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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Feb 25, 2015 - 02:39pm PT
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Interestin'
If a particle and an antiparticle meet, they disappear by emitting two photons or a pair of some other particles. In the "primordial soup" that existed after the Big Bang, there were almost equal amounts of particles of antiparticles, except for a tiny asymmetry: one particle per 10 billion. As the universe cooled, the particles and antiparticles annihilated each other in equal numbers, and only a tiny number of particles remained; this tiny amount is all the stars and planets, and gas in today's universe, said Kusenko, who is also a senior scientist with the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150225132255.htm
Looks like the primordial universe perhaps clumsily made an accounting error via the Higgs boson that resulted in the present universe.
In this charming theoretical scenario the universe we live in can be thought of as merely left-over table scraps from the big party
Like empty boxes of Chinese food take-out left on someone's coffee table.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 25, 2015 - 03:00pm PT
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Wayno, I don't know but what a mess, eh?
Speaking of ISIS... check out these (poor, uneducated?) girls who decide to join up. (I think there might be some unidentified biology going on "under the hood" so to speak; recall young female chimps, well documented, who wander away from their familial tribe at adolescence to alien ones.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/world/from-studious-teenager-to-isis-recruiter.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1
"Seeing how you really like these ISIS guys..."
I don't know about that part!
I pay attn, I follow along, only because it's part of my work.
It's a dirty job, but somebody... well, you know.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Feb 25, 2015 - 03:07pm PT
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I would prefer to compare these ISIS "recruits" to the groupies who worshiped serial killer Ted Bundy and showed up fawning at him during his trial. Even the grotesque cannibal Jeffery Dahmer received scores of amorous love letters in prison.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybristophilia
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Feb 25, 2015 - 03:14pm PT
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"Live. Laugh. Behead."
Hot 30 something virgin seeks swarthy lumbersexual who doesn't have a good day unless he uses his AK. You behead and I'll give it. Here's your chance to have your halva and eat it too, guys. Lulululululu!!!!
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 25, 2015 - 03:14pm PT
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.....
I love new words!
Hybristophilia "is a paraphilia in which sexual arousal, facilitation, and attainment of orgasm are responsive to and contingent upon being with a partner known to have committed an outrage, cheating, lying, known infidelities or crime, such as rape, murder, or armed robbery."
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybristophilia
I don't think we have any hybristophilic climbers here at supertopo.
Of course I'd like to share this bit with Locker but as an "unknown" I have no credibility. "Zee row."
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Feb 25, 2015 - 03:17pm PT
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BTW Ward, ya don't get nothing from something - photons other particles squirt out from particle/antiparticle collisions.
We just got Chinese take out instead of Thai is all.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Feb 25, 2015 - 03:25pm PT
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"Occupy " dudes are going to ISIS as well:
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 25, 2015 - 03:43pm PT
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complexity = consciousness? what manner of nonsense is this?
Ha! Holy ADS it's science nonsense. Reading, a sure sign of consciousness.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Feb 25, 2015 - 03:45pm PT
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To posit that complexity alone is all that is necessary for intelligence is to advertise one's own simplicity!
No worries. Same rhetorical stupid pet trick - not understanding/over generalizing another's specific point - as the 'evolution' thing.
Standard procedure for fuzzy thinkers, I believe, but the Dark Lord is in The Details, is He not?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 25, 2015 - 04:13pm PT
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it occurs to me...
we really need an irony, sarcasm font... is anyone working on that?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 25, 2015 - 04:35pm PT
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To posit that complexity alone is all that is necessary for intelligence is to advertise one's own simplicity!
This is exhausting: It isn't complexity it's computational complexity which includes the parameters you mentioned. Go back and read the posts to find out what was being discussed.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Feb 25, 2015 - 04:37pm PT
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@8oP
^ How about this as brackets for the humorously challenged? A 'cheat sheet' of joke explanations can be provided on a paid subscription basis.
Legend has it that a serious point and humor can be blended in a single statement.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 25, 2015 - 04:40pm PT
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Legend has it that a serious point and humor can be blended in a single statement.
This is true. You should give it a try.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Feb 25, 2015 - 04:51pm PT
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Um, yeah Paul, I got that.
Problem is, we have people who know nothing about information technology architecture making sweeping statements about biological versions of same during an era when such architecture is just being unveiled, albeit at a rapid rate.
Hence, idiotic proclamations about the death of AI - even as the field is cranking up to warp speed.
Bird intelligence - and with it it's alternative architecture so mammalian intelligence, is particularly inconvenient for the 'we are not information processing machines' crowd, however. It seems that evolution has come up with two, not just one, proven architectures for intelligence. Two, rather than 'none', as implied by all other source of consciousness alternatives.
Self awareness has a physiological seat - a place where it happens, just as your sense of sight and touch have systems that make them possible. The question is what brain structures provide that functionality - but a functional model has been deemed DOA by the non-technologists, so there's that idea, tossed without consideration.
Inconveniently, a functional model IS where neuroscience has been steadily heading, and non functional models are what neuroscience has been steadily shedding.
Graziano's Awareness Shema - a specific brain region that integrates information from many other brain regions to 'display'/log/provide data for what we are aware of is where science is headed. It's man as machine stuff - but the second you look at our hierarchically organized bodies function at a molecular level you realize it was never going to be any other way.
Our subjective experience derives from our model for ourselves being much richer than our model for others - given our more direct access to our memories, emotions, state of health, etc.
'Self' and 'Other' is obviously a spectrum in this regard. We feel 'close' to people we 'click' with. When we make love, we feel 'as one' - our information about the other person's emotional and physical state is a flood (we hope) rather than the normal trickle. It's more 'honest' (we hope). Can we 'feel like someone else'? Of course. Not to the point of subjectively 'being' that person, perhaps, but right up to that point at times.
It's 'that subjective feeling' that stumps people, but it's only part of one instantiation of a more general ability - to model the beings around us. One can easily see that this ability has very old evolutionary roots.
And therein lies the rub. Consciousness is a gradual, evolutionary upgrade from much older capabilities. Just another evolutionary attribute, making it's way.
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 25, 2015 - 05:03pm PT
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idiotic proclamations about the death of AI
AI is / was never ever alive.
Plus ... you're just plain guessing and theorizing consciousness as usual .....
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Feb 25, 2015 - 05:11pm PT
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The definition of which varies by quite a bit depending on who you talk to.
No definition of 'being alive' is simple - it's not a simple process to define.
Hoagland and Dodson's definition, for example:
Life builds from the bottom up
Life assembles itself into chains
Life needs a container with an inside and outside
Life uses a few themes to generate many variations
Life organizes with information
Life encourages variety by reshuffling information
Life creates with mistakes
Life needs water
Life runs on sugar
Life works in cycles
Life recycles everything it uses
Life maintains itself by turnover
Life tends to optimize rather than maximize
Life is opportunistic
Life competes within a cooperative framework
Life is interconnected and interdependent
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 25, 2015 - 05:20pm PT
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No definition of 'being alive' is simple - it's not a simple process to define.
Sure it is, it's simple.
But not for mental speculators, theorizes, guessers.
Once you understand completely what consciousness is then you will completely understand life itself.
Until then you're stabbing at it in the dark .....
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Feb 25, 2015 - 05:23pm PT
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By this definition a machine could be deemed alive if it ran on sugar and required water for to glean energy from this power source.
Why not? Plant food is a great energy source in general - the plant does half the work for free and the stuff's all over the place. The machinery required to digest it might be a bit baroque compared to other power sources.
Aaaaand the machine would have to poo.
Machines could 'reshuffle' information through algorithms to produce innovative architectures.
Building from the bottom up - well, that might be partially true for machines, but that one would be a stretch to adhere to entirely.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 25, 2015 - 05:36pm PT
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HFCS:
I didn’t read the book. Sorry. I’ve heard it was persuasive and particularly articulate. (I liked his view in “Contact.”)
Don’t take this as a complaint, but I have difficulty these days taking any story of any sort all that seriously. Everywhere I look, all I see are stories. To me, ALL stories are myths. That is not to say I don’t tell them myself. Stories are vehicles by which to communicate, and they are forms of understanding.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 25, 2015 - 06:52pm PT
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By this definition a machine could be deemed alive if it ran on sugar and required water for to glean energy from this power source.
Why not? Plant food is a great energy source in general - the plant does half the work for free and the stuff's all over the place. The machinery required to digest it might be a bit baroque compared to other power sources.
Aaaaand the machine would have to poo.
Machines could 'reshuffle' information through algorithms to produce innovative architectures.
Building from the bottom up - well, that might be partially true for machines, but that one would be a stretch to adhere to entirely.
And in this is a clear rebuttal of even the remotest possibility of strong AI in the future unless, of course, intelligence is redefined as simply a machine's ability to ingest sugar and water as needed.
Sweet.
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