Imagine a gnutilla program that makes a big database file(that is unencrypted). As it downloads packets it assembles them in this never-encrypted file. Then other people can search files in this database and download through the gnutilla program, completely bypassing the system in which the hardware looks to see if there are copywright bits to prevent transmission of the file.
Now expand this idea, and make a pseudo-file system using this concept. Fun, huh?
What will happen is:
1. Sheeple will say that one buggy OS is as bad as another, and NOT pay > $150 for an upgrade. The poor fools who do will go nuts and bug MS on how their OS wont install on their current system.
2.MS will never point it's finger at itself.
The only way an OS like this can be distributed in mass is pre-installed on pre-assembled computers sold by people like Gateway. Gateway won't do that that because they will get flooded by returns and tech support calls (and possibly lawsuits if they aren't properly warned) when their computers dont play mp3s.
I mainly listen to J-Pop and watch Anime, so let them not make anything. I can survive off of japanese stuff downloaded over the internet or ordered through the mail just fine.:>
What I do care about is full use of my computer!
I did that with some of my (expensive) anime tapes that were wearing out. I have stacks of vcds now, but at least they were 'saved.' They aren't even sold in DVD or vcd(the ones I did anyway) so it isn't like I am leeching somebody by not upgrading through them.
There would be significant returns if the public was not informed. There would have to be a significant warning to avoid suit as well(not fine print; that doesnt work in cases involving bulk groups of people- see the AOL suit).
"But thats just the thing. Theyre not gonna tell anyone. Joe Average Consumer isnt going to know about this kind of crap until it hits him solid in the wallet, _AFTER_ hes bought his new stuff."
Many 'normal people' ask their nerd friends about buying a new computer. Unless they sneak this in right before the next big wave of buyers(the timing of which is unpredictable) they are going to hear about it. People dont buy computers often like videotapes.
"But when media starts to be released such that it will *only* work on the devices with stringent copyright protection, that will be a "benefit." And no, your average John Q. Public won't care about the technological underground that knows how to bypass the protection. "
But he will care about buying a new computer. Old (or current) computers can do multimedia etc; only extreme computer/entertainment nuts would even think of buying a computer for the sole purpose of playing some funky protected format. Heck, most people nowdays buy the $400 'second rate' computers that are 'only' 400 - 650 MHz instead of the expensive stuff.
Being overly restrictive (divx) will fail. Also, current computers work fine; I dont know any 'normal' person who is willing to pay for a GHz comp when the one they have does everything they want and more. They say comp sales are down; they can go much lower if you start taking away features!
I am certain there would be people willing to harvest a clone to save their 'real' child, much like there are people who are willing to harvest unwilling victoms(get drunk with a cute girl, wake up in the morning missing a kidney).
Hopefully we well be able to grow just organs, which would solve both problems
Early computers, medicine and pretty much any other techonology was unreliable at best when it was first invented. In time, better techniques will be invented.
"The primary problem is that cloning violates the unique identity and inherent dignity of each person."
Well, since this is not the case your argument in that quote is largely BS. There is no such thing as an exact copy of a person. Twins are not totally identical, and neither are clones. That quote even pointed out that the clone may have totally different person interests than the origional(art instead of medicine).
As for the identity chrud, that happens to normal people anyway.
Yeah, a mechanical heart that triggers off a large percentage of your T-cells... While the standard biological responce sends tons of T-cells to this device(even ones that won't react to it) they aren't in other places where real infections can crop up.
OTOH if you have such major problems that you need a totally new heart, you may die of other things before this becomes a big problem.
I think that what the article is hinting at is that clones aren't really clones.. They're more like dirty photocopies... Sometimes the result is workable but, more often than not, the result isn't workable.
Part of the problem is probably that removing the origional genetic material from the egg and inserting new DNA (the clone dna) probably severely damages the egg's cytoskeleton. That would kind of explain why the damage seemed random; they dont always pierce the cell at the same spot, angle, depth etc. Even if the egg naturally has the ability to accept the new DNA and grow a perfect clone, the damage they are causing in the process they are using is getting in the way. The egg doesnt have time to repair it's cytoskeleton before it starts dividing.
Another problem would be that in mammal cells DNA modifies itself. It uses this self modification for timers as well as differentiation. Despite what they tell you in high school, not every cell in your body has the same DNA, although for the most part the changes are minor. Your DNA also depends on special protein counters- proteins that serve no function other than to be periodically modified for the cell to keep track of how old it is, how many generations down it is etc. I doubt the egg trick would reset all of these properly.
There may be other problems too; these are just the ones I am aware of.
Re:Computers can not be "intelligent" or "alive" (Score:1)
by gunner800 (gunner800@yahoo.spamisbad.com) on Sunday March 11, @07:38PM EDT (#195)
(User #142959 Info) http://www.asomethingiknownotwhat.com
I'll repeat for you a phrase which nearly caused me to flunk a philosophy class, but is pretty much the standard approach for most people:
"I choose to believe in free will because if I'm right, I get the credit, but if I'm wrong, it's not my fault."
I will have to remember that.
Back in a science class alot of people I asked believed that we will one day break the speed of light(we kind of have since then with the cesium gas stuff) but firmly believed that we will never haf AI as good as human intelligence. It seems like a paradox to me; they believe in science and yet they dont.
"What about the informtation contained within the brain? You'd have to come up with some basic set of information (instinct, so to speak); like a computer, brains don't do anything without some kind of intial starting point. how difficult would it be to give this created brain a set of instincts?"
The brain itself is not static;it's arrangement of physical neurons changes. Such a brain pattern (with a few things like a scan of calcium ion concentrations) would act like an emulator savesate. If you had know the physical locations and connections of all the neurons and the type of each connection(the hardest part) and the ion concentrations all at about the same time, you could theorhetically continue that brain sim exactly where the real brain left off- emotions, instincts(well, that depends on hormones somewhat, which is a seperate issue) and previous knowledge. If you connected certain virtual neurons to some input and output devices, you could have a conversation with the guy.
The problem is that there are alot of 'ifs' there. It would require total mastry of the physics of all the types of neurons(which we dont have yet) and super scanning equipment(way beyond what we currently have, but not so extreme as to be impossible). It would also assume that our minds exist only as physical brains.
BTW constantly chainging brain theory is still new (I dont think it has undergone much peer review yet- the only supporting experiments I know of are cursory). As such, this whole idea may be stupid. I dont think it is, but that is just me...:>
The "string of bits" can only exist if there is an outside interest in it. Because, by inherent necessity of computer mathemathics/logic, for the state of that "string of bits", its existence and nonexistence are identical if the computer loses the "interest" in it.
"Losing interest", for a computer, means deleting the last reference to the data object (think Java). Now, in computer logic, the object which represented the "artificial intelligent being", can be removed without modifying the meaning of the overall formula/expression.
The result is: An "artificial intelligent being" can only exist as long as there is an outside interest in it (like a Java reference to the object). As soon as this "interest" vanishes, existence and nonexistence become logically identical.
I see. So the string of bits is still there, but it isn't doing anything(changing, moving, thinking, experiencing time from it's viewpoint etc). I think the answer would be the same as if we put a human in cryo-sleep. If the person is there but can't move or think etc is he still alive? Both the bits and the person have the possability of being recovered, as well as the possability of being altered/destroyed in the meantime.
Another logical problem here is that an "artificial intelligence" can, as shown above, brought from existence into nonexistence without changing its state (from the outside, we dont change a single bit of the objects state).
Should we call something a person, if it can intentionally be killed without outside influence to it, at a specific time, and even without that "artificial being" being able to notice any difference?
Well, turning it off certainly would be an outside influence!:> OTOH how can you say that the same thing might not happen to us? Our reality was not always the way it is now, how do we know it won't suddenly smash down to one particle? How does any of this even relate to intelligence?
Not only that it cannot notice a difference, there effectively is no difference for the "being", as its own state was not changed at all.
I see. You want to see how turning it on and off without it's noticing relates. Well, the frozen man argument would apply, I think. And this would only happen in a closed-system environment. If this AI did get input from the 'real world' (ie it is an android) it would notice that things/people/etc suddenly 'jumped.'
I hope nobody turns our power off in the immediate future.:>
"But regarding the subatomic level, physicists are pretty much sure that on this level predictability and causality do not exist. All what the (well proven) theory allows to exist, are probability distributions for the observation of specific properties of subatomic particles (like location, speed, etc.). "
I am familiar with the uncertainty principle, but it actually just describes limitations of bouncing photons off of small objects to determing position/velocity.
But I didn't know that they do believe that causality breaks down on small levels(which would be a totally seperate consept from the uncertainty principle - Wolfier seems to have the two comfused.) Could you please point me at some more info on this? Or at least give me the name of this theory so I can look it up myself? My sorry physics 101/102 book doesn't have anything on this.
"how they got there is of no consequence; if strong AI appears tomorrow it will be impressive regarless if it evolved or someone sat down & coded it up."
I agree with this.
"You can't just program something to check and see if something is attacking it/trying to change it and then make it protect it self. You have to program the program so that it notices something attacking and defends or protects itself BECAUSE it is self-aware and not because its a principle programmed into it."
My point was that the above was not right because it would mean that humans are not sentient or something; we are pre-programmed to do things. We can even be programmed after we are born (hypnosis, social programming etc). He is trying to say we are somehow different (which is fine) but without saying how (which is not).
"We have excellent observational evidence that we are - namely we can feel ourselves think, and we can watch other people do things that clearly involve reasoning. What more do you want?"
Well, an octapus can do the same. I am not sure if that was posted on/x or not, but I will explain. There was an experiment in which some fish were put in jars with corks on them. These were then put in tanks with (isolated) octapi. They would cover the jars and probe them. Some would figure it out and some would not.
The neat part is what happened next. The scientists paired up the tanks of ones that did and the ones that didn't figure out how to get at the fish. Then they put a fish-in-a-bottle in the tank of the octapus that knew how to get at the fish. The octapus that didn't know got really colse to the edge of it's tank and watched the other octapus remove the cork and eat the fish. Then when the octapus that (a moment ago) didn't know how to get to the fish was given a fish in a jar, it was able to quickly remove the lid and chow down.
Reasoning, learning from others.... I guess you are as sentient as an octapus!;>
"What is the difference between an source of random seed and your afformentioned transistors? Just imagine I would construct a chip with a random gathering devic on board, will that be an internal resource? I could setup a hardware register, which will return a true random value every time you read it"
Yes, that is the kind of thing I am talking about. This would make it so that it isn't 'just' a pre-programmed pattern.
Here are some of the thoughts I have been having recently:
Isn't real matter(and real life that is made out of real matter) predictable, following a static set of physical rules? Is an atom different from a some bits representing an atom(assuming 100% accuracy in physics- not yet achieved)? If they are the same, then then wouldn't the random issue ultimately be mute?
If they are not the same, despite supposed 100% emulation of real physics, what is the difference? Is some unknown force (soul-power maybe?) acting upon the physical neurons in our brains? If so, why would or would not that same force affect bits on a computer?
As our imaging technology improves, we may eventually be able to make a 3d neuron-by-neuron map of someone's brain. If you pop this in some kind of physics simulator, will the 'brain' think and react as it should? Could we pop this program with a real brain pattern into a robot and have a conversation with it?
If such a thing were to fail, wouldn't it imply that you can't use 'soul-power' with a machine, if it exists at all(IOW biological cones work, but would an inorganic clone work)? If someone actually did this and it failed, it would also imply some bugs in the sim:>
Just the kind of thoughts that keep me up at night:>
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine a gnutilla program that makes a big database file(that is unencrypted). As it downloads packets it assembles them in this never-encrypted file. Then other people can search files in this database and download through the gnutilla program, completely bypassing the system in which the hardware looks to see if there are copywright bits to prevent transmission of the file.
Now expand this idea, and make a pseudo-file system using this concept. Fun, huh?
drugs and guns are everywhere anyway, so i guess we have nothing to worry about :P
What will happen is: 1. Sheeple will say that one buggy OS is as bad as another, and NOT pay > $150 for an upgrade. The poor fools who do will go nuts and bug MS on how their OS wont install on their current system. 2.MS will never point it's finger at itself. The only way an OS like this can be distributed in mass is pre-installed on pre-assembled computers sold by people like Gateway. Gateway won't do that that because they will get flooded by returns and tech support calls (and possibly lawsuits if they aren't properly warned) when their computers dont play mp3s.
I mainly listen to J-Pop and watch Anime, so let them not make anything. I can survive off of japanese stuff downloaded over the internet or ordered through the mail just fine. :>
What I do care about is full use of my computer!
I did that with some of my (expensive) anime tapes that were wearing out. I have stacks of vcds now, but at least they were 'saved.' They aren't even sold in DVD or vcd(the ones I did anyway) so it isn't like I am leeching somebody by not upgrading through them.
hardware makers dont make anything from content providers. We aren't talking about videogame consoles here.
There would be significant returns if the public was not informed. There would have to be a significant warning to avoid suit as well(not fine print; that doesnt work in cases involving bulk groups of people- see the AOL suit).
"But thats just the thing. Theyre not gonna tell anyone. Joe Average Consumer isnt going to know about this kind of crap until it hits him solid in the wallet, _AFTER_ hes bought his new stuff."
Many 'normal people' ask their nerd friends about buying a new computer. Unless they sneak this in right before the next big wave of buyers(the timing of which is unpredictable) they are going to hear about it. People dont buy computers often like videotapes.
"But when media starts to be released such that it will *only* work on the devices with stringent copyright protection, that will be a "benefit." And no, your average John Q. Public won't care about the technological underground that knows how to bypass the protection. "
But he will care about buying a new computer. Old (or current) computers can do multimedia etc; only extreme computer/entertainment nuts would even think of buying a computer for the sole purpose of playing some funky protected format. Heck, most people nowdays buy the $400 'second rate' computers that are 'only' 400 - 650 MHz instead of the expensive stuff.
Being overly restrictive (divx) will fail. Also, current computers work fine; I dont know any 'normal' person who is willing to pay for a GHz comp when the one they have does everything they want and more. They say comp sales are down; they can go much lower if you start taking away features!
I am certain there would be people willing to harvest a clone to save their 'real' child, much like there are people who are willing to harvest unwilling victoms(get drunk with a cute girl, wake up in the morning missing a kidney).
Hopefully we well be able to grow just organs, which would solve both problems
Early computers, medicine and pretty much any other techonology was unreliable at best when it was first invented. In time, better techniques will be invented.
"The primary problem is that cloning violates the unique identity and inherent dignity of each person."
Well, since this is not the case your argument in that quote is largely BS. There is no such thing as an exact copy of a person. Twins are not totally identical, and neither are clones. That quote even pointed out that the clone may have totally different person interests than the origional(art instead of medicine).
As for the identity chrud, that happens to normal people anyway.
Yeah, a mechanical heart that triggers off a large percentage of your T-cells... While the standard biological responce sends tons of T-cells to this device(even ones that won't react to it) they aren't in other places where real infections can crop up.
OTOH if you have such major problems that you need a totally new heart, you may die of other things before this becomes a big problem.
Part of the problem is probably that removing the origional genetic material from the egg and inserting new DNA (the clone dna) probably severely damages the egg's cytoskeleton. That would kind of explain why the damage seemed random; they dont always pierce the cell at the same spot, angle, depth etc. Even if the egg naturally has the ability to accept the new DNA and grow a perfect clone, the damage they are causing in the process they are using is getting in the way. The egg doesnt have time to repair it's cytoskeleton before it starts dividing.
Another problem would be that in mammal cells DNA modifies itself. It uses this self modification for timers as well as differentiation. Despite what they tell you in high school, not every cell in your body has the same DNA, although for the most part the changes are minor. Your DNA also depends on special protein counters- proteins that serve no function other than to be periodically modified for the cell to keep track of how old it is, how many generations down it is etc. I doubt the egg trick would reset all of these properly.
There may be other problems too; these are just the ones I am aware of.
This is very interesting. I will study this. :>
Re:Computers can not be "intelligent" or "alive" (Score:1)
by gunner800 (gunner800@yahoo.spamisbad.com) on Sunday March 11, @07:38PM EDT (#195)
(User #142959 Info) http://www.asomethingiknownotwhat.com
I'll repeat for you a phrase which nearly caused me to flunk a philosophy class, but is pretty much the standard approach for most people:
"I choose to believe in free will because if I'm right, I get the credit, but if I'm wrong, it's not my fault."
I will have to remember that.
Back in a science class alot of people I asked believed that we will one day break the speed of light(we kind of have since then with the cesium gas stuff) but firmly believed that we will never haf AI as good as human intelligence. It seems like a paradox to me; they believe in science and yet they dont.
We barely have the ability to simulate insect intelligence. Even worms are still impressive.
"What about the informtation contained within the brain? You'd have to come up with some basic set of information (instinct, so to speak); like a computer, brains don't do anything without some kind of intial starting point. how difficult would it be to give this created brain a set of instincts?"
:>
The brain itself is not static;it's arrangement of physical neurons changes. Such a brain pattern (with a few things like a scan of calcium ion concentrations) would act like an emulator savesate. If you had know the physical locations and connections of all the neurons and the type of each connection(the hardest part) and the ion concentrations all at about the same time, you could theorhetically continue that brain sim exactly where the real brain left off- emotions, instincts(well, that depends on hormones somewhat, which is a seperate issue) and previous knowledge. If you connected certain virtual neurons to some input and output devices, you could have a conversation with the guy.
The problem is that there are alot of 'ifs' there. It would require total mastry of the physics of all the types of neurons(which we dont have yet) and super scanning equipment(way beyond what we currently have, but not so extreme as to be impossible). It would also assume that our minds exist only as physical brains.
BTW constantly chainging brain theory is still new (I dont think it has undergone much peer review yet- the only supporting experiments I know of are cursory). As such, this whole idea may be stupid. I dont think it is, but that is just me...
"Losing interest", for a computer, means deleting the last reference to the data object (think Java). Now, in computer logic, the object which represented the "artificial intelligent being", can be removed without modifying the meaning of the overall formula/expression.
The result is: An "artificial intelligent being" can only exist as long as there is an outside interest in it (like a Java reference to the object). As soon as this "interest" vanishes, existence and nonexistence become logically identical.
I see. So the string of bits is still there, but it isn't doing anything(changing, moving, thinking, experiencing time from it's viewpoint etc). I think the answer would be the same as if we put a human in cryo-sleep. If the person is there but can't move or think etc is he still alive? Both the bits and the person have the possability of being recovered, as well as the possability of being altered/destroyed in the meantime.
Another logical problem here is that an "artificial intelligence" can, as shown above, brought from existence into nonexistence without changing its state (from the outside, we dont change a single bit of the objects state). Should we call something a person, if it can intentionally be killed without outside influence to it, at a specific time, and even without that "artificial being" being able to notice any difference?
Well, turning it off certainly would be an outside influence! :> OTOH how can you say that the same thing might not happen to us? Our reality was not always the way it is now, how do we know it won't suddenly smash down to one particle? How does any of this even relate to intelligence?
Not only that it cannot notice a difference, there effectively is no difference for the "being", as its own state was not changed at all.
I see. You want to see how turning it on and off without it's noticing relates. Well, the frozen man argument would apply, I think. And this would only happen in a closed-system environment. If this AI did get input from the 'real world' (ie it is an android) it would notice that things/people/etc suddenly 'jumped.' I hope nobody turns our power off in the immediate future. :>
"But regarding the subatomic level, physicists are pretty much sure that on this level predictability and causality do not exist. All what the (well proven) theory allows to exist, are probability distributions for the observation of specific properties of subatomic particles (like location, speed, etc.). "
I am familiar with the uncertainty principle, but it actually just describes limitations of bouncing photons off of small objects to determing position/velocity.
But I didn't know that they do believe that causality breaks down on small levels(which would be a totally seperate consept from the uncertainty principle - Wolfier seems to have the two comfused.) Could you please point me at some more info on this? Or at least give me the name of this theory so I can look it up myself? My sorry physics 101/102 book doesn't have anything on this.
"how they got there is of no consequence; if strong AI appears tomorrow it will be impressive regarless if it evolved or someone sat down & coded it up."
I agree with this.
"You can't just program something to check and see if something is attacking it/trying to change it and then make it protect it self. You have to program the program so that it notices something attacking and defends or protects itself BECAUSE it is self-aware and not because its a principle programmed into it."
My point was that the above was not right because it would mean that humans are not sentient or something; we are pre-programmed to do things. We can even be programmed after we are born (hypnosis, social programming etc). He is trying to say we are somehow different (which is fine) but without saying how (which is not).
"We have excellent observational evidence that we are - namely we can feel ourselves think, and we can watch other people do things that clearly involve reasoning. What more do you want?"
/x or not, but I will explain. There was an experiment in which some fish were put in jars with corks on them. These were then put in tanks with (isolated) octapi. They would cover the jars and probe them. Some would figure it out and some would not.
;>
Well, an octapus can do the same. I am not sure if that was posted on
The neat part is what happened next. The scientists paired up the tanks of ones that did and the ones that didn't figure out how to get at the fish. Then they put a fish-in-a-bottle in the tank of the octapus that knew how to get at the fish. The octapus that didn't know got really colse to the edge of it's tank and watched the other octapus remove the cork and eat the fish. Then when the octapus that (a moment ago) didn't know how to get to the fish was given a fish in a jar, it was able to quickly remove the lid and chow down.
Reasoning, learning from others.... I guess you are as sentient as an octapus!
"What is the difference between an source of random seed and your afformentioned transistors? Just imagine I would construct a chip with a random gathering devic on board, will that be an internal resource? I could setup a hardware register, which will return a true random value every time you read it"
:>
:>
Yes, that is the kind of thing I am talking about. This would make it so that it isn't 'just' a pre-programmed pattern.
Here are some of the thoughts I have been having recently:
Isn't real matter(and real life that is made out of real matter) predictable, following a static set of physical rules? Is an atom different from a some bits representing an atom(assuming 100% accuracy in physics- not yet achieved)? If they are the same, then then wouldn't the random issue ultimately be mute?
If they are not the same, despite supposed 100% emulation of real physics, what is the difference? Is some unknown force (soul-power maybe?) acting upon the physical neurons in our brains? If so, why would or would not that same force affect bits on a computer?
As our imaging technology improves, we may eventually be able to make a 3d neuron-by-neuron map of someone's brain. If you pop this in some kind of physics simulator, will the 'brain' think and react as it should? Could we pop this program with a real brain pattern into a robot and have a conversation with it?
If such a thing were to fail, wouldn't it imply that you can't use 'soul-power' with a machine, if it exists at all(IOW biological cones work, but would an inorganic clone work)? If someone actually did this and it failed, it would also imply some bugs in the sim
Just the kind of thoughts that keep me up at night
Indeed, the principle of self-preservation is provably programmed into you. 'Flight or fight responce' anybody?
How can you prove that you are truely sentient? You cant.