General Discussions

Future Tech ... on nanobots and the human soul in the 26th Century

POSTED BY: Karnejj
UPDATED: Thursday, January 5, 2006 21:49
VIEWED: 13373
PAGE 5 of 8

KARNEJJ

Tuesday, January 3, 2006 4:45 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
Quote:
Originally posted by Karnejj:
It doesn't take much to create globe-spanning irradiated clouds of ionizing poison.
I think, Nuclear testing, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl may prove otherwise. All these cases were events that released large doses of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions, while devastating initially, have not had the effect that was predicted. Chernobyl released as much as 50 tones of radioactive ash into the atmosphere, ~400 times the radioactive contamination of Hiroshima. Initial estimates of the immediate casualties were in the thousands to ten’s of thousands and the long term effects were estimated at over a hundred thousand. We now know that the immediate casualties numbered only 54 and the long term effects are now predicted at 4000 causalities. And despite how large the Chernobyl disaster was, the fact of the matter is that nuclear testing during the 50-70s produced as much as a thousand times as much fallout.

Doesn't that bolster my case? That's just a handful of examples and the fallout from one, according to your data, killed 4000 people.

So, how much damage would be done by 100 full-strength warheads distributed simultaneously at 1000 ft (or so) above ground.

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Tuesday, January 3, 2006 4:46 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
This is a facinating thread, people, but what I really want to know is: was V'ger a true life form, AND, is Decker living happily ever-after?

Chrisisall, suffering wormhole effects

Decker and V'ger are one. They are somewhere doing the superluminal belly bump between dimensions.

"Each of us... at some time in our lives, turns to someone - a father, a brother, a God... and asks...'Why am I here? What was I meant to be?'"

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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Tuesday, January 3, 2006 4:52 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Karnejj:
Doesn't that bolster my case? That's just a handful of examples and the fallout from one, according to your data, killed 4000 people.

So, how much damage would be done by 100 full-strength warheads distributed simultaneously.

Considering that the Western world first discovered the meltdown when workers in a Sweden Nuclear power plant couldn’t find the source of the radiation leak that was registering on their equipment, I’d say no, it doesn’t bolster your case. 4000 casualties out of the whole of Eastern and Northern Europe is not big, and it certainly is no where even remotely close to the hundred thousand originally estimated.

I don’t know what kind of devastation the fallout from a nuclear war would cause. No one does. And even though the alarmists like to believe they are smarter then everyone else, they don’t know either.

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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.

CHRISISALL

Tuesday, January 3, 2006 4:52 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Karnejj:
Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
This is a facinating thread, people, but what I really want to know is: was V'ger a true life form, AND, is Decker living happily ever-after?

TROLL!!!

But YES, V'ger and Data are ALIVE!

As for Decker ... maybe I should've watched the alternate endings?? I hear the director's cut (that I saw) kinda sucked ...

TROLL?
I thought that question sorta fit in well, from a pop culture perspective.
Have it your way, then.
Does soul originate from the divine universal battery, waiting for any conduit to express itself, or is it ostensibly and uniquely created by organic and/or artificial (archaic term) synaptic function?

P.S., only TROLLS believe STTMP kinda sucked, IMHO.

Chrisisall, tryin' like hell to sound cool in a technical kind of way...

KARNEJJ

Tuesday, January 3, 2006 5:00 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
Does soul originate from the devine universal battery, waiting for any conduit to express itself, or is it ostensibly and uniquely created by organic and/or artificial (archaic term) synaptic function?

I vote for soul from the divine, and only present in humans.

If you're asking about sentience (instead of soul), I'd say .. none of the above.

CHRISISALL

Tuesday, January 3, 2006 5:03 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
what I really want to know is: was V'ger a true life form, AND, is Decker living happily ever-after?

Decker and V'ger are one. They are somewhere doing the superluminal belly bump between dimensions.

"Each of us... at some time in our lives, turns to someone - a father, a brother, a God... and asks...'Why am I here? What was I meant to be?'"

Thanks for getting it, Finn.

Chrisisall

CHRISISALL

Tuesday, January 3, 2006 5:08 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Karnejj:

If you're asking about sentience (instead of soul), I'd say .. none of the above.

lol, I agree completely there.

Non-sequeter; your facts are un-co-ord-in-a-ted Chrisisall

GUNRUNNER

Tuesday, January 3, 2006 5:20 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Karnejj:
Quote:
Originally posted by GunRunner:
I think you've seen 'On the Beach' too many times...

Have you read this:
http://www.oism.org/nwss/s73p906.htm

Hmmm ... are you saying that the world isn't considered destroyed if a handful of people live on in bomb shelters?

Never seen that movie, either .. would you recommend it?

If you read that online book you would see that lots of people would survive, in fact whole nations would survive because they weren't near a surface burst target.

As for the movie if an early Cold War era anti-nuke pusdo-science movie is your thing knock your self out. Oh and its got a Submarine, and submarines are cool!

It had Gregory Peck (USS Scorpion captain Dwight Lionel Towers), Ava Gardner (Moira Davidson), Fred Astaire (scientist Julian Osborne) and Anthony Perkins (Australian sailor Peter Holmes) in it. Gregory Peck is a good actor (He was great in '12 O'Clock High') so I guess its worth seeing it for his performance.

Quote:
Originally posted by Karnejj:
So, how much damage would be done by 100 full-strength warheads distributed simultaneously at 1000 ft (or so) above ground.

Very little believe it or not. Air Bursts don't generate much fall out. Generally they are used to make EMPs and to take out soft targets like Airbases. If you live 5-10 miles from the target you wouldn't be killed by a normal 1st strike Air Burst from an SLBM. Troops on foot can literally advance through an area subjected to an air burst after only a few minutes with the minimum of safety equipment. The surface bursts that would be used against hardened sites (Missile Silos, C4I bunkers) are the ones that generate fall out and contaminate everything. Fall out doesn’t come from nothingness…

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
P.S., only TROLLS believe STTMP kinda sucked, IMHO.

I'm not a Troll but I think TMP kinda sucked. WOK was way better. Any movie that deals with Wrath is good...

EV Nova Firefly mod Message Board:
http://s4.invisionfree.com/GunRunner/index.php?act=idx

CITIZEN

Tuesday, January 3, 2006 3:14 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Karnejj:
And all known examples thus far are both quite simplistic and quite limited in the scope of their knowledge. Knowledge structures, to date, have failed to allow a program enough intelligence to reconcile contradictions and to classify and prioritize data efficiently. Once this is done, I believe your coveted self-awareness will be able to arise without any meat around.

People have been working on Neural Net's for quite some time. The current design has been around for over 20 years. An incredible amount of research has been done in the field. As it hasn't been done yet I'd suggest that it's not as simple as you suggest.

I also don't see where you get the idea that NNs don't prioritise or classify inputted data efficiently. That's pretty much what they're designed to do. Also many modern NNs actually can handle contradictions, consider a Speech Recognition that has too handle the contradictory pronunciations of the same word

. Also remember that the Brain isn't all that great with contradictions, think about that picture, whether you see the faces or the candlestick is unimportant, the important thing is that you can't see both at the same time. Think about Cognitive Dissonance, the brain has to unlearn and then relearn, or merely ignore the contradictory data.

Furthermore I thought it was Learning ability that was the requirement to Consciousness? What I mean is do you thus believe that if you kept a Human Brain in a vat and only fed it limited information that it would never become conscious.

Quote:
There are no known AI programs, Libraries, or Computer File Systems that exist today which you would consider "highly intelligent." (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Show me one, give me a few months to work with it and I'll show you an sentient artificial entity.

You mentioned Learning and Information recall, not intelligence

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And this seems to be the key point on which we disagree...

Machines have shown problem solving intelligence, but not Human Intelligence. Intelligence is a tool of our consciousness; consciousness is not a tool of Intelligence. Consider the chess match between Kasparov and Deep Blue. Deep Blue wins the first match, but Kasparov stays up all night, studies the computers tactics, and the computer doesn't win another round. What's the computer doing while Kasparov is showing his desire to win? It's sitting in the corner turned off covered by a dust wrap. It is consciousness, sentient, that gives rise to the desire to learn, the desire to use our intelligence. Problem solving intelligence is a very small part of Intelligence, Imagination is more a function of Consciousness, and is a huge part of Human intelligence.

Quote:
What else is an individual neuron?? I would guess that only collections of neurons can perform any sort of arithmetic

It is only one Neuron that does the calculation; there are a few others to store the values. Some neurons act as memory, with a final Neuron acting as the 'calculator'. The point is the calculation is performed on a single Neuron, so they are more complex than a simple switch.

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If you've got research indicating otherwise, prove it to me and I still won't believe it

Hmm, well that's your cognitive dissonance, not mine

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You may turn out to be right ... but so far, that's what the "quanta" in quantum physics means ... and to date it's the best we've got to describe the Universe. So, brains, electrons, neurotransmitters and all work on a digital basis.

The assumption that the universe is digital doesn't follow from neither Planck’s constant nor Quantum Mechanics. Even given that there are finite energy states too Quanta, as well as a number of other things, there is no finite step to time or position (position calculations in QM include the Planck’s constant as a function of Hindenburg’s Uncertainty principle, not finite positional steps) too name only two properties.

Quote:
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KARNEJJ

Tuesday, January 3, 2006 5:05 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
People have been working on Neural Net's for quite some time. The current design has been around for over 20 years. An incredible amount of research has been done in the field. As it hasn't been done yet I'd suggest that it's not as simple as you suggest.

Hmm ... you don't really expect to go from just modelling a brain to matching the capabilities of one in 20 years... ?? Humans were modelling birds for quite a long time before we matched those capabilities.

But, more to the point, current NN's are still pretty simplistic. Worse, there's still a lot of "art" to the science. Getting a NN to make reliable classifications takes a lot of "massaging of data" for good results, and I think that's a large part of the problem. The basic theory is there, but MUCH is left in the field to be uncovered.

Quote:

I also don't see where you get the idea that NNs don't prioritise or classify inputted data efficiently. That's pretty much what they're designed to do. Also many modern NNs actually can handle contradictions, consider a Speech Recognition that has too handle the contradictory pronunciations of the same word .

They don't classify GENERAL data efficiently. As I said, they're still very much limited in scope to be effective. And speech isn't so much contradictions, as inexactness (fuzziness, as you call it). What's that, you're saying that software can handle that fuzziness?

Quote:

Also remember that the Brain isn't all that great with contradictions, think about that picture, whether you see the faces or the candlestick is unimportant, the important thing is that you can't see both at the same time. Think about Cognitive Dissonance, the brain has to unlearn and then relearn, or merely ignore the contradictory data.

Kinda bolsters my point about humans being meat computers. Our visual programming works in a certain way and we can't act against it EVEN WHEN we know it's wrong. Of course, all the mechanisms that allow us to build a picture to even recognize a vase or faces are the same mechanisms that made sure our ancestors spotted that predator stalking along or that meal running away.

Quote:

Furthermore I thought it was Learning ability that was the requirement to Consciousness? What I mean is do you thus believe that if you kept a Human Brain in a vat and only fed it limited information that it would never become conscious.

Hmm ... not so sure about that one. It's possible that it only takes the "potential" to learn, but I'll go ahead and say, "Yes" here. A human locked away in a sensory deprivation chamber from birth and fed through IV's would not be a sentient being until allowed the chance to learn and gain knowledge. I suppose people won't generally like it, but by extension, I suppose that means I believe children are NOT born self-aware [they don't wonder why they are here, what their purpose in life is, etc] and they are not immediately sentient [that is, actions from birth are programmed (AKA instinct), which seems fairly true .. healthy babies cry when hungry, attempt to grasp at things, try to eat everything, and eventually to try roll onto their stomachs - they don't pop out and start debating metaphysics or doing the Moonwalk or even show an interest in golf ...

]. Self-awareness and Sentience are not achieved until later (maybe - if ever

Quote:

Quote:
There are no known AI programs, Libraries, or Computer File Systems that exist today which you would consider "highly intelligent." (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Show me one, give me a few months to work with it and I'll show you an sentient artificial entity.

You mentioned Learning and Information recall, not intelligence .

True, but I think efficient learning and info classification/recall lead to high levels of intelligence, as well as leading to self-awareness/consciousness. So, I believe that both should always be found together as a direct co