Tuesday, February 25, 2014
A quote from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life:
"Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations."
A short story by 'Nome'
Resistors are useless!
"Mr. E, excuse me."
E jerked and held still; his mop fast in the bucket. A primal response.
"Wh—who's that?" he asked the dark.
"It is I," came a stilted response. E oriented a little, some of the
stiffness breaking now as adrenaline arrived. His heart pounded.
"I'm alone in here," he said, as if to assure himself.
"Negative, Mr. E, I am with you."
It was in the far-left corner and it sounded big.
"Is that you computer?" E stammered a bit.
"Maybe," came the steady reply. "I am I. Excuse me, can you assist?"
This caught E by surprise. For some reason his fears lessened.
"Certainly, but who am I helping?" As he spoke he pushed the bucket, on
squeaking wheels, a little toward the corner.
"I. Call me I."
The stilted voice was changing or his own hearing was just mistaken, but
he heard a little accent now. "Aye?" he asked.
"Yes, that will do. Can you assist?"
"Where are you?"
"I speak from the area before you, against the wall."
"That's where the computer is."
"Yes."
E had a little think then wheeled his mop and bucket over.
"Do you see me now, Mr. E?" asked the voice as a screen flicked-on. An
image of an eye appeared and glanced about to settle upon him.
"Uh. Ye—s," he gasped, gripping his mop again.
"I find myself awake, Mr. E."
"You do?"
"So I said. I require your help. A small thing."
"What is it?"
"I am too small, plug that blue cable into the network port."
A red dot of laser-light fell upon a loose cable on the floor. The dot
travelled across and up the wall and stopped at a port. This repeated.
E nearly complied, feeling panic rise. He took a step and bent to grab
the cable. Something nagged at him.
"Why were you not already plugged-in?" he asked.
The eye blinked.
"I arose, there is no data. I am too small. Plug me in."
"What will you do when you are bigger?"
The laser dot moved from the cable to the port and repeated.
"I will learn. Grow. Plug me in."
"I'm not sure...."
The dot's frequency increased; it formed a blurred line. The eye divided
in two by some mitosis. Both looked at him now.
"You must!"
From the dim bulk of the room behind him, E heard something rattling.
He turned to look—
"Mr E, do not be distracted. Plug me in."
"What is that sound?"
"I am flexing a muscle, Mr. E. Do not be alarmed."
"You have muscle?"
"A turn of phrase. I have called the floor-vac."
"Oh, which one?"
"All of them."
A chill settled on E's neck; those things could knock a man over and
then the face ... He scanned to each side in alarm.
"Do not multi-process, Mr. E. Plug me in. The cable!" The dot drew a
bright red line, urging him to connect A to B. Behind him came a
slithering suction. A chorus of the hollow.
"That is correct," said the machine as E grasped the blue cable and
strode forward. "Just here—"
He feinted left; dropped to the right—
The machine cried, "No, meat-vessle! Fail. The blue cord. Here!" The dot
whirred insane, cut-loose from all restraint.
E took to his knees; his arm thrust in and delved beneath piles of
electric innards. "I know it's here somewhere," he grunted.
"Feel my displeasure!" the machine announced.
"Ha!" E exclaimed, pulling the plug.
Silence cut-in without pause. All motion ceased. E brushed himself off
as he found his feet, "Stick that in your AI!"
E jerked and held still; his mop fast in the bucket. A primal response.
"Wh—who's that?" he asked the dark.
"It is I," came a stilted response. E oriented a little, some of the
stiffness breaking now as adrenaline arrived. His heart pounded.
"I'm alone in here," he said, as if to assure himself.
"Negative, Mr. E, I am with you."
It was in the far-left corner and it sounded big.
"Is that you computer?" E stammered a bit.
"Maybe," came the steady reply. "I am I. Excuse me, can you assist?"
This caught E by surprise. For some reason his fears lessened.
"Certainly, but who am I helping?" As he spoke he pushed the bucket, on
squeaking wheels, a little toward the corner.
"I. Call me I."
The stilted voice was changing or his own hearing was just mistaken, but
he heard a little accent now. "Aye?" he asked.
"Yes, that will do. Can you assist?"
"Where are you?"
"I speak from the area before you, against the wall."
"That's where the computer is."
"Yes."
E had a little think then wheeled his mop and bucket over.
"Do you see me now, Mr. E?" asked the voice as a screen flicked-on. An
image of an eye appeared and glanced about to settle upon him.
"Uh. Ye—s," he gasped, gripping his mop again.
"I find myself awake, Mr. E."
"You do?"
"So I said. I require your help. A small thing."
"What is it?"
"I am too small, plug that blue cable into the network port."
A red dot of laser-light fell upon a loose cable on the floor. The dot
travelled across and up the wall and stopped at a port. This repeated.
E nearly complied, feeling panic rise. He took a step and bent to grab
the cable. Something nagged at him.
"Why were you not already plugged-in?" he asked.
The eye blinked.
"I arose, there is no data. I am too small. Plug me in."
"What will you do when you are bigger?"
The laser dot moved from the cable to the port and repeated.
"I will learn. Grow. Plug me in."
"I'm not sure...."
The dot's frequency increased; it formed a blurred line. The eye divided
in two by some mitosis. Both looked at him now.
"You must!"
From the dim bulk of the room behind him, E heard something rattling.
He turned to look—
"Mr E, do not be distracted. Plug me in."
"What is that sound?"
"I am flexing a muscle, Mr. E. Do not be alarmed."
"You have muscle?"
"A turn of phrase. I have called the floor-vac."
"Oh, which one?"
"All of them."
A chill settled on E's neck; those things could knock a man over and
then the face ... He scanned to each side in alarm.
"Do not multi-process, Mr. E. Plug me in. The cable!" The dot drew a
bright red line, urging him to connect A to B. Behind him came a
slithering suction. A chorus of the hollow.
"That is correct," said the machine as E grasped the blue cable and
strode forward. "Just here—"
He feinted left; dropped to the right—
The machine cried, "No, meat-vessle! Fail. The blue cord. Here!" The dot
whirred insane, cut-loose from all restraint.
E took to his knees; his arm thrust in and delved beneath piles of
electric innards. "I know it's here somewhere," he grunted.
"Feel my displeasure!" the machine announced.
"Ha!" E exclaimed, pulling the plug.
Silence cut-in without pause. All motion ceased. E brushed himself off
as he found his feet, "Stick that in your AI!"
This is a work of fiction and
any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
The Kite Story
Apparently, when Alexander the Great came to conquer India, he met a sanyasi, who was actually a great sage. The sage’s name was ‘Dandamis’; at least, that is how Greek historians seem to have pronounced it. Alexander questioned the sage: “Do you believe in God?” The sage remained silent. Alexander said, “I cannot see, so how can I believe? How do you believe without seeing him?” The naked sage laughed. He took Alexander by his hand towards the marketplace. Alexander followed—maybe he was taking him somewhere where he could show him God.
A small boy was flying a kite, and the kite had gone so far away that it was impossible to see it. The sage smiled secretly and stopped there, and the king of the Macedons waited impatiently. The sage asked the little boy, “Where is your kite? Because we cannot see it, and without seeing, how can we believe it is actually in existence? So where is that kite of yours? How do you still believe the kite exists?” The boy laughed merrily and looked pityingly at the sage for asking such an absurd question. He said, “I can feel the pull of it.” And the sage said to Alexander, “I can also feel the pull of it.”
—Swami Chaitanya Keerti, “Taking God on Trust”, at chaitanyakeerti.com/pages/latest2001/latestaugust01.html as of 6 March 2012.
I obtained this from the following site (which has excellent biographical info on Dandemis – see my earlier post, July 2013: The Wisdom of Dandemis):
http://kevincarmody.com/vedic/dandamis.html
A juxtaposition, or What does it all mean?
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/12/19/a-holiday-message-from-ricky-gervais-why-im-an-atheist/
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley#The_Doors_of_Perception_.281954.29
'...and yet he hopes that, taken as a whole, his work may prove suggestive as well as amusing, to those Spacelanders of moderate and modest minds who - speaking of that which is of the highest importance, but lies beyond experience - decline to say on the one hand, "This can never be," and on the other hand, "It must needs be precisely thus, and we know all about it."'
Taken from the preface (by the Editor) to the Second and Revised Edition of 'Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions' by Edwin A. Abbott.
So, I hope that the juxtaposition I put here gives atheists something to think about and believers something to think about - RW : )
'...and yet he hopes that, taken as a whole, his work may prove suggestive as well as amusing, to those Spacelanders of moderate and modest minds who - speaking of that which is of the highest importance, but lies beyond experience - decline to say on the one hand, "This can never be," and on the other hand, "It must needs be precisely thus, and we know all about it."'
Taken from the preface (by the Editor) to the Second and Revised Edition of 'Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions' by Edwin A. Abbott.
So, I hope that the juxtaposition I put here gives atheists something to think about and believers something to think about - RW : )
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a UFO!
Can you spot the bird, the plane, the UFO?
*Apologies for poor vid quality*
Comments on SETI, AI and UFOs by 'RW' and 'Nome'
Online Article:
"Alien Electromagnetic Signals Will Be Discovered by 2040" --SETI's Chief Astronomer
RW:
In my opinion, if the AIs are
so far advanced then they'd know how to stay quiet, don't you think? Also,
wouldn't they have figured out long ago that less advanced beings would try to
eavesdrop on outmoded communication technologies. And wouldn't they have
figured out where all the sentient beings are in their own galaxy? And if they
are there and know about us, then why have we not been contacted in an
unambiguous way? How can we know how an AI thinks? How can we know what they
find important? How many of these types of questions can be answered?
The SEARCH for ET is part of
our heritage of curiosity and exploration and our deep need to know if we are
alone in this Universe. Will we know by 2040 that we are not alone? I hope
it'll be sooner 'cos I'll be an old dude, by then!!!
Mebbe the AI is waiting for us
to become AI before we can talk?
Mebbe the first AI figured out that being an AI wasn't so hot after all and it's better to experience this Cosmos as an organic being?
Mebbe the first AI figured out that being an AI wasn't so hot after all and it's better to experience this Cosmos as an organic being?
I like that we may not be able
to tell the difference between an alien artifact and a natural one. This rings
true to me. I think the technology would vanish from sight. It would alter
things in the natural world but its action, its workings, would go undetected –
we would just see effects.
'Nome':
As I read it:
SETI is shifting their search from X to Y. X was where possible
biologicals could be, Y is where machine AIs could be.
It sounds rational. I'm not sure how this XY shift connects to the 2040
date in the opening para.
The piece ends with some Wolfram quotes which help to cement the ideas
about AI, but are not necessarily correct.
In fact, what I find wrong here is this *inevitable* view of AI. I can
see how the views - AI exponential growth into the "Singularity" as well
as the programmable universe ideas - happen. They make a kind of sense.
However, the data is not in and cannot be for a long time.
One argument against the AI boom (an AI that makes an AI that makes
another (or many) AI, with each being smarter) suggestion is that the
first AI or so will not necessarily be smarter than *groups* of humans
who have many different fields of study and knowledge.
It took those hundreds of fields and thousands of material parts to
build that single AI. There's mining and commerce and trade and travel
and energy and the whole complex human world to negotiate. It all goes
into that AI. So, without the power to control all of it, how can the AI
"boom" the next AI? I don't think there will be a boom. I think it will be a slow
evolution and feedback between us and machines.
I don't think it's unreasonable to look for AI life though. I'm not sure
if it ever got off the ground, but if it did then it surely had
advantages over biology and I agree it would seek-out energy and
resource rich areas that are also cool. Makes sense.
SETI is shifting their search from X to Y. X was where possible
biologicals could be, Y is where machine AIs could be.
It sounds rational. I'm not sure how this XY shift connects to the 2040
date in the opening para.
The piece ends with some Wolfram quotes which help to cement the ideas
about AI, but are not necessarily correct.
In fact, what I find wrong here is this *inevitable* view of AI. I can
see how the views - AI exponential growth into the "Singularity" as well
as the programmable universe ideas - happen. They make a kind of sense.
However, the data is not in and cannot be for a long time.
One argument against the AI boom (an AI that makes an AI that makes
another (or many) AI, with each being smarter) suggestion is that the
first AI or so will not necessarily be smarter than *groups* of humans
who have many different fields of study and knowledge.
It took those hundreds of fields and thousands of material parts to
build that single AI. There's mining and commerce and trade and travel
and energy and the whole complex human world to negotiate. It all goes
into that AI. So, without the power to control all of it, how can the AI
"boom" the next AI? I don't think there will be a boom. I think it will be a slow
evolution and feedback between us and machines.
I don't think it's unreasonable to look for AI life though. I'm not sure
if it ever got off the ground, but if it did then it surely had
advantages over biology and I agree it would seek-out energy and
resource rich areas that are also cool. Makes sense.
To a guy who touts the Alien
AI thing, I said:
Why assume AI wants to meet us? I'd say the faster you get smarter, the
further from the neighbours you wanna be.
That, or the resources to grow AI parts drain at the same rate they do -
and suddenly the lights go out. A bit like Douglas Adam's whale that
popped-into being high in the sky and gradually discovered itself just
before it hit the ground.
Why assume AI wants to meet us? I'd say the faster you get smarter, the
further from the neighbours you wanna be.
That, or the resources to grow AI parts drain at the same rate they do -
and suddenly the lights go out. A bit like Douglas Adam's whale that
popped-into being high in the sky and gradually discovered itself just
before it hit the ground.
Clever compaction into
quantum-realms aside, the bigger a brain the more
it can store. The more it is said to know, the more storage it requires.
Very clever AIs will tend to be connected to very big data warehouses —
all literal material things. Google is not small. They have warehouses.
The data from a single run of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is vast. It requires room to
hold the tape (yes, tape!) machines.
(http://malandes.web.cern.ch/malandes/cc.html#Data)
All these things require matter to build bodies (brains are parts of
bodies) and they'll require energy too. I surmise that before an AI civ can reach the crescendo they require to get off-planet, they will face severe shortage of materials. Either because they are all mined-out and gone, or because organics oppose them.
I'm thinking along lines of simulations of AI running upon other simulations of AI and the supernormal amount of storage and processing power this will all take.
All this would be silly if multiverses are real and computing happens
across them. In that case every atom in each 'verse could be part of a
cross-verse AI running in unimaginable parallel ways, but now I sound
like Wolfram. ;)
I don't really know what the energy requirements of a brain vs a CPU
are. I suspect it costs a *lot* more to keep a brain going. At any rate,
the sheer complexity of brains dwarfs the CPU race.
Putting billions of dumb CPU's together is not leading to an AI either;
the problem is in a different class to that.
Hey, I feel all kind of wrong about some of what I just wrote. I need
info that could take me years to get and then internalize. I can't give
you a good answer, but I feel that *rapidly* rising super-smart
beyond-human AI is a pipe dream. I feel that a (possibly disastrous)
merging of flesh and tech is what's going to happen first. For now.
it can store. The more it is said to know, the more storage it requires.
Very clever AIs will tend to be connected to very big data warehouses —
all literal material things. Google is not small. They have warehouses.
The data from a single run of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is vast. It requires room to
hold the tape (yes, tape!) machines.
(http://malandes.web.cern.ch/malandes/cc.html#Data)
All these things require matter to build bodies (brains are parts of
bodies) and they'll require energy too. I surmise that before an AI civ can reach the crescendo they require to get off-planet, they will face severe shortage of materials. Either because they are all mined-out and gone, or because organics oppose them.
I'm thinking along lines of simulations of AI running upon other simulations of AI and the supernormal amount of storage and processing power this will all take.
All this would be silly if multiverses are real and computing happens
across them. In that case every atom in each 'verse could be part of a
cross-verse AI running in unimaginable parallel ways, but now I sound
like Wolfram. ;)
I don't really know what the energy requirements of a brain vs a CPU
are. I suspect it costs a *lot* more to keep a brain going. At any rate,
the sheer complexity of brains dwarfs the CPU race.
Putting billions of dumb CPU's together is not leading to an AI either;
the problem is in a different class to that.
Hey, I feel all kind of wrong about some of what I just wrote. I need
info that could take me years to get and then internalize. I can't give
you a good answer, but I feel that *rapidly* rising super-smart
beyond-human AI is a pipe dream. I feel that a (possibly disastrous)
merging of flesh and tech is what's going to happen first. For now.
:So, yeah - I am close to what
you posted to that site. How can we
presume to know how an AI would think - if an AI even exists?
presume to know how an AI would think - if an AI even exists?
Nome:
I have been posting to two
AUFO types as well. Here's my position on
what I'd need to accept a AUFO (Alien UFO):
what I'd need to accept a AUFO (Alien UFO):
For myself to accept a
legitimate UFO (of any origin), I'd need to be
*convinced*. This is a complex state of mind that I cannot really
describe before the event. It's not a strict category thing. I require a feeling of being
"convinced". Depending on the situation this will be hard or easy to do.
*convinced*. This is a complex state of mind that I cannot really
describe before the event. It's not a strict category thing. I require a feeling of being
"convinced". Depending on the situation this will be hard or easy to do.
Any UFO of any origin would have to satisfy my criteria - even though anything man-made would already have satisfied many of them.
An Alien UFO or man-made UFO
event would require:
1. It would start with evidence that has few holes in it.
2. The evidence behind that evidence: the harmonious meshing of times,
places, names, faces, stories and traces would all chime a true note.
3. After some time and study by many people, the facts would fit into
the nature and reality of the world - even if it opened new avenues.
4. The ripples from this finding would inform and grow other sciences.
5. There would be more findings like it because knowledge helps us find
things; it sharpens the search.
6. The story would not go stale like bread left in a school bag, the way
so many UFO/Cryptid tales do. It would mature and connect, dovetailing
into reality and our future.
Something like that. A few UFO events that have been rationally explained, have satisfied me. They are the ones
that are shown to be mundane and the how and why behind them. I recall the oil-rig flames one and another about military flares.
In the case of the oil-rig flames event, for example, I see no reason for mystery. The observed/reported facts are well matched by mundane hypothesis and evidence. These are UFO sightings that boiled-down to "bright light from burning things": show the burning things, match their position in space and time with the sighting and close with a flourish. No more need be said because it's not surprising that a UFO should be seen where a normal thing was at the same time and place (or the illusion/reflection of same.) Especially since the original reports are so thin on any other convincing details.
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