Fire

A man is washing his feet by the river. Another man runs up to him, and says between heaving breaths, "Please, sir, help me, my house is on fire! Everything I have is burning down!"

The first looks up and says to the second, "Look to your left and look to your right. The entire city is on fire."

The second man insists, "You have to help me, please, do something!"

Two men are washing their feet by the river.

Usability (A short story)

God damn, how can we even consider releasing something like this? We should just scrap him.

We can't. The dev team will go nuts; they've spent years on this one; all those delays, the resources...

Doesn't mean we can't cut our losses now. Forget about this and reassign the programmers to someone more promising.

Promising? We all thought he was going to be the next big thing! The RL Chiang of the West; heck, he was suppose to crush the Chinese models. Everybody bought the hype. Maybe that was the problem. The devs worked on the hype instead of on what's in front of them. Their managers should have kept their heads down, instead of blabbering about him on all the forums.

Who cares what went wrong? He's still a completely unusable piece of crap.

You have the formula. Give it to me now.

Longevity has been one of the main goals of transhumanism. We all want to live long enough to see the Future. What if someone tells you that you can live longer without waiting for gene mods, nanobots, or symbiotes? Too easy, right? No, we don't need technology to live longer, better lives. It can be as easy as changing your diet, and we can do that right now.

I'm not trying to sell any diets; there's too much controversy on which one works, and which one is pseudoscientific bullshit. I don't even buy the natural, or traditional diet, the one that Michael Pollan pushes: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." I know most of the processed foods have all kinds of icky preservatives in them, and I know soda will rot you from the inside. But why worship the traditional diet? Traditionally, the average life-span is shorter than it is today. Show me a culture that lives to 120 and I will eat whatever they are having.

Aside: lobsters show negligible senescence and can live to well over 100. Too bad for them they are so delicious. Too bad for us we don't get that longevity by eating them.

140 yr old lobster about to be interrogated on the secrets of its longevity.

The point remains: whether you are anti-fat, pro-carbs, or pro-starving-yourself, you can live better just by tweaking your lifestyle. A bit of exercise is good. Learn to cook, or dance, or play Guitar Hero. Be happy and free yourself from stress. Hang out with friends. Fall in love. It could work. Even if these things don't work, and they don't make you live any longer, well, at least you had fun living.

Merry Christmas. See you in the Future.

Apocalypse!

As civilization grows toward dizzying heights, we become increasingly aware of how far we have to fall. We dote on collapse, destruction, and survival, because of the uneasiness we feel living in a world too complex to understand. Its machinery has evolved beyond our control, and we are all trapped in lives that we call normal. The sub-genre of science fiction that deals with apocalyptic (and post-apocalyptic) scenarios appeals to this dread, and offers a second chance - to blow away the fluff, to reduce civilization to its imaginary core values, and, maybe, to design and rebuild it better than before.

The futurist is concerned with rebounding from this collapse and rebuilding a technological society. After survival is assured, we'd like to skip past all the grime and pollution that came with the Industrial Revolution and go directly into clean, renewable structures. At the last H+ meeting, there was a great deal of discussion on these two ends of the spectrum: basic survival needs like agriculture, medicine, metal-working, tool-making, and sustainable solutions like solar and wind power.

But how do we connect the two? How do we go from subsistence to prosperity and beyond? Are there any shortcuts? There are, but it has less to do with technology than with the propagation of ideas and social structures (at the meeting, interesting analogies were drawn to the role of technology in developing countries). We'd have to consider what resources are available, and how to take the most advantage of them. Let's talk about the end of the world:

Scenario: Biological catastrophe

This broad category includes scenarios of destruction targeted at the human population: any disaster that kills off most of the people without damaging the things we built.  It includes pandemic (The Stand), reproductive failure (Children of Men), gendercide (Y: The Last Man), zombies (28 Days Later, I am Legend), famine due to climate change, ecological collapse, gamma rays and ozone depletion.

Though most of the infrastructure will deteriorate in a decade or less, our most precious resource can last for much longer: the wealth of knowledge stored in books, hard drives (inactive), and optical media. First priority will be the protect repositories of knowledge - libraries, datacenters, and universities - against looting and environmental damage.

As people begin to repopulate and rebuild, we'll need to distribute knowledge to far away communities. The people with access to life-saving information (for example, how to grow food and maintain greenhouses, how to survive cholera or perform an appendicitis) have a responsibility to share it with everyone. Without people operating the network of communication satellites, the easiest way to send information around the world is shortwave radio (around 10 MHz). These radios can be operated by individuals and many are built independent of the electric grid.

Education should be a prime focus. When people become scarce, each person must be encouraged to develop to his or her fullest potential. The problems that caused the disaster, whether pandemic or famine, may prevent any progress until we can find a fix. And that can't be done until we train enough engineers, researchers, and scientists to replace the ones lost in the catastrophe.

Technology level follows the standard decay curve - crumbling quickly as nobody is around to maintain it, but eventually levels off so all that's left are Twinkies, Spam, and those plastic things that hold six-packs together. Population level, following the initial collapse, will slowly grow to a level that's limited by the technology (agricultural, infrastructure, medical, etc) - a logistic curve. Units in the following graphs are arbitrary.

Here is a model of the worst case scenario: nobody bothers to rebuild or maintain the tech, so people keep exploiting what was left from the catastrophe until everything runs down. Buildings crumble to dust, cities turn into wilderness, forests spread across the land. The survivors band together in small tribes and live a hand-to-mouth existence. Even worse: there is no guarantee that we would ever return to a pre-collapse level of civilization.

The recovery model: we preserve enough knowledge to rebuild and use the existing structures to speed up the process. Note that technological decline is reversed quickly and the population limit rises as a result. There's a feedback process here: the more technology and infrastructure we save, the faster people can recover their former lives and become productive (and reproductive!). Optimistically, we'll restore the electric grid in 10 years and networks in 30. Recovery is a race against time - the longer we wait, the more we lose to decay, and the harder it will be to fix things up.

Resources for survivors:
Download the offline version of Wikipedia

Library of Congress in Washington D.C.

National Library of Medicine at Bethesda, Maryland

Research libraries at Harvard, MIT, UC Berkeley, Stanford, etc.

Google datacenters

Too cynical

You know this quote from Niemöller ?

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Of course. Every high school teaches it. It's suppose to be a call to action, asking us to speak out and defend our fellow human beings. But why, according to this poem, why should I care about the communists and the unionists and the Jews? Because when they come for me, when it's my own butt on the line, I want the communists and the socialists and the Jews to save me. Not exactly altruistic.

My interpretation sounds terribly cynical and selfish (as I like to call it "rational self-interest"). Why do I care about the research for Parkinson's or blindness or aging? Is it because I want to reduce the suffering of other people, or because these bad things can one day happen to me?

Morality of genetic enhancement: How will it change relationships?

With nature: Sandel's main objection revolves around humility and what he calls "the gifted aspect of life". If we can't accept who we are and what we are given, if seek to control our own nature, then we lose appreciation of who we are. He bases this argument on the ancient concept of hubris: we shouldn't play god. I will give the standard transhumanist response: people don't build skyscrapers and bridges and dams out of humility. We didn't take flight and land on the Moon out of humility. We didn't split atoms and peer into the infinity of space out of humility. We did those and other things because we wish to better ourselves, and because we can. That's who we are. To ignore this restless impulse would be to deny our very nature. Through out human history, we've been striving to increase our dominion over the world around us. It is only logical to extend that will inward, toward our own bodies and minds.

With our bodies: How do you see yourself? Is there a sacred boundary around our own bodies and our minds, one that makes them off-limits to our willful control? The boundary is becoming more and more fuzzy: most people accept vaccinations and nutritional supplements, contact lenses and pacemakers. We drink coffee and alcohol and take other mind-altering substances. We read and learn and expand our minds. While these modifications are not as permanent as genetic enhancements, they do cross over any bodily boundary.

With our children: "We do not choose our children." Sandel sees having children as an unbidden, surprising, humbling experience. Some parents choose not to learn the sex of the child before birth, because knowing would ruin that experience. Children are gifts (he shied away from using the religious term "blessing"). A parent's love should not depend on the attributes of the child. But it is because of that parental love, that some parents wish to give the best to their child. The proper analogy is not designing specific traits for an offspring like one would order a Whopper at Burger King (no mayo, no tomatoes, extra lettuce), but of three wise men bringing gifts to a new-born child.

With our parents: Will genetic enhancement burden the parents and the children with too much responsibility for their choices? A short child today can only wish that he were taller, but in the future, he might grow to resent his parents for not making him taller, or better looking, or fitting whatever fad the culture dictates. A child that's engineered to be perfect might feel inadequate if she does not succeed. We are not wholly responsible for the way we are, Sandel says, and that relieves us of some pressure. To me, that's a child-like attitude. We as adults take responsibility for the choices we make, for what we learn or fail to learn, for how we behave. People today already deal with the choices that parents made for them, like circumcision, home-schooling, and religious practice. We can blame personal problems on how we were born, or we can learn to overcome them.

In the end, these considerations should be done on a personal level. Each of us learn and grow and figure out our own identities. The government should not make policies based on these objections.

Next post will deal with how enhancement will change society as a whole.

Morality of genetic enhancement (part 1)

"What's the right thing to do?" That's the question Professor Sandel used to open his Justice lectures at Harvard. He served on President Bush's bioethics committee back in 2002 and provided a liberal voice for the ethics of human genetic research and policy, liberal compared to the rest of the Bush-appointed panel. Recently, he gave a lecture for BBC about his moral objections to genetic enhancement of children. I'll summarize his points and inject some of my own thoughts, along with ideas gleamed from last Friday's Seattle H+ meeting.

Before I can start, I need to address two important distinctions. Genetic enhancement is not eugenics. Eugenics seeks to improve the human population by selective breeding, either through incentives or limitations on reproduction. Not only is it associated with racism and tainted by the Nazi ideas of racial purity, but it also infringes on the basic human right of reproduction:

Reproductive rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children - World Health Organization

Sterilizing or restricting reproduction of a racial group is comparable to genocide. But, the non-coercive part of eugenics tends to slip under our moral radar: many religions encourage practitioners to marry inside the group, and to have more children. Countries like Singapore paid certain classes of citizens to have more children, and paid others to be sterilized. These practices fall into the vast gray area between right and wrong.

Genetic enhancement provides couples with the opportunity to choose and select specific traits for their unborn children, or modify the genes in a way that's impossible by nature. Unlike eugenics, it favors quality over quantity. It is not coercive, and it does not inherently discriminate against any group. At first sight, this does not violate any human rights. To justify any limitation, Sandel and other bio-conservatives must weigh any harms of genetic enhancement against what seems to be a reproductive right (though not mentioned yet by the WHO) for parents to decide what's best for their own children. The burden of proof falls on the conservatives.

Enhancement is not therapy. This is a contentious issue, because there exists a wide middle-ground where cases can be interpreted different ways in different contexts. Screening out Down syndrome and muscular dystrophy falls into preventative therapy, but engineering the perfect muscles for a future Olympic swimmer is clearly enhancement. More ambiguously, a treatment for Alzheimer's disease or for ADHD may also enhance memory and learning for regular people. The NSF's report on ethics defines enhancement as rising above the "species-normal" range - but even that can lead to fuzzy scenarios. At the end, the distinction relies on our intution.

Data's struggle

He is wondering: "Why is she holding my arm?"

Until recently, I didn't understand why Data wanted to be more human. His human-like appearance only magnifies the differences: he takes words literally; humor eludes him; he is deprived of pain, pleasure, and emotions; he does not understand human behavior. When put in such negative terms, these qualities make him seem defective and incomplete. It's as if his creator didn't have time to finish the job. Maybe Data feels insecure about these inadequacies. But he can't feel insecure; that's a human emotion!

Data tries to remedy his condition by putting himself in social situations, usually with awkward results. In the episode "In Theory", he engages in a romantic relationship with crewmemeber Jenna, but never feeling any real connection with her. "In regards to romantic relationships, there is no real me," he admits, only a compilation of different cultural sources.

Why does he even try? He goes around to various colleagues for relationship advice. He devotes many processing cycles to write himself a romantic subroutine (which he promptly deletes after Jenna breaks up with him). In the bigger scheme, he struggles to be more human. But there are many other fictional androids who are perfectly comfortable being who they are: the replicants in Blade Runner, the cyborgs in Terminator, the robots in Asimov's stories. Why can't Data accept who he is, and consider his emotionless rationality to be a personality quirk rather than a deficiency?

Data's real struggle, I realized, isn't to become more human; he aspires to become more than he is. The goal is merely a product of the culture he lives in. He wants to exceed the limitations that he was created with. Ironically, that restless longing makes him more human than any emotion can.

When we look at our own lives, and ask what motivates us, maybe the destinations don't matter as much as the journey itself.

A healthy dose of doubt

I haven't updated in a while; I think I needed a break from the ever-quickening stream of information about singularity and transhumanism. Too much immersion can lead to a false sense of certainty, of inevitability, and I don't want hold any delusions. Been thinking about philosophy of knowledge lately:

"Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never traveled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect."  -Bertrand Russell

Someone on Reddit recently asked for arguments against the singularity. I think apathy, laziness, conservatism, and the lack of imagination can hold back human potential better than any technological limitation. Many obstacles originate from well-meaning suggestions: "be careful experimenting with things you don't understand", "let's solve the current problems first, like poverty, famine, and war", "the life we have is good enough; let's keep it that way". While these are all good ideas, they should not be twisted to hinder progress.

More about conservatism this weekend.

Project: Robot Runway

I was just thinking about robot models the other night, the kind that struts down runways wearing the latest fashion, pirouetting to the flashes of a hundred cameras. There is something robotic about the expressionless faces and exaggerated movement of runway models anyway. More importantly, robots would be perfect for events that focus so heavily on form and appearance; designers don't have to worry about the models' personalities influencing their clothing.

This morning, I see this in my inbox:



Screw you, technology. Can't you let my dreams last a few days longer before making them real?

Also, yes I do have a robot fetish.

Synesthesia: that number is orange-red

What does September, green, and the number 6 have in common?

People with synesthesia can link one sensory concept to a different sense. Think of it as one part of the brain spilling-over into another. The most common connection is between shape and color recognition;  letters and numbers can take on different hues and shades. Try looking at this number pattern; can you see the words?

Each person has a unique set of associations. The letter A may look red to one person, and yellow to another. Both would feel uncomfortable if you show them a blue colored A.

Some people can see time laid out as a track or a line, and each month as a different shape: June may be longer and thinner than December, the future and past stretch in different directions, and the weeks and the days stack up in detailed compartments.

Some can see the colors of different sounds and notes, or associate spoken words with shapes. The concepts and senses mingle together like a rich metaphor. Neurologist Ramachandran mentioned that synesthesia is eight times more likely in artists, and may form the basis of creativity and metaphoric thinking.

So your brain can wire itself to link between two different senses, or two modes of input. How can we use that?

To repair and replace senses for people with a damaged sensory organ! Someone could be blind, or color-blind, because of a defect in her eyes, but the visual centers of her brain could still be fully functional. More on that in the next post.

Synthetic senses

We all perceive the world through our senses. Together, they filter reality into subjective experience. But reality has so much more to it than what we can see, hear, feel, taste, and smell, right? Yes, but it is harder to imagine that I expected.

A colorblind person can't understand what some colors look like; she has no basis to compare red and green. Just knowing there is a difference doesn't make the problem go away. Similarly, we don't understand physical concepts like "north" or "10 amps" until they are translated, with instruments, into something that we can sense. A few pioneers have tried to incorporate these instruments into their bodies, in hope of finding a new, synthetic sense.

Adam Skory from Noisebridge (a hackspace) developed a wearable directional sensor called the Northpaw that translates the magnetic direction into a buzzing signal. The wearer feels a constant vibration on her ankle, but the experience quickly becomes subconscious - the brain can rewire the sense of touch into a new sense of direction! This wonderful property of the brain is called "neuroplasticity".

"It passes in and out of my integrated experience. When it’s at its best, my awareness is not of the touch from the Northpaw, it’s the awareness of north from the Northpaw." - My New Sense Organ


While having a compass sense might not seem useful to most people, the Air Force has been working on a similar device that helps pilots: the Spatial Orientation Enhancement System. During tricky maneuvers, a pilot may lose the sense of gravity, which is perceived by our inner ears. In free-fall, this sense becomes disoriented, and the pilot may forget which way is down - the result can be fatal. This suit uses gentle vibrations to remind him the right direction. This augmented sense may become even more useful as the Airforce switches from aircrafts to UAVs: a joystick pilot currently has no situational awareness other than what he sees on the screen.

Some body-modification enthusiasts have implanted small magnets into their fingertips, enabling them to feel magnetic fields, electric currents, and some metals.

But there's more, right? What else can we sense? Most super-senses are just augmentations of the ones we have: Superman's x-ray vision, Predator's infrared vision, telescopic and microscopic vision, super-hearing, a bat's echolocation, a dog's ability of smell, a bee's vision of polarized light, a spider's sense of vibration. Barring any supernatural phenomena, it seems we've come to the end of our exploration of sensory input. After all, physics and chemistry only allows for a few fundamental modes of interaction.

Or maybe, like the colorblind, I'm unable to imagine what other wonderful experiences there are in the margins of reality.

Death's advocate: part 1

I mentioned in the last post that people have come up with many ways of justifying their mortality; most of us, when we become adults, have thought about the meaning of our own lives and deaths. But there are some who openly promote death and the idea that death has intrinsic value. I'll try to refute these Death's advocates as best I can.

Today's Dinosaur Comics (a hilarious and well-written web comic by Ryan North) gives a solid example of a more general argument: death is necessary for progress. There's an image of old people lounging on their porches, reminiscing and clinging onto the good-old-days. What if that's what society becomes?

That's unfair, of course. People can change; each and every person has potential to remake themselves. Ideas and beliefs are not carved into our brains. We can learn and understand new concepts. The religious can become atheist, and skeptics can discover faith. Innovation and growth can move us no matter what age we are.

On the converse, new generations do not guarantee changes in social mores. "Young" and "new" are not necessarily synonyms. Every generation has its own prejudices, selfishness, and cruelty. Those faults are part cultural momentum and part human nature. Biological reproduction is not progress.

I hope that the misguided ideas from Death's advocates never turn into public policy. They target our worship of youth, and blame the older generations for racism, sexism, and all that's wrong with society. We mock the right-wing delusion of death panels, but the T-rex in the comic is talking about the real deal: condemning people to death for the sake of social progress. Not just old people, but ourselves, and our future children too.

Yes, I am taking a web comic too seriously.

Would you ever choose to kill yourself?

Would you ever choose to kill yourself?

That was a loaded question. Most people would say "No, of course not. Life is too precious."

Would you choose to live forever?

Surprisingly, many people would say "No. Living forever would be boring and pointless." Or they may give another reason - people have come up with many ways of justifying their mortality.



Do those questions set up a false dichotomy? Right now, you don't have to kill yourself to find death - age and disease and accidents will take care of it eventually. But some day, science might provide us with solutions for each of those problems; there may be a cure for aging. Aubrey de Grey and other researchers are convinced that they will find a way.

When there exists a choice for immortality, isn't choosing the alternative equivalent to choosing death?

Think of it this way: Every year on your birthday, you receive a small package in the mail. You unwrap it, and inside is a red pill. There's a card there that explains what everybody already knows: If you take this pill, you will live another year, completely healthy and active and free of diseases, guaranteed. If you don't take the pill, you may die within the year.

One year, you feel depressed, or bored, or just sick of it all, and you decide to flush the pill down the toilet. At the end of the year, you're still alive and healthy. And the next year too. You get suspicious, and call the number on the back of the card.

It turns out that all those red pills are actually placebos. The only real pill was the first one you took on your 18th birthday - that one has already made you immortal.

After the call, you receive a package in the mail. It contains a blue pill; if you take the blue pill, you will die. Not immediately, but inevitably, you will die.

Would you take the blue pill?

How can you learn to walk if you never fall down?

Nobody gets it right the first time; not even robots. This video inspired the following story.

It's 2 AM and Kimiko had been coding for 6 hours straight. She was about to make a breakthrough, but it would carry with it a painful mistake.

Compile.
Upload.
Run.

***

The project was conceived in a moment of inspired laziness. Every time the robot Asimo tripped over an obstacle, or lost its balance, or took a mis-programmed step, it would fall down, clattering on the cold floor. And every time, Kimiko struggled to help it back up. Asimo weighed over a hundred pounds with its power pack - almost as much as she did. If only it could get up by itself!

More than human

In the olden days, people use to think that the Earth was at the center of the Universe. They thought that their particular city or country was at the center of the world. All of their maps were drawn this way, but this isn't just a matter of convenience - it was an outlook, a philosophy. People are by nature self-centered and narcissistic beings.

Today, some people believe that human beings are the end-product, the apex of billions of years of evolution.  Again, it's not a matter of convenience, but an actual perception of biological history. The cartoon above (parody of the iconic illustration by Rudolph Zallinger) shows a progression from ape to modern man. It presents evolution as an inevitable ascension toward the top: us. This view is false. Though we can trace our own lineage back to proto-apes, and though there are no surviving semi-human species, evolution is not directed, and it does not have an end-goal. We are merely an extremely successful species among millions of others.

There's no reason to believe that the homo sapiens is the final step. The optimist tells me that we are not a dead end species either. No, there will be a next step; we will become more than human. Once we embrace that idea, only one question remains:

How long?

Epic Showdown: American power armor vs Japanese cyborg exoskeleton

We need to make this fight happen.

On the right: the XOS combat chassis, developed by Raytheon Sarcos to augment the American soldier of the future; can bench 200 lb weights till he gets bored; flexible enough to go up and down steep inclines, and strong enough to punch your head clean off. May come with bulletproof armor plating and sharp stabbing hooks. Available exclusively to the military. (video)

On the left: HAL exoskeleton, developed by Cyberdine and Japanese roboticist Dr. Sankai; can lift a paralyzed man to the summit of the Swiss Alps; carries your grandmother down the stairs; controlled by nerve impulses; helps paralyzed or weakened people to walk again. Comes with a 5 hour battery. Anyone can rent this for $2000 a month! (video, video)

Who do you think would win in this fight? Obviously, the killer military machine, right? Don't be so sure. Doesn't the HAL suit remind you of something? Maybe a story that we all know and love:

A gawky and oppressed teen finds shiny robotic suit. It transforms nerd into superhero. He stops criminals and saves babies and rescues stranded commuters. At the end, he faces down the nasty bully who has been slapping him around for years, and somehow the bully had gotten hold of the battlesuit that looks like a Terminator. It's David vs. Goliath. I think we all know how that fight should turn out.

This scenario brings up the issue of image and narrative. We have learned so many associations and stories that we can't help but draw connections when we contact something new. A piece of technology is not just a collection of functions; it speaks to us, to our subconscious. Apple, for example, is a master of this technique: merging function with personality.

If we hope to make smooth strides in living with any new forms of technology, we should pay attention to the public perception of it.

Article: Cyborg Exoskeletons May Soon Become as Common as Bicycles

LED displays in a contact lens

Scientists at University of Washington have embedded 8x8 LEDs into contact lenses, using micron sized circuits. The goal is to turn contacts into high resolution displays and allow us to see the world through an overlay of information - think "Terminator vision".

This development, when combined with other mobile gadgets, may change the way we think of both the real and the digital world - merging the two into what people call "augmented reality". Imagine traveling to another country and having a subtitle of the foreign language right under your eyes; or, gaining a birds-eye view of your surroundings when you are out hiking or directions while driving. What else would you do with that kind of ability?

(That is a rabbit eye)












There are still technical problems. The eye can't focus on light sources close to it; micro-lenses have to be placed between the eye and the LED so it doesn't look blurry. Another technique is to scan low-power lasers into the retina (like in Snow Crash) - lasers have better resolution, but they can't be made micro-scale yet. The LEDs get power wirelessly; they only require microwatts. They may even be powered by the ubiquitous wifi signal.

What people call augmented reality is actually a new kind of interface, one that allows us to pay attention to both our surroundings and the information. We'll no longer be forced to stare at glowing rectangles. The information becomes part of the environment. You can see a good example of it in the viral video What's In the Box.

The published paper from IEEE: Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens

Circular dreams

The future is approaching faster than ever, and it is accelerating. Fundamental changes in our culture and society happen four or five times in our lives. Even thirty-year youngs are feeling the strains; they are in danger of being left behind by the quickening pace of technology. Those of us who remember asking "why do I need a mobile phone" are now asking "why do I need Facebook on my smartphone".

Individuals are not the only ones being tested by the pace of technology. Companies, laws, policies, relationships, are all struggling to keep up, competing to stay afloat on the bubbling forefront of the new and the next. There will be conflicts, winners, and losers. We have seen the record industry clinging onto the ancient idea of CDs, and failing miserably. We have also seen companies like Amazon or Apple embrace new technology and drive it to enormous success. Countries and cultures can fall to similar fates. Our laws and our social expectations are even worse at keeping apace.

Most of us ride the current of developing technology without a sense of where it is going. We can only see backwards to the past, and look around at our present situation. Like passengers on a drifting ship, we like to imagine there is someone up there steering it through troubled waters. The truth is, there are very few people who can see those looming icebergs, and even fewer who have both the vision and the command to avoid them.

The risks and dangers that we face are immense. We have recently weathered one such technologically driven threat - global nuclear war, a war that could have ended humanity's very existence. That was our first trial, and we barely passed. Though we are pushing back the age-old problems of war, famine, and disease, new threats await us, enabled by the very technologies that can solve those problems. I do not want to a member of the first species ever to become extinct by its own hands. We must be ready.

Yet, the development of technology will not stop. If we try to hang on to outdated ideals, we will be left behind like the record industry, and become dangerously obsolete. If, instead, we take control and guide the development with knowledge and foresight, the benefits will be limitless.

The knowledge and vision should not be kept purely academic, nor be debated only by senators and judges and CEOs. We, as voters, as consumers, and as citizens, need to know. We can contribute our voices and our efforts to help shape the future we will live in. The first steps have already been taken: popular consumer products like Roomba and science fiction stories like Wall-E and Dollhouse help us become comfortable with new technology and challenge us to think about its implications.

But, the future should not be seen as pure speculation or science fiction. Our future is not just a fantasy; it is our own story, and we are both the authors and the characters. We, the people, in order to take hold of our shared destiny, must recognize our part in the circle between technology and humanity.

(Not so) Important realization

Historical persons are immortal until their date of death. They can't die before they're suppose to die!

A good primer for Singularity

This 20 minute talk from Ray Kurzweil should be enough to get anyone started on the subject of technological singularity and tranhumanism. Kurzweil is, as usual, persuasive and his vision is fascinating. Listening to him speak reminds me of Hari Seldon, from Asimov's Foundation books.

Devil's Advocate

Here's me debating with myself again:

The accelerating pace of improvement in computation, also known as Moore's Law, can not continue forever. There are fundamental limitations to how small we can make the circuits and still be able to disperse away heat.

The exponential curves that Kurzweil is so fond of are nothing more than the beginning of a logistic curve. Instead of accelerating into singularity, technological development will hit the inflection point at 2050 and slowly saturate until society and technology comes to an equilibrium.

Simply look at the development of railroads in the United States - there was an intense period of growth for railroad development, but today that has completely stopped.

And the rebuttal:

Moore's Law is a dead horse. Nobody says that the current silicon based photolithographic chips can be made faster exponentially (though it's been good to us for 20 years).

"Whenever a technology approaches some kind of a barrier, according to Kurzweil, a new technology will be invented to allow us to cross that barrier" These paradigm shifts has been happening for as long as people can remember - bronze to iron to steel, steam engine to diesel to gasoline to rocket and jet, etc. While we're not sure which technology will replace silicon, there are many plausible and hotly researched candidates: photonic, molecular, nanotubes, DNA and protein, quantum.

The saturation point has to do with economic and social carrying capacity - it boils down to the question, "When is enough enough?" This makes it obvious to me that the singularity will happen first in the United States. Americans are never satisfied with "enough". They always want more. There is very little profit in a saturated market - instead of stifling progress, the economy demands innovation.

The main obstacle remains: moral, ethical, and social pressures. Already there exists regulations against genetic research. You can be sure there will be more laws and regulations against genetic augmentation, against cybernetic augmentation, against robots, against AI, etc. People are jealous of things they don't understand or don't want to understand. These attitudes will limit progress to baby-steps (see Asimo, Roomba, etc warming the public up to the idea of friendly robots).

Freak

I have these two long arms that hang by my sides. Each one has five wriggly appendages on the end. And I have over a hundred thousand thin black strands on top of my head, and every day they get a little bit longer. There are two pits in the middle of my face with round squishy balls lodged inside, and if you stare too long at them I guarantee you'll get creeped out. I also like to sit for hours and hours in front of a glowing rectangle, like I'm in a trance. Sometimes, I put pieces of dead animals inside my mouth. That's one of my favorite things, actually. Pieces of dead animals. I also cover myself with pieces of cloth because I don't want the world to see what a freak I am.

Please don't judge me.

Wish Upon a Star

The star Betelgeuse, resting on the shoulder of the Orion constellation, is a red supergiant, and one of the largest and brightest stars in the sky. In the last decade, scientists have observed it shrinking at an increasing rate - shedding about 15% of its size. At its core, carbon and neon and oxygen are breaking apart and fusing into heavier elements. At its surface, plasma and hot gas boil and bubble and large plumes eject into space.

The sudden change may be a harbinger of the end of its life cycle - the old star will go supernova within the next one thousand years, and its core may collapse into a black hole. On Earth, this event will be brighter than the moon and be visible during the day.

I want to be there, to witness the death of a star.

I wish I may, I wish I might...

A Breakdown of Intelligence

In the recent transhumanism meetup on AI, the following definition of intelligence was brought up: "the measure of intelligence is how well it can preference order possible futures". In simpler words, intelligence is the measured by the ability to make decisions.

How does one make decisions then? Let's break down the process into smaller parts:

• Predict the outcomes of each choice. This is commonly known as "considering the consequences". What will happen if I cut down this forest? What will happen if I give her a compliment? What will happen if I detune the laser by 5 Mhz?
  
  • Coming up with a good model of self, the environment, and other people / intelligent agents.
    
  • To do this, we need to learn. This is why we study science, why we meditate and moralize, why we study psychology and philosophy.
  • If we don't know enough to get a working model, we need to experiment. Gather data, look at correlations, set up tests that are repeatable, simulate, present theories, debate. We do science.

• Create new choices. Not every decision rests on a binary choice, black or white, yes or no, heads or tails. There are many shades of gray. We call this creativity, inventiveness, imagination, thinking outside the box. Unlike prediction, which delves deep into the possible futures, creativity shows us new possibilities. This is sometimes called "lateral thinking". We're not just picking the road less traveled; we cut our own path.
  
  It is worth noting that most people are bad at this. We like to go along with the choices that are presented.
  

• Preference order the choices, by taking into consideration of their consequences. Which outcome is "best"? That is a tough question, and it comes down to how we define our goals and value. In computer science, it is relegated to a heuristic function: take a model of the world as input, return a number as output. The number represents the value of the model world, and can include positive or negative infinity, but most of the time it lies somewhere in between. This process is inherently flawed, since it takes all the complexities and intricacies of a world model and pares it down to one number, a one dimensional projection of the universe. But it is necessary - that's the way decisions work; at the end we can only choose once: one outcome, one future.
  
  Even if we can model the future perfectly and knows every possible choice (as is possible in many board games), we would still need to define our goals (e.g. checkmate) and to weigh the outcomes to see which choice will best help us to that goal.
  
  
• Recursion. How do we know which goal is the best? Which heuristic function is the best? Which model of the world is the best? These are all decisions to be made! Is a utilitarian policy better than one that's based on natural rights? How do we define utilitarianism? Which rights should be universal? An intelligent being should see the layers and layers of decisions involved in making each decision - it should be able to handle recursive processes. When do we stop the recursion and start relying on assumptions? That is another decision!
  

Japanese scientists aim to create robot-insects

Cyborg insects!

I'd love to see how Japanese science funding works.

A quantifiable definition of Transhumanism

What part of our current condition can we change or make better?
How about any? I see this as a good measure of transhumanism: how much of what we are can we change?

Right now, we can alter a few percent: prosthesis, eye correction, hearing aids, pace makers, vaccines, these are body mods. We can also throw chemicals into our brains to alter perception and behavior, to a certain extent. That's a good start.

To understand what we can change, we have to understand what we are; what makes us human. This point was brought up several times: how can we tell if we ever stop being human? Physically, it's very clear; the genes, the body, the brain, the way we move and eat and mate, birth and death. Mentally, it's not so clear; but there is much research into that, and research reveals that the human mind is a product of evolution, just as much as our physical forms (no surprise there). Our behavior, desires, preferences, what makes us happy, much of it is coded by thousands of generations of adaptation. These things make us human, but they also limit us - we are stuck in this body, stuck in this mindset. We are forced to live with the default settings we got when we were born.

But there's a part of us, a small but all-important part, that can choose - our will. And we can choose to change ourselves. I think that's transhumanism, and it's fundamentally new. We have spent 10 thousand years changing our external environment to suit us. Now we turn that inward.

To quantify it, I'll use a computer analogy. Let's say I got a factory made PC that comes pre-installed with a set of hardware and software. If I were naive I would just use it out of the box. If I understand a little more, I can some RAM upgrades. A bigger hard drive. Nicer LCD screen. I can get new software - Firefox browser, OpenOffice, etc. Now it's a lot different from the factory machine. If I'm really good I'd wipe the OS and install Linux. Swap out the CPU for a quad-core. Build a custom case-mod with liquid cooling. Now the machine is not even recognizable from the one I bought. When we can change everything, we'll be post-human.

Every change is a choice. I can always choose the default and stay human. But I want to be able to make those decisions instead of being shackled with it. Only by breaking those ancient, evolutionary chains can we truly have free-will.

Why do we die?

There is a belief that death is the natural consequence of life. It is an easy conclusion to make: All living things die. No. There is nothing about being alive that necessitates death. The definition of life seems fuzzy, but let's look at the aspects that we humans are familiar with:

Interact with environment: eating, moving, breathing, seeing.
Self-maintenance: all the internal processes that keeps you alive.
Change: thinking, learning, forgetting, maturing, adapting.

None of these functions require us to die!

It is reproduction that necessitates death. If an organism reproduces but is not programmed to die, not only will it exponentially fill up the environment to take all available resources (in fact, mortal living things do this too), but it will do so while forcing newer, younger organisms to die from starvation. A reproducing organism that does not die will be taking resources away from its own children. This behavior goes against the drive of evolution - the organism will compete against its own offspring for survival, limiting the amount and frequency of genetic variation. It might work in an extraordinarily stable environment. However, if the organism has to adapt to frequent and drastic environmental changes, it would need to change. Unfortunately for life on Earth, there is no way for a species to change and adapt except by genetic variation. Until now.

Death (I'm not talking about death from accidents, diseases, or other artificial means) is an evolutionary trait, and may be one of the oldest. We can make it obsolete.

Free

I want to live in a future where everyone is free to choose what they want to do, with a freedom that can only come from a deep understanding of who they are and how they fit into society and in history.

Dangerous ideas

I need to give more examples of ideas consuming the people that hold them, or forcing them to destroy each other. I'm writing from the evolutionary point of view of the ideas, treating them as entities, instead of from the people and cultures that support those ideas.

Human sacrifices took place in cultures all over the world, from Mesopotamia to America to the Far East. These sacrfices were mostly used as a bargaining chip, to appease gods or bring about good fortune. The ritualistic sacrifices help reinforce the beliefs and exalt the power of the deities - one certainly won't sacrifice human lives for lesser gods. The practices were spectacular: enormous temples or pyramids, magnificiant jewelry and art, songs and dances, all serve to imprint the idea on as many spectators as possible. In return, the cultures found justification in their ritual: usually those gods who demand sacrifice are believed to be able to control human lives anyway, by affecting the weather, warfare, disease, child-birth, etc. The rituals give the people some semblance of control over their chaotic and unpredictable lives.

Martyrdom is an newer concept, first encountered in the beginning of the Judeo-christian religion. Jesus was a prime example of one who died for their religious beliefs. The martyr's sacrifice must be a public one. Without witnesses or without the retelling of the associated circumstances, a martyr is just a victim. Sometimes the stories can make the martyr, holding up the image instead of the truth; this is a sign of its ideological nature. Like a human sacrifice, the martyr's story is made more compelling because of the death. But in the martyr's case, it is more so because the sacrifice was a personal choice. This choice makes martyrdom fundamentally different from human sacrifice; the participant is perfectly aware that his or her death will inspire the beliefs of others and become an example. How effective is martyrdom in spreading the faith? The crucifix has become one of the most recognized symbols in the world, and practices like public self-immolation and hunger-strikes are modernized variants of this powerful message. To encourage this self-destructive behavior, both the Bible and the Quran have passages that promise reward to believers who die while fighting for their God.

(More later on warfare, propaganda, and cult suicides)

Memes and ideas as a symbiotic parasite

Why are people willing to die for an idea? To charge into bullets for a flag, a symbol, a word? Why would people kill themselves for a promise? It doesn't make sense from an evolutionary or genetic point of view. There is no genetic benefit to dying for an idea, compared to the sacrifices one would make for siblings or children.

Susan Blackmore explains in her TED presentation how memes can evolve much like genetic organisms. Individual memes are fragments, but a collection of them can exhibit life-like behavior. Let's look at how these memetic parasites coexist with their hosts, the human mind. Most religions have tenets against murder (thou shalt not kill) and against suicide. That is a good example; it is a basic unit of idea; it specifies a behavioral trait; it is indivisible, easily identifiable and embedded in many different sources. In symbiosis, it is beneficial to have more minds for the memes to replicate in. An idea that has more believers is more powerful.

When threatened, though, these mind-parasites have no qualms about sacrificing the hosts. Why didn't Russia surrender to Germany in WW2? Denmark surrendered and bore almost no casualty. Compare the fates of Paris and Stalingrad. The extraordinary power of nationalism and the propaganda machine that pushed that idea compelled millions to sacrifice themselves in the struggle between two abstractions. Many people would die, or kill, without ever truly understanding what they are doing it for, without agreeing on what the Motherland is, or Freedom, or God's will; this is the power and the danger of memes.

I am oversimplifying things, of course, and there were many more factors and causes in historical analysis. But that doesn't diminish the value of this perspective. Of course ideas originate from people. Memes are born from minds. But once they get out, they no longer belong to any one person. Democracy may have originated in Athens, but it is not owned or controlled by Athenians. Ideas and concepts take life, replicating and preserving themselves through the centuries. The sooner we can understand what they work, what the mechanics are, the better we will be able to determine our own fate as a species, and not let ourselves be driven by forces beyond our control.

It made me feel better

"here, this should make you feel better." she gestured toward the console.

there's a yellow button here. on the button were the words "PUSH ME", printed in a very official-looking font.

"what does it do? what happens if i push the button?"

"it will make you feel better." she smiled.

"hmm." i reached for the button. the surface was smooth and rounded and felt slightly warm.

i pushed. it resisted for a bit, a token fight against the steady pressure of my finger. as it yielded, i felt something tiny and delicate breaking inside, not just a click but a snap. i pushed.

i pushed until it came down on the console with a solid bump, pinning it against the backrest. the machine dinged. it felt good, satisfying. i had defeated the button.

as i let off the pressure, the button pushed back at my finger, following it back up. it is taunting me, i thought. i will push it again. and again.

"see?" she said, with a twinkle in her eye.

Words

Mmmmm onomatopoeia.

Whisper.

Murmur.

Rustle.

Susurrus.

Zero Sum

A better understanding of the complexity and multitude of roles and relationships in society:

Suppose every person is entirely self-sufficent. There would be nothing I could do to help anyone else, nor they for me. Suppose the resources available are limited. Then the only way I could get more resources is to take it away from other people. I would be in direct competition with everyone in the whole population; my gain is their loss. If the gains and losses are added up for everyone, we would have a net of zero: the situation is called zero-sum.

Now instead, suppose the population is divided into five roles: A, B, C, D, E. Each group works on a separate task, using up different resources, and receives reward from the other four groups. Now I, as part of group A, would no longer be in competition with anyone from groups B, C, D, or E. I can work harder for them, and they would pay me more. The relationship is no longer zero-sum: both sides benefit from the trade. I would only have to worry about competition from within group A.

What's more interesting is that if I could find a way to create a new group, A1, with a distinct role, then I would have no competition at all. If I could establish mutually beneficial relationships with the rest of the population as A1, then I would be in a brand new niche, and I'd have plenty of room for growth. This is the mechanism by which the society we live in become more specialized and more complex.

The same reasoning can be applied to biological evolution. Animals and plants create and fill new niches to avoid competition, and at the same time establish intricate interspecies relationships. The push toward greater complexity in an ecosystem, as in human society, is a result of non-zero sum interactions.

The Infinity Blade

The Economist did this satire of Moore's Law: More Blades Good. The razor blade meme recalls the incredibly prescient Onion article Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades. Well, the Economist predicts that, if the trend continues, razors will have infinite number of blades by the year 2015.

Ridiculous? Satire? I don't think so. I'm calling it now. Before 2020 at the latest, we will see a razor with so many blades they can call it the Infinity Blade. The shaving surface will be a shiny, smooth surface that deforms to fit the unique contours of your face. It will be made of trillions of nanobots that can disintegrate hair on a molecular level, while protecting and moisturizing any skin tissue. Just run the Infinity Blade across your face or any other sensitive part, and the hair will simply disappear, leaving behind skin so soft you could be mistaken for a new born. Best of all, it won't leave any nasty hair shavings to be cleaned up! The Infinity Blade.

A pre-historical essay

I love fictional non-fiction. Funny piece by Aaron Diaz of Dresden Codak.

A Thinking Ape’s Critique of Trans-Simianism by Thog, Professor of Finding an Animal and then Killing it.

It raises an awareness of how far humans have gone beyond biological evolution. Life, for billions of years, have been limited by their genetic code. Improvements could only take place over thousands of years, through reproduction, mutation, or chance viral infection. With the development of what people call the "mind", humans can improve themselves through learning, invention, and creation. Ideas take the place of genetic material. The span of human development has been a history of how ideas can be communicated and passed on.

The apes in Aaron's essay were on the cusp of a great change. They had access to the power of thought and speech. All they were missing is the imagination, the willingness to see past what they were, and a leap of faith to take them into the next level. Will we humans be able to take that next step?

Hob from Dresden Codak

I feel a deep connection to Kimiko in this story. I too wish to be more than human.

An analysis of tipping

From a waiter's perspective, there are two types of customers.

a) Customers who always tip the same percentage. It could be the standard 15%, or it could be less from the bad tippers. They are indifferent to the quality of service and there's nothing a waiter can do to change the tip amount.

b) Customers who tip an amount correlated positively with the quality of service. Better service means more satisfied customers, which brings in a bigger tip. The correlation function might not be linear at all, and it probably has lower and upper limits.

Note that there are no bizzaro customers who tip more for worse service. Assuming the percent of B type customers is non-zero, waiters will always have an economic incentive to provide better service.

However, if the service-tip correlation function resembles a logistic curve, then the waiter would have to commit significant effort before any noticeable increase in the amount of tip received. This model might discourage many waiters from investing into the relationship.

Even worse, if the service-tip correlation is a step function, then the waiters would see no benefits at all until they overcome a threshold of service quality. The result of this model will be a segmentation of waiter behavior:

a) Some waiters will decide not to invest any additional effort into their service quality, because they don't expect any returns. They treat all customers as type A.

b) Other waiters will do their very best to satisfy their customers, because they believe that reward will follow quality. 

On the other side of the table, the customer's perspective is quite different. There is no economic benefit at all for tipping a greater amount. Disregarding any social, moral, or karmic influences, the customer has no incentive to tip. Since the service has already been provided, the customer can not affect the quality of service by varying the amount of the tip, not in the way that a waiter can affect the reciprocal relationship.

However, from a macroscopic point of view, there is benefit to tipping more for better service. Each type B customer helps to reinforce the proactive mentality of the waiters who work harder. In this way, the customers are all contributing to the system of rewards that encourages better service. Though the customer may not be able to retroactively improve his experience, but he may find consolation in the thought that he may convert a type A waiter to a type B waiter.

Of course, if the customer plans to return to that particular establishment, he would benefit from building up a good reputation there by tipping more. On the other hand, the customer is more likely to return if the service was excellent. Successful business relationships take advantage of this positive feedback between the type B groups for mutual benefit. Better service leads to more tips, which leads better service. The flip side of this is increasing apathy among waiters and decline of repeat business.

Though the restaurant can not control the type of customers coming in, it can control what type of waiters to hire. The only way to build up positive customer relationships is to staff only waiters who are reward-minded and willing to put effort into their service.

For the customers, indifference in tipping can never help increase the quality of service they receive, no matter if they always tip 20% or 0%. If they reward good service and punish bad service, they may be able to reduce apathy from the waiters and ensure better experience in the future.

A parable

I like to imagine there exists another paragraph to my favorite story, the parable Inferno, I, 32 by J. L. Borges.

In the middle of the 20th century, Borges, a sucessful writer, a beloved professor and a respected literary critic, was turning old. Like all men of his age, he comtemplated his own mortality and whether or not his life and his work had a higher purpose. But he had read Nietzsche. He knew about existentialism and nihilism. And he was hoping against hope that Nietzsche was wrong, that the cold slithering feeling in the back of his mind was wrong. He wanted to believe that everything he has done and accomplished in life has a significance and that meaning and significance were not just illusions. Borges wrote the parable to reassure himself, but he wasn't satisfied, because deep down he knew that the machinery of the world is oblivious of man.

On Realism and Pancakes

Hollywood gives us paper cut-out heroes, archetypal characters from the tradition of Greek epics. They hold our larger-than-life expectations, fight against impossible odds, make inhuman sacrifices, and in the end, things always work out. To them, their lives are already written and their decisions are guided by higher fate. There's never any uncertainty when Ripley goes back to save Newt, or when T-800 melts himself in the foundry, or when Jack Bauer tortures a suspect for intel; they do what has to be done. Sarah Connor Chronicles is the opposite of everything we've come to expect from the entertainment industry. The FOX show challenges us with a study of realism in our modern mythology of science fiction. This magic realism is a clear departure from the march of the ordinary, and the discordance may be the cause of the show's downfall.

Let's start with the small things. Life is in the details, as they say. One of the first complains about the show was about pancakes. Sarah Connor cooks pancakes for her son, the future savior of human kind. Sarah Connor, the stone-cold bad ass who blew up Cyberdyne in T2, who faced down two killer cyborgs from the future, is making pancakes. And then she's packing lunch for John, maybe a PB&J sandwich. John Connor goes grocery shopping. Absurd? No, the only absurdity is our willingness to accept these characters as super human. Have you ever wondered how Picard could pee while wearing a full body uniform? I have. What do you think goes through Sarah Connor's mind when she wakes up? Would she wake up every morning worrying about the impending nuclear holocaust? In Kafka's The Metamorphosis, the character Gregor woke up one morning and found himself transformed into a giant insect; his first thoughts were about the bad weather and his crappy job. I'm guessing Sarah Connor thinks about what to have for breakfast.

What else would be on Sarah Connor's mind? In many sci-fi and fantasy stories, the protagonist undergoes a transformation from normal to extraordinary. We can see examples in The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter. Something happens to the hero that completely alters her perspective of the world, and in essence changes who she is. In the intro to Terminator 1, we see Sarah Connor, naive, fumbling, at her job as a waitress, at home doing her hair and makeup with her roommate -- her normal life. At the end of the movie, she fights for survival against a time-traveling killer cyborg, who was sent to murder her and her unborn son, the future savior of humanity.

In T1, these two Sarah Connors are different people; the chasm between them is so deep that one could not even imagine living the other's life. But both Sarahs are present in the Fox show: the normal Sarah: mother, woman, human, and the extraordinary Sarah: fugitive, guardian, hero. One Sarah tries to raise her son to be a strong, capable man. The other prepares her son to be the leader of humankind in a resistance against the machines. One Sarah tries to protect her son against sketchy girlfriends and unhealthy relationships. The other tries to protect him against cyborg assassins. One Sarah worries about getting breast cancer and is afraid of losing the closeness that she shares with her son (She even had a dream where cyborg Cameron made pancakes for John Connor!) The other worries about a malicious AI that wants to see the world burn. One Sarah makes friends with the neighbor. The other trusts absolutely nobody. One Sarah is paranoid, chasing random patterns and UFOs. The other shoulders the fight against a future that seems inevitable. On the FOX show, the two personas are meshed together into one identity. She did not leave behind her normal life, though she is no longer naive nor clumsy. To her, the mundane and the fantastic are not in different worlds; they coexist in one.

Often, people see the future as depicted in movies and shows: a fantasy, another world, something we watch for a few hours and then go back outside. The year 2009 must have seemed impossibly distant and exotic; and yet here we are. Our future is not fantasy, and the things that only existed in our imaginations have a tendency to catch up with us sooner than we expect.

I think the future will be all right, as long as there will be pancakes.

Consider

Consider three men:

One spends his time in front of a mirror. He dotes on his appearance. He sculpts his hair. He bathes and perfumes his body. He enjoys working out and feeling his muscular form develop into the ideal image he had in mind. He takes the right blend of nutritional supplements. He dresses fashionably, always wearing the appropriate outfit for the occasion. He walks with grace and smiles a practiced smile.

The other spends his time in books. He reads and analyzes and writes, to keep his mind sharp and his wit sharper. He is versed in popular and obscure languages. He plays piano, guitar, and accordion. He enjoys a game of chess, or Go, or poker. He studies mathematics, logic, philosophy, physics, linguistics, and is always looking for connections between the subjects. He smiles when he finds beauty in unexpected places. He speaks with conviction and longs for a deeper understanding.

The third man spends his time helping others. He listens. He gives advice on relationships, on family problems, on the myriad of stresses that weigh on people. He volunteers. He tries to treat others with respect, kindness, and honesty. He pays attention to others' needs and acts with compassion and sympathy. He smiles when he knows that he made a difference. He has loyal friends and ardent followers. His reputation shines like a polished set of armor.

Some define vanity to be an excessive opinion of one's self-appearance, but there is no sense in limiting that pride to the physical self. These three men all work to better themselves, though their goals are vastly different. They all uphold an image of themselves, an icon upon the pedestal of their own expectations. Vanity or conceit or narcissism, whatever it be called, can sneak up on us, and without warning, replace the man with a painted shell. And if the shell should crack one day, would we find anything remaining underneath?

Catching up

As I said before, it is possible to stream interactive media the same way we stream high def video. Well, IGN has an article about OnLive cloud gaming. The future is catching up to us fast.

If this works, it will invalidate the current paradigm of perennially upgrading personal hardware. I'm sure the big tech companies are already thinking about this. If there's no more demand for faster and more powerful consumer electronics, what will happen to Moore's Law?

Meaning and purpose are subjective

"What is the meaning of life?" is not the right question. Rather, ask "What is the meaning of MY life?" And it's OK to not know. Most people don't.

Language and concepts

Concepts and words are not equal < Signal13 > 03/13 23:13:56

To draw an analogy to programming, concepts are rich data structures, and words are pointers to those structures. For example, we all know what the concept of love is. But the word "love" is just a label for the multitude of feelings that we associate with the concept. The question "what is love?" is a dereferencing; you are trying to get to the meaning behind the word.

To answer a question you didn't ask, then, yes, it is possible to have concepts without words to describe them. For example, I knew that some people can find perverse joy in other people's misfortunes, but not until recently did I learn the word "schadenfreude".

An example of non-verbal thought:
Let's say you see you pretty girl (or guy) at the local coffee shop. You're looking at her and imagining all the fun things you can do with her. You're definitely having thoughts, but almost none of it is in words.

Now imagine me sitting here trying to answer your question. Most of my thoughts are in the form of language, because it gives me the power to label these abstract concepts and make them manageable. Philosophy isn't like boobs; you can't put your finger on it without using words.

War story

This happened years ago.

I loved playing Battlefield 2 and had logged hundreds of hours in an attack chopper, but my favorite moment in the game was as commander of the US Marines on Wake Island. The US forces had taken the beach and were fighting hard to get across the bridge to the main island, but the Chinese had tanks and snipers covering it, so the fighting was at a stalemate. I called in artillery on the Chinese position whenever I could, and after one sat-scan I noticed a friendly blip on the Chinese side, among about a dozen red blips; one of my soldiers had swam across and penetrated enemy lines. I thought, "oh well, he's not going to live very long being surrounded like that," so I ordered artillery on that position anyway. Collateral damage, etc.

Next time artillery was ready (a few minutes later), I scanned over and that US soldier was STILL THERE. I got on comm with him and said "how are you still alive? I bombed the crap out of that hill. How many kills do you have?" "I don't know, I lost track," he said. Apparently this guy was sneaking behind enemy lines and killing dozens of enemies, evading tanks, taking medkits from Chinese medics, knifing snipers, and just being a badass Rambo. He had over 20 kills in a game where being on foot means your life expectancy is less than 50 seconds.

I was so blown away; I felt like I had to get him out or at least help him, so I asked the Seahawk pilot to fly over and extract him. Meanwhile I gave him everything I could: flying UAV scans, spotting targets for him. By this time there was probably a whole bunch of pissed-off Chinese hunting for him, but I kept spotting them for him so he'd be ready to shoot. By the time the chopper got there he scored 4 or 5 more kills.

Then a noob J-10 pilot kamikazed his plane into the chopper and blew them up. War sucks.

Possibilities using current technology

• A fully 3D, navigable Google streetview. Right now each view is a panoramic photo wrapped around to give the illusion of perspective. You can navigate using the standard WASD keys, but the camera is stuck on a rail (the Google streetview van). There's software being developed that can automatically construct 3D geometry based on photos. Using the vast database of panoramas from Google, it is possible to recreate entire cities down to the pedestrian level, with freely changeable perspective. I'm guessing the Google team already has a working alpha.
  
  
• Streaming games that are rendered at powerful graphics servers. Why spend 1000$ for a machine that can play Crysis when you can stream video output from rendering farms? Most of us already have enough bandwidth to stream HD media. The main problem will be lag, due to the need to have a streaming buffer of a second or so. I'm sure programmers can find a way around that. Word is AMD is already working on this, but if this becomes successful it will destroy their market for PC video cards.
  
  
• Combine the two technologies above to get fully realized virtual cities. I hear Tokyo is beautiful this time of year.
  

Time travel

Sometimes when I glance up at the clock, I see the second hand moving backwards. But it quickly resumes its regular motion, like an office worker just noticing the presence of his boss.

All is possible

a poet that writes poems without words.

a composer who create symphonies out of the elements; rain, wind, fire, waves

a mathematician who constructs shadows of infinite dimensions

an architect who melds water and sky into his floating palaces

a director that blends dreams into movies and reality into dreams

a writer who tells an endless story, because the story is a journey of infinite possibilities

the philosopher who understands that the best paintings are undrawn, the best music is unsung, and the best path is the one not taken

8 years ago

I'm pretty sure the Onion has a staff of psychics and precogs. Evidence.

Re: Plato's Cave

"We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we voyage far." - HP Lovecraft, "Call of Cthulhu"