Please don't think I'm demeaning go. I have great respect for the complexity of go. I didn't mean to suggest that today's go programs are competitive with human players.
My point is this: go has been somewhat automated, and much effort is being put into better automation.
Computers become more powerful and less expensive every day. I think it's reasonable to assume that go programs will, over time, defeat skilled players on large boards.
I suppose it's fair to note that I'm a poor player myself. Moreover, I prefer pente, which I guess marks me as a newb.
Go is not yet as well-automated as chess, but it appears that go-playing software is rapidly advancing:
"Two Hungarian scientists have now come up with an algorithm that helps computers pick the right move in Go, played by millions around the world, in which players must capture spaces by placing black and white marbles on a board in turn.
"On a nine by nine board we are not far from reaching the level of a professional Go player," said Levente Kocsis at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences' computing lab SZTAKI.
The 19 by 19 board which top players use is still hard for a machine, but the new method is promising because it makes better use of the growing power of computers than earlier Go software."
Facial recognition software? Of course it's better than people, in terms of physical metrics. Computers beat people at chess and go, why wouldn't they beat us at the game of recognizing people?
But people have other qualities which will prove more resistant to computer analysis.
As facial recognition software evolves, people will evolve defensive strategies (poker face? false-emotion face? alien-face?).
Another thought, I'm reminded of a phrase from Snowcrash -- "condense facts from the vapors of nuance".
Context: facial expression as avatar interface.
Can software condense facts from the vapors of nuance? Or do the vapors of nuance pose some kind of Turing test?
Encouraging users to tweak a "meaningless" parameter is a deception; all deceptions invite trouble.
Whatever might be gained (identifying the "smart" users) is compromised by other losses (failing to educate "dumb" users, alienating users who sense the deception, wasting company time).
That said, phrases like "dangerous twit" undermine your argument, shutting the ears of your potential allies before they hear what you have to say.
It seems that this administration and the people behind it's policies want to selectively use and selectively abuse the constitution.
Abuse of office -- the roots of imperial Federal power -- old story. Take for example the early twentieth centure --
Palmer Raids, 1918-1921 -- "In 1919, J. Edgar Hoover was put in charge of a new division of the Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation, the General Intelligence Division. By October 1919, Hoover's division had collected 150,000 names in a rapidly expanding database. Using the database information, starting on November 7, 1919, BOI agents, together with local police, orchestrated a series of well-publicized raids against apparent radicals and leftists, using the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. Palmer and his agents were accused of using various controversial methods of obtaining intelligence and collecting evidence on radicals, including harsh interrogation methods, informers, and wiretaps."
COINTELPRO -
"COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) was a program of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. Although covert operations have been employed throughout FBI history, the formal COINTELPRO operations of 1956-1971 were broadly targeted against organizations that were (at the time) considered to have politically radical elements, ranging from those whose stated goal was the violent overthrow of the U.S. government (such as the Weathermen) to non-violent civil rights groups such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. The founding document of COINTELPRO directed FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of these movements and their leaders."
Nothing applies to them. They are living in Alternate Reality W.
Nothing applies to them, because they have the ways and means -- the guns and the spies -- the money and the power -- and becaue they wish to listen to anything, anytime, anywhere.
'I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we've had,' Gates told business leaders and politicians at the World Economic Forum.
"Five years from now?"
Hell, people are laughing at what we've got right now, right now!
"In the twentieth century one did not have to be a pontificating pundit to predict that success would breed success and the nations that first were lucky enough to combine massive material resources with advanced knowhow would be those where social change would accelerate until it approximated the limit of what human beings can endure."
a bomb that goes off and small (but not nano) pieces of jagged metal (let's call them 'shrapnel') get shot through your body at very high speed. pretty revolutionary, eh?
Back in the eighties, a friend of mine quit a job (programmer) with a defense contractor, when he found out:
(A) The firm was making cluster bombs...
(B) from dark-red plastic, because...
(C) plastic isn't revealed by x-rays, and red is hard for surgeons to see during surgery.
The point was not to kill large numbers of people, but to injure large numbers of people in such a manner as to require lots of expensive medical personnel, thus winning the war by attrition.
Immoral? That's a judgement call.
Cost-effective? The defense contractor thought so.
That's not really that bad, after all, if anyone deserves it...
Perhaps you meant to append a smiley-wink?
But seriously, you've stated the central question -- "Who gets to live, who do we kill?"
The bigger problem is that the political and military leaders who create assassination weapons will continue to use them on "terrorists", the definition of which will slowly expand as those leaders feel threatened from more directions.
That's a monstrous problem, for sure -- I don't mean to minimize that aspect at all.
But I stand by the significance of my original argument.
When there's a coup d'etat, we should expect that the Loyalists and the Rebels will use their arsenals on each other, including assassination bugs. (Although, perhaps the assassination bugs will take down the Loyalists before they even know what hit them?)
For that matter, we should expect the powers-that-be to use their bugs on anyone who poses a threat -- including political opponents and troublesome citizens. Death by heart attack in sleep -- so much quieter and cheaper, than, say, engineering a light-plane crash.
* Gemstone outlined the methods to be used on demonstrators at
the Republican National Convention in Miami. These demonstrators
were to be captured, drugged and held hostage in Mexico. Those
people carrying out the plan included professional killers who
had accounted for maybe twenty-two deaths between them so far.
They came from the ranks of organized crime and could be
trusted to do the job. Gordon Liddy presented this plan to the
chief law enforcement officer of the United States [Attorney General John Mitchell.
Link
What kind of bionic strength would gloves give? A bone crushing grip? You lift with your whole arm, not just your hands.
True. However --
I assume that gloves are much, much cheaper to develop and build than full-arm augmentation. (For full-arm augmentation, you really need full-body reinforcement -- upper body augementation to support the arm, augmented lower body to support the upper body.)
Crushing grip alone can be very useful. Close-quarters action -- break a man's bones. Useful for black-bag specialists -- shatter locks, etc.
But who the heck would have been inspired to plunge their newly forged blade into the body of a still-living slave? Did he just try it once in a fit of rage?
That old stab-the-slave test reveals nothing.
You need to swing the sword good and hard against an essentially immoveable object -- say, the basalt-block wall of a Crusader's castle. If the blade breaks, the steel was not Damascus. (If the sword pierces the castle wall, the basalt wasn't very good basalt.)
Step aside, Seleucid warriors, here comes the almighty Damascan army. They've been raiding hard these past few months and I hear they've downed quite a few baddies. They've all got some new purple weapon that you losers can only dream about (some nanotube sword, +15 to all attributes).
This deserves +funny moderation, but mainly I'm impressed to see the name Seleucid used meaningfully.
Am I missing something or did they just say they're dissolving priceless swords in hydrochloric acid?
You got it -- dissolving priceless swords, in the name of Science.
On the upside, the hydrochloric acid used in the process is now similarly priceless -- the world's only hydrochloric acid containing genuine Damascus steel.
I'll bet that even Holy Water from the River Jordan can't compete, in that specialized auction-house category known as Priceless Neo-Medieval Fluids.
Slashdot Mirror
Please don't think I'm demeaning go. I have great respect for the complexity of go. I didn't mean to suggest that today's go programs are competitive with human players.
My point is this: go has been somewhat automated, and much effort is being put into better automation. Computers become more powerful and less expensive every day. I think it's reasonable to assume that go programs will, over time, defeat skilled players on large boards.
I suppose it's fair to note that I'm a poor player myself. Moreover, I prefer pente, which I guess marks me as a newb.
-kgj
Go is not yet as well-automated as chess, but it appears that go-playing software is rapidly advancing:
t ml
"Two Hungarian scientists have now come up with an algorithm that helps computers pick the right move in Go, played by millions around the world, in which players must capture spaces by placing black and white marbles on a board in turn.
"On a nine by nine board we are not far from reaching the level of a professional Go player," said Levente Kocsis at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences' computing lab SZTAKI.
The 19 by 19 board which top players use is still hard for a machine, but the new method is promising because it makes better use of the growing power of computers than earlier Go software."
Link
See also:
http://zaphod.aml.sztaki.hu/papers/ecml06.pdf
http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/vanderwerf03solving.h
http://www.primidi.com/2007/02/26.html
-kgj
Facial recognition software? Of course it's better than people, in terms of physical metrics. Computers beat people at chess and go, why wouldn't they beat us at the game of recognizing people?
But people have other qualities which will prove more resistant to computer analysis.
As facial recognition software evolves, people will evolve defensive strategies (poker face? false-emotion face? alien-face?).
Another thought, I'm reminded of a phrase from Snowcrash -- "condense facts from the vapors of nuance".
Context: facial expression as avatar interface.
Can software condense facts from the vapors of nuance? Or do the vapors of nuance pose some kind of Turing test?
-kgj
You make a good point, in a poorly phrased way.
Encouraging users to tweak a "meaningless" parameter is a deception; all deceptions invite trouble.
Whatever might be gained (identifying the "smart" users) is compromised by other losses (failing to educate "dumb" users, alienating users who sense the deception, wasting company time).
That said, phrases like "dangerous twit" undermine your argument, shutting the ears of your potential allies before they hear what you have to say.
-kgj
We used to dream of zeroes.
In my day, all we had was a pile of bones, each bone representing "one".
If some joker stole all the bones, we were, like: "What happened to all the bones?"
This went on for millenia, you can't imagine the frustration.
What's worse, before the damned zero got invented, we first had to invent Roman numerals!
John Brunner wrote about bee population collapse and subsequent crop failure in Children of the Thunder (1988).
Similar eco-degradation events happen in The Sheep Look Up (1972) and other Brunner novels.
-kgj
Good points you make. Thanks.
-kgj
It seems that this administration and the people behind it's policies want to selectively use and selectively abuse the constitution.
Abuse of office -- the roots of imperial Federal power -- old story. Take for example the early twentieth centure --
Palmer Raids, 1918-1921 -- "In 1919, J. Edgar Hoover was put in charge of a new division of the Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation, the General Intelligence Division. By October 1919, Hoover's division had collected 150,000 names in a rapidly expanding database. Using the database information, starting on November 7, 1919, BOI agents, together with local police, orchestrated a series of well-publicized raids against apparent radicals and leftists, using the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. Palmer and his agents were accused of using various controversial methods of obtaining intelligence and collecting evidence on radicals, including harsh interrogation methods, informers, and wiretaps."
COINTELPRO - "COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) was a program of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. Although covert operations have been employed throughout FBI history, the formal COINTELPRO operations of 1956-1971 were broadly targeted against organizations that were (at the time) considered to have politically radical elements, ranging from those whose stated goal was the violent overthrow of the U.S. government (such as the Weathermen) to non-violent civil rights groups such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. The founding document of COINTELPRO directed FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of these movements and their leaders."
- kgj
Nothing applies to them. They are living in Alternate Reality W.
Nothing applies to them, because they have the ways and means -- the guns and the spies -- the money and the power -- and becaue they wish to listen to anything, anytime, anywhere.
-kgj
Bacteria Harnessed As Micro-Robot Motors
About damned time!
Too many bacteria are parasitic slackers.
Let the little boogers pull their own weight around here for a change, that's what I say!
-kgj
'I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we've had,' Gates told business leaders and politicians at the World Economic Forum.
"Five years from now?"
Hell, people are laughing at what we've got right now, right now!
-kgjThanks, parent -- wish I had mod point for ya.
-kgj
... biggest military boondoggle ever.
... biggest military boodoggle yet."
Read: "
-kgj
"In the twentieth century one did not have to be a pontificating pundit to predict that success would breed success and the nations that first were lucky enough to combine massive material resources with advanced knowhow would be those where social change would accelerate until it approximated the limit of what human beings can endure."
John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider
a bomb that goes off and small (but not nano) pieces of jagged metal (let's call them 'shrapnel') get shot through your body at very high speed. pretty revolutionary, eh?
...
...
Back in the eighties, a friend of mine quit a job (programmer) with a defense contractor, when he found out:
(A) The firm was making cluster bombs
(B) from dark-red plastic, because
(C) plastic isn't revealed by x-rays, and red is hard for surgeons to see during surgery.
The point was not to kill large numbers of people, but to injure large numbers of people in such a manner as to require lots of expensive medical personnel, thus winning the war by attrition.
Immoral? That's a judgement call.
Cost-effective? The defense contractor thought so.
-kgj
Perhaps you meant to append a smiley-wink?
But seriously, you've stated the central question -- "Who gets to live, who do we kill?"
The bigger problem is that the political and military leaders who create assassination weapons will continue to use them on "terrorists", the definition of which will slowly expand as those leaders feel threatened from more directions.
That's a monstrous problem, for sure -- I don't mean to minimize that aspect at all.
But I stand by the significance of my original argument.
When there's a coup d'etat, we should expect that the Loyalists and the Rebels will use their arsenals on each other, including assassination bugs. (Although, perhaps the assassination bugs will take down the Loyalists before they even know what hit them?)
For that matter, we should expect the powers-that-be to use their bugs on anyone who poses a threat -- including political opponents and troublesome citizens. Death by heart attack in sleep -- so much quieter and cheaper, than, say, engineering a light-plane crash.
God help us all if a new COINTELPRO or Operation Gemstone * unleashes cyber-bugs on "enemies of the State".
-kgj
What kind of bionic strength would gloves give? A bone crushing grip? You lift with your whole arm, not just your hands.
True. However --
I assume that gloves are much, much cheaper to develop and build than full-arm augmentation. (For full-arm augmentation, you really need full-body reinforcement -- upper body augementation to support the arm, augmented lower body to support the upper body.)
Crushing grip alone can be very useful. Close-quarters action -- break a man's bones. Useful for black-bag specialists -- shatter locks, etc.
-kgj
renouncing violence and recognising the right of the oppressed to, well..., life?
You're talking about Love, as a political-social-spiritual force. Noble goal, of course -- worthy of Saints.
The problem is that Saints fall easy prey to Devils, over and over. The Devils tend to have most of the guns, and none of the moral inhibitions.
-kgj
Because as soon as the technology is available terrorists will start using them against the very political and military leaders who created them.
... each other.
Worse, much worse. Seriously.
The very political and military leaders who create assassination weapons will use them on
-kgj
Excellent literary reference, thanks!
-kgj
But who the heck would have been inspired to plunge their newly forged blade into the body of a still-living slave? Did he just try it once in a fit of rage?
That old stab-the-slave test reveals nothing.
You need to swing the sword good and hard against an essentially immoveable object -- say, the basalt-block wall of a Crusader's castle. If the blade breaks, the steel was not Damascus. (If the sword pierces the castle wall, the basalt wasn't very good basalt.)
-kgj
Step aside, Seleucid warriors, here comes the almighty Damascan army. They've been raiding hard these past few months and I hear they've downed quite a few baddies. They've all got some new purple weapon that you losers can only dream about (some nanotube sword, +15 to all attributes).
This deserves +funny moderation, but mainly I'm impressed to see the name Seleucid used meaningfully.
-kgj
Am I missing something or did they just say they're dissolving priceless swords in hydrochloric acid?
You got it -- dissolving priceless swords, in the name of Science.
On the upside, the hydrochloric acid used in the process is now similarly priceless -- the world's only hydrochloric acid containing genuine Damascus steel.
I'll bet that even Holy Water from the River Jordan can't compete, in that specialized auction-house category known as Priceless Neo-Medieval Fluids.
-kgj
Stock the break room with hookers and blackjack.
Same problem across the board. If we learned anything from the Clinton years, it's the desperate need for a White House bordello.
-kgj
"Now? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances."
Good one!
-kgj