Author Archives: Phil Bowermaster

Some Interesting Reading

IEEE Spectrum is running a collection of essays on the singularity.

The Who’s Who guide is kind of a cutesy overview of (some of) the major players in the Singularity. Mildly entertaining, I suppose.

John Horan’s The Consciousness Conundrum makes the argument that replicating human consciousness in the human substrate is a pipedream that distracts scientists from doing more important work. Horan makes a pretty airtight case. After all, there’s a lot of disagreement as to what consciousness is and how it works. Plus, the computers that will be required to emulate conscious thought don’t exist yet.

Open and shut case — it will never happen!

Okay, I guess I’m not really selling this series of essays, but finally we get to Vernor Vinge and his Signs of the Singularity. Vinge finds points of agreement and disagreement with the other authors, and notes the following:

Both Horgan and Nordmann express indignation that singularity speculation distracts from the many serious, real problems facing society. This is a reasonable position for anyone who considers the singularity to be bogus, but some form of the point should also be considered by less skeptical persons: if the singularity happens, the world passes beyond human ken. So isn’t all our singularity chatter a waste of breath? There are reasons, some minor, some perhaps very important, for interest in the singularity. The topic has the same appeal as other great events in natural history (though I am more comfortable with such changes when they are at a paleontological remove). More practically, the notion of the singularity is simply a view of progress that we can use—along with other, competing, views—to interpret ongoing events and revise our local planning. And finally: if we are in a soft takeoff, then powerful components of superintelligence will be available well before any complete entity. Human planning and guidance could help avoid ghastliness, or even help create a world that is too good for us naturals to comprehend.

As a bonus, Vinge is also featured on a video explaining how to prepare for the singularity. By all means, let’s not be caught unprepared!

Future Glimpses

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Why does the image above appear to move? Why do optical illusions work?

New research shows that it’s because our brains, compensating for our inability to see in real time (we’re actually about a 10th of a second behind the curve), compensate by showing us what is likely to happen next:

[Researcher Mark Changizi of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York] says it’s our visual system that has evolved to compensate for neural delays, generating images of what will occur one-tenth of a second into the future. That foresight keeps our view of the world in the present. It gives you enough heads up to catch a fly ball (instead of getting socked in the face) and maneuver smoothly through a crowd.

“Illusions occur when our brains attempt to perceive the future, and those perceptions don’t match reality,” Changizi said.

Optical illusions such as the one shown above occur because our brains assume motion and are trying to show us what things will look like as we move towards (or away from) the image. Of course, we only become aware of this when something like an optical illusion draws our attention to it, but the truth is that our brains are doing this all the time — everything we see is a prediction.

In his book On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins claims that intelligence derives from prediction. This research would seem to go along with Hawkins’ ideas — if our vision is based on an attempt to predict what’s coming next, why not all of our senses and, indeed, the very act of thinking?

We are all, in a very fundamental sense, futurists.

FastForward Radio: Speculist Essentials

In this show Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon talked about “Speculist Essentials.” What have been the key influences towards developing our unusual outlook on the future? They named one item in each of the following categories that has had the most impact on them as Speculists:

  1. Movie or TV show

  2. Fiction book
  3. Nonfiction book
  4. Website
  5. Event
  6. Person

We had great feedback from the chat room. Michael Darling shared his own “essentials” and well as those of the chat participants.

Stream the show:

Or:

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Or download the MP3 for this show or other archived shows at:

Listen to FastForward Radio... on Blog Talk Radio

Click “Continue Reading” for the show notes:

Phoenix Finds Ice

…maybe. It sure likes like ice to me:

martianice.jpg

It’s pretty cool if the spacecraft we were hoping would find ice landed right on a patch. That wouldn’t necessarily indicate anything about the abundance of the stuff on the Mars, but then again it can’t be a bad sign.

NASA says they need to do some tests — take a color photo, for example — in order to confirm whether this is really ice. And even if it is, it might be dry ice: CO2 rather than H2O. The real test will be involve chipping some off and seeing how it mixes with a beverage.

Or something like that. I’m not sure exactly what the test is. Anyhow, stay tuned.

Reader's Choice Video 4

Harvey’s contribution this week is somehow reminiscent of Waiting for Godot (until the young ladies start getting somewhere), set to Lucinda Williams’ I Lost It:

Michael Darling votes for these amazing images of the kinetic sculpture of artist Theo Jansen:

Another example here.

Finally, I really enjoyed this quick trip through the Panama Canal on GeekPress the other day, so I recommended it for this feature. (Thats right, I’m a reader, too!)


Through Panama Canal In 75 Seconds – The most popular videos are here

Reader’s Choice Video 4

Harvey’s contribution this week is somehow reminiscent of Waiting for Godot (until the young ladies start getting somewhere), set to Lucinda Williams’ I Lost It:

Michael Darling votes for these amazing images of the kinetic sculpture of artist Theo Jansen:

Another example here.

Finally, I really enjoyed this quick trip through the Panama Canal on GeekPress the other day, so I recommended it for this feature. (Thats right, I’m a reader, too!)


Through Panama Canal In 75 Seconds – The most popular videos are here

Day Job Encroaches

Since Stephen has seen fit to put a picture with a big Brand X logo on the blog for which I shell out monthly hosting fees using money earned in the employ a far superior company, I think it only appropriate that we listen in on some exciting developments from the The Data Warehouse Institute, a couple of weeks ago in Chicago.

I’ll warn you ahead of time — since this interview was not with Claudia Imhoff, it does not end with my standard “rock on!” tagline. Nor do I tell anyone to live to see it.

But if you’re reading this, hey, live to see it. I mean that.


TDWI Podcast.

On to Mars

Should we be heading towards Mars? Rand Simberg notes that the Phoenix’s triumphant landing on Mars this past Sunday occurred on the 47th anniversary of President Kennedy’s appearance before a joint session of Congress to propose an American mission to the moon “before this decade is out.” He comments on the possible significance of what Phoenix finds — or doesn’t find — to an eventual manned mission to the red planet:

This mission, like all Mars missions, is not just to answer pure science questions. It is also ostensibly a precursor to eventual human trips to Mars. The discovery that water is available in large quantities at the poles was encouraging to those who plan to “live off the land” there. But perhaps those who hope to one day be Martians themselves should also hope that Phoenix doesn’t find signs of life, at least current life. If it does, it’s not at all inconceivable that the planet would be put under quarantine from humanity so that we don’t contaminate it with our own life forms (this is a concern even for the robotic envoys, such as Phoenix, to the point that they are scrupulously sterilized prior to launch). Beyond that, for reasons having nothing to do with Mars, some say that we should hope that we are alone because to learn otherwise might be a bad omen for the human race.

The Human Imperative

We walk in shadows towards the light.

From before the beginning, we have faced a world that has filled us with fear, a world fraught with danger, deprivation, disease, destruction, and death.

From before the beginning, we have faced a world that has inspired us to hope, a world that freely offers us pleasure, abundance, meaning, accomplishment, and joy.

Alone among the creatures of the earth, we have conceived in the present day an image of the coming day. We have imagined a world in which the shadows recede and the light shines ever brighter. We have imagined ourselves in the coming day to be freer, more intelligent, more capable, more creative, and more filled with joy than we are in the present day. Alone among the creatures of the earth, we change ourselves, our circumstances, and the world itself in order to realize that vision.

We walk in shadows towards the light, but we do so falteringly — tripping and stumbling as we go. The path that leads from the shadows to the light is not an obvious one; it is a winding and deceptive and sometimes treacherous route from which we stray quite easily. We have not followed the path perfectly, and many times we have stepped off it willfully — declaring the journey to be finished or even moving deliberately back towards shadows, claiming them as our true home. But we have never strayed so far from that path that we could not, upon remembering ourselves, find our way back to it. And so we have proceeded, slowly and painstakingly, from darkness into brighter and brighter light.

The journey is one that spans many generations.

Throughout human and pre-human history, we have directed ourselves towards an increasingly beneficial future. Beginning with primitive circumstances and limited choices, we envisioned outcomes that would increase our intelligence and capability, and therefore the number of choices we would have when driving toward subsequent outcomes.

The Human Imperative is working. We have consistently achieved outcomes in which our intelligence and capability are expanded, and have continuously broadened the possibility space from which we can select and work towards subsequent improved circumstances.

With new circumstances come new problems and challenges, many of these unanticipated at the time we envisioned the change. However, the improvements to the human condition are additive, and we can combine them in creative ways to provide unexpected benefits. Improvements have tended to outpace new problems.

Throughout human history, we have carried out the Human Imperative using two basic strategies:

1. Solving problems / mitigating risks

2. Pursuing happiness

The first strategy has always taken priority, as the primary ongoing problem we have had to solve is how to achieve our survival (or prevent our extinction.) But we now stand on the threshold of a new era in human history. Improvements and potential improvements are increasing exponentially; we are moving rapidly towards a critical mass of human intelligence and capability.

Our achievable future is one that transcends the expectations, hopes, or even dreams of most of humanity.

We can achieve that future only by recognizing that we are at a transitional point in carrying out the Human Imperative. We must transform our thinking about the future and, for the first time, change the order of our priorities. We must recognize that focusing on problems and risks is no longer our optimal strategy for achieving our survival. Our survival lies within the realization of our achievable good.

The Human Imperative is now to recognize that transcendent good as possible, to communicate and share a vision of it, and to work towards its fulfillment.

The Future Is Thin

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Dean’s World has hosted a spontaneous blogwave over the past few days on the subject of whether the traditional recommended course of diet and exercise is an effective long-term cure for obesity. Like Battlestar Galactica and the question of whether “bible-thumpers” should be considered “true Protestants,” this is one of those topics that comes up from time to time on DW: obviously a subject of interest to host Dean Esmay. In arguing that diet and exercise have not been shown to constitute an effective long-term cure for obesity, Dean is challenging mainstream thinking (something that regular readers of his blog know that he likes to do.) Whether I agree with him or not, anyone willing to take on the overwhelming consensus opinion in the face of a large body of established research gets a few points from me for chutzpah if for nothing else.

But here’s the rub: in this case, the overwhelming consensus opinion and the body of established research are at odds with one another. Or as Dean likes to put it:

No study has ever shown that human beings can drop more than 5-40 pounds or so of excess weight through diet and exercise alone. Not long-term anyway. Those who can do so are so rare they barely qualify as statistical anomalies.

I added italics to the third sentence because it is an integral part of the argument. If you read the first two sentences on their own, you might take Dean to be saying that it is impossible for an obese person to lose more than 40 pounds of excess weight and keep it off for more than five years, or that no one has ever done so. And, in fact, several commenters and at least one of the co-bloggers at DW have read it that way, and have responded by linking to research that tracks the progress of obese people who have demonstrated that “impossible” level of success.

But Dean isn’t arguing that it’s impossible. Rather, after reading over the literature, he has found that — in study after study over the course of the past century — the number of clinical trial subjects who have kept more than 40 pounds off for a period of five or more years is vanishingly rare. The number that’s thrown around on DW is 0.1%, although I haven’t seen where Dean specifically raised this number, only where people arguing with him have. So if we can name people who have met the criteria — Jared comes to mind — we have only found an example of that 0.1% of the population for whom diet and exercise is an effective long-term obesity cure. Likewise, the participants in the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) study (linked above) asked to participate if they had already achieved a certain level of long-term weight loss, is just another example of this same selection bias.

It’s like “proving” that the lottery is a smart bet because somebody won!

jared.jpg

But let’s say that the 0.1% number is off by a factor of 10. Could be. In fact, let’s say it’s off by a factor of 100. I doubt that Dean has misread the literature that severely, but even if he has, diet and exercise has only been shown to be an effective long-term cure for obesity for about 10% of the population — assuming that dozens of trials performed over many years have produced results representative of the population as a whole.

Just for a moment, set aside the question of why this approach doesn’t work. Can we all agree that, for any other condition, a treatment with a 10% success rate would be considered a pretty crappy excuse for a cure?