The thing about smart mother fuckers
is that sometimes,
they sound like crazy mother fuckers
to stupid mother fuckers.
is that sometimes,
they sound like crazy mother fuckers
to stupid mother fuckers.
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gorillaman Member Profile  Bio: Member Since: 2006-09-20 Favorite Sift: Monkey Learns to Move Robotic Arm Using Only It's Brain Favorite Tags: british, japan, top gear, bill bailey, david mitchell, shatner, goes horribly wrong Last Power Points used: 2009-06-19 • Available: now Max Power Points: 1 • Get More Power Points Now Comments |
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Wildwestshow Videos Submitted by gorillaman
In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
We are victims in the technical sense, and I do feel aggrieved. What actually happened to Turing is his personal tragedy, the crime was the law of the day, and affects even us since we could just as easily be living in 60s Britain as 00s wherever. While there are strategies he could have adopted for a safer and more comfortable life, there's nothing Turing could have done to avoid being victimised, and all the changed minds and apologies in the world aren't going to help him.
When Henry VIII officially criminalised buggery in 15-urmmurmurmurmur, and his law was supported by subsequent generations, they weren't just thinking of their people in their own time, they applied it to everyone - you, me, Alan Turing and a child born a billion years from now in Alpha Centauri. This is the problem with taking the long view; the future may be bright, but it can't shine back on us, while the shadow of the past stretches forward forever.
Meh. I'm still closer to childhood than middle-age, and enamoured of idealism.
As for our limited intelligence - you do the best you can with what you have, and I'd suggest we're doing a hell of a lot better than some.
In reply to this comment by chilaxe:
Yeah, the 'personhood' model and the cognitive machine model are each useful levels of detail for the same thing... the best one to use probably depends on what your application is.
I don't blame people, though, for holding views that I think have big costs for society... I think we're all in the same trap of limited human intelligence - them more so than us - and people will change their minds in the end.
Also, the libertarian in me says that society's lack of intelligence only has a cost on us if we let it (to some degree). Turing, for example, as much as I personally admire him for his genius, chose to take certain risks, and he lost the bet.
IMHO, it's reasonable to say a rationalist in his position wouldn't have been so careless with sexuality. I think we're often more empowered and capable of proactive behavior than we think we are, and viewing ourselves as victims is generally not necessary.
I don't blame people, though, for holding views that I think have big costs for society... I think we're all in the same trap of limited human intelligence - them more so than us - and people will change their minds in the end.
Also, the libertarian in me says that society's lack of intelligence only has a cost on us if we let it (to some degree). Turing, for example, as much as I personally admire him for his genius, chose to take certain risks, and he lost the bet.
IMHO, it's reasonable to say a rationalist in his position wouldn't have been so careless with sexuality. I think we're often more empowered and capable of proactive behavior than we think we are, and viewing ourselves as victims is generally not necessary.
In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
You're better informed on the technology so I'm not going to argue your projections, but I wouldn't and haven't bet on them. It's funny, a basic assumption I've made in directing my life is that with a good diet and exercise, risk management and so on I'd make it to around 100, half that if I want to enjoy myself. If I thought I had a good chance (>50%) of surviving to the next millennium, say, that would drastically change almost every dimension of my life. So to that extent I sympathise with your attitude.
I disagree that calling a human a person is less valid than your input-output cognitive machine, which I absolutely accept to be an accurate description, itself no less valid than as a bundle of quarks and electrons, acting on even more fundamental mechanisms. One emerges from the next emerges from the next. Possessing a de facto consciousness I'm not too concerned with whether or why it really exists; illusory or real one seems to function as well as the other. So it's on that principle I interact with what I blindly assume are other similar minds.
In reply to this comment by chilaxe
She did that with 20th century technology, and she wasn't even an intellectual or highly motivated.
We've already entered the age of organ regeneration... growing new organs from our own cell... and it's already saving lives. I think it will pass regulatory hurdles and come in to widespread usage within 10 or 20 years.
Genome sequencing is down from $250k a year ago to $5k now (http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006527.html). In 10 or 20 years most people will have their genomes sequenced, and medicine will no longer be a crap shoot.
If you die in 2050, that sounds like a waste, because I think it's highly unlikely I won't live into the 2100s. Imagine where technology will be in 2100.
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Re: 'world of criminals'
I think the idea of humans as possessing 'personhood' is a simplistic model. The deeper you dig in the cognitive sciences and the human sciences in general, the more clear it becomes that human thought outputs and behavioral outputs are just the result of deterministic mechanisms. Looking at humans as 'persons' isn't looking at a deep enough level of detail... and it makes us take things 'personally' -- as if the decision agents (in a game theory sense) we're interacting with are 'persons.' Humans want to be good... they just have simplistic, unmotivated brains.
Change the inputs, and the outputs will change. Embryo selection is borderline-practical today, and it's increasingly being used. My prediction is by 2030 5% of births (in wealthy countries) will be using it (for cosmetic and temperament improvements - e.g. reduced addictive behavior, greater motivation, less 'social learners' and more 'infovores'), and by 2060 60% of births will be using it. When those generations reach 25 years old, they'll be starting to influence society, which will be 2055 and 2085, respectively.
However, by 2055, I think we'll have neurotechnology that achieves most of the large goals of neurogenetic change: next-generation neuropharmaceuticals, neuroimplants, and changes to the organization of our neural tissue using stem cells.
I believe the future is humanistic and humanitarian. And the world is incompetent, waiting for us to influence the arc of history.
IMHO, anyway.
What do you think?
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In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
I think we're going to miss SENS by at least a generation. The way I treat my body I'm expecting to die around 40.
Doesn't it gnaw at you that, living in a world mostly populated by criminals, any good you do will primarily benefit them?
In reply to this comment by chilaxe:
Gorillaman, we're young enough that we have a decent chance of living to see the fulfillment of SENS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey).
Doesn't that make you want to do something with your life that's ingenious and constructive, helping out the common good, instead of just pursuing vendettas?
Doesn't that make you want to do something with your life that's ingenious and constructive, helping out the common good, instead of just pursuing vendettas?
In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
Fucking apology from the fucking prime minister. Unbelievable.
It was only in '67 homosexuality was somewhat decriminalised in the UK. Not actually that long ago. You know what that means? It's not too late for justice. Many of the advocates and enforcers of the corrupt law, corrupt government, corrupt society of the period are still breathing; yet to evade their deserved punishment by dying of natural causes.
Drag them out of their retirement homes, torture them to death and parade their corpses through the streets. I am not kidding.
In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
*dead
I quiet agree with you: http://www.videosift.com/video/Usain-Bolt-Runs-New-100m-World-Record-9-58-sec#comment-838492
In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
Get a job.
In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
We often criticise the execution, but rarely the underlying principle. When someone complains about the weather it doesn't mean they want to live on a planet without an atmosphere.
In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
That was me thanking you for linking the funny comic.
In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
Qué?
In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
Your fuck is shit, dickass.
I think a lot of the diversity of opinion on police brutality videos is rooted in natural genetic diversity, so I think a certain amount of debate is natural.
It might seem like it's just unnecessary to have that much genetic diversity, but I think high-testosterone rational-empiricist types, like Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs, who we do tend to appreciate, tend to be on the side that's less concerned with these kinds of things. (They're concerned with a larger picture.) I'm partially basing my opinion about Larry Ellison on that he withdrew a large donation to Harvard after they sacked Larry Summers in response to his rational-empiricist's (as opposed to a sentamentalist's) description of gender trends. (I think attitudes on these issues correlate.)
What do you think?
In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
So I just woke up to Stephen Hawking and Socrates (back from the dead!) hammering on my door, and they were like:
"OMG, did you see chilaxe upvoted this comment?! I think we're going to have to kick him out of the smart people club!"
But don't worry, I told them it must have been an accident.
In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
Didn't even take me three years to get my first #1. Easy.
In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
*promote
In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
*dead
"Dieses Video wurde aufgrund eines Verstoßes gegen die Nutzungsbedingungen entfernt." So there.