Find out how omniscience can let one opponent make a chump of another in one paradoxical game but get completely trounced in another. Game theory at its weirdest, folks.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Why an omniscient foe will always lose a game of chicken
Why an omniscient foe will always lose a game of chicken:
Monday, November 7, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
The Most Horrifying "Crawling Over a Pile of Your Dead Alternate Selves" Scene Ever Filmed
From io9.com: The Most Horrifying "Crawling Over a Pile of Your Dead Alternate Selves" Scene Ever Filmed:
The clip actually comes from 2009's Triangle, which I'd actually thought was just a standard "trapped on a boat with a killer" movie, with a bit of weirdness here and there. The movie starts out that way, and then turns into a trippy film about a time-loop in which a woman keeps running into her slasher self from another version of the loop. (That's Jess, watching her alternate self kill another alternate self in the clip above.)
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Vernor Vinge’s Children of the Sky: bootstrapping high-tech civilization from hive-mind Machiavellis – Boing Boing
In this, the humans are aided by the Tines, a race of doglike hive-intelligences. Three or more Tines come together and form a collective consciousness, synchronizing with high-speed, ultrasonic chirps. A literal society of minds, the Tines are essentially immortal -- they need merely replace injured or killed individuals with new members. But the Tines are sorely limited in ways as well: if two Tines get to close to one another, their "mindsounds" will mingle, and their consciousness dissolve. Adding new Tines to a pack-individual can change its identity, sometimes creating new and unrecognizable packs.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
New Scientist TV: One-Minute Physics: How do we know our world is 3D?
New Scientist TV: One-Minute Physics: How do we know our world is 3D?:
How do we know we live in three dimensions? In this One Minute Physics episode, animator Henry Reich explores the concept of multiple dimensions and shows one way to test that we live in a 3D world.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Friday, July 22, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Overview : Google Consciousness
Overview : Google Consciousness
Drawing on their experience as pioneering social media strategists, Rome Viharo and Maf Lewis have created a new phenomenon with their proposal that Google has a form of consciousness. Originating as little more than a passing comment between friends, the idea has attracted the attention of academics, philosophers, and most recently, the TED organization.The Google Consciousness TED talk, given on April 9 of 2011 and officially released on June 9, rocketed to the top of the TEDx “most popular” site and was picked up as an Editor’s Choice on the main TED site. With well over 100,000 YouTube views just weeks after launch, the talk is rapidly changing the way we think about both Google, consciousness, government and social media.Google Consciousness itself is just one of several fascinating and forward-thinking ideas proposed by Lewis and Viharo during the talk. From the plant-whispering Ayahuasca shamans of the Amazon rain forest to the future of social media and democracy, “the two coolest philosophy professors you never had” cover an amazing range of topics in just 18 minutes.While not everyone is convinced that Google is conscious, the seemingly-improbable journey of this simple idea from the ears of a few friends all the way to TED and the world stage shows that it represents a discussion whose time has come. We invite you to join that discussion, and help shape the future of how consciousness and society are understood.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Can there be a Singularity without superintelligence (or vice versa)?
Can there be a Singularity without superintelligence (or vice versa)?
Mitchell Howe:
Strictly speaking, it is possible for there to be both a Singularity that does not entail the creation of superintelligence, and for supertintelligence to not trigger the onset of a Singularity. Both are improbable, regardless of the specific criteria used to define Singularity or superintelligence, but some of the potential "loopholes" are worth discussing.
The potential for Singularity without superintelligence depends largely on which variant of the Singularity is being used. A predictive horizon, for example, can be reached if it is anchored at some particular date (which it never really is, in my experience.) In fact, if this date is sufficiently far back in our past, one could argue (uselessly) that we are living in a Singularity now. Also, if a Singularity is considered reached when the distance to the predictive horizon becomes sufficiently small, our own lack of foresight, not the arrival of superintelligence, may turn out to be the cause. If the idea of a developmental Singularity is used, it is possible that existing trends in automation will result in sharply spiking productivity without the need for any greater intelligence. Finally, even the "greater intelligence" definition of Singulairty need not neccessarily mean the arrival of superintelligence -- which implies minds vastly more intelligent than we are now. In each of these cases, however, one must wonder how long exponentially spiking rates of progress, foreseeable or otherwise, could contiune before superintelligence appeared as one of the many new products of such an age -- or before slightly greater intelligence helped design superintelligent successors. So, the Singularity has a very reasonable chance of preceeding superintelligence, but probably not by much. As other parts of this Q&A discuss, it would be very surprising if greater intelligence proved to be impossible or limited.
On the flip side of this question, that of superintelligence without Singularity, the salient concern is for just how "super" and involved superintelligence would be in our own affairs. If superintelligence were surprisingly unimpressive, malicious, or apathetic, its creation would not do much to initiate a Singularity for the rest of us. There are, in fact, a host of such concerns people tend to have about superintelligence, and the most important of these have their own extended responses in this Q&A. For now, let it be said that most of the common concerns are groundless -- based on flawed, if understandable ideas about intelligence -- and that the rest can probably be dealt with through responsible approaches to research and design.
Friday, June 24, 2011
the human hive-mind covers Radiohead
A version of "Paranoid Android" made using only clips of Youtubers covering the song. Pretty amazing.
ht: @keith_wilson
ht: @keith_wilson
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
The Doctor explains how time works
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Dennettian Zimboes
From Cosma Shalizi's review of Daniel Dennett, Brainchildren
The standard objection to Dennett's view of the mind is that it makes no allowance for the difference between creatures with inner lives, namely us, and those without, namely zombies. Zombies might have quite sophisticated dispositions and sensitivities to their external environment, and even to their own information-processing (so the objection goes), but they'd have no inner experience --- they might be able to discriminate red roses from yellow roses, but they'd have no experience of redness, no red qualia. Dennett's quite characteristic response to this objection is to argue that there is no defensible difference between sufficiently nuanced sensitivities and qualia. Consider the case, he asks us, not of zombies per se but of zimboes, who are behaviorally just like us conscious human beings, but have no inner lives. Zombies are the mindless malevolent minions in a Boris Karloff movie; zimboes, when villainous, are more in the Sidney Greenstreet line but, by hypothesis, they show just the same range of heroism, vice, and moral muddle that we do. They'd certainly talk and act as though they thought they had qualia. Maybe brain damage can make people into zimboes --- only they'd insist nothing was wrong! Maybe lots of people (all, of course, normal-seeming) are zimboes --- John Searle, for instance, or this reviewer, or your landlord. They could be everywhere. Consciousness could be a genetic abnormality. Even your best-beloved could be a mere zimbo. In fact, how do you know that you are not a zimbo?
Dennett's answer is that you don't, because, as it happens, you are. Turned around: zimboes, creatures with sophisticated sensitivities to the external world and their inner environment, enjoy just as much consciousness as there is to be had.
Blink (Doctor Who) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Blink (Doctor Who) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "The Doctor explains that he and Martha Jones were transported to the past by the Weeping Angels, beings that feed off the potential time energy of others. The Angels are 'quantum locked', allowing them to move incredibly fast when unobserved but when they are seen, they literally turn to stone. They cover their eyes to avoid looking at each other, giving them their 'weeping' appearance. He warns Sally not to look away or even blink when they are around."
Monday, June 13, 2011
Quantum Smell
From Cosmic Variance:
Quantum Smell: "
"
Quantum Smell: "
Over on the Facebooks, Matt Strassler points to a BBC story about the role of quantum mechanics in explaining our sense of smell. There aren’t any equations in the article, and I haven’t read the research papers, but the idea seems to be that electrons move from one part of a protein to another part via quantum tunneling. The potential that allows this to happen is only set up if you have the right chemical involved, which is how the protein purportedly “smells” the existence of this chemical. The resulting mechanism is just absurdly sensitive — apparently fruit flies can smell the difference between hydrogen and deuterium (chemically identical, but tiny differences in atomic energy levels from having an extra neutron in the nucleus).
It’s still a controversial theory, but apparently not crackpotty. The question of how important quantum mechanics (as opposed to just its classical limit) is for biological processes was brought up in our earlier post on quantum photosynthesis. Which reminds me in turn of this worthwhile talk by Seth Lloyd, on the basic topic of “quantum life” and photosynthesis in particular. In between learning about how quantum phenomena might remain relevant in the hot, warm environment of a plant, you can enjoy Lloyd’s principled stance not to use PowerPoint under any circumstances.
"
How the Experience Machine Works
How the Experience Machine Works:
from experimentalphilosophy.typepad.com:
Robert Nozick’s Experience Machine counterexample to hedonism is one of the most famous thought experiments in contemporary philosophy. It has convinced many that there is more to prudential value than the felt quality of our experiences. Yet it is often misunderstood, and too easily dismissed. Most recently, Felipe de Brigard’s ingenious experimental study, whose results he and others, including Josh Knobe, take to cast aspersions on the Experience Machine argument, is based on a misunderstanding of what is at stake in it, as I will argue below. The key points concern the structure of Nozick’s argument and the nature of the relevant comparison. (I’m afraid this’ll be rather long, but it does meet my criterion for a blog post, namely being written in the course of a day in a fit of inspiration.)
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
?sdrawkcab gnivil
@keithfrankish: How do you know you're not living backwards, with amnesia and precognition?
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Harold Ramis Responds on Groundhog Day
"A writer at Wolf Gnarls calculated that Bill Murray spent exactly 8 years, 8 months and 16 days stuck in a time loop in the movie Groundhog Day. According to Heeb Magazine, the writer and director of the 1993 film Harold Ramis disputes those findings.
“I think the 10-year estimate is too short. It takes at least 10 years to get good at anything, and, alloting for the down time and misguided years he spent, it had to be more like 30 or 40 years… People [i.e. spaz] have way too much time on their hands. They could be learning to play the piano or speak French or sculpt ice”
Friday, January 14, 2011
neon meate dream of a octafish
Psychedelic researcher and ethnobotanist Terence McKenna had this to say about the amazing color-change ability of the cuttlefish:
'I believe that the totemic image for the future is the octopus. This is because the squids and octopi have perfected a form of communication that is both psychedelic and telepathic; a model for the human communications of the future.
In the not-too-distant future men and women may shed the monkey body to become virtual octopi swimming in a silicon sea.'
Friday, January 7, 2011
Group minds in sci fi
Group mind (science fiction) - eNotes.com Reference
This article separates hive- and nonhive-groupminds and presents long lists of science-fictional depictions of each.
This article separates hive- and nonhive-groupminds and presents long lists of science-fictional depictions of each.
Duncan Jones' SOURCE CODE drops a trailer
Duncan Jones' SOURCE CODE drops a trailer:
When decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up in the body of an unknown man, he discovers he’s part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. In an assignment unlike any he’s ever known, he learns he’s part of a government experiment called the “Source Code,” a program that enables him to cross over into another man’s identity in the last 8 minutes of his life. With a second, much larger target threatening to kill millions in downtown Chicago, Colter re-lives the incident over and over again, gathering clues each time, until he can solve the mystery of who is behind the bombs and prevent the next attack.
Bootstrap paradox
Bootstrap paradox
The bootstrap paradox is the paradox arising, if time travel is possible, relating to the existence of information and objects not created at any specific instant of time but instead traveling in a time loop. In simpler terms, an object is brought back in time, and it becomes the object that was initially brought back in time in the first place. Numerous science fiction stories are based on this paradox, which has also been the subject of serious physics articles.
The term "bootstrap paradox" refers to the expression "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps", based on a Munchausen story; the term was popularized by Robert A. Heinlein's story By His Bootstraps.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?
Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?:
On this website you can peruse the debate that followed the paper presenting the Simulation argument. The original paper is here, as are popular synopses, scholarly papers commenting on the first paper, and a couple of replies to these comments.
The Simulation argument is continuing to attract a great deal of attention. I regret that I cannot usually respond to individual queries about the argument.
Professor Nick Bostrom
Director, Future of Humanity Institute
Faculty of Philosophy & James Martin 21st Century School
Oxford University
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