people once declared the death of books when TV came along, but there are more books sold now than at any other point in history. people once declared that pocket calculators were dead when personal computers became available. yet computers have not displaced the pocket calculator. there are more calculators in use now than when they were invented. i am pretty well living a paperless existence. i use email for business, and for rapid correspondence with friends and family. yet, when i want to send someone a letter that is important to me, i will type it out on my computer, and then transcribe it onto paper BY HAND. why? simply because it is more special when you know someone has taken the trouble to write you something by hand. for work, this personal touch is not called for. but for my friends, its a way of saying that i care enough to give them an original piece of handwritten correspondence. its says that i took time and sweated over what i wrote them without the option of a backspace key. a handwritten is simply more trouble to produce. and sometimes this very trouble is worth the aggravation, because the medium itself tells something about the message. the more prevalant rapid-efficient electronic communication becomes, the more special it will be to recieve a handwritten message from someone personally. that is why old mail will never die.
the main trouble with making these sort of "ideal" communities is that they try to impose the ideals from the outside->in. this never works. -- "In the social movement of the present day there is a great deal of talk about social organization but very little about social and unsocial human beings. Little regard is paid to that 'social question' which arises when one considers that the arrangements of society take their social or antisocial stamp from the people who work in them... "The experiments now being made to solve the social question afford such unsatisfactory results because many people have not yet become able to see what the true gist of the problem is. They see it arise in economic regions, and look to economic institutions to provide the answer. They think they will find the solution in economic transformations. They fail to recognize that these transformations can only come about through forces released from within human nature itself.. 'The well-being of a community of people working together will be the greater, the less the individual claims for himself the proceeds of his work, i.e. the more of these proceeds he makes over to his fellow-workers, the more his own needs are satisfied, not out of his own work but out of the work done by others'. Every arrangement in a community that is contrary to this law will inevitably engender somewhere after a while distress and want. It is a fundamental law, which holds good for all social life with the same absoluteness and necessity as any law of nature within a particular field of natural causation. It must not be supposed, however, that it is suff~cient to acknowledge this law as one for general moral conduct, or to try to interpret it into the sentiment that everyone should work in the service of his fellow men. No, this law only lives in reality as it should when a community of people succeeds in creating arrangements such that no one can ever claim the fruits of his own labour for himself, but that these go wholely to the benefit of the community. And he must himself be supported in return by the labours of his fellow men. The important point is, therefore, that working for one's fellow men and obtaining so much income must be kept apart, as two separate things. Self-styled 'practical people' will of course have nothing but a smile for such 'outrageous idealism'. And yet this law is more practical than any that was ever devised or enacted by the 'practicians'. Anyone who really examines practical life will find that every community that exists or has ever existed anywhere has two sorts of arrangements, of which the one is in accordance with this law and the other contrary to it. It is bound to be so everywhere, whether men will it or not. Every community would indeed fall to pieces at once, if the work of the individual did not pass over into the totality. But human egoism has from of old run counter to this law, and sought to extract as much as possible for the individual out of his own work. And what has come about from of old in this way due to egoism has alone brought want, poverty and distress in its wake. This simply means that the part of human arrangements brought about by 'practicians' who calculated on the basis of either their own egotism or that of others must always prove impractical. Now naturally it is not simply a matter of recognizing a law of this kind, but the real practical part begins with the question: How is one to translate this law into actual fact? Obviously this law says nothing less than this: man's welfare is the greater, in proportion as egoism is less. So for its translation into reality one must have people who can find their way out of egoism. In practice, however, this is quite impossiblc if the individual's share of weal and woe is measured according to his labour. He who labours for himself *must* gradually fall a victim to egoism. Only one who labours solely for the rest can gradually grow to be a worker without egoism. But there is one thing needed to begin with. If any man works for another, he must find in this other man the reason for his work; and if anyone is to work for the community, he must perceive and feel the value, the nature and importance, of this community. He can only do this when the community is something quite differcnt from a more or less indefinite summation of individual men. It must be informed by an actual spirit, in which each single one has his part. It must be such that each one says: 'It is as it should be, and I *will* that it be so'. The community must have a spiritual mission, and each individual must have the will to contribute towards the fulfilling of this mission. All the vague abstract ideals of which people usually talk cannot present such a mission. If there be nothing but these, then one individual here or one group there will be working without any clear overview of what use there is in their work, except it being to the advantage of their families, or of those particular interests to which they happen to be attached. In every single member, down to the most solitary, this spirit of the community must be alive... The recognition of these principles means, it is true, the loss of many an illusion for various people whose ambition it is to be popular benefactors. It makes working for the welfare of society a really difficult matter-one of which the results, too, may in certain circumstances comprise only quite tiny part-results. Most of what is given out today by whole parties as panaceas for social life loses its value, and is seen to be a mere bubble and hollow phrase, lacking in due knowledge of human life. No parliament, no democracy, no popular agitation can have any meaning for a person who looks at all deeper, if they violate the law stated above; whereas everything of this kind may work for good if it works on the lines of this law. It is a mischievous delusion to believe that particular persons sent up to some parliament as delegates from the people can do anything for the good of mankind, unless their activity is in conformity with the fundamental social law. Where 'supply and demand' are the determining factors, there the egoistic type of value is the only one that can come into reckon ing. The 'market' relationship must be superseded by associations regulating the exchange and production of goods by an intelligent observation of human needs. Such associations can replace mere supply and demand by contracts and negotiations between groups of producers and consumers, and between different groups of producers... Work done in confidence of the return achievements of others constitutes the giving of *credit* in social life. As there was once a transition from barter to the money system, so there has recently been a progressive transformation to a basis of credit. Life makes it necessary today for one man to work with means entrusted to him by another, or by a community, having confidence in his power to achieve a result. But under the capitalistic method the credit system involves a complete loss of the real and satisfying human relationship of a man to the conditions of his life and work. Credit is given when there is prospect of an increase of capital that seems to justify it; and work is always done subject to the view that the confidence or credit received will have to appear justified in the capitalistic sense. And what is the result? Human beings are subjected to the power of dealings in capital which take place in a sphere of finance remote from life. And the moment they become fully conscious of this fact, they feel it to be unworthy of their humanity... A healthy system of giving credit presupposes a social structure which enables economic values to be estimated by their relation to the satisfaction of men's bodily and spiritual needs. Men's economic dealings will take their form from this. Production will be considered from the point of view of needs, no longer by an abstract scale of capital and wages. Economic life in a threefold society is built up by the cooperation of *associations* arising out of the needs of producers and the interests of consumers. In their mutual dealings, impulses from the spiritual sphere and sphere of rights will play a decisive part. These associations will not be bound to a purely capitalistic standpoint, for one association will be in direct mutual dealings with another, and thus the one-sided interests of one branch of production will be regulated and balanced by those of the other. The responsibility for the giving and taking of credit will thus devolve to the associations. This will not impair the scope and activity of individuals with special faculties; on the contrary, only this method will give individual faculties full scope: the individual is responsible to his association for achieving the best possible results. The association is responsible to other associations for using these individual achievements to good purpose. The individual's desire for gain will no longer be imposing production on the life of the community; production will be regulated by the needs of the community... All kinds of dealings are possible between the new associations and old forms of business--there is no question of the old having to be destroyed and replaced by the new. The new simply takes its place and will have to justify itself and prove its inherent power, while the old will dwindle away... The essential thing is that the threefold idea will stimulate a real social intelligence in the men and women of the community. The individual will in a very definite sense be contributing to the achievements of the whole community... The individual faculties of men, working in harmony with the human relationships founded in the sphere of rights, and with the production, circulation and consumption that are regulated by the economic associations, will result in the greatest possible efficiency. Increase of capital, and a proper adjustment of work and return for work, will appear as a final consequence... References: http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Steiner-Soc ial.html
simplicity and elegance in design comes from distinguishing between the essential and the inessential. consolidate and simplify. the less keys you need to do everything the better. get rid of all that old legacy keys crap. the scroll-lock, the num-lock have no place on a modern keyboard, they just add clutter. this reminds me of people who want to cling to the old I/O standards. you used to have: i) a connector for a keyboard, ii) a connector for a mouse, iii) a connector for a printer, iv) a connector for a modem, v) a connector for a scanner/ZIP drive. that's FIVE connectors, and all of them different, and all of them incompatible. now with USB you can finally get rid of all those damn ports and just have ONE port. simplified, and more elegant design--better. who in their right mind still wants all those crappy old ports when you can replace them all with one simplified universal connector?!?! "everything should be made as simple as possible; but no simpler."
as ussual, alias is behind side effects. side effects was the first high end 3D product (used for stuff like: titanic, apollo 13, vocano, independence day, etc.) to be ported to linux. and they announced their houdini to linux port back in march. they're showing a linux version of houdini 4.0 at siggraph this week. houdini is about a year ahead of maya in power. it's procedural from the ground up in both geometry (sops), channels (chops), and lots of low-level unix scripting support. check out: http://www.sidefx.com
it is unhealthy for kids under seven to be using computers. it is even worse for them than watching television. they need to learn about interacting with living things like plants, people, animals, before immersing themselves in the world of machine logic. if your opinion is otherwise, you condemn a lot of kids to damaged and limited human functionality in later years. for some scientific research on the subject, see: Technical Report RT-MAC-9508, Dept. of Computer Science, Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, University of São Paulo, July 1995. http://www.ime.usp.br/~vwsetzer/comp-in-educ.html Abstract -- This paper presents some considerations concerning the use of computers in education. We justify this use through the need to teach what they are and how they may be employed. An important consideration is the timing for this teaching: we place it at the high school level. We consider earlier uses of computers at home or school as damaging to children and teenagers.
| Microsoft's Windows 2000 hacker challenge was taken offline | by a router failure (caused by an "act of God"), it was struck | by lightening... heh heh, so even god thought it would be fun to hack MSIIs.;-^
i never have troubles crossing borders any more. my passport reads "borg collective". if people don't like us crossing their border, that's okay, we just assimilate 'em.;-)
| Give each reader and each paper a credibitlty score. The | credibility of the reader is based on the average credilibity | of each paper they have submitted. Each reader can give a | credibility score to each paper they read. The score for the | paper will be the submitted scores, weighted by the | credibility of each reviewer.
what you're describing is a popularity contest. truth is not established by concensus.
---my apologies for the length of this post, but i hope its length ---will be compensated for by a few interesting observations. ---i sent this reply to: editorial@theonion.com
http://www.theonion.com/onion3522/robots_are_the _future.html | Let us offer tenderness and show the robots all the beauty they | possess inside. We must write a subroutine that gives them a sense | of pride, programming their supercooled silicon CPUs with | understanding, compassion and patience, to make it easier and | enable them to hold their sensory-input clusters high as they | claim their destiny as overlords of the solar system...
i would like to make a response to your article, "I Believe The Robots Are Our Future" by Helen Virginia Leidermeyer.
firstly, i must appluad your desire to imbue the future with a caring and feeling that is all too much absent in much of life today. this is commendable, and it shows a goodness in you. i hope you will not take this letter the wrong way, because i have a couple comments that may sound somewhat harsh, but please consider this in view of what is actual, rather than a knee-jerk emotional reaction.
i believe it is somewhat of a fantastical vision to think of creating robots with feelings and compassion--it is based on a serious misunderstanding of the nature of machine logic.
first, to assume that sentience can arise from machines is a big leap, but then to think that a sentience based purely upon LOGIC will have a similar conscience with FEELING and compassion is improbable. if it is possible for machine sentience to even exist, logic knows nothing of compassion or FEELING, these are human attributes that are not based on logic. to think that these traits are communicable to a logic-based life is absurd. logic is cold and calculating, it knows nothing of feeling.
this makes the story amusing to read perhaps, but nothing more than sentimental daydreaming drivel. the machines would skewer you for it.
| If we cannot instill their emergent AI meta-consciousness with a | sense of deep, abiding confidence and self-esteem, we will be | letting down not only the robots, but ourselves.
this overlooks the fact of the nature of "self-esteem". it is not probable that you can imbue a logical sentience with a trait such as "self-esteem", or even that it requires it. you are thinking too much like a human. to "let them down" does not compute if it is not actually something that is possible.
to this, one might respond, "so why don't we find a way to TEACH them to have feelings. this line of thought seems to make much sense until you go a little deeper into the issue. in order to go deeper, we have to understand the nature of EMPATHY, and the reason empathy exists for life at all in the first place.
this raises big questions: what is life? what is sentience? what is feeling? until these are adequately addressed, this sort of article can only deal with things at a very superficial level. at the risk of being trite, i will make a few suggestions.
consider the following:
1 - if it is true that we can build robot machines with "thinking" capacity, then you will understand that these machines are built according to certain principles of electronics (using binary "and", "or", "nor", and "nand" circiuts -- you can take any first year electronics course to understand that the entire basis for computer operations is based on an assembly of of these logic circiuts.
2 - once a complex aglamoration of logic circiuts is assembled, you end up with a CPU (or clusters of cpus), RAM, an address bus, etc. then you programme this assembly of logical operations using a logic-based language. computer programming lanugages are simply more flexible forms for rewiring these logic circiuts. they are still entirely based in logic. it is imperitive to understand that anything that can be programmed in software can be executed in a hardware format by wiring the right logic circiuts together. this is why it is possible for video card manufacturers to provide "hardware acceleration" for previously software based systems.
3 - now for a point of utmost significance: the basis for our thinking--i.e. our brain organism is not formed along the lines of digital logic circiuts as are computers. the basic process involves an organism that includes: growth and organic cell reproduction (which is most significantly different than an entirely physical medium of circiuts alone. if you follow this through, you must understand that the nature of process of a logic-based sentience (if that is even possible) would be inherently different in character than one based upon the conscious-organic membering of the thinking organism. IT IS UPON THIS VERY "LIVING GROWTH" CHARACTERISTIC OF THE HUMAN MIND WHICH IS THE BASIS FOR **FEELINGS** it is a gross leap of faith to believe that it is possible that a logic-based sentience could develop feeling qualities in the absence of a FEELING ORGANISM.
4 - THE NATURE OF MEMORY - the basis for human ego is based on the fact that we have memory. the nature of human memory is fundamentally different than computer storage of "memory". if you study neuro-psychology, you will understand that scientists have had utmost difficulty in localising memory in the human brain. that is because human memory is not like RAM at all. rather, each time you recall something, you are not doing a lookup from a physical-electronic memory address, the impression is brought up as an entirely new creation within your consciousness. you must consider this very fundamental difference between machine "memory" and human memory which is an aspect of self-consciousness (i.e. "self awareness"; "i am").
| Though our comparatively tiny mammalian brains--limited as they are | by organic human failings and a constant need for daily nutritional | intake instead of reliance on more efficient non-depletable solar | and geothermal energy sources--will no doubt seem pathetically | ineffectual compared to the interlinked, continually upgrading | cyberminds that will follow in our footsteps, our humble origins | will provide the seed for their genesis. Humanity, weak as we may | be, must give the best of ourselves to the synthetic hiveminds of | the future cyber-era, for we will be their first and most important | role models.
with all due respect, this presumes that a logic-based intelligence is in some way "superiour" to human flesh-and-blood intelligence. that is quite an assumption, and a self-depreciating one at that. you undervalue human life if you already regard machine life to be superiour to human life before it is actualy, or even known to be possible. you are devaluing human life based upon a speculation.
additionally, there whether you have: i) food input, or ii) solar cell energy input -> you still require an input to sustain the activity. to say that "food" input is somehow inferior to a solar-cell or electrical input is nothing short of misguided. it is a more advanced technology that can DIGEST its surroundings.
4 - LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS: MINERAL; PLANT; ANIMAL; MAN. consider this: what is the basis of life? physical science analyses only the physical phenomenon of nature, and therefrom proposes the theory that CONSCIOUSNESS arises as an attribute of a complex interaction of dynamic physical processes. in short, matter is primary, and consciousness an attribute of interactions within matter. but the material view has difficulty explaining the role and fundamental nature of consciousness.
"The naive consciousness...treats thinking as something which has nothing to do with the things, but stands altogether apart from them, and turns its consideration to the world. The picture which the thinker makes of the phenomena of the world is regarded not as something belonging to the things, but as existing only in the human head. The world is complete in itself without this picture. It is quite finished in all its substances and forces, and of this ready-made world man makes a picture. Whoever thinks thus need only be asked one question. What right have you to declare the world to be complete without thinking?" (Rudolf Steiner, *The Philosophy of Freedom*)
if you examine, you will find that all AI (artififical intelligence ) arguments are based on this assumption. however, this is far from ever having been demonstrated. you cannot go forward with any notion of artificial intelligence until you come to a satisfactory comprehension of the nature of consciousness. there is another way of looking at the matter however that many physical-scientific thinkers will not admit to, and it is this: that if you consider conscious-sentience to be primary, and matter to be a manifestation of an active sentience working within the realm of matter, then many of the inexplicable facts of nature are resolved rather neatly. but in order to understand how this can be, we must delineate of what the levels between matter and consciousness are comprised.
MINERAL -- PLANT -- ANIMAL -- EGO
- looking at a rock and a plant, ask yourself what is the fundamental difference between them? a rock is inanimate, it does not GROW, whereas a plant GROWS. it takes mineral up into itself, digests the rock and soil and GROWS into a new form.
- from this we can understand that a plant has something that a rock does not have; and that something about the plant which causes it to grow is can be called its "growth attribute".
- so the difference between a plant and a rock is that the plant has both a physical mineral structure which can be touched and measured, and it also has another attibute which causes it to grow, and the rock has a physical structure only without a growth attribute.
- when this growth attribute is removed from the plant, it is said to "die" - it becomes a dead shriveled up piece of vegetation. it then has only a mineral attribute, and no longer contains the growth attribute. it is then nothing more than re-formed mineral substance; life has left it.
- now, looking at a plant and an animal, we can ask the question: what is the difference between a plant and an animal? there is something about the animal which causes it to be able to be moved by it's passions, it's desires, it's instincts. it's limbs and organs are formed according to this force, and allow this force to express itself in action. an animal has passions and desires, a plant does not. when the passion body is removed from the growth and physical bodies, an animal is said to be "asleep". when the passion AND growth bodies are removed from the physical body, the animal is said to be "dead".
- now compare: the plant stays in place, but unlike the stone, it grows from the soil, and moves the soil and water along itself in such a way that it grows. in addition to this, the animal has something about it which causes it to move it's place, and follow it's instincts and passions. so are it's organs formed to serve these instincts and passions. when it is hungry, it can move itself to obtain food. the plant must accept it's fate. if it is stepped on, there is nothing about it that can get itself to move of it's own volition. the animal, however, when in danger, can move itself so that it gets out of danger. this something that causes the animal to move about from place to place and determine it's course (which the plant does not have) is what is called it's passion body; it contains the passions, instincts, and character of an animal.
- IN NATURE, the habits, instincts, desires, and passions are primary. the growth organism conforms in accordance to the pre-existing HABITS of passion. then from the modified growth organism, a new PHYSICAL structure results: structures conformed to the cyclic repitition of movements. this creates a structure which inherently conforms to the circumstances in which it performs its growth. just as a tree may grow right around a metal bar lodged within it.
| It is only through our guidance with a firm yet gentle hand that they | will achieve full sentience and eventually adapt for themselves the | capacity for autonomous self-replication. Only then, nurtured by our | love and caring, will they be prepared for the inevitable day that | they must leave the nest of human supervision and servitude and begin | independently mass-manufacturing themselves by the hundreds of | thousands.
there is an important and fundamental distinction here. humans and all living things can reproduce themselves through GROWTH, and through the growth organism can replicate from within themselves, OUT OF THEIR OWN NATURE; whereas machines are made not from the inside out, but rather from the OUTSIDE -> IN. they must be assembled and manufactured using external processes. the fundamental difference between a living and a dead thing is that: LIVING THINGS ARE ANIMATED FROM THE INSIDE OF THEIR NATURE OUT; AND DEAD THINGS ARE MADE FROM THE OUTSIDE TO BE ANIMATED.
- THE MOVEMENT EXISTS, THE ORGAN FORMS AROUND IT if the motions and flows of blood in the human organism, or the air moving through the lungs could be present without the organs yet formed to hold the blood - the blood flowing with no organs yet existant to contain the flowing. No viens, no arteries, no heart pump; only the movement of the blood in its circulatory patterns. If you could do this, you would find that slowly, by a sort of building-up and depositing of bits along the course of the flowing, viens, heart and arteries would begin to appear. In fact, this is just what happens in the development of the embryo. The movement exists; the organ forms around it. This is the organic process of growth. This is evident also in the growth of cities, plants, networks, etc. The legacy of the growth determines the history, or unique character of a particular instance of a certain set of movement configurations or Habits. There is a fundamental difference in approach if you try and build the FORM first to dictate the movements, or if you let the movements determine the shape of the FORM. in every observed natural growing formation, the form is determined from the inside->out, rather than the physical-scientific method of determining form from the outside->in. even if you consider the advances of nano-technology, you are still essentially constructing things from material matter on up to a materially-based consciousness. this method is directly derived from the notion (theory) that consciousness is an attribute of matter. it is based upon a flawed understanding of nature, life and sentience.
emotion and FEELING are closely allied to sense-impression, but there is a point where sense impression is transformed into FEELING, and that transformation is not possible without a corresponding FEELING ORGAN. it may be possible to give an illusion of feeling by means of behaviour-logic programming, but you cannot say that such behaviour will be similar in nature to human or animal feeling.
things can only FEEL and LOVE, because they are living. without an organ of FEELING (growth organism), the machine is unrelated to the human world, and the natural world of anything that is alive and GROWS. without an integral GROWTH organism, you will never be able to teach machines how to CARE, or LOVE as you so optimistically posit in your article. i write this not to discourage you, but perhaps so that you will understand the nature of what you are dealing. logic cannot be the basis for love, only LIFE can be the basis for love.
this lady's fantastical vision of creating robots with feelings and compassion are based on a serious misunderstanding of the nature of machine logic.
first, to assume that sentience can arrise from machines is a big leap, but then to think that a sentience based purely upon LOGIC will have a similar conscience with FEELING and compassion is improbable. if it is possible for machine sentience to even exist, logic knows nothing of compassion or FEELING, these are human attributes that are not based on logic. to think that these traits are communicable to a logic-based life is absurd. logic is cold and calculating, it knows nothing of feeling.
this makes the story amusing to read perhaps, but nothing more than sentimental daydreaming drivel. the machines would skewer her for it.
i think this is a move that is simply giving a recognition to the people who put in the work - kind of a "thank you" -- but it still doesn't pay compared to a regurlar technical writers' salary. $20,000 is about half a years salary for a regular technical writer worth their salt.
that being said however, i think its a good idea - pay up front for development of FREE software, and then make it open.
a really excellent book on this same subject is called "Quantum Questions : Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists" by ken wilber.
it is really quite interesting to hear what einstein and heisenberg themselves have to say about mysticism.
this is a great text, because wilber selects telling comments, in their own words, from some of the key big names of modern physics. well edited and insightfully commented, wilber presents a strong case that these physicists were indeed not philosophical materialists, and some were outright mystical. (Thomas Brophy, PhD--physics).
When I prepared the survey at the beginning of the year, Linux had only just started making its presence felt. And yet, when I asked this audience of IT Managers whether they were considering it as a potential alternative to Windows NT, 20% said "Yes", with another 27% unsure of what they might be using as an Enterprise OS beyond the millennium.
Is the writing on the wall and if so, what's changed? Well for a start, just over a year ago, I would have said that 80% of Microsoft Windows NT Forum members would jump to Windows 2000 within twelve months of its release. Today, given a number of factors, including delays, certitude, among the group that were questioned, has slipped to 30%. I'm not sure that very many IT Managers really believe that Linux will really take the place of Windows NT. However, the evidence from this relatively small but influential group of customers, is that Windows 2000 is no longer a foregone conclusion and that options are being kept very much open.
this is a good thing. it is the next itteration towards *associations* which will mediate an intelligent distribution of the needs of producers, and the interests of consumers.
--| open source associations |-----
Where 'supply and demand' are the determining factors, there the egoistic type of value is the only one that can come into reckoning. The 'market' relationship must be superseded by associations regulating the exchange and production of goods by an intelligent observation of human needs. Such associations can replace mere supply and demand by contracts and negotiations between groups of producers and consumers, and between different groups of producers...
Work done in confidence of the return achievements of others constitutes the giving of *credit* in social life. As there was once a transition from barter to the money system, so there has recently been a progressive transformation to a basis of credit. Life makes it necessary today for one man to work with means entrusted to him by another, or by a community, having confidence in his power to achieve a result...
A healthy system of giving credit presupposes a social structure which enables economic values to be estimated by their relation to the satisfaction of men's bodily and spiritual needs. Men's economic dealings will take their form from this. Production will be considered from the point of view of needs, no longer by an abstract scale of capital and wages.
Economic life in a threefold society is built up by the cooperation of *associations* arising out of the needs of producers and the interests of consumers. In their mutual dealings, impulses from the spiritual sphere and sphere of rights will play a decisive part. These associations will not be bound to a purely capitalistic standpoint, for one association will be in direct mutual dealings with another, and thus the one-sided interests of one branch of production will be regulated and balanced by those of the other. The responsibility for the giving and taking of credit will thus devolve to the associations. This will not impair the scope and activity of individuals with special faculties; on the contrary, only this method will give individual faculties full scope: the individual is responsible to his association for achieving the best possible results. The association is responsible to other associations for using these individual achievements to good purpose. The individual's desire for gain will no longer be imposing production on the life of the community; production will be regulated by the needs of the community...
All kinds of dealings are possible between the new associations and old forms of business--there is no question of the old having to be destroyed and replaced by the new. The new simply takes its place and will have to justify itself and prove its inherent power, while the old will dwindle away... The essential thing is that the threefold idea will stimulate a real social intelligence in the men and women of the community. The individual will in a very definite sense be contributing to the achievements of the whole community... The individual faculties of men, working in harmony with the human relationships founded in the sphere of rights, and with the production, circulation and consumption that are regulated by the economic associations, will result in the greatest possible efficiency. Increase of capital, and a proper adjustment of work and return for work, will appear as a final consequence...
Exerpted from: Rudolf Steiner, *Capital & Credit* http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Steiner-S ocial.html
it seems to me that porting IE doesn't make sense for gaining linux user marketshare (what linux user would use IE instead of Netscape???). but it does make sense in light of the fact that the DOJ trail isn't over, and if they seriously want to show that they're not a monopoly, then what other platform are they writing any applications software for? hmmm... a linux version of IE proves that we actually have competetion. the engineering "team" to deploy this is 1 guy -> recompile *nix version for linux; and 9 guys -> FUD FUD FUD.
Where 'supply and demand' are the determining factors, there the egoistic type of value is the only one that can come into reckon ing. The 'market' relationship must be superseded by associations regulating the exchange and production of goods by an intelligent observation of human needs. Such associations can replace mere supply and demand by contracts and negotiations between groups of producers and consumers, and between different groups of producers...
Work done in confidence of the return achievements of others constitutes the giving of *credit* in social life. As there was once a transition from barter to the money system, so there has recently been a progressive transformation to a basis of credit. Life makes it necessary today for one man to work with means entrusted to him by another, or by a community, having confidence in his power to achieve a result. But under the capitalistic method the credit system involves a complete loss of the real and satisfying human relationship of a man to the conditions of his life and work. Credit is given when there is prospect of an increase of capital that seems to justify it; and work is always done subject to the view that the confidence or credit received will have to appear justified in the capitalistic sense. And what is the result? Human beings are subjected to the power of dealings in capital which take place in a sphere of finance remote from life. And the moment they become fully conscious of this fact, they feel it to be unworthy of their humanity...
A healthy system of giving credit presupposes a social structure which enables economic values to be estimated by their relation to the satisfaction of men's bodily and spiritual needs. Men's economic dealings will take their form from this. Production will be considered from the point of view of needs, no longer by an abstract scale of capital and wages.
Economic life in a threefold society is built up by the cooperation of *associations* arising out of the needs of producers and the interests of consumers. In their mutual dealings, impulses from the spiritual sphere and sphere of rights will play a decisive part. These associations will not be bound to a purely capitalistic standpoint, for one association will be in direct mutual dealings with another, and thus the one-sided interests of one branch of production will be regulated and balanced by those of the other. The responsibility for the giving and taking of credit will thus devolve to the associations. This will not impair the scope and activity of individuals with special faculties; on the contrary, only this method will give individual faculties full scope: the individual is responsible to his association for achieving the best possible results. The association is responsible to other associations for using these individual achievements to good purpose. The individual's desire for gain will no longer be imposing production on the life of the community; production will be regulated by the needs of the community...
All kinds of dealings are possible between the new associations and old forms of business--there is no question of the old having to be destroyed and replaced by the new. The new simply takes its place and will have to justify itself and prove its inherent power, while the old will dwindle away... The essential thing is that the threefold idea will stimulate a real social intelligence in the men and women of the community. The individual will in a very definite sense be contributing to the achievements of the whole community... The individual faculties of men, working in harmony with the human relationships founded in the sphere of rights, and with the production, circulation and consumption that are regulated by the economic associations, will result in the greatest possible efficiency. Increase of capital, and a proper adjustment of work and return for work, will appear as a final consequence...
The naive man accepts life as it is, and regards things as real just as they present themselves to him in experience. The first step, however, which we take beyond this standpoint can only be this, that we ask how thinking is related to percept. It makes no difference whether or not the percept, in the shape given to me, exists continuously before and after my forming a mental picture; if I want to assert anything whatever about it, I can only do so with the help of thinking. If I assert that the world is my mental picture, I have enunciated the result of an act of thinking, and if my thinking is not applicable to the world, then this result is false. Between a percept and every kind of assertion about it there intervenes thinking.
The reason why we generally overlook thinking in our consideration of things lies in the fact that our attention is concentrated only on the object we are thinking about, but not at the same time on thinking itself. The naive consciousness, therefore, treats thinking as something which has nothing to do with the things, but stands altogether apart from them, and turns its consideration to the world. The picture which the thinker makes of the phenomena of the world is regarded not as something belonging to the things, but as existing only in the human head. The world is complete in itself without this picture. It is quite finished in all its substances and forces, and of this ready-made world man makes a picture. Whoever thinks thus need only be asked one question. What right have you to declare the world to be complete without thinking? Does not the world produce thinking in the heads of men with the same necessity as it produces the blossom on a plant? Plant a seed in the earth. It puts forth root and stem, it unfolds into leaves and blossoms. Set the plant before yourself. It connects itself in your soul with a definite concept. Why should this concept belong any less to the whole plant than leaf and blossom? You say the leaves and blossom exist quite apart from a perceiving subject, the concept appears only when a human being confronts the plant. Quite so. But leaves and blossoms also appear on the plant only if there is soil in which the seed can be planted, and light and air in which the leaves and blossom can unfold. Just so the concept of the plant arises when a thinking consciousness approaches the plant.
It is quite arbitrary to regard the sum of what we experience of a thing through bare perception as the whole thing, while that which reveals itself through thoughtful contemplation is regarded as a mere accretion which has nothing to do with the thing itself. If I am given a rosebud today, the picture that offers itself to my perception is complete only for the moment. If I put the bud into water, I shall tomorrow get a very different picture of my object. If I watch the rosebud without interruption, I shall see today's state change continuously into tomorrow's through an infinite number of intermediate stages. The picture which presents itself to me at any one moment is only a chance cross-section of an object which is in a continual process of development. If I do not put the bud into water, a whole series of states which lay as possibilities within the bud will not develop. Similarly I may be prevented tomorrow from observing the blossom further, and thereby have an incomplete picture of it.
It would be a quite unobjective and fortuitous kind of opinion that declared of the purely momentary appearance of a thing: this is the thing. Just as little is it legitimate to regard the sum of perceptual characteristics as the thing. It might be quite possible for a spirit to receive the concept at the same time as, and united with, the percept. It would never occur to such a spirit that the concept did not belong to the thing. It would have to ascribe to the concept an existence indivisibly bound up with the thing. . .
It is not due to objects that they are given to us at first without their corresponding concepts, but to our mental organization. Our whole being functions in such a way that from every real thing the elements come to us from two sides, from perceiving and from thinking.
The way I am organized for apprehending the things has nothing to do with the nature of the things themselves. The gap between perceiving and thinking exists only from the moment that I as spectator confront the things. Which elements do, and which do not, belong to the things cannot depend at all on the manner in which I obtain knowledge of these elements.
Man is a limited being... It is owing to our limitation that a thing appears to us as single and separate, when in truth it is not a separate being at all. Nowhere, for example, is the single quality 'red' to be found by itself in isolation. It is surrounded on all sides by other qualities to which it belongs, and without which it could not subsist. For us, however, it is necessary to isolate certain sections from the world and to consider them by themselves. Our eye can grasp only single concepts out of a connected conceptual system. This separating off is a subjective act, which is due to the fact that we are not identical with the world process but are a single being among other beings.
The all-important thing now is to determine how the being that we are ourselves is related to the other entities. This determination must be distinguished from merely becoming conscious of ourselves. For this latter self-awareness we depend on perceiving, just as we do for our awareness of any other thing. The perception of myself reveals to me a number of qualities which I combine into my personality as a whole, just as I combine the qualities yellow, metallic, hard, etc. in the unity 'gold'. The perception of myself does not take me beyond the sphere of what belongs to me. This perceiving of myself must be distinguished from determining myself by means of thinking. Just as, by means of thinking, I fit any single external percept into the whole world context, so by means of thinking I integrate into the world-process the percepts I have made of mysel£ My self-perception confines me within definite limits, but my thinking is not concerned with these limits. ln this sense I am a two-sided being. I am enclosed within the sphere which I perceive as that of my personality, but I am also the bearer of an activity which, from a higher sphere, defines my limited existence.
Our thinking is not individual like our sensing and feeling; it is universal. It receives an individual stamp in each separate human being only because it comes to be related to his individual feelings and sensations. By means of these particular colourings of the universal thinking, individual men differentiate themselves from one another. There is only one single concept of 'triangle'. It is quite immaterial for the content of this concept whether it is grasped in A's consciousness or in B's. It will, however, be grasped by each of the two in his own individual way.
This thought is opposed by a common prejudice which is very hard to overcome. This prejudice prevents one from seeing that the concept of a triangle that my head grasps is the same as the concept that my neighbour's head grasps. The naive man believes himself to be the creator of his concepts. Hence he believes that each person has his own concepts. It is a fundamental requirement of philosophic thinking that it should overcome this prejudice. The one uniform concept 'triangle' does not become a multiplicity because it is thought by many persons, for the thinking of the many is in itself a unity.
Slashdot Mirror
i will never accept a barcode tattoo.
we are not cattle!
Linux works better on the new Mac G3 Notebooks than it does on the ThinkPad.
Linux works better on the new Mac G3 Notebooks than it does on the ThinkPad.
people once declared the death of books when TV came along, but there are more books sold now than at any other point in history. people once declared that pocket calculators were dead when personal computers became available. yet computers have not displaced the pocket calculator. there are more calculators in use now than when they were invented. i am pretty well living a paperless existence. i use email for business, and for rapid correspondence with friends and family. yet, when i want to send someone a letter that is important to me, i will type it out on my computer, and then transcribe it onto paper BY HAND. why? simply because it is more special when you know someone has taken the trouble to write you something by hand. for work, this personal touch is not called for. but for my friends, its a way of saying that i care enough to give them an original piece of handwritten correspondence. its says that i took time and sweated over what i wrote them without the option of a backspace key. a handwritten is simply more trouble to produce. and sometimes this very trouble is worth the aggravation, because the medium itself tells something about the message. the more prevalant rapid-efficient electronic communication becomes, the more special it will be to recieve a handwritten message from someone personally. that is why old mail will never die.
the main trouble with making these sort of "ideal" communities is that they try to impose the ideals from the outside->in. this never works. -- "In the social movement of the present day there is a great deal of talk about social organization but very little about social and unsocial human beings. Little regard is paid to that 'social question' which arises when one considers that the arrangements of society take their social or antisocial stamp from the people who work in them... "The experiments now being made to solve the social question afford such unsatisfactory results because many people have not yet become able to see what the true gist of the problem is. They see it arise in economic regions, and look to economic institutions to provide the answer. They think they will find the solution in economic transformations. They fail to recognize that these transformations can only come about through forces released from within human nature itself.. 'The well-being of a community of people working together will be the greater, the less the individual claims for himself the proceeds of his work, i.e. the more of these proceeds he makes over to his fellow-workers, the more his own needs are satisfied, not out of his own work but out of the work done by others'. Every arrangement in a community that is contrary to this law will inevitably engender somewhere after a while distress and want. It is a fundamental law, which holds good for all social life with the same absoluteness and necessity as any law of nature within a particular field of natural causation. It must not be supposed, however, that it is suff~cient to acknowledge this law as one for general moral conduct, or to try to interpret it into the sentiment that everyone should work in the service of his fellow men. No, this law only lives in reality as it should when a community of people succeeds in creating arrangements such that no one can ever claim the fruits of his own labour for himself, but that these go wholely to the benefit of the community. And he must himself be supported in return by the labours of his fellow men. The important point is, therefore, that working for one's fellow men and obtaining so much income must be kept apart, as two separate things. Self-styled 'practical people' will of course have nothing but a smile for such 'outrageous idealism'. And yet this law is more practical than any that was ever devised or enacted by the 'practicians'. Anyone who really examines practical life will find that every community that exists or has ever existed anywhere has two sorts of arrangements, of which the one is in accordance with this law and the other contrary to it. It is bound to be so everywhere, whether men will it or not. Every community would indeed fall to pieces at once, if the work of the individual did not pass over into the totality. But human egoism has from of old run counter to this law, and sought to extract as much as possible for the individual out of his own work. And what has come about from of old in this way due to egoism has alone brought want, poverty and distress in its wake. This simply means that the part of human arrangements brought about by 'practicians' who calculated on the basis of either their own egotism or that of others must always prove impractical. Now naturally it is not simply a matter of recognizing a law of this kind, but the real practical part begins with the question: How is one to translate this law into actual fact? Obviously this law says nothing less than this: man's welfare is the greater, in proportion as egoism is less. So for its translation into reality one must have people who can find their way out of egoism. In practice, however, this is quite impossiblc if the individual's share of weal and woe is measured according to his labour. He who labours for himself *must* gradually fall a victim to egoism. Only one who labours solely for the rest can gradually grow to be a worker without egoism. But there is one thing needed to begin with. If any man works for another, he must find in this other man the reason for his work; and if anyone is to work for the community, he must perceive and feel the value, the nature and importance, of this community. He can only do this when the community is something quite differcnt from a more or less indefinite summation of individual men. It must be informed by an actual spirit, in which each single one has his part. It must be such that each one says: 'It is as it should be, and I *will* that it be so'. The community must have a spiritual mission, and each individual must have the will to contribute towards the fulfilling of this mission. All the vague abstract ideals of which people usually talk cannot present such a mission. If there be nothing but these, then one individual here or one group there will be working without any clear overview of what use there is in their work, except it being to the advantage of their families, or of those particular interests to which they happen to be attached. In every single member, down to the most solitary, this spirit of the community must be alive... The recognition of these principles means, it is true, the loss of many an illusion for various people whose ambition it is to be popular benefactors. It makes working for the welfare of society a really difficult matter-one of which the results, too, may in certain circumstances comprise only quite tiny part-results. Most of what is given out today by whole parties as panaceas for social life loses its value, and is seen to be a mere bubble and hollow phrase, lacking in due knowledge of human life. No parliament, no democracy, no popular agitation can have any meaning for a person who looks at all deeper, if they violate the law stated above; whereas everything of this kind may work for good if it works on the lines of this law. It is a mischievous delusion to believe that particular persons sent up to some parliament as delegates from the people can do anything for the good of mankind, unless their activity is in conformity with the fundamental social law. Where 'supply and demand' are the determining factors, there the egoistic type of value is the only one that can come into reckon ing. The 'market' relationship must be superseded by associations regulating the exchange and production of goods by an intelligent observation of human needs. Such associations can replace mere supply and demand by contracts and negotiations between groups of producers and consumers, and between different groups of producers... Work done in confidence of the return achievements of others constitutes the giving of *credit* in social life. As there was once a transition from barter to the money system, so there has recently been a progressive transformation to a basis of credit. Life makes it necessary today for one man to work with means entrusted to him by another, or by a community, having confidence in his power to achieve a result. But under the capitalistic method the credit system involves a complete loss of the real and satisfying human relationship of a man to the conditions of his life and work. Credit is given when there is prospect of an increase of capital that seems to justify it; and work is always done subject to the view that the confidence or credit received will have to appear justified in the capitalistic sense. And what is the result? Human beings are subjected to the power of dealings in capital which take place in a sphere of finance remote from life. And the moment they become fully conscious of this fact, they feel it to be unworthy of their humanity... A healthy system of giving credit presupposes a social structure which enables economic values to be estimated by their relation to the satisfaction of men's bodily and spiritual needs. Men's economic dealings will take their form from this. Production will be considered from the point of view of needs, no longer by an abstract scale of capital and wages. Economic life in a threefold society is built up by the cooperation of *associations* arising out of the needs of producers and the interests of consumers. In their mutual dealings, impulses from the spiritual sphere and sphere of rights will play a decisive part. These associations will not be bound to a purely capitalistic standpoint, for one association will be in direct mutual dealings with another, and thus the one-sided interests of one branch of production will be regulated and balanced by those of the other. The responsibility for the giving and taking of credit will thus devolve to the associations. This will not impair the scope and activity of individuals with special faculties; on the contrary, only this method will give individual faculties full scope: the individual is responsible to his association for achieving the best possible results. The association is responsible to other associations for using these individual achievements to good purpose. The individual's desire for gain will no longer be imposing production on the life of the community; production will be regulated by the needs of the community... All kinds of dealings are possible between the new associations and old forms of business--there is no question of the old having to be destroyed and replaced by the new. The new simply takes its place and will have to justify itself and prove its inherent power, while the old will dwindle away... The essential thing is that the threefold idea will stimulate a real social intelligence in the men and women of the community. The individual will in a very definite sense be contributing to the achievements of the whole community... The individual faculties of men, working in harmony with the human relationships founded in the sphere of rights, and with the production, circulation and consumption that are regulated by the economic associations, will result in the greatest possible efficiency. Increase of capital, and a proper adjustment of work and return for work, will appear as a final consequence... References: http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Steiner-Soc ial.html
simplicity and elegance in design comes from distinguishing between the essential and the inessential. consolidate and simplify. the less keys you need to do everything the better. get rid of all that old legacy keys crap. the scroll-lock, the num-lock have no place on a modern keyboard, they just add clutter. this reminds me of people who want to cling to the old I/O standards. you used to have: i) a connector for a keyboard, ii) a connector for a mouse, iii) a connector for a printer, iv) a connector for a modem, v) a connector for a scanner/ZIP drive. that's FIVE connectors, and all of them different, and all of them incompatible. now with USB you can finally get rid of all those damn ports and just have ONE port. simplified, and more elegant design--better. who in their right mind still wants all those crappy old ports when you can replace them all with one simplified universal connector?!?! "everything should be made as simple as possible; but no simpler."
as ussual, alias is behind side effects. side effects was the first high end 3D product (used for stuff like: titanic, apollo 13, vocano, independence day, etc.) to be ported to linux. and they announced their houdini to linux port back in march. they're showing a linux version of houdini 4.0 at siggraph this week. houdini is about a year ahead of maya in power. it's procedural from the ground up in both geometry (sops), channels (chops), and lots of low-level unix scripting support. check out: http://www.sidefx.com
it is unhealthy for kids under seven to be using computers. it is even worse for them than watching television. they need to learn about interacting with living things like plants, people, animals, before immersing themselves in the world of machine logic. if your opinion is otherwise, you condemn a lot of kids to damaged and limited human functionality in later years. for some scientific research on the subject, see: Technical Report RT-MAC-9508, Dept. of Computer Science, Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, University of São Paulo, July 1995. http://www.ime.usp.br/~vwsetzer/comp-in-educ.html Abstract -- This paper presents some considerations concerning the use of computers in education. We justify this use through the need to teach what they are and how they may be employed. An important consideration is the timing for this teaching: we place it at the high school level. We consider earlier uses of computers at home or school as damaging to children and teenagers.
| Microsoft's Windows 2000 hacker challenge was taken offline | by a router failure (caused by an "act of God"), it was struck | by lightening... heh heh, so even god thought it would be fun to hack MSIIs. ;-^
i never have troubles crossing borders any more. my passport reads "borg collective". if people don't like us crossing their border, that's okay, we just assimilate 'em. ;-)
| Give each reader and each paper a credibitlty score. The
| credibility of the reader is based on the average credilibity
| of each paper they have submitted. Each reader can give a
| credibility score to each paper they read. The score for the
| paper will be the submitted scores, weighted by the
| credibility of each reviewer.
what you're describing is a popularity contest.
truth is not established by concensus.
wasn't he some american guy killed in the 60's?
why do people bother watching tv?
live life instead of watching it like a spectator.
WE ARE OUR FUTURE!
---my apologies for the length of this post, but i hope its length
---will be compensated for by a few interesting observations.
---i sent this reply to: editorial@theonion.com
http://www.theonion.com/onion3522/robots_are_th
| Let us offer tenderness and show the robots all the beauty they
| possess inside. We must write a subroutine that gives them a sense
| of pride, programming their supercooled silicon CPUs with
| understanding, compassion and patience, to make it easier and
| enable them to hold their sensory-input clusters high as they
| claim their destiny as overlords of the solar system...
i would like to make a response to your article, "I Believe The
Robots Are Our Future" by Helen Virginia Leidermeyer.
firstly, i must appluad your desire to imbue the future with a caring
and feeling that is all too much absent in much of life today. this
is commendable, and it shows a goodness in you. i hope you will not
take this letter the wrong way, because i have a couple comments that
may sound somewhat harsh, but please consider this in view of what
is actual, rather than a knee-jerk emotional reaction.
i believe it is somewhat of a fantastical vision to think of creating
robots with feelings and compassion--it is based on a serious
misunderstanding of the nature of machine logic.
first, to assume that sentience can arise from machines is a big leap,
but then to think that a sentience based purely upon LOGIC will have
a similar conscience with FEELING and compassion is improbable. if it
is possible for machine sentience to even exist, logic knows nothing of
compassion or FEELING, these are human attributes that are not based on
logic. to think that these traits are communicable to a logic-based life
is absurd. logic is cold and calculating, it knows nothing of feeling.
this makes the story amusing to read perhaps, but nothing more than sentimental daydreaming drivel. the machines would skewer you for it.
| If we cannot instill their emergent AI meta-consciousness with a
| sense of deep, abiding confidence and self-esteem, we will be
| letting down not only the robots, but ourselves.
this overlooks the fact of the nature of "self-esteem". it is not
probable that you can imbue a logical sentience with a trait such
as "self-esteem", or even that it requires it. you are thinking too
much like a human. to "let them down" does not compute if it is
not actually something that is possible.
to this, one might respond, "so why don't we find a way to TEACH them
to have feelings. this line of thought seems to make much sense until
you go a little deeper into the issue. in order to go deeper, we have
to understand the nature of EMPATHY, and the reason empathy exists for
life at all in the first place.
this raises big questions: what is life? what is sentience? what is
feeling? until these are adequately addressed, this sort of article
can only deal with things at a very superficial level. at the risk
of being trite, i will make a few suggestions.
consider the following:
1 - if it is true that we can build robot machines with "thinking"
capacity, then you will understand that these machines are built
according to certain principles of electronics (using binary "and",
"or", "nor", and "nand" circiuts -- you can take any first year
electronics course to understand that the entire basis for computer
operations is based on an assembly of of these logic circiuts.
2 - once a complex aglamoration of logic circiuts is assembled, you
end up with a CPU (or clusters of cpus), RAM, an address bus, etc.
then you programme this assembly of logical operations using a
logic-based language. computer programming lanugages are simply
more flexible forms for rewiring these logic circiuts. they are
still entirely based in logic. it is imperitive to understand that
anything that can be programmed in software can be executed in a
hardware format by wiring the right logic circiuts together. this
is why it is possible for video card manufacturers to provide
"hardware acceleration" for previously software based systems.
3 - now for a point of utmost significance:
the basis for our thinking--i.e. our brain organism is not
formed along the lines of digital logic circiuts as are computers.
the basic process involves an organism that includes: growth and
organic cell reproduction (which is most significantly different
than an entirely physical medium of circiuts alone. if you
follow this through, you must understand that the nature of
process of a logic-based sentience (if that is even possible)
would be inherently different in character than one based upon
the conscious-organic membering of the thinking organism.
IT IS UPON THIS VERY "LIVING GROWTH" CHARACTERISTIC OF THE HUMAN
MIND WHICH IS THE BASIS FOR **FEELINGS** it is a gross leap of
faith to believe that it is possible that a logic-based sentience
could develop feeling qualities in the absence of a FEELING
ORGANISM.
4 - THE NATURE OF MEMORY - the basis for human ego is based on the
fact that we have memory. the nature of human memory is fundamentally
different than computer storage of "memory". if you study
neuro-psychology, you will understand that scientists have had
utmost difficulty in localising memory in the human brain. that
is because human memory is not like RAM at all. rather, each time
you recall something, you are not doing a lookup from a
physical-electronic memory address, the impression is brought
up as an entirely new creation within your consciousness. you
must consider this very fundamental difference between machine
"memory" and human memory which is an aspect of self-consciousness
(i.e. "self awareness"; "i am").
| Though our comparatively tiny mammalian brains--limited as they are
| by organic human failings and a constant need for daily nutritional
| intake instead of reliance on more efficient non-depletable solar
| and geothermal energy sources--will no doubt seem pathetically
| ineffectual compared to the interlinked, continually upgrading
| cyberminds that will follow in our footsteps, our humble origins
| will provide the seed for their genesis. Humanity, weak as we may
| be, must give the best of ourselves to the synthetic hiveminds of
| the future cyber-era, for we will be their first and most important
| role models.
with all due respect, this presumes that a logic-based intelligence
is in some way "superiour" to human flesh-and-blood intelligence.
that is quite an assumption, and a self-depreciating one at that.
you undervalue human life if you already regard machine life to
be superiour to human life before it is actualy, or even known to
be possible. you are devaluing human life based upon a speculation.
additionally, there whether you have: i) food input, or ii) solar
cell energy input -> you still require an input to sustain the
activity. to say that "food" input is somehow inferior to a
solar-cell or electrical input is nothing short of misguided.
it is a more advanced technology that can DIGEST its surroundings.
4 - LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS: MINERAL; PLANT; ANIMAL; MAN.
consider this: what is the basis of life? physical science analyses
only the physical phenomenon of nature, and therefrom proposes the
theory that CONSCIOUSNESS arises as an attribute of a complex
interaction of dynamic physical processes. in short, matter is
primary, and consciousness an attribute of interactions within
matter. but the material view has difficulty explaining the role
and fundamental nature of consciousness.
"The naive consciousness...treats thinking as something which
has nothing to do with the things, but stands altogether apart
from them, and turns its consideration to the world. The picture
which the thinker makes of the phenomena of the world is
regarded not as something belonging to the things, but as
existing only in the human head. The world is complete in
itself without this picture. It is quite finished in all its
substances and forces, and of this ready-made world man makes
a picture. Whoever thinks thus need only be asked one question.
What right have you to declare the world to be complete
without thinking?" (Rudolf Steiner, *The Philosophy of Freedom*)
if you examine, you will find that all AI (artififical
intelligence ) arguments are based on this assumption. however,
this is far from ever having been demonstrated. you cannot go
forward with any notion of artificial intelligence until you come
to a satisfactory comprehension of the nature of consciousness.
there is another way of looking at the matter however that many
physical-scientific thinkers will not admit to, and it is this:
that if you consider conscious-sentience to be primary, and matter
to be a manifestation of an active sentience working within the
realm of matter, then many of the inexplicable facts of nature
are resolved rather neatly. but in order to understand how this
can be, we must delineate of what the levels between matter and
consciousness are comprised.
MINERAL -- PLANT -- ANIMAL -- EGO
- looking at a rock and a plant, ask yourself what is the fundamental
difference between them? a rock is inanimate, it does not GROW,
whereas a plant GROWS. it takes mineral up into itself, digests
the rock and soil and GROWS into a new form.
- from this we can understand that a plant has something that a rock
does not have; and that something about the plant which causes it
to grow is can be called its "growth attribute".
- so the difference between a plant and a rock is that the plant
has both a physical mineral structure which can be touched and
measured, and it also has another attibute which causes it to
grow, and the rock has a physical structure only without a growth
attribute.
- when this growth attribute is removed from the plant, it is said to
"die" - it becomes a dead shriveled up piece of vegetation. it then
has only a mineral attribute, and no longer contains the growth
attribute. it is then nothing more than re-formed mineral substance;
life has left it.
- now, looking at a plant and an animal, we can ask the question:
what is the difference between a plant and an animal?
there is something about the animal which causes it to be able
to be moved by it's passions, it's desires, it's instincts. it's
limbs and organs are formed according to this force, and allow this
force to express itself in action. an animal has passions and
desires, a plant does not. when the passion body is removed from
the growth and physical bodies, an animal is said to be "asleep".
when the passion AND growth bodies are removed from the physical
body, the animal is said to be "dead".
- now compare: the plant stays in place, but unlike the stone, it
grows from the soil, and moves the soil and water along itself in
such a way that it grows. in addition to this, the animal has
something about it which causes it to move it's place, and follow
it's instincts and passions. so are it's organs formed to serve
these instincts and passions. when it is hungry, it can move itself
to obtain food. the plant must accept it's fate. if it is stepped
on, there is nothing about it that can get itself to move of it's
own volition. the animal, however, when in danger, can move itself
so that it gets out of danger. this something that causes the
animal to move about from place to place and determine it's course
(which the plant does not have) is what is called it's passion
body; it contains the passions, instincts, and character of an
animal.
- IN NATURE, the habits, instincts, desires, and passions are
primary. the growth organism conforms in accordance to the
pre-existing HABITS of passion. then from the modified growth
organism, a new PHYSICAL structure results: structures conformed
to the cyclic repitition of movements. this creates a structure
which inherently conforms to the circumstances in which it performs
its growth. just as a tree may grow right around a metal bar
lodged within it.
| It is only through our guidance with a firm yet gentle hand that they
| will achieve full sentience and eventually adapt for themselves the
| capacity for autonomous self-replication. Only then, nurtured by our
| love and caring, will they be prepared for the inevitable day that
| they must leave the nest of human supervision and servitude and begin
| independently mass-manufacturing themselves by the hundreds of
| thousands.
there is an important and fundamental distinction here. humans and
all living things can reproduce themselves through GROWTH, and through
the growth organism can replicate from within themselves, OUT OF THEIR
OWN NATURE; whereas machines are made not from the inside out, but
rather from the OUTSIDE -> IN. they must be assembled and manufactured
using external processes. the fundamental difference between a living
and a dead thing is that: LIVING THINGS ARE ANIMATED FROM THE INSIDE
OF THEIR NATURE OUT; AND DEAD THINGS ARE MADE FROM THE OUTSIDE
TO BE ANIMATED.
- THE MOVEMENT EXISTS, THE ORGAN FORMS AROUND IT
if the motions and flows of blood in the human organism, or the
air moving through the lungs could be present without the organs
yet formed to hold the blood - the blood flowing with no organs yet
existant to contain the flowing. No viens, no arteries, no heart
pump; only the movement of the blood in its circulatory patterns.
If you could do this, you would find that slowly, by a sort of
building-up and depositing of bits along the course of the flowing,
viens, heart and arteries would begin to appear. In fact, this is
just what happens in the development of the embryo. The movement
exists; the organ forms around it. This is the organic process of
growth. This is evident also in the growth of cities, plants,
networks, etc. The legacy of the growth determines the history,
or unique character of a particular instance of a certain set of
movement configurations or Habits. There is a fundamental
difference in approach if you try and build the FORM first to
dictate the movements, or if you let the movements determine
the shape of the FORM. in every observed natural growing
formation, the form is determined from the inside->out, rather
than the physical-scientific method of determining form from
the outside->in. even if you consider the advances of
nano-technology, you are still essentially constructing things
from material matter on up to a materially-based consciousness.
this method is directly derived from the notion (theory) that
consciousness is an attribute of matter. it is based upon a flawed
understanding of nature, life and sentience.
emotion and FEELING are closely allied to sense-impression, but
there is a point where sense impression is transformed into FEELING,
and that transformation is not possible without a corresponding
FEELING ORGAN. it may be possible to give an illusion of feeling
by means of behaviour-logic programming, but you cannot say that
such behaviour will be similar in nature to human or animal feeling.
things can only FEEL and LOVE, because they are living.
without an organ of FEELING (growth organism), the machine is
unrelated to the human world, and the natural world of anything
that is alive and GROWS. without an integral GROWTH organism,
you will never be able to teach machines how to CARE, or LOVE
as you so optimistically posit in your article. i write this
not to discourage you, but perhaps so that you will understand
the nature of what you are dealing. logic cannot be the basis
for love, only LIFE can be the basis for love.
best regards,
johnrpenner@earthlink.net
this lady's fantastical vision of creating robots with feelings and compassion are based on a serious misunderstanding of the nature of machine logic.
first, to assume that sentience can arrise from machines is a big leap, but then to think that a sentience based purely upon LOGIC will have a similar conscience with FEELING and compassion is improbable. if it is possible for machine sentience to even exist, logic knows nothing of compassion or FEELING, these are human attributes that are not based on logic. to think that these traits are communicable to a logic-based life is absurd. logic is cold and calculating, it knows nothing of feeling.
this makes the story amusing to read perhaps, but nothing more than sentimental daydreaming drivel. the machines would skewer her for it.
Red Hat is good--they have given back a lot to the Open Source community, they deserve their laurels.
:-\
lets just hope they can resist the temptation to fork linux with an "embrace and extend"...
i think this is a move that is simply giving a recognition to the people who put in the work - kind of a "thank you" -- but it still doesn't pay compared to a regurlar technical writers' salary. $20,000 is about half a years salary for a regular technical writer worth their salt.
that being said however, i think its a good idea - pay up front for development of FREE software, and then make it open.
"i have seen the future, and it is OPEN!"
a really excellent book on this same subject is called "Quantum Questions : Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists" by ken wilber.
it is really quite interesting to hear what einstein and heisenberg themselves have to say about mysticism.
this is a great text, because wilber selects telling comments, in their own words, from some of the key big names of modern physics. well edited and insightfully commented, wilber presents a strong case that these physicists were indeed not philosophical materialists, and some were outright mystical. (Thomas Brophy, PhD--physics).
From the Report's "Conclusion":
When I prepared the survey at the beginning of the year, Linux
had only just started making its presence felt. And yet, when
I asked this audience of IT Managers whether they were
considering it as a potential alternative to Windows NT, 20%
said "Yes", with another 27% unsure of what they might be
using as an Enterprise OS beyond the millennium.
Is the writing on the wall and if so, what's changed? Well for
a start, just over a year ago, I would have said that 80% of
Microsoft Windows NT Forum members would jump to Windows 2000
within twelve months of its release. Today, given a number of
factors, including delays, certitude, among the group that
were questioned, has slipped to 30%. I'm not sure that very
many IT Managers really believe that Linux will really take
the place of Windows NT. However, the evidence from this
relatively small but influential group of customers, is that
Windows 2000 is no longer a foregone conclusion and that
options are being kept very much open.
this is a good thing. it is the next itteration towards
*associations* which will mediate an intelligent distribution
of the needs of producers, and the interests of consumers.
--| open source associations |-----
Where 'supply and demand' are the determining factors, there the
egoistic type of value is the only one that can come into reckoning.
The 'market' relationship must be superseded by associations
regulating the exchange and production of goods by an intelligent
observation of human needs. Such associations can replace mere supply
and demand by contracts and negotiations between groups of producers
and consumers, and between different groups of producers...
Work done in confidence of the return achievements of others
constitutes the giving of *credit* in social life. As there was once
a transition from barter to the money system, so there has recently
been a progressive transformation to a basis of credit. Life makes it
necessary today for one man to work with means entrusted to him by
another, or by a community, having confidence in his power to achieve
a result...
A healthy system of giving credit presupposes a social structure
which enables economic values to be estimated by their relation to
the satisfaction of men's bodily and spiritual needs. Men's economic
dealings will take their form from this. Production will be
considered from the point of view of needs, no longer by an abstract
scale of capital and wages.
Economic life in a threefold society is built up by the cooperation
of *associations* arising out of the needs of producers and the
interests of consumers. In their mutual dealings, impulses from the
spiritual sphere and sphere of rights will play a decisive part.
These associations will not be bound to a purely capitalistic
standpoint, for one association will be in direct mutual dealings
with another, and thus the one-sided interests of one branch of
production will be regulated and balanced by those of the other. The
responsibility for the giving and taking of credit will thus devolve
to the associations. This will not impair the scope and activity of
individuals with special faculties; on the contrary, only this method
will give individual faculties full scope: the individual is
responsible to his association for achieving the best possible
results. The association is responsible to other associations for
using these individual achievements to good purpose. The individual's
desire for gain will no longer be imposing production on the life of
the community; production will be regulated by the needs of the
community...
All kinds of dealings are possible between the new associations and
old forms of business--there is no question of the old having to be
destroyed and replaced by the new. The new simply takes its place and
will have to justify itself and prove its inherent power, while the
old will dwindle away... The essential thing is that the threefold
idea will stimulate a real social intelligence in the men and women
of the community. The individual will in a very definite sense be
contributing to the achievements of the whole community... The
individual faculties of men, working in harmony with the human
relationships founded in the sphere of rights, and with the
production, circulation and consumption that are regulated by the
economic associations, will result in the greatest possible
efficiency. Increase of capital, and a proper adjustment of work and
return for work, will appear as a final consequence...
Exerpted from: Rudolf Steiner, *Capital & Credit*
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Steiner-
it seems to me that porting IE doesn't make sense for gaining linux user marketshare (what linux user would use IE instead of Netscape???). but it does make sense in light of the fact that the DOJ trail isn't over, and if they seriously want to show that they're not a monopoly, then what other platform are they writing any applications software for? hmmm... a linux version of IE proves that we actually have competetion. the engineering "team" to deploy this is 1 guy -> recompile *nix version for linux; and 9 guys -> FUD FUD FUD.
Where 'supply and demand' are the determining factors, there the
S ocial.html
egoistic type of value is the only one that can come into reckon
ing. The 'market' relationship must be superseded by associations
regulating the exchange and production of goods by an intelligent
observation of human needs. Such associations can replace mere
supply and demand by contracts and negotiations between groups of
producers and consumers, and between different groups of
producers...
Work done in confidence of the return achievements of others
constitutes the giving of *credit* in social life. As there was
once a transition from barter to the money system, so there has
recently been a progressive transformation to a basis of credit.
Life makes it necessary today for one man to work with means
entrusted to him by another, or by a community, having confidence
in his power to achieve a result. But under the capitalistic
method the credit system involves a complete loss of the real and
satisfying human relationship of a man to the conditions of his
life and work. Credit is given when there is prospect of an
increase of capital that seems to justify it; and work is always
done subject to the view that the confidence or credit received
will have to appear justified in the capitalistic sense. And what
is the result? Human beings are subjected to the power of
dealings in capital which take place in a sphere of finance
remote from life. And the moment they become fully conscious of
this fact, they feel it to be unworthy of their humanity...
A healthy system of giving credit presupposes a social structure
which enables economic values to be estimated by their relation
to the satisfaction of men's bodily and spiritual needs. Men's
economic dealings will take their form from this. Production will
be considered from the point of view of needs, no longer by an
abstract scale of capital and wages.
Economic life in a threefold society is built up by the
cooperation of *associations* arising out of the needs of
producers and the interests of consumers. In their mutual
dealings, impulses from the spiritual sphere and sphere of rights
will play a decisive part. These associations will not be bound
to a purely capitalistic standpoint, for one association will be
in direct mutual dealings with another, and thus the one-sided
interests of one branch of production will be regulated and
balanced by those of the other. The responsibility for the giving
and taking of credit will thus devolve to the associations. This
will not impair the scope and activity of individuals with
special faculties; on the contrary, only this method will give
individual faculties full scope: the individual is responsible to
his association for achieving the best possible results. The
association is responsible to other associations for using these
individual achievements to good purpose. The individual's desire
for gain will no longer be imposing production on the life of the
community; production will be regulated by the needs of the
community...
All kinds of dealings are possible between the new associations
and old forms of business--there is no question of the old having
to be destroyed and replaced by the new. The new simply takes its
place and will have to justify itself and prove its inherent
power, while the old will dwindle away... The essential thing is
that the threefold idea will stimulate a real social intelligence
in the men and women of the community. The individual will in a
very definite sense be contributing to the achievements of the
whole community... The individual faculties of men, working in
harmony with the human relationships founded in the sphere of
rights, and with the production, circulation and consumption that
are regulated by the economic associations, will result in the
greatest possible efficiency. Increase of capital, and a proper
adjustment of work and return for work, will appear as a final
consequence...
Exerpted from:
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Steiner-
The naive man accepts life as it is, and regards things as real just as they
present themselves to him in experience. The first step, however, which we take
beyond this standpoint can only be this, that we ask how thinking is related to
percept. It makes no difference whether or not the percept, in the shape given
to me, exists continuously before and after my forming a mental picture; if I
want to assert anything whatever about it, I can only do so with the help of
thinking. If I assert that the world is my mental picture, I have enunciated
the result of an act of thinking, and if my thinking is not applicable to the
world, then this result is false. Between a percept and every kind of assertion
about it there intervenes thinking.
The reason why we generally overlook thinking in our consideration of things
lies in the fact that our attention is concentrated only on the object we are
thinking about, but not at the same time on thinking itself. The naive
consciousness, therefore, treats thinking as something which has nothing to do
with the things, but stands altogether apart from them, and turns its
consideration to the world. The picture which the thinker makes of the
phenomena of the world is regarded not as something belonging to the things,
but as existing only in the human head. The world is complete in itself without
this picture. It is quite finished in all its substances and forces, and of
this ready-made world man makes a picture. Whoever thinks thus need only be
asked one question. What right have you to declare the world to be complete
without thinking? Does not the world produce thinking in the heads of men with
the same necessity as it produces the blossom on a plant? Plant a seed in the
earth. It puts forth root and stem, it unfolds into leaves and blossoms. Set
the plant before yourself. It connects itself in your soul with a definite
concept. Why should this concept belong any less to the whole plant than leaf
and blossom? You say the leaves and blossom exist quite apart from a perceiving
subject, the concept appears only when a human being confronts the plant. Quite
so. But leaves and blossoms also appear on the plant only if there is soil in
which the seed can be planted, and light and air in which the leaves and
blossom can unfold. Just so the concept of the plant arises when a thinking
consciousness approaches the plant.
It is quite arbitrary to regard the sum of what we experience of a thing
through bare perception as the whole thing, while that which reveals itself
through thoughtful contemplation is regarded as a mere accretion which has
nothing to do with the thing itself. If I am given a rosebud today, the picture
that offers itself to my perception is complete only for the moment. If I put
the bud into water, I shall tomorrow get a very different picture of my object.
If I watch the rosebud without interruption, I shall see today's state change
continuously into tomorrow's through an infinite number of intermediate stages.
The picture which presents itself to me at any one moment is only a chance
cross-section of an object which is in a continual process of development. If I
do not put the bud into water, a whole series of states which lay as
possibilities within the bud will not develop. Similarly I may be prevented
tomorrow from observing the blossom further, and thereby have an incomplete
picture of it.
It would be a quite unobjective and fortuitous kind of opinion that declared of
the purely momentary appearance of a thing: this is the thing. Just as little
is it legitimate to regard the sum of perceptual characteristics as the thing.
It might be quite possible for a spirit to receive the concept at the same time
as, and united with, the percept. It would never occur to such a spirit that
the concept did not belong to the thing. It would have to ascribe to the
concept an existence indivisibly bound up with the thing. . .
It is not due to objects that they are given to us at first without their
corresponding concepts, but to our mental organization. Our whole being
functions in such a way that from every real thing the elements come to us from
two sides, from perceiving and from thinking.
The way I am organized for apprehending the things has nothing to do with the
nature of the things themselves. The gap between perceiving and thinking exists
only from the moment that I as spectator confront the things. Which elements
do, and which do not, belong to the things cannot depend at all on the manner
in which I obtain knowledge of these elements.
Man is a limited being... It is owing to our limitation that a thing appears to
us as single and separate, when in truth it is not a separate being at all.
Nowhere, for example, is the single quality 'red' to be found by itself in
isolation. It is surrounded on all sides by other qualities to which it
belongs, and without which it could not subsist. For us, however, it is
necessary to isolate certain sections from the world and to consider them by
themselves. Our eye can grasp only single concepts out of a connected
conceptual system. This separating off is a subjective act, which is due to the
fact that we are not identical with the world process but are a single being
among other beings.
The all-important thing now is to determine how the being that we are ourselves
is related to the other entities. This determination must be distinguished from
merely becoming conscious of ourselves. For this latter self-awareness we
depend on perceiving, just as we do for our awareness of any other thing. The
perception of myself reveals to me a number of qualities which I combine into
my personality as a whole, just as I combine the qualities yellow, metallic,
hard, etc. in the unity 'gold'. The perception of myself does not take me
beyond the sphere of what belongs to me. This perceiving of myself must be
distinguished from determining myself by means of thinking. Just as, by means
of thinking, I fit any single external percept into the whole world context, so
by means of thinking I integrate into the world-process the percepts I have
made of mysel£ My self-perception confines me within definite limits, but my
thinking is not concerned with these limits. ln this sense I am a two-sided
being. I am enclosed within the sphere which I perceive as that of my
personality, but I am also the bearer of an activity which, from a higher
sphere, defines my limited existence.
Our thinking is not individual like our sensing and feeling; it is universal.
It receives an individual stamp in each separate human being only because it
comes to be related to his individual feelings and sensations. By means of
these particular colourings of the universal thinking, individual men
differentiate themselves from one another. There is only one single concept of
'triangle'. It is quite immaterial for the content of this concept whether it
is grasped in A's consciousness or in B's. It will, however, be grasped by each
of the two in his own individual way.
This thought is opposed by a common prejudice which is very hard to overcome.
This prejudice prevents one from seeing that the concept of a triangle that my
head grasps is the same as the concept that my neighbour's head grasps. The
naive man believes himself to be the creator of his concepts. Hence he believes
that each person has his own concepts. It is a fundamental requirement of
philosophic thinking that it should overcome this prejudice. The one uniform
concept 'triangle' does not become a multiplicity because it is thought by many
persons, for the thinking of the many is in itself a unity.
Rudolf Steiner, 1894.
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles