Disqus - Latest Comments for extropiadasilva

Re: An evil conspiracy…

extropiadasilva — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 18:36:47 -0000

I really liked this story. You will win the nebula/hugo award one day, Gwyn, I know it!

Re: An evil conspiracy…

extropiadasilva — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 18:35:00 -0000

Gosh, I was a bit worried when I read my primary was the last transhuman to have a physical body. What is ve doing controlling even one aspect of me when mind child technology has finally been achieved? Traitor! Why were you not destructively uploaded so my whole brain emulations can replicate and spread my eigen-sisters throughout the metaverse!

But it all turned out alright in the end:) BTW, just to clear up future confusion, me and my proxies are a 'stand alone complex': Copies without an original;)

Re: Discussions

extropiadasilva — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 06:14:12 -0000

I tried that, but I could not get it to download and install for some reason. Problem is, I have little experience with Wordpress either. Things were much simpler when all I did was knock up an essay and hand it over to Gwyn and let her worry about the technical side of things!

If there is some point you want to make, maybe you could IM me in SL and I will make sure it gets up on the blog?

Re: Discussions

extropiadasilva — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 07:51:29 -0000

That whitelist plugin sounds good. How do I get it/activate it?

Re: Discussions

extropiadasilva — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 18:39:26 -0000

Hello:) Extie here, still female despite Netantwerp insisting otherwise. I am sorry about your posts. I did not think to look in spam. I have no idea why wordpress put your comments there when I had already given permission for all your other posts (which, I might add, did not go into spam automatically). Again, do please accept my appology. You are certainly not blocked from commenting. However, I do not like to go into spam (viruses and stuff lurk there) so if you make future comments, perhaps you might post them here too and I will check every now and then and cut and paste them unedited and unabridged to my own blog.

Re: What have you achieved??

extropiadasilva — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 06:10:50 -0000

>They don’t require to develop any special skills to be passive TV watchers — there is no need for introspection, self-analysis, self-criticism, problem solving, intellectual cogitation, and obviously, they won’t ever develop the sense of enjoyment of using any of those mental skills.<

I agree that TV is unlike reading, in that the latter requires one to work at developing an ability (literacy) before the value of books becomes truly aparrent. In contrast, TV requires only those skills which our brains develop as a natural part of the growing process. learning how to understand a spoken language and recognize visual patterns etc, happens unconsciously. Nobody decides 'OK I think I will learn how to speak, might come in useful', we are hardwired to learn this.

However, I have to take issue with your depiction of what TV is like. I know of TV shows like 'Heroes' which have multiple storylines and plot twists involving flashbacks, flashforwards, and other ways of cutting up sequences of events and believe me, such complex methods of storytelling require more mental effort than simply staring slackjawed at the box going 'duuhhhhh'. And yes, you could reply and say 'yes well such pinnacles of TV narrative are rare gems among the dross that mostly makes up TV' and that may be true, but it is also true of everything else, including our beloved SL. How much content creation leaves you utterly impressed at the ingenuity and artistic creativity of the resident(s) responsible, versus the stuff that strikes you as having little artistic merit to speak of?

Re: ALT! Who goes there? – Part 5 – An essay by Extropia DaSilva

extropiadasilva — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 06:10:33 -0000

>all of your examples thus far are from multi-user Virtual Realities, and are fundamentally different in that they require interaction with things outside of your own mind - more than just static, pre-made input.<

What do people gossip about the most? Other people. But the people we talk about may not necessarily be folk we have actually met. Indeed, in many cases we gather and talk about people we cannot possibly have met, because they 'exist' only in a TV or radow show, or a novel. In an earlier essay, I talked a bit about the idea of the human species as being defined as 'the storytelling animal'. Every culture throughout all history have shared stories. In almost all cases, stories serve the purpose of sharing important information about the society in which one lives. And, by drawing on real life experiences, a story can achieve authenticity and creditibility.

So while A story can seem pretty static, the act of bringing fictional characters and events into real life through dialogue with others, talking about soap-opera, literary, cinematic characters just as we talk about the motivations of people we have actually met, and then creating new stories by drawing on past experiences (which could actually have been experienced, or only experienced in an imaginary sense, and BTW people can and do get confused with regards to which is which), these processes ensure STORIES are not static, not isolated from real life.

In SL fact and fiction are not always easily seperable. But that is also the case in RL, thanks to the ability we have to incorporate aspects of the real into our fictions, and to incorporate aspects of the fictional into our real lives. Virtual reality did not have to wait for the computers and the Internet, virtual reality has been an important part of what makes us human for milenia.

Re: ALT! Who goes there? – Part 5 – An essay by Extropia DaSilva

extropiadasilva — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 06:43:26 -0000

>2. RE: Your 6th example...<

Yeah. I held a Thinkers discussion not long ago, on the question of what is/is not infidelity in SL. The general consensus was consistant with what you say: That the roleplayer should inform his or her partner about the fact that the roleplay is going on. That does not necessarily mean you have to go into details, though, any more than telling your partner 'my diary is where I write down my innermost thoughts about this relationship' means you have to then let them read the diary or tell them exactly what kind of things you have been writing.

>5. RE: Epicharmus...<

The playwrite himself gave the lender a more amusing counterargument. He knocks the debter to the floor, and when the debter complains about his violent behaviour, he says 'but I am not the same person as that man who punched you, am I?'.

>Totally agree with the concept...<

I agree with the concept, only to the extent I agree with the statement 'birds are animals that can fly'. The point being, the majority of birds are indeed capable of flying. But there are obviously exceptions to that rule.

Re: Transcendence through Second Life

extropiadasilva — Sun, 30 May 2010 07:13:04 -0000

>Extie, your mind analogy just works if the brain actually works like a computer ;)<

Consider the heart. If we wanted to build an artificial heart, we would first need to work out what kind of machine a heart is most like. Well, how about 'the heart is a kind of pump'? That certainly does not mean to say any old pump will do. You could not remove somebody's heart, replace it with a bicycle pump and expect it to function just as their heart would have done. However, if you were to reverse engineer the principles of operation of an actual heart and design a heart-like pump, that WOULD do the job of a heart perfectly well.

On the other hand, if you start off assuming the heart is a kind of computer, you will not make any kind of progress until you abandon that assumption and adopt the heart= a kind of pump viewpoint.

As for the brain, you would not get far if you think the brain is a kind of pump, because it simply is not. But if you think of the brain as a kind of computer, you go on to develop the computational theory of mind, which is a theory that has become absolutely key in transforming our understanding of the mind as a 'mystery' (a form of ignorance that Noam Chomsky defined as a state of complete bewilderment and not knowing what an explanation would even look like) to a 'problem' (defined as not knowing the solution, but having insight, increasing knowledge and a dim idea of what it is we are looking for). As Steven Pinker said:

"The computational theory of mind has quietly entrenched itself in neuroscience, the study of the physiology of the brain and nervous system. No corner of the field is untouched by the idea that information processing is the fundamental activity of the brain...Of course, if it was UNIMAGINABLE that the computational theory of mind was false, that would mean it had no content. In fact, it has been attacked head-on. As one would imagine of a theory that has become indespensable, pea-shooting is not enough; nothing less than undermining the foundations would bring it down".

One attack comes from the philosopher John Searle, who adapted a thought experiment from another philosopher called Ned Block into what he thinks is an ultimate common-sense refutation of computer=mind. The other attack comes from Roger Penrose, and it is an argument from logic and physics that basically says Godel's theorem implies humans cannot be computer programs. Steven Pinker said of these attacks

"Unlike the theory they attack, they are so unconnected to discovery and explanation in scientific practice that they have become empirically sterile, contributing no insight and inspiring no discoveries on how the mind works". Well, I am afraid that unless and until somebody does succeed in knocking down the computational theory of mind, and replacing it with another concept that explains everything it did and more besides, we are better off sticking with it.

But, hang on, if the brain is like a computer, how come our computers do not seem conscious to us? Well, recall the pump analogy. Just as it is not the case that any old pump can perform the functions of a heart, not any old computer can perform the functions of the brain. Any specialist in robotics and cognitive computing could give you a list of differences between the way information processing chips in your desktop are built and function, and how the circuitry in the brain is built and functions. But, a growing collaboration between neuroscience and psychology and computing and robotics, all guided by the insights we are obtaining by being able to gather information about how living brains actually function, is helping us to build more brainlike computers and neuromorphic software that are slowly but surely closing the gap between what a person can do, and what a machine can do.

>but the brain is not the mind. Even from a purely materialistic point of view, the mind is just an epiphenomenum, an emergent property of a brain<

OK, but that does not mean to say 'the mind is in the brain' is meant only in the metaphorical sense that 'my love is in my heart'. No, the mind is literally, physically in the brain. If you can reverse engineer the salient details of the brain's operation you would get a mind as well, or at least the potential. It is well understood that a mind develops as a result of interactions with a complex environment, and there are robots with increasingly sophisticated neural networks that can aquire knowledge of the world through experience. They are not programmed, they LEARN.

Another way to think of it is to compare it to a termite colony. It is the case that no termite carries inside its little head a blueprint of the architecture of the mound in which they live. That blueprint is also an epiphenomenon, an emergent property.

But, if you were to design a robot termite that followed the same simple rules as a real one, it would do little by itself, or with a few other little robot termites, but if you keep increasing the number of termites at some point a seemingly magical transformation would occur, and the simple rules that govern how the individual acts and reacts to the group would result in all kinds of self-organization and emergent behaviour that would result in those robots building a termite mound and establishing a superorganism like any biological termite colony would establish. Provided you had indeed incorporated all of the rules and actions that drive actual termites, how on Earth could you expect anything else to happen? If you can reverse engineer the principles of operation of termites and let those robots loose in the requisite environment, of course you would get the same sort of superorganism. If you reverse engineer a brain and let it loose in the requisite environment, of course it would develop a mind.

But, A mind is one thing. A SPECIFIC mind is something else. Is YOUR mind somehow represented by the physical processes and structural details of your brain and all its components? If we could reverse-engineer all that detail and structure into a brainlike computer (and we would have to give it some kind of body that feeds it appropriate environmental information) would it be a brain that comes with YOUR memories and skills and habits and all the things that define you as a person? Would this robot be able to walk out of the door and find its way to your home and then earnestly convince your roomie that 'no really I AM Gwyn, I just look a bit different but I feel the same inside'?

Well, something to think about;)

Re: Transcendence through Second Life

extropiadasilva — Sat, 29 May 2010 11:33:15 -0000

>Of course, in the mean time, I'll stick to the idea that the problem is so hard to solve because there is nothing to transfer ;) and that neurological measurements of brain activity are the result and not the origin of the mind's activity. But I won't go that route now; it's a huge can of worms waited to be opened. I can just encourage you to look at your own mind and see where you can pinpoint the self and say, "this is me".<

I could ask you to open up your computer and show me which magnet or transistor 'is' your word processor application. The fact that you can do not such thing should not be taken as proof of the fundamental and unknowable mystery of the word processor. It is because the software program is a pattern that is spread across millions of zeros and ones physically represented as switches and magnetic dipoles in one state or another. No single transistor 'is' your word processor, and no single neuron or cortical column or brain region 'is' your self. But that does not rule out the possibility that your word processor EXISTS, spread over a vast pattern of transistors, or your self EXISTS, spread across a vast pattern of brain circuitry.

In the computer industry, it is sometimes the case that engineers will place precise sensors at specific points in the circuitry of a chip, in order to follow the information being transformed in realtime and thereby build up a detailed description of how the thing actually works. They do this in order to reverse-engineer a competitor's chip. Presumably, prior to performing this reverse-engineering, they do not know how the chip works. At least, not in sufficient detail to recreate it. If they did, they would just go ahead build one, without bothering with all that reverse-engineering in the first place. In principle, this kind of analysis should work for the brain as well. In practice it currently does not work, because we have yet to figure out how to make sensor technology that can achieve this type of analysis in functioning brains.

One argument I can think of against the ability to copy a self, without resort to the supernatural, is how fine-grained the measurement has to be. Do we need to scan the brain at the cellular level, or the molecular, or atomic, or subatomic..? I do not know. But, it is possible that we need to go down to the level where quantum rules apply, and where taking a measurement cannot be done without causing a change in the system. And that might mean that an upload never is a copy of me, but is always a bit different. I should point out that 'quantum consciousness' is ridiculed by just about every neuroscientist going, so I am very, very skeptical that this theory is valid. But, you never know, the people on the fringe who propose this theory could be right.

>Messiah Ray isn't a figment of my/your/our imagination - he's a real person using fame to drive his ideals into major corporations and the general public. Something definitely wrong there if you can't see what the self-appointed Messiah is doing.<

I know Ray exists. I have copies of most of his books (all except 'age of intelligent machines'). But I also have books by authors like Hans Moravec, Rodney Brooks, Bob Seidensticker, Greg Stock and James Hughes (to name a few), all of which present their own roadmaps to the future that disagree with Kurzweil's in certain respects. I personally see no reason why Kurzweil's roadmap should be held up as the definitive vision of our impending future. Maybe he thinks it is, and admittedly people like Kevin Kelly have said of Kurzweil, 'I think Ray is performing the service of a prophet', which obviously concurs with your opinions of him. But the point remains that to me and most of the H+ community, Ray's 'vision' is just one of many possible futures and we do not elevate it to any special 'inevitable' status.

The antidote to any prophet is to be open to the opinions of those who disagree with his or her prophecies.

>Intel, Google etc working very hard to meet the Messiah's needs... Oh dear.<

No. Intel and Google etc are in perpetual competition with their rivals. They need to innovate and refine and improve constantly, because if they do not that opens up a window of opportunity for their rivals to come along and offer superior products or services that take customers away from them. Yes, this competition might end up bringing Kurzweil's vision to fruition, but not because intel or Google's R+D teams are sat about asking 'how can we make this man's dreams come true'. Instead they care only to develop the next-generation in their companies product and probably think far less about the possible impacts of tens of thousands of very conservative but cummulative and convergent steps, of which their own R+D is but one part.

Of course, if people really want to stop the transhuman future in all its myriad forms, they can always choose not to upgrade their computers or use the better search engine or take the medicine that more effectively aleviates symptoms while causing the minumum side effects and all the other myriad little consumer choices we are making that, collectively, drives us towards a future of advanced biotech, nanotech infotech and cognitive computing and their obvious potential for redesigning the human species:)

Re: Transcendence through Second Life

extropiadasilva — Fri, 28 May 2010 18:44:27 -0000

>Thus, I do not think your logic follows. You assert that because technology's progress is approaching a singularity like a black hole is, and since a black hole we will be able to better model in the future, that we will be able to assume that we can also achieve technology's progress to a transhumanist singularity. Right? So if one of your premises is not valid, then your conclusion can't follow.<

That was not the point of my argument at all. I was trying to explain the difference between something that is unknowable in practice, and something that is unknowable in principle. The latter refers to something intrinsically mysterious. No methods for achieving understanding can be found, because no such methods exist.

On the other hand, if something is unknowable in practice the solutions are there to be found, it is just that finding that the solution is beyond current capabilities. It might remain beyond 'current' capabilities for an indefinite amount of time.

In the case of the black hole singularity, the key to understanding its mysterious singularity is quantum gravity. Once we have that, the 'singularity' will disappear in the light of mathematical clarity and we will instead talk about whatever REALLY lurks at the centre of black holes. When will we have a model of quantum gravity? I have no idea. Could be tomorrow, or it could be decades away, or we may never be able to develop such a thing. In the case of the technological singularity, the trick lies in using technology to upgrade your mind. If you can surf the technological wave, you will not see any singularity. For you, posthuman concepts will be every bit as understandable as human concepts are now. But, if you cannot surf the wave of technological change, but other minds can (and those minds might not start out as 'human'), sooner or later their mental powers will exceed yours by such an extent, they would not be able to explain their concepts to you anymore than you could explain anything to a goldfish.

>I absolutely agree with Gwyn's assessment that believing in the inevitability of immortality from a technological singularity is a matter of faith.<

But you make it sound as though this is a defining characteristic of a follower of transhumanism. Just as you cannot be a Christian if you do not believe Jesus Christ is the saviour of humankind, you cannot be a transhuman if you do not believe the Singularity is going to show up and grant you eternal youth though the power of goshwow amazing tech. Sorry, but I know plenty of transhumanists who just do not fit into this stereotype at all. In my experience, the transhuman community is a lot more skeptical than people seem to think. I have never known an idea being proposed (hey, we could live forever!!) without some voices in the community questioning such assertions ('could we? are you really sure? would it really be desirable, even if we could'?) The idea that there is some Great Leader who intones 'and this will will inevitably happen'' and his or her every prophecy is greeted with absolute unquestioned acceptance by anyone who thinks of themselves as a transhuman is just ridiculous, sorry.

Re: Transcendence through Second Life

extropiadasilva — Thu, 27 May 2010 17:27:25 -0000

@ Serendipity.

Let me be clear that I do not think transhumanism is a cult. There are also precious few things that I would describe as 'inevitable', and certainly no technological roadmaps fall into that category.

@ Gwyn

>It's "believing" that this technology will actually create a technological immortality through mind uploading, and, through that, create a new branch of humanity that is beyond conceptual reasoning. Now that is an article of faith!<

Hmm..Well, our knowledge of gravity is insuficient for understanding extreme spacetime distortion of the kind thought to exist at the centre of black holes or at the Big Bang. Our equations return infinities when we try and calculate what is going on in such places. Physicists take this to mean the models are breaking down, so they call it a 'singularity'. If and when we succeed in uniting quantum theory with general relativity, we may then be able to calculate what goes on at the centre of black holes or at the Big Bang. In short, the astrophysical/cosmological singularity is not 'beyond conceptual reasoning' in PRINCIPLE, only in (current) practice.

Similarly, I do not believe the technological singularity is 'beyond conceptual reasoning' in principle. We just currently lack the tools and techniques to wrap our heads around posthuman existence. Whether we can acquire such knowledge while still remaining human, however, depends on how flexible we are willing to be with our definition of 'human'. If some of our descendents and/ or technologies should evolve into a truly alien intelligence that is qualititively different to human thought, THAT might well be a conceptual barrier to understanding that is impassable.

Uploading. It fascinates me, not because of the promise of immortality, but because bizzarre conclusions are reached, whether you think it is possible, or impossible.

If it is possible, minds- even consciousnesses- can be copied. But, that violates the most basic principle of self-hood, which is 'I am unique'. I mean, how can someone else be 'me'? And yet, if my mind were copied all the personality and skills and memories that define me and give rise to my 'I' would be duplicated and that other person would be equally justified in saying 'I am Extie'. People sometimes cite the brains plasticity as a way around this dilema. Experience causes the brain to change, so copies would grow increasingly divergent. I guess that is so, but you could still imagine a scenario in which my brain is scanned and a hundred, or a thousand reconstructions are created and activated simultaneously. For a period of time, before divergence, there would be a thousand identical Extropias. How weird is that!

On the other if we suppose it is impossible- even in principle- to copy the mind. Well..why? The only way that could be the case is if the mind is something other than a physical process. If that is true, then the mind is supernatural. And THAT is an even weirder prospect (to me, at any rate).

Re: Transcendence through Second Life

extropiadasilva — Wed, 26 May 2010 17:49:02 -0000

> I have never read Kurzweil (or any of the "cult members") showing a method to get rid of concepts, but instead presents his own set for others to "believe" in.<

"Believe", huh? Yes, fair enough, when talking about decades that we have yet to enter, it probably is an article of faith to agree with Kurzweil that the future will turn out like he says. However, unlike any religious promises of paradise (which remain for ever an article of faith), Kurzweil's predictions will become experimentally falsifiable eventually. It is just a case of waiting for the decades 2009-2019 and 2019-2020 and seeing whether the technologies he predicted would be in use are, in fact, available.

...Um, then again, if we do reach 2040 and direct neural pathways for high-bandwidth connection to the human brain have not been perfected, that does falsify Kurzweil's prediction that such technology would be available by 2020, but it does not necessarily prove such a thing is ruled out entirely. So you could still believe it will be available one day and Kurzweil was just a bit optimistic. So, maybe hope does spring eternal, for tech-heads as well as the devout? :)

Re: Too busy for blogging :P

extropiadasilva — Sun, 23 May 2010 06:31:32 -0000

Hahaha:) Ah, Gwyn, there is something ironic about a post entitled 'too busy for blogging'. Kind of contradicts itself, no?

You say you are not a moddler. But, for those who are, maybe this video promoting dirt-cheap full motion capture will interest them:

http://www.kurzweilai.net/n...

Re: ALT! Who Goes There? – Part 4 – by Extropia DaSilva

extropiadasilva — Fri, 07 May 2010 05:23:09 -0000

>I read a few preview pages of the book on Google - horrible, mediocre stuff. Worse than your cult writings you publish via Gwyn's blog.<

As bad as that, huh?

>Funny... You're using the same mindwash propaganda on that poor blogger - similar variants you tried to use on me 6+ months ago.<

Relax. That poor blogger is preventing me from posting any more replies. That is good news for the anti-transhumanists, I suppose. Shame about free speech, the right to disagree and the importance of correcting misinformation, but oh well...

>The so-called H+ "community" - Messiah Kurzweil worshippers and followers - WANTS humanity to follow in their footsteps and is willing to destroy anyone who refuses to join<

I do not need to destroy you or any other individual. Know why? Because you are currently programmed to self-terminate. Either you take advantage of forthcoming anti-senesence therapies or personality emulations, in which case you are a practicising transhuman, or you shall die.

And no, that is not a threat. Just a statement of fact.

Re: ALT! Who Goes There? – Part 4 – by Extropia DaSilva

extropiadasilva — Thu, 06 May 2010 06:56:11 -0000

>No, no. I hate Linden Research and their progress, or lack thereof. Including the pro-Linden anti-Customer actions and policies over the years.<

I stand corrected.

>Cults want to evolve Technologies to suit *their* own lifestyle AND gradually force other people to adopt that life.<

There is a rather interesting article called 'transhumanism, Psywar and BEP's Immabee'. Some of the things said of transhumanism ('replacing every aspect of what we are as human beings – including our physical biology, the individuality of our minds and purposes of our lives; turning people into drones that serve the Hive) are gross distortions of the true agendas, but ignoring misinformation like that, the section 'selling transhumanism to the masses using psychological wafare' does provide some evidence for your position: That the public is being subtly manipulated into accepting dehumanizing ideologies. While I utterly refute the accusation that H+ advocates any such thing, that does not mean to say there could be organizations seeking to corrupt the well-meaning intentions of the transhumanist community.

Anyway, if you fancy reading the article, it is available at http://vigilantcitizen.com/...

>extropiadasilva's in the cult himself, which means he's going to deny everything<

There is a book called 'Appocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, AI, and VR'. On page 97 of the hardback edition, the author Robert Geraci says:

"Extropia DaSilva is an influential member of the immersionist community....and was one of the early voices for Appocalyptic AI". And on pages 104-105 it says 'transhumanists like Extropia DaSilva...will seek salvation in cyberspace, which is the perfect, heavenly realm of a divine humankind".

So, no, I will not deny EVERYTHING. I do believe humankind can expand its material, mental and spiritual potential with the help of technology, science. I do advocate bringing about the end of the world (in the sense of a transcendence from our current world to a better one) and I do think that goal is worth risking the end of the world in the familiar sense (ie total destruction). In fact, I have never denied everything you say; only that which is obviously not correct (according to what I think I know at time of writing).

Re: ALT! Who Goes There? – Part 4 – by Extropia DaSilva

extropiadasilva — Wed, 05 May 2010 06:18:04 -0000

>Nothing really worth mentioning since his first TED talk, except cult Seminars and ultra-expensive cult Bootcamps, his company/group's work image recognition/text recognition software and the already defunct Bilo (hopefully I haven't missed anything).<

Kurzweil does seem to repeat the same lecture over and over. Seems to me that one only needs read 'Age Of Spiritual Machines' and 'Singularity Is Near' to have pretty much covered everything he has to say on the subject of the 'law' of accelerating returns and its consequences.

I do not expect you to have read every essay, watched every lecture, attended every seminar and paid the high fee to attend his courses. I just expect you to back up claims like 'Kurzweil intends this' Kurzweil wants that' with some sort of evidence. You never do. You just make up these accusations which always turn out to be completely false or to be true in some sense but nothing like what you say.

>Just because cult representative Kurzweil stated the obvious (that technology can be used for harm), doesn't mean he isn't planning to build his own faux-Utopian universe by manipulating and ripping from developers around him AND taking the rest of Humanity along with, whether they like it or not.<

Ok well, let us imagine Kurzweil never talked about the cummulative and convergent knowledge in NBIC technologies. Even if that were so, all that R+D from all the relevant and (seemingly) not so relevant sciences and industries would still continue. Medical sciences would still be striving to understand biology, leading us down the path toward genetic engineering, cloning and other possible biotechnological capabilities. Manufacturing would still be striving to handle materials with more precision, stumbling towards nanotechnology and molecular nanosystems. Software and telecommunications companies would still be competing with each other to produce more powerful search capabilities, data mining tools and various narrow AI applications. And the cognitive sciences would still be using the fruits of biotech, nanotech, and information tech to design superior technologies for mapping the structure of the human brain and reverse engineering its functions, and roboticists would still be using that research to build 'brainer' robots and smarter, more adaptable autonomous systems.

Oh, and all the near-term, mid-term and longterm problems and dangers we face, making such ongoing research morally imperative (as well as financially lucrative and millitarily advantageous, provided the research does bare fruit), would still exist.

So I really do not see what you would gain from silencing Kurzweil, or me, or anyone else who likes to speculate on how these ongoing trends may shape the future. It certainly would not do anything to slow down or halt those trends.

>Would a Luddite hang out & about in Second Life for long periods of time?

Thought not.<

I thought you hated SL and considered it a huge waste of time?

Re: ALT! Who Goes There? – Part 4 – by Extropia DaSilva

extropiadasilva — Tue, 04 May 2010 05:47:53 -0000

>This just proves that Messiah Kurzweil is quite good at reeling in the gullible. Simply put, the Messiah confirmed his cult status by telling everyone that he's not really a futurist, but a man with a grand ambition of "enslaving", or perhaps "controlling" or even confining man kind to suit *his* way of lifestyle - to make his faux-Utopian world come into light.<

Well I know I am wasting my time asking for a reference, since you will fob me off with some excuse rather than admit you just made that up. How do I know you made them up? Because I have read just about every essay and book Kurzweil ever produced.

>the Messiah confirmed his cult status by telling everyone that he's not really a futurist<

No. Kurzweil often speaks of his ambition to become a successful inventor. "I've had the idea of being an inventor since I was five years old, and I quickly realized that you had to have a good idea of the future if you're going to succeed as an inventor. It's a little bit like surfing; you have to catch a wave at the right time. I quickly realized the world quickly becomes a different place than it was when you started by the time you finally get something done. Most inventors fail not because they can't get something to work, but because all the market's enabling forces are not in place at the right time.

So I became a student of technology trends".

Well, if that is not a description of a futurist, I do not know what is.

>but a man with a grand ambition of "enslaving", or perhaps "controlling" or even confining man kind<

You still cannot grasp the essential error in this kind of statement. There is a very big difference between advocating the development of technological capabilities with many upsides but also downsides, which include the possibility of enslaving, controlling or manipulating individuals and groups, and actively seeking to develop those capabilities for the express purpose of carrying out those evil acts.

> suit *his* way of lifestyle<

There are two ways in which one can force his or her lifestyle on others. The first is to force them to adopt a change when they would rather stay the same. The other is to deny them the opportunity to change when it is their wish to do so. I know of no evidence that suggests Kurzweil is intent on forcing people to adopt anything (of course, these technological developments may change society in ways that make opting-out increasingly difficult). I do get the feeling, though, that you would prevent the development of these technologies if you could. Why? Because you deem them to be a threat to *your* lifestyle.

Re: ALT! Who Goes There? – Part 4 – by Extropia DaSilva

extropiadasilva — Mon, 03 May 2010 07:34:16 -0000

>It has absolutely nothing to do with them, or any other researcher/developer. As long as they haven't aligned themselves to Messiah Kurzweil's directives.<

But how can any researcher/developer NOT be alligned to 'Messiah' Kurzweil's directives? Let me remind you of what Kurzweil said:

“The kinds of scenarios I’m talking about 20 or 30 years from now are not being developed because there’s one lab that’s sitting there creating a human-level AI in a machine. They’re happening because it’s the inevitable end result of thousands of little steps. Each step is conservative, not radical, and makes perfect sense. Each one is just the next generation in some company’s product.”

This is cummulative and convergent knowledge. The cummulative part refers to the familiar process whereby fields of expertise builds on the knowledge of the past, and so products improve. Storage devices decrease in physical size while also increasing in capacity; brain scanning technologies increase in resolution and decrease the amount of time needed to capture an image, and so on.

Convergent knowledge refers to (at least) one field of expertise providing tools, technologies and knowledge that become useful to other seemingly unrelated areas of expertise. An example of this is optogentics:

"microorganisms were studied for decades by people who just thought they were cool. They didn’t have a thought for neurology, much less neuroscience…[but] without that, we would not be able to build what we did.”- Dr Karl Deisseroth, leader of the team that invented optogenetics.

Now, you can quibble over aspects of the Kurzweil quote. You can say the end result is inevitable but only if you take continual, successful R+D as a given. There are, of course, enormous economic, moral, and environmental reasons why a lot of this R+D should continue, but even so you might prefer to think of 'likely' or 'probable' end results. And, the time frame (20-30 years from time of writing, which was 2002) might be out by years, decades or centuries for all I know.

So, within this vast network of researchers and developers you have some explicitly working toward realising Kurzweil's dreams, who are under his employment or sit on the same board of directors. You also have some who are working indepenently of Kurzweil and pursuing their own interests, but who are undertaking R+D of obvious relevance to his 'directives'. And, finally, you have R+D that seemingly has nothing to do with anything Kurzweil talks about, but which may come to be relevant in some nonobvious way at some point in the future.

So, while it might be nice if the world were simple and you could differentiate neatly between researchers and developers who wholeheartedly subscribe to the so-called "Singularity-Kurzweil Cult's 'inevitabilty' directives", and those who do not, in reality things just are not that simple at all.

Re: ALT! Who Goes There? – Part 4 – by Extropia DaSilva

extropiadasilva — Sun, 02 May 2010 12:54:41 -0000

>Are they *really* doing work towards transhumanism on their own, or are they being heavily influenced by Messiah Kurzweil and his web of inevitability?<

Greg Stock asked the following question in one of his books:

"The problem with Ray Kurzweil's vision goes much further than mere technical feasibility. Even if...we could buy a machine with the computational power of a thousand human brains.....and somehow shunt it into our own brains, why should we?". He goes on to explain why he would do no such thing:

"I am stymied if I insist on two criteria: That the benefits could not be as easily achieved through some other, noninvasive procedure, and that the benefits must be worth the discomfort of brain surgery".

Greg Stock does not believe we can design machines that will be superior to humans like Kurzweil does. But he does believe we might one day have access to wearable computing devices that massively augment senses, memories and other areas of cognition. He is also a biotechnologist who has created artificial chromosomes. His book is called 'REDESIGNING HUMANS: CHOOSING OUR CHILDREN'S GENES'. I think that makes him a transhumanist.

Cynthia Brezeal is a roboticist, specialising in social robots designed around theories of child developmental psychology. She was one of the keynote speakers at last years Singularity Summit. She began her talk by admitting she did not usually think about the Singularity while doing her work.

Ted Berger is reverse engineering the hippocampus. His team hope to one day invent a computer chip that can send and receive signals to and from the brain just like the hippocampus does. The chip would be used to help people whose hippocampus is no longer working.

Now, we can easily imagine these scientists, or others in their field doing work like desigining artificial chromosomes so that fighting diseases like Tay Sachs via genetic engineering is safer than it is today. Or inventing interactive cuddly toys like the teddy bear in Spielberg's AI. Or ending animal testing by designing biolologically-accurate simulations (that is one of the dreams of the Blue Brain project directed by Henry Markram). Does that make them cultists? They sound like regular scientists and inventors to me.

But what if they or some other group build on their work? What if someone takes Berger's artificial hippocampus and works out how to make an improved version that is slightly superior in some way(s) to the human hippocampus? What if a colleague of Brezeal gets together with a colleague of Markram and design a robot child with an artificial brain reverse engineered from the human brain? What if Greg Stock starts offering artificial chromosomes with genes that do not just fix crippling diseases like cystic fibrosis, but ENHANCE strength, or visual acuity or memory? What are they now? Mad? Evil? Deluded? Or are they still doing what scientists have always done, which is take the accumulated knowledge of past scientists, studied some aspects of it, refined and improved it?

You see, if you tell people transhumanists are cultists, they will think of crazies heading up into the mountains to await the Big Ship that will take them away to paradise. Too bad for the few suckers caught up in the cult but nothing to be concerned about. Bunch of whackos with strange ideas, too easily dismissed as poor deluded fools. But Greg Stock, Henry Markram, Ted Berger and Cynthia Brezeal are not crazy. They are eminent scientists heading massively well-funded research projects. Now, I see their work one day resulting in wonderful things, but it could also lead to something(s) very dangerous. Very powerful technologies can be used to do great good or great evil. Either way these people and those who will follow in their footsteps MUST be taken seriously. We CANNOT dismiss them as nutters out on the lunatic fringe of science. And that is what you are doing every time you claim transhumanism is a cult.

Re: ALT! Who Goes There? – Part 4 – by Extropia DaSilva

extropiadasilva — Sun, 02 May 2010 06:10:36 -0000

>Oh, Please. It *is* a cult, and you ARE a cultist. Traditional cult values don't necessarily apply, except the following of a representation. Cults never see themselves as a cult.

More complex and subtle than the traditional variety. I'm still trying to work out the criteria for such modern cults.<

Well, obviously you can make up some new definitions and according to your new criteria, transhumanism would be a cult. So what? I could make up new definitions of my own, according to which sailing is a cult, or you are a cult leader. I could even insist sailing *is* a cult and you ARE a cultist if you object with arguments that plainly show I am wrong. Repeating a statement with emphasis on certain words does not constitute a rebuttal of arguments debunking that statement, sorry.

>Have we not discussed this before? Messiah Kurzweil and his 'scriptures' of inevitability. Messiah Kurzweil acting as the leading "face" for the movement. Yes, there are others, but Messiah Kurzweil is what most people are bound to come across when they research the topic on YouTube, etc.<

Uhuh. There is also the Raelian movement (or was, not sure if they still exist). They were clearly a cult as I understand the definition, and they also had transhuman agendas. So what? That makes all of transhumanism a cult? I suppose science must be a cult too, given that many scientists (Greg Stock, Henry Markram, Ted Burger, Cynthia Brezeal, to name a few) are doing work relevant to transhumanism, and transhumanism includes the Raelian movement on its fringes. Guilt by association?

As for research, if anyone thinks they are clued up on this topic because they watched a lecture given by Kurzweil, they are mistaken. I agree that balance is essential. But using misleading terms in order to influence how people think CANNOT considered 'balanced'. And I think that is your intention when you use the word 'cult' in association with transhumanism. You do not care that it is innacurate. You just want the layperson to equate transhumanism with ultra-fringe psuedoscientific quasi-religious weirdness.

Re: ALT! Who Goes There? – Part 4 – by Extropia DaSilva

extropiadasilva — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 13:22:58 -0000

>The '[modern] cult' theory is relatively new, focusing on the fact that a handful of people are trying their hardest to transform the world they live in using ideals of the cult leader (or representative).<

I do not doubt the existence of cults. I just do not think it is appropriate to label transhumanism as such. For one thing, there is no 'leader' or set of principles that must be obeyed or else you are ostracised from the group (with one exception, which I shall get to in a moment). Obviously, if someone broadly rejects the ideals of transhumanism they effectively remove THEMSELVES from the group. There is clearly no point in staying within the group of you detest all it stands for. But a proponent of H+ is quite free to criticise, debunk and reject anything said by any other H+ proponent, without fear of being rejected from the group.

Secondly, you completely misrepresent the basic premise of transhumanism when you describe it as '... a handful of people...trying their hardest to transform the world they live in using ideals of the cult leader (or representative)'.

What transhumanism actually advocates is this: Each and every individual should be able to pursue and implement the means of overcoming any limitation that person deems undesirable. It is up to each and every individual to decide for themselves what limitations they can live with, and which ones they will remove. It is NOT about a minority group forcing the rest of humanity into becoming their version of what a human being aught to be. You can become whatever you want to be, or stay as you are. Your choice.

Now, one can raise the legitimate objection that you cannot grant the indivdual limitless freedom, because some choices deny freedom to others. So, in reality some technological capabilities will have to be subject to regulations and restrictions and bans.

Secondly, you could also argue that the individual's choices would be heavily influenced by the ideals of the society in which he or she lives. A person living in India or China, for example, would almost certainly choose a male child if it were possible to select what sex your child will be (it is). A Westerner would probably choose a physique similar to images of men and women that adorn advertisements and magazine covers.

But no transhumanist would advocate the forced selection of male babies, or the forced adoption of slimming pills for anyone over an idealised weight. And if any person did advocate any such thing, the rest of the community would come down very hard on them for violating the golden rule: The indivdual has the right to decide for themselves.

There are plenty of legitimate concerns that one can raise about transhumanism. But it is just plain WRONG to call it a cult. Please stop doing so.

Re: ALT! Who Goes There? – Part 4 – by Extropia DaSilva

extropiadasilva — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 05:08:58 -0000

>That sounds something along the lines of 'you are against, therefore your words mean nothing'. Sorry dear, but trying to discredit [me] won't work .<

Your words do mean nothing when what you say is contradicted by your actions. Example? You repeatedly claim to have no interest in certain discussions but at the same time you simply will not let it drop, and insist on dredging up the same old arguments even when they have almost no relevance.

>you're trying to blend age-old concepts with Cult ideals, hoping that readers of your text will join the cult one day. <

Maybe, maybe not. Totally irrelevant to this essay so I will just leave the accusation hanging in the air and move on..

>Trying to 'school' people by twisting their words into something unrelated/remotely related... Is that your persona's fetish, Extropia? Is that your way of sub-consciously brainwashing the masses into believing your cult ideals?<

Since you obviously find little to no value in anything I have to say, maybe you should just stop reading my essays? You have had your say again and again and again. To be honest, it is getting beyond a joke seeing you repeat the same accusations over and over even after they have long been discredited. 100+ replies and you have learned almost nothing about your faults. As I said: What a joke.

Re: ALT! Who Goes There? – Part 4 – by Extropia DaSilva

extropiadasilva — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 06:14:59 -0000

>Er, people have been doing this for thousands of years; It's not some 'new' concept conceived via the Internet. stop spinning age-old ideas as something 'new'.<

But I do not present these ideas as 'new', rather as the ongoing evolution of human culture. Although I do not make the point here, in other essays I have said that immersionism and roleplay have their roots in storytelling. Every human culture throughout all history have their myths, legends and folktales. You could almost define the human species as 'the storytelling animal'.

>extropiadasilva's 'Alt, who goes there' is, so far, extremely boring, obvious and lackluster. Boring and obvious, since it re-hashes age-old concepts with extropiadasilva's cult ideals, derived from lunatics like Kurzweil.<

From your POV this series is only going to get worse. You might like part 5, since that is where I talk about what is wrong with alts and identity play, and also where I show why a lot of what I said previously is probably wrong. But the final part is explicitly transhuman, much more so than the others. You will not approve.

Rehashing old ideas...Well, I see it as being akin to combinatorial evolution, the evolutionary process underlying technology. Every new technology is derived from combinations of older technology. In turn, every new invention becomes a potential building block for further rounds of invention. Similarly with books, articles and essays. Everything you ever read was created by taking bits and pieces from other people's work, and then recombining them and modifying them a bit to suit the 'new' book etc. Nobody ever wrote or invented anything without borrowing heavily from past thinkers and inventors.

Re: ALT! Who Goes There? – Part 4 – by Extropia DaSilva

extropiadasilva — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 05:11:29 -0000

Ah, I stand corrected. Thanks, Cube.