After reading the article, it seemed to me like this was a proof of concept and they're still working (optimistically) on finding a cheaper substitute for the platinum.
Oh, c'mon, surely you see the irony, even if it can be explained away, it just looks funny, doesn't it? I for one agree with you, I'm very happy with my life and I wish everyone could find this kind of happiness appreciating what we already have. But I find it amusing that I can almost pick out the phrases from your statement verbatim that make it sound like you were saying exactly what I phrased. I don't find any real fault with it, but I do find it amusing.
The singularity doesn't require thinking androids. They may be a side effect, but my understanding (interpretation?) is that the singularity is "simply" the point at which technological complexity exceeds biological complexity. And the need is absolutely there as the parent article indicates. People get fatigued and are not reliable enough to do all the tasks we want done today. This is only the beginning. The real need that you mentioned (as non-existent) is in understanding ourselves. We really want/need to understand and control our bodies' complex chemistry and understand and control how genes operate at every level. We can't quite do all this with todays technology. Beyond that we will want to understand the details of our minds. This requires something more complex that our minds to model.
Just because a superhuman intelligence is more capable than humans in some ways doesn't necessarily mean that it has free will does it? Why do you not entertain the possibility that unscrupulous people could gain control of or create superhuman intelligences to serve them? Or maybe it wouldn't even be considered unethical to utilize the technology without allowing it to have independent motivations. I'm open to the possibility that some philosophical arguments could convince me that this view is unlikely, inconsistent or impossible, but at the moment, I don't see why.
That doesn't quite ring true to me. A jet pack is a very specific technology whereas the singularity is a much more general idea -- an acknowledgement that technological advancement is happening faster than biological advancement / evolution and will continue to do so until it overtakes it. If it *doesn't* happen, the reason for it not happening may be almost as interesting as the event occurring. What do you think will will prevent technology from catching up to biology?
Without being too serious about trying to predict the unpredictable (nor assume that this singularity is a certainty), I would say maybe someone who spends more of their income to support their family now rather than worrying about how they're going to support themselves in retirement could be better off in the future when money no longer matters to mere mortals. They might have better family and community relationships than people who prioritized their retirement over other more immediate priorities. Not that I'm suggesting this; it's just hypothetical. Of course it's entirely possible they would be *much* better off having saved for their own retirement too. It's hard to predict, but an interesting question.
Everything that hasn't happened yet can be considered hypothetical. That doesn't mean the subject is to be entirely dismissed. Y2K issues could have been considered hypothetical before they occurred, but they were an important consideration in planning for the future. But that is why I added the qualifier (which you may have missed) to my comment: "if that's true." It does seem pretty fantastical in some ways, but it also seems plausible and almost inevitable in some ways, especially as you see bits of it like this news article coming to pass in reality. Regardless of what really happens, perhaps the more relevant question on the topic of financial planning is, with the rate and significance of changes happening in the world and specifically the economy today, how practical is financial planning and how practical will it be in the not-too-distant future?
I've often wondered what will happen to the economy and employment levels as technology approaches the sophistication and intelligence of human beings. The singularity is supposed to occur in my lifetime. Does it even make sense for me to save for retirement if that's true? What meaning will money have when no human can earn any? Will we finally be well cared for at no cost, or will we simply become obsolete?
Or maybe these are the guys *to whom* someone sent their results asking "can you reproduce this?" They did, and so they stole the idea and announced it as their own. Then when faced with the prospect of explaining it, they can't? I imagine a person could be slightly nervous about sharing the idea with someone else before protecting it via some sort of publication or announcement that helps to ensure people remember where it came from.
He's an inventor, scientist, author, futurist, musician and probably plenty more I don't even know about. And he's still alive... and hopes to be alive forever due to evolving technology.
It's just one ingredient. Better to have a delay for attackers that don't than not to have one. The less-than-1% chance of success per attempt is still better than the old method, right?
Interesting. I'm not familiar with that app/feature (I don't have a smart phone). It gives you a list of words along with the similar pictures you say? I wonder what the actual probability of the result containing the same word as the test is. The actual test shows 3 pictures and it's up to the human to pick the common element out of them. I wonder if the android app could/would find the same word in 3 lists (or 2 of the 3).
Yes, distortion is another thing that occurred to me that would probably be easy to add if it would introduce some degree of additional challenge to the automated systems without hindering real humans too much.
You didn't look at the program or read my post carefully enough. You have to do this 3 times in a row, which yields less than 1% probability of randomly guessing a correct answer. With a 1 hour delay after 3 bad attempts, this would significantly limit automated passage through the system.
It would be hard to come up with a bank of images as large as Google images. It has to be quite large because otherwise someone could create a database of picture checksums unless some sort of distortion was applied.
I don't specifically see how detecting a happy girl in a picture is better than picking a description of a picture. Personally I would think picking a description that looks like a good categorization of 3 images (as the program does) is even more difficult to fake. It requires more than a single ability; a large vocabulary of words and experience. Maybe your idea is better in that it's easier for people with a limited vocabulary.
That's why you have to pick 1 of 6 choices 3 times in a row correctly. The probability of getting that right with completely random guesses is less than 1%. And if you combine it with a 1 hour delay after 3 bad attempts, that should be a significant impedance.
Seeing this article gave me an idea to come up with a new human verification process. I created a C# program in about an hour that loads images from Google images based on searching for 3 of 2000+ nouns. It shows 3 examples of each noun and asks the user to pick the correct noun from a list of 6. This program is just a proof of concept of course. Could this become useful? (Binary and source code included.) http://enigmadream.com/misc/HumanVerification.zip
I'm not contesting your sources. In fact I used one of your same sources (wikipedia) to show you what was wrong with your point. If you had read what I said, you'd see I simply pointed out that you used an irrelevant part of the wikipedia entry. I used a more relevant part of the same entry to show you what you missed.
You're the one who seems to be short on vocabulary and patience here. You didn't even try to respond to my actual points. You just blew up at my first sentence and tried to end the discussion with a "shut up". So it looks like I'm not the one trying to save face.
Regardless of the semantics over which we're arguing, am I correct in understanding that your point was that Visual Studio Express by itself is not useful because it's limited? I simply want to point out that for the purpose of the original poster, Visual Studio Express more than fulfills his needs (and the needs of many other people). The limitations are not a significant hindrance in this case (nor in any case for which I've ever used Visual Studio, and I'm a professional).
Looks like you pounced on definitions that matched your preconceived notions (or at least you thought they matched) because you're using the definition of "damaged goods" from Wikipedia, but if you had read a little further on Wikipedia, you'd have seen a more specific definition of Crippleware for computer software: The term "crippleware" is sometimes used to describe software products whose functions have been limited (or "crippled") with the sole purpose of encouraging or requiring the user to pay for those functions (either by paying a one-time fee or an on-going subscription fee).
It would be quite a stretch to fit Visual Basic Express to this definition for a few reasons: 1. The Express Edition doesn't ask for any one time fees to "upgrade" to any full version. (Visual Studio is a separate product.) 2. The Express Edition (at least the one that I have, as far as I can tell) doesn't even advertise the fact that a more complete edition exists or that I could upgrade. This enhances the notion that there are not one time fees associated with any "upgraded" version of this product. 3. There's no subscription fee involved in Visual Basic Express or Visual Studio, so that doesn't help it fit the definition either. 4. In the help menu of Visual C# Express (which I assume is similar to Visual Basic Express) there *is* a "Register" option, but it's free, further extending the notion that this is not a limited version of a full product. 5. Even the Visual Studio Express web site goes out of its way to advertise features of the express edition that don't exist elsewhere (thus implying the existence of Visual Studio, but distinguishing the Express Edition as having its own unique advantages). It points out that Visual Studio (framed as a separate product) has it's own trial version. That trial version is limited, but Visual Studio Express is not. This further extends the notion that this is a stand-alone product, not representing a limited version of something whose "sole purpose" is to make you pay for an upgrade. I call your attention to the comment on the Express web site: "Unique to Visual Studio® 2010 Express is a new streamlined user experience that focuses on the most common commands by hiding some of the more advanced menus and toolbars. These are easily accessible by users via the Tools / Settings menu".
Based on this (and other comments on the web site), it looks to me like the purpose of Visual Studio Express is to cater to a different audience. Admittedly it is an audience with less of an expectation of some of the more advanced features, but Visual Studio Express is limiting the visibility of these features in the interest of catering to this "simpler" audience (not enticing them), and in most cases, even provides those features for free, just in a less visible way, so as to avoid overwhelming and confusing the user.
This clearly is not a product whose "sole purpose" (wikipedia) or "express purpose" (thefreedictionary) is encouraging the user to pay for a full product. They have one of those for Visual Studio, and it's called the trial version; it's not Visual Studio Express.
So you best get your facts straight before you go swearing at and insulting someone (never a good policy anyway). Your argument is wearing pretty thin.
Crippleware is software whose features or use is severely limited (sometimes to the point of being practically useless -- unable to save for instance) for the sole purpose of persuading the user to pay for the complete software if they would find it useful. VB Express does not, in my mind, fit this definition because I write a lot of software these days in VB and C#, and I believe it could compile any of it in the express edition. The IDE has some different features (some friendlier than the full-blown visual studio like the way refactoring works, I think) and some that aren't as deep as Visual Studio's (the debugger doesn't have a quick watch window, so you have to watch variables in the regular watch window, for example), but that's hardly crippling. It's just a lower-end simpler environment that's very useful as a stand-alone product for those who don't want to buy the full Visual Studio. As a professional Visual Studio developer, I use Visual C# Express at home and have never felt compelled to upgrade to Visual Studio (which I could probably legally do by simply installing my copy from work). So if it's crippleware, it's a miserable failure at coming across as "crippled". I find it very useful.
I would also point out that you don't need to install Visual Basic Express in order to compile and run VB programs. Any system with the.NET framework installed can compile and run VB.NET projects. If you have.NET 3.5 or later, you can even directly compile the solutions/projects files as generated by Visual Studio by using MSBUILD.EXE (which, for.NET 3.5, is found in Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\).
Three thoughts: 1. I think the corrected #5 is actually a fill-in for #4, and the word "Neverending" is wrong. Then you profit from getting through that. 2. I think this could all happen (or rather something at or beyond this technical level) in well under a century. 3. Because of the accelerating pace of technological development, I think there's a non-trivial chance I'll still be alive more than a century from now.
In the future I see, computer complexity exceeds that of humans within about 30 years (with the help of a feedback loop of a whole new kind of computer aided design). Seeing as how we're already close to "curing" aging, the final cure will become available shortly thereafter if we haven't already discovered it.
I thought the heat could be condensed so that even though the servers didn't run that hot, it could be compressed enough to evaporate water (in which case I suppose you'd need to use air instead of water... maybe transfer the heat from the water to air, then compress the air?) Isn't this the principal on which industrial air conditioners work?
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After reading the article, it seemed to me like this was a proof of concept and they're still working (optimistically) on finding a cheaper substitute for the platinum.
Oh, c'mon, surely you see the irony, even if it can be explained away, it just looks funny, doesn't it? I for one agree with you, I'm very happy with my life and I wish everyone could find this kind of happiness appreciating what we already have. But I find it amusing that I can almost pick out the phrases from your statement verbatim that make it sound like you were saying exactly what I phrased. I don't find any real fault with it, but I do find it amusing.
Are you seriously saying, in essence, "If only people stopped saying 'If only X, then Y would be better,' the world would be better"?
The singularity doesn't require thinking androids. They may be a side effect, but my understanding (interpretation?) is that the singularity is "simply" the point at which technological complexity exceeds biological complexity. And the need is absolutely there as the parent article indicates. People get fatigued and are not reliable enough to do all the tasks we want done today. This is only the beginning. The real need that you mentioned (as non-existent) is in understanding ourselves. We really want/need to understand and control our bodies' complex chemistry and understand and control how genes operate at every level. We can't quite do all this with todays technology. Beyond that we will want to understand the details of our minds. This requires something more complex that our minds to model.
Just because a superhuman intelligence is more capable than humans in some ways doesn't necessarily mean that it has free will does it? Why do you not entertain the possibility that unscrupulous people could gain control of or create superhuman intelligences to serve them? Or maybe it wouldn't even be considered unethical to utilize the technology without allowing it to have independent motivations. I'm open to the possibility that some philosophical arguments could convince me that this view is unlikely, inconsistent or impossible, but at the moment, I don't see why.
That doesn't quite ring true to me. A jet pack is a very specific technology whereas the singularity is a much more general idea -- an acknowledgement that technological advancement is happening faster than biological advancement / evolution and will continue to do so until it overtakes it. If it *doesn't* happen, the reason for it not happening may be almost as interesting as the event occurring. What do you think will will prevent technology from catching up to biology?
Without being too serious about trying to predict the unpredictable (nor assume that this singularity is a certainty), I would say maybe someone who spends more of their income to support their family now rather than worrying about how they're going to support themselves in retirement could be better off in the future when money no longer matters to mere mortals. They might have better family and community relationships than people who prioritized their retirement over other more immediate priorities. Not that I'm suggesting this; it's just hypothetical. Of course it's entirely possible they would be *much* better off having saved for their own retirement too. It's hard to predict, but an interesting question.
Everything that hasn't happened yet can be considered hypothetical. That doesn't mean the subject is to be entirely dismissed. Y2K issues could have been considered hypothetical before they occurred, but they were an important consideration in planning for the future. But that is why I added the qualifier (which you may have missed) to my comment: "if that's true." It does seem pretty fantastical in some ways, but it also seems plausible and almost inevitable in some ways, especially as you see bits of it like this news article coming to pass in reality. Regardless of what really happens, perhaps the more relevant question on the topic of financial planning is, with the rate and significance of changes happening in the world and specifically the economy today, how practical is financial planning and how practical will it be in the not-too-distant future?
Yes, I'm saving (quite well) for retirement, but I still find this an interesting, if somewhat rhetorical, question.
I've often wondered what will happen to the economy and employment levels as technology approaches the sophistication and intelligence of human beings. The singularity is supposed to occur in my lifetime. Does it even make sense for me to save for retirement if that's true? What meaning will money have when no human can earn any? Will we finally be well cared for at no cost, or will we simply become obsolete?
Or maybe these are the guys *to whom* someone sent their results asking "can you reproduce this?" They did, and so they stole the idea and announced it as their own. Then when faced with the prospect of explaining it, they can't? I imagine a person could be slightly nervous about sharing the idea with someone else before protecting it via some sort of publication or announcement that helps to ensure people remember where it came from.
He's an inventor, scientist, author, futurist, musician and probably plenty more I don't even know about. And he's still alive... and hopes to be alive forever due to evolving technology.
It's just one ingredient. Better to have a delay for attackers that don't than not to have one. The less-than-1% chance of success per attempt is still better than the old method, right?
Interesting. I'm not familiar with that app/feature (I don't have a smart phone). It gives you a list of words along with the similar pictures you say? I wonder what the actual probability of the result containing the same word as the test is. The actual test shows 3 pictures and it's up to the human to pick the common element out of them. I wonder if the android app could/would find the same word in 3 lists (or 2 of the 3).
Yes, distortion is another thing that occurred to me that would probably be easy to add if it would introduce some degree of additional challenge to the automated systems without hindering real humans too much.
You didn't look at the program or read my post carefully enough. You have to do this 3 times in a row, which yields less than 1% probability of randomly guessing a correct answer. With a 1 hour delay after 3 bad attempts, this would significantly limit automated passage through the system.
It would be hard to come up with a bank of images as large as Google images. It has to be quite large because otherwise someone could create a database of picture checksums unless some sort of distortion was applied.
I don't specifically see how detecting a happy girl in a picture is better than picking a description of a picture. Personally I would think picking a description that looks like a good categorization of 3 images (as the program does) is even more difficult to fake. It requires more than a single ability; a large vocabulary of words and experience. Maybe your idea is better in that it's easier for people with a limited vocabulary.
That's why you have to pick 1 of 6 choices 3 times in a row correctly. The probability of getting that right with completely random guesses is less than 1%. And if you combine it with a 1 hour delay after 3 bad attempts, that should be a significant impedance.
Seeing this article gave me an idea to come up with a new human verification process. I created a C# program in about an hour that loads images from Google images based on searching for 3 of 2000+ nouns. It shows 3 examples of each noun and asks the user to pick the correct noun from a list of 6. This program is just a proof of concept of course. Could this become useful? (Binary and source code included.)
http://enigmadream.com/misc/HumanVerification.zip
I'm not contesting your sources. In fact I used one of your same sources (wikipedia) to show you what was wrong with your point. If you had read what I said, you'd see I simply pointed out that you used an irrelevant part of the wikipedia entry. I used a more relevant part of the same entry to show you what you missed.
You're the one who seems to be short on vocabulary and patience here. You didn't even try to respond to my actual points. You just blew up at my first sentence and tried to end the discussion with a "shut up". So it looks like I'm not the one trying to save face.
Regardless of the semantics over which we're arguing, am I correct in understanding that your point was that Visual Studio Express by itself is not useful because it's limited? I simply want to point out that for the purpose of the original poster, Visual Studio Express more than fulfills his needs (and the needs of many other people). The limitations are not a significant hindrance in this case (nor in any case for which I've ever used Visual Studio, and I'm a professional).
Looks like you pounced on definitions that matched your preconceived notions (or at least you thought they matched) because you're using the definition of "damaged goods" from Wikipedia, but if you had read a little further on Wikipedia, you'd have seen a more specific definition of Crippleware for computer software:
The term "crippleware" is sometimes used to describe software products whose functions have been limited (or "crippled") with the sole purpose of encouraging or requiring the user to pay for those functions (either by paying a one-time fee or an on-going subscription fee).
It would be quite a stretch to fit Visual Basic Express to this definition for a few reasons:
1. The Express Edition doesn't ask for any one time fees to "upgrade" to any full version. (Visual Studio is a separate product.)
2. The Express Edition (at least the one that I have, as far as I can tell) doesn't even advertise the fact that a more complete edition exists or that I could upgrade. This enhances the notion that there are not one time fees associated with any "upgraded" version of this product.
3. There's no subscription fee involved in Visual Basic Express or Visual Studio, so that doesn't help it fit the definition either.
4. In the help menu of Visual C# Express (which I assume is similar to Visual Basic Express) there *is* a "Register" option, but it's free, further extending the notion that this is not a limited version of a full product.
5. Even the Visual Studio Express web site goes out of its way to advertise features of the express edition that don't exist elsewhere (thus implying the existence of Visual Studio, but distinguishing the Express Edition as having its own unique advantages). It points out that Visual Studio (framed as a separate product) has it's own trial version. That trial version is limited, but Visual Studio Express is not. This further extends the notion that this is a stand-alone product, not representing a limited version of something whose "sole purpose" is to make you pay for an upgrade. I call your attention to the comment on the Express web site: "Unique to Visual Studio® 2010 Express is a new streamlined user experience that focuses on the most common commands by hiding some of the more advanced menus and toolbars. These are easily accessible by users via the Tools / Settings menu".
Based on this (and other comments on the web site), it looks to me like the purpose of Visual Studio Express is to cater to a different audience. Admittedly it is an audience with less of an expectation of some of the more advanced features, but Visual Studio Express is limiting the visibility of these features in the interest of catering to this "simpler" audience (not enticing them), and in most cases, even provides those features for free, just in a less visible way, so as to avoid overwhelming and confusing the user.
This clearly is not a product whose "sole purpose" (wikipedia) or "express purpose" (thefreedictionary) is encouraging the user to pay for a full product. They have one of those for Visual Studio, and it's called the trial version; it's not Visual Studio Express.
So you best get your facts straight before you go swearing at and insulting someone (never a good policy anyway). Your argument is wearing pretty thin.
No, it's not. Look up the definition of Crippleware.
Crippleware is software whose features or use is severely limited (sometimes to the point of being practically useless -- unable to save for instance) for the sole purpose of persuading the user to pay for the complete software if they would find it useful. VB Express does not, in my mind, fit this definition because I write a lot of software these days in VB and C#, and I believe it could compile any of it in the express edition. The IDE has some different features (some friendlier than the full-blown visual studio like the way refactoring works, I think) and some that aren't as deep as Visual Studio's (the debugger doesn't have a quick watch window, so you have to watch variables in the regular watch window, for example), but that's hardly crippling. It's just a lower-end simpler environment that's very useful as a stand-alone product for those who don't want to buy the full Visual Studio. As a professional Visual Studio developer, I use Visual C# Express at home and have never felt compelled to upgrade to Visual Studio (which I could probably legally do by simply installing my copy from work). So if it's crippleware, it's a miserable failure at coming across as "crippled". I find it very useful.
I would also point out that you don't need to install Visual Basic Express in order to compile and run VB programs. Any system with the .NET framework installed can compile and run VB .NET projects. If you have .NET 3.5 or later, you can even directly compile the solutions/projects files as generated by Visual Studio by using MSBUILD.EXE (which, for .NET 3.5, is found in Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\).
Three thoughts:
1. I think the corrected #5 is actually a fill-in for #4, and the word "Neverending" is wrong. Then you profit from getting through that.
2. I think this could all happen (or rather something at or beyond this technical level) in well under a century.
3. Because of the accelerating pace of technological development, I think there's a non-trivial chance I'll still be alive more than a century from now.
In the future I see, computer complexity exceeds that of humans within about 30 years (with the help of a feedback loop of a whole new kind of computer aided design). Seeing as how we're already close to "curing" aging, the final cure will become available shortly thereafter if we haven't already discovered it.
I thought the heat could be condensed so that even though the servers didn't run that hot, it could be compressed enough to evaporate water (in which case I suppose you'd need to use air instead of water... maybe transfer the heat from the water to air, then compress the air?) Isn't this the principal on which industrial air conditioners work?