From extropians-request@extropy.org Sun Sep 12 19:39:39 1993 Return-Path: Received: from usc.edu by chaph.usc.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1+ucs-3.0) id AA21628; Sun, 12 Sep 93 19:39:38 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: from ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.ed (ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu) by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA08026; Sun, 12 Sep 93 19:39:27 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: by ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu id AA10585; Sun, 12 Sep 93 22:33:07 EDT Received: from news.panix.com by ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu via TCP with SMTP id AA10580; Sun, 12 Sep 93 22:32:50 EDT Received: by news.panix.com id AA24809 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for exi-maillist@ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu); Sun, 12 Sep 1993 22:32:46 -0400 Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1993 22:32:46 -0400 Message-Id: <199309130232.AA24809@news.panix.com> To: Extropians@extropy.org From: Extropians@extropy.org Subject: Extropians Digest X-Extropian-Date: September 13, 373 P.N.O. [02:32:38 UTC] Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Status: RO Extropians Digest Mon, 13 Sep 93 Volume 93 : Issue 255 Today's Topics: [1 msgs] DATA: Credit Cards [1 msgs] Discovery, Concepts, and Rights [1 msgs] Discovery, Concepts, and Rights [1 msgs] ECON: Digicash isn't cash [1 msgs] Extropian exploits [2 msgs] Party GIF (uuencoded) version msg 93-9-435 [2 msgs] Rights and Concepts [1 msgs] The Evidence of the Senses [5 msgs] The Evidence of the Senses [2 msgs] WAR/NANO/LAW: automated defense and war [1 msgs] please add [1 msgs] Administrivia: No admin msg. Approximate Size: 52489 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 11 Sep 93 23:19:53 -0700 From: drexler@netcom.com (K. Eric Drexler) Subject: WAR/NANO/LAW: automated defense and war >Far be it from me to tell a 10^21+ brainpower civilization, with a central >power carefully seeking guarantees of eternal peace after technological >innovation has mostly run out, how to run their politics and military.... >If a single super-duper power happens, >and it studies some issue very carefully, and finds a solution it likes, it >will do it, regardless of what we gnats thought about it now, right? This seems a rather passive attitude. What is "it", what does "it" want, and why are we powerless to shape "its" values? There is a widespread assumption that superduper problem-solvers will necessarily share key aspects of hairless-ape values and psychology, but this assumption seems to go unanalyzed. Your promotion of a 10^21 brainpower system to the status of a "civilization" suggests that this assumption has crept in. Setting aside the emotion-charged image of brainpower and the amusing image of attempting to instruct a supercivilization, consider this thought experiment: if you had a magic oracle that could predict many general, long-range properties of spontaneous orders that would emerge from different initial conditions, would differences in these long-range outcomes (and your values) affect the policies you advocated today? (Assume that properties include plausible measures of diversity, liberty, suffering, and your children's happiness.) >Clearly if one side can make wide use of nanotech, and >the other's can't, then the nanotech side wins. But why wouldn't all sides >have some nanotech, with some further ahead in some areas than others? Other scenarios are possible, but consider the incentives: if the capable powers form a coalition, they avoid the risk of an explosive arms race and can gang up on outsiders pursuing threatening developments. Consider the history of the Iraqi nuclear program, from the Israeli strike on their reactor to the Gulf War. Coalition scenarios have become more plausible with the fall of the Soviet Union; again, consider Iraq. >Eric seems to argue that nanotech will have little value before >self-replicating systems (contrary to Nick's scenario) I would say *relatively* little value (though still substantial). The advent of something hugely beyond mass production will surely make a large difference. >That is, we'll have >the software all ready, just waiting for the hardware to run it. Have the software *all* ready doesn't sound likely to me. On the other hand, some appropriate software is already being written; in another ten years much of the basic work may be done. The point about design translation, however, is independent of this. >If some factors of the process of making new products speed up, others will >become the limiting factor. In order for the whole process to go ten times >faster, most of the main process tasks must go a similar factor faster. >Making new products, even new military products, requires not just >manufacturing and compilation of higher level designs. Products must be >conceived and sold to investors/managers. Design teams must be collected >and learn to work together. Prototypes must not only be made but tested in >a variety of contexts. Customers must learn of the product and figure out >how to put it to use. Raw materials must be imported and final products >transported out. Legal and political barriers must be overcome. This argues for delays in the emergence and spread of genuinely new products, but the exact calendar date is not the important issue. Robin's observations are consistent with the rapid, massive deployment of tested weapons systems, especially if these closely mimic existing systems save for cost, performance, and abundance, or if they are relatively self-contained and automated. It is not the average case that matters: in a war, 99% of bullets harm no one. In a military technology transition, 99% of proposed destabilizing systems may prove to be duds. >Yes, yes, technological change will get faster. So why should this make >war so much more likely or more devastating relative to the economy? No one has suggested that a faster change in capabilities will make war more devastating, and one is not dead relative to the economy. I don't understand these points. As for rate of change and the likelihood of war (or of capitulation in the face of overwhelming force), consider what a one month lead would imply in (for example) a newly-started nuclear arms race, given a technology that can convert a tested prototype into a massively deployed weapons system in a matter of weeks. (Yes, there are constraints on the weapons system: it must fit existing delivery mechanisms, or be part of a self-contained ballistic missile, etc.) Analogies may arise with other weapons systems. My point is this: instability is plausible, hence it is a risk. The burden of evidence is on the let's-not-worry side of the argument. >Should folks have >feared multilateral competition during the industrial revolution? It did encourage an unpleasant phenomenon called "total war"; the U.S. Civil War is generally regarded as the first instance. But on the whole, as I've said, the industrial revolution was slow and mild. It did put Europe in command of most of the planet. >He says, "To model the thinking of >voters, politicians, etc., one cannot take the perspective of the uploads." >Yet I imagine fast uploads becoming the center of events, holding much of >the wealth and almost all the political/military positions, with slow >meatheads as marginalized as bobbled folk in Vinge's Peace Wars. >From the perspective of *today's* voters and politicians, and their near-term successors (the ones who will set the initial conditions on the game, and the ones I had mind), what you describe amounts to a complete seizure of power by unrestrained, unaccountable, nonhuman entities. Will this sound wise, or will there be a search for alternatives? >From the point of view of uploads, it could take a very long time before >technological innovation runs out; many winds of political fashion could >come and go, and many alliances could change and powers rise and fall.... >Does anyone else out there find Eric's rapid transition more plausible? With Robin's uploads in charge, transitions would surely be fast from the standard human perspective. Is there a real disagreement here? One can always declare that future transitions will be terribly slow, when measured in picoseconds. To clarify my position: * We cannot predict the future, but we can criticize (and sometimes discard) scenarios. * Generating a range of scenarios can help us prepare for novel challenges. * Scenarios in which novel challenges do not emerge or are self-resolving are almost useless in helping us prepare. * Scenarios in which novel challenges mean certain doom are almost useless in helping us prepare. * Plausible scenarios that would bring large challenges deserve special attention. * A fast military transition generating a temporary monopoly of power appears both plausible and (for those concerned with long-term liberty in a peaceful order) quite challenging. * It is likely that fast AIs (or almost-equivalently, Robin's uploads) will emerge soon enough to play a role in any resolution of this problem. * If we want some foundational aspects of security arrangements to be stable (should we want all aspects to be unstable?), then it seems interesting to examine scenarios for the design and use of automated defenses. * Such scenarios are, at present, poorly developed, and it does not seem that this email discussion is a terribly useful medium for making progress on them. Robin's arguments seemingly encourage us to assume that a historically-fast, multiple-order-of-magnitude transition in manufacturing and military technologies won't have a major disruptive effect on the balance of power, and that the associated problems can therefore be ignored. I sincerely hope that he is right, but paying some serious attention to alternative scenarios seems wise. - Eric Drexler ------------------------------ Date: Saturday, 11 September 1993 16:20:53 PST8 From: "James A. Donald" Subject: Rights and Concepts In <9309111015.aa07461@genie.genie.slhs.udel.edu>, starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu wrote: > Besides, I like Carol, and have never been able to figure > out why she elicits such bad responses from others. Because she speaks the truth about people, which is infinitely more wounding that saying that someone is the bastard of a whore and and donkey. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | 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: Sun, 12 Sep 93 10:23:54 EDT From: eisrael@suneast.east.sun.com (Elias Israel - SunSelect Engineering) Subject: The Evidence of the Senses Perry writes: >Tim, what happens when I put you inside a VR system hooked up to your >nervous system? How the hell can you know what reality is then? Don't >invoke other people's arguments: quote them. Show me why I'm wrong. >Explain to me why it is that such a setup would be completely >impossible. I'll take a crack at it. As an attack on the evidence of the senses, this is perhaps the weakest of all, because it presupposes a scenario that is undetectable to the senses. That is, it presupposes sensory failure in order to prove sensory failure. Each of us might be a "brain in a vat." The entire universe as we know it might even be a collosal VR experiment, concocted by a race of gods for entertainment. ("Hey! What if we set it up so that the speed of light is always the same, no matter what your frame of reference?") But all of this changes the evidence of the senses not one bit. By definition, these scenarios require that the subject be completely unable to tell the "false" reality from the "real" one. I submit that the difference that makes no difference is no difference at all. Perception defines reality. What cannot be perceived may as well not exist, but whether it does or not is irrelevant to the human animal. Even people who overtly disagree with this premise live by it every day. There are millions of humans who are convinced that a better place awaits them after death and that this existence is but a dream. Yet they still step out of the way of oncoming busses. Elias Israel eisrael@east.sun.com HEx: E ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Sep 93 23:18:00 -0500 From: michael.morgan@ehbbs.com (Michael Morgan) Subject: Soc: human population On 09-11-93 01:12, Tony Hamilton - Fes Erg~ wrote to Michael Morgan regarding: "Soc: human population arg"... > More to the point: how traceable are the current economic > problems to overpopulation? TH-F> The US is neither overpopulated, nor inefficient (just in case someone TH-F> might propose this). Perhaps true. David Suzuki on NOVA asks us that if Americans consume 30 times the natural resources that thirdworlders do, are we not overpopulated? If such is the case then we should 'consider' ourselves overpopulated simply because we will soon (?) outstrip the available resources. And again (without the facts to present a strong supportive argument for the discussion) just how long will these resources last? Are they capital or income? I don't know. I do think the subject needs discussion. TH-F> We're simply not manufacturing anymore. Instead, TH-F> we're servicing, legislating, network marketing, and suing. Oops, I TH-F> almost forgot "sulking". We do a lot of that, too. Generally people are paid more for their services or products if these are difficult or dangerous services or products. The trend is toward safer and more simple items. Humm. Do we need to do more dangerous or risky things? TH-F> Can you tell I'm not TH-F> too impressed with the outlook here? And _I'm_ someone with a very TH-F> solid job, living the so-called American Dream (closing on a house in 3 TH-F> weeks)... Well you know what they say about the rat race. Even if you win you're still a rat. B^) First Extropian Gunrunner - Selling lethal weapons to needy folks in a neighborhood near yours. ... Is infinity odd or even? --- Blue Wave/QWK v2.10 ---- +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Ed Hopper's BBS - Home of uuPCB - Usenet for PC Board | | Node 1 - USR HST - 404-446-9462 Node 2 - V.32bis - 404-446-9465 | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Sep 93 23:21:00 -0500 From: michael.morgan@ehbbs.com (Michael Morgan) Subject: Extropian exploits On 09-11-93 13:35, Edward J Oconnell wrote to Michael Morgan regarding: "Extropian exploits"... EJO> As far as I understand it, the word "exploit," as a pajoritive anyway, EJO> has no real meaning in an anarchocapitalist mindset. EJO> Am I correct? I don't think so. Let's suppose that through your hard work you become a multimillionaire. And let's say that your businesses are in sections of town that are closer to the poorer tracks. I can sell guns, gas and tools to help the discouraged take control of their world. Your success in becoming different becomes my opportunity to sell those people weapons to use against you. Think of Koreans and Blacks in L.A. Are there ethics in anarchocapitalism? First Extropian Gunrunner - Selling lethal weapons to needy folks in a neighborhood near your. ... When marriage is outlawed only outlaws will be inlaws. --- Blue Wave/QWK v2.10 ---- +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Ed Hopper's BBS - Home of uuPCB - Usenet for PC Board | | Node 1 - USR HST - 404-446-9462 Node 2 - V.32bis - 404-446-9465 | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1993 12:58:09 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: The Evidence of the Senses Elias Israel - SunSelect Engineering says: [Argues against my "Brain in vat" scenario on semantic grounds] Elias, this has very little to do with Ayn Rand's problem about denial of the evidence of the senses -- I suggest learning about the objectivist position on the subject and then checking whether my counterargument is sufficient or not. Summarized, they argue that what you perceive must be THE reality. Perry ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Sep 93 10:32:36 PDT From: desilets@sj.ate.slb.com (Mark Desilets) Subject: Discovery, Concepts, and Rights > > > 1) John shaves all the men in town who do not shave themselves. > 2) Who shaves John? > Piece of cake. John lives just outside of town. Men come to his house to be shaven. John is excluded from the category of men who are all shaven by John in the first proposition. Therefore John, or anyone else may shave John. Mark ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1993 14:25:56 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: Discovery, Concepts, and Rights Mark Desilets says: > > > > > 1) John shaves all the men in town who do not shave themselves. > > 2) Who shaves John? > > > > Piece of cake. John lives just outside of town. Men come to his house > to be shaven. John is excluded from the category of men who are all shaven > by John in the first proposition. Therefore John, or anyone else may shave > John. Amusing, Mark, but I assume you are as familiar with Goedel's theorem as I am... Perry ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1993 11:42:32 -0800 From: lefty@apple.com (Lefty) Subject: Extropian exploits >I can sell guns, gas and tools to help the discouraged take control >of their world. Your success in becoming different becomes my >opportunity to sell those people weapons to use against you. Think >of Koreans and Blacks in L.A. > >Are there ethics in anarchocapitalism? > >First Extropian Gunrunner - Selling lethal weapons to needy folks in a >neighborhood near your. So, what are the implications of this? No one should get rich? No, can't be that.. Ah, maybe it's that no one should sell "lethal weapons" to "needy folks". Yeah, like "Koreans and Blacks in L.A."! Yeah, I bet _that's_ it! I think you may have hit upon something, Ed! Go put a cold compress on it until the swelling goes down a little. -- Lefty [gYon-Pa] (lefty@apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1993 15:30:30 -0400 (EDT) From: Harry Shapiro Subject: please add Please tell me more about yourself. Please tell me who will be reading the list traffic. /hawk a conscious being, Ed Hopper wrote: > > ADD extrop@ehbbs.gwinnett.com > > Thanks, > Ed Hopper > > ---- > +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ > | Ed Hopper's BBS - Home of uuPCB - Usenet for PC Board | > | Node 1 - USR HST - 404-446-9462 Node 2 - V.32bis - 404-446-9465 | > +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ > > -- Harry S. Hawk habs@extropy.org Electronic Communications Officer, Extropy Institute Inc. The Extropians Mailing List, Since 1991 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1993 16:17:55 -0400 (EDT) From: Christina M Grimes Subject: The Evidence of the Senses Perry writes: PM> Tim, what happens when I put you inside a VR system hooked up to PM> your nervous system? How the hell can you know what reality is PM> then? Don't invoke other people's arguments: quote them. Show me PM> why I'm wrong. Explain to me why it is that such a setup would be PM> completely impossible. I've gotta attack this one. In the prelude to _Consciousness Explained_, "How are Hallucinations Possible?", Daniel C. Dennett begins with a "Brain in the Vat" scenario (I don't know what the copyright deal is, but I don't think anyone will mind): "Suppose evil scientists removed your brain from your body while you slept, and set it up in a life-support system in a vat. Suppose they then set out to trick you into believing that you were not just a brain in a vat, but still up and about, engaging in a normally embodied round of activities in the real world. ... "Let's take a moment to consider, then, just how daunting the task facing the evil scientsts would be. We can imagine them building up to the hard tasks from some easy beginnings. They begin with a conveniently comatose brain, kept alive but lacking all input from the optic nerves, the auditory nerves, the somatosensory nerves, and all the other afferent, or input, paths to the brain. ... "...[T]he scientists arrange to wake you by piping stereo music (suitably encoded as nerve impulses) into your auditory nerves. they also arrange for the signals that would normally come from your vestibular system or inner ear to indicate that you are lying on your back, but otherwise paralyzed, numb, blind. This much should be within the limits of technical virtuosity in the near furure--perhaps possible even today. They might then go on to stimulate the tracts that used to innervate your epidermis, providing it with the imput that would normally have been produced by a gentle, even warmth over the ventral (belly) surface of your body, and (getting fancier) the might stimulate the dorsal (back) epidermal nerves in a way that simulated the tingly texture of grains of sand pressing into your back. 'Great!' you say to yourself: 'Here I am, lying on my back on the beach, paralyzed and blind, listening to rather nice music, but probably in danger of sunburn. How did I get here, and how can I call for help?' "But now suppose the scientists, having accomplished all this, tackle the more difficult problem of convincing you that you are not a mere beach potato, but an agent capable of engaging in some form of activity in the world. Starting with little steps, they decide to lift part of the 'paralysis' of your phantom body and let you wiggle your right index finger in the sand. They permit the sensory experience of moving your finger to occur, which is accomplished by giving you the kinesthetic feedback associated with the relevant volitional or motor signals in the output or efferent part of your nervous syustem, but they must also arrange to remove the numbness from your phantom finger, and provide the stimulation for the feeling that the motion of the imaginary sand around your finger would provoke. "Suddenly, they are faced with a problem that will quickly get out of hand, for just how the sand will feel depends on just how you decide to move your finger. The problem of calculating the proper feedback, generating or composing it, and then presenting it to you in real time is going to be computationally intractable on even the fastest computer, and if the evil scientists decide to sovle the real-time problem by pre-calculating and 'canning' all the possible responses for playback, they will just trade one insoluble problem for another: ther are too many possibilities to store. In short, our evil scientists will be swamped by *combinatorial explosion* as soon as they give you any genuine exploratory powers in this imaginary world. "It is a familiar wall these scientists have hit; we see its shadow in the boring stereotypes in every video game. The alternatives open for action have to be strictly--and unrealistically--limited to keep the task of the world-representers within feasible bounds. It the scientists can do no better than convince you that you are doomed to a lifetime of playing Donkey Kong, they are evil scientists indeed. ... "...Throw a skeptic a dubious coin, and in a second or two of hefting, scratching, ringing, tasting, and just plain looking at how the sun glints on its surface, the skeptic will consume more bits of information than a Cray supercomputer can organize in a year. Making a *real* but counterfeit coin is child's play; making a *simulated* coin out of nothing but organized nerve simulations is beyond human technology now and probably forever.[3]" Footnote [3]: "The development of 'Virtual Reality' systems for recreation and research is currently undergoing a boom. The state of the art is impressive: electronically rigged gloves that provide a convincing interface for 'manipulating' virtual objects, and head-mounted visual displays that permit you to explore virtual environments of considerable complexity. The limitations of these systems are apparent, however, and they bear out my point: it is only by various combinations of physical replicas and schematization (a *relatively* coarse-grained representation) that robust illusions can be sustained. And even at their best, they are experiences of virtual surreality, not something that you might mistake for the real thing in more than a moment. If you really want to fool someone into thinking he is in a cage with a gorilla, enlisting the help of an actor in a gorilla suit is going to be your best bet for a long time." There ya go, Perry. Ratha -- ratha@cmu.edu "If you can't win, change the rules. If you can't change the rules, ignore them." --from Peter's Laws "I intend to live forever or die trying!" --unknown ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Sep 93 22:47:33 GMT From: Michael Clive Price Subject: The Evidence of the Senses My thanks to Ratha for quoting a long section from _Consciousness Explained_, "How are Hallucinations Possible?" by Daniel C. Dennett. Dennet's argument amounts to: "I can't imagine how realistic VR could work, so it won't, ever" Enough said. Dennet/Starr/Rand 0, Perry 1 Mike Price price@price.demon.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1993 18:35:03 -0400 (EDT) From: Christina M Grimes Subject: The Evidence of the Senses Mike Price writes: MP> My thanks to Ratha for quoting a long section from _Consciousness MP> Explained_, "How are Hallucinations Possible?" by Daniel C. MP> Dennett. Dennet's argument amounts to: "I can't imagine how MP> realistic VR could work, so it won't, ever" Enough said. MP> Dennet/Starr/Rand 0, Perry 1 Pardon my thickheadedness if I fail to see how Dennett's argument reduces to that. To me, the argument seemed to be that a completely interactive, to the last realistic detail, complete simulation--or, if you like, "VR"--would have to reach a combinatorial explosion, that is, it would have to simulate much too much simultaneous and instantaneous information, conforming to the subject's every action, than any present computer could possibly supply. If you had a computer of infinite power, theoretically you would be able to work it. However, a computer of infinite power is pretty hard to come by, and it will take quite a few years before we can come up with one. I'm truly astounded that you could reduce that passage to "I can't imagine how realistic VR could work, so it won't, ever." VR can be "realistic" without being "perfect"; it wasn't even about VR, that was a side issue. It was more about the kind of sheer power it takes to fully and interactively simulate a universe. On the grounds that nothing of infinite power can exist, I dismiss the above theoretical objection. I would certainly tally the score as Dennet/Starr/Rand 1, Perry/Price 0. thoughts? Ratha -- ratha@cmu.edu "If you can't win, change the rules. If you can't change the rules, ignore them." --from Peter's Laws "I intend to live forever or die trying!" --unknown ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1993 18:47:18 -0400 From: tburns@gmuvax.gmu.edu (T. David Burns) Subject: ECON: Digicash isn't cash It's too easy to counterfeit (copy) digital money. Of course, Chaum has devised a way to catch the counterfeiters, but this still means that digicash can't circulate as confidently and freely as real cash. Every time I accept some digicash, I need to talk to the issuer to check its validity. It's development is arrested at a point analogous to when bank notes were first developed and no one trusted them much. So digicash isn't cash. Or is it? Perhaps I'm expecting too much. After all, even when notes were a new and not-well-trusted phenomenon, people were still able to use them. Their use has become much more economical since people learned to trust them, but that's not to say that notes were not an improvement over coins before then. Does it matter? If crypto and comms become common enough and cheap enough, the fact that a bank needs to be involved in every transaction will be no more troublesome than keeping an ultraviolet light around to check $100 bills. The difference between cash and checks will erode. It might be nice if there were some more conventional means of exchange available on the net for digicash to compete with. Or even better, it would be nice if there were a lot of things being bought via the net. Then I bet digicash could bootstrap rapidly. I'm currently in the midst of my first online transaction, but since I don't want to send a credit card number over the net, part of that transaction involves a physical check traveling via snail. Come to think of it, since the other party in the transaction uses PGP, using my VISA on the net would be no more risky than using it at the mall (assuming the other party has a reputation). In either case, an employee of the other party could grab my number. How long will it be before credit card companies start asking your e-mail address, so they can discourage e-mail fraud the same way they treat mail order? tburns@gmuvax.gmu.edu (T. David Burns) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Sep 93 19:09:02 WET DST From: rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray) Subject: The Evidence of the Senses Christina M Grimes () writes: > > Mike Price writes: > MP> My thanks to Ratha for quoting a long section from _Consciousness > MP> Explained_, "How are Hallucinations Possible?" by Daniel C. > MP> Dennett. Dennet's argument amounts to: "I can't imagine how > MP> realistic VR could work, so it won't, ever" Enough said. > MP> Dennet/Starr/Rand 0, Perry 1 > > Pardon my thickheadedness if I fail to see how Dennett's argument > reduces to that. To me, the argument seemed to be that a completely > interactive, to the last realistic detail, complete simulation--or, if > you like, "VR"--would have to reach a combinatorial explosion, that is, > it would have to simulate much too much simultaneous and instantaneous [...] We had this argument a long time ago on the list. The general consensus was, we do not know how much computer power is needed for a convincing VR. Dennett gives no evidence for his position except hand-waving. The amount of simulation needed at any one time is small. For instance, to simulate sand running through your fingers, you do not have to perform an n-body computation of the millions of sand particles themselves. Our nervous system doesn't have that resolution. To prove this to yourself, close your eyes and have a friend put a random number of fingers on a random place on your leg. See if you can resolve both the number and position of each finger, I bet you can't. Considering that nanotechnology could reduce a 1 teraop computer down to a cm cube, I don't see how you could possibly argue "we will never have enough CPU". What about a computer more powerful than the human brain itself? Upload the brain to that computer and REPROGRAM the consciousness of that person to believe that cheesying looking vector graphics is "reality" and he never knew otherwise. Dennett's argument avoids the issue by arguing against the assumption. ("What IF you put your brain in a perfect VR") How about this, "what if we take a baby's brain and put it into a vat and raise him to be an adult in a VR such that he never experiences true reality." Now what is Dennett's argument? That the baby will genetically know that ray-traced computer graphics look artificial? -- 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: Sun, 12 Sep 93 07:53:11 PDT From: edgar@spectrx.saigon.com (Edgar W. Swank) Subject: DATA: Credit Cards Romana Machado posted the following useful info: While we're on the subject of credit, those of you who tend to carry balances from month to month should be aware that although the national average credit card rate is 18.04%, many institutions offer lower interest rates. The best rate that I've found lately is 7.92%, with an annual fee of $33 and a 25 day grace period, applications available from: Federal Savings Bank Rogers, Ark. (800) 374-5600 Don't worry, they accept out-of-state clients. That's fine, but those of us who -don't- carry a balance are more interested in cards with no annual fee. Does your list have any Visa or Master cards in that category? Of course, the cheapest card is the Discover Card (if you don't carry a balance). It has no annual fee and they even give you a small rebate on your yearly purchases. I have found from experience that you can reduce the cost of credit even further by "carelessly" using a 1-cent stamp instead of 29-cent stamp to mail in your Discover Card bill (and most other bills). Used this way, you are actually being paid to spend money; I like this arrangement! The only downside is that the Discover Card is not as universally accepted as Visa or Master Card; it's almost completly unknown outside the USA. The Schwab I Visa card also has no annual fee; but it's a debit card. Bills are deducted from your account as they come in to the processing center. You don't get your 25-28 days free credit. But you don't have to mail in a payment either. -- edgar@spectrx.saigon.com (Edgar W. Swank) SPECTROX SYSTEMS +1.408.252.1005 Cupertino, Ca ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Sep 93 16:38:48 PDT From: peb@procase.com (Paul Baclace) Subject: Party GIF (uuencoded) version msg 93-9-435 What's the nosend feature? Is that for an attachment I need to request manuall? BTW, I have't got any info yet on getting perl and using the filter (opinion database). I am assuming the docs aren't ready yet. Is that correct? Paul ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1993 18:43:40 -0500 From: "Phil G. Fraering" Subject: Party GIF (uuencoded) version msg 93-9-435 Although the filter system is written in perl, it's running on the host machine at panix; you don't need perl in order to use it. Just send a message to extropians@extropy.org with no subject and the body ::help Phil ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1993 20:01:01 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: The Evidence of the Senses Christina M Grimes says: > "Suddenly, they are faced with a problem that will quickly get out of > hand, for just how the sand will feel depends on just how you decide to > move your finger. The problem of calculating the proper feedback, > generating or composing it, and then presenting it to you in real time > is going to be computationally intractable on even the fastest computer, > and if the evil scientists decide to sovle the real-time problem by > pre-calculating and 'canning' all the possible responses for playback, > they will just trade one insoluble problem for another: ther are too > many possibilities to store. In short, our evil scientists will be > swamped by *combinatorial explosion* as soon as they give you any > genuine exploratory powers in this imaginary world. Dennett obviously has never done enough real world computer work. Problems like this are solved all the time in various fields. Take, for example, computer graphics. > "It is a familiar wall these scientists have hit; we see its shadow in > the boring stereotypes in every video game. The alternatives open for > action have to be strictly--and unrealistically--limited to keep the > task of the world-representers within feasible bounds. It the scientists > can do no better than convince you that you are doomed to a lifetime of > playing Donkey Kong, they are evil scientists indeed. Dennet hasn't been flying flight simulators lately, has he -- and thats done with primitive technology. Given computers trillions of times more powerful than the ones we have today, and given hundreds of trillions of them running in parallel, it seems perfectly realistic to be able to perform the task in question. We'll have that capacity thanks to nanotechnology. > ... > > "...Throw a skeptic a dubious coin, and in a second or two of hefting, > scratching, ringing, tasting, and just plain looking at how the sun > glints on its surface, the skeptic will consume more bits of information > than a Cray supercomputer can organize in a year. Lets do a little gedanken experiment, shall we? Lets be rather conservative and say that we can pack machines about 1000 times more powerful than a Cray into regions about the size of a bacterium, on the order of a micron across. A one meter cube of such machines could compute more in a second than a single cray could produce in a hundred thousand years. I may be off by an order of magnitude either way. So what. My estimates for everything have been grossly too conservative anyway. > Making a *real* but > counterfeit coin is child's play; making a *simulated* coin out of > nothing but organized nerve simulations is beyond human technology now > and probably forever.[3]" This is silly. I see no reason why given enough nanocomputers you couldn't manage this task. Dennett is simply not being imaginative enough. > Footnote [3]: "The development of 'Virtual Reality' systems for > recreation and research is currently undergoing a boom. The state of the > art is impressive: electronically rigged gloves that provide a > convincing interface for 'manipulating' virtual objects, and > head-mounted visual displays that permit you to explore virtual > environments of considerable complexity. The limitations of these > systems are apparent, however, and they bear out my point: it is only by > various combinations of physical replicas and schematization (a > *relatively* coarse-grained representation) that robust illusions can be > sustained. Yeah, but these systems are being run on very primitive hardware. This is like comparing a snail to bussard interstellar ramjet, and yet we can already produce pretty neat illusions. So, given this, I ask my original question again -- given that it will, fairly soon, be completely practical to simulate one's surroundings well enough that one will have no way of knowing if one is in a VR or not, how are we to believe silly arguments that the likes of David Kelley and other Randroids make that the evidence of one's senses is necessarily true? Perry ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V93 #255 *********************************