89 Message 89: From exi@panix.com Mon Jul 26 03:04:28 1993 Return-Path: Received: from usc.edu by chaph.usc.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1+ucs-3.0) id AA27120; Mon, 26 Jul 93 03:04:13 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: from panix.com by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA07529; Mon, 26 Jul 93 03:03:50 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: by panix.com id AA23741 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for more@usc.edu); Mon, 26 Jul 1993 05:55:08 -0400 Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1993 05:55:08 -0400 Message-Id: <199307260955.AA23741@panix.com> To: Exi@panix.com From: Exi@panix.com Subject: Extropians Digest X-Extropian-Date: July 26, 373 P.N.O. [09:55:02 UTC] Reply-To: extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Status: R Extropians Digest Mon, 26 Jul 93 Volume 93 : Issue 206 Today's Topics: [4 msgs] AI: Searle's Chinese Room [1 msgs] Calling all elisp hackers [1 msgs] DIET: ubiquinone, coenzyme Q [1 msgs] Future Fairs [1 msgs] HEX: HAM offered [1 msgs] Hello? [1 msgs] Homosexual tendencies (was: future problems) [2 msgs] Learning beats Tit-For-Tat [1 msgs] Machine Slavery (Was: Re: Wage Competition ) [2 msgs] Meta: Moving the List [1 msgs] Meta: Who is on the new software? [1 msgs] Nightly Market Report [1 msgs] Wage Competition [1 msgs] born extropians? [1 msgs] command [1 msgs] Administrivia: No admin msg. Approximate Size: 56467 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1993 23:17:55 -0600 (MDT) From: J. Michael Diehl Subject: Machine Slavery (Was: Re: Wage Competition ) According to Stanton McCandlish: > I haven't seen the original, but if this characterization is correct, I > don't see how that's silly. Ex: I draw a series of pictures of my > computer doing stuff (which requires computations), in Windows PaintBrush, > then combine these into an .AVI animation file, and play it with the new > Media Player. I've just simultated computation, but I see a pretty big > difference between what the simulated computer in the animation is 'doing' > (or more accurately NOT doing), and what my real computer is doing in the > process of displaying this little anim file. The .AVI is useless, except > as entertainment, but the real computer can do much useful work (like > making useless .AVI files ). Or must the simulation somehow be a > "special" simulation, for it to apply to Searle's argument? Well, I'm writing this with quite a bit of homebrew under my breath, but what the heck... I submit that the computational power involved in displaying the .avi animation represents much of the power of the original computer. Add to this the computation that you admitted was involved in drawing the individual pictures, and I bet you have about as much "work" being done as was being done by the original computer. Your computer has a finite capasity. What is the difference between using this capasity to "compute" and "showing what it looks like to compute?" Well, am I drunk, or is computational work conserved? Just my .02 of a credit. +-----------------------+-----------------------------+---------+ | J. Michael Diehl ;-) | I thought I was wrong once. | PGP KEY | | mdiehl@triton.unm.edu | But, I was mistaken. |available| | mike.diehl@fido.org | | Ask Me! | | (505) 299-2282 +-----------------------------+---------+ | | +------"I'm just looking for the opportunity to be -------------+ | Politically Incorrect!" | +-----If codes are outlawed, only criminals wil have codes.-----+ +----Is Big Brother in your phone? If you don't know, ask me---+ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1993 23:17:55 -0600 (MDT) From: J. Michael Diehl Subject: Machine Slavery (Was: Re: Wage Competition ) According to Stanton McCandlish: > I haven't seen the original, but if this characterization is correct, I > don't see how that's silly. Ex: I draw a series of pictures of my > computer doing stuff (which requires computations), in Windows PaintBrush, > then combine these into an .AVI animation file, and play it with the new > Media Player. I've just simultated computation, but I see a pretty big > difference between what the simulated computer in the animation is 'doing' > (or more accurately NOT doing), and what my real computer is doing in the > process of displaying this little anim file. The .AVI is useless, except > as entertainment, but the real computer can do much useful work (like > making useless .AVI files ). Or must the simulation somehow be a > "special" simulation, for it to apply to Searle's argument? Well, I'm writing this with quite a bit of homebrew under my breath, but what the heck... I submit that the computational power involved in displaying the .avi animation represents much of the power of the original computer. Add to this the computation that you admitted was involved in drawing the individual pictures, and I bet you have about as much "work" being done as was being done by the original computer. Your computer has a finite capasity. What is the difference between using this capasity to "compute" and "showing what it looks like to compute?" Well, am I drunk, or is computational work conserved? Just my .02 of a credit. +-----------------------+-----------------------------+---------+ | J. Michael Diehl ;-) | I thought I was wrong once. | PGP KEY | | mdiehl@triton.unm.edu | But, I was mistaken. |available| | mike.diehl@fido.org | | Ask Me! | | (505) 299-2282 +-----------------------------+---------+ | | +------"I'm just looking for the opportunity to be -------------+ | Politically Incorrect!" | +-----If codes are outlawed, only criminals wil have codes.-----+ +----Is Big Brother in your phone? If you don't know, ask me---+ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jul 93 8:14:38 GMT From: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu Subject: MISC: Replies to Diehl Welcome, Mike! >From: J. Michael Diehl > >> > Let me put this statistic in perspective. During the >> >fifteen-minute period in which a psycho murdered nine people at a >> >San Francisco law office, forty \ordinary\ Americans used their >> >privately owned firearms to \stop\ a crime, without shooting >> >anyone. > >Good info!!! Thanx! Actually, I've given it further thought, and Schulman seems to have made a mistake. Kleck's numbers are about 644,000 defensive uses of handguns per year. That works out to about 1,764 per day, 73 per hour, and 18 per quarter-hour. Perhaps Schulman started with a number roughly twice as high, but unless he did, then he divided wrongly. A Canucklehead prof. estimated that all guns are used about 690,000 times per year in defense, which is a little higher, but still not high enough to yield 40 times per quarter-hour. Then again, maybe Schulman assumed a 12-hour day, rather than a 24-hour one. >> This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the protective power of >> guns. ISIL's preparing a pamphlet by David Kopel on gun policy that has a >> whole lot more, e.g.: trying to defend yourself from a robber with a gun >> reduces the robber's success rate from 88% to 30%. We'll be publishing it >> after we finish editing it. > >How do I get a copy? You should get one in the next general membership mailing we do after it's been published. You are an ISIL member, aren't you? Aren't we all? >> I don't think any Social Security >> reform is politically feasible in the sense that any majority of Congress >> will vote for it right now, so I see no reason not to advocate an extreme >> position: transfer money equivalent to the amount people have put in into >> pension fund accounts from which they may purchase disability insurance. >> Works like a dream in Chile! Then voluntarize the saving. > >What is this? Another Conservative on this list? Nope. Liberal. Laissez-faire liberal, unlike the social demoncrats who've usurped the once-noble word. >(besides me) But do you >remember the story of the grasshopper and the ant. The ant saved all summer, >and the grasshopper played all summer. In the end, the ant supported the >grasshopper by feeding him through the winter. How would we avoid this problem >if we abolished Wf? Insecticide? >> The International Society for Individual Liberty, > >More info, please. Send your snail-mail address to the compuserve account in my .sig below. >> Think Universally, Act Selfishly - starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu > >Interesting twist on Capitalism? I like to think so. Wonder if bumper stickers with that slogan would sell. Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! Assistant Editor: Freedom Network News, the newsletter of ISIL, The International Society for Individual Liberty, 1800 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 864-0952; FAX: (415) 864-7506; 71034.2711@compuserve.com Think Universally, Act Selfishly - starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jul 93 10:16:26 GMT From: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu Subject: Searle's Chinese Torture Chamber >From: "Perry E. Metzger" > >Searle's argument, transposed, seems to be "a >simulation of a computation is not the same as the computation", which >seems silly. I'm willing to entertain arguments to the contrary, though. Doesn't seem like Searle's Chinese room argument at all. His argument is that computation doesn't exhaust the category of mental functioning. I'm inclined to agree, too. Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! Assistant Editor: Freedom Network News, the newsletter of ISIL, The International Society for Individual Liberty, 1800 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 864-0952; FAX: (415) 864-7506; 71034.2711@compuserve.com Think Universally, Act Selfishly - starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jul 93 10:28:23 GMT From: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu Subject: ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jul 1993 05:10:44 -0700 (PDT) From: szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) Subject: Homosexual tendencies (was: future problems) Stanton McCandlish: > As Romana implied, there is likely to be MORE genderbending going on among > Extropians than among the general populace, and I've seen some evidence to > suggest it holds true on this list, We Extropians are definitely out on the edge, sexually. Look what we yearn for -- uploading is the ultimate genderfuck, the ultimate fetish. In between here and there, a wide variety of fun perversions, like virtual sex. Alas for the PCers, all perversions are not equal. We flame endlessly about dietary habits that can make +/- 5 years difference in lifespan. What about sexual habits? I've heard figures thrown around like 35-40 for the life expectency of a homosexual man. If this is wildly wrong, reliable source are eagerly solicited. If such an outcome isn't quite un-Extropian, I don't know what is. This isn't to say that people can't change their habits, just as I can lose 60 pounds, change to a nearly vegan diet, and other such self-transformations even though I haven't lost any of the instinct to eat food that is genetically "wired-in". (Or to say that they can in certain cases. In the case of homosexual lifestyles I don't know, and won't judge for other people). Not being either a busybody or notably altruistic, I don't make it my business what people do behind their closed doors, and if they parade it in public I just tune them out. I'm open-minded, but I'd be a complete idiot to be open-zippered. Society tells me sex is all fun and games but the facts tell me that's bullshit. I sure as hell do care what I do behind my closed doors, and what my partners have done. It's at least as important as diet, exercise, and other life habits that make a difference. The healthy perverted prude, Nick Szabo szabo@techbook.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jul 93 8:15:17 WET DST From: rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray) Subject: Calling all elisp hackers I read the emacs intro to elisp manual last night (need it for some listadmin utility stuff I need to write) and wrote my first piece of elisp code ever - an interactive hex multi command macro. I would like some people to take a look at it and give me some advice on how it could have been done more cleanly, etc. I was 'flying blind' when I wrote it and had to keep jumping into the emacs texinfo help system to find functions I needed -- so I may not have used the best functions for the job. thanks, -Ray -- Ray Cromwell | Engineering is the implementation of science; -- -- EE/Math Student | politics is the implementation of faith. -- -- rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu | - Zetetic Commentaries -- ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jul 1993 10:08:37 -0400 From: tburns@mason1.gmu.edu (T. David Burns) Subject: Learning beats Tit-For-Tat Thanks for the cite. Axelrod revealed Tit-for-tat's feet of clay in the cite below. But he didn't try to replace it with a new contender. Axelrod, Robert,1987 "The Evolution of Strategies in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma," chapter 3 in Genetic Algorithms and Simulated Annealing, Lawrence Davis, editor, Los Altos, California: Morgan Kaufman, pages 32-42. tburns@gmuvax.gmu.edu (T. David Burns) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jul 93 8:27:59 PDT From: thamilto@pcocd2.intel.com (Tony Hamilton - FES ERG~) Subject: Homosexual tendencies (was: future problems) > -=>What I _really_ want to get at is, if my thesis is correct, what does that > -=>mean in an extropian society? If the gene is only a prerequisite (or simply > -=>a strong prerequisite), than would there be homosexuals in an extropian > -=>society? If it implies that homosexuals are not _necessarily_ homosexual, > -=>but that they are naturally heterosexual, does that mean this condition > -=>could possibly complicate their lives (anytime you act in complete > -=>discordance with your fundamental nature would seem to potentially > -=>precipitate other problems) and therefore restrict them from being as much > -=>as they would hope to be? Well, _actually_, that sounds a little too far > -=>fetched to me, so I'd probably be inclined to agree that at least _some_ > -=>homosexuals may be so by nature, for one reason or another (genetics, > -=>divine influence (!?), physical disorder (?!)) (just groping for alternatives > -=>here - however strange). > > That's a pretty non-Extropian viewpoint. What do you think > "self-transformation" is? It generally involves quite a lot of > "discordance with your fundamental nature", as I see it. Still, as this > whole passage is quite vague, it is difficult to know what you mean. But > by ANY definition, the Extropian dream of "uploading" would seem to be > against anyone's "fundamental" nature as a doomed biological organism. > I am not trying to be "EC" here, but rather pointing out that your > characterization of the motives behind Extropianism whether you or I or > anyone else likes them, hates them or is neutral, is incorrect. Well, I would argue that Extropianism _is_ human nature. Hell, I do argue it, all the time. I think that once homo sapiens (in general, anyway) became conscious (via any of a number of theorized methods), we began on a path which would inevitably lead in the direction that Extropian principles generally take us. Of course, then, I would argue that our nature is far from being a "doomed biological organism". To me, that is the role that society and culture would have for our kind, not nature. So, what is it that makes me say all this? I see "fundamental nature" as anything which is conducive to _survival_. An extropian lifestyle would seem to be nearly the ultimate extension of the survival concept. Now, if someone has determined that whay I have just said is absolutely not allowable within the extropian belief system, than I apologize. The rest of your reply to my message focused on the 4 cases I proposed for the future of homosexuals. I think you may have taken me a little too seriously, in that, as Perry has made very clear, I'm just proposing a thesis (or multiple of such, but I have no idea what the plural form of the word is - sorry). That doesn't mean I absolutely believe in everything I say. Some I do, some I'm just making up as I go which allows me to explore more fully the ideas I'm dealing with. For instance, you seemed to get out of my message that I felt Extropians would be against homosexuals, which was never intended, since I certainly do not believe that. I can't see what I said that implied that, maybe you can tell me so that I can improve my writing style to be more clear in what I say. Anyway, has this topic of Extropianism vs. human nature been discussed here before? If not, what does everyone else think? I guess I'm just not into the paradigm of thinking of all this as being "transhumanism". To me its all just a natural part of our evolution. Not evolution in a Darwinian sense, since I don't think that necessarily applies to conscious beings. Instead, I see that once a species becomes conscious, it embarks on a path of no longer living by Darwinian laws, but rather continuously improving upon itself, whether through culture and society and science, or through self-alteration, which seems to be where we're finally getting close to. Of course, even modern medicine is already a step in that direction. Am I totally off-base in thinking that extropianism, no matter what you call it, had to eventually come about one way or another? All I know is once I've been revived from cryonic suspension, or achieved biological immortality before that is necessary (yes, excluding outside influences of course), or uploaded, or whatever, it'll seem a whole hell of a lot more natural than having died would! Just my take on the matter. -- Tony Hamilton | -Intel Corporation | voice: 916-356-3070 --Folsom Engineering Services | mailstop: FM2-55 ---Engineering Resource Group | email: thamilto@pcocd2.intel.com ----Software Technician | ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jul 1993 17:10:39 +0200 From: perry@potlatch.hacktic.nl (Paul Michael Perry) Subject: command :resend #863 :resend #867 :resend #873 EOF "Take me away from all this death." Paul Michael Perry FAX: +31 50 256662 perry@potlatch.hacktic.nl Groningen HOLLAND ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jul 1993 11:31:13 -0400 (EDT) From: Harry Shapiro Subject: Meta: Who is on the new software? a conscious being, bob angell wrote: > > >The following addresses/users are on the new > >list software, FYI. > > > >bangell@cc.utah.edu > > could you change this to be: bangell@cs.utah.edu. > thanks. This has now been done as Ray has created a tool to do it. :) Please let me know how you like the new list code. /hawk -- Harry S. Hawk habs@extropy.org Electronic Communications Officer, Extropy Institute Inc. List Administrator of the Extropy Institute Mailing List Private Communication for the Extropian Community since 1991 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jul 1993 12:02:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Harry Shapiro Subject: Meta: Moving the List Just to update everyone on the new list and our moving plans. 1) I am planning starting on Aug 9th to move everyone to the new software in batches of 30/40 users per day. This may change 2) We will have a new address. It will probally be extropians@extropy.org Don't use it yet! It is not yet offical - Also if you have any suggestions about our "name" let me know. 3) Our old address will work for quite a while so don't worry!! -- Harry S. Hawk habs@extropy.org Electronic Communications Officer, Extropy Institute Inc. List Administrator of the Extropy Institute Mailing List Private Communication for the Extropian Community since 1991 ------------------------------ Date: Thursday, 22 July 1993 21:53:14 PST8 From: "James A. Donald" Subject: DIET: ubiquinone, coenzyme Q An extropian, cannot remember who, recommended ubiquinone as an antioxidant, hence life extender. and also commented that it helps with gingivitis and gum disease. For the last few years I have had steadily worsening gingivitis. A week after I started taking ubiquinone my gingivitis was markedly improved, and now seems to have disappeared. Now, if I clean my teeth thoroughly at night, in the morning I do not have a bad taste in my mouth. Of course it might well be that 100 other people started taking it, noticed no change or a change for the worse, and so failed to write in. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves and our James A. Donald | property, because of the kind of animals that we | are. True law derives from this right, not from jamesdon@infoserv.com | the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jul 93 15:50:20 EDT From: Andrew S Hall Subject: Hello? Are we still alive, some ill-willed pagan has hexed the list, or I have been unceremoniously dumped? Andrew Techno-Anarchy.Neophilia.Economic Freedom.Cryptography.Anti-Statism.Personal Liberty.Laissez-Faire.Privacy Protection.Libertarianism.No Taxes.No Bullshit. ********** Liberty BBS 1-614-798-9537 ********** ********** Dedicated to Freedom. Yours. ********** ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jul 93 13:19:17 PDT From: thamilto@pcocd2.intel.com (Tony Hamilton - FES ERG~) Subject: HEX: HAM offered Okay, I broke down and registered my reputation on HEX. Feel free to read my prospectus. Specifically, if you happen to happen to agree with anything I've been saying on the homosexuals thread, then buy some HAM. But that's not why I posted this message. I have some questions about the HEX... 1. Given the tendency people have to focus on the negatives rather than the positives, and to accentuate the former when dealing with others, is it possible that the exchange might suffer due to a lack of interest in buying? After all, theoretically, you buy to provide reputation feedback, and of course when you think the person is doing a good job, or whatever. Well, since we tend to focus more on when someone is not doing a good job, does that tend to slow down purchases on the exchange? 2. How active _is_ the exchange? I notice a great deal of disparity between bid and ask prices, which would suggest that there's not much activity. Is there? Could the HEX report indicate activity levels or give summaries? I think (correct me please) that to do this by hand you'd have to TICKER every single reputation on the exchange, wouldn't you? Sorry if these questions have been asked before, but I'm new to this. I know there have been problems with HEX, as far as it not being used for what it was intended, but I'd like to give it a try by actually buying into reputations when it seems appropriate. My only concern is that if I buy, is anyone else out there buying? Its pointless to buy unless you can sell at some point in the future... Oh yes, one other problem I see in the exchange. Normally, the incentive to buy is that you hope the price will go up, and you can make a profit. What is the profit here? What do Thorns get you? Aside from more buying power, but it seems to me that, at the given prices, you don't need _that_ many Thorns to buy up a lot of certain reputations... Just looking for some answers. -- Tony Hamilton | -Intel Corporation | voice: 916-356-3070 --Folsom Engineering Services | mailstop: FM2-55 ---Engineering Resource Group | email: thamilto@pcocd2.intel.com ----Software Technician | ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jul 93 16:45:59 CST From: Subject: Future Fairs There will be a future fair (more like a local carnival, actually) in Minneapolis next month. The people running it seem to have decided that the future will be cyberpunk and heavy metal. It's not what I'd prefer, and not what I expect to be the Wave of the Future. But I hope they do it successfully enough for others to imitate them. (Or are they imitating an example from some other city?) Dan Goodman dsg@staff.tc.umn.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jul 93 15:55:56 PDT From: HFinney@shell.portal.com Subject: AI: Searle's Chinese Room Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment was discussed in the Journal of the Behavioral and Brain Sciences around 1980. This is an interesting journal in which someone advances a controversial scientific thesis and then several dozen commentators have a chance to respond. There's plenty of polite back-stabbing and it's quite entertaining. A more accessible discussion is in Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach,", the Pulitzer-winning, enormously entertaining discussion of Godel's theorem, AI, and related topics. Hofstadter disagrees with Searle and my summary will be based on his description. Searle's thesis is that computer programs cannot be conscious. His argument proposes that someone writes an AI program which is claimed to be conscious and intelligent, just like a person. It communicates over a keyboard, say, passes the Turing test, writes just as wittily and insightfully as any human. It claims to be conscious and energetically defends its claim just as any human would faced with a challenge to his claims of consciousness. But it is a computer program written in some programming language, running on an ordinary computer. For specificity, Searle proposes that the "person" being simulated or run by this program is a Chinese woman. It/she reads and writes in Chinese characters (in ISO format, or whatever) which are sent to and from the computer. His argument that the computer or program is not in fact intelligent, even though it claims in an apparently convincing fashion to be so, goes like this. The program, like any computer program, is in essence a complicated collection of simple steps: assignments of values to memory, comparison tests of numerical values, jump statements which transfer control from one part of the program to another, simple arithmetic and logical operations. >From these pieces any computer program can be created. Since these steps are so simple, we can imagine them being done, not by a computer, but by a person. He would in effect run the program "by hand". It is not uncommon for programmers to go through this process mentally for small parts of a program in order to clarify an algorithm or find a bug, but Searle proposes that this be done for the whole program. The person could use some paper to represent variable values and memory contents, and go through the whole program, step by step, following these simple rules. He would end up producing the same output that the actual program would, although of course he would be far slower than the computer. Now, says Searle, let the person run the AI program. He is given Chinese characters as input, which he encodes using mechanical rules and supplies as input to the program. He runs through the program, step by tedious step, and eventually produces some Chinese characters as output. To the person who is conversing with the program (in Chinese), these appear to be the statements of a conscious individual, this simulated Chinese female. But the person actually running the program knows that there is no such person. Actually, HE produced all those statements, and he doesn't speak a single word of Chinese. I have to admit that I have trouble giving Searle's argument, because I find it incoherent, but the final step is basically to say that if this program is actually conscious as a Chinese woman, then by running this program our subject should in some sense experience or feel this Chinese woman's consciousness. But since he does not, and since he knows that the program is actually being run as this sequence of trivial computation steps, it is "clear" that there is truly no Chinese woman involved. Therefore, no computer program can produce conscious intelligence, says Searle. I will just add two points. First, some people have suggested that this argument may apply to ordinary computer programs, but cannot apply to parallel computers which are based on many processors. I don't agree because a processor ensemble can be simulated by hand just like a single computer can. You just do one instruction for each computer, in a round-robin fashion, repeatedly. His argument applies equally as well to this case. The second point is that Searle's argument appears to apply just as strongly to the way neurons in our brain work. They are conceptually simple and could be simulated on paper (in theory) just like an AI program could. This is basically the answer which Hofstadter and several of Searle's other critics give. If Searle's argument applies to AI's, it would appear to apply to brains as well, at least as we understand their workings. Hal Finney hfinney@shell.portal.com HFINN on Hex ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jul 93 19:38:27 CST From: "" Subject: born extropians? John Lilburne, who lived around the time of the English Civil War, seems to have been a natural libertarian. "If there were but one man in the world, and that man were John Lilburne, then John would quarrel with Lilburne and Lilburne would quarrel with John." He offended _every_ government that ruled England during that period, largely by being more individualistic than, for example, Ayn Rand. What were his political views? He favored giving the vote to all Englishmen above the rank of servant. He did favor a high degree of individual freedom for someone of his time -- but not for someone of our time. In our own time -- I've encountered left-of-Communist Marxists who seemed to be naturally conservative, and a couple of Marxists who seemed to be natural libertarians. There are conservatives who don't seem to have a conservative bone in their bodies. If there are any naturally-pacifistic humans, I'll bet at least forty percent of them are supporters of more military spending. Conversely, if there are natural warriors, at least forty percent of them are probably pacifists or close to it. Dan Goodman dsg@staff.tc.umn.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jul 93 21:38:41 EST From: wit@MIT.EDU (paul whitmore) Subject: Wage Competition On Fri, 23 Jul 1993 14:44:55 -0400 (EDT), Edward J OConnell said: > Heck, simple operant conditioning would be enough to turn anyone on this > list into slaves. > > Dont' believe me? Come to my house; I'll imbed the necessary radio > controlled devices in your pain and pleasure centers, watch you through video > cameras at a safe distance, and see what happens after a year to two of > judicious application of current... > It's quaint to see someone believing in behaviorist methods of control 35 years after Chomsky's review of _Verbal Behavior_ This archaism has not prevented ejo from moving well into the future household, where radio controlled devices for brain centers are available off the shelf. Video cameras do not scratch below the surface. if you take seriously the fact that we are moving through our environment based on internal models of the world, it exceeds plausibility to claim that a year or more of observation wd constrain the interpretation of a human (or robotic) agents actions to specify uniquely the internal representation of the intelligence. Zenon Pylyshyn's _Computation and Cognition_ presents a very strong defense of this central tenet of cognitive science. He refers to a paper of WF Brewer's from 1974, which concluded that even in the case of rats, the most parsimonious interpretation of their modified behavior was not operant conditioning; if anything, the rats were simply modifying their mental representation of their world's structure. Ithought it was an obvious point- you don't need to *condition* intelligences since you can always accomplish the same end through an arbitrary number of alternative routes, all of which are symbolically equivalent to *telling them* what you want them to do. In the case of robots/humans, it is possible to distinguish between their wiring (cognitive architecture) and their computations/interpretations. Because of the symbolic nature of the latter, formalist/syntactic and deterministic approaches fail to capture most interesting behavior. Pain cannot be converted to pleasure by some act of interpretation; nevertheless, it can always be embedded in a more overarching description that reads it as a motivator (athletes in training, e.g.) although i am sketching here, this last point raises problems for limiting robots to mere slaves of our wish-fulfilment. This is just the hoary old frame problem: how can we identify, before inspection, which aspects of a situation are related to the solution of even the most circumscribed problem? If robots symbolically interact with the environment, what will constrain their behavior to doing only the things we will want them to have done? as interested as i am in AI, it is surprising how little people on the extropy list seem to differ from the view of Marvin Minsky in 1970, who predicted, within the next decade or two, a computer would begin to learn and quickly outstrip our own intelligence. Moravec's _Mind Children_ presents a more balanced point, that perception is where humans have really deep intelligence. But, since almost no one has succeeded in disentangling the intertwined steps of perception and judgment/calculation, even if Connection Machine power becomes as available tomorrow as handheld calculators today, i personally can't see how that will strip humans out of the interactive symbiotic relationship with thinking machines. vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, laundromats did not eliminate housework. as more power is mechanized, human interest in crawling into previously inaccessible niches is excited, and the net liberation has so far been negligible. while many have proposed very imaginative extrapolations, these strike me as quite linear extensions from today. why assume that the concentration in capital won't create interests in niches that were once prohibited by cost? use the case of farming, which has most clearly been deimated by the changes in production: as wealth increased in our society, in reaction to tractor-petrochemical combines, organic farming, previously unimaginably expensive, becomes attractive to those who want to choose sustainable options. although i don't know how the labor intensivity of organic farming compares to factory farms, i suppose that people will always be able to choose to increase labor-intensivity, to create new forms of wealth, in combination with robots and AIs and fuzzy chips. has anyone else been struck by the near-luddite strain of anxiety in many of the postings on future competition with robots? nothing in the past century gives any reason to support the claim that the truly interesting problems (cognitive, immunological, economic, ecological, or purely mathematical) are anywhere near exhaustion. even if all production becomes roboticized, the choice of what to produce will still need to be made. and whose job will that become? consumers, of course. at the limit, a person's job might simply be to consume, which is equivalent to being the foreman of a shop, directing the slaves as to what to produce. besides being consumers, i think more and more people will become scientists. and there will be a role for translators and interfacers, people who take the results being created by a billion-plus scientists, and relate the findings about humans, their immune system and eco-system, to guide future development of production. Do people take the combinatorial explosions of choice seriously? there will always be more possible goods than there are means to produce them, and if choice is the limiting factor, then humans can specialize in that niche, and garner quite a lot of compensation. this relationship seems to obtain already between the US and japan. although japan vastly outproduces the US, we are (in the master/slave, or consumer/producer dialectic), strangely the driver, since we are such sophisticated consumers, devoting so much more time to buying. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jul 1993 20:41:14 -0600 (MDT) From: Stanton McCandlish Subject: Machine Slavery (Was: Re: Wage Competition ) Quoth J. Michael Diehl, verily I say unto thee: -=>Well, I'm writing this with quite a bit of homebrew under my breath, but what -=>the heck... I submit that the computational power involved in displaying the -=>.avi animation represents much of the power of the original computer. Add to -=>this the computation that you admitted was involved in drawing the individual -=>pictures, and I bet you have about as much "work" being done as was being done -=>by the original computer. Your computer has a finite capasity. What is the -=>difference between using this capasity to "compute" and "showing what it looks -=>like to compute?" Well, am I drunk, or is computational work conserved? Very well. Let's say I take an instamatic polaroid of my PC calculating Julia sets. I dare say the ciruitry in the camera is not doing anywhere near the computation that the computer is. Now, I have a picture of my PC calculating. This would seem to me to be a simulation of calculation. And even if we go with the original argument, I'd still have to say that the (imaginary) computations of in the .AVI simualation are qualitatively different from the real computation going on on the real PC to display the anim file. -- Stanton McCandlish * Space Migration * Networking * ChaOrder * NO GOV'T. * anton@hydra.unm.edu * Intelligence Increase * Nano * Crypto * NO RELIGION * FidoNet: 1:301/2 * Life Extension * Ethics * VR * Now! * NO MORE LIES! * Noise in the Void BBS * +1-505-246-8515 (24hr, 1200-14400, v32bis, N-8-1) * ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 00:00:04 EDT From: The Hawthorne Exchange Subject: Nightly Market Report The Hawthorne Exchange - HEx Nightly Market Report For more information on HEx, send email to HEx@sea.east.sun.com with the Subject info. --------------------------------------------------------------- News Summary as of: Sat Jul 24 23:59:01 EDT 1993 Newly Registered Reputations: RAND Ayn Rand 1E9 Lifespan == 1 billion 1E6 Lifespan == 1 million PPL Privately Produced Law HAM Tony Hamilton New Share Issues: Symbol Shares Issued SHAWN 10000 RAND 10000 1E6 10000 1E9 10000 PPL 10000 HAM 10000 Share Splits: (None) --------------------------------------------------------------- Market Summary as of: Sat Jul 24 23:59:01 EDT 1993 Total Shares Symbol Bid Ask Last Issued Outstanding Market Value 1000 .10 .20 .10 10000 2000 200.00 110 - .10 - 10000 - - 150 - .10 - 10000 - - 1E6 - .10 - 10000 - - 1E9 - .10 - 10000 - - 200 - .10 - 10000 - - 80 - .10 - 10000 - - 90 - .10 - 10000 - - ACS - .50 .50 10000 1124 562.00 AI - .50 .20 10000 1000 200.00 ALCOR - 2.00 2.00 10000 2931 5862.00 ALTINST - .15 - 10000 - - ANTO - - - - - - BIOPR - .20 .10 10000 1500 150.00 BLAIR - 30.00 50.00 10000 25 1250.00 CHAITN - .05 - 10000 - - CYPHP .15 .20 - 10000 - - DEREK - 1.00 1.00 100000 8220 8220.00 DRXLR - 2.00 2.00 10000 2246 4492.00 DVDT - 1.50 .90 10000 3490 3141.00 E - .60 .75 10000 5487 4115.25 ESR - - - - - - EXI .10 1.25 1.25 10000 3000 3750.00 FCP 11.50 - 11.50 10000 540 6210.00 GHG .01 .30 .54 10000 1755 947.70 GOBEL .01 .30 1.00 10000 767 767.00 H - 2.00 2.00 10000 6250 12500.00 HAM - .10 - 10000 - - HEINLN .30 .90 - 10000 - - HEX 100.00 125.00 100.00 10000 3168 316800.00 HFINN 2.00 10.00 10.00 10000 1005 10050.00 IMMFR .50 .80 .80 10000 501 400.80 JFREE - .15 .10 10000 3000 300.00 JPP .25 .40 .25 10000 2510 627.50 LEARY - .20 - 10000 - - LEF - .20 .30 10000 1526 457.80 LEFTY - .15 .30 10000 1951 585.30 LIST .40 .50 .50 10000 5000 2500.00 LP - .25 - 10000 - - LSOFT .50 .58 .58 10000 5950 3451.00 LURKR - 3.00 - 100000 - - MARCR - - - - - - MED21 - .12 - 10000 - - MLINK - .02 .02 1000000 2602 52.04 MORE 1.50 2.00 1.50 10000 3500 5250.00 MWM .15 .15 1.50 10000 1260 1890.00 N 20.00 25.00 25.00 10000 98 2450.00 NEWTON - .20 - 10000 - - NSS - .10 - 10000 - - OCEAN - .10 - 10000 - - P 20.00 25.00 25.00 1000000 66 1650.00 PETER 1.00 - 1.00 10000000 600 600.00 PLANET - .10 .05 10000 1500 75.00 PPL - .10 - 10000 - - PRICE - 4.00 2.00 10000000 1410 2820.00 R .49 2.80 .99 10000 5100 5049.00 RAND - .15 - 10000 - - RJC .20 - .50 10000 4100 2050.00 ROMA - - - - - - SGP - - - - - - SHAWN - 1.00 - 10000 - - SSI - .10 - 10000 - - TCMAY .75 3.00 2.00 10000 6000 12000.00 TIM 1.00 - - 10000 - - TRADE - - - 1000000 - - TRANS - .10 .40 10000 1511 604.40 VINGE - .50 .20 10000 1000 200.00 WILKEN 1.00 10.00 10.00 10000 101 1010.00 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total 423239.79 ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V93 #206 ********************************* &