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General: Cyborg Time

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    The JASONs (The Pentagon's most prestigious scientific advisory panel) have just recommended that the U.S. begin more aggressive funding of military human-enhancement research with an eye on foreign developments abroad and an emphasis on brain plasticity and sleep deprivation neuropharmaceuticals,
    brain-computer interfaces, and non-traditional cognitive extension techniques.


    Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha
    here's a link: http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/human.pdf
    Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha
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    Regenerative stem cell technologyyyyyyyy

    Also on this there is a great TED talk by Alan Russell on why we should be able to grow new body parts with only a bit more research- here is the link!
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      CommentAuthordchamp
    • CommentTimeJan 14th 2009
     
    While I think the regenerative stuff sounds very useful... just think what it would be like for the 6 months or a year or whatever it takes, while you're growing out a little baby arm out of the stump of your forearm. That's going to be some seriously freaky stuff.
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    I was bored so I made this thread into a movie. Sadly the site wont let me register so I can't complete the process, so as it is anyone can edit it. Just push the play button below the window to watch!
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      CommentAuthorSillyYak
    • CommentTimeJan 18th 2009
     
    it won't let me watch it. buncha errors.
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    Beans! Trust me it was hilarious. Just picture giant teddy bears gesticulating wildly and speaking in Australian accents with drunk camerawork, heavy funk in the background and occassional bird song...
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      CommentAuthorTheSasquatch
    • CommentTimeFeb 7th 2009 edited
     
    This book is exciting, I have long argued (against Fodor, who is a famous philosopher who I rate as a sillynanny at times) that human consciousness exists pragmatically as an inter-nodal system that doesn't stop within the limits of one's own brain or personality, because people often act as groups instead of merely independent individuals as classic economics and psychology hold a person. In answering questions like "what exactly am I going to do tomorrow?" The potential knowledge one has, and behaviors one engages in depend on the sphere of social and non-interactional connections one has, beyond merely an individual's own past experience or personal preference. Tomorrow if Dave posts a link he comes across about radioactive werewolves on the crib, I will read it and think about radioactive werewolves. BUT if two sailors in Melanesia start talking about radioactive werewolves tomorrow, I will not think about radioactive werewolves. They are in no way connected to anything that I will read or that Dave will read or that any of our friends will read or hear about, they are not in our sphere- and more importantly, if I have a question about radioactive werewolves, I cannot ask the Melanesian sailors- because I don't know them or even know that they exist.

    If presented with a question about anything any of my friends are an expert about I can automatically ask them, or maybe even my friends' friends. Everything they know or decide (that they are willing to share with me or make me curious about) can change the eventual decision or opinion that my brain picks out from various sensory experiences in reality, and thus the border of "the self" should really consider who you know and what they are like too.

    To put it another way, if I had an aunt named Betty, and every time Betty came across an article about chocolate she mailed it to me- Betty is now like part of my brain that reports and organizes information about chocolate. Also if I keep the articles they are also like parts of my brain. They store info. on chocolate in case I forget it! If a scientist is watching me one day and trying to predict how I am going to react in a chocolate-related-situation (like my performance in a chocolate-themed Jeopardy-like quiz show) even if the scientist could read all of the chocolate information stored in my entire mind he would not be able to predict that I could call Dear Aunt Betty as a phone-a-friend, or reread some of the articles I had saved up before the competition began if I had forgotten some stuff.

    NOW- suppose instead of just a few chocolate articles (or friends interested in radioactive werewolves) I happened to live next to a giant LIBRARY full of weird crap like this. This is how the internet and cybernetics are going to change cognition, Wikipedia or a neurally implanted database can act as our mental libraries and give us tons of potential reference materials! They also take much less time to tell you stuff than asking someone in a conversation or going through a set of encyclopedias.

    Where Fodor disagrees in the article is his mistake that his Roomba makes choices at random, I don't mean to be invidious but humans are quite a bit more set in their ways. Let's say "Bob" is a raging white supremacist. Every time Bob sees a Mexican immigrant or any Hispanic American he immediately starts drinking and cursing, no matter what he is doing. On Wednesday "Maria" decides to walk to the grocery store, past where Bob is sitting on a park bench with an unopened six pack of beer and a white supremacist magazine. What Bob is going to do is obvious! There is barely even any thought involved on his part, so the real decision whether or not Bob was going to start drinking at noon came from Maria. Bob's brain is still responsible, but if it has been primed by biology and all of his past experiences to always act in a certain way then if we look at the big picture external triggers are really moving Bob around.
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      CommentAuthordchamp
    • CommentTimeFeb 8th 2009 edited
     
    I would disagree that human consciousness transcends beyond the individual in any way, except that people have their own perceptions about what others are thinking. That people act in groups is a complex combination of things, ranging from our social instincts, to similar learning and experiences, to social mores and expectations of how we should act in certain situations.

    I just saw this slashdot article talking about comparing how the human brain and computer AI try to predict what others are doing. IMHO this is more like how people behave in groups than some metaphysical connection between people.
    • CommentAuthorIII_Demon
    • CommentTimeFeb 8th 2009
     
    its difficult to discuss things of a philosophical nature without dancing endless circles around vocabulary and semantics and slight differences in perception. i get the idea of the 'extended conciousness' and the interrelations between humans and all that, but i certainly dont think theres any 'metaphysical connection'. the ideas are still valid and meaningful, whether i think theres a god-spirit-energy connecting people or just the sound of them flapping their meat at each other, they're still connected.

    i tend to occasionally do things like use the word 'soul' in all seriousness, talking about the core of a person and what makes them them. the collected intelligence and personality and emotions and drives and desires that someone has in them, in whatever way... its a convenient word. i have zero belief in an eternal god-given conciousness, or spiritual energy, or whatever religious meaning people tend to attach to the word 'soul'... but its a useful word sometimes.

    you can try to get useful shit done with words and ideas, or you can philosophize and ponder concepts, or you can argue in circles over the specifics of a concept.... i tend to only do that last one when i'm really bored and someone has bit the bait. ask me about base-1 math sometime.
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      CommentAuthordchamp
    • CommentTimeFeb 8th 2009
     
    Right... but I think it's important, at least important to me, to make the distinction that the "group consciousness" thing is based on each individual's perceptions of events, and not a "hive mind".

    Here's an empirical example: you're at a concert, and everyone in the the audience starts to sing along, or clap, or throw their hands in the air like they just don't care, or whatever.. Each individual in the crowd feels part of the experience. Now... put yourself into a situation, say... you hate country music, and you're at a country concert for some reason, and the crowd starts to do some boot scootin' line dancing, but you don't get into it. Is it because you're choosing not to? Or are you disconnected from the group psyche because your consciousness doesn't know the proper line dancing protocol?

    IMHO it's actually a bit scary, looking at this from my angle, when you see a crowd react as one, thinking that these people are all acting on a complex decision tree in their own minds to make them all react, or buy into the moment at the same time in the same way, rather than to think that they're all being danced around like puppets on a string by a larger group consciousness.
    • CommentAuthorIII_Demon
    • CommentTimeFeb 8th 2009
     
    they're stupid. they're all incredibly stupid.

    humans, i mean.
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    Whoa... I wasn't saying that there was a metaphysical connection, I was just saying that there was a really big important physical one. No brain is an island and all of that. If we all had a magical linked subconscious (Jung, Waking Life, etc.) I might know what the Melanesian sailors knew. I'm trying to say that our brains store stuff outside of our brains, and sometimes how we act isn't a complex combination of anything at all, because sometimes our brains make decisions outside of our brains, by automatically mimicking people or following them without ever consulting our consciousnesses.

    Our BRAIN is still doing the deciding, but our mind may be off wandering about thinking about gummy worms. So we start line dancing and then later rationalize this with "oh that looked like fun, I really wanted to line dance and not make the concert into an awkward situation." WRONG! There was never any question that as soon as X people started dancing around you that you were going to start dancing, you only like to think that you had a choice in the matter.

    This may be due to social instincts, to similar learning and experiences, to social mores and expectations of how we should act in certain situations as Dave suggests, but even so I have to agree with Paul that this still makes us incredibly stupid- puppets buffeted to and fro by fortuity and happenstance.
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      CommentAuthordchamp
    • CommentTimeFeb 8th 2009
     
    So, if your brain stores stuff outside of itself, how does the brain communicate with that information? Sounds like a magical metaphysical connection to me.
    • CommentAuthorIII_Demon
    • CommentTimeFeb 9th 2009
     
    ok so now will is talking about the age-old fate vs choice thing, yay matrix, keanu reeves will save us from our pre-destined doom... and i cant figure out if dave is actually arguing semantics or just being a jackass.

    the fate vs choice question is almost exactly like the nature/existence of god question. theres no way to actually know, we'll never know, so the only logical/rational/reasonable/decent conclusion is quit worrying about it and ignore it.

    the semantics vs jackass question also comes to the same conclusion no matter what. 2 cocks. oil. together.

    i have all the answers.
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      CommentAuthordchamp
    • CommentTimeFeb 9th 2009
     
    I think it's pretty straight forward from a pragmatic outlook, there can be no such thing as fate unless you believe in an omniscient power guiding your existence.

    Even some people who are athiests seem to believe in fate, which I don't understand.

    As to the semantics vs. jackass thing... I don't understand the question.
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    The brain communicates with that information through the senses, how it gets all of it's information. No magic! If I read a post by Dave about radioactive werewolves, with my eyes then it goes into my memory, and without free will it's just been a really long chain events since I was born until I reached the point where that was going to happen. It's not really "fate", just a juxtaposition in causality, A has lead to B which has lead to C.

    If Dave reads 'Blog G', and Dave also posts anything super cool that he reads on the internet onto the Crib, and Will reads everything put onto the Crib, If Blog G writes something super cool in Dave's judgment (radioactive werewolves) then Will is going to read it, because Dave posts anything super cool that he reads on the internet onto the Crib. [not necessarily true in real life of course, but a good example of a linked system] In fact, everyone who reads the Crib regularly reads about the radioactive werewolves (so it's an activity undertaken as an interconnected group of individuals). It is not coincidence or magic that we all decide to read what Dave posts, yet each of us are influenced by similar social instincts, learning and experiences, social mores and expectations of how we should act- to do exactly the same thing (like the line dancing).

    So in a way Dave is part of each of our extended cognitive machines- his personality is like a computer program that we are running to do Dave stuff, there is a Will part and a Paul part and everyone that you know and interact with becomes part of the causal hive mind that spreads ideas and makes decisions based on how we all influence one another (through conversations, television programs, music, pictures, smells, books, landscaping and architecture, garbage left on the sidewalk, seductive glances across the bar, etched stone tablets, yada yada yada)

    and with cybernetics we can influence each other every second. Instead or reading a long article on radioactive werewolves I can be like Neo in the Matrix learning Kung Fu and just load it up.
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      CommentAuthorTheSasquatch
    • CommentTimeFeb 19th 2009 edited
     
    So last year I sent in a "Google Gauntlet" proposal to Google, basically asking them to make The Android into Leelah's armband from FUTURAMA, because I am sick of waiting for the endgadget and I am worried that if someone corners the wearable computer market and they suck I will never get a good portable computer that I won't be able to lose.

    They didn't ever send a letter back to me so I put it up on the Android developer forum.

    No one commented on it so I sent it in to the MIT project manager for the MIT IDEAS campaign hoping some doof would pick it up.

    Now a year later several of the apps I asked for have been created, and today on Sentient Development (yes, I know, I read a lot of blogs) someone at MIT has finally adapted parsing gauntlets into A WEARABLE GESTURE INTERFACE!!!!!



    Did someone see my idea and decide to use part of it? Who cares!!!! This is AWESOME!

    To quote me: "If I suddenly get the urge to play laser tag with my friends it's too bad the we can't simply use our index fingers and thumbs with a counter system and sound effects at our wrists. It's too bad that I can't practice Kung Fu against a virtual opponent with pulse rate and extension measurements or have a "pocket fisherman" always ready to go if I am waiting in line at the mall. "Air Guitar" will become "Virtual Guitar", Theremin simulators a day-to-day toy to mess around with, "Dance Dance Revolution" offspring not just measuring foot position but entire body dynamics and posturing. One might even be able to use the three-dimensional city maps being developed at Google meshed with GPS technology to overlay fantastic worlds over normal reality to create earth-based VR systems that track your progress and position through your wrist. Better than any of this though will be the improvisational programming templates that will be flexible enough to create interactive malleable 3D cyber objects fitting any need. If your phone can allow you to quickly create conversational aides to send to anyone on earth that you might be speaking with, kinesthetics can become a new, less ambiguous communication paradigm with sensory feedback, object rotation, and responsive touch programming precise enough to give the illusion that you are holding a wet Koosh ball."

    blah blah blah, projector keyboard, wall murals, credit card, ID store inventory blah blah blah. They even went so far as to put in personal ID tags which I always thought it would be cool to have in cars driving down the highway, but I didn't put THAT into the proposal because it makes it to easy for the government to spy on one.
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    Link this interface with the robo-spider controls and I think that you have a winning team.
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      CommentAuthordchamp
    • CommentTimeFeb 20th 2009
     
    Here's my prediction: ubiquitous pocket / cell phone projectors will be used by asshats to project scat pr0n in public places, just like custom spray tags in Counter Strike.
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    Ha ha!

    Well it will be gross, but perhaps American society will become a little less uptight as a result and allow for more artistic expression. Better than more of this...
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    See? Already happening.
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    So one of the main governemnt proponents of pharmaceutical neuro-enhancement for the creation of super-soldiers (and consequentially super-civilians perhaps) has been this guy, and no one really knows what he is up to most of the time, but recently some of the documents of the things he has been requesting studies for has been released, and the results seem to focus quite a bit on some pretty weird stuff... and lots of hints at annexation scenarios for reinstalling Tiawanese leadership as the new head of China
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    Ted Talk on wearable gesture interface Ok, while she is using a lot of language from the proposal I sent them about the significance and usages I still don't think that they have done everything right. Firstly, projecting everything is dumb. People want privacy when they are looking up stuff because often being ignorant on a widely-understood topic can be embarrassing, or just general interest in something that gives away what I call "observer condition", where looking up something makes you look like a weirdo or inconsiderate jackass (for not remembering someone's name for instance), having your computer then project the info. onto their shirt is not going to make you look like a thoughtful person. The watch trick is cute, but silly. it would take less time to flip open your cell phone from your pocket. The point of the Google Gauntlet is that there is a nice screen right at your arm, you only have to project things you want to share with people, plus tracking technology can project images just as if they were coming from your torso now, we do not need direct line-by-sight interferometry thanks to image-skew programs and some cheap triangulation software.

    Secondly, who likes to wear heavy equipment around their neck? I dislike wearing ties, lanyards, and ref. whistles, I don't think that carrying an entire digital camera and projection array is going to be much better. A Google Gauntlet, once again, is just around the arm, so it is not going to jingle about as you try to flee the police or fall into the sink as you try to wash your hands.

    Thirdly, not everything is a flat, clear surface. I am not going to stand outside in a rain storm because all of the walls in the nearby building are taken. Not everyone has huge hands like me to read the news, and that paper is really stupid. Newsprint is going to be a touchscreen-able kindle interface with infinite regressive magnification ability so that just like the photos demonstrated you will be able to reach out and move around information. If I am in the middle of a grassy field and I want to check who is winning the Iditarod I AM NOT WALKING TO A BARN TO DO IT. Perhaps barns have an unpleasant association for me, having been where my wife was kicked to death and eaten by dairy cow in 2035. The mere sight of a barn wall makes me break out in racking sobs of anguish and make me forget all about my successful career in dog race gambling. That is not going to work!

    Then we have the losing shit aspect. Which is easier to mis-locate in a cluttered room full of books and papers: a huge honking metallic arm sheath, or a tiny I-pod thing, a small detachable hat-camera thing, and itty-bitty little colored finger caps to track where your fingers are moving? The finger caps for the gauntlet are attached with retractable wires to a built-in storage compartment. No separate parts. If I am distracted by thoughts of revenge on the bovine abominations that murdered my spouse, I am not going to be paying attention to where I put the finger caps. Also they forgot the rumble aspect for sculptural 3-D object modeling. Holography already enables seemingly pop-outable images (especially in a fluid medium) , so if I am designing a cow-disintegration ray with my hands I gotsta feel it.
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      CommentAuthorTheSasquatch
    • CommentTimeApr 2nd 2009 edited
     
    ROBOTS don't steal your stock and wont claim benefits if injured. Commenter 8 makes a good point though, what is one to do with all of the unskilled laborers? My vote has always been for further education and service projects- most high school students claim that they want extra spending money, so they can be compensated for learning a difficult subject or skill outside of their normal expertise or helping feed the homeless or something, and for the post-high school laborer who claims that "school just isn't their thing", we merely must furnish better lists of possible study areas and classes then they have been provided with in the past, likely in a digital format with proctored testing for cost control. We could expand local professional athletics (So there would be money provided for six separate Des Moines Menaces for instance), increase the funding for arts and sciences to incentivize productivity (like 18 new channels of reality shows produced by immigrants and former ag. workers) or even work-abroad programs where the laborers are paid to develop the infrastructure of American third world allies who can't afford the robots yet.

    Beneath this we may have bio-energy producers, people paid to move around a lot as their kinetic energy is captured to run industry. There are already gyms powered entirely by people using their machines, and dance clubs powered in part by people dancing on their dance floor, if we add the electricity-capturing fabric that came out last year and the new heat absorption tech. utilized already by several subway systems it would practically be like these people were in a tube from The Matrix, except that they would all be training and competing for endurance, strength or agility prizes in monthly competitions in large "Generator Arenas".

    Then there might be some algae farming, exploration teams sent out to do endangered species counts, many more DEMONICALLY complicated and lengthy team-based video games with massive payouts for success, more local government projects, a ridiculously large military, supercriminal training to go sabotage Switzerland- All of this is contigent to whether or not automation ever becomes widespread and productive enough of course, but large numbers of roving unemployed people usually create revolutions (and lots of babies) soooo not much of an option


    and here is another awesome app that should be produced for cell phones, one could actually score conversations with points for fluid dynamical integration and back-and-forth participation to teach everyone unconsciously how to be better with communication skills. I know I would try it!
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      CommentAuthordchamp
    • CommentTimeApr 2nd 2009
     
    I don't find it that surprising. I think somehow people forget that a robot's brain is a computer. And there is some pretty complex computer AI these days. So if you think of a robot as a computer with motors and sensors, then it's not that hard to imagine how powerful a modern autonomous robot could be in the near future.
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    There is complex, and then there is "it is making it's own inferential hypotheses". Futurists have been predicting computers capable of this for fifty years now but until 'Adam' started working no system was capable of mirroring this facet of human intelligence. My "Philosophy of AI" class was full of naysayers who said that these abilities were impossible, leaving me as one of the only defenders during the required reading of Hubert Dreyfus, and several of my psychology professors tried the same "magical brain jelly" arguments of Contingency 2 below:



    which I may have already posted somewhere else on the Crib before...

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