From: H C (lphege@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Aug 10 2006 - 19:40:21 MDT
>From: Mary Tobias <mariet@got.net>
>Reply-To: sl4@sl4.org
>To: sl4@sl4.org
>Subject: Re: What's going on this decade?
>Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 17:52:04 -0700
>
>H C wrote:
>
>>>From: Mary Tobias <mariet@got.net>
>>>Reply-To: sl4@sl4.org
>>>To: sl4@sl4.org
>>>Subject: Re: What's going on this decade?
>>>Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2006 15:34:54 -0700
>>>
>>>Ben Goertzel wrote:
>>>
>>>>About the supposed lameness of the present decade...
>>>>
>>>>Hmmm...
>>>>
>>>>Well, the early 2000's is when I first created a truly viable design
>>>>for an Artificial General Intelligence ;-)
>>>>
>>>>Also, among many other things...
>>>>
>>>>Estimation of Distribution Algorithms, fusing probability theory and
>>>>evolutionary programming, became prominent and practical [spurred by
>>>>Pelikan's PhD thesis]
>>>>
>>>>Viable automated NL translation via statistical methods became
>>>>possible (due to Google...)
>>>>
>>>>Real quantum computers have been constructed -- we're up to 12 qubits
>>>>now
>>>>
>>>>http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060508164700.htm
>>>>
>>>>Evolutionary quantum computers have been designed and simulated (see
>>>>some nice papers by Hugo de Garis; and a book by Lee Spector; and I
>>>>gave a talk on this at a MITRE workshop earlier this year)
>>>>
>>>>The use of machine learning methods to discover biomarkers became
>>>>viable, and very common (based on SNP data, microarray data, etc.)
>>>>
>>>>BitTorrent !!!
>>>>
>>>>I could go on and on but I won't.... There has been plenty of nice
>>>>stuff in the 2000's.... Yes, much of it had its roots in the 90's;
>>>>but much of the stuff you attribute to the 90's had its roots in the
>>>>80's too...
>>>>
>>>>-- Ben
>>>
>>>
>>>I think we're looking at something completely different... the 90s were
>>>given by tremendous intellectual
>>>vitality, and tremendous amounts of money and energy being invested in
>>>moving the race dramatically
>>>forward.
>>>
>>>The millenium has been marked by tremendous backlash; the explosive
>>>growth of fundamentalist religion
>>>especially in the first world nations, a virtual collapse of support for
>>>science and engineering as the best
>>>and perhaps only answer to human sustainability
>>
>>
>>
>>A virtual collapse of support for science and engineering?
>>
>>That's a little overboard. Just as one example:
>>
>>http://www.nano.gov/
>>
>>
>>Technology is still accelerating, despite the delusions caused by your
>>liberal mental disorder ;).
>>
>>
>>-hank
>
>Thanks for the sound-byte Hank :-)
>
>But I'm neither liberal (I do have a lebertarian leaning in case your
>observation was simply a typo) and having
>a different point of view than yours doesn't make me delusional. Fact is,
>in a multidimentional manifold, the odds
>of any two sentient beings having the same physical perspective is pretty
>slim... that's going to make you aweful
>lonely if you go around calling everyone with a different viewpoint
>delusion just because they can't see through
>your eyes (the physical or the ideological.)
>
>I'm clear that technnology is still accelerating, and it's going to as long
>as sentient beings exist... my concern is
>that with the tremendous amount of churning going on in human society, that
>the future will simply happen, and
>not be designed, and in that case, a future for human beings will be a crap
>shoot. That, and superstitious, and
>misguidied people locked in survival mode, may well do tremendous harm,
>through the ever growing capacity
>that technology provides the individual along the way. A C-5 charge is bad
>enough, a nano-device or some kind
>exotic bio weapon is altogether something else. I can do real genetic
>experimentation in my garage. What happens
>to the security of the world when much of the technology is available to
>highschool kids for science fair projects?
>
>All I'm saying is the we have to be awake, congniscent of the path we walk,
>and prepared to have our children
>prepared to assume responsibility for whats coming, prepared to cope with
>it, and warned of the critical issues
>they'll need to deal with. Anything less is irresponsible on our part for
>future generations.
>
>Mary Tobias
Sorry, I was listening to Michael Savage and got a little excited. I wasn't
going to post for at least another 2-4 weeks except to respond if you
responded. :)
>a nano-device or some kind
>exotic bio weapon is altogether something else.
And an AGI is all that- and everything else, too.
I definitely agree with you, I was just talking before thinking. I'm
surprised I didn't get booted off the list entirely.
-hank
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