bascule

Not quite, the yellow dots represent people (or rather, users on digg. They could just as easily be bots). What that's showing is how ideas are being received by various people on the system. Good stories, in theory, collect a lot of people. Memes represent self-replicating information which passes from mind-to-mind Indeed

Last time I brought up caloric restriction SkepticLance had a small fit, but I agree, caloric restriction is our best bet for improving longevity as the less energy our mitochondria process, the fewer free radicals they produce.

The thing about humans is: they travel, and settle in distant areas: different cities, different countries. There's lots of genetic mixing. This means the gene pool remains extremely diverse, and since there's no selection driving us towards the bad traiths, there's no real chance for them to become predominant.

One little letter can't make all that much of a difference... and Arabs and Persians are the same thing really, right?

I've never seen such an awesome visual representation of memes in action than Digg Swarm: http://labs.digg.com/swarm/ The presentation probably helps the fact, but to me it looks so incredibly biological and alive. And it's just a graphical representation of information...

I'd be interested

When was that?

To everyone else: I'm not saying the problem is insurmountable, but it's certainly one that needs to be addressed. As for me, I can't imagine remaining biological for more than 100 years. I'd rather start replacing parts of my body with machine parts, including my brain. Bit by bit, nanomachines could gobble up your brain, until eventually every neuron has been replaced with a robot counterpart. At that point, you'd effectively be digital, and can transfer your program outside your body. Yay! Mind transfer

Not in the neocortex: http://unisci.com/stories/20014/1207014.htm

I just saw "Bodies" (blatant BodyWorlds rip-off) at the Tropicana in Vegas. It was simultaneously awe inspring and disturbing. However, beyond all else, it removes all conceptualization about what the inside of the human body is actually like, and makes it beautifully and painfully clear. Humans are, hands down, the most beautiful and complex machines ever constructed (via evolution by natural selection), and never have I truly grasped what a limb, or our circulatory system, or our brains actually represent.

Stanford mathematician/computer scientist Donald Knuth gave a lecture in which he described what he considered the impossibility of distinguishing the infinite/infinitessimal from the finite via physical measurement, due to the unbounded nature of finite numbers. One can only prove finiteness by reaching finite limits, but how can infinite quantities ever be distinguished from finite ones? Knuth's point was that they can't, you will simply continue to measure endlessly.

My hope would be that in a world of more ubiquitous and easily accessible information, they would find the knowledge needed to put aside their foolish misconceptions about reality and adopt a more scientific viewpoint. As it stands, it feels to me like they are trapped inside a microcosm of other new age thinkers, and lies spread upon lies.

Hopefully I can prevent this from coming out as an assorted mishmash of completely non-technical gibberish. I realize it's inherently foolish to attempt to explore physics from a purely conceptual perspective, but, well, I continue to do so anyway... This question began plaguing me particularly after I started looking deeper into the nature of quantum indeterminacy, namely discovering that the many-worlds hypothesis had grown so unfavorable and that experimental data testing Bell's inequality show that local hidden variables cannot explain quantum indeterminacy. It's around then that I discovered the Bohm interpretation, which, as far as I can tell, posits a non-local superstructure to the entire universe. Now, I have no doubt in my mind that even if the above description is remotely correct, that means something entirely different to me than it does to you. What does it mean to me? Well, I tried to describe such a superstructure as best I could envision it. In my description, I described the universe as a graph of state holders which share an n:n mapping. The goal of this description was for space/locality to be an emergent effect of information flowing through this system, but just how such a system would self-organize into an apparent 3-dimensional spatial system (since the graph itself would evolve with time) is completely beyond me. The Bohm interpretation, as I understand it, provides for a wave-driven, deterministic superstructure with a sort of universal wavefunction, and, if I understand it correctly, the the specific nature of the collapse of the wavefunction is non-locally connected to the state of the entire universe, or something to that effect. Does anyone know who can help me out here? Do I understand the basics, or am I just completely confused?

AOL recently released 21 million search queries by 650,000 of its users: http://news.com.com/AOL+offers+disturbing+glimpse+into+users+lives/2100-1030_3-6103098.html?tag=nl Usernames were replaced with numbers in hopes of protecting the anonymity of the users performing the searches. However, since searches could be cross-referenced by user, a large enough corpus of search data provided a substantial amount of personal data on the user performing the search. This was enough for Internet sleuths to figure out the identity of at least one of the individuals whose data was released: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?ex=1312776000&en=f6f61949c6da4d38&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss AOL has since made the data unavailable, but unfortunately, this is the information age, and the data virally spread throughout the Internet. I'll forego the opportunity to stick the Bascule-approved moniker describing this phenomena on it and leave that to your imagination. The data has since been indexed and rendered searchable: http://www.aolstalker.com/ What does this all mean for privacy as data-mining algorithms continue to grow more intelligent? What sort of data trail do we leave on the Internet via our searches? Can Google identify and cross-reference users by their search habits, regardless of their location? How much does Google know about you from your searches? Scary stuff... but I for one see the loss of privacy as an inevitability as the Singularity approaches. And I for one welcome our Google overlords!

swantsont, SkepticLance is essentially asking about the Fermi paradox. You might want to read the "Why SETI Will Fail (and why we are alone in the Universe)" section of Kurzweil's article on the Law of Accelerating Returns: http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1 The real point is that the amount of time it would take for evidence of an alien civilization to reach earth, either via information (which can travel at c) or through physical artifacts (obviously much slower, and probably pertainent only to life in our own galaxy) is a mere fraction of the time it took for the solar system to form and for life to evolve. Therefore, if we aren't the only life systems which evolved to the point of human-level intelligence, why haven't we found evidence of other such civilizations yet?

Yes, the chimpanzee. While chimpanzees lack the advanced communication and abstract thinking skills of humans, they still possess them in a rudimentary form. Certain bonobos have vocabularies of over a thousand words, use simple sentences, talk on the phone, and gossip. In short, they use language in many of the same ways humans do. See this story/thread: http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=21862 No, we can't rule it out, however, this is a great place to use Occam's razor: what does an alien origin for humanity explain which evolution by natural selection alone does not? It's an extraneous element which doesn't provide any additional explanatory power.

organizational_type.country.planet.star.galaxy.local_group.supercluster

Some prospective future titles in the same series: Manticores: Myth or Reality? Satyrs: Myth or Reality? Chimeras: Myth or Reality? Gryphons: Myth or Reality?

You lose one neocortical neuron every second on average. At that rate (and given you have about 20 billion neocortical neurons), after a little more than 600 years you won't have any neocortex left whatsoever.

INTP I enjoy Jungian psychology, even though many consider it to be both unscientific and discredited. BrainTypes is an outgrowth of Jungian personality types with a more scientific basis: http://www.braintypes.com/ One fun and totally pointless exercise of Jungian personality types: Your ideal match in a relationship is someone who has the same Keirsey temperment as you (i.e. middle two letters) and opposite on the other properties. By that, my ideal match is an ENTJ.

In context, Einstein meant that space and time are not independent of each other, and the way we measure time is completely artificial. His sentiment is pretty much completely opposite of your defeatist position.

Or maybe I just went to New York and walked past dozens of fire stations with plaques on the wall commemorating each firefighter who died during 9/11. Over 350 rescue personnel died on 9/11. You think their sacrifice was part of the conspiracy? What kind of monster are you? You're implying that the idea that FDNY was, in some way, part of the 9/11 conspiracy isn't absurd, and should be given credence. I think giving their lives in the service of our country in one of its darkest hours clearly repudiates them from being responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

Wow, a 9/11 conspiracy theorist and a supernaturalist. You're a double threat!

I was. I evaluated their claims. Claim: WTC7 was "pulled" (i.e. demolished) by the Fire Department of New York. Controlled demolitions take weeks of preparation. Therefore, WTC7 was rigged with explosives weeks before the 9/11 attacks. But how could they know the 9/11 attacks were going to happen? Answer: IT'S A CONSPIRACY! Problems: The amount of time it would take to rig WTC7 with exposives is a flaw in the conspiracy theorist argument. Drawing any conclusions from this flaw without first supporting it is ridiculous. This argument is one completely unevidenced statement which draws conclusions from another completely unevidenced statement. Oh, and the other problem YOU ARE ACCUSING THE FIRE DEPARTMENT OF NEW YORK OF BEING IN ON THE 9/11 CONSPIRACY. WHAT KIND OF F*CKING ASSHOLES ARE YOU?

Take hallucinogenic drugs... that's about the closest you'll get to a paranormal experience. It's enough to fool new age idiots into thinking there are people in other dimensions you can only see while tripping mushrooms.