do we deserve to perish in a nuclear holocaust?

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He probably perceives the immense stupidities and brutalities of humanity and is totally disgusted. There are decent and worthwhile people but they don't seem to have much effect on the general trend our civilization is taking. He is involved in devising hellish machines to perhaps become self sustainable to a degree but the liklihood of humans, at this point, to rival the exceedingly clever natural systems is negligible so if human civilization collapses (as it seems to be doing rather rapidly) nature will still sustain with its huge organic resources. Mechanical systems are still too primitive to provide any serious competition and are centuries away from getting to the point where they can. Even the cleverest curent machines have absolutely no redundancy to repair themselves which is a basic capability of organic structures and absolutely necessary in an unpredictable world.

I'll come to this later.



Of course. I wouldn't deny it for a second. I feel no pity whatever. I don't give a shit about the welfare of mankind, and the only reason I look out for my own is so that I can enter a career in the defense industry that damns our entire species. In fact, I'm losing weight (down to 55.3 kg) because I care so little about almost anything that I don't feed myself well enough to maintain a normal body weight. From an ethical standpoint, I am absolutely one of the worst people I have ever met.



You're in such a tunnel blind rush to browbeat me (it's not going to work that way) that you pin my thoughts down to "self-loathing" and then turn around and harangue me for "narcissism" in the same breath.

Keep your Goddamn story straight and then maybe I'll take you seriously



Tough shit, crybaby. The military-industrial complex has more wits, malice and sheer willpower than any other organization on the face of the Earth. They will win.



Yes.



Yes.



Nature only got clever through lots of dumb luck plus time.

The growth of technology is deliberate, consistently exponential and will soon outpace that of nature.



If by 'centuries' you mean 'decades' sure.

Unless you've studied these issues in detail, have read a lot expert opinions, etc. and feel you have more meaningful information than I do.

If that's the case, feel free to give your own time line; otherwise, please refrain. I would put the rise of general artificial intelligence at 2100 AT THE LATEST, and many experts in the field would say that's too late. I had to make a conservative estimate because I'm not at the same level of knowledge as them yet.



It's not a distant ability for both networks and robots

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ad ... elf+repair
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ad ... generation

In fact, Cornell University has already implemented a robot capable of self-repair

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyzVtTiax80[/youtube]

Ok, not the most practical thing in the world yet, but it won't be too long. My sh***y TI-83 is better than a high-end PDP workstation from several decades ago. The growth of technology is so Goddamn fast that we simply miss it when we so much as blink and then take it for granted. I take it you really don't understand the rate of change involved here.

Please research assertions before you make them in the future kthx

As far as I'm concerned, the jaws of Hell are already opened

Last edited by chever on 04 Sep 2008, 12:04 am, edited 4 times in total.

I am not cruel at all and I feel compassion, I would rather kill everyone quickly, instantaneously if possible.

I am aware of that primitive self-repair robot. But, aside from the fact it can do nothing else, it's units cannot reproduce which nature discovered long ago is a necessary basic.

Last edited by Sand on 03 Sep 2008, 11:23 pm, edited 2 times in total.

mistaken post

Eh, might as well drag it out awhile for fun.



Yes but technological growth is exponential, so any claims you make about its limits tend to sound pretty silly five years down the road

Yes but technological growth is exponential, so any claims you make about its limits tend to sound pretty silly five years down the road[/quote]

OK let's get a bit more specific. Organic life derives its energy from readily available materials not requiring any manufacturing processes beyond that of other plants and animals. No robot so far can do that or even come close.
Organic life not only survives on local materials, it assembles new units out of them. No robot can do that or come close.
As I mentioned before, organic life can maintain and repair itself out of locally available materials. It does not require massive technological backup to do that. The example you showed could put itself together after it was knocked apart, but if any component units were damaged or destroyed, it could not replace them.
As an organic unit I can manufacture a bicycle and ride it. I can drive a car, fly a plane, bake a cake, sweep a floor, swim a river, read a book, write a book, a poem, a song. Play a harmonica. weld a joint. Paint a picture, teach a child, create a sculpture, pick an apple tree, gather blueberries, invent a new recipe for pasta, contribute to a design for a baby, Drive a tractor, wash my clothes, design a kitchen, shop for new appliances, and many many more things. No robot today can do all those things. They have barely learned to walk properly and those that can can't climb a tree, swing from a rope or rollerskate.

Five years isn't going to make much difference. And although individual robots might do any of these things they can't do all of them. And with the elimination of human coordination, there has to be a society of robots that orchestrates all possible activities and shapes them into something efficient. Nothing like a robot society has even been started to be worked out and that takes generations if it can be done.

This thread is loopy and nutty and does the Autism cause no good at all.

Declaring that YOU want everyone in the world to die because YOU have a hang-up with life!! !!


I'm amazed that the moderators have allowed this self hating rubbish to go on for so long.

i don't think i believe in 'deserve'. stuff happens, and sometimes it doesn't. 'deserve' implies a whole lot of concepts that can't be empirically demonstrated; it's enough that stuff can be observed to happen without attaching any values like 'deserve' to it.

but if i absolutely must perish, nuclear holocaust would have to be real close to the top of the list of preferred ways to go. everything better that i can think of is extraterrestrial.

Yes but this was the most powerful computer fifty years ago



Now try to project that kind of growth into the next fifty years.

And remember, exponential growth, so if our current state could be called '1', the next several months might be called '2', the next '4', then '8', '16', '32', '64', '128', '256', '512', '1024', '2048', ... it's like the story about the peasant who asked the king to reward him for a favor by putting one coin on one square of the chessboard, two coins on the next, four on the third and so on, and the king did not believe that would be much, but quickly bankrupted himself. At the end, he would have spent a total of 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 coins paying the peasant, with the last square having 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 of them.

All from one little coin.

It seems you have made a similar blunder: underestimating the growth rates of technological progress.



Maybe, but fifty, a hundred years is going to make a hell of a lot of difference.



A handful of generations

Unless you really think you know what you are talking about

Do you?



The world powers appear to harbor doubt about whether they want anyone to live as well, so you ought to pause before you say "You and WHAT army?", sweetie.

Fair enough. But then why are you asking what we think at all?



Narcissism is often a created shelter of the individual psyche to protect it from self loathing. You seem to fit the stereo-type of those that desperately cling to some sense of superiority (fueling said narcissism) in order to bolster their self esteem in the face of that loathing, and the societal backlash they receive for their rage because of it. The human psyche/sub-conscious, often, and usually does have it both ways.



You were in 'such a tunnel blind rush to brow beat me' you jumped to conclusions. Also, because I should have spelled it out more clearly. I assumed you would understand. I should not have.



You may have something of a point here. But the 'military-industrial complex' historically speaking has lost, (or at least been subdued) in the past many times before. To give in to 'inevitability' here is giving in to fear.

While I will concede there are times it just makes sense to get on the proverbial winning horse, it can be precisely this cowardice that perpetuates those kind of cruelties that you find so abhorrent in us.




In answer to this pretty little bit of histrionics and melodrama, I would offer-

This does not mean they cannot be closed.

Any new direction in technology makes great leaps at its beginning and then slows considerably. Automobiles changed radically from 1900 to 1950 and the difference between 1950 and now is noticeable but not comparable. The same has been for aircraft, and it seems likely that computing is still in the last stages of major change. It is a mistake to assume one can extrapolate on a geometric scale indefinitely.

As I pointed out the basics of human existence are deeply embedded in energy and material systems that have evolved over billions of years. Robotics is a side effort that cannot exist without human intricate cooperation. It is, so to speak, the icing on the cake of human existence and if the cake disappears the icing has no connection to realistic existence and will quickly wither away.

The most sophisticated automatic autonomous systems are in use by NASA and the Martian robots have done fascinating things but if an astronaut on Mars did as little as the best of the robotics now there he would be laughed out of the organization.

I suppose it was a rhetorical question.



Ok, whatever, I don't really care about psychology. It won't be relevant for long anyway.



Fair enough, that's not my department.



No, they just get more subtle.

Hippies can't do shit.



Yeah but the point is that they'll end sooner this way.



I'd like to open them just a bit wider in my lifetime if I can.



WRONG

http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0 ... rintable=1

People keep predicting that returns will start to diminish and—as you might have already guessed—they keep being wrong, year after year.

Moore's law is bound to fail at some point but



...unstoppable.

Where the hell are you getting your data? Computers are not cars or airplanes. Or are you just thinking wishfully?

Really?





Hmmm...

Again. Then why are you asking us?

So I have a premise to argue.