[p2p-research] Drone hacking

[Ryan Lanham]

On 12/22/09, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:

> do you know many  "the same argument the anti-technology green left" that
> are against the global warming tech ...?
>
> most deniers I know of, the very vast majority, are in the camp of the
> extreme right,or on the payroll of fossil fuel interests... the anti-tech
> green left is at the forefront of the fight against global warming ... James
> Randi is a fundamentalist 'sceptic'
>

Totally agree, Michel.  And I have heretofore been a huge James Randi fan.

The left has been late to the denial game.  To my knowledge their
reverse-psychology argument is meant to spur research to be
definitive...highly improbable when studying an open system....like a mind
or an ecosystem.  I'm all for better research, but there is a political
aspect to all science...to all knowledge.  No one disputes that.  But just
because there is a political element doesn't mean truth isn't a high
probability game.  Without probabilities, we have no idea what we are
talking about.

What is the probability there was a guy named Jesus?  A Christian says,
100%.  I say, maybe 70%.  What's the probability he was Son of God?  A
Christian...99.9%...me, 0.000001%  Linking the two together you get a
Christian with a very high probability analysis that Jesus is the son of
God.  My analysis is more like zero...or approaching it.  Science is the set
of those probabilities amongst esteemed persons given a set of interpretive
"truths."

There isn't equivalency in coming up with a different answer.  Some answers,
some probabilistic assessments, are better than others because they use
highly probable inputs as roots.

Social constructivists want equality of evaluation.  That's rubbish.
Subjectivity doesn't mean equivalence.  What is the probability your root
idea is true when authentically evaluated widely and skeptically?

In a reverse argument, when probabilistic arguments are slightly low, people
say that something is "unknown" as a means of spurring on better
probabilities.  That's what is going on with the left anti-climate change
element now.  I think, I strongly suspect, that is what James Randi is up
to.

I don't see it a lot and the left has been leaders on climate change...I'm
with them totally.  Go greenies!  Wrong on atomic energy in my book...but
it's a quibble.

Why? A reasonable person looking at the details says...hmmm, probability of
anthro-driven climate change...90%.  Probability that it could prove highly
destructive if we do nothing within 30-100 years...90%.  So a reasonable and
informed person is about 81% (0.9 * 0.9) that bad days a cummin.  If it is
4/5 my plane comes down, I'm not flying unless I hope to be a hero of some
sort.  On the other hand, if my set of equations comes out to 1/100 bad days
are coming...then I'm not going to stop driving my SUV and airconditioning
my 2000 square meter mansion.

A skeptic starts that first equation anthro equation at .01 and the second
at maybe 0.0001.  Thus their worries are close to zero...or their concern
is.  They just don't see it as worth it.  This is why we need models...we
need plans and expectation of how things play out.  That's literally the
future.

I think the arguments against incomplete knowledge as a failure are
rubbish.  P values of .4 matter.  We have to plan for that as a 40%
chance...carry an unbrella if rain is a 40% chance if we like our suit of
cloths.

More importantly, we have to build knowledge more quickly by pursuing high
probability outcomes.  That's what a computer would do.



> strange what you say about AI, when I interviewed dozens of AI researhers
> in the late nineties, they said just the opposite, that most of their dreams
> hadn;t come out, that the field had gotten nowhere (but of course they
> expected great things for a hypothetical future, see TechnoCalyps)
>

Dreams yes, expectations no.  No one expected us to be this far.  No one
could have.  I had the fastest IBM RS/6000 in the world on my desk in Roger
Schank's lab for a time when it was a new machine...that thing is far weaker
than my iPod touch.  We thought that might happen...but we didn't know it.
If we had, we would have gone about our research in wholly different ways.
We thought you had to be smart about how brains worked...we didn't know you
just had to be smart about data and outcomes.  That's why Wolfram's Alpha
project is so interesting...even though primitive.

In my opinion, dreams are going to be far surpassed here shortly.  You were
in the right place...just 10-20 years early, I'd say.


> your view of human nature is typically reductionist, oh well ... monkeys on
> a thumb writing shakespeare and building cathedrals, why not ... it's a
> quaint view, but I guess you have seen monkeys like that,
>
> there's nothing simplistic or emotional about recognizing depth and
> complexity, it's just a fact of nature and life, backed up by a lot of
> contemporary science, except for the transhumanists cults ... I'm really
> surprised when reductionism appeals to otherwise interesting minds,
>
>

I love being human, but I'm not impressed.  I see ornate termite mounds and
incredibly complex bird's nests.  I don't seek the builders out as peers.  I
see them as nice models of a few billion years of cellular evolution.
Learning will surpass that in 200 years.

To me it isn't reductionism at all.  Reductionism is the social
constructivist world...we can't know anything and therefore everything is
relative.  That reduces us to meer humanists.  As much as I love Spinoza or
the Romantics, I'm interested in Humanism 2.0...not more wallowing in
Frankenstein monster myths.

We can know things and we can progress.  And if we can progress, then we can
project how fast and where we will progress.  I'm not saying Kurzweil is
Nostradamus...but I am saying he's got us starting to approach the problem
in the right way...conventional academia gave us a bum steer with
neo-Romanticism and all the silly dead ends of Humanism 1.0.  They told us
we were complex and unknowable and constantly surprising.  I doubt it.  No
harm finding out.  If we are creatures made in the image of the divine, I
doubt our flying machines will carry us.  But in 1880, few people thought
our flying machines would carry us.  100 years later, we all knew.

Ryan
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