From extropians-request@extropy.org Sat Oct 22 03:02:05 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 DAA07092 for ; Sat, 22 Oct 1994 03:02:03 -0700 Received: from news.panix.com by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA11302; Sat, 22 Oct 94 03:01:58 PDT Received: (from exi@localhost) by news.panix.com (8.6.9/8.6.9) id GAA00219; Sat, 22 Oct 1994 06:01:53 -0400 Date: Sat, 22 Oct 1994 06:01:53 -0400 Message-Id: <199410221001.GAA00219@news.panix.com> To: Extropians@extropy.org From: Extropians@extropy.org Subject: Extropians Digest #94-10-419 - #94-10-427 X-Extropian-Date: October 22, 374 P.N.O. [06:00:59 UTC] Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org X-Mailer: MailWeir 1.0 Status: RO Extropians Digest Sat, 22 Oct 94 Volume 94 : Issue 294 Today's Topics: _Total Recall_ [1 msgs] Argument by Analogy (Uploads) [1 msgs] Autonomy: Threat or Menace? [1 msgs] Baby hunger vs. creation of artifacts [1 msgs] BABY: REproduction [2 msgs] Psychics & Shrinks [1 msgs] Slaves & Technology (was: Marketing AI) [1 msgs] Tolerance and nonsense. [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: 26204 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 94 22:03:49 -0400 Subject: [#94-10-419] Tolerance and nonsense. >Marvin Minsky writes: >>>By learning to think for themselves, of course, the first step in that >>>direction being to copy other people who are known to do it well. >> >>Wow, in my opinion that's absolutely the most important thing. Even in my >>adult life, I've found that I deliberately do this. In college I attached >>myself to a great young mathematician, Andrew Gleason, and a great young >>psychologist, George Miller. In graduate school I was attached to my >>fellow students John McCarthy and John Nash (who just won a Nobel Prize). >>... The trick is to hang around with your idols, try to anticipate how >>they'll solve each problem, or how they'll explain it. After working at >>this long enough, you acquire a passable downloaded copy. > >Alas, this strategy isn't open to most of us. We must learn to think >for ourselves mostly by ourselves. > >Robin Hanson Umm, maybe not -- but I didn't mean to say that this began in college. One needs at least one parent that is worth copying; I also had an excellent sister, five years older, to imitate. I remember following my 4th grade science teacher around -- and I know that I was reading assorted chemistry books around then. I don't actually remember the context of this -- but probably it was partly motivated by the idea of making myself worthy of that ex-chemist's attention. What I'm suggesting is axiomatic to some people, and not understood at all by many others: their attachment-bonds are powerful influences on how children develop. In many cases it will, I think, not do much good at all to fill the schools with good equipment and superfically good teachers. It may be much more important to find how to get the children attached to the right sorts of "idols" or, as they say these days, to "role models". In present-day pop-culture, the role models are criminals (who succeed in winning by cheating), sport heroes (who mostly succeed by being stronger, faster, or more insensitive to physical pain), physically attractive models, and pop-music stars -- none of who lead the child toward intellectual growth. These ridiculous and degrading self-models are destroying us, I gloomily complain. It is astounding to me how the puiblic worships the movie stars, rather than the writers and directors who create those images. This even extends to my MIT students. The other night I had dinner with the movie magician Douglas Trumball, the eminent musician Quincy Jones, and the latter's girl friend the actress Nastasia Kinsky. The word spread rapidly, and various MIT students asked this. But the students all asked about the actress, who is very nice, and only a couple of them expressed interest in the accomplishers. ___________________________________________ "Don't pay any attention to the critics. Don't even ignore them." --------- Sam Goldwyn ------------------------------ From: davisd@nimitz.ee.washington.edu Date: Fri, 21 Oct 94 19:14:36 -0700 Subject: [#94-10-420] _Total Recall_ > From: sw@tiac.net (Steve Witham) > Subject: _Total Recall_ > > Also, I like the desparate sense in Total Recall, that you run around > being a hero to save the world and find out it's all an illusion anyway, > only maybe not, so you'd better adjust your maps again and keep running > around being a hero, just in case. You got that from Total Recall? Sounds more like Donaldson to me. Buy Buy -- Dan Davis ------------------------------ From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 94 23:26:24 -0400 Subject: [#94-10-421] BABY: REproduction >Choosing genes for a child means that you may design a child to be strong, >bright, handsome, and otherwise to resemble your favorite people; there is >no guarantee that your children will choose to support your memes. Genetic >and memetic reproduction are very different processes. >Romana Machado romana@apple.com Exactly. Reminds me of a short essay I wrote for Discover Magazine in 1992. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The problem with sexual reproduction today is having only two partners. You have to choose so carefully. But even with careful selections of mates, we're all still involved in a lottery. The genetic construction of each individual is based on the genes contained in 46 chromosomes -- each of which is selected at random from either the child's father or mother. But soon -- though no one can say yet how soon -- there'll be no reason at all why those chromosomes could not be selected from 46 different people. That would need only a little technology. Just enough fto enable a technician (or, more likely, a tiny and efficient machine) to extract a particular chromosome from one cell and properly install it in another. Well, then, in that future, you'll be able more literally to "conceive" your next child -- if the adjective "yours' any longer makes sense. Because you -- or rather, your "conception committee" -- will be able to debate the merits of various chromosomes. Of course, that will be far from simple. For one thing, each chromosome contains tens of thousands of different genes (or rather, alleles of different genes). You'll have to wait quite a few years more before you can specify each single gene. Besides, in most cases it will not be at all obvious which gene-alleles are to be preferred -- so there will soon be vast numbers of magazines with articles debating the virtues of various traits. And after all that, we'll still be working mainly in the dark because there remain hundreds of thousands of virtually unpredictable interactions among the chosen genes. So there really won't be any way to know whether any particular "composition" is really "good" -- whatever that might mean -- until those babies have matured -- and even then, it won't be clear. But that's no worse than the way things are now. We'll hear grumblings from every political quarter. "Racism incarnate," some will wrongly say, not comprehending how this might equally mean the end of the very concept of race. "Eugenics a la Carte," others will moan, and wonder who will hold the patents, and collect what sorts of royalties, on sets of genes alleged to embody longevity. "We must preserve our Diversity," other neo-conservationists will cry, banding against the new armies of clones. "The end of Olympics," yet others will groan, facing the prospect of ounce-brained athletes entirely muscled by fast- twitching myosins. ___________________________________________ "Don't pay any attention to the critics. Don't even ignore them." --------- Sam Goldwyn ------------------------------ From: nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu Date: Sat, 22 Oct 94 5:09:22 GMT Subject: [#94-10-422] BABY: REproduction Romana Machado wrote: > >John Bozeman asks: > >>Isn't there a bit of a conflict between the notion of "designer >>kids" and the desire for an "independant being"? >> A lot of people, it seems, want >>their children to think for themselves...so long as they >>don't think to the point that they exceed cutural boundaries >>and, say, question capitalism, or embrace an authoritarian set >>of beliefs. > So wouldn't genetic programming be a way >>of in reality setting limits on our children, as they become >>"art projects," rathern than affirming their autonomy? > >Playing the random genetic lottery with children's genes "affirms their >autonomy"? Maybe--it may mean that they're less autonomous relative to Nature, but they're more autonomous relative to you. >Disallowing inferior genes "sets limits" on children? The blind >hackscrabble of Nature is superior to the caring, conscious hand of a >parent? At least some of the time, yes.....I can easily imagine parents making bad choices for their children, whether as a result of being given poor information by the experts or by having poor judgement about what their children will need. >>Would I get to label my kid 'defective' if he/she became >>a fundamentalist Baptist rather than embracing my own >>'superior' intellectualist memetic/genetic heritage? > >Choosing genes for a child means that you may design a child to be strong, >bright, handsome, and otherwise to resemble your favorite people; there is >no guarantee that your children will choose to support your memes. Genetic >and memetic reproduction are very different processes. > Well, sort of....I expect that there will be some ability to chose one's children's temperment and talents as well as their health and appearance--this isn't quite memetic reproduction, but it's close. Also, if I'd been designed to resemble my parents' favorite people, I would (if I still had my present temperment) *definitely* feel a loss of autonomy about it. (My reaction might be different if I liked my real-world parents better--who knows?) Nancy Lebovitz ------------------------------ From: sw@tiac.net (Steve Witham) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 1994 01:24:09 -0400 Subject: [#94-10-423] Argument by Analogy (Uploads) Robin Hanson writes- > >Currently, genes and memes both evolve in a coupled evolutionary >system. With uploads, genes would be gone, but the gene-coded deep >brain structures that orient our thought would remain. Until we could >learn to modify these, copies would preserve a whole set of such deep >structues. Call such a set a "beme". So there'd be memes and bemes >evolving in a coupled evolutionary system. > >With asexual reproduction, bemes should not evolve as well as the >equivalent sets of genes that code for brain structure. But meme >evolution can improve... I think both memes and "bemes" reproduce sexually. Memes combine by trading ideas. True, there's a big imbalance between the "main parent" and other "parents," but it's still sexual. Bemes (brain designs) can also probably evolve incrementally right away. That is, it'll be easier than experimenting with drugs to tune various identifiable parameters (been thinking about Prozac and the serotonin reuptake channel lately). You could have people going on all these wierd trips--psychedelic trips but also emotional-climate trips, motivational trips, cognitive- enhancement trips. Then they could trade ideas, come up with changes that compensate for side effects of other changes, etc. So beme evolution would be both faster than gene evolution, and sexual if people combine ideas. It might seem at first that the beme-meme system would be intolerant of blind modifications to the beme. There's an argument in genetics that the longer a gene has been around, the less it can be modified, because all the later genes assume its existence. An analogy would say that the brain-design would be "brittle." But uploading is different from biological reproduction because there's no embryogenisis, just a direct copy. That means that, for one thing, the brain and mind don't have to grow up again, so the things that are only needed by kids don't have to stay the same. But also it means that the new copy gets born with a functioning mind that has a certain ability to adapt to changes. That's different from genes, where a fixed program is unfolding and each step depends on the previous state with a limited ability to adapt. Mike Price writes- >My definition: consciousness is the modelling of the world by a mind >which is extended to include itself, especially it's own thought >processes. I like Dennett's idea, or at least my interpretation, something like: consciousness is the ability to make up a first-person story that jibes reasonably with what one does. It's an operational definition that seems to *imply* or *require* some sort of internal "model," but relegates that (properly, it seems to me) to an implementation detail instead of hinging on it. Having the story presented to the outside world is the main thing. So, an apple doesn't make a very interesting account of itself. --Steve - - - - - - - - - - There's more to aspire to than shoddily built tract homes and th' internet!! --Griffy in Zippy ------------------------------ From: sw@tiac.net (Steve Witham) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 1994 01:24:21 -0400 Subject: [#94-10-424] Baby hunger vs. creation of artifacts >Erotic neediness. >Baby hunger and eventual satiation is to the female what the creation >of artifacts is to the male ? >Any comments ? >MLKagan People have said that about males in AI, too. I have just been reading _The Hite Report_, of a study that asked women questions about sex. Some of the questions are about the relationship between sexual feelings and feelings about producing babies, relationships with partners, etc. Uh, background material, yeah! It seems like when people can relate their feelings or inclinations or their body to a larger picture, they do it on a visceral level. In other words, if my feelings or my body seem to relate to something I find big and worthy, then I'll end up thinking of the feelings as *about* that, or my body as *for* that. Probably the same applies to skills and interests. I mean a tendency to identify with and have your feelings be about the things that you can do that seem most important to you. I'm trying to contrast this with the view that biology and emotions tell us what to do, and our ideas about ultimate purpose play catch-up. I'm saying our feelings, down to what seem like physical "drives," grab onto anything that looks like purpose and say "That's IT!" with a sort of retroactive certitude. This also supposedly happens to men about things like becoming a responsible citizen, husband and father. Men aren't too surprised by the need to be creative, but I was surprised by the desire to be monogamous. Maybe women are surprised by baby hunger (and because of the surprise think of it as "biological,") because they are given *both* the independence program that men get, *and* the biology-is-beautiful- destiny program. Or maybe it's just because of the impact of child- rearing on independence, that makes it hard to gradually warm up to the idea, and so it gets repressed until it happens suddenly instead. --Steve - - - - - - - - - - There's more to aspire to than shoddily built tract homes and th' internet!! --Griffy in Zippy ------------------------------ From: sw@tiac.net (Steve Witham) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 1994 01:24:16 -0400 Subject: [#94-10-425] Autonomy: Threat or Menace? > Fred Hapgood wrote: > >FH> It is very hard to imagine anybody even wanting to *buy* a > machine that spontaneously, unpredictably, and autonomously > modified its behavior in any deep sense. Jeez, I'd buy one pretty quick. Unless you mean there are *no* boundaries of how it can modify itself. It's possible (and exciting) to imagine radical self-change within some sort of safe boundary. A TV that would hold conversations with you, but always remained a TV, for instance. Think of the people who downloaded Tierra, the artificial life program. They're probably even more interested in getting the upcoming networked version. True, it's free, but there's a definite consumerish interest there. Or how about _The Blind Watchmaker_, the evolving-"biomorph" program that went with Richard Dawkins' book? That cost money. (Fred again?) >OK. So here they are at the preliminary design conference. >First on the agenda is defining exactly what is meant by >artificial autonomy, or superhuman intelligence, or whatever, for >the purposes of actual design. What do they say? What do they >do? ... >The fundamental problem with building a machine that has >'superhuman intelligence' is that the term itself has no >programmatic content. Even the term 'learning' is looking >problematical -- lots of people working in AI today refuse to >even participate in discusions over what learning means. They >call it 'the L-word' and make the sign of the cross if you try to >bring it up. Fred, you need to go to Artificial Life conferences. ALifers have no need to wait around for definitions. They just write programs that do interesting, significant things, things you wouldn't expect from their designs. You hear them say (with justified pride), "We have no idea how this evolved piece of code works, but it does the job better than our best hand-written one." Interesting, complex, unexpected behavior is the measure of progress. Having a "program" might only get in the way. The method is to learn from their creations rather than impose learning on them. "Intelligence" surpassing ours isn't necessarily going to follow our models. A singularity would be reached if our creations were doing more interesting things on their own than we were. --Steve - - - - - - - - - - There's more to aspire to than shoddily built tract homes and th' internet!! --Griffy in Zippy ------------------------------ From: timstarr@netcom.com (Tim Starr) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 1994 22:45:23 -0700 Subject: [#94-10-426] Psychics & Shrinks >From: cactus@bibliob.slip.netcom.com (L. Todd Masco) >Date: 21 Oct 1994 17:50:40 -0400 >Subject: [#94-10-410] URL: CSICOP/_Skeptical Inquirer_ > >...So, my theory goes, the Psychic Friends Network isn't really a response >of human relativist sheep to readily provided answers, but is just a >cheap and convenient psychotherapy service that clothes itself in the >word "psychic" to avoid legal hassles. I'm not even certain that the >people running it are aware that they're doing the same sort of thing >that psychoanalists do, but that's not important to the success of their >service. Reminds me of a cheers episode in which Carla sees a psychic: Fraser: "You people are nothing but charlatans. All you do is take people's money and fill their heads with a lot of gobbledygook." Psychic: "So, how's that different from what you do?" Fraser: (stunned, thinks a moment) "I... can prescribe drugs." I paraphrase, but that was the gist of it. One interesting test of the theory that psychics are unregulated shrinks in disguise is whether they tend to have greater market share where you have to get a license to practice psychiatry. I'm told that there aren't any licensing laws for psychiatry in England; are there many psychics there? 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 ------------------------------ From: timstarr@netcom.com (Tim Starr) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 1994 22:46:09 -0700 Subject: [#94-10-427] Slaves & Technology (was: Marketing AI) >From: fhapgood@world.std.com (Fred Hapgood) >Date: Fri, 21 Oct 1994 11:10:01 -0400 >Subject: [#94-10-399] Marketing AI > >...look how hard slave-owning societies work to >make sure their slaves stick exactly to the defined routines. >*Nothing* is scarier to a slave-owning society than an >autonomous, self-modifying slave. Slave-owning societies are >famously hostile to technological change (at the time of the CW >the South had exactly *one* railroad line) for just this reason: >any change at all might compromise the severity and >relentlessness of their control. I'm not so sure the historical record is all that clear on this. For instance, if slave-owning societies work hard to keep slaves on task, then how come Euripedes portrays slaves with a high degree of autonomy? If they're so hostile to technological change, how come the ancient Greeks had toys that operated on the same principle as the steam engine, and how come Thomas Jefferson was such an inventive guy? Further, the Sough also had less canals than the north - because it had more natural waterways. The North had to subsidize both canals and railroads in order to compete regionally with the South. What seems to be a better explanation to me is that in a society where the workers aren't their own "masters," or "managers," there will be less of an incentive for the "masters" or "managers" to innovate in labor-saving ways. And that so much effort is spent either idle or keeping slaves in line that what technology that exists that could be put into practice in labor-saving ways gets ignored or simply made into toys for leisure, idle entertainment. 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 #294 *********************************