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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

Actually, Firefox seems to print it OK so I now believe IE sucks cocks for tuppence.

Here is the link to Bill Gate's worshipful words for Jared Diamond.

Consider this, the number of possible proteins 200 amino acids long is 20 raised to the 200th power or about 10 raised to the 260th power. Now, the number of particles in the known universe is about 10 to the 80th power. Suppose, on a microsecond time scale the universe were doing nothing other than producing proteins length 200. It turns out that it would take vastly many repeats of the history of the universe to create all possible proteins length 200. This means that, for entities of complexity above atoms, such as modestly complex organic molecules, proteins, let alone species, automobiles and operas, the universe is on a unique trajectory (ignoring quantum mechanics for the moment). That is, the universe at modest levels of complexity and above is vastly non- ergodic.

Keith Devlin talks about this in his response to the question.

Great minds think alike. Which, logically, does not in itself indicate that you have a great mind ;-)

I argued that game theory seems to be the relevant description of animal(/human) behaviour.

To understand the argument, you could do worse than start with this article.

As an aside I pointed out that religious people are probably worse than the athists in your (?) country today, because of social factors. Which supports my position.

A reality check which your argument failed.

In the not too distant future, we will be able to construct artificial systems that give every appearance of consciousness--systems that act like us in every way. These systems will talk, walk, wink, lie, and appear distressed by close elections. They will swear up and down that they are conscious and they will demand their civil rights. But we will have no way to know whether their behavior is more than a clever trick--more than the pecking of a pigeon that has been trained to type "I am, I am!"

That is the point of the whole story: Belief on what can not be proven. Your question is sort of pointless because you can't prove it either way. You didn't RTFA or even the title of the story, did you?

It sounds like the title is about all you've read. The site and its articles aren't about things believed willy-nilly; the articles are experts describing their hunches based on their years of experience and synthesizing information outside their fields. It is not about experts having beliefs without cause--it's about experts having beliefs with cause but not rigorously proven (yet anyway). That is a critical distinction to make. To quote:

This is an alternative path. It may be that it's okay not to be certain, but to have a hunch, and to perceive on that basis. There is also evidence here that the scientists are thinking beyond their individual fields. Yes, they are engaged in the science of their own areas of research, but more importantly they are also thinking deeply about creating new understandings about the limits of science, of seeing science not just as a question of knowing things, but as a means of tuning into the deeper questions of who we are and how we know.

These questions are not about making vague statments and leaving them at belief; they are about stimulating thought and discussion--not about simply accepting a belief and rejecting discussion based on unprovability.

Aparently that has already been answered by the partent with a resounding Yes!.

That was a mistake on my part. The quesion was meant to be: Have you ever experienced a universe that was not designed?

No, not really. Design is one of those things that indicates intelligent origin, that's all. You can call a DVD player "designed", but yet you can't point to a naturally-occurring DVD player growing wild on some jungle or being mined from the earth.

You've just restated what I said: Design implies an abstraction (a function of intelligence) of a purpose from nature and then creation (by man) of something for that purpose.

I believe in science. Unlike mathematical theorems, scientific results can't be proved. They can only be tested again and again, until only a fool would not believe them.

I cannot prove that electrons exist, but I believe fervently in their existence. And if you don't believe in them, I have a high voltage cattle prod I'm willing to apply as an argument on their behalf. Electrons speak for themselves.

observations
Theres some interesting observational research, Oscillations and Chaos in Ant Societies, R.V. Sole, O. Miramontes, and B.C. Goodwin, J. Theor. Biol. 161, pp.343-357, 1993.

In David Suzuki's, The Sacred Balance, Brian Goodwin (author also of, HOW THE LEOPARD CHANGED ITS SPOTS) made some interesting observational discoveries with ants. Synchronous emergent behaviour arose when individual *chaotic* ants reached a certain density. Goodwin concluded that ...

• ... living near the edge of chaos gives systems, the complex systems, maximal adaptability, the capacity to respond adaptively to a constantly changing and unpredictable world ... Brian Goodwin, The Sacred Balance, Episode 1, Journey into New Worlds.

simulation
You can see a simulation of the ants behaviour begin modeled here. You can find more about cellular automata and ants by Akira Kageyama. The source code (java) is here.

limitations
But there are limitations in trying to model living systems with computers. Some things just happen in nature that cannot be modelled. I remember reading Bart Kosko (Fuzzy thinking) and in it he describes how modelling animals nature for example doesn't take into account things like breaking bones. Sure you could assign probability of a bone breaking, describe the forces on the bone when it breaks. But in nature it just happens.

Diseases had already adapted to infect humans when they were introduced to the Americas.

This can't be emphasized enough.

More specifically, diseases adapt to infect humans through long-term exposure to humans. This often come through domesticated animals eg. smallpox, measles, but sometimes through wild animals which live in close proximity to humans, eg. bubonic plague or AIDS. Jared Diamond author of Guns, Germs and Steel develops these idea in this talk.

I like the work the guy has done in the past, but I sometimes I'm dismayed by a little too much self-promotion by academics these days. Recall in his open letter in Wired:

Wired article

Here he mentions the need to conduct fundamental research, which I applaud, but he fails to mention that many, many people are already doing this, and has come across as championing an idea which has already been pursued for decades. If there's one thing I know about life, it's that people with money will almost always do their best to make more of it, and that includes learning how to use the market via financial research. Most mathematically inclined graduate students in Mandelbrot's own university, Yale, go on to financial research.

It reminds me a little of another widely regarded expert, David Gelernter, who has published lots of grandoise nonsense which are devoured readily by people who don't stop to think about what is actually said. For example, in his article about the future ("The Second Coming: A Manifesto"), he says at one point:

"Everything is up for grabs. Everything will change. There is a magnificent sweep of intellectual landscape right in front of us."

Well, that's nice. What's it mean? Perhaps I shouldn't fault the researchers, since getting your name out there seems to be the only way to attract lots of research funds, but every once in a while, it'd be nice to see someone slightly in touch with reality talk about what they want to do and why.

Seems paradoxical - but it really isn't. First off, let me state that I consider myself to be a recent transhumanist convert. The way to this conclusion was long and arduous, but upon reviewing the evidence, it seems clear that something is selecting for increasing levels of intelligence in the universe. We are not the pinnacle, not by a longshot. Our machines, however...

Both of these camps need to do some reading: Dyson's "Darwin Among the Machines" would be a good place to start. Kelly's "Out of Control" should be on the list, along with Johnson's "Emergence". Also, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi's "Linked". Finally, Drexler's "Engines of Creation" and Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science".

There are few other texts which could be recommended, but the titles to these will be run across in the above reading. Careful reading of all of these texts will reveal something that we are only beginning to understand, the basics of which is that complexity arises from simplicity (namely, simple algorithms and UTM-like mechanisms), that feedback is a necessary part of the equation, whether it is evolution or development of conciousness, and that networks (of all kinds - chemical, electrical, social, etc) play a central part.

All of this (mainly in the human/machine symbiosis) seems to be leading, via combinitorial exponentialism (ie, exponential increases in power in one area translating into further exponential increases in other areas, which feedback onto prior areas, etc) to what has been declared the "technological singularity".

Of all of this, I have only read one dissenting opinion (not that there aren't others - but I have yet to have them pointed out) - that of Lanier's. While his theory is interesting - that software has not made the same strides as hardware, and that since it is still fragile, it is not likely to lead to a singularity - his thinking seems like that of a top-down AI researcher: that such leaps will come from complex software.

If you only look at it from the macro level of current software, one can easily see that such software is nowhere near capable. However, we know that complexity can arise from simple instructions: oOur own DNA points out that this is the case. Wolfram's experiments also lends credence to the idea of simple algorithms producing complex results. This is the direction that software and hardware will have to take in order to continue the trend toward singularity, a very "bottom-up" approach. Our own universe may be the result of such processing:

Are we merely software running in an emulator we call the Universe?

No one knows, and no one can know. We are inside the system, we can't be objective to determine the truth (assuming there is such thing as "truth"). A bottom up approach to software is what is needed. We are only beginning to take steps in that direction. Much of the problems with this research has been lack of understanding over "top-down" vs. "bottom-up", thus the "bottom-up" researchers get lumped in with the "top-down" failures, and funding is lost or otherwise not invested properly. We need more investigation on neural nets, particularly large hardware based systems - even if the current electronics would fill a building or more. We did it with serial Von Neumann architechture machines, we do it today with parallel processing supercomputers. We should be doing it today with neural networks...

The whole creationism vs. evolution is a tiresome debate. On the surface, one seems to favor over the other. But when you really start looking into it - it seems like there is a driving force - most like, a vastly distributed UTM driving all of the possible outcomes in the universe, with perhaps quantum particles making up the interacting "bits", which has been running simple algorithms over a very long time span. We are only beginning to touch these levels, only beginning to understand this stuff.

Of course, all of

His estimate was probably based on the common, and incorrect, belief that neurons are purely digital.

Worse... even if they're analog, they're probably noncomputable.

--Rob

1. great statements require great proof.
2. predictions should follow patterns of substructure

He offers no proof - he simply says : look what's happened so far, by (x) date (which will likely be after I'm dead) the world will be SO different and it will be like (THIS).

His claims of AI are floundering on simple facts like Intel scrapping 4gHz chips and any number of other signs that Moore's Law, on which Kurzweil's argument rests, is being scrapped as we speak.

another example: stick a blank floppy in your fancy pants XP machine and start the computer up. Computers are SO far from being "intelligent" in even the most rudimentary way, it's absurd. The basic flaw in Kurzweil's notions are that he believes that intelligence is a disembodied effect, when (if the likes of Ramachandran are correct) intelligence is an embodied effect and specifically dependent on wetware. So, the pattern doesn't hold, and he has no real proof. He's selling snake oil to technodweebs.

Then there's the entire issue of social class, and Kurzweil has no interest in serving the greater masses of humanity. He is interested in pushing a technological vanguard that will be open only to the rich, who, once properly enabled/enhanced with have no need or desire to accomodate a working class. Why bring on board the middle classes, when you can replace them all with machines? And if you think this doesn't mean you, you're an idiot.

But beyond all that his fantasy is just that: a fantasy.Technology is a means, not an end in itself, and the likes of Kurzweil seek to put the managers of technology in a position of power above and beyond democratic principles, and for that he and his ilk must be opposed and revealed for what they are: techno-fascists.

Now, for full disclosure: I do think we need a robust space program, I do think we need faster and better computers, I do think we can and should use technology to solve the world's ills where technology is a legitimate solution. I *even agree* that we can make humans more disease resistant and longer lived, and I also believe that that is a good thing. However:

I do not see technology as Kurzweil does: in some kind of Messianic Eschatology. It's not like that, and I feel that he and his ilk are perpetrating a fraud on the public, but mostly on the people they advocate the most: technologists. I think the Really Hard Nut To Crack is not going to be technological, but sociological and political.

Jaron Lanier wrote an interesting opposition paper that also opposes Kurzweil, but in more polite language than myself. I guess Lanier doesn't consider Kurzweil to be the charlatan I see him as.

RS

The premise of the article is also similar to the kinds of arguments people were making in the '80s about expert systems:

"We can develop inference systems for all these professions with voluminous, but highly specialized knowlege bases, and then we won't need the highly trained professionals anymore".

This also harkens to a software engineering fantasy that we can standardize and simplify hard problems. There are many who disagree with this point of view, including Fred Brooks.

An interesting take on the failures of software is Jaron Lanier's One Half of a Manifesto. (Actually even more enlightening is the debate that ensued around the manifesto (responses, reply).

The premise of the article is also similar to the kinds of arguments people were making in the '80s about expert systems:

"We can develop inference systems for all these professions with voluminous, but highly specialized knowlege bases, and then we won't need the highly trained professionals anymore".

This also harkens to a software engineering fantasy that we can standardize and simplify hard problems. There are many who disagree with this point of view, including Fred Brooks.

An interesting take on the failures of software is Jaron Lanier's One Half of a Manifesto. (Actually even more enlightening is the debate that ensued around the manifesto (responses, reply).

The premise of the article is also similar to the kinds of arguments people were making in the '80s about expert systems:

"We can develop inference systems for all these professions with voluminous, but highly specialized knowlege bases, and then we won't need the highly trained professionals anymore".

This also harkens to a software engineering fantasy that we can standardize and simplify hard problems. There are many who disagree with this point of view, including Fred Brooks.

An interesting take on the failures of software is Jaron Lanier's One Half of a Manifesto. (Actually even more enlightening is the debate that ensued around the manifesto (responses, reply).

CNN is also covering the story.

More information:

The relationship between space and survival has been expressed by many others, such as Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Martin Rees, William Burrows and Robert Shapiro.

Additionally, read some of the studies done with Koko the gorilla - gorillas can absolutely combine words and concepts into phrases, with far more sophistication than a bird (again, not at a human level, but comparable with a 2-3 year old child, perhaps). I just dug up an actual online interview that was performed with Koko the gorilla (with a sign language interpreter typing for the gorilla of course - check it out).

The Clock of the Long Now is a clock designed Danny Hillis to last 10,000 years with maintenance using only Bronze Age technology. Ticking will be avoided. The century hand will advance every 100 years, and the cuckoo will come out on the millennium. The first 9 foot tall prototype was built in time for "New Year's Eve 01999" (note extra digit, and the second is under construction now.

One might argue that the clock incorporates firmware, in the sense that there will be relatively complex algorithms to maintain accuracy by comparing different timing signals, and simpler algorithms to decide when to move the century hand, or cuckoo the millennium. It's not a stored-program system though, so it doesn't meet the criteria that the Babbage engines meet. Nevertheless, this is a good example of hardware designed realistically to operate continuously for 10 millennia. For this project Hillis invented a mechanical serial-bit-adder, a mechanical digital logic element, which evidently lacks the "wearing problem" of a standard clock mechanism. The clock knows about leap years and such.

The website has images of the prototypes and the design, but I'm on dialup so I didn't look at them. The Principles Page discusses some of the problems to be overcome. For example, power source - right now Hillis is tending toward a temperature-based power source - and maintaining accuracy, which may be based on a phase locked loop using a mechanical oscillator and solar alignment. There are ways to support the foundation, such as buying Brand's Book, or Eno's tunes

IMHO he might want to use three or four other checks as well. An extension of phase locking can work well with multiple nodes in a network, e.g., the multiple nodes in the human heart rhythm controller. Such networks rapidly converge to a common cycle, and this would provide additional reliability. The NTP network time algorithm is based on multiple sources of the same type, but analogous in concept. Just for fun, it'd be great if the clock also included a display of the 64-bit Unix time, in binary!

This Wired article was written by Danny Hillis about his original idea. The Long Now Website has other interesting links about long term stuff. Hillis has some interesting friends, like Brian Eno who named "The Clock of the Long Now", and Stewart Brand. Other links: Intro to Brand talk, The actual talk. Buy the book, or the Eno CD "January 07003" to support the foundation.

The Clock of the Long Now is a clock designed Danny Hillis to last 10,000 years with maintenance using only Bronze Age technology. Ticking will be avoided. The century hand will advance every 100 years, and the cuckoo will come out on the millennium. The first 9 foot tall prototype was built in time for "New Year's Eve 01999" (note extra digit, and the second is under construction now.

One might argue that the clock incorporates firmware, in the sense that there will be relatively complex algorithms to maintain accuracy by comparing different timing signals, and simpler algorithms to decide when to move the century hand, or cuckoo the millennium. It's not a stored-program system though, so it doesn't meet the criteria that the Babbage engines meet. Nevertheless, this is a good example of hardware designed realistically to operate continuously for 10 millennia. For this project Hillis invented a mechanical serial-bit-adder, a mechanical digital logic element, which evidently lacks the "wearing problem" of a standard clock mechanism. The clock knows about leap years and such.

The website has images of the prototypes and the design, but I'm on dialup so I didn't look at them. The Principles Page discusses some of the problems to be overcome. For example, power source - right now Hillis is tending toward a temperature-based power source - and maintaining accuracy, which may be based on a phase locked loop using a mechanical oscillator and solar alignment. There are ways to support the foundation, such as buying Brand's Book, or Eno's tunes

IMHO he might want to use three or four other checks as well. An extension of phase locking can work well with multiple nodes in a network, e.g., the multiple nodes in the human heart rhythm controller. Such networks rapidly converge to a common cycle, and this would provide additional reliability. The NTP network time algorithm is based on multiple sources of the same type, but analogous in concept. Just for fun, it'd be great if the clock also included a display of the 64-bit Unix time, in binary!

This Wired article was written by Danny Hillis about his original idea. The Long Now Website has other interesting links about long term stuff. Hillis has some interesting friends, like Brian Eno who named "The Clock of the Long Now", and Stewart Brand. Other links: Intro to Brand talk, The actual talk. Buy the book, or the Eno CD "January 07003" to support the foundation.

The Clock of the Long Now is a clock designed Danny Hillis to last 10,000 years with maintenance using only Bronze Age technology. Ticking will be avoided. The century hand will advance every 100 years, and the cuckoo will come out on the millennium. The first 9 foot tall prototype was built in time for "New Year's Eve 01999" (note extra digit, and the second is under construction now.

One might argue that the clock incorporates firmware, in the sense that there will be relatively complex algorithms to maintain accuracy by comparing different timing signals, and simpler algorithms to decide when to move the century hand, or cuckoo the millennium. It's not a stored-program system though, so it doesn't meet the criteria that the Babbage engines meet. Nevertheless, this is a good example of hardware designed realistically to operate continuously for 10 millennia. For this project Hillis invented a mechanical serial-bit-adder, a mechanical digital logic element, which evidently lacks the "wearing problem" of a standard clock mechanism. The clock knows about leap years and such.

The website has images of the prototypes and the design, but I'm on dialup so I didn't look at them. The Principles Page discusses some of the problems to be overcome. For example, power source - right now Hillis is tending toward a temperature-based power source - and maintaining accuracy, which may be based on a phase locked loop using a mechanical oscillator and solar alignment. There are ways to support the foundation, such as buying Brand's Book, or Eno's tunes

IMHO he might want to use three or four other checks as well. An extension of phase locking can work well with multiple nodes in a network, e.g., the multiple nodes in the human heart rhythm controller. Such networks rapidly converge to a common cycle, and this would provide additional reliability. The NTP network time algorithm is based on multiple sources of the same type, but analogous in concept. Just for fun, it'd be great if the clock also included a display of the 64-bit Unix time, in binary!

This Wired article was written by Danny Hillis about his original idea. The Long Now Website has other interesting links about long term stuff. Hillis has some interesting friends, like Brian Eno who named "The Clock of the Long Now", and Stewart Brand. Other links: Intro to Brand talk, The actual talk. Buy the book, or the Eno CD "January 07003" to support the foundation.

That must be the worst post in this entire thread. AC posting with a terrible subject line who launches into lumperhood as his thesis paragraph. I've associated with maybe a dozen people in the three to four sigma bracket, some of whom managed to fit in, some of whom didn't. Every misfit I've known has melted his snowflake in his own unique fashion. There's more diversity in failure than success. And what is this "pay your dues" crap? Check out this lecture on hedonic rationalization By Daniel Gilbert. Life is cruel, everyone pays their dues eventually, one way or another, but I'd hardly recommend going through life looking for opportunities to drop your pants and bend over. There's an awful lot that goes on at universities that's institutional, bureaucratic, cynical, and worthless. Heck, "Shawshank Redemption" works quite well as documentary about the undergraduate experience. This is maybe a cryptic sentiment, but I think the secret is to find something in life you care enough about that when the lumps comes (they always do) you feel like you deserved them, but there you are in the muck and you have to find a way to crawl out again. There's a common statement about satisfaction, that it measures not what you accomplished, but what you sacrificed to get there. Before you can make a meaningful sacrifice, you have to live enough to decide what you believe, which is very hard to do if you fall for the "we all have to suffer, everyone get in line" Camenbert.

Some people are seriously thinking of making 'backups' of civilization: "secure sanctuaries (think of the monasteries of the Middle Ages) that preserve and update copies of the vital records and articles needed for the conduct of our society". They would be placed all over Earth and eventually at locations in space. "In the event of a global catastrophe, the ARC facilities will be prepared to reintroduce lost technology, art, history, crops, livestock and, if necessary, even human beings to the Earth."

See Robert Shapiro and William E. Burrows

Brewster Kahle

No. When you looks really close, everything looks like it does on acid.

So you've basically accepted that we're not in control of our own destiny, huh?

If the mighty and sanctified Invisible Hand of the Market dictates that a potentially deadly technology gets developed . . . that's it, huh?

If there's money to be made in something, we may as well just let it happen, right?

Or maybe you think the development of nanotech is part of the path to some trancendental, inevitable technosocial Singularity that cannot, must not be denied.

This kind of absolutist, ideological take on things leads to bad, shortsided policies.

Jaron Lanier deals with a similar sort of ideology in his One Half a Manifesto.

Stefan

Are we nerds or no? I would have expected any discussion even touching on the legal rights of AI machines to mention Ray Kuzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines. Don't know who he is? Don't know who perhaps the GREATEST INVENTOR of the past 50 years is??!! Have a gander at this short bio, you will be glad you did.

There is absolutly nothing wrong with a good text installer.

Sorry to get in on this one late. You are absolutely correct, and just a hair short of the mark. A good command line interface (CLI) installer is better than a good gui installer. You can run a CLI installer on a VGA card, but have you ever tried to run a gui installer without a grahics card? If (and this may be a big if) the CLI and the GUI have all the same features (sensible help, wizards, etc), the only upside of GUI is the prettiness.

A GUI means there is more code to potentially get wrong, and it's less user-friendly for advanced use. Many things have to be text entered for a full install (EG: static network settings) - requiring the user to switch from analog data entry (mouse) to binary data entry (keyclicks) is a hinderance both in terms of moving your right hand and in terms of mental context switching.

There is far too much GUI in the world. This is a matter of consciousness raising - stop blindly nodding when technots imply GUI is inherently better. The invention of the GUI should no more be the death of the CLI than television was the death of radio (which is to say, CLI may take a back seat, but still has an important role).

The litmus test of this is code editors. The two most effective code editors are Vi* and Emacs. I switched to Emacs from a GUI editor in 2000. I've since made extensive use of IntelliJ and Eclipse. Emacs is still better - it doesn't sacrifice keyboarding and screen real estate to satisfy an analog input device, which has absolutely no place in code development.

Even the technotards at Microsoft have finally figured this out and have begun rebuilding DOS.

There is an interesting interview with Neil Gershenfeld, the director of MIT's center for bits and atoms - they have been playing with similar 'replicators' and setting up fabrication labs (fablabs!) in middle-tech countries with interesting results. He sees the mainstream availabilty (ok - once cost comes down a bit) of manufacturing processes as the beginning of a paradigm shift similar to the move of mainframe computing to the desktop. He also discusses their use of open-source hardware and schematics in the fablabs.

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

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

I do like to think of the internet as an extension, and not just through junk mail and porn. Constant access to such a mass of information is a paradigm shift in many ways (duh), but particularly in terms of how one can view human intelligence. I believe a clever philosopher wrote a book about it. I like the notion of the constant access expanding our mental capacities by orders of magnitude. Something like google news, just by virtue of displaying thousands of sources, gives us modern types a capacity for world-knowledge that could barely even be imagined pre-information age. The question is, then, what will all this access allow us (and our minds) to become? A global brain? (Fringe) Academia looks like its finally becoming pertinent again. Through the web, no less, which I do believe is a potential source for so-called "deep knowledge", simply by allowing such little things as hypertext writing to be instantly accessible, or multi-faceted real or near-real time discussion (such as this one). So what's next? It's a bother that my glasses are still so clear...

I keep hearing about this Witten guy, as being the only one who 'lives-in' string-theory, and Martin Rees seems ultra-sharp..., but a straight-forward book on super-symmetric string ( branes, actually ) theory ( aka Brane Theory, or M-Theory ) is Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe.

I'd heard, though, somewheres, that there IS a singularity ( single-brane ) in the black-hole ( or rather, it IS the object in the bottom of the event-horizon/gravity-well ), and that's what happens when things go to the 'other way' of expressing things around Planck's constant, or Planck's law, or something ...

Branes that have less mass than ~Planck's whatever~ express as things that appear to us as 'particles' with electro-magnetic interactions, and all, but branes that have more mass than ~Planck's whatever~ express only Mass, Spin, and Charge, and being of effectively-infinite ( or actually-infinite? ) density, only their Mass and Spin matter, or maybe their Charge isn't valid anymore, or something: it's been awhile since I read that stuff, sorry, but these are the ideas involved in what I'd read, anyways...

Also, I'd heard that there were possibility of multiple time-dimensions in M-theory, but that no-one had decided/discovered which number of 'em worked right... 1, 2, n...

Right.

( awesome reply, and thank you! )

Firstly, I were thinking of Correct Constructs, and probably this is wholely rong, but my assumption was that a Program is made-up of components, each of which can be proved not-incorrect, so the whole thing feels, to me, fractal... ( perhaps there's blurring between the fractal-type reality and the recursive-type reality in my mind... ), so the components can be proven to be correct-constructs, and the whole can be proven too to be a not-incorrect-construct, NOT assuming that this proves it to be the optimal construct, or even the answer to the correct-question, just its non-broken-ness.., and no I didn't assume that all such checking would be guaranteed to happen within finite time, I was just considering the way the logic felt.

Secondly, our definitions of 'computer' are different: Yours seems to correspond more with 'cognition', mine more with thinking ( cognition all-the-way-through to pattern-gnosis/fuzzy-logic, and including various other things that don't translate into English much.. ). Cognitive-systems probably are more-effectively done in machinery, but didn't Godel prove that self-consistency cannot be identical to Reality?

Also, I'm with (Sir) Martin Rees, where he says that there isn't any obvious upper-limit on Mind, but I disagree with him on one point: in buddhism, it is accepted that once one's got sufficient gnosis/mind evolution, then one can finish-the-job one's self.
Edge 116 : 2003-05-19 : In The Matrix., and hims bio: Martin Rees at Edge.org/3rd Culture

If one's definition of 'computing' is inherently digital/sequential, then the analog-computers used, only a few years ago, do study/model power-grids, would be unable to count-as-valid, even though they used very few parts ( as opposed to millions/billions of transistors+opcodes ), and worked rather well. Our current infatuation with ignoring-analog-processing will hopefully wear-off while we still survive, but it isn't a blindness Universe shares, was my humourous point, is all... We think, and are capable of subtle logic, and are capable of true-perceiving, whereas logic-itself cannot know trueness without stepping outside of its self-consistent-system...

As for the rest you rowte, -sigh- I hope I'll understand all you've referred-to in the next coupla years...

Right.

( awesome reply, and thank you! )

Firstly, I were thinking of Correct Constructs, and probably this is wholely rong, but my assumption was that a Program is made-up of components, each of which can be proved not-incorrect, so the whole thing feels, to me, fractal... ( perhaps there's blurring between the fractal-type reality and the recursive-type reality in my mind... ), so the components can be proven to be correct-constructs, and the whole can be proven too to be a not-incorrect-construct, NOT assuming that this proves it to be the optimal construct, or even the answer to the correct-question, just its non-broken-ness.., and no I didn't assume that all such checking would be guaranteed to happen within finite time, I was just considering the way the logic felt.

Secondly, our definitions of 'computer' are different: Yours seems to correspond more with 'cognition', mine more with thinking ( cognition all-the-way-through to pattern-gnosis/fuzzy-logic, and including various other things that don't translate into English much.. ). Cognitive-systems probably are more-effectively done in machinery, but didn't Godel prove that self-consistency cannot be identical to Reality?

Also, I'm with (Sir) Martin Rees, where he says that there isn't any obvious upper-limit on Mind, but I disagree with him on one point: in buddhism, it is accepted that once one's got sufficient gnosis/mind evolution, then one can finish-the-job one's self.
Edge 116 : 2003-05-19 : In The Matrix., and hims bio: Martin Rees at Edge.org/3rd Culture

If one's definition of 'computing' is inherently digital/sequential, then the analog-computers used, only a few years ago, do study/model power-grids, would be unable to count-as-valid, even though they used very few parts ( as opposed to millions/billions of transistors+opcodes ), and worked rather well. Our current infatuation with ignoring-analog-processing will hopefully wear-off while we still survive, but it isn't a blindness Universe shares, was my humourous point, is all... We think, and are capable of subtle logic, and are capable of true-perceiving, whereas logic-itself cannot know trueness without stepping outside of its self-consistent-system...

As for the rest you rowte, -sigh- I hope I'll understand all you've referred-to in the next coupla years...

Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid . Good stuff. A thinking book.

The other is George Dyson's Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence. Incredible history of communication and computing with a pretty cool argument abuot the possible future of computer intelligence. He doesn't follow the well-worn tracks of those who basically posit a Short-Circuit-esque Johnny5 for the future of computers, instead exploring the actual nature of intelligence and how it may emerge uniquely among computer networks. A presentation of the thesis is available at Edge.org.

You won't go wrong with these books.

I just got a new interview with him in my email from edge.org, where he speculates on multiple universes, alternative formulations of physics and the Matrix (hehe). It's here, for all of youse enjoyments. (N.B. RealPlayer format)

The 'scientists' I mentioned have made real world accomplishments for the future, though.

Healthy discussion. Good points all.

Well, I am not sure about which fire you are referring to, but as long as too many people didn't die or too much private property wasn't lost, I'm not going to get too worked up about it. The forest probably will be healthier in a few years/decades due to the fire.

I won't always attribute junk science to letting the fires burn. I think that there is a realization that the original approach of surpressing fires as much as possible wasn't consistent with environmental realities.

As for not letting burnt timber be harvested, well, I don't know about that. If the trees fell over, they are probably too burnt to be useful in industry. If they are standing, then they may be able to heal enough to survive. Either way, I can't see how harvesting the burnt timber will help the forest regrow.
If cheap lumber was an economic necessity, then we would stop putting tariffs on Canadian lumber.

But, I am no expert on logging or forest fires. And I don't know anything about the particulars of any incidents you refer to.

The definition of junk science always seems to depend on the political leanings of the person. I generally lean against more industry, even at the expense of jobs. If the entire region is a polluted wasteland 20 years from now, are any jobs really worth it? While I am not advocating a return to the stone ages, we need to be more efficient with what we already have.

As for the pendulum swinging too far into the envirionmental preservation direction, I think that is ok. All too often we implement some project without really being aware of the consequences. Any development needs to be carefully evaluated. I think that this article is relevent to this discussion.

• Jared Diamond, historian
• Mark Shubb, bass player

Benford's article is titled "Beyond the Shuttle" and can be found.. here.

As usual, Benford is +5 Insightful.

Physics of Consciousness

Building a machine to pass the Turing Test is one thing, but the nature of consciousness itself is the more profound question here. Rodney Brooks asked this question in a relatively recent Edge Online interview.
What are we missing in our computational models of living systems?

Chris

http://www.umsl.edu/~altmanc/
http://www.artilect.org/

Lets see, who's word should we trust more, a highly respected reporter for a very reputable newspaper or a convicted felon who had to go to jail multiple times before he finally got a clue?

Was Kevin Mitnick a national menace? No way. Was this a good yarn? I think so. I mean, it was an interesting sort of morality play for the information age we're moving into. Was Kevin Mitnick an information-age terrorist? No. His motivation is still a mystery to me. But I'll tell you one thing: he was an adult. He'd been arrested five times before. He had gone to jail three times before. He was systematically stealing software from dozens if not more computers around the Internet. He was targeting cellular telephone companies and stealing source code that major U.S. companies had spent millions of dollars developing. His motivations are not clear. He was tampering with the telephone network. He was costing Internet service providers tens of thousands of dollars or more just watching him -- and they were helpless to stop him.

I don't think you have to make the leap to say he was some grave terrorist. This guy was a hardened computer criminal. He is a guy who's been given many chances to get his act together. A lot has been made of whether or not he was "cyberspace's most wanted." I made that call when I wrote my first article in July, 1994, based on the fact that the U.S. Marshal service, the FBI, the California Department of Motor Vehicles, several local police departments and several telecommunications companies were all looking for him and couldn't find him. I think that's a good story -- end of case.

I've been sort of pinned with this conspiracy to catch Kevin. I wrote the first story because I was so intrigued with his ability to avoid these people. That first story had a modern Bonnie-and-Clyde aspect to it that I thought was revealing. The fact that people went nuts over the story -- that's something that I didn't expect. I don't fully comprehend the way the media works. But I didn't advertise him as a menace to the world -- just as a very persistent criminal. The words that I used to describe him were "Con man" and "grifter." I think that comes close to approximating what he did.

From a Salon interview with John Markoff

I think they'll find this gag runs out of steam as soon as P2P clients start using checksum techniques.

I think some do. But I thought about it, while the anti-measures you mention might really help, probably this RIAA guys have no chance to poison P2P networks for some reasons:

1. there's a very fast paced evolution going on: The chance of "poisoned" files to propagate is doubtlessly smaller than the chance of non-poisoned files. Since this propagating is roughly exponential, the gap in "population" numbers between the clean version of a, say, mp3 and a "poisoned" version will grow fast. The poisoned version is always in danger of dying out and has to be artifically kept alive, i.e. constantly refed.

2. Sheer size of p2p space. AFAIK, this kazaa thingy has around millions of users offering also millions of gb of files. It's impossible to get a big enough percentage of "poision" feeders, in order to really affect the network. As long as approx. 80% of all files are clean, nobody will even think about stopping p2p usage.

Anybody who has the slightest doubt, go to google and enter "free porn". You'll get 3,120,000 hits, from which probably 3,199,999 are scam - I assume, didn't check it ;) - but nonetheless there seem to be enough people trying to get "free porn" so that making such sites seems to bring in money.

But the RIAA/IFPI will never reach a poisoning rate of 80%, as that would mean feeding an enormous amount of poision into the network, and they'd have to do that permanently, and with a relativly high bandwidth, because, as I said in the first point, their poison has to fight evolutionary disadvantages.

Maybe they also need a Office of Arithmetics ;).

I know it means I'm kinda pathetic, but I really like Alan Alda's (yes, the actor).

From the "Deeper" section:

What your science advisor really needs to do is help you re-fashion the thinking of the country. Too many people think cloning cells for the fight against disease is the same thing as creating Frankenstein's monster. Too many people think evolution is the idea that people are descended from apes. And too many people think that genetic modification of plants is a dangerous new idea, instead of something that's been going on for ten thousand years.
...
The problem is that, although we're all entitled to our beliefs, our culture increasingly holds that science is just another belief. Maybe this is because it's easier to believe something--anything--than not to know.

We don't like uncertainty--so we gravitate back to the last comfortable solution we had, and in this way we elevate belief to the status of fact.

But scientists are comfortable with not knowing. They thrive on it. They don't assume that just because they had an idea it must be right. They attack it as vigorously as they can because they don't want to lie to themselves. As Richard Feynman said, "Not knowing is much more interesting than believing an answer which might be wrong."

I only hope that Alan is wrong about the Death of Reason In The U.S. I hope, but not much. See, on the one hand, people are always saying, "oh, man things are so screwed up." I'm not just talking about the last few years or even the last few centuries. You go back to biblical times and before and there were still people saying how bad it all was. It's a constant throughout the ages.

So there's hope that Alan's wrong and the seeming surge of gulibility (phone psychics, John Edwards, et al.) are just a fad or trend. Or on the other hand, it could be that the U.S's torch is fading. Goodbye reason, hello psychics, how did we ever get along without you! Yes, I understand that it's okay that we murder all those nasty Arab-types 'cause Johnny Edwards says the dead ones are thanking us from Hell...

Okay, I apologize for going a bit freaky there, folks. Obviously, it's late and past my bedtime. Goodnite, don't let the ziparumpazoos bite.

The problem is that, although we're all entitled to our beliefs, our culture increasingly holds that science is just another belief. Maybe this is because it's easier to believe something--anything--than not to know.

We don't like uncertainty--so we gravitate back to the last comfortable solution we had, and in this way we elevate belief to the status of fact.

But scientists are comfortable with not knowing. They thrive on it. They don't assume that just because they had an idea it must be right. They attack it as vigorously as they can because they don't want to lie to themselves. As Richard Feynman said, "Not knowing is much more interesting than believing an answer which might be wrong."

Above all, Mr. President, I think your science advisor needs to help you help our country learn to be comfortable with uncertainty, and--as hard as this might be to believe--to put reason ahead of belief.

If only all the young minds in the schools could hear this message!

Accelerating the rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere by profligate use of Iraq's vast oil supplies, together with the continuing deforestation of the Amazon, will not only turn the Amazon basin into a parched desert but plunge the entire mid-West into prolonged drought, resulting in famine in your own land. History would then judge you as an apocalyptic Burning Bush, bringing the scourge of parching fire to your country and its people. Read More...

This is one of the arguments Jaron Lanier makes in One half a manifesto. The Turing test has already been passed, the machines are as "intelligent" as humans. But this has not happened in the way usually envisioned, namely, machines achieving human-level intelligence. Rather, humans have become less intelligent. Often when we interact with a machine, we restrict our intelligence to the machine's intellectual framework. Can you tell the difference between a bank statement or credit report generated by a human and one generated by a machine? The answer, of course, is no, and this is the kind of Turing test that is occuring every day.