h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It aint the willful revolution of robots we have to worry about,
it's our own slavish dependence and pre-occupation with tech, at
the expense of human social interaction, that will do us in.
Proof?
Take my unwillingness to turn off this machine, my continued
delusion that it provides a valid substitute for human contact,
my need for electricity and motor transport to support my weakly
need for food and drink, my emotional dependence on audio/video
stimulations...

We are the Zombies.


~jwf~

I can't see mankind being able to design intelligent robots when even simple things like intelligent vending machines or intelligent British Rail ticket machines elude them.

Don't tell me you are falling for that ploy Icy, surely you knows that the machines just want us to under estimate them

I don't even see mankind being able to whipe itself out, totally, by robots, or any other method... I think its just an overly vein notion, and ultimately it'll be the invevitable metior strike, or some other non-man-made event which will do it for us...
Though it would be kinda nice to see Kraft Werk proved right, and the human's become the 'robots' to our 'robot' masters... then 'we are the robots' would be most true
Coming down from the trees was such* a bad idea....

I bet David Ike is hoping the Robots will take on the inter-dimensional blood-sucking lizard-men who (he claims) are really rulling the planet - I'd actually watch a Transformers film if they were stomping on Bush, Blair, Putin and all the others Captain Conspiracy claims are hiding scaly tails.

"The sources quoted in The View From the Centre of the Universe (well researched and well argued) pour cold water on the notion of synthesising intelligence superior to what has evolved.

Pinker and Dennett agree that, not being evolved through sexual competition, machines have no way of acquiring a will of their own."

Of course surely the blindingly obvious counterpoint is we have both really small experience of both intelligent creatures and what makes them (given the small sample of 1 we have to work with) and only 50 years or so of computing (which is improving at an incredible rate).

I can't really see how there view can be much more than speculation rather than a properly tested theory.

Having said that not read the book so am doing the exact thing I often get annoyed at in others.

FB

>>..am doing the exact thing I often get annoyed at in others <<

Well, you're only human after all.


~jwf~

This thread is greatly in need of the primal numero wisdom of the hootoo mathematical sage Julzes. Can someone try and find out what portal of the multidimensional cyber-m-space he is currently occupying and transmit to him a thought message.

I think I saw a link in the News Stories thread
where he was done for having intimate relations
with a calculator.

His plea of innocence based on a claim that it was
solar-powered fell on deaf ears except for the judge
who got a real charge out of it.


~jwf~

"we have both really small experience of both intelligent creatures and what makes them (given the small sample of 1 we have to work with) and only 50 years or so of computing (which is improving at an incredible rate). I can't really see how [their] view can be much more than speculation rather than a properly tested theory." [Ferrettbadger]

We know a fair bit about how things are now, and a fair bit about what things were like in the past. We have zero data about how things will be in the future. No one -- not scientists, not the Dalai Lama, not the charming gypsy lady who consults her crystal ball downtown, not even the Oracle of Omaha [a.k.a. Warren Buffett] can give you a 100% guarantee about what will take place next year. It amuses me to hear scientists to talk about the Gaia Theory [that the Earth is like an organism that regulates itself] without realizing that any sensible organism would pull out the stops to prevent overheating. So, if Global Warming turns out to be much less than predicted, that could partially prove the Gaia Theory.

If Julius Caesar had consulted the most prescient person alive in his era, he still would not have been told that electricity would be in wife use 2,000 years later. Toward the end of the 19th century, some famous person said that the U.S. Patent Office was superfluous because pretty much everything that could be invented had already been invented.

As a species we have a terrible record with predictions. I enjoy the predictions of Vinge and others, but discoveries that have yet to be made cannot be factored into the data that are available to us...

[I can see at least one typo in my last post. Change "wife use" to "wide use." ]

Gaia may not care about global warming. If it wipes out many humans, what's that to her? Even if it wiped us all out? Which is unlikely, though it may impose a second Stone Age.

>>we have both really small experience of both intelligent creatures and what makes them (given the small sample of 1 we have to work with) <<

I am not convinced there is a sample of 1. I do agree that there is a sample of 1 that asserts itself to be intelligent.

We only know the things we know, because they are the things we have chosen to know, we cannot know the things we do not want to know, because we not only do not want to know them, we do not know that we do not want to know them. Therefore we remain ignorant of the things we do not know, and most useually, ignorant of knowing that there are things we do not knnow, because we do not want to know them.
f we knew the things we do not know we do not want to know, though, we would, most probably, just ignore them, and concentrate instead on teh things we do know and also do want to know, which are, of course, those things which we do know, already.
Knowing things, including knowing those things wwe do not know, and do not know that we do not know, is of little use, as seen by those things we do know, and do wish to know, but which, despite knowing, we chose to not act apon, or act in accordance with. Ignorance may be bliss, but inability to act on non-ignorance is blisfully stupid, and seemingly destined to be done, again and again.
Any astrological or zooalogical projection, from our own limited existance in space-time, cannot alter space-time, only change what happens in it, as far as can to all appearances be seen, at least, as we would therefore only chose to know that which we wanted to know, duraing any period of the time to which it was... Therefore, ultimately, doing, or not doing, probably makes no differnce whatsoever, unless, of course it does, in which case it may make a differnce, or it may not, depending on, of course, weather we want to know that it makes a differnce, or not, or, indeed, of course, weather we want to know that we know weahter it makes a difference. and, therefore, even if we did know it made a difference, that, in itself, would not necessarily make any difference, if it was a difference we did not want to know about

Surely "Gaia Theory" would lean towards a warmer planet as this would suit the dominant forms of life - plants and insects?

The planet's certainly Gaia than it was a few decades ago, what with civil partnerships and stuff.

,laugh>

"Surely "Gaia Theory" would lean towards a warmer planet as this would suit the dominant forms of life - plants and insects?" [swl]

That's an excellent point. Let me add that I don't know whether the Gaia Theory is true or not. I was just doing mind-doodles about the consequences of it being true, or mostly true.

As for global warming, I find much of the evidence to be solid, but what do I know? I'm not a scientist.

Sometimes the findings by some scientists seem not to cohere with the findings by other scientists. I've heard reports that over the next 15,000 years the summer and winter seasons will reverse themselves. Presumably this will happen gradually. Maybe 7,000 years from now,all the months will be about the same temperature. Another interesting projection is that the Sun has seasons, based on cycles of solar output. This theory posits that the ice ages are accompanied [I don't want to say caused, because there are a number of different factors involved, some of which have nothing to do with the Sun] by solar winters, when the Sun output is less than it is during solar Springs and Summers. Anyway, according to this theory we are now in the solar Spring, and the next step is solar Summer. I don't remember how long these "seasons" are supposed to last, but they aren't short. The scientists who believe in solar seasons say that another ice age will not be possible in the next 70,000 years.

The seasons in the higher latitudes are caused by the relative angle of thats part of the earth surface to the sun.
In summer the earth's axis in that hemisphere is tilted towards the sun and the surface close to vertical to the incoming solar radiation.
In winter the axis in that hemisphere is tilted away from the sun and the surface is at a relatively shallow angle meaning the solar radiation is spread over a wider area - hope that makes sense. For the seasons to reverse the axis would have to tilt in the other direction and for weather conditions to be uniform through the year it would have to be perpendicular to the solar wind.

There is still considerable debate about the causes of glacial periods and while solar activity is considered one of many significant factors the consensus amongst climatalogists is that atmospheric composition and volcanism are of greaster importance

The seasons in the higher latitudes are caused by the relative angle of that part of the earth's surface to the sun.
In summer the earth's axis in that hemisphere is tilted towards the sun and the surface is close to vertical to the incoming solar radiation.
In winter the axis in that hemisphere is tilted away from the sun and the surface is at a relatively shallow angle meaning the solar radiation is spread over a wider area - hope that makes sense.
For the seasons to reverse the axis would have to tilt in the other direction and for weather conditions to be uniform through the year it would have to be perpendicular to the solar wind.

There is still considerable debate about the causes of glacial periods and while solar activity is considered one of many significant factors the consensus amongst climatalogists is that atmospheric composition and volcanism are of greaster importance