This article was already linked to on a Feb 05 story by jamie: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/02/05/005124 1&mode=thread (Reason Magazine on Copyrights)
You're right to say that no GUI will solve the lack of an appropriate computing paradigm. You're wrong to say that it hasn't been invented yet. It has - look at Squeak, Native Oberon, Self, and many other computing systems (yes, even those that have been traditionally shunned by engineers as "mere research projects"). In particular, look at the Review subproject of Tunes. There's a lot of new stuff out there, and much of it is great. Just because it's not mainstream doesn't mean it's not better. (Just look at Lisp...)
Nope again. "Defined" means it was previously undefined, meaning that Apple would have invented the concept, when in fact it was already in practice even at the Homebrew Computer Club, birthplace of the Apple. He also claimed that they did it before RMS, ESR or Linus, which isn't the case. You might want to take a bit of your own advice.
In the days of "Steve & Steve" Apple defined "Open Source" before the term was coined, and before anybody had heard of RMS, ESR, or Linus.
Sorry, not true. By 1977, Stallman had already been on MIT for six years, and was already working on the TECO macros which would one day become Emacs. And most of the "golden-age" MIT hackers (those which hadn't already gone to Stanford, that is) were leaving for Symbolics. (I should also mention DEC (now Digital (now Compaq)), who made the legendary - and very open - PDP series.) Now these guys invented "open source"... and they did it back in the early 60's, when Steve & Steve were still in diapers.
Was the Apple II open? Yes. Was it cool? Yes, very much so. Was Apple the first one to make "open" stuff? Nope.
My really big worry with capitalism is, I suppose, based on where advancing technology will lead us. It's completely concievable and, I think, quite probable that someday, maybe not so far ahead in the future, it will be possible for all neccessities of life to be produced by machines with little or no human work required. Farms will be able to farm themselves. Factories will churn out processed foods by themselves, and the supermarkets will stock themselves or a person's grocery order will simply be delivered directly without need for human drivers or deliverymen. The same will hold true for clothing and other manufactured goods. It's surely possible to develop factories that not only operate by themselves but also quality check and maintain themselves. Same thing for power generation and construction. Some human supervision might be required, but we would be talking about a small percentage of the population. The trouble is that this model is fundamentally incompatible with capitalism. Aside from the teachers and doctors and policemen and lawyers, etc. what would the vast bulk of the population do for work. Would we all be working in service jobs of one kind or another just to keep a farce of an economic system running? How would things work? What could Capitalism possibly do for us in that situation?
Not that Communism would really apply either. Communism was designed with the working class in mind, but the future I envision doesn't really have a working class. There would have to be an entirely new system. Whatever the new system will be, it will be an extremely bumpy road to get there from Capitalism. Maybe we won't get there, maybe we'll just end up total slaves to a fraction of the population who own the machines (built by other machines with material harvested by machines) and the land. Maybe not, who knows. But Capitalism is not the only answer, it's just one system of many, that more or less works at the present time, but it may be outdated some day.
Yes. Specifically, all current economic systems assume that the economy is a zero-sum game, and that work is a fact of life. With sufficiently advanced technology, that's not the case.
So, when self-replicating, intelligent machines come to being, the concept of an economy will become obsolete in and of itself; no one people will need to work at all in order to support a luxurious lifestyle. Sounds great, eh? Not quite.
As the authors of Beyond Humanity, Earl and Cox, point out, this kind of thing will put humanity into a large-scale "Seinfeld", where everyone has everything they want, but no one has anything to do. Eventually, Earth will bore us, and space isn't much interesting either for a bunch of hairless apes in slow ships. In essence, barring miraculous invention of faster-than-light travel, we have really nothing to do but sit around and stare for a few million years more (and maybe pray to a few gods while we're at it). Or maybe we'll just find another excuse to fight amongst ourselves.
The alternative? Mass uploading of the human race into nano-engineered immortal superbodies, making cybergods of us all. With all the time in the world in our hands, we can all go do whatever we feel like doing, with nothing to hold us back. Think big - think exploration of all the galaxies, Dyson spheres, pyrotechnics with supernovae, computing with neutron stars.
As someone else has already pointed out, Marx is only saying that he feels that the "violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie" is inevitable; he isn't advocating that it take place. He definitely isn't asking his readers to go and do it themselves. In any case, Marx has already turned out to be wrong about other things, and even the most rabid communist doesn't consider his works to be infallible.
I agree... kinda... given that I'm a libertarian (as I've pointed out in my first post to this thread) and a rabid individualist. Personally, I wouldn't ever want to live even in a successful socialist regime like a kibbutz.
But, and here's the schtick, many people would. People, in general, seem to like the idea of having someone take care of them, be that someone the State, the Nazi Party or God. People, in general, seem to fall for the doctrine of equality very easily, while tending against individualism. This is why the "people's dictatorship" always ends up meaning something along the lines of "mob rule". Human nature, y'know... it sucks. But that's not Marx's fault. Scientific socialism is the perfect economic system for a perfect world... just as the public domain is the perfect license for a perfect world. Practice is a bitch, isn't it?
Obviously you're not from Eastern Europe. Or Vietnam. Or North Korea. Cuba... I could go on.
As other posters have pointed out, none of this was actually Marxism. We're talking about totalitarian oligarchies, dictatorships of the State thinly disguised under socialist-ish political and economical practice. An example system which bears much more resemblance to Marx's actual proposals is the kibbutz system in Israel, a semi-open socialistic regime which, I must admit, still works very well (despite some drawbacks in the recent past, having to do with the transition to industrial production and the progressive integration of the Palestines into the economy). (By the way, yes, I've been to Israel. Most of my family lives there.)
In North America (where I assume you are from)
I hate to disappoint you, but I'm from Brazil. By the way, the Brazilian communists have a lot of first-hand experience in fighting fascist dictatorships... it's a dark, sad story.
Again, I must disagree with your claim that communism is in itself violent. At the risk of offending you, I say it's rather like claiming that all of the above mentioned "communist" states also forbid all religious practice, and therefore atheism is violent - it's a confusion of correlation and cause.
(By the way, I have traveled most of Brazil myself, as well as many other countries. I must say I find your "advice" rather insulting.)
Well, depends on what you consider to be "for naught". Canada is still part of the British Commonwealth, isn't it? Anyway, most successful revolutionary movements start to crumble the moment a replacement government rises to power... this was the case with all revolutionary movements I can think of. Human nature, I suppose. But that still doesn't mean the revolutions were "for naught".
Assuming you're American, I doubt you'd understand that.
Well, you don't need to go around assuming, when you can just look at my email address. Does it look like an US email address? No, didn't think so...
So your argument that violence is necessary to achieve some ideological goals still doesn't hold water. [Snip Lennon].
Well, generally I tend to agree, but there let's see how warm n' fuzzy and pacifist you feel when the French monarchy or the British empire or the Russian Tzar are fucking you over... nobody likes to be fucked over. Anyway, "violence" of some kind, whether physical or not, is always inevitable... the key lies in knowing how much violence is too much, I think.
There is violence inherent in socialism. My source? Karl Marx. [Rest snipped]
Marx claimed that, in order for the current regime to be overthrown, violence would be necessary. The Bolsheviks agreed. That doesn't make it a part of the communist or socialist doctrines themselves.
I take your comment about my "goodness" as sarcasm... All I am saying is that we should lock up people who are bent on "violent overthrow". I'm sure laws exist on the books prohibiting "plotting armed insurrection".
Of course there is. There were also British and French laws prohibiting plotting armed insurrection in the 18th century, but that didn't stop the French or American revolutions. My point is, some laws are meant to be broken, and some times, drastic measures must be taken.
As long as an ideology doesn't advocate violence as the primary means to an end, I believe such people should have the "freedom to" do whatever they wish.
However, if they are violent, as I have been taught communists and early socialists generally are, I believe our "freedom from" them is more important. Even in a democratic society, it is not unreasonable to outlaw such organisations.
I'm sorry, but I've yet to meet a violent communist. (Now, violent fascists - those are a dime a dozen.) Most communists and socialists I know are level-headed, well-cultured people interested in the best for society. Just because there are violent communists doesn't mean communism should be banned, now does it?
A value judgement. I hope you share it.
I don't... I hope you understand why.
(By the way: I'm sticking with the "communist" term as a synonym for "Marxist".)
I could be wrong, but I am almost positive that Marx wrote the first step towards communism was dictatorship to weed out the 'evil capitalist influences'.
I Am Not A Humanities Major (IANAHM), but Marx came up with the dictatorship of the proletariat. There's a big difference there. Theoretically (theoretically), what the collective decides is best for all will be done. Theoretically.
since I checked last, the main tenet of communism is the *violent* overthrow of capitalist systems, even democratic ones.
Um, no. Contrary to what opposing propaganda may claim, communism is about economic equality. It isn't about violence. Bolchevism (not sure of the English spelling), the doctrine of the original Soviets, did advocate the violent and immediate overthrow of the old Russian regime, but that has nothing to do with scientific socialism as originated by Marx.
Maybe it's fairer to say that he was a socialist, or had socialist tendencies, without any of the violence inherent in either.
There is no violence inherent in socialism. From where did you pull this out?
Those of you who claim you are communists... Either you don't know what you are claiming, or you are very frightening individuals who should be locked up.
Well, it's nice to see that there are still good people like you advocating that those "frightening" deviants be shut up and locked up. God knows what might happen if people were allowed to hold the ideologies of their choice!
(Disclaimer: I am a libertarian, not a communist. Do not flame.)
If you don't have a deep understanding of what you want to simulate - you won't simulate it.
That's not really true. A GA-based approach requires you only to understand the behaviour expected of the subject, not its necessarily its internal workings (even though, as another poster pointed out, it won't help in enlightening us as to how the mind actually works). My memory fails me, but I remember reading last year about a FPGA, configured by a genetic algorithm for a specific purpose, which was __BIGNUMBER__ times faster than special-purpose chips, but which operated in ways that its original designers didn't understand at all. This FPGA was relatively simple - only 100x100 IIRC - and yet GA-based design made it do completely unexpected things. What knows what can happen with a really large FPGA... or with a big bunch of nano-engineered artificial neurons.
why are we so arrogant to believe that in one generation we can solve what thousands of years of natural evolution could not?
Because natural evolution doesn't reason. Because natural evolution isn't self-aware. Because natural evolution isn't task-oriented. Because natural evolution works in the direction of "whatever is good enough" to survive, not towards the optimal design or the Right Thing.
My point is: as impressive as it may be that such an arbitrary process as evolution by natural selection has lead to the development of human intelligence, there's no reason to believe that this makes it somehow infallible or perfect or absolute - in other words, there's no good reason to attribute God-like qualities to evolution.
I'm sorry, but I don't think there's anything wrong with a species wanting to do whatever they want with their own genetic fate.
yes, and you've got to problems. 1) What exactly does a neuron do? and 2) how are they organized into a brain? Neither are easy questions.
No, but they are much more easy to figure out than the Big Question of "what exactly constitutes intelligence".
Yes, neural nets don't have to be explicitly designed at a low level. But that doesn't mean that you can just throw one together, throw data at it, and get it to work. First, you've got to design your network, then you've got to figure out how to train it.
We don't have to do even that - all it takes is rudimentary understanding of the way the neurons are organised. Once you know that, you can have the GA do the rest.
One thing we do know about the brain is it is not just a bundle of neurons. Those neurons have an organization that is genetically programmed.
Yes, of course. But we also know that this organisation can't be too complex - specifically, it must be possible to describe using a fraction (I don't know how large a fraction, though) of the storage space of human DNA. By the way, this also hints at the possibility that a fuller understanding of the genome may provide an additional insight into the composition and organisation of the brain.
You can't build an artificially intelligent computer unless you have a damn good idea of those things. You can't build something with desires, emotions, etc. unless you know, in detail, what desires and emotions are, at a far deeper level than we do now.
Your entire argument is based on the premise of top-down design - that the Right Way to build an AI is the classical engineer's approach of designing the thing as you would design any other machine or piece of software.
Fortunately, most people now recognise that this approach is doomed, for the exact reason that you point out: an "intelligence" of any sort is much more complex and less well-understood than anything we've ever had to design.
So, what's the alternative? Automated bottom-up design. Specifically, the idea is to first work out the building blocks - the equivalents of neurons - and then have a GA or somesuch start trying to put together a "brain" out of these neurons, which is fit for a specific purpose. Note that this alternative doesn't require one to understand in excrutiating detail (or at all) the high-level abstractions which we consider as "intelligence" - it only requires a good GA and a good understanding of the brain at the cellular and subcellular level.
Now this I don't consider far-fetched at all.
(Of course, it's always worth mentioning that we could go the other way - first using nanotech to completely redesign ourselves into super-intelligent cybergods, then analysing our own new brains and replicating them to create completely new, fully artificial intelligent beings.)
They are. But don't take it from me, mind you - take it from the (in)famous Mr Henry Baker, in this incredible letter (*) to the Communications of the ACM, which is guaranteed to put a smile in the face of everyone who's ever thought there must be a better way.
(*) Note that Netcom, which hosts Mr Baker's archive, is under a large load, and may take a few attempts to be accessed.
Uh, dude, I hate to disappoint you, but this isn't one of those Slashdot interviews where you post your question and hope it gets moderated up and answered. It's a link to an interview with the guy, on Linuxpower, which already took place. If you want to ask him something, go look for his email address and send him a message.
(Not a troll, not flamebait. Just pointing poor Andrew to the right direction.)
I hate to burst SuSE's bubble, but opening offices in Venezuela is not going to get you anywhere in the Latin American market. Why? Because the Latin American market pretty much means Brazil, period. The rest of the market is almost negligible when compared to Brazil. (I'm not gloating, I'm simply telling like it is.) Witness Conectiva, makers of the best-selling Portuguese distro. They are expanding into the rest of the Latin American market, with the release of a Spanish version of their distro. So if you want to get lucky in Latin America, you want to get your ass down to Rio, not Caracas.
But it doesn't - that's the schtick. Even if only one corporation (such as IBM, who definitely seem very interested in it - and who are already working at the atomic level, which essentially makes it only a simple matter of implementation (famous last words)) keeps funding nanotech research at the current pace, they are bound to eventually turn out one prototype assembler (whether by following the natural morphology of ribosomes et al, or by coming up with a wholly new design). And all it takes is one assembler (and one seed) - that one assembler can replicate forever, and before you know it - bang, the nanotech revolution has begun. That's the whole point.
Other people have already commented on just about every other aspect of this story (some rather well, some not quite so), so I'll restrict myself to the technological aspect.
Basically, I think Bruce is being naive. He's seriously and dangerously underestimating the impact that dirt-cheap molecular nanotechnology may have in the future society. Quite honestly, I just don't understand why - I mean, I understand the skepticism (it's very fashionable nowadays), but this is the kind of thing that just changes everything - everything - and it is coming, hopefully within 20 years. Just as people from the 16th century would be overwhelmed at the rate at which things happen in the 20th century, the nanotech revolution is likely to knock at the 20th century man's door before he even knew what happened. And then Bruce will kick himself for having been pessimistic about technology (which is definitely a rookie mistake, as Mr Clarke will tell you). And then I'll have my revenge. MUAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Slashdot Mirror
Do we have lhs subroutine calls yet? If not, I'm not interested. :) (I'm still waiting for list pattern matching a la Haskerl anyway... heh.)
Now excuse me while I go look for the MacPerl update...
This article was already linked to on a Feb 05 story by jamie: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/02/05/005124 1&mode=thread (Reason Magazine on Copyrights)
Way to pay attention, guys!
You're right to say that no GUI will solve the lack of an appropriate computing paradigm. You're wrong to say that it hasn't been invented yet. It has - look at Squeak, Native Oberon, Self, and many other computing systems (yes, even those that have been traditionally shunned by engineers as "mere research projects"). In particular, look at the Review subproject of Tunes. There's a lot of new stuff out there, and much of it is great. Just because it's not mainstream doesn't mean it's not better. (Just look at Lisp...)
but I haven't seen much UI innovation recently
That's because you didn't go look for it.
Morphic
Native Oberon
Bricks
Merlin
Photon
There's more...
Nope again. "Defined" means it was previously undefined, meaning that Apple would have invented the concept, when in fact it was already in practice even at the Homebrew Computer Club, birthplace of the Apple. He also claimed that they did it before RMS, ESR or Linus, which isn't the case. You might want to take a bit of your own advice.
In the days of "Steve & Steve" Apple defined "Open Source" before the term was coined, and before anybody had heard of RMS, ESR, or Linus.
Sorry, not true. By 1977, Stallman had already been on MIT for six years, and was already working on the TECO macros which would one day become Emacs. And most of the "golden-age" MIT hackers (those which hadn't already gone to Stanford, that is) were leaving for Symbolics. (I should also mention DEC (now Digital (now Compaq)), who made the legendary - and very open - PDP series.) Now these guys invented "open source"... and they did it back in the early 60's, when Steve & Steve were still in diapers.
Was the Apple II open? Yes. Was it cool? Yes, very much so. Was Apple the first one to make "open" stuff? Nope.
I can see it already...
Histogram for slashdot.org
Term...................... %age of messages
"natalie portman"......... 46.4%
"hot grits"............... 33.5%
"naked and petrified"..... 27.6%
"cmdrtaco sux"............ 23.9%
"linux sux"............... 19.4%
"linux rox"............... 16.0%
My really big worry with capitalism is, I suppose, based on where advancing technology will lead us. It's completely concievable and, I think, quite probable that
someday, maybe not so far ahead in the future, it will be possible for all neccessities of life to be produced by machines with little or no human work required.
Farms will be able to farm themselves. Factories will churn out processed foods by themselves, and the supermarkets will stock themselves or a person's grocery
order will simply be delivered directly without need for human drivers or deliverymen. The same will hold true for clothing and other manufactured goods. It's
surely possible to develop factories that not only operate by themselves but also quality check and maintain themselves. Same thing for power generation and
construction. Some human supervision might be required, but we would be talking about a small percentage of the population. The trouble is that this model is
fundamentally incompatible with capitalism. Aside from the teachers and doctors and policemen and lawyers, etc. what would the vast bulk of the population do
for work. Would we all be working in service jobs of one kind or another just to keep a farce of an economic system running? How would things work? What could
Capitalism possibly do for us in that situation?
Not that Communism would really apply either. Communism was designed with the working class in mind, but the future I envision doesn't really have a working
class. There would have to be an entirely new system. Whatever the new system will be, it will be an extremely bumpy road to get there from Capitalism. Maybe
we won't get there, maybe we'll just end up total slaves to a fraction of the population who own the machines (built by other machines with material harvested by
machines) and the land. Maybe not, who knows. But Capitalism is not the only answer, it's just one system of many, that more or less works at the present time,
but it may be outdated some day.
Yes. Specifically, all current economic systems assume that the economy is a zero-sum game, and that work is a fact of life. With sufficiently advanced technology, that's not the case.
So, when self-replicating, intelligent machines come to being, the concept of an economy will become obsolete in and of itself; no one people will need to work at all in order to support a luxurious lifestyle. Sounds great, eh? Not quite.
As the authors of Beyond Humanity, Earl and Cox, point out, this kind of thing will put humanity into a large-scale "Seinfeld", where everyone has everything they want, but no one has anything to do. Eventually, Earth will bore us, and space isn't much interesting either for a bunch of hairless apes in slow ships. In essence, barring miraculous invention of faster-than-light travel, we have really nothing to do but sit around and stare for a few million years more (and maybe pray to a few gods while we're at it). Or maybe we'll just find another excuse to fight amongst ourselves.
The alternative? Mass uploading of the human race into nano-engineered immortal superbodies, making cybergods of us all. With all the time in the world in our hands, we can all go do whatever we feel like doing, with nothing to hold us back. Think big - think exploration of all the galaxies, Dyson spheres, pyrotechnics with supernovae, computing with neutron stars.
Now that sounds fun.
As someone else has already pointed out, Marx is only saying that he feels that the "violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie" is inevitable; he isn't advocating that it take place. He definitely isn't asking his readers to go and do it themselves. In any case, Marx has already turned out to be wrong about other things, and even the most rabid communist doesn't consider his works to be infallible.
I agree... kinda... given that I'm a libertarian (as I've pointed out in my first post to this thread) and a rabid individualist. Personally, I wouldn't ever want to live even in a successful socialist regime like a kibbutz.
But, and here's the schtick, many people would. People, in general, seem to like the idea of having someone take care of them, be that someone the State, the Nazi Party or God. People, in general, seem to fall for the doctrine of equality very easily, while tending against individualism. This is why the "people's dictatorship" always ends up meaning something along the lines of "mob rule". Human nature, y'know... it sucks. But that's not Marx's fault. Scientific socialism is the perfect economic system for a perfect world... just as the public domain is the perfect license for a perfect world. Practice is a bitch, isn't it?
Obviously you're not from Eastern Europe. Or Vietnam. Or North Korea. Cuba... I could go on.
As other posters have pointed out, none of this was actually Marxism. We're talking about totalitarian oligarchies, dictatorships of the State thinly disguised under socialist-ish political and economical practice. An example system which bears much more resemblance to Marx's actual proposals is the kibbutz system in Israel, a semi-open socialistic regime which, I must admit, still works very well (despite some drawbacks in the recent past, having to do with the transition to industrial production and the progressive integration of the Palestines into the economy). (By the way, yes, I've been to Israel. Most of my family lives there.)
In North America (where I assume you are from)
I hate to disappoint you, but I'm from Brazil. By the way, the Brazilian communists have a lot of first-hand experience in fighting fascist dictatorships... it's a dark, sad story.
Again, I must disagree with your claim that communism is in itself violent. At the risk of offending you, I say it's rather like claiming that all of the above mentioned "communist" states also forbid all religious practice, and therefore atheism is violent - it's a confusion of correlation and cause.
(By the way, I have traveled most of Brazil myself, as well as many other countries. I must say I find your "advice" rather insulting.)
(Re. French and American revolutions)
Well, depends on what you consider to be "for naught". Canada is still part of the British Commonwealth, isn't it? Anyway, most successful revolutionary movements start to crumble the moment a replacement government rises to power... this was the case with all revolutionary movements I can think of. Human nature, I suppose. But that still doesn't mean the revolutions were "for naught".
Assuming you're American, I doubt you'd understand that.
Well, you don't need to go around assuming, when you can just look at my email address. Does it look like an US email address? No, didn't think so...
So your argument that violence is necessary to achieve some ideological goals still doesn't hold water. [Snip Lennon].
Well, generally I tend to agree, but there let's see how warm n' fuzzy and pacifist you feel when the French monarchy or the British empire or the Russian Tzar are fucking you over... nobody likes to be fucked over. Anyway, "violence" of some kind, whether physical or not, is always inevitable... the key lies in knowing how much violence is too much, I think.
There is violence inherent in socialism. My source? Karl Marx. [Rest snipped]
Marx claimed that, in order for the current regime to be overthrown, violence would be necessary. The Bolsheviks agreed. That doesn't make it a part of the communist or socialist doctrines themselves.
I take your comment about my "goodness" as sarcasm... All I am saying is that we should lock up people who are bent on "violent overthrow". I'm sure laws exist on
the books prohibiting "plotting armed insurrection".
Of course there is. There were also British and French laws prohibiting plotting armed insurrection in the 18th century, but that didn't stop the French or American revolutions. My point is, some laws are meant to be broken, and some times, drastic measures must be taken.
As long as an ideology doesn't advocate violence as the primary means to an end, I believe such people should
have the "freedom to" do whatever they wish.
However, if they are violent, as I have been taught communists and early socialists generally are, I believe our "freedom from" them is more important. Even in a
democratic society, it is not unreasonable to outlaw such organisations.
I'm sorry, but I've yet to meet a violent communist. (Now, violent fascists - those are a dime a dozen.) Most communists and socialists I know are level-headed, well-cultured people interested in the best for society. Just because there are violent communists doesn't mean communism should be banned, now does it?
A value judgement. I hope you share it.
I don't... I hope you understand why.
(By the way: I'm sticking with the "communist" term as a synonym for "Marxist".)
I could be wrong, but I am almost positive that Marx wrote the first step towards communism was dictatorship to weed out the 'evil capitalist influences'.
I Am Not A Humanities Major (IANAHM), but Marx came up with the dictatorship of the proletariat. There's a big difference there. Theoretically (theoretically), what the collective decides is best for all will be done. Theoretically.
since I checked last, the main tenet of communism is the *violent* overthrow of capitalist systems, even democratic ones.
Um, no. Contrary to what opposing propaganda may claim, communism is about economic equality. It isn't about violence. Bolchevism (not sure of the English spelling), the doctrine of the original Soviets, did advocate the violent and immediate overthrow of the old Russian regime, but that has nothing to do with scientific socialism as originated by Marx.
Maybe it's fairer to say that he was a socialist, or had socialist tendencies, without any of the violence inherent in either.
There is no violence inherent in socialism. From where did you pull this out?
Those of you who claim you are communists... Either you don't know what you are claiming, or you are very frightening individuals who should be locked up.
Well, it's nice to see that there are still good people like you advocating that those "frightening" deviants be shut up and locked up. God knows what might happen if people were allowed to hold the ideologies of their choice!
(Disclaimer: I am a libertarian, not a communist. Do not flame.)
If you don't have a deep understanding of what you want to simulate - you won't simulate it.
That's not really true. A GA-based approach requires you only to understand the behaviour expected of the subject, not its necessarily its internal workings (even though, as another poster pointed out, it won't help in enlightening us as to how the mind actually works). My memory fails me, but I remember reading last year about a FPGA, configured by a genetic algorithm for a specific purpose, which was __BIGNUMBER__ times faster than special-purpose chips, but which operated in ways that its original designers didn't understand at all. This FPGA was relatively simple - only 100x100 IIRC - and yet GA-based design made it do completely unexpected things. What knows what can happen with a really large FPGA... or with a big bunch of nano-engineered artificial neurons.
The name of that song is "Land of Confusion". Besides, you forgot to close an tag.
-- Genesis Zealot
why are we so arrogant to believe that in one generation we can solve what thousands of years of natural evolution could not?
Because natural evolution doesn't reason. Because natural evolution isn't self-aware. Because natural evolution isn't task-oriented. Because natural evolution works in the direction of "whatever is good enough" to survive, not towards the optimal design or the Right Thing.
My point is: as impressive as it may be that such an arbitrary process as evolution by natural selection has lead to the development of human intelligence, there's no reason to believe that this makes it somehow infallible or perfect or absolute - in other words, there's no good reason to attribute God-like qualities to evolution.
I'm sorry, but I don't think there's anything wrong with a species wanting to do whatever they want with their own genetic fate.
yes, and you've got to problems. 1) What exactly does a neuron do? and 2) how are they organized into a brain? Neither are easy questions.
No, but they are much more easy to figure out than the Big Question of "what exactly constitutes intelligence".
Yes, neural nets don't have to be explicitly designed at a low level. But that doesn't mean that you can just throw one together, throw data at it, and get it to work. First, you've got to design your network, then you've got to figure out how to train it.
We don't have to do even that - all it takes is rudimentary understanding of the way the neurons are organised. Once you know that, you can have the GA do the rest.
One thing we do know about the brain is it is not just a bundle of neurons. Those neurons have an organization that is genetically programmed.
Yes, of course. But we also know that this organisation can't be too complex - specifically, it must be possible to describe using a fraction (I don't know how large a fraction, though) of the storage space of human DNA. By the way, this also hints at the possibility that a fuller understanding of the genome may provide an additional insight into the composition and organisation of the brain.
You can't build an artificially intelligent computer unless you have a damn good idea of those things. You can't build something with desires, emotions, etc. unless you know, in detail, what desires and emotions are, at a far deeper level than we do now.
Your entire argument is based on the premise of top-down design - that the Right Way to build an AI is the classical engineer's approach of designing the thing as you would design any other machine or piece of software.
Fortunately, most people now recognise that this approach is doomed, for the exact reason that you point out: an "intelligence" of any sort is much more complex and less well-understood than anything we've ever had to design.
So, what's the alternative? Automated bottom-up design. Specifically, the idea is to first work out the building blocks - the equivalents of neurons - and then have a GA or somesuch start trying to put together a "brain" out of these neurons, which is fit for a specific purpose. Note that this alternative doesn't require one to understand in excrutiating detail (or at all) the high-level abstractions which we consider as "intelligence" - it only requires a good GA and a good understanding of the brain at the cellular and subcellular level.
Now this I don't consider far-fetched at all.
(Of course, it's always worth mentioning that we could go the other way - first using nanotech to completely redesign ourselves into super-intelligent cybergods, then analysing our own new brains and replicating them to create completely new, fully artificial intelligent beings.)
They are. But don't take it from me, mind you - take it from the (in)famous Mr Henry Baker, in this incredible letter (*) to the Communications of the ACM, which is guaranteed to put a smile in the face of everyone who's ever thought there must be a better way.
(*) Note that Netcom, which hosts Mr Baker's archive, is under a large load, and may take a few attempts to be accessed.
Uh, dude, I hate to disappoint you, but this isn't one of those Slashdot interviews where you post your question and hope it gets moderated up and answered. It's a link to an interview with the guy, on Linuxpower, which already took place. If you want to ask him something, go look for his email address and send him a message.
(Not a troll, not flamebait. Just pointing poor Andrew to the right direction.)
I hate to burst SuSE's bubble, but opening offices in Venezuela is not going to get you anywhere in the Latin American market. Why? Because the Latin American market pretty much means Brazil, period. The rest of the market is almost negligible when compared to Brazil. (I'm not gloating, I'm simply telling like it is.) Witness Conectiva, makers of the best-selling Portuguese distro. They are expanding into the rest of the Latin American market, with the release of a Spanish version of their distro. So if you want to get lucky in Latin America, you want to get your ass down to Rio, not Caracas.
It just costs way too much.
But it doesn't - that's the schtick. Even if only one corporation (such as IBM, who definitely seem very interested in it - and who are already working at the atomic level, which essentially makes it only a simple matter of implementation (famous last words)) keeps funding nanotech research at the current pace, they are bound to eventually turn out one prototype assembler (whether by following the natural morphology of ribosomes et al, or by coming up with a wholly new design). And all it takes is one assembler (and one seed) - that one assembler can replicate forever, and before you know it - bang, the nanotech revolution has begun. That's the whole point.
Other people have already commented on just about every other aspect of this story (some rather well, some not quite so), so I'll restrict myself to the technological aspect.
:)
Basically, I think Bruce is being naive. He's seriously and dangerously underestimating the impact that dirt-cheap molecular nanotechnology may have in the future society. Quite honestly, I just don't understand why - I mean, I understand the skepticism (it's very fashionable nowadays), but this is the kind of thing that just changes everything - everything - and it is coming, hopefully within 20 years. Just as people from the 16th century would be overwhelmed at the rate at which things happen in the 20th century, the nanotech revolution is likely to knock at the 20th century man's door before he even knew what happened. And then Bruce will kick himself for having been pessimistic about technology (which is definitely a rookie mistake, as Mr Clarke will tell you). And then I'll have my revenge. MUAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Well, that's all the ranting I have for now