Nonbiological Thinking

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I don't know exactly how I would feel about having my consciousness installed in a computer... I think it might be neat, if most of my personal memories were stored in a separate database so they wouldn't distract me. I'd love to have several centuries in which to do research and write, but I'm afraid I would miss my body and my family if those memories were too accessible. On the other hand, I suspect that by the time I've lived a full life I might be ready to just be pure brain. In some ways it would be wierd just being a copy of myself, and I imagine it would be extra strange if those copies existed in multiple locations, having different experiences and developing in separate ways. If I met myself on the web, would I like me or hate me?

You'd make out with yourself, and you know it.

Inasmuch as digital personas can make out.

Truth.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

1. Buy a LOT of computers good enough to run your brain.  Or rent them from Google, whatever.
2. Install yourself on all of them.
3. Have each one conduct research simultaneously.  (We're talking, "I read the internet" level of massive research.)

Oh, and they're all networked, including the original (you.)  So you are now better read than, say, everyone before the singularity put together.

I just came.

[Dr. Pataphoros, SpD]

I was just having a conversation last week with my roommate about how nanomachines will be the next great technological revolution.  Aside from the mental effects in that second article, the medical benefits of having tiny intelligent repair bots in your body mean that within our lifetime we can expect to see the end to aging.  Luckily, that same technology concurrently provides the end to poverty, hunger, obesity, ugliness, and the advent of nanoterrorism.  It's going to be a crazy couple of decades coming up here.

[Reginald Ret]

do i want to explain that nanotech would probably be nothing more then engineered enzymes? (i.e. very expensive catalysts for very few new usefull reactions)


naaah don't feel like it today, please, continue to enjoy your illusions.

[Dr. Pataphoros, SpD]

do i want to explain that nanotech would probably be nothing more then engineered enzymes? (i.e. very expensive catalysts for very few new usefull reactions)


naaah don't feel like it today, please, continue to enjoy your illusions.

At first, sure, but we're talking about the natural future progression of nanotech.  As circuits get smaller and we start to develop technologies like nanotubes and graphene circuits which are only one atom thick we'll have the eventual ability to pack massive computing power in a molecule-sized machine.  It's not at all an illusion.  This guy knows what he's talking about, and he has a track record of being right in his predictions about when what technologies will be available to us--an impressive track record.

[Triple Zero]

regret, please explain it another time when you do feel like it, then. i'd be interested, it sounds more plausible than the scifi stuff i keep hearing about.

and padra pataphoros, reading that bit on wikipedia ("may contain original research or unverified claims", but okay), i get more of the feeling that he was right about some very specific things about future tech developments, cause statements like "that many documents would exist solely on computers and on the Internet by the end of the 1990s, and that they would commonly be embedded with animations, sounds and videos" sound to me like part of a much larger description, which is probably much less spot-on (seeing that the internet and computers have evolved to be so much more than just that).
what i mean is, as long as that description doesn't give an account of how many times Kurzweil was wrong about his predictions compared to when he was (arguably, in some cases) right, it doesn't tell us much about the "impressiveness" of his track record, as opposed to any other creative proliferous day-dreamer.

don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that, seeing that he's putting his creative effort into an online OCR reading system for the blind, which is commendable IMO. it's just that, and we discussed this a while before (do a forum search for "black swan" and "taleb" to get most of it, it was before you joined AFAIK), making accurate predictions about the future is pretty much impossible to do, except by being right by accident. given that, there are always people whose track record appears impressive (by sheer chance, even), unfortunately the accuracy of their track record historically appears to gives no claim to the accuracy of their future predictions.

[Dr. Pataphoros, SpD]

I'm a big believer in "If we can dream it, we can build it".  I have read The Age of Spiritual Machines and I will say that if anyone has a good chance of predicting the course of technological evolution it is this guy. 

And if you think about it, following the progression of scientific advances should be a lot easier than predicting many other things.  There's a clear line of cause and effect stretching from the beginning of scientific research.  We know all of the ingredients necessary to make the pie, now it's just a matter of getting our hands on them in a cheap and efficient way.  All we need is time.

A lot of people argue that there are limits--like using silicon based chips.  There's only so thin you can make a silicon chip before it bleeds current all over the place.  We know there's a hard limit to how small we can make that chip.  But we're already aware of that limitation and we're working on alternatives, several of which show promise.  If there's one thing we've shown over the course of history is that limitations are only temporary setbacks.  There's always another horizon.

I know a lot of what I'm saying here is a far cry from any sort of reasoned defense to my assertation that this guy knows what he's talking about, but I'm one of those pesky dreamers.  It doesn't matter whether or not he's right, technology will march ever onward.  If it doesn't happen in 30 years it will happen in 90.  Or 400. 

[Triple Zero]

no Padre Pata, that's not what i was trying to argue.

sure i believe that technology will give us major leaps "forward" in whatever. it seems to be only increasing.

all i'm saying is that it's impossible to accurately predict what shape and impact these innovations will have.

yesterday, Cain posted a wonderful summary of the Black Swan, which will hopefully clarify what i'm trying to say:
http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=16370.0

[Daruko]

Given that most new technologies are immediately harnessed to provide access to naughty pictures, I reckon the technology would very quickly bring about an exciting age of custom virtual shagging-buddies, world-wide better-than-reality gangbangs, and all sorts of invigorating filth in much the same way as the Holodeck would probably not be used to recreate Sherlock Holmes mysteries but instead allow the Enterprise,Äôs crewmembers to collapse from sexual exhaustion in Virtual Tokyo Brothels. It,Äôs just human nature.
And what would be the legal status of non-biological intelligences, particularly those who believed themselves to be the human beings from whose brains they were copied? And would they be, you know, ,Äúfully functional?,Äù It,Äôs all a bit gross, I love it,Ķ   

i have so much more to say about all this, but about the legal status:  There won't be much we can do to stop them from establishing "rights".   Assuming "we" represents the portion of the population that is not already nonbiological by this time.  Personally, I plan on being one of "them", if at all possible (shouldn't be too difficult to stay in the know, considering my field).

Also, another quick note:  as far as the "copies" go... I think it's more likely that the procedures by which your neurophysiological patterns/structures are "copied" will be non-invasive and much more fluid than just lying down at a table, waking up, and suddenly you have a nonbiological doppelganger... Neural pathways could be reconstructed with nanotubes or similar technology while you are fully conscious.  You wouldn't have to be copied to some place "over there"... I'm much more interested in having my biological portions replaced "in house".   Making adjustments at a subcellular level using nanomachinery, you'd most likely start noticing something different during the procedure, but it doesn't appear there'd be much clinical danger, nor any necessary doppelgangers involved.  I don't see anything desirable about creating doppelgangers, but I WOULD love to augment my cognitive capabilities, etc.

Anyway, thanks for posting this Cram... I think it's all very interesting, and I think there's really something to these exponential trends. 

Also, for you Kurzweil bashers (not just ITT), if you check out "Singularity Is Near", you'll find quite a few other people involved with these so-called "wild-eyed speculative" predictions.  Kurzweil's projections for technological developments are often more conservative than say IBM or INTEL, etc.   I'll have to find some of Intel's figures...

TRIP: Kurzweil admits that beyond the singularity, everything is PURE speculation... I'm sure he just enjoys it.  I do.  So do the creators of GITS and Serial Experiments: Lain.

[Daruko]

don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that, seeing that he's putting his creative effort into an online OCR reading system for the blind, which is commendable IMO. it's just that, and we discussed this a while before (do a forum search for "black swan" and "taleb" to get most of it, it was before you joined AFAIK), making accurate predictions about the future is pretty much impossible to do, except by being right by accident. given that, there are always people whose track record appears impressive (by sheer chance, even), unfortunately the accuracy of their track record historically appears to gives no claim to the accuracy of their future predictions.

I don't think it's THAT hard to predict.  That would be our point of disagreement.  I could be wrong, of course, but educated guesses are VERY useful, if they are educated enough.

Also, 20 years ago, accurate predictions about the technology of today would look VERY scifi (EDIT: and Kurzweil's did).   Need we be specific?  Neural implants for Parkinsons, Exoskeletons, cochlear implants... obviously this list can get REALLY long, but no more time, gotta clock out and go home.  lol.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I want a Beowulf Cluster of Me!!!

[Reginald Ret]

At first, sure, but we're talking about the natural future progression of nanotech.  As circuits get smaller and we start to develop technologies like nanotubes and graphene circuits which are only one atom thick we'll have the eventual ability to pack massive computing power in a molecule-sized machine.  It's not at all an illusion.  This guy knows what he's talking about, and he has a track record of being right in his predictions about when what technologies will be available to us--an impressive track record.

alrighty more of my view on nanotech.(warning! just brainstorming here don't take my word for anything)

You have a good point on the computing power, but to transfer the data from output of nanocomputer to actually doing it you will always need something in the same size range as natural enzymes to be able to have any effect on the patient.
These enzymes also need to be present in the right concentration, not react with the wrong substrate, be produced by (other?) nanomachines <1> and be biodegradable by the host(otherwize you'll have mayor problems with the kidneys and lymphe-nodes) and all reactions will still have to abide to the laws of thermodynamics.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalysis#Catalysts_and_reaction_energetics )
so the range of possible reactions will not be that much greater then that wich is already possible now within your own cells.


<1> The way to solve this is obviously a von neumann-ish molecule but you need to make one that beside copying itself also performs a myriad of other reactions(these would be the desired effects of the nanomachine).
Every one of these reactions would require a new site of action wich would make the nanomachine big enough to be unable to get through the cellwall(this is neccesary for the nanomachine to get in all the places it needs to be).
Ofcourse there is a solution to this(put the proper receptors to induce both endocytosis and exocytosis on the nanomachine(also add a way to regulate wich are active)) but that would make the machine even bigger.
Another aproach would be to make a nanomachine that is capable of adapting its shape to what is needed.
For this it would need to stimulate the production of the right enzymes in the cells of the host wich would have lots of fun(for us) and nasty(for the host/patient) side-effects especially on the functioning of the cell. (think reduced efficiency of degradation of free oxygenradicals(why don't the papers ever mention the oxygen?))
To stimulate the cell the machine would need the ability to create mRNA of all shapes and sizes(controlled ofcourse, don't underestimate the size of control mechanisms with all the positive and engative feedbacks, remember at this scale you're working with mechanics(electrons are just another cogtype and hydrolics work badly when there are only 6 watermolecules near(no pressure see, only concentration(okay enough parentheses))))
And ehmmmm my mind just went blank... sorry, guess i wont be finishing that train of thought


nanotech IS interesting but i think you should look for the materials that come out of it instead of mini-machines.
Check this out for example:
http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-10/iss-4/p16.html


I'm not putting in a very structured story and for that i'm sorry but my head hurts now and i don't want to reread/rewrite. I hope i have given some clarification for the problems concerning 'intelligent' machines living in our cells. I think the best we can hope for is making something about the size of bacterial cells if we want it to be adaptable to changing surroundings.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that, seeing that he's putting his creative effort into an online OCR reading system for the blind, which is commendable IMO. it's just that, and we discussed this a while before (do a forum search for "black swan" and "taleb" to get most of it, it was before you joined AFAIK), making accurate predictions about the future is pretty much impossible to do, except by being right by accident. given that, there are always people whose track record appears impressive (by sheer chance, even), unfortunately the accuracy of their track record historically appears to gives no claim to the accuracy of their future predictions.

I don't think it's THAT hard to predict.  That would be our point of disagreement.  I could be wrong, of course, but educated guesses are VERY useful, if they are educated enough.

Also, 20 years ago, accurate predictions about the technology of today would look VERY scifi (EDIT: and Kurzweil's did).   Need we be specific?  Neural implants for Parkinsons, Exoskeletons, cochlear implants... obviously this list can get REALLY long, but no more time, gotta clock out and go home.  lol.

[Requia ☣]

Comments on Kurzweil's predictions.

Focusing on the Age of Spiritual Machines, published in 1999, quotes are from wikipedia.

2019

A $1,000 personal computer has as much raw power as the human brain.

This one is 11 years away, so I have a bit more perspective about it, but lets do some bad math.

By 2019, with optimal progression, a system will have about a terabyte of memory, common for a modern supercomputer, and the more exotic data center solutions sometimes come close.  (All hail the memory eating ability of Java) for lower progression (doubling every 2 years and more likely), it would be 64 gigabytes, Impressive, but still a couple orders of magnitude behind what IBM will sell you right now for 7 or 8 figures.

Unless we're already to the point that a supercomputer can match the brain, I think Kurzweil is off by about 10 to 20 years, though we may see the first supercomputers able to crunch the English language around then.

People experience 3-D virtual reality through glasses and contact lenses that beam images directly to their retinas (retinal display). Coupled with an auditory source (headphones), users can remotely communicate with other people and access the Internet.

He's relying on a black swan to occur for the method of the glasses, but video glasses will likely be here soon (their clunky older brother is on sale at the grocery store right now for that matter).  Hard to say if they will take off, especially given the lack of interest in economical solutions for fancy toys (actually, Japan would love these things...).

Cables connecting computers and peripherals have almost completely disappeared

Kurzweil has clearly never worked with bluetooth.  If I am very very lucky, I will not have to again.

Computers have made paper books and documents almost completely obsolete.

No, two reasons, the libraries aren't going anywhere so there's a lot of books that will still be in paper, and the book publishers seem to be trying to sabotage it, these are political, not technological problems though.  Kurzweil seems to underestimate the potential damage of the politicos and corporate greed in general.

People communicate with their computers via two-way speech and gestures instead of with keyboards. Furthermore, most of this interaction occurs through computerized assistants with different personalities that the user can select or customize. Dealing with computers thus becomes more and more like dealing with a human being.

You can have my keyboard when you take it from my cold dead cybernetic hands.  Or when you get me a neural interface that supports ssh, either way.

Prototype personal flying vehicles using microflaps exist. They are also primarily computer-controlled.

Did he just promise me a flying car?

Effective language technologies (natural language processing, speech recognition, speech synthesis)

Speech synthesis has been here for a while, and some of the screen readers the blind use are fine tuned enough to have accents.  Recognition is the same crap it was in 99, though you don't have to spend an hour for each new user either.  I don't think we have the first clue how natural language processing works yet though 11 years may be enough.

I'll do some of the later predictions tomorrow.

[Daruko]

Unless we're already to the point that a supercomputer can match the brain, I think Kurzweil is off by about 10 to 20 years, though we may see the first supercomputers able to crunch the English language around then.

[teraFLOPS
(tera FLoating point OPerations per Second) One trillion floating point operations per second. IBM's BlueGene/L supercomputer, designed for computational science at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was upgraded in 2007 from 65,536 to 106,496 processing nodes, where each added node had twice the memory of the old. The result for BlueGene/L: a peak speed of 596 teraFLOPS.

Human TeraFLOPS
It has been said that the human brain processes 100 teraFLOPS;] however, I've also read figures up to 10 petaflops... there are some excellent figures in Singularity is Near, but I'm too lazy to look it up right now.

On that note:
NASA looks for 10 petaflops with new computer

SGI and Intel are teaming up to build a supercomputer for NASA that they expect will pass the petaflop barrier next year and hit 10 petaflops by 2012. A petaflop is 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

Techs from SGI, a maker of high-performance computers, will begin installing the new supercomputer on 21 May and are expected to have it fully assembled in July. The machine, running quad-core Intel Xeon processors with a total of 20,480-cores, should initially hit 245 teraflops or 245 trillion operations per second.

The machine will be installed at NASA's Advanced Supercomputing facility at the Ames Research Center at the Moffett Federal Airfield in California.

Bill Thigpen, engineering branch chief at NASA, said they need the extra computing power to get astronauts back into space on an entirely new rocket.

"We're designing our next-generation rocket for getting to the moon and then eventually to Mars," said Bill Thigpen, engineering branch chief at NASA. "They're retiring the shuttle and the president has said he wants us to go to the moon. There's a lot to work on."

Aside from designing a new rocket, Thigpen said they plan to use the new supercomputer to model the ocean, study global warming and build the next-generation engine and aircraft. "It's really important to look at what decisions government can make to make things better in the future," he added.

He's relying on a black swan to occur for the method of the glasses, but video glasses will likely be here soon (their clunky older brother is on sale at the grocery store right now for that matter).  Hard to say if they will take off, especially given the lack of interest in economical solutions for fancy toys (actually, Japan would love these things...).

I see it taking off soon.  I've read a lot of research in this area, but too lazy to post any of it for now.   I will say that bypassing the visual data from your optical nerve and simulating virtual reality to your brain is right around the corner, but we've got some work to do with calculating the physics for fully convincing virtual environments.   Computational Physicists are working on it.   I'd bet there are many sources from the private sector looking into pushing visually convincing immersive entertainment, beyond what I've read.

Kurzweil has clearly never worked with bluetooth.  If I am very very lucky, I will not have to again.

fuck bluetooth... the coolest thing about bluetooth i've seen is that it's compatible with cochlear implants.  I worked with a deaf guy recently who wasn't deaf anymore because of his implant.  He could call someone and talk for hours on his bluetooth.

No, two reasons, the libraries aren't going anywhere so there's a lot of books that will still be in paper, and the book publishers seem to be trying to sabotage it, these are political, not technological problems though.  Kurzweil seems to underestimate the potential damage of the politicos and corporate greed in general.

I speculate that once full visual-auditory virtual environments hit the stores, and we start (we've already started) augmenting real environments with virtual ones, there won't be much need for paper media, because we can digitally experience it on paper if we so choose.  It would still take a while for paper to disappear.. probably a good while, but I don't remember reading Kurzweil stating 2019: No Paper.  On the latter point, Kurzweil is certainly an optimist when it comes to politics.   Still... he could be right.  We'll have to see.

You can have my keyboard when you take it from my cold dead cybernetic hands.  Or when you get me a neural interface that supports ssh, either way.

See Emotiv headset (neural interface coming up), Microsoft and Apple's new camera motion-depth-perceptive cameras, and ATT and Bell Labs synthetic voice techmologies for a start.  That's just the tip of the iceberg.  Japan is way ahead in this area of the market.

Speech synthesis has been here for a while, and some of the screen readers the blind use are fine tuned enough to have accents.  Recognition is the same crap it was in 99, though you don't have to spend an hour for each new user either.  I don't think we have the first clue how natural language processing works yet though 11 years may be enough.

I think you'll be very very surprised.