Slashdot Mirror

Even the powerful & famous are timid.

I only found one dangerous existing technology, but the idea with which it is presented is not dangerous. which leads me to conclude that the tech is not as great as the following quote implies.

"In a recent laboratory "investment game" many investors would trust all their money to a stranger after a puff of an oxytocin spray."

Never vote for an organic chemist.. no mater how much you trust her/him. :)
Here's my summary of the rest worth noting.

There aren't enough minds to house the population explosion of memes.
"The rapture of the Nerds" explained well, but it's still bunk. If forgetting a bit of common knowledge is harmful to interaction then it will be relearned. If that bit of common knowledge is used often enough it will not be forgotten again. Ergo there will always be just enough common knowledge so that frequently interacting nodes will be able to interact.

The purpose of life is to disperse energy.
His logic is just plain faulty. The author is confused by the classical convection cell examples (oceanic, solar, lab) all of which are forms of self organized complexity (SOC) which form explicitly to transmit energy and do so in the most efficient manner. But life (an eg of SOC) is the exact opposite wrt energy usage, it conserves as much energy as possible. SOC requires energy gradients. Requiring and using a gradient do not imply purpose, let alone "purpose is to eliminate the gradient".

Democratizing access to the means of invention. (BTW: The id attribute on the link destination is currently wrong, so use this link until they fix the other one).
Not dangerous.. actually quite good. What makes this dangerous?

Open Source Currency.
Still trying to get my head around it.. A concrete example would help. How much for that dough naught?

The free market.
The idea is true, but what a ride.. oohhh shiny toys.. cheap plentiful food, plenty of circuses. It's the best of the worst (so far). Yeah, it is leading to the destruction of the world and we'll all die; que sera sera.

Actual dangerous ideas worth reading.

Actual dangerous ideas not worth reading.

Biotechnology will be thoroughly domesticated in the next fifty years, and Science may be 'running out of control'.
Again.. not novel. Apocalypse by sci/tech.

Even the powerful & famous are timid.

I only found one dangerous existing technology, but the idea with which it is presented is not dangerous. which leads me to conclude that the tech is not as great as the following quote implies.

"In a recent laboratory "investment game" many investors would trust all their money to a stranger after a puff of an oxytocin spray."

Never vote for an organic chemist.. no mater how much you trust her/him. :)
Here's my summary of the rest worth noting.

There aren't enough minds to house the population explosion of memes.
"The rapture of the Nerds" explained well, but it's still bunk. If forgetting a bit of common knowledge is harmful to interaction then it will be relearned. If that bit of common knowledge is used often enough it will not be forgotten again. Ergo there will always be just enough common knowledge so that frequently interacting nodes will be able to interact.

The purpose of life is to disperse energy.
His logic is just plain faulty. The author is confused by the classical convection cell examples (oceanic, solar, lab) all of which are forms of self organized complexity (SOC) which form explicitly to transmit energy and do so in the most efficient manner. But life (an eg of SOC) is the exact opposite wrt energy usage, it conserves as much energy as possible. SOC requires energy gradients. Requiring and using a gradient do not imply purpose, let alone "purpose is to eliminate the gradient".

Democratizing access to the means of invention. (BTW: The id attribute on the link destination is currently wrong, so use this link until they fix the other one).
Not dangerous.. actually quite good. What makes this dangerous?

Open Source Currency.
Still trying to get my head around it.. A concrete example would help. How much for that dough naught?

The free market.
The idea is true, but what a ride.. oohhh shiny toys.. cheap plentiful food, plenty of circuses. It's the best of the worst (so far). Yeah, it is leading to the destruction of the world and we'll all die; que sera sera.

Actual dangerous ideas worth reading.

Actual dangerous ideas not worth reading.

Biotechnology will be thoroughly domesticated in the next fifty years, and Science may be 'running out of control'.
Again.. not novel. Apocalypse by sci/tech.

Even the powerful & famous are timid.

I only found one dangerous existing technology, but the idea with which it is presented is not dangerous. which leads me to conclude that the tech is not as great as the following quote implies.

"In a recent laboratory "investment game" many investors would trust all their money to a stranger after a puff of an oxytocin spray."

Never vote for an organic chemist.. no mater how much you trust her/him. :)
Here's my summary of the rest worth noting.

There aren't enough minds to house the population explosion of memes.
"The rapture of the Nerds" explained well, but it's still bunk. If forgetting a bit of common knowledge is harmful to interaction then it will be relearned. If that bit of common knowledge is used often enough it will not be forgotten again. Ergo there will always be just enough common knowledge so that frequently interacting nodes will be able to interact.

The purpose of life is to disperse energy.
His logic is just plain faulty. The author is confused by the classical convection cell examples (oceanic, solar, lab) all of which are forms of self organized complexity (SOC) which form explicitly to transmit energy and do so in the most efficient manner. But life (an eg of SOC) is the exact opposite wrt energy usage, it conserves as much energy as possible. SOC requires energy gradients. Requiring and using a gradient do not imply purpose, let alone "purpose is to eliminate the gradient".

Democratizing access to the means of invention. (BTW: The id attribute on the link destination is currently wrong, so use this link until they fix the other one).
Not dangerous.. actually quite good. What makes this dangerous?

Open Source Currency.
Still trying to get my head around it.. A concrete example would help. How much for that dough naught?

The free market.
The idea is true, but what a ride.. oohhh shiny toys.. cheap plentiful food, plenty of circuses. It's the best of the worst (so far). Yeah, it is leading to the destruction of the world and we'll all die; que sera sera.

Actual dangerous ideas worth reading.

Actual dangerous ideas not worth reading.

Biotechnology will be thoroughly domesticated in the next fifty years, and Science may be 'running out of control'.
Again.. not novel. Apocalypse by sci/tech.

Even the powerful & famous are timid.

I only found one dangerous existing technology, but the idea with which it is presented is not dangerous. which leads me to conclude that the tech is not as great as the following quote implies.

"In a recent laboratory "investment game" many investors would trust all their money to a stranger after a puff of an oxytocin spray."

Never vote for an organic chemist.. no mater how much you trust her/him. :)
Here's my summary of the rest worth noting.

There aren't enough minds to house the population explosion of memes.
"The rapture of the Nerds" explained well, but it's still bunk. If forgetting a bit of common knowledge is harmful to interaction then it will be relearned. If that bit of common knowledge is used often enough it will not be forgotten again. Ergo there will always be just enough common knowledge so that frequently interacting nodes will be able to interact.

The purpose of life is to disperse energy.
His logic is just plain faulty. The author is confused by the classical convection cell examples (oceanic, solar, lab) all of which are forms of self organized complexity (SOC) which form explicitly to transmit energy and do so in the most efficient manner. But life (an eg of SOC) is the exact opposite wrt energy usage, it conserves as much energy as possible. SOC requires energy gradients. Requiring and using a gradient do not imply purpose, let alone "purpose is to eliminate the gradient".

Democratizing access to the means of invention. (BTW: The id attribute on the link destination is currently wrong, so use this link until they fix the other one).
Not dangerous.. actually quite good. What makes this dangerous?

Open Source Currency.
Still trying to get my head around it.. A concrete example would help. How much for that dough naught?

The free market.
The idea is true, but what a ride.. oohhh shiny toys.. cheap plentiful food, plenty of circuses. It's the best of the worst (so far). Yeah, it is leading to the destruction of the world and we'll all die; que sera sera.

Actual dangerous ideas worth reading.

Actual dangerous ideas not worth reading.

Biotechnology will be thoroughly domesticated in the next fifty years, and Science may be 'running out of control'.
Again.. not novel. Apocalypse by sci/tech.

Even the powerful & famous are timid.

I only found one dangerous existing technology, but the idea with which it is presented is not dangerous. which leads me to conclude that the tech is not as great as the following quote implies.

"In a recent laboratory "investment game" many investors would trust all their money to a stranger after a puff of an oxytocin spray."

Never vote for an organic chemist.. no mater how much you trust her/him. :)
Here's my summary of the rest worth noting.

There aren't enough minds to house the population explosion of memes.
"The rapture of the Nerds" explained well, but it's still bunk. If forgetting a bit of common knowledge is harmful to interaction then it will be relearned. If that bit of common knowledge is used often enough it will not be forgotten again. Ergo there will always be just enough common knowledge so that frequently interacting nodes will be able to interact.

The purpose of life is to disperse energy.
His logic is just plain faulty. The author is confused by the classical convection cell examples (oceanic, solar, lab) all of which are forms of self organized complexity (SOC) which form explicitly to transmit energy and do so in the most efficient manner. But life (an eg of SOC) is the exact opposite wrt energy usage, it conserves as much energy as possible. SOC requires energy gradients. Requiring and using a gradient do not imply purpose, let alone "purpose is to eliminate the gradient".

Democratizing access to the means of invention. (BTW: The id attribute on the link destination is currently wrong, so use this link until they fix the other one).
Not dangerous.. actually quite good. What makes this dangerous?

Open Source Currency.
Still trying to get my head around it.. A concrete example would help. How much for that dough naught?

The free market.
The idea is true, but what a ride.. oohhh shiny toys.. cheap plentiful food, plenty of circuses. It's the best of the worst (so far). Yeah, it is leading to the destruction of the world and we'll all die; que sera sera.

Actual dangerous ideas worth reading.

Actual dangerous ideas not worth reading.

Biotechnology will be thoroughly domesticated in the next fifty years, and Science may be 'running out of control'.
Again.. not novel. Apocalypse by sci/tech.

Even the powerful & famous are timid.

I only found one dangerous existing technology, but the idea with which it is presented is not dangerous. which leads me to conclude that the tech is not as great as the following quote implies.

"In a recent laboratory "investment game" many investors would trust all their money to a stranger after a puff of an oxytocin spray."

Never vote for an organic chemist.. no mater how much you trust her/him. :)
Here's my summary of the rest worth noting.

There aren't enough minds to house the population explosion of memes.
"The rapture of the Nerds" explained well, but it's still bunk. If forgetting a bit of common knowledge is harmful to interaction then it will be relearned. If that bit of common knowledge is used often enough it will not be forgotten again. Ergo there will always be just enough common knowledge so that frequently interacting nodes will be able to interact.

The purpose of life is to disperse energy.
His logic is just plain faulty. The author is confused by the classical convection cell examples (oceanic, solar, lab) all of which are forms of self organized complexity (SOC) which form explicitly to transmit energy and do so in the most efficient manner. But life (an eg of SOC) is the exact opposite wrt energy usage, it conserves as much energy as possible. SOC requires energy gradients. Requiring and using a gradient do not imply purpose, let alone "purpose is to eliminate the gradient".

Democratizing access to the means of invention. (BTW: The id attribute on the link destination is currently wrong, so use this link until they fix the other one).
Not dangerous.. actually quite good. What makes this dangerous?

Open Source Currency.
Still trying to get my head around it.. A concrete example would help. How much for that dough naught?

The free market.
The idea is true, but what a ride.. oohhh shiny toys.. cheap plentiful food, plenty of circuses. It's the best of the worst (so far). Yeah, it is leading to the destruction of the world and we'll all die; que sera sera.

Actual dangerous ideas worth reading.

Actual dangerous ideas not worth reading.

Biotechnology will be thoroughly domesticated in the next fifty years, and Science may be 'running out of control'.
Again.. not novel. Apocalypse by sci/tech.

Even the powerful & famous are timid.

I only found one dangerous existing technology, but the idea with which it is presented is not dangerous. which leads me to conclude that the tech is not as great as the following quote implies.

"In a recent laboratory "investment game" many investors would trust all their money to a stranger after a puff of an oxytocin spray."

Never vote for an organic chemist.. no mater how much you trust her/him. :)
Here's my summary of the rest worth noting.

There aren't enough minds to house the population explosion of memes.
"The rapture of the Nerds" explained well, but it's still bunk. If forgetting a bit of common knowledge is harmful to interaction then it will be relearned. If that bit of common knowledge is used often enough it will not be forgotten again. Ergo there will always be just enough common knowledge so that frequently interacting nodes will be able to interact.

The purpose of life is to disperse energy.
His logic is just plain faulty. The author is confused by the classical convection cell examples (oceanic, solar, lab) all of which are forms of self organized complexity (SOC) which form explicitly to transmit energy and do so in the most efficient manner. But life (an eg of SOC) is the exact opposite wrt energy usage, it conserves as much energy as possible. SOC requires energy gradients. Requiring and using a gradient do not imply purpose, let alone "purpose is to eliminate the gradient".

Democratizing access to the means of invention. (BTW: The id attribute on the link destination is currently wrong, so use this link until they fix the other one).
Not dangerous.. actually quite good. What makes this dangerous?

Open Source Currency.
Still trying to get my head around it.. A concrete example would help. How much for that dough naught?

The free market.
The idea is true, but what a ride.. oohhh shiny toys.. cheap plentiful food, plenty of circuses. It's the best of the worst (so far). Yeah, it is leading to the destruction of the world and we'll all die; que sera sera.

Actual dangerous ideas worth reading.

Actual dangerous ideas not worth reading.

Biotechnology will be thoroughly domesticated in the next fifty years, and Science may be 'running out of control'.
Again.. not novel. Apocalypse by sci/tech.

Even the powerful & famous are timid.

I only found one dangerous existing technology, but the idea with which it is presented is not dangerous. which leads me to conclude that the tech is not as great as the following quote implies.

"In a recent laboratory "investment game" many investors would trust all their money to a stranger after a puff of an oxytocin spray."

Never vote for an organic chemist.. no mater how much you trust her/him. :)
Here's my summary of the rest worth noting.

There aren't enough minds to house the population explosion of memes.
"The rapture of the Nerds" explained well, but it's still bunk. If forgetting a bit of common knowledge is harmful to interaction then it will be relearned. If that bit of common knowledge is used often enough it will not be forgotten again. Ergo there will always be just enough common knowledge so that frequently interacting nodes will be able to interact.

The purpose of life is to disperse energy.
His logic is just plain faulty. The author is confused by the classical convection cell examples (oceanic, solar, lab) all of which are forms of self organized complexity (SOC) which form explicitly to transmit energy and do so in the most efficient manner. But life (an eg of SOC) is the exact opposite wrt energy usage, it conserves as much energy as possible. SOC requires energy gradients. Requiring and using a gradient do not imply purpose, let alone "purpose is to eliminate the gradient".

Democratizing access to the means of invention. (BTW: The id attribute on the link destination is currently wrong, so use this link until they fix the other one).
Not dangerous.. actually quite good. What makes this dangerous?

Open Source Currency.
Still trying to get my head around it.. A concrete example would help. How much for that dough naught?

The free market.
The idea is true, but what a ride.. oohhh shiny toys.. cheap plentiful food, plenty of circuses. It's the best of the worst (so far). Yeah, it is leading to the destruction of the world and we'll all die; que sera sera.

Actual dangerous ideas worth reading.

Actual dangerous ideas not worth reading.

Biotechnology will be thoroughly domesticated in the next fifty years, and Science may be 'running out of control'.
Again.. not novel. Apocalypse by sci/tech.

Even the powerful & famous are timid.

I only found one dangerous existing technology, but the idea with which it is presented is not dangerous. which leads me to conclude that the tech is not as great as the following quote implies.

"In a recent laboratory "investment game" many investors would trust all their money to a stranger after a puff of an oxytocin spray."

Never vote for an organic chemist.. no mater how much you trust her/him. :)
Here's my summary of the rest worth noting.

There aren't enough minds to house the population explosion of memes.
"The rapture of the Nerds" explained well, but it's still bunk. If forgetting a bit of common knowledge is harmful to interaction then it will be relearned. If that bit of common knowledge is used often enough it will not be forgotten again. Ergo there will always be just enough common knowledge so that frequently interacting nodes will be able to interact.

The purpose of life is to disperse energy.
His logic is just plain faulty. The author is confused by the classical convection cell examples (oceanic, solar, lab) all of which are forms of self organized complexity (SOC) which form explicitly to transmit energy and do so in the most efficient manner. But life (an eg of SOC) is the exact opposite wrt energy usage, it conserves as much energy as possible. SOC requires energy gradients. Requiring and using a gradient do not imply purpose, let alone "purpose is to eliminate the gradient".

Democratizing access to the means of invention. (BTW: The id attribute on the link destination is currently wrong, so use this link until they fix the other one).
Not dangerous.. actually quite good. What makes this dangerous?

Open Source Currency.
Still trying to get my head around it.. A concrete example would help. How much for that dough naught?

The free market.
The idea is true, but what a ride.. oohhh shiny toys.. cheap plentiful food, plenty of circuses. It's the best of the worst (so far). Yeah, it is leading to the destruction of the world and we'll all die; que sera sera.

Actual dangerous ideas worth reading.

Actual dangerous ideas not worth reading.

Biotechnology will be thoroughly domesticated in the next fifty years, and Science may be 'running out of control'.
Again.. not novel. Apocalypse by sci/tech.

Even the powerful & famous are timid.

I only found one dangerous existing technology, but the idea with which it is presented is not dangerous. which leads me to conclude that the tech is not as great as the following quote implies.

"In a recent laboratory "investment game" many investors would trust all their money to a stranger after a puff of an oxytocin spray."

Never vote for an organic chemist.. no mater how much you trust her/him. :)
Here's my summary of the rest worth noting.

There aren't enough minds to house the population explosion of memes.
"The rapture of the Nerds" explained well, but it's still bunk. If forgetting a bit of common knowledge is harmful to interaction then it will be relearned. If that bit of common knowledge is used often enough it will not be forgotten again. Ergo there will always be just enough common knowledge so that frequently interacting nodes will be able to interact.

The purpose of life is to disperse energy.
His logic is just plain faulty. The author is confused by the classical convection cell examples (oceanic, solar, lab) all of which are forms of self organized complexity (SOC) which form explicitly to transmit energy and do so in the most efficient manner. But life (an eg of SOC) is the exact opposite wrt energy usage, it conserves as much energy as possible. SOC requires energy gradients. Requiring and using a gradient do not imply purpose, let alone "purpose is to eliminate the gradient".

Democratizing access to the means of invention. (BTW: The id attribute on the link destination is currently wrong, so use this link until they fix the other one).
Not dangerous.. actually quite good. What makes this dangerous?

Open Source Currency.
Still trying to get my head around it.. A concrete example would help. How much for that dough naught?

The free market.
The idea is true, but what a ride.. oohhh shiny toys.. cheap plentiful food, plenty of circuses. It's the best of the worst (so far). Yeah, it is leading to the destruction of the world and we'll all die; que sera sera.

Actual dangerous ideas worth reading.

Actual dangerous ideas not worth reading.

Biotechnology will be thoroughly domesticated in the next fifty years, and Science may be 'running out of control'.
Again.. not novel. Apocalypse by sci/tech.

Even the powerful & famous are timid.

I only found one dangerous existing technology, but the idea with which it is presented is not dangerous. which leads me to conclude that the tech is not as great as the following quote implies.

"In a recent laboratory "investment game" many investors would trust all their money to a stranger after a puff of an oxytocin spray."

Never vote for an organic chemist.. no mater how much you trust her/him. :)
Here's my summary of the rest worth noting.

There aren't enough minds to house the population explosion of memes.
"The rapture of the Nerds" explained well, but it's still bunk. If forgetting a bit of common knowledge is harmful to interaction then it will be relearned. If that bit of common knowledge is used often enough it will not be forgotten again. Ergo there will always be just enough common knowledge so that frequently interacting nodes will be able to interact.

The purpose of life is to disperse energy.
His logic is just plain faulty. The author is confused by the classical convection cell examples (oceanic, solar, lab) all of which are forms of self organized complexity (SOC) which form explicitly to transmit energy and do so in the most efficient manner. But life (an eg of SOC) is the exact opposite wrt energy usage, it conserves as much energy as possible. SOC requires energy gradients. Requiring and using a gradient do not imply purpose, let alone "purpose is to eliminate the gradient".

Democratizing access to the means of invention. (BTW: The id attribute on the link destination is currently wrong, so use this link until they fix the other one).
Not dangerous.. actually quite good. What makes this dangerous?

Open Source Currency.
Still trying to get my head around it.. A concrete example would help. How much for that dough naught?

The free market.
The idea is true, but what a ride.. oohhh shiny toys.. cheap plentiful food, plenty of circuses. It's the best of the worst (so far). Yeah, it is leading to the destruction of the world and we'll all die; que sera sera.

Actual dangerous ideas worth reading.

Actual dangerous ideas not worth reading.

Biotechnology will be thoroughly domesticated in the next fifty years, and Science may be 'running out of control'.
Again.. not novel. Apocalypse by sci/tech.

I'd like to vote for Daniel Gilbert's peice "The idea that ideas can be dangerous" as my favorite: http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_8.html#gilbert

Ideas shouldn't be thought of as dangerous.

Except of course mine which I didn't find listed: Killer Robots.

Due to the political fallout of people's children dying the military replaces humans with small, cheap, modular killing machines and just gives thousands of "Military" personell control of one and lets them run around slaughtering people with no risk to themselves. Now imagine it isn't your country that did this, but instead it's the country that's currently invading yours. Frightening?

The relative innocence and stable period of the last 50 years may spiral into a nearly inevitable exposure to real chaos. What if it isn't haphazard testosterone driven riots, where they cannibalize their own neighborhood, much like in L.A. in the 80s, but someone with real insight behind that criminal energy ? What if Slashdotters start musing aloud about "Gee, the L.A. water supply is rather simplistic, isn't it?" An Open Source crime web, a Wiki for real WTO opposition ? Hacking L.A. may be a lot easier than hacking IE.

I would hypothesize that individuals who are really good at finding happiness are not very good at passing on their genes. If you find something that makes you happier than reproduction, why would you reproduce?

Except that scads of social psychology research shows that happier people are far more attractive as mates than unhappy people. So, first, it's not very likely somebody will find something that makes them so happy they want to sacrifice sexual opportunities to pursue it (unless it's being monastic), and second, to the extent they do find something that makes them exceedingly happy, they will likely have many more sexual opportunities as a pleasant side effect.

The problem, according to Gilbert, is that we're really bad at knowing just HOW happy something will make us in the long run. Here's a conversation with Gilbert on the same site that hosted this poll.

Humans have not been around for millions of years.

Yeah, but we have been evolving for millions of years, haven't we? Anyway, my use of the word "evolve" is completely a red herring--I wasn't suggesting an evolutionary account for our current state of happiness. It was just a rhetorical device. In any case, we are now self-aware enough, sophisticated enough, and educated enough that we do not make choices based largely on "evolutionary" drives. We are deliberative creatures and we make our own choices in life, yet most of us feel that real "happiness" is elusive.

Gilbert has a very interesting set of explanations for why this is--mainly, we are very bad at predicting just how lastingly happy certain decisions or events will make our lives. The problem is we tend grossly overestimate the impact of things--both good and bad--on our actual happiness. Interestingly, the same website that has this poll also has an "interview" with Dan Gilbert that covers many of his ideas:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gilbert03/gilbert_ index.html

Our ideas may not matter much after all, as suggested by John Allen Paulos. His idea is short, sweet, and simple: we are not much more than "nominal, marginally integrated entities having convenient labels." Combine this with the anti-anthropocentric ideas of Irene Pepperberg, the pan-psychism of Rudy Rucker, and the eco-dynamics of Scott Sampson, along with the nuclear doubts raised by Jeremy Bernstein, and it all seems to make sense after all. We build thermo-nuclear devices becuase we need to help Gaia redistribute excess energy, not because we need the weapons for war. So, this dangerous idea implies no matter what our governments do with the stockpile of weapons grade plutonium, its not going to have much impact off-world.

Our ideas may not matter much after all, as suggested by John Allen Paulos. His idea is short, sweet, and simple: we are not much more than "nominal, marginally integrated entities having convenient labels." Combine this with the anti-anthropocentric ideas of Irene Pepperberg, the pan-psychism of Rudy Rucker, and the eco-dynamics of Scott Sampson, along with the nuclear doubts raised by Jeremy Bernstein, and it all seems to make sense after all. We build thermo-nuclear devices becuase we need to help Gaia redistribute excess energy, not because we need the weapons for war. So, this dangerous idea implies no matter what our governments do with the stockpile of weapons grade plutonium, its not going to have much impact off-world.

Our ideas may not matter much after all, as suggested by John Allen Paulos. His idea is short, sweet, and simple: we are not much more than "nominal, marginally integrated entities having convenient labels." Combine this with the anti-anthropocentric ideas of Irene Pepperberg, the pan-psychism of Rudy Rucker, and the eco-dynamics of Scott Sampson, along with the nuclear doubts raised by Jeremy Bernstein, and it all seems to make sense after all. We build thermo-nuclear devices becuase we need to help Gaia redistribute excess energy, not because we need the weapons for war. So, this dangerous idea implies no matter what our governments do with the stockpile of weapons grade plutonium, its not going to have much impact off-world.

Our ideas may not matter much after all, as suggested by John Allen Paulos. His idea is short, sweet, and simple: we are not much more than "nominal, marginally integrated entities having convenient labels." Combine this with the anti-anthropocentric ideas of Irene Pepperberg, the pan-psychism of Rudy Rucker, and the eco-dynamics of Scott Sampson, along with the nuclear doubts raised by Jeremy Bernstein, and it all seems to make sense after all. We build thermo-nuclear devices becuase we need to help Gaia redistribute excess energy, not because we need the weapons for war. So, this dangerous idea implies no matter what our governments do with the stockpile of weapons grade plutonium, its not going to have much impact off-world.

Our ideas may not matter much after all, as suggested by John Allen Paulos. His idea is short, sweet, and simple: we are not much more than "nominal, marginally integrated entities having convenient labels." Combine this with the anti-anthropocentric ideas of Irene Pepperberg, the pan-psychism of Rudy Rucker, and the eco-dynamics of Scott Sampson, along with the nuclear doubts raised by Jeremy Bernstein, and it all seems to make sense after all. We build thermo-nuclear devices becuase we need to help Gaia redistribute excess energy, not because we need the weapons for war. So, this dangerous idea implies no matter what our governments do with the stockpile of weapons grade plutonium, its not going to have much impact off-world.

IMO Hoffman gets the prize for navel-gazing and cluelessness and should be forced to attend a semester of Western Philosophy 101 as punishment.

KAI KRAUSE

"The relative innocence and stable period of the last 50 years may spiral into a nearly inevitable exposure to real chaos. What if it isn't haphazard testosterone driven riots, where they cannibalize their own neighborhood, much like in L.A. in the 80s, but someone with real insight behind that criminal energy ? What if Slashdotters start musing aloud about "Gee, the L.A. water supply is rather simplistic, isn't it?" An Open Source crime web, a Wiki for real WTO opposition ? Hacking L.A. may be a lot easier than hacking IE."

I found David Buss's article interesting. He sums up with the following, "On reflection, the dangerous idea may not be that murder historically has been advantageous to the reproductive success of killers; nor that we all house homicidal circuits within our brains; nor even that all of us are lineal descendants of ancestors who murdered. The danger comes from people who refuse to recognize that there are dark sides of human nature that cannot be wished away by attributing them to the modern ills of culture, poverty, pathology, or exposure to media violence. The danger comes from failing to gaze into the mirror and come to grips the capacity for evil in all of us."

Farnsworth: As a man it has become too much of a chore for me to clean out my wrinkles each day. Is it true that stem cells may fight the aging process?

Geneworks Woman: Well yes, in the same way an infant may fight Muhammed Ali! But -

Farnsworth: One pound of stem cells please!

I recently submitted a story about the possibility that Google is a front company for the first real AI, as suggested by George Dyson on Edge. I figured this was exactly the kind of material slashdot thrives on, but for some reason they didn't publish that one.

I recently submitted a story about the possibility that Google is a front company for the first real AI, as suggested by George Dyson on Edge. I figured this was exactly the kind of material slashdot thrives on, but for some reason they didn't publish that one.

"For 30 years I have been wondering, what indication of its existence might we expect from a true AI? Certainly not any explicit revelation, which might spark a movement to pull the plug. Anomalous accumulation or creation of wealth might be a sign, or an unquenchable thirst for raw information, storage space, and processing cycles, or a concerted attempt to secure an uninterrupted, autonomous power supply."

Read the rest at http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dyson05/dyson05_in dex.html.

I for one welcome our new AI overlords.

Does any one know where this phrase was coined "The Mind We All Share?" - George Dyson recent Google visitor attributes it to John Cage - but searching (Google) shows no real further evidence... Where is our world brain?

Sorry, but this is nonsense. The idea of falsification being the central tenet of the scientific method is a new one, first explicitly written down by Popper early this century. Before this, scientific method was seen as making theories that are as correct as possible. Whilst Popper was a scientist, he was much more of a philosopher and for sure he will be remembered for his ideas in the philosophy of science.

If you need a definition of the scientific method, any grade school science textbook will give it to you.

Now I am a scientist, and whilst this might be an artifact of the poor english educational system, I never came across a definition of scientific method at 'grade school' that mentioned falsification.

Actually, if you survey a large group of scientists and ask them to give a definition of scientific method, the answers will not all be the same. This even extends to the big-shots - Smolin criticises Susskind for his theory being unscientific, but obsiously if there was no ambiguity in scientific method either Susskind would already know this or Smolin would be an idiot...clearly there is debate about what constitutes science.

Now I'm not saying that any of these ID people are talking anything other than BS, but you are incorrect to say that scientific method is a solved problem.

Gregory Bateson in his book Mind and Nature deals with examining one's presuppositions. Under minning one's presuppositions is, in one way, what the study of epistemology, as it pertains to theories of knowledge vs the methodology of science, is about.

Creative, or, if you prefer, inventive work is, in large part, about testing the presuppositions underpinning a theory or protocol, and, where possibly profitable, collapsing the presuppositions that underpin our habits and protocols, if for no other reason then to see what happens next.

Why stop there? We are constantly denied the truth about many things that affect our lives more profoundly than the inner workings of baggage scanning equipment, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb cogently points out in this nice little essay. So I'm wondering, if the legality of a matter hinges on knowing the whole truth, where does it end?

For further reading, here are some links:

A quick write up about it: http://www.bfi.org/Trimtab/spring00/longnow.htm

A wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now

An interview aobut it: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/brand/brand_p2.htm l

A Discovery Article: http://www.discover.com/issues/nov-05/cover/

A book about the clock: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465 007805/002-9433271-9089642?v=glance

A self-reproducing thermodynamic work cycle. Video of Kauffman's explanation

It is known that men and women think somewhat diffrently. This is just the old idea that men have a "visual & spacial coprocessor". It is not about intelligence in general. For real information on the issue, check out:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_ index.html

Furthermore, there is an enormous amount of evidence that women suffer from being educated with men. Indeed, most of the best female academics went to all girls schools. Knowing this guys work, he probably didn't bother to control for education. You should really compare women & men educated in mixed & segregated classes. You will find that male preformance is not much effected by segregation, but female proformance is greatly increased by segregation.

A brief setup for the debate reads:"...on the research on mind, brain, and behavior that may be relevant to gender disparities in the sciences, including the studies of bias, discrimination and innate and acquired difference between the sexes."

He's arguing that the practices of Doctors are based on sound Medical Science. This is at best, misleading.

Agreed. But the fact that he erred is no reason for you to repeat his error.

Harari's Law of Scientific Fads and Bandwagons

Every scientific discovery is first made by one person or by a few people. At the time of the discovery, they are the only ones aware of it. It follows logically that democratic votes, public opinion polls, majority views of scientists and scientific fads do not necessarily represent scientific truth. Only correct experimental results do.

Taking your comment from the specific to the general, it's interesting that the American biologist E. O. Wilson has noted, in a different article I can't now locate, that China is the test case for humanity. His argument is that if China, with it's huge population, can find ways to provide for it's citizens, without destroying their ecology, then it's likely we, as a species will be able to overcome our current problems.

While civil liberties are an important facet of China's development, its fast degrading eco-structure is a more telling and scary indicator.

In order to hypothesize we simplify. Using the idea of Occam's Razor we make a number of assumptions and the assumptions we make have a number of presuppositons attached to them. This is how we hypothesize in order to predict and once our predictions are shown to be correct we theorize. Gregory Bateson investigated these ideas in his book Mind and Nature. Smart people should defend dumb/wrong ideas, if they are concerned about falsification as the leading idea in the progress of scince, because the smarter the person the more likely the argument will be logical and the more logical the argument the more able we are to potentially falsify or verify it.

However, scientists are also human beings, and when many of them dedicate their entire career to string theory, you might say that they have a little more than a 'good feeling'.

Belief and faith are in my book two different things, and scientists believe a great many things. For a discussion of this see Edge Magazine.

On another note, as many others have posted here, proof of supersymmetry is, unfortunately, not proof of strings. But it is a step closer to one. A physics professor explained to me once that to probe the Planck length, you'd need an energy far beyond anything available to humanity for millenia to come. Something like the entire energy production of a star in its entire lifetime. So unless someone makes a really ingenious hack for this, we'll be stuck here for a while.

And if this one fails to provide supersymmetric particles, I have hopes that the Large Hadron Collider will.

Check out "WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?"

The 2005 Edge Question has generated many eye-opening responses from a "who's who" of third culture scientists and science-minded thinkers. The 120 contributions comprise a document of 60,000 words.

JORDAN POLLACK
Computer Scientist, Brandeis University

I believe that that systems of self-interested agents can make progress on their own without centralized supervision.

There is an isomorphism between evolution, economics, and education. In economics, the supervisor is a central government or super rich investor, in evolution, it is the "intelligent designer", and in education, its the teacher or outside examiners. In economic systems, despite an almost religious belief in Laissez-Faire and incentive-based behavior, economic systems are prone to winner-take-all phenomena and boom-bust cycles. They seem to require benevolent regulation, or "managed competition" to prevent the "rich get richer" dynamic leading to monopoly, which leads inevitably to corruption and kleptocracy. In evolution, scientists reject the intelligent designer as a creationist ruse, but so far our working models for open-ended evolution haven't worked, and prematurely convergence to mediocrity. In education, evidence of auto-didactic learning in video-games and sports is suppressed in academics by top-down curriculum frameworks and centralized high-stakes testing.

If we did have a working mechanism design which could achieve continuous progress by decentralized self-interested agents, it would settle the creationist objection as well as apply to the other fields, leading to a new renaissance.

Two memorials by Richards Dawkins from 2001 are here ("a keening lament, written too soon to be balanced, too soon to be carefully thought through") and a eulogy here.

The latter piece includes this quote from Adams:

There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions.

It's a reminder that the best way to remember Adams is to re-read what he wrote.

Sorry my bad. There's no excuse so after I post this I'll just slink away and nurse my ego. I took my info from reading Pinker's book How the Mind Works wherein he does take Chomsky to task on some essential points. He quotes Chomsky and relates the issue in some detail. I read the book late last year, but I don't have a copy at hand. I've read Chomsky's book Language and Mind and reviewed some of his earlier writings, especially as it dealt with the Port-Royalists. The Chomsky/Skinner debate referrence came out of researching Chomsky's work. I've only scanned some of Skinner work, basically taking away some idea of his take on behaviorism. While I've read The Edge repository on Pinker. I didn't adequately read the link I posted to the Chomsky/Pinker debate. I was in a hurry and gave it too quick of a read. For the issues I'll have to go back to Pinker's book: How the Mind Works. Either way I screwed up in not reading the link.

Chomsky, who originally debated/antagonized B.F. Skinner, is now locked in debate with Steve Pinker, also of MIT, and, also a theorist attacking the problem of language learning.

I read Lee Smolin's book Three Roads to Quantum Gravity over Xmas and thought it was a good read. It provides a good overview to string theory and the inherent problems and proposed solutions.

Language is better viewed as a co-evolutionary adaptation. Language requires not only a speaker but a listener. The signs/symbols of language are a co-evolutionay process. Gregory Bateson touched upon this in his book Mind & Nature.Adaptation, starvation and poisioning are also players in what we view as the evolutionary game. Of course sexual reproduction leads to the meme of the Selfish Gene as promulgated by R. Dawkins, and leads to viewing us, you and I and everyone of us, as so much packaging shunting genes about. Thinking about the soma as no more than packaging moving genes about via sexual reproduction doesn't seem to take into consideration the generation of negentropy, or, information. The generation and transmission of information via language is the creation of negative entropy and manifests an emergent property that is in a strange way the universe on a course of self discovery.

Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That's an idea we're so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it's kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? -- because you're not!' If somebody votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it, but on the other hand if somebody says 'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday', you say, 'Fine, I respect that'. The odd thing is, even as I am saying that I am thinking 'Is there an Orthodox Jew here who is going to be offended by the fact that I just said that?' but I wouldn't have thought 'Maybe there's somebody from the left wing or somebody from the right wing or somebody who subscribes to this view or the other in economics' when I was making the other points. I just think 'Fine, we have different opinions'. But, the moment I say something that has something to do with somebody's (I'm going to stick my neck out here and say irrational) beliefs, then we all become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say 'No, we don't attack that; that's an irrational belief but no, we respect it'.

Unfortunately, creativity is not something that can be easily taught...

In a recent article, Mandelbrot shows three common techniques that have kept him creative even today when he's nearly 80:

1. I always saw a close kinship between the needs of "pure" mathematics and a certain hero of Greek mythology, Antaeus. The son of Earth, he had to touch the ground every so often in order to reestablish contact with his Mother; otherwise his strength waned. To strangle him, Hercules simply held him off the ground. Back to mathematics. Separation from any down-to-earth input could safely be complete for long periods -- but not forever.
2. A recent, important turn in my life occurred when I realized that something that I have long been stating in footnotes should be put on the marquee. I have engaged myself, without realizing it, in undertaking a theory of roughness.
3. To give an example, let me return to the stock market and the weather. It turns out ... that the techniques I developed for studying turbulence -- like weather -- also apply to the stock market.

Mandelbrot's techniques can be roughly sumarized as (1) periodically return to basic principles or direct observation; (2) pay closer attention to obscure or peripheral phenomenon; and (3) apply techniques from apparently unrelated disciplines.

I suspect that part of the problem isn't that creativity is hard to teach but that it isn't taught at all. Creativity might be like any other technique. If you know it, you use it.

I wonder if the missing ingredient in creativity is arrogance, a quality much on display in Mandelbrot's article. Creative people think their rightful place is standing on the shoulders of giants. They've been told the view is better up there.

And the details of the Jan Hendrik Schon.

How do we remember the past? There are many answers to this question, depending on whether you are an historian, artist or scientist. As a scientist I have wanted to know where in the brain memories are stored and how they are storedthe genetic and neural mechanisms. Although neuroscientists have made tremendous progress in uncovering neural mechanisms for learning, I believe, but cannot prove, that we are all looking in the wrong place for long-term memory.

I have been puzzled by my ability to remember my childhood, despite the fact that most of the molecules in my body today are not the same ones I had as a childin particular, the molecules that make up my brain are constantly turning over, being replaced with newly minted molecules. Perhaps memories only seem to be stable. Rehearsal strengthens memories, and can even alter them. However, I have detailed memories of specific places where I lived 50 years ago that I doubt I ever rehearsed but can be easily verified, so the stability of long-term memories is a real problem.

Textbooks in neuroscience, including one that I coauthored, say that memories are stored at synapses between neurons in the brain, of which there are many. In neural network models of memory, information can be stored by selectively altering the strengths of the synapses, and "spike-time dependent plasticity" at synapses in the cerebral cortex has been found with these properties. This is a hot area of research, but all we need to know here is that patterns of neural activity can indeed modify a lot of molecular machinery inside a neuron.

If memories are stored as changes to molecules inside cells, which are constantly being replaced, how can a memory remain stable over 50 years? My hunch is that everyone is looking in the wrong place: that the substrate of really old memories is located not inside cells, but outside cells, in the extracellular space. The space between cells is not empty, but filled with a matrix of tough material that is difficult to dissolve and turns over very slowly if at all. The extracellular matrix connects cells and maintains the shape of the cell mass. This is why scars on your body haven't changed much after decades of slougare contained in the endoskeleton that connects cells to each other. The intracellular machinery holds memories temporarily and decides what to permanently store in the matrix, perhaps while you are sleeping. It might be possible someday to stain this memory endoskeleton and see what memories look like.what makes you a unique individualhing off skin cells.

My intuition is based on a set of classic experiments on the neuromuscular junction between a motor neuron and a muscle cell, a giant synapse that activates the muscle. The specialized extracellular matrix at the neuromuscular junction, called the basal lamina, consists of proteoglycans, glycoproteins, including collagen, and adhesion molecules such as laminin and fibronectin. If the nerve that activates a muscle is crushed, the nerve fiber grows back to the junction and forms a specialized nerve terminal ending. This occurs even if the muscle cell is also killed. The memory of the contact is preserved by the basal lamina at the junction. Similar material exists at synapses in the brain, which could permanently maintain overall connectivity despite the coming and going of molecules inside neurons.

How could we prove that the extracellular matrix really is responsible for long-term memories? One way to disprove it would be to disrupt the extracellular matrix and see if the memories remain. This can be done with enzymes or by knocking out one or more key molecules with techniques from molecular genetics. If I am right, then all of your memories