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why the universal constants are the way they are (which produced a universe friendly to our type of life)

That's a tail-wagging-the-dog perspective.

Douglas Adams had a wonderful speech he gave at Digital Biota 2, "Is there an Artificial God?"

During the speech he talked about perspectives like that being the same as what a puddle of water would think. It would conclude that the hole it was in had to be created specifically for it since the hole fit the puddle perfectly.

The full text is a good read too:

http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/

Normally, I would ignore anyone who didn't realize that a comment modded +5 Funny was in fact a joke, not intended as a literally true statement. But first, you're wrong in interesting ways. I mean that as a compliment--people who are right or wrong in uninteresting ways are so boring as to be de facto nonentities, and people who are right in interesting ways are exceedingly rare. Second, you express yourself coherently. I therefore deem you to be worth talking to.

Let's deconstruct my joke. In actual fact, France's influence is larger but declining, while Twitbook's is smaller but increasing. Claiming, facetiously, that those trends have gone so far that the situation has reversed emphasizes the trends themselves. It's a statement which is literally false, but in a way that highlights something true. That's something I (and apparently several people with mod points) find funny.

But we do actually disagree--you think I was overstating the influence of social networking, but I was actually understating the influence of France. Social networking, especially Facebook and Twitter, are a much bigger deal than you claim they are. Point by point:

It doesn't really alter people's values

There has been much discussion, including here on Slashdot, about the effect cable television and the internet are having on people's political views. We can, more and more easily, choose to avoid exposure to differing viewpoints. This positive feedback loop seems to be leading us to hold more and more strongly to more and more extreme positions. I'd call that an alteration of our values. Social networking is not the driving force of that change, but it's certainly a factor.

Just as widely discussed is the rapid, universal devaluation of privacy--primarily and directly due to social networking. Whether that's a good or bad thing is far from clear, but it's definitely a big thing.

it doesn't lead people to do anything new ... it's a different way of doing the same thing

The big new thing that Facebook does is that we no longer have to consciously choose to keep in touch with casual friends--we have to consciously choose not to. I'm Facebook-friends with dozens of people I went to high school or college with but haven't seen since graduation, former coworkers, siblings of friends, etc. These continuing relationships are not a big part of my day to day life, but any of them could be rekindled--if we move to the same city, or one of us posts about a common interest we didn't know we shared. That's something that was never possible before, even with earlier social networking sites. Nothing before Facebook had a large enough userbase to have that effect.

You can break all forms of communication down into four categories: one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many. A conversation in person, or a personal letter, is one-to-one. The written (published) word (or television or pretty much any form of artistic expression) is one-to-many. Democracy is a kind of many-to-one communication, as is survey-based research. But many-to-many communication never existed before the internet, and you could almost use it as the primary distinguishing characteristic of social networking. Social networking is the subset of internet activity that is not just a faster version of traditional one-to-one or one-to-many communication. The major breakthroughs of the other three categories are language, democracy, and the printing press--it's an understatement to call them world-changers. We may not know yet HOW many-to-many communication will change the world, but there's no doubt that it's going to. Check out the last three paragraphs of this speech by Douglas Adams for a somewhat more in-depth discussion of this idea.

Twitter is drastically different from anything else that exists on- or offline, including other social networks. All o

It's from an excellent speech he gave, found here.

It's from a Douglas Adams speech in 1998, which was quoted by Richard Dawkins in his 2001 eulogy at Adams's funeral. The original speech is here:

http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/

From Douglas Adams:

I mean this is a great world, it's fantastic. But our early man has a moment to reflect and he thinks to himself, 'well, this is an interesting world that I find myself in' and then he asks himself a very treacherous question, a question which is totally meaningless and fallacious, but only comes about because of the nature of the sort of person he is, the sort of person he has evolved into and the sort of person who has thrived because he thinks this particular way. Man the maker looks at his world and says 'So who made this then?' Who made this? - you can see why it's a treacherous question. Early man thinks, 'Well, because there's only one sort of being I know about who makes things, whoever made all this must therefore be a much bigger, much more powerful and necessarily invisible, one of me and because I tend to be the strong one who does all the stuff, he's probably male'. And so we have the idea of a god. Then, because when we make things we do it with the intention of doing something with them, early man asks himself , 'If he made it, what did he make it for?' Now the real trap springs, because early man is thinking, 'This world fits me very well. Here are all these things that support me and feed me and look after me; yes, this world fits me nicely' and he reaches the inescapable conclusion that whoever made it, made it for him.

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.

Atheist Douglas Adams has my favorite theory as to why humans all over the world have created some sort of deity.

http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/

(He doesn't really get into it until about half way down, but the whole thing a good read if you haven't seen it.)

To paraphrase the late Douglas Adams (full text here) To claim that just because life works so well proves the existance of a "creator" is just like a puddle waking up one day in a pothole and noticing that the pothole fits it so astoundingly well that surely somone must have created this pothole just for it to live in.

Not sure if this is exactly on-topic with Neal Stephenson's review of Revenge of the Sith, but Douglas Adams has already conclusively answered everything that needs to be said about science versus religion.

There's also a cool video available from here.

I remember being incredibly amazed by his work when I first saw it in 1995 or so...

Karl Sims did some fantastic work on evolving movement a decade ago. Creatures were randomly assembled using blocks and a few standard connectors, and eventually evolved a wide variety of strategies for motion. My favorties were the 3-block creature which moved like an ape and the 2-block creature which moved in the same way a washing machine walks.

Perhaps you could call THHG "The Agnostics Bible."

In his interview with American Atheist magazine, Adams said that he usually told people he was "a radical atheist" to make sure they understood that he was convinced that there are no gods. His "Is there an Artificial God" talk at Digital Biota 2 is a great read.

Probably not. Depends on the test, and if it is repeatable. If you're talking about "It said to pray and I'd be happy, I did and I am", you're mistaking emotional reaction (and a possible placebo effect) for a result.

That said, the prayer might still be a useful tool, if indirectly. If you've got the time, I suggest you read Douglas Adams' (of the hitchhikers guide) speech "Is there an Artificial God?"
http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/

• Dawkins' Lament for Adams
• Adams's interview with American Atheists
• Adams' s excellent speech at Digital Biota

Without details the article is fairly pointless. If it actually flew the article would have a point as it is. Otherwise, it DOES sounds like just a GA. I'm going to the homepage of the professor to see what's new and different about this.

As others were, I was annoyed at comparing it to millions of years of evolution. Evolution had to make the physical design as well, it's test for success is a lot slower and fuzzier, and it's goals quite different.

An example of evolving the PHYSICAL aspects AS WELL AS the neural ones can be found in Karl Sims blockies. The little movie is pretty cool to watch. This still has the last two differences from evolution as the above, but there is no article saying the blockies are beating out evolution in 3 hours. blockies

(Note: I tried the link from the earlier post and it didn't work, guess I'll have to ask google.)

So, anyone been working on using computers to create new lifeforms?

Yes.

Hit paydirt!
http://www.biota.org/ksims/blockies/ index.html
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