Spyman

I thought civil engineer was a graduation, architect is a profession of occupation, (designing buildings), and a contractor could be anyone with a deal regarding a construction. Thus an architect should have a a degree in civil engineering and can be hired for designing buildings.

Ooops ! Double Post. This one now cleared and can be deleted.

The main function of the spinal cord is transmission of neural inputs between the periphery and the brain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinal_cord I think computers have a substitute for a spinal cord, like the keyboard is connected by a interface with the CPU. If your spinal cord was replaced with a mechanical/electrical device with the same function/performace would you not be able to feel pain ? If your spinal cord was induced with a simulated pain, does that make the feel of pain less sensitive ? If the spinal cord is simulated instead of real, does that make the feel of pain less important to you ? Lets take the example JohnF gave in post #3: "If someone is daft enough to build a mining robot that's scared of the dark then it should be given the right to operate in an illuminated environment." If our technical abilities and knowledge advances to such a level that a mouse brain computer is small and cheap, then It could be very useful in a mining robot and It could be more efficient with the ability to feel pain. I strongly suspect the Mining company would prefer if It didn't have rights suchs as anti-cruelty laws... How "real" are the thoughts in your brain ? Are computer programs not "real" ? If the autopilot in aircrafts are not "real", how does airplanes stay in the air ? (When humans isn't piloting.) Don't you think a simulation would be able to navigate a plane ? A University of Florida scientist has grown a living "brain" that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network. The "brain" -- a collection of 25,000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat's brain and cultured inside a glass dish -- gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level. As living computers, they may someday be used to fly small unmanned airplanes or handle tasks that are dangerous for humans, such as search-and-rescue missions or bomb damage assessments. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041022104658.htm I don't think there is any difference if the airplane is guided by a software simulation or an biologically created computer of living cells. Thus since their actions are real, the reasons responsible must be also. Simulations of half a mouse brain has already been done, and the human brain is next: The cerebral cortex, the convoluted "grey matter" that makes up 80% of the human brain, is responsible for our ability to remember, think, reflect, empathize, communicate, adapt to new situations and plan for the future. The cortex first appeared in mammals, and it has a fundamentally simple repetitive structure that is the same across all mammalian species. The brain is populated with billions of neurons, each connected to thousands of its neighbors by dendrites and axons, a kind of biological "wiring". The brain processes information by sending electrical signals from neuron to neuron along these wires. In the cortex, neurons are organized into basic functional units, cylindrical volumes 0.5 mm wide by 2 mm high, each containing about 10,000 neurons that are connected in an intricate but consistent way. These units operate much like microcircuits in a computer. This microcircuit, known as the neocortical column (NCC), is repeated millions of times across the cortex. The difference between the brain of a mouse and the brain of a human is basically just volume - humans have many more neocortical columns and thus neurons than mice. The Blue Brain Project is an attempt to reverse engineer the brain, to explore how it functions and to serve as a tool for neuroscientists and medical researchers. It is not an attempt to create a brain. It is not an artificial intelligence project. Although we may one day acheive insights into the basic nature of intelligence and consciousness using this tool, the Blue Brain itself is simply a representation of a biological system and thus would never be considered conscious itself. http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/ As I see it, there is no theoretical limits against making an simulation as complex as a human brain, we will sometime in the future build computers with enough capabilities. The question is 1) if the simulations eventually could be conscious and 2) if they should have rights ? I agree with bascule that machines can be consious and persons, but before we create a human-level being we will probably make a mice-level being, then a dog-level, a lower primate-level and so on, up to humans and maybe even higher. (With that said I don't think the BlueGene L supercomputer or BlueBrain simulation is consious.) So more precisely, my question you quoted was if/when they are conscious, is there a level they must surpass before they should have rights ? bascule gave an easy answer, if machines become people, (human-level), they would likely force us to give them rights eventually, whether we like it or not, but machines that are a low-level can probably be hold in slavery and misery forever. Since a lot of people don't consider "animals" to be consious, it's not likely they would accept a low-level simulation to be either.

1. Sisyphus 2. Severian 3. bascule 4. Edtharan 5. 6.

But when machines become mice should they get the same rights as mice ? (Not much, but more than a simulation in a BlueGene L supercomputer has.)

The vast complexity of the simulation meant that it was only run for 10 seconds at a speed ten times slower than real life - the equivalent of one second in a real mouse brain. For future tests the team aims to speed up the simulation, make it more neurobiologically faithful, add structures seen in real mouse brains and make the responses of neurons and synapses more detailed. (From the Link I gave in post #10.)

Ice has a density of 0.917 g/cm3 at 0 °C, whereas water has a density of 0.9998 g/cm3 at the same temperature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice Earth's north pole is covered by floating pack ice (sea ice) over the Arctic Ocean, the Arctic ice pack. In addition, the Greenland ice sheet covers about 1.7 km² and contains about 2.6 million km³ of ice. The land mass of the Earth's south pole, in Antarctica, is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet. It covers an area of almost 14 million km² and contains 25-30 million km3 of ice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_ice_cap The Artic ice pack is floating so its impact from weight wouldn't change if it would melt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buoyancy The Greenland Ice Sheet only contains 2.6 million km3 ice so it won't change my estimate much. For a rough estimate lets say the Antartic has an average density of 0.917 g/cm3 and contains 30 million km3 of ice. That would give an weight of 27 510 million metric tons. I don't know the density of Antartic ice, but it's probably not much different from Artic ice which is floating and thus has an density below 1 g/cm3. That would give an upper limit of 30 000 million metric tons.

It is not the weight of the ice that creates the oval shape, it is the rotation of Earth. The rotation of the Earth creates the equatorial bulge so that the equatorial diameter is 43 km (27 mi) larger than the pole to pole diameter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth

insane_alien, that was a sad and boring point of view. I think "they have seen characteristics of thought patterns" at least indicates that something is going on, there is no reason for a twice so large simulation to become "brain dead" or "insane". (Sensory input/output to/from a simulation can be virtual too.) JohnF, LOL ! But after the first chock and several years of hard work analyzing all the data from the simulation, the scientists finally find out that it was a practical joke done by a technician during his last night shift. How about a more serious approach, what are your toughts and reflections IF they pull it off ? I remember reading an article, some ten years ago, that they lacked the computer power to simulate a fly brain. It's not impossible to imagine a simulation of a human brain in another ten years. Would it be a person, should it have rights ?

US researchers have simulated half a virtual mouse brain on a supercomputer. In other smaller simulations the researchers say they have seen characteristics of thought patterns observed in real mouse brains. Now the team is tuning the simulation to make it run faster and to make it more like a real mouse brain. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6600965.stm If Moore's law holds and they manage to run a simulation of a whole brain with realtime, in a couple of years... Will the simulation be intelligent, conscious, maybe considered alive ?

The terms "electrical energy" and "electric power" are frequently used interchangeably. However, in physics, and electrical engineering, "energy" and "power" have different meanings. Power is energy per unit time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_energy At the exact moment the measurement is taken, that amount of energy is transfered. To get the total amount for a measured timespan you need to multiply with time also. If a battery is charged for a longer time it will obviously also contain more energy... (with the same voltage and current) Was that what you meant ?

1) Yes, the voltage is the potential difference between any two points in the circuit. 2) Voltage is the potential of the energy, electrical current is the quantity per time. The amount of energy is the potential multiplied with the current. Take two batteries with the same voltage but one is bigger than the other, which contains more energy ? A larger battery contains more chemicals and can thus deliver higher current and/or sustain voltage longer time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_energy

Gliese 581 is a cool and dim, main sequence red dwarf (M2.5 V). The star has almost a third (31 +/- 2 percent) of Sol's mass, possibly 29 percent of its diameter, and a bit more than one percent (around 0.013) of its visual luminosity. The star appears to be only around 47 to 56 percent as enriched as Sol in elements heavier than hydrogen ("metals").Its kinematic characterisitcs, magnetic activity, and sub-Solar metallicity indicate that that Gliese 581 is at least two billion years old. http://www.solstation.com/stars/gl581.htm According to The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia: Gliese 581 is ~4.3 Giga years old. http://vo.obspm.fr/exoplanetes/encyclo/star.php?st=Gl+581 Animation of the planetary and potentially habitable zone orbits: http://www.solstation.com/orbits/gl581sys.htm Red dwarfs fuse hydrogen to helium via the proton-proton (PP) chain. Due to the low temperatures in the core, fusion proceeds slowly. Consequently they emit little light, sometimes as little as 1/10,000th that of the sun. In general red dwarfs transport energy from the core to the surface via convection. As red dwarfs are fully convective, they can burn a larger proportion of their hydrogen before leaving the main sequence than larger stars, such as the Sun. Thus red dwarfs have an enormous estimated lifespan; from tens of billions up to trillions of years depending upon mass; the lower the mass, the longer the lifespan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_dwarf What happens after a low-mass star ceases to produce energy through fusion is not directly known: the universe is thought to be around 13.7 billion years old, which is less time (by several orders of magnitude, in some cases) than it takes for the fusion to cease in such stars. Current theory is based on computer modelling. A star of less than about 0.5 solar mass will never be able to fuse helium even after the core ceases hydrogen fusion. There simply is not a stellar envelope massive enough to bear down enough pressure on the core. These are the red dwarfs, such as Proxima Centauri, some of which will live thousands of times longer than the Sun. Recent astrophysical models suggest that red dwarfs of 0.1 solar masses may stay on the main sequence for almost six trillion years, and take several hundred billion more to slowly collapse into a white dwarf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_evolution

Well, both Consciousness and Intelligence are hard to definately define, and both can be of different degrees, at least partly independent of each other. Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness Intelligence is a property of mind that encompasses many related mental abilities, such as the capacities to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas and language, and learn. Although intelligence is sometimes viewed quite broadly, psychologists typically regard the trait as distinct from creativity, personality, character, knowledge, or wisdom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence Can humans have different levels of Consciousness and/or Intelligence ? As insane_alien says we already have machines with Artificial Intelligence and some people argue that computers are consious. But how do you measure if they have consciousness and at which level relative average humans ? Personally, I would not call them conscious, but I am willing to accept a very very tiny level. The other way around, I don't think you can "perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment" without "the capacities to reason", but that doesn't mean that you couldn't have a very conscious creature with almost zero intelligence. "Animal" has a very broad definition and biologically humans are included. Without humans, as I guess you meant, still leaves plenty of different spiecies. Both insects and mammals are animals but they are quite different. Does Ants have Consciousness and Intelligence ? Clearly they have little intelligence, since they can solve simpler problems, but I don't think they are consius, they are more like automats calculating the risks for efficiency, without any personal desire. (But as said above I can accept a very very tiny level.) Does Dogs have Consciousness and Intelligence ? With Dogs and mammals in general, my opinions is that we have moved from the extreme areas close to zero and are confident that they have both, but to lesser degree than humans. Is it possible to have personality, dreams and desire or fear without Consciousness ? My dogs have dreams with both desire and fear in them. During sleep they can dream and by solely watching their movements and listening to the sounds they make, I can imagine what they are dreaming about: running for joy, chasing something, being chased, fighting and so on... When awake they show more than intelligence behavior, they have personality, feelings and can clearly sence my feelings, if I am happy they want to join, if I am sad they try to comfort, if I am angry they avoid me and they are even able to understand some jokes.

Did not help. EDIT: Thanks for the reputation points ! (My points and comments shows up in my User CP now.)

"comments", I missed that one, they should definately be Users eyes only... But how do I give someone reputation points ? I only have the "scales" icon on my own posts.

How do you give reputation points ? I only have the "scales" icon on my own posts. When hovering above it, it says "Add to Spyman's Reputation". When clicking it, it says "This post has not received any reputation." and "You currently have 10 reputation point(s)." Would be nice to find where the points comes from, and knowing other members points too. EDIT: Can't seem to find the points under the "User CP" either.

I think the ability to have feelings is included in Consciousness. Without Consciousness a robot would be like any other piece of machinery. (and my dishwasher don't need nor deserves any rights) Self-aware would at least mean to be able to reflect on the relationship with it's surroundings. If the mining robots reflections about the darkness is of greater danger and it has a Will to survive, I would call it scared. If it only calculates the risks without second thoughts, without personal Will, it would only be a machine, self-aware or not.

If they become conscious are they still "robots" or a nonhuman person in a artificial body ? Would another intelligent lifeform, as humans, if found on Earth be given rights ? How about advanced aliens if visiting Earth, should they have rights and give us rights ? If we where able to create life, artificially engineered "humans", would they get rights ? IMHO the degree of Consciousness and Intelligence should mirror the degree of rights and responsibility.

5 times the mass of Earth and 1.5 times larger gives ~2.2 times stronger surface gravity, so an astronaut who weights 80 kg on Earth would roughly weight 176 kg down there. Very intriguing find indeed, sparks my fantasy in several directions ! How old is Gliese 581 and whats the expected lifetime ? "We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid," explains Stéphane Udry, from the Geneva Observatory (Switzerland) and lead-author of the paper reporting the result. "Moreover, its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth’s radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky – like our Earth – or covered with oceans," he adds. The host star, Gliese 581, is among the 100 closest stars to us, located only 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra ("the Scales"). http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-04/eso-aff042307.php Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI institute, said the Gliese 581 system has in fact been looked at twice before for signs of intelligent life. The first time was in 1995 using the Parks Radio Telescope in Australia; the second time occured in 1997 using the Greenbank Radio Telescope in West Virgina. Both times revealed nothing. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070424_hab_exoplanet.html David Spergel, chairman of Princeton astrophysics department, noted in a telephone interview that the new planet, if it is indeed rocky, must be "tidally locked" to its sun the way our moon is to the Earth -- which means that it must always show its same face to its sun, and that while one side would be too fiercely hot to support life, the other side would be too cold. But at the terminator -- the margin between the hottest and coldest parts of the planet -- Spergel agreed that liquid water could well exist, hurricane force winds would blow, and although the planet would be "radically different" from Earth, life might well exist in that difficult environment. "This is a big, impressive step," Spergel said. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/24/BAG33PE14U26.DTL But he and other astronomers cautioned that it was far too soon to conclude that liquid water was there without more observations. Sara Seager, a planet expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said, “For example, if the planet had an atmosphere more massive than Venus’s, then the surface would likely be too hot for liquid water.” “It’s 20 light years. We can go there,” said Dimitar Sasselov, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who studies the structure and formation of planets. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/science/space/25planetcnd.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin The idea that other, less-massive, dimmer stars than the Sun could also host habitable worlds has long been debated. A particular class, M-Stars, are of interest simply because there are so many of them—they are the most common star in the galaxy. They’re the cool stars that inhabit our neighborhood. There’s considerable interest in the question of whether M-Stars could host habitable planets. Would the planets be tidally locked with one face always directed toward the M-Star? Would flares wipe out life on the local planet? If M-Stars could host habitable planets, life may be much more widespread that we’ve previously thought. Thus, M-Stars are of interest to astrobiologists including SETI scientists who are searching for life beyond Earth. “One…aspect of M dwarfs makes them intriguing for SETI: they may be ideal hosts for advanced technological civilizations because they live an extraordinarily long time. Stars like the Sun live (i.e., they fuse hydrogen into helium) for only about 10 billion years. No M dwarf that ever formed has yet to die; no M dwarf will die for more than another 100 billion years. With such long lifetimes, there are big possibilities for these small stars.” http://www.space.com/searchforlife/070412_seti_thursday.html

Thanks, for moving this thread to a more appropriately place, Martin ! Any comments of my estimate of surface gravity...

Where the mass/energy came from in the first place is still unsolved... (It might have been from a previous crunch.) But when Universe expands, it's distances that increases not mass. (Gravity strength decreases with the square of distance.) The "big pull" is already there, but Universe still expands and is even able to speed up the expansion.

Black holes don't "start pulling everything" when they form. Gravity is present from the mass of the matter that ends up as a Black hole, ever since the matter was created in the first place. According to current measurements the Universe is expanding with an accelerating rate, if the total mass of the Universe can't stop it today, it seems unlikely that it will tomorrow... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang

Some clearifying links: Wikipedia "Shape of the Universe" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_Universe Scientific American "Misconceptions about the Big Bang" http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?cha...2383414B7F0147 Ned Wright's Balloon Analogy http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/balloon0.html

Some links you might find interesting to read: Wikipedia "Black Hole" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole Wikipedia "Event horizon" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_horizon