Showing posts with label 2018. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2018. Show all posts
Sunday, December 23, 2018
QUOTE | NICE QUOTE
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”*.-George Bernard Shaw
Saturday, December 22, 2018
QUOTE | POWER OF BIOLOGY SURPRISES SCIENTISTS YET AGAIN
[Lloyd said: “The strangest thing for me is that some organisms can exist
for millennia. They are metabolically active but in stasis, with less
energy than we thought possible of supporting life.”]-guardian
FALLACY | LIST OF FALLACIES
"LIST OF FALLACIES
Divine fallacy (argument from incredulity) – arguing that, because something is so incredible or amazing, it must be the result of superior, divine, alien or paranormal agency
False authority (single authority) – using an expert of dubious credentials or using only one opinion to sell a product or idea. Related to the appeal to authority (not always fallacious).
Magical thinking – fallacious attribution of causal relationships between actions and events. In anthropology, it refers primarily to cultural beliefs that ritual, prayer, sacrifice, and taboos will produce specific supernatural consequences. In psychology, it refers to an irrational belief that thoughts by themselves can affect the world or that thinking something corresponds with doing it."-wikipedia
And of course the seeming favorite of late:
"Ad hominem – attacking the arguer instead of the argument." -wikipedia
But I will extend it to say that it is not only attacking the arguer, but also the authors cited by the arguer. I mean even in worst case scenario were the authors cited are known liars, guess what? ATTACKING THE AUTHORS IS NOT AN ARGUMENT. THE ACTUAL MERITS OF THE ARGUMENTS MUST STILL BE ADDRESSED AND CANNOT BE DISMISSED OUT OF HAND BY VIRTUE OF THE AD HOMINEM. What they present, the evidence, or argument must be directly addressed, simply throwing ad hominem at a cited author does not mean they can't be right. Even people who are mistaken most of the time can still be right some of the time, and you can't prove that this time is also one of the times they're mistaken even if it is more likely to be so.
Quote| Commen| Free speech| FICTION|REALITY
I mean what happens if the next GTA or some other high profile game the main character is an irredeemable bastard, bad guy. Boycott? Obviously no one is saying being evil is good, but if you want to play the bad guys, that is an option that should be open in fiction. In fiction bad things happen, and should be allowed to happen. FICTION/=REALITY FREE SPEECH.
Reddit reply Comment on Me-ness | IDENTITY | CONSCIOUSNESS
"I guess the question is would that be a copy or you"
good question. I think one can be in two or more places at once and still be the same person. At least one can conceive that would seem hypothetically possible with enough power. Note that even if being the same you wouldn't necessarily have to be aware the copies exist, the copies could be unaware of each other, yet be the same individual without shared memory.
Take for example if you traveled to the past, which may or may not be possible, if you travel to the past. That was you in the past, and it is you also who are the time traveler, but the past you is unaware of the future you. In fact you could have amnesia and not be aware of past you while past you is not aware of future you. Could also work if you came from the future to the present, it would be you but you wouldn't know nor share working memory.
That said, more knowledge is needed of the nature of consciousness, because the idea of simultaneous copies being you leads down quite a deep rabbit hole.
Friday, December 21, 2018
Gamer Movie Review: Beyond The Trailer + Comment
Comment on gamer movie:
In this movie advanced neural interfaces are explored, but the seeming necessity that such would quickly after likely be followed by radical ai advances seem to be ignored within it, as far as I can remember.
Within the movie humans can be controlled by other humans, but their performance is limited by the performance of those humans remotely controlling them. But one of the things that could happen in the real world is that as neural interfaces lead to the creation of agi, if it isn't created prior to their development through ai research, not only can intelligence be augmented by these neural interfaces but direct control of the body given to software or ai.
What would this mean? Well the human reaction time, even if augmented is limited, and the sluggishness of their thought speed rate(due to slow action potential speed, neuron refractory periods, etc) means they can never reach the best possible behavior. But a superintelligence can attain perfect behavior, score 3 point throws practically nonstop from any distance the individual is physically capable of. A superintelligence can dance perfectly. It can understand any language, and debate any topic perfectly, perform any moves or plays or acting, from the mundane to the most intimate of behaviors at superhuman levels of ridiculous perfection.
What this means is that giving control, which need not actually even feel like giving control("because the neural interface could enact activity in the brain areas that give the sensation of free choice, making it feel as if one is doing the choosing"), means one is the best at any game, sport, art or activity that one's physical body allows. And with training, it would allow peak body to have peak performance and control.
Nervous about a speech? One would not have to fret, engage of such would ensure the speech goes perfectly smooth barring physical failure of the body or external events. Want interesting casual conversation tailored to the audience or person you're speaking with? It can be done.
The attainment of optimal behavior would be quite ideal, especially if it requires no effort.
ADVANCED BRAIN COMPUTER INTERFACE COMMENT
Depends on how advanced the BCI is, but if it is an advanced enough BCI should be able to activate any area of the brain and elicit any physiological response.
If combined with genetic engineering physiologically normally unsustainable states should be possible to safely experience such as intense continuous happiness or fervent indefinite mad love.
The danger is that not only could an advanced enough BCI elicit any visual sensation, auditory sensation, touch or smell, etc, but also any emotion or thought, it is conceivable it could also suppress memories or elicit memories.
Even beyond that cause desires or wants, and even the initiation of action whilst activating the areas that give the sensation of free will. Theoretically you could get into scripted experiences where you do not have access to your full memory or even any control, yet feel fully in control despite following the script. A living movie if you will where you may act with the grace and excellence required of the character you're experiencing, bound by fate but feeling free.
Thursday, December 20, 2018
Brain | human animals | neurons | intelligence
Interesting comment of a researcher regards animals with larger brain and cortical neurons as they compare to the human brain, which may explain why humans retain their vastly superior intelligence despite differences in brain size, it appears cortical neuron count can still define the difference:
Despite the enormous number of neurons in the elephant cerebellum, its cerebral cortex, which is twice the size of ours, has only one third of the neurons in an average human cerebral cortex. Taken together, these results suggest that the limiting factor to cognitive abilities is not the number of neurons in the whole brain, but in the cerebral cortex (to which I would add, “provided that the cerebellum has enough neurons to shape activity in the cerebral cortex”).We don’t have data on whales yet, but that research is underway in our lab – along with research on carnivores, who we predict to have more neurons than the large artiodactyls that they prey upon.-https://intelligence.org/2014/04/22/suzana-herculano-houzel/
Longevity can be predicted by number of cortical neurons in an animal or so it seems.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cne.24564
Interesting snippet as well as the followingCrucially, the finding that no correlation between
maximal longevity and metabolic rate remains after accounting for
variation in numbers of cortical neurons argues strongly against
the common notion that damages accumulate at rates that scale
across species depending on metabolism (West et al., 1997).-Herculano Houzel (2018)
While this new possibility has yet to be investigated, itAnd yet another related snippet from the news
leads to one clear prediction: those species with the largest number
of cells in the relevant organ(s) will live longer before succumbing
to physiological breakdown and disintegration and,
consequently, death.-Herculano Houzel (2018)
"The data suggest that warm-blooded species accumulate damages at the same rate as they age. But what curtails life are damages to the cerebral cortex, not the rest of the body; the more cortical neurons you have, the longer you will still have enough to keep your body functional,” said Herculano-Houzel.-sourceBut it seems to me that if this were the case you'd see massive lifespan reductions in indivduals with half a brain, which does occur in humans. Otherwise this would seem to suggest aging may very well be programmed.
The primacy of the the face, nakedness of the body, and the perfect body
Many people, and many celebs get upset, some very much so when compromising pictures of themselves are released. Yet the most important external thing, exterior aspect about a body, at least the one aspect that defines them most, is their face which is public information, and since it is public information all have access to it. Thankfully there are laws to protect use of their likeliness in public, otherwise it could get even more chaotic, but a program could potentially easily generate their likeliness in new contexts with ease in privacy, ever greater ease as time goes on.
Since everyone has access to privacy, they can make use of said likeness if desired in private. Now that said, why do I say the face is primary, or of utmost importance, more important than the rest of the body? Because the imperfections of the rest of the body do not define someone as a person. A mole here, some scars there, some skin sags there, some cellulite there, can anyone say such is of significant importance? Would the person not be the very same exact person if they got implants, or reductions, or took care of the cellulite or removed a mole? Indeed all of these are minor details of little importance. There are many that get plastic surgery throughout the body to improve appearance, but clearly remain the same individual.
But given the commonality of the human shape, and the fact the human shape in its entirely is well known, once the imperfections are taken out, the series of human shapes that remain are in the public domain. Everyone knows and can make use of these, and given the silhouette of someone can potentially replicate the combination of face and plausible photoreal ideal underlying body type.
If a person has a flawless body? a perfect body? Is it not the same person? Or can we say it is, it is indeed only in a better looking state with the flaws removed? While flaws may have their charm they are not essential to identity, most consider a change towards flawlessness an improvement.
But technology is advancing, the day will be soon at hand when "clothing removal" like ai will be able to produce photoreal results of any individual in an instant. They will have plausible random physical flaws if desired or be physically flawless. Whilst now with great difficulty and time some can take hours in photoshop to attempt to create some such by mix and matching Frankenstein style, the future products will have a finer granularity of features making them seamless and infinitely more natural.
How will people react come such a technology? Right now some flaws remain in some of the techniques, but time will iron them out just as it is doing in fake face generation improvements. Decades ago I foresaw that with enough computing power and good enough ai software it would be possible to essentially have photoreal versions of anyone doing anything. Interestingly enough with immersive VR or AR, at least in the visual sense, it may come to pass that indistinguishable from real novel movements and presence of others can be replicated.
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