BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | US agrees climate deal with Asia
Hooray for the US undermining every environmental treaty it can!
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Super-intelligent Yogurt Spells Doom for Humanity
The Future Health Of Our Brains
If the future health of our brains depends on people like Jan-Willem Bats, the... blogger... of the linked blog, we are truly fucked. This man's craziness is subtle, but deep. He might even appear normal to others except for his obsession with artificial intelligence. According to him, people are studying how to simulate the human brain and in 2020, computer will be able to perform more operations per second than the human brain. Put these two things together and voila! a superhuman AI that will benevolently rule us all.
People are attempting to simulate very small parts of mammal brains, but even if you assume they can simulate an entire human brain, that's still only as smart as a human, not smarter. If you run it faster, it's still thinking like a human, only faster.
The retarded pseudo-science of this whole site aggravates me. He can multiply powers of ten written in scientific notation! He must be right!
He also has an email exchange with a "well-known futurologist", Ian Pearson, who was recently featured in a CNN article about downloading your brain into a computer, which, according to Pearson, will happen in the next 50-70 years. Mr. Bats has decided that he -- "a Dutch guy", as he identifies himself on the site -- is smarter than (the obviously equally insane) Pearson. Pearson's claims are too conservative for Bats, so he wrote to him.
A quote from Mr. Bats' email to Mr. Pearson:
Oh, well obviously. Let me just ask one small question? How do you program a computer to be friendly? With pixie dust? This man envisions the computer being turned on and instantly spitting out answers to all the world's problems. I picture the scene from Robocop where the prototype ED-209 screams and rips its own brain out.
Let's hear from Mr. Pearson, who cannot fucking spell:
Ah, here's a much more reasonable solution. A cup of yogurt a billion times smarter than humans running a weapon system. Now I don't see the ED-209 scene, I see the SAI launching every nuclear missile in the country. Yee-haw! Finally, the solution to the problem in the Middle East that every American in the Midwest wants to see.
On second thought, please don't click that link. Don't give the man traffic. Don't increase his Google ranking. Just let the page suffocate from lack of attention. Crikey. I'm going to eat some yogurt that won't try to kill me.
If the future health of our brains depends on people like Jan-Willem Bats, the... blogger... of the linked blog, we are truly fucked. This man's craziness is subtle, but deep. He might even appear normal to others except for his obsession with artificial intelligence. According to him, people are studying how to simulate the human brain and in 2020, computer will be able to perform more operations per second than the human brain. Put these two things together and voila! a superhuman AI that will benevolently rule us all.
People are attempting to simulate very small parts of mammal brains, but even if you assume they can simulate an entire human brain, that's still only as smart as a human, not smarter. If you run it faster, it's still thinking like a human, only faster.
The retarded pseudo-science of this whole site aggravates me. He can multiply powers of ten written in scientific notation! He must be right!
He also has an email exchange with a "well-known futurologist", Ian Pearson, who was recently featured in a CNN article about downloading your brain into a computer, which, according to Pearson, will happen in the next 50-70 years. Mr. Bats has decided that he -- "a Dutch guy", as he identifies himself on the site -- is smarter than (the obviously equally insane) Pearson. Pearson's claims are too conservative for Bats, so he wrote to him.
A quote from Mr. Bats' email to Mr. Pearson:
To me, it seems more likely that uploading [He means your brain.], and every other thing we could ever dream up, will be available a fraction of a nanosecond after the Singularity has hit. Completely for free, ofcourse. Running an entire planet smoothly is a triviality to a mind billions of times faster AND smarter than us.
I am assuming a friendly and humane SAI as I write this. Why would a friendly SAI let us suffer through 40 hour work weeks so we can barely pay our way through life? It does not make sense. It doesn't make sense to think there will still be an economy once the Singularity has hit. That whole concept will have vanished.
Oh, well obviously. Let me just ask one small question? How do you program a computer to be friendly? With pixie dust? This man envisions the computer being turned on and instantly spitting out answers to all the world's problems. I picture the scene from Robocop where the prototype ED-209 screams and rips its own brain out.
Let's hear from Mr. Pearson, who cannot fucking spell:
Nothing new here, I myself explored all the same arguments you pose back in 1990, so I've been writing about it for 15 years too. Positive technology feedback was one of my first major insights when I started doing this job. I even rely on it in the design of my own OB1 (optical brain 1) machine, whihc I'm designing to achive human level intelligence by 2015, potentially 1 billion x human intelligence by 2020, in a smart yoghurt.
...But the OB1 machine won't arrive overnight, and the military are already well aware of the project type (we've been discussing this with the military for many years), so it isn't going to suddenly arrive out of the blue and will almost certainly be made illegal before we start building it. If it does get built, it will almost certainly arrive first in a weapon system...
Ah, here's a much more reasonable solution. A cup of yogurt a billion times smarter than humans running a weapon system. Now I don't see the ED-209 scene, I see the SAI launching every nuclear missile in the country. Yee-haw! Finally, the solution to the problem in the Middle East that every American in the Midwest wants to see.
On second thought, please don't click that link. Don't give the man traffic. Don't increase his Google ranking. Just let the page suffocate from lack of attention. Crikey. I'm going to eat some yogurt that won't try to kill me.
Monday, July 25, 2005
The New York Times > Magazine > The Redeemer
The New York Times > Magazine > The Redeemer
Interesting, very in-depth profile of/interview with Pedro Almodovar.
From the article: "My movies are more sincere than I am in real life. My movies are more honest than I am in real life. My movies are clearer than I am in real life."
Interesting, very in-depth profile of/interview with Pedro Almodovar.
From the article: "My movies are more sincere than I am in real life. My movies are more honest than I am in real life. My movies are clearer than I am in real life."
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Stabbety-stab!
This fourth of July weekend, a man got stabbed two blocks from where I live. People in Binghamton are so patriotic. They just can't contain their patriotism. They have to let it out. By stabbing someone.
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