We've recently added a new event to the TransVision 2004 conference: The Faith, Transhumanism and Hope seminar. Here are the details:
Faith, Transhumanism and Hope
At first glance, religion and transhumanism may seem to have little to do with one another, or even be in direct conflict. Yet in the past few years transhumanists have emerged in a variety of religious traditions. A recent survey of the members of the World Transhumanist Association found that a quarter of the members were religious or spiritual, based in more than a dozen different religious traditions. Meanwhile debate has emerged within religious communities about the potential outcomes of human enhancement technologies and a transhumanist worldview. Some images and ideals of the posthuman sit well within discussions of spiritual transformation and relate to religious longings. Others, such as pursuing transcendence through technology, stir up heated debate and antagonism. Discussion has emerged about whether a syncretic religious transhumanism is possible or desirable.
For this symposium and a special issue of The Journal of Evolution and Technology we are looking for contributions that address questions such as:
* Are transhumanism and religious faith compatible, complementary or antagonistic?
* How much is transhumanism a product of secular humanism?
* Are only specific theologies or faiths, such as religious humanism, technopaganism or Buddhism, compatible with transhumanism?
* What does a Christian transhumanist believe? A Buddhist transhumanist?
* Is transhumanism utopian or merely progressive?
* Do transhumanists deify technology?
* Is the transhumanist desire for immortality just a sublimation of a desire for heaven or nirvana?
* Is the transhumanist expectation of a Singularity just a sublimated religious millennialism?
* What does Jerusalem have to do with Silicon Valley?
* How long, oh Lord?! How many years are enough?
* Can robots ever have souls?
* Is humanity granted dominion over our own evolution along with dominion over nature?
* Have concepts of hubris and divine limits changed over the years? What ramifications do those changes have for theological interpretations of human enhancement?
* What are the spiritual implications of neurotheology and entheogenic technologies that create subjective experiences of meditative absorption, or religious awe and reverie?
* Do we have a moral obligation to use enhancement technology to make ourselves more compassionate, moral and wise beings?
* What are the spiritual implications of procreative liberty and procreative beneficence (using germinal choice technology to improve the lives of our children)?
* How can transhumanists improve dialogue with, and understanding among, suspicious people of faith?
Submit proposal
If submitting a proposal please include all of the following information in a proposal for your presentation:
* Title of presentation.
* Description of the content and format (300 words or less).
* Abstract (25-50 words) for inclusion in the conference program.
* Media to be used and audiovisual equipment needed (if any).
* Designated contact person (only one per proposal).
* Complete name, title, organization, address, phone and fax numbers, and email address for each session presenter.
* Brief biographical sketch (50 words or less) for each presenter.
Please submit your proposals electronically to conference chair James Hughes, Ph.D at james.hughes@trincoll.edu. The deadline is June 1, 2004. Proposals will be accepted on a rolling basis.
Please attach the paper the presentation is based on if it is already written.
We strongly encourage joint submission to The Journal of Evolution and Technology or Transhumanity e-zine.
The Journal of Evolution and Technology is a peer-reviewed electronic journal associated with the World Transhumanist Association, publishing contemporary research into future science and philosophy.
This special issue seeks to highlight issues related to technological innovation, the human condition and secular and religious worldviews, while mapping out a platform for conversation between transhumanism and faith communities. We seek articles that consider areas of commonality and overlap, as well as their points of divergence between transhumanist and varying religious perspectives. We also encourage discussion of new ways of thinking about and integrating discussion of religious faith and
transhumanism.
This issue on religion and transhumanism intends to present a variety of perspectives and hence is open in terms of topics covered.
Contributions in the form of full-length articles (5000-10,000 words) or forum pieces or position papers (2000-3000 words). Authors are encouraged to discuss their ideas with the editor or guest editor, Heidi Campbell - University of Edinburgh.
Manuscripts should be prepared according to the guidelines and be submitted by October 1, 2004. Please email completed manuscripts to Mark Walker, JET editor, at mark@permanentend.org or Heidi Campbell, guest editor, at hcampbe1@yahoo.co.uk.
April 4, 2004
Peter Passaro on AI, the Brain, and Techlepathy
Neuroscientist Peter Passaro will be presenting at TV04. Passaro will most likely be speaking about the logistics of consciousness uploading and how difficult it will be to achieve such a feat. Peter and I got talking about his work and he mentioned that he had some interesting new things to say about the brain, how it works and it's capacities. Here's our correspondence:
Me:
[W]ow -- I'd really like to hear [more of] your thoughts. Out of curiosity, do you take issue with Moravec's 10X16 IPS, or is that the wrong angle to take in both comprehending and analogizing human cognition? Also, are you also describing the computation required for consciousness-proper or just the overall raw computing power of the brain?
Passaro:
I'm compiling data to write an academic article on the complexity and intelligence issue. Here is my quick and dirty argument. I don't have a problem with Moravec's estimates of raw computing power, but I do have a problem with his estimate of memory, and a very big problem with the lack of discussion of specified complexity.
The standard measure of memory capacity used by AI/GI researchers is that one synapse equals one bit. I don't buy this at all (and neither does anyone in the neuro community) and I don't think we have a good enough handle on computation in small mammalian brain circuits to really understand memory storage completely, but there are good reasons to think that the estimates should be much much larger because you just can't equate a synapse with a bit.
At the heart of this argument is that specified complexity is what is determining the very special type of computation we see in brains. The current estimates of the number of synapses in a human brain is ~100 Trillion. The big deal here is in the way you can organize those 10^14 synapses. There is a recent paper that used a simple N choose R mathematical argument showing that the possible ways you could connect the neurons in the brain using 100 billion neurons and 1000 synapses/neuron is over 10^8000(bits)!!!!! Realize this is an upper bound and a ridiculously hyperastronomical number, but I still think this is a wake up call that we are dealing with an order of complexity unseen any where else in nature (the human brain is hyperastronomical in its *dynamics* and *degree of connectivity*!)
I think it likely we already have devices which have the requisite computational power in terms of speed, but I think we are far away from having the required level of connectivity and speed of altering that connectivity between information processing units (transistors or whatever fundamental substrate you are using) to produce the type of dynamics we see in neural systems. I think the hot areas for AI/GI on the software end should be network and distributed systems research and on the hardware end would be devices such as FPGAs which can quickly alter their structure (current thinking in AI/GI usually ignores the speed at which biological networks rearrange themselves as well).
Lastly we need to figure out how to arrange all this stuff in patterns that are organized to take advantage of information flows. This is what I meant by *specified* complexity. We have to figure out how things are arranged to produce the type of dynamics we see in brains and why I think you still need to do neuroscience to get to AI/GI. Evolutionary computing may be helpful in this regard as well (allowing the system to evolve through the possible space of structures), but neuroscience reverse engineering methods are going to help greatly reduce the search space of good computational structures for intelligence and consciousness. (part of the reason I do the research I do). So much for the quick and dirty :)
Me:
Peter, a few things:
- Yes, I love [Ben] Goertzel's work. I'm fairly convinced that his group will continually be on the cutting edge of AI/GI work for years to come.
- Wow, your figures on the upper-bound capacity of the brain's processing power is staggering to say the least. If you're right, this could significantly push back projections for the development of human-equivalent AI/GI, and even the hypothesized Singularity. You also rightly point out how this further reveals the complexity problem with the human brain. I will continue to mull over this potential discovery.
- Since your encounter with Stuart Hameroff last year [at TransVision 2003], have you considered quantum computation and/or quantum effects in your consciousness studies? Do you still believe that consciousness is an emergent property?
- In your work with neural interfaces, have you given any consideration to technologically endowed telepathy? If so, how do you see it being done? On this subject, check out [the] recent correspondence I had with Chuck Jorgensen of NASA's Ames Research Center.
Passaro:
I think that this whole competition over who will get there first, AI or IA, is just ridiculous. If we can create interactive systems in which machine intelligence learns to create better computational structures by observing biological neuronal networks, and uses that info create denser linkages to biological networks to learn more, we could be seeing progress on both fronts much faster. A self-teaching system for intelligence integration. In my mind the search for general intelligence should be one field. I think Ben may be one of the few AI researchers I'm aware of who would be sympathetic to this view.
The complexity figures are making me think that we seriously need to think about moving towards evolved systems (I know many of the GI gang are thinking in this direction) if we want AI/GI anytime soon and for my own research that I am really going to need the assistance of adaptable machine intelligence to deal with type of large scale processing I am attempting to study in biological neural systems.
I have given a lot more thought to my conversation with Hameroff. To be frank, I was not at all impressed by his argument and especially shocked to find he knew very little about how people in neuroscience mathematically model neurons or networks of them. It confirmed the impression from the publications that this group really just did not know what they are talking about. They are on to something about fast microtubule switching being involved in neuronal transmission of information, but this doesn't have anything to do with the quantum or consciousness (except at the fundamental level of single neuron information processing).
What has really convinced me the quantum processing is not involved in consciousness is the complexity scaling issue. You see certain transitions in the formation of more complex structures in the universe quarks->particles->atomic matter->solar systems->life->consciousness. The reach of the quantum world just does not go very high up that scale as far as information transmission due to the fact that there is just not enough capacity for organization at the level of the quantum, everything gets probabilistically filtered before you get to atomic matter. You have to go up several levels of organizational complexity before reaching structures which can be dynamically organized to produce something on the order of human intelligence (and these structures are probabilistically filtering lots of information from lots of neurons, which are probabilistic filtering lots of information from ion and molecule flows... etc.)
On "telepathic" interfaces - YES! I have given this some thought on a number of occasions. I have often thought that the killer app for public acceptance of nonmedical neural implantation is the implantable cell phone. Technologically, I think it is doable NOW! This combination of subvocalized output along with input through something like a cochlear implant is exactly the device I was imagining. I have seriously played around with business plans for how to get this done, and if no one does it before I graduate this is one of the directions I may try to head. The only thing that bothers me is I know who the initial target market would be and major funding source would be - DARPA - which kind of turns my stomach a bit. They would love to have SEAL teams, and fighter pilots, and intelligence operatives running around with these things. I would hate to see this technology classified and restricted for their use only. Imagine how effective a small team of people who could communicate like this would be. The only major technological problem is transmission at a distance, which requires significant power that you want to get away from biological tissue, but these issues are already being dealt with by the cell phone industry and should have workable solutions soon.
BTW, the next step up in these devices would be to go after the part of the motor cortex responsible for output for the region of the throat and mouth or slightly higher up, the language output centers, in a similar fashion to what Nicolelis has done for arm movements, i.e. you wouldn't need any muscular movement at all, just thought, to produce language output. This could also be done with current microelectrode technology.
The mappings Chuck is talking about are exactly the same type of thing we are trying to correlate within our system, but because we are working in an in vitro system with no native structure we are trying to determine general rules for how systems set up in response to sensory input and what the state space of their output will be. Once these rules are determined it will become much easier to produce cortical implants. I am becoming more and more convinced that we dont need to be directly interfaced to lots of single neurons to get information out we just need an array of listening electrodes. Putting information in is going to be more difficult because no one is sure how to use extracellular field stimulation to get information into cortical neural networks except in the simplest of cases, luckily cochlear information is the simplest of cases :)
Me:
[W]ow -- I'd really like to hear [more of] your thoughts. Out of curiosity, do you take issue with Moravec's 10X16 IPS, or is that the wrong angle to take in both comprehending and analogizing human cognition? Also, are you also describing the computation required for consciousness-proper or just the overall raw computing power of the brain?
Passaro:
I'm compiling data to write an academic article on the complexity and intelligence issue. Here is my quick and dirty argument. I don't have a problem with Moravec's estimates of raw computing power, but I do have a problem with his estimate of memory, and a very big problem with the lack of discussion of specified complexity.
The standard measure of memory capacity used by AI/GI researchers is that one synapse equals one bit. I don't buy this at all (and neither does anyone in the neuro community) and I don't think we have a good enough handle on computation in small mammalian brain circuits to really understand memory storage completely, but there are good reasons to think that the estimates should be much much larger because you just can't equate a synapse with a bit.
At the heart of this argument is that specified complexity is what is determining the very special type of computation we see in brains. The current estimates of the number of synapses in a human brain is ~100 Trillion. The big deal here is in the way you can organize those 10^14 synapses. There is a recent paper that used a simple N choose R mathematical argument showing that the possible ways you could connect the neurons in the brain using 100 billion neurons and 1000 synapses/neuron is over 10^8000(bits)!!!!! Realize this is an upper bound and a ridiculously hyperastronomical number, but I still think this is a wake up call that we are dealing with an order of complexity unseen any where else in nature (the human brain is hyperastronomical in its *dynamics* and *degree of connectivity*!)
I think it likely we already have devices which have the requisite computational power in terms of speed, but I think we are far away from having the required level of connectivity and speed of altering that connectivity between information processing units (transistors or whatever fundamental substrate you are using) to produce the type of dynamics we see in neural systems. I think the hot areas for AI/GI on the software end should be network and distributed systems research and on the hardware end would be devices such as FPGAs which can quickly alter their structure (current thinking in AI/GI usually ignores the speed at which biological networks rearrange themselves as well).
Lastly we need to figure out how to arrange all this stuff in patterns that are organized to take advantage of information flows. This is what I meant by *specified* complexity. We have to figure out how things are arranged to produce the type of dynamics we see in brains and why I think you still need to do neuroscience to get to AI/GI. Evolutionary computing may be helpful in this regard as well (allowing the system to evolve through the possible space of structures), but neuroscience reverse engineering methods are going to help greatly reduce the search space of good computational structures for intelligence and consciousness. (part of the reason I do the research I do). So much for the quick and dirty :)
Me:
Peter, a few things:
- Yes, I love [Ben] Goertzel's work. I'm fairly convinced that his group will continually be on the cutting edge of AI/GI work for years to come.
- Wow, your figures on the upper-bound capacity of the brain's processing power is staggering to say the least. If you're right, this could significantly push back projections for the development of human-equivalent AI/GI, and even the hypothesized Singularity. You also rightly point out how this further reveals the complexity problem with the human brain. I will continue to mull over this potential discovery.
- Since your encounter with Stuart Hameroff last year [at TransVision 2003], have you considered quantum computation and/or quantum effects in your consciousness studies? Do you still believe that consciousness is an emergent property?
- In your work with neural interfaces, have you given any consideration to technologically endowed telepathy? If so, how do you see it being done? On this subject, check out [the] recent correspondence I had with Chuck Jorgensen of NASA's Ames Research Center.
Passaro:
I think that this whole competition over who will get there first, AI or IA, is just ridiculous. If we can create interactive systems in which machine intelligence learns to create better computational structures by observing biological neuronal networks, and uses that info create denser linkages to biological networks to learn more, we could be seeing progress on both fronts much faster. A self-teaching system for intelligence integration. In my mind the search for general intelligence should be one field. I think Ben may be one of the few AI researchers I'm aware of who would be sympathetic to this view.
The complexity figures are making me think that we seriously need to think about moving towards evolved systems (I know many of the GI gang are thinking in this direction) if we want AI/GI anytime soon and for my own research that I am really going to need the assistance of adaptable machine intelligence to deal with type of large scale processing I am attempting to study in biological neural systems.
I have given a lot more thought to my conversation with Hameroff. To be frank, I was not at all impressed by his argument and especially shocked to find he knew very little about how people in neuroscience mathematically model neurons or networks of them. It confirmed the impression from the publications that this group really just did not know what they are talking about. They are on to something about fast microtubule switching being involved in neuronal transmission of information, but this doesn't have anything to do with the quantum or consciousness (except at the fundamental level of single neuron information processing).
What has really convinced me the quantum processing is not involved in consciousness is the complexity scaling issue. You see certain transitions in the formation of more complex structures in the universe quarks->particles->atomic matter->solar systems->life->consciousness. The reach of the quantum world just does not go very high up that scale as far as information transmission due to the fact that there is just not enough capacity for organization at the level of the quantum, everything gets probabilistically filtered before you get to atomic matter. You have to go up several levels of organizational complexity before reaching structures which can be dynamically organized to produce something on the order of human intelligence (and these structures are probabilistically filtering lots of information from lots of neurons, which are probabilistic filtering lots of information from ion and molecule flows... etc.)
On "telepathic" interfaces - YES! I have given this some thought on a number of occasions. I have often thought that the killer app for public acceptance of nonmedical neural implantation is the implantable cell phone. Technologically, I think it is doable NOW! This combination of subvocalized output along with input through something like a cochlear implant is exactly the device I was imagining. I have seriously played around with business plans for how to get this done, and if no one does it before I graduate this is one of the directions I may try to head. The only thing that bothers me is I know who the initial target market would be and major funding source would be - DARPA - which kind of turns my stomach a bit. They would love to have SEAL teams, and fighter pilots, and intelligence operatives running around with these things. I would hate to see this technology classified and restricted for their use only. Imagine how effective a small team of people who could communicate like this would be. The only major technological problem is transmission at a distance, which requires significant power that you want to get away from biological tissue, but these issues are already being dealt with by the cell phone industry and should have workable solutions soon.
BTW, the next step up in these devices would be to go after the part of the motor cortex responsible for output for the region of the throat and mouth or slightly higher up, the language output centers, in a similar fashion to what Nicolelis has done for arm movements, i.e. you wouldn't need any muscular movement at all, just thought, to produce language output. This could also be done with current microelectrode technology.
The mappings Chuck is talking about are exactly the same type of thing we are trying to correlate within our system, but because we are working in an in vitro system with no native structure we are trying to determine general rules for how systems set up in response to sensory input and what the state space of their output will be. Once these rules are determined it will become much easier to produce cortical implants. I am becoming more and more convinced that we dont need to be directly interfaced to lots of single neurons to get information out we just need an array of listening electrodes. Putting information in is going to be more difficult because no one is sure how to use extracellular field stimulation to get information into cortical neural networks except in the simplest of cases, luckily cochlear information is the simplest of cases :)
April 3, 2004
My Panel Cancelled
I've got some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that my panel at the Center for Inquiry International's conference on science and ethics, How Scientific Inquiry Helps Frame Value Judgments, has been cancelled. The good news is that now I can go see David Bowie in concert. Sorry mom, but I want my ticket back :-)
Space Predictions
I recently met a fascinating individual here in Toronto by the name of Talmon Firestone. Talmon, who will be both helping and presenting at TV04, is a student of the International Space University. Jeez, how cool is that? I didn't even know such a thing existed. Anyway, he is totally in the know about anything to do with current efforts to go into space and he has some interesting predictions:
- Spaceship One will win the X-Prize. This thing is gorgeous, elegant, and it actually looks like a spaceship.
- The first space elevator will be up sometime around 2015-20, but it will be a significant military objective (whoever controls the space elevator, argues Firestone, controls space).
- The first orbital hotel will go up relatively shortly. Shrouded in secrecy, work is being done on the first space hotel, Nautilus. Interestingly, the Hilton Hotel people are also supposedly working on an orbital hotel.
- Spaceship One will win the X-Prize. This thing is gorgeous, elegant, and it actually looks like a spaceship.
- The first space elevator will be up sometime around 2015-20, but it will be a significant military objective (whoever controls the space elevator, argues Firestone, controls space).
- The first orbital hotel will go up relatively shortly. Shrouded in secrecy, work is being done on the first space hotel, Nautilus. Interestingly, the Hilton Hotel people are also supposedly working on an orbital hotel.
March 28, 2004
Interviewed by Now Magazine
I was interviewed by Now Magazine's Stephen Humphrey today. It was a long and exhausting 2.5 hr interview in which we covered a lot of ground, including transhumanism. Stephen was thinking of doing an article on bill C-6 (which is biolegislation that was recently passed here in Canada) and cloning. But after our lengthy discussion, he wasn't exactly forthcoming about what he thought the article was going to be about. Reporters make me nervous and I'm loath to trust them -- you can never be too sure how they're going to portray you
March 22, 2004
Berserker Probes
Although unlikely, I came up with a possible variation on the berserker probe scenario to help explain the Fermi Paradox. A berserker probe is like a Von Neumann probe, except that it destroys life instead of spawning it. It's conceivable that, if a civilization can create a life-spawning probe, an advanced civilization could -- for whatever reason -- also create its antithesis: an exponentially duplicating fleet of malevolent probes designed to wipe out all intelligent life in the galaxy. Of course, we haven't seen any signs of berserker probes, so we are left wondering why our planet hasn't been wiped out by them. There are a number of plausible answers to this problem, including the popular Rare Earth hypothesis.
However, a possible explanation for why Earth still has life on it in the presence of berserker probes is that berserker probes, in order to remain energy efficient, remain dormant in space awaiting activation by a sign of intelligent life. One can assume that berserker probes are designed to eliminate advanced intelligences only. What sign of intelligence could they be waiting for? How about radio signals. Yikes.
This is very unlikely, however, for a number of reasons. Primarily, it would seem that we are about a half-century away from Drexlerian nanotechnology, artificial superintelligence, and an existential phase shift (i.e. technological singularity). By cosmological standards, if a berserker probe is going to wipe us out, it better get here already. And assuming that it was lying dormant in our solar system, it has had ample time to destroy us. Moreover, it would have been simpler to design a fleet of berserker probes that permanently sterilize all planets in the galaxy so that life can never arise.
At the very least, this might make an interesting premise for a science fiction story.
However, a possible explanation for why Earth still has life on it in the presence of berserker probes is that berserker probes, in order to remain energy efficient, remain dormant in space awaiting activation by a sign of intelligent life. One can assume that berserker probes are designed to eliminate advanced intelligences only. What sign of intelligence could they be waiting for? How about radio signals. Yikes.
This is very unlikely, however, for a number of reasons. Primarily, it would seem that we are about a half-century away from Drexlerian nanotechnology, artificial superintelligence, and an existential phase shift (i.e. technological singularity). By cosmological standards, if a berserker probe is going to wipe us out, it better get here already. And assuming that it was lying dormant in our solar system, it has had ample time to destroy us. Moreover, it would have been simpler to design a fleet of berserker probes that permanently sterilize all planets in the galaxy so that life can never arise.
At the very least, this might make an interesting premise for a science fiction story.
Correspondence with NASA's Chuck Jorgensen
I sent an e-mail today to Chuck Jorgensen of NASA's Ames Research Center about an idea I have that relates to his recent breakthrough using nerve signals from silent (subvocal) speech to communicate with machines and people:
Chuck Jorgensen et al,
Congratulations to you and your team for your work on computerizing subvocal speech. This breakthrough is sure to have wide reaching implications in a number of fields and in the way we interact with our computers. In particular, I'm very excited for what this will mean to the disabled. Moreover, we are slowly but surely inching closer to the NUI (neural user interface), and by implication, a kind of technologically endowed form of person-to-person telepathy.
As I thought about your breakthrough it occurred to me that the same type of system could work for the aural receptors in the ear. The Organ of Corti's stereocilia send incoming converted acoustic signals to the brain. One can assume that, by feeding this transmitter a compatible signal (not unlike the data you're intercepting en route to the vocal chords), that "virtual acoustic" information can be fed directly into the brain. To the person, it would feel like they were hearing sound (it would probably sound like an acoustic hallucination), but in reality, it's just a neural signal that's tapped into the auditory nerve. (I believe that cochlear implants work along this principle)
So, it seems reasonable to me that if you take your subvocal speech signal, convert and transmit it somehow to the auditory nerve, you can have a soft form of mind-to-mind communication.
I wouldn't mind hearing your thoughts on the matter (pun intended). I would be completely unsurprised if you have considered this already.
Dr. Jorgensen was kind enough to write me back:
Dear Mr. Dvorsky,
Thank you for your most interesting and insightful letter. I found your suggested approach a very penetrating insight. We have not considered your particular method but have been interested in finding whether we can directly correlate auditory speech signals and sub vocal signals recorded at the the same time by learning non linear mapping equations to relate one to the other. We have also explored some research for direct neural signal injection performed at other universities but it is outside our Labs current charter and expertise. We are most interested in a totally non invasive process, starting initially with understanding the highly convolved surface measured signals in contrast to the work which has focused on imbedded neural probes or surgical intrusions such as used for highly handicapped patients.
thanks for your interest in our work -
Dr. Chuck Jorgensen
NASA Ames Research Center
Chuck Jorgensen et al,
Congratulations to you and your team for your work on computerizing subvocal speech. This breakthrough is sure to have wide reaching implications in a number of fields and in the way we interact with our computers. In particular, I'm very excited for what this will mean to the disabled. Moreover, we are slowly but surely inching closer to the NUI (neural user interface), and by implication, a kind of technologically endowed form of person-to-person telepathy.
As I thought about your breakthrough it occurred to me that the same type of system could work for the aural receptors in the ear. The Organ of Corti's stereocilia send incoming converted acoustic signals to the brain. One can assume that, by feeding this transmitter a compatible signal (not unlike the data you're intercepting en route to the vocal chords), that "virtual acoustic" information can be fed directly into the brain. To the person, it would feel like they were hearing sound (it would probably sound like an acoustic hallucination), but in reality, it's just a neural signal that's tapped into the auditory nerve. (I believe that cochlear implants work along this principle)
So, it seems reasonable to me that if you take your subvocal speech signal, convert and transmit it somehow to the auditory nerve, you can have a soft form of mind-to-mind communication.
I wouldn't mind hearing your thoughts on the matter (pun intended). I would be completely unsurprised if you have considered this already.
Dr. Jorgensen was kind enough to write me back:
Dear Mr. Dvorsky,
Thank you for your most interesting and insightful letter. I found your suggested approach a very penetrating insight. We have not considered your particular method but have been interested in finding whether we can directly correlate auditory speech signals and sub vocal signals recorded at the the same time by learning non linear mapping equations to relate one to the other. We have also explored some research for direct neural signal injection performed at other universities but it is outside our Labs current charter and expertise. We are most interested in a totally non invasive process, starting initially with understanding the highly convolved surface measured signals in contrast to the work which has focused on imbedded neural probes or surgical intrusions such as used for highly handicapped patients.
thanks for your interest in our work -
Dr. Chuck Jorgensen
NASA Ames Research Center
March 17, 2004
Panspermia Equation
A friend and I were recently discussing the panspermia hypothesis. I mentioned a recent theory to him suggesting that the Earth has most likely "infected" countless other planets with its biological substrate -- the result of massive celestial impacts that have sent Earth's bio-ejecta into the far reaches of space. We concluded that an Earth panspermia infection bubble must exist and that it is steadily growing outward. Assuming that the panspermia hypothesis is valid (and that is a BIG assumption), the next question is: How probable is it that this matter has landed on a planet and successfully transmitted life to it? My friend took this question and came up with a Drake Equation-style formula. I've since made some suggestions. Here's the most recent draft:
Some of the factors below are valued as "odds". That is, they have a value between 0 (impossible) and 1 (certain).
N(i) * f(l) * f(x) * f(e) * f(s) * f(p) * f(q) * f(v) * f(m)
N(i) Number of meteorite impacts or similar events occurring after life develops on earth. The frequency of these events are decreasing over time. This might also include volcanic eruptions, explosions, etc.
f(l) Fraction of those impacts that encounter living matter of the type suitable for panspermic transmission. It's conceivable that any kind of life, no matter how rudimentary, could set off this effect. This fraction might approach 1 as life matures on a planet (ie post "Cambrian Explosion phases"). It might exclude impacts in the polar regions, deserts, etc; early life probably only existed in oceans, and perhaps only in temperate belts.
f(x) Fraction of impacts that eject viable life matter. This is the chance of life surviving the impact and its transmission into space.
f(e) Fraction of that ejecta which escapes the solar system. [For the sake of this discussion we're excluding intra-solar system infection]
T(v) Average duration for the life-substrate on the ejecta to remain a viable panspermic agent. This is a statement of the chance of life (or the life code) surviving the trip.
V(e) Average velocity of ejecta once it has escaped the solar system. The product of T(v) and V(e) is the average distance that ejecta will reach and remain viable. Call this D(v).
N(s) The number of stars within (T(v) * V(e)) of earth.
f(s) The fraction of escaping ejecta that encounters one of these stars. That is, is captured by the gravity of another star and at least enters stellar orbit.
f(p) Fraction of captured ejecta that lands on a planet (or moon).
f(q) Fraction of planets that are susceptible to panspermic infection.
f(v) Fraction of landing ejecta where the life matter is still viable. This is the chance of life surviving the landing.
f(m) Fraction of landing viable life that multiplies into an ecosystem. This is the chance of life thriving in a brand new environment.
Some of the factors below are valued as "odds". That is, they have a value between 0 (impossible) and 1 (certain).
N(i) * f(l) * f(x) * f(e) * f(s) * f(p) * f(q) * f(v) * f(m)
N(i) Number of meteorite impacts or similar events occurring after life develops on earth. The frequency of these events are decreasing over time. This might also include volcanic eruptions, explosions, etc.
f(l) Fraction of those impacts that encounter living matter of the type suitable for panspermic transmission. It's conceivable that any kind of life, no matter how rudimentary, could set off this effect. This fraction might approach 1 as life matures on a planet (ie post "Cambrian Explosion phases"). It might exclude impacts in the polar regions, deserts, etc; early life probably only existed in oceans, and perhaps only in temperate belts.
f(x) Fraction of impacts that eject viable life matter. This is the chance of life surviving the impact and its transmission into space.
f(e) Fraction of that ejecta which escapes the solar system. [For the sake of this discussion we're excluding intra-solar system infection]
T(v) Average duration for the life-substrate on the ejecta to remain a viable panspermic agent. This is a statement of the chance of life (or the life code) surviving the trip.
V(e) Average velocity of ejecta once it has escaped the solar system. The product of T(v) and V(e) is the average distance that ejecta will reach and remain viable. Call this D(v).
N(s) The number of stars within (T(v) * V(e)) of earth.
f(s) The fraction of escaping ejecta that encounters one of these stars. That is, is captured by the gravity of another star and at least enters stellar orbit.
f(p) Fraction of captured ejecta that lands on a planet (or moon).
f(q) Fraction of planets that are susceptible to panspermic infection.
f(v) Fraction of landing ejecta where the life matter is still viable. This is the chance of life surviving the landing.
f(m) Fraction of landing viable life that multiplies into an ecosystem. This is the chance of life thriving in a brand new environment.
Odds 'n Ends
- I've confirmed Stelarc for TV04!
- My article, "Better Living Through Transhumanism" is going to be published in The Humanist magazine.
- My article, "Have Feminists Forsaken the Future" is going to be published in a University text book that highlights opposing viewpoints in genetics, ethics, and feminist issues.
- My article, "Better Living Through Transhumanism" is going to be published in The Humanist magazine.
- My article, "Have Feminists Forsaken the Future" is going to be published in a University text book that highlights opposing viewpoints in genetics, ethics, and feminist issues.
March 11, 2004
Stelarc and TV04
I contacted Stelarc yesterday about his possible involvement with TV04. I got a very encouraging response from him and hopefully I'll be able to make an official announcement shortly. I also contacted Jaron Lanier, but I'm still waiting to hear back from him. He expressed interest several months ago, but has since dropped off my radar.
Interviewed by Eye Magazine
I was interviewed today by Toronto freelance journalist Andre Mayer who specifically wanted to know about how I apply transhumanism to my daily life. While he made no promises, he hoped that he'll be able to translate our conversation into an article. For those who are interested in this subject matter, check out my column, "Better Living Through Transhumanism."
March 10, 2004
TV04 News
I've got some big TransVision 2004 news: I have reached an agreement with Steve Mann and he will be joining us at TV04 as a keynote speaker. TV04 is certainly starting to take shape -- it's going to be an absolutely mind-blowing weekend. I'm still nowhere near where I want to be in regards to speakers, but we've already got a formidable crew, including Mann, Howard Bloom, Tsubasa, Nick Bostrom, Aubrey de Grey and James Hughes. Wow. I'm also looking to get S. Jay Olshansky and Stelarc involved in the conference. I'll keep you posted.
We're looking to add a Thursday event to TV04. Our current thinking is that it'll be about transhumanism and religion. Or, it could be a crash-course in transhumanism, an event reminiscent of what we did last year at TV03 last year.
Local UofT bioethics student Isaac Filate has joined us on the organizing committee for TV04. If anyone here in Toronto is interested in volunteering, please contact me.
We're looking to add a Thursday event to TV04. Our current thinking is that it'll be about transhumanism and religion. Or, it could be a crash-course in transhumanism, an event reminiscent of what we did last year at TV03 last year.
Local UofT bioethics student Isaac Filate has joined us on the organizing committee for TV04. If anyone here in Toronto is interested in volunteering, please contact me.
March 3, 2004
Exchange with Damien Broderick on Vegetarianism, Personhood
Here's a recent exchange between myself and Damien Broderick about the politics of vegetarianism that eventually made its way to the wta-talk list (the article I'm referring to can be found here):
[George wrote in his original post:]
< Fascinating article, but I found parts of it disturbing, particularly the
suggestion that as long as non-[human] animals are treated and killed
humanely that it's okay to kill them. >
...
< It's a non-argument and one that smacks of speciesism. >
[Damien offlist to George:]
This recently invented word `speciesism' begs the core question itself,
doesn't it? As a sort of analogous back formation from `racism', it simply
doesn't work without lots of extra argument. Racism stinks because it's the
fallacious claim that groups of humans who differ superficially in skin
color (say) are different species, and hence can be treated differently,
even killed at will. But different species *are*, oddly enough, different
species; the argument has to be started again from another standpoint. What
your rhetoric seems to try for is the dubious claim that:
It's a speciesist argument and one that smacks of racism.
Of course it doesn't.
[George replied:]
Yes, of course, non-trivial differences exist between humans and the other
species. I am not suggesting that we should sweepingly ignore those
differences nor that we should offer blanket condemnations whenever any
non-human animal is harmed. That being said, I would say that trivial
differences do exist when it comes to the conscious experience of humans
and a number non-human animals, including some farm animals. For this
reason I have a hard time buying those arguments which unjustifiably and
arbitrarily diminish the value of the life that these creatures have.
And it pisses me off when no consideration or respect is given to the life
of a highly sentient, emotional, and experiential non-human animal -- so
yes, I'll use a word like speciesism because that's exactly what it is. The
article that I was referring to did exactly this; the author was fixated on
his observation that cows, for example, did not panic or show any stress on
the killing floor and that they died virtually instantaneously. In his mind
this made the whole thing okay. The fact that a conscious life had been
terminated didn't seem to bother the author at all because the death came
"humanely." Interesting that you make the racism analogy; as I was reading
the article I was imagining a commentator of 60 years ago rationalizing the
"humaneness" of gas chambers in the same way.
As for the word "speciesism," I must admit that when I throw a word like
that to the wta-talk list I make assumptions about this specific readership
and how they will interpret that word. Most of us here understand and honor
personhood ethics and I thought (hopefully not wrongly) that I didn't need
to qualify the term.
[Damien:]
Yikes. You reckon a cow is a *person*?
...
I did *not* make `the racism analogy'; I specifically *denied* and
*repudiated* any analogy between killing black humans and killing cows,
which I felt was an analogy implicit in the term you used. I'm aghast
(really) to see you now explicitly paralleling murdering Jewish and other
humans in gas chambers with slaughtering animals raised for food.
[George:]
A cow is no more or less a person than, say, a severely disabled human.
Personhood is not a binary designation or status, but is instead a sliding
scale of characteristics and capabilities. The quality of the cognitive,
emotional and sensory life that a cow leads is sufficient enough IMO to
fulfill a number of personhood criteria which should grant it civil
protections against such things as mistreatment and murder.
...
Because humans are capable of so much more than non-human animals (in so
many respects), we can assign a greater inherent "value" to human life
relative to other creatures. Thus, gas chambers are a greater travesty than
factory farms, but *both* are still wrong and the parallel between racism
and speciesism still stands. Moreover, the analogy -- in case you're
concerned -- doesn't lessen the value we ascribe to human life nor does it
artificially inflate the value of animal life; it merely highlights the
need to reject unfounded prejudices and the need to recognize, respect and
protect various types of sentient life.
=============================
[Damien:]
I might end up persuaded that cows are persons, but it seems extremely
unlikely at this point. (I will readily accept that suitably conscious AIs
or extraterrestrial lifeforms or genetically `uplifted' animals must be so
regarded.) The argument for decent treatment and use of non-human animals
can surely be made without taking such a bizarre step.
Damien Broderick
[George wrote in his original post:]
< Fascinating article, but I found parts of it disturbing, particularly the
suggestion that as long as non-[human] animals are treated and killed
humanely that it's okay to kill them. >
...
< It's a non-argument and one that smacks of speciesism. >
[Damien offlist to George:]
This recently invented word `speciesism' begs the core question itself,
doesn't it? As a sort of analogous back formation from `racism', it simply
doesn't work without lots of extra argument. Racism stinks because it's the
fallacious claim that groups of humans who differ superficially in skin
color (say) are different species, and hence can be treated differently,
even killed at will. But different species *are*, oddly enough, different
species; the argument has to be started again from another standpoint. What
your rhetoric seems to try for is the dubious claim that:
It's a speciesist argument and one that smacks of racism.
Of course it doesn't.
[George replied:]
Yes, of course, non-trivial differences exist between humans and the other
species. I am not suggesting that we should sweepingly ignore those
differences nor that we should offer blanket condemnations whenever any
non-human animal is harmed. That being said, I would say that trivial
differences do exist when it comes to the conscious experience of humans
and a number non-human animals, including some farm animals. For this
reason I have a hard time buying those arguments which unjustifiably and
arbitrarily diminish the value of the life that these creatures have.
And it pisses me off when no consideration or respect is given to the life
of a highly sentient, emotional, and experiential non-human animal -- so
yes, I'll use a word like speciesism because that's exactly what it is. The
article that I was referring to did exactly this; the author was fixated on
his observation that cows, for example, did not panic or show any stress on
the killing floor and that they died virtually instantaneously. In his mind
this made the whole thing okay. The fact that a conscious life had been
terminated didn't seem to bother the author at all because the death came
"humanely." Interesting that you make the racism analogy; as I was reading
the article I was imagining a commentator of 60 years ago rationalizing the
"humaneness" of gas chambers in the same way.
As for the word "speciesism," I must admit that when I throw a word like
that to the wta-talk list I make assumptions about this specific readership
and how they will interpret that word. Most of us here understand and honor
personhood ethics and I thought (hopefully not wrongly) that I didn't need
to qualify the term.
[Damien:]
Yikes. You reckon a cow is a *person*?
...
I did *not* make `the racism analogy'; I specifically *denied* and
*repudiated* any analogy between killing black humans and killing cows,
which I felt was an analogy implicit in the term you used. I'm aghast
(really) to see you now explicitly paralleling murdering Jewish and other
humans in gas chambers with slaughtering animals raised for food.
[George:]
A cow is no more or less a person than, say, a severely disabled human.
Personhood is not a binary designation or status, but is instead a sliding
scale of characteristics and capabilities. The quality of the cognitive,
emotional and sensory life that a cow leads is sufficient enough IMO to
fulfill a number of personhood criteria which should grant it civil
protections against such things as mistreatment and murder.
...
Because humans are capable of so much more than non-human animals (in so
many respects), we can assign a greater inherent "value" to human life
relative to other creatures. Thus, gas chambers are a greater travesty than
factory farms, but *both* are still wrong and the parallel between racism
and speciesism still stands. Moreover, the analogy -- in case you're
concerned -- doesn't lessen the value we ascribe to human life nor does it
artificially inflate the value of animal life; it merely highlights the
need to reject unfounded prejudices and the need to recognize, respect and
protect various types of sentient life.
=============================
[Damien:]
I might end up persuaded that cows are persons, but it seems extremely
unlikely at this point. (I will readily accept that suitably conscious AIs
or extraterrestrial lifeforms or genetically `uplifted' animals must be so
regarded.) The argument for decent treatment and use of non-human animals
can surely be made without taking such a bizarre step.
Damien Broderick
March 2, 2004
TV04 Notes
Some more TransVision notes:
- Digital artist Tsubasa has announced that he will be participating at TV04. Tsubasa is also involved with Cyberotica 2004.
- I met with Jacqueline Urbano today, a local student, artist and transhumanist, who will be helping us manage and organize the artists component of the conference. Check out the recently launched TV04 Gallery to see some of her work.
- Eric Aronesty has joined the TV04 organizing committee to help us manage sponsorships.
- Digital artist Tsubasa has announced that he will be participating at TV04. Tsubasa is also involved with Cyberotica 2004.
- I met with Jacqueline Urbano today, a local student, artist and transhumanist, who will be helping us manage and organize the artists component of the conference. Check out the recently launched TV04 Gallery to see some of her work.
- Eric Aronesty has joined the TV04 organizing committee to help us manage sponsorships.
Two Day Fast
I have all but completed my first 2-day fast (I'll have some fruit for breakfast tomorrow AM). I haven't eaten anything since Sunday evening except the Master Cleanser drink (water, lemon juice, honey, salt, and cayenne pepper). I've got the 1-day fast down-pat, but I have to admit, the 2-day was hard. I was surprised how distracted I was and how little energy I had (sad commentary, really, about the effect of coffee). I had all these plans to do yoga and writing tonight, but I ended up renting and watching a couple of cool movies (American Splendor and Okamura's Memories). But I know I'm going to feel great tomorrow and for the rest of the week. These little exercises do strengthen my mental fortitude and self-control, and it's helping me prepare for the Big One later this month: the 10-day juice fast.
March 1, 2004
Catching Up
Long time no blog. Sorry, been busy. Recent happenings in my life:
- I recently came to an agreement with Howard Bloom and his agent; Howard will be a keynote speaker at TransVision 2004.
- I am currently in discussions with Steve Mann and his agent about TV04. I think it's just a matter of crossing the T's and dotting the I's at this point, but it's still unofficial.
- I will be speaking at the Center for Inquiry International's conference on science and ethics, How Scientific Inquiry Helps Frame Value Judgments. The conference will be here in Toronto from May 13-16. I will be speaking on May 14 at 8:30 PM about transhumanism and the future of humanity.
- I've been corresponding with Kevin Warwick. More on this later.
- I recently came to an agreement with Howard Bloom and his agent; Howard will be a keynote speaker at TransVision 2004.
- I am currently in discussions with Steve Mann and his agent about TV04. I think it's just a matter of crossing the T's and dotting the I's at this point, but it's still unofficial.
- I will be speaking at the Center for Inquiry International's conference on science and ethics, How Scientific Inquiry Helps Frame Value Judgments. The conference will be here in Toronto from May 13-16. I will be speaking on May 14 at 8:30 PM about transhumanism and the future of humanity.
- I've been corresponding with Kevin Warwick. More on this later.
January 23, 2004
Conversations with John Smart & Milan Cirkovic
Both John Smart and Milan Cirkovic provided me with assistance for my latest column, "Space: Not the Final Frontier." I corresponded with them via e-mail and I'd like to share those conversations.
Smart is a developmental systems theorist who studies science and technological culture with an emphasis on accelerating change, computational autonomy and the technological singularity. He is the founder and chairman of the Institute for Accelerating Change, a nonprofit community that seeks to help individuals better understand and manage continuous accelerating change.
Cirkovic is a cosmologist based in Serbia. After graduating from the Department of Physics at the University of Belgrade in June 1994, Cirkovic enrolled in the Astronomy graduate program, Department of Physics and Astronomy at the SUNY at Stony Brook, where he received his M.Sc. degree. He is currently working toward his PhD.
Both Smart and Cirkovic are transhumanists and both take great interest in seeking to understand the role, if any, that intelligence plays in the future of the Universe. Consequently, they share an interest in the anthropic principle, the singularity, post-singularity and extra terrestrial intelligence, the Fermi Paradox, and cosmological eschatology (the study of the life-cycle of the Universe, particularly its death). Smart, like a number of cosmologists these days (including Lee Smolin), study the Universe as it were a biological organism -- as something that came to be as a result of selectional processes. It's for this reason that Smart considers himself a cosmological embryologist. Similarly, Cirkovic believes that the Universe has a life-cycle, and that from here on in, this life-cycle cannot be predicted and understood without taking the potential role of intelligence into account; intelligence should be considered an integral part of the Universe.
Here are my conversations with them:
Conversation with John Smart
G. Dvorsky: Suppose we don't venture out into space. What about the "all the eggs in one basket" problem? What will post-singularity intelligences do about existential risks such as gamma ray bursts and collisions with foreign objects? Unless I'm missing a vital concept about MEST (the compression of matter, energy, space and time), the physical locality of post-singularity intelligences will still be here on Earth.
J. Smart: I think you are right about the need for redundancy of local planetary intelligence. In conversation, [Vernor] Vinge has himself suggested that post-singularity intelligences would build local secondary systems no matter how stable or immune Earth's A.I. grid seemed, just in case there were something we'd ignored in all our theorizing. But you don't need too many of them to achieve statistically near-inevitable immortality of the infocomplex, however. The problem might easily be solved with just a few off-Earth repositories of local knowledge (L5 points or the moon seem sufficient). Such systems could easily spring forth to maintain lineage immortality, as needed, if Earth were somehow extincted.
As for gammma ray bursts from nearby supernovas, I suspect technology can fashion far more powerful local shields than any type of radiation sent from far away. Inner space always seems more formidable than outer space in that regard. I'm not a physicist but I'd expect even just a bit of lead shielding around your repositories would presently protect them from even the nearest blasts, wouldn't it? Would you need repositories in geosynch orbit around large planets like Jupiter, so that some would always have planetary shielding, no matter the direction from which came the blast? I don't know, but I don't think so, and we are not even considering the femtotechnology shields that post-singularity intelligences will have access to.
Certainly we can also expect near Earth surveillance and redirection capacity for all foreign objects (meteors, comets, etc.) shortly after the tech singularity arrives. But I'd expect that we'll discover that all of the planet killers are already gone (due to the self-protective nature of solar development), and all the really big ones (Shoemaker Levy, etc.) probably only get sucked in by the really big gravitational attractors in our solar system (like Jupiter).
Again, as you and I know, space appears to be an informational desert, what I call a "rear view mirror" on the trajectory of universal intelligence. There is so much space within even our own solar system that there seems to be no realistic possibility that we'll send intelligence even to the edge of it. No matter, we can simulate it to amazing levels already, with even the primitive eyes and brains we've developed locally.
Conversation with Milan Cirkovic
G. Dvorsky: Are you familiar with the work of John Smart and his transcension scenario for post-singularity intelligence (migration of intelligence into vastly smaller compressions of matter, energy, space, and time)? If so, what do you think of Smart and his work? Do you see his hypothesis as a credible reconciliation for the Fermi Paradox?
M. Cirkovic: I'm afraid I have to admit that I have only a very superficial acquaintance with Smart's ideas (mostly from the transhumanism web sites), and I'm eager to read his upcoming book. However, from what I have learnt so far, I gather that it maybe a form of what I call partial solutions of Fermi's Paradox, for the simple reason: it is not sufficiently non-exclusive (or generic), as far as we know today. Among thousands (if not more) sites in the Galaxy where intelligent communities may arise, at least some of them will be unable/unwilling to go the Smart way (pun intended!). This is not something derogatory -- after all, 99% of the proposed solutions of FP suffer from the same disadvantage (and it is in most cases far worse than for Smart).
G. Dvorsky: When discussing the Fermi Paradox, why do we assume that Type III intelligences embark on interstellar colonization?
M. Cirkovic: There are at least two plausible answers. The first is that the entire definition of Kardashev's classification pertains to the spatial size, and since it is reasonable to assume that any civilization originates in a single (or a number of) discrete place(s), here it is. However, I guess that you aim at something more subtle, i.e. that the resources corresponding to the Galactic-level civilization could be in fact found in more compact environment, which would then obviate the material need for colonization. I'm skeptical, frankly, about this option, with one proviso below, mainly because we find most of the material resources of our universe extremely tenuously distributed, meaning that you need to control a lot of spatial volume in order to exploit its resources for creating value-structures. The proviso (and I gather that Smart counts at something similar) is that we don't have quantum theory of gravity which will judge once for all whether so called wormhole solutions to the quantum field theory are legitimate. If they are, several important ramifications occur, notably (a) the possibility of gathering resources from other places in our universe via non-local transport, and (b) the possibility of gathering resources from other universes through the wormhole throats. Again, although I'm an old SF fan, I don't see any meaningful way of saying anything sensible about these options prior to sufficiently well-developed quantum gravity, which is not something I expect very soon (i.e. within the current decade).
G. Dvorsky: Let's assume for a moment that we live in a non-typical Galaxy and that other Galaxies tend to be colonized rather early in their cosmological cycle. Would we be able to see evidence of this from our vantage point? Could we detect hyperscale engineering of some sort?
M. Cirkovic: Well, this is really a BIG question. I do tend to think that we would indeed be able to observe it, in such a exceptional case. However, one should keep in mind that even the closest big spiral galaxy is seen as it was 2 million years ago, as you notice below -- which is exactly the timescale invoked by Fermi and skeptics for the rise of Type III civilizations in the Milky Way. Thus, in galaxies farther away colonization and re-ordering of resources could be well under way without our noticing it so far. But then again, I don't see any sufficiently good reason for arguing for our exceptional position. Rather, I would bet (and that's something Robert Bradbury and I have extensively discussed and probably will write a short paper on it) that advanced civilizations will, in the process of becoming Type III (or equivalent), make itself rather invisible by moving into the outer regions of the Galaxy, mainly for the reason of heat (believe it or not!), i.e. impossibility to get their computational resources in contact with the temperature of the CMB. On the other hand, since you have read precious little which I wrote on the subject, you probably gather that I'm inclined toward a "catastrophic" viewpoint which argues that all civilizations in the Galaxy (and, per analogiam, in other galaxies) will turn to be of approximately the same age (i.e. ours), so I don't really expect such situations to occur. Of course, even a difference of million years or so may make a large difference concerning the ladder of ascent toward Type III, so the point is still very much debatable... (This is also under assumption that laws of classical computing will apply to advanced civilizations; but, see "Quantum Information Processing: The Case of Vanishing Interaction Energy" for an alternative option. If you are in contact with John Smart, you might wish to point this paper to him -- I guess he'll like its conclusion -- that under some special conditions we might one day create a "superconduction of information" analogue...)
G. Dvorsky: Assuming that we could detect hyperscale engineering, are we constrained by our perspective from our Hubble bubble (we are seeing these Galaxies as they existed millions upon millions of years ago)?
M. Cirkovic: Oh, of course, if we are going back billions of years, we certainly become limited, but mostly by the resolution of our observations. One should also keep in mind that we as of recently have numerical evidence that terrestrial planets (at least in our galaxy) cannot be older than about 9 Gyr. (see e.g. Lineweaver et al. paper in the New Year issue of Science)
I forwarded the previous conversation to Smart, who responded:
J. Smart: Thank you kindly for forwarding your thread. I've followed some of Milan's work from afar, and find him fascinating and very informative. I've added a blurb on his vanishing interaction energy paper to SingularityWatch. This is yet another promising example of MEST efficiency, the surprising emergent efficiencies of the microdomain. The empirically observed and still theoretically inadequately explained phenomenon of superconductivity is another, as you observed.
Cirkovic writes: Among thousands (if not more) sites in the Galaxy where intelligent communities may arise, at least some of them will be unable/unwilling to go Smart way (pun intended!).
This is an understandable response to the developmental singularity hypothesis. Few believe it would be fundamentally generic, as constraining as, for example the process of biological development once you are beginning with tuned DNA (or in this case, the tuned parametric DNA underlying this universe's physical-computational architecture). But it is. Developing organisms can either fail or create mature seed-propagating parents of very defined characteristics. You don't see multiple, non-generic solutions, ever.
Any attempt by any civilization to not transcend would leave it in computationally crippled slowspace. It would have to ignore constant accelerating innovations, innovations that just drop out of our playing with the physics of the microcosm, innovations that are far more intelligence discovered than intelligence created. I think not creating quantum computational devices, for example, would be like not discovering and using language, or mathematics, or electricity. Such systems seem as developmentally convergent and statistically determined as all the lower level features of the universe.
Your comments about wormholes are intriguing. If they were to be used in this universe that would violate every previous example of hierarchical substrate emergence in universal evolutionary development, which has lead to increasingly local interaction (even as we encode models that have increasingly nonlocal insights). Vastly greater MEST compression of compututation is the overwhelming developmental trend. Whether such nonlocality is possible or not, I would not expect it to influence the evolutionary development of spacetime within this universe. We can quantum entangle photons and instantaneously determine their states miles away. But beyond research into the historical processes that created us, I don't think we'll be doing much of that in coming years, within this universe. It takes finite time to traverse the space and becomes computationally uninteresting vs. more localized structure.
Inner space, not outer space, seems to be our developmental destiny, as I see it.
This is an ongoing conversation. Hopefully I'll have more soon, including Milan's response to John's last message.
Smart is a developmental systems theorist who studies science and technological culture with an emphasis on accelerating change, computational autonomy and the technological singularity. He is the founder and chairman of the Institute for Accelerating Change, a nonprofit community that seeks to help individuals better understand and manage continuous accelerating change.
Cirkovic is a cosmologist based in Serbia. After graduating from the Department of Physics at the University of Belgrade in June 1994, Cirkovic enrolled in the Astronomy graduate program, Department of Physics and Astronomy at the SUNY at Stony Brook, where he received his M.Sc. degree. He is currently working toward his PhD.
Both Smart and Cirkovic are transhumanists and both take great interest in seeking to understand the role, if any, that intelligence plays in the future of the Universe. Consequently, they share an interest in the anthropic principle, the singularity, post-singularity and extra terrestrial intelligence, the Fermi Paradox, and cosmological eschatology (the study of the life-cycle of the Universe, particularly its death). Smart, like a number of cosmologists these days (including Lee Smolin), study the Universe as it were a biological organism -- as something that came to be as a result of selectional processes. It's for this reason that Smart considers himself a cosmological embryologist. Similarly, Cirkovic believes that the Universe has a life-cycle, and that from here on in, this life-cycle cannot be predicted and understood without taking the potential role of intelligence into account; intelligence should be considered an integral part of the Universe.
Here are my conversations with them:
Conversation with John Smart
G. Dvorsky: Suppose we don't venture out into space. What about the "all the eggs in one basket" problem? What will post-singularity intelligences do about existential risks such as gamma ray bursts and collisions with foreign objects? Unless I'm missing a vital concept about MEST (the compression of matter, energy, space and time), the physical locality of post-singularity intelligences will still be here on Earth.
J. Smart: I think you are right about the need for redundancy of local planetary intelligence. In conversation, [Vernor] Vinge has himself suggested that post-singularity intelligences would build local secondary systems no matter how stable or immune Earth's A.I. grid seemed, just in case there were something we'd ignored in all our theorizing. But you don't need too many of them to achieve statistically near-inevitable immortality of the infocomplex, however. The problem might easily be solved with just a few off-Earth repositories of local knowledge (L5 points or the moon seem sufficient). Such systems could easily spring forth to maintain lineage immortality, as needed, if Earth were somehow extincted.
As for gammma ray bursts from nearby supernovas, I suspect technology can fashion far more powerful local shields than any type of radiation sent from far away. Inner space always seems more formidable than outer space in that regard. I'm not a physicist but I'd expect even just a bit of lead shielding around your repositories would presently protect them from even the nearest blasts, wouldn't it? Would you need repositories in geosynch orbit around large planets like Jupiter, so that some would always have planetary shielding, no matter the direction from which came the blast? I don't know, but I don't think so, and we are not even considering the femtotechnology shields that post-singularity intelligences will have access to.
Certainly we can also expect near Earth surveillance and redirection capacity for all foreign objects (meteors, comets, etc.) shortly after the tech singularity arrives. But I'd expect that we'll discover that all of the planet killers are already gone (due to the self-protective nature of solar development), and all the really big ones (Shoemaker Levy, etc.) probably only get sucked in by the really big gravitational attractors in our solar system (like Jupiter).
Again, as you and I know, space appears to be an informational desert, what I call a "rear view mirror" on the trajectory of universal intelligence. There is so much space within even our own solar system that there seems to be no realistic possibility that we'll send intelligence even to the edge of it. No matter, we can simulate it to amazing levels already, with even the primitive eyes and brains we've developed locally.
Conversation with Milan Cirkovic
G. Dvorsky: Are you familiar with the work of John Smart and his transcension scenario for post-singularity intelligence (migration of intelligence into vastly smaller compressions of matter, energy, space, and time)? If so, what do you think of Smart and his work? Do you see his hypothesis as a credible reconciliation for the Fermi Paradox?
M. Cirkovic: I'm afraid I have to admit that I have only a very superficial acquaintance with Smart's ideas (mostly from the transhumanism web sites), and I'm eager to read his upcoming book. However, from what I have learnt so far, I gather that it maybe a form of what I call partial solutions of Fermi's Paradox, for the simple reason: it is not sufficiently non-exclusive (or generic), as far as we know today. Among thousands (if not more) sites in the Galaxy where intelligent communities may arise, at least some of them will be unable/unwilling to go the Smart way (pun intended!). This is not something derogatory -- after all, 99% of the proposed solutions of FP suffer from the same disadvantage (and it is in most cases far worse than for Smart).
G. Dvorsky: When discussing the Fermi Paradox, why do we assume that Type III intelligences embark on interstellar colonization?
M. Cirkovic: There are at least two plausible answers. The first is that the entire definition of Kardashev's classification pertains to the spatial size, and since it is reasonable to assume that any civilization originates in a single (or a number of) discrete place(s), here it is. However, I guess that you aim at something more subtle, i.e. that the resources corresponding to the Galactic-level civilization could be in fact found in more compact environment, which would then obviate the material need for colonization. I'm skeptical, frankly, about this option, with one proviso below, mainly because we find most of the material resources of our universe extremely tenuously distributed, meaning that you need to control a lot of spatial volume in order to exploit its resources for creating value-structures. The proviso (and I gather that Smart counts at something similar) is that we don't have quantum theory of gravity which will judge once for all whether so called wormhole solutions to the quantum field theory are legitimate. If they are, several important ramifications occur, notably (a) the possibility of gathering resources from other places in our universe via non-local transport, and (b) the possibility of gathering resources from other universes through the wormhole throats. Again, although I'm an old SF fan, I don't see any meaningful way of saying anything sensible about these options prior to sufficiently well-developed quantum gravity, which is not something I expect very soon (i.e. within the current decade).
G. Dvorsky: Let's assume for a moment that we live in a non-typical Galaxy and that other Galaxies tend to be colonized rather early in their cosmological cycle. Would we be able to see evidence of this from our vantage point? Could we detect hyperscale engineering of some sort?
M. Cirkovic: Well, this is really a BIG question. I do tend to think that we would indeed be able to observe it, in such a exceptional case. However, one should keep in mind that even the closest big spiral galaxy is seen as it was 2 million years ago, as you notice below -- which is exactly the timescale invoked by Fermi and skeptics for the rise of Type III civilizations in the Milky Way. Thus, in galaxies farther away colonization and re-ordering of resources could be well under way without our noticing it so far. But then again, I don't see any sufficiently good reason for arguing for our exceptional position. Rather, I would bet (and that's something Robert Bradbury and I have extensively discussed and probably will write a short paper on it) that advanced civilizations will, in the process of becoming Type III (or equivalent), make itself rather invisible by moving into the outer regions of the Galaxy, mainly for the reason of heat (believe it or not!), i.e. impossibility to get their computational resources in contact with the temperature of the CMB. On the other hand, since you have read precious little which I wrote on the subject, you probably gather that I'm inclined toward a "catastrophic" viewpoint which argues that all civilizations in the Galaxy (and, per analogiam, in other galaxies) will turn to be of approximately the same age (i.e. ours), so I don't really expect such situations to occur. Of course, even a difference of million years or so may make a large difference concerning the ladder of ascent toward Type III, so the point is still very much debatable... (This is also under assumption that laws of classical computing will apply to advanced civilizations; but, see "Quantum Information Processing: The Case of Vanishing Interaction Energy" for an alternative option. If you are in contact with John Smart, you might wish to point this paper to him -- I guess he'll like its conclusion -- that under some special conditions we might one day create a "superconduction of information" analogue...)
G. Dvorsky: Assuming that we could detect hyperscale engineering, are we constrained by our perspective from our Hubble bubble (we are seeing these Galaxies as they existed millions upon millions of years ago)?
M. Cirkovic: Oh, of course, if we are going back billions of years, we certainly become limited, but mostly by the resolution of our observations. One should also keep in mind that we as of recently have numerical evidence that terrestrial planets (at least in our galaxy) cannot be older than about 9 Gyr. (see e.g. Lineweaver et al. paper in the New Year issue of Science)
I forwarded the previous conversation to Smart, who responded:
J. Smart: Thank you kindly for forwarding your thread. I've followed some of Milan's work from afar, and find him fascinating and very informative. I've added a blurb on his vanishing interaction energy paper to SingularityWatch. This is yet another promising example of MEST efficiency, the surprising emergent efficiencies of the microdomain. The empirically observed and still theoretically inadequately explained phenomenon of superconductivity is another, as you observed.
Cirkovic writes: Among thousands (if not more) sites in the Galaxy where intelligent communities may arise, at least some of them will be unable/unwilling to go Smart way (pun intended!).
This is an understandable response to the developmental singularity hypothesis. Few believe it would be fundamentally generic, as constraining as, for example the process of biological development once you are beginning with tuned DNA (or in this case, the tuned parametric DNA underlying this universe's physical-computational architecture). But it is. Developing organisms can either fail or create mature seed-propagating parents of very defined characteristics. You don't see multiple, non-generic solutions, ever.
Any attempt by any civilization to not transcend would leave it in computationally crippled slowspace. It would have to ignore constant accelerating innovations, innovations that just drop out of our playing with the physics of the microcosm, innovations that are far more intelligence discovered than intelligence created. I think not creating quantum computational devices, for example, would be like not discovering and using language, or mathematics, or electricity. Such systems seem as developmentally convergent and statistically determined as all the lower level features of the universe.
Your comments about wormholes are intriguing. If they were to be used in this universe that would violate every previous example of hierarchical substrate emergence in universal evolutionary development, which has lead to increasingly local interaction (even as we encode models that have increasingly nonlocal insights). Vastly greater MEST compression of compututation is the overwhelming developmental trend. Whether such nonlocality is possible or not, I would not expect it to influence the evolutionary development of spacetime within this universe. We can quantum entangle photons and instantaneously determine their states miles away. But beyond research into the historical processes that created us, I don't think we'll be doing much of that in coming years, within this universe. It takes finite time to traverse the space and becomes computationally uninteresting vs. more localized structure.
Inner space, not outer space, seems to be our developmental destiny, as I see it.
This is an ongoing conversation. Hopefully I'll have more soon, including Milan's response to John's last message.
January 22, 2004
Odds 'N Ends
Scientists Lewis Wolpert and Rupert Sheldrake debated each other in London recently over the topic of telepathy, with Sheldrake -- a biochemist and plant physiologist turned parapsychologist -- arguing in its favour. While largely skeptical of telepathy, I personally haven't ruled it out as a possibility. As Sheldrake noted during the debate, some people know who is going to phone or e-mail them, dogs know when their owners are coming home, and there's the alleged telepathic bond between a New York woman and her parrot. "Billions of perfectly rational people believe that they have had these experiences," he said. I'm also interested in parapsychology and the results of certain PK tests. I'm also fascinated by quantum consciousness theories which attempt to explain some of these observations. Until we have a proper theory of consciousness -- something we're not even close to having -- we cannot rule this out as a possibility.
Check out this annotated preprint archive of essays on the anthropic principle. Compiled by Nick Bostrom, it's a total brain cell droolfest.
Evidence has been mounting since November 2002 that Grigori "Grisha" Perelman has cracked the 100-year-old Poincare Conjecture problem, which seeks to explain the geometry of three-dimensional space. Damn! I was so close. No, really.
OTHER NOTES
My latest column for Betterhumans, "Space: Not the Final Frontier," was listed on SciTech Daily's Opinion and Analysis section today -- which would probably explain why it has received 1,000+ hits in the past 24 hours. Thanks to John Smart and Milan Cirkovic for helping me with this one.
I'm back in a Pink Floyd mood these days -- this time their stuff from 1967-1974. Likely reason: my brother got me the DVD, Pink Floyd: Live in Pompeii for Christmas. Amazing stuff. Most underrated Floyd album: More.
Cool movies I've seen recently: The Last Samurai, Big Fish, Avalon and Princess Mononoke. Of the four, Avalon is probably the best -- kind of a Matrix meets The Wizard of Oz and set in a future dystopic Eastern European country. There's some amazing commentary on the realness -- or unrealness of reality -- including the limitations of our sensory perceptions and our constrained perspective on the only reality we know.
Check out this annotated preprint archive of essays on the anthropic principle. Compiled by Nick Bostrom, it's a total brain cell droolfest.
Evidence has been mounting since November 2002 that Grigori "Grisha" Perelman has cracked the 100-year-old Poincare Conjecture problem, which seeks to explain the geometry of three-dimensional space. Damn! I was so close. No, really.
OTHER NOTES
My latest column for Betterhumans, "Space: Not the Final Frontier," was listed on SciTech Daily's Opinion and Analysis section today -- which would probably explain why it has received 1,000+ hits in the past 24 hours. Thanks to John Smart and Milan Cirkovic for helping me with this one.
I'm back in a Pink Floyd mood these days -- this time their stuff from 1967-1974. Likely reason: my brother got me the DVD, Pink Floyd: Live in Pompeii for Christmas. Amazing stuff. Most underrated Floyd album: More.
Cool movies I've seen recently: The Last Samurai, Big Fish, Avalon and Princess Mononoke. Of the four, Avalon is probably the best -- kind of a Matrix meets The Wizard of Oz and set in a future dystopic Eastern European country. There's some amazing commentary on the realness -- or unrealness of reality -- including the limitations of our sensory perceptions and our constrained perspective on the only reality we know.
January 2, 2004
- My "Scientific Ignorance Dooms Democracy" column was recently given top listing in SciTech Daily's Analysis and Opinion section and listed in Butterflies and Wheels.
- My favourite albums of 2003: The Mars Volta: Deloused in the Comatorium, The New Pornographers: Electric Version, & A Perfect Cirlce: The Thirteenth Step.
- My favourite albums of 2003: The Mars Volta: Deloused in the Comatorium, The New Pornographers: Electric Version, & A Perfect Cirlce: The Thirteenth Step.
December 1, 2003
December 2003
Tuesday December 30, 2003
TODAY'S LINKS
- Bailey on chimeras.
- FuturePundit notes that researchers have accidentally created a more virulent strain of TB.
OTHER NOTES
- James Hughes's Betterhumans column from last week, Monsters in the Media, is proving to be one of the most popular BH articles ever. In just over a week Hughes's column has attracted some 5000+ hits, ranking it as the 6th most read article on Betterhumans ever.
- New Sentient Developments article: Scientific Ignorance Dooms Democracy: Increasingly hi-tech nations need informed citizens, making scientific literacy a human right and scientific illiteracy a disability, By George Dvorsky.
- The FBI is urging police to watch for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that "the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning." Geez, and all this time I've been on the lookout for people carrying thesauruses.
- Jeff Patterson asks Warren Ellis four questions.
- Two regrettable things that we need to get used to having around: SARS and Mad Cow disease.
- I can't even begin to tell you how disappointed I am that the Beagle II appears lost.
- My thoughts go out to all those in Iran who have recently lost loved ones.
- Four cool movies I've seen recently: LOTR:ROTK, The Last Samurai, Whale Rider, Ghost Dog.
- Cool music that I've been listening to lately: anything off the SomaFM station, and especially Groove Salad.
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Sunday December 21, 2003
TODAY'S LINKS
- Lev Navrozov, the Russian weapons expert who believes that China will eventually try to take over the world using nanoweapons, is declaring K. Eric Drexler to be the Einstein of nanotechnology. Specifically, Navrozov is comparing Einstein's famous warning to President Roosevelt about the viability of atomic weapons to Drexler's 1986 book, Engines of Creation, where he warns about the possibility of the development of nanoweapons. Navrozov is concerned, however, that Drexler is not being taken seriously by the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), an organization that Navrozov compares to the Manhattan Project. But as Navrozov notes, the irony in all this is that the NNI has denied the military aspects of nanotechnology. "Imagine," says Navrozov, "the U.S. Manhattan Project policy of tacit denial of the military importance of nuclear power, the implication being that the Manhattan Project, with all the money allocated for it, should concentrate on the development of nuclear power as fuel." Disturbingly, while the Chinese have been startlingly open about the potential military uses of molecular assemblers, Navrozov notes that "the current government-NNI policy completely excludes research involved in molecular nano assemblers because of the false non-feasibility argument as put forward by Richard Smalley with peremptory categorical zeal." Ultimately, as the debate between Drexler and Smalley rages, Navrozov sees no harm in assuming that Drexler is right, that we should err on the side of caution. "Now, let us conjecture, for the sake of argument, the opposite," argues Navrozov, "What would be the danger? That the West, including Dr. Smalley and his carbon nanotubes, would be reduced to dust or would surrender unconditionally to become a vast Hong Kong."
- Tech Central Station's Arnold Kling reveals the patent absurdity of Leon Kass's arguments against biotech, "Biotech Ends and Means." Says Kling, "The only way that I can see to definitely rule out the dystopian scenarios is with a radical, worldwide draconian dictatorship. In the absence of totalitarian rule, biotechnology will be developed and all of us will be tempted or pressured into adopting it."
- NASA says that the speed of light remains constant as it travels through the universe. It's been speculated by some that light might actually slow down under certain conditions. NASA's finding reaffirms Einstein's idea that the speed of light is constant. Despite this conclusion, the issue of universal laws and constants intrigues me, particularly as it applies to the ongoing evolution of the Universe. Do the Universe's laws and constants change over time, during the different phases of the Universe's life cycle? If so, which ones, why, and to what degree? Perhaps this will be an area of inquiry for future cosmologists.
- SciAm has an article about how the Milky Way Galaxy is a dynamic, living object.
- Meera Nanda slams postmodernism again, this time as it pertains to India, Hindu nationalism, and Vedic "science."
- Should the state promote marriages because it's in the best interest of the children? Is this 'marriage movement' in the father's best interest? Cathy Young of Reason Online has an excellent column on the subject.
- A RAND study examines the effects of a program that offers laptop computers to children in grades 3—12 and wireless Internet connections at schools and homes. "The findings of this study lead to a set of recommendations for future implementation, and a conceptual framework and research design for use in conducting a more comprehensive future evaluation." It'll only be a matter of time before Internet access is necessary for certain lesson plans.
OTHER NOTES
- My apologies for the lack of postings recently. I've been busy at work, busy with Betterhumans, and busy organizing TV04.
- I've created a new tribe at Tribe.net: Betterhumans.
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Saturday December 13, 2003
TODAY'S LINKS
- Nanomedicine hits the Globe & Mail: "Medical Researchers Are Thinking Small"
- The Edge has a talk with string theorist Leonard Susskind: "What we've discovered in the last several years is that string theory has an incredible diversity—a tremendous number of solutions—and allows different kinds of environments. A lot of the practitioners of this kind of mathematical theory have been in a state of denial about it. They didn't want to recognize it. They want to believe the universe is an elegant universe—and it's not so elegant. It's different over here. It's that over here. It's a Rube Goldberg machine over here. And this has created a sort of sense of denial about the facts about the theory. The theory is going to win, and physicists who are trying to deny what's going on are going to lose."
- A couple of recent reports pertaining to the personhood status of non-human animals: A recent study suggests that some animals, such as monkeys and dolphins, may be capable of a sophisticated thought process called metacognition (thinking about thinking), which may mean they have more self-awareness than previously thought, while another study published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology reveals that dogs have personalities, and that these character traits can be identified as accurately as similar personality attributes in humans.
- NASA is going to speculate on "weird life" beyond earth, evaluating the possibilities that "non-standard" chemistry may support life in known solar system environments and conceivably in extra-solar settings and to define broad areas that might guide NASA and other agencies to fund efforts to expand knowledge in this area.
- We are but worms: apoptosis (neuronal cell death) is nematode worms is remarkably similar to the same process in humans.
- Italy, in an effort to end the perception that it's the 'Wild West of assisted reproduction" has introduced some pretty strict embryo laws, infuriating a number of scientists.
- Men tend to prefer immediate awards, namely the sight of a pretty face, over long term ones. In other words, attractive women can make men act irrationally.
- Lucid dreamers claim that they can take the horror out of nightmares, inspire new ideas, promote self-healing of physical ailments and unravel mysteries of the psyche that can improve their overall well-being.
- New research suggests that if an Earthlike world with significant water is needed for advanced life to evolve, there could be many candidates. In 44 computer simulations of planet formation near a sun, researchers found that each simulation produced one to four Earthlike planets, including 11 so-called "habitable" planets about the same distance from their stars as Earth is from our sun, suggesting that Earthlike planets might be common. Fermi, Fermi, what does this mean?!?!
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Wednesday December 10, 2003
TODAY'S LINKS
- Apparently Hilbert's 16th problem has not been solved. Well, my day's ruined.
- Some heterosexual couples in the US are refusing to get married to protest the fact that gays still can't.
- 56,800 children were being raised by their grandparents in 2001 in Canada. They were being raised by 56,700 grandparents, about 1 per cent of all grandparents in that year.
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Tuesday December 9, 2003
TODAY'S LINKS
- Get your ass to Mars. Here's 10 reasons why.
- Science fiction author and futurist visionary Sir Arthur C. Clarke is interviewed about the current state of communications technology and the potential for information overload.
- Katharine Mieszkowski has published another article in Salon about the Atkins Diet, this time about how animal-rights activists are claiming that low-carb and meat-heavy diets are killing people. Of course, the fact that animals are being killed to feed people isn't very endearing to animal-rights activists either.
- Simon Blackburn has a review of Richard Dawkins's latest book, A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love.
- Is Prozac so successful because of its placebo effect?
OTHER NOTES
- New Sentient Developments article: Beating Beijing's Big Brother. As authorities fortify the Great Firewall of China, information technology is allowing increasingly modern, high-tech and culturally sophisticated Chinese to slip the grip of totalitarianism, by George Dvorsky
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Monday December 8, 2003
TODAY'S LINKS
- Researchers have recently transplanted modified pig kidneys into baboons. It appears to be working and with no signs of rejection. It is hoped that these types of breakthroughs will eventually lead to animal-to-human organ transplants. While interesting and potentially helpful in the short-term, I can't see this as being a viable alternative to eventual breakthroughs in artificial organs, cybernetics, medical nanotechnology, and improved cellular biology in general.
OTHER NOTES
- Although it's still unofficial, I may have gotten Howard Bloom to speak at TransVision 2004, albeit via pre-taped video.
- John Smart has posted an updated version of his interview with The Speculist's Phil Bowermaster.
- I've got the Fermi Paradox Tribe happening at tribe.net, and my friend Matt Schulz submitted an interesting entry which I'd like to reprint here:
"I've always felt that a variant of the zoo hypothesis is most likely. Assuming alien civilizations experience a history whose dynamics are broadly similar to ours, they will no doubt be aware that contact between two cultures across a technological divide will almost invariably not end well for the more primitive culture. Contact between an alien civilization - likely a Type II civilization - and ourselves, may be almost certain to result in our destruction. It has been suggested (I can't remember by who) that, if we were to make contact with an alien network, the most likely thing for us to download would be a virus, simply because viruses are the best at replicating. Consider what a virus of modern sophistication would have done to the primitive internet; consider the fact that our internet, only ten years old, is already lousy with viruses, a situation unlikely to change at any point in the future; and, finally, consider how much more sophisticated the viruses dwelling within a Type II civilization's networks would almost certainly be. If such a virus were downloaded, odds are our civilization would be destroyed. Alien civilizations, being aware of this, are thus likely keeping us under quarantine until such time as we reach a level of sophistication that can survive the onslaught of the viruses that they would inevitably spread were they to make contact. We aren't anywhere near that level, yet; chances are, we won't reach it until we've moved a good distance towards constructing our own Type II civilization."
"As a corollary, I think that alien civilizations are probably aware of us. Arthur C. Clarke's monolith idea - a limited von Neumann probe that replicates only a small number of times in any given solar system, then goes into a dormant 'watching' mode until something interesting comes up - is probably the most rational way to explore: minimally invasive, with maximal coverage. Odds are, our solar system has one or two such artifacts buried in the asteroid belt, in the Oort Cloud, even on the moon. They could easily be quite small and still be very effective for their tasks (think how much information one could pack into, say a cubic meter of computonium), but their small size, small number, and the vast size of the solar system makes it almost certain that we will not discover them until they want to be discovered. Communications would probably be through a tight-wave radio broadcast, which we would not intercept unless we were right between sender and receiver ... and since the probes know where we are, they would ensure that we never, ever have a chance to eavesdrop." -- Matthew Shultz
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Friday December 5, 2003
TODAY'S LINKS
- What do laughing and cocaine have in common? Both result in the same brain region being triggered. I have always found humour and laughing to be fascinating subjects, and I've often wondered why we even laugh at all. Considering that much of what we find funny is derived from pain, misfortune, the absurd, and surprise, selectional processes probably favoured proto-humans who reacted to those particular observational events with a degree of levity. It might also have something to do with how our brains try to process seemingly 'absurd' data. I once had the opportunity to speak with Eliezer Yudkowsky about this, and he agreed, noting that this behaviour then got caught in an culturo-evolutionary positive feedback loop, where mates were selected for their sense of humour; you want to hang out with people who make you laugh because laughing feels good.
- The Edge has a chat with Samuel Barondes, "New Pills for the Mind." Abstract: "Most of the psychiatric drugs we use today are refinements of drugs whose value for mental disorders was discovered by accident decades ago. Now we can look forward to a more rational way to design psychiatric drugs. It will be guided by the identification of the gene variants that predispose certain people to particular mental disorders such as schizophrenia or severe depression." On a similar note, The Independent has an article about whether or not artists need drugs more than ordinary people.
- Psychiatrist Brian Fallon is interviewed by New Scientist about hypochondria, its similarities to obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD, and novel methods of treatment.
- Tech Central Station has a couple of interesting articles: Sydney Smith writes about advances in consciousness studies and how it relates to the Terri Schiavo case, and Edward Fesser wonders if Islam needs its own Protestant Reformation.
- My friend and fellow transhumanist John Smart is being interviewed by The Speculist. John's the kind of guy who will twist and contort the way you look at things; you find yourself resisting and protesting, but you just can't shake it.
- The Chinese government, recognizing the democratizing and individuating effects of information technology, are urging its IT industry to use the country's own encryption standards for wireless networks. Such a move would ensure stronger government control and give domestic manufacturers a slight reprieve from foreign competition.
OTHER NOTES
- Sadly, the hardest part about my fast on Wednesday was not the lack of food, but the lack of coffee. I have got to cut down. Next day to fast: Monday.
- Jeff Patterson is evil because he wants you to watch this Mothra Twins video. I have no good reason for blogging this, so I guess I must be evil, too. I'll blame it on memetic infection. It should be called Japanacheese. To watch the video, click on the pink Watch!! button and then select your desired resolution. Don't say I didn't warn you.
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Wednesday December 3, 2003
TODAY'S LINKS
- Good day, eh, and welcome to today's blog. There seems to be a myth about the Americanization of Canadian culture. Considering recent changes in Canada, including the advent of same-sex marriages and the pending decriminalization of marijuana, and taken in conjunction with declining church attendance, Canada is starting to look more like Europe than the United States. Clifford Krauss of the New York Times elaborates in his recent article, "Canada's View on Social Issues Is Opening Rifts With the U.S." Hey, in what other country could the outgoing Prime Minister safely joke about smoking pot after he retires?
- According to exiled dissident Xu Wenli, China is training "Internet police" to trace political dissidents who are using the Internet to evade state censorship. "Before they used to sentence people because they spoke to a newspaper abroad or spoke to VOA (Voice of America)," Xu said. He claims that Chinese communist authorities are jailing dissidents simply because they were using the Internet to disseminate or read political views. Says Xu, "Lately people who have gotten online have been arrested and sentenced...A lot of students are training as Internet police online to censor articles. This is a very dangerous signal for us."
- The cover story of this month's Chemical & Engineering News features a "Point-Counterpoint" between K. Eric Drexler and Richard Smalley on a fundamental question that will dramatically affect the future development of this field: Are "molecular assemblers"—devices capable of positioning atoms and molecules for precisely defined reactions in almost any environment—physically possible? This exchange is likely to hold some historical importance, and may signify a change in future speculations about Drexlerian-type nanotechnology.
- A 26-year-old American graduate student has made mathematical history by discovering the largest known prime number - a number that is 6,320,430 digits long. Using a distributed network of more than 200,000 computers, it took Michael Shafer just over two years to find. It's been said that from here on in that most new major mathematical discoveries will come about with the help of computers. Mathematical biologist Steven Strogatz, when speculating on what the future holds for research on complex systems, has noted that "we may end up as bystanders, unable to follow along with the machines we've built, flabbergasted by their startling conclusions." That didn't stop Elin Oxenhielm, a 22-year-old student at Stockholm University, who may have cracked part of one of mathematics' greatest unsolved problems: Hilbert's 16th problem.
- In this Tech Central Station article, Michael Fumento examines the explorations of biogerontologists who are working to prolong human lifespan, while contemplating the social and ethical ramifications of greatly extending our lives.
- The Village Voice's Sharon Lerner profiles the latest revolutions in female contraception.
- Check out the excellent array of transhumanist themed books listed by the Speculist in the December 1st blog entry.
- Classic prose is being used to counter powerful Bayesian spam filters.
OTHER NOTES
- I'm fasting today, so feel sorry for me.
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Monday December 1, 2003
TODAY'S LINKS
- RAND has released a "best practices" document for existing human tissue repositories. Abstract: "Case studies of twelve existing human biospecimen repositories performed to evaluate their utility for genomics- and proteomics-based cancer research and to identify “best practices” in collection, processing, annotation, storage, privacy, ethical concerns, informed consent, business plans, operations, intellectual property rights, public relations, marketing, and education that would be useful in designing a national biospecimen network."
- Transgender, gay and feminist groups at the University of Chicago are asking officials to consider creating more gender-neutral bathrooms, saying some people aren't comfortable selecting a gender-specific facility.
OTHER NOTES
- Okay, I've got a handle on being a vegetarian, I'm doing yoga regularly, and I'm meditating daily (I've even joined a group of friends for weekly meditation). Now, there's one more thing I hope to add to the list: fasting. Starting this Wednesday, for health and ascetic reasons, I will be adopting the Ananda Marga method of fasting, which essentially involves fasting one day from dawn-to-dawn twice a month. The days are based on the lunar calendar. Even though it's only one full day of fasting, it's a complete fast where not even water can be ingested. It's claimed that through this method poisons can be better excreted from the body. Exercise and lots of fresh air on the day of the fast is also recommended. But because it's my first fast I have to take it slow, so I will be drinking milk and eating fruit on Wednesday. My second fast (Dec. 19) will include fruit juice and fruits. Eventually I'll be able to do a complete fast. Come back on Thursday to see how I did on my first fast. Oh, and while we're on the topic of my health habits, I'm continuing to take cold showers, and I've started to snort water into my nose to clean out my nasal passages. Yes, that's perhaps more information than you needed, but hey, no one's asking you to read my blog ;-)
TODAY'S LINKS
- Bailey on chimeras.
- FuturePundit notes that researchers have accidentally created a more virulent strain of TB.
OTHER NOTES
- James Hughes's Betterhumans column from last week, Monsters in the Media, is proving to be one of the most popular BH articles ever. In just over a week Hughes's column has attracted some 5000+ hits, ranking it as the 6th most read article on Betterhumans ever.
- New Sentient Developments article: Scientific Ignorance Dooms Democracy: Increasingly hi-tech nations need informed citizens, making scientific literacy a human right and scientific illiteracy a disability, By George Dvorsky.
- The FBI is urging police to watch for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that "the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning." Geez, and all this time I've been on the lookout for people carrying thesauruses.
- Jeff Patterson asks Warren Ellis four questions.
- Two regrettable things that we need to get used to having around: SARS and Mad Cow disease.
- I can't even begin to tell you how disappointed I am that the Beagle II appears lost.
- My thoughts go out to all those in Iran who have recently lost loved ones.
- Four cool movies I've seen recently: LOTR:ROTK, The Last Samurai, Whale Rider, Ghost Dog.
- Cool music that I've been listening to lately: anything off the SomaFM station, and especially Groove Salad.
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Sunday December 21, 2003
TODAY'S LINKS
- Lev Navrozov, the Russian weapons expert who believes that China will eventually try to take over the world using nanoweapons, is declaring K. Eric Drexler to be the Einstein of nanotechnology. Specifically, Navrozov is comparing Einstein's famous warning to President Roosevelt about the viability of atomic weapons to Drexler's 1986 book, Engines of Creation, where he warns about the possibility of the development of nanoweapons. Navrozov is concerned, however, that Drexler is not being taken seriously by the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), an organization that Navrozov compares to the Manhattan Project. But as Navrozov notes, the irony in all this is that the NNI has denied the military aspects of nanotechnology. "Imagine," says Navrozov, "the U.S. Manhattan Project policy of tacit denial of the military importance of nuclear power, the implication being that the Manhattan Project, with all the money allocated for it, should concentrate on the development of nuclear power as fuel." Disturbingly, while the Chinese have been startlingly open about the potential military uses of molecular assemblers, Navrozov notes that "the current government-NNI policy completely excludes research involved in molecular nano assemblers because of the false non-feasibility argument as put forward by Richard Smalley with peremptory categorical zeal." Ultimately, as the debate between Drexler and Smalley rages, Navrozov sees no harm in assuming that Drexler is right, that we should err on the side of caution. "Now, let us conjecture, for the sake of argument, the opposite," argues Navrozov, "What would be the danger? That the West, including Dr. Smalley and his carbon nanotubes, would be reduced to dust or would surrender unconditionally to become a vast Hong Kong."
- Tech Central Station's Arnold Kling reveals the patent absurdity of Leon Kass's arguments against biotech, "Biotech Ends and Means." Says Kling, "The only way that I can see to definitely rule out the dystopian scenarios is with a radical, worldwide draconian dictatorship. In the absence of totalitarian rule, biotechnology will be developed and all of us will be tempted or pressured into adopting it."
- NASA says that the speed of light remains constant as it travels through the universe. It's been speculated by some that light might actually slow down under certain conditions. NASA's finding reaffirms Einstein's idea that the speed of light is constant. Despite this conclusion, the issue of universal laws and constants intrigues me, particularly as it applies to the ongoing evolution of the Universe. Do the Universe's laws and constants change over time, during the different phases of the Universe's life cycle? If so, which ones, why, and to what degree? Perhaps this will be an area of inquiry for future cosmologists.
- SciAm has an article about how the Milky Way Galaxy is a dynamic, living object.
- Meera Nanda slams postmodernism again, this time as it pertains to India, Hindu nationalism, and Vedic "science."
- Should the state promote marriages because it's in the best interest of the children? Is this 'marriage movement' in the father's best interest? Cathy Young of Reason Online has an excellent column on the subject.
- A RAND study examines the effects of a program that offers laptop computers to children in grades 3—12 and wireless Internet connections at schools and homes. "The findings of this study lead to a set of recommendations for future implementation, and a conceptual framework and research design for use in conducting a more comprehensive future evaluation." It'll only be a matter of time before Internet access is necessary for certain lesson plans.
OTHER NOTES
- My apologies for the lack of postings recently. I've been busy at work, busy with Betterhumans, and busy organizing TV04.
- I've created a new tribe at Tribe.net: Betterhumans.
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Saturday December 13, 2003
TODAY'S LINKS
- Nanomedicine hits the Globe & Mail: "Medical Researchers Are Thinking Small"
- The Edge has a talk with string theorist Leonard Susskind: "What we've discovered in the last several years is that string theory has an incredible diversity—a tremendous number of solutions—and allows different kinds of environments. A lot of the practitioners of this kind of mathematical theory have been in a state of denial about it. They didn't want to recognize it. They want to believe the universe is an elegant universe—and it's not so elegant. It's different over here. It's that over here. It's a Rube Goldberg machine over here. And this has created a sort of sense of denial about the facts about the theory. The theory is going to win, and physicists who are trying to deny what's going on are going to lose."
- A couple of recent reports pertaining to the personhood status of non-human animals: A recent study suggests that some animals, such as monkeys and dolphins, may be capable of a sophisticated thought process called metacognition (thinking about thinking), which may mean they have more self-awareness than previously thought, while another study published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology reveals that dogs have personalities, and that these character traits can be identified as accurately as similar personality attributes in humans.
- NASA is going to speculate on "weird life" beyond earth, evaluating the possibilities that "non-standard" chemistry may support life in known solar system environments and conceivably in extra-solar settings and to define broad areas that might guide NASA and other agencies to fund efforts to expand knowledge in this area.
- We are but worms: apoptosis (neuronal cell death) is nematode worms is remarkably similar to the same process in humans.
- Italy, in an effort to end the perception that it's the 'Wild West of assisted reproduction" has introduced some pretty strict embryo laws, infuriating a number of scientists.
- Men tend to prefer immediate awards, namely the sight of a pretty face, over long term ones. In other words, attractive women can make men act irrationally.
- Lucid dreamers claim that they can take the horror out of nightmares, inspire new ideas, promote self-healing of physical ailments and unravel mysteries of the psyche that can improve their overall well-being.
- New research suggests that if an Earthlike world with significant water is needed for advanced life to evolve, there could be many candidates. In 44 computer simulations of planet formation near a sun, researchers found that each simulation produced one to four Earthlike planets, including 11 so-called "habitable" planets about the same distance from their stars as Earth is from our sun, suggesting that Earthlike planets might be common. Fermi, Fermi, what does this mean?!?!
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Wednesday December 10, 2003
TODAY'S LINKS
- Apparently Hilbert's 16th problem has not been solved. Well, my day's ruined.
- Some heterosexual couples in the US are refusing to get married to protest the fact that gays still can't.
- 56,800 children were being raised by their grandparents in 2001 in Canada. They were being raised by 56,700 grandparents, about 1 per cent of all grandparents in that year.
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Tuesday December 9, 2003
TODAY'S LINKS
- Get your ass to Mars. Here's 10 reasons why.
- Science fiction author and futurist visionary Sir Arthur C. Clarke is interviewed about the current state of communications technology and the potential for information overload.
- Katharine Mieszkowski has published another article in Salon about the Atkins Diet, this time about how animal-rights activists are claiming that low-carb and meat-heavy diets are killing people. Of course, the fact that animals are being killed to feed people isn't very endearing to animal-rights activists either.
- Simon Blackburn has a review of Richard Dawkins's latest book, A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love.
- Is Prozac so successful because of its placebo effect?
OTHER NOTES
- New Sentient Developments article: Beating Beijing's Big Brother. As authorities fortify the Great Firewall of China, information technology is allowing increasingly modern, high-tech and culturally sophisticated Chinese to slip the grip of totalitarianism, by George Dvorsky
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Monday December 8, 2003
TODAY'S LINKS
- Researchers have recently transplanted modified pig kidneys into baboons. It appears to be working and with no signs of rejection. It is hoped that these types of breakthroughs will eventually lead to animal-to-human organ transplants. While interesting and potentially helpful in the short-term, I can't see this as being a viable alternative to eventual breakthroughs in artificial organs, cybernetics, medical nanotechnology, and improved cellular biology in general.
OTHER NOTES
- Although it's still unofficial, I may have gotten Howard Bloom to speak at TransVision 2004, albeit via pre-taped video.
- John Smart has posted an updated version of his interview with The Speculist's Phil Bowermaster.
- I've got the Fermi Paradox Tribe happening at tribe.net, and my friend Matt Schulz submitted an interesting entry which I'd like to reprint here:
"I've always felt that a variant of the zoo hypothesis is most likely. Assuming alien civilizations experience a history whose dynamics are broadly similar to ours, they will no doubt be aware that contact between two cultures across a technological divide will almost invariably not end well for the more primitive culture. Contact between an alien civilization - likely a Type II civilization - and ourselves, may be almost certain to result in our destruction. It has been suggested (I can't remember by who) that, if we were to make contact with an alien network, the most likely thing for us to download would be a virus, simply because viruses are the best at replicating. Consider what a virus of modern sophistication would have done to the primitive internet; consider the fact that our internet, only ten years old, is already lousy with viruses, a situation unlikely to change at any point in the future; and, finally, consider how much more sophisticated the viruses dwelling within a Type II civilization's networks would almost certainly be. If such a virus were downloaded, odds are our civilization would be destroyed. Alien civilizations, being aware of this, are thus likely keeping us under quarantine until such time as we reach a level of sophistication that can survive the onslaught of the viruses that they would inevitably spread were they to make contact. We aren't anywhere near that level, yet; chances are, we won't reach it until we've moved a good distance towards constructing our own Type II civilization."
"As a corollary, I think that alien civilizations are probably aware of us. Arthur C. Clarke's monolith idea - a limited von Neumann probe that replicates only a small number of times in any given solar system, then goes into a dormant 'watching' mode until something interesting comes up - is probably the most rational way to explore: minimally invasive, with maximal coverage. Odds are, our solar system has one or two such artifacts buried in the asteroid belt, in the Oort Cloud, even on the moon. They could easily be quite small and still be very effective for their tasks (think how much information one could pack into, say a cubic meter of computonium), but their small size, small number, and the vast size of the solar system makes it almost certain that we will not discover them until they want to be discovered. Communications would probably be through a tight-wave radio broadcast, which we would not intercept unless we were right between sender and receiver ... and since the probes know where we are, they would ensure that we never, ever have a chance to eavesdrop." -- Matthew Shultz
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Friday December 5, 2003
TODAY'S LINKS
- What do laughing and cocaine have in common? Both result in the same brain region being triggered. I have always found humour and laughing to be fascinating subjects, and I've often wondered why we even laugh at all. Considering that much of what we find funny is derived from pain, misfortune, the absurd, and surprise, selectional processes probably favoured proto-humans who reacted to those particular observational events with a degree of levity. It might also have something to do with how our brains try to process seemingly 'absurd' data. I once had the opportunity to speak with Eliezer Yudkowsky about this, and he agreed, noting that this behaviour then got caught in an culturo-evolutionary positive feedback loop, where mates were selected for their sense of humour; you want to hang out with people who make you laugh because laughing feels good.
- The Edge has a chat with Samuel Barondes, "New Pills for the Mind." Abstract: "Most of the psychiatric drugs we use today are refinements of drugs whose value for mental disorders was discovered by accident decades ago. Now we can look forward to a more rational way to design psychiatric drugs. It will be guided by the identification of the gene variants that predispose certain people to particular mental disorders such as schizophrenia or severe depression." On a similar note, The Independent has an article about whether or not artists need drugs more than ordinary people.
- Psychiatrist Brian Fallon is interviewed by New Scientist about hypochondria, its similarities to obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD, and novel methods of treatment.
- Tech Central Station has a couple of interesting articles: Sydney Smith writes about advances in consciousness studies and how it relates to the Terri Schiavo case, and Edward Fesser wonders if Islam needs its own Protestant Reformation.
- My friend and fellow transhumanist John Smart is being interviewed by The Speculist. John's the kind of guy who will twist and contort the way you look at things; you find yourself resisting and protesting, but you just can't shake it.
- The Chinese government, recognizing the democratizing and individuating effects of information technology, are urging its IT industry to use the country's own encryption standards for wireless networks. Such a move would ensure stronger government control and give domestic manufacturers a slight reprieve from foreign competition.
OTHER NOTES
- Sadly, the hardest part about my fast on Wednesday was not the lack of food, but the lack of coffee. I have got to cut down. Next day to fast: Monday.
- Jeff Patterson is evil because he wants you to watch this Mothra Twins video. I have no good reason for blogging this, so I guess I must be evil, too. I'll blame it on memetic infection. It should be called Japanacheese. To watch the video, click on the pink Watch!! button and then select your desired resolution. Don't say I didn't warn you.
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Wednesday December 3, 2003
TODAY'S LINKS
- Good day, eh, and welcome to today's blog. There seems to be a myth about the Americanization of Canadian culture. Considering recent changes in Canada, including the advent of same-sex marriages and the pending decriminalization of marijuana, and taken in conjunction with declining church attendance, Canada is starting to look more like Europe than the United States. Clifford Krauss of the New York Times elaborates in his recent article, "Canada's View on Social Issues Is Opening Rifts With the U.S." Hey, in what other country could the outgoing Prime Minister safely joke about smoking pot after he retires?
- According to exiled dissident Xu Wenli, China is training "Internet police" to trace political dissidents who are using the Internet to evade state censorship. "Before they used to sentence people because they spoke to a newspaper abroad or spoke to VOA (Voice of America)," Xu said. He claims that Chinese communist authorities are jailing dissidents simply because they were using the Internet to disseminate or read political views. Says Xu, "Lately people who have gotten online have been arrested and sentenced...A lot of students are training as Internet police online to censor articles. This is a very dangerous signal for us."
- The cover story of this month's Chemical & Engineering News features a "Point-Counterpoint" between K. Eric Drexler and Richard Smalley on a fundamental question that will dramatically affect the future development of this field: Are "molecular assemblers"—devices capable of positioning atoms and molecules for precisely defined reactions in almost any environment—physically possible? This exchange is likely to hold some historical importance, and may signify a change in future speculations about Drexlerian-type nanotechnology.
- A 26-year-old American graduate student has made mathematical history by discovering the largest known prime number - a number that is 6,320,430 digits long. Using a distributed network of more than 200,000 computers, it took Michael Shafer just over two years to find. It's been said that from here on in that most new major mathematical discoveries will come about with the help of computers. Mathematical biologist Steven Strogatz, when speculating on what the future holds for research on complex systems, has noted that "we may end up as bystanders, unable to follow along with the machines we've built, flabbergasted by their startling conclusions." That didn't stop Elin Oxenhielm, a 22-year-old student at Stockholm University, who may have cracked part of one of mathematics' greatest unsolved problems: Hilbert's 16th problem.
- In this Tech Central Station article, Michael Fumento examines the explorations of biogerontologists who are working to prolong human lifespan, while contemplating the social and ethical ramifications of greatly extending our lives.
- The Village Voice's Sharon Lerner profiles the latest revolutions in female contraception.
- Check out the excellent array of transhumanist themed books listed by the Speculist in the December 1st blog entry.
- Classic prose is being used to counter powerful Bayesian spam filters.
OTHER NOTES
- I'm fasting today, so feel sorry for me.
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Monday December 1, 2003
TODAY'S LINKS
- RAND has released a "best practices" document for existing human tissue repositories. Abstract: "Case studies of twelve existing human biospecimen repositories performed to evaluate their utility for genomics- and proteomics-based cancer research and to identify “best practices” in collection, processing, annotation, storage, privacy, ethical concerns, informed consent, business plans, operations, intellectual property rights, public relations, marketing, and education that would be useful in designing a national biospecimen network."
- Transgender, gay and feminist groups at the University of Chicago are asking officials to consider creating more gender-neutral bathrooms, saying some people aren't comfortable selecting a gender-specific facility.
OTHER NOTES
- Okay, I've got a handle on being a vegetarian, I'm doing yoga regularly, and I'm meditating daily (I've even joined a group of friends for weekly meditation). Now, there's one more thing I hope to add to the list: fasting. Starting this Wednesday, for health and ascetic reasons, I will be adopting the Ananda Marga method of fasting, which essentially involves fasting one day from dawn-to-dawn twice a month. The days are based on the lunar calendar. Even though it's only one full day of fasting, it's a complete fast where not even water can be ingested. It's claimed that through this method poisons can be better excreted from the body. Exercise and lots of fresh air on the day of the fast is also recommended. But because it's my first fast I have to take it slow, so I will be drinking milk and eating fruit on Wednesday. My second fast (Dec. 19) will include fruit juice and fruits. Eventually I'll be able to do a complete fast. Come back on Thursday to see how I did on my first fast. Oh, and while we're on the topic of my health habits, I'm continuing to take cold showers, and I've started to snort water into my nose to clean out my nasal passages. Yes, that's perhaps more information than you needed, but hey, no one's asking you to read my blog ;-)
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