[MD] Transhumanism

[Ian Glendinning]

Hi Krim,

Explain the "Goertzel sent an emissary to the MoQ" remark ?
(I've had him in my blogroll for a few years.)

I think I made my view on the "singularity" clear already ... AGI
needs to evolve through life and social before it reaches
intellectual, so this is much more than just processing power.
Kurzweil, Goertzel and Wolfram ... not a bad day out for 200 bucks.
There is a lot of hype here, but an injection of excitement is always
good.

Ian

On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 3:39 AM, Krimel <Krimel at krimel.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> It has been and extra-ordinarily interesting past few days and I lost track
> of whatever was going on here. I think I was last supposed to referee
> something for Bo but this was way more interesting and Bo is kind of endless
> loop anyway so whatever it was will no doubt come back around soon enough.
>
> For the past month I have been living in Boston changing diapers and
> watching videos. On Hulu, BTW, for our resident TV luddite. The ending of
> Glee rocked. I mean sure Sue Lester won but she hasn't shown that much
> humanity since she let the kid with Downs Syndrome join the Cheerios. And
> OMG the Lost ending will have graduate thesis written about it. Abrams is a
> genius. Any way Friday I was watching a lecture by Ray Kruzweil from his
> 2009 Singularity summit. ( http://vimeo.com/7322310 ) My daughter is doing
> post-doctorate work in immunology at MIT and was actually attending a
> conference on immunology put on by the MIT Cancer Center.
>
> We got to talking about stuff other than kids when she came home and she
> started telling me the most amazing things about 3D printers that can
> actually print out DNA sequences. Not the sequences on paper but the actual
> molecular structure. Apparently Craig Ventner last month published in
> Science that his lab has created the world's first totally engineered
> organism. My daughter gets all the gory details but the short version is:
> this was a very primitive bacteria build entirely from continuant molecules
> and it was able to reproduce. It has been maybe 4 billion years since a
> creature on this planet was born without parents. I guess this will add
> strength to the intelligent design wackos.
>
> Then she starts telling my about these materials engineers at MIT who are
> working with nanotech. These guys have a federal grant to find ways to use
> nanotech to cure cancer but she says they are engineering geeks just looking
> for a way to fund their research. They can build a nut and bolt about the
> size of a protein molecule. They have already built something that can act
> like a red blood cell. And they can stencil verses from Genesis on the
> surface of it.
>
> Other folks have found a way to engineer a cell that can respond to light in
> such a way that it remembers whether that light was on or off. That is it
> can act as a switch. In case you didn't know, all you need to build a
> computer is a bunch of little tiny programmable switches. She said this
> really would not be practical for computing because a cell couldn't turn on
> and off fast enough to keep up with silicon. But still...
>
> Ok, that was pretty jumbled up but you get the idea. Her husband also has a
> doctorate in immunology and is currently finishing up med school so I get
> confused at dinner time a lot. Like last week she was telling me about an
> experiment she is doing that involves attaching little tiny magnets to B
> cells in a mouse then running the mouse blood through a magnetic field and
> vacuuming up the B cells. That's what she does when she isn't cloning
> knock-out mice with a microscope that has joy sticks controlling microscopic
> needles. She can suck out the nucleus of a cell and then insert a different
> nucleus from a different mouse.
>
> So Friday she tells me there is this conference going on a Harvard that I
> might be interested in: http://www.hplussummit.com/. It looked interesting
> but at $400 I was like, probably not. But in the fine print I noticed that
> it was half off with student ID. I just happen to have a valid student ID so
> I figured, "why not." I mean I had just watch Kurzweil's video from 2009 and
> here he was right in town the very next day. That may not be a singularity
> but it sure was loaded with synchronicity. In case you haven't noticed my
> mind was blasted into utter incoherence. After a month of diapers and
> rocking the baby to sleep during "House" reruns, now nanotech, engineered
> life forms and singularity.
>
> You can see the list of presenters and I missed a couple of the early
> morning ones but zowie. This was like a TED conference at a discount. I
> think TED costs $4K so this was a bargain and some of the folks at it have
> presented at TED. The H+ folks are already looking forward to a post human
> future. The talks ranged from the weird: two guys looking at how you can
> have your brain soaked in plastic and persevered so it can get a jump start
> in the future. Like Cryogenics only cheaper and more durable. Another guy
> looks forward to the time when technology will end all suffering. Even your
> pet cat will eat invitro cloned muscle tissue instead of mice and you will
> eat it instead of cows, pigs or other critters.
>
> Another dude talked about the metaphysical reasons that you will not be able
> to upload your consciousness into a computer. I found this depressing but
> think I know how to get around the problem. Several computer geeks were
> talking about how to create what they call AGI or Artificial General
> Intelligence. Despite what you may have heard from dmb narrow AI is already
> passé. There are a couple of different approaches being taken in AGI but
> they would ultimately lead to an AI capable of passing the Turing test.
>
> Steven Wolfram was there talking about his approach to creating computer
> algorhythms by setting up programs that compute in all possible computing
> space then he just looks at the results until he finds something
> interesting. He developed a cryptographic system for generating random
> numbers. He has a program on his web site that does this with music and you
> can compose randomly esthetic ringtone for your phone. He was fascinating
> but talked over my head a bit. I recorded it and will have to get back to
> you on it.
>
> One guy that talked about AGI both as applied to virtual avatars and robots
> was Ben Goetzel. He sent an emissary to the MoQ a couple of years ago. But
> the emissary got run off by the AWGI luddites as I recall.
>
> I woman from one version of the University of California designed a $12
> million three story metal sphere. She is an artist and works with quantum
> physicists and neurobiologists to project into this huge dome, visual and
> sound representations of multi-dimensional spaces, like  the neuron odf the
> brain and the spin of particles in hydrogen atoms.
>
> The cherry on the cake was, of course, Kurzweil. He has been mentioned here
> a few times but it seems anything that actually might actually matter gets
> ignored here. His main idea is that technology progresses at a geometric
> rate. Everyone should have heard of Moore's law where the number of
> transistors you can jam into an integrated circuit doubles every two years.
> Kurzweil says this happens in lots of other areas as well. Examples include
> the resolution of fMRI scans, the size of materials we can work with,
> internet bandwidth, computer users, computer hosts, interesting changes in
> life forms over the past 4 billion years, cost to sequence genomes. His real
> point is that medical and computer technology are converging. He claims that
> by 2030 sunlight will provide all of the power we need for the planet. By
> 2039 a computer will pass the Turning test and sometime before the end of
> the century we will conquer death.
>
> Most of the speakers at the H+ were definitely on board with this. Sometime
> last week I was trying to explain to John how the MoQ actually could matter
> and be applied. It could fit into to all of this stuff to but not while
> carrying to AWGI brick around its neck. For instance I was talking to one of
> the AGI programmers about his notion of hierarchy. The term hierarchy
> usually applies to the establishment of artificial levels. I asked him if he
> thought of hierarchies as fixed rather mechanical building block structure
> or as fractal dynamic systems like trees or lightening bolts. He seemed
> puzzled and talked about network hierarchies and top down versus bottom up
> exchanges of info. But it seem to me he was talking about artificially
> conceived discrete levels without seeing that where you choose to draw the
> line between the levels is an arbitrary decision to make a continuous
> process discrete.
>
> OK that's all. I know this was totally incoherent. I really only wrote this
> so I could kind of sketch out an overview of all of this weirdness for later
> review. And my only point for the MoQ is: for Christ sake we are arguing
> about bullshit that has not amounted to diddly squat for 2500 years. In the
> mean time the world is transforming itself into something astounding.
> Butterfly stem cells my ass. The MoQ if it is relevant at all ought to have
> something to say or some way to deal with cyborgs and chimera, nanotech and
> 3D printing. In case you missed the point a 3D printer is like the
> replicators on Star Trek. The world is becoming science fiction and we still
> don't know what the intellectual level is. You can call me a gearhead,
> motorhead, geeky nerd all you want but this stuff matters.
>
> Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
> You can understand it or be baffled by it.
> It's going to happen for you or it's going to happen to you!
>
> Krimel
>
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