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Happy Fifth Birthday GAC and Mindpixel!

mindpixel writes "GAC is five today! Wow, that was fast! To celibrate, I am releasing 80,000 mindpixels with their corresponding probability of truth for research use."

119 comments

  1. celibrate? by enrico_suave · · Score: 3, Funny

    is that like a party without any nookie?

    e.

    --
    Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
    1. Re:celibrate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "is that like a party without any nookie?"

      Otherwise known as a Catholic School Prom

    2. Re:celibrate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0



      Slashdotters should read about MindPixel's kook (and submitter of the story) first: "Chris McKinstry: Master Hoaxster" before giving him an ounce of admiration or just google for him (newsgroups too) and read about his arrest up in Canada because of an armed standoff he had.

      The guy is seriously nuts.

  2. Am I the only one... by Evro · · Score: 1

    ... completely and utterly lost by this post? I have no idea what it's about or what the acronym means!

    --
    rooooar
    1. Re:Am I the only one... by Evro · · Score: 1
      Whoa... down that list I see:
      0.13 If your wife disobeys you, you should throw her out the window?
      0.13 Was Sopck a lumberjack?
      0.13 Is Iola, KS a major US city?
      0.13 Is Kansas bordered by the ocean?
      0.13 Was Margret Thatcher suffering from Mad cow disease?
      0.13 Do I live in Manitoba?
      0.13 Does a bear shit in outer space?
      Weird stuff.
      --
      rooooar
    2. Re:Am I the only one... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whatever the mindpixel is, it lacks the ability to understand sarcasm:

      Is Britney Spears a rocket scientist?
      0.00

    3. Re:Am I the only one... by Fortran+IV · · Score: 1

      Note the accompanying probability of 0.13 with each of those items. The list is sorted from highest to lowest probability of truth, or correctness, or some such high-flown concept. So apparently in about one universe out of fifty-nine (according to this list), Spock wears flannel shirts and the deflector keeps bear poop off the Enterprise's hull.

      --
      I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
    4. Re:Am I the only one... by AuMatar · · Score: 1

      Please. They were obviously talking about Dr. Spock, the psychologist/lumberjack. Writing best selling pop psych book all on the paper he himself sawed and turned into wood pulp. If only so many computer nerds hadn't gotten the two confused it would be a 1.0!

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
  3. Yeesh by Otter · · Score: 1

    I'd wonder snidely if "celibrate" is a Freudian slip, but then I'm the dweeb who not only read the product of your bong session but is complaining that the probability of "isHelium a gas?" is <1.00.

    1. Re:Yeesh by TopShelf · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You have to wonder about the quality of the data involved here, given lines like:

      0.04 Can a fantasy beast can utter juniper bushes?
      0.04 can you speak russian?
      0.04 Will answer number 7 actually give you cheese?
      0.04 Does an hour consist of 30 minutes?

      --
      Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
    2. Re:Yeesh by mindpixel · · Score: 1

      Dude. probabily is 0.04!!

      WHICH MEANS FALSE!

    3. Re:Yeesh by TopShelf · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't false be 0.00??? Also, some of those don't even form logical statements that are worth assigning a probability too.

      I assume the 0.04 is because one validator gave a smart-ass response, which could skew the data, wouldn't it?

      --
      Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
    4. Re:Yeesh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How about "Did Moses lead pairs of animals onto the ark?" getting 0.54. Even if you do believe Christian theology, that'd be false. The story says that it was Noah.

    5. Re:Yeesh by mindpixel · · Score: 1

      No. It is what it was measured as. We live in a noisy world. The data is real. Do not think in absolutes. Think of the mind as caccading through a geometry of continuous shades of grey.

      0.04 is very week semantic gravity and the chance of you ending up in this attractor basic is well 0.04.

      See the space not the stars. Feel the semantic gravity. Thoughts bend!

    6. Re:Yeesh by IpalindromeI · · Score: 1

      Wow. "Feel the semantic gravity." You should be in marketing.

      --

      --
      Promoting critical thinking since 1994.
    7. Re:Yeesh by AuMatar · · Score: 1

      SOmething that is provably false should have a 0.00. Does 1+1=5? is provable false, for instance. The answer on Russian may make sense (if 4% of the worlds population speaks it, than a truth probability of .04 is reasonable.) But things like "Does an hour consist of 30 minutes?" should be absolute, or you're working on garbage data to begin with.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    8. Re:Yeesh by mindpixel · · Score: 1

      Nothing is absolute. There is noise in the universe my friend.

      Now the very interesting thing about the noise in the mindpixel corpus is it is PINK NOISE! Or 1/f noise! That is the signature of complexity my friend.

      Take you absolutes to church because you can't have them in science.

    9. Re:Yeesh by AuMatar · · Score: 1

      Yes, we do have them in science and mathematics. Basic math is proven. Calculus is proven. The halting problem is proven, etc. While not everything can be, a great many can. There is no set of circumstances in which 1+1=5. Ever. Its an absolute.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    10. Re:Yeesh by mindpixel · · Score: 1

      Not true. 1+1=5 if I am hurried or not paying attention or if I am being an asshole. But if you look at the majority of responses you can see what the truth most likely is.

      Have you ever run a psychology experiment?

      Data is noisy.

    11. Re:Yeesh by AuMatar · · Score: 1

      Psychology isn't science. And making a math mistake doesn't make 1+1=5. It means you made a mistake. It doesn't change what the truth is.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    12. Re:Yeesh by mindpixel · · Score: 1

      Oh fuck off.

      Listen dude. I had the keys to the VLT for four years. That's a $1 billion space ship. We took thousands and thousands of images and in not a single one was there an absolute anything. Don't tell me about science.

      You need to learn some statistics. Statistics is the language of science. Absolutes is the language of religion.

  4. What the FUCK? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is the most pointless, stupid, inane drivel I've ever had the misfortune to see here.
    Thank you, Mindpixel, for submitting this trash, and thank you so much, Timothy, for posting it.
    Congratulations, idiots...you've just scored a new low for Slashdot (something I hadn't previously thought possible).

    1. Re:What the FUCK? by jericho4.0 · · Score: 1

      I agree. This is fucking stupid, even if the project has value. My browser choked on that stupid page for 3 minutes plus. Fuck you Timothy, you've just done a revers DOS.

      --
      "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
    2. Re:What the FUCK? by stoborrobots · · Score: 1

      Fuck you Timothy, you've just done a revers DOS.

      I think Timothy and Chris have figured out the secret to the age-old question:

      Who will Slashdot the Slashdotters? :-)

  5. I love /. by mindpixel · · Score: 4, Informative
    For five years now, more than 50,000 people have been working to make a map of common sense. The project is known as Mindpixel. It was launched on July 6, 2000. On August 24, 2000 Chris McKinstry (me) and Mindpixel were profiled by Robert X. Cringely. In September of 2000 Both Time and Wired magazines carried news of the merger of Mindpixel with the MIT Media Labs Open Mind Common Sense Project.

    Now, what can you do with this data? Well, once it is in the google index - tomorrow, I suspect. Then the 3.5mb page of 80k validated pieces of knowledge will be able to do for consensus internal knowledge what wikipedia does for consensus external knowledge. I hope that eventually, google will trust Mindpixel as it does Wikipedia. Then commercial applications of semantic spectrum based technology can proceed, and the 50,000 owners of the

    1. Re:I love /. by bornyesterday · · Score: 1

      Don't you think that it may have been helpful to include that at the beginning? Not all of us have the time to go look it up in time and wired et al.

    2. Re:I love /. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is the most retarded and pointless thing I've ever seen on the internet. Some of the fetish porno sites have more of an impact on society and thinking than that Mindpixel bullshit will ever have.

    3. Re:I love /. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      This advertisement has been brought to you by Mindpixel. "Over 5 years of paying Timothy to post about us"

    4. Re:I love /. by mindpixel · · Score: 0

      ...50,000 owners of the data can start making some money...

    5. Re:I love /. by mindpixel · · Score: 1

      yes. my bad.

    6. Re:I love /. by TigerNut · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Google may trust Mindpixel, but I sure don't have to. Not when you're claiming that blue and yellow make green (about 0.95 probability), without qualifying that it only applies to pigments.

      --

      Less is more.

    7. Re:I love /. by erlenic · · Score: 1

      How is it useful for Joe Sixpack to lookup "Bill Clinton" on Google, and find the following line:

      1.00 Is Bill Clinton the President of the United States?

      Joe's looking for an answer, not a question. He doesn't know what the 1.00 at the beginning of line means either. And even if he does, it's wrong anyway. I'd hardly call that validated.

      Also, what's semantic spectrum based technology?

    8. Re:I love /. by mindpixel · · Score: 1

      GAC is a model of an average person. You have to look at the geometry of the whole forest, not just the funny looking trees.

      Play with the data...

      For example...pull out the semantic spectrum for aardvark...What is it? What is it not? This information is everything google is missing.

    9. Re:I love /. by mopomi · · Score: 1

      WTFO?

      The link given for GAC is nothing but 80,000 poorly written "questions" (many of which have misspellings and poor grammar, and many of which are not questions) with an arbitrary number before them. They are meaningless.

      1.00 is the earth round??????????

      No, it's not. It's a triaxial ellipsoid. What's with all the question marks?

      1.00 Are unripe banans green?

      What is a banan?

      1.00 Would you find a closet in a h?use?

      What is a h?use?

      1.00 do chillies make your mouth burn?

      What are chillies?

      0.62 Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with will?

      huh?

      0.55 Can I wear underpants on my head?

      Yes. 1.00

      0.14 where is my mind?

      How does this even have a number associated with it?

      0.14 How many countries are there in this world?

      So, there are 0.14 countries in the world? Good lord, I sure hope google doesn't pick this crap up.

      Good luck.

    10. Re:I love /. by twilight30 · · Score: 1

      You kidding? Fuckin' hell, the signal-to-noise ratio of this article is beyond insane:

      - What exactly is GAC ? Shurely shome mistake...

      - Summary ????

      --
      ========================================
      Death will come, and will have your eyes
      -- Pavese
    11. Re:I love /. by Nasarius · · Score: 1

      Just wait til you read the utter crap he posts on K5.

      --
      LOAD "SIG",8,1
    12. Re:I love /. by mopomi · · Score: 1

      Thanks, I really needed to waste more time on this.
      [/sarcasm]

      Wow. Just wow.

      This is like the timecube (which appears to be four dimensional, but I can't really tell--I must be evil).
      I wonder. . .
      Since time is four dimensional and the brain (mind?) is seven dimensional, why can't we visualize/understand the whole of time? Clearly it's within our capacity to do so since our minds completely contain the whole of time!

      Ah, well, back to science.

    13. Re:I love /. by syukton · · Score: 1

      Presumably, google will use their massive server farm to parse the "1.00 Is Bill Clinton the President of the United States." into something that more resembles an answer to a question.

      Temporal things, like "who is the president right now" or "how is the weather" need to be updated more often. It is entirely possible that when that question was entered into the truth table, however, the answer to the question was indeed true.

      No idea about the semantic spectrum bit. I could use an explanation there too.

      --
      Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
    14. Re:I love /. by Alsee · · Score: 1

      Gahhhh!
      I just wasted a few minutes of my life reading his utter crap.
      Damn you! Damn you to hell!

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  6. not a lot of comments yet by zerkon · · Score: 3, Informative

    everyone elses browser must be choking to death on the 80,000 lines of text like mine is...

    1. Re:not a lot of comments yet by blackcoot · · Score: 1

      that wasn't my problem. my issue was trying to figure out what the hell it means to assign a /question/ a truth value. i can understand what it means when you're operating on statements, but the semantics of an 80% correct answer to a 5% true question kinda boggles me.

      as a random fun fact, there are at least 13 references to semen in their list of facts and several random references to sex acts. i suspect that when gac grows up, it's going to turn into the average irc luser...

    2. Re:not a lot of comments yet by zerkon · · Score: 1

      vagina is listed 61 times, breast 113 times, and penis 198 times (i think i may have lost count around 160 though) thus proving more men use the internet, although mind pixel returns FALSE to "more men use the internet" thus proving i just wasted 15 minutes of my time on something stupid, thanks /.

    3. Re:not a lot of comments yet by blackcoot · · Score: 1

      grep | wc -l is my friend.

  7. Some help by mopslik · · Score: 2, Informative

    You're not alone. The GAC link leads to a minimal MindPixel front page, which reads "Digital Mind Modeling Project" and prompts me to log in. The blog link informs me that MindPixel is "a map of common sense". The 80,000 link initially crashed Firefox on my Win2K machine here at work, but on a retry, gave me a page which begins "Is ice cream cold? Is earth a planet? Is green a color?"

    Fortunately, Wikipedia gave some insight. But yeah, the article summary was a bit too vague for my liking.

  8. Many of these are inaccurate... by Muad'Dave · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...given the vagaries of English. For example:

    Is rape a good thing?

    Most people would say 0%, but rape is also a type of seed-bearing plant, so rape is a good thing for getting rapeseed (canola) oil. For this assertion to be useful, there must be a way to distinguish from the plant and the crime.

    In fact, 3 of the first 5 are ambiguous or subject to interpretation:

    1. 1.00 is icecream cold?
    2. 1.00 is earth a planet?
    3. 1.00 Is it hot during the summer?
    Is ice cream cold cold relative to liquid nitrogen? no.
    Earth is also a collection of organic and non-organic substances that plants grow in.
    Hot, relative to what? At the north pole, it's never 'hot'.
    --
    Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
    1. Re:Many of these are inaccurate... by wishus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Inaccurate, and weird.

      0.97 Is Jerry Garcia dead?
      0.90 Did Jerry Garcia die in 1995?
      0.85 Was Jerry Garcia a member of "the Grateful Dead" before he died?
      0.76 Did Jerry Garcia play guitar for the Grateful Dead?
      0.32 Did Jerry Garcia have 9.5 fingers?


      I don't understand how it's 32% probable that Jerry Garcia had 9.5 fingers. Does that mean that, of all the Jerry Garcias in the world, 32% of them have lost half a finger? Or that Jerry Garcia of the Grateful dead had 9.5 fingers for 32% of his life?

    2. Re:Many of these are inaccurate... by ArcticFlood · · Score: 1

      I especially like "1.00 Is Linux good OS?".

      --
      This is here so you don't ignore the last two lines of my posts.
    3. Re:Many of these are inaccurate... by Geoffreyerffoeg · · Score: 1

      What about...

      0.96 Is sphere area is 3*Pi*r^2?

      I would make a snide comment about the American educational system, but then there's a nearby assertion about non-Americans thinking the US is self-centered, probability .98.

      Oh, and don't forget...

      0.96 Bill Clinton president of USA ?

      Now although Clinton's been pushing for a repeal of the presidential term limit, he hasn't even announced his recandidacy yet....

    4. Re:Many of these are inaccurate... by Alsee · · Score: 1

      No, it is intended for future use in creating and training an AI with "common sense". The value is intended to measure and represent how a genuine intelligence with typical human experience and typical common sense would answer a question if there were locked inside a black box and were forced to answer strictly with a YES/NO button.

      Some 97 percent of people would answer "Yes" to "Is Jerry Garcia dead". Most people know that fact and agree on it. Some 3% don't know and guess and get it wrong.

      Not only is it common sense to know that the Earth is a planet, it is common sense to know that 100% of EVERYONE knows Earth is a planet. Not only is it common knowledge to know that Jerry Garcia is dead, it is common sense to know that a few percent of people will *not* know the answer. It is fairly common knowledge to know the exact year Jerry Garcia died, and common sense to know that fewer people will be able to answer this more exact question.

      A result below 10% or above 90% indicates that a question is common knowledge / common sense and that an AI should generally know it and should generally be able to answer it the correct way. A result of 0% or 100% indicates that a question is universal knowledge or common sense and that an AI *MUST* know it and *MUST* be able to get the right answer. It also means an AI should know and expect ALL humans to know this peice of information. An AI should know not to bother you repeating things everyone knows. If an AI tells you it is raining, it should not tell you that rain is water and that water is wet and that if you go outside you will get wet. If an AI tells you it is snowing, it should know not to inform you that it is cold outside. It should know that you already know that.

      If someone asked you "Did Jerry Garcia have 9.5 fingers?", and you only had YES or NO buttons to answer, how would you answer? Some 32% of people would answer YES and 68% would answer NO.

      A mid-range value... or even 50%... is intended to be useful in training an AI as well. The AI would look at it and see it as an example of an ambiguous/nonsensical/disputed question or an obscure bit of information that very few people know, and for the AI to hopefully aquire the common sense to figure out why it is that sort of question.

      Note that I am merely explaining the Mindpixel system and intent, not being a personal advocate for it. I consider Mindpixel project roughly half way between flaky and interesting. The creator hopes that some day this database will be useful in training an AI or something similar.

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  9. I calculate an 87% chance you are wrong, sir. by IorDMUX · · Score: 1

    "Is MicroSoft a basically ethical enterprise?" MindPixel's answer: 0.13

    --
    >> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
  10. Many of the entries... by ivan256 · · Score: 1

    ...on this list that have a probablity that is in the .30 to .70 range or so speak volumes to the average knowledge level of the population that has been training this thing.

  11. This story was accepted! by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) · · Score: 1
    Do the /. editors have any clue what they just posted a story about? It's about a link to 80,000 dumb questions with subjectively determined probabilities attached. Really dumb questions mostly. It's meant to be a 'model' of a human mind.

    Maybe I'll try to submit /dev/random as a story.

    --
    Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
  12. No they don't. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is the work of a truly bizarre kook. (You can find lots of his astonishingly weird "theories" on kuro5hin.org where he also goes by the moniker 'mindpixel')

    1. Re:No they don't. by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) · · Score: 2, Informative

      He's one of the most successful crackpots out there with stories in Wired and Time. (And /. of course.)

      --
      Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
    2. Re:No they don't. by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 1


      Yup...he's right up there with Gene Ray.

      --
      ____

      ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

  13. Some Funny Mindpixels by mindpixel · · Score: 1

    Given that the universe is infinite and that God is also infinite, would you like a crumpet?
    a beautiful woman leading an ugly donkey asks you to kiss her ass ...... would you do it?
    Does Spiderman have a sticky penis?
    If you are a female between 18 - 25 years of age who is looking for love should you email legendlength@hotmail.com?
    Is vicadin a perfume?
    Do women have sex with cats?
    Is Kiro5hin currently up?
    Can tree stumps be used as baby carriges?
    Are children are much like firetrucks, only bigger?
    Was the film Jurassic Park about big scary butterflies?

    1. Re:Some Funny Mindpixels by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So now you're plagiarising comments on k5? Jesus H. Christ you're really reaching now.

    2. Re:Some Funny Mindpixels by mindpixel · · Score: 1

      I own the copyright on this data dude.

    3. Re:Some Funny Mindpixels by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Aren't you glad you own the copyright on this?

      0.34 DO YOU ACTUALLY THINK THIS IS GOING TO WORK? NOT ONLY WILL PEOPLE LIE THEY WILL ASK NON TRUE/FALSE QUESTIONS SUCH AS "FUCK YOU" OR SOME THING DUMB LIKE THAT, NO MATTER HOW MANY YOU GET IT WONT WORK A MIND CANT FUNCTION ON FALSE INFORMATION

      Lameness filter bypass. Lameness filter bypass. Lameness filter bypass. Lameness filter bypass. Lameness filter bypass. Lameness filter bypass. Lameness filter bypass. Lameness filter bypass. Lameness filter bypass. Lameness filter bypass. Lameness filter bypass. Lameness filter bypass. Lameness filter bypass. Lameness filter bypass.

    4. Re:Some Funny Mindpixels by mindpixel · · Score: 1

      Pretty Cool. I think. I also have an ip address associated with it...now think of what that information is worth.

      I know where all the idiots are. And all the geniuses.

  14. I think that says more by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    about Wired and Time than anything else. Even a cursory look at the stuff he posted on k5 will immendiately reveal the idiocy of this stuff. (As if it weren't already apparent from the link in this 'story').

  15. 0.41 Is slashdot.org worth reading? by SPBesui · · Score: 1

    The editors usually think it is, so much so that they post many things twice!

  16. attractor map by mindpixel · · Score: 1

    You are looking at attractors in a high-d space. Look at the picture these mindpixels are sampling!

    Try to see the geometry!

    Think dynamically. Not symbolically!

    Read some Michael Spivey!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  17. You don't know what this all is? by myukew · · Score: 2, Informative

    Fortunatly Slashdot had an inteview with the project founder

  18. Smalltown boy gets his 15 minutes by freeweed · · Score: 1

    Crackpot doesn't even begin to describe him.

    I met Chris when he still lived in Winnipeg nearly 15 years ago. Still good friends with one of his former roommates, and there's some pretty interesting stories to tell. Let's just say, he was into tinfoil hats almost before tinfoil was invented. I do remember him taking a lot of psychadelics at one point, which could explain where he's gone in life.

    Way back during the early days of the web, Chris "pioneered" the idea of an online soap opera. Needless to say, it worked about as well as the idea sounds. Managed to get a TON of publicity about it, even though it seemed like no one outside of the media knew or cared.

    Always interesting to see people you knew way back when making the news, especially when you come from a Canadian backwater (quick Slashdot pool: who's heard of Winnipeg? :)

    --
    Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
    1. Re:Smalltown boy gets his 15 minutes by mindpixel · · Score: 1

      I know where you are...but not who??

      I confess to taking a lot of LSD while I was studying non-parametric statistics...psychology 4100 with Jim Clarke at the University of Winnipeg.

      I also confess that I figured out this project while tripping in that class. Still made Time and Wired and MIT and Cornell agree with me on some very important ideas...and you? What are you doing in your life who ever you are??

      But, what is the tinfoil reference?

    2. Re:Smalltown boy gets his 15 minutes by Otter · · Score: 1
      (quick Slashdot pool: who's heard of Winnipeg? :)

      0.27

    3. Re:Smalltown boy gets his 15 minutes by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) · · Score: 1
      Still made Time and Wired...
      That just about sums it up.
      --
      Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
    4. Re:Smalltown boy gets his 15 minutes by Geoffreyerffoeg · · Score: 1

      I do remember him taking a lot of psychadelics at one point, which could explain where he's gone in life.

      Says the person posting on Slashdot with username freeweed.

  19. Mind is Continuous! by mindpixel · · Score: 1

    My friends, your mind is a continus substrate. Read Michael Spivey from Cornell. It is a very recently PROVEN fact.

    You are looking at samples from a space. People can have weird ideas. Where do you think they come from?

    It is the geometry of the space.

    Remember, the most fundamental idea of Einstein's theory of gravitation in both the physical and philosophic senses is that the geometry of the universe is determined by the distribution of matter. My Specific Hypergeometric Hypothesis says that immediate memories are points on the maximum hypersurface of a seven-dimensional unit sphere and complex cognition is a trajectory on the same hypersurface. I believe and now have experimental confirmation that mind is a space that is warped by thoughts exactly in the same way that matter warps Einstein's space, except that gravity in the mind is actually Hebbian association. Spivey made the measurements that caught the bending of thoughts by other thoughts in a high-dimensional neural space!! One can't help but be amazed that both Spivey and Eddington measured a kind of bending to confirm a counter-intuitive high-dimensional spatial theory!

    1. Re:Mind is Continuous! by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 1

      Tell me the truth, Mindpixel, is this all just a huge prank? Seriously... do you even believe your own babble there? Do you seriously think that this collection of "facts" are going to be useful to any body for any purpose?

    2. Re:Mind is Continuous! by mindpixel · · Score: 1

      Yes.

      Read The Continuity of Mind by Michael Spivey...oh wait...you cannot it is still in press with Oxford Fucking University.

      But you will.

    3. Re:Mind is Continuous! by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 1

      So a project you started in 2000 is only useful after reading a book by Michael Spivey that isn't being released until September 2005?

      Well, you've convinced me! ... that you're a looney.

      Seriously, though, you've been compiling these "mindpixels" for five years, and not yet have you found an actual use for the information? You can't even type out a quick example on a web forum?

    4. Re:Mind is Continuous! by mindpixel · · Score: 1

      Okay. Read his papers. They are on his site. He referes to the book there.

      I am not inventing this stuff you know.

      Use google.

    5. Re:Mind is Continuous! by jericho4.0 · · Score: 1
      Nope. He's for real. He's been posting on kuro5hin for a while.

      A new low for /. IMO.

      --
      "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
  20. probability of my balls by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My swingies bouncing on the chin of this idea? 0.97 Come on...

  21. Intelligence between 0.30 and 0.70 by mindpixel · · Score: 1

    That is true.

    I have systems that can correct this by weighting the users according to how they respond to control questions. But that data is not public. If you want that, you have to give me money.

    1. Re:Intelligence between 0.30 and 0.70 by Thing+1 · · Score: 1
      If you want that, you have to give me money.
      Respect falling, falling ... splat.
      --
      I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
  22. Cheater by SoCalEd · · Score: 1

    Is icecream cold? Is ice cream cold? You owe us one more. Also, "Is sex nice?" cannot be proven to be true by slashdot readers...

    --
    Insert witty comment *here*. I'm fresh out of wit...
  23. what? by Mahou · · Score: 1

    1.00 is earth a planet?
    1.00 is the Earth a planet?

    first of all why are such two similar questions so close to each other; and second, why is 'earth' lower case when it should be capitalized but capitalized when it should be lower case? you would say 'is Mars a planet?' but not 'is the Mars a planet?' geesh

    --
    if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
    ...te?
  24. What you are looking at... by mindpixel · · Score: 1

    Is the probability of a brain states when you sample 20 random people.

    This data self-organizes beautifully with a variation on the DTW-SOM.

    But, the reason I posted it, is it is GACs fifth birthday. I donot expect many people to understand what this very large page means.

    But you will start to get it when it starts turning up in all your search results.

    1. Re:What you are looking at... by Dizzle · · Score: 1

      Why on earth would anyone want this crap in their search results? To me this looks like a huge spam e-mail for some reason. In summary:

      1.00 Is GAC a waste of time?

      --
      -Dizzle
      "I most likely AM so interested in myself."
    2. Re:What you are looking at... by QMO · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think that the idea is VERY interesting.

      There are obvious things, that GAC is certain (or nearly certain) about.
      There are relatively obsure things that GAC is unsure about.
      Other things that GAC is likely to be wrong about.

      It is a very interesting way to get a sample of common knowledge.

      The hard part seems (to me) to be to figure out how to use it.

      --
      Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
  25. GAC? WTF! by two_socks · · Score: 1

    "GAC" = "Good Army Chow"

    We sure love our TLA's.

    --
    I can't help it - I'm a 19D.
  26. Map of 100,000 English Words by mindpixel · · Score: 1

    Look at this map:

    http://www.mindpixel.com/chris/2005/06/map-of-1000 00-english-words.html

    And try to imagine it made not with words, but Mindpixels.

    Do you think it would look random? and be of no use whatsover?? Is that what you think??

    1. Re:Map of 100,000 English Words by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 1

      Considering a HUGE proportion of those questions made no damn sense, had typos that would make them un-parsable to a computer, or have answers that are either ambiguous or plain wrong... yes, that's what I think.

      The idea might have merit, but I doubt that dataset does.

  27. Self-referential humour. by FooAtWFU · · Score: 1

    I found some interesting self references; if you search for 'this', you come up with many gems, including these:

    0.78 Judging by this database, then truth is relative?
    0.78 Will this AI be used for peaceful purposes?
    0.78 should i waste my hours on this instead of computer games?
    0.78 Do some people think GAC is more than it is?
    0.77 can this question be answered "yes" or "no" ?
    0.77 does this just log the questions, and ask other people?
    0.77 Will we ever see the wily and elusive statistics page?
    0.74 is this a stupid question?
    0.73 Is this question a yes or no question?
    0.71 Is this sentence a mindpixel?

    --
    The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
  28. Irrelevant. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That selection of data was extracted by someone else specifically for that k5 post. Your copying of that exact selection of data makes you a plagiarist. (Don't bother replying. I won't.)

  29. What does mindpixel think of slashdot? by penguin121 · · Score: 2, Informative

    ... after a quick investigation:

    1.00 What is slashdot? (Huh?)
    0.83 Is Slashdot actually a website?
    0.77 Does slashdot postings cause extra traffic for its mentioned websites?
    0.76 Is Slashdot a web site? (this one seems to vary a bit)
    0.39 Is slashdot.org good?
    0.35 Is the website at slashdot.org full of trolls and mindless linux bigots?
    0.30 Was mindpixel slashdotted?
    0.13 Is Slashdot the greatest site ever?
    0.05 Has the average person (e.g. your Mother) ever heard of Slashdot?
    and finally
    0.00 is slashdot good journalism? (How sad)

    Of course this is just a sampling of all the related mindpixel questions, but we can conclude that slashdot is a popular topic for mindpixel, but nobody mistakes it for good journalism...

  30. Ahh, wonderful by joto · · Score: 2, Informative
    We now can have a 5-year anniversary of bashing a completely useless project brought to you by some internet cook who thinks he has "solved" AI by writing a program that even a 5-year old would understand is useless.

    If you want a real database of "common-sense" knowledge, you should check out CYC instead. It might be harder to do it that way, but it sure pays off if you actually want to use it for something beyond spamming usenet groups and slashdot.

    1. Re:Ahh, wonderful by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) · · Score: 1

      How do you know CYC isn't as bad? I know one guy who worked on the project who thought the whole thing was a scam. I'm yet to hear a report of Cyc actually doing anything interesting or useful. And Lenat's previous projects (eg. AM, Eurisko) seem very suspect to me. If they really could do what they did at the time (late 70s, early 80s) we should see some amazing stuff today along those lines. We don't.

      --
      Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
    2. Re:Ahh, wonderful by joto · · Score: 1
      How do you know CYC isn't as bad?

      Because it's based on pretty sound knowledge-base-engineering. That doesn't necessarily mean it's good, or even useful, or that first-order logic is a reasonable medium to teach computers common sense. All it means is that it's among the best we have for this kind of stuff.

      If you need a common-sense reasoning engine, combined with common-sense facts, mindpixels stuff won't help you at all. It's just a stupid program any child could write, and a bunch of useless sentences with a probability value. On the other hand; CYC might help. The obvious alternative would be to build one yourself. But even then, you would be a fool to overlook parts of CYC that would be useful for you.

      While you are perfectly justified in doubting whether CYC is useful for anything at all, creating something significantly better, would take both a lot of time, and a spark of genius.

      I know one guy who worked on the project who thought the whole thing was a scam. I'm yet to hear a report of Cyc actually doing anything interesting or useful.

      Given that they still can't put a reasonable "success story" on the frontpage for the commercial version, I tend to agree that they should be pretty careful in what they claim. But so they are (apart from claiming to be far more complete than they actually are). In comparison, mindpixel spams every newsgroup and discussion board he sees, trying to be the messias of the AI revolution.

      And Lenat's previous projects (eg. AM, Eurisko) seem very suspect to me. If they really could do what they did at the time (late 70s, early 80s) we should see some amazing stuff today along those lines. We don't.

      Yes, AI is still far from "solved".

    3. Re:Ahh, wonderful by jfengel · · Score: 1

      Slight addendum: Cyc doesn't do first-order logic. Actually, I can't tell you what the precise semantics of CycL are, and as far as I can tell, neither can they. It's got all sorts of nonmonotonic stuff crammed in.

      Nor would I say it's based on "pretty sound knowledge-base-engineering". It's better than mindpixel (a LOT better than mindpixel), but there's a lot of crud in the Cyc knowledge base.

      So on a scale from Microsoft Bob to Google, Cyc is still well to the left of center; there are some good ideas that haven't really panned out yet (or, increasingly likely, ever). But mindpixel is way off the chart.

    4. Re:Ahh, wonderful by Alsee · · Score: 1

      We now can have a 5-year anniversary of bashing a completely useless project brought to you by some internet cook who thinks he has "solved" AI by writing a program that even a 5-year old would understand is useless.

      I just submitted the matter to the Mindpixel system:
      I think the answer to: Mindpixel a completely useless project. is:
      TRUE


      So there you have it, Mindpixel is a completely useless project brought to you by some internet cook who thinks he has "solved" AI by writing a program that even the program itself understands is useless.

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  31. My personal favourite.... by geek42 · · Score: 1
    0.67 The answer to the meaning of life is 42 ?

    0.63 Would it be incorrect to say that "42" is the answer to the universe, and all that other stuff?

    0.60 Does this question contain 42 letters and numbers?

    0.60 the meaning of life is 42?

    0.51 Is the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything 42?

    0.50 Is the answer to the ultimate question 42?

    0.50 is 42 the answer to life the universe and everything?

    0.50 May the number 42, in at least some circumstances, be percieved as the meaning of life?

    0.50 is the answer to life 42 ?

    0.50 Is the answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything 42?

    0.49 Is 42 the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything?

    ...I'll just stop there - there are about 35 more! Seriously, I thought I was clever when I entered that once!

    Also noteworthy: 0.63 is mindpixel more important than work to Andre Ludwig at 925-242-6572?

    And my favourite: 0.42 Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. What is the answer?

  32. mindpixel youre WRONG by mnmn · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I signed into mindpixel, and submitted my first mp. As I was typing the second one, it dawned on me that the project was not free. I looked around and couldnt find a spot to download mindpixels. Later I read that people who submit 'enough' mindpixels will be given shares in a subsequent company.

    This is not only wrong, its surprising that you are posting it on slashdot of all the places. Youre planning to take public knowledge from the public, and what do you give back in return? I can come up with some algorithm, and try to parse mindpixels, but you own all the mindpixels in the first public frenzy, after which people will stop submitting mindpixels to every such database online.

    'Mindpixels' should be free, and I'll wait till I see a free (GPL or otherwise) site where I can both submit and download all the 'mindpixels'. You can develop some algorithim or neural network and thats all yours. But leave the public knowledge so generously given to you in the name of science, to the public.

    --
    "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
    1. Re:mindpixel youre WRONG by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your apostrophe key is broken.

  33. This look like JAS... by MaDeR · · Score: 1

    Just Another Scam.

    --
    What modern Obelix would say today? Of course, "Those crazy Americans!".
  34. Don't be stupid, just use your brain for a moment. by Jerk+City+Troll · · Score: 1

    Look at that data and try to, for just a single moment, think about what it could be used for. Each of those statements has an associated truth value. Does the term "artificial intelligence" slip into your mind? How about "common sense"? I am not going to detail possible uses, but information like that, combined with correlation between statements, forms the foundation of primative intelligence. Look through those statements and see which cooborate others and consider how a machine might be able to answer an arbitrary question with it. I will tell you that this is the type of material that well established artificial intelligence projects use to mimick intelligent responses to humans.

  35. How does it work? by S_Maturin · · Score: 1

    Okay, I understand that the Mindpixel project is trying to create a type of artificial intelligence by gathering a variety of simple deductions and stringing them together to create more complex "thoughts". But how will it work? When the mindpixel "The sky is blue" is entered, how does software read and interpret any of this information? There is a fundamental missing component of this whole equation, and that is the basic cognition that interprets the English statements that are being entered into this system. Sure, there is a factor associated with each statement, but what is reading and interpreting the actual statement? What is reading, parsing, and understanding the English language statement that is entered? How is that supposed to work? I don't see that this is possible.

  36. Googlefight... by cr0sh · · Score: 1

    Wow! In a Googlefight, Mindpixel wins over Mentifex! Whooda thunk it?

    --
    Reason is the Path to God - Anon
  37. New users of GAC in the last two hours... by mindpixel · · Score: 1

    University Of Oklahoma
    Us Dept Of Justice
    General Electric Company
    Cornell University
    Naval Research Laboratory
    Massachusetts Institute Of Technology
    Google
    Microsoft
    Rutgers University
    Storage Technology Corporation
    U.s. Environmental Protection Agency
    Electronic Arts Inc
    United Parcel Service
    National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration (noaa)
    University Of Calgary
    Ohio State University
    Bowe Bell And Howell International
    National Institute Of Standards And Technology
    Energis Uk
    Brigham Young University
    University Of Waterloo
    Dartmouth College
    The Pennsylvania State University
    Booz Allen & Hamilton

  38. Semantic Gravity & The Bending of Thought by mindpixel · · Score: 1

    I am. See some of my clients here:

    http://www.mindpixel.com/chris/2005/07/some-new-ga c-downloaders-for-july-7.html

    Michael Spivey liked the idea of a popular science book called "The Bending of Thought" becuase, well, the effect is accurately described by an analogy with light and gravity.

    You see, when you have a map of the average person's mind, market becomes a science...which explains my quick growing client list!

  39. So is your brain by jgoemat · · Score: 1

    The project's goal is not to come up with a perfect robot brain, it is to research AI using statistics. If you talked about rape, the seed bearing plant, the AI would certainly be confused. By looking at the 33 lines containng the word 'rape', the AI would probably assume they had to do with the most used form of the word. Maybe by the overwhelming negative response it could determine that the "Is rape a good thing?" mindpixel was about the rape act and not the plant from the definition and other mindpixels. If it determined you were talking about the plant, it may disregard those mindpixels. Just like our brain has to determine what definition of 'rape' is being talked about in the question, the AI would have to as well.

  40. Don't worry, it is not just you... by mindpixel · · Score: 1

    Here's what I pulled out of my log for a few hours this afternoon:

    University Of Oklahoma
    Us Dept Of Justice
    Advanced Acoustics Concepts
    General Electric Company
    Cornell University
    Naval Research Laboratory
    Massachusetts Institute Of Technology
    Google
    Microsoft
    Rutgers University
    Storage Technology Corporation
    U.s. Environmental Protection Agency
    Electronic Arts Inc
    United Parcel Service
    National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration (noaa)
    University Of Calgary
    Ohio State University
    Bowe Bell And Howell International
    National Institute Of Standards And Technology
    Energis Uk
    Brigham Young University
    University Of Waterloo
    Dartmouth College
    The Pennsylvania State University
    Booz Allen & Hamilton
    Tennessee Valley Authority
    Schering-plough Corporation
    Guidant Corporation
    University Of Southern California
    University Of Wisconsin-madison
    Consolidated Edison Co. Of New York
    University Of Arizona
    Avid Technology Inc
    Washington State University
    Hughes Information Technologies Co
    Albany Molecular Research Inc
    African Network Information Center
    Time Warner
    Cirrus Logic Incorporated
    Canadian Jewish Congress
    Carswell A Division Of Thomson Canada Ltd
    The Home Depot Usa Inc
    Idaho State University
    Ascentis Software
    America Online Inc
    Boston University
    Vanderbilt University Medical Center
    Gvm Northwestern Universiy
    Yale University
    Nvidia
    Capitol College
    Thomson Financial Services
    University Of Phoenix
    Gonzaga University
    University Of Pittsburgh
    Maximus Inc
    Continuous Electronic Beam Accelerator Facility (sura/cebaf)
    Institut De Recherches Cliniques De Montreal
    National Instruments Corporation
    University Of Colorado
    Southwest Texas State University
    University Of Connecticut
    University Of Texas At Austin
    Tucson Newspapers
    University Of Illinois At Chicago
    Nacco Materials Handling Group Inc
    Global Crossing
    Utah State University
    Ssg/sino
    University Of Hawaii
    New Mexico Highlands University
    Nuveen Investments
    National Institutes Of Health
    Sciex

    1. Re:Don't worry, it is not just you... by Fortran+IV · · Score: 1

      Here's what I pulled out of my log for a few hours this afternoon:

      It's nice to know that even people in the DOJ and at Microsoft are sneaking over to Slashdot while they're at work. (Though I find it hard to believe anybody at Electronic Arts can find the time.)

      --
      I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
  41. Continuous versus discrete by mindpixel · · Score: 1

    You did not look at the map nor how it was made. This is a continuous vector map. Spelling does not matter. The strings are converted into vectors and the map is organized on vector similarity using dynamic-time warping to normalize the vector lenght. Think what would happen if I used speech synthesis to make a waveform and then mapped the wave from to get an idea what I am saying -- obviously the spelling issues go away and what becomes important is how coherent the waveform is, which is what the truth probability tells us. These really are mindpixels. That why I named the project Mindpixel.

    What is important about mindpixel is not the symbols. Your brain does not use symbols. What is important is that for every mindpixel I have a measue of semantic coherence. I am mapping a space of semantic coherence, so of course most points in the space with be--wait for it--incoherent! Where do you think nutty ideas come from? From nutty spaces between good ideas.

    Mind is a space. Your memories are points in that space. [actually points on a maximum hypersurface] Mindpixel is a db of 1.6 million synthetic memories from which I will be able to simulate behavior that is completely impossible without these measurements.

    Mindpixel is high-dimensional tomography of a high-dimensional space.

    You'll see immediately if you follow my very public trail, or you can wait until you read it in the news. Your choice.

    1. Re:Continuous versus discrete by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 1

      All gibberish. What are you actually *saying*? It sounds like the rant at timecube.com.

    2. Re:Continuous versus discrete by jandrese · · Score: 1
      You did not look at the map nor how it was made. This is a continuous vector map. Spelling does not matter.
      I stopped reading right here. It's like a bad episode of Star Trek, where they try to explain away some fundamental limitation with technobabble. No amount of vectorizing the data is going to help the computer sort out misspellings. It's like trying to fix a flat tire by changing the oil.
      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
    3. Re:Continuous versus discrete by mindpixel · · Score: 1

      Well, that was a mistake. You need to learn a little about Self-Organizing Maps and Learning Vector Quantization.

      If you do not believe me, go to the source:

      Self-Organizing Map of Symbol Strings with Smooth Symbol Averaging
      http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=3&q=http%3A// www.cis.hut.fi/panus/papers/wsom03ssom.pdf&ei

      Online Algorithm for the Self-Organizing Map of Symbol Strings, Neural Networks, 17, 2004, pp. 1231-1239.
      http://www.cis.hut.fi/panus/papers/online_ssom.pdf

      And yes, this is like a bad Star Trek episode - the one where Jordi is caputured and told just to make things work...

    4. Re:Continuous versus discrete by jandrese · · Score: 1
      You're planning to compensate for misspellings by grouping all similar words together? Even the examples in the paper do a pretty good job of explaining why this is a bad idea for your project.

      Cttle is further from Cattle than Battle is!

      It seems like a conventional spell-checker would be superior.

      This doesn't even touch on the real problem though: People learn this information automatically (kinda) as children through interaction with the real world. This way they don't miss important facts (they're necessary in the real world). Your project is limited, however, to what people can think up on your website. Nobody is going to want to spend time putting in the bulk of this mundane knowledge (Trees are hard, pavement is flat, you can see through glass, etc...). There is basically an unlimited number of "facts" you can input in this form, and at the same time it's basically impossible to get even a toddlers level view of the world without far more input data than you are ever going to get.

      In other words, you need to devise some automated method of inputting data into this project. A robotic baby in essence. The knowledge you'll get from this project is basically a drop in the bucket compared to what an automated system should be setting up. I suspect you'll need a better classification system for your knowledge than just a bunch of yes/no questions as well. A simple hardness sensor and object identifier (good luck the the latter) will create thousands of entries like:
      1. Desk is hard
      2. USB Key is hard
      3. Pillow is not hard
      4. Phone is hard
      5. Carpet is not hard
      6. etc...
      Nobody is going to spend the time to input data like that on your website (especially since it can be relative, not all desks are hard!) and yet without basic information like that such a knowledge base is useless except as a source of trivia. Common sense isn't built out of tiny loosely connected bits of trivia, it's a far more extensive general understanding of the fundamentals of the world itself.
      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
  42. Futurama quote reloaded by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You can't "own" copyrights, man!

  43. Re:Don't be stupid, just use your brain for a mome by mwvdlee · · Score: 1

    It could become useful if it was better structured and less "funny".
    I.e. consider the following statements which _could_ be in the database in a computer readable form.

    100% Sky is blue.
    95% Grass is green.
    5% Grass is blue.
    100% Blue is-a color.
    100% Green is-a color.

    A computer could now give a reasonable answer to a question such as "Does grass have the same color as the sky?": "I'm about 95% certain grass had a different color than the sky".

    There is the problem of ambiguity and granularity though, similarly to how we think; to some, grass is all the colors of the rainbow all at once. To some, green and blue are pretty much the same.

    --
    Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
  44. Sounding like a rant... by mindpixel · · Score: 1

    Listen my hostile little friend, read some science instead of ranting. Here's some things that will help you smooth your jagged idea of mind:

    This is most important [but I suspect you cannot handle the ideas naked, so I will paste some easy-reading help below]:
    Online Algorithm for the Self-Organizing Map of Symbol Strings [PDF]

    Self-Organizing Maps
    Dynamic-time warping

  45. Re:New users of GAC in the last two hours... by AuMatar · · Score: 1

    Umm, you had a post on slashdot. I wouldn't be surprised if you had employees 90% of the corporations and universities in the US on their within 2 hours. You could have the same if they linked to a 404 error on your server. It doesn't mean anything either way about your project.

    --
    I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
  46. Your Mind is a Pattern on a Hypersurface by mindpixel · · Score: 1

    Conventional spell checks may be better however spelling is not a natural thing for the brain. The mind is continuous. That was the point of Spivey. Spelling is a bad idea. It doesn't matter. Humnas can understand independent of spelling. It is computers that have problems with spelling.

    Now that you have gone through the trouble of actually reading some science, you are on your way to understanding how the space in your head functions.

    What you should understand is what the dynamic-time warping does - it effectively normailzes the vectors so that they can be matched against each other. That means that the vectors are actually on the surface of a unit hypersphere.

    So every mindpixel maximally load immediate memory and each a point on the hypersurface. Do you care to guess how many dimensions at which hypersurface is maximum? Seven. Exactly the digit span of human immediate memory under load [it is four minimally loaded].

    To reconstruct human semantic space, all we need do is convert the semantic coherence I measured for nearly 2 million widly distributed points on the maximum hypersurface to range between -1.0 and 1.0 and then multiply each vector by that value and cluster them by vector similarity. Doing so would give a map of human semantic coherence. You could pick any point on the map and convert the vector to symbols easily. But far more interesting is to take an arbitrary proposition, convert it to a vector and interpolate the estimated human semantic coherence. Doing so would allow a machine to respond in a human like fashion to arbitrary propositions. That my friend would be true AI.

    Or in short: take your pedantic spelling and shove it.

  47. Crick, DNA and LSD by mindpixel · · Score: 1

    http://mail.psychedelic-library.org/show.cfm?posti d=8020&row=27

    I was on LSD when I figured out the geometry of mind as Crick was when he figured out the geometry of DNA.

    Copyright 2004 Associated Newspapers Ltd.
    Mail on Sunday (London)

    August 8, 2004

    FRANCIS CRICK, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was under
    the influence of LSD when he first deduced the double-helix structure of
    DNA nearly 50 years ago.

    The abrasive and unorthodox Crick and his brilliant American co-researcher
    James Watson famously celebrated their eureka moment in March 1953 by
    running from the now legendary Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge to the
    nearby Eagle pub, where they announced over pints of bitter that they had
    discovered the secret of life.

    Crick, who died ten days ago, aged 88, later told a fellow scientist that
    he often used small doses of LSD then an experimental drug used in
    psychotherapy to boost his powers of thought. He said it was LSD, not the
    Eagle's warm beer, that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the
    discovery that won him the Nobel Prize.

    Despite his Establishment image, Crick was a devotee of novelist Aldous
    Huxley, whose accounts of his experiments with LSD and another
    hallucinogen, mescaline, in the short stories The Doors Of Perception and
    Heaven And Hell became cult texts for the hippies of the Sixties and
    Seventies. In the late Sixties, Crick was a founder member of Soma, a
    legalise-cannabis group named after the drug in Huxley's novel Brave New
    World. He even put his name to a famous letter to The Times in 1967 calling
    for a reform in the drugs laws.

    It was through his membership of Soma that Crick inadvertently became the
    inspiration for the biggest LSD manufacturing conspiracy-the world has ever
    seen the multimillion-pound drug factory in a remote farmhouse inWales that
    was smashed by the Operation Julie raids of the late Seventies.

    Crick's involvement with the gang was fleeting but crucial. The revered
    scientist had been invited to the Cambridge home of freewheeling American
    writer David Solomon a friend of hippie LSD guru Timothy Leary who had come
    to Britain in 1967 on a quest to discover a method for manufacturing pure
    THC, the active ingredient of cannabis.

    It was Crick's presence in Solomon's social circle that attracted a
    brilliant young biochemist, Richard Kemp, who soon became a convert to the
    attractions of both cannabis and LSD. Kemp was recruited to the THC project
    in 1968, but soon afterwards devised the world's first foolproof method of
    producing cheap, pure LSD. Solomon and Kemp went into business,
    manufacturing 'acid' in a succession of rented houses before setting up
    their laboratory in a cottage on a hillside near Tregaron, Carmarthenshire,
    in 1973. It is estimated that Kemp manufactured drugs worth Pounds
    2.5million an astonishing amount in the Seventies before police stormed the
    building in 1977 and seized enough pure LSD and its constituent chemicals
    to make two million LSD 'tabs'.

    The arrest and conviction of Solomon, Kemp and a string of co-conspirators
    dominated the headlines for months. I was covering the case as a reporter
    at the time and it was then that I met Kemp's close friend, Garrod Harker,
    whose home had been raided by police but who had not been arrested. Harker
    told me that Kemp and his girlfriend Christine Bott by then in jail were
    hippie idealists who were completely uninterested in the money they were
    making.

    They gave away thousands to pet causes such as the Glastonbury pop festival
    and the drugs charity Release.

    'They have a philosophy,' Harker told me at the time. 'They believe
    industrial society will collapse when the oil runs out and that the answer
    is to change people's mindsets using acid. They believe LSD can h