Good luck with your project. I've been working on something similar for the last four years, minus the customized, player-run servers. I think both projects share the same goal of bringing MMORPGs back to what their roots promised; freedom and infinite possibility. The real key to success I think is to ensure the systems and rules address from the bottom up (fundamentally) what allows a real society to flourish. Most MMOs systems start from high level concepts, resulting in systems that are poorly integrated and easily exploitable with no countermeasures available to the victims other than GM moderation or developer-implemented "invisible wall" style bandaids. If you get your systems just right and keep them basic enough, players will be able to construct their own defenses against would-be griefers, just like in real life.
The FBI, GCHQ, BND, etc are going to tear apart the finances of every person that donates to this project.
Under what pretense? Funding terrorism? Tor, Ter, not too much a stretch I guess. Seriously, they can't do a thing to stop Tor funding without resorting to breaking or seriously misapplying their own laws. I don't think they'll go that far.
Finally the world has a way to give their respective government a mighty middle finger after all the bullshit that's been going on lately. I hope they get millions from every corner of Earth.
Pride is not what is "holding us back" in this field.
Pride has held us back since we were first capable of feeling it. The inability to admit to being wrong because the evidence offends one's vanity has always plagued science and every other part of our culture and personal relationships.
After thousands of years of attempts, not one man out of the whole of humanity can tell us what intelligence is, much less how it can emerge out of any observed natural process. We only assume that it is possible because we are operating on a presumption of materialism.
Considering how little we understand life mechanically, much less life as mind bogglingly complex as a human, it's no surprise that we currently have no answer outside the realm of philosophy and general description. If "materialism" is what can be directly or indirectly observed by people, unfortunately there's no escaping that without divine intervention.
Once we can fully measure the state of every particle in a human brain and run a simulation with complete accuracy, we should not be too surprised if it turns out to be only a simulation of a comatose state.
I think a lot of people, particularly atheist scientists, would be so surprised they'd immediately fall to their knees and ask God for forgiveness. Ironically I'd be overjoyed to discover we all had souls. Unfortunately the smell prevents me from believing it.
Call me when you show non-biological free will. Emulation of deterministic life processes is interesting, but it's free will that needs to be demonstrated in silicon.
Life is extremely efficient, from the micro to the macro scale. To attempt to recreate even a simple organism using current technology (including a purely logical recreation in silicon) would be like building a modern supercomputer out rocks and sticks. When you speak of "free will" being recreated, you've pretty much chosen the highest possible level of what we'd consider a property of advanced life. What excited me about the article is that it suggests instead of tackling the mountain it may be more fruitful to attack a single grain of sand first. Perhaps once we understand a grain of sand, we can start working our way up to the higher and more complex relationships and functionality.
For example, rather than trying to create AI using programming, try reverse-engineering a single-celled organism's molecular composition and chemical processes. If that can be understood completely it provides a starting point for how to reproduce and modify it. Being able to "run" a bacterium in a simulated environment, and later being able to create one physically, is the first step toward truly understand how life works as a machine. Until we have that kind of understanding, the idea of creating real intelligence or artificial life will be confined to cheap imitations which work nothing like the real thing. If we don't understand how a human works as a massive ongoing chemical reaction, we have zero chance of creating one out of gears and silicon.
Emulating the connectivity and functionality of neurons is pretty awesome, but it would seem the next logical step would be to map and interpret how memories are stored and processed, as well as organ feedback (skin, smell, glands). What's really interesting about this is that it shows, at least to some degree, that a simple brain can be reproduced using mathematical relationships (programming) and "run" with a I/O feedback loop. As far as the philosophical stuff, I think eventually we'll be forced to accept that life is a type of machine and that the "ghost" is an illusion emerging from its complexity. Other than better neuroscience, the main thing holding us back is pride.
Drill a 2-3km shaft into a salt dome, excavate a cavity at the bottom, suspend a 150kT nuclear warhead at the centre surrounded by a reaction mass, such as water laced with a neutron absorber. Above the cavity, at the bottom of the shaft, put a large shock absorber (such as a few hundred metres of oil backed by an ablative-coated pusher plate), with your 3500 tonnes of payload on top.
Most of the radiation would be contained underground, and a dome over the launch site would capture most of the rest.
Is that like the geek's version of "hold my beer"? Holy shit.
While we seem to be advancing technologically at an exponential rate, it seems culturally we're advancing at a snail's pace. I wonder how long it'll be before this divide is so vast it swallows us whole. It's like little kids with a gun; they know what it is and what it does, yet invariably someone ends up getting shot. What I can't figure out is if our misuse of technology is out of ignorance or malice.
I must be losing it, as earlier today I interpreted at first glance "Study Shows How Humans Can Echolocate" as "Study Shows How Humans Can Eat Chocolate" and now "Crowd-Sourced Experiment To Map All Human Skills" as "Crowd-Sourced Experiment To Map All Human Skulls". Haven't even cracked my first beer yet...maybe that's the problem.
Maybe, just maybe, Mars One people will stumble across a fully viable, relatively hospitable, alien population which will save them and propel us into a VERY "New World".
I heard some other Italian guy mention something about seeing canals up there, so who knows! I'll anxiously be awaiting the Mars One crew's report on the matter.
Being deliberate and careful is most always the right way to pursue any complex or risky endeavor, however there are times when saying, "Fuck it. Let's do this," actually works. Christopher Columbus comes to mind. Of course the trip to and existence on Mars is a hell of a lot tougher than what Columbus pulled off. I can't see any way for a permanent outpost on Mars to be accomplished without sending an absolute shitload of automation there first. You'd need a fully-functional living environment with at least two levels of redundancy for critical systems, all remotely tested once in place, before the first human even begins the journey. Otherwise you are Columbus, but this time chances are your faith will end up killing you.
That's a great theory, which I've even considered myself, but really...if you can't tell just by talking with someone for five minutes that they're an addict, much less actually high at that very moment, you've got bigger problems than a company full of junkies. To take it further, job performance is a big indicator of not just whether you're stoned but whether or not you belong there under any circumstances. Fucking up, being late all the time, weirding out clients, all these things will get you fired pretty quickly. I don't think drug tests are necessary. In a market where there are less jobs than applicants, I think it's just easier for employers to use really big filters without regard for how meaningful they are at the level of an individual applicant. Same goes for those bizarre online psych tests.
Wake me when they build a Star Trek museum. Star Wars is batting 0.333 at best, which is great for baseball but pretty shitty for a film franchise. There's what, over 700 Star Trek episodes and at least 11 films? That's no museum; that's a waste of space and money.
As a gamer, game dev, and huge fan of Street Fighter II, I agree with your observations. It's an incredibly well-made and polished classic, and still stands as one of the best fighting games ever made. And Chun Li. Yata!
To further your argument, the private sector has demonstrated that it doesn't care how many people die, which resulted in public outrage and increased government oversight (tons of labor laws, FDA, OSHA, etc.). So maybe that kind of do-or-die attitude combined with government oversight is the best way forward.
Maybe I've been watching too much Star Trek (okay, not maybe), but shouldn't the execution of operations that could single-handedly destroy the craft require an override when being executed outside safe parameters? I understand the danger of having the computer prevent you from doing what you think needs to be done at the time, but having an "are you sure?" prompt when the computer thinks you're fucking up sounds like a good idea to me.
I'm one of those overconfident idiots who never knows what he's talking about (being an expert in nothing), but I suspect it has to do with the higher mental effort required to intelligently form and express an idea about what is inadequately understood than to simply regurgitate what one thinks they already know. I remember when I was a kid my shrink gave me an IQ test and asked me why there were seasons. I had no fucking idea, but started thinking about possible reasons. I knew the Earth's orbit was elliptical and guessed our distance from the Sun was responsible (incorrectly, of course). I suppose demonstrating that I was able to use what little I knew to form a reasonable hypothesis was good enough for the test, but the point is the very act of pushing myself forward based on inadequate information gave me confidence.
What worries me are the people who speak confidently as pure, thoughtless bullshit pours from their mouth (politicians, for example). At least give it a really hard think before you make a fool of yourself.
Don't know much about physics, but Newton's laws of motion were good and still work on a small scale for most practical purposes. Then we had the theories of general and special relativity, which work on larger scales and describe spacetime. Further we have quantum field theory, which describes interactions at an extremely small scale and apparently has yet to be unified with the G/S theories of relativity. The lack of unification leads me to believe that we're either too stupid to discover the missing link or that one or both theories are inaccurate. Now that our observable universe is pretty damn huge, a larger sample size to test our various theories against, it doesn't surprise me that things don't add up. There could be dark matter/energy, other dimensions/universes bumping into ours, a godlike noncorporeal alien race using quantum teleportation as its neural network and galaxies as its body, etc., but if I had to put good money on it I'd venture that our theories are wrong. Until current "working" theories can at least be unified, I'd hold off proposing things like the majority of all matter/energy in the universe not being directly observable. Errors on a small scale are negligible, but when applied at the insane scale of the universe they can't be ignored. Even if dark matter/energy do exist, our theories are probably still wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Good luck with your project. I've been working on something similar for the last four years, minus the customized, player-run servers. I think both projects share the same goal of bringing MMORPGs back to what their roots promised; freedom and infinite possibility. The real key to success I think is to ensure the systems and rules address from the bottom up (fundamentally) what allows a real society to flourish. Most MMOs systems start from high level concepts, resulting in systems that are poorly integrated and easily exploitable with no countermeasures available to the victims other than GM moderation or developer-implemented "invisible wall" style bandaids. If you get your systems just right and keep them basic enough, players will be able to construct their own defenses against would-be griefers, just like in real life.
The FBI, GCHQ, BND, etc are going to tear apart the finances of every person that donates to this project.
Under what pretense? Funding terrorism? Tor, Ter, not too much a stretch I guess. Seriously, they can't do a thing to stop Tor funding without resorting to breaking or seriously misapplying their own laws. I don't think they'll go that far.
I really hate to dox someone, but I believe I've found out who Bennett is: http://youtu.be/G0tljvD49RU
All I can say is, if you're going to show up at his front door or make rape threats, you do so at your own peril.
Finally the world has a way to give their respective government a mighty middle finger after all the bullshit that's been going on lately. I hope they get millions from every corner of Earth.
Pride is not what is "holding us back" in this field.
Pride has held us back since we were first capable of feeling it. The inability to admit to being wrong because the evidence offends one's vanity has always plagued science and every other part of our culture and personal relationships.
After thousands of years of attempts, not one man out of the whole of humanity can tell us what intelligence is, much less how it can emerge out of any observed natural process. We only assume that it is possible because we are operating on a presumption of materialism.
Considering how little we understand life mechanically, much less life as mind bogglingly complex as a human, it's no surprise that we currently have no answer outside the realm of philosophy and general description. If "materialism" is what can be directly or indirectly observed by people, unfortunately there's no escaping that without divine intervention.
Once we can fully measure the state of every particle in a human brain and run a simulation with complete accuracy, we should not be too surprised if it turns out to be only a simulation of a comatose state.
I think a lot of people, particularly atheist scientists, would be so surprised they'd immediately fall to their knees and ask God for forgiveness. Ironically I'd be overjoyed to discover we all had souls. Unfortunately the smell prevents me from believing it.
Call me when you show non-biological free will. Emulation of deterministic life processes is interesting, but it's free will that needs to be demonstrated in silicon.
Life is extremely efficient, from the micro to the macro scale. To attempt to recreate even a simple organism using current technology (including a purely logical recreation in silicon) would be like building a modern supercomputer out rocks and sticks. When you speak of "free will" being recreated, you've pretty much chosen the highest possible level of what we'd consider a property of advanced life. What excited me about the article is that it suggests instead of tackling the mountain it may be more fruitful to attack a single grain of sand first. Perhaps once we understand a grain of sand, we can start working our way up to the higher and more complex relationships and functionality.
For example, rather than trying to create AI using programming, try reverse-engineering a single-celled organism's molecular composition and chemical processes. If that can be understood completely it provides a starting point for how to reproduce and modify it. Being able to "run" a bacterium in a simulated environment, and later being able to create one physically, is the first step toward truly understand how life works as a machine. Until we have that kind of understanding, the idea of creating real intelligence or artificial life will be confined to cheap imitations which work nothing like the real thing. If we don't understand how a human works as a massive ongoing chemical reaction, we have zero chance of creating one out of gears and silicon.
Emulating the connectivity and functionality of neurons is pretty awesome, but it would seem the next logical step would be to map and interpret how memories are stored and processed, as well as organ feedback (skin, smell, glands). What's really interesting about this is that it shows, at least to some degree, that a simple brain can be reproduced using mathematical relationships (programming) and "run" with a I/O feedback loop. As far as the philosophical stuff, I think eventually we'll be forced to accept that life is a type of machine and that the "ghost" is an illusion emerging from its complexity. Other than better neuroscience, the main thing holding us back is pride.
That's what I was thinking too, until I realized someone would have to go up there and hit the power button to bring it out of hibernate. Dammit.
Drill a 2-3km shaft into a salt dome, excavate a cavity at the bottom, suspend a 150kT nuclear warhead at the centre surrounded by a reaction mass, such as water laced with a neutron absorber. Above the cavity, at the bottom of the shaft, put a large shock absorber (such as a few hundred metres of oil backed by an ablative-coated pusher plate), with your 3500 tonnes of payload on top.
Most of the radiation would be contained underground, and a dome over the launch site would capture most of the rest.
Is that like the geek's version of "hold my beer"? Holy shit.
It is nice to pick international system units, however it would be better to do it right. This should be km/h, not kph.
Unit Nazis per hour. :)
While we seem to be advancing technologically at an exponential rate, it seems culturally we're advancing at a snail's pace. I wonder how long it'll be before this divide is so vast it swallows us whole. It's like little kids with a gun; they know what it is and what it does, yet invariably someone ends up getting shot. What I can't figure out is if our misuse of technology is out of ignorance or malice.
Here's one of the bugs... http://spherical-sphinx.com/ac...
Nah, I think that's just what melee combat looks like. Games are pretty violent these days.
I must be losing it, as earlier today I interpreted at first glance "Study Shows How Humans Can Echolocate" as "Study Shows How Humans Can Eat Chocolate" and now "Crowd-Sourced Experiment To Map All Human Skills" as "Crowd-Sourced Experiment To Map All Human Skulls". Haven't even cracked my first beer yet...maybe that's the problem.
I have long ago concluded that on Slashdot success = evil.
It's not success itself, but what was done to achieve it.
Maybe, just maybe, Mars One people will stumble across a fully viable, relatively hospitable, alien population which will save them and propel us into a VERY "New World".
I heard some other Italian guy mention something about seeing canals up there, so who knows! I'll anxiously be awaiting the Mars One crew's report on the matter.
Being deliberate and careful is most always the right way to pursue any complex or risky endeavor, however there are times when saying, "Fuck it. Let's do this," actually works. Christopher Columbus comes to mind. Of course the trip to and existence on Mars is a hell of a lot tougher than what Columbus pulled off. I can't see any way for a permanent outpost on Mars to be accomplished without sending an absolute shitload of automation there first. You'd need a fully-functional living environment with at least two levels of redundancy for critical systems, all remotely tested once in place, before the first human even begins the journey. Otherwise you are Columbus, but this time chances are your faith will end up killing you.
That's a great theory, which I've even considered myself, but really...if you can't tell just by talking with someone for five minutes that they're an addict, much less actually high at that very moment, you've got bigger problems than a company full of junkies. To take it further, job performance is a big indicator of not just whether you're stoned but whether or not you belong there under any circumstances. Fucking up, being late all the time, weirding out clients, all these things will get you fired pretty quickly. I don't think drug tests are necessary. In a market where there are less jobs than applicants, I think it's just easier for employers to use really big filters without regard for how meaningful they are at the level of an individual applicant. Same goes for those bizarre online psych tests.
Wake me when they build a Star Trek museum. Star Wars is batting 0.333 at best, which is great for baseball but pretty shitty for a film franchise. There's what, over 700 Star Trek episodes and at least 11 films? That's no museum; that's a waste of space and money.
As a gamer, game dev, and huge fan of Street Fighter II, I agree with your observations. It's an incredibly well-made and polished classic, and still stands as one of the best fighting games ever made. And Chun Li. Yata!
Anything can be a weapon if placed in the right hands in the right situation.
I'd still rather have murderous psycopaths with lumps of rock than nuclear weapons.
I'd rather have murderous psychopaths with belt-fed machine guns that fired nuclear warheads. Fuck yeah.
The three in the building were in a flight simulator. How horribly ironic.
"You can learn to fly in this machine. It's just like the real jet, except you cannot die."
Up to the moment it ceased functioning it unexpectedly became the most realistic flight simulator ever.
To further your argument, the private sector has demonstrated that it doesn't care how many people die, which resulted in public outrage and increased government oversight (tons of labor laws, FDA, OSHA, etc.). So maybe that kind of do-or-die attitude combined with government oversight is the best way forward.
Maybe I've been watching too much Star Trek (okay, not maybe), but shouldn't the execution of operations that could single-handedly destroy the craft require an override when being executed outside safe parameters? I understand the danger of having the computer prevent you from doing what you think needs to be done at the time, but having an "are you sure?" prompt when the computer thinks you're fucking up sounds like a good idea to me.
I'm one of those overconfident idiots who never knows what he's talking about (being an expert in nothing), but I suspect it has to do with the higher mental effort required to intelligently form and express an idea about what is inadequately understood than to simply regurgitate what one thinks they already know. I remember when I was a kid my shrink gave me an IQ test and asked me why there were seasons. I had no fucking idea, but started thinking about possible reasons. I knew the Earth's orbit was elliptical and guessed our distance from the Sun was responsible (incorrectly, of course). I suppose demonstrating that I was able to use what little I knew to form a reasonable hypothesis was good enough for the test, but the point is the very act of pushing myself forward based on inadequate information gave me confidence.
What worries me are the people who speak confidently as pure, thoughtless bullshit pours from their mouth (politicians, for example). At least give it a really hard think before you make a fool of yourself.
Don't know much about physics, but Newton's laws of motion were good and still work on a small scale for most practical purposes. Then we had the theories of general and special relativity, which work on larger scales and describe spacetime. Further we have quantum field theory, which describes interactions at an extremely small scale and apparently has yet to be unified with the G/S theories of relativity. The lack of unification leads me to believe that we're either too stupid to discover the missing link or that one or both theories are inaccurate. Now that our observable universe is pretty damn huge, a larger sample size to test our various theories against, it doesn't surprise me that things don't add up. There could be dark matter/energy, other dimensions/universes bumping into ours, a godlike noncorporeal alien race using quantum teleportation as its neural network and galaxies as its body, etc., but if I had to put good money on it I'd venture that our theories are wrong. Until current "working" theories can at least be unified, I'd hold off proposing things like the majority of all matter/energy in the universe not being directly observable. Errors on a small scale are negligible, but when applied at the insane scale of the universe they can't be ignored. Even if dark matter/energy do exist, our theories are probably still wrong.