From extropians-request@extropy.org Wed Oct 19 03:01:55 1994 Return-Path: extropians-request@extropy.org Received: from usc.edu (usc.edu [128.125.253.136]) by chaph.usc.edu (8.6.8.1/8.6.4) with SMTP id DAA12926 for ; Wed, 19 Oct 1994 03:01:54 -0700 Received: from news.panix.com by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA01126; Wed, 19 Oct 94 03:01:50 PDT Received: (from exi@localhost) by news.panix.com (8.6.9/8.6.9) id GAA20782; Wed, 19 Oct 1994 06:01:33 -0400 Date: Wed, 19 Oct 1994 06:01:33 -0400 Message-Id: <199410191001.GAA20782@news.panix.com> To: Extropians@extropy.org From: Extropians@extropy.org Subject: Extropians Digest #94-10-317 - #94-10-323 X-Extropian-Date: October 19, 374 P.N.O. [06:01:00 UTC] Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org X-Mailer: MailWeir 1.0 Status: RO Extropians Digest Wed, 19 Oct 94 Volume 94 : Issue 291 Today's Topics: Argument by Analogy (Uploads) [2 msgs] Argument by Analogy (Was: Reply to Challenged Uploaders) [1 msgs] BOOK: The Bell Curve [1 msgs] BOOK: The Bell Curve (Any thoughts?) [1 msgs] Challenge to Uploaders [1 msgs] Procreation Instinct [1 msgs] Administrivia: Note: I have increased the frequency of the digests to four times a day. The digests used to be processed at 5am and 5pm, but this was too infrequent for the current bandwidth. Now digests are sent every six hours: Midnight, 6am, 12pm, and 6pm. If you experience delays in getting digests, try setting your digest size smaller such as 20k. You can do this by addressing a message to extropians@extropy.org with the body of the message as ::digest size 20 -Ray Approximate Size: 27422 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: fcp@nuance.com (Craig Presson) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 1994 07:27:44 -0500 Subject: [#94-10-317] Argument by Analogy (Was: Reply to Challenged Uploaders) At 01:26 PM 10/18/94, Derek Zahn wrote: >Ed Regis: [Good stuff] >Thank you for taking the time to compose this clear response. New rule: no grovelling on the Extropians list. Regis and Minsky and other Names are here exactly because they can handle an ass-kicking -- and sometimes, show us how to. [Excerpt from the Presson family swimming pool wiffleball league chronicles: "New rule: no more new rules."] It also >makes it possible to express a position on uploads -- If you ask me why >I (currently) think that a sufficiently-well-done upload would be >conscious, my answer is: by the Argument from Analogy. To me >(and probably to other "supporters" of uploading) the analogy >between a very accurate functional model of my personal neurophysiology >and my actual neurophysiology is at least as compelling as the >analogy between a dog's neurophysiology and mine. This shows that we have no calculus of analogies. As a radical pragmoperationalist, I have to get back to the question: "how do you distinguish consciousness from its complement?". I judge philosophical arguments mostly by the degree to which they make me want to go off and design something. BTW, a Dr. Johnson at MICOM, and Dr. Caulfield at Alabama A&M, claim that a new sort of neural net that involves convolving a bitstream with a timebase before applying the net solves the symbol-grounding problem because these nets have a useful output without any training. I'll dig out the refs if need be. \\ fcp@nuance.com (Craig Presson) CPresson@aol.com\ -- WWW: http://www.nuance.com/~fcp/ -----------------\ -- President & Principal, T4 Computer Security ------> -- P.O. Box 18271, Huntsville, AL 35804 -------------/ // (205) 880-7692 Voice, -7691 FAX -----------------/ ------------------------------ From: sjw@liberty.demon.co.uk (Stephen J. Whitrow) Date: Wed, 19 Oct 1994 02:06:16 GMT Subject: [#94-10-318] Challenge to Uploaders John Clark, replying to Ed Regis, wrote: > >and we know enough about it, on the basis of that > >experience, to conclude that apples, for example, are not > >conscious >I disagree with you about that , we know nothing about the >personal experience of apples, or anything else. I believe that >apples are not conscious because they don't act conscious, but >then, I believe in the Turing test. It's not just because apples fail the Turing test that I believe they are not conscious, it's also because of their physical structure. If an apple started talking to me, I'd assume that the apple was not really subjectively aware, and that someone was playing a trick with concealed electronic equipment. Apples are no more conscious than electrons. > >The challenge is to show that these same computers, or their > >turbo-revved successors, will reproduce consciousness if and > >when they simulate minds >What's the difference between simulated music and real music, Depends precisely on the definition of real music (you could allow, say, live electric guitars and keyboards but not recordings), but simulations can clearly vary enormously in accuracy. E.g. reduced definition or accuracy of pitch rendition, dynamic compression, overhung / smeared transients, noise... So there is a difference. >simulated arithmetic and real arithmetic, Probably a speed difference, but absolutely no difference in principle which is what counts. >simulated minds and >real minds? If mind and everything that that entails about first-person subjective experiences and sentience can be totally explained in terms of computation and faithfully reproduced (well, allow for speed differences) on a UTM, then there is no difference, otherwise the simulation could be anything from inaccurate to a total failure. But the strong AI position has some fascinating implications. According to this viewpoint, we could reproduce a person's subjective experiences, given knowledge of the algorithm associated with the personality, by arranging for a billion people to wag their fingers up and down as instructed. In fact, some people could be wagging their tongues or their toes, etc, instead. And the mind's subjective experience would be produced solely by the movement of fingers, etc. Since there are an infinity of possible choices of bases for transcribing from the physical state of each finger to a logical state (any direction in 3D space can be arbitrarily chosen to represent a logic-1) a great many minds would be produced from this experiment. And for half of them, time runs backwards. Most of them, though, are not interesting or coherent minds. Derek recently pointed out the fallibility of the argument that consciousness requires particular physical processes because we find these processes to exist where consciousness resides. The argument is inductive so the conclusion could be wrong, although it's better to look where you dropped your key than under the streetlamp 100 yards up the road. Another fallacy is the argument that consciousness involves the operation of an algorithm, therefore run the correct algorithm and full sentience is assured. I think the strong AI position is one plausible possibility, but it's not my preferred choice at the moment. -- Steve Whitrow sjw@liberty.demon.co.uk ------------------------------ From: sjw@liberty.demon.co.uk (Stephen J. Whitrow) Date: Wed, 19 Oct 1994 02:52:37 GMT Subject: [#94-10-319] BOOK: The Bell Curve (Any thoughts?) Gregory Sullivan replies to Reilly Jones: >>A new book by the sociologist, Charles Murray and the late psychologist, Richard >>Herrnstein called "The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American >>Life" is out now. >... >>Has anyone actually read this yet? Or read reviews about it and have any >>thoughts? > >The October 31 issue of The New Republic has an article by Murray and >Herrnstein which covers material from their book. I've appended a review of *The Bell Curve*. This is taken from the Laissez Faire Books news email list, where new titles are reviewed by the L.F.B. editor. >Specifically, the >fact that the effects of direct augmentation of cognitive capabilities will >in the future dominate the effects of any genetic legacy. Yes, the effects of the inverse correlation between intelligence and desire to reproduce one's genes will be temporary (unless pro-Nature deathists stunt technological progress, by way of statist controls). >Also, I rarely comment on spelling; however, since >you use the term quite often I suggest using one `p' in worshiper. It >actually looks odd to me but my spelling dictionary demands it. My Collins English dictionary shows it as "worshipper", so I say Reilly's right. Maybe the double-p is the original English spelling and the US allows an optional dropping of a 'p'? -- Steve Whitrow sjw@liberty.demon.co.uk ----------------------------------------review follows---------------- The controversial role of intelligence in human destiny THE BELL CURVE Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray (reviewed by Jim Powell) This is one of the most anxiously-anticipated books in years. I expect it will be among the most-smeared. Charles Murray became an intellectual star because he accomplished what no one else had before: his 1985 book *Losing Ground* launched an epic attack against the welfare state which has had an enormous influence on mainstream thinking. His next book *In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government* helped solidify his lofty reputation. Then Murray began work on a book about intelligence. To many people, including myself, that seemed like a dead end, since human beings are endowed with unalienable rights, regardless of intelligence. Many of us feared Murray's new book could wreck his career and perhaps result in libertarian views generally being tarred as racist. Meanwhile, Murray discovered that Harvard psychology professor Richard Herrnstein was working on a similar project, and the two men decided to collaborate. The result is *The Bell Curve*. At the outset, I should say that despite what you might have read in the mass media, the book isn't about race. It really is about intelligence. It combines *Losing Ground*'s revealing analysis of statistics with *In Pursuit*'s Jeffersonian thrust. The book breaks important ground by affirming that intelligence has an enormous impact on an individual's destiny and on social phenomena, a taboo subject if ever there was one. Although demographers as well as psychologists have performed many studies documenting all this, their findings have been banned from popular publications, even textbooks. A lot of the findings reviewed by the authors aren't new, but you've probably never seen them before. The authors review considerable data which show how American society is increasingly becoming stratified according to intelligence. High-IQ people get on a fast track for better schools, better jobs, better neighborhoods and so on, while low- IQ people of whatever race face a tougher struggle just to survive. Low-IQ people, the authors report, account for the great bulk of chronic poverty, broken families, child abuse, welfare cases and violent crime. The authors go on to report that low-IQ people are having more children, starting at an earlier age than high-IQ people. Consequently, the average IQ level in the United States is declining. Even a small decline, the authors warn, means more chronic poverty, broken families, child abuse, welfare cases and violent crime social catastrophe. Moreover, since research shows intelligence is 40% to 80% determined by one's genetic inheritance, the authors suggest that costly and oppressive government programs cannot solve social problems. Thus, the authors further undermine the intellectual legitimacy of the welfare state. Murray's aim here, as in his other books, is to help revive the humane ideal of community where everyone, regardless of income, race or intelligence, can make worthwhile contributions and find a valued place. Intelligence & human destiny; A few provocative insights from Herrnstein and Murray's *The Bell Curve*: A nation-wide survey of 12,686 youths 14-22 showed: 48% of the poor come from the bottom 20% of intelligence. * * * "Welfare mothers come mainly from the lower reaches of the distribution of cognitive ability... Welfare mothers have been estimated to have reading skills that average 3-5 years below grade-level. Poor reading skills and little schooling both define populations with lower-than-average IQ... " * * * Outlook for children: "it is worse to have a mother with a low IQ than one from a low socioeconomic background." * * * "Sixty-two percent of those ever interviewed in jail or prison came from the bottom 20 percent of intelligence." ----------------------------------------end of review----------------- ------------------------------ From: Reilly Jones <70544.1227@compuserve.com> Date: 18 Oct 94 23:54:57 EDT Subject: [#94-10-320] Argument by Analogy (Uploads) Ed Regis wrote 10/18/94: It is reasonable to speculate that there may be several points to uploading, possibly unique to each individual, but probably falling into broad categories. Here is one way of looking at the hopes for uploading. An upload, if not exactly one's personal identity due to the unavoidable changes in the material substrate of sapience, at least will be an asexual reproduction unique to the progenitor of the upload (which may be an artifact, if not sapient, or a child, if sapient). I believe I have seen something akin to this position expressed here before. From an evolutionary point of view, such a method of reproduction would differ from sexual reproduction in the search mechanism of fitness space. An asexual, non-biological (inorganic?) upload would be superior to biological sexual reproduction for temporally extended (often *very* extended) long-jump searches in fitness space for distant clusters of fitness peaks. Biological sexual reproduction would be superior to asexual uploads in local hill-climbing fitness space due to genetic recombination quartering peaks, epistatic complexity leading to mutual information between peaks as an optimum search methodology locally. Just speculation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Reilly Jones | Philosophy of Technology: 70544.1227@compuserve.com | The rational, moral and political relations | between 'How we create' and 'Why we create' ------------------------------ From: Reilly Jones <70544.1227@compuserve.com> Date: 18 Oct 94 23:55:18 EDT Subject: [#94-10-321] BOOK: The Bell Curve Nancy Lebovitz wrote 10/18/94: The WSJ may have been referring to Clinton's Cabinet as evidence of this. One of the quotes from the book is, "For many people, there is nothing they can learn that will repay the cost of the teaching." This upsets the critics because it writes off all of the products of the dumbed-down generations of government education system students since around 1970. The ideologues on the left; in the media, the bureaucracy, the education system, and the entertainment field, have organically conspired, through a common fetid worldview of decadence, to produce an underclass of "cognitively challenged" ex-students. They are slack-jawed, ill-mannered, arrogant and dimwitted, with no sense of coherent purpose or meaning in their lives except to follow the group theology of grope-and-inhale in a long, drawn-out suicide. The moral criminals of our educational establishment at the collegiate level have assigned the teachers of America their lesson plans: Teach students (in the immortal words of Alexander Pope) to be "proud, selfish, and dull." Teach that: science is corrupt, reason is hegemonic, Western Civilization is the oppressor, technology is really bad, like, y'know? All you need in life, is to "do your own thing" and "feel," don't think. Unfortunately for these victims, not everyone turned out this way. A small percentage of people harrowingly escaped the clutches of the self-appointed do-gooders and are actually attaining the status of "cognitive elite." The left's whole program would only have worked if they had gotten everybody. We know how hard the NEA has tried to do that, even to the point of going after homeschoolers during the 103rd Congress. Well, it didn't work. They didn't get everybody. Now the "cognitive elite" is stretching the Bell Curve even wider and the critics are quaking in their purple Birkenstocks. I think Murray is enjoying throwing stink bombs, which is what I assume this book really is, and watching the critics spew and splutter. This is a healthy response to the truly terrible thing the leftists have done to people. As Alfred North Whitehead said, "An attack on systematic thought is treason to civilization." Ray wrote 10/18/94: This is the same basic tack taken in the review from US News & World Report Oct. 24, 1994: "It leads nowhere, except toward pessimism and negative group labeling. This is a very unhelpful book." Unhelpful to who? The "very stupid people" don't even know they're being talked about, or indeed, care. It certainly is unhelpful from the left's perspective, because it tears the curtain on their true agenda of inducing docility in the populace over which they desire to rule. Perhaps only the "cognitive elite" is capable of understanding the truth discussed in the book. Perhaps the critics "just don't get it." Ray again: I have had the same experience, it must be group-think. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Reilly Jones | Philosophy of Technology: 70544.1227@compuserve.com | The rational, moral and political relations | between 'How we create' and 'Why we create' ------------------------------ From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) Date: Wed, 19 Oct 94 00:29:10 -0400 Subject: [#94-10-322] Argument by Analogy (Uploads) >Here is one way of looking at the hopes for uploading. An upload, if not >exactly one's personal identity due to the unavoidable changes in the material >substrate of sapience, at least will be an asexual reproduction unique to the >progenitor of the upload (which may be an artifact, if not sapient, or a child, >if sapient). I believe I have seen something akin to this position expressed >here before. From an evolutionary point of view, such a method of reproduction >would differ from sexual reproduction in the search mechanism of fitness space. >An asexual, non-biological (inorganic?) upload would be superior to biological >sexual reproduction for temporally extended (often *very* extended) long-jump >searches in fitness space for distant clusters of fitness peaks. > >Biological sexual reproduction would be superior to asexual uploads in local >hill-climbing fitness space due to genetic recombination quartering peaks, >epistatic complexity leading to mutual information between peaks as an optimum >search methodology locally. Well, aren't there two different fitness spaces to consider. In the upload-duplication, even without any alterations, we're talking about populations in memetic, rather than in genetic space. This is because we're reproducing adult individuals that have been infected by whatever meme-systems they've accumulated. Therefore, in memetic-system space, we can define a "cloning-survival success rate value-system". In that selection-world, the evolution could be much more efficient, because biological reproduction doesn't ensure nearly as much "intelligence" reproduction. In other words, if we're talking about the evolution of adult intelligences, and if we're also considering the recombinations of those systems (either by conversational interactions and/or by artificial selection and recombination of collections of ideas), then the number of mental clones that you can manage to produce corresponds closely to the traditional number of children in the Darwinian scheme. This means, of course, that you have to compete for making your mind-copies. If each copy has a certain cost, then this correlates with economic success. Tricky, because this will especially favor meme-systems that have adopted evolutionary success as a positive value. Which would seem to be more or less inevitable, because the ones that don't do this will tend to die out. >------------------------------------------------------------------------ >Reilly Jones | Philosophy of Technology: >70544.1227@compuserve.com | The rational, moral and political relations > | between 'How we create' and 'Why we create' ___________________________________________ "Don't pay any attention to the critics. Don't even ignore them." --------- Sam Goldwyn ------------------------------ From: timstarr@netcom.com (Tim Starr) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 1994 21:58:45 -0700 Subject: [#94-10-323] Procreation Instinct >From: machado@newton.apple.com (Romana Machado) >Date: Tue, 18 Oct 1994 11:18:46 -0800 >Subject: [#94-10-304] BABY: Re: The Procreation Instinct > >...Like Nancy, I feel no baby hunger, and do not see any purpose in expending >my energy in such an unpleasant and difficult direction. I hope you don't think that I or anyone else is trying to find fault with you for taking this position. >David Friedman comments: >> If I am ever in a situation where I cannot take care of myself, I >>would very much like the world to contain some competent people who value >>my welfare very highly--and reproduction is, for most of us, the best >>method of producing such people. > >Some of us prefer seducing the young. Seducing the young is a legitimate strategy, too, but the two strategies are far from mutually exclusive and could easily complement each other. One could both have lots of children which one raised in such a way as to value taking care of one when one is in need, and try to seduce the young to meet one's needs. There are costs and limitations to both strategies, and some mix of both as well as any others would seem the best way to diversify so as the minimize the risk of being without one who could take care of oneself. For instance, the "seduce the young" strategy fails if one ceases to be seductive for reasons of aging, etc., or if there cease to be young people who would be interested in oneself. And then there's the possibility that biological offspring might be better motivated to take care of oneself than a mere mate or that the might know oneself better and thus be in a better position to help if need be. Given a choice between having any girlfriend I've ever had take me to the hospital when I'm sick and having one of my biological relatives do it, I'd pick my relatives every time for those very reasons. Moving on to our population trends in general, my layman's understanding is that Anglo-American population started to go up right about after the enclosure of the commons in mid-18th century England, when the resultant increased agricultural production improved the diet of the general population and thus decreased the infant mortality rate, while fertility rates held roughly constant. Women went from having 6 babies of whom only one or two lived to adulthood to having most of their babies survive to procreate. So, a population which had pretty much relied upon infant mortality from natural causes to limit population and thus hadn't developed population-limiting customs much had those natural causes decline, resulting in population growth. In fact, in a society with high infant mortality rates one would expect that babies would be highly valued - as they seem to be and have been in Anglo- American society. Not having had much time to evolve social customs which would limit popula- tion, we seem to have then opted for the simple strategy of promoting the meme for abstinence from sex during the Victorian Era of the 19th century. "Sex leads to babies, and babies lead to social problems" seems to have been the Victorian attitude. All of this was thrown off by the proliferation of birth-control devices like the Pill, leading to the Sexual Revolution's overthrow of the Victorian sexual ethic. Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! Think Universally, Act Selfishly 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 Liberty is the Best Policy - timstarr@netcom.com ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V94 #291 *********************************