tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post7058940402159982173..comments2024-03-29T05:59:55.834-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: Concerning Robert Heinlein... socialist or libertarian?David Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger65125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-58224800034474205692010-05-02T15:36:29.358-07:002010-05-02T15:36:29.358-07:00http://io9.com/5529181/heinleins-the-moon-is-a-har...http://io9.com/5529181/heinleins-the-moon-is-a-harsh-mistress-goes-dismayingly-easy-on-its-charactersAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-48166319888617575672010-04-29T22:29:54.973-07:002010-04-29T22:29:54.973-07:00on to next hurried postingon to next hurried postingDavid Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1628191186501744332010-04-29T14:08:12.257-07:002010-04-29T14:08:12.257-07:00The Summer of Code is a great opportunity, by the ...The Summer of Code is a great opportunity, by the way, and easier to get into than you'd expect. The key is to schmooze the project mentors before actually applying. Presenting a working prototype with your proposal also helps.<br /><br />The main reason that Lisp is associated with AI is that Lisp is the oldest high-level programming language: it was the only one available during the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intelligence#The_golden_years_1956.E2.88.921974" rel="nofollow">AI hayday</a>.<br /><br /><i><br />> Is there a way for a compiled language to modify its own code at runtime?<br /></i><br /><br />Yes: computers (except for DSPs and other specialized hardware) are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture" rel="nofollow">von Neumann machines</a>; this means that they store their programs in ordinary, writable memory.<br /><br />Unfortunately, this leads to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_overflow" rel="nofollow">security problems</a>, as a buggy program may be tricked into overwriting parts of itself with code provided by an attacker. Using memory-managed languages remedies this.<br /><br />Anyway, actual self-modifying code is only used in very specialized cases, because it's <a href="http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ThreeStarProgrammer" rel="nofollow">hard for us poor humans to comprehend</a>. More common is runtime generation of new code; in some production-quality Lisp implementations, the runtime includes an incremental compiler, so newly-generated code runs at machine speed. However, this is no longer such a high priority, and newer languages simply use <a href="http://code.google.com/p/v8/" rel="nofollow">increasingly sophisticated interpreters</a>.<br /><br />Anyway, if you know how to write a general artificial intelligence, none of this stuff will worry you. We're talking about limestone vs. travertine in the building of pyramids, and the applicability of pyramid-building techniques to a hypothetical hundred-story tower with vertical sides.David McCabehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16603857353437134459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-72823178028146596612010-04-29T12:09:31.402-07:002010-04-29T12:09:31.402-07:00Still relevant today (I hope) is an observation fr...Still relevant today (I hope) is an observation from "Beyond This Horizon" to the effect that a society with a reasonable amount of merit-based upward mobility is reasonably safe from violent revolution because it co-opts people who are good at leading & organizing.<br /><br />Not (as Heinlein's mouthpiece explains between the bullets and Coagulator beams) that a lot of people won't get hurt in the process of flushing out the "parlor pinks" (in RAH's phrase). But it's worth noting that the McVeigh Memorial Rallies in Our Nation's Capital last week were smaller by an order of magnitude than pro-tax-increase rallies in the MidWest, even through one got a lot of corporate press and the other didn't ... for some reason.rewinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14008105385364113371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-15910906167630149232010-04-29T11:33:11.187-07:002010-04-29T11:33:11.187-07:00@David McCabe
Should have checked your profile th...@David McCabe<br /><br />Should have checked your profile the first time. Looks like I just explained programming languages to someone with a "Google Summer of Code" blog. :-/<br /><br />Is there a way for a compiled language to modify its own code at runtime?Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17774230311169357530noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-81736633206690069962010-04-29T11:09:18.856-07:002010-04-29T11:09:18.856-07:00Lisp is routinely compiled to machine code.
Funct...Lisp is routinely compiled to machine code.<br /><br />Functions-as-data is simply the mark of a language designer with any kind of taste.<br /><br />JavaScript as the next lingua franca: Could have been a lot worse.<br /><br />Posting links to get google-juice is no longer effective, since Google introduced <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow" rel="nofollow">a special attribute</a> which tells their spiders not to follow a certain link -- and blog sites apply this attribute to links in comments.David McCabehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16603857353437134459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-33169884298802112692010-04-29T10:28:45.685-07:002010-04-29T10:28:45.685-07:00Chairman: In Conclusion, the Kansas Board of Educa...<b>Chairman:</b> In Conclusion, the Kansas Board of Education has decided to...<br /><br /><b>Harry Potter:</b> <i>Ratio Pontificus!</i><br /><br /><b>Chairman:</b> Teach the pursuit of scientific truths, which are common to American taxpayers of any religion, to public school students.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17774230311169357530noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-86397272627725768912010-04-29T10:14:19.312-07:002010-04-29T10:14:19.312-07:00As I said, Dr. Brin, it's in Chapter 7 of Harr...As I said, Dr. Brin, it's in Chapter 7 of <i>Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality</i>, while Harry's trying to turn Draco to the good-guy side, and impressing him with the power of Muggle science (after all, no wizard had ever been to the Moon - you can't Apport to someplace you haven't been, you know!).<br /><br />Being me, obviously, I had to read the entire thing at one sitting. Now I can't wait for the next chapter!<br /><br />(Amusingly, my verification tag for this post is "ratio".)Jonathan S.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-34268866178844091752010-04-29T09:48:08.265-07:002010-04-29T09:48:08.265-07:00Sentient machine life will be realized by mankind ...Sentient machine life will be realized by mankind once we learn that a growing number of spam and malware creators have had their finances drained mysteriously and their machines crippled... along with each new bit of Malware to be created.<br /><br />I mean, really. It's an immune response, and I suspect a machine intelligence would find spam and malware even more angering than us fleshware types. =^-^=<br /><br />Rob H.Acacia H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/07678539067303911329noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-6351878832683954302010-04-29T09:43:28.439-07:002010-04-29T09:43:28.439-07:00"Learning to admit you're wrong."
J..."Learning to admit you're wrong."<br /><br />Jonathan, wow, that sounds like a terrific piece of fanfic! Is that Eliezer's? Someone else's?<br /><br />Duncan, sorry, I don't recally such details from Poul Anderson stories. Only that he was the best natural storyteller I ever met.<br /><br />Heinlein's BEYOND THIS HORIZON followed the typical pattern, lively, action packed 1st half and endless jabber in the 2nd. Only here, the gun-obsessed 1st half is lame and skippable, while the talky 2nd half is amazing!David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-48558169853425829132010-04-29T09:02:23.463-07:002010-04-29T09:02:23.463-07:00Perhaps the advertizing spambots are primitive for...Perhaps the advertizing spambots are primitive forms of Berserkers.<br /><br />They certainly are immicable to any form of intelligent life! The big question is whether they are not only self-replicating, but make imperfect copies of themselves, so that natural selection will lead to the evolution of Malware Filter Resistent Spambot Activity (MFRSA)rewinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14008105385364113371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-6881353145925151902010-04-29T06:40:12.603-07:002010-04-29T06:40:12.603-07:00I just realized the answer to my own question in a...I just realized the answer to my own question in an earlier post: The comment spams are probably meant to make the sites they link to appear more popular in the eyes of Google, so the spammers have an incentive to keep posting even if not one person ever clicks a link.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17774230311169357530noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-89418407194379751912010-04-29T06:22:44.601-07:002010-04-29T06:22:44.601-07:00@ David McCabe
All Turing complete systems can se...@ David McCabe<br /><br />All Turing complete systems can self-modify, but Lisp is one of a handful of languages that are special in that they don't distinguish between data and code. Normally, a program compiles down to a non-changing executable that takes data and transforms it. Lisp (and some other languages) provide built-in support for having the program transform itself.<br /><br />In order to support this kind of thing, a language at the very least has to be interpreted as it is run rather than compiled to machine code beforehand. Now that I think of it, I wonder if Javascript would be a good choice. It's an interpreted language, it can generate and run some code on the fly, and it has a less-clear-than-usual separation between functions and data. For instance, you can pass a function as a parameter to another function.<br /><br />I use Javascript frequently for web UI, but I've been meaning to become proficient at it. I know that it can do a lot more than I have been doing with it. Also, there's a strong possibility that Javascript plus HTML5's canvas tag will eventually replace Flash. I think it's pretty cool that such a flexible language is included in every browser. I plan to teach it to my kids so they can hack around in their browsers the way I hacked around on a Commodore Vic 20.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17774230311169357530noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-39119159058039849302010-04-29T05:32:26.791-07:002010-04-29T05:32:26.791-07:00It appears the author of the HP fanfic has been up...It appears the author of the HP fanfic has been updating regularly, chapter-by-chapter. The last update was on the 24th, this past Saturday, and it appears that it has been running since the 28th of February, so 17 updates in 8 weeks suggests that a new update should be appearing shortly (unless the updates are more distantly-spaced, with multiple chapters per update).Ilithi Dragonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10300247936272572280noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-81239940320412098792010-04-29T02:54:23.540-07:002010-04-29T02:54:23.540-07:00Hi
That Harry Potter fanfic Dr. Brin linked us to ...Hi<br />That Harry Potter fanfic Dr. Brin linked us to is superb but it kind of stops at chapter 17<br />I don't know about this type of thing is it continued somewhere else? or are we waiting for the writer?<br /><br />Dr Brin as somebody who knew Poul Anderson there is a question I wanted to put to him<br />One of his Dominic Flandry adventures "A Stone in Heaven" features a Cairncross as the villain,<br />I would love to know if he had encountered one of the clan to base this on.<br />Robert Heinlein was one of my favorite writers, as a socialist leaning Scotsman sometimes the politics grated - but more often it seemed totally pragmatic<br />The one thing I do believe he did get wrong is the armed society<br />IMO that would only work if we could find somewhere to hide the 13 - 25 year old malesDuncan Cairncrossnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-6238072347668863132010-04-28T23:26:55.303-07:002010-04-28T23:26:55.303-07:00As an aside, I ran across a lovely quote in that H...As an aside, I ran across a lovely quote in that Harry Potter fanfic Dr. Brin linked us to, in Chapter 7, "Reciprocity", in the second meeting between Harry and Draco Malfoy:<br /><br />"But make no mistake, Draco, true science really isn't like magic, you can't just do it and walk away unchanged like learning how to say the words of a new spell. The power comes with a cost, a cost so high that most people refuse to pay it."<br /><br />Draco nodded at this as though, finally, he'd heard something he could understand. "And that cost?"<br /><br />"Learning to admit you're wrong."Jonathan S.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-82557532955375143482010-04-28T20:02:18.409-07:002010-04-28T20:02:18.409-07:00Whilst on the subject of berserker apocalypse from...Whilst on the subject of berserker apocalypse from the heavens, Patrick Farley has been successful in his funding drive. (message to apokemon berserkers: please keep off the grass so that sheep may safely graze)Tony Fiskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14578160528746657971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-72591052075312259982010-04-28T17:43:07.654-07:002010-04-28T17:43:07.654-07:00@Gilmoure
"Maybe the berserkers have already ...@Gilmoure<br />"Maybe the berserkers have already been here and wiped out anaerobic life?..." <br /><br />That's a good one! But I don't see any reason for the Beserker to ever leave or stop monitoring the Solar System. It would stick around, make backup copies of itself and wait just in case something emerged from Europa, Mars, the Oort Cloud or some other upstart.ThoughtCriminalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11118442743924905296noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-41263952829700747162010-04-28T15:51:33.056-07:002010-04-28T15:51:33.056-07:00@BCRion
Maybe the berserkers have already been he...@BCRion<br /><br />Maybe the berserkers have already been here and wiped out anaerobic life? Who knew something would come along that could handle active oxygen and corrosive water?JuhnDonnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06795417373366495092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-43855981530435530612010-04-28T15:51:31.026-07:002010-04-28T15:51:31.026-07:00All Turing-equivalent systems can self modify.
Th...All Turing-equivalent systems can self modify.<br /><br />There are some who believe for philosophical reasons that consciousness must be due to some feature of our brain's physical hardware. However, I have not been able to understand their arguments well enough to paraphrase. <br /><br />Personally, I would be astonished to find that such a violation of the principle of mediocrity were true.<br /><br />The other option is that any information-processing substrate, even <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcDshWmhF4A" rel="nofollow">marble-machines</a>, can in principle host a sentient system.<br /><br />However, "Object-Oriented Design", which is pre-invention-of-the-arch architecture, would probably have nothing to do with it.David McCabehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16603857353437134459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-58115451155461526782010-04-28T13:41:19.434-07:002010-04-28T13:41:19.434-07:00Don't humans screw up pretty quickly when they...Don't humans screw up pretty quickly when they don't have stimuli? I wonder what the implications are for a computer which spends the vast majority of its time waiting.Jacobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03773076186367856200noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-90843522230664580022010-04-28T12:54:13.121-07:002010-04-28T12:54:13.121-07:00We don't even have a lead on sentience yet. Wh...We don't even have a lead on sentience yet. When we get a general theory for consciousness, <i>that</i> will mark the beginning of the Official Singularity.<br /><br />As far as programming languages go, I'm pretty sure <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(programming_language)" rel="nofollow">Lisp</a> allows you to write self-modifying code, and sure enough, it's popular among AI researchers. <br /><br />However, there's something mysterious going on with consciousness that I think (though some disagree) is much more than the sum of stimulus and response, however complex. For the current thought on this, see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie" rel="nofollow">Philosophical Zombies</a>.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17774230311169357530noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-58325933624057707172010-04-28T12:23:46.512-07:002010-04-28T12:23:46.512-07:00Well, sentience is more than just a response to st...Well, sentience is more than just a response to stimuli, even a complex response to stimuli. Responses based on learned behaviors/preferences is part of it, but not all of it.<br /><br />What I am talking about is a program that can think on its own, with or without directed stimuli, and even create stimuli of its own. A program that is also aware of itself, and of its own awareness.<br /><br />Creating such a program is especially difficult given that we don't yet fully understand our own consciousness, but I don't think that actually creating a program capable of becoming sentient is the real challenging part, nor building a computer powerful enough to run it. You'd probably need to create a new programming language to write it in, but that's nothing particularly special. Nor is building a super-powerful computer. Developing code to collect and analyze data, and developing a program that consists of multiple layered data structures and that can re-write itself wouldn't be that difficult, either (we already have complex programs consisting of multiple, highly-layered data structures, and programs that can modify themselves at least to a limited degree). It would be a challenge, but I don't think that part is beyond our software engineering capabilities.<br /><br />What I think will be the most challenging part is designing a program that can interpret data like we do. Part of that is the sheer complexity that would be required by that kind of system, and part of that is because we don't yet fully understand how our own system works. The challenge basically comes from trying to recreate hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary pressure towards a system that works, without the hundreds of millions of years part, and without fully understanding how the system does work.<br /><br /><br />Dr. Brin previously described human consciousness as basically a collection of 'programs' running experiments on everything, including each other, themselves, and the collection of simulations as a whole. I think that a similar collection of data structures, designed to run predictive and analytic algorithms, could create sentience within a computer program. Add in an additional 'overseer' data structure(s) that define the collection of data structures of the program as a single entity, a single structure/object, and that also direct the simulations and analysis to center around that entity, and you have the foundations for the concept of self/'I.' Curiosity could be created by designing algorithms to analyze and try to predict the unknown, with the overseer program(s) given a weight discover the reality so as to be able to compare the predictions and analysis to it, and measure the accuracy of its predictions.<br /><br />Algorithms to develop predictions wouldn't be all that challenging, either.<br /><br />The challenge comes in translating our higher-level concepts that are the product of hundreds of millions of years in evolution, into source code that can produce and function according to those concepts, without taking hundreds of millions of years to get it right.Ilithi Dragonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10300247936272572280noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-87983496451809488162010-04-28T11:41:37.648-07:002010-04-28T11:41:37.648-07:00Hi Ilithi,
I would want to know more on your idea...Hi Ilithi,<br /><br />I would want to know more on your idea of sentience. Has science in general figured out consciousness yet? I think of decision making as a factor of how much we are positively and negatively stimulated towards responses and options. While introduced to new ideas we (might) deeply consider a matter, but after that initial introduction we normally consider that idea/option first based on how well we liked or disliked it in the past. My understanding might be wrong, but it is the context of my response.<br /><br />It would be fairly easy to program logic nodes to respond positively, negatively, or neutrally to an idea/option. It would also be easy to introduce an idea to many such nodes. The program could get a general approval rate for an option/idea. It could then compare that approval rate against others relative to each one's ability to answer the question. Say 40% approval for an option that 75% (mostly) solves a problem.<br /><br />Memory is easy to introduce which has options stored for any given stimuli. Does this match your idea of sentience? Response contingent on personal learned (or programed) preference?Jacobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03773076186367856200noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-44978057672649295812010-04-28T10:59:56.494-07:002010-04-28T10:59:56.494-07:00Do you guys think it would be possible to create a...Do you guys think it would be possible to create a sentient program using Object Oriented Design, with the program being able to create and modify the Objects within its own code? Obviously, it would require a LOT of Objects to achieve full sentience, and you'd need an extremely powerful computer to run it, but do you think you could at least simulate accurately, if not outright create a sentient program in such a way? With Objects able to contain Objects containing Objects, etc., so that you have large data structures interacting with each other directly, and containing smaller data sub-structures interacting with each other inside the larger structure, and connecting with sub-structures inside other data structures, which all may contain their own sub-sub-structures, interacting in similar ways, etc. Also with routines, which can also be modified, to create new and modify existing data structures.<br /><br />Do you think such a system could model, and create sentience? Not necessarily <i>human</i> sentience, as in an accurate model of the human brain, but just sentience in general. I was discussing this with Corey recently (again), and he is convinced that sentience requires a system that can re-write its own hardware, and that you could not create a sentient program on any kind of computer such that we have now, even if you could build one powerful enough to run a program that complex. I disagree with that, and after further thought, I am fairly certain that you could create sentience with a sufficiently complex, self-modifying program developed with Object-Oriented Design.<br /><br />What do you guys think?Ilithi Dragonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10300247936272572280noreply@blogger.com