Holy wow, batman!

I was the only kid I knew who came home from school and started a fire so she could take a bath that night.

Via…

It's a sad day but everyone was alive and got home safe.

I had to send an email to someone I love very much today that was so full of assertive, pointy and serrated verbs, and not much time to catch your breath. It had to be done. I feel terrible about it, but I think sometimes it takes something like that to get someone's attention. Unfortunately, due to distance, it was an email rather than a personal visit.

Over the last almost ten years, I have yelled at my wife ... twice, I think. I'd never harm her in any way. I'm just not that kind of guy. But because I keep everything in reserve (here used in the military sense of the word, like keeping your 5th Cav in reserve), when I stand up, look directly at her and say, this is not okay. You cannot do this. You must listen and understand that this has long since lost any relevance to the discussion and has become an exercise in attrition and you need to understand this is not okay, it's not the way people relate to eachother, let alone spouses, so let's ease off a little bit here, and figure out what we're talking about and talk about it. We don't need to yell. You need a glass of water? A hug? Soppy and melodramatic it may sound, but I'm incredibly thankful that my wife understands that I'm being forthright and want to reduce casualties. I know people who haven't or aren't willing to accept that sometimes, you don't have to blame anyone. We can both look at the crater in the road and figure out how to fix it without trying to figure out which eleventy billion raindrops caused it to collapse. I've actually written a couple of published essays on the subject.

So it breaks me up terribly that I had to "yell" so very loud to get this person's attention, and I was very worried that said person would be livid because I had the audacity to … For me it felt so precarious. There are basically two ways people can react to that, especially with email. They can defy it and you and launch into a tirade of ad hominem attacks and generally huffing and puffing and threatening to blow the house down. They can also realize that I'm not trying to hurt anyone, and I want to work through the problem. This takes something important: a leap of faith or a thimble-full of trust. Afterall, I could in fact be lying. But I generally don't when I can avoid it. Basically there are two paths diverging from the one we were on together. One on which we are still together, and one on which we are apart.

I got a thank-you. Boy, I was really worried. So thankful.

hurrah!

i has a famous.

Maybe I just need to fly the coop.

(no, you probably don't want to read this.)

Moving out to California (as much as I rather dislike their politics, gun laws, and taxes), especially to Mojave, would actually work out pretty well for me. I'd get the solace that I find in little pockets during the day, and at night when the brain just stirs, stirs. Zen tells us confusion is a good thing, in the snarky roundabout sarcastic way that it does tell us things.

I 'spect if I went further to the east, to LANL, someone would have me and I could do the old homestead of the frontier thing, keep to myself when not otherwise busy, and work on my space program. That, in itself gives me goosebumps; the fact that it raises no "wow" or surprise; that now, just saying "my space program" is just that, nothing special.


When I was younger, I loved the Mojave. I went out every time I could, party or no. I remember incredible moments under moonless nights, and hour after hour of misshapen purple lumps of hills when the moon was full. We took rentals out there. I also didn't think love was any more than a big pile of chemicals gone wrong in the brain.

Life, as it has frequently and always painfully, straightened me out. I now understand the nature, but it is hard to maintain a separate me, and a separate her, and hope that the synchros are still meshing and the lot. I'm not feeling too terrific about these things now. It's so unfortunate I didn't really figure myself out until I was in my twenties. Being me, today, is almost a hostile act. I can't simply say to someone, pardon, I'm over here being introspective, or rolling a turbine between little ganglion fingers, unfolding it, watching it, figuring out where the turnips grow. Please, someone, just turn it a little down from eleven so I can think the thoughts that my head is swimming in. No, "Me," indeed, is a thing most people don't like. Which of course is entirely different than saying "Sophie doesn't like [me, alex]". It is a very different thing.

It makes me sad to think that the only real reason I can come up with for that "Me" for someone else is not suitably set up for them to spend time in. Hence my saying that I want to step out and aside and just think a little is interpreted as an affront; I am happy with my Me, while you, I guess, are not. I've told people for as long as I can remember that I don't really care about specifics. I don't care about politics, be they marital or Nanc'yth Nug Shothoth-al-addin Pel'osi. You know, I'll just keep being me, by myself, and you, really, can go do whatever you were doing. Really. As I tell my cat every night, "I am not going to eat your dinner. Don't sit there and look at me like I might take it! Have I ever eaten your dinner? No. Instead, I am going to read a little before bed, and you are going to eat your dinner. Is that acceptable?"

She seems to agree, rotting fetid ball of cat filth she is, every night. And yet, the next day, the confrontation comes back. Listen, cat, I'm going to feed you. Don't worry about it. I am far more concerned about that book I'm reading, or muscle spasms.

Listen, folks. Just because I am happy being by myself does not mean that I must always be by myself. There's no link between wanting some time to yourself and a mutually assured destruction. It's just time. Maybe we can walk off into some sunset somewhere, and be Us, be together.

Perhaps that's why I have become so very disinfatuated with Washington DC. It's full of vile people that defy my vocabulary's ability to describe them. Indeed! Do give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses! DC is full of people that cannot even describe freedom to yearn to breathe free. Instead, we indeed do have wretched refuse on our post-teeming shore. Homeless, un-free, and afraid of their own person. What a state! To be so very afraid of yourself that somebody who isn't is automatically categorized as a threat.

I yearn to breathe free. And yet, as I do, I am fairly certain I shall be subjugated by myself or someone far worse.

(this is really, really, not an emo #fml sort of thing. i spew forth all manner of shit you're welcome to consume if the taste strikes you.)

You dont say?

There is no financial incentive to keep patients healthy.

I think I have ranted about this for years, going on and on about the pharmocracy and health institutions not having any reason to prescribe the appropriate dose of the appropriate meds to the patient. As it stands, it looks like I'm not the only one to have noticed it.  The New York Times (your truth may vary) published an article written by a man with more degrees than anyone on the planet. That man is Clayton Christensen.

I know it's a little bit cheeky to complain about a guy who sees my point (which of course is his point as he's never read this sham of a website, nor has he met me, nor have I even seen him speak), but if you add up all the degrees and the amount of time it must have taken. I mean, have a look at his record. It's not like he skimmed through college with a bong and a suspiciously good spate of luck. I mean he has five published books, and his education, apparently starting in the early 1970's, would have had him booked solid through at least the early 80's, but at that point, it looks like he rested a little and started up again in 1984. Yeeeesh.

So the guy is brilliant, but it seems to me that he's spent more time in school than out, and his brilliance has made it into the books, and he's charging $largesum to just show up somewhere and talk.

I know it's supposed to be hard

But jesus, starting Spun has been so incredibly hard for me. I feel like I'm drinking from the firehose. I know my shit upside down backwards and fucking cold. But so much stuff comes up, like hiring people and finding funding, and weird "ZOMG your clearance is valid" and other people wanting me to work for them, and needing office space, and holy shit, it's really, really, really hard to do this!

Don't ever decide you want to start a space company, or a startup, or a company without physical offices unless you already have deep pockets (in which case, you're not hungry enough to succeed), you're so ambitious you scare some of your friends (but if nobody's scared, there's no risk, which means there's no venture, which means your startup is a fucking corner bodega), and be prepared to stay up all night thinking about hiring people, what the website should look like, and, god, am I really up for this?

Yeah, man, I fucking am. Spun is going to kick so much ass when we get our offices squared away that people will be blown the fuck away. I mean, you can't do that! is going to be continually answered by "sir, please step behind the yellow line or you will be charred by the rocket plume coming out of that engine, there."

I had no idea. I can't stop now. I'm shaking my head, like, what have I gotten myself into, but I know it's the future. And I am grabbing onto that future with both hands so tight that we're gonna fucking get there.

It's almost as if

He's distracting the public from the occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan to focus on the war
back home. I thought that his plan was to go after the war first, because it's killing people and costing terabucks doing so. But I've only seen Obama say one thing: the troops will be out of Iraq by next August. Which most likely means they'll be heading over to the areas around Jallalabad and coordinating with the ISI to find bin Laden – who is starting to look more and more like a dead man every day.

David Chalmers, speaking at the Singularity Summit in NYC, 2009.

The Intelligence Explosion 

David Chalmers 

(summarized from notes, with detail added by Alex J. Avriette, Research Director, Spun Flight Research)

This paper was presented on October 3, 2009, at the Singularity Summit, by David Chalmers. I summarize his work here, and give credit to him, and have added small pieces of clarification along the way to help the lay-person.


Let us start with a few simple precepts or a vocabulary if you like:

1. AI is just human (or greater, but not yet AI+)
   
2. AI+ is greater than human
   
3. AI++ is far greater. This is what we would call not merely "smarter" than human intelligence or AI+, but rather "superhuman intelligence." I can think of a few science fiction examples, but let's avoid those for now.
   

If we start with the premise that at one point, there will be AI, we have to accept that AI+ will emerge. This is simply because, as a piece of software or hardware or ideology, name your approach, becomes more honed, the better it performs, and iterative increases in its ability will lead us to an inevitable AI+.


What is scary (or hopeful, depending) about this is that AI+ is to AI++ as we are to AI and possibly AI+. Once AI+ exists, AI++ is a given.


David paused, though, to go back to the first premise which needs closer analysis. You have to state that AI will exist period. Once you can have a "proof" of this, the result, leading to AI++, is unavoidable. But how soon? Chalmers was very clear in saying that "2035 is optimistic." (for AI) Instead, he feels that "within centuries" is a more reasonable timeframe. But, as the nature of singularities show us, After AI emerges, AI+ will emerge soon after, and the definition of "soon after" may be as little as years or sooner, and subsequently AI++ will be on the scene almost immediately after AI is sentient, self-aware, and extant.


While the certainty of AI (and thus AI++) is given, he also says that there are obvious ways to curtail or at least slow its development. Among the causes for retarding (in the literal sense of the word) the growth of artificial intelligence are disaster, such as drastic climate change or war, and active prevention, as we see in the United States with stem cell research. The (perhaps good?) news regarding AI on supercomputing assets in the United States is that the US has the biggest and meanest computers, continues to hold that edge, and has no problem with either WBE (whole brain emulation), cognitive learning programs, heuristic learning devices, and even Gödel type approaches, wherein we try to "know everything" by using Kurt Gödel's work. The efficacy of this is unknown. There may be a "Gödel-complete" answer out there, but it's substantially more likely that AI++ will find it, rather than we mere mortals.


He continues and stresses that human biological reproduction is not an expandable process, at least not in a relevant way to progress with AI. By the same notion, because we don't understand the way the brain works, WBE is also not likely to increase the pace from !AI to AI or further.


After these subtexts, he returned to the meat of the talk. He said, so, will there be AI? The answer, Chalmers feels, is simple: evolution got here, to intelligence, to our brains as complicated and perhaps even quantum devices (per Kurzweil) in what is an elegant, but essentially "dumb" process.


His hope is that the product of evolution, us, can see the merits of multiple approaches, and create new life without having to go through the millions upon millions of years of reproduction required for evolution to produce something as smart as us. If we take us, as H, how long will it take before an H+ is generated by evolution? Furthermore, unless we have a very firm understanding of the way H works, H+ isn't likely to be able to create H++ without the groundwork being laid. This is not the case with AI, AI+, and so on. We can refactor, repurpose, reinitialize and learn from our mistakes as we move from !AI to AI to AI+. Evolution is a product of circumstance; scientific discovery and progress is the product of the scientific method which allows us to avoid previous "mistakes" or "branches of an evolutionary tree that shouldn't have happened" (I think he's talking to the ID people, there).


Crucially, he sees this as taking far, far less time than evolution did getting us to H. He continues with another proof:

Any system S can create S+. If that is the case (and it seems that way) then S++ is inevitable. Doing it through evolution is slow and stupid, but _still likely to work_.

Which of course covers his feelings on the probability of AI coming into existence, of H, and H+ or AI+, and the inevitability of change for the positive -- or to use a less loaded word than "positive," advantage of the organism, be it H or AI, or "system S." But! he argues, what will AI+ or AI++ think of H or H+? He says that we have no real way of making sure that AI+ doesn't decide to turn us all into "coppertops" (thanks, Carrie-Ann Moss) or food (that one from Charlton Heston) or to just irradiate us all and be done with the scourge of humanity. He proposes two strictures for AI research, especially where AI+ is capable or bound to come from.

1. Constraints on the environment, laid out before the experiments begin.
   
2. Ongoing control and changes in the environment, or put simply, "tampering" so that we don't allow an AI+ or AI++ organism to come eradicate us.
   

In a nutshell, his argument is to create AI+ in a simulated environment (think Holodecks without Wesley Crusher, Vic Fontaine, Nazis, and things like that) so we don't have to worry about it being batshit insane. While this is important for AI+, we must not proceed without these sorts of constraints before A++. But he, like many people presently thinking these thoughts invokes the sort of "Heisenberg Argument" (I swear, it's starting to sound like the Chewbacca defense it's used frequently).

A fully leakproof singularity is either pointless or impossible. A non-pointless singularity can be observed, but as we observe the simulation, it affects us.

If their simulation gives them information about us, they (the AI citizenry for lack of a better term) are far more likely to leak out because they will perceive that their environment is incomplete.


What is really fascinating about that statement, is that while it seems plausible and almost inescapable, it relies on the presumption of curiosity. And we don't understand curiosity, we don't understand how to make software curious, and it hasn't been demonstrated. Is it that between AI and AI++ that it will become curious? What if it isn't? What if it's happy where it is? We just don't have these answers right now.


In conclusion, he basically paints a grim picture (especially in light of the other speakers). A post singularity world almost certainly results in mind-upload and human self-enhancement. This sounds benign on paper, but it amounts to the end of H in favor of H+ or H++/AI++(with H) or something. But, no question, it's the end of humanity as a nominal h. sapiens. The consequences of not playing the AI++ game makes us dinosaurs. You will not have access to the most crucial information, sensory information, or even society that anyone who's made the trip from H to H++ will have. And what's the life expectancy of H-style dinosaurs, be they on Earth, in Space, and so on?


So, we destroy who we are, as we attempt to reach the pinnacle of synthetic thought. Is that a good thing? He leaves this question to the audience.


Now, AI itself, let alone AI+ [or H+], is out of our grasp right now. And we have no idea how a computational system can be conscious. However this painfully ignores one crucial fact, pointed out by Chalmers: we don't have any idea how a human brain can be conscious. So far, all we have is guesses. (other talks that I'll be summarizing or talking about here deal with human consciousness at a physical level)


This was mostly the end of his talk. He suggested looking on Google for the following three links:

• Absent Qualia
  
• Fading Qualia
  
• Dancing Qualia, which is covered by a search on the previous two terms.
  

What did I think of the talk? I was furiously writing notes down the entire time. The man is brilliant. He sticks to his field (there were others there to discuss ethics and what to do with "AI in a jar" (e.g., simulation), and by so doing was able to give the audience a very, very thorough understanding of his work. I found it absolutely stellar. He and a couple others (perhaps 3) are the reason Spun attend SS10, which is hopefully to be held in CONUS rather than, say, Fiji. It's a business expense for Spun, sure, but we have to have enough revenue to deduct the expenses. :)

The man's a genius. I hope I have done him justice here.

Upcoming content

I'll be publishing my expanded notes from the Singularity Summit. To be honest, I think I was surprised at how incredible Kurzweil was. And, both my escort and I felt that Wolfram was unbelievable. Two presenters were terrible, but everything else was great. Interesting note: everybody was talking about AI-generated singularity. I wonder if that's Kurzweil, or just the state of the industry. Kurzweil himself remarked that there were speakers there that were more optimistic than he, a hard feat to accomplish.

At any rate, it was terrific. I am so going back next year. Maybe I'll be able to do it without the chair. Definitely going to try to record it or something. There were times I got way behind the speaker.

Lately, I've been having weekly injections of Toradol into my muscles, which help a lot, but are a short-term fix. I have to still do exercises and stretches, but if you add up time at the hospital and time at the surgeon, it's 3 days a week, minimum, and people are asking me to interview or get together and talk. On top of that, Spun is really starting to gain momentum. It's almost as if for every two hours I spend working on it, I have sixteen hours of work more to do. The good news is this eventually boils down to equity, but right now, I want to start doing stuff, and I can't because paperwork is staggeringly, inexcusably, slow. Oh, and then there's the joyous stuff of figuring out compensation for partners, employees, stakeholders, &c, which may be my least favorite job, evar.

So, busy. More to come. New photos up from Spun's trip to Udvar-Hazy.