Saturday, May 30, 2015

Comment on the immortal's dilemma

The problem with expansion in my view is that it assumes that adding more states yields ever more meaningful differences in experience.

But look at say resolution, say 480p, go to 720p, go to 1080p, go to 4k, keep going.  All the larger resolutions are either scaled up versions of the lower resolution content or stitching-up(mosaic-like) of chunks of the already seen content at the lower resolution.

Say you exhaust all content at 1080p.   Can you expect to find meaningful differences in the 4k set of images? Nope, the 4k consists of stitching up the 1080p images, and the 1080p images not only have zoomed up chunks of the 4k image but they also have scaled down, zoomed out versions of entire 4k images.  At 4k you won't find meaningful differences, and this likely holds for all higher resolutions you go to.

That is vision, basically the most important sense, scaling up eye sensors will basically not get you outside of the finitude of the possible, no more meaningful content differences can be extracted.    The rearrangement of small sequences deals meaningful differences, but once you reach a certain threshold of sequence size up to which you've seen all sequences, further increases do not add further meaningful differences.

You could say that, although I've not the math to show it, it is my intuition that a similar phenomena to what is seen in computation happens with regards to content.   In computations, once you reach a certain threshold of versatility in the workings of a machine, that is universality, increasing the versatility of the machine beyond that does not allow you to compute things beyond the simpler machine's capabilities.  

I suspect that it is the same with regards to content, once you reach a certain threshold in the complexity of sequences you're dealing with, a certain length or size, further increases do not yield meaningful differences.  

Infinity in essence is bound by the finitude of the possible.  Which refers to the hypothesis that there are a finite number of meaningfully different possibilities, and anything else is just rearranged combinations of these finite possibilities, that do not add any further meaningful difference.

That said, even if you end up trapped within a loop for eternity, so long as you controlled the transition between states, it shouldn't truly matter that you repeat.   The problem with mortality is not only that you die, missing out on many potentially pleasing experiences that you could controllably experience indefinitely, but that without certainty of the finality of death you do not know, for sure,if you will continue to exist in some manner outside your control.

Immortality grants control and certitude(when accompanied with adequate technology or means), if you're in a pleasant state and can guarantee it indefinitely, one might consider the endless repetition pathetic in a sense, but I don't see why the lack of novelty must objectively and necessarily truly mean it would indeed be pathetic.-coolball 

link to original site

Monday, May 25, 2015

Comment on kurzweilai regards future bodies

quote: For example, page 307 in Singularity is near says: Lets consider where we are, circa early 2030. We ve eliminated
the heart, lungs, red and white blood cells, platelets, pancreas, kidneys, bladder, liver and more..

Page 303: Redesigning the digestive system, reasonable mature by late 2020s.-andmar74

The problem I see with singularity is near is that it assumes hard nano not only is feasible, but that it can work outside of specialized environments in manufacturing or research facilities.  

IMHO, it is likely that soft nano is the only nano that is viable in a wide number of real world environments.    Unless you design hard nano with a similar ease of dis-assembly and repair of components, it will have serious trouble dealing with failure of an internal component, let alone multiple components.   I find it highly unlikely that energy extraction, constant high speed motion, and bombardment with external agents*(high energy particles, especially in outer-space) can be withstood for long periods of time without failure of some internal component.    A biological cell can withstand countless multiple simultaneous failures of its internal components at the same time, how many can hard nanobot designs withstand before becoming nonfunctional?  in case of becoming nonfunctional how easy is the dis-assembly and repair?   The answers to these two questions will determine viability.

That said it is indeed likely that at least soft nano will be used to replace all of our internal organs with far superior versions.   Endogenous synthesis of all vitamins, and countless beneficial compounds will occur.   Long term storage of excess necessary trace elements to withstand possible suboptimal nutrition, and the ability to tolerate toxic amounts of these substances by storing some and mass disposing of unnecessary excess.  Also vast detoxification capabilities for poisons, the ability to withstand prolonged oxygen deprivation without damage, higher radiation tolerance, and cancer immunity with agelessness, and vast scar free regenerative potential.

IIRC, the idea of cartridges, belts or something like that was mentioned to deal with waste and provide raw materials and nutrients, this can possibly be accomplished with soft nano too.

Theoretically a linking system towards the blood supply could be designed, with a safe plug-n-play design, that would connect the body to an external machine that could provide nutrients and take waste materials and recycle them externally while using a computer or vr technology.

IF fusion reactors can be built and miniaturized or alternatively using wireless electricity, wastes would not need to go outside the body as there would be sufficient energy to internally recycle all internal waste produced and digest 100% all food, there would be enough energy to transform excesses into anything... say flowers?   Though with the advent of augmented reality food, excess consumption is unlikely.

Way I see it is likely that nutrient and waste exchange will occur while asleep, or if we do away with sleep while sitting or relaxing some, through a plug-n-play wire or if desired cartridge system, though plug-n-play wire seems less cumbersome.

Augmented reality food will dispense with most need for managing digestive waste, and aided by a system that harnesses either wireless electricity or nuclear fusion(less likely) it should be possible to handle real food without producing nonpleasant waste.   Wireless electricity would also allow for sufficient energy to recycle all internal wastes.

cool upcoming kickstarter game

Friday, May 22, 2015

confabulating reasons for predetermined choices by external agents

For instance, when he questioned the volunteers afterwards, he was shocked to find that 92% of the volunteers had absolutely no idea that they’d been manipulated and felt that they had been in complete control of their decisions. Even more surprisingly, a large proportion went as far as to make up imaginary reasons for their choice. “One person said ‘I chose the 10 of hearts because 10 is high number and I was thinking of hearts before the experiment started’,” says Olson – despite the fact that it was really Olson who’d made the decision.-link

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Nice quote from nice article

Deep Learning Godfather says machines learn like toddlers

 "Anything you can do, neural networks will also eventually be able to do. All industries will be affected by it." - Geoffrey Hinton. -link

Cool amv

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Another nice video on aging

Article on conscious perception

What this means is that the brain samples the world in rhythmic pulses, perhaps even discrete time chunks, much like the individual frames of a movie. From the brain’s perspective, experience is not continuous but quantized.

Another clue that led to this discovery was the so-called wagon-wheel illusion, in which the spokes on a wheel are sometimes perceived to reverse the direction of their rotation. This illusion is easy to induce with a strobe light if the rotation of the wheel is such that each strobe flash captures the spoke location slightly behind the location captured on the previous flash, leading to the perception of reverse motion. The illusion results from “sampling” the scene in discrete frames or time chunks.

 The telling fact, for perceptual scientists, is that this illusion can also occur during normal observation of a rotating wheel, in full daylight. This suggests that the brain itself, even in the absence of a strobe light, is sampling the world in discrete chunks...-nytimes
Interesting article on perception and likely discreteness of it. 

video on aging science

Friday, May 8, 2015

Nice quote on quantum nature

Ross Anderson, one of the authors of the above paper, is more optimistic: “I think it's potentially one of the most high-impact things I've ever done,” he says, “If we're right, and reality is fluid-mechanical at the deepest level, this changes everything. It consigns string theory and multiple universes to the dustbin.”-link

Nice quote, if right, the mystics playing physics will finally have to give way to reality and stop invoking magic in the classroom.