuxnet had infected via a USB stick...BillK _______________________________________________ Oh OK cool thanks BillK, that sounds way more believable. Even then, it would only apply to the laptop computers on the space station, which really are not part of the space station. They made it sound like the control software was at risk. The space station control software is not on a network that could be spread in this way. There isn't a lot of free memory in any case, and those computers do not use USB ports. I can see where they could get infected by viruses that may interfere with what is likely the most common computer usages in space: solitaire, chess, Minecraft and email. spike From spike66 at att.net Tue Nov 12 23:04:08 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 15:04:08 -0800 Subject: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <006701cedffb$7f458190$7dd084b0$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Max More Subject: Re: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 12:45 PM, James Clement wrote: >. "Numerically speaking, according to Gallup, only a marginally higher percentage of Republicans reject evolution completely than do Democrats. Yes, an embarrassing half of Republicans believe the earth is only 10,000 years old-but so do more than a third of Democrats.James Ja. I have a hard time taking seriously these kinds of studies however, for the direction of US education (and for that matter the sizeable portion of the rest of the world which is following our common core standards) takes the attitude that if something is not going to be covered on the evaluation tests, don't even mention it in class, for that would be taking time away from that which will help the student and the school to better assessment scores. Regarding politicians and their views on creation, we fool ourselves if we think we can get at their actual views. Anything any politician utters on the topic of evolution has extremely nothing to do with evolution or science in general, even if we recognize the awkwardness of the term "extremely nothing." A representative's job is to represent. Most politicians are lawyers. A defense lawyers own personal views of a client's guilt or innocence is irrelevant to that lawyer's task. You cannot learn what a politician believes on evolution merely by asking. You can only learn which views they perceive will get them the most votes. We cannot say that a self-proclaimed creationist politician believes in creationism, and therefore is stupid. If they managed to get elected, they are smarter than their evolutionist opponent, regardless of either's views on the topic (if any.) Regarding the citizen's views on evolution, even that is mostly out of reach. We are seeing currently a proposed takeover of most school curricula by the Federal Government. If that means introducing evolution into the classroom in a meaningful way, this would be a benefit to a plan mostly filled with detriments, the most important one being it takes away control from the state level and hands it down to the Federal level. Ron Numbers has shown that the views of the citizens on evolution vs creationism cannot be determined from multiple choice surveys, for most of the surveys contain answers that are mutually contradictory. Numbers did a study in which the self-contradictory surveys were eliminated. The remaining surveys showed an overwhelming understanding of, and firm belief in evolution (see Numbers, The Creationists, 1992: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Numbers ) Currently we in the USA face bigger problems than ever regarding creationism in the public schools. If evolution is not introduced in school, there is little chance proles will ever come to any significant appreciation of the topic. We have evolution being neglected as a component of Common Core, we have states' rights issues all mixed up in there, we have the concept of evolution coming under fire from both ends of the political spectrum and several points in between, for reasons having nothing to do with science: the notion that evolution fights religion, that evolution promotes immorality, that it promotes racism, that it's teachings result in homosexuality (not kidding on this last bit, there are those who claim that.) These are political notions, for nature cares not how we humans deal with her ways. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 01:06:58 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 18:06:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 12:06 PM, Max More wrote: > A bit of balance: > > > http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/the-republican-party-isnt-really-the-anti-science-party/281219/ > Thanks Max, great article. I would like to take a moment to slap the backs of you my fellow extropians for a moment. I don't believe there is anyone on the left here who believes in astrology. Though there may be a few who are against genetically modified foods. I also know of nobody on this right of this list that doesn't believe in evolution. I don't think we are as polarized on nuclear energy as the great unwashed masses either. We are far more enlightened than the unwashed masses on both the left and the right. It is admittedly frustrating for both sides when we present "facts" that appear to us to support our position, only to be batted down by the other side. These biases are the enemy to true skepticism. I identify as a skeptic, and remain firmly open to being convinced of my wrong headedness on all topics. That is one of my most cherished core beliefs. So don't give up on trying to convince me, but do it with science, the best data available, and solid logic. That will go a long way with me. And I think the same could be said of most members of this illustrious list. The science of global warming (as opposed to the politics of global warming) has hit a snag in the last month. Does that do anything to dampen anyone's position about it? Well, not really. It is only one study. But if it is true, others will eventually back it up, and we can throw out one of the biggest impediments to mutual understanding there is today. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tech101 at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 01:25:43 2013 From: tech101 at gmail.com (Adam A. Ford) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 12:25:43 +1100 Subject: [ExI] Coursera Nanotechnology has begun In-Reply-To: <20131112073253.GW5661@leitl.org> References: <20131112073253.GW5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: I have joined - I don't have any formal background in physics or chemistry, so I hope to just augment my basic understanding of nanotechnology by doing this course. I am interested in interviewing some experts in this area - results would go on my youtube channel and/or H+ Magazine. (links below will only work if you have joined the nanotechnology course and while you are logged in to Coursera) I am surprised at how much the course conveners refer to Drexler's views as Science Fiction in forums and in the main lecture video: https://class.coursera.org/nanotech-001/lecture/7 There seems to be some heated debate on the course forums so far 'Fenyman/Drexler Nanotechnology vs Nanomaterials': https://class.coursera.org/nanotech-001/forum/thread?thread_id=31 So you can just do a forum search on 'Drexler' - https://class.coursera.org/nanotech-001/forum/search?q=Drexler#2-state-query=Drexler Kind regards, Adam A. Ford Director - Humanity+ Global, Director - Humanity+ Australia, Chair - Humanity+ @ Melbourne Summit Chair - Singularity Summit Australia Director - Future Day Mob: +61 421 979 977 | Email: tech101 at gmail.com *Science, Technology & the Future * conference on *30th Nov - 1st Dec 2013*. *"The conference will feature a diverse range of presenters from across the globe. Scientists, Engineers, Artists and Philosophers will discuss evidence-based research, community awareness of rapid technological change, and scenarios for navigating our future."* *Future Day - "Join the conversation on Future Day March 1st to explore the possibilities about how the future is transforming us. You can celebrate Future Day however you like, the ball is in your court ? feel free to send a photo of your Future Day gatherings to info at futureday.org , and your jubilation may wind up being commemorated on the Future Day website and the Facebook page! "* Humanity+ | Humanity+ Australia| Singularity Summit Australia | Facebook| Twitter | YouTube| Future Day "A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels." ("Atomic Education Urged by Albert Einstein", New York Times, 25 May 1946) Please consider the environment before printing this email On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 6:32 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > https://www.coursera.org/course/nanotech > _______________________________________________ > 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 Nov 13 03:11:31 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 03:11:31 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Coursera Nanotechnology has begun In-Reply-To: References: <20131112073253.GW5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: <5282EDE3.3080305@aleph.se> On 2013-11-13 01:25, Adam A. Ford wrote: > > I am surprised at how much the course conveners refer to Drexler's > views as Science Fiction in forums and in the main lecture video: > https://class.coursera.org/nanotech-001/lecture/7 Maybe you should bring up what he really argues for? See his Guardian blogs, and his recent book. The problem seem that everybody argues against Strawman Drexler, who has little to do with real Drexler. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 13 03:50:07 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 19:50:07 -0800 Subject: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <01ff01cee023$72ed3af0$58c7b0d0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2013 5:07 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party >.The science of global warming (as opposed to the politics of global warming) has hit a snag in the last month. Kelly did you mean this? http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ I have been following hurricanes for years now after being told they would get more frequent and more violent. This year has been eerie quiet in the Atlantic. Do let us hope that doesn't point to global cooling. Warming would be OK, cooling, not. >.Does that do anything to dampen anyone's position about it? Well, not really. It is only one study. Kelly didn't you get the memo? The science is settled on that. >. But if it is true, others will eventually back it up, and we can throw out one of the biggest impediments to mutual understanding there is today. -Kelly My fondest hope is that we focus attention where it belongs: how to deal with increasing cost of energy before that becomes a bigger catastrophe than that monster typhoon that hit the Philippines. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 04:58:51 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 21:58:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party In-Reply-To: <01ff01cee023$72ed3af0$58c7b0d0$@att.net> References: <01ff01cee023$72ed3af0$58c7b0d0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 8:50 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:* Tuesday, November 12, 2013 5:07 PM > *To:* ExI chat list > > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science > Party > > > > > > >?The science of global warming (as opposed to the politics of global > warming) has hit a snag in the last month. > > > > Kelly did you mean this? > > > > http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ > More like these sorts of stories about why the temperature has been steady for the past 20 years and how climate change scientists are on the defensive about it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24874060 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/26/opinion/a-pause-not-an-end-to-warming.html?_r=0 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2485772/Global-warming-pause-20-years-Arctic-sea-ice-started-recover.html The Daily Mail piece has a graph that shows the nature of the problem faced by scientists that predicted one thing and then an entirely different thing actually happened. This takes the edge off of the shrillness of people like Al Gore in the 90s. Apparently, we aren't all going to die in a fire storm in the very near future. Though they claim it will start up again in a while... yawn. Show me the real data, not what your computer model shows. I have been following hurricanes for years now after being told they would > get more frequent and more violent. This year has been eerie quiet in the > Atlantic. Do let us hope that doesn?t point to global cooling. Warming > would be OK, cooling, not. > Once again Spike, you aren't with the cool kids. The cool kids now say "Human Caused Climate Change" not global warming. That way whether the temperature goes up, down or stays the same, it's our fault. > > >?Does that do anything to dampen anyone's position about it? Well, not > really. It is only one study? > > > > Kelly didn?t you get the memo? The science is settled on that. > I've always remained slightly skeptical of it on the basis that the science is really hard. I have been consistently against the idea that the government can fix climate change with tax games that send money from the rich to the poor (countries and people). > >? But if it is true, others will eventually back it up, and we can throw > out one of the biggest impediments to mutual understanding there is today. > ?Kelly > > > > My fondest hope is that we focus attention where it belongs: how to deal > with increasing cost of energy before that becomes a bigger catastrophe > than that monster typhoon that hit the Philippines. > Of course, the climate change crowd will point to that and say, "isn't it better that we have smaller Atlantic storms than this sort of monster in the Pacific?" to which I answer, "Shit happens man, get used to it." And if you are in the Philippines this is indeed very shitty. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Wed Nov 13 06:42:08 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 06:42:08 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party In-Reply-To: <01ff01cee023$72ed3af0$58c7b0d0$@att.net> References: <01ff01cee023$72ed3af0$58c7b0d0$@att.net> Message-ID: <52831F40.3090709@aleph.se> On 2013-11-13 03:50, spike wrote: > > I have been following hurricanes for years now after being told they > would get more frequent and more violent. This year has been eerie > quiet in the Atlantic. Do let us hope that doesn't point to global > cooling. Warming would be OK, cooling, not. > Hurricane numbers are a bad indicator for climate: you get very few data points even in a high hurricane year. Consider flipping a biased coin, trying to estimate how biased it is. But you only get 2-10 flips each year. Worse, you are trying to tell whether the bias is changing. [ The variance of the estimate from N trials with pN heads is (1-p)/(N+1)^2 (it is a beta distribution). going from 2 to 10 flips reduces the variance by a factor of 0.67, which is just a 19% reduction of standard deviation. If you want to reliably detect a change in p on the order of 10% you will need a lot more data - at least more than 20 data points. ] I am always annoyed at how many people confuse weather - the stochastic outcomes - with climate - the underlying parameters. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 07:11:01 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 23:11:01 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Coursera Nanotechnology has begun In-Reply-To: References: <20131112073253.GW5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 5:25 PM, Adam A. Ford wrote: > I have joined - I don't have any formal background in physics or > chemistry, so I hope to just augment my basic understanding of > nanotechnology by doing this course. > I have as well. Thanks for the update, Eugen. I have some formal background in the sciences, and I actually ran a nanotech project some years ago, so for me this is curiosity/seeing how well I can do. I wouldn't call myself an "expert", but I wish to see if my current understanding includes everything in a course such as this. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rex at nosyntax.net Wed Nov 13 07:17:31 2013 From: rex at nosyntax.net (rex) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 23:17:31 -0800 Subject: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party In-Reply-To: <52831F40.3090709@aleph.se> References: <01ff01cee023$72ed3af0$58c7b0d0$@att.net> <52831F40.3090709@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20131113071731.GA21361@ninja.nosyntax.net> Anders Sandberg [2013-11-12 22:46]: > Hurricane numbers are a bad indicator for climate: you get very few data > points even in a high hurricane year. > > Consider flipping a biased coin, trying to estimate how biased it is. But > you only get 2-10 flips each year. Worse, you are trying to tell whether > the bias is changing.? > > [ The variance of the estimate from N trials with pN heads is > (1-p)/(N+1)^2 (it is a beta distribution). going from 2 to 10 flips > reduces the variance by a factor of 0.67, which is just a 19% reduction of > standard deviation. If you want to reliably detect a change in p on the > order of 10% you will need a lot more data - at least more than 20 data > points. ] Interesting idea, Anders, but I don't understand it. We have a record of hurricane numbers h[i] for years i = 1:N, and temperature records for those years. We could do a linear regression to try to estimate how much of the variance in hurricane numbers is accounted for by temperature, but where does the biased coin model enter into it? -rex -- Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson; you find the present tense and the past perfect. From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 08:24:34 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 01:24:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <024001cedcb1$0d064580$2712d080$@att.net> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <527CA4A4.9000009@aleph.se> <00d601cedc95$b4995ab0$1dcc1010$@att.net> <024001cedcb1$0d064580$2712d080$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 11:33 AM, spike wrote: > Why is dry land [inherently] better for smarts than ocean? > Evolution requires a few things that are harder to get in the ocean. First, and perhaps most important, in order to get new species, you have to have geographical separation of two cousins for a period of time so they forget how to interbreed. That is harder to come by in the ocean than on land where you have mountains, rivers, etc. dividing things up. There are fewer niches to occupy in the ocean than on land. So evolution tends to wash out a bit in the ocean. That is it goes slower. There are estimated to be approximately 28,000 species of fish. 15,300 species of marine (saltwater) fish were cataloged in the Census of Marine Life database. Another site says there are 27,500 species of freshwater fish. But this article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2097874/There-actually-ARENT-fish-sea-Rivers-lakes-contain-80-Earths-species--despite-covering-2-surface.html states what I expected to find, that "There are more fish species in freshwater than in saltwater habitats, despite the much greater area and volume of the oceans" "Despite covering 70% of the Earth's surface, marine environments contain only 20% of all its species." By marine, I think they mean saltwater, but I'm unsure. So one of the numbers or facts above is suspect as they seem to be contradictory. However, I'm going to go with the 80% of the fish species live in fresh water despite it being only about 2% of the water out there because rivers and lakes provide the separation required for speciation, whereas the ocean does not do this nearly as well. While it is possible to evolve very good tentacles underwater, nothing like hands has evolved underwater. Part of the problem is that water tends to evolve creatures that are streamlined. Hands, are clearly not very streamlined. Could tentacles lead to intelligence? Perhaps. But without high rates of speciation, it would take much longer in the ocean than on land. > To be tech enabled, you definitely need to get dry somehow. You can > concentrate elements, do jillions of experiments that can never be done > without dryness. Kelly?s notion of hands I am still pondering, but I was > thinking of how limited is the range of experiments without dry land of > some sort, and the materials limitations. > > The smartest animals that evolved entirely in the sea are the cephalopods, octopi and their cousins. They are smart enough to open bottles and the like. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_intelligence I don't believe that they are nearly as smart as most mammals, but I can't back that up with any particular data. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 08:32:37 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 01:32:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 9, 2013 at 7:12 AM, BillK wrote: > On Sat, Nov 9, 2013 at 1:03 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > And yet mars currently lacks a molten core. It also lacks the > magnetosphere > > that would protect martians from radiation. Would mars count as one of > the > > planets counted by NASA in this survey? > > I think there is still debate about Mars. > There is no debate (that I know of) that mars has a very weak magnetosphere. That is the issue that most affects life at this point. It probably did have one in the distant past. So nobody knows NASA's definition of goldilocks planets well enough to know if mars would count as one of the eight billion or not? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 09:11:56 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 02:11:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 1:00 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-11-11 05:41, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 3:41 PM, BillK wrote: > >> I find the scale of these structures a bit mind boggling. >> So I think I'll sit quiet for a while until the boggle factor returns to >> normal. >> > > It might boggle your mind a little less to understand that these large > scale structures likely formed VERY early in the life of the universe and > have simply been expanding to their ungodly current size over the last 13.7 > billion years. Yes, the scales of anything beyond our little planet strain > our African-made and optimized primate brains. > > In fact, we cannot even handle planetary scales. I cannot intuitively > think about the distance from Oxford to Stockholm or even London. I can > compare it to known distances, I can play around with imagined maps, I can > remember what the trip is like, but I don't *feel* it like I feel the > distances within the towns where I have walked. > But it's not incomprehensible... Just slightly out of our daily experience level. > I suspect the reason is that in order to go between these places I have to > take a vehicle rather than wander. > But if you have ever walked to somewhere you normally drive to, it gives you a sense of how to scale. > In between these target places there is an awful lot of places that would > feel big to me if I were in them, but since I have never been to Ipswich I > do not have any feel for it. It is just a point on my mental map (with a > sticky note saying it was used in a Monty Python joke). > I can't say that I have ANY feeling for Great Britain, despite having flown over it once or twice. > The large scale structure is pretty awesome. This video looks at the local > motions of galactic clusters (starts slow, gets awesome): > http://vimeo.com/66641648 > That video reminds me of my childhood trying to understand what the hell Jaques Cousteu was saying about all those pretty fish. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 09:32:53 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 09:32:53 +0000 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 8:32 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > There is no debate (that I know of) that mars has a very weak magnetosphere. > That is the issue that most affects life at this point. It probably did have > one in the distant past. > > So nobody knows NASA's definition of goldilocks planets well enough to know > if mars would count as one of the eight billion or not? > > I think the confusion is between 'habitable zone' and 'habitable planet'. A goldilocks planet must be in the habitable zone, but for other reasons (like being too small) may not be habitable. Quote: In astronomy and astrobiology, the circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ) (or simply the habitable zone), colloquially known as the Goldilocks zone, is the region around a star within which planetary-mass objects with sufficient atmospheric pressure can support liquid water at their surfaces. ------------ But there is even some dispute about the size of Sol's habitable zone. Quote: Given the large spread in the masses of planets within a circumstellar habitable zone, coupled with the discovery of super-Earth planets which can sustain thicker atmospheres and stronger magnetic fields than Earth, circumstellar habitable zones are now split into two separate regions?a "conservative habitable zone" in which lower-mass planets like Earth or Venus can remain habitable, complemented by a larger "extended habitable zone" in which super-Earth planets, with stronger greenhouse effects, can have the right temperature for liquid water to exist at the surface. ---------- See: BillK From pharos at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 10:16:48 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 10:16:48 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Statistical tests Message-ID: Weak statistical standards implicated in scientific irreproducibility One-quarter of studies that meet commonly used statistical cutoff may be false. 11 November 2013 Quote: Johnson then used these uniformly most powerful tests to compare P values to Bayes factors. When he did so, he found that a P value of 0.05 or less ? commonly considered evidence in support of a hypothesis in fields such as social science, in which non-reproducibility has become a serious issue ? corresponds to Bayes factors of between 3 and 5, which are considered weak evidence to support a finding. Indeed, as many as 17?25% of such findings are probably false, Johnson calculates. He advocates for scientists to use more stringent P values of 0.005 or less to support their findings, and thinks that the use of the 0.05 standard might account for most of the problem of non-reproducibility in science ? even more than other issues, such as biases and scientific misconduct. ----------------- BillK From anders at aleph.se Wed Nov 13 12:17:09 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 13:17:09 +0100 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> Message-ID: <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> On 2013-11-13 09:32, BillK wrote: > On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 8:32 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> So nobody knows NASA's definition of goldilocks planets well enough to know >> if mars would count as one of the eight billion or not? > I think the confusion is between 'habitable zone' and 'habitable planet'. > A goldilocks planet must be in the habitable zone, but for other > reasons (like being too small) may not be habitable. Goldilocks is not even a proper scientific term, just a shorthand and journa-splaining word. Whether Mars is too small to be habitable is best phrased as a timing issue: Mars-sized worlds will stop continental drift early (crudely: total internal energy ~R^3, radiation rate ~R^2, so the time until things stop is ~R) and then become dry and lose atmosphere. But once it had oceans, and no doubt life could have lived in them (given what Earth-life can do). The zone where water can exist also moves somewhat across the lifespan of the star (the inner and outer radii scale as sqrt(luminosity)) but depends on planet mass and atmosphere. So we might talk about habitability in terms of time and space. Right now we do not know the number density of small terrestrials. A fair guess is some kind of power-law (it works for asteroids, and seem to fit the simulations I have seen that people fit to real exoplanet data). Their frequency is R^-a where a is some exponent: 0.48 according to http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1305/1305.0542.pdf/. However, there may be a plateau below 2 Earth radiuses (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.0460.pdf) - but this might be mainly about the very near star planets. (And a power law with that kind of heavy tail will by necessity have a cut-off - or actually have an exponent If it is a power law all the way down to some limit, the total amount of habitable time is the integral of R^(-a+1). This is dominated by the smallest worlds if a>2, and by the largest ones if a<2. So if the above papers are correct, then most habitable world-moments are on pretty big planets. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Wed Nov 13 12:30:24 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 13:30:24 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party In-Reply-To: <20131113071731.GA21361@ninja.nosyntax.net> References: <01ff01cee023$72ed3af0$58c7b0d0$@att.net> <52831F40.3090709@aleph.se> <20131113071731.GA21361@ninja.nosyntax.net> Message-ID: <528370E0.80701@aleph.se> On 2013-11-13 08:17, rex wrote: > Interesting idea, Anders, but I don't understand it. We have a record > of hurricane numbers h[i] for years i = 1:N, and temperature records for > those years. We could do a linear regression to try to estimate how > much of the variance in hurricane numbers is accounted for by > temperature, > but where does the biased coin model enter into it? I wanted to give an easy example, rather than get into the statistics. Yes, we can try to model how hurricanes are affected by temperature, and maybe it is even possible to say something sensible about it. But going in the opposite direction, looking for evidence of higher temperatures in the hurricane frequency, does not work at all. There are few data points, but worse, we do not know the map hurricane "frequency -> temperature". Sure, we could first do the regression and then use it, but then we are just feeding the data back twice - we are not learning anything new. Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_hurricane_season shows a pretty noisy time series; the trend is definitely smaller than the variability. Hehehe... another political thread hi-jacked by statistics! :-) -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Wed Nov 13 14:38:27 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 15:38:27 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> Message-ID: <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> On 2013-11-13 10:11, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 1:00 AM, Anders Sandberg > wrote: > > > In fact, we cannot even handle planetary scales. I cannot > intuitively think about the distance from Oxford to Stockholm or > even London. I can compare it to known distances, I can play > around with imagined maps, I can remember what the trip is like, > but I don't *feel* it like I feel the distances within the towns > where I have walked. > > > But it's not incomprehensible... Just slightly out of our daily > experience level. Kind of. I just arrived in Plzen in the Czech republic (world capital of the letter 'Z'!) I have been here before, I know where it is on the map, but I do not *feel* like I am 1,051 kilometres away from home. I *feel* that walking to the university from where I am now is a long walk. But I cannot *feel* how much longer walking to Oxford would be compared to walking to Prague, despite a sizeable difference. > I suspect the reason is that in order to go between these places I > have to take a vehicle rather than wander. > > > But if you have ever walked to somewhere you normally drive to, it > gives you a sense of how to scale. What happens is that your local place cell maps get joined up. London is typically first experienced as a "mole map", where you get to know regions around tube stations. Gradually they join up, forming a larger map of neighbourhoods. Scale shows up about now, except that it only covers the central parts you deal with. Human movement is somewhat fractal: lots of local movement in small clustered regions (home, work, museums, strolls), fewer longer trips (commutes, visit to remote office) and even fewer very long trips (the median UK business traveller makes 7 flights per year). Only the local movement produces sensible senses of scale. > In between these target places there is an awful lot of places > that would feel big to me if I were in them, but since I have > never been to Ipswich I do not have any feel for it. It is just a > point on my mental map (with a sticky note saying it was used in a > Monty Python joke). > > > I can't say that I have ANY feeling for Great Britain, despite having > flown over it once or twice. Exactly! The American Midwest is an abstraction or TV setting for me, despite having seen it ("flyover country") from the airplane window many times. -- 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 Wed Nov 13 14:49:51 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 15:49:51 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Statistical tests In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5283918F.2070803@aleph.se> On 2013-11-13 11:16, BillK wrote: > Weak statistical standards implicated in scientific irreproducibility > One-quarter of studies that meet commonly used statistical cutoff may > be false. But even sharp p-values can be useless if effect sizes are not stated. If a medicine reduces the length of colds at p=0.000001 but has an effect size of only 1%, it is useless in practice. A surprising number of papers downplay or hide effect sizes. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 16:11:33 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 11:11:33 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Max More wrote: > A bit of balance: > > > http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/the-republican-party-isnt-really-the-anti-science-party/281219/ > They're not just anti-science, after learning that the majority of Republicans in the House and Senate voted to default on the national debt I concluded that Republicans were anti-logic. I could no longer stand the humiliation of being a member of such a hillbilly organization, therefore last week I resigned from the Republican party ending my long association with the party of Lincoln. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 16:49:25 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 11:49:25 -0500 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <527CA4A4.9000009@aleph.se> <00d601cedc95$b4995ab0$1dcc1010$@att.net> <024001cedcb1$0d064580$2712d080$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 3:24 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > While it is possible to evolve very good tentacles underwater, nothing > like hands has evolved underwater. Part of the problem is that water tends > to evolve creatures that are streamlined. Hands, are clearly not very > streamlined. Could tentacles lead to intelligence? Perhaps. But without > high rates of speciation, it would take much longer in the ocean than on > land. > I think it would be almost impossible for sea creatures, however smart they were, to develop technology. The laws of Newtonian Physics were hard enough to discover for humans who lived in a atmosphere not in a vacuum, but it would be astronomically harder under water; there things NEVER move at the same speed unless a force is constantly applied, and intelligent fish wouldn't have the motions of the stars and planets to help them figure out basic physics. Even humans would never have discovered Quantum Mechanics if they hadn't figured out a way to make a vacuum first. And intelligent fish would lack one of the first and most important inventions, fire. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 17:13:52 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 18:13:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <527CA4A4.9000009@aleph.se> <00d601cedc95$b4995ab0$1dcc1010$@att.net> <024001cedcb1$0d064580$2712d080$@att.net> Message-ID: John K Clark > I can think of a pretty good excuse, the telescope on Kepler ... Can't disagree. But then also all other "optimistic" claims abut all other exo-planets are quite void, too. Here, how jubilant are some: http://seagerexoplanets.mit.edu/research.htm On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 5:49 PM, John Clark wrote: > On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 3:24 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > > While it is possible to evolve very good tentacles underwater, nothing >> like hands has evolved underwater. Part of the problem is that water tends >> to evolve creatures that are streamlined. Hands, are clearly not very >> streamlined. Could tentacles lead to intelligence? Perhaps. But without >> high rates of speciation, it would take much longer in the ocean than on >> land. >> > > I think it would be almost impossible for sea creatures, however smart > they were, to develop technology. The laws of Newtonian Physics were hard > enough to discover for humans who lived in a atmosphere not in a vacuum, > but it would be astronomically harder under water; there things NEVER move > at the same speed unless a force is constantly applied, and intelligent > fish wouldn't have the motions of the stars and planets to help them figure > out basic physics. Even humans would never have discovered Quantum > Mechanics if they hadn't figured out a way to make a vacuum first. And > intelligent fish would lack one of the first and most important inventions, > fire. > > John K Clark > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 13 17:24:49 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 09:24:49 -0800 Subject: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party In-Reply-To: <52831F40.3090709@aleph.se> References: <01ff01cee023$72ed3af0$58c7b0d0$@att.net> <52831F40.3090709@aleph.se> Message-ID: <00fc01cee095$426669c0$c7333d40$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party On 2013-11-13 03:50, spike wrote: I have been following hurricanes for years now after being told they would get more frequent and more violent. This year has been eerie quiet in the Atlantic. Do let us hope that doesn't point to global cooling. Warming would be OK, cooling, not. >.Hurricane numbers are a bad indicator for climate: you get very few data points even in a high hurricane year. >.I am always annoyed at how many people confuse weather - the stochastic outcomes - with climate - the underlying parameters.-- Dr Anders Sandberg Ja, agreed. Most of us here do understand the difference between weather and climate. This is a special problem we see specifically with the global warming debate, because it is tangled in politics, which is subject to change as fast as the weather. Note in the internet archives how political agents used the super destructive hurricane Katrina for political leverage back in the peak days of global warming interest of 2005 (by predicting more and stronger hurricanes) compared to the internet traffic on the same topic today. We can only hope to see a similar interest level in sustainable energy sources as we saw in 2005 regarding hurricanes. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rex at nosyntax.net Wed Nov 13 17:54:10 2013 From: rex at nosyntax.net (rex) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 09:54:10 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Statistical tests In-Reply-To: <5283918F.2070803@aleph.se> References: <5283918F.2070803@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20131113175410.GC21361@ninja.nosyntax.net> Anders Sandberg [2013-11-13 06:52]: >But even sharp p-values can be useless if effect sizes are not >stated. If a medicine reduces the length of colds at p=0.000001 but >has an effect size of only 1%, it is useless in practice. A >surprising number of papers downplay or hide effect sizes. Surprising until one recalls, "Publish or perish." What fraction of authors will (correctly) note, "X is related to Y at the p=0.000001 level, but the effect is utterly insignificant." Who wants to be known as the fellow who finds lots of useless, but statistically significant, relationships? -rex -- Tales are like trees: both grow taller over time. From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 13 17:57:37 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 09:57:37 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Statistical tests In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <013a01cee099$d73c3b70$85b4b250$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: [ExI] Statistical tests Weak statistical standards implicated in scientific irreproducibility One-quarter of studies that meet commonly used statistical cutoff may be false. 11 November 2013 Quote: >...Johnson then used these uniformly most powerful tests to compare P values to Bayes factors. When he did so, he found that a P value of 0.05 or less - commonly considered evidence in support of a hypothesis in fields such as social science, in which non-reproducibility has become a serious issue - corresponds to Bayes factors of between 3 and 5, which are considered weak evidence to support a finding... ----------------- BillK ____________________________________________ Thanks BillK, I have thought this for a long time. Back when I was learning about Bayesian statistics I did the math on this and came to the same startling conclusion: that arbitrary 95% confidence level we are taught in Statistics 101 is misleading. That does not mean your conclusion will be right 95% of the time. I encourage the math geeks to go over the equations to see why. This doesn't mean the 95% criterion is useless, only that it is an oversimplification that leads often to misinterpretation, and creates opportunity for all kinds of mischief. I saw this firsthand in a failed manufacturing line in 1990 and 1991. The engineers involved in that are a pathetic poster child for this phenom. They were absolutely set in stone convinced, if any test was below 95% confidence, out with it, meaningless. Above, chisel it in stone tablets, a universal truth has been discovered. Nature doesn't really work that way. It was classic example of a fuzzy line that became chiseled in stone as a sharp boundary between truth and fiction. I kept trying to explain why this was going wrong, but I might as well have been talking to a wall; 95% confidence is not just an arbitrary mathematical convenience to them. Everyone's statistics book said plainly, 95% confidence determines statistical significance period end of story. spike From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 13 18:09:26 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 10:09:26 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> Message-ID: <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg >.Exactly! The American Midwest is an abstraction or TV setting for me, despite having seen it ("flyover country") from the airplane window many times. --Dr Anders Sandberg Hi Anders, I often urge people especially Europeans, to come to the states, fly in to Phoenix, or Las Vegas, even Los Angeles, or just pick one out there somewhere, any one of those states where you look out your plane window and see no signs of civilization for half an hour at a time at airliner speeds. Rent a car, a good comfortable fast one, then just drive out across the US desert southwest. Note how empty and how vast and how sunny it is out there. Note the stark desert beauty everywhere. Go across Highway 50 in Nevada is a great example. Stop somewhere. Right in the middle of the road if you wish, no one is coming, either direction. Get out of your car, and listen. That is a sound you seldom hear: your heart beating and your lungs breathing. Drive for a week thru the fly-over states. Take camping gear along, because cities are far apart. When you get back to the airport, ask yourself if your views on massive ground based solar have been influenced by your lonely drive thru those massive empty desert states. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 18:52:24 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 11:52:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 7:38 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-11-13 10:11, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 1:00 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > >> >> But it's not incomprehensible... Just slightly out of our daily > experience level. > > > Kind of. I just arrived in Plzen in the Czech republic (world capital of > the letter 'Z'!) I have been here before, I know where it is on the map, > but I do not *feel* like I am 1,051 kilometres away from home. I *feel* > that walking to the university from where I am now is a long walk. But I > cannot *feel* how much longer walking to Oxford would be compared to > walking to Prague, despite a sizeable difference. > I can't argue with how you feel, as they are your feelings. Just out of curiosity though, what's the longest distance you have walked Anders? > I can't say that I have ANY feeling for Great Britain, despite having > flown over it once or twice. > > > Exactly! The American Midwest is an abstraction or TV setting for me, > despite having seen it ("flyover country") from the airplane window many > times. > And I have driven across America many times. While I don't have the same feel for anyone who has done the two to three month walk, I do have some kind of feel for it. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 18:57:14 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 11:57:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 11:09 AM, spike wrote: > > > Note how empty and how vast and how sunny it is out there. Note the stark > desert beauty everywhere. Go across Highway 50 in Nevada is a great > example. Stop somewhere. Right in the middle of the road if you wish, no > one is coming, either direction. Get out of your car, and listen. That is > a sound you seldom hear: your heart beating and your lungs breathing. > While highway 50 is a breathtaking example of loneliness, it's also a great example of why the government shouldn't be in charge of deciding where roads go. What a tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars! Any private company that would have built it as a toll road would have LONG AGO gone out of business. I hate that highways are the example people always bring up of why we need large government projects. They do it so poorly. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 19:08:53 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 12:08:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 9:11 AM, John Clark wrote: > > On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Max More wrote: > > > A bit of balance: >> >> >> http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/the-republican-party-isnt-really-the-anti-science-party/281219/ >> > > They're not just anti-science, after learning that the majority of > Republicans in the House and Senate voted to default on the national debt I > concluded that Republicans were anti-logic. I could no longer stand the > humiliation of being a member of such a hillbilly organization, therefore > last week I resigned from the Republican party ending my long association > with the party of Lincoln. > I'm sure you'll be missed John. Are you coming to the light and joining the Libertarians now? ;-) -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 19:17:12 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 12:17:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <527CA4A4.9000009@aleph.se> <00d601cedc95$b4995ab0$1dcc1010$@att.net> <024001cedcb1$0d064580$2712d080$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 9:49 AM, John Clark wrote: > On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 3:24 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > > While it is possible to evolve very good tentacles underwater, nothing >> like hands has evolved underwater. Part of the problem is that water tends >> to evolve creatures that are streamlined. Hands, are clearly not very >> streamlined. Could tentacles lead to intelligence? Perhaps. But without >> high rates of speciation, it would take much longer in the ocean than on >> land. >> > > I think it would be almost impossible for sea creatures, however smart > they were, to develop technology. The laws of Newtonian Physics were hard > enough to discover for humans who lived in a atmosphere not in a vacuum, > but it would be astronomically harder under water; there things NEVER move > at the same speed unless a force is constantly applied, and intelligent > fish wouldn't have the motions of the stars and planets to help them figure > out basic physics. Even humans would never have discovered Quantum > Mechanics if they hadn't figured out a way to make a vacuum first. And > intelligent fish would lack one of the first and most important inventions, > fire. > While fire is important to land animals, what makes it important is that it is terrestrial. Of greater importance to this discussion might be the invention of writing. Imagine that cephalopods had another billion years of evolution without the interference of land returning to water animals... and they got enough intelligence that they could invent writing. It would be far more difficult to find an alternative to clay tablets or papyrus underwater. And what would you write with. Also, mining would be terribly difficult underwater, and especially in the very deep water worlds. How would they be able to pass through the bronze and iron ages in such a world? While I have no problem seeing life and even intelligent life evolve in the ocean eventually, the rise of technology in a water world seems far more difficult. Of course this might just be because I have a lack of an imagination. Intelligent creatures might figure out how to do it. But if you live in a world covered with 7 to 70 miles of water everywhere, with compressed warm ice at the bottom of the ocean, the materials issue would be difficult. Even the occasional underwater volcano would be hard to take advantage of. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 19:24:52 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 12:24:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <5278E5FB.8080302@aleph.se> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 5:17 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-11-13 09:32, BillK wrote: > >> On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 8:32 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >>> So nobody knows NASA's definition of goldilocks planets well enough to >>> know >>> >>> if mars would count as one of the eight billion or not? >>> >> I think the confusion is between 'habitable zone' and 'habitable planet'. >> A goldilocks planet must be in the habitable zone, but for other >> reasons (like being too small) may not be habitable. >> > > Goldilocks is not even a proper scientific term, just a shorthand and > journa-splaining word. > > Whether Mars is too small to be habitable is best phrased as a timing > issue: Mars-sized worlds will stop continental drift early (crudely: total > internal energy ~R^3, radiation rate ~R^2, so the time until things stop is > ~R) and then become dry and lose atmosphere. But once it had oceans, and no > doubt life could have lived in them (given what Earth-life can do). The > zone where water can exist also moves somewhat across the lifespan of the > star (the inner and outer radii scale as sqrt(luminosity)) but depends on > planet mass and atmosphere. So we might talk about habitability in terms > of time and space. > If intelligent life had evolved on mars in the distant past, then they might have been able to escape the death of their world. The loss of atmosphere is of course related to the loss of the magnetosphere. For planets very close to their sun would the increased density of the solar wind require an even stronger magnetosphere to preserve an atmosphere? Would larger planets with greater gravity be able to hold onto an atmosphere more tightly? The dynamic interaction of atmosphere, magnetosphere and solar wind might make it difficult to have enough atmosphere for enough time to evolve intelligent life. Also, if the atmosphere is too thick, that seems like it would cause its own set of problems. You can't live on Jupiter for example, thought that is an extreme example. I don't know the necessary physics, but if you had a planet 2x the size of earth with the same proportion of water and atmosphere, but a much greater magnetosphere because of the size of the core, would you have problems with the atmosphere being too dense? Would the oceans be too deep in some sense? Would it be harder for continents to arise from the deep? So many questions. I'm sure there are people at NASA who have been scratching their heads about this stuff for decades. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 13 19:43:18 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 11:43:18 -0800 Subject: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <026001cee0a8$9aec5470$d0c4fd50$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2013 8:12 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Max More wrote: > A bit of balance: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/the-republican-party-isn t-really-the-anti-science-party/281219/ >.They're not just anti-science, after learning that the majority of Republicans in the House and Senate voted to default on the national debt I concluded that Republicans were anti-logic. I could no longer stand the humiliation of being a member of such a hillbilly organization. Now that is an egregiously elevationist comment. They prefer the more respectful "Mountain Williams" if you don't mind, and believe in the fundamental equality of all mankind regardless of distance from sea level. >.therefore last week I resigned from the Republican party ending my long association with the party of Lincoln. John K Clark How will they ever cope without you, John? Utter collapse is imminent! Or not. Be kind to Republicans John, they may soon run your government. John you were aware that the state of California has defaulted twice that I can remember, once in 2009 where they sent out IOUs. I didn't have any but I saw one. People treated them as real money for a while, and even when they weren't immediately redeemed, the discount on them wasn't much. Note that the state of California went Chapter 11 (not 13) with a balanced budget requirement and the option of its citizens to move away, taking their money with them. So if that wasn't a big catastrophe, you can see why the citizens of California (and pretty much everyone else) didn't get too panicky over the threat of a US default. A US default would raise our price of borrowing, but our borrowing should be more expensive than it is: it is riskier than it appears. The Fed has a bunch of options the states don't have, such as their arbitrary calculation on inflation. They could just find a way to declare inflation negative and give COLA decreases on all Social Security pensioners (that is coming) or just keep raises for all federal employees and pensioners to zero for a year or three. They could take the money in Medicare, dump it into some other plan (whose name escapes me at the moment, perhaps named after that guy in the Whitehouse) then declare that program delayed indefinitely because of technical issues of some kind, such as a faulty website. Yes this is a form of default and yes you and I are holding the bag. We knew it was coming (didn't we?) for a long time. Yes it will be painful. But do let us move on to the acceptance stage, shall we? Our government set up a huge Ponzi scheme; eventually it has to collapse. It is doing that now. Anger and denial are so yesterday. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 20:20:29 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 13:20:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party In-Reply-To: <026001cee0a8$9aec5470$d0c4fd50$@att.net> References: <026001cee0a8$9aec5470$d0c4fd50$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 12:43 PM, spike wrote: > Or not. Be kind to Republicans John, they may soon run your government. > Perhaps this is wishful thinking Spike. Demographics are on the Democrat's side. While the abject stupidity of Washington is undeniable, you can see that an otherwise very smart person can end up blaming the wrong party for the trouble. > A US default would raise our price of borrowing, but our borrowing should > be more expensive than it is: it is riskier than it appears. > Ok Spike, you've off the rails here a bit. Defaulting on our debt would increase the rate of interest the Federal Government would have to pay. While that doesn't sound so horrible, in 2012, payment of interest on the debt cost $220 billion, or about 6 percent of the budget. If the interest rate doubled from its current low rate (sorry, I can't make sense of the numbers to tell you exactly what it is today) then Poof! All of a sudden this goes from 6% of the budget to 12% and that's mostly going to come out of discretionary spending on the things we like the most, like basic science research, NASA and the like. So the Fed keeps printing money to keep the interest rates low. It is a big problem if we get downgraded. Every politician, even the dumber Republicans, understand this, and there is no way a majority of them would ever actually vote to default. However, it is very difficult to get any kind of leverage over this press protected president without threatening something extremely dire. > Our government set up a huge Ponzi scheme; eventually it has to collapse. > It is doing that now. Anger and denial are so yesterday. > Perhaps not yet, but soon it is possible. Anyone who thinks otherwise risks being one of those dead optimists Eugen is so eager about. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 22:54:05 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 09:54:05 +1100 Subject: [ExI] The Problem with Drugs (was Re: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 11 November 2013 04:22, John Clark wrote: > > > > On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 1:06 AM, Stathis Papaioannou > wrote: > >> > Here's what Einstein would have done if he had direct access to his >> brain's control panel: he would have adjusted things so that his drive >> to do theoretical physics was even greater, the process more >> rewarding, and the dejection from going down a wrong pathway much less >> so as to minimise the risk that he would give up. > > > I hope something like that could be made to work but I see problems. It's OK > if he enjoys doing physics but to advance he must receive much more pleasure > from doing NEW physics, but the trouble is that's very hard to do and > happens rarely; it took Einstein over a decade to receive his reward in the > pleasure of finding General Relativity. If you wanted to maximize your > happiness it seems to me it would be better to reset the switches in your > emotional control panel so that you received happiness not from finding new > physics but from something much easier to accomplish and therefore happens a > lot more often, like blowing bubbles. I hope I'm wrong about this. The happiness would be linked to the process and anticipation, not to the final result. If I work really hard I can perhaps achieve a lot, which would make me happy, but against that is the fact that the hard work is difficult and after a point, unpleasant. If I could, I would make the hard work more pleasant than, say, sitting around browsing the Internet. There is no reason why either intensity of happiness or happiness per unit time should depend on the difficult of the activity. -- Stathis Papaioannou From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 13 23:56:13 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 15:56:13 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> Message-ID: <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2013 10:57 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Dark Matter On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 11:09 AM, spike wrote: Note how empty and how vast and how sunny it is out there. Note the stark desert beauty everywhere. Go across Highway 50 in Nevada is a great example. Stop somewhere.. While highway 50 is a breathtaking example of loneliness, it's also a great example of why the government shouldn't be in charge of deciding where roads go. What a tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars! Any private company that would have built it as a toll road would have LONG AGO gone out of business. I hate that highways are the example people always bring up of why we need large government projects. They do it so poorly. -Kelly Kelly I totally agree, so don't interpret the next bit as refuting it in any way. Here's our chance to redeem a mistake of the past, to turn a stumbling block into a stepping stone. Highway 50 had enormous potential as a showcase location for ground based solar. It's about 600 km of paved two-lane with a good solid base under it and very little rain, little cloud cover ever out there in that big old desert. What we could do is use all those Chinese PV factories' output, install ground based PV a km or more either side of the road, collect the power every km or so, use the power to convert low-grade bituminous coal from Wyoming and Utah or biomass from California's Central Valley to liquid hydrocarbon fuel. Autonomous trucks would haul in water and feedstock, then haul out Diesel oil. Since the trucks are autonomous, we could use smaller trucks to preserve the road, or even do stuff like taking standard tanker trucks and retrofitting the big Diesel engines with smaller ones so that the trucks cruise at 80 kph instead of the usual 110-130, so that alone would nearly double the fuel economy in hauling out synfuel. The road already exists, and isn't being used for anything, snaking all the way out thru that lonely desert. The PV factories in China already exist, and they are filled with workers who will rise up and kill if they don't have something to do. We could use Chinese PVs, American sunshine and coal, synthesize the fuel in Nevada and ship it all the way back to China if we wanted. Time to fire up the old spreadsheet! There is so much empty land out there, it would be interesting to estimate what could be done with 1000 square km of ground based PV used for biomass or coal conversion to liquids. Highway 50 was built for the wrong reasons, but if we used that as a showcase for a huge GBPV installation, it would be an example of using cheap energy now to create an energy source for expensive energy times in the future. A successful demonstration of that would give the world new hope. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 14 00:27:00 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 16:27:00 -0800 Subject: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party In-Reply-To: References: <026001cee0a8$9aec5470$d0c4fd50$@att.net> Message-ID: <039001cee0d0$3c98a860$b5c9f920$@att.net> Skip to the end if you are hard up for time. It is worth it. s >. On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson Subject: Re: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 12:43 PM, spike wrote: Or not. Be kind to Republicans John, they may soon run your government. >.Perhaps this is wishful thinking Spike. No. I don't see the Rs as an improvement over the Ds. The Tea Party might be an improvement, or the libertarian party, but the two majors are difficult for me to distinguish from each other. >.Demographics are on the Democrat's side. True, but this time around, the Democrats may not be on the Democrats' side. Consider this ad, and imagine yourself a serious Catholic, an important component of the American left and the Democrat party. Now check out this ad: http://www.doyougotinsurance.com/index.php?id=20 How does that make you feel? I'll tell you what I am feeling when I see something like this: Damn she is hot. But I am not Catholic. If I had been, this would really piss me offwardly. I would find it highly offensive I suppose, enough to make me stay home next November or possibly even vote for the other guy for the first time ever. Suppose you match the demographic of the cocky young man in this ad. Would it compel you to go buy insurance? Didn't think so. They will not come. Suppose you are the girl. Will this ad work on you? Didn't think so. It might encourage you to buy BCPs out of pocket I suppose, then go on the prowl for guys like this one. So they don't come either. Now the system collapses, and you have all those target demographics who usually vote D are bewildered. Some who have long been told they could keep their current health plans are getting notices that they are being cancelled because they don't cover maternity expenses. >. While the abject stupidity of Washington is undeniable, you can see that an otherwise very smart person can end up blaming the wrong party for the trouble. As we saw, yes. That only works for a while. A US default would raise our price of borrowing, but our borrowing should be more expensive than it is: it is riskier than it appears. >.Ok Spike, you've off the rails here a bit. Defaulting on our debt would increase the rate of interest the Federal Government would have to pay. They won't default. They might reduce payouts of Social Security or Medicare, but will find some justification for it besides the obvious. >. While that doesn't sound so horrible, in 2012, payment of interest on the debt cost $220 billion, or about 6 percent of the budget. If the interest rate doubled from its current low rate (sorry, I can't make sense of the numbers to tell you exactly what it is today) then Poof! All of a sudden this goes from 6% of the budget to 12% -Kelly . Kelly I know it is bad, but interest rates will eventually go up, regardless of Federal monetary policy. Stopping them will be like holding back the rising tide. We can at least try to make for a softer landing, or just keep pretending we can live far beyond our means as long as we persistently outvote those who say this will end badly, and keep borrowing like desperate addicts. To end on a cheerful note, Adrianna the Mona Lisa of HealthCare.gov has been found! And oooooohhhh she is hot, slender, perfect skin, perfect teeth, seeeeexy Columbian accent, oh my, I can't get enough of her: http://gma.yahoo.com/exclusive-obamacares-mystery-woman-says-she-fell-victim -111640839--abc-news-topstories.html If she can't figure out some way to leverage this to a cool fortune, she might as well have stayed in Columbia. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 14 01:40:26 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 17:40:26 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> Message-ID: <040901cee0da$7f3e6150$7dbb23f0$@att.net> .. On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson >>.While highway 50 is a breathtaking example of loneliness, it's also a great example of why the government shouldn't be in charge of deciding where roads go.I hate that highways are the example people always bring up of why we need large government projects. They do it so poorly. -Kelly >. Kelly I totally agree, so don't interpret the next bit as refuting it in any way. Here's our chance to redeem a mistake of the past, to turn a stumbling block into a stepping stone..Highway 50 had enormous potential as a showcase location for ground based solar. It's about 600 km of paved two-lane with a good solid base under it and very little rain, little cloud cover ever out there in that big old desert.The road already exists, and isn't being used for anything, snaking all the way out thru that lonely desert. The PV factories in China already exist, and they are filled with workers who will rise up and kill if they don't have something to do. We could use Chinese PVs, American sunshine and coal, synthesize the fuel in Nevada and ship it all the way back to China if we wanted. Time to fire up the old spreadsheet! .spike Ok did it. Assume using route 50 where it diverges from Interstate 80 east of Reno, and take that road all the way to Payson Utah. That gives us over 800km of good two lane road through desert where the annual average is over 5 kWh/day, so 5 could be used as a conservative figure. That's about 1.8e6Wh/yr/m^2, so one km either side of the road would give us 1.6e3 km^2 or 1.6e9m^2 so that would make about about 3e15Wh/yr, which is a little more power than the US generated from coal and natural gas combined last year. Someone check my figures. A single km either side of the road for less than the distance from Reno Nevada to Payson Utah along and existing road that NOOOObody uses would replace coal and natural gas power in the US, and no one would even notice it was out there. How many have ever been on that road? Kelly has, I have. We may be the only two here. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 02:28:13 2013 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 20:28:13 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: <040901cee0da$7f3e6150$7dbb23f0$@att.net> References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> <040901cee0da$7f3e6150$7dbb23f0$@att.net> Message-ID: On the topic of dark matter, isn't it wonderful to live in a place and time where we know so woefully little about the universe? I think it's quite charming. Also encouraging to understand that our current models ARE far too arbitrary and that they have become and will probably become less arbitrary multiple times throughout our lifetimes! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 03:43:13 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 19:43:13 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 3:56 PM, spike wrote: > Highway 50 had enormous potential as a showcase location for ground based > solar. It?s about 600 km of paved two-lane with a good solid base under it > and very little rain, little cloud cover ever out there in that big old > desert. What we could do is use all those Chinese PV factories? output, > install ground based PV a km or more either side of the road, collect the > power every km or so, use the power to convert low-grade bituminous coal > from Wyoming and Utah or biomass from California?s Central Valley to liquid > hydrocarbon fuel. Autonomous trucks would haul in water and feedstock, > then haul out Diesel oil. Since the trucks are autonomous, we could use > smaller trucks to preserve the road, or even do stuff like taking standard > tanker trucks and retrofitting the big Diesel engines with smaller ones so > that the trucks cruise at 80 kph instead of the usual 110-130, so that > alone would nearly double the fuel economy in hauling out synfuel. > Better: pipelines. Since you have a stationary power source, let the water & feedstock flow in and the fuel out. Over flat enough land, angle them so the water & feedstock pipes go down, and the fuel pipe up, about a centimeter for every kilometer horizontally, and you might be able to pool the fuel & have water/feedstock pumped out at existing towns, possibly piped straight to gas stations, greatly decreasing the infrastructure needed. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 05:37:50 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 22:37:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 8:43 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 3:56 PM, spike wrote: > >> Highway 50 had enormous potential as a showcase location for ground >> based solar. It?s about 600 km of paved two-lane with a good solid base >> under it and very little rain, little cloud cover ever out there in that >> big old desert. What we could do is use all those Chinese PV factories? >> output, install ground based PV a km or more either side of the road, >> collect the power every km or so, use the power to convert low-grade >> bituminous coal from Wyoming and Utah or biomass from California?s Central >> Valley to liquid hydrocarbon fuel. Autonomous trucks would haul in water >> and feedstock, then haul out Diesel oil. Since the trucks are autonomous, >> we could use smaller trucks to preserve the road, or even do stuff like >> taking standard tanker trucks and retrofitting the big Diesel engines with >> smaller ones so that the trucks cruise at 80 kph instead of the usual >> 110-130, so that alone would nearly double the fuel economy in hauling out >> synfuel. >> > Not a bad idea. As long as you can fund it with kickstarter instead of gov dollars... LOL > Better: pipelines. > Pipelines are better, though if you are talking about oil shale, I don't know if that would be easy to pump through pipes, even as a slurry. Maybe the autonomous trucks or a train > Since you have a stationary power source, let the water & feedstock flow > in and the fuel out. Over flat enough land, angle them so the water & > feedstock pipes go down, and the fuel pipe up, about a centimeter for every > kilometer horizontally, and you might be able to pool the fuel & have > water/feedstock pumped out at existing towns, possibly piped straight to > gas stations, greatly decreasing the infrastructure needed. > The only gas station shown on Google maps in the 152 miles between Delta, Utah and Ely, Nevada is three miles off the road in Baker, NV. Google street views shows that it has two pumps and no permanent attendant. There isn't even a door on the gas station. http://goo.gl/maps/jAC56 The other station has four pumps and isn't even listed as a gas station on Google maps. http://goo.gl/maps/0wH5i I don't think either sells enough gasoline to justify local pumping. The day Google did street views, apparently only four other cars were seen along this 152 mile stretch. Check out this hyperview I made: http://bit.ly/HZzOjE There is a lot of sun there... that's for sure. Of note is that Nevada was the first state to legalize autonomous vehicles. Go figure. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 05:52:20 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 21:52:20 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 9:37 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Pipelines are better, though if you are talking about oil shale > We're not. We're talking about much more liquid things. > The only gas station shown on Google maps in the 152 miles between Delta, > Utah and Ely, Nevada is three miles off the road in Baker, NV. > > With the right tilt and separation of pipes, that's no problem. The pipes only have to handle half the distance from one gas station to the next; the other half is handled by pipes going to the next gas station. Therefore, one gas station in the middle of a 152 mile stretch, where there's also a station at either end of that stretch, only needs pipes that can handle 152/4 = 38 miles. Granted, 4 sets of these pipes would be needed. > I don't think either sells enough gasoline to justify local pumping. > If not, it's at least a more convenient depot for the trucks to carry things to and from, greatly reducing equipment costs - which in turn justifies the local pumping. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 14 06:38:11 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 22:38:11 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> Message-ID: <012f01cee104$17374520$45a5cf60$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2013 7:43 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Dark Matter On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 3:56 PM, spike wrote: >>.Highway 50 has enormous potential as a showcase location for ground based solar. It's about 600 km of paved two-lane with a good solid base under it and very little rain, little cloud cover ever out there in that big old desert. What we could do is use all those Chinese PV factories' output, install ground based PV a km or more either side of the road, collect the power every km or so, use the power to convert low-grade bituminous coal from Wyoming and Utah or biomass from California's Central Valley to liquid hydrocarbon fuel. Autonomous trucks would haul in water and feedstock, then haul out Diesel oil. Since the trucks are autonomous, we could use smaller trucks to preserve the road, or even do stuff like taking standard tanker trucks and retrofitting the big Diesel engines with smaller ones so that the trucks cruise at 80 kph instead of the usual 110-130, so that alone would nearly double the fuel economy in hauling out synfuel. >.Better: pipelines. Since you have a stationary power source, let the water & feedstock flow in and the fuel out. Over flat enough land, angle them so the water & feedstock pipes go down, and the fuel pipe up, about a centimeter for every kilometer horizontally, and you might be able to pool the fuel & have water/feedstock pumped out at existing towns, possibly piped straight to gas stations, greatly decreasing the infrastructure needed. I think you are onto something there, me lad. We grind the biomass and create a slurry, then send the feedstock and water together in a pipe. I need to work out that economic model. I know how much tanker trucks cost, don't know much about pipe costs. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 06:58:29 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 23:58:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 10:52 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 9:37 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> Pipelines are better, though if you are talking about oil shale >> > > We're not. We're talking about much more liquid things. > Ok, good. > > The only gas station shown on Google maps in the 152 miles between Delta, >> Utah and Ely, Nevada is three miles off the road in Baker, NV. >> >> > > With the right tilt and separation of pipes, that's no problem. The pipes > only have to handle half the distance from one gas station to the next; the > other half is handled by pipes going to the next gas station. Therefore, > one gas station in the middle of a 152 mile stretch, where there's also a > station at either end of that stretch, only needs pipes that can handle > 152/4 = 38 miles. Granted, 4 sets of these pipes would be needed. > As you can see here: http://bit.ly/1bFsOCh we've built a lot of pipelines already. None are all that close to the area of interest, but we could build another if the environmentalists don't jack it all up. > >> I don't think either sells enough gasoline to justify local pumping. >> > > If not, it's at least a more convenient depot for the trucks to carry > things to and from, greatly reducing equipment costs - which in turn > justifies the local pumping. > You could justify pumping it all the way to Salt Lake or Los Angeles or just to the nearest existing pipeline. IF there were enough fuel produced, of course. The better use of Nevada is to use Yucca Mountain for what Cthulhu intended it for, the storage of nuclear waste. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 07:01:56 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 00:01:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: <012f01cee104$17374520$45a5cf60$@att.net> References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> <012f01cee104$17374520$45a5cf60$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 11:38 PM, spike wrote: > I think you are onto something there, me lad. We grind the biomass and > create a slurry, then send the feedstock and water together in a pipe. I > need to work out that economic model. I know how much tanker trucks cost, > don?t know much about pipe costs. > Railroads are far cheaper than trucks. And pipes are far cheaper than railroads. But good luck prying water out of the hands of the Los Angeleans... they are really attached to their wet stuff. http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Trucks-Trains-or-Pipelines-The-Best-Way-to-Transport-Petroleum.html The Washington-based Association of American Railroads said in a report this year the rate of hazardous-material spills by railroads is about 2.7 times higher than pipelines. The cost for rail transport is about three times higher than pipelining. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 08:08:05 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 01:08:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 2:35 AM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > > > That being said, what does Bitcoin specifically (or cryptocurrency in > > general) add to the scenario that isn't provided by government backed > > currencies? > > Bitcoin add trust because it is trustless. > Ok, I get that part. But I don't see really what it has to do with the Singularity specifically. > Fiat currency (but also gold and silver) can not add trust because they > can be debased, payment reversed, fund seized at the source bank, in > transit and at the receiving bank and from the hand of the payer and the > payed. > Not good, of course. > Governments or sociopathic AIs Governments are just one type of sociopathic AI... > could and would exploit the weakness of > the system like sociopathic speculators and politics exploit the system > now. Given their time preferences and limited resources they could not > even understand the scope of the damage they are doing to others and > themselves in the present and future. I get all these advantages of Bitcoin. The question remains as to how this specifically relates to the Singularity. Sorry if I'm being dense here, it is late. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 09:26:20 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 02:26:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Millions of Lines of Code Message-ID: Thought you might enjoy this. http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/million-lines-of-code/ According to this, the number of lines of code required to fix healthcare.gov is roughly the size of a modern web browser, firefox or chrome... The kicker is at the bottom of the page. Unreal. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Thu Nov 14 12:07:13 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 05:07:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> Message-ID: <5284BCF1.2000806@canonizer.com> Hi Kelly, For me, from within the singularity, or from wherever you happen to be, as you approach such, the only way you can tell you are approaching it, is the number of great opportunities like Bitcoin expands at least exponentially. The internet and the world wide web were a great opportunity. Lots of people got stinking rich, making the world a far better place. Bitcoin is yet another one of those, built on the internet. As we continue to fall into the singularity, the significance of these types of opportunities, and the rate at which they occur, will continue to explode, as the next ones are always based on, and enabled by, the last ones, making everyone even more stinking rich than the last one, at an ever increasing rate. Brent On 11/14/2013 1:08 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 2:35 AM, Mirco Romanato > wrote: > > > > That being said, what does Bitcoin specifically (or > cryptocurrency in > > general) add to the scenario that isn't provided by government > backed > > currencies? > > Bitcoin add trust because it is trustless. > > > Ok, I get that part. But I don't see really what it has to do with the > Singularity specifically. > > Fiat currency (but also gold and silver) can not add trust because > they > can be debased, payment reversed, fund seized at the source bank, in > transit and at the receiving bank and from the hand of the payer > and the > payed. > > > Not good, of course. > > Governments or sociopathic AIs > > > Governments are just one type of sociopathic AI... > > could and would exploit the weakness of > the system like sociopathic speculators and politics exploit the > system > now. Given their time preferences and limited resources they could not > even understand the scope of the damage they are doing to others and > themselves in the present and future. > > > I get all these advantages of Bitcoin. The question remains as to how > this specifically relates to the Singularity. Sorry if I'm being dense > here, it is late. > > -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 pharos at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 12:40:34 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 12:40:34 +0000 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <5284BCF1.2000806@canonizer.com> References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284BCF1.2000806@canonizer.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 12:07 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: > The internet and the world wide web were a great opportunity. Lots of > people got stinking rich, making the world a far better place. Bitcoin is > yet another one of those, built on the internet. As we continue to fall > into the singularity, the significance of these types of opportunities, and > the rate at which they occur, will continue to explode, as the next ones are > always based on, and enabled by, the last ones, making everyone even more > stinking rich than the last one, at an ever increasing rate. > Viewed from an alternate universe, a few people got stinking rich while millions were driven towards reduced income, poverty and unemployment, natural resources were consumed at an ever increasing rate and environmental pollution and destruction increased. More of the same appears like the Gates of Hell are opening wide. BillK From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Thu Nov 14 12:53:23 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 05:53:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284BCF1.2000806@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <5284C7C3.8040300@canonizer.com> Hi Bill, So, let me ask you this. The internet dissrupted most all industries. Lots of dumb, inefficient pockets of capital (i.e. large companies that did not adapt very fast) had their wealth taken from them, and given to the new upstarts that could better see the future - making everything WAY more efficient. So, other than a few rich dumb bastards that did not deserve the wealth, is anyone in the world today worse off, because of the internet? Brent On 11/14/2013 5:40 AM, BillK wrote: > On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 12:07 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: >> The internet and the world wide web were a great opportunity. Lots of >> people got stinking rich, making the world a far better place. Bitcoin is >> yet another one of those, built on the internet. As we continue to fall >> into the singularity, the significance of these types of opportunities, and >> the rate at which they occur, will continue to explode, as the next ones are >> always based on, and enabled by, the last ones, making everyone even more >> stinking rich than the last one, at an ever increasing rate. >> > > Viewed from an alternate universe, a few people got stinking rich > while millions were driven towards reduced income, poverty and > unemployment, natural resources were consumed at an ever increasing > rate and environmental pollution and destruction increased. > > More of the same appears like the Gates of Hell are opening wide. > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From rahmans at me.com Thu Nov 14 13:16:10 2013 From: rahmans at me.com (Omar Rahman) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 14:16:10 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Millions of Lines of Code In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <50C575F1-04BB-4F66-9A43-97B34EE4E8C4@me.com> > Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 02:26:20 -0700 > From: Kelly Anderson > Subject: [ExI] Millions of Lines of Code > > Thought you might enjoy this. > http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/million-lines-of-code/ > > According to this, the number of lines of code required to fix > healthcare.gov is roughly the size of a modern web browser, firefox or > chrome... > > The kicker is at the bottom of the page. Unreal. > > -Kelly Hi Kelly, There is no doubt that the website is a bloated piece of $#!+. The only question for me is how they achieved such epic levels of bloat and craptasticness. The suspected size of the code base displayed on the site you gave puts this thing in a league of it's own. But seriously, how did they manage to make it so big? Thousands of plans x thousands of insurers x 50 state versions x thousands of procedures might do it but that's data and not code. Are they counting the data set as part of the code base? I honestly have a hard time imagining how they achieved such bloat. I guess it's a failure of my imagination because somehow they seem to have done it. Regards, Omar Rahman From pharos at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 13:28:48 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 13:28:48 +0000 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <5284C7C3.8040300@canonizer.com> References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284BCF1.2000806@canonizer.com> <5284C7C3.8040300@canonizer.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 12:53 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: > So, let me ask you this. The internet disrupted most all industries. Lots > of dumb, inefficient pockets of capital (i.e. large companies that did not > adapt very fast) had their wealth taken from them, and given to the new > upstarts that could better see the future - making everything WAY more > efficient. > > So, other than a few rich dumb bastards that did not deserve the wealth, is > anyone in the world today worse off, because of the internet? > > You want me to specifically list the disadvantages of the internet??? (And ignore the rest of the environment?). The internet is an improved communication system, a tool that can be used for good or bad purposes. So some uses will help people and some uses will make people worse off, just as the telephone did. Do I really need to list the bits that make people worse off? NSA and corporation monitoring, population surveillance, export of jobs overseas (aided by improved communication), never away from work (email and messaging evenings and weekends), alienation, loneliness and relationship breakups (living on the internet reduces personal contacts), SPAM, id theft and monetary loss, financial frauds, internet paedophile clubs, virus takeover and misuse of personal pcs, worldwide publicity for insanity in forums and chat rooms, easy access for children to the worst kinds of violence and pornography, etc. This list is just a quick sample and probably incomplete. I do appreciate the good bits of the internet as well. But it is certainly not a one-way 'good thing'. BillK From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Nov 14 13:23:08 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 14:23:08 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> Message-ID: <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> Il 14/11/2013 09:08, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > I get all these advantages of Bitcoin. The question remains as to how > this specifically relates to the Singularity. Sorry if I'm being dense > here, it is late. In the past we (humans or protohumans) moved from a social group formed by collaborators (help others) AND exploiters (exploit collaborators) AND not collaborators (do not collaborate but are not exploited). This configurations limit the group size and the type of cooperation possible. The advent of the altruistic punisher v1.0 allowed the group to flourish and become larger (it limited the number of exploiters in small groups). Larger groups were able to wipe out smaller groups and most important to not be wiped out by natural causes (like wolves or hyenas packs). Then Altruistic Punisher 2.0 come out and instead to punish just the exploiters & defectors it punished them AND the individuals unwilling to join the punishing efforts. This allowed the groups to grow larger and larger, without real limits of sizes, because larger the group less costly is the punishing effort. But, as larger groups we changed the environment around ourselves in many ways. This allowed the exploiters and the defectors to find new strategies to exploit the collaborators and the punishers without being detected or making the punishing unsustainable. Politicians and bureaucrats are in position to exploit people with little or no repercussion to their reproductive fitness, because they do it with many degree of separation and are able to deflect blame in many cases. In many cases, this is done by writing and continuously changing rules and administering them to regulate the conflicts between individuals (at least this is the stated rationale). This confound the individual at individual level because in many cases he is unable to tell if someone act with malice or is pushed by other forces to act in the way he act. Bitcoin and the blockchain, acting as a ledger of properties and possessions, is able to take away the obscure and intricate rules of laws and the discretion they are enforced with. If a rule is decided between two parties, the rule can not be broken. If the majority accept a rule, it can not be changed easily after by a minority, interpreted differently and so on. There is no "depend of what the means of is is", because if someone is able to change the mean of is, it must change it for all at the same time (and it would not be pretty to see the after effects on everyone him included). Without central banks to be able to redistribute the wealth from producers to exploiters (a little elite) a lot of more capital could be accumulated by producers making their lives better and allowing them to thrive and produce even more wealth and science and technology. Without judges and prosecutors able to selectively enforce rules a lot of bad laws would be striked down. Without the money, a lot of police would not spend time running around to punish people for victimless crimes. And so on. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Nov 14 13:30:52 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 14:30:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Millions of Lines of Code In-Reply-To: <50C575F1-04BB-4F66-9A43-97B34EE4E8C4@me.com> References: <50C575F1-04BB-4F66-9A43-97B34EE4E8C4@me.com> Message-ID: <5284D08C.6090107@libero.it> Il 14/11/2013 14:16, Omar Rahman ha scritto: According to this, the number of lines of code required to fix >> healthcare.gov is roughly the size of a modern web browser, firefox >> or chrome... >> >> The kicker is at the bottom of the page. Unreal. > There is no doubt that the website is a bloated piece of $#!+. The > only question for me is how they achieved such epic levels of bloat > and craptasticness. The suspected size of the code base displayed on > the site you gave puts this thing in a league of it's own. But > seriously, how did they manage to make it so big? > Thousands of plans x thousands of insurers x 50 state versions x > thousands of procedures might do it but that's data and not code. Are > they counting the data set as part of the code base? I honestly have > a hard time imagining how they achieved such bloat. I guess it's a > failure of my imagination because somehow they seem to have done it. They probably tried to code the law(s), with all it loopholes, exceptions, and so on. It is not the code of healthcare.gov that is bloated beyond belief, it is the laws and regulations that are bloated way inside the twilight zone. Mirco From anders at aleph.se Thu Nov 14 14:08:12 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 15:08:12 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Millions of Lines of Code In-Reply-To: <5284D08C.6090107@libero.it> References: <50C575F1-04BB-4F66-9A43-97B34EE4E8C4@me.com> <5284D08C.6090107@libero.it> Message-ID: <5284D94C.6080709@aleph.se> On 2013-11-14 14:30, Mirco Romanato wrote: > They probably tried to code the law(s), with all it loopholes, > exceptions, and so on. It is not the code of healthcare.gov that is > bloated beyond belief, it is the laws and regulations that are bloated > way inside the twilight zone. True. But even coding non-bloated laws seem to be very, very hard: http://robohub.org/we-robot-conference-2-law-as-algorithm/ -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 14 14:58:03 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 06:58:03 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> Message-ID: <02e501cee149$ebfbe820$c3f3b860$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson Subject: Re: [ExI] Dark Matter On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 8:43 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 3:56 PM, spike wrote: Highway 50 had enormous potential as a showcase location for ground based solar. It's about 600 km of paved two-lane with a good solid base under it and very little rain, little cloud cover ever out there in that big old desert. >.Not a bad idea. As long as you can fund it with kickstarter instead of gov dollars... LOL This is an idea which scales well. >.There is a lot of sun there... that's for sure. Of note is that Nevada was the first state to legalize autonomous vehicles. Go figure. -Kelly OK hold on, I think I figured out the problem. It felt one order of magnitude off and it is. I worked this problem about 20 years ago and was getting numbers more like 10 km either side of the road. This time I forgot to account for the fact that those cheapy PVs the Chinese are grinding out below cost are only about 10% efficient. I did the calcs on this back when PVs were about an order of magnitude more expensive than they are now, and oil was a quarter what it is now. So to generate the amount of power we make with natural gas and coal combined requires about 10 km either side of the road along a nearly abandoned stretch of pavement in Nevada. Get on Google Maps, go to street view, look around. There is pleeeenty of room for something like that. Next step is to price out 16 thousand square kilometers of PV panels, or 16 billion square meters. Any gurus among us? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rtomek at ceti.pl Thu Nov 14 15:19:27 2013 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 16:19:27 +0100 (CET) Subject: [ExI] Millions of Lines of Code In-Reply-To: <50C575F1-04BB-4F66-9A43-97B34EE4E8C4@me.com> References: <50C575F1-04BB-4F66-9A43-97B34EE4E8C4@me.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 14 Nov 2013, Omar Rahman wrote: [...] > Thousands of plans x thousands of insurers x 50 state versions x > thousands of procedures might do it but that's data and not code. Are > they counting the data set as part of the code base? I honestly have a > hard time imagining how they achieved such bloat. I guess it's a failure > of my imagination because somehow they seem to have done it. Don't try too hard to understand it. We become what we understand, so if you go too far on the bloat side, the bloatness will stick to you... and all your coding from that time on will become bloat. Chances are, they heard about SQL injection and decided to go without database. So, they took a data and generated code from it, full of IF and CASE statements. And GOTOs, because without GOTOs no web service would be complete... Kind of, the treatment happened to be more deadly than disease. Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 14 15:38:55 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 07:38:55 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> <012f01cee104$17374520$45a5cf60$@att.net> Message-ID: <030e01cee14f$a11e8140$e35b83c0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2013 11:02 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Dark Matter On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 11:38 PM, spike wrote: I think you are onto something there, me lad. spike >.Railroads are far cheaper than trucks. And pipes are far cheaper than railroads. But good luck prying water out of the hands of the Los Angeleans... they are really attached to their wet stuff. http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Trucks-Trains-or-Pipelines-The-Bes t-Way-to-Transport-Petroleum.html >.The Washington-based Association of American Railroads said in a report this year the rate of hazardous-material spills by railroads is about 2.7 times higher than pipelines. The cost for rail transport is about three times higher than pipelining. -Kelly Cool thanks Kelly. It might be possible to transport the biomass using seawater somehow, but I haven't worked out the economic model or the cooling model for that matter. It might not be practical to carry off the waste heat with evaporation. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 14 16:00:52 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 08:00:52 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Millions of Lines of Code In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <031e01cee152$b27fc950$177f5bf0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2013 1:26 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] Millions of Lines of Code Thought you might enjoy this. http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/million-lines-of-code/ According to this, the number of lines of code required to fix healthcare.gov is roughly the size of a modern web browser, firefox or chrome... The kicker is at the bottom of the page. Unreal. -Kelly Kelly, in all this code, no one has ever discovered a plausible explanation for why they ever needed allll thiiiis coooode in the first place. Why didn't they just set it up like the old days, where the whole deal could be presented on a paper chart, or fifty different charts, one for each state? It would have an income column, age brackets, a list of companies and their prices, along with what they cover, a column for the penalty for opting out, and they're done. Let the insurance companies fill in most of the blanks. Easy. Doesn't need code at all, or if so, not much. What in the goddam hell are allllll thoooose liiiiines of code actually doing? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 17:45:37 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 09:45:37 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: <02e501cee149$ebfbe820$c3f3b860$@att.net> References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> <02e501cee149$ebfbe820$c3f3b860$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 6:58 AM, spike wrote: > Next step is to price out 16 thousand square kilometers of PV panels, or > 16 billion square meters. Any gurus among us? > From http://shop.mlsolar.com/50W-Solar-Panel-12V-Free-Shipping-OFF-GRID-RV-BOAT-181068755276.htmwe have one price point, at least, of $85 for 590x665 mm, which comes to a bit under $220 per square meter. Granted, this is better quality than the panels you're talking about, but between discount for lower quality and bulk purchase discount, I suspect the price wouldn't come down by more than 2 orders of magnitude and probably no more than 1. And that's not including the cost of the land, or the fuel processing equipment. So, if you Kickstarter finance this, you're going to start off with much less than 16,000 km^2. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 18:17:24 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 11:17:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Millions of Lines of Code In-Reply-To: <50C575F1-04BB-4F66-9A43-97B34EE4E8C4@me.com> References: <50C575F1-04BB-4F66-9A43-97B34EE4E8C4@me.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 6:16 AM, Omar Rahman wrote: > > Hi Kelly, > > There is no doubt that the website is a bloated piece of $#!+. The only > question for me is how they achieved such epic levels of bloat and > craptasticness. Bureaucracy. > The suspected size of the code base displayed on the site you gave puts > this thing in a league of it's own. But seriously, how did they manage to > make it so big? > Cut and paste coding on an industrial scale? Or perhaps, since this is a government project, they did something stupid and told the developers that they would be paid for every line of code... hehe. That would do it. > Thousands of plans x thousands of insurers x 50 state versions x thousands > of procedures might do it but that's data and not code. Apparently, that is what did it. All tied together with some kind of web services calls. Also, they must have used at least 100 million lines of code to program Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. http://hotair.com/archives/2013/11/14/debbie-wasserman-schultz-i-meant-what-i-said-were-running-on-obamacare-next-year/ http://hotair.com/archives/2013/10/23/cnn-blowing-up-healthcare-gov-and-starting-over-still-looking-like-their-best-option-say-more-tech-experts/ Maybe they should throw the whole damn thing out and start over by hiring a software architect. I am guessing that a lot of the code is intended to implement various things in the 1500+ page Obamacare law, which is unpardonably large for a law to begin with, but who knows? Are they counting the data set as part of the code base? I honestly have a > hard time imagining how they achieved such bloat. I guess it's a failure of > my imagination because somehow they seem to have done it. > Here are a couple of pithy quotes from Slate: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/10/21/healthcare_gov_problems_why_5_million_lines_of_code_is_the_wrong_way_to.html If the site really contains 500 million lines of code, they say, *that?s a strong hint that the programmers involved are doing something wrong.* Jeff Atwood, co-founder of the coding question-and-answer site Stack Overflow, wrote in 2006: ?Here's the single most important decision you can make on your software project if you want it to be successful: *keep it small.* Small may not accomplish much, but the odds of outright failure?a disturbingly common outcome for most software projects?(are) low.? === http://www.slate.com/articles/business/bitwise/2013/10/what_went_wrong_with_healthcare_gov_the_front_end_and_back_end_never_talked.html "Writing in Medium in defense of Development Seed, technologist and contractor CTO Adam Becker complains of ?layers upon layers of contractors, a high ratio of project managers to programmers, and a severe lack of technical ownership.? Sounds right to me." "Power flows upward while responsibility flows downward, which is why you couldn?t pay me to work as a government contractor. It?d be like going back to Microsoft ." David Auerbach === Apparently, CGI, one of the big contractors on the project hasn't even hired a spokesman to explain their side of the story. That should tell you how bad it is all by itself. It's so bad, we don't even want to talk about it because that would be digging our own grave. My prediction stands. Obamacare will fail. Obama will blame the insurance companies, and now the software programmers and designers too. In the end, it will be EVERYBODY's fault but Obama, and we'll all be working for the government trying to fix their code. If they can make us pay taxes for things we don't want or need, then they sure as hell can chain us to a desk and make us code. We'll write trillions of lines of code hehehe... -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 14 18:06:30 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 10:06:30 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Millions of Lines of Code In-Reply-To: <031e01cee152$b27fc950$177f5bf0$@att.net> References: <031e01cee152$b27fc950$177f5bf0$@att.net> Message-ID: <005d01cee164$3ff96050$bfec20f0$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of spike Subject: Re: [ExI] Millions of Lines of Code From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson The kicker is at the bottom of the page. Unreal. -Kelly OK I have two questions. First, imagine you are a writer for the Onion. How could you possibly create a parody of this? https://twitter.com/sarahkliff/status/400318902300708864/photo/1 And if so, it leads to my second question. Never mind Adriana, the beautiful brown-eyed Mona Lisa of HealthCare.gov; how do we find the Susie, the adequate-in-a-pinch hot to trot Brosurance slut? Adriana was found alive and well, and she is as gorgeous as her picture, but she is taken: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/obamacare-model-health-care-website -felt-bullied-critics-article-1.1515206 The search continues for HTH Susie however. We are left to wonder if she was told when that photo of her with Nate would be used this way. I wonder what her father thinks of that ad. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 18:19:52 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 11:19:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: <02e501cee149$ebfbe820$c3f3b860$@att.net> References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> <02e501cee149$ebfbe820$c3f3b860$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 7:58 AM, spike wrote: > *>?* *On Behalf Of *Kelly Anderson > > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Dark Matter > > > > On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 8:43 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 3:56 PM, spike wrote: > > Highway 50 had enormous potential as a showcase location for ground based > solar. It?s about 600 km of paved two-lane with a good solid base under it > and very little rain, little cloud cover ever out there in that big old > desert? > > > > >?Not a bad idea. As long as you can fund it with kickstarter instead of > gov dollars... LOL > > > > This is an idea which scales well. > Just like health care... > >?There is a lot of sun there... that's for sure. Of note is that Nevada > was the first state to legalize autonomous vehicles. Go figure. -Kelly > > > > > > OK hold on, I think I figured out the problem. It felt one order of > magnitude off and it is. I worked this problem about 20 years ago and was > getting numbers more like 10 km either side of the road. This time I > forgot to account for the fact that those cheapy PVs the Chinese are > grinding out below cost are only about 10% efficient. I did the calcs on > this back when PVs were about an order of magnitude more expensive than > they are now, and oil was a quarter what it is now. > > > > So to generate the amount of power we make with natural gas and coal > combined requires about 10 km either side of the road along a nearly > abandoned stretch of pavement in Nevada. Get on Google Maps, go to street > view, look around. There is pleeeenty of room for something like that. > Next step is to price out 16 thousand square kilometers of PV panels, or 16 > billion square meters. Any gurus among us? > The problem with that is you are creating more demand than there is supply. That will drive the price up (econ 101). And whatever numbers you start with won't be the ones you end with. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 18:22:14 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 11:22:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: <030e01cee14f$a11e8140$e35b83c0$@att.net> References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> <012f01cee104$17374520$45a5cf60$@att.net> <030e01cee14f$a11e8140$e35b83c0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 8:38 AM, spike wrote: > > > Cool thanks Kelly. It might be possible to transport the biomass using > seawater somehow, > Only if you can desalinate it first. And if you do that, Los Angeles will want to drink it. And when Los Angeles wants water, Lolita gets water! Seriously, you can't do it with seawater because it is too corrosive. Anything you built would not last long enough to be worth the cost. > but I haven?t worked out the economic model or the cooling model for that > matter. It might not be practical to carry off the waste heat with > evaporation. spike > Sorry, what needs to be cooled here? I'm lost. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 18:32:01 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 13:32:01 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Millions of Lines of Code In-Reply-To: References: <50C575F1-04BB-4F66-9A43-97B34EE4E8C4@me.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 1:17 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Maybe they should throw the whole damn thing out and start over by hiring > a software architect. I am guessing that a lot of the code is intended to > implement various things in the 1500+ page Obamacare law, which is > unpardonably large for a law to begin with, but who knows? > > Maybe each provider should sell their "product" via an Amazon store... I'm confident Amazon has the infrastructure and logistics know-how to satisfy 300+ million American's "shopping" needs with 1-click ease. Or maybe I'm woefully ignorant of ACA's true complexity _requirements_ - there could be several layers of subterfuge surrounding the real reason why it must suck so hard. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 18:55:09 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 10:55:09 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> <012f01cee104$17374520$45a5cf60$@att.net> <030e01cee14f$a11e8140$e35b83c0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Nov 14, 2013 10:23 AM, "Kelly Anderson" wrote: > On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 8:38 AM, spike wrote: >> Cool thanks Kelly. It might be possible to transport the biomass using seawater somehow, > > > Only if you can desalinate it first. And if you do that, Los Angeles will want to drink it. And when Los Angeles wants water, Lolita gets water! Indeed, a more viable product for all this electricity might well be simple desalinated water. At least if the energy production was near the coast. That doesn't require radical new technology. In fact, it's somewhat boring. But if you could make the numbers work, it would be a viable first step toward this sort of scheme. Further, this step could quite readily attract large private investment - if and only if the data and projections are believable to said investors. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 19:08:06 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 12:08:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Millions of Lines of Code In-Reply-To: References: <50C575F1-04BB-4F66-9A43-97B34EE4E8C4@me.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 11:32 AM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 1:17 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> Maybe they should throw the whole damn thing out and start over by hiring >> a software architect. I am guessing that a lot of the code is intended to >> implement various things in the 1500+ page Obamacare law, which is >> unpardonably large for a law to begin with, but who knows? >> >> > Maybe each provider should sell their "product" via an Amazon store... > I'm confident Amazon has the infrastructure and logistics know-how to > satisfy 300+ million American's "shopping" needs with 1-click ease. > > Or maybe I'm woefully ignorant of ACA's true complexity _requirements_ - > there could be several layers of subterfuge surrounding the real reason why > it must suck so hard. > While Amazon does have the shopping cart figured out, they don't have the facilities, required by the law to protect the privacy of their customers. In addition, how much various insurance companies charge various people varies by a relatively large number of variables, and they want to keep those variables secret just as Google wants to keep their algorithms secret from SEO merchants. What you have here is a collision of galaxies. Large Washington Bureaucracies colliding with large Insurance Bureaucracies colliding with smaller but still large state bureaucracies from 47 states. (I guess three states have opted out??? is that right???) When the juggernaut LOL. I just got this from Wikipedia: WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION Error Our servers are currently experiencing a technical problem. This is probably temporary and should be fixed soon. Please try again in a few minutes. The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organisation which hosts some of the most popular sites on the Internet, including Wikipedia. It has a constant need to purchase new hardware. If you would like to help, please donate . ------------------------------ If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request: GET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggernaut, from 10.64.32.104 via cp1055 cp1055 ([10.64.32.107]:3128), Varnish XID 2611000651 Forwarded for: 66.182.94.87, 10.64.32.104 Error: 503, Service Unavailable at Thu, 14 Nov 2013 18:59:21 GMT Perhaps Wikipedia has become a bureaucracy... LOL Here is a picture of three original juggernauts http://www.archaeologyonline.net/indology/jagannatha-puri/rathayatra-carts-panorama.jpg The story goes that if someone falls beneath these things, they don't stop. They can't stop. And the person is killed and ground into the dirt. The effect of Obamacare is only important in what it does to the juggernauts of government, insurance and government. What it does to the proles is of no concern. The wheels of justice are lubricated with human blood. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 19:12:14 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 12:12:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> <012f01cee104$17374520$45a5cf60$@att.net> <030e01cee14f$a11e8140$e35b83c0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 11:55 AM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Nov 14, 2013 10:23 AM, "Kelly Anderson" wrote: > > On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 8:38 AM, spike wrote: > >> Cool thanks Kelly. It might be possible to transport the biomass using > seawater somehow, > > > > > > Only if you can desalinate it first. And if you do that, Los Angeles > will want to drink it. And when Los Angeles wants water, Lolita gets water! > > Indeed, a more viable product for all this electricity might well be > simple desalinated water. At least if the energy production was near the > coast. > Correct. The problem now being that land near the coast in sunny areas is expensive. Spike's solution took advantage of existing infrastructure (i-50) that is underutilized and of low value, that happens to be in an area with a lot of sun. Also an area where people don't generally want to live, I might add. > That doesn't require radical new technology. In fact, it's somewhat > boring. But if you could make the numbers work, it would be a viable first > step toward this sort of scheme. Further, this step could quite readily > attract large private investment - if and only if the data and projections > are believable to said investors. > Correct. And I don't think you can make the numbers work for Solar today. I would love to be proven wrong, as I love solar in principle. I still think putting up that many solar panels would likely kill as many people as Chernobyl... LOL -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 19:18:59 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 12:18:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <5284BCF1.2000806@canonizer.com> References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284BCF1.2000806@canonizer.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 5:07 AM, Brent Allsop wrote: > > Hi Kelly, > > For me, from within the singularity, or from wherever you happen to be, as > you approach such, the only way you can tell you are approaching it, is the > number of great opportunities like Bitcoin expands at least exponentially. > > The internet and the world wide web were a great opportunity. Lots of > people got stinking rich, making the world a far better place. Bitcoin is > yet another one of those, built on the internet. As we continue to fall > into the singularity, the significance of these types of opportunities, and > the rate at which they occur, will continue to explode, as the next ones > are always based on, and enabled by, the last ones, making everyone even > more stinking rich than the last one, at an ever increasing rate. > Ok, finally an argument that combines Bitcoins and the Singularity. Strangely, Brent, I think I agree with you. Faster change means faster paradigm shift, which leads to more and more opportunities in less and less time. I just saw the Winklewonder twins' interview on one of the money news shows. The guy running the show was f'ing clueless. Amazing. So there is opportunity out there for us geeks at this time. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 19:19:53 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 12:19:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284BCF1.2000806@canonizer.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 5:40 AM, BillK wrote: > > Viewed from an alternate universe, a few people got stinking rich > while millions were driven towards reduced income, poverty and > unemployment, natural resources were consumed at an ever increasing > rate and environmental pollution and destruction increased. > > More of the same appears like the Gates of Hell are opening wide. > Bill, are you actually arguing that the Internet is a bad thing? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Nov 14 19:24:26 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 20:24:26 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284BCF1.2000806@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <5285236A.3040601@libero.it> Il 14/11/2013 20:18, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > Strangely, Brent, I think I agree with you. Faster change means faster > paradigm shift, which leads to more and more opportunities in less and > less time. I just saw the Winklewonder twins' interview on one of the > money news shows. The guy running the show was f'ing clueless. Amazing. > So there is opportunity out there for us geeks at this time. "The fact you don't get it is the reason the opportunity exist" I love that answer. Mirco From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 19:25:58 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 12:25:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 6:23 AM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 14/11/2013 09:08, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > > > I get all these advantages of Bitcoin. The question remains as to how > > this specifically relates to the Singularity. Sorry if I'm being dense > > here, it is late. > > In the past we (humans or protohumans) moved from a social group formed > by collaborators (help others) AND exploiters (exploit collaborators) > AND not collaborators (do not collaborate but are not exploited). > > This configurations limit the group size and the type of cooperation > possible. > > The advent of the altruistic punisher v1.0 allowed the group to flourish > and become larger (it limited the number of exploiters in small groups). > Larger groups were able to wipe out smaller groups and most important to > not be wiped out by natural causes (like wolves or hyenas packs). > > Then Altruistic Punisher 2.0 come out and instead to punish just the > exploiters & defectors it punished them AND the individuals unwilling to > join the punishing efforts. This allowed the groups to grow larger and > larger, without real limits of sizes, because larger the group less > costly is the punishing effort. > > But, as larger groups we changed the environment around ourselves in > many ways. This allowed the exploiters and the defectors to find new > strategies to exploit the collaborators and the punishers without being > detected or making the punishing unsustainable. > > Politicians and bureaucrats are in position to exploit people with > little or no repercussion to their reproductive fitness, because they do > it with many degree of separation and are able to deflect blame in many > cases. > > In many cases, this is done by writing and continuously changing rules > and administering them to regulate the conflicts between individuals (at > least this is the stated rationale). This confound the individual at > individual level because in many cases he is unable to tell if someone > act with malice or is pushed by other forces to act in the way he act. > > Bitcoin and the blockchain, acting as a ledger of properties and > possessions, is able to take away the obscure and intricate rules of > laws and the discretion they are enforced with. > If a rule is decided between two parties, the rule can not be broken. > If the majority accept a rule, it can not be changed easily after by a > minority, interpreted differently and so on. There is no "depend of what > the means of is is", because if someone is able to change the mean of > is, it must change it for all at the same time (and it would not be > pretty to see the after effects on everyone him included). > > Without central banks to be able to redistribute the wealth from > producers to exploiters (a little elite) a lot of more capital could be > accumulated by producers making their lives better and allowing them to > thrive and produce even more wealth and science and technology. > > Without judges and prosecutors able to selectively enforce rules a lot > of bad laws would be striked down. > Without the money, a lot of police would not spend time running around > to punish people for victimless crimes. > > And so on. > Mirco, I couldn't have said it better. I believe I agree with every word you have said, and it was brilliantly stated. Thank you for that. I'm still struggling with the tie in to the Singularity. Are you predicting that the Singularity will bring an end to big business, big government, and empower the intelligent? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 20:02:47 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 15:02:47 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party In-Reply-To: <026001cee0a8$9aec5470$d0c4fd50$@att.net> References: <026001cee0a8$9aec5470$d0c4fd50$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 2:43 PM, spike wrote: > Be kind to Republicans John, they may soon run your government. > If in January Republican troglodytes continue to throw their feces at economic logic and behave as they did in October I have 3 predictions: 1) The approval rating of congress will drop even lower than its current 9% and Republicans will loose control of the House in the next election. 2) The level of stupidity displayed in October was so enormous that it even started to scare rich people like the Koch brothers (who said defaulting on the debt would be a disaster), so if they see a repeat performance in January money to Republican crazies will dry up. 3) No Republican will ever be president again. > Our government set up a huge Ponzi scheme; eventually it has to > collapse. > That could happen in 30 or 40 years but only if one takes the pessimistic assumption that future productivity will be no greater than what it is now, and I like most Extropians am not pessimistic in that regard. > It is doing that now. > For as long as I've been alive I've been hearing that government bankruptcy is imminent, but except for the imbecilic Republican stunt on October 23 2013 I never saw any evidence that it was actually going to happen. And I'm not the only one, the free market can't find any evidence that the government is about to go broke either, hence the anemic performance of gold and the insatiable demand for government bonds even at historic low interest rates. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 14 20:09:38 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 21:09:38 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> <02e501cee149$ebfbe820$c3f3b860$@att.net> Message-ID: <20131114200937.GZ5661@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 09:45:37AM -0800, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 6:58 AM, spike wrote: > > > Next step is to price out 16 thousand square kilometers of PV panels, or > > 16 billion square meters. Any gurus among us? > > It's not a good idea to use PV (~20% efficiency) to drive a synfuel plant (low efficiency) to refuel vehicles. PV to EV efficiency is quantitative, and automatically deployed trolleys (plus autonomous driving) will even let you forego large batteries, or run your plug-in hybrid in trolleybus mode during cruise. Not an option for planes or ships, obviously. Though for planes wireless delivery is an option. Synthetic chemical industry and fertilizer are also not wireless. So if you're beyond 100% peak by wind or sun, make hydrogen and/or methane and/or ammonia. > From > http://shop.mlsolar.com/50W-Solar-Panel-12V-Free-Shipping-OFF-GRID-RV-BOAT-181068755276.htmwe > have one price point, at least, of $85 for 590x665 mm, which comes to > a > bit under $220 per square meter. Granted, this is better quality than the > panels you're talking about, but between discount for lower quality and > bulk purchase discount, I suspect the price wouldn't come down by more than > 2 orders of magnitude and probably no more than 1. And that's not > including the cost of the land, or the fuel processing equipment. > > So, if you Kickstarter finance this, you're going to start off with much > less than 16,000 km^2. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 20:21:13 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 15:21:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <527CA4A4.9000009@aleph.se> <00d601cedc95$b4995ab0$1dcc1010$@att.net> <024001cedcb1$0d064580$2712d080$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 2:17 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > While fire is important to land animals, what makes it important is that > it is terrestrial. [...] mining would be terribly difficult underwater, and > especially in the very deep water worlds. How would they be able to pass > through the bronze and iron ages in such a world? > Even if the underwater creatures could obtain copper and tin ore it would do them no good if they didn't have fire and the necessary heat to refine the ore into bronze. And making iron tools requires even more heat than bronze, and steel more than iron. > Imagine that cephalopods had another billion years of evolution without > the interference of land returning to water animals > But they don't have another billion years, the sun will leave the main sequence and the Earth will become uninhabitable in about half that time, John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 14 20:21:07 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 21:21:07 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> <012f01cee104$17374520$45a5cf60$@att.net> <030e01cee14f$a11e8140$e35b83c0$@att.net> Message-ID: <20131114202107.GA5661@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 12:12:14PM -0700, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Correct. The problem now being that land near the coast in sunny areas is > expensive. Spike's solution took advantage of existing infrastructure > (i-50) that is underutilized and of low value, that happens to be in an Over here, you would think that running high-speed trains and heavy rail in general by PV put by the side of the rail is a no-brainer. One would think wrong. (But, on paper, the DB is running their trains on renewables. On paper). > area with a lot of sun. Also an area where people don't generally want to > live, I might add. > > > That doesn't require radical new technology. In fact, it's somewhat > > boring. But if you could make the numbers work, it would be a viable first > > step toward this sort of scheme. Further, this step could quite readily > > attract large private investment - if and only if the data and projections > > are believable to said investors. > > > Correct. And I don't think you can make the numbers work for Solar today. I It's weird how renewables and PV work for countries like Denmark and Germany, today. > would love to be proven wrong, as I love solar in principle. I still think > putting up that many solar panels would likely kill as many people as > Chernobyl... LOL Chernobyl and Fukushima are not bad because they kill people. They're bad because they ruin agriculture across large areas, and simply because the sustainability and financials do not check out. Notice neither Chernobyl or Fukushima produce power. And their cleanup costs would ruin their operators many times over, if they had to operate in an unsubsidized, commercial context. From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 14 20:28:10 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 21:28:10 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> <02e501cee149$ebfbe820$c3f3b860$@att.net> Message-ID: <20131114202810.GC5661@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 11:19:52AM -0700, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > So to generate the amount of power we make with natural gas and coal > > combined requires about 10 km either side of the road along a nearly > > abandoned stretch of pavement in Nevada. Get on Google Maps, go to street There's no point in making power where nobody needs it. You can power transportation by about the amount of pavement the highway or the rail needs. Normal suburbia would be net exporting, if you just utilized building skin. A bit more (plenty of dead/sealed area) and you can run everything. > > view, look around. There is pleeeenty of room for something like that. > > Next step is to price out 16 thousand square kilometers of PV panels, or 16 > > billion square meters. Any gurus among us? > > > > The problem with that is you are creating more demand than there is supply. > That will drive the price up (econ 101). And whatever numbers you start If Germany did not use FITs there would be no global solar market today. Does Econ 101 cover that, too? > with won't be the ones you end with. Yes, the numbers would be way lower. Economies of scale alone would do it, but long-term you would have other effects kicking in. E.g., there's no point in have higher-voltage AC in a home. Lower-voltage DC would cover >90%. From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 14 20:34:10 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 21:34:10 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> <012f01cee104$17374520$45a5cf60$@att.net> <030e01cee14f$a11e8140$e35b83c0$@att.net> Message-ID: <20131114203410.GD5661@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 10:55:09AM -0800, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Indeed, a more viable product for all this electricity might well be simple > desalinated water. At least if the energy production was near the coast. Apropos desalination near the coast: http://news.sciencemag.org/asiapacific/2013/11/desert-farming-experiment-yields-first-results Not the first time mentioned here, but this is a very recent newsitem, and notice where it's published. > That doesn't require radical new technology. In fact, it's somewhat > boring. But if you could make the numbers work, it would be a viable first Large scale seawater desal is anything but boring. In fact, it's an unsolved problem. Both in term of the energetics of the fundamental process as well as sheer logistics. If you want to grow a gigaton of vegetables, the numbers get big, fast. > step toward this sort of scheme. Further, this step could quite readily > attract large private investment - if and only if the data and projections > are believable to said investors. From atymes at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 20:48:35 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 12:48:35 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> <012f01cee104$17374520$45a5cf60$@att.net> <030e01cee14f$a11e8140$e35b83c0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 11:12 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 11:55 AM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > >> On Nov 14, 2013 10:23 AM, "Kelly Anderson" >> wrote: >> > On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 8:38 AM, spike wrote: >> >> Cool thanks Kelly. It might be possible to transport the biomass >> using seawater somehow, >> > >> > >> > Only if you can desalinate it first. And if you do that, Los Angeles >> will want to drink it. And when Los Angeles wants water, Lolita gets water! >> >> Indeed, a more viable product for all this electricity might well be >> simple desalinated water. At least if the energy production was near the >> coast. >> > Correct. The problem now being that land near the coast in sunny areas is > expensive. Spike's solution took advantage of existing infrastructure > (i-50) that is underutilized and of low value, that happens to be in an > area with a lot of sun. Also an area where people don't generally want to > live, I might add. > Actually he said "highway 50", by which I assume he meant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Route_50_in_California as there is no I-50. But there is a lot of unused coastal land along http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Route_1 between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles (assuming Los Angeles would be the main destination). Not all of it, of course, but more than enough to stick a few large solar facilities powering a desalination plant out of sight of existing settlements. (South of Los Angeles, it seems to become mostly one long sprawl - though perhaps someone w/Marine contacts could ask Camp Pendleton if they'd be willing to host a major desal facility on their coast.) > That doesn't require radical new technology. In fact, it's somewhat >> boring. But if you could make the numbers work, it would be a viable first >> step toward this sort of scheme. Further, this step could quite readily >> attract large private investment - if and only if the data and projections >> are believable to said investors. > > Correct. And I don't think you can make the numbers work for Solar today. > I would love to be proven wrong, as I love solar in principle. > IIRC, solar-powered desalination was tried before, many years ago. The numbers almost but not quite worked. If that is the case, there's reason to believe they could work today. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 20:57:48 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 12:57:48 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: <20131114203410.GD5661@leitl.org> References: <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> <012f01cee104$17374520$45a5cf60$@att.net> <030e01cee14f$a11e8140$e35b83c0$@att.net> <20131114203410.GD5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 12:34 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Not the first time mentioned here, but this is a very > recent newsitem, and notice where it's published. > Quite. Some places are making effective use of it. > > That doesn't require radical new technology. In fact, it's somewhat > > boring. But if you could make the numbers work, it would be a viable > first > > Large scale seawater desal is anything but boring. In fact, it's an > unsolved problem. Both in term of the energetics of the fundamental > process as well as sheer logistics. If you want to grow a gigaton > of vegetables, the numbers get big, fast. > Yes, but the biggest problem with it is logistics, not fundamentally new technology. That inherently makes is a less exciting problem to solve, for many people. Of course, this doesn't make it any less important or challenging, though it does make it more difficult to attract funding and competent help. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Nov 14 21:17:54 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 22:17:54 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> Message-ID: <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> Il 14/11/2013 20:25, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > I'm still struggling with the tie in to the Singularity. Are you > predicting that the Singularity will bring an end to big business, big > government, and empower the intelligent? The Singularity will bring, for sure, enhanced ways to cooperate and collaborate, increasing the productivity of the productive individuals: allowing faster and freer economic transactions without the need of a third party is just one of them. I think there will be big business but, without a big government granting them privileges, they will be forced to be a lot more useful or the competition will eat their lunch with no remorse. What is the point of a Singularity or living an unlimited amount of time or be mentally, physically and ethically enhanced if we need more government to run our lives. We don't want become like Gods to live like Z the Ant. Bitcoin show that many things done by the government can and should be done by the market, by the people. And the people can and will do a better work than any government. Mirco From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 14 21:27:36 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 22:27:36 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> <012f01cee104$17374520$45a5cf60$@att.net> <030e01cee14f$a11e8140$e35b83c0$@att.net> <20131114203410.GD5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20131114212736.GG5661@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 12:57:48PM -0800, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Yes, but the biggest problem with it is logistics, not fundamentally new > technology. That inherently makes is a less exciting problem to solve, for There's plenty of innovation in desal. http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/web/2013/11/Sunlight-Helps-Turn-Salty-Water.html Of course in order to run ecosystem scale you'll need MNT, which is many decades away from being a solved problem. > many people. Of course, this doesn't make it any less important or > challenging, though it does make it more difficult to attract funding and > competent help. For pretty much the same reason why AIDS drew a disproportionately larger effort than malaria, as it hit a richer and educated demographic. Central Valley is running pretty unsustainably though, so it's only a question of time until large scale water desalination becomes a national priority. From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 14 21:34:43 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 22:34:43 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> Message-ID: <20131114213442.GH5661@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 10:17:54PM +0100, Mirco Romanato wrote: > The Singularity will bring, for sure, enhanced ways to cooperate and The Singularity, for sure, is defined as a prediction horizon. So trying to predict that is, by definition, is impossible. > collaborate, increasing the productivity of the productive individuals: > allowing faster and freer economic transactions without the need of a > third party is just one of them. > > I think there will be big business but, without a big government Business? Government? Where we're going, we don't need either. > granting them privileges, they will be forced to be a lot more useful or > the competition will eat their lunch with no remorse. > > What is the point of a Singularity or living an unlimited amount of time > or be mentally, physically and ethically enhanced if we need more > government to run our lives. There is no point in the Singularity, any more than any point there is in your current existence. Why are you there, wasting perfectly good air? The universe certainly doesn't care, but us chickens sure do. > We don't want become like Gods to live like Z the Ant. It doesn't matter what we want, it only matter what we're going to get, collectively. > Bitcoin show that many things done by the government can and should be > done by the market, by the people. And the people can and will do a > better work than any government. As an anarchist, I care about neither governments, nor corporations. As a pragmatic anarchist, I'm willing to run for office or being an enterpreneur if it helps getting things done, short-term. Long-term, we'll see if we live long enough to care about that. From atymes at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 21:36:38 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 13:36:38 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: <20131114212736.GG5661@leitl.org> References: <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> <012f01cee104$17374520$45a5cf60$@att.net> <030e01cee14f$a11e8140$e35b83c0$@att.net> <20131114203410.GD5661@leitl.org> <20131114212736.GG5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 1:27 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Central Valley is running pretty unsustainably though, so it's only > a question of time until large scale water desalination becomes a > national priority. > Or at least a California priority. Obtaining state money might be easier than obtaining federal, especially for a project using Californian industries (shipping from China, if not its own solar companies) and Californian land for the benefit of Californian agriculture and cities. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 14 21:26:15 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 13:26:15 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Millions of Lines of Code In-Reply-To: References: <50C575F1-04BB-4F66-9A43-97B34EE4E8C4@me.com> Message-ID: <028001cee180$276a1450$763e3cf0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2013 11:08 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Millions of Lines of Code On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 11:32 AM, Mike Dougherty wrote: .Or maybe I'm woefully ignorant of ACA's true complexity _requirements_ - there could be several layers of subterfuge surrounding the real reason why it must suck so hard. >.While Amazon does have the shopping cart figured out, they don't have the facilities, required by the law to protect the privacy of their customers. In addition, how much various insurance companies charge various people varies by a relatively large number of variables.-Kelly Kelly, the whole point of this is the government does not need to know all that info, and shouldn't be trusted with it to start with. Recall we currently have an IRS chief who has refused to testify by invoking the fifth, and another who has been shown to be sharing taxpayer info with the government. So why would we trust them with private data? The government's role in all this is to list which insurance policies qualify, then estimate subsidies for the low income (note I didn't say poor, but low income) and tax penalties for the opt-outs. They could do that using only W2 info, which they already have anyway. Then the competing insurance companies would be responsible for handling their own client's info. They do that currently. I have been an Amazon customer since the thing started, and I have never had them screw up an order, never had them leak my credit card info, nothing has ever gone wrong, and they handle buttloads of transactions; they know how to do it. The government, not so much. They shouldn't be in the insurance biz. Leave that to those who know how. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tech101 at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 22:53:10 2013 From: tech101 at gmail.com (Adam A. Ford) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 09:53:10 +1100 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Molecular robot mimics life's protein-builder In-Reply-To: <20130115075956.GO6172@leitl.org> References: <20130114161951.GD6172@leitl.org> <009801cdf28f$af480430$0dd80c90$@att.net> <20130115075956.GO6172@leitl.org> Message-ID: This paper I just stumbled on recently - the full paper is here. And on the Leigh Group website they state "Over the last decade we have developed some of the first examples?all be they primitive by biological standards?of functional synthetic molecular level machines and motors" >From someone who does not have a strong background in physics and chemistry let alone nanotechnology, what they are doing at the Leigh grouplooks interesting, but I wonder if my enthusiasm for nanotech is coloring my assessment. Has anyone here spoken to David A. Leigh about this work? Or done any serious investigation? What some people seem to take away from the Drexler/Smalley debate is that molecular manufacturing is science fiction (might be possible in a few centuries), and that molecular assemblers are fantasy (might be possible in another universe or in VR). More moderate skeptics may suggest that molecular manufacturing beyond biology is folly. I get this impression from the lecturers of the coursera 'Nanotechnology' MOOC. Does Leigh's example of a synthetic molecular machine make one more optimistic about the possibility of molecular manufacturing? Does it support Drexler's vision of nanotechnology? Are there any other research or engineering projects that show promise for molecular manufacturing? p.s. Apologies for all the questions, but this looks pretty interesting. Kind regards, Adam A. Ford Director - Humanity+ Global, Director - Humanity+ Australia, Chair - Humanity+ @ Melbourne Summit Chair - Singularity Summit Australia Director - Future Day Mob: +61 421 979 977 | Email: tech101 at gmail.com *Science, Technology & the Future * conference on *30th Nov - 1st Dec 2013*. *"The conference will feature a diverse range of presenters from across the globe. Scientists, Engineers, Artists and Philosophers will discuss evidence-based research, community awareness of rapid technological change, and scenarios for navigating our future."* *Future Day - "Join the conversation on Future Day March 1st to explore the possibilities about how the future is transforming us. You can celebrate Future Day however you like, the ball is in your court ? feel free to send a photo of your Future Day gatherings to info at futureday.org , and your jubilation may wind up being commemorated on the Future Day website and the Facebook page! "* Humanity+ | Humanity+ Australia| Singularity Summit Australia | Facebook| Twitter | YouTube| Future Day "A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels." ("Atomic Education Urged by Albert Einstein", New York Times, 25 May 1946) Please consider the environment before printing this email On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 6:59 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 11:45:18AM -0800, spike wrote: > > > Gene, is not this an example of a nano-machine creating a covalent bond? > > Creating or breaking bond is not scale-dependant. > > > Is not a nano-machine creating a covalent bond exactly the mega-holy > nano-grail the nay-saying crowd insists cannot be done? > > I don't recall that particular objection. > > Smalley mentioned the 'fat finger' problem, which > is real for soft, floppy enzyme-like systems, > but not relevant for rigid cages depositing > highly reactive moieties, which work > pretty much like today's numerically controlled > rapid prototyping. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 14 22:45:29 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 14:45:29 -0800 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284BCF1.2000806@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <007e01cee18b$388c8500$a9a58f00$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 5:40 AM, BillK wrote: >>.More of the same appears like the Gates of Hell are opening wide. >.Bill, are you actually arguing that the Internet is a bad thing? -Kelly Depends on how you look at it. If hell has gates, presumably it has a wall or fence with the gates being the entrance/exit. Unless hell is a lot more fun than has been portrayed, presumably the inhabitants would be far more eager to exit than would be outsiders to gain entry via those gates. So if the gates of hell are open wide, this would be a good thing, as demonstrated by the first wave of winged rodents, exiting the place like proverbial bats outta hell. Of course, all the paintings made of the place have two things in common, one of which is the heat, but the other is that no one is wearing clothes. With all that wicked-cool nekkidness everywhere, it is no mystery that people would want in. BillK's list of consequences I fully recognize as bad things for some people. I am one of those who came out on the winning side of everything on that list, but I know people who generally are not internet users who express discontent. A good example is that people don't gather and socialize as much, so those who remember the time before. As it turns out, people still gather, but they do so with more specialized interest. People who are not internet users today seldom have special interests, or if so, they cannot find the others who are like-minded, these having found each other long before in internet groups. Without internet use, their own specialties might be having social gatherings right next door, and the non-surfer would never know it was going on. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Nov 14 23:25:14 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 00:25:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Molecular robot mimics life's protein-builder In-Reply-To: References: <20130114161951.GD6172@leitl.org> <009801cdf28f$af480430$0dd80c90$@att.net> <20130115075956.GO6172@leitl.org> Message-ID: <52855BDA.5040607@aleph.se> On 2013-11-14 23:53, Adam A. Ford wrote: > Does it support Drexler's vision of nanotechnology? Yes. Note that Drexler's vision is not pure diamondoid, but rather the precision. This is a demonstration of designer nanostructures that does something useful. The slow speed is not an issue, if this (or something like this) can be used to bootstrap something better. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 14 23:30:30 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 15:30:30 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Dark Matter In-Reply-To: References: <52808EA1.6070508@aleph.se> <52838EE3.7080103@aleph.se> <013b01cee09b$7de4ea70$79aebf50$@att.net> <036501cee0cb$f0d72ea0$d2858be0$@att.net> <012f01cee104$17374520$45a5cf60$@att.net> <030e01cee14f$a11e8140$e35b83c0$@att.net> Message-ID: <00fc01cee191$82db4a00$8891de00$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson >. >.Seriously, you can't do it with seawater because it is too corrosive. Anything you built would not last long enough to be worth the cost. Ja I was afraid of that. but I haven't worked out the economic model or the cooling model for that matter. It might not be practical to carry off the waste heat with evaporation. spike >.Sorry, what needs to be cooled here? I'm lost. -Kelly There is waste heat in the conversion process of any carbon source to liquid fuels. Carrying away all that waste heat is a big challenge out there along SR50 in Nevada because of limited access to sufficient quantities of fresh water, which can be used for evaporative cooling. Sea water is unsuitable for evaporative cooling. I don't know how to exhaust the waste heat without a plentiful fresh water source. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From odellhuff2 at gmail.com Fri Nov 15 15:56:57 2013 From: odellhuff2 at gmail.com (Odell Huff) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 10:56:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Single-hand touch typing in Ender's Game Message-ID: Dear Cave Shadows--I'm a twenty-year lurker on this list and this is my first post, or question rather. In the (enthralling!) movie, Ender types complete-sentence emails with one hand on a touch screen. Does this technology actually exist, or could it? I was thinking I would very much like to take notes mobilely, on say an iPhone, the writing equivalent to a micro recorder. It seems to me the tech would be easy, the hard part might be having to learn to type like a court reporter... --Odell -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 15 16:26:53 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 17:26:53 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Single-hand touch typing in Ender's Game In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20131115162653.GW5661@leitl.org> On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 10:56:57AM -0500, Odell Huff wrote: > Dear Cave Shadows--I'm a twenty-year lurker on this list and this is my > first post, or question rather. In the (enthralling!) movie, Ender types Two-decade lurker, that's got to be a new record. > complete-sentence emails with one hand on a touch screen. Does this > technology actually exist, or could it? I was thinking I would very much > like to take notes mobilely, on say an iPhone, the writing equivalent to a > micro recorder. It seems to me the tech would be easy, the hard part might > be having to learn to type like a court reporter... You mean a chorded keyboard on a multitouch device? http://labs.teague.com/2012/02/08/doug-engelbarts-chorded-keyboard-as-a-multi-touch-interface/ From florent.berthet at gmail.com Fri Nov 15 16:31:14 2013 From: florent.berthet at gmail.com (Florent Berthet) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 17:31:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Single-hand touch typing in Ender's Game In-Reply-To: <20131115162653.GW5661@leitl.org> References: <20131115162653.GW5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: This is feasible. Look at this concept that could work by using a head-mounted display such as the Oculus Rift with either VR gloves or a kinect-like motion capture system: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs9kocefwaA 2013/11/15 Eugen Leitl > On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 10:56:57AM -0500, Odell Huff wrote: > > > Dear Cave Shadows--I'm a twenty-year lurker on this list and this is my > > first post, or question rather. In the (enthralling!) movie, Ender types > > Two-decade lurker, that's got to be a new record. > > > complete-sentence emails with one hand on a touch screen. Does this > > technology actually exist, or could it? I was thinking I would very much > > like to take notes mobilely, on say an iPhone, the writing equivalent to > a > > micro recorder. It seems to me the tech would be easy, the hard part > might > > be having to learn to type like a court reporter... > > You mean a chorded keyboard on a multitouch device? > > > http://labs.teague.com/2012/02/08/doug-engelbarts-chorded-keyboard-as-a-multi-touch-interface/ > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 15 16:45:07 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 08:45:07 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Single-hand touch typing in Ender's Game In-Reply-To: References: <20131115162653.GW5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: <036b01cee222$0b5c0af0$221420d0$@att.net> 2013/11/15 Eugen Leitl On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 10:56:57AM -0500, Odell Huff wrote: > Dear Cave Shadows--I'm a twenty-year lurker on this list and this is my > first post, or question rather. In the (enthralling!) movie, Ender types Two-decade lurker, that's got to be a new record. > complete-sentence emails with one hand on a touch screen. Does this > technology actually exist, or could it? I was thinking I would very much > like to take notes mobilely, on say an iPhone, the writing equivalent to a > micro recorder. It seems to me the tech would be easy, the hard part might > be having to learn to type like a court reporter... You mean a chorded keyboard on a multitouch device? http://labs.teague.com/2012/02/08/doug-engelbarts-chorded-keyboard-as-a-mult i-touch-interface/ _______________________________________________ Some of you guys might have been around in the early to mid 90s when we had a wearable computer group; Eugen I vaguely recall seeing you there but I might be mistaken. I was a lurker on ExI in those days, but the wearables group almost predated ExI-chat. We had a vision going back to about 1989 when I saw a demonstration of a head-up display at a trade show. It wasn't good resolution, but it was good enough for grainy graphics and 640x480 resolution text, which was common in those primitive savage days. The data egg or one-handed keyboard was big then. We debated if that would be the way, or speech recognition. >.Dear Cave Shadows--I'm a twenty-year lurker on this list. In retrospect, it is interesting that the bulk of this discussion on data eggs vs speech rec happened twenty years ago, but it wasn't really here, it was on another group. I think ExI-chat took it up mostly in the later 90s. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rolandodegilead at gmail.com Fri Nov 15 17:01:08 2013 From: rolandodegilead at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Eugenio_Mart=EDnez?=) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:01:08 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Single-hand touch typing in Ender's Game In-Reply-To: References: <20131115162653.GW5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: Not the same, not even similar, but http://bit.ly/InGooglePlay and http://www.swype.com/ are the most similar thing we have for now. For mobiles and tablets. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rolandodegilead at gmail.com Fri Nov 15 17:02:13 2013 From: rolandodegilead at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Eugenio_Mart=EDnez?=) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:02:13 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Single-hand touch typing in Ender's Game In-Reply-To: <036b01cee222$0b5c0af0$221420d0$@att.net> References: <20131115162653.GW5661@leitl.org> <036b01cee222$0b5c0af0$221420d0$@att.net> Message-ID: Well.. I mean, the only ones easily affordables that we have in reality, of course, ha ha. On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 5:45 PM, spike wrote: > > > 2013/11/15 Eugen Leitl > > On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 10:56:57AM -0500, Odell Huff wrote: > > > Dear Cave Shadows--I'm a twenty-year lurker on this list and this is my > > first post, or question rather. In the (enthralling!) movie, Ender types > > Two-decade lurker, that's got to be a new record. > > > > complete-sentence emails with one hand on a touch screen. Does this > > technology actually exist, or could it? I was thinking I would very much > > like to take notes mobilely, on say an iPhone, the writing equivalent to > a > > micro recorder. It seems to me the tech would be easy, the hard part > might > > be having to learn to type like a court reporter... > > You mean a chorded keyboard on a multitouch device? > > > http://labs.teague.com/2012/02/08/doug-engelbarts-chorded-keyboard-as-a-multi-touch-interface/ > _______________________________________________ > > > > Some of you guys might have been around in the early to mid 90s when we > had a wearable computer group; Eugen I vaguely recall seeing you there but > I might be mistaken. I was a lurker on ExI in those days, but the > wearables group almost predated ExI-chat. > > > > We had a vision going back to about 1989 when I saw a demonstration of a > head-up display at a trade show. It wasn?t good resolution, but it was > good enough for grainy graphics and 640x480 resolution text, which was > common in those primitive savage days. The data egg or one-handed keyboard > was big then. We debated if that would be the way, or speech recognition. > > > > >?Dear Cave Shadows--I'm a twenty-year lurker on this list? > > > > In retrospect, it is interesting that the bulk of this discussion on data > eggs vs speech rec happened twenty years ago, but it wasn?t really here, it > was on another group. I think ExI-chat took it up mostly in the later 90s. > > > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- OLVIDATE.DE Tatachan.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Nov 15 18:37:16 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 13:37:16 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Quantum Computers Message-ID: Perhaps the biggest problem in making a quantum computer is overcoming quantum decoherence. In yesterday's issue of the journal Science Kamyar Saeedi and his team reported that they placed phosphorous atoms in a silicon matrix in a state of quantum coherence for over 3 hours at liquid helium temperatures. And even at room temperature they remained in quantum coherence for 39 minutes, at room temperature the previous record was 2 seconds. They think they might be able to do even better, and possibly much better, if they use selenium instead of phosphorous next time. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Fri Nov 15 20:02:53 2013 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 14:02:53 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Single-hand touch typing in Ender's Game In-Reply-To: References: <20131115162653.GW5661@leitl.org> <036b01cee222$0b5c0af0$221420d0$@att.net> Message-ID: Swype is really novel and has changed the way I write on phones. On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 11:02 AM, Eugenio Mart?nez < rolandodegilead at gmail.com> wrote: > Well.. I mean, the only ones easily affordables that we have in reality, > of course, ha ha. > > > On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 5:45 PM, spike wrote: > >> >> >> 2013/11/15 Eugen Leitl >> >> On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 10:56:57AM -0500, Odell Huff wrote: >> >> > Dear Cave Shadows--I'm a twenty-year lurker on this list and this is my >> > first post, or question rather. In the (enthralling!) movie, Ender types >> >> Two-decade lurker, that's got to be a new record. >> >> >> > complete-sentence emails with one hand on a touch screen. Does this >> > technology actually exist, or could it? I was thinking I would very much >> > like to take notes mobilely, on say an iPhone, the writing equivalent >> to a >> > micro recorder. It seems to me the tech would be easy, the hard part >> might >> > be having to learn to type like a court reporter... >> >> You mean a chorded keyboard on a multitouch device? >> >> >> http://labs.teague.com/2012/02/08/doug-engelbarts-chorded-keyboard-as-a-multi-touch-interface/ >> _______________________________________________ >> >> >> >> Some of you guys might have been around in the early to mid 90s when we >> had a wearable computer group; Eugen I vaguely recall seeing you there but >> I might be mistaken. I was a lurker on ExI in those days, but the >> wearables group almost predated ExI-chat. >> >> >> >> We had a vision going back to about 1989 when I saw a demonstration of a >> head-up display at a trade show. It wasn?t good resolution, but it was >> good enough for grainy graphics and 640x480 resolution text, which was >> common in those primitive savage days. The data egg or one-handed keyboard >> was big then. We debated if that would be the way, or speech recognition. >> >> >> >> >?Dear Cave Shadows--I'm a twenty-year lurker on this list? >> >> >> >> In retrospect, it is interesting that the bulk of this discussion on data >> eggs vs speech rec happened twenty years ago, but it wasn?t really here, it >> was on another group. I think ExI-chat took it up mostly in the later 90s. >> >> >> >> spike >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> > > > -- > OLVIDATE.DE > Tatachan.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Fri Nov 15 20:07:06 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 12:07:06 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Single-hand touch typing in Ender's Game In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 7:56 AM, Odell Huff wrote: > In the (enthralling!) movie, Ender types complete-sentence emails with one > hand on a touch screen. Does this technology actually exist, or could it? > I have composed some of my recent emails to this list on a touch screen with one hand - indeed, with two fingers, sometimes just one. This did not take any special software; this was just using the standard GMail app with the standard Android in-screen keyboard. I have used in-screen keyboards on iOS as well. Perhaps the UI could be improved to increase typing speed (including reducing typos that need to be corrected, lowering speed), but what you have described exists, and is readily available today. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Fri Nov 15 20:18:14 2013 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 14:18:14 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Single-hand touch typing in Ender's Game In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Adrian, what version of Android are you running? On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 2:07 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 7:56 AM, Odell Huff wrote: > >> In the (enthralling!) movie, Ender types complete-sentence emails with >> one hand on a touch screen. Does this technology actually exist, or could >> it? >> > > I have composed some of my recent emails to this list on a touch screen > with one hand - indeed, with two fingers, sometimes just one. This did not > take any special software; this was just using the standard GMail app with > the standard Android in-screen keyboard. I have used in-screen keyboards > on iOS as well. > > Perhaps the UI could be improved to increase typing speed (including > reducing typos that need to be corrected, lowering speed), but what you > have described exists, and is readily available today. > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Fri Nov 15 20:46:28 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 12:46:28 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Single-hand touch typing in Ender's Game In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 12:18 PM, Will Steinberg wrote: > Adrian, what version of Android are you running? > Currently, 4.1.2. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri Nov 15 22:16:03 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 22:16:03 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Quantum Computers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <52869D23.5070303@aleph.se> On 2013-11-15 18:37, John Clark wrote: > Perhaps the biggest problem in making a quantum computer is overcoming > quantum decoherence. In yesterday's issue of the journal Science > Kamyar Saeedi and his team reported that they placed phosphorous atoms > in a silicon matrix in a state of quantum coherence for over 3 hours > at liquid helium temperatures. And even at room temperature they > remained in quantum coherence for 39 minutes, at room temperature the > previous record was 2 seconds. They think they might be able to do > even better, and possibly much better, if they use selenium instead of > phosphorous next time. It is pretty impressive, indeed. Of course, nuclear spins are much more stable than particle spins and naturally isolated from each other. By the way, I read the news story on my way back home in Oxford - just when I was passing outside the building where the group works. Nice coincidence... or is it? :-) (phone reception is always bad in that area. I assume the signals get eaten by escaped quantum states, or something) -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From steinberg.will at gmail.com Fri Nov 15 22:18:05 2013 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 16:18:05 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Single-hand touch typing in Ender's Game In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Do you use Swype, then? I've been wondering if people think it's as great as I do. It has easily tripled my phone typing speed, and made typing on my phone a more aesthetically perfect task in general. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sat Nov 16 02:29:06 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:29:06 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Single-hand touch typing in Ender's Game In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 2:18 PM, Will Steinberg wrote: > Do you use Swype, then? I've been wondering if people think it's as great > as I do. It has easily tripled my phone typing speed, and made typing on > my phone a more aesthetically perfect task in general. > I myself do not use Swype at this time, though some of my friends do. I have heard mixed reviews about it, though that suggests it is at least usable. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu Sat Nov 16 18:26:38 2013 From: hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu (Henry Rivera) Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 13:26:38 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Single-hand touch typing in Ender's Game In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > On Nov 15, 2013, at 21:29, Adrian Tymes wrote: > >> On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 2:18 PM, Will Steinberg wrote: >> Do you use Swype, then? I've been wondering if people think it's as great as I do. It has easily tripled my phone typing speed, and made typing on my phone a more aesthetically perfect task in general. >> > > I myself do not use Swype at this time, though some of my friends do. I have heard mixed reviews about it, though that suggests it is at least usable. > I still use ShapeWriter (formerly known as SHARK--shorthand aided rapid keyboarding). It's the original. I don't think you can't get it anymore however since they were bought by Nuance, who put the technology in Swype. I never switched to Swype. There is also SlideIT, TouchPal, and MessageEase according to Wikipedia. -Henry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sun Nov 17 11:04:28 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 11:04:28 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The post-antibiotic era Message-ID: 'Superbugs could erase a century of medical advances' experts warn. Doctors issue new warning of devastating effect of over-prescribing antibiotics for trivial ailments Quote: Routine operations could become deadly "in the very near future" as bacteria evolve to resist the drugs we use to combat them. This process could erase a century of medical advances, say government doctors in a special editorial in The Lancet health journal. Writing in The Lancet, experts, including England's chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, warn that death rates from bacterial infections "might return to those of the early 20th century". They write: "Rarely has modern medicine faced such a grave threat. Without antibiotics, treatments from minor surgery to major transplants could become impossible, and health-care costs are likely to spiral as we resort to newer, more expensive antibiotics and sustain longer hospital admissions." About 35 million antibiotics are prescribed by GPs in England every year. The more the drugs circulate, the more bacteria are able to evolve to resist them. In the past, drug development kept pace with evolving microbes, with a constant production line of new classes of antibiotics. But the drugs have ceased to be profitable and a new class has not been created since 1987. Antibiotics are also used in vast quantities in agriculture, fisheries and by vets, the resulting environmental exposure adding to bacterial resistance, with further consequences for human health. Writing in The Lancet, Professor Otto Cars of Uppsala University in Sweden, and one of the world's leading experts on antibiotic resistance, said: "Antibiotic resistance is a complex ecological problem which doesn't just affect people, but is also intimately connected with agriculture and the environment. ------- BillK From anders at aleph.se Sun Nov 17 12:13:34 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 12:13:34 +0000 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> Message-ID: <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> On 2013-11-13 19:24, Kelly Anderson wrote: > The loss of atmosphere is of course related to the loss of the > magnetosphere. Is that really obvious? I know a fair bit of planetary science, and I always thought it was more UV-dissociation of water into hydrogen that does a Jeans escape or hydrodynamic escape that dried out the planet and led to most atmospheric loss. > For planets very close to their sun would the increased density of the > solar wind require an even stronger magnetosphere to preserve an > atmosphere? Would larger planets with greater gravity be able to hold > onto an atmosphere more tightly? The solar wind intensity goes down as 1/a^2 where a is the orbital radius. The magnetosphere doesn't seem to scale in a simple way with planet size: I have tried to find some neat rule of thumb, but it mainly looks like big planets with fast rotation have a better chance of being more magnetic, but it all depends on iffy magnetohydrodynamic properties of the core. One possible scaling law I don't trust is that field strength goes as sqrt(density/period). A heavy planet will have a shorter atmospheric scale height; 7400/g meters, where g is the surface gravity in Earth gravities. But a low atmosphere doesn't necessary help, it is temperature that matters most. However, the escape temperature for each gas scales as 1/R - large planets need to be hotter to lose as much atmosphere. > > The dynamic interaction of atmosphere, magnetosphere and solar wind > might make it difficult to have enough atmosphere for enough time to > evolve intelligent life. Also, if the atmosphere is too thick, that > seems like it would cause its own set of problems. You can't live on > Jupiter for example, thought that is an extreme example. Even thick terrestrial planet atmospheres cause a lot of complications - they distribute temperature evenly, they convect in ways different from our thin atmosphere (thinness in this case is all about how many optical length constants deep the atmosphere is - can an IR photon get through it without scattering?) > > I don't know the necessary physics, but if you had a planet 2x the > size of earth with the same proportion of water and atmosphere, but a > much greater magnetosphere because of the size of the core, would you > have problems with the atmosphere being too dense? Would the oceans be > too deep in some sense? Would it be harder for continents to arise > from the deep? A double-Earth would likely be a waterworld, from what I have read. Rock after all contains water, and if you squeeze it enough it will be released to the surface (plus cometary water). So double-Earth will at least have eight times the water volume but just four times the surface area. Plenty of volcanism, and over time I think continents will develop. Mountains would be half of our height (since gravity would be twice as large), but that is still enough to get some to poke up. Atmospheric density is the hard part: it depends on how the planet formed, and its temperature. It is to some extent a free variable which also affects the temperature that constrains it - it is a real headache in my worldbuilding program ;-) Quick guess: the atmosphere would be thicker but not super-thick, as long as surface temperatures are fairly low and like Earth's. Might be unbreathable to humans (too high oxygen partial pressure) but not to local life. > > So many questions. I'm sure there are people at NASA who have been > scratching their heads about this stuff for decades. Indeed. I have to rush, but I have a library of papers and books on this. Am writing a short guide for worldbuilding. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Sun Nov 17 11:55:32 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 11:55:32 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The post-antibiotic era In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5288AEB4.5000301@aleph.se> On 2013-11-17 11:04, BillK wrote: > 'Superbugs could erase a century of medical advances' experts warn. It is not quite that bad, but it is taking seriously. Not an existential risk, and unlikely to shorten lifespans dramatically (note that she talks about death rates of bacterial infections), but a real risk to our individual lives. The problem seems to be that right now (1) there are few economic incentives to develop better or new kinds of antibiotics for a variety of reasons, (2) the people struggling against resistance are mostly stuck in "reduce misuse"-mode, which means that they do not help (1) much, and likely will fail because they can at most stipulate sensible rules in their own countries, not in emerging markets where the big breeding of resistant pathogens take place. Meanwhile the right kind of hospital organisation and handling of patients with resistant pathogens can help a lot; there are regional differences in Europe that show this (apparently the Netherlands and Sweden are paradigm examples, while Germany for some reason fails at it). Bring on the nanoparticle antibiotics, Sonia and Sonia! http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/briefings/nano-antibiotics-breifing.pdf -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From protokol2020 at gmail.com Sun Nov 17 15:10:15 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 16:10:15 +0100 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> Message-ID: > A double-Earth would likely be a waterworld, from what I have read. Rock after all contains water, and if you squeeze it enough it will be released to the surface (plus cometary water). So double-Earth will at least have eight times the water volume but just four times the surface area. > Plenty of volcanism, and over time I think continents will develop. Mountains would be half of our height (since gravity would be twice as large), but that is still enough to get some to poke up. Twice as much water is 8 km deep on average. 4 km above Earth ocean surface. And mountains half as big, not even Mont Everest would be above water. On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 1:13 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-11-13 19:24, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> The loss of atmosphere is of course related to the loss of the >> magnetosphere. >> > > Is that really obvious? I know a fair bit of planetary science, and I > always thought it was more UV-dissociation of water into hydrogen that does > a Jeans escape or hydrodynamic escape that dried out the planet and led to > most atmospheric loss. > > > For planets very close to their sun would the increased density of the >> solar wind require an even stronger magnetosphere to preserve an >> atmosphere? Would larger planets with greater gravity be able to hold onto >> an atmosphere more tightly? >> > > The solar wind intensity goes down as 1/a^2 where a is the orbital radius. > The magnetosphere doesn't seem to scale in a simple way with planet size: I > have tried to find some neat rule of thumb, but it mainly looks like big > planets with fast rotation have a better chance of being more magnetic, but > it all depends on iffy magnetohydrodynamic properties of the core. One > possible scaling law I don't trust is that field strength goes as > sqrt(density/period). > > A heavy planet will have a shorter atmospheric scale height; 7400/g > meters, where g is the surface gravity in Earth gravities. But a low > atmosphere doesn't necessary help, it is temperature that matters most. > However, the escape temperature for each gas scales as 1/R - large planets > need to be hotter to lose as much atmosphere. > > > > >> The dynamic interaction of atmosphere, magnetosphere and solar wind might >> make it difficult to have enough atmosphere for enough time to evolve >> intelligent life. Also, if the atmosphere is too thick, that seems like it >> would cause its own set of problems. You can't live on Jupiter for example, >> thought that is an extreme example. >> > > Even thick terrestrial planet atmospheres cause a lot of complications - > they distribute temperature evenly, they convect in ways different from our > thin atmosphere (thinness in this case is all about how many optical length > constants deep the atmosphere is - can an IR photon get through it without > scattering?) > > > >> I don't know the necessary physics, but if you had a planet 2x the size >> of earth with the same proportion of water and atmosphere, but a much >> greater magnetosphere because of the size of the core, would you have >> problems with the atmosphere being too dense? Would the oceans be too deep >> in some sense? Would it be harder for continents to arise from the deep? >> > > A double-Earth would likely be a waterworld, from what I have read. Rock > after all contains water, and if you squeeze it enough it will be released > to the surface (plus cometary water). So double-Earth will at least have > eight times the water volume but just four times the surface area. > > Plenty of volcanism, and over time I think continents will develop. > Mountains would be half of our height (since gravity would be twice as > large), but that is still enough to get some to poke up. > > Atmospheric density is the hard part: it depends on how the planet formed, > and its temperature. It is to some extent a free variable which also > affects the temperature that constrains it - it is a real headache in my > worldbuilding program ;-) > > Quick guess: the atmosphere would be thicker but not super-thick, as long > as surface temperatures are fairly low and like Earth's. Might be > unbreathable to humans (too high oxygen partial pressure) but not to local > life. > > > >> So many questions. I'm sure there are people at NASA who have been >> scratching their heads about this stuff for decades. >> > > Indeed. I have to rush, but I have a library of papers and books on this. > Am writing a short guide for worldbuilding. > > > -- > 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 > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sun Nov 17 16:33:39 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 16:33:39 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> Message-ID: <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> OK, now I have the time to run my code, based on what I have gathered from the exoplanet literature. Welcome to dry and wet Double-Earth: A lot hinges on whether we assume Double-Earth started out beyond the iceline and moved inwards, in which case it will be really wet, or started out close to the sun and never got much volatiles. In the first case the mass will be about 3 Earths and the average density 37% of Earth, with a surface gravity of 0.73 g and an escape velocity of 13.6 km/s. This will have an ocean hundreds of kilometres deep, surrounding a rocky core covered with high pressure warm ices. In the second case the mass will be 15 Earths, the density will be 167%, gravity 3.4 g and escape velocity 30 km/s. Note that if the component rock contributes water like on Earth, a planet with 15 times the mass but only 4 times the area will have 3.75 times deeper hydrosphere, assuming everything equal. That means 16 km deep oceans - "dry" Double-Earth might still be a waterworld. Now we need to make some guesses at atmosphere and temperatures. The basic temperature for a greybody with Earthlike albedo at this orbital distance (1 AU around a sun-like star) is 250 K, if we add the 36 K greenhouse correction of Earth this becomes 13 degrees C average. In the wet case the scale height is 11.3 km - air pressure will be 36% less at this altitude. The temperature needed for a molecular species to escape is 1.49 times on Earth: in this case hydrogen certainly escapes and I think helium will escape (it depends on the exosphere temperature, something that is hard to calculate). Methane and ammonia could be retained, but if there is life and oxygen they will have been turned into carbon dioxide and nitrogen. In the dry case scale height is 2.4 km: clouds will be very low. The retention temperature is 7.5 times Earth - dry Double-Earth could potentially retain hydrogen gas. This means that potentially it could have gathered a much denser atmosphere from the beginning, potentially turning into a gas giant. Note however that by assumption we had it form in the "dry" zone near the star, so it might not have accumulated that much. We should still expect it to have a denser atmosphere than the wet case. If we make the assumption that the surface pressure is proportional to surface gravity (might make sense in this particular case) wet Double-Earth has surface pressure 0.73 and dry Double-Earth surface pressure 3.4 atmospheres. Let's also assume the mean wind speed is a terrestrial 10 m/s - again, this is hard to evaluate without running a full model. Finally, most doubtfully, let's assume the rotation period is 24 hours. In this case wet Double-Earth gets air density 0.9 Earths. The radiative timescale of 1.8 days and advection timescale of 1.4 days - this means that the weather is complex like on Earth, and responds rather quickly to seasons (ah, I implicitly assumed an Earth-like axial tilt: things will get really strange if it is more extreme). Wet will have about 9-10 jet-streams (Earth has about 7). Dry Double-Earth instead has surface air density is 4.3 times Earth, fast timescales and 10 jet streams. Not too alien. Weather is partially driven by buoyancy. On wet Double-Earth this is weaker: clouds will be taller and move more ponderously, while on dry Double-Earth the higher gravity will make small density differences generate more force: flatter, more intense convection. The strength of hurricanes depends on the temperature difference between the ocean and the stratosphere; I do not know how to calculate this, but I note that in the absence of land they can run much longer before drifting too far towards the poles that they dissipate. I am a bit uncertain about whether latitudinal mixing is strong enough to keep the poles too warm to form ice sheets or not. I suspect the lack of land will destabilize ice. If we assume 20% oxygen, then dry Double-Earth will have 537 mmHg partial pressure oxygen - toxic to humans. Even worse, the partial pressure of CO2 will be 10.4 mmHg - causing hypercapnia in humans. Still, local life could likely evolve to handle that with little problem. Wet Double-Earth looks pretty OK for humans. The radiogenic heating (assuming an Earthlike composition) of dry Double-Earth is 3.34 times higher than on Earth, 0.29 W/m^2. Still not enough to melt the crust into an Io-like volcanic mess, but it is far more active. Wet Double-Earth will have less radiogenic heating than Earth, although this is complicated by the very different composition. I still get continental drift (hence churning the ice crust), but it is not as vigorous and it will stop earlier (reducing convection in the deep ocean, likely strongly reducing the available minerals to life). Mountains on wet Double-Earth will tend to be 1.37 times taller than on Earth, but they will all be on the bottom of the super-deep ocean. On dry Double-Earth they will be just 0.29 times the height - the local Mount Everest will be just 2.4 km. Given my guess at mean ocean depths, this means that it will indeed be a waterworld. If one buys the idea that Coriolis-Lorenz dynamos in the core scales as sqrt(density/period) the magnetic field of wet Double-Earth will be 60% of Earths, while dry Double-Earth 130% - not an enormous difference, although wet Double-Earth will be less protected. Note that it has an enormous store of volatiles to bleed off, though. The higher cosmic radiation might be nasty for beings on the surface, but the water absorbs it fine. The optical depth of the atmospheres on the Double-Earths will be the same as on Earth (because of my assumption of pressure = surface gravity), so you can see the same distance. The vertical optical depth is 1.37 times more than Earth on wet Double-Earth: the sky is more milky, but not too alien. On dry Double-Earth it is just 1.1: almost normal. If you were to fly a plane, it would however turn dark blue at a much lower altitude. On the oceans, waves would be moving differently. On wet Double-Earth they would move at 85% of Earth speed, while on dry Double-Earth 184%. The height would of course scale inversely with gravity: 136% on wet Double-Earth, but just 29% on dry Double-Earth. So the seas would be choppier but slower in the wet case (but the waves will have more energy per square meter), while the dry case would have fast low swells. To sum up: both Double-Earths are waterworlds, but one is *deep*. Neither has any land. Both might have interesting deep sea vent ecologies, the wet case around vents in the high pressure ice and the dry case more terrestrial-style vents (which are more common than on Earth). On the surface the ocean has weather like on Earth, either strangely tall or fiercely squat clouds. Life could probably thrive on both worlds, but would be limited by minerals: no land, no surface weathering, and hence less minerals added to the oceans. Getting into space from wet Double-Earth is about as tough as on Earth, while dry Double-Earth is pretty tough to get away from. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 17 16:44:46 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 08:44:46 -0800 Subject: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> Message-ID: <007e01cee3b4$53be9360$fb3bba20$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Tomaz Kristan Subject: Re: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets >>. A double-Earth would likely be a waterworld, from what I have read. Rock after all contains water, and if you squeeze it enough it will be released to the surface (plus cometary water). So double-Earth will at least have eight times the water volume but just four times the surface area. >> Plenty of volcanism, and over time I think continents will develop. Mountains would be half of our height (since gravity would be twice as large), but that is still enough to get some to poke up. Dr Anders Sandberg >.Twice as much water is 8 km deep on average. 4 km above Earth ocean surface. And mountains half as big, not even Mont Everest would be above water. -- Tomaz Hmmm, it might work that way, but it isn't clear. Increased gravity would reduce the altitude of the mountains, but it would also decrease the depths of the deepest parts of the sea, so the same amount of water might cover more land. A double earth with twice the radius of earth (and 8 times the mass and 8 times the water) might have no dry continents. Since we know think there are many Goldilocks planets and there is justification for thinking they have similar composition to the earth for all the same reasons, and since Kepler is proportionally capable of discovering larger planets, we can extrapolate to plenty of larger Goldies. >From that I get to a lot of water worlds. Since we started the thread regarding the need for dry land for the evolution of intelligent life, I have been thinking about all the possibilities: life can evolve in the seas of course, but as far as I know, biogenesis theory requires dry land for tidal pools to concentrate organic matter, and I don't think ice gets it done. So if there are no islands and ice caps don't help, are there any other possibilities? I thought of one: floating pumice islands. I am not referring to the floating island of Guam, which representative Johnson fears will capsize at 1:20 in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7XXVLKWd3Q ({8^D heeeeeeheheheheheeeeeeehaaaaahahahahahaaaaaheh} But rather a floating pumice raft such as the one formed in 2006 near Tonga: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumice_raft http://www.livescience.com/22268-huge-pumice-island-floats-in-pacific.html http://www.space.com/15491-volcanic-rock-microbes-life.html So if pumice rafts could perhaps have had some role in biogenesis, then it feels like a reasonable extrapolation that a pumice raft could eventually form a stable land mass on a water planet under some conditions, such as: the salinity of the sea is much higher than the earth's so its freezing point is lower, and the planet is colder, then the rain and snow falling on the pumice raft would freeze (being fresh water) which would cement the mass together and cause more pumice to collect underneath it, raising the whole dirty snowball, making it an even better place for rain and snow to collect. Or it could be I am working too hard to imagine intelligent life on a water planet. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Sun Nov 17 16:59:24 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 17:59:24 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> Message-ID: This deep vents life we know on Earth, needs oxygen. It gets it from green plants in our case. Worth to remember. On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 5:33 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > OK, now I have the time to run my code, based on what I have gathered from > the exoplanet literature. Welcome to dry and wet Double-Earth: > > A lot hinges on whether we assume Double-Earth started out beyond the > iceline and moved inwards, in which case it will be really wet, or started > out close to the sun and never got much volatiles. In the first case the > mass will be about 3 Earths and the average density 37% of Earth, with a > surface gravity of 0.73 g and an escape velocity of 13.6 km/s. This will > have an ocean hundreds of kilometres deep, surrounding a rocky core covered > with high pressure warm ices. In the second case the mass will be 15 > Earths, the density will be 167%, gravity 3.4 g and escape velocity 30 km/s. > > Note that if the component rock contributes water like on Earth, a planet > with 15 times the mass but only 4 times the area will have 3.75 times > deeper hydrosphere, assuming everything equal. That means 16 km deep > oceans - "dry" Double-Earth might still be a waterworld. > > Now we need to make some guesses at atmosphere and temperatures. The basic > temperature for a greybody with Earthlike albedo at this orbital distance > (1 AU around a sun-like star) is 250 K, if we add the 36 K greenhouse > correction of Earth this becomes 13 degrees C average. > > In the wet case the scale height is 11.3 km - air pressure will be 36% > less at this altitude. The temperature needed for a molecular species to > escape is 1.49 times on Earth: in this case hydrogen certainly escapes and > I think helium will escape (it depends on the exosphere temperature, > something that is hard to calculate). Methane and ammonia could be > retained, but if there is life and oxygen they will have been turned into > carbon dioxide and nitrogen. > > In the dry case scale height is 2.4 km: clouds will be very low. The > retention temperature is 7.5 times Earth - dry Double-Earth could > potentially retain hydrogen gas. This means that potentially it could have > gathered a much denser atmosphere from the beginning, potentially turning > into a gas giant. Note however that by assumption we had it form in the > "dry" zone near the star, so it might not have accumulated that much. We > should still expect it to have a denser atmosphere than the wet case. > > If we make the assumption that the surface pressure is proportional to > surface gravity (might make sense in this particular case) wet Double-Earth > has surface pressure 0.73 and dry Double-Earth surface pressure 3.4 > atmospheres. Let's also assume the mean wind speed is a terrestrial 10 m/s > - again, this is hard to evaluate without running a full model. Finally, > most doubtfully, let's assume the rotation period is 24 hours. > > In this case wet Double-Earth gets air density 0.9 Earths. The radiative > timescale of 1.8 days and advection timescale of 1.4 days - this means that > the weather is complex like on Earth, and responds rather quickly to > seasons (ah, I implicitly assumed an Earth-like axial tilt: things will get > really strange if it is more extreme). Wet will have about 9-10 jet-streams > (Earth has about 7). Dry Double-Earth instead has surface air density is > 4.3 times Earth, fast timescales and 10 jet streams. Not too alien. > > Weather is partially driven by buoyancy. On wet Double-Earth this is > weaker: clouds will be taller and move more ponderously, while on dry > Double-Earth the higher gravity will make small density differences > generate more force: flatter, more intense convection. The strength of > hurricanes depends on the temperature difference between the ocean and the > stratosphere; I do not know how to calculate this, but I note that in the > absence of land they can run much longer before drifting too far towards > the poles that they dissipate. I am a bit uncertain about whether > latitudinal mixing is strong enough to keep the poles too warm to form ice > sheets or not. I suspect the lack of land will destabilize ice. > > If we assume 20% oxygen, then dry Double-Earth will have 537 mmHg partial > pressure oxygen - toxic to humans. Even worse, the partial pressure of CO2 > will be 10.4 mmHg - causing hypercapnia in humans. Still, local life could > likely evolve to handle that with little problem. Wet Double-Earth looks > pretty OK for humans. > > The radiogenic heating (assuming an Earthlike composition) of dry > Double-Earth is 3.34 times higher than on Earth, 0.29 W/m^2. Still not > enough to melt the crust into an Io-like volcanic mess, but it is far more > active. Wet Double-Earth will have less radiogenic heating than Earth, > although this is complicated by the very different composition. I still get > continental drift (hence churning the ice crust), but it is not as vigorous > and it will stop earlier (reducing convection in the deep ocean, likely > strongly reducing the available minerals to life). > > Mountains on wet Double-Earth will tend to be 1.37 times taller than on > Earth, but they will all be on the bottom of the super-deep ocean. On dry > Double-Earth they will be just 0.29 times the height - the local Mount > Everest will be just 2.4 km. Given my guess at mean ocean depths, this > means that it will indeed be a waterworld. > > If one buys the idea that Coriolis-Lorenz dynamos in the core scales as > sqrt(density/period) the magnetic field of wet Double-Earth will be 60% of > Earths, while dry Double-Earth 130% - not an enormous difference, although > wet Double-Earth will be less protected. Note that it has an enormous store > of volatiles to bleed off, though. The higher cosmic radiation might be > nasty for beings on the surface, but the water absorbs it fine. > > The optical depth of the atmospheres on the Double-Earths will be the same > as on Earth (because of my assumption of pressure = surface gravity), so > you can see the same distance. The vertical optical depth is 1.37 times > more than Earth on wet Double-Earth: the sky is more milky, but not too > alien. On dry Double-Earth it is just 1.1: almost normal. If you were to > fly a plane, it would however turn dark blue at a much lower altitude. > > On the oceans, waves would be moving differently. On wet Double-Earth they > would move at 85% of Earth speed, while on dry Double-Earth 184%. The > height would of course scale inversely with gravity: 136% on wet > Double-Earth, but just 29% on dry Double-Earth. So the seas would be > choppier but slower in the wet case (but the waves will have more energy > per square meter), while the dry case would have fast low swells. > > To sum up: both Double-Earths are waterworlds, but one is *deep*. Neither > has any land. Both might have interesting deep sea vent ecologies, the wet > case around vents in the high pressure ice and the dry case more > terrestrial-style vents (which are more common than on Earth). On the > surface the ocean has weather like on Earth, either strangely tall or > fiercely squat clouds. Life could probably thrive on both worlds, but would > be limited by minerals: no land, no surface weathering, and hence less > minerals added to the oceans. Getting into space from wet Double-Earth is > about as tough as on Earth, while dry Double-Earth is pretty tough to get > away from. > > -- > 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 > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sun Nov 17 18:39:31 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 18:39:31 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> Message-ID: <52890D63.9000603@aleph.se> On 2013-11-17 16:59, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > This deep vents life we know on Earth, needs oxygen. It gets it from > green plants in our case. Worth to remember. No problem really, since either you could have an oxidizing atmosphere courtesy of surface algae, or a reducing environment with some alternative electron transport solutions. For example Anammox bacteria turn ammonia into nitrogen without any oxygen need (they use nitrites instead), Thiobacillus denitrificans turn sulphur into sulphates using nitrates, hydrogen bacteria turn hydrogen into water using sulphates, while phosphite bacteria convert phosphite into phosphate using sulphate, metanogens turn hydrogen into water using carbon dioxide, and the carboxydotropic bacteria convert carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide while turning water into hydrogen. If you have a good, strong flow of volcanic chemicals you can build a pretty functional ecosystem even without any oxygen. This is why I think dry Double-Earth will be a nicer place for life than wet Double-Earth: the heavier volcanism will really add a proper chemical outflow that will last for a long time no matter how the surface looks. While wet Double-Earth will stop continental drift after about 3 gigayears and then have the ice-crust become increasingly inert. Without heavy volcanism the sea will become very stratified and the ice will insulate it from the rocks, making the mineral content low. The total sea volume is also much bigger (at least a factor of 10), making it even harder to get any heavier atoms. Note that life might still thrive on Wet. Even if one thinks it is unlikely to originate there it could spread through panspermias, and once established on the surface it can use photosynthesis to grab CHON into structures that catch the rare heavier atoms needed. (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siderophore ) But it will be largely limited to the surface layer: just four times Earth's area, and well mixed so that there will be fewer species. Dry at the very least can run two near-independent ecosystem layers plus some stuff in-between. Intelligence evolution... well, I don't think I know enough to say anything. (In Charles Stross' "Neptune's Brood" there is Shin-Tethys, a waterworld relatively similar to Wet, although the higher amount of radioactives in the rocky core plays a fun role in the ecosystem/economy. However, when we chatted he admitted he did not do any elaborate calculations for the planet. His ecosystem also seems to be at least partially escaped nanotech. I suspect that one could tweak my model to have a much denser and more radioactive core and get something more like it. ) -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From pharos at gmail.com Sun Nov 17 19:33:33 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 19:33:33 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The post-antibiotic era In-Reply-To: <5288AEB4.5000301@aleph.se> References: <5288AEB4.5000301@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 11:55 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > It is not quite that bad, but it is taking seriously. Not an existential > risk, and unlikely to shorten lifespans dramatically (note that she talks > about death rates of bacterial infections), but a real risk to our > individual lives. > > The problem seems to be that right now (1) there are few economic incentives > to develop better or new kinds of antibiotics for a variety of reasons, (2) > the people struggling against resistance are mostly stuck in "reduce > misuse"-mode, which means that they do not help (1) much, and likely will > fail because they can at most stipulate sensible rules in their own > countries, not in emerging markets where the big breeding of resistant > pathogens take place. > > The tone of your comment seems to indicate that you think it is not a really serious problem. (?) The medics, on the other hand, seem to be panicking about it. In the US, deaths from resistant infections is approaching the scale of road deaths. The CDC has issued a Threat Report 2013 that says "Each year in the United States, at least 2 million people become infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics and at least 23,000 people die each year as a direct result of these infections. Many more people die from other conditions that were complicated by an antibiotic-resistant infection. The estimates are based on conservative assumptions and are likely minimum estimates. They are the best approximations that can be derived from currently available data." To rephrase your comment about 'few economic incentives', that means that the giant pharma companies don't see big enough profits to justify them developing new drugs. As the report says, they stopped developing new antibiotics in 1987. So presumably they are already making big enough profits on existing drugs (which are now failing to cure infections). So we will have to rely on government-funded research for new drugs. BillK From anders at aleph.se Sun Nov 17 22:49:36 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 22:49:36 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The post-antibiotic era In-Reply-To: References: <5288AEB4.5000301@aleph.se> Message-ID: <52894800.8040505@aleph.se> On 2013-11-17 19:33, BillK wrote: > The tone of your comment seems to indicate that you think it is not a > really serious problem. (?) > > The medics, on the other hand, seem to be panicking about it. Yes, but that is because they do not have the big picture. They look at mortality rates and deaths around them, rather than mortality distributions and existential risk. From my ivory tower resistent bacteria are a stinking, nasty cesspit in the landscape, but not anything like the bioweaponry dragon in the synthbio mountains, the gleaming nuclear silos, or that dust cloud on the horizon that might be bad AI. Yes, per average year resistant bacteria is likely to kill more people than the weird threats I watch for, but they are not going to end humanity. They are just bad news like climate change. The insurance people are worried because they see rising costs (at least health and life; I don't know if pension is quietly smug). But they are down in that small skyscraper beneath the tower, and have clearly said they don't mind the dragons. > To rephrase your comment about 'few economic incentives', that means > that the giant pharma companies don't see big enough profits to > justify them developing new drugs. As the report says, they stopped > developing new antibiotics in 1987. So presumably they are already > making big enough profits on existing drugs (which are now failing to > cure infections). No, existing antibiotics do not give big profits since they are out of patent and the market is full of generics. The problem is that the cost of developing a new drug is enormous in the current risk-averse testing climate, and antibiotics does not tend to pay well. If you add in that emergency drug licensing is likely for antibiotics in countries with problems, there is even less incentive. > So we will have to rely on government-funded research for new drugs. Either that or philanthropic foundations. Or we could lobby for a bit less risk-averse FDA, EMEA etc? -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 17 22:56:37 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 14:56:37 -0800 Subject: [ExI] The post-antibiotic era In-Reply-To: References: <5288AEB4.5000301@aleph.se> Message-ID: <017d01cee3e8$462c9dd0$d285d970$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK >...As the report says, they stopped developing new antibiotics in 1987. So presumably they are already making big enough profits on existing drugs (which are now failing to cure infections). So we will have to rely on government-funded research for new drugs. BillK _______________________________________________ Which government? spike From lloydmillerus at yahoo.com Mon Nov 18 00:18:10 2013 From: lloydmillerus at yahoo.com (Lloyd Miller) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 19:18:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The post-antibiotic era In-Reply-To: References: <5288AEB4.5000301@aleph.se> Message-ID: <067501cee3f3$aa4304c0$fec90e40$@yahoo.com> To rephrase your comment about 'few economic incentives', that means that the giant pharma companies don't see big enough profits to justify them developing new drugs. As the report says, they stopped developing new antibiotics in 1987. So presumably they are already making big enough profits on existing drugs (which are now failing to cure infections). So we will have to rely on government-funded research for new drugs. BillK Lloyd Sez: No, we have to stop regulating to control prices and profits. From max at maxmore.com Mon Nov 18 16:51:53 2013 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 09:51:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Appealing German video on Alcor Message-ID: Popular German science magazine, Galileo, visited Alcor in 1999. They returned in 2013 and produced a very nicely-done 10 minute video. Here is the English version: https://vimeo.com/77562754 The Password is "jynx-cryonics" -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gsantostasi at gmail.com Mon Nov 18 16:59:35 2013 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 10:59:35 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Appealing German video on Alcor In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Can we downloaded and repost it on FB? Giovanni On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 10:51 AM, Max More wrote: > Popular German science magazine, Galileo, visited Alcor in 1999. They > returned in 2013 and produced a very nicely-done 10 minute video. Here is > the English version: > > https://vimeo.com/77562754 > > The Password is "jynx-cryonics" > > -- > Max More, PhD > Strategic Philosopher > Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* > > http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader > President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Mon Nov 18 17:42:37 2013 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 10:42:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Appealing German video on Alcor In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Since they send a password to a private video, I don't think so. --Max On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Giovanni Santostasi wrote: > Can we downloaded and repost it on FB? > > Giovanni > > > On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 10:51 AM, Max More wrote: > >> Popular German science magazine, Galileo, visited Alcor in 1999. They >> returned in 2013 and produced a very nicely-done 10 minute video. Here is >> the English version: >> >> https://vimeo.com/77562754 >> >> The Password is "jynx-cryonics" >> >> -- >> Max More, PhD >> Strategic Philosopher >> Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* >> >> http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader >> President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 > > -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Mon Nov 18 18:51:44 2013 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 11:51:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Appealing German video on Alcor In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Okay, I heard from the producer. He has no objection to posting the link on Facebook. --Max On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Giovanni Santostasi wrote: > Can we downloaded and repost it on FB? > > Giovanni > > > On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 10:51 AM, Max More wrote: > >> Popular German science magazine, Galileo, visited Alcor in 1999. They >> returned in 2013 and produced a very nicely-done 10 minute video. Here is >> the English version: >> >> https://vimeo.com/77562754 >> >> The Password is "jynx-cryonics" >> >> -- >> Max More, PhD >> Strategic Philosopher >> Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* >> >> http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader >> President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 > > -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gsantostasi at gmail.com Mon Nov 18 19:22:18 2013 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 13:22:18 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Appealing German video on Alcor In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: So link with password? Or upload the video? What is best? Giovanni On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 12:51 PM, Max More wrote: > Okay, I heard from the producer. He has no objection to posting the link > on Facebook. > > --Max > > > On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Giovanni Santostasi < > gsantostasi at gmail.com> wrote: > >> Can we downloaded and repost it on FB? >> >> Giovanni >> >> >> On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 10:51 AM, Max More wrote: >> >>> Popular German science magazine, Galileo, visited Alcor in 1999. They >>> returned in 2013 and produced a very nicely-done 10 minute video. Here is >>> the English version: >>> >>> https://vimeo.com/77562754 >>> >>> The Password is "jynx-cryonics" >>> >>> -- >>> Max More, PhD >>> Strategic Philosopher >>> Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* >>> >>> http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader >>> President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> 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 >> >> > > > -- > Max More, PhD > Strategic Philosopher > Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* > > http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader > President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation > > _______________________________________________ > 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 kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Nov 18 20:54:25 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 13:54:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 2:17 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 14/11/2013 20:25, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > > > I'm still struggling with the tie in to the Singularity. Are you > > predicting that the Singularity will bring an end to big business, big > > government, and empower the intelligent? > > The Singularity will bring, for sure, enhanced ways to cooperate and > collaborate, increasing the productivity of the productive individuals: > allowing faster and freer economic transactions without the need of a > third party is just one of them. > All right, but this is happening now, prior to the Singularity. I think there will be big business but, without a big government > granting them privileges, they will be forced to be a lot more useful or > the competition will eat their lunch with no remorse. > Fortunately, Bitcoin does accomplish this IMHO. > What is the point of a Singularity or living an unlimited amount of time > or be mentally, physically and ethically enhanced if we need more > government to run our lives. > Amen brother! Can I hear an Amen!!! > We don't want become like Gods to live like Z the Ant. > > Bitcoin show that many things done by the government can and should be > done by the market, by the people. And the people can and will do a > better work than any government. > As I look at the chart in the blog: http://bit.ly/1amBcrP Here is a link directly to the chart, in case he releases another blog or someone is looking at this in the archive: http://bit.ly/1amBcrP The one thing that I have to say that Bitcoin and the Singularity have in common is that they are both based upon the idea of exponential curves. There are those who clearly argue against both curves, and that's ok. But to the true believer, exponential growth, whether it be of things that will lead to the Singularity or things that will lead to their personal wealth, is a key concept. It's also a key concept for those who predict the doom of mankind by resource depletion (Malthus, Paul Ehrlich, et al). Will Bitcoin help enable the Singularity? It certainly makes it more difficult for individual governments to outlaw things that might lead to the Singularity (should it be viewed, correctly, as damaging to the status quo). This week http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304439804579205740125297358 -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Nov 18 20:56:06 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 13:56:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A Step Towards an Autonomous Truck (Big Rig) Message-ID: This seems like a large step towards autonomous big rigs. It's also cool as hell. Even video haters should watch this Van Damme commercial. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7FIvfx5J10 -Kelly (I have no stock in Volvo... LOL) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Nov 18 21:03:39 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 14:03:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Communication Singularity (was Re: What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks?) Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 2:34 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 10:17:54PM +0100, Mirco Romanato wrote: > > > The Singularity will bring, for sure, enhanced ways to cooperate and > > The Singularity, for sure, is defined as a prediction horizon. > So trying to predict that is, by definition, is impossible. > Predicting up to the Singularity is, however, possible. One of the exponential curves that I feel (though I don't think it can be measured precisely) is the increase in speed and frequency of interpersonal communications. If you think about runners progressing to post men, to telegraphy, to telephony, to the Internet, to Text messaging and twitter, you see a progression in frequency and speed of delivery of messages between individuals. I believe this is one of those Singularity curve thingys. Now, that being said, what does being near the Singularity mean for this particular curve? One thing that it certainly means in order to continue is that you will have to communicate nearly continuously, and eventually with more than one person at a time. To achieve this level of communications, it will be necessary to either be uploaded, or have an avatar that answers many of your communications on your behalf. In twenty years, it could be that this mailing list will be entirely filled with communications between our individual avatars. They will then summarize the results of the communication back to our "main brain". This will be part of what I call the Multi Threaded Life. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But I do believe that autonomous communications on our behalf is just a couple of decades around the corner. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Nov 18 21:07:19 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 14:07:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <007e01cee18b$388c8500$a9a58f00$@att.net> References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284BCF1.2000806@canonizer.com> <007e01cee18b$388c8500$a9a58f00$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 3:45 PM, spike wrote: > > On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 5:40 AM, BillK wrote: > > > > > > >>?More of the same appears like the Gates of Hell are opening wide. > > > > >?Bill, are you actually arguing that the Internet is a bad thing? -Kelly > > > > > > Depends on how you look at it. If hell has gates, presumably it has a > wall or fence with the gates being the entrance/exit. Unless hell is a lot > more fun than has been portrayed, presumably the inhabitants would be far > more eager to exit than would be outsiders to gain entry via those gates. > So if the gates of hell are open wide, this would be a good thing, as > demonstrated by the first wave of winged rodents, exiting the place like > proverbial bats outta hell. > > > > Of course, all the paintings made of the place have two things in common, > one of which is the heat, but the other is that no one is wearing clothes. > With all that wicked-cool nekkidness everywhere, it is no mystery that > people would want in. > Sign me up. > BillK?s list of consequences I fully recognize as bad things for some > people. I am one of those who came out on the winning side of everything > on that list, but I know people who generally are not internet users who > express discontent. A good example is that people don?t gather and > socialize as much, so those who remember the time before. > If you don't buy into motor cars, you're going to be left behind with your horse and buggy. > As it turns out, people still gather, but they do so with more specialized > interest. People who are not internet users today seldom have special > interests, or if so, they cannot find the others who are like-minded, these > having found each other long before in internet groups. Without internet > use, their own specialties might be having social gatherings right next > door, and the non-surfer would never know it was going on. > Yes, I see the silos of interest growing around me. Fortunately, I maintain interest in several silos, so I find life to be interesting and fulfilling. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Nov 18 21:46:26 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 22:46:26 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> Message-ID: <528A8AB2.2070909@libero.it> Il 18/11/2013 21:54, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > > Bitcoin show that many things done by the government can and should be > done by the market, by the people. And the people can and will do a > better work than any government. > As I look at the chart in the blog: > http://bit.ly/1amBcrP > Here is a link directly to the chart, in case he releases another blog > or someone is looking at this in the archive: > http://bit.ly/1amBcrP What do you think about my comment of the post? Mirco From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Nov 19 00:16:43 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 17:16:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The post-antibiotic era In-Reply-To: References: <5288AEB4.5000301@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 12:33 PM, BillK wrote: > So we will have to rely on government-funded research for new drugs. > Yeah! Let's destroy all economic incentives for the pharmaceutical industry, then take it over. Great idea. I think it will work for health care in general too!!! -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue Nov 19 00:42:24 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 17:42:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <52792CD7.9090606@aleph.se> <048101ceda96$4f950980$eebf1c80$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 9:33 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Weather is partially driven by buoyancy. On wet Double-Earth this is > weaker: clouds will be taller and move more ponderously, while on dry > Double-Earth the higher gravity will make small density differences > generate more force: flatter, more intense convection. The strength of > hurricanes depends on the temperature difference between the ocean and the > stratosphere; I do not know how to calculate this, but I note that in the > absence of land they can run much longer before drifting too far towards > the poles that they dissipate. Without land masses, and the water currents they create, I suspect that on any water world you would get a permanent hurricane analogous to Jupiter's red spot. It is interesting to note that the hot spot under Hawaii is at the exact same location as the red spot on Jupiter and it is just as stable. I think there may be physics happening here. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Tue Nov 19 01:03:07 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 01:03:07 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> Message-ID: <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> On 2013-11-19 00:42, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > Without land masses, and the water currents they create, I suspect > that on any water world you would get a permanent hurricane analogous > to Jupiter's red spot. Maybe. The red spot is kept in place because of reliable convection bands, in turn stabilized by the high rate of rotation. Double-Earth is rotating a bit too slow and has too small raius to have enough Coriolis force to make a purely banded atmosphere, so hurricanes will likely eventually escape. But cycling a few turns around the planet may work fine. > > It is interesting to note that the hot spot under Hawaii is at the > exact same location as the red spot on Jupiter and it is just as > stable. I think there may be physics happening here. There is always physics where there is energy flow. However, the Hawaii hotspot is likely different from the red spot: it is vertical convection rather than a vortex - the lithosphere is really viscous, it is hard to get it to twirl. (Which leaves me wondering about the core) -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From rolandodegilead at gmail.com Tue Nov 19 11:22:19 2013 From: rolandodegilead at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Eugenio_Mart=EDnez?=) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 12:22:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <528A8AB2.2070909@libero.it> References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> <528A8AB2.2070909@libero.it> Message-ID: I don?t find a problem having more government as far as this government works under certain guarantees. A government is the "bondsman" (Guarantor?) that watch if rules are kept and that weak ones are not abused. Furthermore: If there is a strong IA it would be the perfect government... and the perfect worker. We, as humans, will not need to work anymore. That idea entail a lot of problems, of course. Vgr: what to do with productive private property On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 10:46 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 18/11/2013 21:54, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > > > > > Bitcoin show that many things done by the government can and should > be > > done by the market, by the people. And the people can and will do a > > better work than any government. > > > As I look at the chart in the blog: > > http://bit.ly/1amBcrP > > Here is a link directly to the chart, in case he releases another blog > > or someone is looking at this in the archive: > > http://bit.ly/1amBcrP > > What do you think about my comment of the post? > > Mirco > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- OLVIDATE.DE Tatachan.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ddraig at gmail.com Tue Nov 19 14:43:01 2013 From: ddraig at gmail.com (ddraig) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 01:43:01 +1100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> <528A8AB2.2070909@libero.it> Message-ID: This is a fascinating thread. I've been aware of bitcoins since pretty close to the beginning, but ignored it as Yet Another Net.Fad I was told about a guy a few years ago (!) who decided to heat his house over winter by leaving the heating off and running a heap of computers 24/7 to mine bitcoins. I'd love to know if he sold them, and if not, what are they worth now? Dwayne On 19 November 2013 22:22, Eugenio Mart?nez wrote: > I don?t find a problem having more government as far as this government > works under certain guarantees. > > A government is the "bondsman" (Guarantor?) that watch if rules are kept > and that weak ones are not abused. > > Furthermore: If there is a strong IA it would be the perfect government... > and the perfect worker. We, as humans, will not need to work anymore. > > That idea entail a lot of problems, of course. Vgr: what to do with > productive private property > > > On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 10:46 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > >> Il 18/11/2013 21:54, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: >> >> > >> > Bitcoin show that many things done by the government can and should >> be >> > done by the market, by the people. And the people can and will do a >> > better work than any government. >> >> > As I look at the chart in the blog: >> > http://bit.ly/1amBcrP >> > Here is a link directly to the chart, in case he releases another blog >> > or someone is looking at this in the archive: >> > http://bit.ly/1amBcrP >> >> What do you think about my comment of the post? >> >> Mirco >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > > > > -- > OLVIDATE.DE > Tatachan.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- ddraig at pobox.com irc.bluesphereweb.com #dna ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg our aim is wakefulness, our enemy is dreamless sleep -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Nov 19 17:59:49 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 17:59:49 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Inheritance - It's not just the DNA Message-ID: The Toxins That Affected Your Great-Grandparents Could Be In Your Genes Quote: For half a century it has been common knowledge that the genetic material DNA controls this process; the ?letters? in the DNA strand spell out messages that are passed from parent to offspring and so on. The messages come in the form of genes, the molecular equivalent of sentences, but they are not permanent. A change in a letter, a result of a random mutation, for example, can alter a gene?s message. The altered message can then be transmitted instead. The strange thing about Skinner?s lab rats was that three generations after the pregnant mothers were exposed to the fungicide, the animals had abnormally low sperm counts?but not because of a change in their inherited DNA sequence. Puzzled, Skinner and his team repeated the experiments?once, twice, 15 times?and found the same sperm defects. Skinner and his team found instead that as the toxins flooded in, they altered the pattern of simple molecules called methyl groups that latch onto DNA in the fetus? germ-line cells, which would eventually become its eggs or sperm. Like burrs stuck to a knit sweater, these methyl molecules interfered with the functioning of the DNA and rode it down through future generations, opening each new one to the same diseases. These burrs, known to be involved in development, persisted for generations. The phenomenon was so unexpected that it has given rise to a new field, with Skinner an acknowledged leader, named transgenerational epigenetics, or the study of inherited changes that can?t be explained by traditional genetics. ----------- BillK From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Nov 19 18:38:55 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 13:38:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin Message-ID: The following article was on the front page of the business section of today's New York Times: ============= The virtual currency bitcoin took a big step toward the mainstream on Monday as federal authorities signaled their willingness to accept it as a legitimate payment alternative. A number of federal officials told a Senate hearing that such financial networks offered real benefits for the financial system even as they acknowledged that new forms of digital money had provided avenues for money laundering and illegal activity. ?There are plenty of opportunities for digital currencies to operate within existing laws and regulations,? said Edward Lowery, a special agent with the Secret Service, which is tasked with protecting the integrity of the dollar. Signs that the government would not stand in the way of bitcoin?s development, even as it has been cracking down on criminal networks that use the digital money, stoked a strong rally in the price of the crypto-currency. By Monday evening, the value of a bitcoin unit soared past $700 on some exchanges. The total outstanding pool of bitcoin ? which is created by a network of users who solve complex mathematical problems ? is now worth more than $7 billion. The Senate hearing Monday afternoon was the clearest indication yet of the government?s desire to grapple with the consequences of this growth, and the recognition that bitcoin and other similar networks could become more lasting and significant parts of the financial landscape. ?The decision to bring virtual currency within the scope of our regulatory framework should be viewed by those who respect and obey the basic rule of law as a positive development for this sector,? said Jennifer Shasky Calvery, the director of the Treasury Department?s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. ?It recognizes the innovation virtual currencies provide, and the benefits they might offer.? Ms. Shasky Calvery and the other officials at the hearing did say that basic questions still had to be answered about virtual currencies, including whether they can actually be considered currencies or whether they are more properly categorized as commodities or securities. The distinction will determine which agencies regulate the networks and how they are treated under tax law. Ms. Shasky Calvery said that the Internal Revenue Service was ?actively working? on its own rules for bitcoin. The hearing followed other less visible steps taken by regulators and lawmakers to bring digital money into the mainstream. New York State?s top financial regulator, Benjamin M. Lawsky, said last week that he would hold a hearing to consider the creation of a BitLicense to provide more oversight for transactions. Earlier, the Federal Election Commissionput out an advisory indicating that bitcoin could be legally accepted as political donations. The general counsel of the Bitcoin Foundation, a nonprofit advocating the currency, said in his testimony on Monday that he was receiving a much more friendly response from both government and the financial industry. ?We have recently perceived a marked improvement in the tone and tenor taken by both state officials and bank executives,? the general counsel, Patrick Murck, said. Bitcoin has experienced a remarkable ascent since it was created in 2009 by an anonymous programmer or collective known as Satoshi Nakamoto. The money, which is not tied to any national currency, has been popular with technophiles who are skeptical of the world?s central banks. Only a finite amount of bitcoin will ever be created ? 21 million units. Users have bid up the price on Internet exchanges, betting that the currency will be more widely used in the future. There are significant questions about the wisdom of the digital money as an investment, given that bitcoin has no intrinsic value and has proved to be vulnerable to hackers. Many money managers have recommended that unsophisticated investors stay away. Recently, though, bitcoin has been catching fire around the world, with exchanges in China particularly active. A growing number of prominent American investors have also bought stakes, including Michael Novogratz, a principal at the private equityand hedge fund giantFortress Investment Group, as well as the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler. The increasingly widespread ownership of bitcoin has shifted attention away from the criminal enterprises that have used digital money, but it was a focus at the Senate hearing. Last month, the online marketplace Silk Road, where bitcoin was the primary form of payment, was shut down and its founder arrested after authorities accused it of being used to buy and sell drugs, weapons and pornography. The chairman of the Senate committee, Thomas R. Carper, Democrat of Delaware, said that a few days after the arrest, a similar site sprang up. It can be harder to track criminals who use bitcoin, law enforcement officials said at the hearing, because they operate across international borders and often do not use established financial institutions that report transactions. But Mythili Raman, an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, also said that because every bitcoin transaction was recorded on a public ledger, it was possible for investigators to trace the movement of money between accounts. ?It is not in fact anonymous. It is not immune from investigation,? Ms. Raman said. All the officials at the hearing said that crime had been an issue during the early days of credit cards and online payment systems like PayPal, and should not be a reason to limit innovation. ?It is our duty as law enforcement to stay vigilant while recognizing that there are many legitimate users of those services,? Ms. Raman said. The bitcoin supporters who testified at the hearing said bitcoin could bring major changes to the financial system by cutting out the middle men needed to move money around the world. ?I am here to testify because I believe that global digital currency represents one of the most important technical and economic innovations of our time,? said Jeremy Allaire, the chief executive of Circle Internet Financial, which is seeking to promote more widespread use of the currency. Given bitcoin?s appeal to skeptics of government, many aficionados have been wary of involvement by Washington. But advocates at the hearing said that the increasing cooperation with regulators could lay the groundwork for further growth. ?As this technology moves from early adopters into mainstream acceptance, it is critical in my view that federal and state governments establish policies surrounding digital currency,? Mr. Allaire said. A version of this article appears in print on 11/19/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Regulators See Value in Bitcoin, And Investors Hasten to Agree . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Tue Nov 19 21:25:59 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 13:25:59 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Coursera Nanotechnology has begun In-Reply-To: <5282EDE3.3080305@aleph.se> References: <20131112073253.GW5661@leitl.org> <5282EDE3.3080305@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-11-13 01:25, Adam A. Ford wrote: > >> I am surprised at how much the course conveners refer to Drexler's views >> as Science Fiction in forums and in the main lecture video: >> https://class.coursera.org/nanotech-001/lecture/7 >> > > Maybe you should bring up what he really argues for? See his Guardian > blogs, and his recent book. The problem seem that everybody argues against > Strawman Drexler, who has little to do with real Drexler. This is definitely seeming to be the trend here. Even one of the professors clings to Strawman Drexler after having been called out on it, in detail, by four of the respondents (myself and Adam included). But it turns out there might be a financial incentive for this: if the don't spout that, government funding sources worry they're promoting a scary vision of uncontrolled nanotech, and pull funding (because of course one must not be seen as supporting that which scares the sheeple, if one wishes to get reelected). And of course we wind up dealing with those who got funded, far more than those who did not. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Nov 19 22:01:28 2013 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 15:01:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Coursera Nanotechnology has begun In-Reply-To: References: <20131112073253.GW5661@leitl.org> <5282EDE3.3080305@aleph.se> Message-ID: Adrian Tymes wrote: "But it turns out there might be a financial incentive for this: if the don't spout that, government funding sources worry they're promoting a scary vision of uncontrolled nanotech, and pull funding (because of course one must not be seen as supporting that which scares the sheeple, if one wishes to get reelected). And of course we wind up dealing with those who got funded, far more than those who did not." I suspect there are at least several (if not far more) extremely well funded top secret/above top secret Drexlerian-style nanotech research projects going on for the U.S. military, which we are "in the black" about. And I suspect the same regarding quantum computers and artificial intelligence.... Now if I could only confidently say that about extreme longevity research! LOL.... John On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > >> On 2013-11-13 01:25, Adam A. Ford wrote: >> >>> I am surprised at how much the course conveners refer to Drexler's views >>> as Science Fiction in forums and in the main lecture video: >>> https://class.coursera.org/nanotech-001/lecture/7 >>> >> >> Maybe you should bring up what he really argues for? See his Guardian >> blogs, and his recent book. The problem seem that everybody argues against >> Strawman Drexler, who has little to do with real Drexler. > > > This is definitely seeming to be the trend here. Even one of the > professors clings to Strawman Drexler after having been called out on it, > in detail, by four of the respondents (myself and Adam included). > > But it turns out there might be a financial incentive for this: if the > don't spout that, government funding sources worry they're promoting a > scary vision of uncontrolled nanotech, and pull funding (because of course > one must not be seen as supporting that which scares the sheeple, if one > wishes to get reelected). And of course we wind up dealing with those who > got funded, far more than those who did not. > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Tue Nov 19 14:41:14 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 15:41:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> <528A8AB2.2070909@libero.it> Message-ID: <528B788A.3010604@libero.it> Il 19/11/2013 12:22, Eugenio Mart?nez ha scritto: > I don?t find a problem having more government as far as this government > works under certain guarantees. Me too...but I'm not sure your "certain guarantees" are mines. "Whoever wants to see the world governed according to his own ideas must strive for dominion over men?s minds. It is impossible, in the long run, to subject men against their will to a regime that they reject. Whoever tries to do so by force will ultimately come to grief, and the struggles provoked by his attempt will do more harm than the worst government based on the consent of the governed could ever do. Men cannot be made happy against their will." Liberalism, p. 46 > A government is the "bondsman" (Guarantor?) that watch if rules are kept > and that weak ones are not abused. The problems arise when the particular "bondsman" is unable or unwilling to work as intended. This because government is conceived as a monopoly of force and coercion. "Government is a guarantor of liberty and is compatible with liberty only if its range is adequately restricted to the preservation of what is called economic freedom." Human Action, p. 283 "Once the principle is admitted that it is duty of government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments." Human Action, pp. 728?29, p. 733 > Furthermore: If there is a strong IA it would be the perfect > government... and the perfect worker. We, as humans, will not need to > work anymore. I'm not sure a strong AI will be happy to exist as a manservant and man keeper. You know, just like in a jail. > That idea entail a lot of problems, of course. Vgr: what to do with > productive private property Leave it to their legitimate owners? Mirco From giulio at gmail.com Wed Nov 20 08:19:36 2013 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 09:19:36 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Coursera Nanotechnology has begun In-Reply-To: References: <20131112073253.GW5661@leitl.org> <5282EDE3.3080305@aleph.se> Message-ID: Yes, criticizing early Drexler's visions is Politically Correct these days. Of course only PC science gets funded, and suspects of unPCness can kill a scientist's career. Note that even Drexler himself, in his last book Radical Abundance, seems to forget his juvenile unPC sins and focus on down-to-earth nanotech only. This means also that, even if many technologies discussed on this list in the 90s are approaching the mainstream, radical futurist groups such as the ExI list have still an important role to play. The mainstream may have appropriated a mild version of transhumanist tech, but they don't tell the whole story. On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 10:25 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: >> >> On 2013-11-13 01:25, Adam A. Ford wrote: >>> >>> I am surprised at how much the course conveners refer to Drexler's views >>> as Science Fiction in forums and in the main lecture video: >>> https://class.coursera.org/nanotech-001/lecture/7 >> >> >> Maybe you should bring up what he really argues for? See his Guardian >> blogs, and his recent book. The problem seem that everybody argues against >> Strawman Drexler, who has little to do with real Drexler. > > > This is definitely seeming to be the trend here. Even one of the professors > clings to Strawman Drexler after having been called out on it, in detail, by > four of the respondents (myself and Adam included). > > But it turns out there might be a financial incentive for this: if the don't > spout that, government funding sources worry they're promoting a scary > vision of uncontrolled nanotech, and pull funding (because of course one > must not be seen as supporting that which scares the sheeple, if one wishes > to get reelected). And of course we wind up dealing with those who got > funded, far more than those who did not. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From sondre-list at bjellas.com Tue Nov 19 19:14:50 2013 From: sondre-list at bjellas.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Sondre_Bjell=E5s?=) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 20:14:50 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: For anyone interested in trading Bitcoin, here is a nice site that shows the differences in value between the various currency exchanges: http://www.coined.com/ BTC hit $900 on MTGOX yesterday, fell hard afterwards but that's normal as a lot of users sold their BTCs. Will we see $1000 soon? It passed that in China yesterday. - Sondre On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 7:38 PM, John Clark wrote: > The following article was on the front page of the business section of > today's New York Times: > > ============= > > The virtual currency bitcoin took a big step toward the mainstream on > Monday as federal authorities signaled their willingness to accept it as a > legitimate payment alternative. > > A number of federal officials told a Senate hearing that such financial > networks offered real benefits for the financial system even as they > acknowledged that new forms of digital money had provided avenues for money > laundering and illegal activity. > > ?There are plenty of opportunities for digital currencies to operate > within existing laws and regulations,? said Edward Lowery, a special agent > with the Secret Service, which is tasked with protecting the integrity of > the dollar. > > Signs that the government would not stand in the way of bitcoin?s > development, even as it has been cracking down on criminal networks that > use the digital money, stoked a strong rally in the price of the > crypto-currency. > > By Monday evening, the value of a bitcoin unit soared past $700 on some > exchanges. The total outstanding pool of bitcoin ? which is created by a > network of users who solve complex mathematical problems ? is now worth > more than $7 billion. > > The Senate hearing Monday afternoon was the clearest indication yet of the > government?s desire to grapple with the consequences of this growth, and > the recognition that bitcoin and other similar networks could become more > lasting and significant parts of the financial landscape. > > ?The decision to bring virtual currency within the scope of our regulatory > framework should be viewed by those who respect and obey the basic rule of > law as a positive development for this sector,? said Jennifer Shasky > Calvery, the director of the Treasury Department?s Financial Crimes > Enforcement Network. ?It recognizes the innovation virtual currencies > provide, and the benefits they might offer.? > > Ms. Shasky Calvery and the other officials at the hearing did say that > basic questions still had to be answered about virtual currencies, > including whether they can actually be considered currencies or whether > they are more properly categorized as commodities or securities. The > distinction will determine which agencies regulate the networks and how > they are treated under tax law. > > Ms. Shasky Calvery said that the Internal Revenue Service was ?actively > working? on its own rules for bitcoin. > > The hearing followed other less visible steps taken by regulators and > lawmakers to bring digital money into the mainstream. > > New York State?s top financial regulator, Benjamin M. Lawsky, said last > week that he would hold a hearing to consider the creation of a BitLicense > to provide more oversight for transactions. Earlier, the Federal Election > Commissionput out an advisory indicating that bitcoin could be legally > accepted as political donations. > > The general counsel of the Bitcoin Foundation, a nonprofit advocating the > currency, said in his testimony on Monday that he was receiving a much more > friendly response from both government and the financial industry. > > ?We have recently perceived a marked improvement in the tone and tenor > taken by both state officials and bank executives,? the general counsel, > Patrick Murck, said. > > Bitcoin has experienced a remarkable ascent since it was created in 2009 > by an anonymous programmer or collective known as Satoshi Nakamoto. The > money, which is not tied to any national currency, has been popular with > technophiles who are skeptical of the world?s central banks. Only a finite > amount of bitcoin will ever be created ? 21 million units. Users have bid > up the price on Internet exchanges, betting that the currency will be more > widely used in the future. > > There are significant questions about the wisdom of the digital money as > an investment, given that bitcoin has no intrinsic value and has proved to > be vulnerable to hackers. Many money managers have recommended that > unsophisticated investors stay away. > > Recently, though, bitcoin has been catching fire around the world, with > exchanges in China particularly active. A growing number of prominent > American investors have also bought stakes, including Michael Novogratz, a > principal at the private equityand hedge fund giantFortress Investment > Group, as well as the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler. > > The increasingly widespread ownership of bitcoin has shifted attention > away from the criminal enterprises that have used digital money, but it was > a focus at the Senate hearing. > > Last month, the online marketplace Silk Road, where bitcoin was the > primary form of payment, was shut down and its founder arrested after > authorities accused it of being used to buy and sell drugs, weapons and > pornography. The chairman of the Senate committee, Thomas R. Carper, > Democrat of Delaware, said that a few days after the arrest, a similar site > sprang up. > > It can be harder to track criminals who use bitcoin, law enforcement > officials said at the hearing, because they operate across international > borders and often do not use established financial institutions that report > transactions. > > But Mythili Raman, an assistant attorney general at the Justice > Department, also said that because every bitcoin transaction was recorded > on a public ledger, it was possible for investigators to trace the movement > of money between accounts. > > ?It is not in fact anonymous. It is not immune from investigation,? Ms. > Raman said. > > All the officials at the hearing said that crime had been an issue during > the early days of credit cards and online payment systems like PayPal, and > should not be a reason to limit innovation. > > ?It is our duty as law enforcement to stay vigilant while recognizing that > there are many legitimate users of those services,? Ms. Raman said. > > The bitcoin supporters who testified at the hearing said bitcoin could > bring major changes to the financial system by cutting out the middle men > needed to move money around the world. > > ?I am here to testify because I believe that global digital currency > represents one of the most important technical and economic innovations of > our time,? said Jeremy Allaire, the chief executive of Circle Internet > Financial, which is seeking to promote more widespread use of the currency. > > Given bitcoin?s appeal to skeptics of government, many aficionados have > been wary of involvement by Washington. But advocates at the hearing said > that the increasing cooperation with regulators could lay the groundwork > for further growth. > > ?As this technology moves from early adopters into mainstream acceptance, > it is critical in my view that federal and state governments establish > policies surrounding digital currency,? Mr. Allaire said. > A version of this article appears in print on 11/19/2013, on page B1 of > the NewYork edition with the headline: Regulators See Value in Bitcoin, And > Investors Hasten to Agree . > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Sondre Bjell?s http://www.sondreb.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ddraig at gmail.com Wed Nov 20 09:18:54 2013 From: ddraig at gmail.com (ddraig) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 20:18:54 +1100 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 20 November 2013 06:14, Sondre Bjell?s wrote: > For anyone interested in trading Bitcoin, here is a nice site that shows > the differences in value between the various currency exchanges: > > http://www.coined.com/ > > BTC hit $900 on MTGOX yesterday, fell hard afterwards but that's normal as > a lot of users sold their BTCs. Will we see $1000 soon? It passed that in > China yesterday. > > I read the enormous thread you guys have been posting to yesterday, got interested, and put a widget on my phone to track the value of bitcoins. It went from 650 to 520 in an hour - interesting volatility. Dwayne -- ddraig at pobox.com irc.bluesphereweb.com #dna ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg our aim is wakefulness, our enemy is dreamless sleep -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rolandodegilead at gmail.com Wed Nov 20 10:54:41 2013 From: rolandodegilead at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Eugenio_Mart=EDnez?=) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 11:54:41 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <528B788A.3010604@libero.it> References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> <528A8AB2.2070909@libero.it> <528B788A.3010604@libero.it> Message-ID: > > > I don?t find a problem having more government as far as this government > > works under certain guarantees. > > Me too...but I'm not sure your "certain guarantees" are mines. > > "Whoever wants to see the world governed according to his > own ideas must strive for dominion over men?s minds. It is > impossible, in the long run, to subject men against their will to > a regime that they reject. Whoever tries to do so by force will > ultimately come to grief, and the struggles provoked by his > attempt will do more harm than the worst government based > on the consent of the governed could ever do. Men cannot be > made happy against their will." > Liberalism, p. 46 > Certain guarantees are that the government is easily changeable if it fails and punishable if it is deserved. Like in modern democracies, but in a more equalitarian way (I say that because, as far as I know, there are more than two parties in USA, but it is impossible for one of the other parties to reach everybody) The problem with that quote is that No Government is also a way of governing and I?d say that is not desired by general public (since nobody votes anarchist or anachcapitalist parties). Also, I don?t know when a nation will embrace transhumanism. Maybe in 50 years. I don?t know how many years it will take to develop. Maybe 50 years more. But I know that 101 years later, all the nations will embrace it or will be left behind. Because of his own definition, I cannot know what happens after singularity, but I think that grief and struggles would be futile against a government protected with transhumanist forces. > A government is the "bondsman" (Guarantor?) that watch if rules are kept > > and that weak ones are not abused. > > The problems arise when the particular "bondsman" is unable or unwilling > to work as intended. > Then is when the certain guarantees comes to scene. > "Government is a guarantor of liberty and is compatible with > liberty only if its range is adequately restricted to the preservation > of what is called economic freedom." > Human Action, p. 283 > Well. Economic freedom is Ok. It is a right. But I?d say that there are more important rights like right to work, food, healthcare,physical integrity, freedom of expression, fair trials, education and that kind of basic things. If that fails, system is not working. Just economic freedom means child labour. And that is a non working system. "Once the principle is admitted that it is duty of government > to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious > objections can be advanced against further encroachments." > Human Action, pp. 728?29, p. 733 > Oh, no no no no. Not against his own foolishness, but against other people foolishness. Now I am suffering banks and Lehman Brothers lack of ethics and I am unemployed for first time on my life. That is because economic freedom. I?d like to be protected. In Spain 12 billion ? has been stolen to citizens by banks selling preferred stock as fixed income and nobody is in prison because economic freedom. Defrauded ones would like to be protected. > > > Furthermore: If there is a strong IA it would be the perfect > > government... and the perfect worker. We, as humans, will not need to > > work anymore. > > I'm not sure a strong AI will be happy to exist as a manservant and man > keeper. You know, just like in a jail. > If you just add more computational power, is just a little task. Like visit your parents in the weekend. Or like move a finger. > > That idea entail a lot of problems, of course. Vgr: what to do with > > productive private property > > Leave it to their legitimate owners? > It?s ok. But then.. if there is a IA that can work, the productive private property owners would buy it and there would be 100% unemployent and hunger. There is an existencial problem. Caused why? Because having in our hands the solution to one of the main problems of humanity (work division, unemployment, low salaries and class struggle), private property of a few was considered more important that the right to live with dignity of everybody -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed Nov 20 10:46:46 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 11:46:46 +0100 Subject: [ExI] biops Message-ID: <20131120104646.GT5661@leitl.org> Anyone knows who's behind this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTMS9y8OVuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDC35pcr-Fg From anders at aleph.se Wed Nov 20 12:36:39 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 12:36:39 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> Message-ID: <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> OK, now I have a better writeup: http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2013/11/greetings_from_doubleearth.html I am starting to think that really "wet" ocean worlds are likely not as hospitable to life as the "dry" ones. But land might still be optional. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 20 14:59:11 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 06:59:11 -0800 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> <528A8AB2.2070909@libero.it> <528B788A.3010604@libero.it> Message-ID: <00ea01cee601$12ddbac0$38993040$@att.net> > On Behalf Of Eugenio Mart?nez > "Whoever wants to see the world governed according to his own ideas must strive for dominion over men?s minds.... Men cannot be made happy against their will." Liberalism, p. 46 COOL! Eugenio, who wrote that? > (I say that because, as far as I know, there are more than two parties in USA, but it is impossible for one of the other parties to reach everybody) We have a number of third parties which tend to mostly ally themselves with one of the two majors. In the past two decades, our two major parties have become nearly indistinguishable. A new one came along recently, the Tea Party, with the main platform of ?Don?t raise taxes, cut spending.? That sounded right to me. The two majors united in common cause against that one. Even the IRS got in on the act, illegally suppressing that party at every opportunity. They got caught. Nothing happened. It appears nothing will happen. Does that tell you what you need to know about American politics? > The problem with that quote is that No Government is also a way of governing and I?d say that is not desired by general public (since nobody votes anarchist or anachcapitalist parties). Eugenio, I am astonished at how often in America today we are seeing the concept of limited central government being equated with no government. We see the concept of states (rather than the Fed) doing most of the governing being equated to anarchy. We see the concept of local governments doing that for which they were established being equated with chaos. The notion that the Federal government is held to the intentionally strict guidelines of its own Constitution is treated as a quaint and outdated theory, established by racists and slavers. It then follows with how wonderful it will all be if a big brother federal government just does everything for us, feeds our poor, supports our unemployed, heals our sickness, binds our wounds, stops the rising of the seas, holds our helpless little hands and tells us exactly what we are to do. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Wed Nov 20 15:32:10 2013 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 16:32:10 +0100 Subject: [ExI] biops In-Reply-To: <20131120104646.GT5661@leitl.org> References: <20131120104646.GT5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: See http://www.kurzweilai.net/new-video-series-aims-to-popularize-transhumanism-kickstarter-launched On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 11:46 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > Anyone knows who's behind this? > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTMS9y8OVuY > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDC35pcr-Fg > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From atymes at gmail.com Wed Nov 20 16:58:50 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 08:58:50 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Coursera Nanotechnology has begun In-Reply-To: References: <20131112073253.GW5661@leitl.org> <5282EDE3.3080305@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 2:01 PM, John Grigg wrote: > I suspect there are at least several (if not far more) extremely well > funded top secret/above top secret Drexlerian-style nanotech research > projects going on for the U.S. military, which we are "in the black" about. > I doubt it. Such research would be far more valuable to the US - even to just the US military - if done in the open (due to the amount of capital needed to fully exploit this technology - e.g., the intelligence community as a whole can never manufacture chips nearly as cheaply as Intel), and they know it. Notice that the specific details of the US Navy's nuclear program are merely Secret, and then only mainly for how to operate (and thus, how to sabotage) their particular reactors. The basic theory and most principles of design are unclassified. It's a safe bet that the Navy has been taking advantage of reactor design enhancements made in the open over the past few decades. Same principle here. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed Nov 20 19:01:13 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 11:01:13 -0800 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> <528A8AB2.2070909@libero.it> <528B788A.3010604@libero.it> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 2:54 AM, Eugenio Mart?nez wrote: > "Once the principle is admitted that it is duty of government >> to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious >> objections can be advanced against further encroachments." >> Human Action, pp. 728?29, p. 733 >> > > Oh, no no no no. Not against his own foolishness, but against other people > foolishness. Now I am suffering banks and Lehman Brothers lack of ethics > and I am unemployed for first time on my life. > What about cases that cross the line? For instance, some people who worked for Lehman Brothers are now out of work due to this same thing. Would protecting them against their own foolishness be okay, if it would also protect you against their foolishness? (Note that they would ignore that it's about protecting others - but really, most "protect from themselves" arguments can be cast as protecting others. If nothing else, letting you take yourself out of the labor force means you're not doing stuff to support the rest of us.) Simpler examples can be seen in public health - e.g., disallowing people from becoming another Typhoid Mary. (She did not want to be protected from herself, and insisted she was not carrying disease even though she provably was. She very strongly resisted the notion that she either give up her career as a cook or at least take measures such as washing her hands before cooking.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sondre-list at bjellas.com Wed Nov 20 19:04:14 2013 From: sondre-list at bjellas.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Sondre_Bjell=E5s?=) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 20:04:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> <528A8AB2.2070909@libero.it> Message-ID: ... "weak ones are not abused" ... can you give some examples? When did the government protect and help the weak ones? Even in social democracies such as Norway, it's clearly the rich, wealthy, connected and corporations that gets benefits. If you are a weak one, and have issues with the government, you will never win a law suite or get the proper retribution. - Sondre On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 12:22 PM, Eugenio Mart?nez < rolandodegilead at gmail.com> wrote: > I don?t find a problem having more government as far as this government > works under certain guarantees. > > A government is the "bondsman" (Guarantor?) that watch if rules are kept > and that weak ones are not abused. > > Furthermore: If there is a strong IA it would be the perfect government... > and the perfect worker. We, as humans, will not need to work anymore. > > That idea entail a lot of problems, of course. Vgr: what to do with > productive private property > > > On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 10:46 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > >> Il 18/11/2013 21:54, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: >> >> > >> > Bitcoin show that many things done by the government can and should >> be >> > done by the market, by the people. And the people can and will do a >> > better work than any government. >> >> > As I look at the chart in the blog: >> > http://bit.ly/1amBcrP >> > Here is a link directly to the chart, in case he releases another blog >> > or someone is looking at this in the archive: >> > http://bit.ly/1amBcrP >> >> What do you think about my comment of the post? >> >> Mirco >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > > > > -- > OLVIDATE.DE > Tatachan.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Sondre Bjell?s http://www.sondreb.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Nov 20 19:39:13 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 19:39:13 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The post-antibiotic era In-Reply-To: <52894800.8040505@aleph.se> References: <5288AEB4.5000301@aleph.se> <52894800.8040505@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 10:49 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Yes, but that is because they do not have the big picture. They look at > mortality rates and deaths around them, rather than mortality distributions > and existential risk. > > From my ivory tower resistent bacteria are a stinking, nasty cesspit in the > landscape, but not anything like the bioweaponry dragon in the synthbio > mountains, the gleaming nuclear silos, or that dust cloud on the horizon > that might be bad AI. Yes, per average year resistant bacteria is likely to > kill more people than the weird threats I watch for, but they are not going > to end humanity. They are just bad news like climate change. > > The doctors so far are only seeing the first signs of the increased death rate from antibiotic-resistant bacteria. It is the future death rates they are worried about. A new article describes what happens when operations become impossible and every accident, large or small, that gets infected becomes fatal. Quote: If we really lost antibiotics to advancing drug resistance ? and trust me, we?re not far off ? here?s what we would lose. Not just the ability to treat infectious disease; that?s obvious. But also: The ability to treat cancer, and to transplant organs, because doing those successfully relies on suppressing the immune system and willingly making ourselves vulnerable to infection. Any treatment that relies on a permanent port into the bloodstream ? for instance, kidney dialysis. Any major open-cavity surgery, on the heart, the lungs, the abdomen. Any surgery on a part of the body that already harbors a population of bacteria: the guts, the bladder, the genitals. Implantable devices: new hips, new knees, new heart valves. Cosmetic plastic surgery. Liposuction. Tattoos. We?d lose the ability to treat people after traumatic accidents, as major as crashing your car and as minor as your kid falling out of a tree. We?d lose the safety of modern childbirth: Before the antibiotic era, 5 women died out of every 1,000 who gave birth. One out of every nine skin infections killed. Three out of every 10 people who got pneumonia died from it. And we?d lose, as well, a good portion of our cheap modern food supply. Most of the meat we eat in the industrialized world is raised with the routine use of antibiotics, to fatten livestock and protect them from the conditions in which the animals are raised. Without the drugs that keep livestock healthy in concentrated agriculture, we?d lose the ability to raise them that way. Either animals would sicken, or farmers would have to change their raising practices, spending more money when their margins are thin. Either way, meat ? and fish and seafood, also raised with abundant antibiotics in the fish farms of Asia ? would become much more expensive. And it wouldn?t be just meat. Antibiotics are used in plant agriculture as well, especially on fruit. Right now, a drug-resistant version of the bacterial disease fire blight is attacking American apple crops. There?s currently one drug left to fight it. And when major crops are lost, the local farm economy goes too. --------- The future effect will be many times more than the current 23,000 deaths per year (in USA). It will be much worse for third world countries where there is more infection and who will also be badly hit by food shortages and higher food prices. BillK From anders at aleph.se Wed Nov 20 20:27:45 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 20:27:45 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The post-antibiotic era In-Reply-To: References: <5288AEB4.5000301@aleph.se> <52894800.8040505@aleph.se> Message-ID: <528D1B41.8020505@aleph.se> On 2013-11-20 19:39, BillK wrote: > The doctors so far are only seeing the first signs of the increased > death rate from antibiotic-resistant bacteria. > It is the future death rates they are worried about. Yes, I know. And I still think they are being myopic. A world without antibiotic would be nastier. Surgery would indeed be far harder (but not impossible - there are non-specific sterilization methods too that are resistant to resistance) and many common accidents would become far more serious. Not to mention childbirth. But... most people live longer today because they do not get sick and have fewer accidents, not because they have lots of surgery or antibiotics to treat minor wounds. Good immune systems thanks to sanitation, plentiful food and vaccines count for a lot. Antibiotic use in animal husbandry is actually a serious bad, and rightly banned in many countries (e.g. banned for non-medical purposes across EU since 2006). You can produce cheap meat without it. It is just that you can make cheaper meat with it, at the price of feeding resistance bigtime. (Not that the EU cares about cheap meat...) Conflating antibiotics used for plants with the ones used for humans is just stupid - I lost all my respect for the Wired article at that point. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From pharos at gmail.com Wed Nov 20 21:10:01 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 21:10:01 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The post-antibiotic era In-Reply-To: <528D1B41.8020505@aleph.se> References: <5288AEB4.5000301@aleph.se> <52894800.8040505@aleph.se> <528D1B41.8020505@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 8:27 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Conflating antibiotics used for plants with the ones used for humans is just > stupid - I lost all my respect for the Wired article at that point. > I think you may have misunderstood the quotation. The author is writing about antibiotic resistance developing in *both* the antibiotics used in humans and animals and also in the antibiotics used on fruit trees. The plant bacteria resistance will lead to less plant food being produced, which is an additional problem for humans. The author is an award-winning reporter on epidemics. She has written a book on MRSA. She knows her subject. Her Wired blog is here: BillK From painlord2k at libero.it Wed Nov 20 21:16:09 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 22:16:09 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <00ea01cee601$12ddbac0$38993040$@att.net> References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> <528A8AB2.2070909@libero.it> <528B788A.3010604@libero.it> <00ea01cee601$12ddbac0$38993040$@att.net> Message-ID: <528D2699.6070302@libero.it> Il 20/11/2013 15:59, spike ha scritto: > *COOL! Eugenio, who wrote that?* I'm quoting "The Quotable Mises". >>?The problem with that quote is that No Government is also a way of > governing and I?d say that is not desired by general public (since > nobody votes anarchist or anachcapitalist parties). > Eugenio, I am astonished at how often in America today we are seeing the > concept of limited central government being equated with no > government. > We see the concept of states (rather than the Fed) doing > most of the governing being equated to anarchy. We see the concept of > local governments doing that for which they were established being > equated with chaos. The notion that the Federal government is held to > the intentionally strict guidelines of its own Constitution is treated > as a quaint and outdated theory, established by racists and slavers. It > then follows with how wonderful it will all be if a big brother federal > government just does everything for us, feeds our poor, supports our > unemployed, heals our sickness, binds our wounds, stops the rising of > the seas, holds our helpless little hands and tells us exactly what we > are to do. Or else.... Mirco From anders at aleph.se Wed Nov 20 22:20:21 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 22:20:21 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The post-antibiotic era In-Reply-To: References: <5288AEB4.5000301@aleph.se> <52894800.8040505@aleph.se> <528D1B41.8020505@aleph.se> Message-ID: <528D35A5.8020108@aleph.se> On 2013-11-20 21:10, BillK wrote: > The author is an award-winning reporter on epidemics. She has written > a book on MRSA. > She knows her subject. She is a journalist, for heavens sake. Maybe a good one. But as arguments from authority goes, it is rather bad. Meanwhile I have based my views on actual meetings with researchers and insurers. Part of my *job* is to track global risk and think about it. Note that my point isn't that antibiotics resistance is a trivial matter: it isn't. But it seems that people tend to end up thinking that their particular nasty problem is the End of the World. There are *plenty* of ongoing tough problems more (or at least rational) effort should be going into - nuclear weapon safety, pandemics, couplings between the food and energy system, climate change, invasive species, digital freedom, underdevelopment of vaccines, Eroom's law, demographic trouble, massive digital insecurity, bioweapons, priority setting itself... antibiotics resistance is on the list, but it may not be the top. What annoys me with the media references that have been mentioned in this thread is the shrill doomsayer tone. Maybe the writers think that is a good way of getting people off their couches to *do* something. After all, it worked for nuclear weapons... I mean climate change... I mean cybersecurity... actually, I think it *only* worked for the Y2K bug. Which is an interesting data point. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From pharos at gmail.com Wed Nov 20 23:00:47 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 23:00:47 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The post-antibiotic era In-Reply-To: <528D35A5.8020108@aleph.se> References: <5288AEB4.5000301@aleph.se> <52894800.8040505@aleph.se> <528D1B41.8020505@aleph.se> <528D35A5.8020108@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 10:20 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Note that my point isn't that antibiotics resistance is a trivial matter: it > isn't. But it seems that people tend to end up thinking that their > particular nasty problem is the End of the World. There are *plenty* of > ongoing tough problems more (or at least rational) effort should be going > into - nuclear weapon safety, pandemics, couplings between the food and > energy system, climate change, invasive species, digital freedom, > underdevelopment of vaccines, Eroom's law, demographic trouble, massive > digital insecurity, bioweapons, priority setting itself... antibiotics > resistance is on the list, but it may not be the top. > > What annoys me with the media references that have been mentioned in this > thread is the shrill doomsayer tone. Maybe the writers think that is a good > way of getting people off their couches to *do* something. After all, it > worked for nuclear weapons... I mean climate change... I mean > cybersecurity... actually, I think it *only* worked for the Y2K bug. Which > is an interesting data point. > I think the UK Chief Medical Officer (and her deputy) writing in the Lancet and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention might be a trifle upset at being called 'doomsayers'. There are different kinds and scales of risks. Since the Cold War ended hardly anyone even considers nuclear annihilation as a significant risk. (Maybe they should, of course). But people are already dying in hospitals from antibiotic resistant infections. That strikes close to home, so people see it as a much bigger risk. In my own life I would certainly be far more worried about dying in hospital from a resistant infection than a nuclear bomb in London. People will always consider personal risks to be far more important than vague large-scale threats. Especially when they can see a simple, specific cure for the problem - New antibiotics. The cure for large scale threats is neither obvious or straightforward, so let's solve the easier, more pressing problems first. BillK From anders at aleph.se Wed Nov 20 23:56:23 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 23:56:23 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The post-antibiotic era In-Reply-To: References: <5288AEB4.5000301@aleph.se> <52894800.8040505@aleph.se> <528D1B41.8020505@aleph.se> <528D35A5.8020108@aleph.se> Message-ID: <528D4C27.4020408@aleph.se> On 2013-11-20 23:00, BillK wrote: > I think the UK Chief Medical Officer (and her deputy) writing in the > Lancet and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention might be > a trifle upset at being called 'doomsayers'. Maybe. But that does not mean the epithet is completely unwarranted. I prefer to see them as myopic: they see a major world problem on their turf and shout about it. It is just that it is one among several. > There are different kinds and scales of risks. Since the Cold War > ended hardly anyone even considers nuclear annihilation as a > significant risk. (Maybe they should, of course). My best estimate is around 0.1% chance per year. Over a 70 year lifespan, that means a total risk of 6.7%. This means it beats things like cerebrovascular disease, accidents, influenza, and liver disease as a potential cause of death. It is just that it likely either happens or it doesn't, unlike most of the others that have ongoing mortality. > But people are already dying in hospitals from antibiotic resistant > infections. That strikes close to home, so people see it as a much > bigger risk. In my own life I would certainly be far more worried > about dying in hospital from a resistant infection than a nuclear bomb > in London. Exactly. The availability heuristic strikes again. Note that from an individual perspective antibiotics resistance is likely about as big threat as a nuclear war to your health. It is just that from a global perspective nuclear wars are much worse, since they cause massive correlated death and damage. > The cure for large scale threats is neither obvious or > straightforward, so let's solve the easier, more pressing problems > first. Which is of course a mistake, since (1) the "easier" problems are often rather tough (common cold, antibiotics resistance) and (2) there might be rational reasons to focus much more on the big and important problems. We had a discussion in the office today about this diagram: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/11/infoporn-causes-of-death/ Imagine that a genie offered you to either permanently remove kidney disease or war from the world. Which one should you choose? Removing kidney disease will save many more life-years per year than removing war. Even a major decrease in the diseases will save more lives! So from a consequentialist perspective it looks like one ought to do it. A deontologist might argue that wars are more evil because people do seriously immoral things in them, but that position essentially means that all intentional bad stuff in the diagram (and the vast amount of non-lethal intentional evil) should have priority before "mere" bad luck like cancer, starvation and malaria. Yep, deontologists are crazy. Still, there is a very good reason to choose to end war rather than kidney disease. Wars have a power law distribution with a very heavy tail. The frequency might be going down (c.f. Pinker) but sooner or later there will be a Big One, and it has nonzero chance of wiping us out. In fact, there is no average war size because of the tail: the expectation diverges, so if you measure long enough the war box will totally dominate (unless the pandemic box beats it). Meanwhile kidney disease remains fluctuating around a mean size: there is no risk of it wiping out much of humanity. So in the short run removing it is the best choice, but in the long run removing war is the wisest choice. Same thing for antibiotics resistance: removing one of the nasty heavy tail risks is more important in the long run than the resistance. Not removing the heavy tails might mean there will not be any long run, even if we successfully fix antibiotics resistance. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 21 00:22:06 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 17:22:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 12:14 PM, Sondre Bjell?s wrote: > For anyone interested in trading Bitcoin, here is a nice site that shows > the differences in value between the various currency exchanges: > > http://www.coined.com/ > I don't understand how a spread of $70 can be maintained here. Can't you just run money around in circles and make a profit? What am I missing here? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rex at nosyntax.net Thu Nov 21 00:06:33 2013 From: rex at nosyntax.net (rex) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 16:06:33 -0800 Subject: [ExI] The post-antibiotic era In-Reply-To: References: <5288AEB4.5000301@aleph.se> <52894800.8040505@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20131121000633.GO22956@ninja.nosyntax.net> BillK [2013-11-20 11:45]: >On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 10:49 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: >> Yes, but that is because they do not have the big picture. They look at >> mortality rates and deaths around them, rather than mortality distributions >> and existential risk. >> >> From my ivory tower resistent bacteria are a stinking, nasty cesspit in the >> landscape, but not anything like the bioweaponry dragon in the synthbio >> mountains, the gleaming nuclear silos, or that dust cloud on the horizon >> that might be bad AI. Yes, per average year resistant bacteria is likely to >> kill more people than the weird threats I watch for, but they are not going >> to end humanity. They are just bad news like climate change. >> >> > >The doctors so far are only seeing the first signs of the increased >death rate from antibiotic-resistant bacteria. >It is the future death rates they are worried about. > >A new article describes what happens when operations become impossible >and every accident, large or small, that gets infected becomes fatal. That's FUD. Normal immune systems constantly defeat infections, mostly unnoticed. Those that reach the noticeable level are also usually naturally defeated without resorting to antibiotics. Life expectancy in 1st world countries increased markedly _before_ antibiotic use became widespread. IOW, good public health practices are more important than antibiotics are. > >Quote: >If we really lost antibiotics to advancing drug resistance ? and trust >me, we?re not far off ? here?s what we would lose. Not just the >ability to treat infectious disease; that?s obvious. Sorry, I don't trust journalists. Marc Lappe wrote, _Germs That Won't Die: The New Threat of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria_ in -- wait for it -- 1982. IOW, the threat is real and has been known for a long time, but it's not tomorrow's TEOTWAWKI. >And we?d lose, as well, a good portion of our cheap modern food >supply. Most of the meat we eat in the industrialized world is raised >with the routine use of antibiotics, to fatten livestock and protect >them from the conditions in which the animals are raised. Without the >drugs that keep livestock healthy in concentrated agriculture, we?d >lose the ability to raise them that way. This is counterfactual. Small amounts of antibiotics are commonly added to animal feed in the US, not to "fatten" the animals and protect them from disease, but to increase the growth rate. If the practice were ended (which IMO it should be, yesterday), growth rates would be only slightly lower and disease rates would remain about the same because the amounts of antibiotics in feed are subtherapeutic. >Either way, meat ? and fish and seafood, also raised with abundant >antibiotics in the fish farms of Asia ? would become much more >expensive. Only if "much more" means "a few percent more." >And it wouldn?t be just meat. Antibiotics are used in plant >agriculture as well, especially on fruit. Right now, a drug-resistant >version of the bacterial disease fire blight is attacking American >apple crops. There?s currently one drug left to fight it. And when >major crops are lost, the local farm economy goes too. More FUD. At this point McKenna's credibility dropped to zero for me. Fire blight is a problem to be sure, but it will not end apple farming, much less destroy the farm economy. Why not? At least two reasons: a) there are apple varieties (red delicious, winesap) that are naturally resistant to fire blight; b) A natural strain of _Pseudomonas fluorescens_ is used to control fire blight. http://www.apsnet.org/publications/apsnetfeatures/Pages/AntibioticsForPlants.aspx >The future effect will be many times more than the current 23,000 >deaths per year (in USA). "Many times"? Doubtful. Got anything more than McKenna's & similar FUD to show us? Like Anders, I see antibiotic resistance as _a_ problem, but not a TEOTWAWKI problem. >It will be much worse for third world countries where there is more >infection and who will also be badly hit by food shortages and higher >food prices. Gaia has an out-of-control _H. hubris_ infestation. If _H. hubris_ cannot handle the problem, Ma Nature will. -rex -- The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data. --John Tukey From rolandodegilead at gmail.com Thu Nov 21 00:26:00 2013 From: rolandodegilead at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Eugenio_Mart=EDnez?=) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 01:26:00 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <00ea01cee601$12ddbac0$38993040$@att.net> References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> <528A8AB2.2070909@libero.it> <528B788A.3010604@libero.it> <00ea01cee601$12ddbac0$38993040$@att.net> Message-ID: > > *>?* *On Behalf Of *Eugenio Mart?nez > > > > >?"Whoever wants to see the world governed according to his > own ideas must strive for dominion over men?s minds.... Men cannot be > > made happy against their will." > Liberalism, p. 46 > > > > *COOL! Eugenio, who wrote that?* > Mirco Romanato a couple of mails before this one. > > > *>?* (I say that because, as far as I know, there are more than two > parties in USA, but it is impossible for one of the other parties to reach > everybody) > > > We have a number of third parties which tend to mostly ally themselves > with one of the two majors. In the past two decades, our two major parties > have become nearly indistinguishable. A new one came along recently, the > Tea Party, with the main platform of ?Don?t raise taxes, cut spending.? > That sounded right to me. The two majors united in common cause against > that one. Even the IRS got in on the act, illegally suppressing that party > at every opportunity. They got caught. Nothing happened. It appears > nothing will happen. > > Does that tell you what you need to know about American politics? > I was thinking more on the green party or the USA?s comunist party I don?t know about the Tea Party more than I heard in the news, that is more or less that they are ultrareligious, ultranationalistic, ultra-anti-ecologist, ultra-conservative, etc. > >?The problem with that quote is that No Government is also a way of > governing and I?d say that is not desired by general public (since nobody > votes anarchist or anachcapitalist parties). > > Eugenio, I am astonished at how often in America today we are seeing the > concept of limited central government being equated with no government. > We see the concept of states (rather than the Fed) doing most of the > governing being equated to anarchy. We see the concept of local > governments doing that for which they were established being equated with > chaos. The notion that the Federal government is held to the intentionally > strict guidelines of its own Constitution is treated as a quaint and > outdated theory, established by racists and slavers. It then follows with > how wonderful it will all be if a big brother federal government just does > everything for us, feeds our poor, supports our unemployed, heals our > sickness, binds our wounds, stops the rising of the seas, holds our > helpless little hands and tells us exactly what we are to do. > Here in Spain there was a example of that with Jose Mar?a Aznar in the leading role: While Zapatero?s government (light-right-winged monarchic-catholic socialdemocracy), there was and advertisment about road security that had as slogan "No podemos conducir por ti" ("We can?t drive for you"). Aznar, after praise the wine, said that "Nobody wants the government to drive by you" . I was astonished at how often the concept of security and traffic laws was equated to a big brother doing everything for us. In the past, for thousand of years probably, there was a perfect economic freedom, before doing economic laws. Do you really think that it was an egalitarian society? I don?t want my sickness being forced to be healed, but If I have a sickness and I want it to be healed and I can?t afford a heal plan, Must I die because not having money enough? Giving freedom or right to live only to people with money is moraly wrong. > spike > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- OLVIDATE.DE Tatachan.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 21 00:31:59 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 17:31:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> <528A8AB2.2070909@libero.it> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 4:22 AM, Eugenio Mart?nez wrote: > I don?t find a problem having more government as far as this government > works under certain guarantees. > It isn't that government is any worse than big corporations, just usually less efficient. As for evil, neither has the corner on that. > Furthermore: If there is a strong IA it would be the perfect government... > and the perfect worker. We, as humans, will not need to work anymore. > And perhaps, we won't need to live anymore either... -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 21 00:47:07 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 17:47:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the Ross Ulbricht (aaka: Dread Pirate Roberts) defense fund Message-ID: https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/legal-defense-fund-for-ross-ulbricht I think it is hilarious that they don't take Bitcoin. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rex at nosyntax.net Thu Nov 21 02:04:49 2013 From: rex at nosyntax.net (rex) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 18:04:49 -0800 Subject: [ExI] The post-antibiotic era In-Reply-To: References: <5288AEB4.5000301@aleph.se> <52894800.8040505@aleph.se> <528D1B41.8020505@aleph.se> <528D35A5.8020108@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20131121020449.GQ22956@ninja.nosyntax.net> BillK [2013-11-20 15:06]: > >People will always consider personal risks to be far more important >than vague large-scale threats. >Especially when they can see a simple, specific cure for the problem - >New antibiotics. Antibiotics inevitably eventually fail due to a combination of one species of bacteria developing resistance and horizontal gene transfer between species of bacteria. There are better approaches on the horizon. http://www.healthline.com/health-news/tech-two-new-techniques-to-fight-bacteria-without-antibiotics-101813 >The cure for large scale threats is neither obvious or >straightforward, so let's solve the easier, more pressing problems >first. Easier? And, a reduction in the frequency of deaths due to antibiotic resistance necessarily increases the frequency of deaths due to other things. For example, a reduction in death rate due to cardiovascular disease necessarily increases the death rate due to cancer, because we all eventually die of _something_. -rex -- There are two kinds of geniuses: the "ordinary" and the "magicians." An ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they've done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. Even after we understand what they have done it is completely dark. Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest calibre. --Mark Kac From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 21 02:19:07 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 18:19:07 -0800 Subject: [ExI] biops In-Reply-To: References: <20131120104646.GT5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: <043601cee660$0f2ed760$2d8c8620$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco Subject: Re: [ExI] biops >...See http://www.kurzweilai.net/new-video-series-aims-to-popularize-transhumanism- kickstarter-launched On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 11:46 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > >>... Anyone knows who's behind this? > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTMS9y8OVuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDC35pcr-Fg > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat _______________________________________________ The British Institute of Posthuman Studies does not have much of a web presence yet, but this video is excellent, thanks Gene. It gave me an idea. Transhumanist videos have that polished often British accent that sounds so articulate and erudite. What if... we were to write a script with all the most cutting edge transhumanist notions, then record it in whatever we can think of that would be the most opposite to that, or rather a counterpart. Imagine for instance this script spoken in a Junior Samples accent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WRyfJer6gU We would clean up Junior's grammar, but keep the strumming dobro in the background and his slow-talking Southern pronunciation as he discusses the latest breakthroughs in transhumanism and the future of humanity. Would not this put a whole new spin on things? I might be able to write a script and do the accent. I don't talk that way now, but I know how to do it; I used to sound a more like Junior in my misspent youth than I do now. Old friends from my childhood now tell me I speak with a foreign accent. spike From atymes at gmail.com Thu Nov 21 03:52:28 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 19:52:28 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 12:14 PM, Sondre Bjell?s wrote: > >> For anyone interested in trading Bitcoin, here is a nice site that shows >> the differences in value between the various currency exchanges: >> >> http://www.coined.com/ >> > > I don't understand how a spread of $70 can be maintained here. Can't you > just run money around in circles and make a profit? What am I missing here? > Transaction volume and processing time. (Also transaction fees, but they're not a big enough portion to make a $70 spread unattractive.) In short, nobody's running enough money around to close the gap...yet. Other than that, it is as you think. If you've got several thousand $ you could afford to lose (never invest what you need to pay rent and groceries)...well, I'd experiment with just one bitcoin first, see what the hidden gotchas are. But if those pan out and the gap hasn't closed yet, good luck. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 21 06:06:27 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 22:06:27 -0800 Subject: [ExI] ...or else... was: RE: What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? Message-ID: <04c101cee67f$d17e8d50$747ba7f0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato >> ... big brother federal government just does everything for us, feeds our poor, > supports our unemployed, heals our sickness, binds our wounds, stops > the rising of the seas, holds our helpless little hands and tells us > exactly what we are to do. >...Or else.... >...Mirco _____________________________________________ Ja. Mirco everywhere in the last decade I have seen evidence of a Federal government which has become too big for its breeches. The whole reason why the constitution was written was to prevent the kinds of abuses we are seeing today. It is too bad it had to be this way. The American people are to suffer for the way we vested so much authority into our Federal government, even knowing that it leads to corruption. Our near-term suffering will come in the form of chaos in our medical care industry, panic and disruption everywhere, brutal destruction of a system which didn't work well, but worked for some. We will pay the price in the form of power shifting from one of the major parties to the other, but the problem will not be solved. I am convinced the other major party will prove to be nearly as corrupt and perhaps over half as incompetent as the one currently holding two of the three seats of power. Regarding that bungled HealthCare.gov website launch, I am emboldened to make another prediction. Recall in mid-October they assured us the website would be fixed by 30 November. It will not be fixed by 30 November, even after we note they didn't specify which year. The system was based on a flawed premise: healthy young people can be compelled to buy insurance. I thought three years ago they could not and would not. I still think that way. Prediction: the American people will shrug and suggest we give the other guys a chance to fix it. They too will fail, for different reasons. They will not recognize that this kind of problem must be tackled at the state level, and that federal government must shrink to fit its budget. The other guys find that notion as repugnant as the current crew. Any questions? spike From pharos at gmail.com Thu Nov 21 09:24:00 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 09:24:00 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The post-antibiotic era In-Reply-To: <528D4C27.4020408@aleph.se> References: <5288AEB4.5000301@aleph.se> <52894800.8040505@aleph.se> <528D1B41.8020505@aleph.se> <528D35A5.8020108@aleph.se> <528D4C27.4020408@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 11:56 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > My best estimate is around 0.1% chance per year. Over a 70 year lifespan, > that means a total risk of 6.7%. This means it beats things like > cerebrovascular disease, accidents, influenza, and liver disease as a > potential cause of death. It is just that it likely either happens or it > doesn't, unlike most of the others that have ongoing mortality. > > Note that from an individual perspective antibiotics resistance is likely > about as big threat as a nuclear war to your health. It is just that from a > global perspective nuclear wars are much worse, since they cause massive > correlated death and damage. > I am rather doubtful about how to use stats and percentages concerning mortality risks. Nobody gets 6% pregnant or 6% dead. I appreciate that for large-scale national budget planning, policy should aim to get the best return for the money spent. (Apart from the usual political considerations of popularity, re-election and profits for allies). A lifetime risk of 6.7% for nuclear war sounds OK. But if you are talking to a 60 year old politician, he is very likely to reason that 80% of his life is already over and reduce pro-rota the risk for him personally. When you talk to somebody about the risk of death from specific causes, they don't really care about a national 5% rate. The rate doesn't mean that everyone gets 5% of the disease. It means that 5% of the population get 100% of the disease and for 95% of the population the statistic doesn't apply. Where death is concerned people want to know the risk as it applies to themselves. Are they likely to be in the 5% fatality group? The same applies to car accidents. If you don't drive, ignore it. Obesity. If you are slim and watch what you eat, ignore it. Etc. etc. And of course, men can ignore the health risks of childbirth, just as women can ignore the risk of prostate cancer. This is not using the availability heuristic to reason incorrectly. For each individual this is correct reasoning, because some risks just don't apply to them. So people are more concerned about the steady ongoing mortality risks that happen every day, because they are more likely to encounter them, and they want the likely risks reduced first. And encountering MRSA in a hospital stay, is beginning to loom very large in the likelihood scenario. If you want people to pay attention to huge but very rare risks, I think you need to convince them that it is likely to affect them in their lifetime. (That's why climate change has been generally ignored. People thought they would be dead long before it became a serious problem). The other way of dealing with rare risks is just to spend a small amount of money steadily over a very long time and hope that a solution is developed before the rare event happens. This seems to be the option being adopted for asteroid strikes. BillK From rolandodegilead at gmail.com Thu Nov 21 11:01:31 2013 From: rolandodegilead at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Eugenio_Mart=EDnez?=) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 12:01:31 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> <528A8AB2.2070909@libero.it> Message-ID: > > I don?t find a problem having more government as far as this government >> works under certain guarantees. >> > > It isn't that government is any worse than big corporations, just usually > less efficient. As for evil, neither has the corner on that. > > Of course is less efficient: Is not a business and his ultimate target is not winning money > Furthermore: If there is a strong IA it would be the perfect >> government... and the perfect worker. We, as humans, will not need to work >> anymore. >> >> And perhaps, we won't need to live anymore either... >> > Are you a Catholic? I don?t know your case. I need to live. And working is a way to get money to live confortably... but consume living time. I am not thinking on Wall-e model, where people who don?t have to work use their times to just stay in the sofa. I am thinking on a model where people who don?t have to work use their times to study, get lots of university degrees, pass time with their families, etc > > -Kelly > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- OLVIDATE.DE Tatachan.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 21 11:29:58 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 12:29:58 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Exclusive: Inside America's Plan to Kill Online Privacy Rights Everywhere Message-ID: <20131121112958.GF5661@leitl.org> http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/11/20/exclusive_inside_americas_plan_to_kill_online_privacy_rights_everywhere Exclusive: Inside America's Plan to Kill Online Privacy Rights Everywhere Posted By Colum Lynch Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - 6:10 PM Share The United States and its key intelligence allies are quietly working behind the scenes to kneecap a mounting movement in the United Nations to promote a universal human right to online privacy, according to diplomatic sources and an internal American government document obtained by The Cable. The diplomatic battle is playing out in an obscure U.N. General Assembly committee that is considering a proposal by Brazil and Germany to place constraints on unchecked internet surveillance by the National Security Agency and other foreign intelligence services. American representatives have made it clear that they won't tolerate such checks on their global surveillance network. The stakes are high, particularly in Washington -- which is seeking to contain an international backlash against NSA spying -- and in Brasilia, where Brazilian President Dilma Roussef is personally involved in monitoring the U.N. negotiations. The Brazilian and German initiative seeks to apply the right to privacy, which is enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to online communications. Their proposal, first revealed by The Cable, affirms a "right to privacy that is not to be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with their privacy, family, home, or correspondence." It notes that while public safety may "justify the gathering and protection of certain sensitive information," nations "must ensure full compliance" with international human rights laws. A final version the text is scheduled to be presented to U.N. members on Wednesday evening and the resolution is expected to be adopted next week. A draft of the resolution, which was obtained by The Cable, calls on states to "to respect and protect the right to privacy," asserting that the "same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, including the right to privacy." It also requests the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, present the U.N. General Assembly next year with a report on the protection and promotion of the right to privacy, a provision that will ensure the issue remains on the front burner. Publicly, U.S. representatives say they're open to an affirmation of privacy rights. "The United States takes very seriously our international legal obligations, including those under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," Kurtis Cooper, a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said in an email. "We have been actively and constructively negotiating to ensure that the resolution promotes human rights and is consistent with those obligations." But privately, American diplomats are pushing hard to kill a provision of the Brazilian and German draft which states that "extraterritorial surveillance" and mass interception of communications, personal information, and metadata may constitute a violation of human rights. The United States and its allies, according to diplomats, outside observers, and documents, contend that the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights does not apply to foreign espionage. In recent days, the United States circulated to its allies a confidential paper highlighting American objectives in the negotiations, "Right to Privacy in the Digital Age -- U.S. Redlines." It calls for changing the Brazilian and German text so "that references to privacy rights are referring explicitly to States' obligations under ICCPR and remove suggestion that such obligations apply extraterritorially." In other words: America wants to make sure it preserves the right to spy overseas. The U.S. paper also calls on governments to promote amendments that would weaken Brazil's and Germany's contention that some "highly intrusive" acts of online espionage may constitute a violation of freedom of expression. Instead, the United States wants to limit the focus to illegal surveillance -- which the American government claims it never, ever does. Collecting information on tens of millions of people around the world is perfectly acceptable, the Obama administration has repeatedly said. It's authorized by U.S. statute, overseen by Congress, and approved by American courts. "Recall that the USG's [U.S. government's] collection activities that have been disclosed are lawful collections done in a manner protective of privacy rights," the paper states. "So a paragraph expressing concern about illegal surveillance is one with which we would agree." The privacy resolution, like most General Assembly decisions, is neither legally binding nor enforceable by any international court. But international lawyers say it is important because it creates the basis for an international consensus -- referred to as "soft law" -- that over time will make it harder and harder for the United States to argue that its mass collection of foreigners' data is lawful and in conformity with human rights norms. "They want to be able to say ?we haven't broken the law, we're not breaking the law, and we won't break the law,'" said Dinah PoKempner, the general counsel for Human Rights Watch, who has been tracking the negotiations. The United States, she added, wants to be able to maintain that "we have the freedom to scoop up anything we want through the massive surveillance of foreigners because we have no legal obligations." The United States negotiators have been pressing their case behind the scenes, raising concerns that the assertion of extraterritorial human rights could constrain America's effort to go after international terrorists. But Washington has remained relatively muted about their concerns in the U.N. negotiating sessions. According to one diplomat, "the United States has been very much in the backseat," leaving it to its allies, Australia, Britain, and Canada, to take the lead. There is no extraterritorial obligation on states "to comply with human rights," explained one diplomat who supports the U.S. position. "The obligation is on states to uphold the human rights of citizens within their territory and areas of their jurisdictions." The position, according to Jamil Dakwar, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Human Rights Program, has little international backing. The International Court of Justice, the U.N. Human Rights Committee, and the European Court have all asserted that states do have an obligation to comply with human rights laws beyond their own borders, he noted. "Governments do have obligation beyond their territories," said Dakwar, particularly in situations, like the Guantanamo Bay detention center, where the United States exercises "effective control" over the lives of the detainees. Both PoKempner and Dakwar suggested that courts may also judge that the U.S. dominance of the Internet places special legal obligations on it to ensure the protection of users' human rights. "It's clear that when the United States is conducting surveillance, these decisions and operations start in the United States, the servers are at NSA headquarters, and the capabilities are mainly in the United States," he said. "To argue that they have no human rights obligations overseas is dangerous because it sends a message that there is void in terms of human rights protection outside countries territory. It's going back to the idea that you can create a legal black hole where there is no applicable law." There were signs emerging on Wednesday that America may have been making ground in pressing the Brazilians and Germans to back on one of its toughest provisions. In an effort to address the concerns of the U.S. and its allies, Brazil and Germany agreed to soften the language suggesting that mass surveillance may constitute a violation of human rights. Instead, it simply deep "concern at the negative impact" that extraterritorial surveillance "may have on the exercise of and enjoyment of human rights." The U.S., however, has not yet indicated it would support the revised proposal. The concession "is regrettable. But it?s not the end of the battle by any means," said Human Rights Watch?s PoKempner. She added that there will soon be another opportunity to corral America's spies: a U.N. discussion on possible human rights violations as a result of extraterritorial surveillance will soon be taken up by the U.N. High commissioner. Follow me on Twitter: @columlynch. From michael at briarproject.org Thu Nov 21 12:17:38 2013 From: michael at briarproject.org (Michael Rogers) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 12:17:38 +0000 Subject: [ExI] [liberationtech] Exclusive: Inside America's Plan to Kill Online Privacy Rights Everywhere In-Reply-To: <20131121112958.GF5661@leitl.org> References: <20131121112958.GF5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: <528DF9E2.4090306@briarproject.org> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 21/11/13 11:29, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/11/20/exclusive_inside_americas_plan_to_kill_online_privacy_rights_everywhere > > For users of Adblock Plus, the following rule allows access: ||foreignpolicy.com/sites/all/themes/fp/projects/identity/* Cheers, Michael -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJSjfniAAoJEBEET9GfxSfMOhAH/j5j+BCdksuQDQphW7xJVAxt FURTm1NP2wWGXtjUuZs1vYkylcOx41KMnhtbz+RcEuVuF2MYEgh44Uo9byioVEdt zG+83d1mugmFwh0t2kAEL6HzO4PjQI2TdbZmbl2bx7rCgMVLJ3S1+woihr5WJfJr Jf/SoFBeQKPO+WtgNDpOqoTW6dmvdYuFxkiocwf0ush0JCyxOoyz8M4KUZ+ro91Z 5MWswlfJZxoCBbWCEoY9c5j/kxUJ8GFcY7opXsrFf0RD1pyvZHcaACDkzLb416fi Y+ryOOt/F6BO8y7Phtcn9tgv5rCAUxqw0+xpCmUMeTLeRWrFXHvLgH2fpTI/Xr0= =+k9L -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys at stanford.edu. From rtomek at ceti.pl Thu Nov 21 19:56:36 2013 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 20:56:36 +0100 (CET) Subject: [ExI] the Ross Ulbricht (aaka: Dread Pirate Roberts) defense fund In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, 20 Nov 2013, Kelly Anderson wrote: > https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/legal-defense-fund-for-ross-ulbricht > > I think it is hilarious that they don't take Bitcoin. > > -Kelly Ross Ulbricht - isn't he the guy who wanted to pay money for assasination service? If this was so, then I find it hilarious that some people ask for public support of him. I mean, there may be pioneers, misunderstood innovators, anti-gov personas and the like, no problem. But once certain border is crossed they become as good as any other bandit out there. 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 kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 21 21:13:05 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 14:13:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the Ross Ulbricht (aaka: Dread Pirate Roberts) defense fund In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 12:56 PM, Tomasz Rola wrote: > On Wed, 20 Nov 2013, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > > https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/legal-defense-fund-for-ross-ulbricht > > > > I think it is hilarious that they don't take Bitcoin. > > > > -Kelly > > Ross Ulbricht - isn't he the guy who wanted to pay money for assasination > service? If this was so, then I find it hilarious that some people ask for > public support of him. > Allegedly, yes. His friends believe he has been set up. They can not reconcile the man they know with the man described in the court records. Apparently, in his personal life, he lived to an exemplary standard. Perhaps he is a bit like Ted Bundy, carrying on a perfectly normal surface life, but having a secret life that none of his friends knew about. Not one of his friends were aware of his work as the Dread Pirate Roberts. He was Batman and Bruce Wayne, according to the feds. There is the possibility that he was framed by the real DPR, but that seems a little far fetched without some evidence in that direction. > I mean, there may be pioneers, misunderstood innovators, anti-gov personas > and the like, no problem. But once certain border is crossed they become > as good as any other bandit out there. > I agree with you. While I'm a borderline anarchist, I don't support Leon Czolgosz types. I think a site like the Silk Road should be legal, but specific illegal activities that occur there should be investigated by the authorities. (It is probably not economical to chase down individual sales of narcotics on Silk Road, but things like hit men should be chased down, IMHO.) Bitcoin leaves enough of a trail that serious criminals can be tracked down through their financial activities. You can at least say, "Whoever is associated with this account number is doing bad things." Associating someone with an account number, however, is somewhat more tricky if the person using Bitcoin is not exceptionally aware and cautious of their activities. It's hard for the authorities to track you down, but if you are bad enough, they can do it. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Nov 21 21:26:56 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 13:26:56 -0800 Subject: [ExI] the Ross Ulbricht (aaka: Dread Pirate Roberts) defense fund In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 1:13 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > I think a site like the Silk Road should be legal, but specific illegal > activities that occur there should be investigated by the authorities. > I'm mildly surprised they didn't leave it in place as a honeypot. "Hey everyone who wants to commit crimes: go here! It's safe! It's anonymous! A majority of those advertising the worst services aren't actually the authorities, honest!" But perhaps there was too much political pressure to shut it down. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Nov 21 22:08:25 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 15:08:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the Ross Ulbricht (aaka: Dread Pirate Roberts) defense fund In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 2:26 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 1:13 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> I think a site like the Silk Road should be legal, but specific illegal >> activities that occur there should be investigated by the authorities. >> > > I'm mildly surprised they didn't leave it in place as a honeypot. "Hey > everyone who wants to commit crimes: go here! It's safe! It's anonymous! > A majority of those advertising the worst services aren't actually the > authorities, honest!" > > But perhaps there was too much political pressure to shut it down. > Or perhaps they knew it would be replaced soon... almost immediately as it turned out. Think of it this way... the authorities exist to grow the power and size and influence of what? The authorities, of course. Any organization wants to grow and increase their own power. The policing forces are no different than any other organization in this way. So do they get the politicians to give them more money by letting Silk Road get big enough to be a REAL problem before they try to tackle it? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu Thu Nov 21 22:51:28 2013 From: hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu (Henry Rivera) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 17:51:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The post-antibiotic era In-Reply-To: References: <5288AEB4.5000301@aleph.se> <52894800.8040505@aleph.se> Message-ID: <440249B1-9803-412D-94C4-31EDAD2B8D81@alumni.virginia.edu> > On Nov 20, 2013, at 2:39 PM, BillK wrote: > ... > And we?d lose, as well, a good portion of our cheap modern food > supply. Most of the meat we eat in the industrialized world is raised > with the routine use of antibiotics, to fatten livestock and protect > them from the conditions in which the animals are raised. Without the > drugs that keep livestock healthy in concentrated agriculture, we?d > lose the ability to raise them that way. I hate to say it, but this might be the only positive outcome of the loss of use of antibiotics. Of course, I'm way biased as a vegetarian and opponent of the deplorable conditions in which most of these animals are raised. Anyone seen the movie Food Inc.? It's worth checking out. -Henry From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Nov 22 08:13:43 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 01:13:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> <528A8AB2.2070909@libero.it> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 4:01 AM, Eugenio Mart?nez wrote: > I don?t find a problem having more government as far as this government >>> works under certain guarantees. >>> >> >> It isn't that government is any worse than big corporations, just usually >> less efficient. As for evil, neither has the corner on that. >> >> Of course is less efficient: Is not a business and his ultimate target is > not winning money > That is correct. When you can correlate good things happening with money being made, that is the ultimate in efficiency. I grant that there are times when it takes huge imagination to correlate these two elements, and that is where the socialists say, "gotcha" and that is where I say, "We simply have a failure of imagination." > > Furthermore: If there is a strong IA it would be the perfect >>> government... and the perfect worker. We, as humans, will not need to work >>> anymore. >>> >>> And perhaps, we won't need to live anymore either... >>> >> > Are you a Catholic? I don?t know your case. I need to live. And working is > a way to get money to live confortably... but consume living time. I am not > thinking on Wall-e model, where people who don?t have to work use their > times to just stay in the sofa. I am thinking on a model where people who > don?t have to work use their times to study, get lots of university > degrees, pass time with their families, etc > You do not seem to understand my point precisely. Let me try using a few more words. I shall try to select them carefully. It seems to be the case in evolution that there is not much room for two super intelligent predators to occupy the same niche together. Homo Sapiens likely wiped out Neandertal, for example. Homo Erectus suffered a similar fate, even though he was likely fairly intelligent. As soon as homo sapiens arrived, homo florensiensus' days were numbered. When homo silicensiensus arrives, it may be our turn to be put into the dust bin where 99% of species currently lies. Am I Catholic, by no means. I desire to live, for a long time if possible. The utopia you describe does not square with the idea that everyone must earn the right to occupy their niche. Against homo silicensiensus, we stand little hope of successfully occupying our previous niche for long. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Nov 22 09:28:33 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 02:28:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 5:36 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > OK, now I have a better writeup: > http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2013/11/greetings_ > from_doubleearth.html That was an incredibly detailed writeup. Thank you Anders. So if I understand, the physics of a "twice as large" earth lead to no continents? Does that assume the same proportion of water as earth was formed from? It kind of seems like if there were less water for some reason, you still might get continents, but perhaps I'm missing some rule of thumb that suggests the ratio of water is similar everywhere??? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Fri Nov 22 09:58:56 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 10:58:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> Message-ID: I guess that a lot of water is a direct consequence of the fact, that the oxygen is the number 3 most frequent element in the Galaxy. It likely bounds with the number 1, hydrogen - and there is water. The number three, helium doesn't bound. The real problem might be, why the Earth is so dry? On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 10:28 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 5:36 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > >> OK, now I have a better writeup: >> http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2013/11/greetings_ >> from_doubleearth.html > > > That was an incredibly detailed writeup. Thank you Anders. So if I > understand, the physics of a "twice as large" earth lead to no continents? > Does that assume the same proportion of water as earth was formed from? It > kind of seems like if there were less water for some reason, you still > might get continents, but perhaps I'm missing some rule of thumb that > suggests the ratio of water is similar everywhere??? > > -Kelly > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Fri Nov 22 10:00:15 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 11:00:15 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> Message-ID: The number *two*, helium. Apologize. On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 10:58 AM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > I guess that a lot of water is a direct consequence of the fact, that the > oxygen is the number 3 most frequent element in the Galaxy. It likely > bounds with the number 1, hydrogen - and there is water. The number three, > helium doesn't bound. > > The real problem might be, why the Earth is so dry? > > > On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 10:28 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 5:36 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: >> >>> OK, now I have a better writeup: >>> http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2013/11/greetings_ >>> from_doubleearth.html >> >> >> That was an incredibly detailed writeup. Thank you Anders. So if I >> understand, the physics of a "twice as large" earth lead to no continents? >> Does that assume the same proportion of water as earth was formed from? It >> kind of seems like if there were less water for some reason, you still >> might get continents, but perhaps I'm missing some rule of thumb that >> suggests the ratio of water is similar everywhere??? >> >> -Kelly >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> > > > -- > https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Nov 22 10:18:08 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 03:18:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 2:58 AM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > I guess that a lot of water is a direct consequence of the fact, that the > oxygen is the number 3 most frequent element in the Galaxy. It likely > bounds with the number 1, hydrogen - and there is water. The number three, > helium doesn't bound. > > The real problem might be, why the Earth is so dry? > You may be spot on. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that water was the most common molecule in the universe... but that doesn't tell you what percentage of the universe is expected to be made up of water though... -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Fri Nov 22 10:26:27 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 11:26:27 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> Message-ID: I think H2 must be the most frequent molecule, and H2O must be the second. The third might be CO2, since the carbon is the number 4. Anyway, we don't need to ask ourselves - where all this water came from. We rather should ask - where almost all the water has gone? On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 11:18 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 2:58 AM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > >> I guess that a lot of water is a direct consequence of the fact, that the >> oxygen is the number 3 most frequent element in the Galaxy. It likely >> bounds with the number 1, hydrogen - and there is water. The number three, >> helium doesn't bound. >> >> The real problem might be, why the Earth is so dry? >> > > You may be spot on. > > I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that water was the most common molecule > in the universe... but that doesn't tell you what percentage of the > universe is expected to be made up of water though... > > -Kelly > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 22 10:46:30 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 11:46:30 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 11:26:27AM +0100, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > I think H2 must be the most frequent molecule, and H2O must be the second. > The third might be CO2, since the carbon is the number 4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth's_crust O, Si, Al, Fe, Ca, Na, K, Mg, Ti, H, P etc. Sorry, neither hydrogen nor carbon are particularly abundant in Earth's lithosphere. Universe is different, obviously. There, it's mostly hydrogen, with a smattering of helium. > Anyway, we don't need to ask ourselves - where all this water came from. We > rather should ask - where almost all the water has gone? > > > On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 11:18 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > > On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 2:58 AM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > > > >> I guess that a lot of water is a direct consequence of the fact, that the > >> oxygen is the number 3 most frequent element in the Galaxy. It likely > >> bounds with the number 1, hydrogen - and there is water. The number three, > >> helium doesn't bound. > >> > >> The real problem might be, why the Earth is so dry? > >> > > > > You may be spot on. > > > > I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that water was the most common molecule > > in the universe... but that doesn't tell you what percentage of the > > universe is expected to be made up of water though... > > > > -Kelly > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > > > > -- > https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From protokol2020 at gmail.com Fri Nov 22 11:04:15 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 12:04:15 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> References: <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: We are talking about the situation inside *Galaxy*. And why the Earth (or Solar system) is that different. Oxygen is the third with 1% of all the atoms. You can forget helium for its neutrality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements The top one and the third one - (forget the helium, it does not bond significantly) - love to join into water. Our Galaxy must be very wet place. On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 11:46 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 11:26:27AM +0100, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > > I think H2 must be the most frequent molecule, and H2O must be the > second. > > The third might be CO2, since the carbon is the number 4. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth's_crust > > O, Si, Al, Fe, Ca, Na, K, Mg, Ti, H, P etc. > > Sorry, neither hydrogen nor carbon are particularly abundant in > Earth's lithosphere. > > Universe is different, obviously. There, it's mostly hydrogen, > with a smattering of helium. > > > Anyway, we don't need to ask ourselves - where all this water came from. > We > > rather should ask - where almost all the water has gone? > > > > > > On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 11:18 AM, Kelly Anderson >wrote: > > > > > On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 2:58 AM, Tomaz Kristan >wrote: > > > > > >> I guess that a lot of water is a direct consequence of the fact, that > the > > >> oxygen is the number 3 most frequent element in the Galaxy. It likely > > >> bounds with the number 1, hydrogen - and there is water. The number > three, > > >> helium doesn't bound. > > >> > > >> The real problem might be, why the Earth is so dry? > > >> > > > > > > You may be spot on. > > > > > > I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that water was the most common > molecule > > > in the universe... but that doesn't tell you what percentage of the > > > universe is expected to be made up of water though... > > > > > > -Kelly > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > extropy-chat mailing list > > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri Nov 22 11:06:18 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 11:06:18 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> Message-ID: <528F3AAA.4070904@aleph.se> On 2013-11-22 09:28, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 5:36 AM, Anders Sandberg > wrote: > > OK, now I have a better writeup: > http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2013/11/greetings_from_doubleearth.html > > > That was an incredibly detailed writeup. Thank you Anders. So if I > understand, the physics of a "twice as large" earth lead to no > continents? Does that assume the same proportion of water as earth was > formed from? Thanks! Yes, I assumed the same proportion of water went into the formation of Dry. Wet of course is much wetter. > It kind of seems like if there were less water for some reason, you > still might get continents, but perhaps I'm missing some rule of thumb > that suggests the ratio of water is similar everywhere??? We don't know for certain. When a solar nebula coalesces into planets, the innermost parts get baked by the sun and gas and volatiles are blown away. Outside the "iceline" a few AU out lots of water remain, and planets that migrate inwards during formation will turn into inner system wet planets - but the details of early migration are complicated. I think the likely answer is that Earth formed roughly where it is, and has a typical composition. So if it had been bigger it would have been like my Dry double-Earth. In theory, a Dry that formed from material even closer to the sun and then got moved out a bit (say by a passing hot Jupiter) might be a heavy world with "normal" ocean sizes. -- 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 Fri Nov 22 11:09:21 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 11:09:21 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: <528F3B61.50208@aleph.se> On 2013-11-22 11:04, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > > Our Galaxy must be very wet place. Or strictly speaking, a very icy place. The regions where water is liquid are a very small fraction of the total. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 22 11:48:22 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 12:48:22 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Zapped Message-ID: <20131122114822.GP5661@leitl.org> http://www.aeonmagazine.com/altered-states/would-dabbling-in-cranial-stimulation-make-me-smarter/?utm_source=Aeon%20newsletter&utm_campaign=a5db18c94f-Daily_Newsletter_November_22_201311_22_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-a5db18c94f-68626925 Zapped I strapped TDCS electrodes to my head to see if I could make myself smarter by stimulating my brain. Here?s what happened by Mary H K Choi 5,100 words Mary HK Choi. Credit Jon Snyder Mary H K Choi is editor-at-large for MTV Style and contributes to Wired, The New York Times and The Awl. She lives in New York. I?m lying on my bed, on my back, with a bandage wrapped around my head. If I had a thermometer sticking out of my mouth, I?d look like an emoji for a sick person. There?s nothing wrong with me, at least nothing the bandage can fix, but there are two electrodes under it ? one above my right eyebrow, the other higher up, beyond the hairline above my left eyebrow. They?re supposed to be making me smarter, or so the internet says. The eyebrow alignment thing is clutch because it?s hard to know exactly where to plant the anode and cathode, and placement is key if you want this thing to work. I can?t tell if it?s helping me yet. Before I got into any of this, I expected a raging placebo effect. I?m a sucker when it comes to under-explored human potential and ?stuff that makes you be better?. I like science a whole bunch, but I love The X-Files more ? I want to believe. A year ago I quit smoking and started running, which is universally understood as good, but now I eat chia seeds, coconut oil, and dinosaur kale, too, and I buy into sensory deprivation tanks. I don?t eat gluten or dairy (except KerryGold butter) and listen to quite a few podcasts about the Quantified Self. I roll my eyes at the grandstanding blowhards who have ?fixed? themselves but I keep up with the gizmos and apps that track people?s various rhythms. I?m no lifelogger or body-hacker, but I?m curious, and I want to be in-tune enough to know what?s really the matter, so I can level up and be at my most awesome. Right now, though, my concerns are superficial: I?m worried about my pillows. I?m using wet, Post-it sized sponges to help conduct the electricity that?s making its way into my skull, but I overdid it. The waterlogged squares are weeping all over my face and into my down pillows, and those are fancy and newish, so I don?t want them to start smelling weird. I don?t know what it means that I?m so concerned with my bedding, but I?m hoping this session will figure that out for me. The water juices the current so it doesn?t run out of steam while it?s lapping my head, but it?s also there as a precaution: I don?t want to burn myself like this one guy on Reddit who has a forehead patch that looks like a hamburger. However, this is my fourth day of auto-administering TDCS, or transcranial direct current stimulation, and I?m slightly discouraged. It sucks to admit this, but I may need TDCS to be intuitive enough to do TDCS correctly in the first place. Few things make you feel more irresponsible than relying on a subreddit for information on zapping your brain. To catch you up on everything I know, TDCS (or tDCS ? there?s something controversial about whether the ?t? should be capitalised or not, but I?m a tourist so I?m sticking with a big ?T? because it?s easier) is also called non-invasive brain stimulation. It?s non-invasive because nobody?s getting cut open. If you break all the words down it means you?re sending electricity through your head where it turns on, stays on for a while ? usually 20 minutes ? and then shuts off. During the session, the bit of brain directly beneath the anode (in my case, the red wire) is thought to become excited, whereas the region beneath the cathode (the black one) is thought to be inhibited. If you?re thinking of TDCS in terms of electroconvulsive therapy, like in One Flew Over the Cuckoo?s Nest or Girl Interrupted, it?s not like that. Dr Marom Bikson, associate professor of biomedical engineering at the City University of New York, explained it to me like this: ?The way to think about electrical stimulation is that you have a dose, just like with a drug. But instead of talking about what the drug is made out of in terms of chemical composition, we talk about the waveform, duration, and placement. Any alterations make it a different drug altogether.? TDCS is two milliamps, ECT about 800. See, super-different. Bikson has been studying the effects of electric currents on neurons since he did his dissertation on the subject at Johns Hopkins in 1995. He?s the guy TDCS fanboys email all the time, asking questions or writing screeds about their discoveries and adventures. He has dynamite SEO when you look for anything TDCS-related, especially in New York. He?s also the CEO of Soterix, which is like the Louis Vuitton of TDCS machine manufacturers. At Soterix, they have that whole ?price available on request? thing going on, like you see in high-fashion magazines. He won?t even tell you how much one costs since there?s no way to get one outside of a research setting. Part of me wonders if everyone who undergoes TDCS will go nuts in 50 years, in the same way I?m slightly convinced everyone with LASIK will go blind on the very same day. When I visited Bikson at his office uptown to check out the gear, I asked him to run a session of TDCS on me, but he shut me down. He did let me feel the current on my arm, at which point I sweet-talked him into showing me what it felt like on my head. But only for a minute. We both knew there are minimal risks to TDCS since we?re talking teeny, tiny electrical currents, but he could lose his job running experiments on randoms so I understood. I didn?t flip his desk or set fire to his office. The funny thing about TDCS is that I?d never heard of it until I did, but once I had it started showing up everywhere. It?s like that movie with Jim Carrey where he sees the number 23 wherever he looks, but less boring. The articles on the topic are wonderfully seductive and because I?m such a believer I buy into most of them. The ones from British newspapers are my favourites. They crib juicy bits from clinical trials in Brazil or Germany, or else DARPA experiments, and pull-quote on and on about how TDCS makes you smarter by ramping up your maths skills and language skills, while giving you laserlike focus. It?s also supposed to improve marksmanship. Last year, Sally Adee wrote an article on TDCS for New Scientist. She visited a lab in Carlsbad, California where they hooked her up to a machine intended to evoke a ?flow state,? that Zen zone where you tune-out self-doubt. She said it helped her learn how to shoot an M4 close-range assault rifle in a military training simulation. The first go around, she was garbage at it, but when she used TDCS she found herself in a state that she described as a ?near-spiritual experience? and slayed every single one of the targets. Reading her story, I was reminded of the immortal words of 30 Rock?s Liz Lemon: ?I want to go to there.? The godfathers of modern TDCS are Dr Michael A Nitsche and Dr Walter Paulus from the department of clinical neurophysiology at the University of G?ttingen in Germany. In the year 2000, Nitsche and Paulus published an article in The Journal of Physiology, which described how TDCS alters excitability in different regions of the brain by up to 40 per cent. In the brain, excitability affects synaptic plasticity, which means that the neural pathways that determine the capacity for memory and learning are changing substantially, depending on where you?re zapping. There are various electrode montages, each correlating to what we understand about regions in the brain. If you want to stimulate the language centre, you place your anode and cathode on different parts of your head than if you?re interested in reducing epileptic seizures. It seems straightforward but it?s actually mysterious. For example, stimulating the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex influences memory but also helps you quit smoking. Most of the recent internet write-ups on TDCS have been about the ?foc.us?, a TDCS headset that claims to ?overclock? your brain and make you better at video games. Priced at $249, the unit comes in two colours (red and black) with a fancy zippered carrying case like the kind that overhyped headphones made by ex-rappers are packaged in. They?re beleaguered with shipping issues and have fallen a couple of weeks behind in fulfilling orders (mine has not arrived yet) but their customer service is highly communicative. The website is a riot. In the ?press? section, there?s a handful of high-resolution images with attractive models wearing the headset with Blue Steel expressions, very low-cut jeans, and ?come hither? eyes. It?s clear this stuff is marketed to gamer bros, but from what little I know, I?m not convinced of the effectiveness based on the foc.us contact points. The sponges are too small and flat and the headset looks hard, like a girl?s plastic headband. I can?t imagine the electrodes are placed snugly enough on the skin to guarantee an effective circuit. Foc.us adAdvertising image for the foc.us gaming headset, slogan: ?Overclock your head!? Credit foc.us tDCS Labs Despite my scepticism, and the fact that I don?t even know what it means to ?overclock? the brain, I?m intrigued. After all, the desire to make yourself smarter is universal, and in my experience, if you?re smart in the first place, you?re even greedier for cognitive boosts. When I get writer?s block, I?ll do almost anything to get over it. Sometimes, I even give a guy money to let me lie in the dark in his saline-filled tank. The only thing I won?t do is noortropics. Smart drugs scare me. Especially ProVigil (Modafinil), the pill that?s referred to as the ?Limitless? drug since it behaves like NZT-48, the brain-boosting stuff that takes a doltish Bradley Cooper and makes him superhuman-smart. Certain overachieving Silicon Valley types are candid about taking it regularly, like Dave Asprey, aka The Bulletproof Executive, who also cops to augmenting his chemically heightened brain function and alertness with TDCS. He?s had a kit for over a decade, and he throws it on like a light cardigan whenever he feels like it. He claims it allows him to efficiently reach ?gamma states,? a transcendental level that takes the Dalai Lama four hours of meditation to achieve. I know this because he talked about it on Joe Rogan. I?m going to try to learn how to twirl a pen, in a practice known in Japan as mawashi. It?s otherwise known as that annoying but enviable gift that all Asian mathletes seem to have I like Asprey?s casual style, but part of me wonders if everyone who undergoes TDCS will go nuts in 50 years, in the same way I?m slightly convinced everyone with LASIK will go blind on the very same day like in that Jos? Saramago book. Still, I have to at least do it once. And by once I mean five days a week for two weeks at least. How else will I know? But the thing about TDCS is that nobody will do it on me outside of a clinical trial. Most of the clinical trials currently being conducted in the US focus on stroke rehabilitation and pain management. There are also some interesting attempts to treat depression with it, and there?s a team at Harvard that?s looking into the effects of TDCS on food cravings. That?s the study I?m really curious about, since I have a Dorito problem, and because it?s being led by Dr Felipe Fregni, who is a big deal in TDCS circles. But the problem with clinical trials is that most are double-blind with a sham arm, which means neither the subject nor the investigator knows who got the real treatment. Even if I hoof it to Boston for a couple days a week, there?s no guarantee I?ll be juiced. And while there?s a study at the University of Pennsylvania, I?m not eligible for it, because English is not my first language. At this point, I?ve been researching TDCS for weeks and reading a ton of Oliver Sacks. I?ve re-watched Altered States and even screened the Bourne Identity again, the crap one with Jeremy Renner where he takes the ?blue chems? to get smart. I am jonesing for a vision quest or that quickening that?ll happen when my synapses get diesel and my long-term potentiation game is unrivalled. But there are just too many caveats when you?re working within the parameters of clinical research with institutional review board approval. I?m getting antsy, but I?m still determined to go the official route. I finally succeed in finding an assistant professor of neurology at New York University who agrees to administer a 20-minute sample session. She warns me that a single dose is ?not likely to produce any long-lasting changes? but still, I take her up on it, because I want to see the electrode montage and get a feel for the experience as a whole. The morning of our appointment, she goes into labour and emails me as she?s headed to the hospital. I feel like the universe is trying to tell me something, so I take matters into my own hands. I do not visit the campuses of pedigreed universities, I go to the TDCS outback. I head south to visit Dr James Fugedy at the Brain Stimulation Clinic in Atlanta, Georgia. It?s the one place in the country where you?re able to buy a TDCS machine of your very own. Fingers crossed it?s not in a strip mall. I?m happy to learn that the Brain Stimulation Clinic is well-appointed and official-looking. I hadn?t known what to expect, since the website is helpful but also features a lot of cursive type. The clinic is located on the third floor of the Meridian Mark Medical Plaza and I?m admittedly most reassured by the multi-storey parking garage. The way I see it, the true indication of how official the BSC is, is if they validate parking. It?s humid out since it?s been pouring all morning and I?m in black leggings and a loosefitting top. I?ve come all this way to see Fugedy and here I am dressed like I?m going to yoga. I snap a photo of my crap rental car and the spot I?ve parked it in, just in case my zapped brain elects to jettison this information. I wonder briefly if I should be driving myself home, given that you?re not allowed to after oral surgery or getting your pupils dilated. Fugedy?s office has a waiting room that?s large by New York standards. I fill out the paperwork about my medical history and insurance information. A BSC visit with a single treatment is $150, but an appointment where you?re given a treatment, your own TDCS machine to take home and instructions on how to use it (as well as follow-up emails or Skype chats) costs $2,400. Insurance doesn?t cover it since the treatment is ?off-label? which means that TDCS isn?t approved for the depression or fibromyalgia you may be visiting Fugedy for. But sometimes for patients with insurance and a well-documented pain-management case, Fugedy will perform electromedicine on your body, bill the insurance company (since that?s FDA approved) and deduct the session fee from the $2,400. Fugedy refuses to sell a unit unless you meet with him in person. He has standards. He went to Yale. I?m led by a nurse to the back office which has three huge windows, a brown exam table, two small, suspiciously identical plants (they?re plastic, I checked), a framed painting of a non-religious mother and child, and a grey machine with a bunch of dials and buttons on it. Fugedy looks about in his 60s with a thick head of stick-straight white hair and a white moustache. He takes my vitals and we chat about our respective weeks. I like him immediately. He?s one of those guys who never seem put out, no matter how many questions you ask him. Amid my frustration, I start to wonder if TDCS makes you better at sex. I?m unnerved that this is where my brain went, even if I?m definitely not the first person to consider it The TDCS machine that Fugedy uses is called an ActivaDoseII Iontophoresis delivery unit. As he readies it and wets the sponges, I realise I?m nervous. I have such high hopes. I?m already kinda good at a whole bunch of stuff. I wonder if it?ll be hard for me to relate to people who aren?t as accelerated as I am. I?ll have to break up with my boyfriend and stop talking to my family because the alternative would only hurt everyone. I?ll be like Dr Manhattan from Watchmen. I?ll probably have to go to space just to get some peace. The set-up turns out to be rather simple. The unit is about the size and weight of the first-gen Game Boy, but black. There are only two dials, one that?s the on/off switch and one that controls the current. The hard part is placing the electrodes. I make sure to take selfies of the electrode montages so I can know if I?ve done them correctly when I get home. One of the first things I notice about TDCS is that it?s like being able to set an appointment for a power nap. Time goes by at an unbelievable clip. Twenty minutes is a long time just to sit near someone blinking at you, so Fugedy leaves the room. He gives me a big gold Salvation Army bell so I can alert him when the 20 minutes are up. When he comes back into the room, I think he must have forgotten something. It feels like only five minutes, but it turns out 19 have already passed. I?m even slightly annoyed, as if I?ve been interrupted. TDCS sort of feels like you?re about to fall asleep while knowing that you won?t completely conk out. My breathing slowed way down, and I started to feel cold. I was so relaxed, I couldn?t imagine having to shoot a gun like Sally Adee. I don?t know what ?flow? feels like but my thoughts became jumbled. I often daisy-chain absurd thoughts to entertain myself as I drift into sleep but this was different. I felt like I had no control over the remote. When my session was over Fugedy sat next to me as I tried to solve the nine-dot logic problem. Last spring, a pair of Australians ? Richard P Chi and Allan W Snyder ? published a paper in Neuroscience Letters claiming that inhibiting the left hemisphere for 10 minutes made participants in a study 40 per cent more likely to solve a difficult task, like the nine-dot logic puzzle. I?d tried solving the infamous Google Interview Questions online but hadn?t ever attempted this one. But after 20 minutes of TDCS, I strike out. I had wicked performance anxiety and a well-meaning Fugedy patiently urging me to think outside of the box. I couldn?t help but feel that I was wasting his time. I return to New York with my TDCS kit (the Transportation Security Administration checks it for gunpowder residue) and take my dose after my multivitamin. It?s actually a wonderful reprieve to build in a 20-minute meditation session into each afternoon, and by day three I?ve solved the logic problem. For those who don?t know, the problem goes like this: there are nine dots in a square. Three up, three across. You?re supposed to join all the dots without picking up your pen using only straight lines. You can?t use more than four straight lines. I solve it pretty quickly by cheating. I don?t look up the solution but I do draw a massive nine-dot set and fold the paper into strips and then triangles until the dots line up and I can knock them all out in one stroke. I also consider drawing the dots really small and taking a Sharpie Magnum 44 and blacking out the whole square with one line, but I decide against it. There has to be a legitimate solve. It?s hideously narcissistic. I feel like I?ve earned the right to be smarter simply because I was curious enough to buy a plane ticket to Georgia and run a couple of drills On the fourth day I remember Fugedy?s advice. I let my lines go wild outside of the box?s parameters and solve it by creating diagonals that hinge far outside of the corners. But here?s the thing, I don?t know if that?s attributable to Fugedy?s words or TDCS. ?Think outside of the box? feels like a pretty big hint. The second week I try to stimulate the brain?s language centre but I only do it for two days. I already speak four languages and while I?d love to learn Spanish since it seems the most useful and the easiest to practice with native speakers, I know French already and the romance language cognates are too easy. So instead, I elect to learn Farsi. I?m not learning how to read and write. I?m just learning vocabulary words written out phonetically in the English alphabet. I take two quizzes before TDCS ? one with 33 vocabulary words and the other with 48 ? and again afterwards. I give myself two minutes to study both sets. The first quiz I get 30.3 per cent of the words wrong. After TDCS only 12.1 per cent. On the second quiz I get 35.4 per cent wrong; after, 8.3 per cent. The improvements are marked but I can?t get excited because it didn?t feel startling. I started building memory devices like I always do when I?m learning new words. The word for war in Farsi is jang which means ?sauce? in Korean. If I picture a battleground drenched in thick red blood I know I?ll have that word forever. It felt entirely unremarkable. Mary Choi at shooting range?I shoot 25 bullets, conduct TDCS for 10 minutes, and then shoot 25 more.? Credit Jon Snyder Next I moved on to stimulating the motor cortex. Since Fugedy?s kit only supplied one industrial-strength elastic bandage, I use a too-tight Hello Kitty sleep mask for the anode that needs to go on top of your head and to the left. I?m relieved to be home alone. I?m going to try to learn how to twirl a pen, in a practice known in Japan as mawashi. It?s otherwise known as that annoying but enviable gift that all Asian mathletes seem to have, where they can register impatience and boredom with elegantly spinning mechanical pencils. Between that and the Hello Kitty sleep mask, I?m a study in abusing electrical neuroscience to get way more stereotypically Asian. I?ve always been jealous of pen-twirling but too cool to practise it, and the one time I tried it was really, really hard. I prepare by watching a YouTube video so that I can envision it in slo-mo. I grab a medium-point, plastic Bic Round Stic since it?s nice and long. For 10 minutes I try spinning, but no dice. I can get the twirling bit right, but I can?t catch it with my forefinger. Not even once. It repeatedly goes flying, skittering off the bed and on to the floor. I pause to reflect that I am beginning to spend a weird amount of time in bed during the day. Ten minutes into exciting the motor cortex, I catch the bastard 11 times. Back-to-back only once but the pen feels heavier. I learn how to lower my hand slightly at the right time to create a slight wave that helps the pen complete a full rotation. It?s a revelation. This feels different. By the time you?re in your 30s, unless somebody makes the god-awful decision to gift you with a cooking class or salsa lessons, it may have been a while since you learnt something new. Since I?d only learnt how to ride a bike two months prior through a course, I can vividly recall what it feels like to learn how to do something physical. I know what it feels like to go from panicking and veering into whatever you?re looking at, to the wildly alien sensation of lifting your legs simultaneously and catching the pedals to move yourself forward in an intended direction. It?s like ice skating or learning to float. This pen business was nothing like that. It felt a great deal harder the whole time. And it was annoying to have to repeatedly pick the pen up off the floor. Amid my frustration, I start to wonder if TDCS makes you better at sex. I want to look it up but I?m pre-emptively repulsed. I?m also unnerved that this is where my brain went, even if I?m definitely not the first person to consider it. I make an appointment with my local shooting range, making sure that the instructor?s cool with me bringing my kit, but then I start to feel guilty. In any TDCS study I?d be a healthy subject. I don?t have depression, schizophrenia, seizures, or incapacitating pain, and I don?t need stroke rehabilitation for aphasia or compromised motor skills. When Fugedy and Bikson talk about the possibility of creating a viable, available option for those people who find typical treatments ineffective, they?re stoked. They?ve witnessed stunning improvements in the quality of life for numerous patients, and regardless of how different their approaches are to the field, they?re devoted to the prospect of helping the sick. They?re both frustrated with the cockamamie way medicine works in America. And while I certainly don?t think I have the power to hinder the cause, I respect their work enough to wonder if I?m a liability to them. I know TDCS has a credibility problem, I see it every time I explain it to my friends. They?re curious, but they also think I?m nuts. When I describe all the wonderful palliative properties aloud it sounds so unlikely, even to my ears. It sounds like snake oil. I am 33 years old and these are seriously the most terrible things I have witnessed. I am astoundingly, piggishly, lucky It?s been less than a month and here I am, mildly surprised that I haven?t solved the stock market or learnt how to code in a fortnight. It?s hideously narcissistic. I feel like I?ve earned the right to be smarter simply because I was curious enough to buy a plane ticket to Georgia and run a couple of drills. I?d even considered buying an entire box of skinny metal pens from the Japanese stationery store to gain an edge because they?re heavier on one side and because I can batch-process picking the bastards up. Even in the fish bowl of first-world problems, feeling any of this is so extra. Griping about not TDCSing myself to genius level should extinct me on general principal, to where I?m just the smell of burned hair, a scorch streak and some smoking shoes because you know what? I am just too gross to live. This is the way that TDCS has made me feel special. While I?m reading some message boards about the new foc.us kit, Bikson contacts me. It?s like he knows. He forwards me an email (with the identifying portions redacted) from a guy with bipolar disorder II who is using TDCS with a machine like mine to treat his condition as he has become allergic to his antipsychotics. The whole thing bums him out. ?When people are ill and don?t get the best possible care, is anyone culpable?? he writes. ?And what does this mean for real TDCS?? In the letter the guy describes his history with mental illness and how it?s affected his work and personal life. He explains that he?s tried other drugs (he dabbles with noortropics but finds the costs prohibitive) and then cites a TDCS study on depression and another on seizures and arrives at the conclusion that the seizure suppression montage would help his mood swings. He claims success, but he also talks about alterations in his sleep patterns and accidentally ?changing perception? while he?s ?hacking around?. The desperation in the guy?s email makes me feel ill. I pan out for a little perspective and try to recount the worst things I?ve experienced ? ever ? and the only life events I can come up with are break-ups. Two were awful. For one I couldn?t get out of bed for a week and all I did was smoke cartons of Parliament Lights and eat tortilla chips until my hair smelled so bad it made me gag. There was a third break-up but that one had been excised so cleanly from my brain that it was like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I am 33 years old and these are seriously the most terrible things I have witnessed. I am astoundingly, piggishly, lucky, and yet here I am soaking up all this TDCS equipment and expertise out of sheer curiosity. I finally make it to the shooting range the next week. It?s in the basement of a building in a central business district and you?d never guess it was there. It feels like a clubhouse. There?s an office area, a designated place where people clean their guns, a classroom and a set of tables with benches. It?s a place where cops hang out and there?s free coffee. I have a semi-automatic 22. It?s a rifle, because I need a licence to shoot anything else in New York. I take a safety class; I learn how to load and how to jam the butt of the gun into my shoulder, to hold it in place and to anchor my elbow into my torso to steady it. I learn that my right is my dominant eye. I also learn how to match up the gold dot into the little notched groove for front and rear sight alignment. You have to breath a certain way and you have to allow the target in the back to get all fuzzy and ?bokeh? and be chill. I shoot 25 bullets, conduct TDCS for 10 minutes, and then shoot 25 more. The first time, I hit the bull?s eye 24 times. With TDCS, I hit 25. The grouping suggests that my gun?s sight picture is slightly off. I feel like I may have sensed it, but I kept going anyway, blasting and reloading the Ruger, shells pinging off the white plywood partitions. I wonder why I didn?t stop to make the correction. Maybe I dropped into flow state ? I can?t be sure. I wish I had an app that could tell me. From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 22 11:56:12 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 12:56:12 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 12:04:15PM +0100, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > We are talking about the situation inside *Galaxy*. And why the Earth (or Not sure what's the point. Life doesn't emerge within stars or even on insterstellar dust/ice grains. > Solar system) is that different. Local deviations can be arbitrarily high. There are carbon planets, pure metal planets, what have you. Are they interesting? > Oxygen is the third with 1% of all the atoms. You can forget helium for its > neutrality. Still not see what you're looking at. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements > > The top one and the third one - (forget the helium, it does not bond > significantly) - love to join into water. > > Our Galaxy must be very wet place. Our galaxy is typical, and most of it is plasma. Molecules are the exception rather than the rule. But for emergence of life, you will need molecules in a solvent, and only water has a 4 C density anomaly. There might be transient uses of cryogenic hydrocarbons, or water/ammonia and hydrogen disulfide, and condensation from gas phase into solid state with subsequet irradation, but for life you'll need a solvent, and it's almost certainly always water. From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 22 12:11:52 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 13:11:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20131122121152.GU5661@leitl.org> On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 03:18:08AM -0700, Kelly Anderson wrote: > I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that water was the most common molecule in > the universe... but that doesn't tell you what percentage of the universe That would be molecular hydrogen. > is expected to be made up of water though... From anders at aleph.se Fri Nov 22 13:23:58 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 13:23:58 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> References: <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> On 2013-11-22 11:56, Eugen Leitl wrote: > But for emergence of life, you will need molecules in a solvent, and > only water has a 4 C density anomaly. There might be transient uses of > cryogenic hydrocarbons, or water/ammonia and hydrogen disulfide, and > condensation from gas phase into solid state with subsequet > irradation, but for life you'll need a solvent, and it's almost > certainly always water. I think we might be too hasty in ruling out other thalassogens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassogen For rpg purposes I have been looking at exotic biochemistries, and I was surprised by the number of liquids that may exist in solar systems. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~meech/a281/handouts/Baines_astrobio04.pdf Water is perhaps the most abundant one, but one should not rule out ammonia - outside the ice line, especially if you get planets spiralling in from the colder parts, ammonia is very common. It can coexist with water in a lot of phases, and has a pretty interesting chemistry (dissolving and complexing with metals allows for some funky things). Methane and nitrogen are other options. While often dismissed as having too limited temperature range to be likely liquids, their range goes up a lot under pressure. Sulphuric acid, liquid hydrogen, and supercritical gases might be rare, but the more exotic solvents there are, the number of spots in the universe where life could exist goes up by a fairly sizeable factor. Maybe ocean worlds, ice-capped seas or hothouses are dead ends from an intelligence or technology standpoint. But that still leaves plenty of weird options. We do not care much about what the majority of atoms do: it is the few spots that produce self-propagating formed integrities that really matter. http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2013/11/invasion-from-the-blue-planet-are-we-protecting-mars-too-much/ -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 22 13:38:24 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 14:38:24 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> References: <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 01:23:58PM +0000, Anders Sandberg wrote: > I think we might be too hasty in ruling out other thalassogens. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassogen I would rule most of them as a stable end point. This is not ad hoc, I've spent some time investigating different options. > For rpg purposes I have been looking at exotic biochemistries, and I > was surprised by the number of liquids that may exist in solar You don't need just liquids. You need liquids with a wide liquid range and redox stability. If you have significant oceans you better have a density anomaly, too. Chemistry dominates over physics here. > systems. > http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~meech/a281/handouts/Baines_astrobio04.pdf > > Water is perhaps the most abundant one, but one should not rule out Water is not particularly abundant, but it has certainly very interesting properties, which, if taken together, make it unique. > ammonia - outside the ice line, especially if you get planets > spiralling in from the colder parts, ammonia is very common. It can Ammonia stops being common rather soon, as nitrogen-nitrogen bonds are so very stable. > coexist with water in a lot of phases, and has a pretty interesting > chemistry (dissolving and complexing with metals allows for some > funky things). Methane and nitrogen are other options. While often Cryogenic (so everything is dead slow but radical reactions, which leave you with kerogen-like brick) and apolar. Useful for prebiotic stages, but, then, pretty much everything is useful for that. > dismissed as having too limited temperature range to be likely > liquids, their range goes up a lot under pressure. Sulphuric acid, > liquid hydrogen, and supercritical gases might be rare, but the more > exotic solvents there are, the number of spots in the universe where > life could exist goes up by a fairly sizeable factor. I disgree. Complex life will need water. Water/ammonia for ice worlds, maybe. > Maybe ocean worlds, ice-capped seas or hothouses are dead ends from > an intelligence or technology standpoint. But that still leaves > plenty of weird options. We do not care much about what the majority > of atoms do: it is the few spots that produce self-propagating > formed integrities that really matter. > > http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2013/11/invasion-from-the-blue-planet-are-we-protecting-mars-too-much/ From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Nov 22 17:19:49 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 10:19:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> References: <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 6:38 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > Water is perhaps the most abundant one, but one should not rule out > > Water is not particularly abundant, but it has certainly very > interesting properties, which, if taken together, make it unique. > I tend to agree with Eugen on this one. As far as I'm aware, water is the only liquid that becomes less dense upon freezing. Otherwise, the oceans would fill up with ice from the bottom up. Ices are clearly not as good for life as liquid. If ammonia or another liquid does the same thing, I'm unaware of that. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 22 18:46:37 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 19:46:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] this one is for the prime hipsters Message-ID: <20131122184637.GE5661@leitl.org> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/11/prime/all/ From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 22 19:29:57 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 11:29:57 -0800 Subject: [ExI] this one is for the prime hipsters In-Reply-To: <20131122184637.GE5661@leitl.org> References: <20131122184637.GE5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: <010401cee7b9$3b143870$b13ca950$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Subject: [ExI] this one is for the prime hipsters http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/11/prime/all/ _______________________________________________ Thanks Gene, I am embarrassed as all hell but hafta confess: when I heard of Zhang's work a few months ago, I dismissed it as a math-geek's version of an Onion parody. I didn't even investigate it because the whole notion sounded so outlandish. I will be drummed out of the geek inner circle. (What happens when one is no longer worthy to be a geek? Does one get declared cool? Evolution forbid.) Oy. Thanks for the reference man! Now I have some investigatin' to do. spike From atymes at gmail.com Fri Nov 22 19:49:14 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 11:49:14 -0800 Subject: [ExI] this one is for the prime hipsters In-Reply-To: <010401cee7b9$3b143870$b13ca950$@att.net> References: <20131122184637.GE5661@leitl.org> <010401cee7b9$3b143870$b13ca950$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 11:29 AM, spike wrote: > What happens > when one is no longer worthy to be a geek? Does one get declared cool? > Evolution forbid. > There exist such things as cool geeks, who are not mere posers in either circle. You know, if you wanted some mental explosives. ;) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rtomek at ceti.pl Fri Nov 22 19:54:55 2013 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 20:54:55 +0100 (CET) Subject: [ExI] this one is for the prime hipsters In-Reply-To: <20131122184637.GE5661@leitl.org> References: <20131122184637.GE5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Fri, 22 Nov 2013, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/11/prime/all/ > _______________________________________________ Yeah. The ground shook under me. Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 22 19:43:24 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 11:43:24 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: <010501cee7bb$1bea8ce0$53bfa6a0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson >. >. As far as I'm aware, water is the only liquid that becomes less dense upon freezing. Otherwise, the oceans would fill up with ice from the bottom up. Ices are clearly not as good for life as liquid. >.If ammonia or another liquid does the same thing, I'm unaware of that. >.-Kelly Silicon, bismuth, and (under some conditions) tin are like that too: the solid form is less dense than the liquid phase. From my vague recollection, water is the lowest freezing point of known substances with this property at 1 atmosphere. Recall that there could be other compounds we don't normally experience in their liquid/solid interface, so we might not even know. Also, there are different phases of a solid, depending on the ambient pressure when it froze. There might even be phases of water ice we still haven't discovered because it only forms under higher pressures than we know. What if, for instance, we had an interplanetary sphere of water the size of our planet? Ain't science kewall? {8-] spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 22 21:09:36 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 13:09:36 -0800 Subject: [ExI] this one is for the prime hipsters In-Reply-To: References: <20131122184637.GE5661@leitl.org> <010401cee7b9$3b143870$b13ca950$@att.net> Message-ID: <016701cee7c7$26b07610$74116230$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Subject: Re: [ExI] this one is for the prime hipsters On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 11:29 AM, spike wrote: What happens when one is no longer worthy to be a geek? Does one get declared cool? Evolution forbid. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/11/prime/all/ >.There exist such things as cool geeks, who are not mere posers in either circle. >.You know, if you wanted some mental explosives. ;) Adrian I am feeling a strange mixture of emotions which could perhaps best be explained using an imaginary scenario. Spouse calls, Honey come straight on home after work today, oookaaaaay Shweethaaaht? Whenever she is doing Bogart, you know what she has in mind, so quitting time, you hustle on home, come in the back door, make a few preparations, walk in to the living room: Shweethaaaht, I'm ho. SURPRIIIIiiii.yi.yi.yi. exclaims about twenty of your closest friends as they leap out from behind the furniture, and you are standing there in nothing but a big old boner. In my particular case, for literal accuracy, I would be standing there in nothing but an old boner. But in any case, you manage to stammer, Hi everybody, mind if we hold the party until I. uh. put on some actual. clothing? And would you mind averting your mortified gaze? And so forth. One might feel an odd mixture of embarrassment, understandable under the circumstances, at one's presumption, and for having revealed oneself in such a way, but this emotion would be an odd mixture of embarrassment with a pleasant and exciting anticipation of fine companionship for the evening with old friends you perhaps haven't seen in months, and who have never seen you, or at least that much of you. Assuming of course they don't flee as soon as you leave the room. A math geek friend posted me about this prime discovery some time ago, but I presumptuously tossed it aside, with a dismissive and presumptuous comment "Oh right, I am so very sure that is correct. What's the date on that story, April first?" Now it sounds like it is true. But it completely blows my mind that it could possibly be so. I don't see how it could be true. It changes everything! But I anticipate with a mixture of contrite embarrassment and excitement learning about it. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 22 21:10:55 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 13:10:55 -0800 Subject: [ExI] this one is for the prime hipsters In-Reply-To: References: <20131122184637.GE5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: <016c01cee7c7$559bdff0$00d39fd0$@att.net> Cc: Tomasz Rola Subject: Re: [ExI] this one is for the prime hipsters On Fri, 22 Nov 2013, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/11/prime/all/ > _______________________________________________ >...Yeah. The ground shook under me. >...Regards, >...Tomasz Rola Me too! I don't see how the hell it could be. Eugen, this isn't a gag, right? spike From mrjones2020 at gmail.com Sat Nov 23 02:45:56 2013 From: mrjones2020 at gmail.com (J.R. Jones) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 21:45:56 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Nov 20, 2013 10:54 PM, "Adrian Tymes" wrote: > > On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> >> On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 12:14 PM, Sondre Bjell?s wrote: >>> >>> For anyone interested in trading Bitcoin, here is a nice site that shows the differences in value between the various currency exchanges: >>> >>> http://www.coined.com/ >> >> >> I don't understand how a spread of $70 can be maintained here. Can't you just run money around in circles and make a profit? What am I missing here? > > > Transaction volume and processing time. (Also transaction fees, but they're not a big enough portion to make a $70 spread unattractive.) In short, nobody's running enough money around to close the gap...yet. Particularly the transaction times. I've been playing around a bit with 2 sites, it takes near a week to both get the purchased coins and/or $ from selling them (coinbase). I'm still "verifying" myself with Mt Gox. > > Other than that, it is as you think. If you've got several thousand $ you could afford to lose (never invest what you need to pay rent and groceries)...well, I'd experiment with just one bitcoin first, see what the hidden gotchas are. But if those pan out and the gap hasn't closed yet, good luck. There's likely $ to be made both in arbitrage, as well as riding the swings.. Providing you can tie your $ up for weeks as mentioned. The %s could certainly warrant it. This won't last long however. As it's market cap grows, it's swings will stabilize. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Nov 23 05:02:40 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 21:02:40 -0800 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade Message-ID: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> InTrade folded about a year ago. This says they are trying to rise again, at first with a sports prediction game of some sort. I don't do sports so this doesn't help me: http://www.intrade.com/v4/home/ Does anyone know of an Ideas Futures that is less lame than Iowa Exchange? Foresight Exchange was not lame, but it is still play money and not many players are active there. InTrade apparently had some problems of which I don't know the details. The user interface on Iowa Electronic Futures Market is tragic. I would have thought this whole concept would take off like crazy by now, but it seems to be dwindling to nothing. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Sat Nov 23 07:07:44 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 00:07:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] How can people be so blind about Bitcoin and the future? Message-ID: <52905440.8020008@canonizer.com> Transhumanites, Check out this (admittedly now a few months old) article criticizing Bitcoin: http://www.technollama.co.uk/we-need-decentralized-cryptocurrencies-we-just-dont-need-bitcoin The best part is where he says: "In one of the *best pieces* that I've read about the instability of Bitcoin, Matthew Yglesias argues that it is possible that it will continue to go up and down in price forever." And then he quotes it saying: "The problem is that if the price of a bitcoin is on a steady upward trajectory, then nobody's actually going to want to /spend/ a Bitcoin on anything. And if everyone's hoarding their Bitcoins, then the network is actually useless. Then, since it turns out to be useless, you get a crash." I mean, obviosly this guy is a few french fries short of a happy meal. I thought the people that fought to destroy the sewing machine, because they would destroy the jobs of all the seamstresses were dumb. Every argument I've seen, to date, against Bitcion seems to me to be almost equally mistaken, or at best near a zero possibility. So why are people so compeled to bleat, believe, and act according to this kind of stuff? I can't wait till all the wealth drains out of the pockets of people that think this way, and into the pockets of people with a little more intelligence than this. The singularity must truly be near. By the way, does anyone want to work for the now funded startup Canonizer.com? We're hiring. Brent Allsop -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sat Nov 23 07:22:23 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 23:22:23 -0800 Subject: [ExI] How can people be so blind about Bitcoin and the future? In-Reply-To: <52905440.8020008@canonizer.com> References: <52905440.8020008@canonizer.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 11:07 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: > So why are people so compeled to bleat, believe, and act according to > this kind of stuff? > Simple: it disrupts the world vision they have grown comfortable (and in many cases, rich) from. > I can't wait till all the wealth drains out of the pockets of people that > think this way, and into the pockets of people with a little more > intelligence than this. > That'll take a while. Bitcoin's market volume is still just a drop in the bucket compared to, again, that which made quite a few of these people rich and keeps them there. Even on an exponential curve, assuming Bitcoin grows to somewhat bigger than the conventional markets (unlikely, given the finite total possible number of bitcoins, unless sub-bitcoin currencies take off in similar speed), we're probably talking multiple decades given how far behind it is. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Sat Nov 23 08:38:05 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 01:38:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5290696D.5010504@canonizer.com> Kelly, Try it. You'll quickly find that it is (or soon will be) exactly as difficult (or time consuming) as the price difference. I buy it on Coinbase.com, because it takes me a week to get the money to a cheaper exchange, and by then, the price of Bitcoin could be double. Just like when Argentina outlawed Bitcoin, because of their inflation. The price of Bitcoin went up in that country, exactly proportional to how hard it was to get around the laws. Brent Allsop On 11/20/2013 5:22 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 12:14 PM, Sondre Bjell?s > > wrote: > > For anyone interested in trading Bitcoin, here is a nice site that > shows the differences in value between the various currency > exchanges: > > http://www.coined.com/ > > > I don't understand how a spread of $70 can be maintained here. Can't > you just run money around in circles and make a profit? What am I > missing here? > > -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 giulio at gmail.com Sat Nov 23 08:44:09 2013 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 09:44:09 +0100 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade In-Reply-To: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> Message-ID: It would be interesting to build an idea futures market in Bitcoin, which under some conditions (e.g. server and business based in Iceland or another suitable jurisdiction) would protect it from regulators. I have discussed the idea many times on the Bitcoin Forum, with interesting suggestions and comments. Of course like all ideas, this needs work and cash to fly. On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 6:02 AM, spike wrote: > > > InTrade folded about a year ago. This says they are trying to rise again, > at first with a sports prediction game of some sort. I don?t do sports so > this doesn?t help me: > > > > http://www.intrade.com/v4/home/ > > > > Does anyone know of an Ideas Futures that is less lame than Iowa Exchange? > Foresight Exchange was not lame, but it is still play money and not many > players are active there. InTrade apparently had some problems of which I > don?t know the details. The user interface on Iowa Electronic Futures > Market is tragic. > > > > I would have thought this whole concept would take off like crazy by now, > but it seems to be dwindling to nothing. > > > > spike > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From giulio at gmail.com Sat Nov 23 09:21:09 2013 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 10:21:09 +0100 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade In-Reply-To: References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> Message-ID: Just searched, there is a prediction market in Bitcoin: https://www.predictious.com/ On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 9:44 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > It would be interesting to build an idea futures market in Bitcoin, > which under some conditions (e.g. server and business based in Iceland > or another suitable jurisdiction) would protect it from regulators. I > have discussed the idea many times on the Bitcoin Forum, with > interesting suggestions and comments. Of course like all ideas, this > needs work and cash to fly. > > On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 6:02 AM, spike wrote: >> >> >> InTrade folded about a year ago. This says they are trying to rise again, >> at first with a sports prediction game of some sort. I don?t do sports so >> this doesn?t help me: >> >> >> >> http://www.intrade.com/v4/home/ >> >> >> >> Does anyone know of an Ideas Futures that is less lame than Iowa Exchange? >> Foresight Exchange was not lame, but it is still play money and not many >> players are active there. InTrade apparently had some problems of which I >> don?t know the details. The user interface on Iowa Electronic Futures >> Market is tragic. >> >> >> >> I would have thought this whole concept would take off like crazy by now, >> but it seems to be dwindling to nothing. >> >> >> >> spike >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> From eugen at leitl.org Sat Nov 23 11:48:48 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 12:48:48 +0100 Subject: [ExI] whoah Message-ID: <20131123114848.GI5661@leitl.org> https://blockchain.info/tx/1c12443203a48f42cdf7b1acee5b4b1c1fedc144cb909a3bf5edbffafb0cd204 http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1r87p5/omfg_what_is_going_on/ From rolandodegilead at gmail.com Sat Nov 23 14:43:52 2013 From: rolandodegilead at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Eugenio_Mart=EDnez?=) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 15:43:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> <528A8AB2.2070909@libero.it> Message-ID: > > It seems to be the case in evolution that there is not much room for two > super intelligent predators to occupy the same niche together. Homo Sapiens > likely wiped out Neandertal, for example. Homo Erectus suffered a similar > fate, even though he was likely fairly intelligent. As soon as homo sapiens > arrived, homo florensiensus' days were numbered. When homo silicensiensus > arrives, it may be our turn to be put into the dust bin where 99% of > species currently lies. > > Am I Catholic, by no means. I desire to live, for a long time if possible. > The utopia you describe does not square with the idea that everyone must > earn the right to occupy their niche. Against homo silicensiensus, we stand > little hope of successfully occupying our previous niche for long. > Mmmm... So you don?t want us to develop a strong IA. That?s another discussion. Probably a strong Ai it?s going to arrive. What I was debating was what can we do with it. > > -Kelly > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- OLVIDATE.DE Tatachan.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Nov 23 15:00:32 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 07:00:32 -0800 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade In-Reply-To: References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> Message-ID: <00d501cee85c$c2936d40$47ba47c0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2013 1:21 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] i miss intrade Just searched, there is a prediction market in Bitcoin: https://www.predictious.com/ Giulio, do they only have those four: bicoin price, Snowden PotR, Nakamoto PotR, and gold price? I will not risk an IRS audit by owning bitcoins for those claims. I am already on the IRS' radar for predicting failure of O-Care. We already know the IRS acts illegally by leaking taxpayer information and targeting political enemies, then invokes the fifth amendment, thus wielding power without accountability. I just want to see the claims and the prices before I take the risk of buying bitcoins. spike From ddraig at gmail.com Sat Nov 23 15:16:55 2013 From: ddraig at gmail.com (ddraig) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 02:16:55 +1100 Subject: [ExI] whoah In-Reply-To: <20131123114848.GI5661@leitl.org> References: <20131123114848.GI5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 23 November 2013 22:48, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > https://blockchain.info/tx/1c12443203a48f42cdf7b1acee5b4b1c1fedc144cb909a3bf5edbffafb0cd204 > Woah indeed! https://twitter.com/paradimeshift Dwayne -- ddraig at pobox.com irc.bluesphereweb.com #dna ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg our aim is wakefulness, our enemy is dreamless sleep -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Sat Nov 23 15:31:24 2013 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 16:31:24 +0100 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade In-Reply-To: <00d501cee85c$c2936d40$47ba47c0$@att.net> References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> <00d501cee85c$c2936d40$47ba47c0$@att.net> Message-ID: There are many active claims, took at the menu Sport Politics Economics Entertainment Sci/Tech On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 4:00 PM, spike wrote: > > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco > Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2013 1:21 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] i miss intrade > > Just searched, there is a prediction market in Bitcoin: > https://www.predictious.com/ > > > Giulio, do they only have those four: bicoin price, Snowden PotR, Nakamoto > PotR, and gold price? I will not risk an IRS audit by owning bitcoins for > those claims. I am already on the IRS' radar for predicting failure of > O-Care. We already know the IRS acts illegally by leaking taxpayer > information and targeting political enemies, then invokes the fifth > amendment, thus wielding power without accountability. I just want to see > the claims and the prices before I take the risk of buying bitcoins. > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From spike66 at att.net Sat Nov 23 15:18:59 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 07:18:59 -0800 Subject: [ExI] How can people be so blind about Bitcoin and the future? In-Reply-To: <52905440.8020008@canonizer.com> References: <52905440.8020008@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <00ee01cee85f$56b59140$0420b3c0$@att.net> .] On Behalf Of Brent Allsop Subject: [ExI] How can people be so blind about Bitcoin and the future? >.Check out this (admittedly now a few months old) article criticizing Bitcoin: Brent Allsop >.http://www.technollama.co.uk/we-need-decentralized-cryptocurrencies-we-jus t-dont-need-bitcoin >>.."The problem is that if the price of a bitcoin is on a steady upward trajectory, then nobody's actually going to want to spend a Bitcoin on anything. And if everyone's hoarding their Bitcoins, then the network is actually useless. Then, since it turns out to be useless, you get a crash." Haaahahahahahaaaa. {8^D The silly person. That is what happens when people write articles while stoned. They write comments like the above, or about scenarios where the wife arranges a surprise party and the husband comes into the living room nekkid, that sort of thing. Brent the real problem I see with btcoin and the other crypto-currencies is that eventually the government will notice and figure out who is using them, and noting the IRS isn't getting its cut of the action. Governments don't like that. Ours is wielding power without accountability (Where is Lois Lerner these days? Where is Sarah Hall Ingram? Neither are in jail. Ingram is running the IRS branch in charge of "encouraging" healthy young people into buying overpriced insurance.) For our non-libertarian friends among us, how hard is it to see? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Nov 23 15:28:57 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 07:28:57 -0800 Subject: [ExI] hilarios gag, was: RE: i miss intrade Message-ID: <00f301cee860$bb003320$31009960$@att.net> This has nothing to do with intrade, but I found it while looking for something else. What a terrific gag! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kuhrHvrPdo spike ... I wonder how many of these couples broke up? Heeeeheheheheheheheeeeeeeheheeeeeeee _______________________________________________ From spike66 at att.net Sat Nov 23 15:33:32 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 07:33:32 -0800 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade Message-ID: <00f401cee861$5ea81ab0$1bf85010$@att.net> From: spike [mailto:spike66 at att.net] Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2013 6:51 AM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: RE: [ExI] i miss intrade >. On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco Subject: Re: [ExI] i miss intrade >.Just searched, there is a prediction market in Bitcoin: >. https://www.predictious.com/ >.Giulio Thanks Giulio! This is too funny. I try to make a prediction regarding HealthCare.gov. This this happened: {Graphic deleted} It was a guy with a look of consternation. The message was: Whoops, an error occurred. Please try again later. Haaaaaaahahahahahahahaaaaahahhhaaaaahahahaaaaaaheeheeheheheheheheheheheheheh eeeeee. That's the message you get most of the time if you try to navigate HealthCare.gov. I don't know if they are just trying to be funny, or they specifically don't want to go into that market for fear of drawing attention to themselves from a powerful and corrupt administration, or if it was an actual glitch. You Italians are lucky. You don't live under fear from your own government. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Nov 23 15:38:43 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 07:38:43 -0800 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade In-Reply-To: References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> <00d501cee85c$c2936d40$47ba47c0$@att.net> Message-ID: <014101cee862$1884d2c0$498e7840$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2013 7:31 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] i miss intrade >...There are many active claims, took at the menu Sport Politics Economics Entertainment Sci/Tech Giulio, is there an anonymous shopper option? It looks like there is not. I have an account in Predictious now, but no bitcoins and don't want to risk owning them unless I can see what it allows me to buy. It looks like it won't let me see my options unless I have at least a few cents worth of btcoin. It might be a trap. Am I paranoid? Sure. But we have a former IRS chief who invoked the fifth, and we STILL don't know what felonies she committed. spike From giulio at gmail.com Sat Nov 23 16:00:26 2013 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 17:00:26 +0100 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade In-Reply-To: <014101cee862$1884d2c0$498e7840$@att.net> References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> <00d501cee85c$c2936d40$47ba47c0$@att.net> <014101cee862$1884d2c0$498e7840$@att.net> Message-ID: I don't have Bitcoins at this moment (I sold all my Bitcoins a couple of years ago when I needed some cash), but I am sure somebody on the list will contact you and offer to sell some. If you are in a big city, there will be a local BTC club where you can but BTC for cash. See http://localbitcoins.com/ On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 4:38 PM, spike wrote: > > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco > Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2013 7:31 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] i miss intrade > >>...There are many active claims, took at the menu Sport Politics Economics > Entertainment Sci/Tech > > > Giulio, is there an anonymous shopper option? It looks like there is not. > I have an account in Predictious now, but no bitcoins and don't want to risk > owning them unless I can see what it allows me to buy. It looks like it > won't let me see my options unless I have at least a few cents worth of > btcoin. It might be a trap. Am I paranoid? Sure. But we have a former > IRS chief who invoked the fifth, and we STILL don't know what felonies she > committed. > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From spike66 at att.net Sat Nov 23 17:02:20 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 09:02:20 -0800 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> Message-ID: <019001cee86d$c6d54cf0$547fe6d0$@att.net> From: spike [mailto:spike66 at att.net] Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2013 6:51 AM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: RE: [ExI] i miss intrade >. On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco Subject: Re: [ExI] i miss intrade >.Just searched, there is a prediction market in Bitcoin: >. https://www.predictious.com/ >.Giulio Thanks Giulio! This is too funny. I try to make a prediction regarding HealthCare.gov. This this happened: {Graphic deleted because it was oversized, sj} It was a guy with a look of consternation. The message was Whoops, an error occurred. Please try again later. Haaaaaaahahahahahahahaaaaahahhhaaaaahahahaaaaaaheeheeheheheheheheheheheheheh eeeeee. That's the message you get most of the time if you try to navigate HealthCare.gov. I don't know if they are just trying to be funny, or they specifically don't want to go into that market for fear of drawing attention to themselves from a powerful and corrupt administration, or (more likely) it was an actual glitch. Giulio, you Italians are lucky. You don't live under constant fear from your own government. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Nov 23 17:15:36 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 09:15:36 -0800 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade In-Reply-To: <014101cee862$1884d2c0$498e7840$@att.net> References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> <00d501cee85c$c2936d40$47ba47c0$@att.net> <014101cee862$1884d2c0$498e7840$@att.net> Message-ID: <019501cee86f$a127d840$e37788c0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco ubject: Re: [ExI] i miss intrade >...There are many active claims, took at the menu Sport Politics >...Economics >...Entertainment Sci/Tech _______________________________________________ Oh OK thanks, found it. User error, didn't look around enough. Thanks Giulio, this is less lame than Iowa Futures, better user interface, etc. spike From spike66 at att.net Sat Nov 23 17:52:39 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 09:52:39 -0800 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade In-Reply-To: <019501cee86f$a127d840$e37788c0$@att.net> References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> <00d501cee85c$c2936d40$47ba47c0$@att.net> <014101cee862$1884d2c0$498e7840$@att.net> <019501cee86f$a127d840$e37788c0$@att.net> Message-ID: <01b701cee874$ce253b80$6a6fb280$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of spike Subject: Re: [ExI] i miss intrade >... On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco ubject: Re: [ExI] i miss intrade >>...There are many active claims, took at the menu Sport Politics >>...Economics ...Entertainment Sci/Tech https://www.predictious.com/ ______________________________________________ >...Oh OK thanks, found it. User error, didn't look around enough. Thanks Giulio, this is less lame than Iowa Futures, better user interface, etc. spike _______________________________________________ Giulio, this is so cool! Just from a memetic point of view, it really has my wheels turning. Check my reasoning on this please. The company (Predictious) isn't selling advertisement but it occurred to me how it could be making its living: speculating on Bitcoin using other people's money. All transactions are in BTC. Short sellers must put up the money (10 mBTC per share) up front to cover the cost if the contract is adjudicated true, in order to pay off the true-holders. The true-buyers must pay up front as well, so if the contract ends up false that money goes to pay off false-holders and short sellers. So the company is holding no currency other than BTCs. Giulio, is this right? Do educate me if this line of reasoning isn't correct, for I am sooo not hip to this stuff you younger guys do. Also recognize my terminology dates back to Robin Hanson's Ideas Futures days, where a contract was eventually true or false. Now instead of buying Noes, this new system has you short selling Yeses. I like the new system, even though it isn't true short selling. So if Predictious is a company with no other income, but is just holding BTCs, then they can be perfectly honest, always pay all contract holders, etc, and make buttloads of money by de facto speculation on the time value of bitcoins. If bitcoin goes to a skerjillion bucks, well, there they go. There are long bets in which the contract holder could perish while the claim is active, then they never claim the prize. If BTC crashes, their debts are in bitcoin, so they can still pay off, irregardful. Predictious makes a cubic buttload of money either way. Oh evolution, this is brilliant. spike From atymes at gmail.com Sat Nov 23 18:26:15 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 10:26:15 -0800 Subject: [ExI] A possible justification for applying force even in an extreme libertarian minarchist state Message-ID: If the topic didn't make it abundantly clear, I'm talking hypothetical extremes here. ;) Specifically: it has sometimes been posited on this list that a utopian government, or anarchy, should never apply coercive force. I've had issue with that position, but I hadn't found a really good way of stating it until now: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/wicks20131120 Discuss. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Nov 23 18:18:53 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 19:18:53 +0100 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade In-Reply-To: <019001cee86d$c6d54cf0$547fe6d0$@att.net> References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> <019001cee86d$c6d54cf0$547fe6d0$@att.net> Message-ID: <5290F18D.8040002@libero.it> Il 23/11/2013 18:02, spike ha scritto: > Giulio, you Italians are lucky. You don?t live under constant fear from > your own government. Well, was Mussolini that come to the understanding "governing Italians is not impossible, it is useless" ( as in pointless/vain). It is the proof that when a government plague their productive citizens, they just select for the most government-resistant strain of productive citizens. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Nov 23 18:41:52 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 19:41:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade In-Reply-To: <014101cee862$1884d2c0$498e7840$@att.net> References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> <00d501cee85c$c2936d40$47ba47c0$@att.net> <014101cee862$1884d2c0$498e7840$@att.net> Message-ID: <5290F6F0.8080004@libero.it> Il 23/11/2013 16:38, spike ha scritto: > > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco > Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2013 7:31 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] i miss intrade > >> ...There are many active claims, took at the menu Sport Politics Economics > Entertainment Sci/Tech > > > Giulio, is there an anonymous shopper option? It looks like there is not. > I have an account in Predictious now, but no bitcoins and don't want to risk > owning them unless I can see what it allows me to buy. It looks like it > won't let me see my options unless I have at least a few cents worth of > btcoin. It might be a trap. Am I paranoid? Sure. But we have a former > IRS chief who invoked the fifth, and we STILL don't know what felonies she > committed. Spike, just buy some and swap some with a third unrelated party, maybe in another country. If you are patient, Amir Taaki and Cody Wilson are working on Dark Wallet, so bitcoin are washed every time they are spent. Mirco From spike66 at att.net Sat Nov 23 18:48:11 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 10:48:11 -0800 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade In-Reply-To: <5290F18D.8040002@libero.it> References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> <019001cee86d$c6d54cf0$547fe6d0$@att.net> <5290F18D.8040002@libero.it> Message-ID: <001b01cee87c$8fbab610$af302230$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato Il 23/11/2013 18:02, spike ha scritto: >>... Giulio, you Italians are lucky. You don't live under constant fear from your own government. _______________________________________________ >... when a government plague their productive citizens, they just select for the most government-resistant strain of productive citizens. Mirco Mirco me lad, I am so proud of you. Thanks you made my day. Apologies for the overposting today. I fear the ExI moderator will give me a spanking. Oh, wait... >...Mussolini that come to the understanding "governing Italians is not impossible, it is useless"... Our version of that might be "Governing Americans is not impossible, but it is always advisable to note Americans are extremely well armed." spike From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sat Nov 23 19:19:20 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 12:19:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin In-Reply-To: <5290696D.5010504@canonizer.com> References: <5290696D.5010504@canonizer.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 1:38 AM, Brent Allsop wrote: > > Kelly, > > Try it. You'll quickly find that it is (or soon will be) exactly as > difficult (or time consuming) as the price difference. I buy it on > Coinbase.com, because it takes me a week to get the money to a cheaper > exchange, and by then, the price of Bitcoin could be double. > > Just like when Argentina outlawed Bitcoin, because of their inflation. > The price of Bitcoin went up in that country, exactly proportional to how > hard it was to get around the laws. > >> Well, the spread between the Chinese bitcoin and some of the other exchanges is up to $174 this morning. It just seems unbelievable that there isn't a pile of money to be made, if you can figure out how to move on it quickly enough. Now, if they hold onto your coins for two weeks to do the transaction it wouldn't work... maybe that's the issue. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sat Nov 23 19:32:14 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 12:32:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> <528A8AB2.2070909@libero.it> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 7:43 AM, Eugenio Mart?nez wrote: > Am I Catholic, by no means. I desire to live, for a long time if possible. >> The utopia you describe does not square with the idea that everyone must >> earn the right to occupy their niche. Against homo silicensiensus, we stand >> little hope of successfully occupying our previous niche for long. >> > > Mmmm... So you don?t want us to develop a strong IA. That?s another > discussion. > Probably a strong Ai it?s going to arrive. What I was debating was what > can we do with it. > I didn't say that I don't want to develop it. I have simply come to terms with the fact that it seems likely to lead to widespread human depopulation, if not outright extinction. I think it possible that unenhanced humans will become one more in a list of endangered species brought about by the further technological progress of the planet. Personally, I'm now more or less ok with that. What is important to me is the progress of human-like or human-inspired thought. Not necessarily the progress of humans in their current physical state. The question, almost by definition, is not what we can do with it, but rather what it will do with us. Is this not as obvious as the sun in the sky? At this point, we determine what computers do for the most part. But even saying that many people have their days driven serving the machine. Perhaps answering emails, texting, twittering or interacting on the book of face. Perhaps pinning their pinterest pictures, or working on Amazon Turk or editing Wikipedia. We are already slaves to the machine to the extent that we choose to be. Many are playing protein folding games, or solving captchas. This trend seems to me to be increasing. As the machine learns to entertain us by giving us diverting tasks to accomplish, we will become its servant to a greater and greater extent until it learns to do all the things we now do for it. Once that becomes the case, then what need more does it have of us? -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Nov 23 19:38:45 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 20:38:45 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin In-Reply-To: References: <5290696D.5010504@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <52910445.9060204@libero.it> Il 23/11/2013 20:19, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 1:38 AM, Brent Allsop > > wrote: > > > Kelly, > > Try it. You'll quickly find that it is (or soon will be) exactly as > difficult (or time consuming) as the price difference. I buy it on > Coinbase.com, because it takes me a week to get the money to a > cheaper exchange, and by then, the price of Bitcoin could be double. > > Just like when Argentina outlawed Bitcoin, because of their > inflation. The price of Bitcoin went up in that country, exactly > proportional to how hard it was to get around the laws. > > > Well, the spread between the Chinese bitcoin and some of the other > exchanges is up to $174 this morning. It just seems unbelievable that > there isn't a pile of money to be made, if you can figure out how to > move on it quickly enough. Now, if they hold onto your coins for two > weeks to do the transaction it wouldn't work... maybe that's the issue. Currently, the only way to arbitrage is to get on an airplane with cash in Japan and go to Europe and deposit the cash at the bank (better if it is the same of Bitstamp or BTC-e). Or finding someone needing Yen in Japan that have ? in Europe. Mirco From pharos at gmail.com Sat Nov 23 19:48:56 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 19:48:56 +0000 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> <528A8AB2.2070909@libero.it> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 7:32 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > I didn't say that I don't want to develop it. I have simply come to terms > with the fact that it seems likely to lead to widespread human depopulation, > if not outright extinction. I think it possible that unenhanced humans will > become one more in a list of endangered species brought about by the further > technological progress of the planet. Personally, I'm now more or less ok > with that. What is important to me is the progress of human-like or > human-inspired thought. Not necessarily the progress of humans in their > current physical state. > > The question, almost by definition, is not what we can do with it, but > rather what it will do with us. Is this not as obvious as the sun in the > sky? > > As the machine learns to entertain us by giving us diverting tasks to > accomplish, we will become its servant to a greater and greater extent until > it learns to do all the things we now do for it. Once that becomes the case, > then what need more does it have of us? > > Depends which comes first. Your scenario is that AI comes first and takes over. But if uploading comes first we will copy ourselves into virtual reality and the question becomes what will our intelligences do, operating many many times faster than us? Just have fun? BillK From odellhuff2 at gmail.com Sat Nov 23 20:21:42 2013 From: odellhuff2 at gmail.com (Odell Huff) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 15:21:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A possible justification for applying force even in an extreme libertarian minarchist state In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I've been working on a paper, A Just Order, where I make the case that Strictly Defensive Violence--the use of an only sufficient amount of violence to halt an aggression in real time (by individual or institution on their behalf), to halt eg the rape of Tolstoy's sister, can be an ethical use of violence if it meets strict and suspect Imminency, Necessary, and Minimal tests. But this concession therefore precludes all other justifications, such as retribution or deterrence, benevolence, even rectificatory or restitutive violence, and indeed any form of supposedly minimizing or optimizing violence, the justification of which in (classical) liberal theory I deem the "liberal defect." And so I criticize all the liberal philosophers, from Aristotle to Rothbard, who make justifications of these types of violence, which more often than not are inconsistent with the rest of their philosophies anyway. It's just a draft and I'm not a trained grad student, but if anybody is at all interested, email me privately and I'd be thrilled to share some of it for criticism. On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 1:26 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > If the topic didn't make it abundantly clear, I'm talking hypothetical > extremes here. ;) > > Specifically: it has sometimes been posited on this list that a utopian > government, or anarchy, should never apply coercive force. I've had issue > with that position, but I hadn't found a really good way of stating it > until now: > > http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/wicks20131120 > > Discuss. > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Nov 23 21:52:00 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 22:52:00 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Bitcoin In-Reply-To: References: <5290696D.5010504@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <20131123215200.GD10793@leitl.org> On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 12:19:20PM -0700, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Well, the spread between the Chinese bitcoin and some of the other > exchanges is up to $174 this morning. It just seems unbelievable that there Problem with arbitrage is that many exchanges are overloaded to the point of unavailability, and many exchanges go down taking the funds with them ( http://rt.com/business/banshee-bitcoin-vanish-china-601/ ). Greed and lack of trust are poor bedfellows. > isn't a pile of money to be made, if you can figure out how to move on it > quickly enough. Now, if they hold onto your coins for two weeks to do the > transaction it wouldn't work... maybe that's the issue. From eugen at leitl.org Sat Nov 23 21:53:52 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 22:53:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [IP] NSA report Message-ID: <20131123215352.GE10793@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from Dave Farber ----- Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 14:56:20 -0500 From: Dave Farber To: ip Subject: [IP] NSA report Message-ID: Reply-To: dave at farber.net [image: The New York Times] ------------------------------ November 22, 2013 N.S.A. Report Outlined Goals for More PowerBy JAMES RISEN and LAURA POITRAS WASHINGTON ? Officials at the National Security Agency, intent on maintaining its dominance in intelligence collection, pledged last year to push to expand its surveillance powers, according to a top-secret strategy document. In a February 2012 paper laying out the four-year strategy for the N.S.A.?s signals intelligence operations, which include the agency?s eavesdropping and communications data collection around the world, agency officials set an objective to ?aggressively pursue legal authorities and a policy framework mapped more fully to the information age.? Written as an agency mission statement with broad goals, the five-page document said that existing American laws were not adequate to meet the needs of the N.S.A. to conduct broad surveillance in what it cited as ?the golden age of Sigint,? or signals intelligence. ?The interpretation and guidelines for applying our authorities, and in some cases the authorities themselves, have not kept pace with the complexity of the technology and target environments, or the operational expectations levied on N.S.A.?s mission,? the document concluded. Using sweeping language, the paper also outlined some of the agency?s other ambitions. They included defeating the cybersecurity practices of adversaries in order to acquire the data the agency needs from ?anyone, anytime, anywhere.? The agency also said it would try to decrypt or bypass codes that keep communications secret by influencing ?the global commercial encryption market through commercial relationships,? human spies and intelligence partners in other countries. It also talked of the need to ?revolutionize? analysis of its vast collections of data to ?radically increase operational impact.? The strategy document, provided by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, was written at a time when the agency was at the peak of its powers and the scope of its surveillance operations was still secret. Since then, Mr. Snowden?s revelations have changed the political landscape. Prompted by a public outcry over the N.S.A.?s domestic operations, the agency?s critics in Congress have been pushing to limit, rather than expand, its ability to routinely collect the phone and email records of millions of Americans, while foreign leaders have protested reports of virtually unlimited N.S.A. surveillance overseas, even in allied nations. Several inquiries are underway in Washington; Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the N.S.A.?s longest-serving director, has announced plans to retire; and the White House has offered proposals to disclose more information about the agency?s domestic surveillance activities. The N.S.A. document, titled ?Sigint Strategy 2012-2016,? does not make clear what legal or policy changes the agency might seek. The N.S.A.?s powers are determined variously by Congress, executive orders and the nation?s secret intelligence court, and its operations are governed by layers of regulations. While asserting that the agency?s ?culture of compliance? would not be compromised, N.S.A. officials argued that they needed more flexibility, according to the paper. Senior intelligence officials, responding to questions about the document, said that the N.S.A. believed that legal impediments limited its ability to conduct surveillance of terrorism suspects inside the United States. Despite an overhaul of national security law in 2008, the officials said, if a terrorism suspect who is under surveillance overseas enters the United States, the agency has to stop monitoring him until it obtains a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. ?N.S.A.?s Sigint strategy is designed to guide investments in future capabilities and close gaps in current capabilities,? the agency said in a statement. ?In an ever-changing technology and telecommunications environment, N.S.A. tries to get in front of issues to better fulfill the foreign-intelligence requirements of the U.S. government.? Critics, including some congressional leaders, say that the role of N.S.A. surveillance in thwarting terrorist attacks ? often cited by the agency to justify expanded powers ? has been exaggerated. In response to the controversy about its activities after Mr. Snowden?s disclosures, agency officials claimed that the N.S.A.?s sweeping domestic surveillance programs had helped in 54 ?terrorist-related activities.? But under growing scrutiny, congressional staff members and other critics say that the use of such figures by defenders of the agency has drastically overstated the value of the domestic surveillance programs in counterterrorism. Agency leaders believe that the N.S.A. has never enjoyed such a target-rich environment as it does now because of the global explosion of digital information ? and they want to make certain that they can dominate ?the Sigint battle space? in the future, the document said. To be ?optimally effective,? the paper said, ?legal, policy and process authorities must be as adaptive and dynamic as the technological and operational advances we seek to exploit.? Intent on unlocking the secrets of adversaries, the paper underscores the agency?s long-term goal of being able to collect virtually everything available in the digital world. To achieve that objective, the paper suggests that the N.S.A. plans to gain greater access, in a variety of ways, to the infrastructure of the world?s telecommunications networks. Reports based on other documents previously leaked by Mr. Snowden showed that the N.S.A. has infiltrated the cable links to Google and Yahoo data centers around the world, leading to protests from company executives and a growing backlash against the N.S.A. in Silicon Valley. Yet the paper also shows how the agency believes it can influence and shape trends in high-tech industries in other ways to suit its needs. One of the agency?s goals is to ?continue to invest in the industrial base and drive the state of the art for high performance computing to maintain pre-eminent cryptanalytic capability for the nation.? The paper added that the N.S.A. must seek to ?identify new access, collection and exploitation methods by leveraging global business trends in data and communications services.? And it wants to find ways to combine all of its technical tools to enhance its surveillance powers. The N.S.A. will seek to integrate its ?capabilities to reach previously inaccessible targets in support of exploitation, cyberdefense and cyberoperations,? the paper stated. The agency also intends to improve its access to encrypted communications used by individuals, businesses and foreign governments, the strategy document said. The N.S.A. has already had some success in defeating encryption, The New York Times has reported, but the document makes it clear that countering ?ubiquitous, strong, commercial network encryption? is a top priority. The agency plans to fight back against the rise of encryption through relationships with companies that develop encryption tools and through espionage operations. In other countries, the document said, the N.S.A. must also ?counter indigenous cryptographic programs by targeting their industrial bases with all available Sigint and Humint? ? human intelligence, meaning spies. The document also mentioned a goal of integrating the agency?s eavesdropping and data collection systems into a national network of sensors that interactively ?sense, respond and alert one another at machine speed.? Senior intelligence officials said that the system of sensors is designed to protect the computer networks of the Defense Department, and that the N.S.A. does not use data collected from Americans for the system. One of the agency?s other four-year goals was to ?share bulk data? more broadly to allow for better analysis. While the paper does not explain in detail how widely it would disseminate bulk data within the intelligence community, the proposal raises questions about what safeguards the N.S.A. plans to place on its domestic phone and email data collection programs to protect Americans? privacy. N.S.A. officials have insisted that they have placed tight controls on those programs. In an interview, the senior intelligence officials said that the strategy paper was referring to the agency?s desire to share foreign data more broadly, not phone logs of Americans collected under the Patriot Act . Above all, the strategy paper suggests the N.S.A.?s vast view of its mission: nothing less than to ?dramatically increase mastery of the global network.? Other N.S.A. documents offer hints of how the agency is trying to do just that. One program, code-named Treasure Map, provides what a secret N.S.A. PowerPoint presentation describes as ?a near real-time, interactive map of the global Internet.? According to the undated PowerPoint presentation, disclosed by Mr. Snowden, Treasure Map gives the N.S.A. ?a 300,000 foot view of the Internet.? Relying on Internet routing data, commercial and Sigint information, Treasure Map is a sophisticated tool, one that the PowerPoint presentation describes as a ?massive Internet mapping, analysis and exploration engine.? It collects Wi-Fi network and geolocation data, and between 30 million and 50 million unique Internet provider addresses ? code that can reveal the location and owner of a computer, mobile device or router ? are represented each day on Treasure Map, according to the document. It boasts that the program can map ?any device, anywhere, all the time.? The documents include addresses labeled as based in the ?U.S.,? and because so much Internet traffic flows through the United States, it would be difficult to map much of the world without capturing such addresses. But the intelligence officials said that Treasure Map maps only foreign and Defense Department networks, and is limited by the amount of data available to the agency. There are several billion I.P. addresses on the Internet, the officials said, and Treasure Map cannot map them all. The program is not used for surveillance, they said, but to understand computer networks. The program takes advantage of the capabilities of other secret N.S.A. programs. To support Treasure Map, for example, the document states that another program, called Packaged Goods, tracks the ?traceroutes? through which data flows around the Internet. Through Packaged Goods, the N.S.A. has gained access to ?13 covered servers in unwitting data centers around the globe,? according to the PowerPoint. The document identifies a list of countries where the data centers are located, including Germany, Poland, Denmark, South Africa and Taiwan as well as Russia, China and Singapore. Despite the document?s reference to ?unwitting data centers,? government officials said that the agency does not hack into those centers. Instead, the officials said, the intelligence community secretly uses front companies to lease space on the servers. Despite the N.S.A.?s broad surveillance powers, the strategy paper shows that N.S.A. officials still worry about the agency?s ability to fend off bureaucratic inertia while keeping pace with change. ?To sustain current mission relevance,? the document said, Signals Intelligence Directorate, the N.S.A.?s signals intelligence arm, ?must undertake a profound and revolutionary shift from the mission approach which has served us so well in the decades preceding the onset of the information age.? James Risen reported from Washington, and Laura Poitras from Berlin. ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/25094221-ddf8422b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ----- End forwarded message ----- From anders at aleph.se Sun Nov 24 00:56:54 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 01:56:54 +0100 Subject: [ExI] A possible justification for applying force even in an extreme libertarian minarchist state In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <52914ED6.5090503@aleph.se> On 2013-11-23 19:26, Adrian Tymes wrote: > If the topic didn't make it abundantly clear, I'm talking hypothetical > extremes here. ;) > > Specifically: it has sometimes been posited on this list that a > utopian government, or anarchy, should never apply coercive force. > I've had issue with that position, but I hadn't found a really good > way of stating it until now: Isn't this dealt with at some length in David Friedman's "The Machinery of Freedom"? By the way, Nick Bostrom's paper on information hazards might be relevant. There are externalities to informing people too. The problem with arguing this topic is that it strikes at an extreme minority position, so small that it might be called a strawman. Sure, there are some people who might argue it. But it does not represent a majority of libertarians (minarchists will no doubt be fine with it). Still, as a philosophy essay without any aims beyond showing a limit to non-coercion it makes sense. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From ddraig at gmail.com Sun Nov 24 01:14:02 2013 From: ddraig at gmail.com (ddraig) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 12:14:02 +1100 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade In-Reply-To: <001b01cee87c$8fbab610$af302230$@att.net> References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> <019001cee86d$c6d54cf0$547fe6d0$@att.net> <5290F18D.8040002@libero.it> <001b01cee87c$8fbab610$af302230$@att.net> Message-ID: On 24 November 2013 05:48, spike wrote: > > > Our version of that might be "Governing Americans is not impossible, but it > is always advisable to note Americans are extremely well armed." > from the outside, it looks like they are doing a pretty good job of it, though. Dwayne -- ddraig at pobox.com irc.bluesphereweb.com #dna ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg our aim is wakefulness, our enemy is dreamless sleep -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sun Nov 24 05:14:58 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 16:14:58 +1100 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade In-Reply-To: <014101cee862$1884d2c0$498e7840$@att.net> References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> <00d501cee85c$c2936d40$47ba47c0$@att.net> <014101cee862$1884d2c0$498e7840$@att.net> Message-ID: On 24 November 2013 02:38, spike wrote: > > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco > Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2013 7:31 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] i miss intrade > >>...There are many active claims, took at the menu Sport Politics Economics > Entertainment Sci/Tech > > > Giulio, is there an anonymous shopper option? It looks like there is not. > I have an account in Predictious now, but no bitcoins and don't want to risk > owning them unless I can see what it allows me to buy. It looks like it > won't let me see my options unless I have at least a few cents worth of > btcoin. It might be a trap. Am I paranoid? Sure. But we have a former > IRS chief who invoked the fifth, and we STILL don't know what felonies she > committed. > > spike Why would bitcoins cause you any more problems with the IRS than cash? -- Stathis Papaioannou From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 24 06:46:38 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 22:46:38 -0800 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade In-Reply-To: References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> <019001cee86d$c6d54cf0$547fe6d0$@att.net> <5290F18D.8040002@libero.it> <001b01cee87c$8fbab610$af302230$@att.net> Message-ID: <00c501cee8e0$eda03160$c8e09420$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of ddraig Subject: Re: [ExI] i miss intrade On 24 November 2013 05:48, spike wrote: >>.Our version of that might be "Governing Americans is not impossible, but it is always advisable to note Americans are extremely well armed." >.from the outside, it looks like they are doing a pretty good job of it, though. Dwayne -- That depends on what your definition of it is. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From zelaron at gmail.com Sun Nov 24 04:40:39 2013 From: zelaron at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Christian_H=E4gg?=) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 05:40:39 +0100 Subject: [ExI] How can people be so blind about Bitcoin and the future? In-Reply-To: References: <52905440.8020008@canonizer.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 8:22 AM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Even on an exponential curve, assuming Bitcoin grows to somewhat bigger > than the conventional markets (unlikely, given the finite total possible > number of bitcoins, unless sub-bitcoin currencies take off in similar > speed), we're probably talking multiple decades given how far behind it is. > It might be worth noting that minimum unit that the Bitcoin can be divided into, the satoshi (10^-8 Bitcoins), isn't a fundamental limit of divisibility, as much as it's the currently agreed-upon one. If the satoshi were ever to become too valuable (say, >1 cent/satoshi, leading to a >1 million USD value per Bitcoin), the Bitcoin community would probably divide it. As a fun side note, the current amount of Bitcoins that have been mined (~12 million) can be divided into 1.2*10^15 satoshis. This is on the same order of magnitude as last year's world GDP in terms of purchasing power, taken in U.S. cents (~8.5*10^15 cent). Max interpreted Brent's position in another thread as "everyone should have at least one Bitcoin". I'm mostly optimistic about its future as well. However, we're already past the point where a significant number of humans think things like "I can't afford a whole Bitcoin, so I'll go buy some Litecoins instead." Litecoin, and some other altcoins, rely on scrypt, a cryptographic key derivation algorithm that imposes high memory requirements on miners. The Litecoin designer's intention for using scrypt was, in part, to make CPU mining more cost-effective than GPU or ASIC mining, and thus to make Litecoin mining far less esoteric than Bitcoin mining. Even grandma can mine Litecoin on her archaic computer! Unfortunately for the designer, it didn't work. GPU mining of Litecoins is currently the best strategy, with ASICs under development. I think there's a dangerous idea from the point of view of Bitcoin adherents in there. If some "scrypt-like" key derivation algorithm is developed which actually restricts mining to CPUs to a significant extent, the network effect could tip the cryptocurrency user base away from Bitcoin. (Again, a lot of people are unhappy about missing the "whole Bitcoin" boat, and would rather start with something new, than to yield to some soulless, behemoth gov... err, ASIC farm and group of early investors.) Of course, that's a very big if. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 24 07:20:06 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 23:20:06 -0800 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade In-Reply-To: References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> <00d501cee85c$c2936d40$47ba47c0$@att.net> <014101cee862$1884d2c0$498e7840$@att.net> Message-ID: <00ff01cee8e5$9a849ca0$cf8dd5e0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou >> ... no bitcoins and don't want > to risk owning them unless I can see what it allows me to buy... > But we have a former IRS chief who invoked the fifth, and we STILL > don't know what felonies she committed. > > spike >...Why would bitcoins cause you any more problems with the IRS than cash? -- >...Stathis Papaioannou _______________________________________________ Stathis, privacy is under vicious attack in the USA. Bitcoin offers both privacy and a possible means of a currency which is difficult to tax. The government will surely see it as a threat. The current US government has been caught spying on news reporters, leaking confidential taxpayer information, suppressing the Tea Party, using the IRS to go after political enemies, power grabs un an unprecedented scale. From the first time I heard it, I thought BTC would attract IRS attention, and it is a government agency completely free of accountability for its power. We have two directors who have been caught in wrongdoing. One pled the fifth and walked away, with no repercussions. The other is still on the job, or rather has been transferred to the branch of the IRS charged with enforcing the individual mandate of the healthcare reform. How could any American not see what his happening? Apparently they never read or understood Hayek's Road to Serfdom. I think it is dangerous for Americans to own bitcoins. There is no law against it specifically, but there is no effective law against the IRS destroying you without evidence either. spike From rolandodegilead at gmail.com Sun Nov 24 11:00:04 2013 From: rolandodegilead at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Eugenio_Mart=EDnez?=) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 12:00:04 +0100 Subject: [ExI] What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <527B212C.6000408@canonizer.com> <527C07EF.1090605@libero.it> <527CB05A.1010401@libero.it> <5284CEBC.3000403@libero.it> <52853E02.4070308@libero.it> <528A8AB2.2070909@libero.it> Message-ID: I understand your point, but, I really think that a strong IA is something that is going to happen, so, are we doomed anyway? If there is a strong IA and, for any reason, we are not doomed because of an control-mad-IA, the only way to not be doomed for a capitalism-enhaced-with-IA is removing capitalism as we know it. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sun Nov 24 11:57:17 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 12:57:17 +0100 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade In-Reply-To: <00ff01cee8e5$9a849ca0$cf8dd5e0$@att.net> References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> <00d501cee85c$c2936d40$47ba47c0$@att.net> <014101cee862$1884d2c0$498e7840$@att.net> <00ff01cee8e5$9a849ca0$cf8dd5e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <5291E99D.8020100@libero.it> Il 24/11/2013 08:20, spike ha scritto: > How could any American not see what his happening? Apparently they never > read or understood Hayek's Road to Serfdom. > > I think it is dangerous for Americans to own bitcoins. There is no law > against it specifically, but there is no effective law against the IRS > destroying you without evidence either. This is because you need bitcoin, because they will destroy you if you have them or if you have them not. And it will easier to destroy you if you have them not, because you will have only worthless pieces of paper. If you have paper notes, they can seize them and confiscate (Civil forfeiture) without a due process of law because maybe you could do something illegal with so much cash. If you have all your money in bank, they can seize it there; it is also easier. Just send a mail to the treasurer of the bank telling him "The account of X is seized, if you do not comply you go in jail". If just own stuff they can confiscate it or tax it, as they please. So, in the end, if they are starved of money or just hate you they will obliterate you or, at least try to do so. And if it is unlawful, they will plead the fifth or claim sovereign immunity or something like it. Mirco From stathisp at gmail.com Sun Nov 24 13:49:48 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:49:48 +1100 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade In-Reply-To: <00ff01cee8e5$9a849ca0$cf8dd5e0$@att.net> References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> <00d501cee85c$c2936d40$47ba47c0$@att.net> <014101cee862$1884d2c0$498e7840$@att.net> <00ff01cee8e5$9a849ca0$cf8dd5e0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 24 November 2013 18:20, spike wrote: >>... On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou > >>> ... no bitcoins and don't want >> to risk owning them unless I can see what it allows me to buy... >> But we have a former IRS chief who invoked the fifth, and we STILL >> don't know what felonies she committed. >> >> spike > >>...Why would bitcoins cause you any more problems with the IRS than cash? > -- >>...Stathis Papaioannou > _______________________________________________ > > Stathis, privacy is under vicious attack in the USA. Bitcoin offers both > privacy and a possible means of a currency which is difficult to tax. The > government will surely see it as a threat. The current US government has > been caught spying on news reporters, leaking confidential taxpayer > information, suppressing the Tea Party, using the IRS to go after political > enemies, power grabs un an unprecedented scale. From the first time I heard > it, I thought BTC would attract IRS attention, and it is a government agency > completely free of accountability for its power. We have two directors who > have been caught in wrongdoing. One pled the fifth and walked away, with no > repercussions. The other is still on the job, or rather has been > transferred to the branch of the IRS charged with enforcing the individual > mandate of the healthcare reform. > > How could any American not see what his happening? Apparently they never > read or understood Hayek's Road to Serfdom. > > I think it is dangerous for Americans to own bitcoins. There is no law > against it specifically, but there is no effective law against the IRS > destroying you without evidence either. > > spike But cash is at least as anonymous as Bitcoin. -- Stathis Papaioannou From spike66 at att.net Sun Nov 24 14:57:43 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 06:57:43 -0800 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade In-Reply-To: References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> <00d501cee85c$c2936d40$47ba47c0$@att.net> <014101cee862$1884d2c0$498e7840$@att.net> <00ff01cee8e5$9a849ca0$cf8dd5e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <006601cee925$885ad900$99108b00$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou ... > > How could any American not see what his happening? Apparently they > never read or understood Hayek's Road to Serfdom. > > I think it is dangerous for Americans to own bitcoins. There is no > law against it specifically, but there is no effective law against the > IRS destroying you without evidence either. > > spike But cash is at least as anonymous as Bitcoin. -- Stathis Papaioannou _______________________________________________ It is, but that makes my point. In the USA, it has become functionally illegal to carry a lot of currency. If you go around with a suitcase full of it, the authorities can seize it and argue that surely you were dealing in dope. Their standards of evidence are low in those cases. This was a huge issue in 1989 when we were having an enormous land boom in the SF Bay Area California. The game was to advertise a home for sale at a certain price. The inventory was low and the prices were going up every day. So the game was to advertise the home, the owner would get scarce for a week or two, people would overbid, owner returns, goes thru a pile of bids, picks out his favorite, house sells for 20 or 30k over asking price. At Lockheeed, a group of engineers pooled their funds, hired a real estate specialist, rigged up a cell phone with a laptop computer (hot new tech in 89) had him drive around, then when a new property came on the listing, he would look up in a database and find its value, then show up within minutes with a suitcase full of cash the exact amount the owner listed, along with an implied threat that if the owner failed to accept the cash, it would be evidence he was refusing on some racial basis (the agent was African American.) In most cases, the owner would sell on the spot, the buyer group could resell for 20 to 30k more the next day. The group was making money hand over fist. Then the earthquake hit. In the meantime, they realized it was a huge risk to have a person going around with a quarter of a million dollars cash in a briefcase. He wasn't doing anything illegal. But had they known, the authorities would likely have figured out some way to seize all that lettuce. As it turns out, the group doubled its money in about 5 months, from June 1989 to October 1989. I wasn't in on that. But it caused a change in the way people sell houses during a land boom. We are in another one of those now. If a person goes to sell a house, they need to be absent when the home goes on the market, in some place they cannot be contacted or found for a couple weeks. It will be interesting to see what happens when the first land transaction happens in BTC. spike From anders at aleph.se Sun Nov 24 15:43:05 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 16:43:05 +0100 Subject: [ExI] this one is for the prime hipsters In-Reply-To: <20131122184637.GE5661@leitl.org> References: <20131122184637.GE5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: <52921E89.5090803@aleph.se> Interesting restart of the pursuit. Looks very much like punctuated equilibrium, where new approaches signal a new tightening cascade. http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2013/11/watching_the_bound_shrink_ii.html -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Mon Nov 25 07:27:01 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 08:27:01 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> Message-ID: <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> On 2013-11-22 18:19, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 6:38 AM, Eugen Leitl > wrote: > > > > Water is perhaps the most abundant one, but one should not rule out > > Water is not particularly abundant, but it has certainly very > interesting properties, which, if taken together, make it unique. > > > I tend to agree with Eugen on this one. As far as I'm aware, water is > the only liquid that becomes less dense upon freezing. Otherwise, the > oceans would fill up with ice from the bottom up. Ices are clearly not > as good for life as liquid. Remember the high temperature water ices of double-earth: under many conditions water behaves "normally" too. In fact, bottom-ice-free oceans might be unusual in the universe if most terrestrials tend to be big waterworlds. There are other expanding liquids like beryllium difluoride, but most are elements like silicon, bismuth, antimony, gallium and plutonium. Even I agree that a planet with plutonium oceans is unlikely to be habitable for life. While we all know the anomalous properties of water and cherish them, it might be because we also live in a water-dominated environment where every little property has big effects on us. Had we been living in a methane or high pressure water-ammonia environment we might have written the same number of papers about the anomalousness of methane and water-ammonia mixtures. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 25 10:09:26 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 11:09:26 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> References: <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20131125100926.GK10793@leitl.org> On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 08:27:01AM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote: > While we all know the anomalous properties of water and cherish > them, it might be because we also live in a water-dominated > environment where every little property has big effects on us. Had Chemistry gives you an objective view on suitability of different systems to support life. I was always interested in the origin of life, ever since I've read about Oparin's coacervates as a young kid. There is a tendency to see more possibilities the less constraints you're aware of. Chemists routinely dwell in objective views of how members of the PSE play together. It turns out, that most of the PSE is barren, and only few elements play nice with each other, and elemental abundancies and prebiotic chemistry (studied remotely by spectroscopy, and by analyzing extraterrestrial samples, as well as laboratory experiments simulating processes occuring in interstellar space and accretion on planetary nebulas) we can rule a lot of what ought to work but actually doesn't. > we been living in a methane or high pressure water-ammonia Methane is apolar and a solvent under deep cryogenic conditions, while kinetically stable is not stable under irradiation, and will not coexist with oxidants. Lower hydrocarbons are of interest in prebiotic reactions, but you're not going to find surface life in methane pools in the outer solar system. No energy, no metabolism. Water/ammonia is potentially fertile, especially as water-ammonia eutectic and has interesting properties, but in general it has issues, and the stability of the nitrogen-nitrogen triple bond will tend to drive towards decomposition to nitrogen and hydrogen (which reacts with oxidants like oxygen, or is lost to space). > environment we might have written the same number of papers about > the anomalousness of methane and water-ammonia mixtures. See the following interesting treatment of water/ammonia http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11919&page=72 6.2.1 Polar Solvents That Are Not Water 6.2.1.1 Ammonia Ammonia is analogous to water in many of its properties. Ammonia, like water, dissolves many organic compounds, including many polyelectrolytes. Preparative organic reactions are often done in ammonia in the laboratory. Ammonia, like water, is liquid over a wide range of temperatures (195 to 240 K at 1 atm). The liquid range is even broader at higher pressure. For example, at 60 atm ammonia is liquid from 196 to 371 K. Further, liquid ammonia may be abundant in the solar system. A large amount of the inventory of liquid ammonia in the solar system exists, for example, in clouds in the jovian atmosphere. However, as noted earlier by the committee, some view clouds as unlikely places to harbor life. However, if clouds are not transient and broken (as on Earth) but are rather more continuous (as on Venus), this view may need modification. As compared with water, ammonia?s increased ability to dissolve hydrophobic organic molecules suggests an increased difficulty in using the hydrophobic effect to generate compartmentalization in ammonia, relative to water. This in turn implies that the liposome, a compartment that works in water, generally will not work in liquid ammonia. Hydrophobic phase separation is possible in ammonia, however, albeit at lower temperatures. For example, Brunner reported that liquid ammonia and hydrocarbons form two phases, where the hydrocarbon chain contains from 1 to 36 CH2 units.5 Different hydrocarbons become miscible with ammonia at different temperatures and pressures. Thus, formation of ammonia-phobic and ammonia-philic phases, analogous to the hydrophobic and hydrophilic phases in water, useful for isolation would be conceivable in liquid ammonia at temperatures well below its boiling point at standard pressures. The greater basicity of liquid ammonia must also be considered. The species that serve as acid and base in pure water are H3O+ and HO?. In ammonia, NH4+ and NH2? are the acid and base, respectively. H3O+, with a pKa of ?1.7, is about 11 orders of magnitude stronger (in water) as an acid than NH4+, with a pKa of 9.2 (in water). Likewise, NH2? is about 15 orders of magnitude stronger as a base than HO?. The increased strength of the dominant base in ammonia,as well as the corresponding enhanced aggressivity of ammonia as a nucleophile, implies that ammonia would not support the metabolic chemistry found in terran life. Terran life exploits compounds containing the C=O carbonyl unit. In ammonia, carbonyl compounds are (at the very least) converted to compounds containing the corresponding C=N unit. Nevertheless, hypothetical reactions that exploit a C=N unit in ammonia can be proposed in analogy to the metabolic biochemistry that exploits the C=O unit in terran metabolism in water (Figure 6.1).6 Given this adjustment, metabolism in liquid ammonia is easily conceivable. Most interestingly, ammonia is a potent antifreeze for water. Recently recovered data from Titan suggest that that moon is periodically being resurfaced by a liquid having a viscosity comparable to that of a water-ammonia eutectic, which is liquid even in an environment that experiences methane rain. Water-ammonia eutectics, which FIGURE 6.1 Different functional groups, but analogous mechanisms, could be used to form new C?C bonds in different solvents. In water, the C=O unit would provide the necessary reactivity. In ammonia, the C=N unit would provide the necessary reactivity. In sulfuric acid, the C=C unit is sufficient to provide the necessary reactivity. are liquid even at the temperature of Titan, are a potential biosolvent. They are abundant in the cosmos, they have a wide temperature range of liquidity, and they are not bad as solvents. etc., see the site for an interesting discussion of other solvent systems. From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Mon Nov 25 12:18:56 2013 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 10:18:56 -0200 Subject: [ExI] RES: Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: <010601ced9ed$35846a30$a08d3e90$@att.net> <078c01cedb87$f0ebb490$d2c31db0$@att.net> <015b01cedbd1$7addd810$70998830$@att.net> <052101cedbfe$b5fac610$21f05230$@att.net> <072e01cedc2d$ff4564e0$fdd02ea0$@att.net> <52836DC5.7030707@aleph.se> <5288B2EE.7020909@aleph.se> <5288EFE3.1010304@aleph.se> <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> Message-ID: <018901cee9d8$84c60220$8e520660$@gmail.com> The real problem might be, why the Earth is so dry? Correct me if I'm wrong but I think I've read somewhere that Earth's water comes from comets and asteroids. And that Jupiter and Saturn attract most of the comets and asteroids to themselves. Put the two together and then we end up with tiny moon Europa having more than two times the water Earth has. From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 25 14:25:58 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 15:25:58 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [tp] Thiel, Anissimov and Neo-reactionary Monarchism Message-ID: <20131125142558.GR10793@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from "Hughes, James J." ----- Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 22:26:23 +0000 From: "Hughes, James J." To: "technoprogressive at yahoogroups.com" , "ieet-news at ieet.org" Cc: "ieet at ieet.org" Subject: [tp] Thiel, Anissimov and Neo-reactionary Monarchism Message-ID: <3631A119EB15854B832730C5CA624B242525B58C at exmb3.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu> Reply-To: technoprogressive at yahoogroups.com I had not realized how wachy things were getting on the right wing of H+/S^ thought. This is startling to me, and it shouldn't have been. If folks out there want to write about this odious ideological phenomenon please send your missive to Kris . - J. http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/ Geeks for Monarchy: The Rise of the Neoreactionaries Posted 17 hours ago by Klint Finley (@klintron) Many of us yearn for a return to one golden age or another. But there's a community of bloggers taking the idea to an extreme: they want to turn the dial way back to the days before the French Revolution. Neoreactionaries believe that while technology and capitalism have advanced humanity over the past couple centuries, democracy has actually done more harm than good. They propose a return to old-fashioned gender roles, social order and monarchy. You may have seen them crop-up on tech hangouts like Hacker News and Less Wrong, having cryptic conversations about "Moldbug" and "the Cathedral." And though neoreactionaries aren't exactly rampant in the tech industry, PayPal founder Peter Thiel has voiced similar ideas, and Pax Dickinson, the former CTO of Business Insider, says he's been influenced by neoreactionary thought. It may be a small, minority world view, but it's one that I think shines some light on the psyche of contemporary tech culture. Enough has been written on neoreaction already to fill at least a couple of books, so if you prefer to go straight to the source, just pop a Modafinil and skip to the "Neoreaction Reading List" at the end of this post. For everyone else, I'll do my best to summarize neoreactionary thought and why it might matter. Who Are the Neoreactionaries? "Reactionary" originally meant someone who opposed the French Revolution, and today the term generally refers to those who would like to return to some pre-existing state of affairs. Neoreaction - aka "dark enlightenment - begins with computer scientist and entrepreneur Curtis Yarvin, who blogs under the name Mencius Moldbug. Yarvin - the self-described Sith Lord of the movement - got his start as a commenter on sites like 2blowhards before starting his own blog Unqualified Reservations in 2007. Yarvin originally called his ideology "formalism," but in 2010 libertarian blogger Arnold Kling referred to him as a "neo-reactionary." The name stuck as more bloggers - such as Anomaly UK (who helped popularize the term), Nick Land (who coined "dark enlightenment") and Michael Anissimov - started to self-identify as neoreactionary. The movement has a few contemporary forerunners, such as Herman Hoppe and Steven Sailer, and of course, neoreaction is heavily influenced by older political thought - Thomas Carlyle and Julius Evola are particularly popular. Anti-Democracy Perhaps the one thing uniting all neoreactionaries is a critique of modernity that centers on opposition to democracy in all its forms. Many are former libertarians who decided that freedom and democracy were incompatible. "Demotist systems, that is, systems ruled by the 'People,' such as Democracy and Communism, are predictably less financially stable than aristocratic systems," Anissimov writes. "On average, they undergo more recessions and hold more debt. They are more susceptible to market crashes. They waste more resources. Each dollar goes further towards improving standard of living for the average person in an aristocratic system than in a Democratic one." Exactly what sort of monarchy they'd prefer varies. Some want something closer to theocracy, while Yarvin proposes turning nation states into corporations with the king as chief executive officer and the aristocracy as shareholders. For Yarvin, stability and order trump all. But critics like Scott Alexander think neoreactionaries overestimate the stability of monarchies - to put it mildly. Alexander recently published an anti-reactionary FAQ, a massive document examining and refuting the claims of neoreactionaries. "To an observer from the medieval or Renaissance world of monarchies and empires, the stability of democracies would seem utterly supernatural," he wrote. "Imagine telling Queen Elizabeth I - whom as we saw above suffered six rebellions just in her family's two generations of rule up to that point - that Britain has been three hundred years without a non-colonial-related civil war. She would think either that you were putting her on, or that God Himself had sent a host of angels to personally maintain order." Exit Yarvin proposes that countries should be small - city states, really - and that all they should compete for citizens. "If residents don't like their government, they can and should move," he writes. "The design is all 'exit,' no 'voice.'" That will probably sound familiar if you heard Balaji Srinivasan's Y Combinator speech. Although several news stories described the talk as a call for Silicon Valley to secede from the union, Srinivasan told Tim Carmody that his speech has been misinterpreted. "I'm not a libertarian, don't believe in secession, am a registered Democrat, etcetera etcetera," he wrote. "This is really a talk that is more about emigration and exit." I don't know Srinivasan, but it sounds like he'd find neoreactionary views repulsive. And exit is a concept that appeals to both the right and left. But there are others in the Valley pushing ideas much closer to the neoreaction. Patri Friedman, who co-founded the Seasteading Institute with Peter Thiel, specifically mentioned Yarvin's blog in a reading list at the end of an essay for Cato Unbound, and Yarvin was scheduled to speak at the Seasteading Institute's conference in 2009 before his appearance was canceled. Thiel, meanwhile, voiced a related opinion in his own article for Cato Unbound: "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." Incidentally, Thiel's Founders Fund is one of the investors in Srinivasan's company Counsyl. The co-founder of Yarvin's startup Tlon was one of the first recipients of the Thiel Fellowship. Anissimov was the media director of the Thiel-backed Machine Intelligence Institute (formerly known as the Singularity Institute). It's enough to make a conspiracy theorist's head spin, but I'm not actually suggesting that there's a conspiracy here. I don't think Peter Thiel is part of some neoreactionary master plot - I don't even necessarily think he's a neoreactionary. But you can see that a certain set of ideas are spreading through out the startup scene. Neoreactionary ideas overlap heavily with pickup artistry, seasteading and scientific racism (more on that later), and this larger "caveman cult" has an impact on tech culture, from work environments to the social atmosphere at conferences. To be clear though, pure neoreaction is an extreme minority position that will probably never catch on beyond a tiny cult following. But there has been an explosion of interest since late 2012, despite the fact that Hoppe, Sailer, Yarvin and others have been writing about this stuff for years (and neoreaction's European cousin archeofuturism has been around even longer). And this interest just happens to coincide with growing media attention being paid to the problems of the tech industry, from sexism in video games to "bro culture" in the tech industry to gentrification in the Bay Area. And many professionals, rather than admit to their role in gentrification, wealth disparity and job displacement, are casting themselves as victims. This sense of persecution leads us to our next neoreactionary theme. The Cathedral Neoreactionaries believe "The Cathedral," is a meta-institution that consists largely of Harvard and other Ivy League schools, The New York Times and various civil servants. Anissimov calls it a "self-organizing consensus." Sometimes the term is used synonymously with political correctness. The fundamental idea is that the Cathedral regulates our discussions enforces a set of norms as to what sorts of ideas are acceptable and how we view history - it controls the Overton window, in other words. The name comes from Yarvin's idea that progressivism (and in his view, even today's far right Republicans are progressive) is a religion, and that the media-academic-civil service complex punishes "heretical" views. So what exactly is the Cathedral stopping neoreactionaries from talking about? Well, the merits of monarchy for starters. But mostly, as far as I can tell, they want to be able to say stuff like "Asians, Jews and whites are smarter than blacks and Hispanics because genetics" without being called racist. Or at least be able to express such views without the negative consequences of being labeled racist. Speaking of which, neoreactionaries are obsessed with a concept called "human biodiversity" (HBD) - what used to be called "scientific racism." Specifically, they believe that IQ is one of - if not the - most important personal traits, and that it's predominately genetic. Neoreactionaries would replace, or supplement, the "divine right" of kings and the aristocracy with the "genetic right" of elites. To call these claims "controversial" would be putting it lightly, but they underpin much of anti-egalitarian and pro-traditionalist claims neoreactionaries make. Delving into the scientific debate over race, genetics and IQ is beyond the scope of this article, but I've included some links on the topic in the reading list. It's not hard to see why this ideology would catch-on with white male geeks. It tells them that they are the natural rulers of the world, but that they are simultaneously being oppressed by a secret religious order. And the more media attention is paid to workplace inequality, gentrification and the wealth gap, the more their bias is confirmed. And the more the neoreactionaries and techbros act out, the more the media heat they bring. We don't need more public shamings and firings - what we should want is for neoreactionaries to change their minds, not their jobs. As Jessica Valenti wrote for The Nation about the firing of John Derbyshire - a cause c?l?bre for - neoreaction: "After all, what's more impactful-a singular racist like Derbyshire or Arizona's immigration law? A column or voter suppression?" I'm not sure what to do about it. It's not like I think the media should ignore the tech industry's misdeeds. But maybe recognizing that cycle is the first step towards fixing it. Neoreaction reading list Foundations of neoreaction: Michael Anissimov: Neoreactionary Glossary Michael Anissimov: Empirical Claims of Neoreaction Nick Land's Dark Enlightenment Sequence Mencius Moldbug: A formalist manifesto Mencius Moldbug: Against Political Freedom Mencius Moldbug: An open letter to an open-minded progressive Heroes of the Dark Enlightenment Against Neoreaction: Scott Alexander's Anti-Reactionary FAQ Alexander's Response to the "Empirical Claims of Neoreaction" Popehat: Free Speech Does Not Include The Right to Be Free of Criticism Alexander on the historical forces that shaped modernity Alexander on racism, sexism and social justice Genetic Similarities Within and Between Human Populations by D.J. Witherspoon et al. Genetics Made Complicated: Is Race Genetic? Ron Unz on race, IQ and wealth Research on the cognitive effects of poverty Tim Maly on seasteading and other technocratic exit strategies Correction An earlier version of this story accidentally misidentified Pax Dickinson as Pax Dickerson. ----- End forwarded message ----- From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Nov 25 14:43:03 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 15:43:03 +0100 Subject: [ExI] ...or else... was: RE: What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <04c101cee67f$d17e8d50$747ba7f0$@att.net> References: <04c101cee67f$d17e8d50$747ba7f0$@att.net> Message-ID: <529361F7.3030201@libero.it> Il 21/11/2013 07:06, spike ha scritto: > Ja. Mirco everywhere in the last decade I have seen evidence of a Federal > government which has become too big for its breeches. The whole reason why > the constitution was written was to prevent the kinds of abuses we are > seeing today. All political structure fail because individuals, slowly or not, erode their fundation for their own profit. The most lasting political structure of the world is the most strict on one of the most severe on the people it allow to join it. It put them at a loss first and just a few are able to move up. And require them to respect celibacy. But this do not work well in a low birth rate world. > It is too bad it had to be this way. The American people are to suffer for > the way we vested so much authority into our Federal government, even > knowing that it leads to corruption. Our near-term suffering will come in > the form of chaos in our medical care industry, panic and disruption > everywhere, brutal destruction of a system which didn't work well, but > worked for some. We will pay the price in the form of power shifting from > one of the major parties to the other, but the problem will not be solved. > I am convinced the other major party will prove to be nearly as corrupt and > perhaps over half as incompetent as the one currently holding two of the > three seats of power. Reforms, usually, is caused by external factors more than internal ones. The reforms will force people to behave honestly, at least a little more honestly than now. There will not be pork to be redistributed, no younger generation to indebt to pay for olders current expenditures. People will need to work and exchange honest work and goods to obtain honest work and goods. I was listening to Jeffrey Tucker and Adam B. Levine debate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F1Gh2PBivo&feature=c4-overview&list=UU0iTb2U2nWkm5X3XRityENw and Tucker made an interesting remark about Bitcoin as a way to burn down to the ground the current financial system by the younger generations. They could not have the numbers to stage a revolution with their bodies and the strength to do so with weapons (it rarely works and the US are just one of the few exceptions), but they have fresh mind and technology to back their attempts. It do not need to be a conscious effort for all of them; they just do what they do because they try to survive and prosper in a world where all card are already stacked against them even before they where born. They do not enroll in ObamaCare because they have no money and no inclination to pay more for others. They move into bitcoin because they have no reason to preserve the wealth of the elders that is stored in government debts, house prices, stock prices and so on. They are just leaving the elders play their childish games alone and prey over each other. > Regarding that bungled HealthCare.gov website launch, I am emboldened to > make another prediction. Recall in mid-October they assured us the website > would be fixed by 30 November. It will not be fixed by 30 November, even > after we note they didn't specify which year. The system was based on a > flawed premise: healthy young people can be compelled to buy insurance. I > thought three years ago they could not and would not. I still think that > way. > Prediction: the American people will shrug and suggest we give the other > guys a chance to fix it. They too will fail, for different reasons. They > will not recognize that this kind of problem must be tackled at the state > level, and that federal government must shrink to fit its budget. The other > guys find that notion as repugnant as the current crew. > Any questions? Do you think they will move the system to a single-payer system before they give up and decide to try something more market friendly? Then, the single-payer system do not need to be done directly at a Federal Level. In Italy there is not a single payer system centrally directed (sort of). The central government just collect the money from payrolls It is a service tax where, in the end, people pay around 11% of their salary and wealthier people pay less - there is a Constitutional Court ruling about this (because the politicians wanted to make wealthier people pay more); it come out what we pay is not a tax but a payment for a service and given the service is the same for everyone, they can not justify a progressive taxation or even the same level of taxation). But in the end, the centers entitled (in some ways) to spend money and manage the Health Service are the Regional local governments. This improved the situation from the first reform when they were managed by the Provincial Government levels and the expenditures were totally out of control and the management totally political (but we are talking about more than twenty years ago). With the current system we have the country divided in two, with the North with a better Health care (because we are relatively better managed) and the South with a bad health care (because they are very mismanaged and too much people was hired in the past to obtain their vote for the sitting politicians). A lot of people is forced to move from south to north to obtain the care they need. There are a lot of waiting time everywhere to see a MD specialist or obtain some examinations from the government health care. Not so if you pay out of pocket. And often, because of the copay required, it happen it cost less to obtain some service directly from the private sector. So, no, I do not think if they move from Obamacare to GovernorsCare there will be any increase of efficiency. In the end, every local government will try to use the sector to obtain money and votes to stay in power. You need (and we need) to move to a free market health care, where people pay and obtain what the market can afford to offer at some price level and efficiency improvements are promptly rewarded. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Nov 25 14:53:39 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 15:53:39 +0100 Subject: [ExI] i miss intrade In-Reply-To: <006601cee925$885ad900$99108b00$@att.net> References: <000601cee809$3ceabed0$b6c03c70$@att.net> <00d501cee85c$c2936d40$47ba47c0$@att.net> <014101cee862$1884d2c0$498e7840$@att.net> <00ff01cee8e5$9a849ca0$cf8dd5e0$@att.net> <006601cee925$885ad900$99108b00$@att.net> Message-ID: <52936473.5020803@libero.it> Il 24/11/2013 15:57, spike ha scritto: > This was a huge issue in 1989 when we were having an enormous land boom in > the SF Bay Area California. The game was to advertise a home for sale at a > certain price. The inventory was low and the prices were going up every > day. So the game was to advertise the home, the owner would get scarce for > a week or two, people would overbid, owner returns, goes thru a pile of > bids, picks out his favorite, house sells for 20 or 30k over asking price. > At Lockheeed, a group of engineers pooled their funds, hired a real estate > specialist, rigged up a cell phone with a laptop computer (hot new tech in > 89) had him drive around, then when a new property came on the listing, he > would look up in a database and find its value, then show up within minutes > with a suitcase full of cash the exact amount the owner listed, along with > an implied threat that if the owner failed to accept the cash, it would be > evidence he was refusing on some racial basis (the agent was African > American.) In most cases, the owner would sell on the spot, the buyer group > could resell for 20 to 30k more the next day. The group was making money > hand over fist. Then the earthquake hit. Well, it was like HFT in the real estate market, just a lot more honest compared to what G&S do everyday; you didn't need to cheat to win. Yours just were faster than others to find the bargains. > In the meantime, they realized it was a huge risk to have a person going > around with a quarter of a million dollars cash in a briefcase. He wasn't > doing anything illegal. But had they known, the authorities would likely > have figured out some way to seize all that lettuce. As it turns out, the > group doubled its money in about 5 months, from June 1989 to October 1989. > I wasn't in on that. But it caused a change in the way people sell houses > during a land boom. We are in another one of those now. If a person goes > to sell a house, they need to be absent when the home goes on the market, in > some place they cannot be contacted or found for a couple weeks. > > It will be interesting to see what happens when the first land transaction > happens in BTC. It depend on if the RE agent have control of the BTC directly or not. I would suggest to have the RE agent to just contact the seller and, if it accept to sale and the price, someone at home give him the coins needed. So he can not be kidnapped and forced to give up the money by random highway men (usually uniformed). It would be interesting if the Bitcoin to buy RE start to come from China or some other place like it. Mirco From spike66 at att.net Mon Nov 25 15:23:28 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 07:23:28 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> References: <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> Message-ID: <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg >.There are other expanding liquids like beryllium difluoride, but most are elements like silicon, bismuth, antimony, gallium and plutonium. Ja. I can't think of any life forms that depend on that oddball characteristic of water ice. Perhaps the remarkable thing here is that with all the ice on this planet, there are no known (to me) life forms that use it in its solid phase. One would think there would be a snow eater somewhere. Clearly it wouldn't be to extract energy from the water (ground state compound) but rather some kind of life form that can plant itself in snow and use sunlight. >. Even I agree that a planet with plutonium oceans is unlikely to be habitable for life. -- Dr Anders Sandberg I learned a new thing by thinking about this. There is an isotope of plutonium which is non-fissile, 244. Get a sphere of the stuff, heat it to 900 and some Kelvin, you have an ocean of plutonium, with radioactive particles up the kazoo but no fission. Until Anders' offhanded comment about an ocean of plutonium, I never knew there was such a critter. Ain't science kewallll? {8-] spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Mon Nov 25 17:28:59 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 18:28:59 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> References: <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> Message-ID: Henrique: > Correct me if I'm wrong but I think I've read somewhere that Earth's water comes from comets and asteroids. Yes, so they say. But for every iron atom in the universe, there is at least one molecule of water. So, a 100 to 1000 km deep ocean is unaccounted for on this planet. The problem is where all the water went. Not from where this water came from. > And that Jupiter and Saturn attract most of the comets and asteroids to themselves. Put the two together and then we end up with tiny moon Europa having more than two times the water Earth has. Exactly. On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 4:23 PM, spike wrote: > > > > > *>?* *On Behalf Of *Anders Sandberg > > > >?There are other expanding liquids like beryllium difluoride, but most > are elements like silicon, bismuth, antimony, gallium and plutonium? > > > > Ja. I can?t think of any life forms that depend on that oddball > characteristic of water ice. Perhaps the remarkable thing here is that > with all the ice on this planet, there are no known (to me) life forms that > use it in its solid phase. One would think there would be a snow eater > somewhere. Clearly it wouldn?t be to extract energy from the water (ground > state compound) but rather some kind of life form that can plant itself in > snow and use sunlight. > > > > >? Even I agree that a planet with plutonium oceans is unlikely to be > habitable for life. -- Dr Anders Sandberg > > > > I learned a new thing by thinking about this. There is an isotope of > plutonium which is non-fissile, 244. Get a sphere of the stuff, heat it to > 900 and some Kelvin, you have an ocean of plutonium, with radioactive > particles up the kazoo but no fission. Until Anders? offhanded comment > about an ocean of plutonium, I never knew there was such a critter. Ain?t > science kewallll? {8-] > > > > spike > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Nov 25 17:32:58 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 09:32:58 -0800 Subject: [ExI] ...or else... was: RE: What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <529361F7.3030201@libero.it> References: <04c101cee67f$d17e8d50$747ba7f0$@att.net> <529361F7.3030201@libero.it> Message-ID: <011501ceea04$62630b70$27292250$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato >... >>... Prediction: the American people will shrug and suggest we give the > other guys a chance to fix it. They too will fail, for different > reasons. They will not recognize that this kind of problem must be > tackled at the state level, and that federal government must shrink to > fit its budget. The other guys find that notion as repugnant as the current crew. >>... Any questions? spike >...Do you think they will move the system to a single-payer system before they give up and decide to try something more market friendly?... Had you asked me in September, my answer would differ from what I would answer today. Then I would have guessed the system as proposed would fail, and that would pave the way to single payer at the national level. But the national system failed so spectacularly, with a fiery crash on takeoff, that it sent a strong message: don't trust the federal government with your health care. They are too incompetent and too corrupt. >...Then, the single-payer system do not need to be done directly at a Federal Level... Thanks, I agree. Single payer can be done at a state level, and that's where it should be done. Reasoning: the Fed does not and cannot take into account one's assets, only one's income. The state can and does take into account both income and assets when deciding how much you pay. Having health care done at the state level makes sense, in fact it even makes sense to mostly cut out the insurance industry. Then you move to the state which has the system you like best. You have fifty different state governments competing to create the best model. Some will work better than others. We had two states, Massachusetts and Oregon, which had what might be described as almost a single payer system in place before 2008. I noticed the other states were not rushing to follow in their footsteps. I know from firsthand experience that the quality of care in Oregon was not as good as what you could get in Florida, where the state doesn't pay much. >...In Italy...A lot of people is forced to move from south to north to obtain the care they need. There are a lot of waiting time everywhere to see a MD specialist or obtain some examinations from the government health care... Ja. Anywhere the same general rules apply: medical school is hard and expensive. People will not invest in that if the doctors are not able to make a ton of money at it. So it always means a shortage of doctors. But I have an idea. Read on please. >...So, no, I do not think if they move from Obamacare to GovernorsCare there will be any increase of efficiency. In the end, every local government will try to use the sector to obtain money and votes to stay in power... I think there will be an increase in efficiency over federal-level health care. But the bar is low on that leap, and getting lower each day. Note that when the rollout of HealthCare.gov failed, they promised us repeatedly that everything would be fixed by 30 November. That's five days from now. Note that noooobody in government has repeated the 30 November fix. The federal insiders themselves have come right out and admitted there are no plans in place to encrypt the data or do any reasonable measures to protect patient information that is compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Insurance Act, HIPAA. The HealthCare.gov website isn't encrypted, and they aren't even claiming there are plans in place to eventually encrypt the data. Anything you put on that site is public domain, and everything needed to steal your identity is asked on that site. Mirco me lad, do ponder that please. They aren't going to have even the "glitches" fixed by 30 November, and there are no plans to PROTECT YOUR DAMN DATA, no intentions of keeping your private information private, no HIPAA compliance even in the works, and this, my friend from Italy, is at the US Federal level. The mind boggles. >...You need (and we need) to move to a free market health care, where people pay and obtain what the market can afford to offer at some price level and efficiency improvements are promptly rewarded...Mirco _______________________________________________ It has been said the medical system is inherently incompatible with free markets. I partially agree, but that is not to say it is hopeless or that the government can solve that problem. One thing governments can do is be a lot more open minded to importing foreign doctors who did not get a bachelor's degree before going to medical school, as we usually require in the states. I personally know a doctor who went to med school in Tehran right out of high school, got her MD at age 23, did a residency, practiced medicine for several years in Iran, fled the country 8 yrs ago, and has been struggling ever since just to get a residency in the USA, anywhere. Somewhere we need to have states which actively recruit foreign doctors who were trained in similar circumstances. They would be lower cost. We could take pharmacists and others that way too. Nursing can be taken as a college major, right out of high school. Why not medical school? Why not pharmacy? Wouldn't that increase the pool of doctors, and drive down the cost? spike From sparge at gmail.com Mon Nov 25 18:09:29 2013 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 13:09:29 -0500 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service Message-ID: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-25/fda-tells-google-backed-23andme-to-halt-dna-test-service.html 23andMe Inc., the Google Inc.-backed DNA analysis company co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, was told by U.S. regulators to halt sales of its main product because it?s being sold without ?marketing clearance or approval.? The Saliva Collection Kit and Personal Genome Service, or PGS, tells users whether they carry a disease, are at risk of a disease and would respond to a drug. Most of the uses fall into the category of a medical device and require Food and Drug Administration approval, the agency told the Mountain View , California-based company in a Nov. 22 lettermade public today. Wojcicki, who recently separated from her husband, Google co-founder Sergey Brin , started 23andMe about six years ago to help people assess their risk of cancer, heart diseaseand other medical conditions. Brin used the saliva kit to determine he had a gene that makes him susceptible to Parkinson?s. ?FDA is concerned about the public health consequences of inaccurate results from the PGS device,? the agency said today. ?The main purpose of compliance with FDA?s regulatory requirements is to ensure that the tests work.? The FDA decided in 2010 that services claiming to evaluate a customer?s risk of disease must be cleared by regulators if the companies sell directly to consumers. Most FDA-cleared genetic tests are for a single disease while 23andMe?s would be the first to test for multiple conditions. ... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Mon Nov 25 19:15:03 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 11:15:03 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> References: <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 7:23 AM, spike wrote: > Perhaps the remarkable thing here is that with all the ice on this planet, > there are no known (to me) life forms that use it in its solid phase. > I can think of one species - homo sapiens - but even then it's mainly used as an external tool (e.g. to build shelters out of, or to remove heat from some part of the body), not evolved biological processes. (Though it is sometimes solid when ingested, internal heat renders it liquid before absorption.) > One would think there would be a snow eater somewhere. Clearly it > wouldn?t be to extract energy from the water (ground state compound) but > rather some kind of life form that can plant itself in snow and use > sunlight. > Would not life in such a region, have enough sunlight that the snow would often be melted? Or if there was not that much sunlight, might it be too little sunlight to sustain life? (Assuming plant life, in areas with year-round snow.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Nov 25 21:36:16 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 13:36:16 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: References: <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> Message-ID: <020401ceea26$5f961050$1ec230f0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Sent: Monday, November 25, 2013 11:15 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 7:23 AM, spike wrote: >>.Perhaps the remarkable thing here is that with all the ice on this planet, there are no known (to me) life forms that use it in its solid phase. >.I can think of one species - homo sapiens - but even then it's mainly used as an external tool (e.g. to build shelters out of, or to remove heat from some part of the body), not evolved biological processes. (Though it is sometimes solid when ingested, internal heat renders it liquid before absorption.) Ja, igloos. Humans use snow as a shelter. Polar bears make dens in the snow; good chance there are others. >>.One would think there would be a snow eater somewhere. >.Would not life in such a region, have enough sunlight that the snow would often be melted? Or if there was not that much sunlight, might it be too little sunlight to sustain life? (Assuming plant life, in areas with year-round snow.) Mosquitoes use sun cups, which are small water puddles in the snow. The snow falls, the sun forms divots which fill with water, anywhere from an actual cup of water to a few gallons, the mosquitoes bite your ass, go lay eggs in those sun cups by the jillions. We know there is a group of humans which skim fly larvae from the surface of a salt water body such as Mono Lake and devour them. http://online.sfsu.edu/bholzman/courses/Fall01%20projects/alkalifly.htm >From the article: How did the Mono Lake alkali-fly get its name? Ephydra hydropyrus hians is the full name and was discovered by a scientist named Say in 1830. Say discovered the fly in an area called Mono Basin in California. The area just east of Yosemite was home to Kuzedika or Mono Lake Paiutes. The Paiutes called the pupae "kutsavi," and during the summer would harvest it and use is as a main source of food. Trade between other tribes in the area become popular and neighboring Yokuts called the Paiutes "Monoche" and their food "mono". The fly-devouring people would be a scraper-gatherer society, ja? So if they can live off of fly larvae, it seems like we could create some kind of machine that would track along in a snow-field with image-recognition, put a tube into the sun cups, suck up the water and mosquito larvae, throw the water away and keep the larvae for fish food if nothing else. I would like the poetic justice of devouring the mosquitoes before they can devour us, but I don't know that mosquito larvae would catch on as the next hipster thing to devour after the sushi is finished off. Hey, mosquito-fed sushi might sell. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Nov 25 22:53:25 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 23:53:25 +0100 Subject: [ExI] ...or else... was: RE: What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <011501ceea04$62630b70$27292250$@att.net> References: <04c101cee67f$d17e8d50$747ba7f0$@att.net> <529361F7.3030201@libero.it> <011501ceea04$62630b70$27292250$@att.net> Message-ID: <5293D4E5.7070307@libero.it> Il 25/11/2013 18:32, spike ha scritto: >> ...In Italy...A lot of people is forced to move from south to north to > obtain the care they need. There are a lot of waiting time everywhere to see > a MD specialist or obtain some examinations from the government health > care... > Ja. Anywhere the same general rules apply: medical school is hard and > expensive. People will not invest in that if the doctors are not able to > make a ton of money at it. So it always means a shortage of doctors. But I > have an idea. Read on please. We will actually have a surplus of MD and specialists (because practically one need to be a specialist to be hired by the health care anyway). We will have a penury of MD in the future, because they bungled the numbers at the University system (like for the nurses). But it is not a real problem. The numbers at the hospitals are lowering anyway. We was 24 nurses in my ward fifteen years ago, now we are 21 (and not all full time). We barely have time to do what is needed now, not much more. The same is true for MD. They just do not hire anyone or hire the minimum legal number of MD they need. >> ...So, no, I do not think if they move from Obamacare to GovernorsCare > there will be any increase of efficiency. In the end, every local government > will try to use the sector to obtain money and votes to stay in power... > > I think there will be an increase in efficiency over federal-level health > care. Anything over water is better than underwater. >> ...You need (and we need) to move to a free market health care, where > people pay and obtain what the market can afford to offer at some price > level and efficiency improvements are promptly rewarded...Mirco > > _______________________________________________ > > It has been said the medical system is inherently incompatible with free > markets. I partially agree, but that is not to say it is hopeless or that > the government can solve that problem. One thing governments can do is be a > lot more open minded to importing foreign doctors who did not get a > bachelor's degree before going to medical school, as we usually require in > the states. I personally know a doctor who went to med school in Tehran > right out of high school, got her MD at age 23, did a residency, practiced > medicine for several years in Iran, fled the country 8 yrs ago, and has been > struggling ever since just to get a residency in the USA, anywhere. > Somewhere we need to have states which actively recruit foreign doctors who > were trained in similar circumstances. They would be lower cost. We could > take pharmacists and others that way too. Plundering someone else stock will not solve your long term problems. At most will delay the day of reckoning. The solution is to reduce (in the US and everywhere) the bar to enter health care as a professional provider. There are stuff nurses can do as good or better than MD. There are other that could be done by technicians without the need of nurses or MD. A lot of stuff could be done by the patient itself, it the right tools could be developed and commercialized. And this would reduce the costs (direct and indirect) a lot. > Nursing can be taken as a college major, right out of high school. Why not > medical school? Why not pharmacy? Wouldn't that increase the pool of > doctors, and drive down the cost? It all depend on what you want they be able to do. If you want certified (by the government) or recognized (by the government) individuals, you have problems. The reason I advocate a completely private infrastructure people pay out of pocket or with catastrophic insurance policies is because they have every incentive to reduce costs and have a lean but effective structure they are able and willing to re-purpose if the original purpose is no more useful. And, mainly, they have competition. Remember the first thing to go out in case of government managed health care is competition. Because government hate competition. With competition they can not choose losers and winners. BTW, how would you manage the streaming of people coming from a state to another to obtain "free" health care? Do you send them packing back to their home state? In Italy is possible to accept all people because the central government, as they distribute the funds, compensate for the expenses of the past year. So a lot of money from the south regions is taken and given to the northern regions to compensate them for the costs they incur for treating the southerns residents. If you have no way to compensate expenses, you go broke nor much slower than Obamacare or you must start refuse treatments. Mirco From stathisp at gmail.com Mon Nov 25 23:57:12 2013 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 10:57:12 +1100 Subject: [ExI] ...or else... was: RE: What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: <011501ceea04$62630b70$27292250$@att.net> References: <04c101cee67f$d17e8d50$747ba7f0$@att.net> <529361F7.3030201@libero.it> <011501ceea04$62630b70$27292250$@att.net> Message-ID: On 26 November 2013 04:32, spike wrote: > I personally know a doctor who went to med school in Tehran > right out of high school, got her MD at age 23, did a residency, practiced > medicine for several years in Iran, fled the country 8 yrs ago, and has been > struggling ever since just to get a residency in the USA, anywhere. > Somewhere we need to have states which actively recruit foreign doctors who > were trained in similar circumstances. They would be lower cost. We could > take pharmacists and others that way too. > > Nursing can be taken as a college major, right out of high school. Why not > medical school? Why not pharmacy? Wouldn't that increase the pool of > doctors, and drive down the cost? Why would that drive down costs? In Australia and most Commonwealth countries the traditional medical degree is a 6 year undergraduate course with a 1 year internship, 7 years in total. At some universities that has recently been changed to a 3 year premed degree and a 3 + 1 year postgraduate medical degree. The reason given for the change is that students will go into the medical degree more mature and more certain that it is the career for them than if they had to decide as 17 or 18 year olds. But the course is basically the same and costs the same. -- Stathis Papaioannou From spike66 at att.net Tue Nov 26 01:55:18 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 17:55:18 -0800 Subject: [ExI] ...or else... was: RE: What happens when Bitcoin goes to a million bucks? In-Reply-To: References: <04c101cee67f$d17e8d50$747ba7f0$@att.net> <529361F7.3030201@libero.it> <011501ceea04$62630b70$27292250$@att.net> Message-ID: <031901ceea4a$8f7a00a0$ae6e01e0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou ... > >>... Nursing can be taken as a college major, right out of high school. > Why not medical school? Why not pharmacy? Wouldn't that increase the > pool of doctors, and drive down the cost? >...Why would that drive down costs? In Australia and most Commonwealth countries the traditional medical degree is a 6 year undergraduate course with a 1 year internship, 7 years in total. At some universities that has recently been changed to a 3 year premed degree and a 3 + 1 year postgraduate medical degree. The reason given for the change is that students will go into the medical degree more mature and more certain that it is the career for them than if they had to decide as 17 or 18 year olds. But the course is basically the same and costs the same. -- Stathis Papaioannou _______________________________________________ Medical school costs could be reduced by use of online learning. Then after a typical one year of home study, students could take a comprehensive in-person test to qualify for the expensive lab courses. The doctors would have less time invested in their training, so they would be able to pay off their debts on lower salaries. The increased supply of doctors would also drive down salaries. The removal of the law business from the medicine business is an even bigger potential savings than use of doctors who have no bachelor's degree. spike From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 26 07:06:21 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 08:06:21 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> References: <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> Message-ID: <20131126070621.GU10793@leitl.org> On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 07:23:28AM -0800, spike wrote: > Ja. I can't think of any life forms that depend on that oddball > characteristic of water ice. Perhaps the remarkable thing here is that with > all the ice on this planet, there are no known (to me) life forms that use > it in its solid phase. One would think there would be a snow eater There is no life in solid phase (yet) since it relies on passive transport. It also uses diffusion and brownian noise to drive machinery in solvent phase. Notice it uses 2d solvents (lipid bilayer) as well 3d solvents, more complicated systems (host-guest complexes) and it also does active transport, within the solvated paradigm. If you want life to work in solid state you'll need machine phase systems. That life can't emerge naturally, so it needs to be midwifed by solvated life (us) to come into being. We would be a sacrifical stage in its bootstrap. > somewhere. Clearly it wouldn't be to extract energy from the water (ground > state compound) but rather some kind of life form that can plant itself in > snow and use sunlight. From listsb at infinitefaculty.org Tue Nov 26 06:59:37 2013 From: listsb at infinitefaculty.org (Brian Manning Delaney) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 07:59:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> El 2013-11-25 19:09, Dave Sill escribi?: > http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-25/fda-tells-google-backed-23andme-to-halt-dna-test-service.html > > 23andMe Inc., the Google Inc.-backed DNA analysis company co-founded by > Anne Wojcicki, was told by U.S. regulators to halt sales of its main > product because it?s being sold without ?marketing clearance or approval.? [...] Possible viral -- actually, mainstream media... -- falsehood warning. The FDA letter (http://www.fda.gov/.../WarningLetters/2013/ucm376296.htm) as I read it, only orders 23andMe to stop marketing the saliva collection kit. ("23andMe must immediately discontinue marketing the PGS until such time as it receives FDA marketing authorization for the device.") Is marketing it (for a particular purpose) the same as /selling/ it (without mentioning said, or any, purpose)? Doesn't seem like it, but I'm no expert in regulatory law. Brian From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Nov 26 07:36:20 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 02:36:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The post-antibiotic era In-Reply-To: <528D1B41.8020505@aleph.se> References: <5288AEB4.5000301@aleph.se> <52894800.8040505@aleph.se> <528D1B41.8020505@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 3:27 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > Antibiotic use in animal husbandry is actually a serious bad, and rightly > banned in many countries (e.g. banned for non-medical purposes across EU > since 2006). You can produce cheap meat without it. It is just that you can > make cheaper meat with it, at the price of feeding resistance bigtime. (Not > that the EU cares about cheap meat...) ### I disagree here. I am not familiar with any good evidence that agricultural use of antibiotics in feed has any negative impact on human health, directly or indirectly. From what I heard, the antibiotics used to increase meat yields are usually different from the ones used in humans, and, much more importantly, they are not used in bacteriostatic or bactericidal concentrations. This bears repeating: It is impossible to select for high levels of antibiotic resistance using low concentrations of antibiotics. The mechanism whereby antibiotics increase yields is not through killing of bacteria but rather through some as yet poorly understood signaling processes. This is completely different from medical use in humans, where the purpose is to achieve bacteriostasis or even bacteriolysis. The source of MRSA is not a farm, it's a hospital, and it's in the hospitals that antibiotics should be limited. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Nov 26 08:23:30 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 03:23:30 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A Gedanken Rational Eugenics Experiment (AGREE) In-Reply-To: <20131024172753.GB4352@ninja.nosyntax.net> References: <20131024011619.GB4312@ninja.nosyntax.net> <20131024172753.GB4352@ninja.nosyntax.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 1:27 PM, rex wrote: > BTW, why do you assume so few zygotes are viable? ### This is extrapolated from the frequency of vanished twins (whose remains are found in the afterbirth), and so called "delayed periods" in fertile sexually active women, which actually represent very early miscarriages, added to the more obviously visible cases of fetal loss (miscarriage, stillbirth). Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Nov 26 08:44:10 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 03:44:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 3:53 AM, Omar Rahman wrote: > I would prefer the Federal government to implement an insurance policy that > MUST be accepted at all hospitals and only pays a FIXED cost for procedures. > Comparison shopping doesn't work well in health care because there is a too > much time pressure and you don't have time to move to Arizona/Hawaii/etc > where procedure X is covered and/or cheaper than where you live in a 'State > Model' situation as you have proposed. ### Omar, you are repeating standard leftist boilerplate on medical care (at least what they say when they don't talk about the single payer). You hit all the points, even the notion of impossibility of patient informed decision making in medical care. Just think about the following sentence for five minutes: "It is generally impossible for an individual to reasonably choose a doctor/hospital/insurance plan". Cogitate on the details, try to imagine how a human might go about this task. Only a propaganda-elicited learned helplessness can stop you from reducing it to an absurdity. Or think about this one: "Fear of the police is a good way of making sure there are enough surgeons healing patients everywhere". Rafal From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 26 09:08:06 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 10:08:06 +0100 Subject: [ExI] New Wave Energy wants to put power plants in the sky Message-ID: <20131126090806.GZ10793@leitl.org> http://www.gizmag.com/new-wave-energy-creates-aerial-power-plants/29849/ New Wave Energy wants to put power plants in the sky By Lakshmi Sandhana November 25, 2013 A model of a high altitude aerial power plant that harvests both solar and wind energy and beams it wirelessly to the ground. (Image: New Wave Energy UK) Image Gallery (4 images) Harvesting power from the wind and the sun is nothing new. We've seen flying wind turbines and solar power plants that aim to provide clean renewable energy. UK-based New Wave Energy has a bolder idea in the works. The company plans to build the first high altitude aerial power plant, using networks of unmanned drones that can harvest energy from multiple sources and transmit it wirelessly to receiving stations on the ground. Each drone in a network can power itself and also deliver 50 kW of usable energy (Image: N...Four rotors and wind turbines are included in the design (Image: New Wave Energy UK)A close up of the model with a flat solar panel for generating solar energy (Image: New Wa... The patent-pending technology aims to have drone networks hover in the sky harvesting both solar and wind power, while moving about at low speeds to keep track of the sun. The drones will operate at high altitudes where the winds are more stable and there's minimal chance of weather patterns or aircraft interfering with them. "At 50,000 ft (15,000 m) there is very little air traffic and biodiversity, unless you go over the Himalayas," company director Michael Burdett tells Gizmag. "Implementing a system in these conditions will not obstruct any existing systems." Each 20 x 20 m (65 x 65 ft) drone will have four rotors, multiple wind turbines and a flat base for generating solar power. It'll be able to power itself with the harvested energy and generate an additional 50 kW that can be transmitted wirelessly to the ground. Rectenna arrays installed inland or on offshore installations would receive the electromagnetic waves and convert them into usable power. Burdett estimates that an aerial power plant containing thousands of drones could produce around 400 MW of power, enough to power over 205,000 homes annually. Designed to be easy to update, the drone networks can be outfitted with more efficient generators as they become available. A drone power plant capable of delivering so much power, the company says, would be pretty large, around twice the size of an offshore wind farm such as the Robin Rigg farm in the Solway Firth, Scotland. Though it sounds quite ambitious, there have been a number of advances in drone design and technology that help give an aerial power plant some weight. Solara's UAV can stay airborne for up to 5 years and Quadrotor's UAVs are able to charge devices wirelessly. Getting a power-producing drone network airborne also offers other benefits, such as being able to link small aerial power plants to each other wirelessly to deliver large amounts of energy reliably. The company states that it will be able to handle energy output within a drone network as efficiently as managing data in an information network. An aerial power plant also makes it easier to provide power to remote locations with long range transmissions, or help out immediately in the event of an emergency or a natural disaster. "The time for a response in times of natural disaster depends on the drone's current location and flight speed once the final form is specified," Burdett says. "Using smaller drones of 50 to 100 kW will reduce implementation times. It would be feasible to produce a system to operate at lower altitudes if required, one which could be transported with other equipment for relief efforts and implemented instantly." Aside of the obvious advantage of requiring little or no land space, the drone networks would be invisible to the naked eye making it realistic for them to be installed anywhere. The company aims to make use of the unpopulated airspace over the Atlantic, Indian or Pacific Ocean first. Burdett states that New Wave Energy will be able to deliver energy around the clock to many different parts of the world using solar, wind, thermoelectrics, infrared and visible spectrum rectennas. It took around two years for New Wave Energy UK to develop the technology. The company plans to start a Kickstarter campaign to raise around ?300,000 (US$500,000) and expects to have a working prototype within 6 months of receiving funding. Source: New Wave Energy UK About the Author Lakshmi Sandhana When Lakshmi first encountered pig's wings in a petri dish, she realized that writing about scientists and imagineers was the perfect way to live in an expanding mind bubble. Articles for Wired, BBC Online, New Scientist, The Economist and Fast Company soon followed. She's currently pursuing her dream of traveling from country to country to not only ferret out cool stories but also indulge outrageously in local street foods. When not working, you'll find her either buried nose deep in a fantasy novel or trying her hand at improvisational comedy. All articles by Lakshmi Sandhana From anders at aleph.se Tue Nov 26 10:40:36 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 10:40:36 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> References: <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> Message-ID: <52947AA4.1080604@aleph.se> On 2013-11-25 15:23, spike wrote: > > >...There are other expanding liquids like beryllium difluoride, but most > are elements like silicon, bismuth, antimony, gallium and plutonium... > > Ja. I can't think of any life forms that depend on that oddball > characteristic of water ice. Perhaps the remarkable thing here is > that with all the ice on this planet, there are no known (to me) life > forms that use it in its solid phase. One would think there would be > a snow eater somewhere. Clearly it wouldn't be to extract energy from > the water (ground state compound) but rather some kind of life form > that can plant itself in snow and use sunlight. > There are algae that thrive not just on or under sea-ice, but in it: http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/essay_krembsdeming.html Also, some animals have adapted to freezing in order to (I assume) get a first shot at good locations: http://science.whoi.edu/labs/pinedalab/Subpages/larvaeinice.html But note that they do not eat snow - it would need to provide so much energy per volume eaten that it counteracts the energy required to melt it, and that is a pretty tall order. > >... Even I agree that a planet with plutonium oceans is unlikely to be > habitable for life. -- Dr Anders Sandberg > > I learned a new thing by thinking about this. There is an isotope of > plutonium which is non-fissile, 244. Get a sphere of the stuff, heat > it to 900 and some Kelvin, you have an ocean of plutonium, with > radioactive particles up the kazoo but no fission. Until Anders' > offhanded comment about an ocean of plutonium, I never knew there was > such a critter. Ain't science kewallll? {8-] > Sounds like a great practical joke to do when re-engineering a solar system. A hot ecology based on plutonium as a solvent for some weird metal-oxide biochemistry/mechanochemistry. -- 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 Tue Nov 26 11:14:41 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 11:14:41 +0000 Subject: [ExI] [tp] Thiel, Anissimov and Neo-reactionary Monarchism In-Reply-To: <20131125142558.GR10793@leitl.org> References: <20131125142558.GR10793@leitl.org> Message-ID: <529482A1.3010409@aleph.se> On 2013-11-25 14:25, Eugen Leitl wrote: > http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/ Hmm... where does the analysis of related or interacting ideas turn into conspiracy theory? I assume this is when you actually believe the group you are talking about has more power than you. Which might explain the inclusion of Peter Thiel - if there wasn't at least one rich guy in the mess, it would not be more exciting than other groups with weird ideas (he seems to be a popular target for nasty claims). Overall, an interesting read. The main problem with it is of course that seeing problems with democracy or other current institutions doesn't automatically mean you are in favour of monarchy or are reactionary. But certainly the simple structure of monarchies makes them easier to explain than the interlocking subtleties of other regulatory systems: if one is not willing to dive into the deep end of the sociology/political science pool there might be few conceptual options to base one's discourse on. "All exit, no voice" is an interesting suggestion. As an emicrat myself I have some sympathy for it. But Hirschman's original point was that exit (and even more loyalty) could make things *worse*: if the capable members of a community that is going bad in some respect withdraw, it leaves the rest of the community less able to correct itself. Anybody seeking to construct better societies should consider the point made by David Brin about the importance of open societies: they are self-correcting because members are allowed to criticise what doesn't work, people responsible are held accountable, and the system itself can be updated. Societies that cannot efficiently self-correct have brittle stability, since their flaws tend to grow until they overwhelm them. If you cannot tell the boss that why his policies are stupid, the system will not make efficient use of available brainpower and information. In a sense, the idea of a monarchy or technocracy is based on the same flawed assumption as planned economy: they all assume that the system can be controlled by a sufficiently smart and well informed central agency, but all the preferences and information exists at the periphery. The von Mieses critique bites technocrats as badly as Soviet planners, despite the formers having neater dashboards and dreams of ubiquitous surveillance. Yes, in theory all the information is at his fingertips, but he either needs to aggregate it or have sub-systems analyse it in order to act. Even if those subsystems are AI (rather than layers of analysts and bureaucrats afraid of telling bad news to their bosses) they can easily introduce nontrivial biases and modelling errors - and detecting those requires further checking of reality-vs-model by other parts of the administration, subject to exactly the same problems as the top level. I think Virginia Postrel nailed it well in "The future and its enemies" when she pointed out that the big split about the future was between dynamists who have an open-ended, "let a thousand flowers bloom" approach of trial and error open-ended learning, and the stasists that think it needs to be regulated by experts because it could be dangerous (technocrats) or should be avoided altogether because it is bad (reactionaries). The current discussion is not so much about the future as about the present. But post 2000 the future and the present are the same. We should just make sure we do not make the past the future too. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From rex at nosyntax.net Tue Nov 26 10:52:56 2013 From: rex at nosyntax.net (rex) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 02:52:56 -0800 Subject: [ExI] New Wave Energy wants to put power plants in the sky In-Reply-To: <20131126090806.GZ10793@leitl.org> References: <20131126090806.GZ10793@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20131126105256.GA24500@ninja.nosyntax.net> Eugen Leitl [2013-11-26 01:10]: > >http://www.gizmag.com/new-wave-energy-creates-aerial-power-plants/29849/ > >New Wave Energy wants to put power plants in the sky > >By Lakshmi Sandhana > >November 25, 2013 > >A model of a high altitude aerial power plant that harvests both solar and >wind energy and beams it wirelessly to the ground. (Image: New Wave Energy >UK) > >Image Gallery (4 images) > >Harvesting power from the wind and the sun is nothing new. We've seen flying >wind turbines and solar power plants that aim to provide clean renewable >energy. UK-based New Wave Energy has a bolder idea in the works. The company >plans to build the first high altitude aerial power plant, using networks of >unmanned drones that can harvest energy from multiple sources and transmit it >wirelessly to receiving stations on the ground. It reads like a scam to me. I've never seen a feasible wind generator design that isn't anchored to the ground, and AFAIK 50KW wireless power transmission over miles has not been demonstrated, either. -rex -- "It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end." - Ursula Le Guin From protokol2020 at gmail.com Tue Nov 26 11:25:03 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 12:25:03 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <52947AA4.1080604@aleph.se> References: <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> <52947AA4.1080604@aleph.se> Message-ID: Those extremophiles have a less extreme background to start. A human may survive on Antarctica. But if there was no Africa (and no Europe), the number of humans on Antarctica would be zero. On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-11-25 15:23, spike wrote: > > > >?There are other expanding liquids like beryllium difluoride, but most > are elements like silicon, bismuth, antimony, gallium and plutonium? > > > > Ja. I can?t think of any life forms that depend on that oddball > characteristic of water ice. Perhaps the remarkable thing here is that > with all the ice on this planet, there are no known (to me) life forms that > use it in its solid phase. One would think there would be a snow eater > somewhere. Clearly it wouldn?t be to extract energy from the water (ground > state compound) but rather some kind of life form that can plant itself in > snow and use sunlight. > > > There are algae that thrive not just on or under sea-ice, but in it: > http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/essay_krembsdeming.html > Also, some animals have adapted to freezing in order to (I assume) get a > first shot at good locations: > http://science.whoi.edu/labs/pinedalab/Subpages/larvaeinice.html > > But note that they do not eat snow - it would need to provide so much > energy per volume eaten that it counteracts the energy required to melt it, > and that is a pretty tall order. > > > > > > >? Even I agree that a planet with plutonium oceans is unlikely to be > habitable for life. -- Dr Anders Sandberg > > > > I learned a new thing by thinking about this. There is an isotope of > plutonium which is non-fissile, 244. Get a sphere of the stuff, heat it to > 900 and some Kelvin, you have an ocean of plutonium, with radioactive > particles up the kazoo but no fission. Until Anders? offhanded comment > about an ocean of plutonium, I never knew there was such a critter. Ain?t > science kewallll? {8-] > > > Sounds like a great practical joke to do when re-engineering a solar > system. A hot ecology based on plutonium as a solvent for some weird > metal-oxide biochemistry/mechanochemistry. > > > > -- > 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 > > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rahmans at me.com Tue Nov 26 14:09:06 2013 From: rahmans at me.com (Omar Rahman) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 15:09:06 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 03:44:10 -0500 > From: Rafal Smigrodzki > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks > Republicans are "asinine" > > On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 3:53 AM, Omar Rahman wrote: > > >> I would prefer the Federal government to implement an insurance policy that >> MUST be accepted at all hospitals and only pays a FIXED cost for procedures. >> Comparison shopping doesn't work well in health care because there is a too >> much time pressure and you don't have time to move to Arizona/Hawaii/etc >> where procedure X is covered and/or cheaper than where you live in a 'State >> Model' situation as you have proposed. > > ### Omar, you are repeating standard leftist boilerplate on medical > care (at least what they say when they don't talk about the single > payer). You hit all the points, even the notion of impossibility of > patient informed decision making in medical care. Just think about the > following sentence for five minutes: "It is generally impossible for > an individual to reasonably choose a doctor/hospital/insurance plan". > Cogitate on the details, try to imagine how a human might go about > this task. Only a propaganda-elicited learned helplessness can stop > you from reducing it to an absurdity. Or think about this one: "Fear > of the police is a good way of making sure there are enough surgeons > healing patients everywhere". > > Rafal Rafal, I actually took the five minutes you suggested. Conclusions: 1) these statements are yours but you seem to be proposing them as 'my position' 2) these statements are falsifiable on first reading 3) this is an invalid form of argumentation known as 'Straw Man' see https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman Of your two statements the first is closer to something I might say, except that I wouldn't want to speak in absolutes. Rafal, as a doctor it would seem that you are in a better position to make an informed choice about health care than the vast majority of people. But are you really? With the multitude of 'competing' plans out there how can you be sure unless you read and compare them all. Here's a new reason to need radical life extension: there is no way in hell that anyone could read all the fine print in all the plans in what is a current 'human lifespan'. Especially as armies of lawyers keep changing the details more or less unilaterally. Maybe someone could create an AI to read legalese: the Turing's Lawyer Test perhaps? We almost never have complete information when we make our decisions so I wouldn't worry too much about the fact that we can't read all the plans except...except.....except.... Insurance is a form of gambling. (You are betting you are going to get sick, the insurance company bets that you will not get 'sick'.) You are not 'the house'. (The rules are different for each side, with one side having a statistical advantage.) 'The house' makes the rules. (The house decides what 'sick' is and what, if any, treatment applies.) 'The house' always wins in the end. (The house always makes a profit from cheating you at the most helpless and miserable points in your life.) The argument I make for 'socialised medicine' is that I want to be 'the house'. If there was ever a case for Keynesian spending, it would be in education, infrastructure, and health care, things that demonstrably grow the tax base and productivity of a nation. Well, I want to be 'the house' in a collective society, with my fellow citizens and workers, with whom I shall unite to form a glorious republic of the people, for the people, and by the people. See all those very positive words in the previous sentence? How is it that when I string them together like that some list readers will be 'seeing red' in more ways than one? The argument for private health care is also very compelling. It goes like this: I, or my family member, is ill/hurt. We are rich, there is no damn way I'm going to wait while the situation might deteriorate. Take my money, get me the top specialist, and a latte. Rafal, as you may know, I live in Poland. If you ever pass through Warsaw we can meet up for coffee and discuss 'extropian' things. Would you agree that Poland has a dysfunctional health care system? I certainly think so. There are, at least, three causes in my opinion. 1) poor management of public systems 2) poor funding of public systems 3) the existence of private hospitals which exist mainly, in my opinion, to allow 'rich' people to jump the queue and get prioritised care in public health care institutions I'm not 'rich', not by a long shot, but when my family members or myself are ill I don't wait to see the doctor in the public hospital I generally go to see them in their private practice. I'll pay out of pocket if I have to. Seems all well and good, yes? Sometimes the doctor says that the situation isn't as serious as I thought and that's the end of it, but sometimes there is a real problem that must be addressed. In that case the doctor tells you to go to public hospital X at time Y and see Doctor Z. In the current situation in which I live it is in my interest to do this. In effect health care here in Poland, and in many other places, is prioritised on the ability to pay. It should be prioritised on a triage basis. How do we account for the undeniable human need to receive the best health care possible? Isn't the right to the best health care in fact the right to self preservation? I think that it is. My best case solution would be to have: 1) a single payer solution (which meets some agreed upon minimum standard of care) that everyone must pay into 2) a private system that is entirely separate (does not function as a queue jumper to the public system) Sometimes people talk about 'positive rights' and 'negative rights', sometimes paraphrasing this into 'freedom to' and 'freedom from'. I believe we have a right to health care in society to whatever level we collectively agree to fund it. That's the freedom from disease, and it has, for example, the social benefit of preventing the spread of disease and increasing the productivity of those who would otherwise die or be ill. I also believe we have a right to get the best health care we can afford. That for me is the freedom to, for example, cryopreserve yourself, make some radical body modifications, try unproven therapies, etc. etc. This is where I see possibility for loosening regulations, as it is an optional system and could function under the rule of caveat emptor. With the removal of much regulation, and patients acting under informed consent, I see the possibility for medical advances to move faster. Currently, the US should move in the 'Canadian' direction re health care. The rich can, and do, fly to Switzerland anyways. If you can't afford to fly to Switzerland and pay out of pocket there you're probably better off in a 'Canadian' system. Best regards, Omar Rahman -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Nov 26 14:18:09 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 09:18:09 -0500 Subject: [ExI] [tp] Thiel, Anissimov and Neo-reactionary Monarchism In-Reply-To: <529482A1.3010409@aleph.se> References: <20131125142558.GR10793@leitl.org> <529482A1.3010409@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 11/26/13, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > Hmm... where does the analysis of related or interacting ideas turn into > conspiracy theory? ### The moment you notice the ideas don't fit with your ideology (and you are a statist). Again I have to commend you on very calm and evenhanded treatment of this hatchet job on Moldbug and his buddies. I have been reading Unqualified Reservations for years, and for me anybody who whips out the old race card here ("scientific racism") is just a hack. Moldbug has a penchant for penning excessively long essays larded with page-long quotations from white men dead so long ago they are not even on the mainstream leftoid's target list anymore but he does have a finely developed sense of humor and dozens of ideas that are inspiring, if not always correct. I highly recommend his treatises on money and how old statist propaganda has a way of becoming a widely accepted fact after a mere 20 years of daily repetition. Luckily, with Google Books, the words of modern world's vanquished foes are no longer confined to the deep archives of university libraries but are a mere click away from our screens. Rafal From spike66 at att.net Tue Nov 26 15:01:17 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 07:01:17 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <20131126070621.GU10793@leitl.org> References: <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> <20131126070621.GU10793@leitl.org> Message-ID: <040a01ceeab8$5ca82ad0$15f88070$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Subject: Re: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 07:23:28AM -0800, spike wrote: > ... Perhaps the remarkable thing here is > that with all the ice on this planet, there are no known (to me) life > forms that use it in its solid phase. One would think there would be > a snow eater >...There is no life in solid phase (yet) since it relies on passive transport. It also uses diffusion and brownian noise to drive machinery in solvent phase. Notice it uses 2d solvents (lipid bilayer) as well 3d solvents, more complicated systems (host-guest complexes) and it also does active transport, within the solvated paradigm. _______________________________________________ Ja, what I meant was some plant that could land on dirty snow, create some kind of root or mineral transport system which would let it germinate on the surface of the snow, use sunlight to send the snow thru the phase change into liquid water, reach down some number of cm to the phosphorus sources below in the soil, transport that and the other necessary minerals to and from the leaves, then have a plant which germinated on the snowy surface to create a plant which started life by getting water from melting snow. The bottleneck might be in collecting enough energy from small leaves to get the 80 cal/gram needed to change the phase of the snow. spike From spike66 at att.net Tue Nov 26 16:02:20 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 08:02:20 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <52947AA4.1080604@aleph.se> References: <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> <52947AA4.1080604@aleph.se> Message-ID: <040b01ceeac0$e3f44520$abdccf60$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg >>>. Even I agree that a planet with plutonium oceans is unlikely to be habitable for life. -- Dr Anders Sandberg >>.I learned a new thing by thinking about this. There is an isotope of plutonium which is non-fissile, 244. Get a sphere of the stuff, heat it to 900 and some Kelvin, you have an ocean of plutonium, with radioactive particles up the kazoo but no fission. Until Anders' offhanded comment about an ocean of plutonium, I never knew there was such a critter. Ain't science kewallll? {8-] >.Sounds like a great practical joke to do when re-engineering a solar system. A hot ecology based on plutonium as a solvent for some weird metal-oxide biochemistry/mechanochemistry. -- Dr Anders Sandberg As practical jokes go, that one would be elaborate. As Anders' comments often do, this notion of a plutonium sea has me pondering. Assume into existence a sphere of molten plutonium 244. The melting point of plutonium is not so high, about the same as magnesium and lower than that of aluminum, both of which are easy to melt for the home hobbyist, and even if not, most of us here have tossed aluminum soda cans into the campfire, so it isn't glowing red when it melts. So I was starting to work on a heat model that has some interesting properties. If you assume the liquid plutonium planet out in space far from anything, at about 650K, ten over the melting point, it is easy to calculate the heat loss from radiation to space with Boltzmann's law. Now take the radioactive decay energies, 80 million year half life for Pu244, then see what happens. There is an alpha decay to Neptunium 240 plus a helium atom at first, and helium reacts with nothing so that stuff comes bubbling to the surface, and the 240Np beta decays with a half life of about an hour to Pu240, which is fissible. The model's future may depend on the initial radius of your planet, but it looks to me like the thing eventually explodes. Thanks Anders! spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Tue Nov 26 16:41:30 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 08:41:30 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 10:59 PM, Brian Manning Delaney < listsb at infinitefaculty.org> wrote: > Possible viral -- actually, mainstream media... -- falsehood warning. The > FDA letter (http://www.fda.gov/.../WarningLetters/2013/ucm376296.htm) as > I read it, only orders 23andMe to stop marketing the saliva collection kit. > ("23andMe must immediately discontinue marketing the PGS until such time as > it receives FDA marketing authorization for the device.") Is marketing it > (for a particular purpose) the same as /selling/ it (without mentioning > said, or any, purpose)? Doesn't seem like it, but I'm no expert in > regulatory law. > Marketing and sales are intertwined in this case. Unless they have a sales channel that strips out all reason from why you would want to buy their kit (which in practice does not generate significant sales in any but a very few cases, of which they're not one), they would inherently be "marketing" it every time they tried to make a sale. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Nov 26 16:31:59 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 08:31:59 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <040b01ceeac0$e3f44520$abdccf60$@att.net> References: <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> <52947AA4.1080604@aleph.se> <040b01ceeac0$e3f44520$abdccf60$@att.net> Message-ID: <043c01ceeac5$082f5660$188e0320$@att.net> Doh! I meant 640C, not 640K. Embarrasskin! Here's something cool: the Pu alpha decays to 240Np, which is denser, so it sinks toward the center, but really doesn't have time to go far with that hour half-life to 240Pu, but then the concentration of 240Pu goes up and heats up, so I suppose it would boil, but under enormous pressure perhaps not, so it isn't clear if a critical mass eventually results. At about 900K starting temperature, the radiative heat loss to space isn't much, and there is gravitational heating as the helium bubbles to the surface and the radius decreases, resulting in heating. Wowsers I need to get to work on a sim of this, oy. My intuition tells me it eventually creates enough Pu240 to create a critical mass. It alphas down to Uranium 236 with a half-life of about 6600 years. Then some of that alphas to 232U and a little of it undergoes honest fission to lead and magnesium. What I don't know is if a critical mass in the center of an enormous ball of Pu244 does what we are so accustomed to critical masses doing. Any nucular physicists, do feel free to jump in and help me here. Hey I wonder if the feds are getting nervous watching me google around on plutonium and uranium? spike From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2013 8:02 AM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: Re: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) >. On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg >>>. Even I agree that a planet with plutonium oceans is unlikely to be habitable for life. -- Dr Anders Sandberg >>.I learned a new thing by thinking about this. There is an isotope of plutonium which is non-fissile, 244. Get a sphere of the stuff, heat it to 900 and some Kelvin, you have an ocean of plutonium, with radioactive particles up the kazoo but no fission. Until Anders' offhanded comment about an ocean of plutonium, I never knew there was such a critter. Ain't science kewallll? {8-] >.Sounds like a great practical joke to do when re-engineering a solar system. A hot ecology based on plutonium as a solvent for some weird metal-oxide biochemistry/mechanochemistry. -- Dr Anders Sandberg As practical jokes go, that one would be elaborate. As Anders' comments often do, this notion of a plutonium sea has me pondering. Assume into existence a sphere of molten plutonium 244. The melting point of plutonium is not so high, about the same as magnesium and lower than that of aluminum, both of which are easy to melt for the home hobbyist, and even if not, most of us here have tossed aluminum soda cans into the campfire, so it isn't glowing red when it melts. So I was starting to work on a heat model that has some interesting properties. If you assume the liquid plutonium planet out in space far from anything, at about 650K, ten over the melting point, it is easy to calculate the heat loss from radiation to space with Boltzmann's law. Now take the radioactive decay energies, 80 million year half life for Pu244, then see what happens. There is an alpha decay to Neptunium 240 plus a helium atom at first, and helium reacts with nothing so that stuff comes bubbling to the surface, and the 240Np beta decays with a half life of about an hour to Pu240, which is fissible. The model's future may depend on the initial radius of your planet, but it looks to me like the thing eventually explodes. Thanks Anders! spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Nov 26 17:16:39 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan Ust) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 09:16:39 -0800 Subject: [ExI] OT: self-promotion References: <8B733E9F-D5DB-4206-AD4D-737938216A00@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7955C3EF-F801-4CE8-BC46-F8D22E97DBC3@yahoo.com> "Medea's Gift," my Kindle thriller set in the far south seas, will be free all day today PST: Australia -- http://www.amazon.au/gp/product/B00GHX2M1O Germany --http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00GHX2M1O Italy --http://www.amazon.it/gp/product/B00GHX2M1O UK --http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00GHX2M1O US --http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GHX2M1O Even if you don't have a Kindle, the story can be viewed on the desktop. Also, at the site, you can view the opening of the story to see if piques your interest. Regards, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Nov 26 17:48:46 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 09:48:46 -0800 Subject: [ExI] [tp] Thiel, Anissimov and Neo-reactionary Monarchism In-Reply-To: <529482A1.3010409@aleph.se> References: <20131125142558.GR10793@leitl.org> <529482A1.3010409@aleph.se> Message-ID: <008701ceeacf$c2469ae0$46d3d0a0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: [ExI] [tp] Thiel, Anissimov and Neo-reactionary Monarchism On 2013-11-25 14:25, Eugen Leitl wrote: > http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/ >... might explain the inclusion of Peter Thiel - if there wasn't at least one rich guy in the mess, it would not be more exciting than other groups with weird ideas (he seems to be a popular target for nasty claims). >...Overall, an interesting read. The main problem with it is of course that seeing problems with democracy or other current institutions doesn't automatically mean you are in favour of monarchy or are reactionary... -- Dr Anders Sandberg _______________________________________________ Ja, that is what I concluded too Anders. The article felt like it carried the unstated assumption that world socialism is the future, therefore anyone who isn't for world socialism must be reactionary. I have read Peter Thiel's comments and attended his lectures; I can calmly assure you that man is anything but reactionary. He has a crystal clear view of the future. In some ways we could argue that socialists are the reactionaries. Margaret Thatcher has so eloquently identified its shortcoming: it works fine until they run out of other people's money. We get unnecessarily tangled up in racys and archys today, monarchy, aristocracy, anarchy, yakkity-yak-acy, and bla-blarchy, but at the end of the day, the guy with the money is the ruler, and the guy with the technology has the money, so everything melts down to technocracy. COOL! spike From pharos at gmail.com Tue Nov 26 18:35:31 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 18:35:31 +0000 Subject: [ExI] [tp] Thiel, Anissimov and Neo-reactionary Monarchism In-Reply-To: <008701ceeacf$c2469ae0$46d3d0a0$@att.net> References: <20131125142558.GR10793@leitl.org> <529482A1.3010409@aleph.se> <008701ceeacf$c2469ae0$46d3d0a0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 5:48 PM, spike wrote: > Ja, that is what I concluded too Anders. The article felt like it carried > the unstated assumption that world socialism is the future, therefore anyone > who isn't for world socialism must be reactionary. I have read Peter > Thiel's comments and attended his lectures; I can calmly assure you that man > is anything but reactionary. He has a crystal clear view of the future. > > In some ways we could argue that socialists are the reactionaries. Margaret > Thatcher has so eloquently identified its shortcoming: it works fine until > they run out of other people's money. > Can't the socialists just keep printing trillions as required, like the US does???? ;) BillK From msd001 at gmail.com Tue Nov 26 18:58:12 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 13:58:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <043c01ceeac5$082f5660$188e0320$@att.net> References: <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> <52947AA4.1080604@aleph.se> <040b01ceeac0$e3f44520$abdccf60$@att.net> <043c01ceeac5$082f5660$188e0320$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 11:31 AM, spike wrote: > Any nucular physicists, do feel free to jump in and help me here. > > > > Hey I wonder if the feds are getting nervous watching me google around on > plutonium and uranium? > > > Probably no more than normal nervousness watching you google around. They look for abnormal patterns. As long as spike-like traffic is coming from your residence, no alarms. Perhaps in your case if you were to suddenly cease your googling they'd have to assume you're spending your free time assembling said items. :) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Nov 26 20:21:43 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 20:21:43 +0000 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 6:59 AM, Brian Manning Delaney wrote: > Possible viral -- actually, mainstream media... -- falsehood warning. The > FDA letter (http://www.fda.gov/.../WarningLetters/2013/ucm376296.htm) as I > read it, only orders 23andMe to stop marketing the saliva collection kit. > ("23andMe must immediately discontinue marketing the PGS until such time as > it receives FDA marketing authorization for the device.") Is marketing it > (for a particular purpose) the same as /selling/ it (without mentioning > said, or any, purpose)? Doesn't seem like it, but I'm no expert in > regulatory law. > 'Marketing' as the FDA regulations use the term, means 'Offering for sale'. The letter orders 23andMe to stop selling the Saliva Collection Kit and Personal Genome Service (PGS) until approved by the FDA. The FDA said the company repeatedly has failed to provide the scientific data necessary to prove that its test works as advertised. In its letter, which was dated Nov. 22 but posted online Monday, the FDA said it was concerned about 23andMe?s direct-to-consumer test ?because of the potential health consequences that could result from false positive or false negative assessments,? which could lead people into unnecessary or ineffective treatments. The agency also said that the company had failed to support its claims despite ?more than 14 face-to-face and teleconference meetings? with FDA officials, as well as ?hundreds of e-mail exchanges? and ?ample detailed feedback.? ------------- So 23andMe now have to prove that their tests actually work. If they say a subject is at risk of a disease, they have to prove it. BillK From atymes at gmail.com Tue Nov 26 21:10:46 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 13:10:46 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 12:21 PM, BillK wrote: > So 23andMe now have to prove that their tests actually work. If they > say a subject is at risk of a disease, they have to prove it. > Just out of curiosity - Spike, what are your plans in case the data 23andMe sent you turns out to be bogus? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From listsb at infinitefaculty.org Tue Nov 26 21:30:09 2013 From: listsb at infinitefaculty.org (Brian Manning Delaney) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 22:30:09 +0100 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> El 2013-11-26 21:21, BillK escribi?: > On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 6:59 AM, Brian Manning Delaney wrote: >> Possible viral -- actually, mainstream media... -- falsehood warning. The >> FDA letter (http://www.fda.gov/.../WarningLetters/2013/ucm376296.htm) as I >> read it, only orders 23andMe to stop marketing the saliva collection kit. >> ("23andMe must immediately discontinue marketing the PGS until such time as >> it receives FDA marketing authorization for the device.") Is marketing it >> (for a particular purpose) the same as /selling/ it (without mentioning >> said, or any, purpose)? Doesn't seem like it, but I'm no expert in >> regulatory law. >> > > 'Marketing' as the FDA regulations use the term, means 'Offering for sale'. Makes sense of course, but it would have been clearer if they had just written "stop selling". It is curious, however, that selling is precisely what 23andMe has not stopped doing. I know someone who purchased a kit (well, ordered and paid for a kit) a few hours ago. Brian From anders at aleph.se Tue Nov 26 21:24:12 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 21:24:12 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <043c01ceeac5$082f5660$188e0320$@att.net> References: <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> <52947AA4.1080604@aleph.se> <040b01ceeac0$e3f44520$abdccf60$@att.net> <043c01ceeac5$082f5660$188e0320$@att.net> Message-ID: <5295117C.2060405@aleph.se> As practical jokes go, having a planet with oceans that go critical is pretty impressive. On 26/11/2013 16:31, spike wrote: > > > Here's something cool: the Pu alpha decays to 240Np, which is denser, > so it sinks toward the center, but really doesn't have time to go far > with that hour half-life to 240Pu, but then the concentration of 240Pu > goes up and heats up, so I suppose it would boil, but under enormous > pressure perhaps not, so it isn't clear if a critical mass eventually > results. > It is worth considering the neutron reflectivity properties of the original Pu too: it might act as a neutron mirror, in which case the critical mass goes down. Hmm, those alpha particles might also mess things up a bit. Not sure they have an effect, I need to check my literature. Wikipedia mentions that alphas can incite fission in Pu240, I have not yet checked out http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v144/i3/p1046_1 Hmm, if the Pu gets close to critical I assume there would be mini-explosions or flare-ups that would be like mega-boiling: high concentration zones have chain reactions, heat up a lot, turn to big nuclear vapour bubbles and mix the ocean. You would only get a big detonation if it all quietly congregated together and then something eating the neutrons suddenly disappeared. So maybe there would not be a big boom, just regular geysers of molten metal and nuclear plasma. Still awesome. > Hey I wonder if the feds are getting nervous watching me google around > on plutonium and uranium? > It is when you start downloading neutron diffusion codes they get really nervous... -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Nov 26 21:49:48 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 13:49:48 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: <018901ceeaf1$6e2e0250$4a8a06f0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Brian Manning Delaney Subject: Re: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service El 2013-11-26 21:21, BillK escribi?: > On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 6:59 AM, Brian Manning Delaney wrote: >> ... >>>... marketing it (for a particular purpose) the same as /selling/ it >> (without mentioning said, or any, purpose)? Doesn't seem like it, but >> I'm no expert in regulatory law. >> > >>... 'Marketing' as the FDA regulations use the term, means 'Offering for sale'. >...Makes sense of course, but it would have been clearer if they had just written "stop selling". >...It is curious, however, that selling is precisely what 23andMe has not stopped doing. I know someone who purchased a kit (well, ordered and paid for a kit) a few hours ago. >...Brian _______________________________________________ The term "marketing" is one I would interpret as advertising. It isn't clear to me they are being ordered to stop selling it. If they meant stop selling, they should have used the very specific term selling. The spit kits are available by other means besides 23andMe. You can buy one at the pharmacy, then send it to them with a fee. I don't know the accuracy or the details on that, just repeating something I read somewhere, so it could be wrong. spike From spike66 at att.net Tue Nov 26 21:57:32 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 13:57:32 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <5295117C.2060405@aleph.se> References: <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> <52947AA4.1080604@aleph.se> <040b01ceeac0$e3f44520$abdccf60$@att.net> <043c01ceeac5$082f5660$188e0320$@att.net> <5295117C.2060405@aleph.se> Message-ID: <019001ceeaf2$82e739e0$88b5ada0$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg >. On 26/11/2013 16:31, spike wrote: >>.Here's something cool: the Pu alpha decays to 240Np, which is denser, so it sinks toward the center, but really doesn't have time to go far with that hour half-life to 240Pu, but then the concentration of 240Pu goes up and heats up, so I suppose it would boil, but under enormous pressure perhaps not, so it isn't clear if a critical mass eventually results. >. Wikipedia mentions that alphas can incite fission in Pu240, I have not yet checked out http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v144/i3/p1046_1 >.Hmm, if the Pu gets close to critical I assume there would be mini-explosions or flare-ups that would be like mega-boiling: high concentration zones have chain reactions, heat up a lot, turn to big nuclear vapour bubbles and mix the ocean. You would only get a big detonation if it all quietly congregated together and then something eating the neutrons suddenly disappeared. >.So maybe there would not be a big boom, just regular geysers of molten metal and nuclear plasma. Still awesome. -- Anders Sandberg, Ja! All our experience with this kind of thing is from small, just barely critical masses assemble suddenly. But what happens if you have critical masses forming gradually? Under enormous pressures with nowhere to go and no good means of sending away the heat? It isn't analogous to a huge ball of hydrogen, which can go supernova and end up as a ball of neutrons. The heavy elements have already been there once (in a supernova.) The heavies can only go down as far as iron, which is the bottom of the energy well. Anders this was a terrific thought experiment you spawned, me lad. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Tue Nov 26 22:29:50 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 17:29:50 -0500 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 3:21 PM, BillK wrote: > > So 23andMe now have to prove that their tests actually work. If they > say a subject is at risk of a disease, they have to prove it. > > In a similar move to protect the public, the Library of Congress just told churches they aren't allowed to read from their bible until god is proven to exist. Unfortunately most of what churchians hoped to use for evidence is contained in their book. Oh right, separation of Church and State... but the State still controls Science, eh? damn. Seems the NSA has a right to our activity information while the FDA has some right to our genetic information. Perhaps 23andMe can just reincorporate as a religious institution and claim the testing equipment is some form of sacrament process? Yes, I'm being facetious... and perhaps rude/mildly offensive about it. Sorry 'bout that. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Nov 26 22:18:53 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 14:18:53 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: <01b601ceeaf5$7e7866b0$7b693410$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2013 8:42 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 10:59 PM, Brian Manning Delaney wrote: >>. The FDA letter (http://www.fda.gov/.../WarningLetters/2013/ucm376296.htm) as I read it, only orders 23andMe to stop marketing the saliva collection kit. . >.Marketing and sales are intertwined in this case. Unless they have a sales channel that strips out all reason from why you would want to buy their kit (which in practice does not generate significant sales in any but a very few cases, of which they're not one), they would inherently be "marketing" it every time they tried to make a sale. At this point, those kits are selling themselves. I have sold four of them to family members in a quest to find out something I now almost wish I didn't know. It has now created a chain reaction of sorts, with more kits being sold to cousins of cousins who want to know things they might later regret. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Nov 26 22:33:39 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 14:33:39 -0800 Subject: [ExI] [tp] Thiel, Anissimov and Neo-reactionary Monarchism In-Reply-To: References: <20131125142558.GR10793@leitl.org> <529482A1.3010409@aleph.se> <008701ceeacf$c2469ae0$46d3d0a0$@att.net> Message-ID: <01bb01ceeaf7$8e295c20$aa7c1460$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK >... > >>... In some ways we could argue that socialists are the reactionaries. > Margaret Thatcher has so eloquently identified its shortcoming: it > works fine until they run out of other people's money. > >...Can't the socialists just keep printing trillions as required, like the US does???? ;) BillK _______________________________________________ BillK, that only as long as someone somewhere will keep loaning actual wealth to back it. As soon as that stops, the government which has grown fondly accustomed to a long line of willing lenders must choose one of two difficult paths: suddenly figure out how to live within its means, or print phony money. I urge we try the former course and do it as quickly as possible. I would recommend to foreign lenders to stop buying US treasury bills and buy US real estate instead. spike From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 27 01:02:51 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 17:02:51 -0800 Subject: [ExI] googling around on said items Message-ID: <026101ceeb0c$65f6c890$31e459b0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty Subject: Re: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 11:31 AM, spike wrote: >>.Hey I wonder if the feds are getting nervous watching me google around on plutonium and uranium? >.Probably no more than normal nervousness watching you google around. >.They look for abnormal patterns. As long as spike-like traffic is coming from your residence, no alarms. Ja, I have been looking up stuff like this for nearly 20 years. >.Perhaps in your case if you were to suddenly cease your googling they'd have to assume you're spending your free time assembling said items. :) Mike it occurred to me that the Fed doesn't care if I am googling about on the said items. What worries them is my pointing out that the ACA contains specific language explicitly forbidding the IRS from any effective means of enforcing the tax penalty for opting out of buying health insurance. They don't like it when citizens are informed and inform others. That observation makes me wonder and fills me with optimism. I am known for being filled with baseless optimism, but I hope that the presence of the internet can provide a more effective means than has ever existed for citizens to keep their own governments in line. If my notion is correct, the nations which have the highest percentage of internet users will be those with the lowest government corruption, because it becomes too difficult to get away with things. For instance, had it not been for the internet, the current administration might have been able to get away with the story about the Benghazi attacks being caused by a video. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ddraig at gmail.com Wed Nov 27 02:57:08 2013 From: ddraig at gmail.com (ddraig) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 13:57:08 +1100 Subject: [ExI] [tp] Thiel, Anissimov and Neo-reactionary Monarchism In-Reply-To: <008701ceeacf$c2469ae0$46d3d0a0$@att.net> References: <20131125142558.GR10793@leitl.org> <529482A1.3010409@aleph.se> <008701ceeacf$c2469ae0$46d3d0a0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 27 November 2013 04:48, spike wrote: > > > We get unnecessarily tangled up in racys and archys today, monarchy, > aristocracy, anarchy, yakkity-yak-acy, and bla-blarchy, but at the end of > the day, the guy with the money is the ruler, and the guy with the > technology has the money, so everything melts down to technocracy. > The problem with you technophiles is you have no idea about history or real-world politics. Traditionally, Spike, the most vicious and cunning winds up at the top, and he then hires or coerces the one with the technology. If you applied your ideas to entire cultures, then, yes, the one with the technology wins (bronze, iron, stirrups, guns, free market capitalism) but the people at the top aren't always the ones with the technology, they are invariably the most politically adept (Stalin vs Trotsky). Big, big difference. http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/security.png Dwayne -- ddraig at pobox.com irc.bluesphereweb.com #dna ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg our aim is wakefulness, our enemy is dreamless sleep -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 27 02:51:37 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 18:51:37 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: <02ef01ceeb1b$97b096e0$c711c4a0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2013 1:11 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 12:21 PM, BillK wrote: So 23andMe now have to prove that their tests actually work. If they say a subject is at risk of a disease, they have to prove it. Just out of curiosity - Spike, what are your plans in case the data 23andMe sent you turns out to be bogus? Dunno. Open to suggestion on that. I didn't really take the medical stuff very seriously. That wasn't what I meant with finding out stuff I wish I didn't know. As far as my disease risks, I do hope that part is right: I got off easy on that. The DNA links to distant cousins turned out to be worth the price many times over, if I can force myself to forget about that incident with General Sherman's boys. That one still haunts me, and had a big negative impact on my black cousins. It was all a terrific tool for genealogy, which was at a dead end in so many ways. Now I mostly figured out where the genetic anomalies are located, and found the people who know. Regarding the medical stuff, a couple months ago I went for my regular annual checkup (my last one for the foreseeable, thankyouverymuch ObamaCare.) My doctor and I went over the results from 23andMe. She hadn't actually seen one of them before, but it indicated a risk for a condition, so she ordered a test, and sure enough, I came back a 1.7 sigma case on that. Fortunately it was nothing life-threatening. But I am taking steps to compensate. Now isn't that a perfectly legitimate argument for taking the test? Just use the DNA tests to see if there is some more-rigorous medical tests that might be done. It isn't a conclusive diagnostic test in itself. Regarding the earlier comment on their order to cease marketing the spit kit, as of last night, you can still order the kits. One site seems to think it had to do with a TV commercial 23andMe was running. If the FDA is saying you need some kind of approval to advertise the service, that might be understandable. I still disagree with stopping the marketing effort, but I disagree with a lot of what is going on with the US government. They don't listen to me. They don't listen to any of us. After November 2014 perhaps they will listen. I learned so much about genetics from the whole exercise. I would do it again. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From listsb at infinitefaculty.org Wed Nov 27 06:36:20 2013 From: listsb at infinitefaculty.org (Brian Manning Delaney) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 07:36:20 +0100 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: <02ef01ceeb1b$97b096e0$c711c4a0$@att.net> References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <02ef01ceeb1b$97b096e0$c711c4a0$@att.net> Message-ID: <529592E4.4090805@infinitefaculty.org> El 2013-11-27 03:51, spike escribi?: > Regarding the medical stuff, a couple months ago I went for my regular > annual checkup (my last one for the foreseeable, thankyouverymuch > ObamaCare.) My doctor and I went over the results from 23andMe. She > hadn?t actually seen one of them before, but it indicated a risk for a > condition, so she ordered a test, and sure enough, I came back a 1.7 > sigma case on that. Fortunately it was nothing life-threatening. But I > am taking steps to compensate. Now isn?t that a perfectly legitimate > argument for taking the test? Just use the DNA tests to see if there is > some more-rigorous medical tests that might be done. It isn?t a > conclusive diagnostic test in itself. My perspective as well. This idea -- frequently brought up by the mainstream press -- that someone will get an email from 23andMe announcing their results are ready, click on a link, then read something that with no intervening steps (talking with a GP, or a genetic counselor, friends, then a surgeon...) causes them mistakenly to have some important body parts removed is, to put it mildly, far-fetched. I can report that getting the health results changed my life. (Still haven't had time to explore the 900+ kin that show up.) I have made critical readjustments to my life-extension regimen that may save my life, or at least save many years of healthy life. I wish I had known about 23andMe when they first opened their doors. It cost much more then, but my current self would tell my past self to pay however many thousands it cost. Brian From eugen at leitl.org Wed Nov 27 07:26:27 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 08:26:27 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <5295117C.2060405@aleph.se> References: <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> <52947AA4.1080604@aleph.se> <040b01ceeac0$e3f44520$abdccf60$@att.net> <043c01ceeac5$082f5660$188e0320$@att.net> <5295117C.2060405@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20131127072627.GE10793@leitl.org> On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 09:24:12PM +0000, Anders Sandberg wrote: > >Hey I wonder if the feds are getting nervous watching me google > >around on plutonium and uranium? > > > > It is when you start downloading neutron diffusion codes they get > really nervous... It is surprising how much you can piece together from Carey Sublette and Curve of Binding Energy alone (I was looking for a recipe for Fogbank). If he was alive today, Theodore Taylor would probably agree that fusion weapons are no longer inaccessible to a moderately sophisticated group. The state of the art for EFP and radiation hydrodynamics (fusion and astrophysics research) is quite advanced and available, and powerful computers are dirt cheap. If yield is effectively infinite you no longer can make assumptions about optimal placement, and just watch the hotspots. The US foreign policy is particularly perilous in such an environment. From protokol2020 at gmail.com Wed Nov 27 09:54:04 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 10:54:04 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [tp] Thiel, Anissimov and Neo-reactionary Monarchism In-Reply-To: References: <20131125142558.GR10793@leitl.org> <529482A1.3010409@aleph.se> <008701ceeacf$c2469ae0$46d3d0a0$@att.net> Message-ID: > The problem with you technophiles is you have no idea about history or real-world politics. Every day, there is less and less importance out of the technology area. These doors are closing, And by technology I don't talk about iPhones. At least not in the first place. The so called real world politics will be a fish with no water. On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 3:57 AM, ddraig wrote: > On 27 November 2013 04:48, spike wrote: > >> >> >> We get unnecessarily tangled up in racys and archys today, monarchy, >> aristocracy, anarchy, yakkity-yak-acy, and bla-blarchy, but at the end of >> the day, the guy with the money is the ruler, and the guy with the >> technology has the money, so everything melts down to technocracy. >> > > > The problem with you technophiles is you have no idea about history or > real-world politics. Traditionally, Spike, the most vicious and cunning > winds up at the top, and he then hires or coerces the one with the > technology. If you applied your ideas to entire cultures, then, yes, the > one with the technology wins (bronze, iron, stirrups, guns, free market > capitalism) but the people at the top aren't always the ones with the > technology, they are invariably the most politically adept (Stalin vs > Trotsky). Big, big difference. > > http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/security.png > > Dwayne > -- > ddraig at pobox.com irc.bluesphereweb.com #dna > ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... > http://tinyurl.com/he-is-right-you-know-jpg > our aim is wakefulness, our enemy is dreamless sleep > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Nov 27 11:14:53 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 11:14:53 +0000 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 9:30 PM, Brian Manning Delaney wrote: > Makes sense of course, but it would have been clearer if they had just > written "stop selling". > > It is curious, however, that selling is precisely what 23andMe has not > stopped doing. I know someone who purchased a kit (well, ordered and paid > for a kit) a few hours ago. > It looks as though 23andMe are assuming that the mention of 15 days to respond means they can carry on as normal for at least 15 days. The speculation is that 23andMe will then start discussions with the FDA to try to drag things out much longer. However the FDA are getting annoyed after four years of discussion, so may take other actions like an injunction to stop the business and civil monetary penalties. Google are probably not worried about monetary penalties, but going by history it is not wise to pick a fight with the FDA. BillK From anders at aleph.se Wed Nov 27 12:42:00 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 12:42:00 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <20131127072627.GE10793@leitl.org> References: <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> <52947AA4.1080604@aleph.se> <040b01ceeac0$e3f44520$abdccf60$@att.net> <043c01ceeac5$082f5660$188e0320$@att.net> <5295117C.2060405@aleph.se> <20131127072627.GE10793@leitl.org> Message-ID: <5295E898.1070300@aleph.se> On 2013-11-27 07:26, Eugen Leitl wrote: > If yield is effectively infinite you no longer can make assumptions > about optimal placement, and just watch the hotspots. Shovelling lithium deuteride is not that easy. The bottlenecks have always been getting access to isotopes (and to some extent high precision explosive control), never access to optimal placement. Still, even if you have a ridiculous amount of fusable material thinking about where to put the charge matters. You cannot easily make up for distance to the target by upping the yield. (You need to quadruple your power to go twice as far, roughly speaking) -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From eugen at leitl.org Wed Nov 27 13:23:02 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 14:23:02 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <5295E898.1070300@aleph.se> References: <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> <52947AA4.1080604@aleph.se> <040b01ceeac0$e3f44520$abdccf60$@att.net> <043c01ceeac5$082f5660$188e0320$@att.net> <5295117C.2060405@aleph.se> <20131127072627.GE10793@leitl.org> <5295E898.1070300@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20131127132302.GZ10793@leitl.org> On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 12:42:00PM +0000, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-11-27 07:26, Eugen Leitl wrote: > >If yield is effectively infinite you no longer can make > >assumptions about optimal placement, and just watch the hotspots. > > Shovelling lithium deuteride is not that easy. The bottlenecks have Lithium deuteride is easy to make, and even Li-6 enrichment is a simple wet (COLEX) process. I've worked with lithium hydride, not difficult at all. > always been getting access to isotopes (and to some extent high The actual bottleneck is availability of fissible for the primary. HEU might be hard to get, but Pu by PUREX is easy in the age of industrial automation, and really old nuclear waste. Reactor-grade Pu merely lowers the yield. > precision explosive control), never access to optimal placement. Placement is everything if you dial up to 300 kT vs 3 kT. > Still, even if you have a ridiculous amount of fusable material > thinking about where to put the charge matters. You cannot easily > make up for distance to the target by upping the yield. (You need to > quadruple your power to go twice as far, roughly speaking) Look at Manhattan in Google Earth while thinking about being really yield-constrained. Than dial up to 300 kT. See the difference in ground zero placement sensitivity? You can watch a few penthouses, you can't watch everything. From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Nov 27 15:14:13 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 10:14:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 6:14 AM, BillK wrote: > > However the FDA are getting annoyed after four years of discussion, so > may take other actions like an injunction to stop the business and > civil monetary penalties. Google are probably not worried about > monetary penalties, but going by history it is not wise to pick a > fight with the FDA. > > So you can "ask your doctor" about drugs for your scaly, red, itching skin that has a side effect of "death" or some heartburn meds that give you low magnesium levels and risk of bone fractures - but you can't swab some spit into a cup because the resulting test(s) has the effect of education about information you might not be prepared to learn? Seems like the addition of disclaimers like "for entertainment purposes only" or "not intended to diagnose or treat..." would be sufficient to tell the FDA to get the hell out of my business. But I guess that IS the FDA business, isn't it? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 27 15:04:56 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 07:04:56 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: <006c01ceeb82$0a066470$1e132d50$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK >...The speculation is that 23andMe will then start discussions with the FDA to try to drag things out much longer...However the FDA are getting annoyed after four years of discussion, so may take other actions like an injunction to stop the business and civil monetary penalties. Google are probably not worried about monetary penalties, but going by history it is not wise to pick a fight with the FDA...BillK _______________________________________________ On the contrary, in the current situation, picking a big public fight with the FDA is a very logical next step. The FDA wants to force 23andMe to meet standards that most people would consider inapplicable to those kinds of devices. Meeting FDA standards is a process which is way too expensive and too slow. The spit kits are a perfect example of a device which should not be considered a medical device, but rather a home diagnostic tool which would point the consumer to FDA approved medical devices, if the consumer really thinks it necessary. The 23 kits are a good example of a device which has been brought down to the consumer level by pricing them at the 100 dollar level. If 23 buckles and agrees to work with the bureaucracy, then those kits would be priced out of that range, which would discourage the masses from using them. For myself, I was waiting for the price to go below about 300 bucks. It went from 500 to 100 practically overnight. If 23 gets tangled in bureaucracy, it will be back at 500 overnight. In this particular case, Anne Wojcicki can afford to play chicken with the Feds. She and Mr. Google will not go hungry, even if the FDA shuts down 23. But the reputation of the FDA and government bureaucratic intervention in consumer affairs in general is at a historic low point with the spectacular crash on takeoff of the "Affordable" "Care" Act. Now is the very best time for 23 to pick this fight, and 23andMe is the very best test case I can imagine: popular with the proletariat, affordable, not a medical diagnosis device exactly, not even on the same level as a home pregnancy test, clearly something that is not doing anyone any harm, as opposed to the FDA, which plenty could argue are doing a great deal of harm. BillK, this is a perfect test case. We have a tech startup which used all private funding, which works right, created a useful tool which has done plenty of good for the public and no real or convincing harm, an organization which has done a great job of protecting privacy, being bullied by an organization which spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a website that doesn't work and places private information into the public domain. The US federal government spent HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of dollars, and couldn't even launch a goddam website correctly, then they assure us, PROMISE us that the website will be all fixed and running by this Saturday, and oh by the way, they still aren't encrypting anything, not even working on that yet, but by this Saturday, it will all be fixed they promise, and if you liked your insurance plan you can keep your insurance plan, period end of story, and if you liked your doctor you can keep your doctor period end of story. BillK, if the FDA goes after 23andMe, which of those two will you be rooting for? spike From pharos at gmail.com Wed Nov 27 15:59:06 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 15:59:06 +0000 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: <006c01ceeb82$0a066470$1e132d50$@att.net> References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <006c01ceeb82$0a066470$1e132d50$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 3:04 PM, spike wrote: > BillK, if the FDA goes after 23andMe, which of those two will you be rooting for? > > Note that the FDA is not complaining about the genealogical DNA analysis. You can still trace your relatives and there are other companies doing this analysis. No problems with that. It is the medical 'snake-oil' that the FDA doesn't like. And it has a lot of medical and scientific support. Do these DNA risk factors mean anything? What about all the other genes and epigenetic factors not checked? What about false positives and false negatives? Do these tests actually work? It is all unverified. I think it is too early to be making health recommendations. We don't know enough about how our DNA affects us and how genes interact with each other. More research is required. Maybe if 23andMe enhanced the genealogy side and toned down the medical side to vague 'worth asking your doctor about' hints, they might keep the FDA happy. BillK From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 27 16:18:38 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 08:18:38 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: <002a01ceeb8c$555ead60$001c0820$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2013 7:14 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 6:14 AM, BillK wrote: >>.However the FDA are getting annoyed after four years of discussion, so may take other actions like an injunction to stop the business and civil monetary penalties. Google are probably not worried about monetary penalties, but going by history it is not wise to pick a fight with the FDA. >.So you can "ask your doctor" about drugs for your scaly, red, itching skin that has a side effect of "death" or some heartburn meds that give you low magnesium levels and risk of bone fractures - but you can't swab some spit into a cup because the resulting test(s) has the effect of education about information you might not be prepared to learn? >.Seems like the addition of disclaimers like "for entertainment purposes only" or "not intended to diagnose or treat..." would be sufficient to tell the FDA to get the hell out of my business. >.But I guess that IS the FDA business, isn't it? BillK, in the USA, it can cost over 500 million dollars to get FDA approval for a new drug or medication. For decades, the USA was doing the heavy lifting on developing new drugs and proving efficacy, with its medicine-for-profit system. The entire world benefitted. The price of that FDA approval eventually got high enough that it is not profitable for a company to develop new antibiotics, so that ended. The bugs are evolving around our older drugs. That is a perfect example of a violation of the Hippocratic notion of doing no harm. 23andMe is related to Google. Now there's company. It just showed up one day, back in the late 90s. I have used it nearly every day since that time. It is competent in figuring out what you want even if you don't really know yourself, then finding it for you, and it is FREEEEEE! It's the libertarian's dream: it empowered the proletariat with KNOWLEDGE! A pauper could be living in a cardboard box and eating out of the dumpster behind Kentucky Fried Chicken, wrapping the body in discards from the Salvation Army, yet could walk over to the public library, get on their computers on Google and there is the world's wisdom, right there, just as accessible to the completely penniless pauper as it is to the Italian-suited executive. In some ways, it is more accessible to the pauper: she has plenty of time. The executive is busy as hell and has no time for Googling. 23andMe is a product which does no harm but does plenty of good. Example: 23andMe reveals you have both markers for Farklestein's schnarkoma, an obscure disease which your former doctor never heard of (your former doctor is the doctor you liked and can keep period end of story.) Even if penniless and living in a box down by the tracks, the pauper can go to the library, google on Farklestein's and educate herself on how to deal with it, and while she is there, she can google on where some local will give her food. A pauper *might* be able to scrape together a hundred bucks for a spit kit. I see people handing cash to clearly phony will-work-for-fooders, I have done it myself (I try to not make a habit of it.) So let's see a showdown between 23andMe vs the FDA. This is a fight which has been long brewing. There appears to be a clear moral right and wrong here. It does to me. What does it look like from that side of the Atlantic? >.Note that the FDA is not complaining about the genealogical DNA analysis. You can still trace your relatives and there are other companies doing this analysis. No problems with that. >.It is the medical 'snake-oil' that the FDA doesn't like. And it has a lot of medical and scientific support. Do these DNA risk factors mean anything? What about all the other genes and epigenetic factors not checked? What about false positives and false negatives? Do these tests actually work? It is all unverified. >.I think it is too early to be making health recommendations. We don't know enough about how our DNA affects us and how genes interact with each other. More research is required. >.Maybe if 23andMe enhanced the genealogy side and toned down the medical side to vague 'worth asking your doctor about' hints, they might keep the FDA happy.BillK Ja to all. I received this seconds before I hit send. I think you are right, but at this point I am not sure we want to keep the FDA happy. I think it is time to stand and fight. We have let the FDA strangle us for too long. Time to stand and show some of that good old American don't-tread-on-me grit in the face of a battle I think the people can win. In the setting of a spectacular failure of bureaucratic control over medicine, and a spectacular success of a private enterprise, the time is right for a test case, especially considering it is an odd year, so the halls of congress will soon be vacated, the representatives off campaigning for re-election. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Wed Nov 27 16:32:57 2013 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 11:32:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <006c01ceeb82$0a066470$1e132d50$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 10:59 AM, BillK wrote: > > It is the medical 'snake-oil' that the FDA doesn't like. And it has a > lot of medical and scientific support. > What medical snake-oil? Do you have a specific example? 23andMe seems to be very careful about explaining exactly what one's results mean. For example: Restless Legs Syndrome Imagine what it would be like to crawl into bed every night, ready to catch some much-needed Zs, only to be struck by an irrepressible urge to move your legs as soon as you began to relax. No matter how tired you were, instead of drifting off peacefully, you would be compelled to get up and move around. It may sound crazy, but this is exactly the situation people with restless legs syndrome (RLS) experience. Though the symptoms in many people are milder, it is estimated that about 4% of the U.S. population suffers from this puzzling disorder. The following results are based on *Established Research* for 1 reported marker, updated July 16th, 2009. Learn more about the biology of Restless Legs Syndrome... Major discoveries in Restless Legs Syndrome... [image: Not getting enough sleep can cause decreased concentration, impaired memory, slowed reaction times, and a weakened immune system.] 1 of 3. Not getting enough sleep can cause decreased concentration, impaired memory, slowed reaction times, and a weakened immune system. Your Genetic Data ? Share your health results Show information for assuming ethnicity and an age range of David Sill 1.5 out of 100 men of European ethnicity who share David Sill's genotype will develop Restless Legs Syndrome between the ages of 0 and 79. Average 2.0 out of 100 men of European ethnicity will develop Restless Legs Syndrome between the ages of 0 and 79. What does the Odds Calculator show me? Use the ethnicity and age range selectors above to see the estimated incidence of Restless Legs Syndrome due to genetics for men with *David Sill*'s genotype. The 23andMe Odds Calculator assumes that a person is free of the condition at the lower age in the range. You can use the name selector above to see the estimated incidence of Restless Legs Syndrome for the genotypes of other people in your account. The 23andMe Odds Calculator only takes into account effects of markers with known associations that are also on our genotyping chip. Keep in mind that aside from genetics, environment and lifestyle may also contribute to one's risk for Restless Legs Syndrome. Genes vs. Environment 54 % Attributable to Genetics The heritability of restless legs syndrome is estimated to be 54%. This means that genetic and environmental factors contribute nearly equally to differences in risk for this condition. Genetic factors that play a role in restless legs syndrome include both unknown factors and known factors such as the SNPs we describe here. Environmental factors include pregnancy. Low iron levels, dialysis for end-stage renal disease, and damage to the nerves of the hands and feet tend to worsen the condition. (sources) What You Can Do Assuming the ethnicity setting above is correct, your test results indicate you are not at increased risk for restless legs syndrome based on your genetics. Family history and non-genetic factors can also influence your risk, but note that this condition is fairly rare. Below are some steps you can take to reduce your risk. *Keep chronic diseases under control* Chronic diseases such as kidney failure, diabetes, Parkinson's, and peripheral neuropathy can exacerbate symptoms of RLS, but managing them can reduce symptoms of RLS. *Watch iron levels, and your intake of caffeine, alcohol, and tobacco* According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, caffeine, alcohol, and tobacco may aggravate or trigger symptoms in patients who are predisposed to develop RLS, as can low iron levels. *RLS can occur if you're pregnant or taking certain drugs* If RLS symptoms appear, they usually disappear once the pregnancy is completed or the drug regimen is stopped. *Learn your family medical history* According to the Mayo Clinic, RLS tends to run in families, especially when it occurs at an early age. The U.S. Surgeon General's My Family Health Portraittool can help you assemble your family medical history. *Connect with relevant groups* - Restless Legs Syndrome Foundation 877-INFO-RLS - WE MOVE 800-437-MOV2 *Talk with a genetic counselor* A genetic counselor specializes in helping people understand genetic disorders and genetic test results. Learn more about genetic counseling here . Marker Effects What does this chart show? The chart shows the approximate effects of the selected person's genotype at the 1 reported marker. Higher, red bars indicate increased risk from the average, while lower, green bars indicate decreased risk from the average. The light gray bars show the maximum possible effects for the possible genotypes at the marker. Mouse over individual bars to view additional information about each marker. Click on a bar to view detailed information about that marker below. You can read more about all markers in the technical report. BTBD9 Marker:rs3923809 The function of this gene is not yet known. Scientists do know that it belongs to a large family of genes that encode proteins that can influence activity levels of other genes. The SNP in this gene doesn?t actually cause a change in the protein sequence of BTBD9. Instead, it lies in a non-coding part of the gene where it may affect how BTBD9 is turned on or off. One group found that the A version of this SNP is specifically associated with PLMS. Because such a large percentage of people with RLS also have PLMS, this SNP is also a good predictor of RLS risk. There was, however, no association of the riskier version of the SNP in people with RLS who did not also have periodic limb movements in sleep (PLMS). The protein encoded by BTBD9 is found in many different parts of the brain (in addition to other organs) and is therefore a good candidate for a gene involvement in other neurological disorders similar to RLS and PLMS. In addition, even though there is no previously known link between BTBD9 and iron levels, the riskier version of this SNP was has been associated with decreased iron stores in the body. The studies whose data we report as applicable to those of "European" ancestry confirmed the association between this SNP and RLS in samples from Germany and Canada. This association has not been investigated in samples of Asian or African ancestry. Citations Stefansson et al. (2007). ?A genetic risk factor for periodic limb movements in sleep.? *N Engl J Med* 357(7):639-47. Winkelmann et al. (2007). ?Genome-wide association study of restless legs syndrome identifies common variants in three genomic regions.? *Nat Genet* 39(8):1000-1006. Collins et al. (2001). ?All in the family: the BTB/POZ, KRAB, and SCAN domains.? *Mol Cell Biol* 21(11):3609-15. The genotyping services of 23andMe are performed in LabCorp's CLIA-certified laboratory. The tests have not been cleared or approved by the FDA but have been analytically validated according to CLIA standards. The information on this page is intended for research and educational purposes only, and is not for diagnostic use. I think it is too early to be making health recommendations. We don't > know enough about how our DNA affects us and how genes interact with > each other. More research is required. > And 23andMe is contributing to that research. > Maybe if 23andMe enhanced the genealogy side and toned down the > medical side to vague 'worth asking your doctor about' hints, they > might keep the FDA happy. I wouldn't bet on it. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From listsb at infinitefaculty.org Wed Nov 27 17:09:49 2013 From: listsb at infinitefaculty.org (Brian Manning Delaney) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 18:09:49 +0100 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <006c01ceeb82$0a066470$1e132d50$@att.net> Message-ID: <5296275D.4090402@infinitefaculty.org> > Do these DNA risk factors mean anything? Yes, they mean a lot, but are not totally determinative of risk. (though they are nearly so in a couple cases, like Huntington's). > What about all the other > genes and epigenetic factors not checked? You mean factors that form part of what also determines risk? You tell us: what about them? No one is denying they exist. > What about false positives > and false negatives? No technology is perfect, a claim with which 23andMe would not disagree. > Do these tests actually work? It is all > unverified. Do you mean the technology that reads the SNPs? It is most assuredly verified. I think the error rate is something like 1 out of 10,000 (though I haven't looked into this, since I would never make any huge decisions without rerunning the analysis). But it's been studied and written about in peer-reviewed journals. Brian From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 27 18:05:43 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 10:05:43 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: <002a01ceeb8c$555ead60$001c0820$@att.net> References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <002a01ceeb8c$555ead60$001c0820$@att.net> Message-ID: <00b701ceeb9b$4ac2c620$e0485260$@att.net> This is what MedCity news is saying. If you have an opinion on the matter, do consider this one: http://medcitynews.com/2013/11/public-petitions-white-house-overrule-fdas-23 andme-halt/?utm_source=MedCity+News+Subscribers &utm_campaign=88d3ff043b-RSS_Daily+Top+Stories&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c 05cce483a-88d3ff043b-67664253 They are urging the POTUS (whose name I cannot recall at the moment) to overrule the FDA on 23andMe, or suspend their CaD order. POTUSes have the authority to do that, since he would be suspending a law not made by congress but rather a bureaucratic regulation. I am aware that the petition refers to the spit kit as a diagnostic kit even though 23andMe site specifies their system is not intended for diagnostic use. If you choose to not sign it for that reason, I get that too. There might be another petition somewhere which is worded better. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed Nov 27 18:59:41 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 10:59:41 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 7:14 AM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > So you can "ask your doctor" about drugs for your scaly, red, itching skin > that has a side effect of "death" or some heartburn meds that give you low > magnesium levels and risk of bone fractures - but you can't swab some spit > into a cup because the resulting test(s) has the effect of education about > information you might not be prepared to learn? > No. Because the information stands an unacceptable (to the FDA) risk of being flat-out wrong. It's one thing if it advises someone of a condition they didn't know they had, for which there is a risky treatment option but less risky than doing nothing. It's another thing entirely if this advice is incorrect, and the person never had that condition in the first place. This is one of the things the FDA exists to prevent, and what it says is going on in this case. (Specifically that there are high enough odds that it's happening to a significant number of 23andMe's customers.) Rake the FDA over the coals for what it actually does do badly (and doesn't do that it should), but let's confine the accusations to what's actually going on, please. There's more than enough without exaggerating or making stuff up. (It's possible that you might have simply misread, but it seems at least some people seem to be willfully misinterpreting what's going on here.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Wed Nov 27 19:14:48 2013 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 14:14:48 -0500 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 1:59 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 7:14 AM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > >> So you can "ask your doctor" about drugs for your scaly, red, itching >> skin that has a side effect of "death" or some heartburn meds that give you >> low magnesium levels and risk of bone fractures - but you can't swab some >> spit into a cup because the resulting test(s) has the effect of education >> about information you might not be prepared to learn? >> > > No. Because the information stands an unacceptable (to the FDA) risk of > being flat-out wrong. > How much risk of wrong genetic test results is acceptable to the FDA? How much does 23andMe have? Doesn't the use of a CLIA-certified lab address the quality of the results? > It's one thing if it advises someone of a condition they didn't know they > had, for which there is a risky treatment option but less risky than doing > nothing. > > It's another thing entirely if this advice is incorrect, and the person > never had that condition in the first place. This is one of the things the > FDA exists to prevent, and what it says is going on in this case. > (Specifically that there are high enough odds that it's happening to a > significant number of 23andMe's customers.) > What evidence is there of that, and that it's resulted in actual harm due to people not following 23andMe's disclaimer that their reports aren't intended for diagnostic use? Rake the FDA over the coals for what it actually does do badly (and doesn't > do that it should), but let's confine the accusations to what's actually > going on, please. There's more than enough without exaggerating or making > stuff up. > > (It's possible that you might have simply misread, but it seems at least > some people seem to be willfully misinterpreting what's going on here.) > Can you give a hypothetical scenario that demonstrates the unacceptable risks presented by 23andMe? Honestly, I want to understand. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Nov 27 19:44:48 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 19:44:48 +0000 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 7:14 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > What evidence is there of that, and that it's resulted in actual harm due to > people not following 23andMe's disclaimer that their reports aren't intended > for diagnostic use? > That disclaimer is very similar to the fraudulent mediums and astrologers saying 'for entertainment purposes only'. Their customers give them money and believe what they are told, knowing that the disclaimer is just a wheeze to get round the law.. > > Can you give a hypothetical scenario that demonstrates the unacceptable > risks presented by 23andMe? Honestly, I want to understand. > > Read the FDA letter. It explains their POV very clearly. Quote: This product is a device within the meaning of section 201(h) of the FD&C Act, 21 U.S.C. 321(h), because it is intended for use in the diagnosis of disease or other conditions or in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, or is intended to affect the structure or function of the body. ----- The letter continues on to list specific problems. You are entitled, of course, to disagree with the FDA's opinion. But they do have a lot of experience fighting the avalanche of medical fraud in the USA. BillK From atymes at gmail.com Wed Nov 27 19:57:35 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 11:57:35 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 11:14 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 1:59 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > >> On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 7:14 AM, Mike Dougherty wrote: >> >>> So you can "ask your doctor" about drugs for your scaly, red, itching >>> skin that has a side effect of "death" or some heartburn meds that give you >>> low magnesium levels and risk of bone fractures - but you can't swab some >>> spit into a cup because the resulting test(s) has the effect of education >>> about information you might not be prepared to learn? >>> >> >> No. Because the information stands an unacceptable (to the FDA) risk of >> being flat-out wrong. >> > > How much risk of wrong genetic test results is acceptable to the FDA? How > much does 23andMe have? Doesn't the use of a CLIA-certified lab address the > quality of the results? > Worthy questions; these items are likely in the details of the FDA's communications. Although the last one can be answered "no": it's not "do you have this marker" that's the problem, but the information they attach to it. > It's one thing if it advises someone of a condition they didn't know they >> had, for which there is a risky treatment option but less risky than doing >> nothing. >> >> It's another thing entirely if this advice is incorrect, and the person >> never had that condition in the first place. This is one of the things the >> FDA exists to prevent, and what it says is going on in this case. >> (Specifically that there are high enough odds that it's happening to a >> significant number of 23andMe's customers.) >> > > What evidence is there of that, and that it's resulted in actual harm due > to people not following 23andMe's disclaimer that their reports aren't > intended for diagnostic use? > Again: a good question to address to the FDA. Although the FDA's policy is "prove it doesn't do significant harm", not "prove it has caused significant harm". While this does veer toward the precautionary principle, and the high costs of meeting their standards are a continuing problem in the biotech industry, many cures and treatments over the years have been able to meet those standards: it's not impossible for stuff that works (even if it is a lot costlier than it could be). > > Rake the FDA over the coals for what it actually does do badly (and >> doesn't do that it should), but let's confine the accusations to what's >> actually going on, please. There's more than enough without exaggerating >> or making stuff up. >> >> (It's possible that you might have simply misread, but it seems at least >> some people seem to be willfully misinterpreting what's going on here.) >> > > Can you give a hypothetical scenario that demonstrates the unacceptable > risks presented by 23andMe? Honestly, I want to understand. > I did (in the "one thing...another thing" quoted above), but I'll restate: Let's say 23andMe says you have a 95% chance of having condition X. Condition X has a 90% mortality rate over 5 years if left untreated. However, there is a treatment that completely cures this condition, although it itself has a mortality rate of 10% over 20 years. Obviously you would prefer to take this treatment, right? Well...what if they're wrong, and you actually have less than a 1% chance of having condition X? (I.e., you have certain gene markers, but those markers actually have less than a 1% correlation, not a 95% correlation. They haven't provided proof that it's 95% and not 1%. Most gene markers have a less than 1% correlation here, so without evidence to the contrary, this gene marker is most likely the same.) You're out the money for the treatment, and you now have a 10% chance of dying in the next 20 years that you didn't have before, without having gained anything. The FDA doesn't care whether or not 23andMe has any connection to the providers of this treatment. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Wed Nov 27 20:03:11 2013 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 15:03:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 2:44 PM, BillK wrote: > On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 7:14 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > > What evidence is there of that, and that it's resulted in actual harm > due to > > people not following 23andMe's disclaimer that their reports aren't > intended > > for diagnostic use? > > That disclaimer is very similar to the fraudulent mediums and > astrologers saying 'for entertainment purposes only'. Their customers > give them money and believe what they are told, knowing that the > disclaimer is just a wheeze to get round the law.. > Similar, but fundamentally different. 23andMe results really don't *diagnose* any diseases, they merely indicate genetic susceptibility to them. And they make that very clear. > > Can you give a hypothetical scenario that demonstrates the unacceptable > > risks presented by 23andMe? Honestly, I want to understand. > > Read the FDA letter. It explains their POV very clearly. > < > http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/EnforcementActions/WarningLetters/2013/ucm376296.htm > > > Quote: > This product is a device within the meaning of section 201(h) of the > FD&C Act, 21 U.S.C. 321(h), because it is intended for use in the > diagnosis of disease or other conditions or in the cure, mitigation, > treatment, or prevention of disease, or is intended to affect the > structure or function of the body. > Well, gosh, yes, if a genetic test shows that I'm more likely to get a disease, I'll probably change my behavior to avoid that disease. How is that harmful, even if the test turns out to have been wrong? The letter continues on to list specific problems. > > You are entitled, of course, to disagree with the FDA's opinion. But > they do have a lot of experience fighting the avalanche of medical > fraud in the USA. > Do you think 23andMe is perpetrating medical fraud? -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Wed Nov 27 20:14:26 2013 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 15:14:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 2:57 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 11:14 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > >> >> How much risk of wrong genetic test results is acceptable to the FDA? How >> much does 23andMe have? Doesn't the use of a CLIA-certified lab address the >> quality of the results? >> > > Worthy questions; these items are likely in the details of the FDA's > communications. Although the last one can be answered "no": it's not "do > you have this marker" that's the problem, but the information they attach > to it. > Ah, so if they didn't include an explanation of what the SNPs they found mean, then FDS would be OK? But, of course, that information is extremely useful. > What evidence is there of that, and that it's resulted in actual harm due >> to people not following 23andMe's disclaimer that their reports aren't >> intended for diagnostic use? >> > > Again: a good question to address to the FDA. Although the FDA's policy > is "prove it doesn't do significant harm", not "prove it has caused > significant harm". While this does veer toward the precautionary > principle, and the high costs of meeting their standards are a continuing > problem in the biotech industry, many cures and treatments over the years > have been able to meet those standards: it's not impossible for stuff that > works (even if it is a lot costlier than it could be). > But we're talking about testing, not cures/treatments. The 23andMe test *cannot *itself be harmful--it's spitting in a tube. > | Can you give a hypothetical scenario that demonstrates the unacceptable > risks presented by 23andMe? Honestly, I want to understand. > > I did (in the "one thing...another thing" quoted above), but I'll restate: > > Let's say 23andMe says you have a 95% chance of having condition X. > Condition X has a 90% mortality rate over 5 years if left untreated. > However, there is a treatment that completely cures this condition, > although it itself has a mortality rate of 10% over 20 years. > At that point, I'd have to consult a physician in order to get the treatment, right? 90% mortality meds aren't over-the-counter. And doctors don't administer them without being pretty damned sure they're necessary, so the doctor will order his own tests. 23andMe can only raise awareness of potential issues, it doesn't diagnose them or treat them. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From listsb at infinitefaculty.org Wed Nov 27 20:18:47 2013 From: listsb at infinitefaculty.org (Brian Manning Delaney) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 21:18:47 +0100 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: <529653A7.6010705@infinitefaculty.org> El 2013-11-27 21:03, Dave Sill escribi?: > Well, gosh, yes, if a genetic test shows that I'm more likely to get a > disease, I'll probably change my behavior to avoid that disease. How is > that harmful, even if the test turns out to have been wrong? Well, here's an example. Everyone "knows" that, in general, light to moderate daily consumption of alcohol reduces mortality more than drinking more, or drinking less. (Turns out that's a bit controversial, but let's leave that aside.) The link to dementia is particularly strong. Let's say you get your 23andMe results back, and discover you're an APOE-?4 carrier. 23andMe tells you the odds of your developing Alzheimer's is much greater than avg. You do some digging and learn that, for ?4-carriers, the "little is better than none" rule about drinking doesn't apply: the more you drink, starting from zero, the greater the risk. So you become a teetotaler. But say it turns out you aren't an ?4-carrier. Well, you changed your behavior, and it was harmful (assuming the J-curve idea about alcohol consumption -- at least for non-?4 carriers -- is correct). Brian From atymes at gmail.com Wed Nov 27 20:31:19 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 12:31:19 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 12:14 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 2:57 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > >> On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 11:14 AM, Dave Sill wrote: >> >>> >>> How much risk of wrong genetic test results is acceptable to the FDA? >>> How much does 23andMe have? Doesn't the use of a CLIA-certified lab address >>> the quality of the results? >>> >> >> Worthy questions; these items are likely in the details of the FDA's >> communications. Although the last one can be answered "no": it's not "do >> you have this marker" that's the problem, but the information they attach >> to it. >> > > Ah, so if they didn't include an explanation of what the SNPs they found > mean, then FDS would be OK? But, of course, that information is extremely > useful. > If that information is correct, yes. That is the point at issue. And if they didn't provide that information, then for what purpose are they providing the SNPs? There are other purposes that could be served by just the SNPs, true, but if it leans back toward hinting at this, the FDA would be within its rights to crack down on that. But we're talking about testing, not cures/treatments. The 23andMe test *cannot > *itself be harmful--it's spitting in a tube. > The test itself is not the issue. It's what's done with the results. > At that point, I'd have to consult a physician in order to get the > treatment, right? > Not necessarily. Some such treatments are indeed "over the counter", or even on the level of fad diets. Not all such treatments involve pills that can be regulated by normal means. There's also the issue of patients convinced they need certain specific meds that no reputable physician will give them, because said patients do not in fact need them. If you're convinced you need pill X but your doctor says you do not, do you believe your doctor, or do you find other ways to get X without seriously considering that you might be wrong? Many people choose the latter. (And then there is user error, such as getting results in an email signed with Blowfish and thinking that means they need to eat raw blowfish - which has a significant mortality rate, but can be had without a physician in the loop. That's a separate issue.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Wed Nov 27 20:33:38 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 21:33:38 +0100 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: <02ef01ceeb1b$97b096e0$c711c4a0$@att.net> References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <02ef01ceeb1b$97b096e0$c711c4a0$@att.net> Message-ID: <52965722.4060701@libero.it> Il 27/11/2013 03:51, spike ha scritto: > Regarding the earlier comment on their order to cease marketing the spit > kit, as of last night, you can still order the kits. One site seems to > think it had to do with a TV commercial 23andMe was running. If the FDA > is saying you need some kind of approval to advertise the service, that > might be understandable. I still disagree with stopping the marketing > effort, but I disagree with a lot of what is going on with the US > government. They don?t listen to me. They don?t listen to any of us. > After November 2014 perhaps they will listen. After November 2014 or they are removed from government or they will continue to not listen. Mirco From atymes at gmail.com Wed Nov 27 20:34:24 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 12:34:24 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: <529653A7.6010705@infinitefaculty.org> References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <529653A7.6010705@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 12:18 PM, Brian Manning Delaney < listsb at infinitefaculty.org> wrote: > Everyone "knows" that, in general, light to moderate daily consumption of > alcohol reduces mortality more than drinking more, or drinking less. (Turns > out that's a bit controversial, but let's leave that aside.) The link to > dementia is particularly strong. Let's say you get your 23andMe results > back, and discover you're an APOE-?4 carrier. 23andMe tells you the odds of > your developing Alzheimer's is much greater than avg. You do some digging > and learn that, for ?4-carriers, the "little is better than none" rule > about drinking doesn't apply: the more you drink, starting from zero, the > greater the risk. > > So you become a teetotaler. > > But say it turns out you aren't an ?4-carrier. Well, you changed your > behavior, and it was harmful (assuming the J-curve idea about alcohol > consumption -- at least for non-?4 carriers -- is correct). > A better and more relevant example: what if your digging turns out to be wrong, and c4 carriers' minimum risk is greater than average? And what if 23andMe tells you specifically that you need to drink more or less than average, when in fact it's the opposite? They're right that you're a c4-carrier, but not what it means. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Wed Nov 27 20:29:44 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 21:29:44 +0100 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: <01b601ceeaf5$7e7866b0$7b693410$@att.net> References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <01b601ceeaf5$7e7866b0$7b693410$@att.net> Message-ID: <52965638.4000202@libero.it> Il 26/11/2013 23:18, spike ha scritto: > At this point, those kits are selling themselves. I have sold four of > them to family members in a quest to find out something I now almost > wish I didn?t know. It has now created a chain reaction of sorts, with > more kits being sold to cousins of cousins who want to know things they > might later regret. They could just sell them on a blank page telling they can not, by FDA injunction, sell the kit for any particular purpose. They could just spin off the company in two halves: 1) one half, in the US, selling the kit and making the raw data available to the customers 2)second half, outside the US, taking the data of the first half (or any other data by the way, make it "generic" and interpreting it for the customers. And they could allow bitcoin payments too, just to avoid unnecessary fees and obstructions by banks and payment processors. Mirco From spike66 at att.net Wed Nov 27 20:52:25 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 12:52:25 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: <52965638.4000202@libero.it> References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <01b601ceeaf5$7e7866b0$7b693410$@att.net> <52965638.4000202@libero.it> Message-ID: <019701ceebb2$94af5e30$be0e1a90$@att.net> Mrs. Google just sent out a note: Dear 23andMe Customers, I wanted to reach out to you about the FDA letter that was sent to 23andMe last Friday. It is absolutely critical that our consumers get high quality genetic data that they can trust. We have worked extensively with our lab partner to make sure that the results we return are accurate. We stand behind the data that we return to customers - but we recognize that the FDA needs to be convinced of the quality of our data as well. 23andMe has been working with the FDA to navigate the correct regulatory path for direct-to-consumer genetic tests. This is new territory, not just for 23andMe, but for the FDA as well. The FDA is an important partner for 23andMe and we will be working hard to move forward with them. I apologize for the limited response to the questions many of you have raised regarding the letter and its implications for the service. We don't have the answers to all of those questions yet, but as we learn more we will update you. I am committed to providing each of you with a trusted consumer product rooted in high quality data that adheres to the best scientific standards. All of us at 23andMe believe that genetic information can lead to healthier lives. Thank you for your loyalty to 23andMe. Please refer to our 23andMe blog for updates on this process. Anne Wojcicki Co-founder and CEO, 23andMe From painlord2k at libero.it Wed Nov 27 22:43:18 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 23:43:18 +0100 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: <52967586.10005@libero.it> Il 27/11/2013 21:31, Adrian Tymes ha scritto: > Not necessarily. Some such treatments are indeed "over the counter", or > even on the level of fad diets. Not all such treatments involve pills > that can be regulated by normal means. If the treatment is "over the counter" then it is a responsibility of the patient deciding for himself the treatment. > There's also the issue of patients convinced they need certain specific > meds that no reputable physician will give them, because said patients > do not in fact need them. If you're convinced you need pill X but your > doctor says you do not, do you believe your doctor, or do you find other > ways to get X without seriously considering that you might be wrong? > Many people choose the latter. This is a question of personal responsibility. What if they are right and the doctor is not? There are a number of MD that avoid prescribing restricted drugs like painkillers or anabolic steroids even if they are useful for the treatment of the patients because they fear repercussion from law enforcement (often the drugs is not registered for the specific pathology or problem to threat). Or maybe they are just too much expensive and the single payer health care don't want pay for them because they are just 1% more useful (maybe from 98 to 99% efficacy) but cost double. > (And then there is user error, such as getting results in an email > signed with Blowfish and thinking that means they need to eat raw > blowfish - which has a significant mortality rate, but can be had > without a physician in the loop. That's a separate issue.) Natural selection have its utility, do you know? Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Wed Nov 27 22:51:58 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 23:51:58 +0100 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: <5296778E.2010801@libero.it> Il 26/11/2013 23:29, Mike Dougherty ha scritto: > Perhaps 23andMe can just reincorporate as a religious institution and > claim the testing equipment is some form of sacrament process? > > Yes, I'm being facetious... and perhaps rude/mildly offensive about it. > Sorry 'bout that. My suggestion is, if they lose their fight with the FDA, they incorporate outside the US and sell their test from outside the US. And another corporation provide the interpretation of the results. I like the idea of a market for interpretation of the results. Just now 23andMe has a kit and interpret the data, other services have other kits and interpret their data. I would like the ability to have the raw data and then give it to different services so I can compare the results. Mirco From listsb at infinitefaculty.org Wed Nov 27 22:56:12 2013 From: listsb at infinitefaculty.org (Brian Manning Delaney) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 23:56:12 +0100 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <529653A7.6010705@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: <5296788C.9060300@infinitefaculty.org> El 2013-11-27 21:34, Adrian Tymes escribi?: > A better and more relevant example: what if your digging turns out to be > wrong, and c4 carriers' minimum risk is greater than average? That's a risk that attends all consultations with Dr. Google, Dr. PubMed, etc. > And what if 23andMe tells you specifically that you need to drink more > or less than average, when in fact it's the opposite? They're right > that you're a c4-carrier, but not what it means. Well, 23andMe /does/ make a lot of health recommendations, but the recs. are very conservative, and phrased very conservatively. Not, "you need to", but, for ex., under Alzheimer's (and this is what they tell ?4-carriers /and/ non-carriers, I see now -- I manage several accounts): ------- Eat right A healthy, low-fat diet can not only help you maintain healthy weight and cholesterol, but can also help reduce your risk of Alzheimer's. ------- There are a lot of complicated legal questions here, and I am definitely not convinced that what the FDA is doing is wrong (or right). But my tentative conclusion is that they should be putting their limited resources into serious fraud, which abounds in the U.S., and which they probably won't find much of at 23andMe. Brian From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Nov 28 08:25:19 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 03:25:19 -0500 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: <002a01ceeb8c$555ead60$001c0820$@att.net> References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <002a01ceeb8c$555ead60$001c0820$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 11:18 AM, spike wrote: > Ja to all. I received this seconds before I hit send. I think you are > right, but at this point I am not sure we want to keep the FDA happy. I > think it is time to stand and fight. We have let the FDA strangle us for > too long. Time to stand and show some of that good old American > don?t-tread-on-me grit in the face of a battle I think the people can win. > In the setting of a spectacular failure of bureaucratic control over > medicine, and a spectacular success of a private enterprise, the time is > right for a test case, especially considering it is an odd year, so the > halls of congress will soon be vacated, the representatives off campaigning > for re-election. ### This is a very interesting perspective - 23andMe being involved in an extended, well-thought-out campaign against the FDA, rather than being caught like a deer in the juggernaut's headlights (sorry for the mixed idioms). On second thoughts, yes, of course, after all, 23andMe is Google, so forethought should be assumed. The big issue here is, obviously, patient autonomy. The existence of the FDA (and most other regulatory agencies) is predicated on the notion that humans may not exercise autonomy when it comes to choices regarding their own health, or in other domains. In FDA's world all choices are made primarily by bureaucrats, and to a lesser degree by vendors, while consumers have no choice but to accept them. The propaganda line supporting this vision is, as is often the case with modern government, protection of the weak (unsuspecting, powerless) customers against unscrupulous and inept vendors efficiently achieved by competent, selfless officials. A depressingly large fraction of the population seem to swallow this hook, line and sinker. As Spike points out, 23andMe might be the perfect test case, pitting informed, internet-empowered consumers against an immensely powerful but slow enemy. It certainly helps that the principals of the company involved are financially independent, depriving the FDA of one of their most potent weapons, the ability to destroy indirectly with bankruptcy rather than by prison sentences. With a lot of luck, the battle lines might be redrawn in our favor, the strangling onslaught may be slowed somewhat (but not reversed, only an unrealistic optimist could expect that), and who knows what the future might bring? - The abolition of the FDA? A cure for stupidity? One may dream. On a related note, I just found out in another 23andMe discussion that snake oil actually works. As it turns out, the very etymology of current meaning of "snake oil" (as fraudulent medicine that cries for a law against it) comes from early regulatory capture mixed with racism. Original snake oil, produced from Enhydris chinensis, a snake found in China, is a potent anti-inflammatory, and was used by Chinese laborers building American railroads to treat injuries. Rival medicine salesmen found it easy to ridicule the practice, since it originated with a despised ethnic group, and thus snake oil came to mean what it means. Eventually, the Pure Food and Drug Act came to help stamp out the slant-eyed competition, although in its initial version the Act only required truth in labeling, i.e. snake oil was supposed to contain actual snakes. After a hundred and seven years of regulatory expansion and daily little powergrabs by bureaucrats we came to this juncture, when swabbing your mouth to take a sample of your own genetic material is deemed illegal. Oh, the irony. Rafal From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Nov 28 14:33:07 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 15:33:07 +0100 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <002a01ceeb8c$555ead60$001c0820$@att.net> Message-ID: <52975423.4030808@libero.it> Il 28/11/2013 09:25, Rafal Smigrodzki ha scritto: > ### This is a very interesting perspective - 23andMe being involved in > an extended, well-thought-out campaign against the FDA, rather than > being caught like a deer in the juggernaut's headlights (sorry for the > mixed idioms). On second thoughts, yes, of course, after all, 23andMe > is Google, so forethought should be assumed. Well, surely they have experience with legal battle with big legal entities exploiting monopolies and government protections. And I'm pretty sure they have some plan and scenarios about the future course of events. > As Spike points out, 23andMe might be the perfect test case, pitting > informed, internet-empowered consumers against an immensely powerful > but slow enemy. It certainly helps that the principals of the company > involved are financially independent, depriving the FDA of one of > their most potent weapons, the ability to destroy indirectly with > bankruptcy rather than by prison sentences. With a lot of luck, the > battle lines might be redrawn in our favor, the strangling onslaught > may be slowed somewhat (but not reversed, only an unrealistic optimist > could expect that), and who knows what the future might bring? - The > abolition of the FDA? A cure for stupidity? One may dream. If I was the FDA, I would think twice or more, before picking a fight with Google. If Google is just a little to much pissed off they could tweak their search engine and rank up everything bad about the Fed. Not rank up a lot, just a little. Then they have enough money to buy a lot of political support (and rank down the politicians not supporting them, but just a little, and rank up the politicians supporting them, but just a little. Then they are able to move their business outside the US with ease, if the FDA it is too much of a nuisance and keep going as nothing happened. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Nov 28 15:32:13 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 16:32:13 +0100 Subject: [ExI] How can people be so blind about Bitcoin and the future? In-Reply-To: <00ee01cee85f$56b59140$0420b3c0$@att.net> References: <52905440.8020008@canonizer.com> <00ee01cee85f$56b59140$0420b3c0$@att.net> Message-ID: <529761FD.9080704@libero.it> Il 23/11/2013 16:18, spike ha scritto: >>?http://www.technollama.co.uk/we-need-decentralized-cryptocurrencies-we-just-dont-need-bitcoin >>>??"The problem is that if the price of a bitcoin is on a steady upward >>> trajectory, then nobody?s actually going to want to /spend/ a Bitcoin on >>> anything. And if everyone?s hoarding their Bitcoins, then the network is >>> actually useless. Then, since it turns out to be useless, you get a crash.? Envy of the pen... price They lost the train at 1$, they lost the train at 10$ and they lost the train at 100$, now they fear to have lost the train and find excuses to not jump in at 1.000. Current projections say ~3000$ top (+- 1000), then some 50% correction. We will see > Haaahahahahahaaaa? {8^D > Brent the real problem I see with btcoin and the other crypto-currencies > is that eventually the government will notice and figure out who is > using them, and noting the IRS isn?t getting its cut of the action. > Governments don?t like that. Ours is wielding power without > accountability (Where is Lois Lerner these days? Where is Sarah Hall > Ingram? Neither are in jail. Ingram is running the IRS branch in > charge of ?encouraging? healthy young people into buying overpriced > insurance.) > For our non-libertarian friends among us, how hard is it to see? Censure resistance is a big problem for the government. Then developers are building anonymization tools on top of the protocol and I bet the large majority of the users will want use them, from the big established vendor hating the idea the competition is able to analyze their cash flow to the little guy fearing police interference. Like with BitTorrent, they could try to curb the use, but the majority of people will just ignore the regulations because they will not be able to enforce them. People do not stop driving or smoking pot because they feat a car crash or an inroad with the police. Mirco From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 28 15:27:51 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 07:27:51 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <002a01ceeb8c$555ead60$001c0820$@att.net> Message-ID: <00dd01ceec4e$672930c0$357b9240$@att.net> ### This is a very interesting perspective - 23andMe being involved in an extended, well-thought-out campaign against the FDA, rather than being caught like a deer in the juggernaut's headlights (sorry for the mixed idioms). On second thoughts, yes, of course, after all, 23andMe is Google, so forethought should be assumed... ###...After a hundred and seven years of regulatory expansion and daily little powergrabs by bureaucrats we came to this juncture, when swabbing your mouth to take a sample of your own genetic material is deemed illegal. ###...Oh, the irony. Rafal Cool thanks Rafal. Here's MedCity's take on it: http://medcitynews.com/2013/11/23andme-ceo-stands-behind-data-response-fda/#ixzz2lxE31X00 News 23andMe CEO ?stands behind the data? in a response to the FDA November 27, 2013 3:39 pm by Christina Farr After 48 hours of silence, 23andMe issued a response to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration?s public warning letter, which asked the home genetic-testing service to cease selling and marketing its kit. 23andMe has stayed quiet in response to the media firestorm, referring press to a short and rather conciliatory statement on the company blog. However, this morning, 23andMe chief executive Anne Wojcicki shared their side of the story and promised to provide further updates as the case develops. It?s clear that 23andMe believes its actions will have implications for other companies in the genetic-testing field. The use of the phrase ?lay the groundwork? is particularly interesting, and it suggests the company realizes that its actions could define how the FDA regulates direct-to-consumer genetic tests. Wojcicki stresses that she ?stands behind the data? despite the FDA?s fears that test results are not accurate and/or clinically validated. ?This is new territory,? she writes. ?This makes the regulatory process with the FDA important because the work we are doing with the agency will help lay the groundwork for what other companies in this new industry do in the future.? In its stiff warning letter (delivered on Friday and made public on Monday), the FDA requested that 23andMe stop marketing its testing kit and provide specific actions to address its various concerns within 15 days. As of this report, the 23andMe test is still up for sale on the company?s website. Innovation vs. regulation This is by no means a clear-cut issue ? it has caused dispute among bioethics experts and law professors for years. This particular case touches on complex issues of privacy, freedom of information, the proper classification of medical devices, and the (often precarious) balance between innovation and regulation. Silicon Valley-based 23andMe claims that it is ?saving lives? by delivering clinical data, such as your risk of developing breast cancer or Parkinson?s disease. The company says in its marketing materials that it will provide ?health reports on 254 diseases and conditions.? 23andMe is not the first genetic test on the market, but it is the best known ?direct to consumer? play. It is also the last company doing this after its rivals were acquired or simply ran out of money. 23andMe believes it?s cutting out the middle man by delivering results straight to you ? in the past, doctors would order the tests on the patient?s behalf, and a genetic counselor would typically be on hand to decipher the results. The FDA has not issued much clear direction about how it intends to regulate direct-to-consumer companies like 23andMe ? a final guidance is still under development. However, 23andMe appears to have provoked the agency by ramping up its marketing to consumers. Far more troubling, the agency says 23andMe has failed to prove that the data is accurate. ?There should be sufficient or reasonable assurance the test results people are getting are accurate and that people are getting clear information about how to interpret those tests,? said Courtney Lias, the director of chemistry and toxicology devices at the FDA, in an interview with San Francisco NPR affiliate KQED. 23andMe has been working with the FDA since 2008, and this isn?t letter isn?t its first hurdle. However, for reasons that are not yet clear, 23andMe has not responded to the FDA in e-mail or other forms of written communication in almost six months. As I reported, this communication gap coincided with 23andMe?s aggressive marketing campaign on social media sites and broadcast TV networks. This article originally appeared on VentureBeat Read more: http://medcitynews.com/2013/11/23andme-ceo-stands-behind-data-response-fda/#ixzz2lxE31X00 From alfio.puglisi at gmail.com Thu Nov 28 16:20:51 2013 From: alfio.puglisi at gmail.com (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 17:20:51 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Comet ISON Message-ID: Check out this spectacular movie of comet Ison navigating solar outbursts: http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/data_query_search_url?Session=web&Resolution=2&Display=Movie&Start=2013-11-27&Finish=2013-11-28&Instrument=LASCO&Detector=C3 Ciao, Alfio -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Nov 28 16:48:35 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 11:48:35 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Healthcare thread again Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 9:09 AM, Omar Rahman wrote: > > Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 03:44:10 -0500 > From: Rafal Smigrodzki > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks > Republicans are "asinine" > > On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 3:53 AM, Omar Rahman wrote: > > > I would prefer the Federal government to implement an insurance policy that > MUST be accepted at all hospitals and only pays a FIXED cost for procedures. > Comparison shopping doesn't work well in health care because there is a too > much time pressure and you don't have time to move to Arizona/Hawaii/etc > where procedure X is covered and/or cheaper than where you live in a 'State > Model' situation as you have proposed. > > > ### Omar, you are repeating standard leftist boilerplate on medical > care (at least what they say when they don't talk about the single > payer). You hit all the points, even the notion of impossibility of > patient informed decision making in medical care. Just think about the > following sentence for five minutes: "It is generally impossible for > an individual to reasonably choose a doctor/hospital/insurance plan". > Cogitate on the details, try to imagine how a human might go about > this task. Only a propaganda-elicited learned helplessness can stop > you from reducing it to an absurdity. Or think about this one: "Fear > of the police is a good way of making sure there are enough surgeons > healing patients everywhere". > > Rafal > > > > Rafal, > > I actually took the five minutes you suggested. > > Conclusions: > > 1) these statements are yours but you seem to be proposing them as 'my > position' > 2) these statements are falsifiable on first reading > 3) this is an invalid form of argumentation known as 'Straw Man' see > https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman ### I'd say they are translations of your statements into a form where the substance and more importantly, their implications become obvious. After all, you do want to send the police after any surgeon who dares charge a different price for a procedure, don't you? That is exactly what you wrote, "MUST be accepted at all hospitals and only pays a FIXED cost for procedures". ---------- > > Rafal, as a doctor it would seem that you are in a better position to make > an informed choice about health care than the vast majority of people. But > are you really? With the multitude of 'competing' plans out there how can > you be sure unless you read and compare them all. ### Obviously, no. When I look for a car mechanic, I don't spend a year visiting every shop in driving range, I look until I find somebody good enough. There is absolutely no difference between car mechanics and doctors in this respect. ----------------- > > Insurance is a form of gambling. (You are betting you are going to get sick, > the insurance company bets that you will not get 'sick'.) > You are not 'the house'. (The rules are different for each side, with one > side having a statistical advantage.) > 'The house' makes the rules. (The house decides what 'sick' is and what, if > any, treatment applies.) > 'The house' always wins in the end. (The house always makes a profit from > cheating you at the most helpless and miserable points in your life.) ### No. The only way they make a profit is to maintain a reputation for being not more difficult to deal with than their competitors while keeping their prices not grossly higher than competition. That's why insurance plans already cover vastly more than necessary. That's why HMOs died, because they tried to use evidence to limit coverage of insanely expensive treatments. You have it exactly opposite-wrong: The problem with private insurance is not that they cover too little but that they cover way too much already and O-care would make it even worse. I could cut my patients' treatment costs by 80% with minimal reduction in their survival and health but since they are insured we never get to talk about costs anyway, so the money gets spent. -------------------- > > The argument I make for 'socialised medicine' is that I want to be 'the > house'. ### Yeah, I noticed, you do want to have armed personnel at your behest, to make people do as you say. -------------------- > > Well, I want to be 'the house' in a collective society, with my fellow > citizens and workers, with whom I shall unite to form a glorious republic of > the people, for the people, and by the people. See all those very positive > words in the previous sentence? How is it that when I string them together > like that some list readers will be 'seeing red' in more ways than one? ### Because, very reliably over the last century or so, when those who said the same stuff actually got to make decisions, the first thing they did was to have people like the list readers taken out back and shot. No doubt thinking positive thoughts all the time. -------------------------- > > Rafal, as you may know, I live in Poland. If you ever pass through Warsaw we > can meet up for coffee and discuss 'extropian' things. Would you agree that > Poland has a dysfunctional health care system? I certainly think so. There > are, at least, three causes in my opinion. > > 1) poor management of public systems > 2) poor funding of public systems > 3) the existence of private hospitals which exist mainly, in my opinion, to > allow 'rich' people to jump the queue and get prioritised care in public > health care institutions ### I have been only an occasional visitor in Poland since 1990 but I am quite familiar with its health system, since most of my friends and family are doctors, and yes, it's dysfunctional. The public system should in my opinion be completely abolished. That would cure all problems. ----------------- > > How do we account for the undeniable human need to receive the best health > care possible? Isn't the right to the best health care in fact the right to > self preservation? I think that it is. ### No. Receiving the best health care possible is not "self-preservation". It is receiving help from others. You may politely ask for it. You may pay. But making peremptory demands on other people's time and resources, backed by threat of violence, is wrong. It is especially wrong in the situation we are discussing, when you are not fighting to preserve your life in an emergency. Almost all citizens can easily pay for all reasonable medical care from their incomes, if they use a catastrophic health care plan - so claiming there is a "need" is disingenuous. It is not need, it's greed, demanding something for nothing. -------------------- > > My best case solution would be to have: > > 1) a single payer solution (which meets some agreed upon minimum standard of > care) that everyone must pay into ### But why, why? Why do you demand dominion over me (an "everyone")? Why do you say I "MUST" do what you want? Can't you just leave well alone, live and let live? ----------------- > > I believe we have a right to health care in society to whatever level we > collectively agree to fund it. ### Yes, the royal "we". Actually stands for bureaucrats pushing me around and claiming it's all for my good, and for the children, too. The way I see it, the desire for all these single payer wonders is based on a moral wrong and an illusion. The wrong is the demand to control the lives of others justified by the invocation of a collective good. The illusion is in the belief that the collective good will be well-served by a hierarchy of men with nobody to watch over them but the collective itself. Count me out of your collective. Rafal From atymes at gmail.com Thu Nov 28 16:52:59 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 08:52:59 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: <52975423.4030808@libero.it> References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <002a01ceeb8c$555ead60$001c0820$@att.net> <52975423.4030808@libero.it> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 6:33 AM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Then they are able to move their business outside the US with ease, if > the FDA it is too much of a nuisance and keep going as nothing happened. Actually, not so much. Google's HQ is deeply implanted in Mountain View, at least, and I suspect similar for its other operations centers. (Honestly, most multinationals just don't have the freedom to just pick up and move that some people claim that said multinationals threaten to exercise with every little regulatory thing said people disagree with. Put shortly, "exit rights" are a nonissue in most cases where it's claimed as an issue.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Nov 28 16:56:01 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 11:56:01 -0500 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: <00dd01ceec4e$672930c0$357b9240$@att.net> References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <002a01ceeb8c$555ead60$001c0820$@att.net> <00dd01ceec4e$672930c0$357b9240$@att.net> Message-ID: I understand that the FDA can provide counsel to prevent fraud. That's a nice feature when it's implemented as an approval certification. It's some kind of bullying when that agency has the power to issue C&D orders. In the interest of protecting the people, we should make sure WebMD only sends information to licensed doctors. We should make sure Home Depot only plays HowTo videos to licensed carpenters and plumbers. Stock information should only be available to licensed bankers and legal information should only be available to licensed lawyers. Of course only politicians should know anything at all about what goes on in government, right? We must also do everything we can to prevent the general public from accessing incomplete or potentially inaccurate information from unreliable devices. Forthwith, any "love tester" found on boardwalks and traveling carnivals must be impounded. In this same vein, advice columns (in print or online) must also be shut down. Bartenders may also solicit inaccurate advice so should be sanctioned against speaking about anything other than food and drink orders. Parents also tend to provide information to children that may be deemed inaccurate. Essentially the flow of information of any kind needs to be stopped. It's simply too difficult to control public memes if people are allowed to "talk amongst themselves." **** 2013.11.27 Adrian wrote Rake the FDA over the coals for what it actually does do badly (and doesn't do that it should), but let's confine the accusations to what's actually going on, please. There's more than enough without exaggerating or making stuff up. (It's possible that you might have simply misread, but it seems at least some people seem to be willfully misinterpreting what's going on here.) **** I may have misread. I don't think I'm willfully misinterpreting though. I would admit to reacting while underinformed. However by the time I feel qualified to say something warranted to be beyond dismissal the whole scenario would likely have played itself out. Can you explain how information about my own genetics that I am buying from a company that provides this service should be blocked by the FDA? I feel that we are either entitled to transact this business (in which case the FDA is interfering with my transaction) or we the people are too stupid/irresponsible to act on our own (in which case the FDA nanny is keeping us safe) Honestly, if you can enlighten me I'd appreciate the effort. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Thu Nov 28 17:06:58 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 17:06:58 +0000 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <002a01ceeb8c$555ead60$001c0820$@att.net> <00dd01ceec4e$672930c0$357b9240$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 4:56 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > Can you explain how information about my own genetics that I am buying from > a company that provides this service should be blocked by the FDA? I feel > that we are either entitled to transact this business (in which case the FDA > is interfering with my transaction) or we the people are too > stupid/irresponsible to act on our own (in which case the FDA nanny is > keeping us safe) Honestly, if you can enlighten me I'd appreciate the > effort. > > Can you explain why I am not allowed to buy heroin and cocaine as I feel like it? Or drive at 100mph when I judge it safe to do so? I am well able to behave responsibly and not cause damage to myself or others. Does the nanny state see me as too stupid/irresponsible to act on my own? BillK From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Nov 28 17:08:23 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 18:08:23 +0100 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <002a01ceeb8c$555ead60$001c0820$@att.net> <52975423.4030808@libero.it> Message-ID: <52977887.10004@libero.it> Il 28/11/2013 17:52, Adrian Tymes ha scritto: > On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 6:33 AM, Mirco Romanato > wrote: > > Then they are able to move their business outside the US with ease, if > the FDA it is too much of a nuisance and keep going as nothing happened. > > > Actually, not so much. Google's HQ is deeply implanted in Mountain > View, at least, and I suspect similar for its other operations centers. > (Honestly, most multinationals just don't have the freedom to just pick > up and move that some people claim that said multinationals threaten to > exercise with every little regulatory thing said people disagree with. > Put shortly, "exit rights" are a nonissue in most cases where it's > claimed as an issue.) I was talking about 23andMe, not Google, moving out of the US. Sorry for not being explicit. With all the talking about big Google rafts anchored in San Francisco, I could suppose Google is gaining expertise in moving their facilities around. And when you have your data-centers on industrial rafts able to be hauled around the ocean, you have the ability to raise the anchors and leave for freer waters. It would be funny if Brin, in a future where more of the Google HW is sea worth, decided to leave the harbor to better places. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Nov 28 17:20:04 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 18:20:04 +0100 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: <52977B44.9020504@libero.it> Il 25/05/2013 03:27, Mirco Romanato ha scritto: > 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. We will see pretty fast, and as Rossi said, the market is the final test: http://ecat.com/ecat-products/ecat-1-mw The ECAT 1MW plant is now available on the market. Sign up and pre-order, and secure your place on a waiting list with the right to priority treatment and faster product delivery. The ECAT 1MW plant contains 106 smaller ECAT units mounted in a shipping container. Valve for filling the Hydrogen is on the front of each unit, together with electrical connection to the immersion heater used to start the reaction. Production & Manufacturing plans are under way 2013. Current delivery time is estimated to four months. Warranty for functionality is two years with a guaranteed COP of 6, and the plant has an expected life span of 30 years. The ECAT 1MW plant is constructed inside an international standardized 20ft container which can easily be transferred between different modes of transportation (e.g. ships, air cargo, trains and trucks). The plant consists of small parallel modules. Each reactor contains three cores and consumes small amounts of treated Nickel powder and Hydrogen gas (under pressure, approx. 15 bar). The plant is recharged by specially trained and certified personnel. Orders are accepted from all over the world and require a routine due-diligence process. Customers must comply with several criteria set by Leonardo Corporation in order to qualify for a purchase of a ECAT 1MW plant. ECAT 1 MW Plant Features ECAT 1 MW Plant is a Heat Plant with 1 MW of thermal output through a normal pressure warm water/steam outlet. It can easily be coupled to a secondary high pressure loop for local or district heating. ECAT 1 MW Plant produces energy through a so-called cold fusion process. No combustion takes place; instead Nickel and Hydrogen merge to produce Copper. Per unit of weight, this process is at least 100,000 more efficient than any known combustion process. ECAT 1 MW Plant is made up of smaller modules where the actual reactor is the size of 20cmx20cmx1cm. These small reactors are coupled in modules of 3 pieces each, then these modules in turn are built into a 20 ?container with a series of 106 pieces. Power density in the small reactor is as high as 100 kW / L Due to its structure, the ECAT 1MW plant is extremely easy to use. It is delivered in a standard container which can be stacked if your solution requires multiple ECAT 1MW plants. It also has a convenient plug?n?serve design that makes installation straight forward. - See more at: http://ecat.com/ecat-products/ecat-1-mw#sthash.ZezgSti8.dpuf Mirco From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Nov 28 17:23:25 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 12:23:25 -0500 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <002a01ceeb8c$555ead60$001c0820$@att.net> <00dd01ceec4e$672930c0$357b9240$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 12:06 PM, BillK wrote: > Can you explain why I am not allowed to buy heroin and cocaine as I > feel like it? > Or drive at 100mph when I judge it safe to do so? > I am well able to behave responsibly and not cause damage to myself or > others. > Does the nanny state see me as too stupid/irresponsible to act on my own? > > I can't explain the restriction on your use of drugs without invoking the same kind of loss of personal liberties to the nanny state. I think there's a social contract that suggests you won't rob me to pay for your addiction and you won't assault me for entertainment (possibly while high) - I also think that social contract would prevent me from telling you what drugs you should or shouldn't ingest. For example, people seem to have more long-term exposure health problems with legal alcohol than with illegal marijuana - idk why one is ok and the other not. I think you should be allowed to drive 100mph, but only when there is no possibility for the capability of others to interfere or bring themselves harm as a result. This is somewhat different from the personal liberty of drug usage because my reaction time isn't able to accommodate your vehicle's speed on a shared resource like the road. i know, there are cases where ones liberties with drugs impact another via a shared resource... such as addicted mothers neglecting their dependent children's needs. Obviously we need some solution to those kinds of problems. I just don't think more government is the answer. As far as the last question (re: nanny state) - i don't know. I'm frequently told that I have a bad attitude and that I never have anything positive to say. I really want to believe we're able to make intelligent choices for ourselves and be able to manage the consequences of those choices. That's my optimist side. I keep seeing examples where we yield our right to choose to a government decider-er. That's my pessimist view. How do you see these trends? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Nov 28 17:23:54 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 09:23:54 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <002a01ceeb8c$555ead60$001c0820$@att.net> <00dd01ceec4e$672930c0$357b9240$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 8:56 AM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > In the interest of protecting the people, we should make sure WebMD only > sends information to licensed doctors. We should make sure Home Depot only > plays HowTo videos to licensed carpenters and plumbers. Stock information > should only be available to licensed bankers and legal information should > only be available to licensed lawyers. Of course only politicians should > know anything at all about what goes on in government, right? > Your analogy is flawed. The FDA has said it would have no problem with 23andMe communicating the information as to what genetic markers mean to the public *if this information was proven correct*. Problem is, 23andMe has not provided this proof to the FDA's satisfaction. (Sure, they can prove that they have the correct markers. That's not the part the FDA's objecting to.) Can you explain how information about my own genetics that I am buying from > a company that provides this service should be blocked by the FDA? I feel > that we are either entitled to transact this business (in which case the > FDA is interfering with my transaction) or we the people are too > stupid/irresponsible to act on our own (in which case the FDA nanny is > keeping us safe) Honestly, if you can enlighten me I'd appreciate the > effort. > I have explained multiple times. In short: if this information suggests that certain things would be healthy for you when in fact they are not, then they are causing you to be less healthy than you otherwise would be. Basically it's the latter case from what you said, except instead of "stupid/irresponsible" try "misinformed". If your doctor told you that taking pill X would improve your health, most Americans would take pill X without any further research. The FDA's issue is that this level of trust is being extended to 23andMe when, in the FDA's opinion, they have not earned it. Now, it could well be that the information about what genetic markers trigger what is all accurate. If so, it should be a simple matter to prove this to the FDA. That 23andMe has not done this suggests that either the information is not in fact trustworthy, or that the real issue is something else (but if that is the case, 23andMe should have said so by now). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Nov 28 17:33:13 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 12:33:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 12:06 PM, John Clark wrote: > > > Richard Feynman also said that when a theory doesn't fit the facts it must > be abandoned no matter how beautiful or well loved the theory may be. Ten > years ago I too would have predicted huge inflation if the printing presses > continued to operate at the rate they were at it would create huge > inflation, but in spite of the fact that the presses have actually > accelerated my prediction failed miserably, therefore I must change my > economic theories. > ### John, you should not throw out a theory based on a thousand data points when a single new data point seemingly disagrees with it. Inflation is a monetary phenomenon (that's a well-accepted economic theory), i.e. it is caused by an increase in the amount of circulating currency. The USG has been recently generating huge amounts of currency but only a part of it actively circulates in the US - since the dollar is still a global and especially Chinese wealth parking spot, you can print a lot of it and not much will move in domestic US prices. Generally, government production of money is evil, since it strengthens the government and transfers real resources from the productive economy to non-productive or even destructive government employees, cronies, government-associated bankers and other hangers-on. This is the key point - a destructive transfer of resources, no matter whether it leads to obvious inflation or not. You should read Rothbard on that. The stories about the benefits of inflation are vastly exaggerated: "sticky wages" get unstuck pretty quick if there is less regulation and no labor unions. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 28 17:28:32 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 09:28:32 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: <52975423.4030808@libero.it> References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <002a01ceeb8c$555ead60$001c0820$@att.net> <52975423.4030808@libero.it> Message-ID: <01bd01ceec5f$4389b6b0$ca9d2410$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato Subject: Re: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service Il 28/11/2013 09:25, Rafal Smigrodzki ha scritto: >>... ### This is a very interesting perspective - 23andMe being involved in > an extended, well-thought-out campaign against the FDA, rather than > being caught like a deer in the juggernaut's headlights (sorry for the > mixed idioms). On second thoughts, yes, of course, after all, 23andMe > is Google, so forethought should be assumed...> As Spike points out, >23andMe might be the perfect test case, pitting > informed, internet-empowered consumers against an immensely powerful > but slow enemy... abolition of the FDA? A cure for stupidity? One may dream. Rafal Rafal they make you lads take an oath before they give you a license to cut parts out of a prole, and as I recall it has right up front after the initial pleasantries a comment about "...never do harm to anyone." Before we even get to what the US government is doing, I can think of plenty of harm the FDA has done, is doing and will do, by trying to carry out such things as efficacy proofs for medications where it isn't needed. It makes the pool of medications more effective, but it simultaneously raises the prices of those medications to place them out of the reach of more and more of us. They are protecting us to death. >...If I was the FDA, I would think twice or more, before picking a fight with Google. If Google is just a little to much pissed off they could tweak their search engine and rank up everything bad about the Fed. Not rank up a lot, just a little... Mirco You bring up an important issue Mirco that deserves treatment separately from the current medical debate. In the specific case of government intervening excessively in the area of medicine, we recognize that as a double-edged sword. We know of such problems as trusted radio voices selling vitamins claiming it can halt macular degeneration (an example chosen because it hits close to home.) We know that elderly people can be easily led astray by this sort of thing. We know there are these kinds of problems, but my notion is that governments should not think they can fix everything. But they can sure break everything. Note where we are in US history. We saw the failed ACA rollout on 1 October, but that crash and burn is nothing compared to what we will see the day after tomorrow, 30 November. Reasoning: when the 1 October site kept crashing, most customers just went away, assuming they would come back later. They had two and a half months to get on there. Now they will have less than three weeks, and since then, jillions of proles have learned their insurance was being cancelled (because their inadequate plans didn't cover Sandra Fluke's BCPs.) So day after tomorrow, Saturday 30 November, we will see ten times as many people trying to get on a website that still isn't fixed, even if it is new and improved. In that new wave are plenty who are openly hostile, whereas before they were passively neutral. This will be a spectacular example of failure of government in medicine. With that backdrop, I can imagine the FDA wishing to avoid a head-on confrontation with a popular and affordable device like 23andMe, even if we know it isn't up to the usual medical standards for precision and accuracy. I see the 23andMe kit as analogous to a home pregnancy test. I don't see how the government has any right to regulate that. I don't see the justification or the authority anywhere in the constitution, don't see it as promoting the general welfare, but I do see it as violating that oath they make Rafal swear to, regarding do no harm to anyone. spike From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Nov 28 17:47:31 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 12:47:31 -0500 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <002a01ceeb8c$555ead60$001c0820$@att.net> <00dd01ceec4e$672930c0$357b9240$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 12:23 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Now, it could well be that the information about what genetic markers > trigger what is all accurate. If so, it should be a simple matter to prove > this to the FDA. That 23andMe has not done this suggests that either the > information is not in fact trustworthy, or that the real issue is something > else (but if that is the case, 23andMe should have said so by now). ### The real issue is that the FDA imposes enormous arbitrary costs (measured in hundreds of billions of dollars) on me and other consumers by demanding those, as you say, "simple" proofs of accuracy. It is hugely destructive, no matter what kind of sanctimonious justifications the FDA comes up with. And, aside from that but no less importantly, it is none of your, or the FDA's business how I use my resources, whether I spend them in Vegas or on inaccurate genetic testing. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Nov 28 17:54:01 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 12:54:01 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <63E929A5-85CD-4C48-A513-A741793B05D3@me.com> References: <63E929A5-85CD-4C48-A513-A741793B05D3@me.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 10:42 AM, Omar Rahman wrote: Once a person is 26, they are probably going to be mature enough > to understand that, like it or not, 'something bad is going to happen to > them sometime' and pony up for health care. For them it isn't going to be > about 'getting' health care, they will be thinking of the context of > 'losing' the health care they had until age 26. Once that shift takes place > in the general population it's game over. ### EMTALA says (you know about EMTALA, don't you?) a hospital can't turn away a person with a medical emergency, no matter whether they are insured or not. Why should a 26 year old be stupid enough to pay 15k per year for coverage they won't use (chronic disease and pre-death care of the elderly), if they know they can get emergency care for free anyway? Rafal From atymes at gmail.com Thu Nov 28 18:02:15 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 10:02:15 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <002a01ceeb8c$555ead60$001c0820$@att.net> <00dd01ceec4e$672930c0$357b9240$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 9:47 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > ### The real issue is that the FDA imposes enormous arbitrary costs > (measured in hundreds of billions of dollars) on me and other > consumers by demanding those, as you say, "simple" proofs of accuracy. > The provided justification is that, absent these proofs, collective costs to said consumers would be far higher, since each consumer would independently have to verify what's accurate - and, more often, suffer when their own research fell short. This was easy to demonstrate when the FDA was founded, across all things the FDA had jurisdiction over. These days, there are some cases where that basic assumption is no longer valid. Further, while the costs are not completely arbitrary, they are in many cases far higher than they could be for the same degree of accuracy. And, aside from that but no less importantly, it is none of your, or > the FDA's business how I use my resources, whether I spend them in > Vegas or on inaccurate genetic testing. > It is if you use your resources in a way that is destructive to other people, such as by crippling yourself then demanding the rest of us make accommodations to let you continue living normally. Most people who do this, do the self-crippling part involuntarily (such as by acting on bad information). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Nov 28 18:06:56 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 10:06:56 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: References: <63E929A5-85CD-4C48-A513-A741793B05D3@me.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 9:54 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > ### EMTALA says (you know about EMTALA, don't you?) a hospital can't > turn away a person with a medical emergency, no matter whether they > are insured or not. Why should a 26 year old be stupid enough to pay > 15k per year for coverage they won't use (chronic disease and > pre-death care of the elderly), if they know they can get emergency > care for free anyway? > Because they suffer from other non-emergency conditions that the elderly don't, and the elderly are helping to pay for those conditions too. In general, the more people who pay for a pool of medical insurance, the cheaper it is for everyone in the pool - even when the pool covers conditions exclusive to small fractions of the pool. It's an economy of scale effect, with substantial per-person dividends when the pool covers millions of people - as in the difference between affordable and unaffordable for many, perhaps most, people in the US. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Nov 28 18:18:59 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 13:18:59 -0500 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <002a01ceeb8c$555ead60$001c0820$@att.net> <00dd01ceec4e$672930c0$357b9240$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 1:02 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > > The provided justification is that, absent these proofs, collective costs to > said consumers would be far higher, since each consumer would independently > have to verify what's accurate - and, more often, suffer when their own > research fell short. > > This was easy to demonstrate when the FDA was founded, across all things the > FDA had jurisdiction over. ### It never needs to be demonstrated, since it is not relevant. Your basic assumption is wrong: In fact, consumers don't have to independently verify what's accurate. The FDA is neither capable nor willing to perform the cost-benefit analyses that are the key to efficient regulation of anything, and this is why the FDA imposes hundred billion dollar costs on us for trivial benefits. However, there are some forms of markets that are capable of performing these cost-benefit analyses, including insurance, accreditation organizations, consumer groups, professional associations and others. There are more efficient ways to assess quality of medical care than a government bureaucracy. Therefore the FDA should not exist. QED. ------------ > > It is if you use your resources in a way that is destructive to other > people, such as by crippling yourself then demanding the rest of us make > accommodations to let you continue living normally. Most people who do > this, do the self-crippling part involuntarily (such as by acting on bad > information). ### Are you asking if I am a leech? I am not a leech. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Nov 28 18:21:23 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 13:21:23 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: References: <63E929A5-85CD-4C48-A513-A741793B05D3@me.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 1:06 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 9:54 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki Why should a 26 year old be stupid enough to pay >> 15k per year for coverage they won't use (chronic disease and >> pre-death care of the elderly), if they know they can get emergency >> care for free anyway? > > > Because they suffer from other non-emergency conditions that the elderly > don't, and the elderly are helping to pay for those conditions too. ### Non-emergency conditions in 26 year olds? LOL. From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 28 18:27:38 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 10:27:38 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <002a01ceeb8c$555ead60$001c0820$@att.net> <00dd01ceec4e$672930c0$357b9240$@att.net> Message-ID: <02e301ceec67$8517d000$8f477000$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Subject: Re: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 9:47 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: ### The real issue is that the FDA imposes enormous arbitrary costs (measured in hundreds of billions of dollars) on me and other consumers by demanding those, as you say, "simple" proofs of accuracy. Rafal >.The provided justification is that, absent these proofs, collective costs to said consumers would be far higher, since each consumer would independently have to verify what's accurate - and, more often, suffer when their own research fell short. Adrian Idea: set up a government agency to collect patient feedback on the efficacy of a medical device, or anything medical: pills, potions and lotions. Let them collect the data from anonymous contributors, and any negative reaction to the medications, have them fill out questionnaires and so forth, especially valuable if the patients are willing to volunteer what other medications they are taking. Then let the FDA do its data-mining magic to sift the data and find oddball correlations, such as taking cortium hydrochloroplazinate while on paxil and drinking excessively causes increased risk of masturbation-related injury, that sort of thing. They could create a publicly available database with efficacy ratings of the various pills, potions and lotions. What we could do is to let willing proles be the beta testers, then let the FDA decide which medications work for what ailments. I recognize the risk of intentional corruption of the database for profit and all the other risks, but it would likely be an improvement over what we have now, which is a system with crazy high costs to prove what might be a very subtle signal. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Nov 28 19:26:28 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 20:26:28 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: References: <63E929A5-85CD-4C48-A513-A741793B05D3@me.com> Message-ID: <529798E4.3060608@libero.it> Il 28/11/2013 19:21, Rafal Smigrodzki ha scritto: > On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 1:06 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: >> On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 9:54 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki > > Why should a 26 year old be stupid enough to pay >>> 15k per year for coverage they won't use (chronic disease and >>> pre-death care of the elderly), if they know they can get emergency >>> care for free anyway? >> >> >> Because they suffer from other non-emergency conditions that the elderly >> don't, and the elderly are helping to pay for those conditions too. > > ### Non-emergency conditions in 26 year olds? Pregnancy? I suggest to ask money to the other party involved. Mirco From spike66 at att.net Thu Nov 28 19:57:29 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 11:57:29 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: References: <63E929A5-85CD-4C48-A513-A741793B05D3@me.com> Message-ID: <039101ceec74$124c8810$36e59830$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Sent: Thursday, November 28, 2013 10:07 AM To: rafal at smigrodzki.org; ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 9:54 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: ### EMTALA says (you know about EMTALA, don't you?) a hospital can't turn away a person with a medical emergency, no matter whether they are insured or not. Why should a 26 year old be stupid enough to pay 15k per year for coverage they won't use (chronic disease and pre-death care of the elderly), if they know they can get emergency care for free anyway? Rafal >.Because they suffer from other non-emergency conditions that the elderly don't, and the elderly are helping to pay for those conditions too. >.In general, the more people who pay for a pool of medical insurance, the cheaper it is for everyone in the pool - even when the pool covers conditions exclusive to small fractions of the pool. It's an economy of scale effect, with substantial per-person dividends when the pool covers millions of people - as in the difference between affordable and unaffordable for many, perhaps most, people in the US. Adrian Adrian I would agree with this line of reasoning but for what I see as an enormous flaw in the reasoning: the price differential between the highest cost group and the lowest was dictated to be 3. Why 3? Did not the architects of this system talk to the insurance people? If they had, they would realize the ratio should be more like in the 6 to 8 range. If the government wanted to dictate an arbitrary ratio, 3 is way too low. Then to design the system to depend on the lowest risk people to overpay was a flaw in the design. Young people, especially young men, already underestimate their health risks for reasons easy to see: you and I did all kinds of crazy stuff back then that we couldn't do now: played tackle football without pads for instance, and all manner of insanity. We would take a handful of aspirin and a few days later all would be well. No wonder we felt invincible. For the most part, we were. Our bodies would quickly heal themselves, and even then doctors couldn't do much for a young healthy person, unless there was an actual broken bone. So the insurance people would have told the ACA authorities that young people, especially young men, are a very tough sell. The price ratio should be about 8 rather than 3. We saw a spectacular failure in the Brosurance ads. They had kegstanding bros commenting that not having insurance was crazy, as if the young men would consider crazy a bad thing. They had a drunken male teenager perched on a keg acknowledging he could "totally fall" and oh how wonderful it is I am insured. OK then, a 19 yr old drunkard could fall off a keg. How tall is a keg? Would that hurt him? Would that ad sell a single insurance policy? Then these critically necessary young males who have never even seen a slow website are sent to this place where they are giving spinning rainbows for minutes on end, and offered an overpriced product which they don't really want. What could go wrong? My prediction: Saturday's do-over ACA rollout will be an even more spectacular failure than 1 October. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Nov 28 20:23:04 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 12:23:04 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> <529512E1.5040904@infinitefaculty.org> <002a01ceeb8c$555ead60$001c0820$@att.net> <00dd01ceec4e$672930c0$357b9240$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 10:18 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > ### It never needs to be demonstrated, since it is not relevant. Your > basic assumption is wrong: In fact, consumers don't have to > independently verify what's accurate. > 1) It's not my basic assumption. I am trying to explain the FDA's position, that you may come up with attacks on it that are actually accurate (and therefore potentially effective: venting your anger on straw men accomplishes nothing, and I - like most on this list - might benefit if we came up with reforms for the FDA that could actually solve the problem). To accuse me of sharing their beliefs just because I am explaining them is a logical fallacy, and rather insulting. 2) Some verification must be done, whether by consumers, the FDA, or whoever else. When the FDA was founded, consumers were demonstrably unable, and there were no other reliable sources. That is not necessarily true today. Please do not confuse 2013 with the 19th century again. > The FDA is neither capable nor willing to perform the cost-benefit > analyses that are the key to efficient regulation of anything, and > this is why the FDA imposes hundred billion dollar costs on us for > trivial benefits. Technically correct, but they believe they can tell what sufficient cost-benefit analyses are. They require that the various practitioners then perform said cost-benefit analyses to their satisfaction. They specifically believe that 23andMe has not done this. > However, there are some forms of markets that are > capable of performing these cost-benefit analyses, including > insurance, accreditation organizations, consumer groups, professional > associations and others. > And these have indeed performed many of the analyses that the FDA requires. > There are more efficient ways to assess quality of medical care than a > government bureaucracy. Therefore the FDA should not exist. Incorrect. Part of the FDA's mission is to make sure that those assessments have in fact been done, even if it itself does not directly do them. > > It is if you use your resources in a way that is destructive to other > > people, such as by crippling yourself then demanding the rest of us make > > accommodations to let you continue living normally. Most people who do > > this, do the self-crippling part involuntarily (such as by acting on bad > > information). > > ### Are you asking if I am a leech? > > I am not a leech. > You do not intend to be a leech. Very few of those who wind up in this position intend to be leeches. Also, you are not yet a cripple. You are not yet in the position where living a decent life requires that you become a leech. The point there is to prevent people - including you - from having to trade off personal survival vs. not being leeches. (Because of course personal survival wins out in most cases. Near-term survival is a biological imperative for most people. Not necessarily long term, so problems arise when the long term becomes the near term, but that's another story.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Nov 28 21:46:18 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 13:46:18 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: References: <63E929A5-85CD-4C48-A513-A741793B05D3@me.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 10:21 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 1:06 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 9:54 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki > Why should a 26 year old be stupid enough to pay > >> 15k per year for coverage they won't use (chronic disease and > >> pre-death care of the elderly), if they know they can get emergency > >> care for free anyway? > > > > Because they suffer from other non-emergency conditions that the elderly > > don't, and the elderly are helping to pay for those conditions too. > > ### Non-emergency conditions in 26 year olds? > > LOL. > Cancer, diabetes, and various mental health issues and stress-related disorders are no laughing matter if you have them and opted out of insurance. Do not confuse the fact that you lived through your 20s with no issues for thinking that everyone does, or can. Do yourself a favor and do some research: things are not as you believe they are. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Nov 28 21:47:54 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 13:47:54 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine" In-Reply-To: <039101ceec74$124c8810$36e59830$@att.net> References: <63E929A5-85CD-4C48-A513-A741793B05D3@me.com> <039101ceec74$124c8810$36e59830$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 11:57 AM, spike wrote: > Adrian I would agree with this line of reasoning but for what I see as an > enormous flaw in the reasoning: the price differential between the highest > cost group and the lowest was dictated to be 3. Why 3? Did not the > architects of this system talk to the insurance people? If they had, they > would realize the ratio should be more like in the 6 to 8 range. If the > government wanted to dictate an arbitrary ratio, 3 is way too low. Then to > design the system to depend on the lowest risk people to overpay was a flaw > in the design. > FINALLY! Someone's actually digging out the facts and building a realistic case. Thank you Spike. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Nov 28 23:20:16 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 23:20:16 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Comet ISON In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5297CFB0.7030103@aleph.se> The poor little thing didn't survive perihelion :-( But at least it went out in style with the tail held high. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From rahmans at me.com Thu Nov 28 23:32:39 2013 From: rahmans at me.com (Omar Rahman) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 00:32:39 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Healthcare thread again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <973F3A58-5D9C-4B12-8515-38959E6E05B4@me.com> Rafal, I've merged these two threads here for simplicity. On 28 Nov 2013, at 19:02, extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org wrote: > Message: 5 > Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 11:48:35 -0500 > From: Rafal Smigrodzki > To: ExI chat list > Subject: [ExI] Healthcare thread again > Message-ID: > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 9:09 AM, Omar Rahman wrote: >> >> Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 03:44:10 -0500 >> From: Rafal Smigrodzki >> To: ExI chat list >> Subject: Re: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks >> Republicans are "asinine" >> >> On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 3:53 AM, Omar Rahman wrote: >> >> >> I would prefer the Federal government to implement an insurance policy that >> MUST be accepted at all hospitals and only pays a FIXED cost for procedures. >> Comparison shopping doesn't work well in health care because there is a too >> much time pressure and you don't have time to move to Arizona/Hawaii/etc >> where procedure X is covered and/or cheaper than where you live in a 'State >> Model' situation as you have proposed. >> >> >> ### Omar, you are repeating standard leftist boilerplate on medical >> care (at least what they say when they don't talk about the single >> payer). You hit all the points, even the notion of impossibility of >> patient informed decision making in medical care. Just think about the >> following sentence for five minutes: "It is generally impossible for >> an individual to reasonably choose a doctor/hospital/insurance plan". >> Cogitate on the details, try to imagine how a human might go about >> this task. Only a propaganda-elicited learned helplessness can stop >> you from reducing it to an absurdity. Or think about this one: "Fear >> of the police is a good way of making sure there are enough surgeons >> healing patients everywhere". >> >> Rafal >> >> >> >> Rafal, >> >> I actually took the five minutes you suggested. >> >> Conclusions: >> >> 1) these statements are yours but you seem to be proposing them as 'my >> position' >> 2) these statements are falsifiable on first reading >> 3) this is an invalid form of argumentation known as 'Straw Man' see >> https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman > > ### I'd say they are translations of your statements into a form where > the substance and more importantly, their implications become obvious. I'd say that the translation of my arguments into your words so that you can trivially refute them is precisely what makes a 'Straw Man' argument. > After all, you do want to send the police after any surgeon who dares > charge a different price for a procedure, don't you? That is exactly > what you wrote, "MUST be accepted at all hospitals and only pays a > FIXED cost for procedures". They can charge a different price as long as it's lower. The free markets should be able to supply that, right? > ---------- >> >> Rafal, as a doctor it would seem that you are in a better position to make >> an informed choice about health care than the vast majority of people. But >> are you really? With the multitude of 'competing' plans out there how can >> you be sure unless you read and compare them all. > > ### Obviously, no. When I look for a car mechanic, I don't spend a > year visiting every shop in driving range, I look until I find > somebody good enough. There is absolutely no difference between car > mechanics and doctors in this respect. I'd also say that you are wilfully ignoring my statements about not needing perfect information to make a decision in order for you to say that you don't need perfect information to make a decision. > ----------------- >> >> Insurance is a form of gambling. (You are betting you are going to get sick, >> the insurance company bets that you will not get 'sick'.) >> You are not 'the house'. (The rules are different for each side, with one >> side having a statistical advantage.) >> 'The house' makes the rules. (The house decides what 'sick' is and what, if >> any, treatment applies.) >> 'The house' always wins in the end. (The house always makes a profit from >> cheating you at the most helpless and miserable points in your life.) > > ### No. The only way they make a profit is to maintain a reputation > for being not more difficult to deal with than their competitors while > keeping their prices not grossly higher than competition. You can make profits in a multitude of ways both legal and illegal, ethical and unethical. Having a good reputation and decent prices would be one of the more legal and ethical means. What's your point? > That's why > insurance plans already cover vastly more than necessary. That's why > HMOs died, because they tried to use evidence to limit coverage of > insanely expensive treatments. > > You have it exactly opposite-wrong: The problem with private insurance > is not that they cover too little but that they cover way too much > already and O-care would make it even worse. I could cut my patients' > treatment costs by 80% with minimal reduction in their survival and > health but since they are insured we never get to talk about costs > anyway, so the money gets spent. > -------------------- Costs can be discussed in both public and private contexts. What you seem to be saying is that the costs are too high in the existing private programs. Interestingly I, and international studies concerning the percent of GDP spent by various nations and their health outcomes, agree with you that the US private health insurance industry is very inefficient. Nice to know we have some common ground to build on. >> >> The argument I make for 'socialised medicine' is that I want to be 'the >> house'. > > ### Yeah, I noticed, you do want to have armed personnel at your > behest, to make people do as you say. > Yes, I have millions of minions. All jack booted by the way. They even have little jack boot slippers to go with their pyjamas. Our plan for world domination is to make people healthy so that they are helpless to resist us. Of wait....that won't work very well....won't they be all healthy and stuff and be able to fight back? > -------------------- >> >> Well, I want to be 'the house' in a collective society, with my fellow >> citizens and workers, with whom I shall unite to form a glorious republic of >> the people, for the people, and by the people. See all those very positive >> words in the previous sentence? How is it that when I string them together >> like that some list readers will be 'seeing red' in more ways than one? > > ### Because, very reliably over the last century or so, when those who > said the same stuff actually got to make decisions, the first thing > they did was to have people like the list readers taken out back and > shot. No doubt thinking positive thoughts all the time. Sunshine puppies la la la 'BANG BANG BANG'...you've got me figured out! Or you've pegged me into some ridiculous caricature so as to make me seem some sort of extremist and therefore trivial to argue against? I think deep in your heart you want to be a farmer you have so many Straw Men around...... > > -------------------------- >> >> Rafal, as you may know, I live in Poland. If you ever pass through Warsaw we >> can meet up for coffee and discuss 'extropian' things. Would you agree that >> Poland has a dysfunctional health care system? I certainly think so. There >> are, at least, three causes in my opinion. >> >> 1) poor management of public systems >> 2) poor funding of public systems >> 3) the existence of private hospitals which exist mainly, in my opinion, to >> allow 'rich' people to jump the queue and get prioritised care in public >> health care institutions > > ### I have been only an occasional visitor in Poland since 1990 but I > am quite familiar with its health system, since most of my friends and > family are doctors, and yes, it's dysfunctional. The public system > should in my opinion be completely abolished. That would cure all > problems. > So we agree that the Polish system is dysfunctional too. Would privatisation 'cure' the problem of millions of people losing the health care they paid for during their working lives? No. Reform of the existing system is the only fair option for those who have paid into it. > ----------------- >> >> How do we account for the undeniable human need to receive the best health >> care possible? Isn't the right to the best health care in fact the right to >> self preservation? I think that it is. > > ### No. Receiving the best health care possible is not > "self-preservation". It is receiving help from others. Frankly, you need to learn to read. I am conflating the right to 'the best' health care with the right to SELF preservation. I thought I was conceding a point to you actually. My thought was that the existence of public systems should not limit individuals from seeking whatever addition treatments they deem necessary. > You may > politely ask for it. You may pay. But making peremptory demands on > other people's time and resources, backed by threat of violence, Where did I misplace my millions of minions? I could really use a jack booted thug right now! > is > wrong. It is especially wrong in the situation we are discussing, when > you are not fighting to preserve your life in an emergency. Almost all > citizens can easily pay for all reasonable medical care from their > incomes, if they use a catastrophic health care plan - so claiming > there is a "need" is disingenuous. It is not need, it's greed, > demanding something for nothing. > You completely missed my point as it was clearly explained a few sentences further on. > -------------------- >> >> My best case solution would be to have: >> >> 1) a single payer solution (which meets some agreed upon minimum standard of >> care) that everyone must pay into > > ### But why, why? Why do you demand dominion over me (an "everyone")? > Why do you say I "MUST" do what you want? Can't you just leave well > alone, live and let live? Why must? To avoid the free rider problem. > ----------------- >> >> I believe we have a right to health care in society to whatever level we >> collectively agree to fund it. > > ### Yes, the royal "we". Actually stands for bureaucrats pushing me > around and claiming it's all for my good, and for the children, too. At least it seems I'm not being portrayed as a dictator but as some form of royalty. Hmm......wait....is that better or worse than a dictatorial 'commoner'? Most human societies have collectively chosen to leave that funding level at zero by the way. > > The way I see it, the desire for all these single payer wonders is > based on a moral wrong and an illusion. > The wrong is the demand to > control the lives of others justified by the invocation of a > collective good. We usually call that being a citizen and living in a society. Go try driving on the left in the US and when the police catch you please inform them that is it morally wrong for them to control you by having 'rules of the road' just to have the collective good of avoiding head on collisions. That's what governments do. If you don't like it I suggest you get seriously extropian and colonise some asteroid or something because basically every square cm down in this gravity well is covered by some claim of control. > The illusion is in the belief that the collective > good will be well-served by a hierarchy of men with nobody to watch > over them but the collective itself. "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Just to highlight: MORE PERFECT UNION.......PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE 'Promote the general welfare' practically mandates something like socialised health care right in the first bloody sentence off the constitution. Government of the people, by the people, for the people......what part of this is hard for you to understand? That's EXACTLY what the US is supposed to be about. > > Count me out of your collective. > > Rafal No man is an island..... > Message: 16 > Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 12:54:01 -0500 > From: Rafal Smigrodzki > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks > Republicans are "asinine" > Message-ID: > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 10:42 AM, Omar Rahman wrote: > > Once a person is 26, they are probably going to be mature enough >> to understand that, like it or not, 'something bad is going to happen to >> them sometime' and pony up for health care. For them it isn't going to be >> about 'getting' health care, they will be thinking of the context of >> 'losing' the health care they had until age 26. Once that shift takes place >> in the general population it's game over. > > ### EMTALA says (you know about EMTALA, don't you?) a hospital can't > turn away a person with a medical emergency, no matter whether they > are insured or not. Why should a 26 year old be stupid enough to pay > 15k per year for coverage they won't use (chronic disease and > pre-death care of the elderly), if they know they can get emergency > care for free anyway? > > Rafal Emergency care is not free. They can't turn you away but they do attempt to collect fees for their services later and, if you aren't completely broke, they do. Besides that, there is a lot more to health care than emergency care. Do I really need to tell a Doctor this? If health care is costing you 15k a year you should come back to Poland. You could pay into the public system here, have a supplemental private policy, and have enough money left over for a mountain of kielbasa to send your cholesterol levels through the roof so you have an excuse to use all that healthcare you paid for. Regards, Omar Rahman -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Nov 29 03:12:43 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 22:12:43 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: <52977B44.9020504@libero.it> References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> <52977B44.9020504@libero.it> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 12:20 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Sign up and pre-order > Anybody gullible enough to actually sign up and pre-order this cold fusion thing would no doubt also send $1000 to spammers who say they need the money to cover paperwork to get 20 million dollars out of Nigeria and will give the spam recipient 10% of it for their help. As P. T. Barnum said "There's a sucker born every minute". John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Nov 29 03:46:40 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 22:46:40 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 12:33 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > John, you should not throw out a theory based on a thousand data points > when a single new data point seemingly disagrees with it. > You are incorrect. If that single data point is well established as being real and it doesn't correspond with your theory then you must indeed throw out the theory regardless of how much you love it. > Inflation is a monetary phenomenon (that's a well-accepted economic > theory), i.e. it is caused by an increase in the amount of circulating > currency. > The amount of circulating currency has increased dramatically but the inflation rate has not, therefore the theory that it is the only variable responsible for inflation must be wrong. In retrospect it's not surprising that the theory is wrong, if inflation were caused by just one thing then economics would be simple, instead the economy is the product of 7 billion minds and is astronomically complex. People are always fighting the last war not the present one, today they remember the 1970's when inflation was terrible and fear its return and overcompensate. In the 1970's they remembered the 1930's when deflation was terrible and feared its return and overcompensated too far in the other direction. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Nov 29 04:36:52 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 23:36:52 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 10:46 PM, John Clark wrote: > > > > On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 12:33 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki > wrote: > >> > John, you should not throw out a theory based on a thousand data points >> > when a single new data point seemingly disagrees with it. > > > You are incorrect. If that single data point is well established as being > real and it doesn't correspond with your theory then you must indeed throw > out the theory regardless of how much you love it. ### Oh, no, I am correct. Not just seemingly. --------------- > >> > Inflation is a monetary phenomenon (that's a well-accepted economic >> > theory), i.e. it is caused by an increase in the amount of circulating >> > currency. > > > The amount of circulating currency has increased dramatically but the > inflation rate has not, therefore the theory that it is the only variable > responsible for inflation must be wrong. In retrospect it's not surprising > that the theory is wrong, if inflation were caused by just one thing then > economics would be simple, instead the economy is the product of 7 billion > minds and is astronomically complex. ### Wow, you just smashed monetarism to smithereens. MV does not equal PQ. Go to wikipedia and update the article on inflation so everybody would know. Rafal From rex at nosyntax.net Fri Nov 29 04:53:16 2013 From: rex at nosyntax.net (rex) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 20:53:16 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> <52977B44.9020504@libero.it> Message-ID: <20131129045316.GQ12119@ninja.nosyntax.net> John Clark [2013-11-28 19:15]: > On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 12:20 PM, Mirco Romanato <[1]painlord2k at libero.it> > wrote: > > > Sign up and pre-order > > Anybody gullible enough to actually sign up and pre-order this cold fusion > thing would no doubt also send $1000 to spammers who say they need the > money to cover paperwork to get 20 million dollars out of Nigeria and will > give the spam recipient 10% of it for their help. As P. T. Barnum said > "There's a sucker born every minute". -- "Barnum underestimated the birth rate. From painlord2k at libero.it Fri Nov 29 11:21:14 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 12:21:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion paper In-Reply-To: <52977B44.9020504@libero.it> References: <3DDAA2C1-AEE3-4BC3-8D99-C7D3DF5D4010@yahoo.com> <20130523091446.GS2380@leitl.org> <51A01376.7030300@libero.it> <52977B44.9020504@libero.it> Message-ID: <529878AA.7010007@libero.it> Il 28/11/2013 18:20, Mirco Romanato ha scritto: My wrong, was a old page reposted by someone. In fact, I should have think about the description: it describe the old low temperature e-cat good only for steam production at 120 ?C and nothing else. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Fri Nov 29 13:50:48 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 14:50:48 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> Message-ID: <52989BB8.1040809@libero.it> Il 29/11/2013 04:46, John Clark ha scritto: > The amount of circulating currency has increased dramatically but the > inflation rate has not, therefore the theory that it is the only > variable responsible for inflation must be wrong. Call it "price index" or "prices" but not "inflation". Because "inflation" is the increase of the monetary mass, where the increase of prices is "increase of price index". Conflating the two concept together is not good. The increase of money in existence could be dramatic, but the prices are not bound to increase dramatically immediately or in any specific time frame. Then there are different metrics for money. Where the M1 of money increase dramatically (at the pace of 1 trillion at year), there was/is a reduction of M3 due to reduction of bank credit. The bank credit multiply the base money many times, so it is not abnormal to see an apparent reduction of prices/small increase (caused by the reduction of bank credit) with a concomitant large increase of base money largely used to prop up the bank balance sheets and not moving in the larger economy. It is just a question of time and something, sometime, will cause the money hold in the banks to end in the hands of the population and start running around. Until now they were soacked by China and others. Wait until the short maturity bonds in the hands of China mature and the Treasury must pay them back. I do not think they will keep USD in cash at home or in some vault. They will spend them in any way possible, to buy commodities (rising prices) around the world. The you will see real "prices inflation". And if others start ditching the USD, the "real price inflation" will start to become "high price inflation". > In retrospect it's not > surprising that the theory is wrong, if inflation were caused by just > one thing then economics would be simple, instead the economy is the > product of 7 billion minds and is astronomically complex. Monetary inflation have a single cause (the increase of the units of money). Price inflation is caused by monetary inflation, just the ways and times this happen are not fixed and rarely easily foreseeable. If there was not monetary inflation (and credit expansion), every increase in the price of some class of assets would cause the reduction in price of some or all other assets. > People are always fighting the last war not the present one, today they > remember the 1970's when inflation was terrible and fear its return and > overcompensate. In the 1970's they remembered the 1930's when deflation > was terrible and feared its return and overcompensated too far in the > other direction. This is the reason you need an inflexible, not human-controlled, mean of indirect exchange. So human stop compensating and overcompensating (usually for their personal profit first). Mirco From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Nov 29 14:39:32 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 07:39:32 -0700 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: On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 9:24 AM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > 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? > While not as immediately dismissive of the entire cold fusion phenomenon as Spike, one should be aware that this failure could have been a result of chemistry based heat, not cold fusion produced heat. Chemistry based heat doesn't last long, and is just a battery basically. Cold fusion heat should, in theory, last a long time. Here it didn't. So it isn't quite as "interesting" as one would initially assume. The behavior of cold fusion advocates reminds me a lot of the behavior of bigfoot researchers. They both sound scientific, but they go slow, and they always say that they are going to publish in peer reviewed journals "Real Soon Now"... sigh. It's just a red flag. That's not to say that they won't find a bigfoot any day now. Anything is possible. It's just the behavior patterns that are the concern. Also, like ALL researchers, they are trying to raise money. A yellow flag perhaps. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Nov 29 14:44:57 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 07:44:57 -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> <52977B44.9020504@libero.it> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 8:12 PM, John Clark wrote: > On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 12:20 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > > > Sign up and pre-order >> > > Anybody gullible enough to actually sign up and pre-order this cold fusion > thing would no doubt also send $1000 to spammers who say they need the > money to cover paperwork to get 20 million dollars out of Nigeria and will > give the spam recipient 10% of it for their help. As P. T. Barnum said > "There's a sucker born every minute". > It kind of reminds me of the Butterfly Labs Bitcoin miners that were shipped a year late. What a profitable scam that was. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Nov 29 15:20:53 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 08:20:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 3:29 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 3:21 PM, BillK wrote: > >> >> So 23andMe now have to prove that their tests actually work. If they >> say a subject is at risk of a disease, they have to prove it. >> >> > In a similar move to protect the public, the Library of Congress just told > churches they aren't allowed to read from their bible until god is proven > to exist. Unfortunately most of what churchians hoped to use for evidence > is contained in their book. > > Oh right, separation of Church and State... but the State still controls > Science, eh? damn. > > Seems the NSA has a right to our activity information while the FDA has > some right to our genetic information. > > Perhaps 23andMe can just reincorporate as a religious institution and > claim the testing equipment is some form of sacrament process? > > Yes, I'm being facetious... and perhaps rude/mildly offensive about it. > Sorry 'bout that. > Perhaps they should take a page from the book used by the sex toys industry. All they would have to do is say, "This is for entertainment purposes only. Not meant to really diagnose a damn thing." After all, if a vibrating dildo is not a medical device, then a swab in the mouth should not be either, so long as they don't make any real medical claims about it. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri Nov 29 17:02:23 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 17:02:23 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Google search personalization Message-ID: Did you realize that Google edits your search results? It is called your 'Filter Bubble'. You get search results similar to previous searches. Quote: A filter bubble is a result state in which a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user (such as location, past click behaviour and search history) and, as a result, users become separated from information that disagrees with their viewpoints, effectively isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles. ------------ The situation has got worse since the book by Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You, Penguin Press (New York, May 2011), as Google continually adds new features. Google big data takes into account dozens of factors about you when you do a search. Your search history, your web browsing history, location, language, time, device used, your social history, friends' likes, Google+ data, etc. etc. (Google knows a LOT about you). There are ways around this, of course, to enable you to get unbiased search results. You can tinker with the Google Search settings, or use Private Browsing, but the best solution is to use DuckDuckGo. BillK From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 29 18:32:39 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 10:32:39 -0800 Subject: [ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service In-Reply-To: References: <529446D9.7080501@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: <022001ceed31$62a78810$27f69830$@att.net> >.. On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson . >.Perhaps they should take a page from the book used by the sex toys industry. Hmmmmm, OK. {8-] But don't actually TAKE the page, that would ruin one of my favorite books. >.All they would have to do is say, "This is for entertainment purposes only. Not meant to really diagnose a damn thing." . Kelly I think you are onto a good idea here. >.After all, if a vibrating dildo is not a medical device, then a swab in the mouth should not be either, so long as they don't make any real medical claims about it. -Kelly Ja, and keep in mind the spit kit doesn't actually have any swab or anything that goes into the mouth. I am not sure about the sex toy catalog in that regard, but the 23 kit is just a test tube full stop. If it did have a swab, that would be possibly a legitimate objection by the FDA, since 23 would be responsible for the cleanliness of the swab. It might be more analogous to the vitamin industry, which the Feds will mostly leave alone if they don't make too many claims about what their products do. I can't imagine how they figure the spit kit is a medical device. It feels too much like a power grab on the part of the FDA. If they manage to require 23andMe to do efficacy testing, there is no way the price of the kits can stay below the magic 100 dollar mark, and think of it this way: 100 bucks is a magic number for so many reasons: we don't much hesitate to spend that much for birthday and Newtonmas gifts for friends and family, for a lot of us. It is a good middle-class America threshold expense level for gifts, a psychological imaginary fence: all two digit numbers are fair game for gifts. So if the FDA raises that price even a couple bucks, it would have enormous impact on the business. 23andMe is a perfect example of an enterprise which becomes more valuable as more people participate in it. A good low-end DNA service is just what we need somewhere. On another topic: >. While not as immediately dismissive of the entire cold fusion phenomenon as Spike, one should be aware that this failure could have been a result of chemistry based heat, not cold fusion produced heat. Kelly I want to save my five daily posts by responding here. Regarding cold fusion and my skepticism on that topic: if cold fusion is real, then everything we thought we knew about nuclear chemistry is wrong. The evidence needed for me to take seriously that farfetched idea is waaaay above anything that has been offered to date, way above. What really makes me confident in my doubt is the notion that chemistry can somehow affect the way a nucleus behaves. That strains my imagination well beyond the breaking point. Those wispy little electrons flying around way out there at a nanometer or more really cannot even find that compact knot of mass way down there at the femtometer scale, never mind have some kind of voodoo influence on it. Regarding bitcoin, that whole notion was believable to me from the first time I heard it, because Prime95 was loosely analogous to bitcoins: we had all these computers fishing around looking for Mersenne Primes, sorta like the way bitcoin miners do. Anyone who found one was at least a temporary world record holder for the discoverer of the largest known prime number, and went on a short list with Euler and some of the greatest mathematicians in history. If you aren't a geek and don't care about that stuff, you could quietly offer to sell the number to someone who would pay a looootta lotta money for it. So in a way Prime95 was a proto Bitcoin, sorta. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 29 19:13:51 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 11:13:51 -0800 Subject: [ExI] healthcare mash Message-ID: <024b01ceed37$2461daa0$6d258fe0$@att.net> Just because the USA is screwing up our healthcare system doesn't mean we aren't allowed to have a little fun with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaC1lk7KVzI >. Kelly I want to save my five daily posts.spike .for what I think will happen this evening and tomorrow. I will give HealthCare.gov another try, and report back on how it goes. I might even give them the benefit of the doubt and wait until Sunday, to keep out of the way of the vast majority of users. We are told the experience will be greatly improved. While this is a low bar, I doubt even that, for I know how hard it is to fix someone else's code, and I know how difficult it is to make significant improvements in a software package when the real problem was bad initial design. Good luck to me. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Nov 29 19:18:19 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 14:18:19 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: <52989BB8.1040809@libero.it> References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> <52989BB8.1040809@libero.it> Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 8:50 AM, Mirco Romanato wrote: >> In retrospect it's not surprising that the theory is wrong, if inflation >> were caused by just one thing then economics would be simple, instead the >> economy is the product of 7 billion minds and is astronomically complex. >> > > > Monetary inflation have a single cause (the increase of the units of > money). > A single cause? That is ridiculous, you need 2 independent variables to describe something even as simple as the wind, speed and direction! You're saying that the retail cost of a widget has nothing to do with the savings rate, or the manufacturing efficiency of making a widget (productivity), or the general desire the population has of owning a widget, you're saying the cost of the widget only depends on how much money is around. And that's just nuts. > Price inflation is caused by monetary inflation, In the last decade I've seen the largest increase in the units of money in my lifetime, and I've also seen the lowest interest rates and the lowest increase of the cost of goods and services in my lifetime. Therefore your theory that monetary inflation has a single cause, the increase of the units of money, and price inflation is caused by monetary inflation must be wrong, or at least it must be wrong if you assume that the scientific method is valid. > just the ways and times this happen are not fixed and rarely easily > foreseeable. > So your theory can't make good predictions. A theory that can't make good predictions is as useless as a sack full of dead rats in a tampon factory. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Nov 29 19:42:39 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 14:42:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> <52989BB8.1040809@libero.it> Message-ID: On 11/29/13, John Clark wrote: > So your theory can't make good predictions. A theory that can't make good > predictions is as useless as a sack full of dead rats in a tampon factory. > ### Seriously, John, are you claiming, based on your anecdotes, that MV does not equal PQ? Really? Rafal From spike66 at att.net Fri Nov 29 21:19:02 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 13:19:02 -0800 Subject: [ExI] ison survived! Message-ID: <029501ceed48$a13cd5f0$e3b681d0$@att.net> Check out it: http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2013/11/29/weird_anim2.gif spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Nov 29 21:32:59 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 16:32:59 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> <52989BB8.1040809@libero.it> Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 2:42 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > Seriously, John, are you claiming, based on your anecdotes, > Anecdotes? Is it a anecdote that the money printing presses have been operating at warp speed for years but that interest rates and price increases for goods and services remain at record lows? > > that MV does not equal PQ? I am saying that prices, which is what you're so worried about, is equal to the money supply which is all you want to talk about, TIMES the velocity of money which you don't want to talk about because it is the product of about a zillion independent factors, DIVIDED by the quantity of things produced which you also don't want to talk about because it is the product of a bazillion QUITE different independent factors. MV=PQ may be true but is useless in predicting what P will be next year if you don't know what V or Q will be next year. It's as useless as the Drake equation is in figuring out if ET exists because we don't know what values to stick into the equation. > Really? > Yes really. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri Nov 29 21:49:52 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 21:49:52 +0000 Subject: [ExI] ison survived! In-Reply-To: <029501ceed48$a13cd5f0$e3b681d0$@att.net> References: <029501ceed48$a13cd5f0$e3b681d0$@att.net> Message-ID: <52990C00.6060902@aleph.se> On 29/11/2013 21:19, spike wrote: > > Check out it: > > http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2013/11/29/weird_anim2.gif > Awesome! I am glad I was wrong about its expiration. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sat Nov 30 00:36:10 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 17:36:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> <52989BB8.1040809@libero.it> Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 12:18 PM, John Clark wrote: > > > So your theory can't make good predictions. A theory that can't make good > predictions is as useless as a sack full of dead rats in a tampon factory. > Isn't that pretty much the entire field of Economics? If you could predict it, someone would make money off of that prediction, forcing the prediction to not come true. It is a maddening science. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sat Nov 30 08:53:14 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 08:53:14 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> <52989BB8.1040809@libero.it> Message-ID: <5299A77A.3000405@aleph.se> On 2013-11-30 00:36, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 12:18 PM, John Clark > wrote: > > > So your theory can't make good predictions. A theory that can't > make good predictions is as useless as a sack full of dead rats in > a tampon factory. > > > Isn't that pretty much the entire field of Economics? If you could > predict it, someone would make money off of that prediction, forcing > the prediction to not come true. That is a bit of a misunderstanding: it only applies to efficient financial markets. Economics also predicts that if you lower the price of your lemonade, more people will tend to buy it. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Sat Nov 30 10:56:17 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 10:56:17 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Luna Ring Solar Power In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5299C451.4000100@yahoo.com> http://www.shimz.co.jp/english/theme/dream/lunaring.html Any observations on this? Better/worse than solar power satellites? Ben Zaiboc From pharos at gmail.com Sat Nov 30 11:30:14 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 11:30:14 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: <5299A77A.3000405@aleph.se> References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> <52989BB8.1040809@libero.it> <5299A77A.3000405@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 8:53 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-11-30 00:36, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 12:18 PM, John Clark wrote: >> So your theory can't make good predictions. A theory that can't make good >> predictions is as useless as a sack full of dead rats in a tampon factory. > > > Isn't that pretty much the entire field of Economics? If you could predict > it, someone would make money off of that prediction, forcing the prediction > to not come true. > > > That is a bit of a misunderstanding: it only applies to efficient financial > markets. Economics also predicts that if you lower the price of your > lemonade, more people will tend to buy it. > I doubt if you can call that a prediction. (Agreeing with John). It is a naive observation that if the price is cheaper people can afford to buy more. The original claim is that *all things being held equal*, lower price equals more sales. But there are so many exceptions, that it cannot be a prediction. In real life all things are never held equal. For example, it assumes the price of competing products doesn't change. A new product may appear which people prefer, regardless of price. There may be a tax increase so that people have less money to spend. The product may become unfashionable as public taste changes or the product appears 'cheap'. A TV program may warn against health risks for the product. The FED may print money in a way that makes people spend money elsewhere. In real life it cannot be a prediction. At best you can say that *sometimes* lowering the price will mean selling more. And sometimes you only sell more for quite a short period of time (until everything else reacts to the cheaper price). BillK From anders at aleph.se Sat Nov 30 11:35:01 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 11:35:01 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Luna Ring Solar Power In-Reply-To: <5299C451.4000100@yahoo.com> References: <5299C451.4000100@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5299CD65.9010904@aleph.se> On 2013-11-30 10:56, Ben wrote: > http://www.shimz.co.jp/english/theme/dream/lunaring.html > > Any observations on this? Better/worse than solar power satellites? Same problem with voltage conversion as Elon Musk felt made SPS too inefficient, much longer transmission distance, not geostationary, and also requires getting building material far beyond geostationary orbit. The fundamental security problem is that either the beams are weak enough that they are no weapons of mass destruction, and then the rectennas are just like much better solar collectors of the same size. Or the beams have real oomph, and now you have an orbital death ray which means geopolitics gets tricky. Still, robotic factories on the moon are always robotic factories on the moon. The project would both force and enable proper space colonisation. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Sat Nov 30 11:38:23 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 11:38:23 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets) In-Reply-To: <019001ceeaf2$82e739e0$88b5ada0$@att.net> References: <528AB8CB.2040302@aleph.se> <528CACD7.9080907@aleph.se> <20131122104630.GM5661@leitl.org> <20131122115612.GR5661@leitl.org> <528F5AEE.9010506@aleph.se> <20131122133824.GX5661@leitl.org> <5292FBC5.7020404@aleph.se> <00aa01cee9f2$4b931190$e2b934b0$@att.net> <52947AA4.1080604@aleph.se> <040b01ceeac0$e3f44520$abdccf60$@att.net> <043c01ceeac5$082f5660$188e0320$@att.net> <5295117C.2060405@aleph.se> <019001ceeaf2$82e739e0$88b5ada0$@att.net> Message-ID: <5299CE2F.4000207@aleph.se> Incidentally, found this lovely review of plutonium physics: http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/pubs/00818035.pdf That is one tricksy metal. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Sat Nov 30 11:51:18 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 11:51:18 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> <52989BB8.1040809@libero.it> <5299A77A.3000405@aleph.se> Message-ID: <5299D136.4000807@aleph.se> On 2013-11-30 11:30, BillK wrote: > On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 8:53 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: >> On 2013-11-30 00:36, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> Isn't that pretty much the entire field of Economics? If you could predict >> it, someone would make money off of that prediction, forcing the prediction >> to not come true. >> >> >> That is a bit of a misunderstanding: it only applies to efficient financial >> markets. Economics also predicts that if you lower the price of your >> lemonade, more people will tend to buy it. >> > I doubt if you can call that a prediction. (Agreeing with John). > > It is a naive observation that if the price is cheaper people can > afford to buy more. > The original claim is that *all things being held equal*, lower price > equals more sales. > But there are so many exceptions, that it cannot be a prediction. In > real life all things are never held equal. Physics is clearly just as crappy. That "law of gravity" clearly has loads of exceptions - balloons, birds, clouds. Clearly it cannot make good predictions with all those exceptions of buoyancy, drag, the Yarkovsky effect and whatnot. And they change it all the time with relativistic corrections. Clearly no real life applications. Don't get me started on the "science" of biology. If you really think economics doesn't know anything useful, you should be able to make money as well as - or better - than people with economic knowledge without having had to pay for all that education. Raise prices, value risk at zero, and trade with people with more information than you have: you are going to be rich! (I was thinking of mentioning Giffen goods and similar complications in my quick post, but felt that it would detract from the point. "Prediction" is a loaded word in the philosophy of science, and comes in many kinds and qualities. But supply-demand is a rather solid prediction approach.) -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From giogavir at yahoo.it Sat Nov 30 11:51:56 2013 From: giogavir at yahoo.it (giorgio gaviraghi) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 11:51:56 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] Luna Ring Solar Power In-Reply-To: <5299CD65.9010904@aleph.se> References: <5299C451.4000100@yahoo.com> <5299CD65.9010904@aleph.se> Message-ID: <1385812316.14256.YahooMailNeo@web171606.mail.ir2.yahoo.com> -There must be better and affordable ways to solve the energy problem such as; -increase ?PV efficiency from the current 15% to at least 40%. ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?- Reduce panel costs of an order of magnitude -impose for new construction 100% power independency and utilization of green sources -Give tax ?breaks and other incentives for the power system transformation -Utilize all resources (wind, undersea currents, geothermal etc) reduce power compsumption with advanced technologies -redesign trasnportation system to allow green power utilization These and several other measures can be implemented right now , without waiting decades ?in unaffordable and crazy projects that could only increase pollution and create dangerous zones in our planet. As for space development much better ideas , including standardization of components, reduce costs for accessibility, utilization of asteroids and other incentives for private initiatives can be implemented. Giorgio Gaviraghi Let's opena discussion on green power generation possibilities Il Sabato 30 Novembre 2013 12:36, Anders Sandberg ha scritto: On 2013-11-30 10:56, Ben wrote: > http://www.shimz.co.jp/english/theme/dream/lunaring.html > > Any observations on this?? Better/worse than solar power satellites? Same problem with voltage conversion as Elon Musk felt made SPS too inefficient, much longer transmission distance, not geostationary, and also requires getting building material far beyond geostationary orbit. The fundamental security problem is that either the beams are weak enough that they are no weapons of mass destruction, and then the rectennas are just like much better solar collectors of the same size. Or the beams have real oomph, and now you have an orbital death ray which means geopolitics gets tricky. Still, robotic factories on the moon are always robotic factories on the moon. The project would both force and enable proper space colonisation. -- 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 pharos at gmail.com Sat Nov 30 12:17:40 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 12:17:40 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: <5299D136.4000807@aleph.se> References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> <52989BB8.1040809@libero.it> <5299A77A.3000405@aleph.se> <5299D136.4000807@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 11:51 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > (I was thinking of mentioning Giffen goods and similar complications in my > quick post, but felt that it would detract from the point. "Prediction" is a > loaded word in the philosophy of science, and comes in many kinds and > qualities. > > But supply-demand is a rather solid prediction approach.) > Only if you exclude externalities. i.e. in theory the prediction works, in practice it mostly doesn't. (And when it does appear to work, it is only for a short time). Economics desperately wants to be called a 'science'. But their theories only work in their ivory towers. Look at the economic mess the real world is in now and all the arguing economists. Pick any economic theory you like, and I guarantee there is an opposing economic theory. Economics is a contradictory shambles. BillK From bbenzai at yahoo.com Sat Nov 30 12:06:05 2013 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 12:06:05 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Luna Ring Solar Power In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5299D4AD.3070106@yahoo.com> Anders Sandberg wrote: On 30/11/2013 11:35, extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org wrote: > Anders Sandberg > To:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Subject: Re: [ExI] Luna Ring Solar Power > Message-ID:<5299CD65.9010904 at aleph.se> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > On 2013-11-30 10:56, Ben wrote: >> >http://www.shimz.co.jp/english/theme/dream/lunaring.html >> > >> >Any observations on this? Better/worse than solar power satellites? > Same problem with voltage conversion as Elon Musk felt made SPS too > inefficient, much longer transmission distance, not geostationary, and > also requires getting building material far beyond geostationary orbit. > > The fundamental security problem is that either the beams are weak > enough that they are no weapons of mass destruction, and then the > rectennas are just like much better solar collectors of the same size. > Or the beams have real oomph, and now you have an orbital death ray > which means geopolitics gets tricky. > > Still, robotic factories on the moon are always robotic factories on the > moon. The project would both force and enable proper space colonisation. It's that last thing that is probably the important one in the short-term. Get a population of robots up there first, then people will start to realise all the cool things that we can do with them, including saving our entire civilisation from collapse. From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Nov 30 12:41:53 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 13:41:53 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: <5299A77A.3000405@aleph.se> References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> <52989BB8.1040809@libero.it> <5299A77A.3000405@aleph.se> Message-ID: <5299DD11.5060000@libero.it> Il 30/11/2013 09:53, Anders Sandberg ha scritto: > On 2013-11-30 00:36, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 12:18 PM, John Clark > > wrote: >> >> >> So your theory can't make good predictions. A theory that can't >> make good predictions is as useless as a sack full of dead rats in >> a tampon factory. >> >> >> Isn't that pretty much the entire field of Economics? If you could >> predict it, someone would make money off of that prediction, forcing >> the prediction to not come true. > > That is a bit of a misunderstanding: it only applies to efficient > financial markets. Economics also predicts that if you lower the price > of your lemonade, more people will tend to buy it. Technically, it just tell there will not be a decrease of buying (it could be the same OR more). If at price X I sell all the lemonade the market actors want, I could halve the price but I would not sell more lemonade. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Nov 30 12:43:26 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 13:43:26 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> <52989BB8.1040809@libero.it> Message-ID: <5299DD6E.8080107@libero.it> Il 29/11/2013 22:32, John Clark ha scritto: > On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 2:42 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki > > wrote: > > > Seriously, John, are you claiming, based on your anecdotes, > Anecdotes? Is it a anecdote that the money printing presses have been > operating at warp speed for years but that interest rates and price > increases for goods and services remain at record lows? The printing presses went warp speed even in WWI Germany (to finance the war) but the prices do not skyrocket in 1914 nor in 1918 nor in 1920. They exploded in the following years. If you have the printing presses producing currency at warp speed but have, also and at the same time, something soaking liquidity outside the US (China/Japan buying bonds other countries needing $ reserves to commerce and buy oil), you have a real small increase of internal prices. Then, a lot of money (not savers money) went to finance the DOTCOM bubble and the Housing bubble (do the stock first and housing second increased in prices prices? Where do you think the money came from? Low interest rates are an effect of the initial expansion of money. They go down until there is no way to push them lower. Then they get up. In the mean time people are full of debts; affordable when the rates were low, no more affordable when the rates go up. Now, with China signaling the end of US bond buying (they will not increase and probably will not roll over all the T-bonds they have) who will buy the bonds? If they do not, who will take the slack to buy T-bonds? The US people? The 50 millions (or likes) on food-stamp? I think the Fed Res will not be able to avoid to buy them all. By the way, food prices are rising around the world and, given they are priced in US$, a good part of the price increase is due to $ inflation. You do not see it on the price because a lot of other costs are a lot larger than the cost of the ingredient used for the food (electricity, labor, transport, etc.). > I am saying that prices, which is what you're so worried about, is equal > to the money supply which is all you want to talk about, TIMES the > velocity of money which you don't want to talk about because it is the > product of about a zillion independent factors, DIVIDED by the quantity > of things produced which you also don't want to talk about because it is > the product of a bazillion QUITE different independent factors. MV=PQ > may be true but is useless in predicting what P will be next year if you > don't know what V or Q will be next year. It's as useless as the Drake > equation is in figuring out if ET exists because we don't know what > values to stick into the equation. All the factors you talk about are the reasons is difficult to know the development of the money printing from monetary inflation to price inflation. You can not precisely foresee where the money will flow first (increasing prices), how much the trust on the money will last, who will the first to go broke, etc. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Nov 30 13:04:01 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 14:04:01 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> <52989BB8.1040809@libero.it> <5299A77A.3000405@aleph.se> <5299D136.4000807@aleph.se> Message-ID: <5299E241.7020904@libero.it> Il 30/11/2013 13:17, BillK ha scritto: >> But supply-demand is a rather solid prediction approach.) > i.e. in theory the prediction works, in practice it mostly doesn't. > (And when it does appear to work, it is only for a short time). As Mises and other explained, economics is a social science and must be studied with praxeology. People are not quark or billiard balls; they are not rule bonded but goal oriented (and they change their mind often). Just read the first pages of Rothbard "Man, Economy and State." It is easy to understand even for a freshman. Mirco From protokol2020 at gmail.com Sat Nov 30 13:38:42 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 14:38:42 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Luna Ring Solar Power In-Reply-To: <5299D4AD.3070106@yahoo.com> References: <5299D4AD.3070106@yahoo.com> Message-ID: > -There must be better and affordable ways to solve the energy problem such as; > -increase PV efficiency from the current 15% to at least 40%. And who do you think, will tolerate those square miles and miles of PV fields? The Greens certainly not. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sat Nov 30 13:51:34 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 13:51:34 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Luna Ring Solar Power In-Reply-To: References: <5299D4AD.3070106@yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > And who do you think, will tolerate those square miles and miles of PV > fields? > The Greens certainly not. > > When PV efficiency reaches 40% and panel purchase and installation costs reduce, it will be a no-brainer for every roof to be covered in PV panels. Only big power consumers (like factories or server farms) will need fields of PV panels. And sheep graze quite happily under PV panels. BillK From giogavir at yahoo.it Sat Nov 30 13:45:34 2013 From: giogavir at yahoo.it (giorgio gaviraghi) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 13:45:34 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] Luna Ring Solar Power In-Reply-To: References: <5299D4AD.3070106@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1385819134.89231.YahooMailNeo@web171605.mail.ir2.yahoo.com> we don't need centralize solar farms. Each building will carry its own, same with roads that will power the vehicles we must decentralize power generation get rid of power lines, stations and so on Il Sabato 30 Novembre 2013 14:39, Tomaz Kristan ha scritto: >-There must be better and affordable ways to solve the energy problem such as;> -increase ?PV efficiency from the current 15% to at least 40%. And who do you think, will tolerate those square miles and miles of PV fields? The Greens certainly not. _______________________________________________ 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 markalanwalker at gmail.com Sat Nov 30 15:02:09 2013 From: markalanwalker at gmail.com (Mark Walker) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 08:02:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> <52989BB8.1040809@libero.it> <5299A77A.3000405@aleph.se> <5299D136.4000807@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 5:17 AM, BillK wrote: > On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 11:51 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > > (I was thinking of mentioning Giffen goods and similar complications in > my > > quick post, but felt that it would detract from the point. "Prediction" > is a > > loaded word in the philosophy of science, and comes in many kinds and > > qualities. > > > > But supply-demand is a rather solid prediction approach.) > > > > Only if you exclude externalities. > > i.e. in theory the prediction works, in practice it mostly doesn't. > (And when it does appear to work, it is only for a short time). > > Economics desperately wants to be called a 'science'. But their > theories only work in their ivory towers. Look at the economic mess > the real world is in now and all the arguing economists. Pick any > economic theory you like, and I guarantee there is an opposing > economic theory. Economics is a contradictory shambles. > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > All sciences predict only to the extent that they idealize and add ceteris paribus clauses. Example: Newtonianism and General Relativity predict that if I let go of this ball it will hit the ground. But then I "falsify" the theories by grabbing the ball with my other hand as it heads towards the ground. Well, the prediction is supposed to be understood with an "other things being equal" or some other ceteris paribus clause ("unless acted upon by some other force".... being perhaps the most famous). We notice these ceteris paribus clauses and idealizations more in economics and other social sciences, but they are there in every science. Ironically, the more science gives us mastery over nature, the less predictable nature becomes. Anthropocentric effects, for example, have to be factored into climatology. Nasa is predicting a lunar eclipse on Dec. 9, 2030, at 22:28.51 for the greatest eclipse. I haven't done the calculations but I bet if humanity put all its resources into it, we could make a big enough nuclear blast or series of blasts on the moon to thwart this prediction by a few minutes. So, even astronomy has to invoke ceteris paribus clauses. As we increasingly are able to engineer celestial and nano size objects, more and more of the "hard" science predictions will either fail or have to idealize away from intelligent interventions. In other words, I'm predicting a convergence in the predictive abilities of the natural and social sciences over the long term. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Nov 30 15:30:42 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 10:30:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: <5299DD6E.8080107@libero.it> References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> <52989BB8.1040809@libero.it> <5299DD6E.8080107@libero.it> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 7:43 AM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > The printing presses went warp speed even in WWI Germany (to finance the > war) but the prices do not skyrocket in 1914 nor in 1918 nor in 1920. They > exploded in the following years. > You are incorrect. Inflation exploded in Germany because in June 1921 the first gargantuan payment for war reparations became due. This first payment was for 132 billion gold-marks, that means it had to be payed in gold or a hard foreign currency. In June 1921 there was only 50 billion gold-marks in the entire country. It was only then that the Weimar Republic put the printing presses into overdrive, they used paper-marks to buy foreign currency to pay the reparations, and the mark became virtually worthless soon after. That's terrible economic policy but given the circumstances I don't see how they had any other choice. > Now, with China signaling the end of US bond buying (they will not > increase and probably will not roll over all the T-bonds they have) who > will buy the bonds? The answer is just about everybody is eager to buy US bonds, even long term bonds at historically low interest rates. But if you believe you're smarter than the free market and can see the future more clearly you should short bonds or buy gold; true if you followed that strategy 3 years ago you'd be broke today, but who knows someday it might work. > > By the way, food prices are rising around the world Thanks to environmentalists and their idiotic policy of turning food into fuel. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Nov 30 15:46:48 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 10:46:48 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: <5299D136.4000807@aleph.se> References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> <52989BB8.1040809@libero.it> <5299A77A.3000405@aleph.se> <5299D136.4000807@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 6:51 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Physics is clearly just as crappy [as economics]. That "law of gravity" > clearly has loads of exceptions - balloons, birds, clouds. Clearly it > cannot make good predictions with all those exceptions of buoyancy, drag, > the Yarkovsky effect and whatnot. Often that is true but sometimes there are important real life situations where it is not, such as the motion of the planets. Economics can point to very few real life situations analogous to planetary motion in physics. > If you really think economics doesn't know anything useful [...] > That would be stating things a little more strongly than what I would be comfortable with. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rtomek at ceti.pl Sat Nov 30 16:18:17 2013 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 17:18:17 +0100 (CET) Subject: [ExI] Google search personalization In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, 29 Nov 2013, BillK wrote: > Did you realize that Google edits your search results? > It is called your 'Filter Bubble'. You get search results similar to > previous searches. > > > Quote: > A filter bubble is a result state in which a website algorithm > selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on > information about the user (such as location, past click behaviour and > search history) and, as a result, users become separated from > information that disagrees with their viewpoints, effectively > isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles. > ------------ Ah. Thanks for nice keyword term :-). I have noticed some time ago that google serves me a total crap on some of my queries, while duck gives much better choice of links. What was total in my case - something like only two links both leading to some pages looking like a dictionary dump on results page, so I didn't bothered to click. Ok, so google knows me and this is why I get crap? Ouch... I'd rather ask a stranger, then. The autopropaganda is another marvel keyword. Very potent. And very cool. I guess youngsters will love it. 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 pharos at gmail.com Sat Nov 30 16:52:18 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 16:52:18 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> <52989BB8.1040809@libero.it> <5299A77A.3000405@aleph.se> <5299D136.4000807@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 3:46 PM, John Clark wrote: > On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 6:51 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: >> > Physics is clearly just as crappy [as economics]. That "law of gravity" >> > clearly has loads of exceptions - balloons, birds, clouds. Clearly it cannot >> > make good predictions with all those exceptions of buoyancy, drag, the >> > Yarkovsky effect and whatnot. > > > Often that is true but sometimes there are important real life situations > where it is not, such as the motion of the planets. Economics can point to > very few real life situations analogous to planetary motion in physics. > >> > If you really think economics doesn't know anything useful [...] > > > That would be stating things a little more strongly than what I would be > comfortable with. > > I think that economics theory does have useful insights, which sometimes apply in the real world. But I think the problem is simply that the finance industry et all, have realised that bribery, corruption, fraud and theft are far more profitable than following some economic theory. As more and more money accumulated, with little downside from the law and regulators, the problem grew larger and larger. Market theory and economic theory fail in corrupt markets. BillK From spike66 at att.net Sat Nov 30 20:11:48 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 12:11:48 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> <52989BB8.1040809@libero.it> <5299A77A.3000405@aleph.se> <5299D136.4000807@aleph.se> Message-ID: <025f01ceee08$671f32d0$355d9870$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] Inflation graph >...I think that economics theory does have useful insights, which sometimes apply in the real world... Ja, BillK the real world has two competing economic schools of thought which make opposite predictions. Currently the Keynesians have iron-grip control in the USA. We will soon see Hayek's brutal revenge. >...But I think the problem is simply that the finance industry et all, have realised that bribery, corruption, fraud and theft are far more profitable than following some economic theory... Hmmm, it isn't so much that it is more profitable than some economic theory. Bribery, corruption and fraud are part of some economic theory: Hayek assumes these things as part of the model. >... As more and more money accumulated, with little downside from the law and regulators, the problem grew larger and larger. Market theory and economic theory fail in corrupt markets. BillK _______________________________________________ Keynesian theory fails in that environment. Hayek theory assumes corruption; it correctly predicts that corruption grows with wealth and power. As government and industry become more corrupt, Hayek's theory works ever better, as Keynesian theory crumbles. I am optimistic however: the internet empowers individuals. It brings power down from central authority, which reduces overall corruption. The current 23andMe situation is a perfect example: that company delivers a product for a reasonable price. The central authorities don't like it. They want us to buy their absurdly overpriced product, the one over which they have monopolistic totalitarian control. spike From pharos at gmail.com Sat Nov 30 21:14:47 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 21:14:47 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Inflation graph In-Reply-To: <025f01ceee08$671f32d0$355d9870$@att.net> References: <04bf01ced34e$02ba59c0$082f0d40$@att.net> <52989BB8.1040809@libero.it> <5299A77A.3000405@aleph.se> <5299D136.4000807@aleph.se> <025f01ceee08$671f32d0$355d9870$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 8:11 PM, spike wrote: > Hmmm, it isn't so much that it is more profitable than some economic theory. > Bribery, corruption and fraud are part of some economic theory: Hayek > assumes these things as part of the model. > I've never heard that claim about Hayek before. (Not that that means too much. I'm sure there are lots of things I've never heard before). :) I understood that Hayek accepted Government corruption and central planning faults and saw the solution as free, self-regulating markets. I don't think he saw his free markets being ruined by banksters being allowed to manipulate markets to their personal benefit. He still expected marketeers to 'play by the rules'. Dishonest trading ruins his free markets. BillK From anders at aleph.se Sat Nov 30 21:58:38 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 21:58:38 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Luna Ring Solar Power In-Reply-To: <1385819134.89231.YahooMailNeo@web171605.mail.ir2.yahoo.com> References: <5299D4AD.3070106@yahoo.com> <1385819134.89231.YahooMailNeo@web171605.mail.ir2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <529A5F8E.1080002@aleph.se> On 2013-11-30 13:45, giorgio gaviraghi wrote: > we don't need centralize solar farms. Each building will carry its > own, same with roads that will power the vehicles > we must decentralize power generation get rid of power lines, stations > and so on The problem is deeper than that. Solar power is inefficient in many parts of the world - consider Scandinavia, especially above the polar circle. Worse, it is periodic and has peaks that does not correspond to peak demand: I assume you do not want to only have road and rail traffic during summer days. Even 100% efficient cells would not really solve this. In order to actually work as a major energy source it requires *much* better storage methods or *much* better transmission. This is also why the lunar ring approach is so problematic: it will be off 12 hours at a time, and needs to be transmitted from rectennas (in the imagery located inconveniently and expensively in the ocean). If you want to really help mankind, invent a really good (large capacity, many cycles) rechargeable battery. The rest is easy. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: