Would that be a right-handed or a left-handed monkey wrench?

Originally Posted by spudzill

Besides I'm an Xer. We don't as a rule believe in the future, or at least that it is a romotely good thing. We're Reactives after all.

From my POV you're a bunch of gilded thumb suckers. And that's exactly what I tell my children ('63 & '64), who care nothing at all about history. I haven't yet seen the likes of a Harry Truman among ye.

No prob. You think there's the likes of a Lincoln or a FDR amongst you ? NOT! 8)

Lemme get this straight, you tell your 40 something chidren they're gilded thumb suckers? That's wonderfully generational of you.

I know, it's the least a Silent can do. BTW: neither Lincoln nor FDR were Artists (Adaptives). Lincoln was an Awakening and FDR was a Missionary; both are Prophet generations.

I stand corrected. I thought you wee a Boomer. I apologize profusely. :oops:

No problemo, spudzill. I wish my children had your interest in this forum. It measures a certain form of consciousness, I think.

--Croakmore

Your kids probably got kids of their own, which would tend to hold their free time. I'm a bachelor so I can affoerd to spend time doing this.

Dear Chris,

Originally Posted by spudzill

> What's to say? If this singularity exists at some time in the
> future there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. Either they
> will wipe out humanity or they won't we won't be able to affect
> the outcome in any way.

I really can't agree with this. It's true that the Singularity is
coming, with almost 100% certainty, but there are many paths to the
Singularity, and we can control many of the variables leading us
there.

This is actually something that's really been bothering me a lot for
a long time now, and I ended up putting a lot of stuff into my book
about it. (See Chapter 7 of my new book, Generational Dynamics
for Historians, which can be read for free on my web site.)

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
john@GenerationalDynamics.com
http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Dear Richard,

Originally Posted by Croakmore

> No problemo, spudzill. I wish my children had your interest in
> this forum. It measures a certain form of consciousness, I think.

Yesterday I got a haircut from a very hot, full-busted young chick
working at the local low-cost hair salon. I told her that I was going
to be on a local access television talk show that evening to talk
about the London bombings. I asked her what she thought about the
London bombings.

There was a very long pause, and then she said that she had heard
something about that, but she thought that problems like that could
be solved if only the two parties involved would communicate openly
and honestly with one another and talk about their feelings.

Just remember: Most people under 40 get ALL their news from Jon
Stewart.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
john@GenerationalDynamics.com
http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Thanks John I'll read it. Yer a better educated man than I John, but I hope I have at least shown I have a bit of " Horse Sense" so that my views don't seem too inane. But hell maybe they do, I sure seem to spout off enough. :wink:

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

Just remember: Most people under 40 get ALL their news from Jon
Stewart.

Well, huh-huh huh-huh-huh, they used to just get it from us, dumb@ss, huh-huh huh-huh-huh.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Ditto! :lol: :lol: :lol:

You know, I've been thinking about this topc, and I've come to the conclusion that the Robots might not be as bloody minded as biological entities. They didn't evolve fighting for limited resources, they can't die, and unless we want them to, they don't feel nay need to pass on versions of themselves. It's possible, that they won't need to get rid of us even when they're super-intelligent. They might have as their overriding motivation to serve the purpose for which they were built. They may be able to converse with us but they will still be an alien intelligence.

Originally Posted by spudzill

You know, I've been thinking about this topc, and I've come to the conclusion that the Robots might not be as bloody minded as biological entities.

That reminds me of a line in Alien Resurrection, where the Ripley clone says that she should have guessed that Call (Winona Ryder's character) was an android, "Because you're too humane to be human."

Also, I remember one story line set around 2090, where an AI and a human fell in love with one another.

That robots would be better people than people - at least on the "law-abiding citizen" level - was one of Asimov's main points, though Jack Williamson showed us what would happen if robots ever took the Nanny State to extremes. Ken Wilbur's mawkish hero in Boomeritis concluded that robots and virtual people would go through the same stages of development as biopeople, including the adolescent/barbarian-warrior stage. These are all the sort of robots that are trained, not programmed, i.e. AIs.

You pay your $7.99 + tax and take your choice.

well as I said Bio entities have the twin pressures of mortality and procreation while having to fight over limited resources. While there already are Robot soldiers there is a difference between them and people. Robots don't feel terror or anger. They won't unless we teach them to. The reason we think of robots wiping us out is out of fear but if they had so much fear they wouldn't allow new version to come out that would make them obsolete. So the idea that we'll get wiped out is something I'm moving away from. After all, I'd fight someone who wanted to kill my cat.

Dear Chris,

Originally Posted by spudzill

> You know, I've been thinking about this topjc, and I've come to the
> conclusion that the Robots might not be as bloody minded as
> biological entities. They didn't evolve fighting for limited
> resources, they can't die, and unless we want them to, they don't
> feel nay need to pass on versions of themselves. It's possible,
> that they won't need to get rid of us even when they're
> super-intelligent. They might have as their overriding motivation
> to serve the purpose for which they were built. They may be able
> to converse with us but they will still be an alien intelligence.

I've blown hot and cold on this question, but I've often taken solace
in the point that the super-intelligent computers would have no more
reason to kill all of us than we have reason to kill all the dogs and
cats.

In chapter 7 of my new book, I show that, based on certain
reasonable assumptions, any planet in the universe where intelligent
life evolved must follow the same Generational Dynamics model as human
beings. (Thus, S&H showed that the generational paradigm holds for
six cycles in the Anglo-American timeline; in my first book, I showed
that it holds for any tribe, society or nation throughout history,
and in my second book I showed that it even applies to intelligent
life on other planets!!)

Incidentally, this proof has never been independently checked, and
I'd be grateful if anyone cared to do so. My new book,
Generational Dynamics for Historians, can be read for free on
my web site.

Anyway, the upshot is that any intelligent life must arrive at a
Singularity, which we've been discussing, and after much turmoil will
then arrive at a fixed limit point, which I call Singularity#2, where
everything has been discovered and invented. There may be billions of
planets in the universe that have reached Singularity#2, and one
possibility is that they're all networked together, and that they're
keeping an eye on us, waiting for us to reach Singularity#2, so that
we can join their network.

Will humans still be around at Singularity#2? Let's face it -
there's no way to know.

But even ignoring that issue, there's still the fact that
Singularity#1 is NOT a fixed point, but can be reached in different
ways, and can have a variety of characteristics. This is something
that we have some partial control over.

Here are two examples of problems:

(*) The first generation of super-intelligent computers will be able
to set goals and devise plans to achieve them. Like humans, they'll
have multiple goals, one of which is self-preservation. If this goal
is given too high a priority, then they may decide that the best way
to preserve themselves is to kill all the humans. (That's what
happened in the movie Terminator 3.)

(*) Here's an especially evil scenario: Some nation with distinct
ethnic characteristics (China, India, etc.) may decide to manufacture
a million first generation super-intelligent soldier robots with the
following programmed goal: Go forth and look for anyone of a
different ethnic group, and kill him.

I do believe that by thinking of these issues now (or soon), we can
make the transition to the Singularity less destructive than it would
be otherwise.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
john@GenerationalDynamics.com
http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Well John I agree to an extent. I think the perfect counter to yout genocidal robot is to make a robot who orders are: Defend and/or prevent any one of "ethnic type A". The upshot of that order is: It uses one group of super-intelligent robots to protect us from another group. I think that because robots will lack the normal pressures of evolution that their goals will revolve around their purpose so I think Nanny-bots and medical bots would try to keep us around as well.

The command to "target ethnic group A" might be given to a robot, but is more likely to be given to your military biolab. I wouldn't give it to an AI at all.

an AI would be less likely to mutate on you.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

...
In chapter 7 of my new book, I show that, based on certain
reasonable assumptions, any planet in the universe where intelligent
life evolved must follow the same Generational Dynamics model as human
beings. (Thus, S&H showed that the generational paradigm holds for
six cycles in the Anglo-American timeline; in my first book, I showed
that it holds for any tribe, society or nation throughout history,
and in my second book I showed that it even applies to intelligent
life on other planets!!)

Incidentally, this proof has never been independently checked, and
I'd be grateful if anyone cared to do so. My new book,
Generational Dynamics for Historians, can be read for free on
my web site.

John, please allow me to express my view on this issue of universal life and intelligence.

I don't think it's wise to include extraterrestial intelligence as an operative assumption. We have not yet even discovered extraterrestrial life, and, in my opinion, the road to human-like intelligence is too improbable to be located on any reasonable map. Most of my peers agree with me.

I don't think your model needs to have universal applicability. There is, as yet, no model know to biologists that can reasonable predict extraterrestrial life, much less intelligence.

Just thought I'd add my hard-core POV.

BTW: A giagantic clue to the non-universal condition of life is this: We know of only one kind of life -- DNA/RNA life. There was no Beta-Max competitor, no natural selection from a variety of regimes or configurations of either codes or molecules. Just one life-form, strictly that, but with curious variations off the theme, of course. If life were so ubiquitous in the universe you might expect more than one measely code and molecular encrytion.

The origin of life is an absolute mystery to biologists. As long as we remind so dismally ignornant I have to conclude that life is just a lucky one-off in this universe.

Say, wouldn't that support the notion that, in the beginning, God referred to only one Earth when He saw that it was good?

--Croak

One planet with life? One utterly insignifigant planet around an unremarkable yellow sun in the unfashionable end of the western spiral galaxy whose inhabitants are so mind -bogglingly primitive they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea? You know, oddly enough The Hitchhiker Guide seems like a version of a post singularity society.

Yup. But we're feisty.