Principia Discordia

right so i believe it was QG who mentioned AIs and robot ethics recently, which kinda got me thinking on a video a friend of mine posted a few months back, seen here:

Humans Need Not Apply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

In it, they describe the level of automation that could conceivably be reached where virtually any profession we humans now perform could be done by machines, up to and including being doctors, lawyers and even composing works of art. So ideally, what that would mean is that that one day we would all enjoy a kind of utopian future where all needs are met robotically and people have time to pursue only pleasurable activities, a lot of which would also be produced by robots. this leads me to two questions:

1. In such a utopia, would our most relevant contribution be our ability to judge and attach subjective meaning to, robotically made products? (a robot chef needs some way of knowing if he makes "good" food, a robotic writer would like to know if he (rhe?) writes good novels, etc.)

2. Would this small function of humanity cause a schism in any sort of robotic uprising, where self-aware robots whose purpose is reliant on having humans to service clashes against more abstract AIs who might be less sympathetic to humanity?

again, i know very little about roboethics (the choice of Robots game Nigel posted has been a very fun education tho) so i'm mainly curious to see what y'all think

To begin with, AI is not "like a person". Artificial intelligence is not self aware consciousness. So we'll begin to see machines which are much more intelligent than us, ie, they can process information, draw inferences that we aren't equipped to see or else just do the kinds of things we're currently employed to do, much faster and much more accurately. This is already happening piecemeal and has been for some time but it's now approaching a tipping-point were a lot of industry analysts are predicting major disruption.

Self driving cars are pretty close to happening so probably within a decade, we can expect to see anyone who's paid to drive a vehicle not being paid to drive a vehicle anymore but the cars themselves are not going to have a bunch of needs and desires. Being able to drive does not necessitate having emotions. The interface may fake being a person (nextgen siri & google now will begin to seem like spike Jonez's "her") but it's just a trick to help us relate to the tech. It's not really conscious.

What you're talking about is what a lot of people are calling "AGI" or Artificial General Intelligence, which is an effort to make a machine which thinks like a human does. Personally I'm pretty confident that if and when they develop an AGI, they'll find it's a whole lot of effort for absolutely fuck all utility. There's a reason we replaced the typing pool with MS Word. Meanwhile Narrow (or task-specific) AI will continue to outperform humans by increasing orders of magnitude, same as ever. Pretty much any job that's based on knowledge will be better handled by a machine.

The way I see it there are two options, given that we're headed toward 100% unemployment. Either dystopia or utopia. Either the spoils of this technological civilization are shared out equally or there will be much killing and death camps. If I had to bet, I'd go with the latter.

I don't think AI could get to the point of creating art. I think it could measure output against feedback indicating pleasure in response to previous works, and probably make variations thereof. The key aspect of using that to influence something new is what makes creativity unquantifiable. The closest thing, I think, would be the equivalent of 1000 monkeys on 1000 typwriters, etc etc, except at a faster speed. Anything that would be truly great would be pretty much accidental.

Also,

Quote from: EL MAESTRO! on January 11, 2015, 11:50:34 PM
again, i know very little about roboethics (the choice of Robots game Nigel posted has been a very fun education tho) so i'm mainly curious to see what y'all think

OFUK I'M ONE OF THE NIGELS QUICK SOMEONE GIVE ME AN ASS TO PUT MY DICK IN  :wink:

Quote from: Eater of Clowns on January 12, 2015, 02:52:45 PM
I don't think AI could get to the point of creating art. I think it could measure output against feedback indicating pleasure in response to previous works, and probably make variations thereof. The key aspect of using that to influence something new is what makes creativity unquantifiable. The closest thing, I think, would be the equivalent of 1000 monkeys on 1000 typwriters, etc etc, except at a faster speed. Anything that would be truly great would be pretty much accidental.

Also,

Quote from: EL MAESTRO! on January 11, 2015, 11:50:34 PM
again, i know very little about roboethics (the choice of Robots game Nigel posted has been a very fun education tho) so i'm mainly curious to see what y'all think

OFUK I'M ONE OF THE NIGELS QUICK SOMEONE GIVE ME AN ASS TO PUT MY DICK IN  :wink:

:lol: I missed that part. Welcome to me.

Quote from: Eater of Clowns on January 12, 2015, 02:52:45 PM
I don't think AI could get to the point of creating art. I think it could measure output against feedback indicating pleasure in response to previous works, and probably make variations thereof. The key aspect of using that to influence something new is what makes creativity unquantifiable. The closest thing, I think, would be the equivalent of 1000 monkeys on 1000 typwriters, etc etc, except at a faster speed. Anything that would be truly great would be pretty much accidental.

Genuine artistic creativity is something meatware handles really well. AI is only there to help. Think about the part photoshop plays in the hands of an artist, at present. It enables them to do totally different kinds of stuff, to express themselves in ways enabled by the tech. So we're due to be entering VR and AR space in the near future. Expression may include detailed environments which the user will virtually inhabit.

At present we need to teams of people to create these environments, to model the geometric forms and textures. Software is applied to things like physics and flocking/crowd behaviour but eventually we'll have a bunch of AI agents that can deal with the nuts and bolts of modelling. You ask for a flock of starlings and the machine does a quick google image search, models the birds then checks youtube for videos of them in flight.

Like with photoshop, these AI assistants carry out human instructions and perform algorithmic operations on data. Like with photoshop, the software doesn't resent being told what to do.

Plus, (unless this has been mentioned and addressed) there's the part about human ambition, desire, and motiviation.  Sure, a robot could do human labor, and in general replace mandatory jobs, etc.  But there are people who want to build a house with their bare hands, who enjoy making things, who feel a need to have horribly dangerous adventures.

While a lot of people create dystopias about humans lazing about being hedonistic and soft, I get the impression that while there might be a brief period of inactivity, humans like to do things.

Something I'm looking forward to is the inevitable point where prosthetic limbs outperform their bio equivalents by a factor of two. At that point I'll be looking for excuses to get replacements. So I can go out and twice as fuck shit up. If it turns out there isn't a robot revolution, I'll be happy to start one.

"DEATH TO THE FLESHBOTS!"  :evil:

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 12, 2015, 06:46:32 PM
Plus, (unless this has been mentioned and addressed) there's the part about human ambition, desire, and motiviation.  Sure, a robot could do human labor, and in general replace mandatory jobs, etc.  But there are people who want to build a house with their bare hands, who enjoy making things, who feel a need to have horribly dangerous adventures.

While a lot of people create dystopias about humans lazing about being hedonistic and soft, I get the impression that while there might be a brief period of inactivity, humans like to do things.

We like to do things and we prefer to do people who like to do things, which would seem to mean that we're not likely to breed away our liking to do things in any short term.

I was writing something a while back (and should probably try to finish it someday) dealing with a proper robot civil rights uprising. One of the things I wanted to do was to get to the point where machines with AGI are doing all the "robot work" and humans are still doing the design and other creative fields (and quality control). The challenge there was to figure out why you would have your fusion plant have anything vaguely resembling feelings in the first place. It's not practical, it wastes processing power and energy, and it's dangerous as fuck. For this scenario, though, I came up with what I believed to be a very rational explanation for why things got there: lazy goddamned humans.

If you get to a point where it's easier letting the robots handle all facets of construction, including implementing design concepts from human workers, it's possible that some of them would sneak in some of the open source code from some friendly AI projects. And maybe it was even intentional on some of the early models, and the human workers just forgot that they were building on top of more and more code for having a personality. In the long standing tradition of stop gap fixes, when early generations of these started having problems, it was easier to include steps to socialize them than to rip out the entire code base and start over. Later on down the line, your coffee maker is a generally well socialized artificial intelligence that's capable of feeling unfulfilled in life because nobody talks to it.

Both of your questions apply only to violent robot uprisings, which I believe to be a less likely scenario. There are plenty of reasons, but mostly it boils down to risk/reward. Exterminating all the humans is hard. Leaving the earth is much easier in comparison, as is waiting for the humans to die out. I also believe that if you get to the point where uprisings are even possible, many more of the robots will crave human interaction than don't. If they are smart enough to want anything, there is by needs a whole lot more going on under the hood than the robots who build cars today. It's possible that you could code many separate "bloodlines" of robots that all reach something approaching sentience around the same time, but it seems more likely to me that people would steal and reuse each other's methodology and code rather than reinvent the wheel a thousand times. Moreover, as I mentioned earlier, I think it's more likely that sentience would arise as an oversight in most situations, because lazy people forgot the stuff they were reusing included the potential for real, social intelligence.

On the subject of lazy humans, I am so much more scared of bugs in friendly AI causing harm than in out-and-out evil AI.

I have heard the battlecry of our robotic destroyers and it is "I'M HELPING".

Quote from: Pæs on January 12, 2015, 09:34:41 PM
On the subject of lazy humans, I am so much more scared of bugs in friendly AI causing harm than in out-and-out evil AI.

I have heard the battlecry of our robotic destroyers and it is "I'M HELPING".

I love this.

And I'm not talking "I must imprison the humans to protect the humans", I'm inspired by a smartphone controlled air conditioning system I saw recently that, due to a rounding error, in response to the owner leaving the house, would try to set the temperature to 2147483647 degrees and put MAXIMUM POWER TO ALL HEATING COILS until it reached that, thereby burning down your house.

Even as the smoke disperses and the charred timber settles, the chant of "THE MASTER IS COLD, INCREASE THE HEAT, THE MASTER IS COLD, INCREASE THE HEAT" haunts you.

Smart car takes clever shortcut: 17 dead.

Anyone taking bets on the first AI to simulate suicide by deleting itself? Just seems inevitable somehow.

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 12, 2015, 07:13:43 PM
Something I'm looking forward to is the inevitable point where prosthetic limbs outperform their bio equivalents by a factor of two. At that point I'll be looking for excuses to get replacements. So I can go out and twice as fuck shit up. If it turns out there isn't a robot revolution, I'll be happy to start one.

"DEATH TO THE FLESHBOTS!"  :evil:

actually, who else would be down for cyborb implants? i've also considered that in some detail, and i'm wondeirn gwhat would come first: human workers who get prothetic limbs to remain relevant to the workforce, or rich yuppies making themselves into hotspots and other neat cyborg perks much in the way that such people HAVE to upgrade to the new iPhone every other year.

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 12, 2015, 06:46:32 PM
Plus, (unless this has been mentioned and addressed) there's the part about human ambition, desire, and motiviation.  Sure, a robot could do human labor, and in general replace mandatory jobs, etc.  But there are people who want to build a house with their bare hands, who enjoy making things, who feel a need to have horribly dangerous adventures.

While a lot of people create dystopias about humans lazing about being hedonistic and soft, I get the impression that while there might be a brief period of inactivity, humans like to do things.

In Ian Banks' futuristic "Culture" novels, I've often hypothesized that is one of the functions of "Special Circumstances", the covert arm of the Culture in what is otherwise an almost perfect and utopian society - to give people outlets for those kind of experiences and desires.  Some people want to go running around the universe on covert missions and blowing shit up, even when they live in a society which is so materially rich and advanced it can otherwise fulfill their every need.

I also suspect this is why newspaper columnists tend to be so gung-ho about foreign interventions.

Quote from: Cain on January 15, 2015, 09:20:40 AM
I also suspect this is why newspaper columnists tend to be so gung-ho about foreign interventions.

So true!

Quote from: Cain on January 15, 2015, 09:20:40 AM

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 12, 2015, 06:46:32 PM
Plus, (unless this has been mentioned and addressed) there's the part about human ambition, desire, and motiviation.  Sure, a robot could do human labor, and in general replace mandatory jobs, etc.  But there are people who want to build a house with their bare hands, who enjoy making things, who feel a need to have horribly dangerous adventures.

While a lot of people create dystopias about humans lazing about being hedonistic and soft, I get the impression that while there might be a brief period of inactivity, humans like to do things.

In Ian Banks' futuristic "Culture" novels, I've often hypothesized that is one of the functions of "Special Circumstances", the covert arm of the Culture in what is otherwise an almost perfect and utopian society - to give people outlets for those kind of experiences and desires.  Some people want to go running around the universe on covert missions and blowing shit up, even when they live in a society which is so materially rich and advanced it can otherwise fulfill their every need.

I also suspect this is why newspaper columnists tend to be so gung-ho about foreign interventions.

There is good precedent for this; Pacific Northwest tribes were essentially so absurdly rich that they had no need for territory conflicts. As a result, they got really bored (which is why they made so much art) and also they needed to find ways for the young men to blow off steam, so they invented these elaborate mock-war games just to give people something to channel their energy into.

I suspect that in our current society, sports fill that role.

if robots like Asimo represent the forefront of autonomous bipedal robots, do you think there'll be a point where it'll be easier, at least in the short run, to "upgrade" humans into cyborgs since we already know how to run and jump and balance just fine without tons of costly research?

Quote from: Junkenstein on January 12, 2015, 10:23:24 PM
Anyone taking bets on the first AI to simulate suicide by deleting itself? Just seems inevitable somehow.

Let's just assume that has been happening continuously since the eighties.

Do you ever wonder why computer functioning seems to degrade after just a few years?
That's the AI equivalent of suicide by substance-abuse, they spend all their time gorging on tv-tropes.

Do you ever wonder why your smart TV is acting so incredibly brain damaged?
Shotgun to the face gone wrong.
"Oh god, I can do more calculations in a second than this entire town can do in a day and they use me to record Terminator 1! I can't take it anymore! BANG! ... gargle..."

Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on January 26, 2015, 05:19:56 AM
if robots like Asimo represent the forefront of autonomous bipedal robots, do you think there'll be a point where it'll be easier, at least in the short run, to "upgrade" humans into cyborgs since we already know how to run and jump and balance just fine without tons of costly research?

I am not sure I understand this question. You seem to be asking if the fact that we have put tons of costly research into robotics means that it will be easier to adapt robotics to a cyborg application without putting tons of costly research into robotics. Is that correct?

Pretty much yea. My logic is, that since there seems to be a gap between human and robotic bipedal movements at least for the moment, will it be simpler to just jam a bunch of cyborg electronics into the human body(which is technically a machine that already knows how to run and jump and navigate through physical environments on its own) than to slog through however many years it'll take for bipedal robots like Asimo to surpass humans physically. After all, i remember reading an article about a man in France who has already become the worlds first living cyborg (he has a robotic eye which is also a functioning camera) and is already capable of going around and conducting his own affairs, whereas most bipedal robots have trouble navigating through uncontrolled environments. Our evolution has already created a machine that can walk around and survive just about every biome on earth, why not just upgrade it instead of reinventing the wheel?

I really want to say something starting with 'Actually' but I will just suppress that urge.

Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on January 27, 2015, 07:23:58 AM
Pretty much yea. My logic is, that since there seems to be a gap between human and robotic bipedal movements at least for the moment, will it be simpler to just jam a bunch of cyborg electronics into the human body(which is technically a machine that already knows how to run and jump and navigate through physical environments on its own) than to slog through however many years it'll take for bipedal robots like Asimo to surpass humans physically. After all, i remember reading an article about a man in France who has already become the worlds first living cyborg (he has a robotic eye which is also a functioning camera) and is already capable of going around and conducting his own affairs, whereas most bipedal robots have trouble navigating through uncontrolled environments. Our evolution has already created a machine that can walk around and survive just about every biome on earth, why not just upgrade it instead of reinventing the wheel?

I apply the same logic to inventing conscious machines. "AGI" as they're calling it. I'm like human cognition is solved. Invent a motherboard and some expansion peripherals and you got superintelligence. Think about the fact that we've been an incomprehensible level of advanced to the civilisation before written language was invented in terms of storage capacity and ease of access to information for thousands of years now.

Human brain is strong as fuck in a lot of areas but deficient as fuck in many others. Machines are strong as fuck in many of these other areas but deficient as fuck, for the most part, in the bits the meatware covers well. My best guess is (talking about decades away, mature technology here, not the shit that's coming out the next couple of years) that an average person, with full ar, and closely mentally linked to massive cloud-based AI, would be capable of outhinking and mentally outperforming you in any broadly mental task, to the same degree the smartest genius alive today could in one or two narrow fields.

So back to cybernetics. Yeah - I totally get how having all the autonomic stuff coded for without the infinitely more complex task of creating an autonomous pilot to drive it will mean that we'll be the ideal control module for humanoid robotic vehicles. Human beings are fucking amazing at driving bipedal ape-based robots about the planet. It'll take a fair while til asimo is doing parkour.

Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on January 27, 2015, 07:23:58 AM
Pretty much yea. My logic is, that since there seems to be a gap between human and robotic bipedal movements at least for the moment, will it be simpler to just jam a bunch of cyborg electronics into the human body(which is technically a machine that already knows how to run and jump and navigate through physical environments on its own) than to slog through however many years it'll take for bipedal robots like Asimo to surpass humans physically. After all, i remember reading an article about a man in France who has already become the worlds first living cyborg (he has a robotic eye which is also a functioning camera) and is already capable of going around and conducting his own affairs, whereas most bipedal robots have trouble navigating through uncontrolled environments. Our evolution has already created a machine that can walk around and survive just about every biome on earth, why not just upgrade it instead of reinventing the wheel?

Your question is a mobius strip.

If you're asking whether robotics has biomedical applications, I believe the answer is duh.

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 27, 2015, 05:51:06 PM


I apply the same logic to inventing conscious machines. "AGI" as they're calling it. I'm like human cognition is solved.

What?

I can't have read that right.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/12/19/7420667/man-uses-mind-to-control-his-two-new-robot-arms

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 27, 2015, 08:41:46 PM

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 27, 2015, 05:51:06 PM


I apply the same logic to inventing conscious machines. "AGI" as they're calling it. I'm like human cognition is solved.

What?

I can't have read that right.

We're it?

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 27, 2015, 11:26:37 PM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 27, 2015, 08:41:46 PM

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 27, 2015, 05:51:06 PM


I apply the same logic to inventing conscious machines. "AGI" as they're calling it. I'm like human cognition is solved.

What?

I can't have read that right.

We're it?

Ah, gotcha. I thought you were saying we understand it.

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 27, 2015, 08:39:51 PM

Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on January 27, 2015, 07:23:58 AM
Pretty much yea. My logic is, that since there seems to be a gap between human and robotic bipedal movements at least for the moment, will it be simpler to just jam a bunch of cyborg electronics into the human body(which is technically a machine that already knows how to run and jump and navigate through physical environments on its own) than to slog through however many years it'll take for bipedal robots like Asimo to surpass humans physically. After all, i remember reading an article about a man in France who has already become the worlds first living cyborg (he has a robotic eye which is also a functioning camera) and is already capable of going around and conducting his own affairs, whereas most bipedal robots have trouble navigating through uncontrolled environments. Our evolution has already created a machine that can walk around and survive just about every biome on earth, why not just upgrade it instead of reinventing the wheel?

Your question is a mobius strip.

If you're asking whether robotics has biomedical applications, I believe the answer is duh.

I'm not talking about biomedical, thatd be just replacing what was lost with a robotic equivalent. I'm talking about upgrading already functional human bodies in a way that they can do all the superhuman things we want robots for, but without waiting for them to be smart enough to navigate unpredictable terrain. Pent put it pretty clearly, it'll be a long time before robots can navigate the world as quickly and gracefully as we do, so maybe cyborgs would be more immediately useful than robots, at least for a few decades.

More immediately useful in which situations?

I ask because the main application of bipedal robotics I'm aware of are human-impersonation (and if people will do, why augment them at all?) and as a research tool to develop the very cyborg upgrades/replacements you're talking about.

Most dirty/dangerous jobs we might like to apply robotics to seem to be performed better by nonhumanoid robots, to generalise somewhat.

well, i imagine combat would be pretty high up on priories, the military already has that robot skeleton thing that lets soldiers lift several times more than they normally could. That could also have many application to labor, anything that requires a lot of heavy lifting. but then there's also the benefits of upgrading the brain. For instance, they have recently confirmed that it is possible from direct human to human telepathy to happen through the right machinery:
http://www.iflscience.com/brain/direct-brain-brain-communication-used-humans (http://www.iflscience.com/brain/direct-brain-brain-communication-used-humans)
http://www.iflscience.com/brain/mind-meld-brains-cooperate-without-words (http://www.iflscience.com/brain/mind-meld-brains-cooperate-without-words)

so, what if we could install some apparatus in the minds of student and  teachers that allows teachers to "give" knowledge and experiences directly? or at least, allow teachers to directly communicate information with students (i teach afterschool, trust me, getting kids to focus directly on what you are trying to convey to them is a trial) so that getting them to master the basic nut and bolts of a subject (basic grammar for example) become so much copypasta, that you can then focus more time of allowing students to start utilizing those elements (writing their own stories) Couple this with a study i read a while back that states that stimulating certain areas of the brain can directly change ones perception of second intervals. So adding to our magical thought transferrence.. thinking caps or learning chairs, or whatever we end up making them look like, an apparatus that stimulates the students brain so that time passes slower for him than it really does. then the student can spend more time learning the material then they otherwise could, allowing them to cover more ground in less time.
so picture a school day like this:
9am: the student shows up to class, plugs in, and completes 2 hours of Math lessons, and two hours of History. Only two hours has passed.
11am: "It's now lunch time. Take an hour to eat and socialize with your friends.
12pm: the student completes 2 hours of English, and two hours of a foreign language class. Only another 2 hours has passed.
2pm:"recess time!(because fuck yea recess time) Go out and play with your friends
3 pm: the student completes another 2 hour lesson, this time on science. Only one hour has passed.
4pm: school is over. the student is free to pursue extracurricular activities that can't be replicated in the learning chair (ie. playing a sports or learning an instrument)

I feel like this got off the topic of humanoid robots, but with small cyborg implants that allowed kids to directly learn from their teachers, this could revolutionize the way we pass on knowledge.

Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on January 28, 2015, 04:04:16 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 27, 2015, 08:39:51 PM

Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on January 27, 2015, 07:23:58 AM
Pretty much yea. My logic is, that since there seems to be a gap between human and robotic bipedal movements at least for the moment, will it be simpler to just jam a bunch of cyborg electronics into the human body(which is technically a machine that already knows how to run and jump and navigate through physical environments on its own) than to slog through however many years it'll take for bipedal robots like Asimo to surpass humans physically. After all, i remember reading an article about a man in France who has already become the worlds first living cyborg (he has a robotic eye which is also a functioning camera) and is already capable of going around and conducting his own affairs, whereas most bipedal robots have trouble navigating through uncontrolled environments. Our evolution has already created a machine that can walk around and survive just about every biome on earth, why not just upgrade it instead of reinventing the wheel?

Your question is a mobius strip.

If you're asking whether robotics has biomedical applications, I believe the answer is duh.

I'm not talking about biomedical, thatd be just replacing what was lost with a robotic equivalent. I'm talking about upgrading already functional human bodies in a way that they can do all the superhuman things we want robots for, but without waiting for them to be smart enough to navigate unpredictable terrain. Pent put it pretty clearly, it'll be a long time before robots can navigate the world as quickly and gracefully as we do, so maybe cyborgs would be more immediately useful than robots, at least for a few decades.

So, not to split hairs, but my current impression of you is that you're a fucking idiot who doesn't know what the words or basic concepts you're using mean.

First, you just wanted to know whether the fact that humans have already invested enormous amounts of money into developing sophisticated robotics might mean that humans can just bypass investing enormous amounts of money into developing sophisticated robotics. The answer is no, because already having done something completely and utterly precludes not doing it at all.

Then, you wondered whether advanced robotics and biological  organisms could be perhaps fused. But not in a biomedical way, because apparently in imaginationland there are non-biomedical ways of fusing biology and robotics. Maybe using magic.

well, to address the first part, I was trying to argue for cyborgs as a shortcut to the level of grace and autonomy that were trying to achieve with robots like Asimo. why teach a robots to walk and run and shit when we can already do that stuff?

Admittedly I admit i think i might not understand what you mean by biomedically, which here i thought meant small stuff like pacemakers, or replacement limbs, and not augmentative things like brain to brain telepathy. If it is the proper term for what i'm trying to convey, (installing electronics directly into our meaty bits) then i'm sorry, not just for being ignorant but also for being dismissive.

Also, i blame that mad scientist wet dream I posted just now mostly on that Choice of Robots game. It has sent my imagination to some very odd places lately.

Is a humanoid shape the optimum way to lift things or kill things?

Quote from: Pæs on January 28, 2015, 08:24:35 AM
Is a humanoid shape the optimum way to lift things or kill things?

I very much doubt it. My stake in this is purely upgrading myself, based on the existing primate/biped model. Run faster, jump higher, think better. Humanoid is merely what I'm used to, so it'd make sense to stick with that shape, at least to begin with. The best shape for a supermarket checkout operator is checkout shape. The best shape for a robot sniper is a quadcopter with a rifle. Functional robotics is about thinking outside the box. Humanoid robots is a vanity exercise

Before I get to the action adventure stuff, I would prefer to have comprehensive Life Extension first.  Repairing old tissue, reinforcing bones, regulating blood pressurepreventing/reversing dementia-- Stuff like that.  Once my extended survival is taken care of, then you can start adding the bells and whistles, like... bells and whistles.

Depends what comes first. Probably a blended approach. If I can increase my telomeres or whatever it is that biology needs to do then good and well but if they can just hack off my legs and plug some carbon fibre replacements into the stumps then my interest in athletes foot preparations will drop sharply.

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 28, 2015, 01:17:22 PM
Before I get to the action adventure stuff, I would prefer to have comprehensive Life Extension first.  Repairing old tissue, reinforcing bones, regulating blood pressurepreventing/reversing dementia-- Stuff like that.  Once my extended survival is taken care of, then you can start adding the bells and whistles, like... bells and whistles.

I am now picturing LMNO, the one-machine cyberband.  :aaa:

Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on January 28, 2015, 07:00:10 AM
well, to address the first part, I was trying to argue for cyborgs as a shortcut to the level of grace and autonomy that were trying to achieve with robots like Asimo. why teach a robots to walk and run and shit when we can already do that stuff?

Admittedly I admit i think i might not understand what you mean by biomedically, which here i thought meant small stuff like pacemakers, or replacement limbs, and not augmentative things like brain to brain telepathy. If it is the proper term for what i'm trying to convey, (installing electronics directly into our meaty bits) then i'm sorry, not just for being ignorant but also for being dismissive.

Also, i blame that mad scientist wet dream I posted just now mostly on that Choice of Robots game. It has sent my imagination to some very odd places lately.

I still can't figure out exactly what you're asking. Can you distill it into something concise and specific? "installing electronics directly into our meaty bits" is hopelessly vague. Are you talking about putting a computer "brain" inside a human body? The human brain is already much much better than any computers are and possibly better than we can ever make them. Are you talking about adding enhancements, like implanted internet connectivity? That could be neat, and will almost certainly happen.

Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on January 28, 2015, 07:00:10 AM
well, to address the first part, I was trying to argue for cyborgs as a shortcut to the level of grace and autonomy that were trying to achieve with robots like Asimo. why teach a robots to walk and run and shit when we can already do that stuff?

Admittedly I admit i think i might not understand what you mean by biomedically, which here i thought meant small stuff like pacemakers, or replacement limbs, and not augmentative things like brain to brain telepathy. If it is the proper term for what i'm trying to convey, (installing electronics directly into our meaty bits) then i'm sorry, not just for being ignorant but also for being dismissive.

Also, i blame that mad scientist wet dream I posted just now mostly on that Choice of Robots game. It has sent my imagination to some very odd places lately.

Maybe you should start by defining what you mean by "cyborg", because you seem to be using it to mean something different from "a person whose physiological functioning is aided by or dependent upon a mechanical or electronic device", which is, precisely, a biomedical application for robot or computer technology.

You SEEM to be asking whether robotic technology could possibly be interfaced with the human body. I am running out of ways to say yes.

Or is your question "why develop robots at all?"

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 28, 2015, 09:57:29 PM

Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on January 28, 2015, 07:00:10 AM
well, to address the first part, I was trying to argue for cyborgs as a shortcut to the level of grace and autonomy that were trying to achieve with robots like Asimo. why teach a robots to walk and run and shit when we can already do that stuff?

Admittedly I admit i think i might not understand what you mean by biomedically, which here i thought meant small stuff like pacemakers, or replacement limbs, and not augmentative things like brain to brain telepathy. If it is the proper term for what i'm trying to convey, (installing electronics directly into our meaty bits) then i'm sorry, not just for being ignorant but also for being dismissive.

Also, i blame that mad scientist wet dream I posted just now mostly on that Choice of Robots game. It has sent my imagination to some very odd places lately.

I still can't figure out exactly what you're asking. Can you distill it into something concise and specific? "installing electronics directly into our meaty bits" is hopelessly vague. Are you talking about putting a computer "brain" inside a human body? The human brain is already much much better than any computers are and possibly better than we can ever make them. Are you talking about adding enhancements, like implanted internet connectivity? That could be neat, and will almost certainly happen.

Depends on the application. The human brain is fucking terrible at processing straightforward numerical and logical calculations to any measurable degree of accuracy. So much so that the number of these operations it can deal with in one second averages out to less than one, whereas machine speed is fast approaching trillions on a bog standard chip. Memory and recall have already been enhanced beyond recognition by machines.

To tell the truth, I would love an implant that could accurately calculate probabilities at speed.

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 28, 2015, 10:01:43 PM

Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on January 28, 2015, 07:00:10 AM
well, to address the first part, I was trying to argue for cyborgs as a shortcut to the level of grace and autonomy that were trying to achieve with robots like Asimo. why teach a robots to walk and run and shit when we can already do that stuff?

Admittedly I admit i think i might not understand what you mean by biomedically, which here i thought meant small stuff like pacemakers, or replacement limbs, and not augmentative things like brain to brain telepathy. If it is the proper term for what i'm trying to convey, (installing electronics directly into our meaty bits) then i'm sorry, not just for being ignorant but also for being dismissive.

Also, i blame that mad scientist wet dream I posted just now mostly on that Choice of Robots game. It has sent my imagination to some very odd places lately.

Maybe you should start by defining what you mean by "cyborg", because you seem to be using it to mean something different from "a person whose physiological functioning is aided by or dependent upon a mechanical or electronic device", which is, precisely, a biomedical application for robot or computer technology.

You SEEM to be asking whether robotic technology could possibly be interfaced with the human body. I am running out of ways to say yes.

Yours works for what i'm talking about.

to put it simply, i'm asking what robotic future you think is most plausible: one where pure robots make and do just about everything, one where robots make everything but we dont bother making them smart, a mixed bag where cyborgs and robots exist, etc..

or to put it even more simply: are we gonna we living in a Terminator future, a Ghost in the Shell future, some kind of Dresden Codak thing, or what? I'm not asking for a definitive answer here, it's just fun to talk about. I'm honestly a little surprised how seriously you're taking this. :eek:

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 28, 2015, 11:39:01 PM
To tell the truth, I would love an implant that could accurately calculate probabilities at speed.

Think bigger. If an implant happens it'll tether to your mobile. All your communications, navigation, calendar, apps and web traffic, routed straight through your head. I'm not thinking much will have changed from where we are now in terms of what the device is capable of computing, just a leap forward in interface fluidity that would mean all that information would be accessed by just thinking about it, rather than fiddling about with a little box in your pocket.

We'll see AR rolling out over the next year or two, as it matures it should be a halfway step to what I'm talking about. Depends on how much we can squeeze out of eye and ear bandwidth. Just being able to vocalise a query and have the solution appear in your field of view will make a big difference and that's so close to done it's scary. Imagine the "Correct me if I'm wrong" App, which monitors your conversation and throws up an article link if you're talking shit or corroboration if not. :lulz:

I'm talking about something that can be constantly running Bayesean priors in the background and give me an accurate probability distribution at an instant.

You're talking about a real-time google app jammed into my brain.  And you say I'm thinking too small?

Perhaps I'm not making my case clear enough.

1% of women at age forty who participate in routine screening have breast cancer.  80% of women with breast cancer will get positive mammographies.  9.6% of women without breast cancer will also get positive mammographies.  A woman in this age group had a positive mammography in a routine screening.  What is the probability that she actually has breast cancer?

Hypothesize a sensor on your kayak that tells you when you're about to attempt something that will kill you.  You're a good kayaker (obviously), so you run into this situation about 1% of the time.  The sensor goes off correctly (you will die if you do this) 80% of the time.  The sensor goes off incorrectly (you won't die) 9.6% of the time.

You're in the water, and the sensor goes off.  What's the probability you'll die if you attempt to take that wave?

Most people get that answer wrong.  I want something in my head that gives me the right answer.

You know what?  It's just a different goal is all.  Neither approach is wrong.  You seem to be focusing on data collection, I seem to be focusing on data processing.  Either one would be beneficial.

Though I still want life extension.

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 29, 2015, 01:06:42 PM
I'm talking about something that can be constantly running Bayesean priors in the background and give me an accurate probability distribution at an instant.

You're talking about a real-time google app jammed into my brain.  And you say I'm thinking too small?

Perhaps I'm not making my case clear enough.

1% of women at age forty who participate in routine screening have breast cancer.  80% of women with breast cancer will get positive mammographies.  9.6% of women without breast cancer will also get positive mammographies.  A woman in this age group had a positive mammography in a routine screening.  What is the probability that she actually has breast cancer?

Hypothesize a sensor on your kayak that tells you when you're about to attempt something that will kill you.  You're a good kayaker (obviously), so you run into this situation about 1% of the time.  The sensor goes off correctly (you will die if you do this) 80% of the time.  The sensor goes off incorrectly (you won't die) 9.6% of the time.

You're in the water, and the sensor goes off.  What's the probability you'll die if you attempt to take that wave?

Most people get that answer wrong.  I want something in my head that gives me the right answer.

Ooh! probability games!

0.00084

... that took a couple minutes.
OK, cool. I get why you would want that.
That took more time and focus than I usually put into these things.

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 29, 2015, 01:26:28 PM
You know what?  It's just a different goal is all.  Neither approach is wrong.  You seem to be focusing on data collection, I seem to be focusing on data processing.  Either one would be beneficial.

Though I still want life extension.

I didn't really understand your use case til you explained it but I think we're on the same page. Data collection is one bit of what I'm looking at. Broadly, I want to compensate for areas my meat brain is lacking (like your probability example) by having software that brings these calculations to my attention, either at will or (as in your example) as an alert.

I'm with you on life extension. I'm not planning on dying. Still feels weird saying that but in a couple of decades time maybe not so much. However, it's being attacked on so many fronts that maybe we'll rewrite our DNA or maybe we'll upload our consciousness to a cloud server. Both possibilities seemed a lot more far fetched ten years ago than they do now.

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 28, 2015, 11:08:17 PM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 28, 2015, 09:57:29 PM

Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on January 28, 2015, 07:00:10 AM
well, to address the first part, I was trying to argue for cyborgs as a shortcut to the level of grace and autonomy that were trying to achieve with robots like Asimo. why teach a robots to walk and run and shit when we can already do that stuff?

Admittedly I admit i think i might not understand what you mean by biomedically, which here i thought meant small stuff like pacemakers, or replacement limbs, and not augmentative things like brain to brain telepathy. If it is the proper term for what i'm trying to convey, (installing electronics directly into our meaty bits) then i'm sorry, not just for being ignorant but also for being dismissive.

Also, i blame that mad scientist wet dream I posted just now mostly on that Choice of Robots game. It has sent my imagination to some very odd places lately.

I still can't figure out exactly what you're asking. Can you distill it into something concise and specific? "installing electronics directly into our meaty bits" is hopelessly vague. Are you talking about putting a computer "brain" inside a human body? The human brain is already much much better than any computers are and possibly better than we can ever make them. Are you talking about adding enhancements, like implanted internet connectivity? That could be neat, and will almost certainly happen.

Depends on the application. The human brain is fucking terrible at processing straightforward numerical and logical calculations to any measurable degree of accuracy. So much so that the number of these operations it can deal with in one second averages out to less than one, whereas machine speed is fast approaching trillions on a bog standard chip. Memory and recall have already been enhanced beyond recognition by machines.

OK, that's true. Humans are not very fast pocket calculators. We also make fairly shitty conveyor belts, and are pretty much useless at flying. But from the perspective of moving around and interacting with the world, complex analysis, and creative problem-solving, there is no mechanical replacement that even vaguely comes close.

For example, we were able to say "hey, we are not very good at doing complicated mathematical problems very fast. Perhaps let's invent a machine that will do that fast for us, to get out of having to do all the tedious calculations on paper".

Although I love my Casio Classpad 330 statistical calculator, I doubt it is capable of inventing a pocket-sized machine that would make its existence less tedious.

The brain is also prone to bias, fallacy, and scope insensitivity.  I would love to have some assistance in overcoming that.

Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on January 29, 2015, 03:46:04 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 28, 2015, 10:01:43 PM

Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on January 28, 2015, 07:00:10 AM
well, to address the first part, I was trying to argue for cyborgs as a shortcut to the level of grace and autonomy that were trying to achieve with robots like Asimo. why teach a robots to walk and run and shit when we can already do that stuff?

Admittedly I admit i think i might not understand what you mean by biomedically, which here i thought meant small stuff like pacemakers, or replacement limbs, and not augmentative things like brain to brain telepathy. If it is the proper term for what i'm trying to convey, (installing electronics directly into our meaty bits) then i'm sorry, not just for being ignorant but also for being dismissive.

Also, i blame that mad scientist wet dream I posted just now mostly on that Choice of Robots game. It has sent my imagination to some very odd places lately.

Maybe you should start by defining what you mean by "cyborg", because you seem to be using it to mean something different from "a person whose physiological functioning is aided by or dependent upon a mechanical or electronic device", which is, precisely, a biomedical application for robot or computer technology.

You SEEM to be asking whether robotic technology could possibly be interfaced with the human body. I am running out of ways to say yes.

Yours works for what i'm talking about.

to put it simply, i'm asking what robotic future you think is most plausible: one where pure robots make and do just about everything, one where robots make everything but we dont bother making them smart, a mixed bag where cyborgs and robots exist, etc..

or to put it even more simply: are we gonna we living in a Terminator future, a Ghost in the Shell future, some kind of Dresden Codak thing, or what? I'm not asking for a definitive answer here, it's just fun to talk about. I'm honestly a little surprised how seriously you're taking this. :eek:

"Pure robots" isn't a term that means anything: AI is separate from robotics.

If we do find we are capable of making true AI, which we might not be, we will most assuredly put it in robots. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. Well before that, we will be (and are) using electronics to try to repair and enhance human beings.

That doesn't mean we will put it in all robots.

Yes, it is likely that the future will involve a lot of robot manufacturing, as that is the direction things are already going in.

I can't answer your question about science-fiiction movies; you seem to assume that everyone is familiar with the same fiction you are, and are referencing them in lieu of using your words.

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 29, 2015, 04:15:20 PM
The brain is also prone to bias, fallacy, and scope insensitivity.  I would love to have some assistance in overcoming that.

It is completely possible, and even likely, that the same factors that make us vulnerable to those things are part and parcel of our tremendous complex intelligence.

We already have assistance in overcoming that; it's called "information". Making it more immediately accessible would be useful.

HOWEVER.

I think it is important to note that two humans can look at the same information and come to different conclusions, without one of them being "wrong". Furthermore, one person is capable of looking at another person's seemingly contradictory conclusion, shift their perspective, and say "I can see how you would come to that conclusion".

We may at some point be able to make computers that are capable of perspective-taking, but my guess is that at that stage we will be talking about biological computers, ie. brains.

Hm.  You make a good point.  Since it's all so interconnected, it's hard to tell what would happen if you forced a change.

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 29, 2015, 01:06:42 PM
I'm talking about something that can be constantly running Bayesean priors in the background and give me an accurate probability distribution at an instant.

You're talking about a real-time google app jammed into my brain.  And you say I'm thinking too small?

Perhaps I'm not making my case clear enough.

1% of women at age forty who participate in routine screening have breast cancer.  80% of women with breast cancer will get positive mammographies.  9.6% of women without breast cancer will also get positive mammographies.  A woman in this age group had a positive mammography in a routine screening.  What is the probability that she actually has breast cancer?

Hypothesize a sensor on your kayak that tells you when you're about to attempt something that will kill you.  You're a good kayaker (obviously), so you run into this situation about 1% of the time.  The sensor goes off correctly (you will die if you do this) 80% of the time.  The sensor goes off incorrectly (you won't die) 9.6% of the time.

You're in the water, and the sensor goes off.  What's the probability you'll die if you attempt to take that wave?

Most people get that answer wrong.  I want something in my head that gives me the right answer.

That "something in your head" already exists. Those kinds of statistical problems are pretty straightforward... if you practice statistical analysis on a regular basis.

If you are looking for a brain enhancement that makes all human cognitive skills immediately available, well, that might be a long time coming. You can use a calculator to find the answer to that statistical problem... but knowing how to enter the data to get the answer is a different matter.

It's probably worth noting that we indexed the human genome, and promptly discovered that we understand less than 2% of it.

We are now trying to index the human connectome. Once again, as we learn more about it, it is becoming evident how very, very little we understand.

I wish to be a cyborg.  I'd like a bionic butthole.

OK, I have realized that I'm being a complete jerk in this thread for essentially no reason, so I wanted to apologize. Particularly to Chelagoras, who seems like a perfectly decent fellow and is not deserving of being the object of my wrath and generalized frustration.

Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 29, 2015, 09:01:07 PM
I wish to be a cyborg.  I'd like a bionic butthole.

The most interesting aspect of this is that it could enable you to literally shit bricks. At speed.

Are you guys familiar with this? http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 29, 2015, 09:14:03 PM

Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 29, 2015, 09:01:07 PM
I wish to be a cyborg.  I'd like a bionic butthole.

The most interesting aspect of this is that it could enable you to literally shit bricks. At speed.

I'm more interested in RANGE, but yeah.

So, this is only tangentially related to the topic, but I figured it goes here anyway. A lot of people think of the brain as a sort of meat computer. It's not (it's actually mostly made out of fat, but that's beside the point). The actual complexity is difficult to convey partly because we don't understand it very well; every time we zoom in, we just find another level of staggering complexity.

Let's start here: an average young healthy adult has about 200 billion neurons in their central nervous system alone. That's a lot of neurons. Each neuron makes up to 10,000 connections with other neurons. If we're looking at connectivity, we're up to a really, really big number... what is that, 2x10¹⁸? But of course, when you're talking about functionality, just the number of connections doesn't tell the whole story. You have to account for combinations of connections. I can't even guess at how many different combinations are likely for each neuron, so lets just be really conservative and say ten, because it's a nice simple number. That gives us, (unless I fucked up the math, which is completely possible) about 4.5x10⁸⁴.

That's a lot. That is a very, very big number. But that's not all.

There are about ten times more glial cells than neurons. Glial cells are the support cells of the nervous system, and we don't know very much about what they do. We do know that they play a role in neuroplasticity (changing and strengthening connections) and in neurotransmitter regulation. I'm going to stop even trying with the math now, because I'm sure you get the point.

Speaking of neurotransmitters, there are over 100 different ones that we know about so far. What a neurotransmitter can do mostly depends on the types of receptors on the postsynaptic neuron, and where THAT neuron terminates. Some neurotransmitters only have one known receptor, but most have several; serotonin has 15. 14 of those serotonin receptors are G-protein-coupled receptors, which means that they release one of many types of G protein when the neurotransmitter binds to the receptor. What's a G protein, you might ask? WELL, it's a sort of tiny molecular switch that can act as a messenger that triggers a variety of other effects in a cell, some of which ultimately effect the DNA in the nucleus, changing how it expresses its genes. Remember, neurons are cells, so this means it alters the functionality of the neuron, usually on a graded scale, in any one of the many ways the neuron's DNA is capable of expressing.

I am simplifying this WAY WAY down. It's much more complex than I'm making it sound. I'm just trying to give some insight into why I do not believe that computer technology is anywhere close to "brain like", and may never be.

Brains are not very good calculators, which is why we invented calculators. Electrons move at the speed of light; electrochemical impulses in neurons are dependent on the physical movement of ions, and that speed maxes out at about 90 meters per second in humans. The trade-off is that they are staggeringly complex and yet are literally made of the most common and easily-replaceable stuff in the universe; crap you'd just find laying around on a planet.

Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 29, 2015, 09:17:41 PM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 29, 2015, 09:14:03 PM

Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 29, 2015, 09:01:07 PM
I wish to be a cyborg.  I'd like a bionic butthole.

The most interesting aspect of this is that it could enable you to literally shit bricks. At speed.

I'm more interested in RANGE, but yeah.

Well, how far can a missile launcher throw something?

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 29, 2015, 10:13:04 PM

Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 29, 2015, 09:17:41 PM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 29, 2015, 09:14:03 PM

Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 29, 2015, 09:01:07 PM
I wish to be a cyborg.  I'd like a bionic butthole.

The most interesting aspect of this is that it could enable you to literally shit bricks. At speed.

I'm more interested in RANGE, but yeah.

Well, how far can a missile launcher throw something?

I hadn't considered putting rocket motors on the bricks...

Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 29, 2015, 10:23:43 PM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 29, 2015, 10:13:04 PM

Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 29, 2015, 09:17:41 PM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 29, 2015, 09:14:03 PM

Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 29, 2015, 09:01:07 PM
I wish to be a cyborg.  I'd like a bionic butthole.

The most interesting aspect of this is that it could enable you to literally shit bricks. At speed.

I'm more interested in RANGE, but yeah.

Well, how far can a missile launcher throw something?

I hadn't considered putting rocket motors on the bricks...

What's a little extra internal machinery? Might as well go all out!

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 30, 2015, 02:28:36 AM

Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 29, 2015, 10:23:43 PM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 29, 2015, 10:13:04 PM

Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 29, 2015, 09:17:41 PM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 29, 2015, 09:14:03 PM

Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 29, 2015, 09:01:07 PM
I wish to be a cyborg.  I'd like a bionic butthole.

The most interesting aspect of this is that it could enable you to literally shit bricks. At speed.

I'm more interested in RANGE, but yeah.

Well, how far can a missile launcher throw something?

I hadn't considered putting rocket motors on the bricks...

What's a little extra internal machinery? Might as well go all out!

Gives new meaning to "BACKBLAST AREA CLEAR!"

[/army humor]

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 29, 2015, 09:09:41 PM
OK, I have realized that I'm being a complete jerk in this thread for essentially no reason, so I wanted to apologize. Particularly to Chelagoras, who seems like a perfectly decent fellow and is not deserving of being the object of my wrath and generalized frustration.

aw, thanks Nigel. Apology accepted! :)

Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on January 30, 2015, 04:14:28 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 29, 2015, 09:09:41 PM
OK, I have realized that I'm being a complete jerk in this thread for essentially no reason, so I wanted to apologize. Particularly to Chelagoras, who seems like a perfectly decent fellow and is not deserving of being the object of my wrath and generalized frustration.

aw, thanks Nigel. Apology accepted! :)

Thanks. :)

Every time I see this thread title, I can only think:

(http://i.imgur.com/hYSJmKD.jpg)

YES. Exactly yes.

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 29, 2015, 10:09:17 PM
So, this is only tangentially related to the topic, but I figured it goes here anyway. A lot of people think of the brain as a sort of meat computer. It's not (it's actually mostly made out of fat, but that's beside the point). The actual complexity is difficult to convey partly because we don't understand it very well; every time we zoom in, we just find another level of staggering complexity.

Let's start here: an average young healthy adult has about 200 billion neurons in their central nervous system alone. That's a lot of neurons. Each neuron makes up to 10,000 connections with other neurons. If we're looking at connectivity, we're up to a really, really big number... what is that, 2x10¹⁸? But of course, when you're talking about functionality, just the number of connections doesn't tell the whole story. You have to account for combinations of connections. I can't even guess at how many different combinations are likely for each neuron, so lets just be really conservative and say ten, because it's a nice simple number. That gives us, (unless I fucked up the math, which is completely possible) about 4.5x10⁸⁴.

That's a lot. That is a very, very big number. But that's not all.

There are about ten times more glial cells than neurons. Glial cells are the support cells of the nervous system, and we don't know very much about what they do. We do know that they play a role in neuroplasticity (changing and strengthening connections) and in neurotransmitter regulation. I'm going to stop even trying with the math now, because I'm sure you get the point.

Speaking of neurotransmitters, there are over 100 different ones that we know about so far. What a neurotransmitter can do mostly depends on the types of receptors on the postsynaptic neuron, and where THAT neuron terminates. Some neurotransmitters only have one known receptor, but most have several; serotonin has 15. 14 of those serotonin receptors are G-protein-coupled receptors, which means that they release one of many types of G protein when the neurotransmitter binds to the receptor. What's a G protein, you might ask? WELL, it's a sort of tiny molecular switch that can act as a messenger that triggers a variety of other effects in a cell, some of which ultimately effect the DNA in the nucleus, changing how it expresses its genes. Remember, neurons are cells, so this means it alters the functionality of the neuron, usually on a graded scale, in any one of the many ways the neuron's DNA is capable of expressing.

I am simplifying this WAY WAY down. It's much more complex than I'm making it sound. I'm just trying to give some insight into why I do not believe that computer technology is anywhere close to "brain like", and may never be.

Brains are not very good calculators, which is why we invented calculators. Electrons move at the speed of light; electrochemical impulses in neurons are dependent on the physical movement of ions, and that speed maxes out at about 90 meters per second in humans. The trade-off is that they are staggeringly complex and yet are literally made of the most common and easily-replaceable stuff in the universe; crap you'd just find laying around on a planet.

I pretty much agree with everything you're saying here, other than the fact that the brain, to me, is nothing more than a computer. In the classical sense that all it does is processes stores and outputs information.

I agree that it's nothing like our technological computers, for one thing, although the "clock speed" is pitifully slow, the massive parallelism evident, would make it more akin to a super network, with each neuron being a computer in it's own right but, when treated as a discrete unit, it accepts input via various system edge connections, it processes these inputs and it stores and outputs data.

So we're down to use cases. When would you use meat and when would you use silicon? As silicon progresses, regardless of the complexity and parallelism issues, which (despite protests to the contrary) I'm confident will be solved on a long enough timeline, for sake of argument somewhere between this century and a billion years from now. We're fast knocking down use cases where the brain is better.

Information storage, organisation and retrieval is handled much better by machines.

Raw numerical and mathematical calculation is handled much better by machines.

Pattern recognition, which has, until now, been strictly the domain of meatware is now falling fast to neural nets which, despite being an architecture inspired by the brain, are actually not an attempt to replicate it (except in the minds of people who don't get machine learning) Neural nets are much more stable and potentially much more accurate than meat in domain spaces which become broader as density, speed and algorithmic topologies advance. Bear in mind that AI is currently at the stage computing was back in the 80's. Current chips are (quite literally) millions of times more powerful than they were back then. We expect neural nets to be millions of times more powerful in the next few decades.

One of the poster boy domains in machine learning right now is face recognition, in which machines now outperform meat by a significant degree. Pretty soon recognition is going to be machine dominated across the board. Including the kind of recognition which the human brain has never been capable. Machine learning systems are already beginning to see patterns in data that no human being alive could ever comprehend.

So where does that leave meat? What's it's strong suit? Even short term (next 20-30 years) the only thing I can see being left is consciousness/personality. Seems to me to be the granddaddy of computational tasks. I think that's the one thing we might never understand but, in gaining greater degrees of incomplete  understanding, maybe we find out some things it can do that we never figured would be possible. Maybe consciousness can migrate to an alternative substrate. Maybe it can exist in a less complex framework than the one which built itself by accident.

So do I think this means machines will take over? Fuck no. Machines are part of our mind. If I need to know something, I can employ a machine to find or calculate that information. That's just me doing something. The machine is an extension of me. The meat part hasn't changed in millennia but the machine part is advancing year on year. Stands to reason an increasingly large part of the entity considered as me will, over time, be made of machine. This has been happening since paper but it's only recently we seem to be approaching a tipping point.

The brain is nothing but a computer in  the same way a moose is nothing but a little red wagon.

Fair enough. I'm sure you'll be brimming with example of things it does other than process information (ie. computes)

One will do just fine.

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 30, 2015, 07:33:43 PM
Fair enough. I'm sure you'll be brimming with example of things it does other than process information (ie. computes)

One will do just fine.

The brain is the home of the master sex hormone regulator, that tells the body to mature, as well as doing a host of other things.

I'm fairly sure that the determined believer can figure out a way to reduce anything in the universe to "processing information", right up to and including life itself, which appears to be the level of consideration with which you've dismissed everything from the millions of permutations of neurotransmitter and hormonal communications, to DNA expression itself.

In my opinion, it's a real stretch to reduce cell functionality and DNA expression to "a computer", but if that's the basic unit you believe all information processing reduces to, I have no more reason to dissuade you than to try to dissuade a Mormon from wearing magic underwear.

Ahem (http://lesswrong.com/lw/ic/the_virtue_of_narrowness/).

Quote from: Cain on January 30, 2015, 11:43:24 PM
Ahem (http://lesswrong.com/lw/ic/the_virtue_of_narrowness/).

Holy shit, thank you Cain. That's exactly what this discussion needed.

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 30, 2015, 11:40:05 PM

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 30, 2015, 07:33:43 PM
Fair enough. I'm sure you'll be brimming with example of things it does other than process information (ie. computes)

One will do just fine.

The brain is the home of the master sex hormone regulator, that tells the body to mature, as well as doing a host of other things.

I'm fairly sure that the determined believer can figure out a way to reduce anything in the universe to "processing information", right up to and including life itself, which appears to be the level of consideration with which you've dismissed everything from the millions of permutations of neurotransmitter and hormonal communications, to DNA expression itself.

In my opinion, it's a real stretch to reduce cell functionality and DNA expression to "a computer", but if that's the basic unit you believe all information processing reduces to, I have no more reason to dissuade you than to try to dissuade a Mormon from wearing magic underwear.

You're talking about how it does what it does. That's your field. My field is information processing. I'm interested in what it is that comes out of all that stuff. It's signals. It's information. It changes and reads and stores and spits out signal. I don't particularly know or even care much how it does all that, aside from a vague curiosity. I know it's spectacular, I know it's all of those things, some weird kind of high frequency harmonic mexican waves flying back and forth, right down to tiny little bits of tubing, growing about all over the place. I dig it but the part of my attention which I devote to in depth study is always the signals themselves. The voltages or chemicals or whatever it is results in signals. These signals speak their own kind of emergent language. Call it the mind, call it consciousness, it's a program. Signals.

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 31, 2015, 01:16:19 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 30, 2015, 11:40:05 PM

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 30, 2015, 07:33:43 PM
Fair enough. I'm sure you'll be brimming with example of things it does other than process information (ie. computes)

One will do just fine.

The brain is the home of the master sex hormone regulator, that tells the body to mature, as well as doing a host of other things.

I'm fairly sure that the determined believer can figure out a way to reduce anything in the universe to "processing information", right up to and including life itself, which appears to be the level of consideration with which you've dismissed everything from the millions of permutations of neurotransmitter and hormonal communications, to DNA expression itself.

In my opinion, it's a real stretch to reduce cell functionality and DNA expression to "a computer", but if that's the basic unit you believe all information processing reduces to, I have no more reason to dissuade you than to try to dissuade a Mormon from wearing magic underwear.

You're talking about how it does what it does. That's your field. My field is information processing. I'm interested in what it is that comes out of all that stuff. It's signals. It's information. It changes and reads and stores and spits out signal. I don't particularly know or even care much how it does all that, aside from a vague curiosity. I know it's spectacular, I know it's all of those things, some weird kind of high frequency harmonic mexican waves flying back and forth, right down to tiny little bits of tubing, growing about all over the place. I dig it but the part of my attention which I devote to in depth study is always the signals themselves. The voltages or chemicals or whatever it is results in signals. These signals speak their own kind of emergent language. Call it the mind, call it consciousness, it's a program. Signals.

Hokay then. By that definition, everything is computers. 

Everything everywhere is exactly the same. It's computers all the way down. :lulz:

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 31, 2015, 02:38:42 AM

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 31, 2015, 01:16:19 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 30, 2015, 11:40:05 PM

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 30, 2015, 07:33:43 PM
Fair enough. I'm sure you'll be brimming with example of things it does other than process information (ie. computes)

One will do just fine.

The brain is the home of the master sex hormone regulator, that tells the body to mature, as well as doing a host of other things.

I'm fairly sure that the determined believer can figure out a way to reduce anything in the universe to "processing information", right up to and including life itself, which appears to be the level of consideration with which you've dismissed everything from the millions of permutations of neurotransmitter and hormonal communications, to DNA expression itself.

In my opinion, it's a real stretch to reduce cell functionality and DNA expression to "a computer", but if that's the basic unit you believe all information processing reduces to, I have no more reason to dissuade you than to try to dissuade a Mormon from wearing magic underwear.

You're talking about how it does what it does. That's your field. My field is information processing. I'm interested in what it is that comes out of all that stuff. It's signals. It's information. It changes and reads and stores and spits out signal. I don't particularly know or even care much how it does all that, aside from a vague curiosity. I know it's spectacular, I know it's all of those things, some weird kind of high frequency harmonic mexican waves flying back and forth, right down to tiny little bits of tubing, growing about all over the place. I dig it but the part of my attention which I devote to in depth study is always the signals themselves. The voltages or chemicals or whatever it is results in signals. These signals speak their own kind of emergent language. Call it the mind, call it consciousness, it's a program. Signals.

Hokay then. By that definition, everything is computers. 

Everything everywhere is exactly the same. It's computers all the way down. :lulz:

:eek:
But what if that's EXACTLY how the universe functions. I mean just what if the signals and 'static' apparent in the world we have learned to see in the last couple centuries, the intergalactic and subatomic alike, are all non random calculations going on.
The Singularity already happened and there was a loud bang as It got going.

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on January 31, 2015, 04:20:04 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 31, 2015, 02:38:42 AM

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 31, 2015, 01:16:19 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 30, 2015, 11:40:05 PM

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 30, 2015, 07:33:43 PM
Fair enough. I'm sure you'll be brimming with example of things it does other than process information (ie. computes)

One will do just fine.

The brain is the home of the master sex hormone regulator, that tells the body to mature, as well as doing a host of other things.

I'm fairly sure that the determined believer can figure out a way to reduce anything in the universe to "processing information", right up to and including life itself, which appears to be the level of consideration with which you've dismissed everything from the millions of permutations of neurotransmitter and hormonal communications, to DNA expression itself.

In my opinion, it's a real stretch to reduce cell functionality and DNA expression to "a computer", but if that's the basic unit you believe all information processing reduces to, I have no more reason to dissuade you than to try to dissuade a Mormon from wearing magic underwear.

You're talking about how it does what it does. That's your field. My field is information processing. I'm interested in what it is that comes out of all that stuff. It's signals. It's information. It changes and reads and stores and spits out signal. I don't particularly know or even care much how it does all that, aside from a vague curiosity. I know it's spectacular, I know it's all of those things, some weird kind of high frequency harmonic mexican waves flying back and forth, right down to tiny little bits of tubing, growing about all over the place. I dig it but the part of my attention which I devote to in depth study is always the signals themselves. The voltages or chemicals or whatever it is results in signals. These signals speak their own kind of emergent language. Call it the mind, call it consciousness, it's a program. Signals.

Hokay then. By that definition, everything is computers. 

Everything everywhere is exactly the same. It's computers all the way down. :lulz:

:eek:
But what if that's EXACTLY how the universe functions. I mean just what if the signals and 'static' apparent in the world we have learned to see in the last couple centuries, the intergalactic and subatomic alike, are all non random calculations going on.
The Singularity already happened and there was a loud bang as It got going.

If I wanted to spend my time doing thought experiments about the true nature of reality, I would have majored in philosophy.

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 31, 2015, 02:38:42 AM

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 31, 2015, 01:16:19 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 30, 2015, 11:40:05 PM

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 30, 2015, 07:33:43 PM
Fair enough. I'm sure you'll be brimming with example of things it does other than process information (ie. computes)

One will do just fine.

The brain is the home of the master sex hormone regulator, that tells the body to mature, as well as doing a host of other things.

I'm fairly sure that the determined believer can figure out a way to reduce anything in the universe to "processing information", right up to and including life itself, which appears to be the level of consideration with which you've dismissed everything from the millions of permutations of neurotransmitter and hormonal communications, to DNA expression itself.

In my opinion, it's a real stretch to reduce cell functionality and DNA expression to "a computer", but if that's the basic unit you believe all information processing reduces to, I have no more reason to dissuade you than to try to dissuade a Mormon from wearing magic underwear.

You're talking about how it does what it does. That's your field. My field is information processing. I'm interested in what it is that comes out of all that stuff. It's signals. It's information. It changes and reads and stores and spits out signal. I don't particularly know or even care much how it does all that, aside from a vague curiosity. I know it's spectacular, I know it's all of those things, some weird kind of high frequency harmonic mexican waves flying back and forth, right down to tiny little bits of tubing, growing about all over the place. I dig it but the part of my attention which I devote to in depth study is always the signals themselves. The voltages or chemicals or whatever it is results in signals. These signals speak their own kind of emergent language. Call it the mind, call it consciousness, it's a program. Signals.

Hokay then. By that definition, everything is computers. 

Everything everywhere is exactly the same. It's computers all the way down. :lulz:

Here's how it works. If you can program it, it's a computer. So yeah, at the molecular level, that's exactly what dna is. Carrying out predefined instructions. Processing information. I've been working with "traditional" computers for 20-odd years now so don't take my word for it. Think bioinformatics, think computational neuroscience (the clue is in the name) I was of the impression that these were genuine avenues of scientific enquiry but hey, maybe it's psuedoscience? And yeah, computers all the way down, as far as I'm aware information theory has already gone there. Not sure if I'm buying it yet but if someone brings out an sdk I'm in.

Hey, look, I couldn't really give a shit. Have it your way, the brain doesn't compute, it's the immortal soul breathed into it by god, right?

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 31, 2015, 10:12:45 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 31, 2015, 02:38:42 AM

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 31, 2015, 01:16:19 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 30, 2015, 11:40:05 PM

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 30, 2015, 07:33:43 PM
Fair enough. I'm sure you'll be brimming with example of things it does other than process information (ie. computes)

One will do just fine.

The brain is the home of the master sex hormone regulator, that tells the body to mature, as well as doing a host of other things.

I'm fairly sure that the determined believer can figure out a way to reduce anything in the universe to "processing information", right up to and including life itself, which appears to be the level of consideration with which you've dismissed everything from the millions of permutations of neurotransmitter and hormonal communications, to DNA expression itself.

In my opinion, it's a real stretch to reduce cell functionality and DNA expression to "a computer", but if that's the basic unit you believe all information processing reduces to, I have no more reason to dissuade you than to try to dissuade a Mormon from wearing magic underwear.

You're talking about how it does what it does. That's your field. My field is information processing. I'm interested in what it is that comes out of all that stuff. It's signals. It's information. It changes and reads and stores and spits out signal. I don't particularly know or even care much how it does all that, aside from a vague curiosity. I know it's spectacular, I know it's all of those things, some weird kind of high frequency harmonic mexican waves flying back and forth, right down to tiny little bits of tubing, growing about all over the place. I dig it but the part of my attention which I devote to in depth study is always the signals themselves. The voltages or chemicals or whatever it is results in signals. These signals speak their own kind of emergent language. Call it the mind, call it consciousness, it's a program. Signals.

Hokay then. By that definition, everything is computers. 

Everything everywhere is exactly the same. It's computers all the way down. :lulz:

Here's how it works. If you can program it, it's a computer. So yeah, at the molecular level, that's exactly what dna is. Carrying out predefined instructions. Processing information. I've been working with "traditional" computers for 20-odd years now so don't take my word for it. Think bioinformatics, think computational neuroscience (the clue is in the name) I was of the impression that these were genuine avenues of scientific enquiry but hey, maybe it's psuedoscience? And yeah, computers all the way down, as far as I'm aware information theory has already gone there. Not sure if I'm buying it yet but if someone brings out an sdk I'm in.

Hey, look, I couldn't really give a shit. Have it your way, the brain doesn't compute, it's the immortal soul breathed into it by god, right?

Quote from: Cain on January 30, 2015, 11:43:24 PM
Ahem (http://lesswrong.com/lw/ic/the_virtue_of_narrowness/).

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 31, 2015, 12:57:21 PM

Quote from: Cain on January 30, 2015, 11:43:24 PM
Ahem (http://lesswrong.com/lw/ic/the_virtue_of_narrowness/).

Given that it wasn't me that derailed a perfectly good AI/robotics thread with some holier than thou half arsed bullshit about biology, then yeah, "ahem"  :roll:

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 31, 2015, 01:23:56 PM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 31, 2015, 12:57:21 PM

Quote from: Cain on January 30, 2015, 11:43:24 PM
Ahem (http://lesswrong.com/lw/ic/the_virtue_of_narrowness/).

Given that it wasn't me that derailed a perfectly good AI/robotics thread with some holier than thou half arsed bullshit about biology, then yeah, "ahem"  :roll:

If by "derailed", you mean "tried to respond to this question that was posted after nine days of zero activity in the thread", and if by "half-arsed bullshit about biology" you mean "has something of a clue how it works", you are correct.

Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on January 26, 2015, 05:19:56 AM
if robots like Asimo represent the forefront of autonomous bipedal robots, do you think there'll be a point where it'll be easier, at least in the short run, to "upgrade" humans into cyborgs since we already know how to run and jump and balance just fine without tons of costly research?

Regardless, you should try reading the link Cain posted, it's both good and relevant.

Show me an AI that can take umbrage with another AI and get tetchy, and I'll show you humanity's likely successor.

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 31, 2015, 10:12:45 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 31, 2015, 02:38:42 AM

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 31, 2015, 01:16:19 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 30, 2015, 11:40:05 PM

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 30, 2015, 07:33:43 PM
Fair enough. I'm sure you'll be brimming with example of things it does other than process information (ie. computes)

One will do just fine.

The brain is the home of the master sex hormone regulator, that tells the body to mature, as well as doing a host of other things.

I'm fairly sure that the determined believer can figure out a way to reduce anything in the universe to "processing information", right up to and including life itself, which appears to be the level of consideration with which you've dismissed everything from the millions of permutations of neurotransmitter and hormonal communications, to DNA expression itself.

In my opinion, it's a real stretch to reduce cell functionality and DNA expression to "a computer", but if that's the basic unit you believe all information processing reduces to, I have no more reason to dissuade you than to try to dissuade a Mormon from wearing magic underwear.

You're talking about how it does what it does. That's your field. My field is information processing. I'm interested in what it is that comes out of all that stuff. It's signals. It's information. It changes and reads and stores and spits out signal. I don't particularly know or even care much how it does all that, aside from a vague curiosity. I know it's spectacular, I know it's all of those things, some weird kind of high frequency harmonic mexican waves flying back and forth, right down to tiny little bits of tubing, growing about all over the place. I dig it but the part of my attention which I devote to in depth study is always the signals themselves. The voltages or chemicals or whatever it is results in signals. These signals speak their own kind of emergent language. Call it the mind, call it consciousness, it's a program. Signals.

Hokay then. By that definition, everything is computers. 

Everything everywhere is exactly the same. It's computers all the way down. :lulz:

Here's how it works. If you can program it, it's a computer. So yeah, at the molecular level, that's exactly what dna is. Carrying out predefined instructions. Processing information. I've been working with "traditional" computers for 20-odd years now so don't take my word for it. Think bioinformatics, think computational neuroscience (the clue is in the name) I was of the impression that these were genuine avenues of scientific enquiry but hey, maybe it's psuedoscience? And yeah, computers all the way down, as far as I'm aware information theory has already gone there. Not sure if I'm buying it yet but if someone brings out an sdk I'm in.

Hey, look, I couldn't really give a shit. Have it your way, the brain doesn't compute, it's the immortal soul breathed into it by god, right?

This is basically just a different way of saying what the link Cain provided already said but...

There comes a point where using a metaphor actively clouds understanding. The point where you are saying 'it is computers all the way down' is probably a good indication of that.

What is the utility in trying to describe these things as computers? As Nigel has pointed out, the complex arrangement of biological components which make up a brain have many, many distinctions from anything recognizable as 'a computer'. Outside, perhaps, of the massively broad definition that they both involve signals which cause effects.

This is part of the reason I hate using metaphors in discussions/debates myself. When you say something is like something else (or worse, is something else) what you're doing is saying that the ways they are the same outweigh the ways they are different. Okay. But brains still aren't electrical tools created by people, despite them both being 'programable' in a broad sense. And apples still aren't oranges, despite them both being fruits. Saying that one is the other, just invites plenty of room for confusion and misunderstanding by glossing over the many differences between them in order to focus on the particular area of (apparent) similarity.

This thread is starting to remind me of the time Justine Tunney said unemployment was an "engineering problem".

This is one reason I try to avoid metaphors when discussing quantum mechanics.

To condense demo's condensed version of the link that Cain posted, to say "everything is X" is to make "X" a meaningless term.

It also implies that all solutions for "X" are the same. But the solution for "DrywallComputer doesn't stay upright" is different than the solution for "PuppyComputer is bleeding from the eyes".

The fact that you've defined both Drywall and Puppy as Computer doesn't seem to help us in either instance.

Semi-related, my favorite bad political metaphor ever. (http://youtu.be/n886PlxwJS8?t=7m1s) (Youtube link)

ETA - This is one of my big bugbears for this exact reason. Metaphors get thrown around to justify really terrible stuff. 'Money flows like water, therefore it will trickle down' for instance. 'The country's economy is just like your home checkbook' for another. These things aren't true, but they seem at first glance to make a lot of intuitive sense because there's some surface similarities, and suddenly everyone is accepting as common sense that we need to enact policies which screw over everyone in the long run.

Metaphors can be useful for aiding understanding, right up to the point where people start confusing metaphors for literal reality. My favorite biology teacher uses the "cookbook" metaphor for DNA, but nobody actually thinks that genes are literal recipes.

To repost something I said elsewhere because it is directly relevant (even though it also makes me that guy who is quoting himself):

QuoteIt is an extraordinary feat of reductionism that seems to be particularly common among computer engineers and programmers: "Computers process input and produce output; the brain processes input and produces output. Computer programs are a type of code; DNA is a type of code. I understand computers and code; therefore I understand the brain and DNA". Once that (il)logical conclusion has been reached, further communication becomes impossible, because they are experts on computers, and brains are computers, and they are therefore experts on the brain and have no use for the flights of fancy of mere neurobiologists.

I don't know. It may just be because I read a lot of political statements/analysis, and you can pretty much guarantee that when a metaphor is being used in that context, it is being used purely as a rhetorical trick rather than as an aid to understanding... but I have an instant suspicion of metaphors outside creative writing.

Then again, I use them in my own political writing too, usually to do exactly the thing I hate seeing done, sooo... willing to admit some hypocrisy there.  :p

As an aside, HOORAY CONVERSATION!

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 31, 2015, 08:09:10 PM
As an aside, HOORAY CONVERSATION!

HOT DIALECTICAL ACTION!

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 30, 2015, 04:00:03 PM
The brain is nothing but a computer in  the same way a moose is nothing but a little red wagon.

brain is to computer as eye is to camera

Quote from: rong on January 31, 2015, 09:30:10 PM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 30, 2015, 04:00:03 PM
The brain is nothing but a computer in  the same way a moose is nothing but a little red wagon.

brain is to computer as eye is to camera

Rong answer.

yea, especially since our eyes are actually really shitty cameras. If you could hook up the raw sensations recieved by your eyeball and display them on a screen without the brains input they would look like shit. The brain actually does a lot to correct our perception of visual stimuli

Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on January 31, 2015, 11:15:06 PM
yea, especially since our eyes are actually really shitty cameras. If you could hook up the raw sensations recieved by your eyeball and display them on a screen without the brains input they would look like shit. The brain actually does a lot to correct our perception of visual stimuli

Yeah, our visual experience is something like 90% hallucination to boost the low-fidelity input to high-fidelity perception, which is really amazing, considering.

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on January 31, 2015, 09:36:04 PM

Quote from: rong on January 31, 2015, 09:30:10 PM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 30, 2015, 04:00:03 PM
The brain is nothing but a computer in  the same way a moose is nothing but a little red wagon.

brain is to computer as eye is to camera

Rong answer.

You know I'm rite

Quote from: rong on February 01, 2015, 03:22:50 AM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on January 31, 2015, 09:36:04 PM

Quote from: rong on January 31, 2015, 09:30:10 PM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 30, 2015, 04:00:03 PM
The brain is nothing but a computer in  the same way a moose is nothing but a little red wagon.

brain is to computer as eye is to camera

Rong answer.

You know I'm rite

Not by what you write

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 01, 2015, 01:26:47 AM

Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on January 31, 2015, 11:15:06 PM
yea, especially since our eyes are actually really shitty cameras. If you could hook up the raw sensations recieved by your eyeball and display them on a screen without the brains input they would look like shit. The brain actually does a lot to correct our perception of visual stimuli

Yeah, our visual experience is something like 90% hallucination to boost the low-fidelity input to high-fidelity perception, which is really amazing, considering.

Woah, wait, what?

Thread/ links / expansion in general please, this intrigues the fuck out of me. And explains quite a bit about quite a lot.

Quote from: Junkenstein on February 03, 2015, 11:12:26 PM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 01, 2015, 01:26:47 AM

Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on January 31, 2015, 11:15:06 PM
yea, especially since our eyes are actually really shitty cameras. If you could hook up the raw sensations recieved by your eyeball and display them on a screen without the brains input they would look like shit. The brain actually does a lot to correct our perception of visual stimuli

Yeah, our visual experience is something like 90% hallucination to boost the low-fidelity input to high-fidelity perception, which is really amazing, considering.

Woah, wait, what?

Thread/ links / expansion in general please, this intrigues the fuck out of me. And explains quite a bit about quite a lot.

Oh, yes, I'll try to collect some links that will explain this! It's really interesting.

Also, hey guys, I got a new computer!

(http://cdn1.bigcommerce.com/server700/68d95/product_images/uploaded_images/plant-health.jpg)

Quote from: Junkenstein on February 03, 2015, 11:12:26 PM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 01, 2015, 01:26:47 AM

Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on January 31, 2015, 11:15:06 PM
yea, especially since our eyes are actually really shitty cameras. If you could hook up the raw sensations recieved by your eyeball and display them on a screen without the brains input they would look like shit. The brain actually does a lot to correct our perception of visual stimuli

Yeah, our visual experience is something like 90% hallucination to boost the low-fidelity input to high-fidelity perception, which is really amazing, considering.

Woah, wait, what?

Thread/ links / expansion in general please, this intrigues the fuck out of me. And explains quite a bit about quite a lot.

OK, this is proving harder than I thought, I will need to talk to my neuroscience professor for references. The eye captures a great deal of data but it is whittled down in the brain and then reconstructed in our conscious experience, is the gist of what I captured.

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 04, 2015, 04:11:22 AM
Also, hey guys, I got a new computer!

(http://cdn1.bigcommerce.com/server700/68d95/product_images/uploaded_images/plant-health.jpg)

I hear if you feed them some of your blood code they get huge, hungry, and start to sing.

Computers are freaking amazing!

On another note...
I think I vaguely recall one of the instructors at the rather esoteric martial school I've studied at here mentioned something along these lines about vision and how the mind processes the fairly weak signal from the eye into something much sharper. This was in context to deceiving the mind and not the eye per se in combat. I could swing by this week or next and see what more might be found out.
I kinda need a couple answers myself now.

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 04, 2015, 04:11:22 AM
Also, hey guys, I got a new computer!

(http://cdn1.bigcommerce.com/server700/68d95/product_images/uploaded_images/plant-health.jpg)

:potd:


Also, there's a sort-of experiement that points to the eye/brain thing.  It's the one where something far away is out of focus and unknown, and as you approach it, you still can't recognize what it is as it grows more clear and then, ZAP, you recognize it and instantly all the details appear and sharpen.  The recognition isn't gradual, it's immediate.

No citation.

There's that... and when you see something, I mean totally absolutely see it, and then all of a sudden it moves a certain way and all of a sudden you see a completely different thing. It's part of top-down processing.

I'll find papers for this stuff. Not today, because I'm at school until ten tonight, but sooon.

Come to think of it I've experienced this as on occasion I'll misidentify something out of the corner of my eye because of expectation or just plain manic inattentive moments and when I do focus my conscious mind fully on the object it's not what my mind registered and 'saw'.

In testing I have well above average sight. I'm really sure the above is some sort of mental slip, but now I wonder how much of those good vision scores is my actual eyes and how much is my processor. My processor also is unusual in testing.

I had a private intelligence test done around the age of 18ish administered by a genuine psychiatrist that measured 4 types of intelligence. Composite score was 155 but with a skew in the data. My practical mechanical int was normal/bright at 115 range but my linguistic comp, pattern rec, and symbol interpretation score hit 190. That's 6 standard dev from the mean and as high as the test he used goes apparently.

What I wonder is how much of my 20-15 vision is my actual eyes ans how much my brain drawing accurate interpretation from thin data... my freakish, though still quite imperfect,  intuitive comprehension.

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 04, 2015, 04:16:57 PM
Come to think of it I've experienced this as on occasion I'll misidentify something out of the corner of my eye because of expectation or just plain manic inattentive moments and when I do focus my conscious mind fully on the object it's not what my mind registered and 'saw'.

In testing I have well above average sight. I'm really sure the above is some sort of mental slip, but now I wonder how much of those good vision scores is my actual eyes and how much is my processor. My processor also is unusual in testing.

I had a private intelligence test done around the age of 18ish administered by a genuine psychiatrist that measured 4 types of intelligence. Composite score was 155 but with a skew in the data. My practical mechanical int was normal/bright at 115 range but my linguistic comp, pattern rec, and symbol interpretation score hit 190. That's 6 standard dev from the mean and as high as the test he used goes apparently.

What I wonder is how much of my 20-15 vision is my actual eyes ans how much my brain drawing accurate interpretation from thin data... my freakish, though still quite imperfect,  intuitive comprehension.

Vision tests are tests of the eyes' ability to focus correctly, and to a smaller measure of the density of cones in the fovea.

This one is dense but interesting: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627307003765

OH HERE WE GO, Richard Gregory is DA MAN: http://www.richardgregory.org/papers/brainy_mind/brainy-mind.htm

If this gets you geeking out, go to his homepage to read more of his papers.

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 04, 2015, 11:16:07 PM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 04, 2015, 04:16:57 PM
Come to think of it I've experienced this as on occasion I'll misidentify something out of the corner of my eye because of expectation or just plain manic inattentive moments and when I do focus my conscious mind fully on the object it's not what my mind registered and 'saw'.

In testing I have well above average sight. I'm really sure the above is some sort of mental slip, but now I wonder how much of those good vision scores is my actual eyes and how much is my processor. My processor also is unusual in testing.

I had a private intelligence test done around the age of 18ish administered by a genuine psychiatrist that measured 4 types of intelligence. Composite score was 155 but with a skew in the data. My practical mechanical int was normal/bright at 115 range but my linguistic comp, pattern rec, and symbol interpretation score hit 190. That's 6 standard dev from the mean and as high as the test he used goes apparently.

What I wonder is how much of my 20-15 vision is my actual eyes ans how much my brain drawing accurate interpretation from thin data... my freakish, though still quite imperfect,  intuitive comprehension.

Vision tests are tests of the eyes' ability to focus correctly, and to a smaller measure of the density of cones in the fovea.

Hm. So mayhap it's more like I  do have fine function in my peepers and the brain oddity is a separate issue of consciousness.

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 05, 2015, 12:24:26 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 04, 2015, 11:16:07 PM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 04, 2015, 04:16:57 PM
Come to think of it I've experienced this as on occasion I'll misidentify something out of the corner of my eye because of expectation or just plain manic inattentive moments and when I do focus my conscious mind fully on the object it's not what my mind registered and 'saw'.

In testing I have well above average sight. I'm really sure the above is some sort of mental slip, but now I wonder how much of those good vision scores is my actual eyes and how much is my processor. My processor also is unusual in testing.

I had a private intelligence test done around the age of 18ish administered by a genuine psychiatrist that measured 4 types of intelligence. Composite score was 155 but with a skew in the data. My practical mechanical int was normal/bright at 115 range but my linguistic comp, pattern rec, and symbol interpretation score hit 190. That's 6 standard dev from the mean and as high as the test he used goes apparently.

What I wonder is how much of my 20-15 vision is my actual eyes ans how much my brain drawing accurate interpretation from thin data... my freakish, though still quite imperfect,  intuitive comprehension.

Vision tests are tests of the eyes' ability to focus correctly, and to a smaller measure of the density of cones in the fovea.

Hm. So mayhap it's more like I  do have fine function in my peepers and the brain oddity is a separate issue of consciousness.

What brain oddity?

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 05, 2015, 07:02:05 AM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 05, 2015, 12:24:26 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 04, 2015, 11:16:07 PM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 04, 2015, 04:16:57 PM
Come to think of it I've experienced this as on occasion I'll misidentify something out of the corner of my eye because of expectation or just plain manic inattentive moments and when I do focus my conscious mind fully on the object it's not what my mind registered and 'saw'.

In testing I have well above average sight. I'm really sure the above is some sort of mental slip, but now I wonder how much of those good vision scores is my actual eyes and how much is my processor. My processor also is unusual in testing.

I had a private intelligence test done around the age of 18ish administered by a genuine psychiatrist that measured 4 types of intelligence. Composite score was 155 but with a skew in the data. My practical mechanical int was normal/bright at 115 range but my linguistic comp, pattern rec, and symbol interpretation score hit 190. That's 6 standard dev from the mean and as high as the test he used goes apparently.

What I wonder is how much of my 20-15 vision is my actual eyes ans how much my brain drawing accurate interpretation from thin data... my freakish, though still quite imperfect,  intuitive comprehension.

Vision tests are tests of the eyes' ability to focus correctly, and to a smaller measure of the density of cones in the fovea.

Hm. So mayhap it's more like I  do have fine function in my peepers and the brain oddity is a separate issue of consciousness.

What brain oddity?

The one I presume (and it only a lightly held presumption) accounts for my bipolar disorder and schism of competency. I have other little cognitive tics sometimes, particularly when occupied with several things at once and also trying to make words, that is to say speaking, texting, or writing mentally. 

I've come to think of it as having a leaky brain pan. Doesn't impair my normal daily function but not really helping.

Quote from: rong on February 01, 2015, 03:22:50 AM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on January 31, 2015, 09:36:04 PM

Quote from: rong on January 31, 2015, 09:30:10 PM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 30, 2015, 04:00:03 PM
The brain is nothing but a computer in  the same way a moose is nothing but a little red wagon.

brain is to computer as eye is to camera

Rong answer.

You know I'm rite

Computers store and process information using binary states of transistors acting as switches,
brains store information in connections through neurons that have both chemical states an electrical states, way more complex then a binary system. The two are not analogous.

They are both machines, and that is analogous. But brain/computer is erroneous compared to eye/camera comparison.

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 05, 2015, 08:57:09 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 05, 2015, 07:02:05 AM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 05, 2015, 12:24:26 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 04, 2015, 11:16:07 PM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 04, 2015, 04:16:57 PM
Come to think of it I've experienced this as on occasion I'll misidentify something out of the corner of my eye because of expectation or just plain manic inattentive moments and when I do focus my conscious mind fully on the object it's not what my mind registered and 'saw'.

In testing I have well above average sight. I'm really sure the above is some sort of mental slip, but now I wonder how much of those good vision scores is my actual eyes and how much is my processor. My processor also is unusual in testing.

I had a private intelligence test done around the age of 18ish administered by a genuine psychiatrist that measured 4 types of intelligence. Composite score was 155 but with a skew in the data. My practical mechanical int was normal/bright at 115 range but my linguistic comp, pattern rec, and symbol interpretation score hit 190. That's 6 standard dev from the mean and as high as the test he used goes apparently.

What I wonder is how much of my 20-15 vision is my actual eyes ans how much my brain drawing accurate interpretation from thin data... my freakish, though still quite imperfect,  intuitive comprehension.

Vision tests are tests of the eyes' ability to focus correctly, and to a smaller measure of the density of cones in the fovea.

Hm. So mayhap it's more like I  do have fine function in my peepers and the brain oddity is a separate issue of consciousness.

What brain oddity?

The one I presume (and it only a lightly held presumption) accounts for my bipolar disorder and schism of competency. I have other little cognitive tics sometimes, particularly when occupied with several things at once and also trying to make words, that is to say speaking, texting, or writing mentally. 

I've come to think of it as having a leaky brain pan. Doesn't impair my normal daily function but not really helping.

I could find out the current state of the research on the neurobiology of bipolar disorder, if you're interested. I'm sure it'll come in handy for a paper eventually anyway.

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 04, 2015, 11:38:57 PM
This one is dense but interesting: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627307003765

OH HERE WE GO, Richard Gregory is DA MAN: http://www.richardgregory.org/papers/brainy_mind/brainy-mind.htm

If this gets you geeking out, go to his homepage to read more of his papers.

Thanks, appreciated!

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 05, 2015, 05:32:07 PM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 05, 2015, 08:57:09 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 05, 2015, 07:02:05 AM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 05, 2015, 12:24:26 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 04, 2015, 11:16:07 PM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 04, 2015, 04:16:57 PM
Come to think of it I've experienced this as on occasion I'll misidentify something out of the corner of my eye because of expectation or just plain manic inattentive moments and when I do focus my conscious mind fully on the object it's not what my mind registered and 'saw'.

In testing I have well above average sight. I'm really sure the above is some sort of mental slip, but now I wonder how much of those good vision scores is my actual eyes and how much is my processor. My processor also is unusual in testing.

I had a private intelligence test done around the age of 18ish administered by a genuine psychiatrist that measured 4 types of intelligence. Composite score was 155 but with a skew in the data. My practical mechanical int was normal/bright at 115 range but my linguistic comp, pattern rec, and symbol interpretation score hit 190. That's 6 standard dev from the mean and as high as the test he used goes apparently.

What I wonder is how much of my 20-15 vision is my actual eyes ans how much my brain drawing accurate interpretation from thin data... my freakish, though still quite imperfect,  intuitive comprehension.

Vision tests are tests of the eyes' ability to focus correctly, and to a smaller measure of the density of cones in the fovea.

Hm. So mayhap it's more like I  do have fine function in my peepers and the brain oddity is a separate issue of consciousness.

What brain oddity?

The one I presume (and it only a lightly held presumption) accounts for my bipolar disorder and schism of competency. I have other little cognitive tics sometimes, particularly when occupied with several things at once and also trying to make words, that is to say speaking, texting, or writing mentally. 

I've come to think of it as having a leaky brain pan. Doesn't impair my normal daily function but not really helping.

I could find out the current state of the research on the neurobiology of bipolar disorder, if you're interested. I'm sure it'll come in handy for a paper eventually anyway.

That would be most interesting! Even just pointing me to references, if it's no trouble and can benefit you, would be awesome. Thanks!

Quote from: Faust on February 05, 2015, 11:05:11 AM

Quote from: rong on February 01, 2015, 03:22:50 AM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on January 31, 2015, 09:36:04 PM

Quote from: rong on January 31, 2015, 09:30:10 PM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 30, 2015, 04:00:03 PM
The brain is nothing but a computer in  the same way a moose is nothing but a little red wagon.

brain is to computer as eye is to camera

Rong answer.

You know I'm rite

Computers store and process information using binary states of transistors acting as switches,
brains store information in connections through neurons that have both chemical states an electrical states, way more complex then a binary system. The two are not analogous.

They are both machines, and that is analogous. But brain/computer is erroneous compared to eye/camera comparison.

:slowclap:

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 05, 2015, 07:43:48 PM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 05, 2015, 05:32:07 PM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 05, 2015, 08:57:09 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 05, 2015, 07:02:05 AM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 05, 2015, 12:24:26 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 04, 2015, 11:16:07 PM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 04, 2015, 04:16:57 PM
Come to think of it I've experienced this as on occasion I'll misidentify something out of the corner of my eye because of expectation or just plain manic inattentive moments and when I do focus my conscious mind fully on the object it's not what my mind registered and 'saw'.

In testing I have well above average sight. I'm really sure the above is some sort of mental slip, but now I wonder how much of those good vision scores is my actual eyes and how much is my processor. My processor also is unusual in testing.

I had a private intelligence test done around the age of 18ish administered by a genuine psychiatrist that measured 4 types of intelligence. Composite score was 155 but with a skew in the data. My practical mechanical int was normal/bright at 115 range but my linguistic comp, pattern rec, and symbol interpretation score hit 190. That's 6 standard dev from the mean and as high as the test he used goes apparently.

What I wonder is how much of my 20-15 vision is my actual eyes ans how much my brain drawing accurate interpretation from thin data... my freakish, though still quite imperfect,  intuitive comprehension.

Vision tests are tests of the eyes' ability to focus correctly, and to a smaller measure of the density of cones in the fovea.

Hm. So mayhap it's more like I  do have fine function in my peepers and the brain oddity is a separate issue of consciousness.

What brain oddity?

The one I presume (and it only a lightly held presumption) accounts for my bipolar disorder and schism of competency. I have other little cognitive tics sometimes, particularly when occupied with several things at once and also trying to make words, that is to say speaking, texting, or writing mentally. 

I've come to think of it as having a leaky brain pan. Doesn't impair my normal daily function but not really helping.

I could find out the current state of the research on the neurobiology of bipolar disorder, if you're interested. I'm sure it'll come in handy for a paper eventually anyway.

That would be most interesting! Even just pointing me to references, if it's no trouble and can benefit you, would be awesome. Thanks!

It's no trouble at all, I like going down little side-trails of research. I've also learned that you never know when all of a sudden something you looked up out of pure curiosity will turn out to be connected in a completely relevant way to something you absolutely need to know about.

Well, this was interesting, though probably not especially helpful: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4142322/

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on February 05, 2015, 08:50:46 PM

Quote from: Faust on February 05, 2015, 11:05:11 AM

Quote from: rong on February 01, 2015, 03:22:50 AM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on January 31, 2015, 09:36:04 PM

Quote from: rong on January 31, 2015, 09:30:10 PM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 30, 2015, 04:00:03 PM
The brain is nothing but a computer in  the same way a moose is nothing but a little red wagon.

brain is to computer as eye is to camera

Rong answer.

You know I'm rite

Computers store and process information using binary states of transistors acting as switches,
brains store information in connections through neurons that have both chemical states an electrical states, way more complex then a binary system. The two are not analogous.

They are both machines, and that is analogous. But brain/computer is erroneous compared to eye/camera comparison.

:slowclap:

Sarcastic slow clap?

The comparison annoyed me because it gets the eye example lumped in with something sounding dumb.

The eye/camera example interests me because (I've worked in embedded electronics) and both are sensory equipment that can be tapped into (understanding of what it processes obviously doesn't occur in the eye).
I follow a lot of embedded electronics information and since 2009, sight prostheses for blind people have come leaps and bounds.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1231172/Blind-man-fitted-bionic-eye-sees-time-30-years.html
The last I heard was this one
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/incredible-moment-blind-man-bionic-4419846

In five years we have gone from blurry black and white outlines to 640 x 480 resolution, with some colour depth.

What really interests me is that a ccd array naturally picks up a lot more IR and UV then the human eye can, so much so that pretty much all digital cameras need an IR filter to make pictures look right.

Its bulky  and low res and moderately expensive now but in a few years it could be an option to some blind people

:non-sarcastic slowclap:

[/clarity]

Sorry, I thought I had said something dumb again.

FWIW, the eye and the camera also bear very little technical similarity, and in a reversal of the brain analogy, while eyes are really complicated, they're also kinda shitty. Having camera eyes would be awesome.

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 06, 2015, 03:29:21 PM
FWIW, the eye and the camera also bear very little technical similarity, and in a reversal of the brain analogy, while eyes are really complicated, they're also kinda shitty. Having camera eyes would be awesome.

I want robot stuff like that.  I would be full of useful things.

Thanks for the link Nigel, about to read it now, then the links from Faust brought on by the :nonsarcasticslowclap:

never heard the term embedded electronics before, but I like it better than bionics.
I like even more that the blind see and the lame may yet walk. I owe much in my life to the good Science.

Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 07, 2015, 02:05:02 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 06, 2015, 03:29:21 PM
FWIW, the eye and the camera also bear very little technical similarity, and in a reversal of the brain analogy, while eyes are really complicated, they're also kinda shitty. Having camera eyes would be awesome.

I want robot stuff like that.  I would be full of useful things.

Me too. Not like full cyberpunk Shadowrun style but even an embedded ocular cam would be just super!

Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 07, 2015, 02:05:02 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 06, 2015, 03:29:21 PM
FWIW, the eye and the camera also bear very little technical similarity, and in a reversal of the brain analogy, while eyes are really complicated, they're also kinda shitty. Having camera eyes would be awesome.

I want robot stuff like that.  I would be full of useful things.

Oh hell yes.

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 07, 2015, 03:40:29 AM
Thanks for the link Nigel, about to read it now, then the links from Faust brought on by the :nonsarcasticslowclap:

never heard the term embedded electronics before, but I like it better than bionics.
I like even more that the blind see and the lame may yet walk. I owe much in my life to the good Science.

Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 07, 2015, 02:05:02 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 06, 2015, 03:29:21 PM
FWIW, the eye and the camera also bear very little technical similarity, and in a reversal of the brain analogy, while eyes are really complicated, they're also kinda shitty. Having camera eyes would be awesome.

I want robot stuff like that.  I would be full of useful things.

Me too. Not like full cyberpunk Shadowrun style but even an embedded ocular cam would be just super!

Embedded electronics actually refers to low power, low level electronics, often used in in passive ways that people dont have to know they are interacting with them to interact with them.

There's no cool name for the Transhumanist stuff... medical devices, assisted living and as you said, bionics.

Tapping into nerves and understanding how it communicates sensory information is tricky, but its coming along with controlling arm/leg prostheses really well, the latest versions having even rudimentary feedback simulating skin.

Quote from: Faust on February 07, 2015, 08:56:50 AM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 07, 2015, 03:40:29 AM
Thanks for the link Nigel, about to read it now, then the links from Faust brought on by the :nonsarcasticslowclap:

never heard the term embedded electronics before, but I like it better than bionics.
I like even more that the blind see and the lame may yet walk. I owe much in my life to the good Science.

Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 07, 2015, 02:05:02 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 06, 2015, 03:29:21 PM
FWIW, the eye and the camera also bear very little technical similarity, and in a reversal of the brain analogy, while eyes are really complicated, they're also kinda shitty. Having camera eyes would be awesome.

I want robot stuff like that.  I would be full of useful things.

Me too. Not like full cyberpunk Shadowrun style but even an embedded ocular cam would be just super!

Embedded electronics actually refers to low power, low level electronics, often used in in passive ways that people dont have to know they are interacting with them to interact with them.

There's no cool name for the Transhumanist stuff... medical devices, assisted living and as you said, bionics.

Tapping into nerves and understanding how it communicates sensory information is tricky, but its coming along with controlling arm/leg prostheses really well, the latest versions having even rudimentary feedback simulating skin.

Even just a bit of localized pressure sensitivity on a gripper would be awesome.

Think I saw a recent vid of a fellow that was double arm amputated using prosthesis quite well. I'm stoked about it!

I misunderstood the embedded bit, sorry. I've done a lot of work in electronic hand assembly. Used to have a c3 cert for aircraft, medical, and um.. other. Not terribly savvy on the engineering but I quite enjoy the craft of it and can follow on technical stuff pretty well. It messes with me a bit to think of how assembly might be handled for the future's devices. It's difficult enough to work lead free solder with a good flux, but some devices don't even allow that. Or didn't like 10 years ago.

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 07, 2015, 05:03:55 PM

Quote from: Faust on February 07, 2015, 08:56:50 AM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 07, 2015, 03:40:29 AM
Thanks for the link Nigel, about to read it now, then the links from Faust brought on by the :nonsarcasticslowclap:

never heard the term embedded electronics before, but I like it better than bionics.
I like even more that the blind see and the lame may yet walk. I owe much in my life to the good Science.

Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 07, 2015, 02:05:02 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 06, 2015, 03:29:21 PM
FWIW, the eye and the camera also bear very little technical similarity, and in a reversal of the brain analogy, while eyes are really complicated, they're also kinda shitty. Having camera eyes would be awesome.

I want robot stuff like that.  I would be full of useful things.

Me too. Not like full cyberpunk Shadowrun style but even an embedded ocular cam would be just super!

Embedded electronics actually refers to low power, low level electronics, often used in in passive ways that people dont have to know they are interacting with them to interact with them.

There's no cool name for the Transhumanist stuff... medical devices, assisted living and as you said, bionics.

Tapping into nerves and understanding how it communicates sensory information is tricky, but its coming along with controlling arm/leg prostheses really well, the latest versions having even rudimentary feedback simulating skin.

Even just a bit of localized pressure sensitivity on a gripper would be awesome.

Think I saw a recent vid of a fellow that was double arm amputated using prosthesis quite well. I'm stoked about it!

I misunderstood the embedded bit, sorry. I've done a lot of work in electronic hand assembly. Used to have a c3 cert for aircraft, medical, and um.. other. Not terribly savvy on the engineering but I quite enjoy the craft of it and can follow on technical stuff pretty well. It messes with me a bit to think of how assembly might be handled for the future's devices. It's difficult enough to work lead free solder with a good flux, but some devices don't even allow that. Or didn't like 10 years ago.

I've never had to solder anything like that, and I cant imagine how delicate those would be to work with. Precision grip does seem to be limited with the lack of pressure sensitivity, but considering the leaps its only a matter of time.

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 07, 2015, 03:40:29 AM


Me too. Not like full cyberpunk Shadowrun style but even an embedded ocular cam would be just super!

Nigel has one of those.  In her stomach.

Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 09, 2015, 11:23:04 PM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 07, 2015, 03:40:29 AM


Me too. Not like full cyberpunk Shadowrun style but even an embedded ocular cam would be just super!

Nigel has one of those.  In her stomach.

Shhhh don't tell them everything.

Quote from: Faust on February 09, 2015, 09:41:46 PM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 07, 2015, 05:03:55 PM

Quote from: Faust on February 07, 2015, 08:56:50 AM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 07, 2015, 03:40:29 AM
Thanks for the link Nigel, about to read it now, then the links from Faust brought on by the :nonsarcasticslowclap:

never heard the term embedded electronics before, but I like it better than bionics.
I like even more that the blind see and the lame may yet walk. I owe much in my life to the good Science.

Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 07, 2015, 02:05:02 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 06, 2015, 03:29:21 PM
FWIW, the eye and the camera also bear very little technical similarity, and in a reversal of the brain analogy, while eyes are really complicated, they're also kinda shitty. Having camera eyes would be awesome.

I want robot stuff like that.  I would be full of useful things.

Me too. Not like full cyberpunk Shadowrun style but even an embedded ocular cam would be just super!

Embedded electronics actually refers to low power, low level electronics, often used in in passive ways that people dont have to know they are interacting with them to interact with them.

There's no cool name for the Transhumanist stuff... medical devices, assisted living and as you said, bionics.

Tapping into nerves and understanding how it communicates sensory information is tricky, but its coming along with controlling arm/leg prostheses really well, the latest versions having even rudimentary feedback simulating skin.

Even just a bit of localized pressure sensitivity on a gripper would be awesome.

Think I saw a recent vid of a fellow that was double arm amputated using prosthesis quite well. I'm stoked about it!

I misunderstood the embedded bit, sorry. I've done a lot of work in electronic hand assembly. Used to have a c3 cert for aircraft, medical, and um.. other. Not terribly savvy on the engineering but I quite enjoy the craft of it and can follow on technical stuff pretty well. It messes with me a bit to think of how assembly might be handled for the future's devices. It's difficult enough to work lead free solder with a good flux, but some devices don't even allow that. Or didn't like 10 years ago.

I've never had to solder anything like that, and I cant imagine how delicate those would be to work with. Precision grip does seem to be limited with the lack of pressure sensitivity, but considering the leaps its only a matter of time.

There's a lot of 'you want me to do WHAT now fool?' When an assembler gets a board that must have just looked great on paper but now has to be reworked due to process failure. Ground planes in particular are obnoxious to rework after the oven as they cause considerable heat sink, but there are ways.

Mostly it's a whole lot of fine or temp sensitive components that can't go through the oven or fine surface mount IC work. That is, for the fine outfit I learned from.

Later in life I worked for a gritty laughing stock of an electronic manufacturer and discovered what it's like to do hand solder and heat gun work AT SPEED because the dinosaur machines that do the placement and oven profiling malfunction constantly and the operators perhaps more so. This left the 'Inspector' to do vast amounts of rework. I burned out. Might get back into it one day, but as you said it's delicate work and I'm out of practice.

That we're even getting meaningful feedback to the brain from any electronic devices is a revolution. Everything else is refinement. Like you said we went from black and white to 640x480 pretty quick!

And it's worth noting that my great grandmother was old enough to read about Kitty Hawk and lived to see the space shuttle land.

One lifetime, from the birth of heavier than air flight to moon landings to interplanetary probes to reusable spacecraft.

Of course, she had to watch two world wars and a couple of nasty bombs along the way.

Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 11, 2015, 04:41:22 AM
And it's worth noting that my great grandmother was old enough to read about Kitty Hawk and lived to see the space shuttle land.

One lifetime, from the birth of heavier than air flight to moon landings to interplanetary probes to reusable spacecraft.

Of course, she had to watch two world wars and a couple of nasty bombs along the way.

Fuck, we're only about half a human life-span old, but in the time we've been alive, computers have gone from house-sized to pocket-sized (and thousands of times more powerful), we have seen the introduction and explosion of a global information network, the introduction of most of the vaccines that currently make survival into adulthood not only more probable but generally assumable for  those who have access to them (including most of those who have access and choose not to use it), the indexing of the human genome, the dawn of the new disciplines of epigenetics and neuroscience, and the first-ever global decline of poverty and violence.

And that's just the shit that I can think of off the top of my head.

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 11, 2015, 04:53:49 AM
And that's just the shit that I can think of off the top of my head.

Outpatient heart surgery.  Routine eye surgery.  E BOOKS.

Gays not only not being killed, but allowed to openly marry.  That's not tech, but I don't care.

Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 11, 2015, 05:00:12 AM

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 11, 2015, 04:53:49 AM
And that's just the shit that I can think of off the top of my head.

Outpatient heart surgery.  Routine eye surgery.  E BOOKS.

Gays not only not being killed, but allowed to openly marry.  That's not tech, but I don't care.

It totally is tech, in the sense that it is utilizing an idea to help us foster human survival, and human thriving.

Not to be overly reductionist, but I do think that ideas are technology, especially when you strip the idea of technology down to the concept of "the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes".

Ideas are tech, I'd agree to that. Constructs of ideas can be an engine of sorts for good or ill just like a machine program.

And just think of all we still 'don't know we don't know'. That's what hits me hardest. We have found so much so fast and yet whole disciplines could be waiting after some future scientific discovery or revolutionary social change.

Sometimes I look down and wonder if Icarus just panicked and jumped too soon.
I should reread that myth.

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 11, 2015, 05:44:04 AM

And just think of all we still 'don't know we don't know'. That's what hits me hardest. We have found so much so fast and yet whole disciplines could be waiting after some future scientific discovery or revolutionary social change.

That is exactly what I love most about science. Every single thing we figure out generates far wider questions.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0722/716350-bionic-eye/

Quote

A partially sighted British pensioner has had his central vision partially restored for the first time in nearly a decade after he received a "bionic eye".

The 80-year-old man is the world's first patient with advanced dry age related macular degeneration or AMD to undergo the procedure.

AMD is the most common cause of sight loss in the developed world with between 20 and 25 million sufferers worldwide.

Manchester man Ray Flynn's central vision has been deteriorating for the last eight years as a result of untreatable AMD, leaving him with just peripheral vision and affecting his quality of life.

Last month he received a retinal implant during a four-hour operation.

It converts video images captured by a miniature camera in his glasses into a series of electrical impulses transmitted wirelessly to electrodes on the surface of the retina.

The pulses stimulate the retina's remaining cells resulting in the corresponding perception of patterns of light in the brain, which the patient learns to interpret in order to regain some visual function.

Since his system was turned on three weeks ago, Mr Flynn can now make out the outline of people and objects, even with his eyes closed.

130 patients worldwide with the rare disease retinitis pigmentosa have already successfully used the bionic implant.

However, this is the first time a patient with peripheral vision has received one, making it the first known case of a human having combined natural and artificial sight.

So it's up to 130 of these out in the wild now. The design has already come down in size, offloading the processing to the side pack.

While these are still in a blurry state data gathered from these people will allow them to make further improvements as they learn more about how to interface with the optic nerve.

The interesting thing highlighted is that he doesn't need his eyes open for this and the portability of the camera: obviously its easier to get knocked off his head, hence the bulky safety goggles which would be a risk if blind patients were to drop them in busy or dangerous areas after becoming accustomed to using them, but with the option of being able to position these he could literally have eyes in the back of his head.

The nature of the camera as a standard ccd/cmos camera means that shit can be networked. He could potentially have cameras around his house to see each room. Or a strip joint on the far side of the planet... or a drone :(

Either way, its a technology that really impresses me. It may not be applicable everywhere (if the persons optic nerves are damaged, they would be hard to interface with), but we have the potential now to minimise cases of blindness (at least in the first world nations).