We run this every year. Made a few tweaks this time out. See if you can spot them.

Happy Independence Day, all.]]> http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/001780.html http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/001780.html Singularity Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:05:27 -0700 Stephen Hawking says that our species has transcended genetics alone as our means of eolving, and that information external to us -- the sum of human knowledge in books, computer networks, etc. -- is taking us in an entirely new direction:

But we are now entering a new phase, of what Hawking calls "self designed evolution," in which we will be able to change and improve our DNA. "At first," he continues "these changes will be confined to the repair of genetic defects, like cystic fibrosis, and muscular dystrophy. These are controlled by single genes, and so are fairly easy to identify, and correct. Other qualities, such as intelligence, are probably controlled by a large number of genes. It will be much more difficult to find them, and work out the relations between them. Nevertheless, I am sure that during the next century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence, and instincts like aggression."

If the human race manages to redesign itself, to reduce or eliminate the risk of self-destruction, we will probably reach out to the stars and colonize other planets. But this will be done, Hawking believes, with intelligent machines based on mechanical and electronic components, rather than macromolecules, which could eventually replace DNA based life, just as DNA may have replaced an earlier form of life.

Hey, is it just me, or is the greatest scientist of our time starting to sound a lot like Ray Kurzweil? It almost seems like all this accelerating change stuff is going mainstream or something.

If I read correctly between the lines, Hawking says that we will experience 10,000 years worth of evolution in a 50 year period (although he doesn't say starting when.) By way of comparison, Ray Kurzweil has said that humanity will undergo 20,000 years worth of progress in the 21st century, while Intel CTO Justin Ratner recently predicted that we will advance 35,000 years in the next 100 years.

These guys are well within an order of magnitude of each other. In fact, Kurzweil looks like the middle-of-the-road guy in that grouping, doesn't he? Not as far-out as Ratner, not as conservative as Hawking.

But Hawking hits on a key point: these next 10, 20, or 35K years worth of change won't be like any previous leap. This time, we get to choose the outcome. Consciously. Dow we choose as a species or as individuals? That's unclear. Does everybody get a vote? That's unlikely, but I maintain that people really ought to have a say in a set of changes this big -- especially when having a say is possible for this first time ever.

In any case, we're talking about an awful lot of change to undergo in a very short period of time. It's important for us to start seriously thinking about this stuff. We have some big decisions to make.

Soon.

Oh, and they can also eliminate vermin...by eating the pests. The video says it all:

I'm not usually one for robots-gone-mad scenarios, but doesn't the idea of a robot designed to seek out and eat living things in your house sound like a recipe for disaster?

(h/t: Mike Dougherty)

"How long have I got, Doc?"

"Oh, about 1000 years..."

Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon welcome visionary aging researchers and best-selling authors Aubrey de Grey (Ending Aging) and Terry Grossman (The Baby-Boomer's Guide to Living Forever, Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever) to explain how indefinite healthy extension of human lifespan is not only possible, but may well soon be within our grasp.

Towards the end of part 1 of the show, we ask Dr. Grossman if there are three things that people can do right now to start "living forever," what would they be? He says the top three would be:

1. Stop eating sugar.

2. Get exercise.

3. Reduce stress in your life.

We didn't ask, but I'm guessing this list assumes that you don't smoke or drink heavily. With the exception of the first item, which is probably a little more extreme than the advice doctors would typically give -- generally they'll tell you to "cut down" on sugar, not go cold turkey -- these sound like some good general tips for how to live a healthier life.

Of course, that should come as no big surprise. If you want to live longer, getting healthy is a great way to start.

Listening Options:

About our guests:

Aubrey de Grey Ph.D. is a biogerontologist, creator of the Methuselah Mouse prize, and Chief Science Officer of the SENS Foundation.
Terry Grossman, MD is a leading expert on anti-aging and life extension therapies, and the founder and medical director of Frontier Medical Institute in Denver, Colorado.

A couple of months ago, we did a show exploring whether the technological singularity and associated accelerating change ideas are becoming mainstream, and what steps might be taken to move such ideas further along in that direction. I have not been shy about stating (and reiterating) that if humanity's near -- or even long-term -- future involves the emergence of a superintelligence that forever alters what live on this planet is all about, people ought to know about it.

It really ought to be as familiar a concept as, say, climate change.

So it occurs to me that, when the CEO CTO of a Fortune 100 company acknowledges that he not only buys into the idea of the singularity, but apparently takes it for granted, we are very much heading in the direction of this becoming a mainstream idea.

Steve Leibson tells the story thusly:

Greene's first question concerned when we'd know that the singularity had arrived. [Intel CEO CTO Justin] Rattner replied that we'd know it was here when we saw a robot emptying our dishwasher. In other words, when we've handed routine tasks over to machines, then we should know.

Now before you chuckle, be aware that unloading a dishwasher is not as mundane as you might think. For one thing, my wife has yet to train me to do it reliably and I'm pretty sure I have human-level intelligence. Just don't ask her. However, there are lots of issues with getting a machine to do this kitchen work. First, there's substantial dexterity involved in maneuvering dishes in and out of the dishwasher's racks and up to the storage shelves without breaking some dishes. Especially stemware. I hate stemware.

I agree with Leibson on the stemware thing, but I can't quite get behind Rattner's answer. A robot that can empty the dishwasher will be a remarkably sophisticated machine -- and I like an answer that diverges so widely from stock, Turing-test type definitions -- but that task requires human-level intelligence at best. A world in which robots empty dishwashers -- and that's the height of robot sophistication -- is a pre-singularity world. At some point, robots will be doing all our driving for us, but even that development won't mean that the singularity is upon us.

So kudos to Rattner for taking the idea of the singularity seriously, even if he doesn't articulate a terribly helpful definition of what it is. I think this is an idea that needs to be taken seriously even by those who consider it unlikely. (Alvis Brigis does a good job of showing how this is done.) Some possibilities are so high-impact that we need to consider them even if their probability of happening is quite low. For example, it's not at all likely that a huge meteor will hit the earth in the next 50 years. But does anyone think that the possibility should therefore be ignored?

Steve Leibson obviously doesn't take the idea of the singularity seriously, and that's too bad, seeing as he has provided the only report I can find (so far) on Rattner's comments. Rattner may have followed up the idea of the dishwashing robot with some thoughts on how that leads to superhuman intelligence. Leibson does give us this tidbit to chew on:

Rattner alluded to the bird-bone flute discovery -- just announced today -- that was found in the Ach Valley of southern Germany. That means that scientists now have a record of human artifact development that goes back at least 35,000 years or about 30,000 years before the flood. Rattner says that we will see more technological development in the next 100 years than in the previous 35,000 that is, if we (or the robots) don't kill off the human race in the next 100 years.

Wow, 35000 years of progress in the next 100 years? That's quite an endorsement of the idea of accelerating change to come from the mouth of a corporate CEO CTO, even if his company DOES make computer chips! By way of comparison, I think Ray Kurzweil says that we will experience 20,000 years of progress during the twentieth 21st century [thanks, Sally]. So either Rattner is more bullish even than Kurzweil on human progress, or we're going to see a lot of progress between 2101 and 2109. And the latter is possible, after all, if acceleration continues. After 2109 it just keeps getting faster and faster, to the point where we won't ever even see the year 2200.

As these ideas become more mainstream, we're likely to see more of these superlative scenarios from increasingly unexpected sources. As a confirmed superlativist myself, I'm all for that. But I hope we get more on the other side of the discussion than people rolling their eyes and making dismissive wisecracks. Thoughtful criticism is vital. I hope the mainstreaming of the Singularity means we'll see more arguments of the Bill Joy and Dale Carrico caliber -- also coming from unexpected sources.

Of course, visiting the early history of the universe is interesting, but what many of us want to do is visit this planet's past. As the linked article points out:

If we want to finally work out who really killed Kennedy, all we need to do is nip over (assuming instantaneous matter transportation) to a planet some 46 light years from here and we should be able to inspect the grassy knoll (with an Extremely Large Telescope) at our leisure. Similarly, the Battle of Waterloo, the birth of Christ or the building of the pyramids — we just need to go the extra few million miles.

The real problem is getting out ahead of the light. We would need FTL drives to make that happen.

But then again, sometimes the light bounces back.

Or to give another example, I might be described as an "orang putih." A white man.

Of course, the word "orang" made it into the English langauge as part of "orangutan." That's two Malay words mashed together. In Malay, "orang utan" means simply the "man of the forest" or the "people of the forest."

The Malays saw orangutans and identified them as a variety of human being. And maybe they weren't so far off.

There's something very interesting about this image. Can you figure out what it is?

Hint: this is not one of those "moving" optical illusions. So if starts to move, think about getting some rest.

Have you figured it out yet?

Another hint: the peculiarity has to do with the blue and green bands. Look carefully at them. What do you see?

Still nothing? Okay, read this.

Some people are really credulous and believe in a lot of things. Some people believe only what they see with their own eyes.

And then some people realize that even that is highly suspect.

Is your thinking future-ready?

Find out as futurists Reichart Von Wolfsheild, Natasha Vita-More and Alvis Brigis join hosts Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon for a lively and eye-opening discussion about the vital first step we have to take in preparing for life in a world transformed: changing the way we think.

Listening Options:

About our guests:

Reichart Von Wolfsheild is the Chief Software Architect, CTO, Co-Founder of Qtask, which provides a comprehensive and secure web-based project management and collaboration environment for business. Reichart has more than 25 years of software and hardware design, and he specializes in complex platform software architecture, including cross-platform development, lossless compression technology, encryption, gambling systems, and multi-point real-time communication systems. He played a key role in the conception and creation of a wide array of entertainment titles including Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Die Hard, and Hot Wheels Crash. Reichart designed and created the award winning Walt Disney Animation Studio, and the multi-million dollar original video game franchise Return Fire. He has also developed ground breaking training software used by law enforcement, the Olympics, the military, and the aerospace industry, including the Boeing RARO system, and co-developed the world's first consumer CD-ROM set-top box (CDTV).

Natasha Vita-More has been called by the New York Times the first female transhumanist philosopher. Her affiliations, past and present, include Extropy Institute, Transhumanist Arts & Culture, H+ Laboratory, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, World Transhumanist Association, Alcor Foundation, Zero Gravity Arts Consortium, and Foresight Institute. Her talks and writings include "Talent for Living: Cracking the Myths of Mortality" - talk presented at Alcor 4th Technology Conference, 2000; "Sensorial Mix - The Future of the Senses" - talk presented at EXTRO4, Berkeley, California, 1999; and "Ageless Thinking" - Resources for Independent Thinking, Oakland, CA 1996.

Alvis Brigis is a media producer, futurist and entrepreneur with a specialty in evolving communications. His diverse background includes roles on projects such as the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model Search (NBC), MotorMouth (VH1), Virtual Laguna Beach, TheseTunes.com and The Metaverse Roadmap. He is Co-Founder of MemeBox.com, where he writes about intelligence amplification spurred by accelerating technology, communication and information domains.

]]> http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/002090.html http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/002090.html FastForward Radio Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:35:15 -0700 http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/002089.html http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/002089.html Better All The Time Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:27:23 -0700 Alvis Brigis says that it's upon us

It's particularly interesting to observe the web trending toward advanced simulation. As I noted above, many of the web's most valuable properties are rooted in super-simulations - massive bodies of structured data that can be viewed as a whole or sub-sections. It is clear that the major players are now racing to add both more data and more structure to these simulations in order to fend off sharp-witted competitors and amass more resources, a very life-like behavior indeed.

Alvis points out Wolfram Alpha as a particularly interesting example of an application of a subset of available information which, although initially a simulation, has the ability to lead to the generation of new knowledge. Wikipedia is another example. In a comment, I add that, along similar lines, Facebook is a simulated social interaction environment which enables massive amounts of real social interactions, many of a a wholly novel kind; e.g., "Jeff has thrown a sheep at you."

Alvis explains that all this simulating we're doing now has deep roots:

My personal take on the matter...is that as organisms evolve and life's complexity increases, new species with brains capable of greater quantification and abstraction (simulation!) emerge at a regular clip. Over time, these organisms discover ways to expand their knowledge by communicating (actively or passively) information to one another and letting the network manage their quantifications and decisions. Then, eventually, the higher-level organisms figure out how to extend their knowledge into the environment through technology that allows them to communicate and retrieve it more easily than before. This is accomplished directly through technologies like language, writing, or classical maps, and indirectly through the hard-technologies like spears, paint, and paper that critically support knowledge externalization.

In other words, I believe that simulation plays a critical role in not only the evolution and development of the human species, but also of all forms of life on this planet and probably in our known universe (as suggested by recent findings that physical matter millions of light years distant closely resembles our own).

Whoa, cosmic. So simulation = evolutionary success. Can that be right? In his current piece on expanding human intelligence in The Atlantic, Jamais Cascio describes how homo sapiens staged a massive comeback from near extinction 74,000 years ago:

How did we cope? By getting smarter. The neuro­physi­ol­ogist William Calvin argues persuasively that modern human cognition—including sophisticated language and the capacity to plan ahead—evolved in response to the demands of this long age of turbulence. According to Calvin, the reason we survived is that our brains changed to meet the challenge: we transformed the ability to target a moving animal with a thrown rock into a capability for foresight and long-term planning. In the process, we may have developed syntax and formal structure from our simple language.

As a species, and as individuals, we began to create better and better conceptual maps of the world around us and to make better use of those maps. We got better at simulating.It should be obvious that better simulation amounts to better evolutionary success -- just take out the word "evolutionary," and consider some examples:

-- Two athletes of roughly equal physical ability are pitted against each other. One is much better than the other at modeling various game scenarios.

-- Two sales people of similar temperament and experience are competing in the same territory selling virtually identical products. One of them struggles with understanding the inner workings of the organizations that make up the potential customer base; the other seems to have a knack for sussing out these companies' internal dynamics.

--Two students with more or less equal academic records are preparing for a standardized test. Both study the same basic materials in preparation for the test. Additionally, one of them gets access to earlier versions of the test and goes through several practice rounds of test-taking before taking the actual test.

Now those are some pretty contrived examples and, of course, there would be other factors in any of these scenarios, but still I think it's safe to say who has the advantage in each of those scenarios. I am especially fond of the third one because the student doesn't have an innate advantage where it comes to doing simulations; he or she simply takes advantage of the best simulations available.

So if simulation has always been positively correlated with human survival and human success, shouldn't the fact that we are in the midst of a massive increase in the number of ways we simulate the world -- as well as the quality of those simulations -- speak well for our future? Or maybe it speaks well only for the future of those performing the simulations, or who have access to them. But then again, many of these new simulation tools are widely distributed and available to almost anyone.

]]> http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/002088.html http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/002088.html Society Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:58:24 -0700 K. Eric Drexler hates nanobots.

I know. That's like saying that Santa hates reindeer, but this comes straight from the man himself. And he lists some pretty good reasons for feeling the way he does.

Moreover, he points out an unfortunate general tendency:

Some widespread ideas about research objectives

* are bad
* seem absurd to most scientists
* are inconsistent with my ideas and publications
* are nonetheless widely attributed to me

Drexler's blog is a great read. When he's not busy setting the record straight, he takes the time to explain things like how to understand everything.

Very useful!

]]> http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/002087.html http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/002087.html Nanotechnology Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:06:13 -0700 "If you're going to do something truly novel, there isn't anybody who can tell you how long it's going to take or how much it's going to cost. NASA's contract with Grumman stipulated three things: performance, schedule, and cost. Well, it didn't take us long to figure out that it didn't quite work that way. Performance was absolutely critical. Schedule came next, and cost was a derivative of the first two."

Joe Gavin, director, Apollo Lunar Module Program, Grumman Aerospace Corporation.

]]> http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/002086.html http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/002086.html Space Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:14:49 -0700 Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon continued the countdown to the breakthrough 10-part series, "The World Transformed." (details below)

---

Listening Options:

Stream our latest shows:

Or:

Or download MP3's for all the archived shows at:

---

Click "Continue Reading" for the show notes:

]]> http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/002085.html http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/002085.html World Transformed Sat, 13 Jun 2009 20:52:40 -0700 What if we can start routing our thinking processes the way we route air travel?

The concept of a networked brain isn't so different from the transportation grids used by cars and planes, says Martijn van den Heuvel, a neuroscientist at Utrecht University Medical Center who led the new study.

"If you're flying from New York to Amsterdam, you can do it in a direct flight. It's much more effective than going from New York, then to Washington, and then to Amsterdam. It's exactly the same idea in the brain," he says.

Per this model, intelligence is a factor not of the number of connections inside the brain, but the efficiency with which those connections are wired together. Apparently the arrangement of non-nueron-carrying white matter is also a major factor. Seeing as this basic plumbing ought to be reasonably reconfigurable -- once we know how -- this research begins to look like something that might push us towards greater than human intelligence in a fairly straightforward way.

But let's not plan those The Singularity Is Here parties quite yet.

For one thing, as the article points out:

The first order of business will be to determine what physical and biochemical properties create more efficient brain network

Well, that's a fairly tall first order of business, now isn't it? First we have to figure out what those properties are, then we have to figure out how we can manipulate them. It may well all be doable, but a lot of heavy spade work lies ahead. And that's not the only difficulty. Alvis Brigis argues pretty convincingly that we don't yet have a precise and mutually agreed upon definition of what we mean by "intelligence."

Back when I used to lead process improvement teams for the product engineering and development group at U S WEST Advanced Technologies, we had a saying -- "You can't improve what you can't measure." In retrospect, this is not entirely true. I believe something like "reliably" or "consistently" belongs in there between the "can't" and the "improve." And if we can't reliably improve something that we can't measure, it seems equally axiomatic that we can't measure what we haven't properly defined.

Not to be a buzzkill, I'm just saying that a little progress in this area is still a long way from any of us dropping by the clinic for a quick brain reconfiguration and an additional 60 IQ points. But still, it could very well be (early and embryonic) progress in exactly that direction.

]]> http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/002084.html http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/002084.html Brain Thu, 11 Jun 2009 07:37:51 -0700