Re: Apple II: Second Best Tech Product of All Time!

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <Ks6dndJ2H5OaxrnbnZ2dnUVZ_rylnZ2d@comcast.com>,
Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:

> Paul Schlyter wrote (odd numbers of >):
> 
>> In article <9JOdneqwjrQEzrzbnZ2dnUVZ_jidnZ2d@comcast.com>,
>> Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote (even numbers of >):
....................
>>>>Then your use of "mechanics" is non-standard.  Consider a harddisk,
>>>>and compare ot to e.g. flash memory.  The latter is often said
>>>>to have "no mechanical parts", as opposed to the former.  But to you
>>>>both are purely mechanical.
>>>
>>>I think my meaning was pretty clear.  I was referring to a fully
>>>reductionist embodiment of conscious beings, in contrast to the
>>>"wetware" embodiment we are familiar with.
>>>
>>>BTW, how do you feel about quantum mechanics?  ;-)
>> 
>> 
>> OK -- how do you feel about fluid mechanics then?  ;-)
>> 
>> The biological "wetware" is just as mechanical as electronics, since
>> they're both based on quantum mechanics.  Right?
> 
> OK, Paul--you get what I mean.  I'm picked a relatively simple,
> and perhaps imprecise, way of saying that "intelligent life" may
> have substrates other than biological--that's all.

So to you, "life" is something different from "biology"?  The very
word "biology" is derived from "bios", which is Latin for "life"... ;-)

If life can occur on some chemical platform other than the carbon
based organical molecules here on Earth, that life would surely form a
biology too!!!

>> True.  And speed is not an issue when one judges whether a process
>> is mechanical or not.  Consider e.g. celestial mechanics, where a
>> celestial body in the outer solar system may need centuries or more
>> to complete one revolution in its orbit.  Bioligical electricity,
>> or mechanics if you so like, is much faster than that.
> 
> The point here is not "mechanism", but the possiblity of faster
> and less massive substrates for intelligence than biology.

Earth's biology surely contains less massive substrates - ever
heard about microbiology?  Although a biological cell is some 10
times larger than our smalles transistors, it can perform much
more complex operations than those 1000 or so transistors which
we might cram into the same volume as a call.

> It is a reasonable assumption that intelligence requires a critical
> number of "neurons", gates, logic functions, or whatever.  These
> can be realized with what used to be considered great density in
> biological systems.  But we are now on the threshold of creating
> substrates for logic and computation that have many more elements
> than brain tissue per unit of weight and power.

If so, we must already today be able to create substrates for logic
and computation that have somewhat more (i.e. not "many more")
elements than brain tissue per unit of weight and power.  Can you
give a concrete example of such a project which ha ssucceeded?
And do you by "brain tissue" mean the brain of a human?  Or of a rat
or other small mammal?  Or of a crocodile or other big reptile or
fish?

> There is every reason to believe that we can build things on purpose
> that significantly surpass what has evolved biologically--it's just a
> small matter of engineering.  ;-)  We can get it done in a lot less
> time, too.  ;-)

How soon do you think this will happen?  Ten years?  One year?  One
month?  Less?` ;-)

>>>>>>If it's feasible for machines to have "personal consciousness", then
>>>>>>surely insects can have that too!  They too are quite complex
>>>>>>machines, much more complex than anything we can build today.
>>>>>
>>>>>Certainly.  On Earth, we made it to "level 4 intelligence" first,
>>>>>and will surely regulate the graduation of any other species on
>>>>>the planet to that level (unless it's *very* sneaky ;-).
>>>>
>>>>What's "level 4"?  How many levels are they?  Does a bigger number
>>>>mean more, or less, intelligence?  And who defined these levels?
>>>
>>>I was using it somewhat humerously as an indicator that there are
>>>various levels of intelligent synthesis, placing humans at "level 4"
>>>to indicate that there are clearly lesser levels (e.g. birds) and
>>>suggesting that there may be more.  (That's why the quotes.)
>> 
>> Still, a context must be known, or else the phrase "level 4" says
>> absolutely nothing.
> 
> Sorry for using literary license...  I thought that the "throwaway"
> nature of the term would be clear, together with its implication
> that intelligence has degrees or differences, of scale and type.

You enjoy using buzzwords?  You know, those words and phrases where
the meaning is at best unclear and at worst completely misunderstood...
 
>>>>Storing sufficient information for *replication* may be trivial.  But
>>>>to succeed in making the machine actually replicate itself, including
>>>>all of its own hardware (of course including its replication unit) is
>>>>still beyond our capabilities.
>>>
>>>These kinds of issues are always dependent on definitions.  For example,
>>>if the "feedstock" is taken to include programmable logic chips, then
>>>the fab used to make them is part of the replication cycle, but is not
>>>a part of each unit.  Even human beings cannot replicate alone!  ;-)
>> 
>> The amoebae and a number of plants are superior to us in this respect,
>> that's true.  An amoeba is pretty close to immortal: when one amoeba
>> has split up and become two, you cannot say one of them is the "parent"
>> and the other is the "child".  Of course you can kill amoeba cells,
>> but you cannot kill them all because you won't be able to find all.
>> So in a way, the surviving amoebae are many millions of years old.
> 
> I find this asexual fascinating--like plants that reproduce
> primarily by cloning themselves.

It was the first kind of reproduction in the early stages of life
on Earth.  And it has one evolutionary advantage: it is not dependent
on two individuals of opposite sexes meeting each other.
 
>> Sexual reproduction has one great advantage: it provides large
>> variations in the genetic pool without having to trust mutations,
>> which almost always are more harmful than beneficial.  That's why
>> sexual reproduction has become the norm in living organisms.  Some
>> organisms can switch between sexual and non-sexual reproduction
>> though.  The dandelion (a very common weed) is one of them: when
>> the environment remains the same, it reproduces non-sexually.  But
>> if there's any significant change in the environment, the dandelion
>> switches to sexual reproduction in an attempt to deal with the
>> change.
> 
> Exactly.  And we don't have any way to *directly* make our experience
> available to others, so we evolved/invented language to make it possible
> to communicate them indirectly.  Imagine the possibilities if a type
> of intelligent being arises which can directly share experience with
> others of its type.  This brings a kind of "sexual" character to
> communication which could greatly accelerate learning.

The Soviet biologist Lysenko believed that did actually happen, and claimed
that if the parents learnt some new skills, then their children would
inherit those skills....

Btw, learning has one advantage over genetic heritage: learning is
much faster, and learning can be changed much quicker to adapt to
changes in our environment.  One generation is enough to give a
different focus in learning - many more generations are needed to
significantly alter the genetic heritage.

> BTW, I have a plant (with many offspring!) called commonly a "pregnant
> onion", which reproduces by three different means:
> 
> 1) Most typically, it forms clone "buds" inside its bulb layers that
> show up as bumps on the outside (hence the common name).  As the outer
> layers die and peel off, the buds fall to the ground, ready to root.
> 
> 2) Once or twice a year, if it is well fed or if it is very stressed,
> it blooms, putting up a several-foot bloom spike filled with tiny
> blossoms that take over a month to open progressively.  This is its
> sexual reproductive mode.  The seed pods form at the base of the blooms
> and crack open to be scattered in the wind.
> 
> 3) About every 4-5 years, stimulated by I know not what, the outer layer
> will peel off to reveal that the bulb has fissioned into *two* bulbs,
> initially pressed tightly together, each shaped like half a bulb, but
> each with leaves already sprouted--until this point it was not clear
> that some of the straplike leaves belonged to each "bulb".  Over the
> next couple of months, no longer constrained by the outer layers, the
> two bulbs fill out to a full bulb shape, each a separate plant.
> 
> Needless to say, I find its reproductive strategies fascinating!

Compared to that, the human reproduction seems quite simple-minded.
Otoh, we are probably the only species which actively and on purpose
tries to *avoid* reproduction....

>>>Physical replication is not a theoretical problem, and it can exist
>>>whenever we are willing to make it exist.  The first cases will be
>>>expensive, though.  ;-)
>> 
>> Willingness isn't enough for this - you also need sufficient skill
>> and resources.
> 
> I think the skill is inevitable, and the resources come down to
> "will" to do it.  But to create artifical life would be a huge
> scientific accomplishment, so the motivation is very great.

.... i.e. you think we already have the resources?

> I expect to see this happen within a decade--on a small scale, of
> course.  There will probably be considerable effort to ensure that
> the "organism" cannot escape the laboratory.  ;-)

;-) ....and these efforts will, sooner or later, fail and those
self-reproducing machines will escape, if they're ever constructed.
See what happened to software viruses.... self-replicationg robots
would go out of control in a similar way sooner or later.  Of course
we might succeed in exterminating them if that should happen.
 
>>> I have often mused about whether or not modern humanity is actually
>>> capable of surviving and "replicating" in a world in which various
>>> "feedstocks" have been removed.  It seems certain that our culture
>>> is dependent on numerous products of technology whose supply could
>>> be easily disrupted.  Human biology might go on, but "life" as we
>>> know it is relatively fragile, and not easily re-bootstrapped.
>> 
>> I think you mean civilization rather than "life" here.  Yes, civlizations
>> may collapse, and that has already happened many times in human history.
>> But even if our current civilization would collapse, there may emerge
>> new civilizations in the future.
> 
> Yes, that is what I meant.  I'm concerned about how future humans
> who must start over might bootstrap themselves back to a technological
> civilization.

Presumably in a way similar to our ancestors.... if it's been done once,
it can be repeated.

> And its clear that I identify with our technological civilization--I
> have great hopes for it.  ;-)

We'll have to find a way of living where we don't demand ever-increasing
available resources though ---- that's our biggest problem.

>>>>> Of course, the consequence of not shipping ourselves would be not
>>>>> surviving...
>>>>
>>>> That's our long-time fate anyway.... there are limits to our capabilities.
>>>
>>> True.  It's a good time that it doesn't have to be done by tomorrow!
> 
> "Give me immortality or give me death!" (Firesign Theater)

....well, you surely cannot have both!   <g>

>> The question is whether those who succeed in travelling to other planets
>> are us, or if they are some who are descendants to us but still very
>> different from us - so different that they're no longer humans.
> 
> The question of what "human" means is truly interesting.
> 
> I suggested much earlier that kinship with us was primarily cultural,
> and probably not all parts of our culture.  ;-)  Our "heirs" may be
> hard for one of us to recognize, either in "body" or "thought"--but
> then, a proto-human probably would think us unrelated, too.
> 
> Of course, we could agree about how nice fresh water is...
> 
> With our possible heirs, we might find common ground in music,
> or humor in an unforseen logical contradiction.  ;-)
> 
> "Ha, ha--that's very logical."  ;-)

Humans have large components not based on logic.... emotions are
important too.
 
>>>> I think both plans will be attempted -- there are enough people for
>>>> both.  For the majority, only your plan 2 will be a realistic
>>>> alternative though, since only a small minority of the Earth's
>>>> population will ever make it into space, and an even smaller minotiry
>>>> (if any at all) will make it to another world and permanently stay
>>>> there.
>>>
>>> That may be so, but who knows what the future will bring?  The same
>>> thing must have been said about using the telephone.
>> 
>> You'll have to consider the energy budget here though.  What requires
>> the most energy?  Building a worldwide telephone network?  Or transporting
>> a major fraction of the Earth's population to another planet (which means
>> another stellar system, since our solar system has no other planets
>> suitable for human life), along with enough supplies for their journey
>> there and them setting up a self sustainable habitat on their new world?
>> Yes, there is a tremendeous difference - and we're already consuming too
>> much energy for our dailye lives here on Earth.  We'll have to fix that
>> problem first.... ;-)
> 
> I would say we are consuming too much energy derived from the wrong
> sources, not too much energy.  (Of course, improving efficiency by
> a goodly factor is long overdue, but in the long run we still need
> lots of energy to accomplish things--just from better sources.)

If we were able to capture a much larger part of the Sun's energy output,
the situation would indeed become drastically different.  Otoh the Sun's
energy is avialable only relatively near the Sun, not in deep interstellar
space.

>>>>> And that may be why species that achieve technological competence
>>>>> tend to exterminate themselves unless they learn to control that
>>>>> passion for competing to the death.
>>>>
>>>> Yep!  The very factor which brought us to survival this far is now
>>>> the greatest danger for our survival...
>>>
>>> This may be the "knothole" for advanced civilizations.
>> 
>> ....and perhaps natural selection will enter here: those civilizations
>> which survive in the long term are those who managed to handle this
>> problem.
> 
> Exactly.  This is one reason to predict that "advanced civilizations"
> will tend to be benign.

You do have a point there....

>>> It will not be difficult to decipher the (possibly fragmentary) digital
>>> remains of our civilization to any technologically advanced observer.
>>> It will require effort, but small breakthroughs will open up vast tracts
>>> of data.
>> 
>> Perhaps that's your definition of "technologically advanced observer"?
>> If he think it's difficult, then you don't think he's "technologically
>> advanced".
>> 
>> The cryptographic problem is a different problem though: there you assume
>> the plaintext is written by someone from your own civilization and therefore
>> you have a fairly good idea of what it could look like.  So your task is
>> to find out how to transform the ciphertext into this well-known form.
>> And you'll know at once if and when you've succeeded.
>> 
>> Interpreting messages from other civilizations is not quite that
>> straightforward.
> 
> Agreed.  But most of what any civilization records is trivial and
> repetitious--like sales receipts.

Perhaps our first intercepted message from an alien civilization would
be similar: it might be *their* sales receipt.....

>>> If the corpus of documents is extensive, then there will be so many
>>> cross references that everything would become clear quite quickly.
>> 
>> You ARE indeed an optimist!
> 
> Most cryptographical challenges are made difficult by the scarcity
> of similarly encoded ciphertext.  Having "gobs" of ciphertext that
> is simply encoded makes this much easier than it might seem.  Numbers
> usually emerge first, then nouns, then verbs, etc., etc.

So it's then just due to human clumsiness, or laziness, taht there still
are many old dead languages we've failed to decipher?

>> The signs indicating that prerequisites for life are not rare say
>> nothing about the prerequisites for intelligent life.  Is intelligent
>> life just a freak accident, or is it something which inevitably occurs
>> sooner or later wherever life occurs?  We don't know.  Here on Earth,
>> the only example of intelligent life we know about are the humanoids,
>> and we've been around for only a few million years during the Earth's
>> 5 billion year history.  So far, the Earth has had intelligent life
>> during 0.1% of its life span.  Will we be around here for hundreds of
>> million years, or will we be gone within another million years or two?
>> We don't know.
> 
> Actually, we see many animals that have developed substantial central
> nervous systems, and, should the environment demand it, they offer the
> possibility of evolving what we usually call intelligence.
> 
> The brain probably evolved as a way of coordinating inputs from
> more highly developed eyes, and then was put to work on other kinds
> of "pattern recognition".
> 
> I think of intelligence as a normal, not an extraordinary, tendency
> of evolution in a variable enviroment.  Changing conditions makes
> greater adaptability and learning capability a big survival advantage.
> 
> And when multiple organisms began to develop "crafty" adaptability,
> then higher-order, reflective and planning intelligence became an
> advantage.
> 
> None of this seems extraordinary.  I would be surprised it it were
> not a common tendency of life forced by a changing environment.

If so, why weren't there species with human-like intelligence during
a much larger part of the Earth's past natural history?  Why don't we
find e.g. artefacts hundreds of millions of years old, made by
intelligent dinosaurs or insects?

-- 
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