bascule

This quote comes from the Blue Brain Project, which intends to use the world’s 9th most powerful supercomputer to create the most realistic, cellular level model of the neocortical column to date. Daniel Dennett, one of the pre-eminent thinkers on consciousness, reckons that consciousness must come about through a cumulative, distributed effect. Imagine a thriving society of pattern analyzers who like to communicate with each other by posting little bits of “thoughtstuff” (phenomenological objects, or “phenoms” to the Dennett-initiated) on a sort of community bulletin board, which all the other pattern analyzers can read and respond to. All the pattern analyzers choose from the available “phenoms” and look for whatever patterns they choose to specialize in. And specialize they do, just like little people they all have their specific types of patterns they “like” to look for which they develop over time. So when a common pattern is discovered that enough of the specialists like, it gets reposted throughout the bulletin board of your brain, with added input from more and more specialists as the idea develops. This mimics human societal behavior, in which we figure out higher level concepts by listening to other people’s ideas and contributing back our own deductions. In collective human behavior, the role of the “phenom” is replaced with that of a meme, a “thought virus” which passes from person to person. In either case, the phenoms or memes which are replicated by the greatest number of individuals dominate the thought process or collective though process. In humans, the dominant phenoms control our behavior. In society, a tool like Google Zeitgeist can show what the collective consciousness is “thinking” about. Now, I don’t want to mischaracterize Dennett; he’s quite adamant that consciousness cannot be localized to a specific part of the brain, and that the entire brain works for the benefit of conscious processing, therefore indicating that consciousness is an inseperable quality from any part of the brain. I, on the other hand, am going to be a little more brash than Dennett, and say that the most logical seat of consciousness is the part that has diverged so drastically in humans as compared to the rest of our common ancestral heritage. It only makes sense that the “specialists” Dennett talks about are the neocortical columns and that consciousness arises through their collective action. If this is the case, then what the Blue Brain project is building a mathematatical model of is essentially the atomic unit of consciousness, a universal pattern analyzer which can work collaboratively with millions of variadic copies of itself to correct its own mistakes and deficiencies, who together comprise a society which can share the patterns that they individually see (and recognize that others’ see the same patterns) and also correct each others’ mistakes if the pattern doesn’t actually exist. Once we have a mathematical model of this atomic unit of universal pattern analyzer, we don’t need a computer the size of Blue Brain to model this atomic unit of consciousness. I don’t mean to sound myopic, but it seems to me that it’s far more likely that we could already model tens of thousands of them, in realtime, on your modern day home PC. Blue Brain is, in effect, an emulator for the computer that the NCC’s “specialist” program runs on, and once we have that, the computational requirements will drastically decrease. The mathematical model that Blue Brain (or a project with similar methodology, if Blue Brain doesn’t pan out) produces will be the hot commodity among AI researchers, who I can only predict will begin building programs which model large communities of artificial NCCs. I really believe that once we can do that, AI researchers will finally be able to fill in the gaps themselves since they will finally have a surefire base framework to begin operating from, with the “hard stuff” already in place. Furthermore, once we understand how the neo-cortical column works, we can begin to learn how to “talk” to them with electronic hardware. We can use the mathematical model to extract phenomenological messages that the columns are communicating, and then apply a (Bayesian) classification algorithm to begin divining meaning. From this we can build a “language map” of how the neocortex communicates internally. Once we have this, we can begin using computers to generate and inject phenomenological objects into the workspace of consciousness. When we can do this, and have a bidirectional interface directly into human consciousness, we’ve successfully created a direct neural interface (DNI), perhaps the ultimate form of Intelligence Amplification (IA) as predicted by Vernor Vinge. So, following the successful extraction of a mathematical model of the NCC’s operation, I would predict that both strong AI and DNI are in the not-too-distant future. And if you believe all of this, then the Singularity could happen in a decade’s timespan, or less… This is a syndicated meme

The most dangerous idea I can think of is that humans will be obsolete in 40 years time

The biggest advantage of a single-payer system is streamlining of the payment process, which is presently a multi-tiered bureaucracy in America which gobbles a fixed percentage of all costs to provide access to the system. In a single-payer system, you not only eliminate the middle man, but your network of providers becomes everyone in the single-payer system, rather than a limited network of preferred providers offered by most current PPO helath plans. A 2000 WHO survey had the following to say about the US helathcare system: A 2004 survey by the Commonwealth Fund showed America's healthcare system dragging behind Canada, Australia, New Zeland, and the UK. Under the present system, the American people are simply not getting their money's worth, and sadly, it seems the best argument for keeping the system is "I don't want to help other people, they'll just abuse the system" That's already happening with Medicare/Medicaid, which, if you ask me, are a lousy idea to begin with. Any system will be subject to corruption, but isn't it better to help people than to having the money you spend on healthcare go to line the pockets of the access providers to the multi-payer system?

Fossils, or fossil imprints. Either makes a much more compelling argument than "Arr, thar be DRAGONS HYRE"

Alex Chiu patented his immortality bracelets! Therefore they MUST work, right? I mean, the USPTO doesn't go around giving out patents willy nilly, do they? Oh wait...

Ooh boy, can't wait to get me one of these, it will look awesome next to my immortality bracelets

http://shop.wgbh.org/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10051&storeId=11051&langId=-1&partNumber=GHOST_WG36813 So what's the dilly yo?

Relative to what?

No, if anything, I expect entropy and extropy to reach some kind of symmetric balance, where the last bit of entropy left (at which point the universe suffers "entropy death") is consumed to complete the extropian structure of the universe, at which point the universe is complete and halts (only to resume again, ad infinitum) So you're asking what it has to do when it assumes something? Go with what the majority of its evidence would have it believe, and if it conflicts too much, then the decision becomes arbitrary. What else would you have it do? Well, it all stems from my belief in a teleological attractor towards which events are inevitably drawn, e.g. any system of variadic replicators will either produce conscious life or be completely obliterated, any conscious life will inevitably transcend its own biology and move to a purely technological form, or destroy itself. When you let the machine of the universe run and these patterns start popping up, it's only natural to start putting them together and looking for the higher level pattern...

The skeptic in me responds: "If they were really alive, I would've expected some hard evidence by now"

Yay! <3 Evolutionary Cosmology!

Yes, the move to diamond substrates will be an important one. Revolutions in computer design happen once every few weeks, though... or even faster, depending on your metric.

Well, on one side you have Chappelle's Show which is unabashedly racist, and on the other side you have the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, which is subtly racist (or sometimes pretty blatant in the case of Larry the Cable Guy) That pretty much seems to be the state of the double standard... black people can be a little more obvious about racism, at least in the name of comedy

Being a skeptic I doubt the girlfriend story to begin with

Nice. He seems to ramble on mixing truth with total fabrications, and won't accept any explanations you give him but will instead continue to argue and make up stuff as he goes. It's really frustrating.

Hilarious http://christiananswers.net/dinosaurs/video.html

I think Gene Ray is more on track with his Timecube theory of the universe

With Adam and Eve being central to the creation story, I don't see how creationists can be anything but wrong... creationism must be looked upon as allegorical, or simply a myth passed down via oral tradition.

I think he's using "accident" to mean non-determinism, i.e. human life is an inevitable consequence of the existence of the universe, because the states that led to it arising are causally linked in a deterministic manner to all the states that came before it (in a discrete time view)

Where is there outward movement to be deflected clockwise? It's the inward movement of air across the low's pressure gradient that is fueling the circulation. This is the third time I've explained this, and it will also be the last. It seems you don't care for the answer... Ugh, what's the point of even trying to explain this to you...

Yeah, the point of Archie Bunker (and George Jefferson's) racism was part of the humor. I remember an episode where Archie is eating a plate of waffles and George comes over to borrow his waffle iron. As George is leaving with the waffle iron, Archie remarks "You people sure like your waffles" and George Jefferson replies "You honkies sure like yours" Anyway, in this case, the character speaking (Uncle Ruckus) is something of an angry Uncle Tom. He hates black people and worships white people, especially white women. He always introduces himself as "Uncle Ruckus, no relation," ostensibly a reference to Uncle Remus upon which he seems to be based. Boondocks is a comic strip full of racism, which it uses as the background for all sorts of insightful social commentary. Before you go *gasp* How racist! you really need to familiarize yourself with the characters and the basic setup of the strip.

Try to keep up...

Courtesy http://bugmenot.com: u: goladyvols@mailinator.com p: peyton

Well, in this case, "You're black, so you must be a liberal!"

Probably because I've been using computers since I was a small child and therefore determinism is ingrained into my thinking. It basically goes back to what Martin said...