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2003 Edge.org World Question
murky.waters writes "The responses to this year's Edge.org question have been published; basically, people were asked to imagine they were nominated as White House science adviser and the President asked them what are some important issues in science and what we should do about them. There are 84 responses, ranging in topic from advanced nanotechnology to the psychology of foreign cultures, and lots of ideas regarding science, technology, politics, and education. The responses were written by academics (e.g. Roger Schank, Marvin Minsky), journalists (Kevin Kelly), Nobel Laureates (Eric Kandel), and others (Alan Alda). Some of responses are politically loaded but the majority has either a more specialised proposal, or general remarks about our world. Many are absolutely fascinating: funny, insightful, interesting, hell even informative. ... One of the most public supporters of the Singularity 'religion', Ray Kurzweil, is a regular at Edge, and currently discussed issues range from said transhumanism to early-universe theories, and many other kinds of exciting and novel science."
-if you were in the gov, what'd would you do ? :)
-ask for credits
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I'm happy that this was brought up. I am getting tired of all the talk about banning this research and banning that research. There are certainly ethical ways to do things that don't necesarilly require banning large areas of research.
Sex - Find It
Maybe they could work on getting Chaney a Heart, Lott his Courage and Bush a brain... i'll miss you most of all scarecrow.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
I would say that the scientific body of the government should be doing research into rapid learning techniques - for the other members of the Whitehouse ;-)
The world won't last long if the US never change its policics on that (Kyoto.. Johanesburg etc...), IMHO...
I don't agreee with all but have a look at Brian Goodwin suggestions:
But he got a point there. However, his point in the article points that video games go at the expense of eductation, where I think they just replcae part of it. People learn at young age to work with PCs and new technology, which is also eductaion IMHO.
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Of course, the study of the biological underpinnnings of self-awareness may also help AI to take off in a big way. One of the major issues that the naysayers (such as John Searle and his Chinese Room have) is that a machine is a bundle of electronic switches without acknowledging that the brain is just a bunch of biological ones.
See my journal, I write things there
If only all the young minds in the schools could hear this message!
What a dreamy way to spend the day.
Imagining that some Questionaire Answerer actually knows anything of value which wasn't discovered 50 years ago and subsequently locked away for gradual public release, (or not at all), and better yet, that the power behind the government actually gives the slightest fig about what his/her opinion might be.
Yes. I'd like to live in that world, too. --You know, the one they still teach to all little kids, where everybody is happy, healthy, wise and caring, we all wear 'vault 13' type outfits, (without the overtones of holocaust, 'natch), we all carry tri-corders and our delicious meat products come from designer plants.
Sigh.
-Fantastic Lad
Google that phrase to find papers on the subject.
Penrose argues convincingly that consciousness is a QM phenomenon exhibited by most life forms, even bacteria. In other words, it's not as simple as cranking your Athlon up to 50Ghz and running AI Girl v7.0.
I know it means I'm kinda pathetic, but I really like Alan Alda's (yes, the actor).
From the "Deeper" section:
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.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
Considering the fact that there are precious few female respondents, one thing that needs to be fixed is an apparent gender imbalance in science.
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
One person mistakes the position of Science Advisor for Science Crusader and embarks to convert Bush to Evolutionism. In TWO paragraphs! Surely he knows that Bush is a devout Christian. He might as well be lobbying for bin Laden to be put in charge of Homeland Security on the basis that he's really a freedom fighter.
Another person tries to persuade Bush that animals should be considered to have rights as humans and that we should respect the diverse cultures of all animal/human civilizations. Nnngh? Bush is supposed to accept this on the basis of Darwinism. Umm, hellooo?? We're talking Bible-thumping Bush here. That line of argument is gonna fly like a dodo bird. In effect, the guy goes on to wield Occam's Razor against any notions of the Creator. His letter is going in the circular file faster than you can say W.
I don't think these [Over the] Edge people were playing along with the given scenario as they would've if it were real. Knowing who Bush is and what he stands for, it just doesn't seem very bright to even attempt some of the arguments they're making. Besides, you don't make a good first impression with your boss by attacking his most fundamental beliefs in your first correspondence before you even meet him.
He really means, "Mr. President, too many people reject the liberal left's tired dogma. We've got to make them believe!"
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
When will you people.... Nothing was banned! The US government simply said that it will not provide government money to private research firms to conduct studies on an morally ambiguous process. Whether or not you believe that scooping the dna out of fertilized embryos is equivalent to killing, there is a significant number of Americans who do, and they do not want their tax money supporting what they believe is murder.
Besides, if the same celebrities (the majority of which don't know a stem cell from a make-up applicator) put their effort into supporting adult stem cell research, we'd have a much better attitude towards celluar sciences.
I'm not sure if this falls under Science, but what about Nuclear power? The US currently has a policy against building any new nuclear power plants, which is based on nonsense. We're the only country with such a policy, and I think it's rediculous...
:p I'll let someone else -- with actual scientific goals -- have this opportunity.
I did a lot of reading on the subject after the Chernobyl article, facinating stuff. I never knew about this policy before.
Apparently the only reason noone wants to chance this policy is that it would be a bad political move (piss off all the ill-informed anti-nuclear people). If only people were willing to become educated on a subject before protesting against it (most anti-nuclear arguments are based on uninformed assumptions, it seems)...
Come to think of it, if I had an opportunity to influence political figures, the first thing I'd do is try to ban religious-based state laws, ruling them unconstitutional. Specifically, state laws that disallow alcohol purchase on Sundays are based purely on the beliefs of some particular religion. I like to relax with a beer on my "day of rest", and unfortunatly in GA I have to plan ahead, something I'm not very good at.
But that's me, my priorities are all screwed up
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Most of these questions are very political, usually leaning toward big government and socialism.
e.g., David Lykken's proposal, involving the government in the most personal aspects of our lives: One promising example of such legislation would be a program of parental licensure requiring persons, wishing to birth and rear a baby, to demonstrate at least what we should minimally require of persons wishing to adopt someone else's baby.
or David Buss's proposal to infiltrate our minds to stop murder: We are endangered from the outside by our avowed enemies. We are threatened from within by killers among us. An urgent need for the nation to establish a deep scientific understanding of psychological circuits dedicated to murder and the causal processes that create, activate, and deactivate those circuits.
Other suggestions involve the complete rejection of ethical standards in research, in the manner of Nazi Germany, using Ian Wilmut's argument that "This research cannot be carried out in any other way."
What we need scientist to do is act like scientists and not politicians. We need them to abide by the ethical standards that have kept scientific development going at an increasing pace for the past several centuries. We need scientists to do their jobs well and not waste their time philosophizing about what the current administrations foreign policy should be.
"Folks bent on reinventing the wheel should understand that if it's not round, it ain't a wheel." - Jonah Goldberg
The problem is that, although we're all entitled to our beliefs, our culture increasingly holds that science is just another belief.
I thought this was something that only people way out on the fringes of religious faith subscribed to until I had a casual conversation at a party with a woman I've lived next door to for 3 years. The conversation somehow turned towards evolution and she simply denied that evolution had any validity and that the biblical creation was as, if not more, valid than evolution.
I'm not terribly "up" on this debate, but its my understanding that evolution, as a biological process, has such overwhelming scientific support that it must be considered true, while the human evolutionary tree (ape-man) has a lot of evidence in favor of it but a lot to be learned.
She was felt that evolution just didn't apply to humans, it wasn't true and we didn't evolve from apes. I imagine she had no opinion or interest in fruit flies, barn swallows or any of the obvious but non-{ape,human} examples of evolution.
My response to her was basically that she could choose to believe in anything she wanted, but choosing to not believe in things which have been demonstrated valid by scientific inquiry was kind of a dangerous business. At what point does she follow religion and ignore science? Is the world still flat? Does she believe the sun orbits the earth?
Anyway, it's a scary world and there's an increasing number of people willing to believe in all kinds of fantastic things...
I'm really confused by that last part of your post.
what did any of what you quoted have to do with "the liberal left's tired dogma?" in fact, some of the things mentioned are MORE opposed by the left than the right (e.g. genetic modification of plants).
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Your insightful brainwaves don't seem to be manifesting in your post. Please take off your tinfoil hat and try again.
Thanks!
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
You're not funny.
;)
That is all.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
While treaties bind the federal government (not the states) to cooperate internationally, this power cannot extend into the states of the Union. The force and effect of treaties remain at the border.
Umm, lets see what the Constitutions say about that ...
Art IV, Cl 2.This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
For tomorrows class read up about '(self-)executing' and 'executory' treaties ....
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
No, and I don't think the moon is made of swiss cheese either. What's your point? And why did you post that quote?
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Try asking the guys who build and service those spy planes which the public aren't told about for the decade or more during which they are in use. (You ARE capable of accepting even that limited exposure, aren't you? That poor-ass stuff is on the cover or your favorite propaganda paper, I believe.) But of course, in your limited version of reality, that sort of thing only happens in the Airforce. --Because, you know, nobody else has ever discovered the tactical advantage of, horrors, *keeping secrets*.
It's hard to believe the parent was modded +5... so it goes amongst the super-Libertarian masses of
The interesting part is still, for me, to watch how people like you deal with the world when it drops stuff info into your lap. --Not that I'm suggesting that you have anything in your lap right now, (least of all a set of balls), but nonetheless, watching people in denial is. .
-2 parts bluster which is either performed in total confidence, (because all those textbooks and educational films were just sooo convincing), or served with dollops of false bravado thinly veiling that stuff we call, 'Yellow Freaking Fear' as the programming breaks down around the edges.
-3 parts ridicule as taught and reinforced on the school yard, where minds are so young and impressionable. Little do the robot people know that the ridicule button no longer connects to the same parts of the brain in those who understand how the game is played. Doesn't stop the twits from punching at it endlessly however, precisely because in their little pre-fab bubble realities, the button is not just connected, but so hardwired into their core thinking processes that they actually cannot conceive of a headspace where fear of ridicule is no longer relevant. Where it is seen largely as just another piece of programming designed to make people shut the fuck up.
Dissenting, questioning voices are horribly inconvenient when one is trying to live a lie. To wake up, sadly, is to admit that one has been a fucking moron most of one's life. Truth hurts, and so it is preferable to many to defend the tyrant than to face the fact that one is being raped. Stockholm Syndrome, anyone? Maybe if you're good, they won't shred you. --Not too bad, anyway. I'll be good, I promise! Just don't make me feel that horrible, embarrassing, palm-sweaty, almost crippling feeling which accompanies the consideration of any subject not safely couched in state sanctioned 'science' (I hate to dirty such a fine word as science, but there it is.)
"Soul." "Magic." "Malevolent Aliens." "Infinite energy." "Conspiracy."
Consider such terms and others on a deep level and actually look into the subjects? Psh. Not bloody likely. You'd get sweaty palms. And, after all, they make films about such things, which, of course invalidates any such line of query from the list of rational possibilities. A clever trick, if you ask me.
Guys like you are a dime a dozen, (and I dump cult of science twits in with the bloody Christians because the end result is the same; a pile of self-deluding people chasing their tails, limiting their scope of awareness, who refuse to look at where the rabbit is really being hidden).
People shy away because their brains have been fucking hijacked by others who really, really don't want people to consider such things. In understanding such matters is power. And power is the grand obsession. So long as you don't have it; so long as you cling to the vapid bullshit you've been fed, you are not a threat. You are nothing but a commodity.
A Coward, you post as? Hmm. There's a shocker.
And finally, when push comes to shove. .
-1 part, that expressionless blinking thing people do when their brains re-boot in the face of magic and the unexplained.
I always find that one kind of upsetting. It looks a bit like a seizure; I forget sometimes, (thanks to all that bluster), just how fragile people's psyches really are; how riddled, not just with low-self esteem and confidence issues, but by the brainwashing our dumb-ass 'culture' provides, to the point of their nearly drooling and beeping when the walls of this pip-squeak, 'Nike-McDonnald's-Microsoft-Hollywood' reality shift and crack. This happens more and more often these days as things heat up and the sheep, bless them, try their damndest to keep Winamp running.
Oh yeah. Rinse and repeat.
-Fantastic Lad